Thus, over snowy prairies and half-frozen marshes; wading sometimes to their waists in mud, water, and bulrushes, they urged their way through the spongy, saturated wilderness. During three successive days they were aware that a party of savages was dogging their tracks. They dared, not make a fire at night, lest the light should betray them; but, hanging their wet clothes on the trees, they rolled themselves in their blankets, and slept together among piles of spruce and pine boughs. But the night of the second of April was excessively cold. Their clothes were hard frozen, and they were forced to kindle a fire to thaw and dry them. Scarcely had the light begun to glimmer through the gloom of evening, than it was greeted from the distance by mingled yells; and a troop of Mascoutin warriors rushed towards them. They were stopped by a deep stream, a hundred paces from the bivouac of the French, and La Salle went forward to meet them. No sooner did they see him, and learn that he was a Frenchman, than they cried that they were friends and brothers, who had mistaken him and his men for Iroquois; and, abandoning their hostile purpose, they peacefully withdrew. Thus his device to avert danger had well-nigh proved the destruction of the whole party. Two days after this adventure, two of the men fell ill from fatigue, and exposure, and sustained themselves with difficulty till they reached the banks of a river, probably the Huron. Here, while the sick men rested, their companions made a canoe. There were no birch-trees; and they were forced to use elm bark, which at that early season would not slip freely from the wood until they loosened it with hot water. Their canoe being made, they embarked in it, and for a time floated prosperously down the stream, when, at length the way was barred by a matted barricade of trees fallen across the water. The sick men could now walk again; and, pushing eastward through the forest, the party soon reached the banks of the Detroit.