At Prairie du Rocher, at St. Philippe, the inhabitants lined the streets to do homage to this man of strange power who rode, unattended and unafraid, to the council of the savage tribes which had terrorized his people of Kentucky.  From the ramparts of Fort Chartres (once one of the mighty chain of strongholds to protect a new France, and now deserted like Massacre), I gazed for the first time in awe at the turgid flood of the Mississippi, and at the lands of the Spanish king beyond.  With never ceasing fury the river tore at his clay banks and worried the green islands that braved his charge.  And my boyish fancy pictured to itself the monsters which might lie hidden in his muddy depths.

We lay that night in the open at a spring on the bluffs, and the next morning beheld the church tower of Cahokia.  A little way from the town we perceived an odd gathering on the road, the yellowed and weathered hunting shirts of Bowman’s company mixed with the motley dress of the Creole volunteers.  Some of these gentlemen wore the costume of coureurs du bois, others had odd regimental coats and hats which had seen much service.  Besides the military was a sober deputation of citizens, and hovering behind the whole a horde of curious, blanketed braves, come to get a first glimpse of the great white captain.  So escorted, we crossed at the mill, came to a shady street that faced the little river, and stopped at the stone house where Colonel Clark was to abide.

On that day, and for many days more, that street was thronged with warriors.  Chiefs in gala dress strutted up and down, feathered and plumed and blanketed, smeared with paint, bedecked with rude jewellery,—­earrings and bracelets.  From the remote forests of the north they had come, where the cold winds blow off the blue lakes; from the prairies to the east; from the upper running waters, where the Mississippi flows clear and undefiled by the muddy flood; from the villages and wigwams of the sluggish Wabash; and from the sandy, piny country between the great northern seas where Michilimackinac stands guard alone,—­Sacs and Foxes, Chippeways and Maumies and Missesogies, Puans and Pottawattomies, chiefs and medicine men.

Well might the sleep of the good citizens be disturbed, and the women fear to venture to the creek with their linen and their paddles!

The lives of these people hung in truth upon a slender thing—­the bearing of one man.  All day long the great chiefs sought an audience with him, but he sent them word that matters would be settled in the council that was to come.  All day long the warriors lined the picket fence in front of the house, and more than once Tom McChesney roughly shouldered a lane through them that timid visitors might pass.  Like a pack of wolves, they watched narrowly for any sign of weakness.  As for Tom, they were to him as so many dogs.

“Ye varmints!” he cried, “I’ll take a blizz’rd at ye if ye don’t keep the way clear.”