Yet they set their faces toward the west, types of the pioneers who
have carved empire out of wilderness.
[Illustration: The Ragged Sky-line of the Mountains.]
The Assiniboine was winding and low, with many sand bars. On the
wooded banks deer and buffalo grazed in such countless multitudes that
the boatmen took them for great herds of cattle. Flocks of wild geese
darkened the sky overhead. As the boats wound up the shallows of the
river, ducks rose in myriad flocks. Prairie wolves skulked away from
the river bank, and the sand-hill cranes were so unused to human
presence that they scarcely rose as the voyageurs poled past. While
the boatmen poled, the soldiers marched in military order across
country, so avoiding the bends of the river. Daily, Crees and
Assiniboines of the plains joined the white men. A week after leaving
the Forks or Fort Rouge, De la Verendrye came to the Portage of the
Prairie, leading north to Lake Manitoba and from the lake to Hudson
Bay. Clearly, northward was not the way to the Western Sea; but the
Assiniboines told of a people to the southwest--the Mandans--who knew a
people who lived on the Western Sea. As soon as his baggage came up,
De la Verendrye ordered the construction of a fort--called De la
Reine--on the banks of the Assiniboine. This was to be the forwarding
post for the Western Sea. To the Mandans living on the Missouri, who
knew a people living on salt water, De la Verendrye now directed his
course.
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