During the winter the necessary material for the _Griffin_, as the new vessel was to be called, was carried over the long portage to the mouth of Cayuga Creek, above the falls, where a dock was prepared and the keel laid. La Salle sent the master-carpenter to Hennepin to desire him to drive the first bolt, but, as he says, his profession obliged him to decline the honour. La Salle returned to Fort Frontenac, leaving Tonty to finish the work. The Iroquois, in spite of their agreement with La Salle, watched the building of the _Griffin_ with jealous dissatisfaction, and kept the little band of Frenchmen in a state of constant anxiety. Fortunately, one of their expeditions against the neighbouring tribes took the majority of them off, and the work was pushed forward with redoubled zeal, so that it might be completed before their return. The Indians that remained behind were too few to make an open attack, but they did their utmost to prevent the completion of the ship. One of them, feigning drunkenness, attacked the blacksmith and tried to kill him, but was driven off with a red-hot bar. Hennepin naïvely remarks that this, "together with the reprimand he received from me," obliged him to be gone. A native woman warned Tonty that an attempt would be made to burn the vessel. Failing in this, the Senecas tried to starve the French by refusing to sell them corn, and might have succeeded but for the efforts of two Mohegan hunters, who kept the workmen supplied with game from the surrounding forest. Finally, the _Griffin_ was launched, amid the shouts of the French and the yelpings of the Indians, who forgot their displeasure in the novel spectacle. She was towed up the Niagara, and on the seventh of August, 1679, La Salle and his men sailed out over the placid waters of Lake Erie, the booming of his cannon announcing the approach of the first ship of the upper lakes. In the _Griffin_ La Salle sailed through Lakes Eric, St. Clair, and Huron, to Michilimackinac, and thence crossed Lake Michigan to the entrance to Green Bay, where some of his men, sent on ahead, had collected a quantity of valuable furs. These he determined to send back to Canada, to satisfy the clamorous demands of his creditors, while he continued his voyage to the Mississippi. The _Griffin_ set sail for Niagara on the eighteenth of September. She never reached her destination, and her fate has remained one of the mysteries of Canadian history. VI THE HIGHWAY OF THE FUR TRADE