sent on in advance. He loaded up his sailing
boat, the _Griffon_, and sent her on a voyage back to the east to
transport this splendid load of furs to the merchants with whom he had
become deeply indebted. Unhappily the _Griffon_ foundered in a storm
on Lake Michigan, and was never heard of again. Meantime La Salle,
with de Tonty and Father HENNEPIN, the discoverer of Niagara, had
travelled in canoes to the south-east end of Lake Michigan, had passed
up the Joseph River, and thence by portage into the Kankaki, which
flows into the Illinois. This river he descended till he stopped near
the site of the modern Peoria. Below this place he built a fort--for
it was winter time--and although the natives were not very friendly he
collected enough information from them to satisfy himself that he
could easily pass down the Illinois to the Mississippi.

He sent one of the Frenchmen, Michel Accault, together with Father
Hennepin, to explore the Illinois down to the Mississippi; de Tonty he
placed in charge of the fort with a small garrison; and then himself,
on the last day of February, 1680, started to walk overland from Lake
Michigan to Detroit. Eventually, by means of a canoe, which he
constructed himself, he regained Fort Frontenac and Montreal. When he
returned to Fort Crevecoeur, on the Illinois River,[11] it was to meet
with the signs of a horrible disaster. The Iroquois in his absence had
descended on the place with a great war party. They had massacred the
Illinois people dwelling in a big settlement near the fort, and the
remains of their mutilated bodies were scattered all over the place.
Their town had been burnt; the fort was empty and abandoned. There
were no traces of the Frenchmen, however, amongst the skulls and
skeletons lying around him; for the skulls retained sufficient hair to
show that they belonged to Amerindians. Nevertheless, he deposited his
new stock of goods and most of his men in the ruins of the Fort
Crevecoeur, and descended the River Illinois to the Mississippi. But
he was obliged to turn back. On the west bank of the river were the
scared Illinois Indians, on the east the raging Iroquois. Whenever La
Salle could safely visit a deserted camp he would examine the remains
of the tortured men tied to stakes to see if amongst them there was a
Frenchman.

[Footnote 11: He had named this place "Heartbreak" because when
building it he had learnt of the loss of his sailing ship _Griffon_,
with the splendi