Old Kaskaskia — Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Mary Hartwell CatherwoodŽs works include Old Caravan Days, The Lady of Fort St. John, The Chase of Saint-Castin. Old Kaskaskia was set in 1818 when Illinois was just becoming a state. The novel deals with fur trading and politics. An excerpt reads, ôAn apparition from the other hemisphere came upon her that instant. She saw a man standing by the friar's booth looking at her. What his eyes said she could not, through her shimmering and deadly faintness, perceive. How could he be here in Kaskaskia? The shock of seeing him annihilated physical weakness in her. She stood on limbs of stone. Her hand on her brother's arm did not tremble; but a pinched blueness spread about her nostrils and eye sockets, and dinted sudden hollows in her temples. Dr. Dunlap took a step toward her. At that, she looked around for some place to hide in, the animal instinct of flight arising first, and darted from her brother into the graveyard. Rice beheld this freak with quizzical surprise, but he had noted the disappearance of more than one maid through that gate, and was glad to have Maria with them.ö