Recognizing no landmarks, La Salle entreated Beaujeu not to disembark the forces without some further exploration of the coast; but he was unheeded. The boats were lowered, and the colonists were put on shore. The wrecking of the store-ship was the first disaster to overtake them; it was followed, as a necessary result, by famine and discontent, and in the midst of the confusion some Indians surprised the new-comers, and murdered two of them. In this terrible crisis Beaujeu at last yielded to the superior experience of La Salle, who, restored to the command, had a fort constructed out of the wreck of the store-ship, and, leaving 230 persons in it, he started with sixteen picked men to try and find the Mississippi. His search was unsuccessful, and, fearing that the colony would suffer on the low lands by the bay, La Salle returned to the fort and superintended its removal to a hill near by, to which he gave the name of St. Louis, claiming the whole of the surrounding country as the property of the King of France. The fort strengthened by outposts, the colonists cheered by brighter prospects, La Salle now again ventured to go on a quest for the Mississippi and the faithful Tonti, only to return four months later in rags. Again and again the same thing was repeated. Far away from the alluvial coast region, to the cross-timbers or wooded lands and prairies of Eastern Texas, and into the mountain districts of New Mexico in the West, tenanted by the Navajoes, Apaches, Utahs, Comanches, and other wild predatory tribes, the unsuccessful explorer led his few faithful followers, until at last he was compelled to give up all hope of finding the great river connected with so many hopes. He returned for the last time to Fort St. Louis to find it almost in ruins, and of the 230 colonists only thirty-six still alive, dissensions among themselves and famine having been the chief causes of this terrible state of things.