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

";422 ASSASSINATION OF LA SALLE. [1687.though with unwonted hardship, as is familiar to thememory of many a prairie traveller of our own time.They suffered greatly from the want of shoes, andfound for a while no better substitute than a casingof raw buffalo-hide, which they were forced to keepalways wet, as, when dry, it hardened about the footlike iron. At length they bought dressed deer-skinfrom the Indians, of which they made tolerablemoccasins. The rivers, streams, and gullies filledwith water were without number: and to cross themthey made a boat of bull-hide, like the " bull boatstill used on the Upper Missouri. This did goodservice, as, with the help of their horses, they couldcarry it with them. Two or three men could crossin it at once, and the horses swam after them likedogs. Sometimes they traversed the sunny prairiesometimes dived into the dark recesses of the forest,where the buffalo, descending daily from theirpastures in long files to drink at the river, oftenmade a broad and easy path for the travellers.Whenfoul weather arrested them, they built huts of barkand long meadow-grass ;and safely sheltered loungedaway the day, while their horses, picketed near by,stood steaming in the rain. At night, they usuallyset a rude stockade about their camp ; and here, bymemory.Some of his statements are irreconcilable with those ofJoutel and Douay ; and known facts of his history justify the suspicionof a wilful inaccuracy. Joutel's account is of a very differentcharacter, and seems to be the work of an honest and intelligentman. Douay's account is brief ; but it agrees with that of Joutel,in most essential points.