Note 1 — VOL. I VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY AND EARLY EXPLORATIONS: 1000 A.D.—1682 (continued 4)

Louis Hennepin, born in Belgium in 1640, was a friar of the Recollect order, an offshoot of the Franciscans. Mr. Thwaites, who has edited Hennepin's "New Discovery of a Vast Country," from which the account of Niagara Falls here given is taken, describes him as "an uneasy soul, uncontent to remain cloistered and fretting to engage in travel and wild adventure." After the pioneer voyage down the Mississippi, made by Joliet and Marquette, had become known in Europe, it intensified an already active spirit of discovery. In the summer of 1678 Hennepin joined La Salle and Laval Montmorency in the famous expedition of La Salle undertaken from Quebec to explore the interior, with a view to uniting Canada with the Gulf of Mexico by a chain of forts. On arrival in Quebec Father Hennepin was sent forward by La Salle to Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario. Thence, with La Monte and sixteen men, he went on to Niagara in order to smooth the way with the Indians for La Salle's later coming. It was at this time that Hennepin first saw Niagara Falls. White men had probably seen the cataract before, but he is the first who wrote a description of it that has come down to us. Hennepin's character has been severely criticized. He was much given to exaggeration, and he magnified his own importance. Mr. Thwaites describes him as "hardy, brave and enterprising," but "lacking in spiritual qualities."

Hennepin's estimate of the height of the falls (about 600 feet) may be cited as an example of his faculty in exaggeration. The actual height is 167 feet. The descent from Lake Erie to Ontario, including that of the rapids above and below the falls, is only 330 feet.