"Belle," for whose safety, since the loss of her pilot, he had become very
anxious.

On the next day, these men appeared at the fort, with downcast looks. They
had not found the "Belle" at the place where she had been ordered to
remain, nor were any tidings to be heard of her. From that hour, the
conviction that she was lost possessed the mind of La Salle.

Surrounded as he was, and had always been, with traitors, the belief now
possessed him that her crew had abandoned the colony, and made sail for
the West Indies or for France. The loss was incalculable. He had relied on
this vessel to transport the colonists to the Mississippi, as soon as its
exact position could be ascertained; and, thinking her a safer place of
deposit than the fort, he had put on board of her all his papers and
personal baggage, besides a great quantity of stores, ammunition, and
tools. [Footnote: _Proces Verbal fait au poste de la Baie St. Louis, le_
18 _Avril_, 1686, MS.] In truth, she was of the last necessity to the
unhappy exiles, and their only resource for escape from a position which
was fast becoming desperate.

La Salle, as his brother tells us, fell dangerously ill; the fatigues of
his journey, joined to the effects upon his mind of this last disaster,
having overcome his strength though not his fortitude. "In truth," writes
the priest, "after the loss of the vessel, which deprived us of our only
means of returning to France, we had no resource but in the firmness and
conduct of my brother, whose death each of us would have regarded as his
own." [Footnote: Cavelier, _Relation du Voyage pour decouvrir l'embouchure
du Fleuve de Missisipy_, MS.]

La Salle no sooner recovered than he embraced a resolution which could be