We are accustomed to call those who crossed the plains and the Rocky
Mountains for the gold-fields of California nearly two centuries later (in
1849) the Argonautae; but the first American Argonauts went from France,
and they built their _Argo_ on what is now Lake Erie, on the edge of the
Field of the Bulls, near a place, grown into a beautiful city, which now
bears the very name of the wild bull, the "buffalo," and within sound of
the roaring of the dragon that had frightened all earlier explorers. So
accurately do the details of the story of Jason's adventure become
realities to-day! Champlain and others had heard only at a distance the
thunder of the great cataract that was some day to become not only as
docile as the dragon under Jason's taming but as useful as a million
harnessed bulls.
La Salle gathered his ship-carpenters and his ship furniture between his
journeys to Rouen (the place of his birth) and elsewhere for the means of
purchase. But before the winter had come in Normandy his messengers were
out amid the snows and naked forests of Canadian winters in continuance of
that voyage toward the western Colchis.
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