II
THE LAST EXPEDITION AND THE DEATH OF
CAVELIER DE LA SALLE
1684-16871
“We were the dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stified town;
We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need,
Till the Soul, that is not man’s soul, was lent us to lead.”
NO words, I believe, could express better than these few
lines from Kipling’s Song of the Dead, the great and
secret incentive which accounts for all the expeditions under-
taken by Cavelier de La Salle on this continent, and notably
the last and fateful venture which brought him to the shores
of Texas where he found his death two hundred and fifty
years ago, on the 19th of March 1687.
Many have been the explorers of this continent of America.
Many were the motives by which they were actuated; some
came urged on by a most worthy zeal dictated by profound
religious convictions, others were allured by visions of untold
wealth, others by a tamer but saner spirit of commercial
enterprise. But of all the men who “cleared the path” or
“blazed the trail” of this huge country, till it could be devel-
oped, de La Salle, “The Prince of Explorers,” as some of his
historians have called him, stands apart. He brings to a
close, at the end of the 17th century, “the heroic period of
1A public lecture delivered in the Physics Amphitheatre of the Rice Institute,
March 7, 1937, in commemoration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
the death (March 19, 1687) of de La Salle, by Marcel Moraud, Agrégé de !’Univer-
sité, Docteur ès Lettres, Professeur au Rice Institute.
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