scarcely rose as the voyageurs poled past. While
the boatmen poled, the soldiers marched in military order across
country, so avoiding the bends of the river. Daily, Crees and
Assiniboines of the plains joined the white men. A week after leaving
the Forks or Fort Rouge, De la Verendrye came to the Portage of the
Prairie, leading north to Lake Manitoba and from the lake to Hudson
Bay. Clearly, northward was not the way to the Western Sea; but the
Assiniboines told of a people to the southwest--the Mandans--who knew a
people who lived on the Western Sea. As soon as his baggage came up,
De la Verendrye ordered the construction of a fort--called De la
Reine--on the banks of the Assiniboine. This was to be the forwarding
post for the Western Sea. To the Mandans living on the Missouri, who
knew a people living on salt water, De la Verendrye now directed his
course.

[Illustration: Hungry Hall, 1870; near the site of the Verendrye Fort
in Rainy River Region.]

On the morning of October 18 drums beat to arms. Additional men had
come up from the other forts. Fifty-two soldiers and _voyageurs_ now
stood in line. Arms were inspected. To each man were given powder,
balls, axe, and kettle. Pierre and Francois de la Verendrye hoisted
the French flag. For the first time a bugle call sounded over the
prairie. At the word, out stepped the little band of white men,
marking time for the Western Sea. The course lay west-southwest, up
the Souris River, through wooded ravines now stripped of foliage, past
alkali sloughs ice-edged by frost, over rolling cliffs russet and bare,
where gopher and badger and owl and roving buffalo were the only signs
of life. On the 21st of October two hundred Assiniboine warriors
joined the marching white men. In the sheltered ravines buffalo grazed
by the hundreds of thousands, and the march was delayed by frequent
buffalo hunts to gather pemmican--pounded marrow and fat of the
buffalo--which was much esteemed by the Mandans. Within a month so
many Assiniboines had joined the French that the company numbered more
than six hundred warriors, who were ample protection against the Sioux;
and the Sioux were the deadly terror of all tribes of the plains. But
M. de la Verendrye was expected to present ammunition to his
Assiniboine friends.

Four outrunners went speeding to the Missouri to notify the Mandans of
the advancing warriors. The _coureurs_ carried presents of pemmican.
To prevent surp