"
"It surely is delicious," said Oncle Jazon, "very delicious." He
spoke French with a curious accent, having spent long years with
English-speaking frontiersmen in the Carolinas and Kentucky, so
that their lingo had become his own.
As they walked side by side down the way to the river house they
looked like typical extremes of rough, sun-burned and weather-
tanned manhood; Oncle Jazon a wizened, diminutive scrap, wrinkled
and odd in every respect; Gaspard Roussillon towering six feet
two, wide shouldered, massive, lumbering, muscular, a giant with
long curling hair and a superb beard. They did not know that they
were going down to help dedicate the great Northwest to freedom.
CHAPTER V
FATHER GIBAULT
Great movements in the affairs of men are like tides of the seas
which reach and affect the remotest and quietest nooks and inlets,
imparting a thrill and a swell of the general motion. Father
Gibault brought the wave of the American Revolution to Vincennes.
He was a simple missionary; but he was, besides, a man of great
worldly knowledge and personal force. Colonel George Rogers Clark
made Father Gibault's acquaintance at Kaskaskia, when the fort and
its garrison surrendered to his command, and, quickly discerning
the fine qualities of the priest's character, sent him to the post
on the Wabash to win over its people to the cause of freedom and
independence.
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