er to abandon his cherished dreams, or
follow them at the risk of ruin and death. As before, when his men had
mutinied, he determined to advance.

Jean, the eldest son, was dead. Pierre and Francois were with their
father. Louis, the youngest, now seventeen years of age, had come up
with the supplies. Pierre at once went to Lake Winnipeg, to prepare
Fort Maurepas for the reception of all the forces. Winter set in.
Snow lay twelve feet deep in the forests now known as the Minnesota
Borderlands. On February 8, 1737, in the face of a biting north wind,
with the thermometer at forty degrees below zero, M. de la Verendrye
left Fort St. Charles, Francois carrying the French flag, with ten
soldiers, wearing snow-shoes, in line behind, and two or three hundred
Crees swathed in furs bringing up a ragged rear. The bright uniforms
of the soldiers were patches of red among the snowy everglades.
Bivouac was made on beds of pine boughs,--feet to the camp-fire, the
night frost snapping like a whiplash, the stars flashing with a steely
clearness known only in northern climes. The march was at a swift
pace, for three weeks by canoe is short enough time to traverse the
Minnesota and Manitoba Borderlands northwest to Lake Winnipeg; and in
seventeen days M. de la Verendrye was at Fort Maurepas.

Fort Maurepas (in the region of the modern Alexander) lay on a tongue
of sand extending into the lake a few miles beyond the entrance of Red
River. Tamarack and poplar fringe the shore; and in windy weather the
lake is lashed into a roughness that resembles the flux of ocean tides.
I remember once going on a steamer towards the site of Maurepas. The
ship drew lightest of draft. While we were anchored the breeze fell,
and the ship was stranded as if by ebb tide for twenty-four hours. The
action of the wind explained the Indian tales of an ocean tide, which
had misled La Verendrye into expecting to find the Western Sea at this
point. He found a magnificent body of fresh water, but not the ocean.
The fort was the usual pioneer fur post--a barracks of unbarked logs,
chinked up with frozen clay and moss, roofed with branches and snow,
occupying the centre of a courtyard, palisaded by slabs of pine logs.
M. de la Verendrye was now in the true realm of the explorer--in
territory where no other white man had trod. With a shout his motley
forces emerged from the snowy tamaracks, and with a shout from Pierre
de la Verendrye and his tawny follo