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the first ridge of highlands, walking through beautiful
plains and groves, among deer and buffaloes,—now fording the clear rivulets, now building a bridge by felling
a giant tree across a stream,—till they had passed the basin of the
Colorado, and, in the upland country, had reached a branch of
Trinity River.
In the little company of wanderers, there were two men, Duhaut and L'Archeveque, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise.
Of these, Duhaut had long shown a spirit
of mutiny: the base malignity of disappointed avarice, maddened by suffering, and impatient of control, awakened the fiercest passions of ungovernable hatred.
Inviting Moranget to take charge of the fruits of a buffalo hunt, they quarrelled with him, and murdered him.
Wondering at the delay of his nephew's return,
La Salle, on the twentieth of March, went to seek him. At the brink of the river, he observed eagles hovering as if over carrion; and he fired an alarm gun. Warned by the sound, Duhaut and L'Archeveque crossed the river; the former skulked in the prairie grass; of the latter,
La Salle asked, ‘Where is my nephew?’
At the moment of the answer, Duhaut fired; and, without uttering a word,
La Salle fell dead ‘You are down now, grand bashaw!
you are down now!’
shouted one of the conspirators, as they despoiled his remains, which were left on the prairie, naked and without burial, to be devoured by wild beasts.
Such was the end of this daring adventurer.
For force of will, and vast conceptions; for various knowledge, and quick adaptation of his genius to untried circumstances; for a sublime magnanimity, that resigned itself to the will of Heaven, and yet triumphed over affliction by energy of purpose and unfaltering hope,— he had no superior among his countrymen.
He had
