Shooting Big Game for the Servants of the King under Robert Cavelier de La Salle—Fit Gifts for a King.
"EGGS!" cried Anthony, "Eggs!" He licked his lips. "I have not tasted an egg for a long time," and he smiled his gayest at an Indian who was carrying in both hands a dish hastily made from a palmetto leaf.
The savage was proud of his find and a little more excited than even fresh eggs seemed to warrant. But then he was a southern Indian and they are always more emotional than northern ones. He was a present from some Indian village lately visited by this party of the Sieur La Salle's with whom Anthony was now exploring and he may have wanted to call attention to himself as a useful and important person.
"They look rather queer," Anthony touched them with an inquiring finger; "some sort of wild hen may have laid them. They look something like turtle eggs."
"No. Not turtle," the Indian was sure of that. He stated their name positively.
Anthony had never heard the word. He called an interpreter. That worthy could pronounce the word which was new to him also. He could explain at second hand that it meant a creature living sometimes on land and sometimes in the water, very large and dangerous.
"Oh, nonsense," laughed Anthony, "it would not take a very big bird to lay those eggs. You should see a really large one like an ostrich. Go bring another Indian, for I'm sure we do not understand each other." He put the dish down in the sand near the camp-fire as he waited. Sometimes it was necessary to hunt an interpreter to interpret the interpreters.
It was nearly dinner-time and the whole of the Sieur La Salle's train, two dozen Frenchmen, a dozen and a half of Indians, ten squaws and three papooses and a guide or so hurried up to stare hungrily at the palmetto leaf, while the owner of this treasure trove, in a frenzy of words, tried to tell them that a fierce manitou as big as a man and wicked enough to bite a boat in two had laid those eggs. They must not be eaten.
This was unwelcome news to the cook, to whom the beautiful southern reaches of the Great River were not yielding as much foodstuff as she needed for her table.
Sieur La Salle had a cool, scientific interest in every form of life. He listened carefully to the Indian because he wanted to learn all he could of real and fancied fauna.
Henry Tonty, a captain and the Sieur La Salle's most devoted aide, was second in command. He watched with much amusement. Fantastic notions such as Indians delight in often caught his ready sympathy.
And the priest of the expedition, Father Membre, felt it his duty to keep his ears open when a heathen manitou was mentioned.
From the leader down to the tiniest papoose anything that had to do with meals claimed full attention.
How long the talk might have lasted it would be hard to tell had not Mother Nature herself chosen this moment to hatch those eggs. Warm sand and sunshine and fire were her helpers. This was what the Indian wished. He was more than satisfied at the astonishment of the northerners when there emerged, not fledglings, but squirming lizards.
"El-lagarto!" cried Tonty in Spanish. "Ha! They are crocodiles. Destroy them."
The Father laughed with contempt, "We need not be afraid of such tiny crocodiles, nor of the manitou they breed."
As Anthony recoiled from the wriggling mites he knew by the stirring of his curls that theIndian might be justified in his dread of the manitou.
The Sieur La Salle gave the Indian a special present for the timeliness of his warning and issued the command, "No swimming in the bayous, no jumping from boats to floating logs, no paddle hands trailing in the water."
Anthony was filled with creeping nerves. He could not eat the ration doled out to him at the dinner, which didnotinclude eggs. He shook and shook, partly with the chill which precedes the fever of malaria and partly with the shiver the reptiles gave him.
But he was normal again when the full moon came shining through the moss-draped branches of the live-oaks. The odor of jessamine, the song of the mocking-bird, the silver water rolling past, the easy bed of shore grass, the vespers of the peeper frogs, the altar candles of the fireflies, all combined to make him love the southland and to wonder why Canadians stayed in ice-bound Canada when France could give them homes in such balmy lands as this.
The Sieur La Salle, who was leading them down the river, was young, handsome, educated, titled, and rich. Honors and pleasures were at his hand if he lived in his native country; but he had one of those brave hearts which desired to sacrifice itself for France in the front trenches of the New World.
More than any other one discovery France felt that she needed to have a western water route to the trade of the Orient mapped out. Sieur La Salle had undertaken to find some northwest passage through this new American continent which barred the way. The king gave him a seigniory on the Saint Lawrence River. It was named La Chine to remind him of his ambition to achieve a short cut to China. He explored far and near.
He finally decided from what he heard through the Indians that a man in a canoe, with a few portages, could go from one side of the continent to the other by water. Starting at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence on the Atlantic, sailing through the Great Lakes, down any one of several tributaries to the Mississippi, then up the Missouri, then into the La Platte, from its headwaters to those of the Colorado, down to the Gulf of California, he could at last dip into the Pacific. That route is still open, but there had never been a deep waterway for ocean-going ships until the Panama Canal was begun by the French in 1880 and completed by the United States in 1914. So the Sieur La Salle hunted in vain.
When legends of the Mississippi began to reach him he hoped that the great sea into which it was said to empty might be the Pacific. The Sieur Joliet's voyage proved that it had some southern instead of a western outlet.
The Sieur Joliet's maps, the Père Marquette's diary, Friar Hennepin's descriptions, Accau's business reports, the Sieur DuLuth's estimate of fur-bearing animals, all combined to interest the Empire in developing the Great River valley. The Sieur La Salle received most of the help he asked for when he began to plan a French port at the mouth of the river which could be open to traffic all the year round and could afford an ocean carry for the products of the valley.
At Niagara he built a ship called theGriffen, the first to sail the Great Lakes, but it was lost before it could get into the ocean to go to the Mississippi's mouth. Another ship coming to him from France went down in the Saint Lawrence. These huge misfortunes forced him to abandon the idea of deep-water vessels for his first voyage on the Mississippi. He used the only things he could get—the same old birch-bark canoes which the natives had always had. They could not carry the profitable cargoes of the bigger ships, but they might serve to find a port.
In them, partly because they were fitted to the river and partly because they were manned by Indians who understood their navigation, the Sieur La Salle and his retinue were now making a happy voyage. They had come down by way of the Illinois River, offering friendship to thehospitable Indian villages and scaring the hostile ones into allegiance by a fine show of state.
On this particular day they were far below the last point touched by the Sieur Joliet, and Anthony's gray eyes grew wider and wider as he viewed the semi-tropical scenes and marveled at the ever-broadening expanse of the river so truly great.
Soon they came to a place where the main stream divided into three. The party separated; several boats for each of the new currents would speed the journey's end. Sieur La Salle took the right-hand one. Perhaps he was hoping against hope for some western outlet.
When the fleet came together again it was upon salt water. Blue, sparkling, and invigorating, the water and the air of the Gulf of Mexico filled them with joy.
"Past this gulf the Spanish galleons go back to the Old World heavily laden with the gold of their new lands. From this port we can ship cargoes of furs almost as valuable as theirs. Nearly a century and a half ago the Spaniards saw this region, but they have never fortified nor possessed it," said the Sieur La Salle to his officers. "We will now take it under the protection of our Empire."
Jubilant over their luck, they began to prepare for a formal claim.
During the bustle an Indian signaled toAnthony and he withdrew to let the savage whisper in his ear, "Do you remember the eggs?"
Anthony grimaced to show that he did.
"El-lagarto," repeated the Indian carefully. He liked the Spanish word. "I can show you one."
"I'm not sure I want to see one—but—yes—of course I do," and Anthony followed his guide.
On a little rise of muddy ground was a jumble of driftwood and grass. The Indian mounted it with Anthony at his heels. He peered over a log and, bobbing his head with assurance, pointed his finger and made way for his companion to see. Anthony stuckhishead forward and almost into the open maw of the most horrid creature on earth—two immense jaws wide open—double rows of long white fangs—
He forgot that he was now grown up. He gave the shriek after shriek of a scared little boy and, flouncing backward, went tumbling down the knoll in a madness of haste.
The conference was stopped. All crowded round him in consternation. He was too shaken to be ashamed of himself. "What's the matter?" was the demand.
"El-lagarto," explained the Indian, charmed with this second sensation he had produced.
"Did you kill it, Tony?" asked the Sieur La Salle.
"No," confessed Anthony. "The instant I looked at it, it opened the biggest mouth ever seen and almost bit my head off."
"I will shoot it," and Tonty picked up his firearms; "we don't want one so near the camp."
"It has already been dead for a very long time," began the Indian; "I myself tied its mouth open with a thong—"
As this fact brought the laughter of his peers, Anthony flew into a rage and plunged at the Indian with both fists clenched. Nothing would have pleased the rank and file of soldiers nor the savage boatmen better than a fight in the ring they formed. But the officers pulled Anthony off the prostrate, bewildered Indian, who could not understand the pain of du Gay's wounded vanity.
The poor savage seriously explained to all the interested circle: "When the dead el-lagartoes are quite—quite—ripe—it is the custom of my people to pluck out the elegant teeth and to make ourselves necklaces. Why should the white man be so noisy about that?"
Why indeed?
Anthony had so exhausted his emotions that he was very quiet and only half appreciative as he held his place in the group who were ready for the ceremony of taking possession of a kingdom.
To represent the Church, the Father Membreset up a cross and buried near it a lead plate bearing the arms of France. For the Empire the Sieur La Salle erected a column with the emblem of France in full view. These words were carved in the wood: "Louis Le Grand, Roy de France et de Narvarre, regne, la Neuvieme Avril 1682."
The Indians, in the brightest of feathers and the dullest of faces, formed a background for the Father Membre, who chanted the Te Deum. Anthony led the hymns. Then the Sieur La Salle in legal speech took possession of all the lands drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries from the Alleghanies in the east to the unknown mountains in the west, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. The Frenchmen lined up in military formation and fired a salute to the king's new dominion. It was named Louisiana, for his Majesty.
Think how bold a spirit a man must have had to make such a claim; think what a magnificent present from a subject to his ruler; think of the changes which have happened in that vast domain!
For eighty years the rustic standard held Louisiana. During those days whenever a wandering missionary would meet a soldier of fortune in a native village they would join with somecoureur de boisto start a trading post. Many dotted the valley. To civilize his newcountry his Majesty sent over ship-loads of "king's maids," whom the priests married to the soldiers andcoureurs de bois. Houses took the places of tepees, the tiny villages grew to towns, French habits of living and gentle ideals of courtesy colored midwestern life with a romance which has never faded.
Then the mother country, politically harassed, ceded Louisiana west of the Mississippi to Spain. In another three years the Highland Black Watch captured Fort Chartres and all Louisiana east of the Great River went to England. Old World emigrants, Scotch and Irish and what not, began pouring toward these lands to make themselves on the virgin soil into something that was not Spanish nor French nor English, but a new race called American. At the time of the Revolution they took Louisiana away from England by force of arms. The part owned by Spain had been ceded back to France, and that the Americans bought of Napoleon in 1803.
All the world, even kings, love a hero, and the Sieur La Salle, standing at the mouth of the Mississippi in 1682, felt sure that in time Louis XIV would reward him for adding this valley to the Empire, as indeed he did, not with honors and titles, for which the explorer cared nothing, but with more men and ships to develop the resources of the Great River.
But even in the midst of the glory of claiming such a kingdom, the little group of adventurers complained of the heat and the miasma. Anthony growled softly: "I do wish that explorers might go north in summer and south in winter like the birds and buffalo. Last winter we were frost-bitten in the ice. Now we are sweltering at the outlet in the time of year when the sources of the river are pleasant."
"This hot, swampy land is breeding fever among us. We cannot find fruits to allay it nor any wholesome meat to counteract it as we did further up the stream," said Tonty. "We must pay for our discoveries in physical discomfort."
"In a word," declared the Sieur La Salle, "we are, as you all know, on the verge of starvation. I have resolved of necessity to eat the only game this region affords. Anthony, is your pistol ready?" and he motioned to the Indian who longed for a necklace. "Then follow this man."
Poor Anthony, rebellion in his long-drawn face and repugnance in every line of his figure, moved behind his guide along a half-submerged path. Soon they came to a pile of rotted tree-trunks. Among them the Indian pointed out the quarry, which would have been quite invisible to unaccustomed eyes.
Swallowing a shudder and adjusting his pistol, Anthony determined to blot out his formercowardice. So intent was he that he forgot the command about innocent-looking logs. He stepped upon one to get a better aim at the reptile. His foot-rest slipped, a flail hit him with so much force that he might have been driven straight into the opening jaws of the living log had not the wary Indian grabbed his jerkin even as he touched the snare and yanked him away at right angles, one hand clutching the air, the other tight on the pistol.
The sweep of the beast's tail was quicker than the eye could follow, but its body was so clumsily built that it needed several seconds to turn. In that flash of time Anthony's pride rose above fear and horror, and as the brute, after missing its kill, was sinking itself into the ooze he aimed at one of the wicked little eyes and banged away.
The first seen reptile had vanished as completely as though it had never existed. Anthony's shot was fatal to the second one.
The Indian guide's whoop of triumph brought others to help haul out the game and prepare it for roasting. The ravenous crowd shouted for glee. This stuff could be chewed and swallowed, and therefore it was food.
Then Anthony, having found himself, went back to his superior officer whistling with restored self-confidence. He knew that many more such distasteful meals would have to be provided ere they worked their way up from theswamp lands and out of starvation into the productive regions and into touch with the world.
"Sieur La Salle," he said, "if in the pursuit of your duty to France you have come to such a pass that you must eat diabolical game, I can shoot it. Behold in me, at your service, chief high executioner to his Satanic Majesty the El-lagarto!"