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The Naval Expedition. Its Object. Its Equipment. Disagreement between La Salle and Beaujeu. The Voyage to the West Indies. Adventures in the Caribbean Sea. They Enter the Gulf. Storms and Calms. The Voyagers Lost. Father Membré's journal abruptly terminates with the arrival of the party at Fort Miami. We have no detailed account of the adventures of La Salle during the next eight or ten months.
There is no great improbability, however, that such enterprising and roving voyagers as the Scandinavians, may have wandered to the northern shores of America, about the coast of Labrador, or the shores of Newfoundland; and if the Icelandic manuscripts said to be of the thirteenth century can be relied upon as genuine, free from modern interpolation, and correctly quoted, they would appear to prove the fact.
In the evening his voyagers were entertained with a dance, in which the Canadians exhibited some grace and much agility; and they contrived to infuse some portion of their activity and spirits into the steps of their female companions. The half-breed women are passionately fond of this amusement, but a stranger would imagine the contrary on witnessing their apparent want of animation.
Launched on the mighty and unknown river, in a rudely built barque, it is a marvel that the voyagers escaped shipwreck in the descent of that vast stream, the navigation being too difficult and perilous, as we are told by Condamine, who descended it in 1743, to be undertaken without the aid of a skilful pilot. Yet the daring Spaniards accomplished it safely.
We do not find in the language of the voyagers themselves, or of those who lent them their help at home, any of that weak watery talk of 'protection of aborigines, which, as soon as it is translated into fact, becomes the most active policy for their destruction, soul and body.
There would be frolics and dances, the notes of the violin an almost universal instrument among the flatboat men sounded across the waters by night to the lonely cabins on the shores, and the settlers not infrequently would put off in their skiffs to meet the unknown voyagers, ask for the news from the east, and share in their revels.
On the gentle declivities of the hills were scattered in gay profusion the dog-wood, the sumach, and the wild brier, whose scarlet berries and white blossoms glowed brightly among the deep green of the surrounding foliage; and here and there a curling column of smoke rising from the little glens that opened along the shore seemed to promise the weary voyagers a welcome at the hands of their fellow-creatures.
But they quickly changed their minds and resolved not to fly but to fight. When the boats came up they began the attack with their paddles and with stones so vigorously, that the voyagers were obliged to fire at them in self-defence. Unhappily four were killed, and the three who remained leaped into the sea.
The brave voyagers, who never doubted the existence of Satan, firmly believed what they stated, that those people wholly worshipped the devil, and oftentimes have conferences with him who "appeareth unto them in a most ugly and monstrous shape."
Let us speak of the Land of Souls." "Who ever returned from that land to tell us of it?" said Pausanias. "Voyagers that never voyaged thither save in song." "Son of Cleombrotus," said Alcman, "hast thou not heard that in one of the cities founded by thine ancestor, Hercules, and named after his own name, there yet dwells a Priesthood that can summon to living eyes the Phantoms of the Dead?"
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