ling search.

The two men left among the Mandans to learn the language had returned
to the Assiniboine River with more news of tribes from "the setting
sun" who dwelt on salt water. Pierre de la Verendrye went down to the
Missouri with the two interpreters; but the Mandans refused to supply
guides that year, and the young Frenchman came back to winter on the
Assiniboine. Here he made every preparation for another attempt to
find the Western Sea by way of the Missouri. On April 29, 1742, the
two brothers, Pierre and Francois, left the Assiniboine with the two
interpreters. Their course led along the trail that for two hundred
years was to be a famous highway between the Missouri and Hudson Bay.
Heading southwest, they followed the Souris River to the watershed of
the Missouri, and in three weeks were once more the guests of the smoky
Mandan lodges. Round the inside walls of each circular hut ran berth
beds of buffalo skin with trophies of the chase,--hide-shields and
weapons of war, fastened to the posts that separated berth from berth.
A common fire, with a family meat pot hanging above, occupied the
centre of the lodge. In one of these lodges the two brothers and their
men were quartered. The summer passed feasting with the Mandans and
smoking the calumet of peace; but all was in vain. The Missouri
Indians were arrant cowards in the matter of war. The terror of their
existence was the Sioux. The Mandans would not venture through Sioux
territory to accompany the brothers in the search for the Western Sea.
At last two guides were obtained, who promised to conduct the French to
a neighboring tribe that might know of the Western Sea.

[Illustration: Fur Traders' Boats towed down the Saskatchewan in the
Summer of 1900.]

The party set out on horseback, travelling swiftly southwest and along
the valley of the Little Missouri toward the Black Hills. Here their
course turned sharply west toward the Powder River country, past the
southern bounds of the Yellowstone. For three weeks they saw no sign
of human existence. Deer and antelope bounded over the parched alkali
uplands. Prairie dogs perched on top of their earth mounds, to watch
the lonely riders pass; and all night the far howl of grayish forms on
the offing of the starlit prairie told of prowling coyotes. On the
11th of August the brothers camped on the Powder Hills. Mounting to
the crest of a cliff, they scanned far and wide for signs of the
Indians w