on the lake impeded them subsequently, and they came back to the fort to find Tonty returned from Denonville’s campaign against the Senecas.[643] The same deceit regarding La Salle’s fate was practised on Tonty, and he gave them money and supplies as to La Salle’s representatives, only to learn a few months later, when Couture came up from the Arkansas, of La Salle’s murder. The wanderers, however, had now passed on, had reached Quebec in safety, still concealing what they knew, and not disclosing it till they reached France; and even in France there is a suspicion that Cavelier held his peace till he had secured some property against the seizure of La Salle’s creditors. Why Joutel connived at the deception is less comprehensible, for otherwise he bears a fair name. No representations of his, however, could induce the King to send succor to the hapless colony; and all the result, so far as known, of the tardy acknowledgment of La Salle’s death was an order sent to Canada for the arrest of his murderers. The story which Couture told to Tonty in September inspired that hero with a determination to try to rescue La Salle’s colony on the Gulf. So in December he left his fortified rock, with five Frenchmen and three others. Late in March he was on the Red River, where all but two of his companions deserted him. He was himself finally, by the loss of his ammunition, compelled to turn back, but not till he had learned of the probable death of Heins.[644] In September he reached his fort on the Illinois; and here, with La Forest, he continued to live, holding the seigniory jointly under a royal patent, and trading in furs, till 1702, when the establishment was broken up.[645] Tonty now joined D’Iberville in Louisiana, and of his subsequent years nothing is known. The French again occupied his rocky fastness; but when Charlevoix saw it, in 1721, it was only a ruin. The fate of the Texan colony is soon told. The Spaniards who had searched for it by sea had always missed it, though they had found the wrecked vessels.[646] A Frenchman, probably a deserter from La Salle, fell into the Spaniards’ hands in New Leon. From him they learned its position, and despatched under the Frenchman’s guidance a force to capture it. They found the fort deserted, and three dead bodies a little distance off. From the Indians they learned of two Frenchmen who were living with a distant tribe. They sent for them under a pledge of good treatment; and when they came, they proved to be L’Archevêque, one of Duhaut’s accomplices, and one of the stray deserters whom Joutel had discovered after the murder. They told a story of ravages from the small-pox and of slaughter by the savages. A few of the colonists had been saved by the Indian women; but these were subsequently given up to the Spaniards, and they added their testimony to the sad and ignominious end of the colony. * * * * *