At Fort Brokenheart La Salle had a valiant priest named Hennepin, a disloyal rogue and a quite notable liar. With two voyageurs Pere Hennepin was sent to explore the river down to the Mississippi, and there the three Frenchmen were captured by the Sioux. Their captors took them by canoe up the Mississippi to the Falls of Saint Anthony, so named by Hennepin. Thence they were driven afoot to the winter villages of the tribe. The poor unholy father being slow afoot, they mended his pace by setting the prairie afire behind him. Likewise they anointed him with wildcat fat to give him the agility of that animal. Still he was never popular, and in the end the three wanderers were turned loose. Many were their vagabond adventures before they met the explorer Greysolon Du Luth, who took them back with him to Canada. They left La Salle to his fate. Meanwhile La Salle set out from Fort Brokenheart in March, attended by a Mohegan hunter who loved him, and by four gallant Frenchmen. Their journey was a miracle of courage across the unexplored woods to Lake Erie, and on to Frontenac. There La Salle heard that the moment his back was turned his garrison had looted and burned Fort Brokenheart; but he caught these deserters as they attempted to pass Fort Frontenac, and left them there in irons. Every man has power to make of his mind an empire or a desert. At this time Louis the Great was master of Europe, La Salle a broken adventurer, but it was the king’s mind which was a desert, compared with the imperial brain of this haughty, silent, manful pioneer. The creditors forgot that he owed them money, the governor caught fire from his enthusiasm, and La Salle went back equipped for his gigantic venture in the west. The officer he had left in charge at Fort Brokenheart was an Italian gentleman by the name of Tonty, son of the man who invented the tontine life insurance. He was a veteran soldier whose left hand, blown off, had been replaced with an iron fist, which the Indians found to be strong medicine. One clout on the head sufficed for the fiercest warrior. When his garrison sacked the fort and bolted, he had two fighting men left, and a brace of priests. They all sought refuge in the camp of the Illinois.