little band of heroic men; how hunger, and cold, and fever dogged their
steps; how the Indians proved treacherous and hostile; how, having
reached central Illinois, after incredible exertion, they found
themselves in the dead of winter unable to proceed further, and
surrounded by tribes incited against them by some unknown enemy. A
fatality seemed to hang over them; suspicious occurrences indicated that
they had a traitor among their number, but he was never discovered. La
Salle did not despair or abandon the enterprise; but when six of his
most trusted men mutinied and deserted, he lost hope, and became seized
with a presentiment that he would never return from his expedition.
Father Xavier was his confidant as well as confessor, but he seems not
to have been able to disperse the gloom which settled over the leader's
mind. Perhaps he did not endeavor to do so. Hopeless but still true to
his trust, La Salle constructed near Peoria a fort which he named
Crèvecoeur, in token of his despondency and disappointment. Leaving
Tontz Main de Fer in command here with the greater part of his men, he
set out with five for Frontenac, on the 2d of March, 1680, intending to
return with supplies to take command again of his party, and to proceed
southward. It was at this point that the most inexplicable event of the
entire enterprise occurred. Before the party divided _some one_
attempted to poison the Chevalier La Salle. The poison was a subtle and
slow one, similar in its effects to those used by the Borgia family; the
secret of its manufacture was thought to be unknown out of Italy.
Fortunately he had taken an under or overdose of it, and the effects
manifested themselves only in a long illness. He was too far on his
journey from Fort Heartbreak when stricken down to return to it, and was
mercifully received and nursed back to health by the friendly
Pottawottamies.

While the leader was lying sick in an Indian lodge, the knightly Tontz,