[Illustration: A Monarch of the Plains.]
All that De la Verendrye had accomplished on this trip was to learn that salt water existed west-southwest. Anxious to know more of the Northwest, he sent his sons to the banks of a great northern river. This was the Saskatchewan. In their search of the Northwest, they constructed two more trading posts, Fort Dauphin near Lake Manitoba, and Bourbon on the Saskatchewan. Winter quarters were built at the forks of the river, which afterwards became the site of Fort Poskoyac. This spring not a canoe load of food came up from Montreal. Papers had been served for the seizure of all De la Verendrye’s forts, goods, property, and chattels to meet the claims of his creditors. Desperate, but not deterred from his quest, De la Verendrye set out to contest the lawsuits in Montreal.
Which way to turn now for the Western Sea that eluded their quest like a will-o’-the-wisp was the question confronting Pierre, Francois, and Louis de la Verendrye during the explorer’s absence in Montreal. They had followed the great Saskatchewan westward to its forks. No river was found in this region flowing in the direction of the Western Sea. They had been in the country of the Missouri; but neither did any river there flow to a Western Sea. Yet the Mandans told of salt water far to the west. Thither they would turn the baffling search.