The Indians said that La Salle and his friends might build a fort there. Built without delay, the fort was named Fort Breakheart, for Robert La Salle had been going through some heartrending experiences. One of these was the loss of the lake boat, the _Griffin_, with all the supplies and equipments. When La Salle explained to the Illinois tribe what he was seeking, the chief gave him and his men a solemn warning of perilous falls and precipices, of cannibal tribes and man-eating monsters. He said that if they should get by those awful dangers, the mouth of the river was an awful whirlpool which would engulf them, for no man who had ever gone down into the mouth of the Father of Waters had returned alive. These stories so frightened the men of the party--both red and white--that they deserted their leader. They preferred to endure the ills they had and risk their lives among savages known to be cruel, rather than fly to ills they knew not of. [Illustration: THE SHIPS OF FRANCE AT THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI _From the painting in the Versailles Collection_] So La Salle had to go hundreds of miles back to Canada for more men, funds, and supplies, before he could venture to make the rest of the trip. After many months’ delay he started out again from Montreal. There were now fifty-four in his party--twenty-three Frenchmen, eighteen braves, ten squaws to do the cooking, and three papooses. When they got back to Fort Breakheart, La Salle gave up building a ship, as he had decided to make the voyage down the Mississippi in canoes. There was plenty of game along the river, and in its muddy waters they caught catfish six feet long and weighing about two hundred pounds. They saw wild beans along the banks with stalks “as big as your arm,” reminding one of the tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” They had varied experiences with the different tribes of Indians--Chickasaw, Arkansas, Natchez--along their course, and found that the “man-eating monsters” described by the Illinois chief were only alligators. When at last they reached the mouth of the Father of Waters, there was no whirlpool to swallow them down; but the river calmly divided into three mouths, each leading into a broad expanse of salt water which, they learned, was not the Pacific Ocean but the Gulf of Mexico. On a hill near by, La Salle raised a wooden pillar on which he nailed the coat-of-arms bearing the lilies of France, and buried near it a leaden plate on which letters were engraved to tell future comers that the whole country drained by the Mississippi belonged to France.