The glamour of the spot, the teeming soil, the great and lesser game, that swam past,--or wandered by their doors--soon drew to this Mecca of the Plains and Waters--the roving, scattered children of the trade--Bourgeois and voyageur alike heading their lithe and dusky broods.

Here touched and fused all habitudes of life, the blended races, knit by ties conserving every divergence of pursuit, all forms of faith and thought, free from assail or taint begotten of contact with aught other than themselves.

A people whose unchecked primal freedom was afterward strengthened by the light hand of laws that conserved what they most desired; whose personal relations with their rulers were of such primitive character as to make the Government in every sense paternal; the petty tax on imports attending its administration one practically unfelt! A people whose land was dotted with schools and churches, to whose maintenance their contributions were so slight as to be unworthy of mention.

The three separate religious denominations, holding widely different tenets--elsewhere the cause of bitter sectarian feeling,--was with them so unthought of as to give where all topics were eagerly sought--no room for even fireside discussion.

Side by side, "upon the voyage,"-- as they termed their lake or inland trips--the Catholic and the Protestant knelt and offered up their devotions--following the ways of their fathers,--no more to be made a subject of dispute than a difference in color or height.
The cursings and obscenities that taint the air and brutalize life elsewhere, were in this quaint old settlement unknown.