So deeply interested was I in listening to the "legendary lore" associated with the spot upon which I was sitting, that hours glided unobserved away, and the full moon was culminating in cloudless splendour from the zenith when we retired.
Early the following morning I was in the saddle. The heavy night-mists lay wavering, like a silvery mantle, all over the surface of that broad plain; and the crimson clouds, rolling up the eastern sky, proclaimed the rising sun. After a short ride I reached the former site of St. Philippe, a settlement of the French, since called _Little Village_. Its "common field" is now comprised in the single plantation of Mr. M'David. It was at this point that Philippe Francis Renault--from whom the village received its name, as well as a large section of the neighbouring region, known to this day as "Renault's Tract"--established himself in 1719, with two hundred miners from France, in anticipation of discovering gold and silver.[63] He was disappointed; but is said to have obtained large quantities of lead from the region along the opposite bank of the Mississippi, in the vicinity of Ste. Genevieve; and to have discovered, moreover, a copper mine near Peoria. St. Philippe was once a considerable village. Previous to 1765--when possession of the country was claimed [CCI] by the English government, and, like the other French settlements, it was abandoned by the villagers--it is said to have comprised twenty or thirty families, a Catholic church, and a water-mill; while the surrounding meadow afforded pasturage for extensive herds of cattle.