In 1721 Charlevoix traversed this region. Speaking of the so-called fort at St. Joseph, near the foot of Lake Michigan, he says: “The commandant’s house, which is but a sorry one, is called a fort from its being surrounded with an indifferent palisade,—which is pretty near the case with all the rest.” The route of Charlevoix was up the St. Joseph across a portage to the Kankakee, and down that river, the Illinois, and the Mississippi, to Fort Chartres, the next French station which he mentions.[72] He describes it as standing about a musket-shot from the river. He heard of mines both copper and lead. Renault, or Renaud, as he is generally called, who was working the lead mines, still hoped for silver. Even after this we hear occasionally of alleged mineral discoveries and revived hopes of mines; but neither the Company nor the Government were destined to reap any great revenue from this source. The duties of Boisbriant and of his successors were almost exclusively limited to adjudicating quarrels, administering estates, watching Indians, and granting provisional titles to lands or setting off rights in the common fields of the villages. The history of these years is preserved in fragments of church-registers, in mouldy grants of real estate, or in occasional certificates of marriage which have by chance been saved. No break occurred in this monotony till the joint movement against the Chickasaws, of young Artaguette from Fort Chartres and of Vinsennes from his post on the Wabash in 1736. The troops from these posts, who were to move from the North at the same time that Bienville should approach from the South, following their orders, met and advanced at the appointed time. Their prompt obedience brought them to the spot in advance of the dilatory Bienville, and enabled the Chickasaws, as has been previously stated, to meet the columns separately and defeat them in detail. A column from this fort was also in the body of troops from the North which co-operated in the second attack on these Indians.