on a low hill, or knoll, half a league from the camp and about 200 yards from the southern bank. In front of this knoll was a marsh, overflowed at high tide, and on either side a ravine. A ditch was dug behind this knoll, connecting these two ravines, and thus isolating it from the mainland. On each side of the hill, which was nearly square, an embankment was thrown up and its sloping sides were guarded by chevaux-de-frise, and a 25-foot palisade surrounded the whole. The buildings within this area were of musket-proof timber. This fort, the first civilized act of occupation in the present State of Illinois, he named Fort Crèvecœur.
"La Salle's men," says Parkman, "were for the most part raw hands, knowing nothing of the wilderness, and easily alarmed at its dangers, * * * it was to the last degree difficult to hold men to their duty. Once fairly in the wilderness, completely freed from the sharp restraints of authority in which they had passed their lives, a spirit of lawlessness broke out among them with a violence proportioned to the pressure which had hitherto suppressed it. Discipline had no resources and no guarantee; while these outlaws of the forest, the courriers des bois, were always before their eyes, a standing example of unbridled license." Desertions and disaffections among his followers were, at this time, a heavy burden to La Salle; and he even barely escaped from another attempt to poison him. Finally, however, having apparently placated the Indians of the vicinity, and checked, as he hoped, the disposition to mutiny and desertion among his men, which had been a constant menace to his plans,[1] he built, in an incredibly short time, a*
- ↑ He clearly foresaw what this journey involved, for as he wrote to one of his associates in his enterprise, "though the thaws of approaching Spring greatly increased the difficulty of the way, interrupted as it was everywhere by marshes and rivers, to say nothing of the length of the journey, which is about 500 leagues in a direct line, and the danger of meeting Indians of four or five different nations through whose country we were to pass, as well as an Iroquois army which we knew was coming that way; though we must suffer all the time from hunger, sleep on the open ground, and often with-*
