Periods of industry and prosperity alternated with periods of
depression, and the easy-going habitants--"farmers, hunters,
traders by turn, with a strong admixture of unprogressive Indian
blood"--tended always to relapse into utter indolence.

Some of these French towns, however, were seats of culture; and
none was wholly barren of diversions. Kaskaskia had a Jesuit
college and likewise a monastery. Cahokia had a school for Indian
youth. Fort Chartres, we are gravely told, was "the center of
life and fashion in the West." If everyday existence was humdrum,
the villagers had always the opportunity for voluble conversation
"each from his own balcony"; and there were scores of Church
festivals, not to mention birthdays, visits of travelers or
neighbors, and homecomings of hunters and traders, which invited
to festivity. Balls and dances and other merrymakings at which
the whole village assembled supplied the wants of a people
proverbially fond of amusement. Indeed, French civilization in
the Mississippi and Illinois country was by no means without
charm.

Kaskaskia, in the wonderfully fertile "American Bottom,"
maintained its existence, in spite of the cession to the English,
as did also Vincennes farther east on the Wabash. Fort Chartres,
a stout fortification whose walls were more than two feet thick,
remained the seat of the principal garrison, and some traces of
French occupancy survived on the Illinois. Cahokia was deserted,
save for the splendid mission-farm of St. Sulpice, with its
thirty slaves, its herd of cattle, and its mill, which the
fathers before returning to France sold to a thrifty Frenchman
not averse to becoming an English subject. A few posts were