Cavelier de La Salle, 1684-1687 145
laying before the Minister of the Navy, Seignelay, and then
before the King himself, not so much the results of his recent
discovery as plans for a new and bolder venture. Once more
de La Salle had yielded not so much to the call of the un-
known, for he knew the region to which he proposed return-
ing, but to the call of adventure, or better still the call of
great enterprise. He proposes going back to the mouth of
the Mississippi, by way of the Gulf of Mexico, and founding
there, sixty leagues above the mouth of the river, a perma-
nent settlement which if necessary could serve as a base to
conduct an expedition into Northern Mexico, should the war
with Spain continue.
In the two Memorials which he presents to Seignelay, we
see de La Salle growing more and more enthusiastic over the
enterprise and setting forth all the good reasons why it
should be promptly undertaken. Among the chief of these
we find:
1) The service of God . . . the need of preaching the gos-
pel to the numerous nations to be found in these parts.
2) The desirability of occupying a tremendous territory
whose fertility and resources seemed boundless.
3) The necessity of forestalling the Spaniards in parts to
which their attention had been called by de La Salle’s re-
cent discovery.
4) The possibility of seizing provinces of Northern Mexico
rich in silver mines and “defended only by a few indolent
and effeminate Spaniards.” Equally appealing to the King
of France was the cleverly exploited necessity of providing
an outlet for the trade of Western New France, already
hemmed in by the British and the Dutch establishments
in the East.
To accomplish such vast ends de La Salle was asking
merely for a vessel of thirty guns, some cannon for his forts,