La Salle, moreover, was
in constant danger of Indians of various tribes. In a letter to a friend
he said that though he knew that they must suffer all the time from
hunger, sleep on the open ground, and often without food, watch by night
and march by day, loaded with baggage, sometimes pushing through thickets,
sometimes wading whole days through marshes where the water was waist-
deep; still he was resolved to go. Two of the men fell ill. A canoe was
made for them and the journey continued. Two men were sent to Point St.
Ignace to learn if any news had come of the _Griffin_. At Niagara, where
he learned of further misfortune, he left the other two Frenchmen and the
faithful Mohigan Indian as unfit for further travel and pushed on with
three fresh men to Fort Frontenac, which he reached in sixty-five days
from the day of his starting from Fort Crevecoeur. This gives intimation
and illustration of the will which possessed the body of this "man of
thought, trained amid arts and letters." "In him," said the Puritan
Parkman, "an unconquerable mind held at its service a frame of iron.
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