Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/90

72 Verendrye himself remained at the mouth of Kaministiqua for the winter, with his band of malcontents. In the spring, accompanied and guided by a large band of friendly Indians, he and his men traversed Rainy Lake, descended Rainy River, threaded their way through the intricate channels of Lake of the Woods and, at its western extremity began the construction of Ft. St. Charles. This post was completed by the fall and became the important rendezvous for the various detachments of the Verendrye party and principal base for further explorations. Both Ft. St. Pierre and Ft. St. Charles were on land now in the state of Minnesota near the towns of International Falls and Warroad respectively.

Then winter again. Verendrye's partners had sent him no spring supplies and only one of the four canoe loads expected in the fall reached him. Another long Canadian winter, with the savage cold creeping through every crack of the windowless log fort, separated by hundreds of miles of ice-bound wilderness from the small French settlements on the Great Lakes. We picture the life within the post, a life stripped of every comfort and many of the barest necessities, the men crowded together in constant, wearing intimacy, from which there was no escape; and outside, in the trackless, silent forest, the ever present menace of a lurking enemy—the implacable Sioux. But harder for Verendrye than any physical discomfort was the knowledge that his associates would not countenance or assist his cherished purpose of pushing farther west to establish a post on Lake Winnipeg, then called Lake Bourbon.

We can imagine with what impatience he awaited the spring, when the ice should break up in the lakes, and the streams, swollen to raging torrents by the melting snow, should subside and again become navigable for the egg shell canoes of the voyageurs. He had determined to send his nephew to Montreal to report favorably on the progress he had made in winning the loyalty of the