eight experienced companions, and basic trading merchandise. From Quebec, he set out for the colony of Saint-Domingue via the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes to Michilimackinac, where he made an excursion to the southern edge of Green Bay. He traveled along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, trying to reach the Illinois River from the Chicago, but the shallowness of the water forced him up the St. Joseph to the headwaters of the Theakiki, whose waters fall into the Illinois River. He traveled along the Illinois until he reached the Mississippi River in 1721, which he considered "the finest confluence in the world".| Visiting the Illinois Country along the way, Charlevoix traveled down the Mississippi to its mouth at the Gulf Coast. He embarked on a ship at New Orleans for the sail to the island of Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean, but it was wrecked at the entrance of the Bahama Channel. He was aided by nuns of the order of the Ursulines of Quebec, whose founder StMarie of the Incarnation later was the subject of one of his books. Charlevoix and his companions returned to the Mississippi River via following the coast of Florida. Charlevoix's second trip to Saint-Domingue was more fortunate. He arrived in the colony at the beginning of September 1722. He departed for France at the end of that month, landing at Le Havre on 24 December. Charlevoix kept a record of his entire expedition, which he published as the Journal d'un voyage fait par l'ordre du Roi dans l'Amérique Septentrionale de la Nouvelle France Charlevoix's records of local geography were later used to improve regional maps. Unsuccessful in reaching the Pacific, he reported upon his return to France in 1722 of two possible routes: by the Missouri River, "whose source is certainly not far from the sea", or by the establishment of a mission in Sioux territory, from which contact with tribes further west may have been possible. In 1723, Charlevoix traveled to Italy. For twenty-two years, from 1733 to 1755, Charlevoix was one of the directors of the Mémoires or Journal de Trévoux, a monthly journal of literature, history, and science. On the pages of that journal, he lay down in 1735 the plan for a corpus of histories that should have given an all-inclusive account of the extra-European world. The plan was announced when his history of Japan—the first installment of