La Salle and the discovery of the great West - North Central ...

214 INDIAN CONQUERORS. [1QS1.of the water, a rude cabin of bark.La Salle landedand examined the spot, when an object met his eyewhich cheered him with a bright gleam of hope.was but a piece of wood ;Itbut the wood had been cutwith a saw. Tonty and his party, then, had passedthis way, escaping from the carnage behind them.Unhappily, they had left no token of their passageat the fork of the two streams ;• and thus La Salle,on his voyage downward, had believed them to bestill on the river below.With rekindled hope, the travellers pursued theirjourney, leaving their canoes, and making their wayoverland towards the fort on the St. Joseph."Snow fell in extraordinary quantities all day,"writes La Salle, "and it kept on falling for nineteendays in succession, with cold so severe thatI never knew so hard a winter, even in Canada.We were obliged to cross forty leagues of opencountry, where we could hardly find wood to warmourselves at evening, and could get no bark whateverto make a hut, so that we had to spend thenight exposed to the furious winds which blowover these plains. I never suffered so much fromcold, or had more trouble in getting forward; forthe snow was so light, resting suspended as it wereamong the tall grass, that we could not use snowshoes.Sometimes it was waist deep; and as Iwalked before my men, as usual, to encouragethem by breaking the path, I often had much ado,though I am rather tall, to lift my legs above the