They had provided themselves with a few tents, which were promptly brought into use, while improvised habitations were at first constructed of the tall canes which grew wild along the river, and of the lithe saplings cut from the clumps of trees which dotted here and there the prairie over. The prairies were now in their floral beauty, while the young, tender cane was just springing, undermatted with luxuriant grass, with here and there a dash of wild strawberries. In dry weather the surface of the land was flinty with abounding fissures, while during the rainy season it was converted into a soft, waxy, black mud. These bright and pretty French women, used to the gilded salons and festive scenes of Paris, found a complete reversal of conditions in this wild and inhospitable region, but their native joviality never forsook them. Novelties and mistakes were turned into laughter, and roughness into cheeriness. They would promptly adjust themselves to conditions, and would meet them with burst after burst of jollity. They shared in the sentiment expressed by the trivial John Gay, who wrote: "Life is a jest, and all things show it, I thought so once, and now I know it." Donning their dainty garbs, these unconquerable French women did not hesitate to cook, wash, iron, hoe in their gardens and yards, or join their husbands in efforts of a more serious nature, in tillage, and in the erecting of log houses. Their lightness of heart was a cordial in the conditions of actual gloom which sometimes confronted them, but they would never repine, and would decline to take conditions seriously. The personnel of this novel colony was most interesting. Marshal Groughy was classed by them with that segment of society called by Mr. Roosevelt "undesirable citizens," because of the affair at Waterloo, and was left behind in Philadelphia, though he was one of the allottees of the land procured, but got another to occupy it for him. The stigma of the defeat of Waterloo was his, and this made him most unpopular. But Count Desnoettes, who was a cavalry general in Napoleon's army, and a great favorite with the Emperor, was of the colony. Napoleon loved Desnoettes because of his fighting qualities, and because of his exceeding attractiveness of person. He accompanied Bonaparte on the memorable retreat from Russia, and when the French officers were gathered at Fontainebleau, on the eve of Napoleon's departure to Elba, and all were weeping, he embraced Desnoettes, saying that he would avail himself of this means of bidding all farewell.