The things we do!

The Sulpitian priests and their companions followed to the west the newly
found course, but La Salle, the goal of whose thought was still the Ohio,
feigning illness (as it is believed), received the sacrament from the
priests (an altar being improvised of some paddles), parted from them,
and, as they at the time supposed, went back to Montreal. But it was not
of such fibre that his purposes were knit. Just where he went it is not
with certainty known, but it is generally conceded that he reached and
followed the Ohio as far at least as the site of Louisville, Ky. It is
claimed by some that he coasted the unknown western shores of Lake Huron;
that he reached the site of Chicago; and that he even saw the Mississippi
two years at least before Marquette and Joliet. What Parkman says in his
later edition, after full and critical acquaintance with the Margry papers
in Paris, is this: "La Salle discovered the Ohio, and in all probability
the Illinois also; but that he discovered the Mississippi has not been
proved, nor, in the light of the evidence we have, is it likely.


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