La Salle and the discovery of the great West - North Central ...

1678.] HENNEPIN 133This bold, hardy, and adventurous friar,the historianofthe expedition, and a conspicuous actor in it,has unwittingly painted his own portrait with tolerabledistinctness. "I always," he says, "felt astrong inclination to fly from the world and liveaccording to the rules of a pure and severe virtue;and it was with this view that I entered the Order ofSt. Francis." 1 He then speaks of his zeal for thesaving of souls, but admits that a passion for traveland a burning desire to visit strange lands had nosmall part in his inclination for the missions. 2Beingin a convent in Artois, his Superior sent him toCalais, at the season of the herring-fishery, to begalms, after the practice of the Franciscans. Hereand at Dunkirk he made friends of the sailors, andwas never tired of their stories.So insatiable, indeed,was his appetite for them, that "often," he says, "Ihid myself behind tavern doors while the sailors weretelling of their voyages. The tobacco smoke mademe very sick at the stomach ; but, notwithstanding,I listened attentively to all they said about theiradventures at sea and their travels in distant countries.I could have passed whole days and nights in thisway without eating." 8He presently set out on a roving mission throughThis paper, apparently addressed to Abbs' Renaudot, is entirely distinctfrom Tont/s memoir of 1693, addressed to the ministerPonchartrain.1Hennepin, Nouvelle Decouverte (1697), 8.2 Ibid., Avant Propos, 5.8 Ibid., Voyage Curieux (1704), 12.