as chosen for the fort. Two sides were
bounded by water. On the third or land side of the triangle there was a
deep ravine. A breastwork of hewn logs was raised several feet high,
enclosing a space eighty feet long by forty feet broad. And this all
was surrounded by stout palisades.

The fortress was artistically constructed, and could bid defiance to
any attack by the Indians. It was also admirably selected to give the
French command of the region, against any encroachments of the English.

Through the whole month of November the men toiled upon these works,
fed only upon the flesh of turkeys, deer, and bears, which their Indian
hunter brought in. It was learned that the Griffin, which, it will be
remembered, sailed from Green Bay, bound first to Mackinac, did not
reach that port. The vessel must have foundered somewhere by the way.
The natives on the coast had heard nothing of the vessel. Seventy days
had now elapsed since she sailed, and all hopes of ever hearing from
her again were relinquished.

On the 3d of December the whole party of thirty-three persons, in eight
canoes, left Fort Miami, as La Salle called his works, and paddled up
the river, a distance of seventy miles, toward the south. Considerable
time was lost in the endeavor to find the trail or portage which led
across, westerly from the St. Joseph's River, to the head waters of the
Kankakee, which is the eastern branch of the Illinois River.

La Salle, imprudently exploring alone, became lost in the forest. The
darkness of a stormy night, with falling snow, overtook him. He fired
his gun as a signal of distress; but silence was the only answer. Soon
he espied, in the distance, the light of a fire. It was the encampment
of a solitary Indian, who had formed for himself a soft bed of leaves.
Alarmed by the report of the gun, he had fled. La Salle appropriated to
himself the cheerless quarters and slept soundly until morning. All the
forenoon of the next day he wandered, and it was not until the
afternoon that he rejoined his companions. He came in with two opossums
hanging at his belt, which he had killed.

At length their Indian hunter found the trail. They had gone too far up
the river. The men took the canoes and the freight upon their
shoulders, and carried them over the portage, of five or six miles,
which the Indians had traversed for countless ages. Dreary in the
extreme was the wintry landscape which now opened before them. The
ground was froze