A half-century of conflict. France and England in North America. Part ...

18 SEARCH FOR THE PACIFIC. [1739.La Vdrendry^e represents the six villages as surroundedwith ditches and stockades, flanked by asort of bastion, — defences which, he says, had nothingsavage in tlieir construction. In later times thefortifications were of a much ruder kind, thoughMaximilian represents them as having pointed salientsto serve as bastions. La Vdrendrj^e mentions somepeculiar customs of the Mandans which answer exactlyto those described by more recent observers.He had intended to winter with the tribe ; but theloss of the presents and the interpreter made it uselessto stay, and, leaving two men in the village tolearn the language, he began his return to Fort LaReine. "I was very ill," he writes, "but hoped toget better on the way. The reverse was the case, forit was the depth of winter. It would be impossibleto suffer more than I did. It seemed that nothingbut death could release us from such miseries."reached Fort La Reine on the eleventh of1739.HeFebruary,His iron constitution seems to have been severelyshaken; but he had sons worthy of their father.The two men left among the Mandans appeared atFort La Reine in September. They reported thatthey had been welltreated, and that their hosts hadparted from them with regret. They also declaredthe small-pox, which had made great havoc among them. Expeditionof Lewis and Clark, i. 129 (cd. Philadelphia, 1814). Thesenine villages seem to have been above Cannon-ball lliver, a tributaryof the Missouri.