ead
branches grated, and the stream rustled betwixt its edges of ice. A heap
of dry grass was gathered for a bed under a tree by the fire, and its
elastic top showed the hollow where a man had lain. La Salle put some
more wood on the fire, piled a barricade of brush around the bed, and
lay down in a place left warm by some strolling Indian whom his gun had
frightened away. He slept until morning. In the afternoon he found his
own camp.

From the first thread of the Kankakee oozing out of swamps to the Indian
town on the Illinois River where Marquette had done his last missionary
work, was a long canoe journey. It has been said the rivers of the New
World made its rapid settlement possible; for they were open highways,
even in the dead of winter guiding the explorer by their frozen courses.

The Illinois tribe had scattered to their hunting, and the lodges stood
empty. La Salle's men were famished for supplies, so he ventured to open
the covered pits in which the Indians stored their corn. Nothing was
more precious than this hidden grain; but he paid for what he took when
he reached the Indians. This was not until after New Year's day. He had
descended the river as far as that expansion now called Peoria Lake.

The Illinois, after their first panic at the appearance of strange white
men, received La Salle's party kindly, fed all with their own fingers,
and, as they had done with Jolliet and Marquette when those explorers
passed them on the Mississippi, tried to coax their guests to go no
farther. They and other Indians who came to the winter camp told such
tales of danger on that great river about which the French knew so
little, that six of La Salle's men deserted in one night.

This caused him to move half a league beyond the Illinois camp,
where, on the southern bank, he built a palisaded fort and called it
Crevecoeur. He was by this time convinced that the Griffin was lost.
Whether she went down in a storm, or was scuttled and sunk by those to
whom he intrusted her, nothing was ever heard of her again. The furs he
had sent to pay his creditors never in any way reached port. If they
escaped shipwreck, they were stolen by the men who escaped with them.

Nothing could bend La Salle's resolution. He meant in some way to
explore the west through which the southern Mississippi ran. But the
loss of the Griffin hurt him sorely. He could not go on without more
supplies; and having no vessel to bring them, the fearful nece