Scarcely had he left,
when he fell terribly ill; but for the pathfinder of the wilderness
there is neither halt nor retreat. M. de la Verendrye's ragged army
tramped wearily on, half blinded by snow glare and buffeted by prairie
blizzards, huddling in snowdrifts from the wind at night and uncertain
of their compass over the white wastes by day. There is nothing so
deadly silent and utterly destitute of life as the prairie in
midwinter. Moose and buffalo had sought the shelter of wooded ravines.
Here a fox track ran over the snow. There a coyote skulked from cover,
to lope away the next instant for brushwood or hollow, and
snow-buntings or whiskey-jacks might have followed the marchers for
pickings of waste; but east, west, north, and south was nothing but the
wide, white wastes of drifted snow. On Christmas Eve of 1738 low
curling smoke above the prairie told the wanderers that they were
nearing the Indian camps of the Assiniboines; and by nightfall of
February 10, 1739, they were under the shelter of Fort de la Reine. "I
have never been so wretched from illness and fatigue in all my life as
on that journey," reported De la Verendrye. As usual, provisions were
scarce at the fort. Fifty people had to be fed. Buffalo and deer meat
saved the French from starvation till spring.
[Illustration: A Monarch of the Plains.]
All that De la Verendrye had accomplished on this trip was to learn
that salt water existed west-southwest.
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