ship’s provisions with which they started. His men were weary. All the testimony that he could procure concurred to show that the route by which Tonty came and went was the same as that which he himself had pursued, and that the division of the river into two channels was a myth.[31] With bitterness of spirit he inveighs against the Récollet, whose “false accounts had deceived every one. Time had been consumed, the enterprise hindered, and the men of the party had suffered in the search after purely imaginary things.” And yet, if we may accept the record of his Journal, this visit to the village of the Oumas was the means of his tracing the most valuable piece of evidence of French explorations in this vicinity which could have been produced. “The Bayagoulas,” he says, “seeing that I persisted in wishing to search for the fork and also insisted that Tonty had not passed by there, explained to me that he had left with the chief of the Mougoulachas a writing enclosed for some man who was to come from the sea, which was similar to one that I myself had left with them.” The urgency of the situation compelled Iberville’s return to the ships. On his way back he completed the circuit of the island on which New Orleans was afterward built, by going through the river named after himself and through Lake Pontchartrain. The party which accompanied him consisted of four men, and they travelled in two canoes. The two boats proceeded down the Mississippi, with orders to procure the letter from the Mougoulachas and to sound the passes at the mouth of the river. On the 31st both expeditions reached the ships. Iberville had the satisfaction of receiving from the hands of his brother[32] the letter which Tonty had left for La Salle, bearing date, “At the village of the Quinipissas, April 20, 1685.”[33] The contents of the letter were of little moment, but its possession was of great value to Iberville. The doubts of the incredulous must yield to proof of this nature. Here was Tonty’s account of his trip down the river, of his search along the coast for traces of his old leader, and of his reluctant conclusion that his mission was a failure. In the midst of the clouds of treachery which obscure the last days of La Salle, the form of Tonty looms up, the image of steadfast friendship and genuine devotion. “Although,” he says, “we have neither heard news nor seen signs of you, I do not despair that God will grant success to your undertakings. I wish it with all my heart; for you have no more faithful follower than myself, who would sacrifice everything to find you.”