on snowshoes down
the ice of the Winnipeg River and reached the shores of Lake Winnipeg.
They were probably the first white men to arrive there. La Verendrye
established forts and posts along his route from Lake Nipigon, but his
expedition had not been a commercial success. There was a deficit of
L1700 between the amount realized in furs and the cost of the
equipment and wages of the French and French Canadians. De Beauharnais
made a fresh appeal to the French Court; he urged that the expenditure
to convey La Verendrye's expedition to the Pacific Ocean would not be
a large one--perhaps only L1500.

[Footnote 14: What we should call to-day a "concession".]

But the French Court was obdurate; it would not furnish a penny. Thus
La Verendrye, in all probability, was prevented from forestalling the
British explorers of sixty and seventy years later, besides the
expeditions of Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver, which secured for
Great Britain a foothold on the Pacific seaboard of British Columbia.

La Verendrye in his fort on Lake Winnipeg was in a desperate position.
He made a hasty journey back to Montreal and even Quebec, to beat up
funds and to pacify the capitalists of his fur-trading monopoly. He
painted in glowing colours the prospects of cutting off the trade of
the Hudson's Bay Company and the building up of an immense commerce in
valuable furs, and these men agreed once again to furnish the funds
for the extension of the expedition. On his return he took back with
him his youngest son, Louis, a boy of eighteen. Whilst he had been
absent from Fort St. Charles (a post which he had built on the Lake of
the Woods, in communication by water with the Winnipeg River), on Lake
Winnipeg, that place was visited by a party of Siou Indians. They
found the fort occupied in the absence of the French by a number of
Kri or "Knistino" Indians in French service. These Kris were
frightened at the arrival of the Sious and fired guns at them. "Who
fired on us?" demanded these haughty Indians from Dakota, and the Kris
replied, "The French". Then the Sious withdrew, but vowed to be
completely revenged on the treacherous white man.

When La Verendrye reached Fort St. Charles its little garrison was
almost at the point of starvation. He had travelled himself ahead of
his party, and the immense stock of supplies and provisions he was
bringing up country were a long way behind him when he reached the
fort. He therefore sent back his son