He spent most of the winter at Fort La Reine. Here, towards the end of 41 February, 1752, he had with him only five men, having sent out the rest in search of food. Suddenly, as he sat in his chamber, he saw the fort full of armed Assiniboins, extremely noisy and insolent. He tried in vain to quiet them, and they presently broke into the guard-house and seized the arms. A massacre would have followed, had not Saint-Pierre, who was far from wanting courage, resorted to an expedient which has more than once proved effective on such occasions. He knocked out the heads of two barrels of gunpowder, snatched a firebrand, and told the yelping crowd that he would blow up them and himself together. At this they all rushed in fright out of the gate, while Saint-Pierre ran after them, and bolted it fast. There was great anxiety for the hunters, but they all came back in the evening, without having met the enemy. The men, however, were so terrified by the adventure that Saint-Pierre was compelled to abandon the fort, after recommending it to the care of another band of Assiniboins, who had professed great friendship. Four days after he was gone they burned it to the ground. He soon came to the conclusion that farther discovery was impossible, because the English of Hudson Bay had stirred up the western tribes to oppose it. Therefore he set out for the settlements, and, reaching Quebec in the autumn of 1753, placed the journal of his futile 42 enterprise in the hands of Duquesne, the new governor.[41] Canada was approaching her last agony. In the death-struggle of the Seven Years’ War there was no time for schemes of western discovery. The brothers La Vérendrye sank into poverty and neglect. A little before the war broke out, we find the eldest at the obscure Acadian post of Beauséjour, where he wrote to the colonial minister a statement of his services, which appears to have received no attention. After the fall of Canada, the Chevalier de la Vérendrye, he whose eyes first beheld the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, perished in the wreck of the ship “Auguste,” on the coast of Cape Breton, in November, 1761.[42] [1] _Mémoire fait et arresté par le Conseil de Marine, 3 Février, 1717; Mémoire du Roy, 26 Juin, 1717._ [2] _Charlevoix au Comte de Morville, 1 Avril, 1723._ [3] The valuable journal of Charlevoix’s western travels, written in the form of letters, was published in connection with his _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_. After his visit to the Lakes, he went to New Orleans, intending to return in the spring and continue his inquiries for the Western Sea; but being unable to do this, he went back to France at the end of 1722. The official report of his mission is contained in a letter to the Comte de Toulouse, 20 January, 1723. [4] _Traité de la Compagnie des Sioux, 6 Juin, 1727._