blizzards, huddling in snowdrifts from the wind at night and uncertain
of their compass over the white wastes by day. There is nothing so
deadly silent and utterly destitute of life as the prairie in
midwinter. Moose and buffalo had sought the shelter of wooded ravines.
Here a fox track ran over the snow. There a coyote skulked from cover,
to lope away the next instant for brushwood or hollow, and
snow-buntings or whiskey-jacks might have followed the marchers for
pickings of waste; but east, west, north, and south was nothing but the
wide, white wastes of drifted snow. On Christmas Eve of 1738 low
curling smoke above the prairie told the wanderers that they were
nearing the Indian camps of the Assiniboines; and by nightfall of
February 10, 1739, they were under the shelter of Fort de la Reine. "I
have never been so wretched from illness and fatigue in all my life as
on that journey," reported De la Verendrye. As usual, provisions were
scarce at the fort. Fifty people had to be fed. Buffalo and deer meat
saved the French from starvation till spring.

[Illustration: A Monarch of the Plains.]

All that De la Verendrye had accomplished on this trip was to learn
that salt water existed west-southwest. Anxious to know more of the
Northwest, he sent his sons to the banks of a great northern river.
This was the Saskatchewan. In their search of the Northwest, they
constructed two more trading posts, Fort Dauphin near Lake Manitoba,
and Bourbon on the Saskatchewan. Winter quarters were built at the
forks of the river, which afterwards became the site of Fort Poskoyac.
This spring not a canoe load of food came up from Montreal. Papers had
been served for the seizure of all De la Verendrye's forts, goods,
property, and chattels to meet the claims of his creditors. Desperate,
but not deterred from his quest, De la Verendrye set out to contest the
lawsuits in Montreal.

V

1740-1750

Which way to turn now for the Western Sea that eluded their quest like
a will-o'-the-wisp was the question confronting Pierre, Francois, and
Louis de la Verendrye during the explorer's absence in Montreal. They
had followed the great Saskatchewan westward to its forks. No river
was found in this region flowing in the direction of the Western Sea.
They had been in the country of the Missouri; but neither did any river
there flow to a Western Sea. Yet the Mandans told of salt water far to
the west. Thither they would turn the baff