A Little Girl in Old Detroit   By: Amanda Minnie Douglas (1831-1916)

by

AMANDA M. DOUGLAS

[Illustration]

A. L. Burt Company Publishers New York

Copyright, 1902, by Dodd, Mead & Company.

First Edition Published September, 1902.

TO

MR. AND MRS. WALLACE R. LESSER

Time and space may divide and years bring changes, but remembrance is both dawn and evening and holds in its clasp the whole day.

A. M. D., NEWARK, N. J.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. A HALF STORY, 1

II. RAISING THE NEW FLAG, 16

III. ON THE RIVER, 33

IV. JEANNE'S HERO, 50

V. AN UNKNOWN QUANTITY, 65

VI. IN WHICH JEANNE BOWS HER HEAD, 82

VII. LOVERS AND LOVERS, 102

VIII. A TOUCH OF FRIENDSHIP, 121

IX. CHRISTMAS AND A CONFESSION, 139

X. BLOOM OF THE MAY, 157

XI. LOVE, LIKE THE ROSE, IS BRIERY, 176

XII. PIERRE, 194

XIII. AN UNWELCOME LOVER, 209

XIV. A HIDDEN FOE, 228

XV. A PRISONER, 243

XVI. RESCUED, 265

XVII. A PÆAN OF GLADNESS, 289

XVIII. A HEARTACHE FOR SOME ONE, 307

XIX. THE HEART OF LOVE, 327

XX. THE LAST OF OLD DETROIT, 344

A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD DETROIT.

CHAPTER I.

A HALF STORY.

When La Motte Cadillac first sailed up the Strait of Detroit he kept his impressions for after travelers and historians, by transcribing them in his journal. It was not only the romantic side, but the usefulness of the position that appealed to him, commanding the trade from Canada to the Lakes, "and a door by which we can go in and out to trade with all our allies." The magnificent scenery charmed the intrepid explorer. The living crystal waters of the lakes, the shores green with almost tropical profusion, the natural orchards bending their branches with fruit, albeit in a wild state, the bloom, the riotous, clinging vines trailing about, the great forests dense and dark with kingly trees where birds broke the silence with songs and chatter, and game of all kinds found a home; the rivers, sparkling with fish and thronged with swans and wild fowl, and blooms of a thousand kinds, made marvelous pictures. The Indian had roamed undisturbed, and built his temporary wigwam in some opening, and on moving away left the place again to solitude.

Beside its beauty was the prospect of its becoming a mart of commerce. But these old discoverers had much enthusiasm, if great ignorance of individual liberty for anyone except the chief rulers. There was a vigorous system of repression by both the King of France and the Church which hampered real advance. The brave men who fought Indians, who struggled against adverse fortunes, who explored the Mississippi valley and planted the nucleus of towns, died one after another. More than half a century later the English, holding the substantial theory of colonization, that a wider liberty was the true soil in which advancement progressed, after the conquest of Canada, opened the lake country to newcomers and abolished the restrictions the Jesuits and the king had laid upon religion.