But we must not belittle
the power of verbal description. What if a thoroughly trained
newspaper reporter had been given the freedom of old Vincennes on
the Wabash during the first week of June, 1778, and we now had his
printed story! What a supplement to the photographer's pictures!
Well, we have neither photographs nor graphic report; yet there
they are before us, the gowned and straw-capped priest, the fresh-
faced, coarsely-clad and vigorous girl, the grotesque little
hunchback, all just as real as life itself. Each of us can see
them, even with closed eyes. Led by that wonderful guide,
Imagination, we step back a century and more to look over a scene
at once strangely attractive and unspeakably forlorn.
What was it that drew people away from the old countries, from the
cities, the villages and the vineyards of beautiful France, for
example, to dwell in the wilderness, amid wild beasts and wilder
savage Indians, with a rude cabin for a home and the exposures and
hardships of pioneer life for their daily experience?
Men like Gaspard Roussillon are of a distinct stamp. Take him as
he was. Born in France, on the banks of the Rhone near Avignon, he
came as a youth to Canada, whence he drifted on the tide of
adventure this way and that, until at last he found himself, with
a wife, at Post Vincennes, that lonely picket of religion and
trade, which was to become the center of civilizing energy for the
great Northwestern Territory.
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