e in debt.
Already he had sent on stores and men to the West and the men were
likely to starve if not followed by provisions. His chief property was
in the West in the form of goods which would be plundered without his
guardianship. To tide over the immediate future he sold the one small
piece of land in Montreal which he had inherited from his father and
threw this slight sop to his urgent creditors.

Saint-Pierre, strong in his right of monopoly, insisted that the
brothers should not even return to the West. Francois, urged that to go
was a matter of life and death. In some way he secured leave to set out
with one laden canoe. When Saint-Pierre found that Francois had gone, he
claimed damages for the intrusion on his monopoly and secured an order
to pursue Francois and bring him back. He caught him at Michilimackinac.
The meeting between the two men at that place involved explanations.
Face to face with an injured man, Saint-Pierre admitted that he had been
in the wrong, paid to Francois many compliments, and regretted that he
had not joined hands with the brothers.

The mischief done was, however, irreparable. Francois, crippled by
opposition, could not carry on his trade with success and in the end he
returned to Montreal a ruined man overwhelmed with debt. He wrote to the
French court a noble appeal for relief:

"I remain without friends and without patrimony...a simple ensign of
the second grade; my elder brother has only the same rank as myself; my
younger brother is only a junior cadet. This is the result of all that
my father, my brothers and myself have done.... There are in the hands
of your Lordship resources of compensation and of consolation. I venture
to appeal to you for relief. To find ourselves excluded from the
West would mean to be cruelly robbed of our heritage, to realize for
ourselves all that is bitter and to see others secure all that is
sweet."

The appeal fell on deaf ears. The brothers sank into obscurity. During
Montcalm's campaigns from 1756 to 1759 Pierre and Francois seem to have
been engaged in military service. Francois was killed in the siege of
Quebec in 1759. After the final surrender of Canada the Auguste, a ship
laden for the most part with refugees returning to France, was wrecked
on the St. Lawrence. Among those on board who perished was Pierre de
la Verendrye. He died amid the howling of the tempest and the cries of
drowning men. Tragedy, unrelenting, had pursued him to the