dly to the garrison of Detroit, who were used to the noise of
Indian yelling and dancing. This fort was the central point of his
operations, and he intended to take it next morning by surprise.

Though La Motte Cadillac was the founder of a permanent settlement on
the west shore of Detroit River, it is said that Greysolon du Lhut set
up the first palisades there. About a hundred houses stood crowded
together within the wooden wall of these tall log pickets, which were
twenty-five feet high. The houses were roofed with bark or thatched with
straw. The streets were mere paths, but a wide road went all around the
town next to the palisades. Detroit was almost square in shape, with
a bastion, or fortified projection, at each corner, and a blockhouse
built over each gate. The river almost washed the front palisades, and
two schooners usually anchored near to protect the fort and give it
communication with other points. Besides the homes of settlers, it
contained barracks for soldiers, a council-house, and a little church.

About a hundred and twenty English soldiers, besides fur traders and
Canadian settlers, were in this inclosure, which was called the fort, to
distinguish it from the village of French houses up and down the shore.
Dwellers outside had their own gardens and orchards, also surrounded by
pickets. These French people, who tried to live comfortably among the
English, whom they liked no better than the Indians did, raised fine
pears and apples and made wine of the wild grapes.

The river, emptying the water of the upper lakes into Lake Erie, was
about half a mile wide. Sunlight next morning showed this blue strait
sparkling from the palisades to the other shore, and trees and gardens
moist with that dewy breath which seems to exhale from fresh-water seas.
Indians swarmed early around the fort, pretending that the young men
were that day going to play a game of ball in the fields, while Pontiac
and sixty old chiefs came to hold a council with the English. More than
a thousand of them lounged about, ready for action. The braves were
blanketed, each carrying a gun with its barrel filed off short enough
to be concealed under his blanket.

About ten o'clock Pontiac and his chiefs crossed the river in birch
canoes and stalked in Indian file, every man stepping in the tracks
of the man before him, to the fort gates. The gates on the water side
usually stood open until evening, for the English, contemptuously
careles