if he had paddled three more days he would have reached the ocean!
Though Lake Erie was known to the French as early as 1640 it was not until 1669 that it was explored or even approximately understood. In September of that year the two men who rank next to Champlain as explorers, La Salle and Joliet, met on the portage between Lake Ontario and Grand River, and discussed the question of what the West contained and how to go there. They had heard of a road to a great river and they both were men to do and dare. They parted. Joliet went to Montreal, having converted the two Sulpitian missionaries Galinée and Dollier to his belief that the western road would be found by passing to the western lakes. They therefore left La Salle and went up through the Strait of Detroit, and Galinée made the first map of the Upper Lakes now in existence.
La Salle on the other hand, believing a story told him by the Senecas, held that the road sought lay to the southwest, and it is practically agreed today that he passed from near Grand River across Lake
