Nevertheless, the next morning, when La Salle looked about for his sentinels, not one of them was to be seen. Six of his men, including two of the best carpenters, upon whom he depended for building the vessel, had deserted.
To withdraw his men from the demoralizing influences of the Indian camp, La Salle chose a naturally strong position at some distance down the river, fortified it, and built lodgings for the men, together with a house for the friars. This, the first habitation reared by white men in the { 241} territory now comprised in the State of Illinois, stood a little below the site of Peoria and was called Fort Crèvecoeur. This name, Fort Break-Heart, was taken from that of a celebrated fortification in Europe. It was to be a heart-breaker to the enemy.
La Salle believed in the doctrine of work as the best preventive of low spirits, and he kept his men at it. No sooner was the fort finished than he began to build the vessel. Two of his carpenters, we remember, had deserted. "Seeing," he says, "that if I should wait to get others from Montreal, I should lose a whole year, I said one day before my people that I was so vexed to find that the absence of two sawyers would defeat my plans, that I was resolved to try to saw the planks myself, if I could find a single man who would help me with a will." Two men stepped forward and said they would try what they could do. The result was that the work was begun and was pushed along so successfully that within two weeks the hull of the vessel was half finished.
La Salle now felt free to make the unavoidable journey to Montreal, to look after his affairs. His men were in better heart, and the vessel was well on its way to completion. Leaving the { 242} faithful Tonty in charge of the fort with its garrison, mostly of scoundrels, he set out with his trusty Mohegan and four Frenchmen.
A few days earlier he had sent off Father Hennepin with two Frenchmen, to explore the lower part of the Illinois. In another place we shall read the story of their adventures.
We shall not follow La Salle on his journey back to Canada. It was a terribly hard experience of sixty-five days' travel through a country beset with every form of difficulty and swarming with enemies, "the most arduous journey," says the chronicler, "ever made by Frenchmen in America." But there was a worse thing to come. When La Salle reached Niagara, he learned not only the certainty of the "Griffin's" loss, with her valuable cargo, but that a vessel from France freighted with indispensable goods for him had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and a party of twenty hired men on their way from Europe to join him had, on their arrival, been so disheartened by reports of his failure and death, that only four persisted in their purpose.