"The northward current of the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and the southward current of the western shore," says a writer exact in knowledge, "naturally made the St. Joseph portage a return route to Canada, and the Chicago portage an outbound one." But though La Salle was a careful observer and must have known that what was then called the Chekago River afforded a very short carrying to the Desplaines or upper Illinois, he saw fit to use the St. Joseph both coming and going.

His march to Fort Frontenac he afterwards described in a letter to one of the creditors interested in his discoveries.

"Though the thaws of approaching spring greatly increased the difficulty of the way, interrupted as it was everywhere by marshes and rivers, to say nothing of the length of the journey, which is about five hundred leagues in a direct line, and the danger of meeting Indians of four or five different nations, through whose country we were to pass, as well as an Iroquois army which we knew was coming that way; though we must suffer all the time from hunger; sleep on the open ground, and often without food; watch by night and march by day, loaded with baggage, such as blanket, clothing, kettle, hatchet, gun, powder, lead, and skins to make moccasins; sometimes pushing through thickets, sometimes climbing rocks covered with ice and snow; sometimes wading whole days through marshes where the water was waist deep or even more,—all this did not prevent me from going to Fort Frontenac to bring back the things we needed and to learn myself what had become of my vessel."

Carrying their canoes where the river was frozen, and finally leaving them hidden near where the town of Joliet now stands, La Salle and his men pushed on until they reached the fort built at the mouth of the St. Joseph. Here he found the two voyageurs he had sent to search for the Griffin. They said they had been around the lake and could learn nothing of her. He then directed them to Tonty, while he marched up the eastern shore. This Michigan region was debatable ground among the Indians, where they met to fight; and he left significant marks on the trees, to make prowlers think he had a large war party. A dozen or twenty roving savages, ready to pounce like ferocious wildcats on a camp, always peeled white places on the trees, and cut pictures there of their totem, or tribe mark, and the scalps and prisoners they had taken. They respected a company more numerous than themselves, and avoided it.

Stopping to nurse the sick when some fell ill of exposure, or to build canoes when canoes were needed, La Salle did not reach Fort Niagara until Easter, and it was May when Fort Frontenac came into view.

No man ever suffered more from treachery. Before he could get together the supplies he needed, trouble after trouble fell upon him. The men that Tonty had sent to tell him about the destruction of Fort CrÈvecoeur were followed by others who brought word that the deserters had destroyed his forts at the St. Joseph River and Niagara, and carried off all the goods. The Griffin was certainly lost. And before going back to the Illinois country he was obliged to chase these fellows and take from them what could be recovered. But when everybody else seemed to be against him, it was much comfort to remember he had a faithful lieutenant while the copper-handed Italian lived.

La Salle gathered twenty-five men of trades useful to him, and another outfit with all that he needed for a ship, having made new arrangements with his creditors; and going by way of Michilimackinac, he reached the St. Joseph early in November.

Whenever, in our own day, we see the Kankakee still gliding along its rocky bed, or the solemn Illinois spreading betwixt wooded banks, it is easy to imagine a birch canoe just appearing around a bend, carrying La Salle or Tonty, and rowed by buckskin-clad voyageurs. On the Kankakee thousands of buffaloes filled the plains, and La Salle's party killed many, preparing the flesh in dried flakes by smoking it.

The buffaloes were left behind when they approached the great town on the Illinois. La Salle glanced up at the rock he wanted fortified, but no palisade or Frenchman was to be seen.

"It seems very quiet," he said to the men in his canoe, "and we have not passed a hunter. There—there is the meadow where the town stood; but where is the town?"

Heaps of ashes, charred poles, broken scaffolds, wolves prowling where papooses had played, crows whirling in black clouds or sitting in rows on naked branches, bones,—a horrible waste plain had taken the place of the town.

The Frenchmen scattered over it, eagerly seeking some trace of Tonty and his companions. They labored all day, until the sun set, among dreadful sights which they could never forget, without finding any clue to his fate.

They piled charred wood together and made a fire and camped among ruins. But La Salle lay awake all night, watching the sharp-pointed autumn stars march overhead, and suffering what must have seemed the most unendurable of all his losses.

Determined not to give up his friend, he rose next morning and helped the men hide their heavy freight in the rocks, leaving two of them to hide with and guard it, and went on down the Illinois River. On one bank the retreat of the invaded tribe could be traced, and on the other the dead camp-fires of the Iroquois who had followed them. But of Tonty and his Frenchmen there was still no sign.

La Salle saw the ruins of Fort CrÈvecoeur and his deserted vessel. And so searching he came to the mouth of the Illinois and saw for the first time that river of his ambitions, the Mississippi. There he turned back, leaving a letter tied to a tree, on the chance of its sometime falling into the hands of Tonty. There was nothing to do but to take his men and goods from among the rocks near the destroyed town and return to Fort Miamis, on the St. Joseph, which some of his followers had rebuilt. The winter was upon them.

La Salle never sat and brooded over trouble. He was a man of action. Shut in with his men and goods, and obliged to wait until spring permitted him to take the next step, he began at once to work on Indian hunters, and to draw their tribes towards forming a settlement around the rock he meant to fortify on the Illinois. Had he been able to attach turbulent voyageurs to him as he attached native tribes, his heroic life would have ended in success even beyond his dreams. Tonty could better deal with ignorant men, his military training standing him in good stead; yet Tonty dared scarcely trust a voyageur out of his sight.

While Tonty and La Salle were passing through these adventures, the RÉcollet father, Louis Hennepin, and his two companions, sent by La Salle, explored the upper Mississippi. One of these was named Michael Ako; the other, Du Gay, a man from Picardy in France.

They left Fort CrÈvecoeur on the last day of February, twenty-four hours before La Salle started northward, and entered the Mississippi on the 12th of March. The great food-stocked stream afforded them plenty of game, wild turkeys, buffaloes, deer, and fish. The adventurers excused themselves from observing the Lenten season set apart by the Church for fasting; but Father Hennepin said prayers several times a day. He was a great robust Fleming, with almost as much endurance as that hardy Norman, La Salle.

They had paddled about a month up river through the region where Marquette and Jolliet had descended, when one afternoon they stopped to repair their canoe and cook a wild turkey. Hennepin, with his sleeves rolled back, was daubing the canoe with pitch, and the others were busy at the fire, when a war whoop, followed by continuous yelling, echoed from forest to forest, and a hundred and twenty naked Sioux or Dacotah Indians sprang out of boats to seize them. It was no use for Father Hennepin to show a peace-pipe or offer fine tobacco. The Frenchmen were prisoners. And when these savages learned by questioning with signs, and by drawing on the sand with a stick, that the Miamis, whom they were pursuing to fight, were far eastward out of their reach, three or four old warriors laid their hands on Hennepin's shaven crown and began to cry and howl like little boys.

The friar in his long gray capote or hooded garment, which fell to his feet, girt about the waist by a rope called the cord of St. Francis, stood, with bare toes showing on his sandals, inclining his fat head with sympathy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the old men's faces. Du Gay and Ako, in spite of the peril, laughed to see him daub the war paint.

"The good father hath no suspicion that these old wretches are dooming him to death," said Ako to Du Gay.

It appeared afterwards that this was what the ceremony meant. For several days the Frenchmen, carried northward in their captors' boats, expected to die. No calumet was smoked with them; and every night one of the old chiefs, named Aquipaguetin, who had lost a son in war and formed a particular intention of taking somebody's scalp for solace, sat by the prisoners stroking them and howling by the hour. One night when the Frenchmen were forced to make their fire at the end of the camp, Aquipaguetin sent word that he meant to finish them without more delay. But they gave him some goods out of the store La Salle had sent with them, and he changed his mind and concluded to wait awhile. He carried the bones of one of his dead relations, dried and wrapped in skins gaily ornamented with porcupine-quill work; and it was his custom to lay these bones before the tribe and request that everybody blow smoke on them. Of the Frenchmen, however, he demanded hatchets, beads, and cloth. This cunning old Sioux wanted to get all he could before the party reached their villages, where the spoil would be divided.

Nineteen days after their capture the prisoners were brought to a place which is now the site of St. Paul in the state of Minnesota, where the Sioux disbanded, scattering to their separate towns. They had finally smoked the peace-pipe with the Frenchmen; and now, fortunately without disagreement, portioned their white captives and distributed the goods. Father Hennepin was given to Aquipaguetin, who promptly adopted him as a son. The Flemish friar saw with disgust his gold-embroidered vestments, which a missionary always carried with him for the impressive celebration of mass, displayed on savage backs and greatly admired.

The explorers were really in the way of seeing as much of the upper Mississippi as they could desire. They were far north of the Wisconsin's mouth, where white men first entered the great river. The young Mississippi, clear as a mountain stream, gathered many small tributaries. St. Peter's joined it from a blue-earth channel. This rugged northern world was wonderfully beautiful, with valleys and heights and rocks and waterfalls.

The Sioux were tall, well-made Indians, and so active that the smaller Frenchmen could hardly keep up with them on the march. They sometimes carried Du Gay and Ako over streams, but the robust friar they forced to wade or swim; and when he lagged lame-footed with exhaustion across the prairies, they set fire to grass behind him, obliging him to take to his heels with them or burn. By adoption into the family of Aquipaguetin he had a large relationship thrust upon him, for the old weeper had many wives and children and other kindred. Hennepin indeed felt that he was not needed and might at any time be disposed of. He never had that confidence in his father Aquipaguetin which a son should repose in a parent.

He was separated from Ako and Du Gay, who were taken to other villages. By the time he reached father Aquepaguetin's house he was so exhausted, and his legs, cut by ice in the streams, were so swollen that he fell down on a bear robe. The village was on an island in a sheet of water afterwards called Lake Buade. Hennepin was kindly received by his new family, who fed him as well as they were able, for the Sioux had little food when they were not hunting. Seeing him so feeble, they gave him an Indian sweating bath, which he found good for his health. They made a lodge of skins so tight that it would hold heat, and put into it stones baked to a white heat. On these they poured water and shut Hennepin in the steam until he sweated freely.

The Sioux had two kinds of lodges—one somewhat resembling those of the Illinois, the other a cone of poles with skins stretched around, called a tepee.

Father Hennepin did little missionary work among these Indians. He suffered much from hunger, being a man who loved good cheer. But the tribes went on a buffalo hunt in July and killed plenty of meat. All that northern world was then clothed in vivid verdure. Honeysuckles and wild grapevines made the woods fragrant. The gentian, which jealously closes its blue-fringed cup from the human eye, grew close to the lakes. Captive though the Frenchmen were, they could not help enjoying the evening camp-fire with its weird flickerings against the dark of savage forests, the heat-lightning which heralded or followed storms, the waters, clear, as if filtered through icebergs, dashing in foam over mossy rocks.

They met during the buffalo hunt, and it was about this time that some "spirits," or white men, were heard of, coming from Lake Superior. These proved to be the great ranger Greysolon du Lhut and four other Frenchmen.

This man, cousin to Tonty, passed nearly his whole life in the woods, going from Indian town to Indian town, or planting outposts of his own in the wilderness. Occasionally he went to France, and the king's magnificence at Versailles was endured by him until he could gain some desired point from the colonial minister and hurry back. The government relied on him to keep lawless coureurs de bois within bounds, and he traded with nearly all the western tribes. When Greysolon du Lhut appeared, the Sioux treated their prisoners with deference; and from that time Hennepin, Du Gay, and Ako went where they pleased.

They seemed to have had no thought of returning to Fort CrÈvecoeur. In those days when each man took his individual life in his hands and guarded it in ways which seemed best to him, it was often expedient to change one's plan of action. About the time that Tonty was obliged to abandon Fort CrÈvecoeur, Hennepin and his companions set off eastward with Greysolon du Lhut's party. Hennepin sailed for France as soon as he could and wrote a book about his adventures. It was one of La Salle's misfortunes that this friar should finally even lay claim to discovering the mouth of the Mississippi, adding the glory of that to these real adventures on its upper waters.

The first of March, La Salle, with a number of the men he had gathered, started from Fort Miamis to the Illinois country. The prairies were one dazzling expanse of snow, and as the party slid along on the broad, flat snowshoes to which their feet were strapped, some of them were so blinded that the pain in their eyes became unendurable. These were obliged to camp in the edge of some woods, while the rest went on.

La Salle himself was sitting in darkness while the spring sun struck a million sparkles from a world yet locked in winter. The wind chilled his back, and he spread his hands to the camp blaze. In the torment of snow-blindness he wondered whether Tonty was treading these white wastes, seeking him, or lying dead of Indian wounds under the snow crust. The talk of the other snow-blinded men, sitting about or stretched with their feet to the fire, was lost on his ear. Yet his one faithful servant, who went with him on all his journeys, could not see anything but calm fortitude on his face as he lifted it at the approach of snowshoes.

"I cannot see you, Hunaut," said La Salle. "Did you find some pine leaves?"

"I found some, monsieur."

"Steep them as soon as you can for the men's eyes."

"I wish to tell you, monsieur," the man said as he went about his task with a snow-filled kettle, "that I found also a party of Fox Indians from Green Bay, and they gave me news of Monsieur de Tonty."

Hunaut looked at the long, pale face of his master and saw the under lip tremble and twitch.

"You know I am much bound to Monsieur de Tonty. Is he alive?"

"He is alive, monsieur. He has been obliged to pass the winter at Green Bay. Father Hennepin has also passed through that country on his way to Montreal."

La Salle felt his troubles melt with the unlocking of winter. The brief but agonizing snow-blindness passed away with a thaw; and, overtaking his other men, he soon met the returning Illinois tribe and began the Indian settlement around the rock he intended to fortify.

Already the Miami tribe was following him, and he drew them into an alliance with the Illinois, impressively founding the principality soon to grow there. This eloquent Norman Frenchman had gifts in height and the large bone and sinew of Normandy, which his Indian allies always admired. And he well knew where to impress his talk with coats, shirts, guns, and hunting-knives. As his holdings of land in Canada were made his stepping-stones toward the west, so the footing he gained at Fort Miamis and in the Illinois country was to be used in discovering the real course of the Mississippi and taking possession of its vast basin.

It was the end of May before he met Tonty at St. Ignace; Italian and Frenchman coming together with outstretched arms and embracing. Tonty's black eyes were full of tears, but La Salle told his reverses as calmly as if they were another man's.

"Any one else," said Father MembrÉ, who stood by, "would abandon the enterprise, but Monsieur de la Salle has no equal for constancy of purpose."

"But where is Father Ribourde?" La Salle inquired, missing the other RÉcollet.

Tonty told him sorrowfully how Father Ribourde had gone into the woods when his party camped, after being driven up river in a leaky boat by the Iroquois; how they had waited and searched for him, and were finally made aware that a band of prowling Kickapoos had murdered him.

Tonty had aimed at Green Bay by the Chicago portage, and tramped along the west shore of Lake Michigan, having found it impossible to patch the boat.

"We were nearly starved," he said; "but we found a few ears of corn and some frozen squashes in a deserted Indian town. When we reached the bay we found an old canoe and mended it; but as soon as we were on the water there rose a northwest wind with driving snow, which lasted nearly five days. We ate all our food, and, not knowing what to do, turned back to the deserted town to die by a warm fire in one of the wigwams. On the way the bay froze. We camped to make moccasins out of Father MembrÉ's cloak. I was angry at Étienne Renault for not finishing his; but he excused himself on account of illness, having a great oppression of the stomach, caused by eating a piece of an Indian rawhide shield which he could not digest. His delay proved our salvation, for the next day, as I was urging him to finish the moccasins, a party of Ottawas saw the smoke of our fire and came to us. We gave them such a welcome as never was seen before. They took us into their canoes and carried us to an Indian village only two leagues off. All the Indians took pleasure in sending us food; so, after thirty-four days of starvation, we found our famine turned to abundance."

Tonty and La Salle, with their followers, paddled the thousand miles to Fort Frontenac, to make another start into the wilderness.

La Salle was now determined to keep his men together. He set down many of his experiences and thoughts in letters which have been kept; so we know at this day what was in the great explorer's mind, and how dear he held "Monsieur de Tonty, who is full of zeal."

On his return to the wilderness with another equipment, he went around the head of Lake Michigan and made the short Chicago portage to the Desplaines River. Entering by this branch the frozen Illinois, they dragged their canoes on sledges past the site of the town and reached open water below Peoria Lake. La Salle gave up the plan of building a ship, and determined to go on in his canoes to the mouth of the Mississippi.

So, pausing to hunt when game was needed, his company of fifty-four persons entered the great river, saw the Missouri rushing into it—muddy current and clear northern stream flowing alongside until the waters mingled. They met and overawed the Indians on both shores, building several stockades. The broad river seemed to fill a valley, doubling and winding upon itself with innumerable curves, in its solemn and lonely stretches. Huge pieces of low-lying bank crumbled and fell in with splashes, for the Mississippi ceaselessly eats away its own shore.

A hundred leagues below the mouth of the Arkansas they came to a swamp on the west side. Behind this swamp, they had been told, might be found the Arkansas tribe's great town. La Salle sent Tonty and Father MembrÉ, with some voyageurs, to make friends with the Indians and bring him word about the town.

Tonty had seen nothing like it in the New World. The houses were large and square, of sun-baked brick, with a dome of canes overhead. The two largest were the chief's house and the temple. Doors were the only openings. Tonty and the friar were taken in where the chief sat on a bedstead with his squaws, and sixty old men, in white mulberry bark cloaks, squatted by with the dignity of a council. The wives, in order to honor the sovereign, yelled.

The temple was a place where dead chiefs' bones were kept. A mud wall built around it was ornamented with skulls. The inside was very rough. Something like an altar stood in the center of the floor; and a fire of logs was kept burning before it, and never allowed to go out, filling the place with smoke, and irritating the eyes of two old Indians who tended it in half darkness. The Frenchmen were not allowed to look into a secret place where the temple treasure was kept. But, hearing it consisted of pearls and trinkets, Tonty conjectured the Indians had got it from the Spanish. This tribe was not unlike the Aztecs of Mexico. The chief came in barbaric grandeur to visit La Salle, dressed in white, having fans carried before him, and a plate of burnished copper to represent the sun, for these lower Mississippians were sun-worshipers.

With gifts and the grave consideration which instantly won Indians, La Salle moved from tribe to tribe towards the Gulf. Red River pulsed upon the course like a discharging artery. The sluggish alligator woke from the ooze and poked up his snout at the canoes. "He is," says a quaint old writer who made that journey afterwards, "the most frightful master-fish that can be seen. I saw one that was as large as half a hogshead. There are some, they say, as large as a hogshead and twelve to fifteen feet long. I have no doubt they would swallow up a man if they caught him."

In April La Salle reached his goal. He found that the Mississippi divided its current into three strands and entered the Gulf through three mouths. He separated his party; La Salle took the west passage, and Tonty and another lieutenant the middle and the east. At the Gulf of Mexico they came together again, and with solemn ceremonies claimed for France all the country along the great river's entire length, and far eastward and westward, calling it Louisiana, in honor of King Louis XIV. A metal plate, bearing the arms of France, the king's name, and the date of the discovery, was fixed on a pillar in the shifting soil.

Hardy as he was, La Salle sometimes fell ill from the great exposures he endured. And more than once he was poisoned by some revengeful voyageur. It was not until the December following his discovery of the Mississippi's mouth that he realized his plan of fortifying the rock on the Illinois River. He and Tonty delighted in it, calling it Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Storehouses and quarters for a garrison rose around its edges, protected by a palisade. A windlass was rigged to draw water from the river below. On the northeast corner of the rock a low earthwork remains to this day.

Around this natural castle the Indian tribes gathered to La Salle, as to a sovereign,—Miamis, Abenakis, and Shawanoes, from countries eastward, and the Illinois returned to spread over their beloved meadow. Instead of one town, many towns of log, or rush, or bark lodges could be seen from the summit of the Rock. Years afterwards the French still spoke of this fortress as Le Rocher. A little principality of twenty thousand inhabitants, strong enough to repel any attack of the Iroquois, thus helped to guard it. La Salle meant to supply his people with goods and give them a market for their furs. At this time he could almost see the success of his mighty enterprise assured; he could reasonably count on strengthening his stockades along the Mississippi, and on building near its mouth a city which would protect the entire west and give an outlet to the undeveloped wealth of the continent.

In the flush of his discovery and success La Salle went back to France, leaving Tonty in charge of the Rock and the gathering Indian nations, and laid his actual achievements before the king, asking for help. This was made necessary by the change in the colonial government, which had removed his friend Count Frontenac and left him at the mercy of enemies.

The king was not slow to see the capacity of this wonderful man, so shy of civilization that he lodged in a poor street, carrying with him the very breath of the wilderness. La Salle asked for two ships; the king gave him four; and many people and supplies were gathered to colonize and stock the west.

It was La Salle's intention to sail by way of the West Indies, cross the Gulf of Mexico, and enter the mouth of the Mississippi. But the Gulf of Mexico is rimmed with low marshy land, and he had never seen the mouth of the Mississippi from seaward. His unfamiliarity with the coast, or night, or fog cheated him of his destination, and the colony was landed four hundred miles west of it, in a place called Matagorda Bay, in Texas, which then belonged to the Spaniards. Although at the time of discovery he had taken the latitude of that exact spot where he set the post, he had been unable to determine the longitude; any lagoon might be an opening of the triple mouth he sought.

La Salle's brother, a priest, who sailed with him on this voyage, testified afterwards that the explorer died believing he was near the mouth of the Mississippi. Whatever may have been his thoughts, the undespairing Norman grappled with his troubles in the usual way. One of his vessels had been captured by the Spanish. Another had been wrecked in the bay by seamen who were willing to injure him. These contained supplies most needed for the colony. The third sailed away and left him; and his own little ship, a gift of the king for his use along the coast, was sunk by careless men while he was absent searching northward for the Mississippi.

Many of the colonists fell sick and died. Men turned sullen and tried to desert. Some went hunting and were never seen again. Indians, who dare not openly attack, skulked near and set the prairie on fire; and that was a sight of magnificence, the earth seeming to burn like a furnace, or, far as the eye could follow them, billows of flame rushing as across a fire sea. But La Salle was wise, and cut the grass close around his powder and camp.

Water, plains, trees combined endlessly, like the pieces of a kaleidoscope, to confuse him in his search. Tonty was not at hand to take care of the colony while he groped for the lost river. He moved his wretched people from their camp, with all goods saved off the wreck in the bay, to a better site for a temporary fort, on rising ground. The carpenters proved good for nothing. La Salle himself planned buildings and marked out mortises on the logs. First a large house roofed with hides, and divided into apartments, was finished to shelter all. Separate houses were afterwards built for the women and girls, and barracks or rougher cells for the men. A little chapel was finally added. And when high-pointed palisades surrounded the whole, La Salle, perhaps thinking of his invincible rock on the Illinois and the faithfulness of his copper-handed lieutenant guarding it, called this outpost also Fort St. Louis. Cannon were mounted at the four corners of the large house. As the balls were lost, they were loaded with bullets in bags.

Behind, the prairies stretched away to forests. In front rolled the bay, with the restless ever-heaving motion of the Mexican Gulf. A delicious salty air, like the breath of perpetual spring, blew in, tingling the skin of the sulkiest adventurer with delight in this virgin world. Fierce northers must beat upon the colonists, and the languors of summer must in time follow; and they were homesick, always watching for sails. Yet they had no lack of food. Oysters were so plentiful in the bay that they could not wade without cutting their feet with the shells. Though the alligator pushed his ugly snout and ridgy back out of lagoons, and horned frogs frightened the children, and the rattlesnake was to be avoided where it lay coiled in the grass, game of all kinds abounded. Every man was obliged to hunt, and every woman and child to help smoke the meat. Even the priests took guns in their hands. Father MembrÉ had brought some buffalo traditions from the Illinois country. He was of Father Hennepin's opinion that this wild creature might be trained to draw the plow, and he had faith that benevolence was concealed behind its wicked eyes.

As Father MembrÉ stalked along the prairie with the hunters, his capote tucked up out of his way on its cord, one of the men shot a buffalo and it dropped. The buffaloes rarely fell at once, even when wounded to death, unless hit in the spine. Father MembrÉ approached it curiously.

"Come back, Father!" shouted the hunters.

Father MembrÉ touched it gently with his gun.

"Run, Father, run!" cried the hunters.

"It is dead," asserted Father MembrÉ. "I will rest my gun across its carcass to steady my aim at the other buffaloes."

He knelt to rest his gun across its back.

The great beast heaved convulsively to its feet and made a dash at the RÉcollet. It sent him revolving heels over head. But Father MembrÉ got up, and, spreading his capote in both hands, danced in front of the buffalo to head it off from escaping. At that, with a bellow, the shaggy creature charged over him across the prairie, dropping to its knees and dying before the frightened hunters could lift the friar from the ground.

"Are you hurt, Father?" they all asked, supporting him, and finding it impossible to keep from laughing as he sat up, with his reverend face skinned and his capote nearly torn off.

"Not unto death," responded Father MembrÉ, brushing grass and dirty hoof prints from his garment. "But it hath been greatly impressed on my mind that this ox-savage is no fit beast for the plow. Nor will I longer counsel our women to coax the wild cows to a milking. It is well to adapt to our needs the beasts of a country," said Father MembrÉ, wiping blood from his face. "But this buffalo creature hath disappointed me!"

La Salle was prostrated through the month of November. But by Christmas he was able to set out on a final search from which he did not intend to return until he found the Mississippi. All hands in the fort were busied on the outfit necessary for the party. Clothes were made of sails recovered from one of the wrecked vessels. Eighteen men were to follow La Salle, among them his elder brother, the AbbÉ Cavelier. Some had on the remains of garments they had worn in France, and others were dressed in deer or buffalo skins. He had bought five horses of the Indians to carry the baggage.

At midnight on Christmas Eve everybody crowded into the small fortress chapel. The priests, celebrating mass, moved before the altar in such gold-embroidered vestments as they had, and the light of torches illuminated the rough log walls. Those who were to stay and keep the outpost, literally lost in the wilderness, were on their knees weeping. Those who were to go knelt also, with the dread of an awful uncertainty in their minds. The faithful ones foresaw worse than peril from forests and waters and savages, for La Salle could not leave behind all the villains with whom he was obliged to serve himself. He alone showed the composure of a man who never despairs. If he had positively known that he was setting out upon a fatal journey,—that he was undertaking his last march through the wilderness,—the mass lights would still have shown the firm face of a man who did not turn back from any enterprise. The very existence of these people who had come out to the New World with him depended on his success. Whatever lay in the road he had to encounter it. The most splendid lives may progress and end through what we call tragedy; but it is better to die in the very stress of achievement than to stretch a poor existence through a century. The contagion of his hardihood stole out like the Christmas incense and spread through the chapel.