Then his eyes caught the welcome sight of a fire burning in the woods. Believing he was near his friends, he quickened his steps, only to find himself mistaken. Near the fire, under a tree, was a bed of dried grass which was still warm, and showed plainly that a man had but a few minutes before been lying there. Very likely the man was an Indian, who had been frightened off by the sound of the gun. La Salle carefully placed brush for a sort of barricade on each side of the newly found bed, and then lay down by the blazing fire and slept till daybreak. He did not find his friends until four o'clock next afternoon. On rejoining his party they made their way down the Illinois River, until their eyes fell upon some Indian wigwams on the forest-covered bank. The Indians, being friendly, received the Frenchmen with generous hospitality. They urged La Salle not to go down the Mississippi. They indeed said so much of the danger of the journey that six of La Salle's followers deserted, and another tried to poison him. These were sad days for La Salle and, like all his days, were beset with troubles and dangers. To protect himself from attack during the winter, he now planned the building of a fort which he called Crevecoeur, the French word for heartbreak, surely a fitting name. Up to this time the iron-willed La Salle had not given up hope of hearing from the Griffin, but now he decided that his vessel was lost. There was but one thing to do. He must make an overland journey to Canada, 1,500 miles away, to get supplies for his expedition down the Mississippi. It was a dangerous undertaking. But on March 1, 1680, with an Indian hunter and four Frenchmen, the dauntless explorer started in two canoes. The season was the worst in the year for such a journey. The ground was covered with melting snow, and the rivers in many places were frozen with ice, too thick to be broken by the boats. Much of the time the party had to pull the canoes on rough sleds overland or carry them on their shoulders until, a few days after starting, they hid them in the woods and pushed forward on foot to the head of Lake Michigan. Reaching that point, it was now necessary for them to thread their toilsome way through the deep forests of Southern Michigan to the head of Lake Erie. For three days the undergrowth was so thick with thorns that it tore their clothing into shreds, and scratched their faces until they were covered with blood. Another three days were spent in wading, sometimes up to their waists, in the mud and water of the flood-covered marshes. At night they would take off their clothing and, covering their bodies with blankets, lie down to sleep on some dry hillock. One frosty night their clothes froze so stiff that in the morning they had to be thawed by the fireside before they could be put on. Amid such exposure some of the men fell sick, and thus delayed the party. But early in May, at the end of sixty-five days, they reached Canada.