It was evidently useless to remain longer on the coast, and La Salle now came to the desperate resolution of making his way back to Canada on foot. With sixteen companions, he started for the work, supporting himself and his party by hunting the wild animals of the prairie; and but for treachery, among his followers, he would probably have lived to tell the tale of a journey of which every stage was full of the most thrilling adventure. As it was, however, the wanderers had not proceeded very far before La Salle’s nephew, Moranget, was murdered by two men named Dubaut and L’Archeveque, who had long cherished bitter feelings against the family, in whose enterprise they had embarked all their capital. La Salle, coming up soon after Moranget’s death, and missing him from among the party, put the simple question, “Where is my nephew?” The only reply was a loud report from the gun of Dubaut, and La Salle fell dead at his feet. His body and Moranget’s were stripped, and left on the prairie to be devoured by eagles and wild beasts, while the murderers calmly pursued their way. It is with little regret that we add that they were shortly afterward themselves slain by Indians, and that of the original party, seven only――fourteen long years after the starting of the original expedition――reached Arkansea, on the Mississippi, where they were kindly received by the Indians, who gave them a letter from Tonti to La Salle, which had been left with them when the former, having given up all hope of the arrival of his friend, had returned to the lakes of Canada. Illustration: ASSASSINATION OF LA SALLE. While La Salle was vainly struggling to accomplish the end for which he had sailed to Louisiana, the French were not idle in the North. In the rich peltries of the far West the fur-traders found a source of wealth rivaling even the mines of the South, and a class of men――unique alike in their manners and their experiences――sprang up, as it were, in the heart of the wilderness, to whom the name of _coureurs des bois_ was given. These rangers of the woods seem to have left behind them the European prejudice against the natives, and in their wild expeditions in remote tracts, and among distant tribes, they adopted the Indian mode of dress, contracted marriages with “squaws,” and brought up their half-caste children to lead a life differing but slightly, if at all, from that of their mothers’ relations. The usual result followed: the natives copied the vices of their visitors without their virtues, and but for the missionaries, who settled wherever there seemed to be a hope of winning even a few souls to God, natives and settlers would have been involved in one common ruin, alike of body and soul.