While this was going on La Salle returned below the Falls, and having begun two blockhouses on the site of the later Fort Niagara,[596] proceeded to Fort Frontenac. By spring Tonty had the “Griffin” ready for launching. She was of forty-five or fifty tons, and when she had her equipment on board, five cannon looked from her port-holes. The builders made all ready for a voyage in her, but grew weary in waiting for La Salle, who did not return till August, when he brought with him Membré the priest, whose Journal we are to depend on later, and the vessel departed on the voyage which Mr. Neill has sketched.[597] After the “Griffin” had departed homeward from this region, La Salle and his canoes followed up the western shores of the lake, while Tonty and another party took the eastern. The two finally met at the Miamis, or St. Joseph River, near the southeastern corner of Lake Michigan. They now together went up the St. Joseph, and crossing the portage[598] launched their canoes on the Kankakee, an upper tributary of the Illinois River, and passed on to the great town of the tribe of that name, where Marquette had been before them, near the present town of Utica.[599] They found the place deserted, for the people were on their winter hunt. They discovered, however, pits of corn, and got much-needed food. Passing on, a little distance below Peoria Lake they came upon some inhabited wigwams. Among these people La Salle learned how his enemies in Canada were inciting them to thwart his progress; and there were those under this incitement who pictured so vividly the terrors of the southern regions, that several of La Salle’s men deserted.