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

1678.] HENNEPIff 187among his many failings fearhad no part, and wherehis vanity or his spite was not involved, he oftentold the truth,their enormous fabrications. 1His books have their value, with allLa Motte and Hennepin, with sixteenmen, wenton board the little vessel of ten tons, which lay atFort Frontenac. The friar's two brethren, Buissetand Ribourde,, threw their arms about his neck asthey bade him farewell ;while his Indian proselytes,learning whither he was bouna, stood with theirhands pressed upon their mouths,in amazement atthe perils which awaited their ghostly instructor.La Salle, with the rest of the party, was to follow assoon as he could finish his preparations. It was aboisterous and gusty day, the eighteenth of November,The sails were spread ; the shore receded, — the stonewalls of the fort, the huge cross that the friar hadreared, the wigwams, the settlers' cabins, the groupof staring Indians on the strand. The lake was yrough; and the men, crowded in so small a craft,grew nervous and uneasy. They hugged the northernshore, to escape the fury of the wind, which blewsavagely from the northeast; while the long graysweep ofnaked forests on their right betokened thatwinter was fast closing in. On the twenty-sixth,they reached the neighborhood of the Indian town of1The nature of these fabrications will be shown hereafterThey occur, not in the early editions of Hennepin's narrative, whichare comparatively truthful, but in the edition of 1697 and thosewhich followed. La Salle was dead at the time of their publication.