In August, 1814, an attempt was made to retake the Island. A battle was fought near the scene of the British landing two years before, in which battle Major Holmes and twelve privates were killed, and many men were wounded or missing. The routed Americans, under Colonel Croghan, withdrew to their ships. The Island finally passed into the keeping of the United States in 1815. Then followed the great days of the fur companies, when the place was astir with a life so gay and vivid that only to hear of it stirs the blood of the untamed savage which centuries of the repressions of civilization have not routed from our hearts. Hundreds of hardy, ill-paid _engagés_, hundreds of happy-go-lucky, hard-working _voyageurs_ and _coureurs des bois_ and hundreds of Indians crowded into the hundreds of tents set up along the beach; into the log-houses of the primitive village, and into the huge barracks of the company, which counted and weighed the rich peltries they had gathered, paying them in return the miserable wages which in dancing, gambling, drinking, fighting, feasting and sleeping, were spent long before the _bateaux_ freighted with the poor necessities for the fast-coming winter were again rowed out toward the wilderness, the brave _chansons_ of the oarsmen growing fainter and fainter as the boats passed steadily out of sight. [Illustration REV. ELEAZAR WILLIAMS. REPRODUCED FROM LATIMER'S "SCRAP BOOK OF THE REVOLUTION," BY PERMISSION OF A.C. McCLURG & CO.] An incident but little known connects the Island with one of the great mysteries of history,--the fate of the little son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. That the Dauphin did not die in the Temple, but had been secretly conveyed to America and had been placed among the Indians, was believed by persons whose opinions were entitled to respect; but that he might be found in the person of the Rev. Eleazar Williams, a half-breed missionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church among the tribes about Green Bay, was a supposition stranger than any fiction. The story is too long to tell here,[7] but as it touches Mackinac at a single point, it must have a line in this chapter. On the wharf of the moon-shaped bay, one bright day in October, 1841, a crowd was gathered to see the Prince de Joinville, son of Louis Philippe, then reigning in France, who was on his way to Green Bay, and who had stopped off at Mackinac to visit some of the natural curiosities of the place. A salute had been fired in honor of the royal sailor with true republican fervor, and while the steamer which had brought him waited his pleasure, the village was _en fête_. Waiting on the dock, and also about to embark for Green Bay, was the Rev. Eleazar Williams, who, before the boat left the bay, was, at the request of the Prince, presented to his Highness. The acquaintance thus begun led to disclosures which, if true, make the identity of the Dauphin and the missionary all but certain.