From the first everything had gone wrong. La Salle and the ship-captains, who could not endure his haughty manners, quarreled incessantly. A Spanish cruiser captured his fourth vessel, laden with indispensable supplies for the colony. Then he was seized with a dangerous fever; and while the vessels waited at San Domingo for him to be well enough to resume the voyage, his villains roamed the island and rioted in debauchery.
Its destination being the mouth of the Mississippi, what was the expedition doing at Matagorda Bay, in Texas? This was the result of { 264} another folly. Not a soul on board knew the navigation of the Gulf, so carefully had Spain guarded her secret. The pilots had heard much of the currents in those waters, and they made so excessive allowance for them that when land was sighted, instead of being, as they supposed, about Appalachee Bay, they were on the coast of Texas, probably about Galveston Bay. In the end it proved to be a fatal mistake, wrecking the enterprise.
On New Year's day La Salle landed and found only a vast marshy plain. Clearly, this was not the mouth of the Great River. He returned on board, and the vessel stood westward along the coast, every eye on board strained to catch some indication of what they sought, whereas they were all the time sailing further from it. At one point where they stopped, some Indians, who doubtless were familiar with the sight of white men, swam out through the surf and came on board without any sign of fear. But, nobody knowing their language, nothing could be learned from them.
After hovering for three weeks in sight of land, La Salle, perplexed beyond measure, but forced to decide because the captain of the man-of-war was impatient to land the men and to sail for { 265} France, announced that they were at one of the mouths of the Mississippi and ordered the people and stores put ashore.
Scarcely were they landed, when a band of Indians set upon some men at work and carried off some of them. La Salle immediately seized his arms, called to some of his followers, and started off in pursuit. Just as he was entering the Indian village, the report of a cannon came from the bay. It frightened the savages so that they fell flat on the ground and gave up their prisoners without difficulty. But a chill foreboding seized La Salle. He knew that the gun was a signal of disaster, and, looking back, he saw the "Aimable" furling her sails. Her captain, in violation of orders, and disregarding buoys which La Salle had put down, had undertaken to come in under sail and had ended by wrecking her. Soon she began to break up, and night fell upon the wretched colonists bivouacking on the shore, strewn with boxes and barrels saved from the wreck, while Indians swarmed on the beach, greedy for plunder, and needed to be kept off by a guard.