on was
read, the British flag was run up, and Sterling's red-coated soldiery
established itself in the citadel. In due time small detachments were
sent to Vincennes and other posts; and the triumph of the British power
over Frenchman and Indian was complete. Saint-Ange retired with his
little garrison to St. Louis, where, until the arrival of a Spanish
lieutenant-governor in 1770, he acted by common consent as chief
magistrate.

The creoles who passed under the English flag suffered little from the
change. Their property and trading interests were not molested, and the
English commandants made no effort to displace the old laws and usages.
Documents were written and records were kept in French as well as
English. The village priest and the notary retained their accustomed
places of paternal authority. The old idyllic life went on. Population
increased but little; barter, hunting, and trapping still furnished
the means of a simple subsistence; and with music, dancing, and holiday
festivities the light-hearted populace managed to crowd more pleasure
into a year than the average English frontiersman got in a lifetime.

For a year or two after the European pacification of 1763 Indian
disturbances held back the flood of settlers preparing to enter, through
the Alleghany passes, the upper valleys of the westward flowing rivers.
Neither Indian depredations nor proclamations of kings, however,
could long interpose an effectual restraint. The supreme object of the
settlers was to obtain land. Formerly there was land enough for all
along the coasts or in the nearer uplands. But population, as Franklin
computed, was doubling in twenty-five years; vacant areas had already
been occupied; and desirable lands had been gathered into great
speculative holdings. Newcomers were consequently forced to cross the
mountains--and not only newcomers, but all residents who were still
land-hungry and ambitious to better their condition.

To such the appeal of the great West was irresistible. The English
Government might indeed regard the region as a "barren waste" or a
"profitless wilderness," but not so the Scotch-Irish, Huguenot, and
Palatine homeseekers who poured by the thousands through the Chesapeake
and Delaware ports. Pushing past the settled seaboard country, these
rugged men of adventure plunged joyously into the forest depths and
became no less the founders of the coming nation than were the Pilgrims
and the Cavaliers.

Ahead of t