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Its banks had been desolated by Indian wars, and where once many flourishing villages rose there were to be seen only ashes and smoke-blackened ruins. About the 1st of February they reached Crevecoeur, the fort La Salle had built some years earlier. Below this point the stream was free from ice, and after a week's rest the canoes were launched on the liquid surface.
He hath acted by my advice and resigns his claim to him by whom the Wild Boar was actually brought to bay, who is his maternal nephew, and is of the House of Durward, descended from that Allan Durward who was High Steward of Scotland." "Nay, if it be young Durward," said Crèvecoeur; "there is nothing more to be said.
Without delay, La Sale takes advantage of their friendly dispositions, and erects upon the very site of their camp, a small fort, which he calls Crèvecoeur, in allusion to the troubles which he has already experienced.
To put an end to an intolerable state of suspense, in his own case he resolved to set out on foot for Frontenac, four hundred or five hundred leagues distant hoping there to obtain good news about the Griffin; also in order to obtain equipments for a new bark, then in course of construction at Crevecoeur, in which he meant to embark upon his return thither, intending to descend the Mississippi to its embouchure.
But he remembered that he had a man's part to sustain before Crevecoeur, who, perhaps of all the chivalry in France or Burgundy, was the least likely to be moved to anything but laughter by a tale of true love sorrow.
Within a few months he was again at Fort Frontenac and ready to rejoin Tonty at Crèvecoeur. Just as he was about to depart, however, word came that the Crèvecoeur garrison had mutinied and had destroyed the post. La Salle's one hope now was that his faithful lieutenant had held on doggedly and had saved the vessel he had been building.
On the twenty-second of July, two voyageurs, Messier and Laurent, came to him with a letter from Tonty; who wrote that soon after La Salle's departure, nearly all the men had deserted, after destroying Fort Crevecoeur, plundering the magazine, and throwing into the river all the arms, goods, and stores which they could not carry off.
With Tonty, who, as he writes, is full of zeal, he confounded his enemies at home, gathered the tribes of the west into a confederacy against the Iroquois, as Champlain had done in the east, gave up for the present the building of the vessel, and in 1681, the river being frozen, set out on sledges at Chicago portage and made a prosperous journey down the Illinois to Fort Crevecoeur.
On his return he found that Fort Crèvecoeur was in ruins, and that Tonty and the few men who had been faithful were gone, he knew not where. In the hope of meeting them he pushed on down the Illinois to the Mississippi. To go on would have been easy, but he turned back to find Tonty, and passed the winter on the St. Joseph River.
The Count consigned her, in a state of great exhaustion, to the care of the Abbess of the Cistercian convent in Charleroi, a noble lady, to whom both the families of Crevecoeur and Croye were related, and in whose prudence and kindness he could repose confidence.
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