It was but a few days after, when a cry of Qui vive, twice repeated, was heard from the river. Joutel went down to the bank, and saw a canoe full of men, among whom he recognized Chedeville, a priest attached to the expedition, the Marquis de la Sablonnière, and others of those who had embarked in the "Belle." His first greeting was an eager demand what had become of her, and the answer confirmed his worst fears. Chedeville and his companions were conducted within the fort, where they told their dismal story. The murder of the pilot and his boat's crew had been followed by another accident, no less disastrous. A boat which had gone ashore for water had been swamped in returning, and all on board were lost. Those who remained in the vessel, after great suffering from thirst, had left their moorings, contrary to the orders of La Salle, and endeavored to approach the fort. But they were few, weak, and unskilful. A wind rose, and the "Belle" was wrecked on a sand-bar at the farther side of the bay. All perished but eight men, who escaped on a raft, and, after long delay, found a stranded canoe, in which they made their way to St. Louis, bringing with them some of La Salle's papers and baggage, saved from the wreck.
Thus clouds and darkness thickened around the hapless colonists, whose gloom was nevertheless lighted by a transient ray of hilarity. Among their leaders was the Sieur Barbier, a young man, who usually conducted the hunting-parties. Some of the women and girls often went out with them to aid in cutting up the meat. Barbier became enamoured of one of the girls; and, as his devotion to her was the subject of comment, he asked Joutel for leave to marry her. The commandant, after due counsel with the priests and friars, vouchsafed his consent, and the rite was duly solemnized; whereupon, fired by the example, the Marquis de la Sablonnière begged leave to marry another of the girls. Joutel, the gardener's son, concerned that a marquis should so abase himself, and anxious, at the same time, for the morals of the fort, not only flatly refused, but, in the plenitude of his authority, forbade the lovers all farther intercourse. [Footnote: Joutel, 146, 147.]
The Indians hovered about the fort with no good intent, sent a flight of arrows among Barbier's hunting-party, and prowled at night around the palisades. One of the friars was knocked down by a wounded buffalo, and narrowly escaped; another was detected in writing charges against La Salle. Joutel seized the paper, and burned it; but the clerical character of the reverend offender saved him from punishment. The colonists were beginning to murmur; and their discontent was fomented by Duhaut, who, with a view to some ulterior design, tried to ingratiate himself with the malcontents, and become their leader. Joutel detected the mischief, and, with a lenity which he afterwards deeply regretted, contented himself with a severe rebuke to the ring-leader, and words of reproof and exhortation to his dejected band. And, lest idleness should beget farther evil, he busied them in such superfluous tasks as mowing grass, that a better crop might spring up, and cutting down trees which obstructed the view. In the evening, he gathered them in the great hall, and encouraged them to forget their cares in songs and dances.
On the seventeenth of October, [Footnote: This is Douay's date. Joutel places it in August, but this is evidently an error. He himself says that, having lost all his papers, he cannot be certain as to dates.] Joutel saw a band of men and horses, descending the opposite bank of the Lavaca, and heard the familiar voice of La Salle shouting across the water. He and his party were soon brought over in canoes, while the horses swam the river. Twenty men had gone out with him, and eight had returned. Of the rest, four had deserted, one had been lost, one had been devoured by an alligator; and the rest, giving out on the march, had probably perished in attempting to regain the fort. The travellers told of a rich country, a wild and beautiful landscape, woods, rivers, groves, and prairies; but all availed nothing, and the acquisition of five horses was but an indifferent return for the loss of twelve men. The story of their adventures was soon told.
After leaving the fort, they had journeyed towards the north-east, over plains green as an emerald with the young verdure of April, till at length they saw, far as the eye could reach, the boundless prairie alive with herds of buffalo. The animals were in one of their tame, or stupid moods; and they killed nine or ten of them without the least difficulty, drying the best parts of the meat. They crossed the Colorado on a raft, and reached the banks of another river, where one of the party named Hiens, a German of Würtemberg, and an old buccaneer, was mired and nearly suffocated in a mud-hole. Unfortunately, as will soon appear, he managed to crawl out; and, to console him, the river was christened with his name. The party made a bridge of felled trees, on which they crossed in safety. La Salle now changed their course, and journeyed eastward, when the travellers soon found themselves in the midst of a numerous Indian population, where they were feasted and caressed without measure. At another village, they were less fortunate. The inhabitants were friendly by day, and hostile by night. They came to attack the French in their camp, but withdrew, daunted by the menacing voice of La Salle, who had heard them approaching through the cane-brake.
La Salle's favorite Shawanoe hunter, Nika, who had followed him from Canada to France, and from France to Texas, was bitten by a rattlesnake; and, though he recovered, the accident detained the party for several days. At length they resumed their journey, but were arrested by a large river, apparently the Brazos. La Salle and Cavelier, with a few others, tried to cross on a raft, which, as it reached the channel, was caught by a current of marvellous swiftness. Douay and Moranget, watching the transit from the edge of the canebrake, beheld their commander swept down the stream, and vanishing, as it were, in an instant. All that day they remained with their companions on the bank, lamenting in an abyss of despair for the loss of their guardian angel, for so Douay calls La Salle. [Footnote: "Ce fût une desolation extrême pour nous tous qui desesperions de revoir jamais nostre Ange tutélaire, le Sieur de la Salle… Tout le jour se passa en pleurs et en larmes."—Douay, in Le Clercq, ii. 315.] It was fast growing dark, when, to their unspeakable relief, they saw him advancing with his party along the opposite bank, having succeeded, after great exertion, in guiding the raft to land. How to rejoin him was now the question. Douay and his companions, who had tasted no food that day, broke their fast on two young eagles which they knocked out of their nest, and then spent the night in rueful consultation as to the means of crossing the river. In the morning, they waded into the marsh, the friar with his breviary in his hood, to keep it dry, and hacked among the caries till they had gathered enough to make another raft, on which, profiting by La Salle's experience, they safely crossed, and rejoined him.
Next, they became entangled in a cane-brake, where La Salle, as usual with him in such cases, took the lead, a hatchet in each hand, and hewed out a path for his followers. They soon reached the villages of the Cenis Indians, on and near the River Trinity, a tribe then powerful, but long since extinct. Nothing could surpass the friendliness of their welcome. The chiefs came to meet them, bearing the calumet, and followed by warriors in shirts of embroidered deer-skin. Then the whole village swarmed out like bees, gathering around the visitors with offerings of food, and all that was precious in their eyes. La Salle was lodged with the great chief; but he compelled his men to encamp at a distance, lest the ardor of their gallantry might give occasion of offence. The lodges of the Cenis, forty or fifty feet high, and covered with a thatch of meadow- 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 by the way, excepting the loss of La Salle's servant, Dumesnil, who was seized by an alligator while attempting to cross the Colorado.
The temporary excitement caused among the colonists by their return soon gave place to a dejection bordering on despair. "This pleasant land," writes Cavelier, "seemed to us an abode of weariness and a perpetual prison." Flattering themselves with the delusion, common to exiles of every kind, that they were objects of solicitude at home, they watched daily, with straining eyes, for an approaching sail. Ships, indeed, had ranged the coast to seek them, but with no friendly intent. Their thoughts dwelt, with unspeakable yearning, on the France they had left behind; and which, to their longing fancy, was pictured as an unattainable Eden. Well might they despond; for of a hundred and eighty colonists, besides the crew of the "Belle," less than forty-five remained. The weary precincts of Fort St. Louis, with its fence of rigid palisades, its area of trampled earth, its buildings of weather-stained timber, and its well-peopled graveyard without, were hateful to their sight. La Salle had a heavy task to save them from despair. His composure, his unfailing cheerfulness, his words of sympathy and of hope, were the breath of life to this forlorn company; for, self-contained and stern as was his nature, he could soften, in times of extremity, to a gentleness that strongly appealed to the hearts of those around him; and though he could not impart, to minds of less adamantine temper, the audacity of hope with which he still clung to the final accomplishment of his purposes, the contagion of his courage touched, nevertheless, the drooping spirits of his followers. [Footnote: "L'égalité d'humeur du Chef rassuroit tout le monde; et il trouvoit des resources à tout par son esprit qui relevoit les espérances les plus abatues."—Joutel, 152.
"Il seroit difficile de trouver dans l'Histoire un courage plus intrepide et plus invincible que celuy du Sieur de la Salle dans les évenemens contraires; il ne fût jamais abatu, et il espéroit toujours avec le secours du Ciel de venir à bout de son entreprise malgré tous les obstacles qui se présentoient."—Douay, in Le Clercq, ii. 327.]