heavy stores for trade. At length the party reached Rainy Lake,
and out of Rainy Lake the waters flow westward. The country
seemed delightful. Fish and game were abundant, and it was not
hard to secure a rich store of furs. On the shore of the lake, in
a charming meadow surrounded by oak trees, La Verendrye built a
trading-post on waters flowing to the west, naming it Fort St.
Pierre.

The voyageurs could now travel westward with the current. It is
certain that other Frenchmen had preceded them in that region,
but this is the first voyage of discovery of which we have any
details. Escorted by an imposing array of fifty canoes of
Indians, La Verendrye floated down Rainy River to the Lake of the
Woods, and here, on a beautiful peninsula jutting out into the
lake, he built another post, Fort St. Charles. It must have
seemed imposing to the natives. On walls one hundred feet square
were four bastions and a watchtower; evidence of the perennial
need of alertness and strength in the Indian country. There were
a chapel, houses for the commandant and the priest, a
powder-magazine, a storehouse, and other buildings. La Verendrye
cleared some land and planted wheat, and was thus the pioneer in
the mighty wheat production of the West. Fish and game were
abundant and the outlook was smiling. By this time the second
winter of La Verendrye's adventurous journeying was near, but
even the cold of that hard region could not chill his eagerness.
He himself waited at Fort St. Charles but his eldest son, Jean
Baptiste, set out to explore still farther.

We may follow with interest the little group of Frenchmen and
Indian guides as they file on snowshoes along the surface of the