Cavelier de La Salle, 1684-1687 163
And now here is the official report:
“Monseigneur, I François Cavelier, priest and brother of
Sieur Robert de La Salle hereby relate to your Excellency
the true story of the deplorable voyage which we made in
1684, of which we could have foreseen the fatal issue by the
difficulties which we encountered as soon as we left the har-
bor of La Rochelle. For it is not usual that the weather
should be stormy at the end of July any more than in Sep-
tember, and yet there was a storm which broke one of our
masts and compelled to put back to port. . . .”
The author is the same, the expedition is the same, and
yet all historians have made use of the first document
without taking the trouble to compare it with the second,
the only dependable one.
And now, how are we to account for the first story? The
only plausible explanation which, I believe, can be offered,
has to be inferred from a practice which was not infrequent
at the time, and which had brought a predecessor of Abbe
Cavelier, Father Hennepin, a tremendous reputation as a
writer. Hennepin, after giving a fairly accurate description
of Louisiana, in 1683, had later written other books based
on a certain number of accurate facts and for the rest on
details drawn from his imagination. It is very possible that
the Parkman manuscript, which has been translated so care-
fully and used so freely by historians as well as novelists,
may only be the first draft of a book meant for publication
and which therefore would have needed a little filling. We
can also easily surmise that as a novice, Abbe Cavelier
would have imagined that his story would read much better
if it began, “We started on a beautiful day—” and if later by
way of contrast, he could bring out the tragic end of his tale.
Many other problems confront us as we study the last
expedition of de La Salle. I mention a few just to show that