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Updated: June 15, 2025
Joutel, being large and heavy, weighed down his bearer, insomuch that two of his countrymen were forced to sustain him, one on each side. The travellers afterwards visited other villages of the same people. Cavelier, the unworthy successor of his brother, being represented as the chief of the party, became the principal victim of their attentions.
At the height of the fever, a party of Beaujeu's sailors spent a night in singing and dancing before the house; and, says Cavelier, "The more we begged them to be quiet, the more noise they made." La Salle lost reason and well-nigh life; but at length his mind resumed its balance, and the violence of the disease abated.
Here were the conquerors of New Biscay; they who were to hold for France a region as large as the half of Europe. Here was the tall form and the fixed calm features of La Salle. Here were his two nephews, the hot-headed Moranget, still suffering from his wound, and the younger Cavelier, a mere school- boy. Conspicuous only by his Franciscan garb was the small slight figure of Zenobe Membre.
The Mississippi was first to be found; then followed through all the perilous monotony of its interminable windings to a goal which was to be but the starting-point of a new and not less arduous journey. Cavelier, his brother, Moranget, his nephew, the friar, Anastase Douay, and others, to the number of twenty, offered to accompany him. Every corner of the magazine was ransacked for an outfit.
Marquette died not long afterwards, worn out by his labours in the wilderness, and was buried beneath the little chapel at St. Ignace. Joliet's name henceforth disappears from the annals of the West. Réné Robert Cavelier, better known as the Sieur de la Salle, completed the work commenced by the trader and missionary.
The elder Cavelier was to tell him that they were too fatigued for the journey, and wished to stay among the Cenis; and to beg him to allow them a portion of the goods, for which Cavelier was to give his note of hand.
Cavelier de la Sale very soon understood what advantage might be derived from an artery of this importance, especially if the Mississippi had, as he believed, its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. By the lakes and the Illinois, an affluent of the Mississippi, it was easy to effect a communication between the St. Lawrence, and the Sea of the Antilles.
From passages in some of La Salle's letters, it may be gathered that the Abbe Cavelier gave him at times no little annoyance. In his double character of priest and elder brother, he seems to have constituted himself the counsellor, monitor, and guide of a man, who, though many years his junior, was in all respects incomparably superior to him, as the sequel will show.
Apparently, this did not satisfy him; for there is before me the copy of a petition, written about 1717, in which he asks, jointly with one of his nephews, to be given possession of the seignorial property held by La Salle in America. The petition was refused. Young Cavelier, La Salle's nephew, died some years after, an officer in a regiment.
Thus, in the vigor of his manhood, at the age of forty-three, died Robert Cavelier de la Salle, "one of the greatest men," writes Tonty, "of this age;" without question one of the most remarkable explorers whose names live in history.
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