Thirty-three days of anxiety and toil thus passed away. The boatmen, who had come with Lieutenant Tonti, increased his number to over thirty men. At the point of land where the river entered the lake, there was a bluff, of considerable elevation and of triangular form, containing an acre or more of pretty level land. It was at that time covered with trees. This commanding position was chosen for the fort. Two sides were bounded by water. On the third or land side of the triangle there was a deep ravine. A breastwork of hewn logs was raised several feet high, enclosing a space eighty feet long by forty feet broad. And this all was surrounded by stout palisades. The fortress was artistically constructed, and could bid defiance to any attack by the Indians. It was also admirably selected to give the French command of the region, against any encroachments of the English. Through the whole month of November the men toiled upon these works, fed only upon the flesh of turkeys, deer, and bears, which their Indian hunter brought in. It was learned that the Griffin, which, it will be remembered, sailed from Green Bay, bound first to Mackinac, did not reach that port. The vessel must have foundered somewhere by the way. The natives on the coast had heard nothing of the vessel. Seventy days had now elapsed since she sailed, and all hopes of ever hearing from her again were relinquished. On the 3d of December the whole party of thirty-three persons, in eight canoes, left Fort Miami, as La Salle called his works, and paddled up the river, a distance of seventy miles, toward the south. Considerable time was lost in the endeavor to find the trail or portage which led across, westerly from the St. Joseph's River, to the head waters of the Kankakee, which is the eastern branch of the Illinois River. La Salle, imprudently exploring alone, became lost in the forest. The darkness of a stormy night, with falling snow, overtook him. He fired his gun as a signal of distress; but silence was the only answer. Soon he espied, in the distance, the light of a fire. It was the encampment of a solitary Indian, who had formed for himself a soft bed of leaves. Alarmed by the report of the gun, he had fled. La Salle appropriated to himself the cheerless quarters and slept soundly until morning. All the forenoon of the next day he wandered, and it was not until the afternoon that he rejoined his companions. He came in with two opossums hanging at his belt, which he had killed.