He denounced frauds boldly. Count Frontenac spoke highly of his "valor, wisdom, experience and good conduct." It was no ordinary man to whom a wife could by word and deed alike bear witness as Cadillac's wife bore witness to her husband. After they had been married for fourteen years, and when the colony was less than two years old, in company with Madame Touty, in an open canoe with Indians and woodsmen for an escort, she made the journey of a thousand miles from Quebec to Detroit in the fall of the year when fierce winds and rough waves and heavy rains might be expected. When one of the Quebec ladies reminded her in advance, "At Detroit you will die of _ennui_," she replied, "A woman who loves her husband as she should has no stronger attraction than his company wherever he may be; everything else should be indifferent to her." The American cities that equal us in age and population are few indeed. Two hundred years are behind us, and three hundred thousand people fill our homes. Our people are and ever have been of many types. In the early days _coureurs des bois_, bluff, hearty, reckless, and Indians, the squaw trudging along bent double under her basket of bead-work, the unburdened brave stalking proudly, noiselessly along, frequented the place. Dutch traders from the Mohawk coasting along the Lakes early brought negro slaves from Albany.[3] In our social life the Gallic spirit remains to soften and harmonize. The dash of gorgeous coloring which the almost continuous existence here of a military post has given, the distinction and grace which the early arrival of some of old Virginia's noblest children has lent, the intellectual vigor which Puritan New England has contributed, and the solidity and conservatism furnished by the presence of the many wealthy landed proprietors have all shared in the making of a social life as rich as it is attractive. [Illustration THE DETROIT RIVER FROM "WINDMILL POINT," 1838. FROM A PENCIL DRAWING.] After the first settlers came strange sights. Round-towered and red-painted windmills began to dot the banks of the Detroit, and all "along shore" narrow farms, a city block in width and fifty times as long, stretched from the river rearward to meadows and woods. The canoe and the pirogue were always in the stream, and in them the French girls were as much at home as mermaids in the sea. The fort was the centre of every interest. It was a log stockade enclosing a plot of ground three or four hundred feet square, and lay south of what is now Jefferson Avenue, occupying at least the western half of the block between Griswold and Shelby streets. Within it commandant and soldiers were gathered, the church was located, justice administered and goods were kept on sale.