girls, who looked forward to certain marriage in the new land.

On the twenty-fourth of July, La Salle set sail from Rochelle, with four hundred men in his four vessels, leaving an affectionate and comforting letter as his last farewell to his mother at Rouen. We have already seen how he was thrown upon the shores of the New World. There, on the sands of Matagorda Bay, with nothing to eat but oysters and a sort of porridge made of the flour that had been saved, the homesick party of downcast men and sorrowing women encamped until their leader could tell them what to do. They did not even know where they were. They were intending to conquer the Spaniards, but they knew nothing of their whereabouts. They were attacked by Indians, and finally, some three weeks after the wreck, the commander of the ships sailed away for France leaving La Salle and his forlorn company behind!

A site was soon chosen on the river now called Lavaca (a corruption La Vache, the cow, a name given it because buffaloes had been seen there), and a fort was built called St. Louis. La

Salle had scarcely finished this establishment, when he determined to search for the Mississippi river, for he had by that time concluded from explorations, that he had not found it. On the last day of October, he started, and towards the end of March, the party returned, tattered and worn, almost ready to die; but though the strong body of the leader had given away, his stronger spirit was still unbroken, and he soon determined to set out to find the Illinois region, where he left a colony formerly, and where he felt sure he could obtain relief. There was no chance for them to return directly to France since their vessels were all gone, and this seemed their only hope.

A party of twenty was formed to undertake the perilous enterprise, and on the twenty-second of April, 1686, they took their way from the fort, bearing on their persons the contributions that their fellows who were to remain had been able to bring together for their comfort.

The party experienced a variety of hardships, quarrelled among themselves, and finally, on the morning of the eighteenth of March, 1687, one of

them shot and killed the brave leader.

The re

mainder kept on, finally reached Canada and were taken to their native land. To the colonists at Fort St. Louis, no ground of hope ever appeared, though they felt that the people of France must have an interest in them, and so they kept a lookout over the water for a ship coming to their relief. It never came, alas, and no one knows to this day what became of the Lost Exiles of Texas!

CHAPTER X.

THE PATRIARCH OF NORRIDGEWOCK.

HE visitor to the library of Harvard Univer

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sity may see, carefully preserved in the "Art Room," a remarkable relic of one of the Pathfinders. It is a small volume, made of sheets of small letter-paper. On the first page he reads the following fading words, traced by the Pathfinder's own hand in the woods of Maine. "Il y a un an que je suis parmi les sauvages; je commence à mettre en orde, en forme de dictionnaire, les mots que j'apprens." (I have now been among the savages a year; I begin to arrange in order, in the style of a dictionary, the words that I learn.)

These two hundred and thirty leaves, dingy and soiled as they are, carry the mind back to the olden times. It was in the year 1691, that the words I have quoted were traced by the Frenchman's hand

under the trees of the wilderness. They tell us of a man of education, for no other would have thought of making a dictionary of the language of the wild Indians. Do they not also speak of a man of patience? Can we imagine the toil necessary for a Frenchman to learn the sounds of a savage language and to trace them out besides the words corresponding to them in his own tongue? They make us ask, "Why was this man of education, this patient and persevering student among the Indians of Maine so long ago?"

History describes the place at which he lived, and tells the story of the patriarch. It is on the banks of the Kennebec river, and is still known as Indian Old Point. Mr. Whittier says:

On the brow of a hill, which slopes to meet
The flowing river, and bathe at its feet-
The bare-washed rock, and the drooping grass,
And the creeping vine, as the waters pass
A rude and unshapely chapel stands,

Built up in that wild by unskilled hands;

Yet the traveller knows it a place of prayer,

For the holy sign of the cross is there;