United States or Gabon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was reported, too, that Cahokia had been taken, and that, even as the messenger was leaving Kaskaskia, "Gibault, a French priest, had his horse ready saddled to go to Vincennes to receive the submission of the inhabitants in the name of the rebels." George Rogers Clark was a Virginian, born in the foothills of Albemarle County three years before Braddock's defeat.
"I should like to learn to speak French," said I, for I had been much irritated at not understanding what was said in the streets. "And so you shall," said Father Gibault; "I myself will teach you. You must come to my house to-day." "And Davy will teach me," said the Colonel. But I was not immediately to take up the study of French. Things began to happen in Kaskaskia.
I was bid by Colonel Clark to sit down and dine with them on the good things which Monsieur Rocheblave's cook had prepared. Colonel Clark plied the priest with questions of the French towns under English rule: and Father Gibault, speaking for his simple people, said that the English had led them easily to believe that the Kentuckians were cutthroats.
Had Gibault known what a theatrical air was, he might have been immensely tickled; but, being what he was an unsophisticated son of the wilderness he knew nothing about such airs, and therefore regarded his companion in the light of a superior order of being, or a madman; he was not quite sure which.
Any one who had observed our friends March Marston, and Redhand, and Bounce, and Big Waller, and Black Gibault, the trappers, and Bertram the artist, and Hawkswing the Indian, one beautiful afternoon, not long after the day on which they lost their canoe, would have admitted, without hesitation, that wandering through the wild woods was, among other things, a funny thing.
He brought forward his gun as he spoke, and examined the priming. "I b'lieve he's an evil spirit, I do," said Bounce; "wot a pace!" "More like to de Wild Man of de Vest," observed Gibault. "Think you so?" whispered Bertram in an anxious tone, with an involuntary motion of his hand to the pouch in which lay that marvellous sketch-book of his. "Think it's him?" said Redhand to Hawkswing.
A body of French militia returned to British allegiance with quite as much facility as it had shown in accepting American sovereignty under the eloquence of Father Gibault; and the French inhabitants, gathered again in the church, with perfectly straight faces acknowledged that they had "sinned against God and man" by taking sides with the rebels, and promised to be loyal thereafter to George III.
But she had now begun to spell out the words of the book which had at last fallen into her hands, and March could not again draw her into general talk; so he was fain to sit down and help her to read the Bible. Leaving them thus occupied, we will now return to the trappers, three of whom, it will be remembered Bounce, Redhand, and Gibault had reached the Mountain Fort and given the alarm.
The scattered trappers rode for a long time singly, but as they neared the fort, one or two of them met, and when they came first in sight of the tall flagstaff, Bounce, Redhand, and Gibault rode abreast. McLeod was standing in front of the fort, when the three horsemen came dashing over the plain.
They felt secure in their lonely situation, and so went on selling their trinkets, weapons, domestic implements, blankets and intoxicating liquors to the Indians, whom they held bound to them with a power never possessed by any other white dwellers in the wilderness. Father Beret was probably subordinate to Father Gibault.
Word Of The Day