The name is absent

Cavelier de La Salle, 1684-1687   161

which they drew from de La Salle’s notes and on which he
had depended himself. But it must be remembered that
these notes had been taken in the spring, in April, 1682, and
that de La Salle reached the Gulf of Mexico early in January
in 1685, during a period of great storms and at a time when
the whole shore, as we know, would be muddy. It can there-
fore be suggested that, deceived by the information he had
received at Santo Domingo, where he had been told that a
strong current carried ships to the east, he would naturally
have directed his course slightly to the west, looked in vain
for the muddy current of the Mississippi, and finally failed
where the Spaniards could not succeed.

Through Spanish documents which have been put to ex-
cellent use by Professor Bolton, and through French docu-
ments and maps, we know pretty certainly today where the
main camp of de La Salle, known as Camp or Fort Saint
Louis, stood. Documents gathered by a Mexican scholar,
Garcia, in 1909, give us the plan of the fort and the very
inscriptions to be found on the gate, to such an extent that
it could easily be reconstructed today and at small cost.

Historians of de La Salle have been very much perplexed
over the different expeditions which he undertook after
building his fort and providing for the safety of his colony.
Some have wondered if the first of these was not towards
the mines of Santa Barbara in northern Mexico. Their
unique documentation to this effect is the Diary of Abbé
Cavelier who declares that in the course of that first expedi-
tion they “reached a village enclosed with a kind of wall
made of clay and sand, and fortified with little towers at
intervals, where they found the arms of Spain engraved on
a copper plate, with the date 1598, . . . two small pieces of
iron cannon, a small brass culverin” and other unmistakable
signs of Spanish occupation. Parkman, who had bought

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