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One evening, perhaps four days after Nick's departure, I went into the common room of the tavern, and there I was surprised to see an old friend. His square, saffron face was just the same, his little jet eyes snapped as brightly as ever, his hair which was swept high above his forehead and tied in an eelskin behind was as black as when I had seen it at Kaskaskia.
CLARK, GEORGE ROGERS. Born in Albemarle County, Virginia, November 19, 1752; settled in Kentucky, 1775; major of militia, 1776; sent as delegate to Virginia, 1776; second journey to Virginia, 1777; started on Illinois expedition, June 24, 1778; captured Kaskaskia, July 4, 1778; captured Vincennes, February 24, 1779; defeated Miami Indians and destroyed villages, 1782; died near Louisville, Kentucky, February 18, 1818.
Here the objects of the expedition were disclosed. Some of the men murmured, and others attempted to desert; but the energy of Colonel Clarke secured obedience and even enthusiasm. The little band soon commenced its march through a wild and difficult country, and on the 4th of July, 1778, reached a spot within a few miles of the town of Kaskaskia.
If you will look at the map, you will see, dotted along the bottoms and the bluffs beside the great Mississippi, the string of villages, Kaskaskia, La Prairie du Rocher, Fort Chartres, St. Philip, and Cahokia. Some few miles from Cahokia, on the western bank of the Father of Waters, was the little French village of St. Louis, in the Spanish territory of Louisiana.
It is not half so large or half so good as the common horse-stables in Philadelphia. Saturday, Nov. 13. Left St. Louis at 6 o'clock a. m. Crossed the Mississippi to Illinois on my way to Kaskaskia. Passed a small village called Cahokia, a miserable, dirty little hole. But very few good houses. Inhabitants half French, half Indian, retaining part of the manners of both.
The village mentioned was then the most, and in fact, the only, important place in the vast area constituting the present State of Illinois. There were less than five thousand persons of all nationalities and conditions in the Territory, and they mainly in and about Kaskaskia, and southward to the Ohio.
"You pretend to know the way to Kaskaskia, you bring us to the middle of the Indian country where we may be wiped out at any time, and now you have the damned effrontery to tell me that you have lost your way. I am a man of my word," he added with a vibrant intensity, and pointed to the limbs of a giant tree which stood at the edge of the distant forest.
"Savin' your Honor's prisence," said Terence, "he's afeard your Honor will be sending him on the boat. Sure, he wants to go swimmin' with the rest of us." Colonel Clark frowned, bit his lip, and Terence seized his gun and stood to attention. "It were right to leave you in Kaskaskia," said the Colonel; "the water will be over your head."
And the vast stretch of country from that place westward to the Father of Waters was now American. And that brings me to the second oversight. The surprise and conquest of Cahokia by Bowman and his men was like that of Kaskaskia. And the French there were loyal, too, offering their militia for service in the place of those men of Bowman's company who would not reenlist.
But when the preacher saw a friar peddling spirits, he determined to denounce Kaskaskia as Sodom and Gomorrah around his whole circuit in the American bottom lands. While the fire burned in him he encountered Father Olivier, who despised him as a heretic, and respected him as a man. Each revered the honest faith that was in the other, though they thought it their duty to quarrel.
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