Lakes Erie and Ontario first explored by La Salle along with Dollier and Galinee with the hopes of finding a waterway to China...................French exploration of North America in 1669-70.............vast herds of deer and elk.............black bear aplenty

The Journey of Dollier
LaSalle and Galinee
1669-1670(LaSalle later ventured down
the Mississippi, again in search of a route
to China via water)                                                    

                                                                 

 The brothers of St. Sulpice, an order founded
in Paris in 1641, were brave and gallant men, many of them
of noble birth and lofty ideals. They dreamed of an empire
in New France that should be the Kingdom of God upon the
earth, and with the coming to Montreal of the Western In-
dians for their yearly barter, fair opportunities opened to the
Sulpicians for mission work among the tribesmen. Already
the brother of the great Fenelon had begun a mission on the
north shore of Lake Ontario, when a chance came to open new
mission territory in the Far Southwest. The governor of New
France fostered the enterprise for the exploration's sake, and
in midsummer of 1669 a brave little flotilla of seven birch-bark
canoes set off from the water-gate of St. Sulpice to seek a
new route into the Western unknown.

    Three remarkable men, all in the vigor of early life, were
leaders of this expedition. FranCois Dollier de Casson, power-
ful in frame, erect and soldierly of bearing, was a Breton of
noble family, who had served as cavalry captain under the great
Turenne. Although but thirty-three years old, he had been
three years in Canada, and had learned the Algonquian tongue
by wintering in the huts of the savages.

  Dollier de Casson was the originator and leader of the ex-
pedition. At the last moment it was decided to associate
with him a newly-arrived member of the order, Ren de
Brehant de Galinee, likewise of a noble Breton family. He
had reached Montreal in the late summer of 1668, and, being
an expert mathematician, was chosen to accompany the ex-
pedition as map-maker and chronicler. A shrewd observer
and ready writer, possessed of a keen sense of the picturesque,
Galinee gives us in the following pages one of the most inter-
esting narratives of travel that has survived from the seven-
teenth century. His New World experiences were limited.
In 1671 he returned to France, never again to visit the great
wilderness whose waterways he so vividly described.

    The third member of the expedition was still younger than
the two priests, but destined to leave a permanent impress on
the history of North America. Robert Rene Cavalier, Sieur
de La Salle, was a Norman from Rouen, where his father was
a wealthy burgher interested in the fortunes of the Company of
New France. Robert's elder brother Jean had preceded him
to Canada, where as a member of the Sulpician order he was
in a position to aid his younger brother. Upon the latter's
arrival, in 1666, he had secured for him a seigneury on the upper
end of Montreal Island, named, in derision of his ambition
for Western exploration, La Chine. That it might lead to the
discovery of a new water-route to China was apparently La
Salle's earliest hope. With a quick and comprehensive mind
he readily mastered the Algonquian language.

So far as is recorded, this was the first journey from the lower
Great Lakes to the upper ones, the first expedition to come
within sound, if not within sight, of the cataract of Niagara,
the first to map the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie. The
incidents of the voyage are so graphically given by Galin6e
that the reader can follow the travellers with ease.

"We had very good hunting there.    At last we arrived, on the 13th or 14th, at the shore of
Lake Erie, which appeared to us at first like a great sea, be-
cause there was a great south wind blowing at the time.
There is perhaps no lake in the whole country in which the
waves rise so high, which happens because of its great depth
and its great extent. Its length lies from east to west, and its
north shore is in about 42 degrees of latitude. We proceeded
three days along this lake, seeing land continually on the
other side about four or five leagues away, which made us
think that the lake was only of that width; but we were un-
deceived when we saw that this land, that we saw on the
other side, was a peninsula separating the little bay in which
we were from the great lake, whose limits cannot be seen
when one is in the peninsula. I have shown it on the map I
send you pretty nearly as I saw it.
     we found a spot which appeared to us so beauti-
ful, with such an abundance of game, that we thought we could
not find a better in which to pass our winter. The moment
we arrived we killed a stag and a hind, and again on the fol-
lowing day two young stags. The good hunting quite deter-
mined us to remain in this place.

 We hunted meanwhile and killed a considerable number
of stags, hinds, and roebucks, so that we began to have no
longer any fear of leaving during the winter. We smoked the
meat of nine large animals in such a manner, that it could
have kept for two or three years, and with this provision
we awaited the winter with tranquillity whilst hunting and
making good provision of walnuts and chestnuts, which were
there in great quantities. We had indeed in our granary 23
or 24 minots2 of these fruits, besides apples, plums and grapes,
and alizes3 of which we had an abundance during the autumn.
    

 I leave you to imagine whether we suffered in the midst
of this abundance in the earthly Paradise of Canada; I call
it so, because there is assuredly no more beautiful region in
all Canada. The woods are open, interspersed with beauti-
ful meadows, watered by rivers and rivulets filled with fish
and beaver, an abundance of fruits, and what is more impor-
tant, so full of game that we saw there at one time more than
a hundred roebucks in a single band, herds of fifty or sixty
hinds, and bears fatter and of better flavor than the most
savory pigs of France. In short, we may say that we passed
the winter more comfortably than we should have done in
Montreal.

  Hitherto the country of the Ottawas had passed in my
mind, and in the minds of all those in Canada, as a place where
there was a great deal of suffering for want of food. But I
am so well persuaded of the contrary that I know of no region
in all Canada where they are less in want of it. The nation
of the Saulteaux, or in Algonkin Waoiiitik6ungka Entaouakk
or Ojibways, amongst whom the Fathers are established, live
from the melting of the snows until the beginning of winter
on the bank of a river nearly half a league wide and three
leagues long, by which Lake Superior falls into the Lake of
the Hurons. This river forms at this place a rapid so teem-
ing with fish, called white fish, or in Algonkin attikamegue,
that the Indians could easily catch enough to feed 10,000
men.

It is true the fishing is so difficult that only Indians
can carry it on. No Frenchman has hitherto been able to
succeed in it, nor any other Indian than those of this tribe,
who are used to this kind of fishing from an early age. But, in
short, this fish is so cheap that they give ten or twelve of them
for four fingers of tobacco. Each weighs six or seven pounds,
but it is so big and so delicate that I know of no fish that ap-
proaches it. Sturgeon is caught in this small river, close by,
in abundance. Meat is so cheap here that for a pound of
glass beads I had four minots of fat entrails of moose, which
is the best morsel of the animal. This shows how many these
people kill. It is at these places that one gets a beaver robe
for a fathom of tobacco, sometimes for a quarter of a pound
of powder, sometimes for six knives, sometimes for a fathom
of small blue beads, etc. This is the reason why the French
go there, notwithstanding the frightful difficulties that are
encountered.