It was named Fort Machault, from Jean Baptiste Machault, a celebrated French financier and politician and favorite of La Pompadour. The fort was a parallelogram about seventy-five by one hundred and five feet with bastions in the form of polygons at the four angles. The gate fronted the river. It contained a magazine protected by three feet of earth, and five barracks two stories high furnished with stone chimneys. The soldiers' barracks consisted of forty-four buildings erected around the fort on the north and east sides.
Thus, strong in her resources of military and civil centralization, France at last moved swiftly into the West. In this, her superiority over the English colonies was as marked as her success in winning her way into the good graces of the Indians. French and English character nowhere show more plainly than in the nature of their contact with the Indians as each met them along the St. Lawrence, Allegheny, and the Great Lakes. The French came to conciliate the Indians, with no scruples as to how they might accomplish their task. The coureur-de-bois threw himself into
