out of its stall, harnessed it hurriedly and hitched it between the thills of the cart. He must drive over to the little mill on May's Creek near where the Michigan Central Railroad now crosses Howard Street and bring back several bags of flour. Just before he mounted the cart he stopped to unload his pipe as the wind was blowing the sparks from it into his eyes. He rapped

the bowl against the heel of his boot and the glowing plug of tobacco dropped to the ground. The wind caught it and whirled it back through the open door of the shed barn and into a pile of hay that lay on the floor.

In a moment the wind had fanned the hay into a blaze and Harvey rushed in to stamp out the incipient fire. But the strong wind scattered the blazing hay all over the interior and Harvey was forced to beat a hasty retreat from the whirling flames

and sparks. He shouted "Fire! Fire!" with all the power of his lungs and the pony and cart dashed off for a wild runaway down the river road.

The alarm quickly spread and soon every man in the village was rushing to the scene. The men of the several departments of the fire organization dropped whatever they were doing and took up their several duties. Down Ste. Anne Street they came, carrying axes, bags and battering rams; a group of them came running with the little hand fire engine and its few feet of hose.

Already the fire was an imposing spectacle. The wind drove the flames and sparks in an eastward direction. Embers were smoking on the roofs of several buildings. Harvey's house and shop were past saving and adjoining buildings, set close together, some of them nearly 100 years old and dry as tinder, were bursting into flames. The crew of the little engine worked valiantly but it was impossible to make a stand before the fire, for the flames shot 50 feet or more beyond the buildings already on fire. To fight the fire from the rear was equally impracticable. The sole hope of saving the town from total destruction seemed to lie in battering down buildings before the fire could reach them and then soaking the fallen timbers with water.

Men and boys mounted the roofs, beating out sparks and embers with their coats and dashing water upon the roof timbers and thatch from buckets passed up the ladders attached to each house. Women and girls hastily gathered up the most precious of the portable things in their homes and fled down the street with their arms filled with bedding, clothing, dishes, sacred pictures and the treasured crucifixes hastily snatched from the walls. Armed with logs of wood 12 to 20 feet long, gangs of men would charge against the walls of a house at a run. The old building would quake and rock before the blow. A few blows from the battering rams would bring the whole structure crashing down. The barrels and buckets of water by each house were soon emptied and lines of men were formed to pass buckets of water dipped from the river. But it was a losing fight.

Three hours of frantic endeavor saw the fire-fighters driven backward little by little until they were forced to escape by

the eastern gate and look on in helpless bewilderment. When night fell there was but one unimportant warehouse and a few tottering stone chimney's left standing above the glowing embers of what had once been the incorporated town of Detroit. All the labor and love and hope that had gone into the making of old Detroit were gone, without leaving a trace behind. Household goods were piled in little heaps here and there about the common and on each remnant of a lost home sat a weeping woman surrounded by her children. The little churchyard of old Ste. Anne's Church, where slept the dead of Detroit for a century, was now filled with despairing groups of the homeless, living inhabitants of the town.

Calamity is a great leveler of social distinctions and antipathies. The kind hearts of the French farmers up and down the shore were touched with pity and they opened their homes to the limit of their capacity for the shelter of the homeless. Not only the homes and most of the household effects of the people were lost, but there was a still more acute loss. The food supply of the town had been swept away, and already children were tugging at their mothers' skirts and begging for something to eat. They had been without food since early morning.

Fr. Gabriel Richard was a man of quick intelligence and he was the first to see the food crisis. He trotted along the shore with his curious shovel hat held tight on his head and the long skirts of his coat of ancient pattern flapping about his legs. With shouts he called out the Frenchmen and led them down to the shore, and soon he had two small flotillas of canoes and a couple of bateaux ranging up and down the river to bring corn meal, milk, eggs and other easily prepared foods from the farms along the shore.

The men of the town, having assured themselves that their families were collected together and their household goods guarded, picked their way between heaps of glowing coals trying to locate the sites of their former homes. They found it very difficult, for every landmark was swept away. The stockade was gone and such portions as remained of it had fallen prone. Some of these timbers were afterward used to make improvised

*

shelters with the aid of bedding, hides and pelts of animals, and blankets.

The canoes began to straggle back laden with food and many a child was given a supper of mush and milk that had perhaps been cooked over the coals of the former family home. The collected food was stored on the common and a guard was placed over it to see that it was doled out properly to the needy. Other canoes were sent out to notify farmers farther away of the disaster and of the urgent needs of the people. Later they were to bring in supplies for other days and thus keep life and hope in the people until they could improvise some sort of temporary shelter pending the rebuilding of the town. Quite a number of the inhabitants gave up in utter discouragement and moved away, some into Canada over the river, and some to the Ohio settlements which were now springing up here and there about the old forts and battlegrounds of earlier years.

Petitions were sent down the lake to Montreal and even to Congress asking assistance for the stricken people of this hard-won outpost of western civilization. Many Indians gathered about the town to see the wreckage of the white man's hope and to wonder if the town would be rebuilt or if the place would be abandoned.

CHAPTER XXIV

REIGN OF THE GOVERNOR AND JUDGES

M

EANWHILE the future history of Detroit was being shaped far away in the scattered village of Washington by the Congress of the United States. The national capital had been moved from Philadelphia to Washington in 1800 and the plan of preparing for that removal was begun 10 years before. Maj. L'Enfant, who had served in the Continental Army, had laid out a scheme of streets with broad avenues intersecting the general plan at various angles. It was a superb plan, of which the idea was brought from Versailles, France. But few Americans of that day had the imagination or vision to see the applicability of such a vast plan to the District of Columbia, which was then open country. It was, perforce, at the beginning a city of dreams, and it was destined soon to become a city of office-seekers in quest of land grants and offices for all sorts of services, and sometimes for no reason at all except that the applicant wanted an office of some sort with the largest possible salary and the smallest possible allotment of duties.

On June 30, 1805, Congress adopted a plan of government for Detroit, which was to be the seat of government for the new Territory of Michigan just carved out of the Territory of Indiana. Government was to be placed in the hands of five officials, which was enough for the moment, but curiously enough only one of the five was to be a resident of Detroit. Gen. William Hull, who had fought in the Revolution, was appointed Governor of Michigan Territory. He had graduated from Yale College, taught school and been admitted to the bar to practice law in 1775. After the war he had become a member of the legislature of Massachusetts and held that office until President Jefferson made him Governor of Michigan Territory.

Associated with the Governor were three judges, Augustus B. Woodward, Frederick Bates and John Griffin. Woodward