Since reaching the head of Lake Ontario, La Salle had been attacked by a
violent fever, from which he was not yet recovered. He now told his two
colleagues that he was in no condition to go forward, and should be forced
to part with them. The staple of La Salle's character, as his life will
attest, was an invincible determination of purpose, which set at naught
all risks and all sufferings. He had cast himself with all his resources
into this enterprise, and, while his faculties remained, he was not a man
to recoil from it. On the other hand, the masculine fibre of which he was
made did not always withhold him from the practice of the arts of address,
and the use of what Dollier de Casson styles _belles paroles_. He
respected the priesthood,--with the exception, it seems, of the Jesuits,--
and he was under obligations to the Sulpitians of Montreal. Hence there
can be no doubt that he used his illness as a pretext for escaping from
their company without ungraciousness, and following his own path in his
own way.

On the last day of September, the priests made an altar, supported by the
paddles of the canoes laid on forked sticks. Dollier said mass; La Salle
and his followers received the sacrament, as did also those of his late
colleagues; and thus they parted,--the Sulpitians and their party
descending the Grand River towards Lake Erie, while La Salle, as they
supposed, began his return to Montreal. What course he actually took, we
shall soon inquire; and meanwhile, for a few moments, we will follow the
priests. When they reached Lake Erie, they saw it tossing like an angry
ocean under a wild autumnal sky. They had no mind to tempt the dangerous
and unknown navigation, and encamped for the winter in the forest near the
peninsula called the Long Point. Here they gathered a good store of
chestnuts, hickory-nuts, plums, and grapes; and built themselves a log-
cabin, with a recess at the end for an altar. They passed the winter
unmolested, shooting game in abundance, and saying mass three times a