Abandon it he never did. We find him in Montreal in 1740 involved
in what he had always held in horror--a lawsuit brought against
him by some impatient creditor. The report had gone abroad that
he was amassing great wealth, when, as he said, all that he had
accumulated was a debt of forty thousand livres. In the autumn of
1741 he was back at Fort La Reine, where he welcomed his son
Pierre from a fruitless journey to the Mandans.
The most famous of all the efforts of the family was now on foot.
On April 29, 1742, a new expedition started from Fort La Reine,
led by La Verendrye's two sons, Pierre and Francois. They knew
the nature of the task before them, its perils as well as its
hopes. They took with them no imposing company as their father
had done, but only two men. The party of four, too feeble to
fight their way, had to trust to the peaceful disposition of the
natives. When they started, the prairie was turning from brown to
green and the rivers were still swollen from the spring thaw. In
three weeks they reached a Mandan village on the upper Missouri
and were well received.
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