nced only by the blue dip of a shimmering horizon. It was a
world, though La Verendrye knew it not, five times larger than New
France, half as big as all Europe. He had discovered the Canadian
Northwest.

One can guess how the tired wanderers at rest beneath the uptilted
canoes that night wondered whither their quest would lead them over the
fire-dyed horizon where the sun was sinking as over a sea. The Cree
chiefs told them of other lands and other peoples to the south, "who
trade with a people who dwelt on the great waters beyond the mountains
of the setting sun,"--the Spaniards.

Leaving men to knock up a trading post near the suburb now known as
Fort Rouge, La Verendrye, on September 26, steers his canoes up the
shallow Assiniboine far as what is now known as Portage La Prairie,
where a trail leads overland to the Saskatchewan and so down to the
English traders of Hudson Bay. But this is not the trail to the
Western Sea; La Verendrye's quest is set towards those people "who live
on the great waters to the south."

{211}

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE SUPPOSED SEA OF THE WEST, WITH
APPROACHES TO THE MISSISSIPPI AND GREAT LAKES, PARIS, 1755]

Fort de La Reine is built at the Portage of the Prairie, and October
18, to beat of drum, with flag flying, La Verendrye marches forth with
fifty-two men towards Souris River for the land of the Mandanes on the
Missouri. December 3 he is welcomed to the Mandane villages; but here
is no Western Sea, only the broad current of the Missouri rolling
turbulent and muddy southward towards the Mississippi; but the Mandanes
tell of a people to the far west, "who live on the great waters bitter
for drinking, who dress in armor and dwell in stone houses." These
must be the Spaniards. La Verendrye's quest has become a receding
phantom. Leaving men to learn the Missouri dialects, La Verendrye
marched in the teeth of mid-winter storms back to the Portage of the
Prairie on the Assiniboine. Of that march, space forbids to tell. A
blizzard raged, driving the fine snows into eyes and skin like hot
salt. When the marchers camped at night they had to bury themselves in
snow to keep from freezing. Drifts covered all landmarks. The men
lost their bearings, doubled back on their own tracks, were
frost-bitten, buffeted by the storm, and short of food. Christmas
{212} was passed in the camps of wandering Assiniboines, and February
10, 1739, the fifty men staggered, weak and starving,