forest, forest and lake; a dreary scene haunted with yet more dreary
memories,--disasters, sorrows, and deferred hopes; time, strength, and
wealth spent in vain; a ruinous past and a doubtful future; slander,
obloquy, and hate. With unmoved heart, the patient voyager held his
course, and drew up his canoes at last on the beach at Fort Miami.




CHAPTER XXI.
1681-1682.
SUCCESS OF LA SALLE.

HIS FOLLOWERS.--THE CHICAGO PORTAGE.--DESCENT OP THE MISSISSIPPI.
--THE LOST HUNTER.--THE ARKANSAS.--THE TAENSAS.--THE NATCHEZ.
--HOSTILITY.--THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI.--LOUIS XIV. PROCLAIMED
SOVEREIGN OF THE GREAT WEST.


The season was far advanced. On the bare limbs of the forest hung a few
withered remnants of its gay autumnal livery; and the smoke crept upward
through the sullen November air from the squalid wigwams of La Salle's
Abenaki and Mohegan allies. These, his new friends, were savages, whose
midnight yells had startled the border hamlets of New England; who had
danced around Puritan scalps, and whom Puritan imaginations painted as
incarnate fiends. La Salle chose eighteen of them, "all well inured to
war," as his companion Membre writes, and added them to the twenty-three
Frenchmen who composed his party. They insisted on taking their women with
them, to cook for them, and do other camp work. These were ten in number,
besides three children; and thus the expedition included fifty-four