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

'362 A NEW ENTERPRISE. [1684.him twenty years. They all say that he was alwaysrather visionary.'It is difficult not to suspect that the current beliefat Rochefort had some foundation; and that thedeadly strain of extreme hardship, prolonged anxiety,and alternation of disaster and success, joined to thefever which nearly killed him, had unsettled hisjudgment and given a morbid development to hisnatural defects. His universal suspicion, whichincluded even the stanch and faithful Henri deTonty; his needless provocation of persons whosegood-will was necessary to him; his doubts whetherhe should sail for the Gulf or for Canada, when tosail to Canada would have been to renounce, orexpose to almost certain defeat, an enterprise longcherished and definitely planned, — all point to oneconclusion. It may be thought that his doubts werefeigned, in order to hide his destination to the lastmoment; but if so, he attempted to blind not onlyhis ill wishers, but his mother, whom he also left inuncertainty as to his route.Unless we assume that his scheme of invadingMexico was thrown out as a bait to the King, it ishard to reconcile it with the supposition of mentalsoundness. To base so critical an attempt on ageographical conjecture, which rested on the slightestpossible information, and was in fact a total error;topostpone the perfectly sound plan cf securing themouth of the Mississippi, to a wild project of leadingfifteen thousand savages for an unknown distance