Penier was a distinguished statesmen; Colonel Raoul was a distinguished cavalry fighter, who had accompanied Napoleon in his exile to Elba, and afterward led the advance guard on the return of the Emperor to France after escaping from his island imprisonment. Madame Raoul was a handsome Italian woman, a native of Naples. Cluis was one of the aids of Marshal Lefebvre; Chaudoin was a French poet of note; Clausel was a count; L'Allemand was a lieutenant general of artillery under Napoleon; Lackonel was a savant, who was at the head of the department of education, in the empire, during the regime of Napoleon, together with others of equal note. All of these notables were once residents of Alabama, and encountered the conditions of pioneer life on its western plains. Of some of the ups and downs of this strange colony something will be said in the next article. LIFE IN THE FRENCH COLONY One may easily infer from that already said about these peculiar colonists, who settled in the early years of the nineteenth century, at the confluence of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers, that life under such conditions must have been strikingly novel throughout. It was an attempt to graft an exceptional European civilization, with all its traditional peculiarities of many centuries, into the raw wilderness conditions of western civilization, and to preserve intact, the customs of the gay Gallic capital of Europe, on the prairies of black mud in Alabama. The log huts which lined the streets of primitive Demopolis, were made as nearly palaces as they well could be, and the streets themselves were lighted at night, in imitation of the French capital. It was a play doll performance, as pathetic as it was patriotic and loyal. The French founded and named Demopolis "the city of the people," seeking thus to blend a miniature Paris with democratic sentiment. In vain did these people seek to grow the olive and the vine in an unfriendly soil, and the attempt was gradually abandoned, and by every possible makeshift they eked out a bare subsistence. In a fertile soil, vegetables and corn were easily grown, and with these and with such supplies as they could get from the game of the woods, they struggled on against odds. They were not without annoyance from the Indians, and more from the American settlers who were now beginning to come into that quarter of the Alabama territory. These latter would entrench on the lands of the French which gave rise to much friction, and an agent had to go to Washington to sue for protection against such invasions. This occasioned opposition to the "furreners," as the French came to be popularly called, in the neighboring log cabins of the American squatters.