Excerpt from History of Christian County, Illinois: With Illustrations, Descriptive of Its Scenery, and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers Robert De La Salle, whose name is more closely connected with the explorations of the Mississippi than that of any other, was the next to descend the river in the year 1632. Formal posses sion was taken of the great river and all the countries bordering upon it or its tributaries in the name of the King. La Salle and his party now retraced their steps towards the north. They met with no serious trouble until they reached the Chickasaw Bluffs, where they had erected a fort on their down ward voyage, and named it Prudhomme. Here La Salle was taken violently sick. Unable to proceed, he sent forward Tonti to communicate with Count Frontenac. La Salle himself reached the mouth of the St. Joseph the latter part of September. From that point he sent Father Zenobe with his dispatches to represent him at court, while he turned his attention to the fur trade and to the project of completing a fort, which he named St. Louis, Upon the Illinois River. The precise location of this work is not known. It was said to be upon a rocky bluff two hundred and fifty feet high, and only accessible upon one side. There are no bluffs of such a height on the Illinois River answering the de scription. It may have been on the rocky bluff above La Salle, where the rocks are perhaps one hundred feet in height. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.