grass, looked like huge beehives. Each held several families, whose fire
was in the middle, and their beds around the circumference. The spoil of
the Spaniards was to be seen on all sides; silver lamps and spoons,
swords, old muskets, money, clothing, and a Bull of the Pope dispensing
the Spanish colonists of New Mexico from fasting during summer. [Footnote:
Douay, in Le Clercq, ii. 321; Cavelier, _Relation_, MS.] These treasures,
as well as their numerous horses, were obtained by the Cenis from their
neighbors and allies, the Camanches, that fierce prairie banditti, who
then, as now, scourged the Mexican border with their bloody forays. A
party of these wild horsemen was in the village. Douay was edified at
seeing them make the sign of the cross, in imitation of the neophytes of
one of the Spanish missions. They enacted, too, the ceremony of the mass;
and one of them, in his rude way, drew a sketch of a picture he had seen
in some church which he had pillaged, wherein the friar plainly recognized
the Virgin weeping at the foot of the cross. They invited the French to
join them on a raid into New Mexico; and they spoke with contempt, as
their tribesmen will speak to this day, of the Spanish creoles, saying
that it would be easy to conquer a nation of cowards who make people walk
before them with fans to cool them in hot weather. [Footnote: Douay, in Le
Clercq, ii. 324, 325.]

Soon after leaving the Cenis villages, both La Salle and his nephew,
Moranget, were attacked by a fever. This caused a delay of more than two
months, during which the party seem to have remained encamped on the
Neches, or, possibly, the Sabine. When at length the invalids had
recovered sufficient strength to travel, the stock of ammunition was
nearly spent, some of the men had deserted, and the condition of the
travellers was such, that there seemed no alternative but to return to
Fort St. Louis. This they accordingly did, greatly aided in their march by
the horses bought from the Cenis, and suffering no very serious accident