From the rugged trunk of the stunted cedar that leans forward from the brink, you may drop a plummet into the river below, where the catfish and the turtles may plainly be seen gliding over the wrinkled sands of the clear and shallow current.  The cliff is accessible only from the south, where a man may climb up, not without difficulty, by a steep and narrow passage.  The top is about an acre in extent.

Here, in the month of December, 1682, La Salle and Tonty began to entrench themselves.  They cut away the forest that crowned the rock, built storehouses and dwellings of its remains, dragged timber up the rugged pathway, and encircled the summit with a palisade.  Thus the winter was passed, and meanwhile the work of negotiation went prosperously on.  The minds of the Indians had been already prepared.  In La Salle they saw their champion against the Iroquois, the standing terror of all this region.  They gathered around his stronghold like the timorous peasantry of the Middle Ages around the rock-built castle of their feudal lord.

From the wooden ramparts of St. Louis,—­for so he named his fort,—­high and inaccessible as an eagle’s nest, a strange scene lay before his eye.  The broad, flat valley of the Illinois was spread beneath him like a map, bounded in the distance by its low wall of wooded hills.  The river wound at his feet in devious channels among islands bordered with lofty trees; then, far on the left, flowed calmly westward through the vast meadows, till its glimmering blue ribbon was lost in hazy distance.

There had been a time, and that not remote, when these fair meadows were a waste of death and desolation, scathed with fire, and strewn with the ghastly relics of an Iroquois victory.  Now, all was changed.  La Salle looked down from his rock on a concourse of wild human life.  Lodges of bark and rushes, or cabins of logs, were clustered on the open plain, or along the edges of the bordering forests.  Squaws labored, warriors lounged in the sun, naked children whooped and gamboled on the grass.

Beyond the river, a mile and a half on the left, the banks were studded once more with the lodges of the Illinois, who, to the number of six thousand, had returned, since their defeat, to this their favorite dwelling place.  Scattered along the valley, among the adjacent hills, or over the neighboring prairie, were the cantonments of a half score of other tribes, and fragments of tribes, gathered under the protecting aegis of the French.

Notes.—­The curious elevation called Starved Rock is on the south side of Illinois River, between La Salle and Ottawa.  There is a legend according to which it is said that over one hundred years ago, a party of Illinois Indians took refuge here from the Pottawatomies; their besiegers, however, confined them so closely that the whole party perished of starvation, or, as some say, of thirst.  From this circumstance the rock takes its name.