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

1680.] LA SALLE AGAIN POISONED. 179placed in the pot in which their food was cooked,and that La Salle was saved by an antidote whichsome of his friends had given him before he leftFrance. This, it will be remembered, was an epochof poisoners.It was in the following month that thenotorious La Voisin was burned alive, at Paris, forpractices to which many ofthe highest nobility werecharged with being privy, not excepting some inwhose veins ran the blood of the gorgeous spendthriftwho ruled the destinies of France. 1In these early French enterprises in the West, itwas to the last degree difficult to hold men to theirduty. Once fairly in the wilderness, completelyfreed from the sharp restraints of authority in whichthey had passed their lives, a spirit of lawlessnessbroke out among them with a violenceproportionedto the pressure which had hitherto controlled it.Discipline had no resources and no guarantee ; whilethose outlaws of the forest, the coureurs de bois, werealways before their eyes, a standing example ofunbridled license. La Salle, eminently skilful in hisdealings with Indians, was rarely so happy with hisown countrymen ; and yet the desertions from whichhe was continually suffering were due far more tothe inevitable difficulty of his position than to anywant of conduct on his part.1The equally noted Brinvilliers was burned four years before.An account of both will be found in the Letters of Madame deSeVigne. The memoirs of the time abound in evidence of thefrightful prevalence of these practices, and the commotion whichthey excited in all ranks of society.