They had not enough powder to
last another month, and already the Indians were coming in with furs
and food to be traded for ammunition. If the Crees had known the
weakness of the white men, short work might have been made of Fort St.
Charles. It never entered the minds of De la Verendrye and his sons to
give up. They decided to rush three canoes of twenty _voyageurs_ to
Michilimackinac for food and powder. Father Aulneau, the young priest,
accompanied the boatmen to attend a religious retreat at
Michilimackinac. It had been a hard year for the youthful missionary.
The ship that brought him from France had been plague-stricken. The
trip to Fort St. Charles had been arduous and swift, through stifling
heat; and the year passed in the North was one of famine.
Accompanied by the priest and led by Jean de la Verendrye, now in his
twenty-third year, the _voyageurs_ embarked hurriedly on the 8th of
June, 1736, five years to a day from the time that they left
Montreal--and a fateful day it was--in the search for the Western Sea.
The Crees had always been friendly; and when the boatmen landed on a
sheltered island twenty miles from Fort St. Charles to camp for the
night, no sentry was stationed. The lake lay calm as glass in the hot
June night, the camp-fire casting long lines across the water that
could be seen for miles. An early start was to be made in the morning
and a furious pace to be kept all the way to Lake Superior, and the
_voyageurs_ were presently sound asleep on the sand.
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