About six months were spent in constructing this fort, which was built from timber felled in the neighbouring groves, and with fragments of the wreck brought up in canoes, together with a good supply of arms. After all, the little colony was not ill-supplied, if they had been possessed of courage and perseverance. Whilst these necessary works were going forward, La Salle carefully explored the neighbouring country for “the fatal river;” on one occasion being absent four months and returning in rags. But his presence always renewed hope. In April of the next year he set out again with twenty companions, and wandered into New Mexico. On his return, he found the last of the vessels left with the colonists wrecked, and themselves reduced to about six-and-thirty, grown desperate and cruel by despair. He now determined, seeing that no succour was likely to reach them from France, to proceed to Canada on foot, and with sixteen companions set out on this terrible undertaking, their baggage laden on the wild horses of the prairies, and with moccassins made of green buffalo hides. The journey was full of unprecedented hardships. We will give the concluding scene of the tragedy in the words of our able historian Bancroft. “In the little company of wanderers were two men, Duhaut and l’Archevêque, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise; of these Duhaut had long shown a spirit of mutiny. Inviting Maranget to take charge of the fruits of a buffalo hunt, they quarrelled with and murdered him. Wondering at the delay of his nephew’s return, La Salle went in search of him. At the brink of a river he observed eagles hovering as if over carrion, and fired an alarm gun. Warned by the sound, Duhaut and l’Archevêque crossed the river; the former skulked in the prairie-grass; La Salle asked of the latter, ‘Where is my nephew?’ At the moment of the answer Duhaut fired and La Salle fell dead without a word. ‘You are down now, proud bashaw! you are down now!’ shouted one of the conspirators, as they despoiled the body, which was left on the prairie, naked and without burial, to be devoured by wild beasts. “Such was the end of this daring adventurer. For force of will and vast conceptions, for various knowledge and quick adaptation of his genius to untried circumstances, for a sublime magnanimity, that resigned itself to the will of Heaven and yet triumphed over affliction by energy of purpose and unfaltering hope—he had no superior among his countrymen. “After beginning the colonisation of Upper Canada, he perfected the discovery of the Mississippi from the falls of St. Anthony to its mouth; and he will be remembered through all time as the father of colonisation in the great central valley of the West.”