The succeeding Lieutenant-Governor, Francisco Cruzat, thoroughly fortified the town, which was never afterwards molested by the savages. While the more extensive fortifications were in process of construction, indeed to the peace of 1783, the price of provisions in St. Louis was high, and visitors from New Orleans, Ste. Geneviève, Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and other settlements nicknamed the place "_Pain Court_," or "short of bread." Still, it was a time of prosperity. The town grew, and nothing alarming happened until, in 1785, when the people were terrified by their first sight of the "June rise" of the Mississippi. They saw the great yellow stream spread out over the American Bottoms on the east bank and the Columbia Bottom on the west bank to the north, until it became a vast lake reaching farther than the eye could distinctly see. They saw the mighty flood go raging past, black with the trunks of mighty trees torn up by the wild waters, the villages of Cahokia and Kaskaskia submerged, crops ruined, cattle drowned, and houses melting into the yellow sea. St. Louis was flooded to what is now Main Street, and part of the people were preparing to move farther up the high bank that ran back from the stream, when the waters began to recede, and the anxiety of the town was relieved. The people called this "_l'année des grands eaux_,"--"the year of the great waters." There have been many such floods since, but none more awe-inspiring than this, seen in a setting of virgin wilderness. The flood increased the population of the city, however, for the settlers in the bottoms went to town and joined in its upbuilding. In those days, notwithstanding all the dangers of war and flood, St. Louis seems to have been a gay place. Society was simple, yet retaining an indefinable air of elegance that bore the flavor of old France. Even if they were "short of bread," the people were hospitable, a trait which still persists characteristic and conspicuous. The French element has almost wholly disappeared in newer elements, but there yet lingers, somehow, the atmosphere of deliberate ease among the people, even in the pressure of modern business. So orderly was this frontier town that during the entire period of the French and Spanish dominations but one murder was reported. [Illustration OLD MOUND, ST. LOUIS, REMOVED IN 1869. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH IN MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION.]