1261	----	Etext prepared by Bill Brewer, billbrewer@ttu.edu BETTY ZANE BY ZANE GREY TO THE BETTY ZANE CHAPTER OF THE DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR NOTE In a quiet corner of the stately little city of Wheeling, West Va., stands a monument on which is inscribed: "By authority of the State of West Virginia to commemorate the siege of Fort Henry, Sept 11, 1782, the last battle of the American Revolution, this tablet is here placed." Had it not been for the heroism of a girl the foregoing inscription would never have been written, and the city of Wheeling would never have existed. From time to time I have read short stories and magazine articles which have been published about Elizabeth Zane and her famous exploit; but they are unreliable in some particulars, which is owing, no doubt, to the singularly meagre details available in histories of our western border. For a hundred years the stories of Betty and Isaac Zane have been familiar, oft-repeated tales in my family--tales told with that pardonable ancestral pride which seems inherent in every one. My grandmother loved to cluster the children round her and tell them that when she was a little girl she had knelt at the feet of Betty Zane, and listened to the old lady as she told of her brother's capture by the Indian Princess, of the burning of the Fort, and of her own race for life. I knew these stories by heart when a child. Two years ago my mother came to me with an old note book which had been discovered in some rubbish that had been placed in the yard to burn. The book had probably been hidden in an old picture frame for many years. It belonged to my great-grandfather, Col. Ebenezer Zane. From its faded and time-worn pages I have taken the main facts of my story. My regret is that a worthier pen than mine has not had this wealth of material. In this busy progressive age there are no heroes of the kind so dear to all lovers of chivalry and romance. There are heroes, perhaps, but they are the patient sad-faced kind, of whom few take cognizance as they hurry onward. But cannot we all remember some one who suffered greatly, who accomplished great deeds, who died on the battlefield--some one around whose name lingers a halo of glory? Few of us are so unfortunate that we cannot look backward on kith or kin and thrill with love and reverence as we dream of an act of heroism or martyrdom which rings down the annals of time like the melody of the huntsman's horn, as it peals out on a frosty October morn purer and sweeter with each succeeding note. If to any of those who have such remembrances, as well as those who have not, my story gives an hour of pleasure I shall be rewarded. PROLOGUE On June 16, 1716, Alexander Spotswood, Governor of the Colony of Virginia, and a gallant soldier who had served under Marlborough in the English wars, rode, at the head of a dauntless band of cavaliers, down the quiet street of quaint old Williamsburg. The adventurous spirits of this party of men urged them toward the land of the setting sun, that unknown west far beyond the blue crested mountains rising so grandly before them. Months afterward they stood on the western range of the Great North mountains towering above the picturesque Shenandoah Valley, and from the summit of one of the loftiest peaks, where, until then, the foot of a white man had never trod, they viewed the vast expanse of plain and forest with glistening eyes. Returning to Williamsburg they told of the wonderful richness of the newly discovered country and thus opened the way for the venturesome pioneer who was destined to overcome all difficulties and make a home in the western world. But fifty years and more passed before a white man penetrated far beyond the purple spires of those majestic mountains. One bright morning in June, 1769, the figure of a stalwart, broad shouldered man could have been seen standing on the wild and rugged promontory which rears its rocky bluff high above the Ohio river, at a point near the mouth of Wheeling Creek. He was alone save for the companionship of a deerhound that crouched at his feet. As he leaned on a long rifle, contemplating the glorious scene that stretched before him, a smile flashed across his bronzed cheek, and his heart bounded as he forecast the future of that spot. In the river below him lay an island so round and green that it resembled a huge lily pad floating placidly on the water. The fresh green foliage of the trees sparkled with glittering dewdrops. Back of him rose the high ridges, and, in front, as far as eye could reach, extended an unbroken forest. Beneath him to the left and across a deep ravine he saw a wide level clearing. The few scattered and blackened tree stumps showed the ravages made by a forest fire in the years gone by. The field was now overgrown with hazel and laurel bushes, and intermingling with them were the trailing arbutus, the honeysuckle, and the wild rose. A fragrant perfume was wafted upward to him. A rushing creek bordered one edge of the clearing. After a long quiet reach of water, which could be seen winding back in the hills, the stream tumbled madly over a rocky ledge, and white with foam, it hurried onward as if impatient of long restraint, and lost its individuality in the broad Ohio. This solitary hunter was Colonel Ebenezer Zane. He was one of those daring men, who, as the tide of emigration started westward, had left his friends and family and had struck out alone into the wilderness. Departing from his home in Eastern Virginia he had plunged into the woods, and after many days of hunting and exploring, he reached the then far Western Ohio valley. The scene so impressed Colonel Zane that he concluded to found a settlement there. Taking "tomahawk possession" of the locality (which consisted of blazing a few trees with his tomahawk), he built himself a rude shack and remained that summer on the Ohio. In the autumn he set out for Berkeley County, Virginia, to tell his people of the magnificent country he had discovered. The following spring he persuaded a number of settlers, of a like spirit with himself, to accompany him to the wilderness. Believing it unsafe to take their families with them at once, they left them at Red Stone on the Monongahela river, while the men, including Colonel Zane, his brothers Silas, Andrew, Jonathan and Isaac, the Wetzels, McCollochs, Bennets, Metzars and others, pushed on ahead. The country through which they passed was one tangled, most impenetrable forest; the axe of the pioneer had never sounded in this region, where every rod of the way might harbor some unknown danger. These reckless bordermen knew not the meaning of fear; to all, daring adventure was welcome, and the screech of a redskin and the ping of a bullet were familiar sounds; to the Wetzels, McCollochs and Jonathan Zane the hunting of Indians was the most thrilling passion of their lives; indeed, the Wetzels, particularly, knew no other occupation. They had attained a wonderful skill with the rifle; long practice had rendered their senses as acute as those of the fox. Skilled in every variety of woodcraft, with lynx eyes ever on the alert for detecting a trail, or the curling smoke of some camp fire, or the minutest sign of an enemy, these men stole onward through the forest with the cautious but dogged and persistent determination that was characteristic of the settler. They at length climbed the commanding bluff overlooking the majestic river, and as they gazed out on the undulating and uninterrupted area of green, their hearts beat high with hope. The keen axe, wielded by strong arms, soon opened the clearing and reared stout log cabins on the river bluff. Then Ebenezer Zane and his followers moved their families and soon the settlement began to grow and flourish. As the little village commenced to prosper the redmen became troublesome. Settlers were shot while plowing the fields or gathering the harvests. Bands of hostile Indians prowled around and made it dangerous for anyone to leave the clearing. Frequently the first person to appear in the early morning would be shot at by an Indian concealed in the woods. General George Rodgers Clark, commandant of the Western Military Department, arrived at the village in 1774. As an attack from the savages was apprehended during the year the settlers determined to erect a fort as a defense for the infant settlement. It was planned by General Clark and built by the people themselves. At first they called it Fort Fincastle, in honor of Lord Dunmore, who, at the time of its erection, was Governor of the Colony of Virginia. In 1776 its name was changed to Fort Henry, in honor of Patrick Henry. For many years it remained the most famous fort on the frontier, having withstood numberless Indian attacks and two memorable sieges, one in 1777, which year is called the year of the "Bloody Sevens," and again in 1782. In this last siege the British Rangers under Hamilton took part with the Indians, making the attack practically the last battle of the Revolution. BETTY ZANE CHAPTER I. The Zane family was a remarkable one in early days, and most of its members are historical characters. The first Zane of whom any trace can be found was a Dane of aristocratic lineage, who was exiled from his country and came to America with William Penn. He was prominent for several years in the new settlement founded by Penn, and Zane street, Philadelphia, bears his name. Being a proud and arrogant man, he soon became obnoxious to his Quaker brethren. He therefore cut loose from them and emigrated to Virginia, settling on the Potomac river, in what was then known as Berkeley county. There his five sons, and one daughter, the heroine of this story, were born. Ebenezer Zane, the eldest, was born October 7, 1747, and grew to manhood in the Potomac valley. There he married Elizabeth McColloch, a sister of the famous McColloch brothers so well known in frontier history. Ebenezer was fortunate in having such a wife and no pioneer could have been better blessed. She was not only a handsome woman, but one of remarkable force of character as well as kindness of heart. She was particularly noted for a rare skill in the treatment of illness, and her deftness in handling the surgeon's knife and extracting a poisoned bullet or arrow from a wound had restored to health many a settler when all had despaired. The Zane brothers were best known on the border for their athletic prowess, and for their knowledge of Indian warfare and cunning. They were all powerful men, exceedingly active and as fleet as deer. In appearance they were singularly pleasing and bore a marked resemblance to one another, all having smooth faces, clear cut, regular features, dark eyes and long black hair. When they were as yet boys they had been captured by Indians, soon after their arrival on the Virginia border, and had been taken far into the interior, and held as captives for two years. Ebenezer, Silas, and Jonathan Zane were then taken to Detroit and ransomed. While attempting to swim the Scioto river in an effort to escape, Andrew Zane had been shot and killed by his pursuers. But the bonds that held Isaac Zane, the remaining and youngest brother, were stronger than those of interest or revenge such as had caused the captivity of his brothers. He was loved by an Indian princess, the daughter of Tarhe, the chief of the puissant Huron race. Isaac had escaped on various occasions, but had always been retaken, and at the time of the opening of our story nothing had been heard of him for several years, and it was believed he had been killed. At the period of the settling of the little colony in the wilderness, Elizabeth Zane, the only sister, was living with an aunt in Philadelphia, where she was being educated. Colonel Zane's house, a two story structure built of rough hewn logs, was the most comfortable one in the settlement, and occupied a prominent site on the hillside about one hundred yards from the fort. It was constructed of heavy timber and presented rather a forbidding appearance with its square corners, its ominous looking portholes, and strongly barred doors and windows. There were three rooms on the ground floor, a kitchen, a magazine room for military supplies, and a large room for general use. The several sleeping rooms were on the second floor, which was reached by a steep stairway. The interior of a pioneer's rude dwelling did not reveal, as a rule, more than bare walls, a bed or two, a table and a few chairs--in fact, no more than the necessities of life. But Colonel Zane's house proved an exception to this. Most interesting was the large room. The chinks between the logs had been plastered up with clay and then the walls covered with white birch bark; trophies of the chase, Indian bows and arrows, pipes and tomahawks hung upon them; the wide spreading antlers of a noble buck adorned the space above the mantel piece; buffalo robes covered the couches; bearskin rugs lay scattered about on the hardwood floor. The wall on the western side had been built over a huge stone, into which had been cut an open fireplace. This blackened recess, which had seen two houses burned over it, when full of blazing logs had cheered many noted men with its warmth. Lord Dunmore, General Clark, Simon Kenton, and Daniel Boone had sat beside that fire. There Cornplanter, the Seneca chief, had made his famous deal with Colonel Zane, trading the island in the river opposite the settlement for a barrel of whiskey. Logan, the Mingo chief and friend of the whites, had smoked many pipes of peace there with Colonel Zane. At a later period, when King Louis Phillippe, who had been exiled from France by Napoleon, had come to America, during the course of his melancholy wanderings he had stopped at Fort Henry a few days. His stay there was marked by a fierce blizzard and the royal guest passed most of his time at Colonel Zane's fireside. Musing by those roaring logs perhaps he saw the radiant star of the Man of Destiny rise to its magnificent zenith. One cold, raw night in early spring the Colonel had just returned from one of his hunting trips and the tramping of horses mingled with the rough voices of the negro slaves sounded without. When Colonel Zane entered the house he was greeted affectionately by his wife and sister. The latter, at the death of her aunt in Philadelphia, had come west to live with her brother, and had been there since late in the preceding autumn. It was a welcome sight for the eyes of a tired and weary hunter. The tender kiss of his comely wife, the cries of the delighted children, and the crackling of the fire warmed his heart and made him feel how good it was to be home again after a three days' march in the woods. Placing his rifle in a corner and throwing aside his wet hunting coat, he turned and stood with his back to the bright blaze. Still young and vigorous, Colonel Zane was a handsome man. Tall, though not heavy, his frame denoted great strength and endurance. His face was smooth, his heavy eyebrows met in a straight line; his eyes were dark and now beamed with a kindly light; his jaw was square and massive; his mouth resolute; in fact, his whole face was strikingly expressive of courage and geniality. A great wolf dog had followed him in and, tired from travel, had stretched himself out before the fireplace, laying his noble head on the paws he had extended toward the warm blaze. "Well! Well! I am nearly starved and mighty glad to get back," said the Colonel, with a smile of satisfaction at the steaming dishes a negro servant was bringing from the kitchen. "We are glad you have returned," answered his wife, whose glowing face testified to the pleasure she felt. "Supper is ready--Annie, bring in some cream--yes, indeed, I am happy that you are home. I never have a moment's peace when you are away, especially when you are accompanied by Lewis Wetzel." "Our hunt was a failure," said the Colonel, after he had helped himself to a plate full of roast wild turkey. "The bears have just come out of their winter's sleep and are unusually wary at this time. We saw many signs of their work, tearing rotten logs to pieces in search of grubs and bees' nests. Wetzel killed a deer and we baited a likely place where we had discovered many bear tracks. We stayed up all night in a drizzling rain, hoping to get a shot. I am tired out. So is Tige. Wetzel did not mind the weather or the ill luck, and when we ran across some Indian sign he went off on one of his lonely tramps, leaving me to come home alone." "He is such a reckless man," remarked Mrs. Zane. "Wetzel is reckless, or rather, daring. His incomparable nerve carries him safely through many dangers, where an ordinary man would have no show whatever. Well, Betty, how are you?" "Quite well," said the slender, dark-eyed girl who had just taken the seat opposite the Colonel. "Bessie, has my sister indulged in any shocking escapade in my absence? I think that last trick of hers, when she gave a bucket of hard cider to that poor tame bear, should last her a spell." "No, for a wonder Elizabeth has been very good. However, I do not attribute it to any unusual change of temperament; simply the cold, wet weather. I anticipate a catastrophe very shortly if she is kept indoors much longer." "I have not had much opportunity to be anything but well behaved. If it rains a few days more I shall become desperate. I want to ride my pony, roam the woods, paddle my canoe, and enjoy myself," said Elizabeth. "Well! Well! Betts, I knew it would be dull here for you, but you must not get discouraged. You know you got here late last fall, and have not had any pleasant weather yet. It is perfectly delightful in May and June. I can take you to fields of wild white honeysuckle and May flowers and wild roses. I know you love the woods, so be patient a little longer." Elizabeth had been spoiled by her brothers--what girl would not have been by five great big worshippers?--and any trivial thing gone wrong with her was a serious matter to them. They were proud of her, and of her beauty and accomplishments were never tired of talking. She had the dark hair and eyes so characteristic of the Zanes; the same oval face and fine features: and added to this was a certain softness of contour and a sweetness of expression which made her face bewitching. But, in spite of that demure and innocent face, she possessed a decided will of her own, and one very apt to be asserted; she was mischievous; inclined to coquettishness, and more terrible than all she had a fiery temper which could be aroused with the most surprising ease. Colonel Zane was wont to say that his sister's accomplishments were innumerable. After only a few months on the border she could prepare the flax and weave a linsey dresscloth with admirable skill. Sometimes to humor Betty the Colonel's wife would allow her to get the dinner, and she would do it in a manner that pleased her brothers, and called forth golden praises from the cook, old Sam's wife who had been with the family twenty years. Betty sang in the little church on Sundays; she organized and taught a Sunday school class; she often beat Colonel Zane and Major McColloch at their favorite game of checkers, which they had played together since they were knee high; in fact, Betty did nearly everything well, from baking pies to painting the birch bark walls of her room. But these things were insignificant in Colonel Zane's eyes. If the Colonel were ever guilty of bragging it was about his sister's ability in those acquirements demanding a true eye, a fleet foot, a strong arm and a daring spirit. He had told all the people in the settlement, to many of whom Betty was unknown, that she could ride like an Indian and shoot with undoubted skill; that she had a generous share of the Zanes' fleetness of foot, and that she would send a canoe over as bad a place as she could find. The boasts of the Colonel remained as yet unproven, but, be that as it may, Betty had, notwithstanding her many faults, endeared herself to all. She made sunshine and happiness everywhere; the old people loved her; the children adored her, and the broad shouldered, heavy footed young settlers were shy and silent, yet blissfully happy in her presence. "Betty, will you fill my pipe?" asked the Colonel, when he had finished his supper and had pulled his big chair nearer the fire. His oldest child, Noah, a sturdy lad of six, climbed upon his knee and plied him with questions. "Did you see any bars and bufflers?" he asked, his eyes large and round. "No, my lad, not one." "How long will it be until I am big enough to go?" "Not for a very long time, Noah." "But I am not afraid of Betty's bar. He growls at me when I throw sticks at him, and snaps his teeth. Can I go with you next time?" "My brother came over from Short Creek to-day. He has been to Fort Pitt," interposed Mrs. Zane. As she was speaking a tap sounded on the door, which, being opened by Betty, disclosed Captain Boggs his daughter Lydia, and Major Samuel McColloch, the brother of Mrs. Zane. "Ah, Colonel! I expected to find you at home to-night. The weather has been miserable for hunting and it is not getting any better. The wind is blowing from the northwest and a storm is coming," said Captain Boggs, a fine, soldierly looking man. "Hello, Captain! How are you? Sam, I have not had the pleasure of seeing you for a long time," replied Colonel Zane, as he shook hands with his guests. Major McColloch was the eldest of the brothers of that name. As an Indian killer he ranked next to the intrepid Wetzel; but while Wetzel preferred to take his chances alone and track the Indians through the untrodden wilds, McColloch was a leader of expeditions against the savages. A giant in stature, massive in build, bronzed and bearded, he looked the typical frontiersman. His blue eyes were like those of his sister and his voice had the same pleasant ring. "Major McColloch, do you remember me?" asked Betty. "Indeed I do," he answered, with a smile. "You were a little girl, running wild, on the Potomac when I last saw you!" "Do you remember when you used to lift me on your horse and give me lessons in riding?" "I remember better than you. How you used to stick on the back of that horse was a mystery to me." "Well, I shall be ready soon to go on with those lessons in riding. I have heard of your wonderful leap over the hill and I should like to have you tell me all about it. Of all the stories I have heard since I arrived at Fort Henry, the one of your ride and leap for life is the most wonderful." "Yes, Sam, she will bother you to death about that ride, and will try to give you lessons in leaping down precipices. I should not be at all surprised to find her trying to duplicate your feat. You know the Indian pony I got from that fur trader last summer. Well, he is as wild as a deer and she has been riding him without his being broken," said Colonel Zane. "Some other time I shall tell you about my jump over the hill. Just now I have important matters to discuss," answered the Major to Betty. It was evident that something unusual had occurred, for after chatting a few moments the three men withdrew into the magazine room and conversed in low, earnest tones. Lydia Boggs was eighteen, fair haired and blue eyed. Like Betty she had received a good education, and, in that respect, was superior to the border girls, who seldom knew more than to keep house and to make linen. At the outbreak of the Indian wars General Clark had stationed Captain Boggs at Fort Henry and Lydia had lived there with him two years. After Betty's arrival, which she hailed with delight, the girls had become fast friends. Lydia slipped her arm affectionately around Betty's neck and said, "Why did you not come over to the Fort to-day?" "It has been such an ugly day, so disagreeable altogether, that I have remained indoors." "You missed something," said Lydia, knowingly. "What do you mean? What did I miss?" "Oh, perhaps, after all, it will not interest you." "How provoking! Of course it will. Anything or anybody would interest me to-night. Do tell me, please." "It isn't much. Only a young soldier came over with Major McColloch." "A soldier? From Fort Pitt? Do I know him? I have met most of the officers." "No, you have never seen him. He is a stranger to all of us." "There does not seem to be so much in your news," said Betty, in a disappointed tone. "To be sure, strangers are a rarity in our little village, but, judging from the strangers who have visited us in the past, I imagine this one cannot be much different." "Wait until you see him," said Lydia, with a serious little nod of her head. "Come, tell me all about him," said Betty, now much interested. "Major McColloch brought him in to see papa, and he was introduced to me. He is a southerner and from one of those old families. I could tell by his cool, easy, almost reckless air. He is handsome, tall and fair, and his face is frank and open. He has such beautiful manners. He bowed low to me and really I felt so embarrassed that I hardly spoke. You know I am used to these big hunters seizing your hand and giving it a squeeze which makes you want to scream. Well, this young man is different. He is a cavalier. All the girls are in love with him already. So will you be." "I? Indeed not. But how refreshing. You must have been strongly impressed to see and remember all you have told me." "Betty Zane, I remember so well because he is just the man you described one day when we were building castles and telling each other what kind of a hero we wanted." "Girls, do not talk such nonsense," interrupted the Colonel's wife who was perturbed by the colloquy in the other room. She had seen those ominous signs before. "Can you find nothing better to talk about?" Meanwhile Colonel Zane and his companions were earnestly discussing certain information which had arrived that day. A friendly Indian runner had brought news to Short Creek, a settlement on the river between Fort Henry and Fort Pitt of an intended raid by the Indians all along the Ohio valley. Major McColloch, who had been warned by Wetzel of the fever of unrest among the Indians--a fever which broke out every spring--had gone to Fort Pitt with the hope of bringing back reinforcements, but, excepting the young soldier, who had volunteered to return with him, no help could he enlist, so he journeyed back post-haste to Fort Henry. The information he brought disturbed Captain Boggs, who commanded the garrison, as a number of men were away on a logging expedition up the river, and were not expected to raft down to the Fort for two weeks. Jonathan Zane, who had been sent for, joined the trio at this moment, and was acquainted with the particulars. The Zane brothers were always consulted where any question concerning Indian craft and cunning was to be decided. Colonel Zane had a strong friendly influence with certain tribes, and his advice was invaluable. Jonathan Zane hated the sight of an Indian and except for his knowledge as a scout, or Indian tracker or fighter, he was of little use in a council. Colonel Zane informed the men of the fact that Wetzel and he had discovered Indian tracks within ten miles of the Fort, and he dwelt particularly on the disappearance of Wetzel. "Now, you can depend on what I say. There are Wyandots in force on the war path. Wetzel told me to dig for the Fort and he left me in a hurry. We were near that cranberry bog over at the foot of Bald mountain. I do not believe we shall be attacked. In my opinion the Indians would come up from the west and keep to the high ridges along Yellow creek. They always come that way. But of course, it is best to know surely, and I daresay Lew will come in to-night or to-morrow with the facts. In the meantime put out some scouts back in the woods and let Jonathan and the Major watch the river." "I hope Wetzel will come in," said the Major. "We can trust him to know more about the Indians than any one. It was a week before you and he went hunting that I saw him. I went to Fort Pitt and tried to bring over some men, but the garrison is short and they need men as much as we do. A young soldier named Clarke volunteered to come and I brought him along with me. He has not seen any Indian fighting, but he is a likely looking chap, and I guess will do. Captain Boggs will give him a place in the block house if you say so." "By all means. We shall be glad to have him," said Colonel Zane. "It would not be so serious if I had not sent the men up the river," said Captain Boggs, in anxious tones. "Do you think it possible they might have fallen in with the Indians?" "It is possible, of course, but not probable," answered Colonel Zane. "The Indians are all across the Ohio. Wetzel is over there and he will get here long before they do." "I hope it may be as you say. I have much confidence in your judgment," returned Captain Boggs. "I shall put out scouts and take all the precaution possible. We must return now. Come, Lydia." "Whew! What an awful night this is going to be," said Colonel Zane, when he had closed the door after his guests' departure. "I should not care to sleep out to-night." "Eb, what will Lew Wetzel do on a night like this?" asked Betty, curiously. "Oh, Lew will be as snug as a rabbit in his burrow," said Colonel Zane, laughing. "In a few moments he can build a birch bark shack, start a fire inside and go to sleep comfortably." "Ebenezer, what is all this confab about? What did my brother tell you?" asked Mrs. Zane, anxiously. "We are in for more trouble from the Wyandots and Shawnees. But, Bessie, I don't believe it will come soon. We are too well protected here for anything but a protracted siege." Colonel Zane's light and rather evasive answer did not deceive his wife. She knew her brother and her husband would not wear anxious faces for nothing. Her usually bright face clouded with a look of distress. She had seen enough of Indian warfare to make her shudder with horror at the mere thought. Betty seemed unconcerned. She sat down beside the dog and patted him on the head. "Tige, Indians! Indians!" she said. The dog growled and showed his teeth. It was only necessary to mention Indians to arouse his ire. "The dog has been uneasy of late," continued Colonel Zane "He found the Indian tracks before Wetzel did. You know how Tige hates Indians. Ever since he came home with Isaac four years ago he has been of great service to the scouts, as he possesses so much intelligence and sagacity. Tige followed Isaac home the last time he escaped from the Wyandots. When Isaac was in captivity he nursed and cared for the dog after he had been brutally beaten by the redskins. Have you ever heard that long mournful howl Tige gives out sometimes in the dead of night?" "Yes I have, and it makes me cover up my head," said Betty. "Well, it is Tige mourning for Isaac," said Colonel Zane "Poor Isaac," murmured Betty. "Do you remember him? It has been nine years since you saw him," said Mrs. Zane. "Remember Isaac? Indeed I do. I shall never forget him. I wonder if he is still living?" "Probably not. It is now four years since he was recaptured. I think it would have been impossible to keep him that length of time, unless, of course, he has married that Indian girl. The simplicity of the Indian nature is remarkable. He could easily have deceived them and made them believe he was content in captivity. Probably, in attempting to escape again, he has been killed as was poor Andrew." Brother and sister gazed with dark, sad eyes into the fire, now burned down to a glowing bed of coals. The silence remained unbroken save for the moan of the rising wind outside, the rattle of hail, and the patter of rain drops on the roof. CHAPTER II. Fort Henry stood on a bluff overlooking the river and commanded a fine view of the surrounding country. In shape it was a parallelogram, being about three hundred and fifty-six feet in length, and one hundred and fifty in width. Surrounded by a stockade fence twelve feet high, with a yard wide walk running around the inside, and with bastions at each corner large enough to contain six defenders, the fort presented an almost impregnable defense. The blockhouse was two stories in height, the second story projecting out several feet over the first. The thick white oak walls bristled with portholes. Besides the blockhouse, there were a number of cabins located within the stockade. Wells had been sunk inside the inclosure, so that if the spring happened to go dry, an abundance of good water could be had at all times. In all the histories of frontier life mention is made of the forts and the protection they offered in time of savage warfare. These forts were used as homes for the settlers, who often lived for weeks inside the walls. Forts constructed entirely of wood without the aid of a nail or spike (for the good reason that these things could not be had) may seem insignificant in these days of great nasal and military garrisons. However, they answered the purpose at that time and served to protect many an infant settlement from the savage attacks of Indian tribes. During a siege of Fort Henry, which had occurred about a year previous, the settlers would have lost scarcely a man had they kept to the fort. But Captain Ogle, at that time in charge of the garrison, had led a company out in search of the Indians. Nearly all of his men were killed, several only making their way to the fort. On the day following Major McColloch's arrival at Fort Henry, the settlers had been called in from their spring plowing and other labors, and were now busily engaged in moving their stock and the things they wished to save from the destructive torch of the redskin. The women had their hands full with the children, the cleaning of rifles and moulding of bullets, and the thousand and one things the sterner tasks of their husbands had left them. Major McColloch, Jonathan and Silas Zane, early in the day, had taken different directions along the river to keep a sharp lookout for signs of the enemy. Colonel Zane intended to stay in his oven house and defend it, so he had not moved anything to the fort excepting his horses and cattle. Old Sam, the negro, was hauling loads of hay inside the stockade. Captain Boggs had detailed several scouts to watch the roads and one of these was the young man, Clarke, who had accompanied the Major from Fort Pitt. The appearance of Alfred Clarke, despite the fact that he wore the regulation hunting garb, indicated a young man to whom the hard work and privation of the settler were unaccustomed things. So thought the pioneers who noticed his graceful walk, his fair skin and smooth hands. Yet those who carefully studied his clearcut features were favorably impressed; the women, by the direct, honest gaze of his blue eyes and the absence of ungentle lines in his face; the men, by the good nature, and that indefinable something by which a man marks another as true steel. He brought nothing with him from Fort Pitt except his horse, a black-coated, fine limbed thoroughbred, which he frankly confessed was all he could call his own. When asking Colonel Zane to give him a position in the garrison he said he was a Virginian and had been educated in Philadelphia; that after his father died his mother married again, and this, together with a natural love of adventure, had induced him to run away and seek his fortune with the hardy pioneer and the cunning savage of the border. Beyond a few months' service under General Clark he knew nothing of frontier life; but he was tired of idleness; he was strong and not afraid of work, and he could learn. Colonel Zane, who prided himself on his judgment of character, took a liking to the young man at once, and giving him a rifle and accoutrements, told him the border needed young men of pluck and fire, and that if he brought a strong hand and a willing heart he could surely find fortune. Possibly if Alfred Clarke could have been told of the fate in store for him he might have mounted his black steed and have placed miles between him and the frontier village; but, as there were none to tell, he went cheerfully out to meet that fate. On this is bright spring morning he patrolled the road leading along the edge of the clearing, which was distant a quarter of a mile from the fort. He kept a keen eye on the opposite side of the river, as he had been directed. From the upper end of the island, almost straight across from where he stood, the river took a broad turn, which could not be observed from the fort windows. The river was high from the recent rains and brush heaps and logs and debris of all descriptions were floating down with the swift current. Rabbits and other small animals, which had probably been surrounded on some island and compelled to take to the brush or drown, crouched on floating logs and piles of driftwood. Happening to glance down the road, Clarke saw a horse galloping in his direction. At first he thought it was a messenger for himself, but as it neared him he saw that the horse was an Indian pony and the rider a young girl, whose long, black hair was flying in the wind. "Hello! I wonder what the deuce this is? Looks like an Indian girl," said Clarke to himself. "She rides well, whoever she may be." He stepped behind a clump of laurel bushes near the roadside and waited. Rapidly the horse and rider approached him. When they were but a few paces distant he sprang out and, as the pony shied and reared at sight of him, he clutched the bridle and pulled the pony's head down. Looking up he encountered the astonished and bewildered gaze from a pair of the prettiest dark eyes it had ever been his fortune, or misfortune, to look into. Betty, for it was she, looked at the young man in amazement, while Alfred was even more surprised and disconcerted. For a moment they looked at each other in silence. But Betty, who was scarcely ever at a loss for words, presently found her voice. "Well, sir! What does this mean?" she asked indignantly. "It means that you must turn around and go back to the fort," answered Alfred, also recovering himself. Now Betty's favorite ride happened to be along this road. It lay along the top of the bluff a mile or more and afforded a fine unobstructed view of the river. Betty had either not heard of the Captain's order, that no one was to leave the fort, or she had disregarded it altogether; probably the latter, as she generally did what suited her fancy. "Release my pony's head!" she cried, her face flushing, as she gave a jerk to the reins. "How dare you? What right have you to detain me?" The expression Betty saw on Clarke's face was not new to her, for she remembered having seen it on the faces of young gentlemen whom she had met at her aunt's house in Philadelphia. It was the slight, provoking smile of the man familiar with the various moods of young women, the expression of an amused contempt for their imperiousness. But it was not that which angered Betty. It was the coolness with which he still held her pony regardless of her commands. "Pray do not get excited," he said. "I am sorry I cannot allow such a pretty little girl to have her own way. I shall hold your pony until you say you will go back to the fort." "Sir!" exclaimed Betty, blushing a bright-red. "You--you are impertinent!" "Not at all," answered Alfred, with a pleasant laugh. "I am sure I do not intend to be. Captain Boggs did not acquaint me with full particulars or I might have declined my present occupation: not, however, that it is not agreeable just at this moment. He should have mentioned the danger of my being run down by Indian ponies and imperious young ladies." "Will you let go of that bridle, or shall I get off and walk back for assistance?" said Betty, getting angrier every moment. "Go back to the fort at once," ordered Alfred, authoritatively. "Captain Boggs' orders are that no one shall be allowed to leave the clearing." "Oh! Why did you not say so? I thought you were Simon Girty, or a highwayman. Was it necessary to keep me here all this time to explain that you were on duty?" "You know sometimes it is difficult to explain," said Alfred, "besides, the situation had its charm. No, I am not a robber, and I don't believe you thought so. I have only thwarted a young lady's whim, which I am aware is a great crime. I am very sorry. Goodbye." Betty gave him a withering glance from her black eyes, wheeled her pony and galloped away. A mellow laugh was borne to her ears before she got out of hearing, and again the red blood mantled her cheeks. "Heavens! What a little beauty," said Alfred to himself, as he watched the graceful rider disappear. "What spirit! Now, I wonder who she can be. She had on moccasins and buckskin gloves and her hair tumbled like a tomboy's, but she is no backwoods girl, I'll bet on that. I'm afraid I was a little rude, but after taking such a stand I could not weaken, especially before such a haughty and disdainful little vixen. It was too great a temptation. What eyes she had! Contrary to what I expected, this little frontier settlement bids fair to become interesting." The afternoon wore slowly away, and until late in the day nothing further happened to disturb Alfred's meditations, which consisted chiefly of different mental views and pictures of red lips and black eyes. Just as he decided to return to the fort for his supper he heard the barking of a dog that he had seen running along the road some moments before. The sound came from some distance down the river bank and nearer the fort. Walking a few paces up the bluff Alfred caught sight of a large black dog running along the edge of the water. He would run into the water a few paces and then come out and dash along the shore. He barked furiously all the while. Alfred concluded that he must have been excited by a fox or perhaps a wolf; so he climbed down the steep bank and spoke to the dog. Thereupon the dog barked louder and more fiercely than ever, ran to the water, looked out into the river and then up at the man with almost human intelligence. Alfred understood. He glanced out over the muddy water, at first making out nothing but driftwood. Then suddenly he saw a log with an object clinging to it which he took to be a man, and an Indian at that. Alfred raised his rifle to his shoulder and was in the act of pressing the trigger when he thought he heard a faint halloo. Looking closer, he found he was not covering the smooth polished head adorned with the small tuft of hair, peculiar to a redskin on the warpath, but a head from which streamed long black hair. Alfred lowered his rifle and studied intently the log with its human burden. Drifting with the current it gradually approached the bank, and as it came nearer he saw that it bore a white man, who was holding to the log with one hand and with the other was making feeble strokes. He concluded the man was either wounded or nearly drowned, for his movements were becoming slower and weaker every moment. His white face lay against the log and barely above water. Alfred shouted encouraging words to him. At the bend of the river a little rocky point jutted out a few yards into the water. As the current carried the log toward this point, Alfred, after divesting himself of some of his clothing, plunged in and pulled it to the shore. The pallid face of the man clinging to the log showed that he was nearly exhausted, and that he had been rescued in the nick of time. When Alfred reached shoal water he slipped his arm around the man, who was unable to stand, and carried him ashore. The rescued man wore a buckskin hunting shirt and leggins and moccasins of the same material, all very much the worse for wear. The leggins were torn into tatters and the moccasins worn through. His face was pinched with suffering and one arm was bleeding from a gunshot wound near the shoulder. "Can you not speak? Who are you?" asked Clarke, supporting the limp figure. The man made several efforts to answer, and finally said something that to Alfred sounded like "Zane," then he fell to the ground unconscious. All this time the dog had acted in a most peculiar manner, and if Alfred had not been so intent on the man he would have noticed the animal's odd maneuvers. He ran to and fro on the sandy beach; he scratched up the sand and pebbles, sending them flying in the air; he made short, furious dashes; he jumped, whirled, and, at last, crawled close to the motionless figure and licked its hand. Clarke realized that he would not be able to carry the inanimate figure, so he hurriedly put on his clothes and set out on a run for Colonel Zane's house. The first person whom he saw was the old negro slave, who was brushing one of the Colonel's horses. Sam was deliberate and took his time about everything. He slowly looked up and surveyed Clarke with his rolling eyes. He did not recognize in him any one he had ever seen before, and being of a sullen and taciturn nature, especially with strangers, he seemed in no hurry to give the desired information as to Colonel Zane's whereabouts. "Don't stare at me that way, you damn nigger," said Clarke, who was used to being obeyed by negroes. "Quick, you idiot. Where is the Colonel?" At that moment Colonel Zane came out of the barn and started to speak, when Clarke interrupted him. "Colonel, I have just pulled a man out of the river who says his name is Zane, or if he did not mean that, he knows you, for he surely said 'Zane.'" "What!" ejaculated the Colonel, letting his pipe fall from his mouth. Clarke related the circumstances in a few hurried words. Calling Sam they ran quickly down to the river, where they found the prostrate figure as Clarke had left it, the dog still crouched close by. "My God! It is Isaac!" exclaimed Colonel Zane, when he saw the white face. "Poor boy, he looks as if he were dead. Are you sure he spoke? Of course he must have spoken for you could not have known. Yes, his heart is still beating." Colonel Zane raised his head from the unconscious man's breast, where he had laid it to listen for the beating heart. "Clarke, God bless you for saving him," said he fervently. "It shall never be forgotten. He is alive, and, I believe, only exhausted, for that wound amounts to little. Let us hurry." "I did not save him. It was the dog," Alfred made haste to answer. They carried the dripping form to the house, where the door was opened by Mrs. Zane. "Oh, dear, another poor man," she said, pityingly. Then, as she saw his face, "Great Heavens, it is Isaac! Oh! don't say he is dead!" "Yes, it is Isaac, and he is worth any number of dead men yet," said Colonel Zane, as they laid the insensible man on the couch. "Bessie, there is work here for you. He has been shot." "Is there any other wound beside this one in his arm?" asked Mrs. Zane, examining it. "I do not think so, and that injury is not serious. It is lose of blood, exposure and starvation. Clarke, will you please run over to Captain Boggs and tell Betty to hurry home! Sam, you get a blanket and warm it by the fire. That's right, Bessie, bring the whiskey," and Colonel Zane went on giving orders. Alfred did not know in the least who Betty was, but, as he thought that unimportant, he started off on a run for the fort. He had a vague idea that Betty was the servant, possibly Sam's wife, or some one of the Colonel's several slaves. Let us return to Betty. As she wheeled her pony and rode away from the scene of her adventure on the river bluff, her state of mind can be more readily imagined than described. Betty hated opposition of any kind, whether justifiable or not; she wanted her own way, and when prevented from doing as she pleased she invariably got angry. To be ordered and compelled to give up her ride, and that by a stranger, was intolerable. To make it all the worse this stranger had been decidedly flippant. He had familiarly spoken to her as "a pretty little girl." Not only that, which was a great offense, but he had stared at her, and she had a confused recollection of a gaze in which admiration had been ill disguised. Of course, it was that soldier Lydia had been telling her about. Strangers were of so rare an occurrence in the little village that it was not probable there could be more than one. Approaching the house she met her brother who told her she had better go indoors and let Sam put up the pony. Accordingly, Betty called the negro, and then went into the house. Bessie had gone to the fort with the children. Betty found no one to talk to, so she tried to read. Finding she could not become interested she threw the book aside and took up her embroidery. This also turned out a useless effort; she got the linen hopelessly twisted and tangled, and presently she tossed this upon the table. Throwing her shawl over her shoulders, for it was now late in the afternoon and growing chilly, she walked downstairs and out into the Yard. She strolled aimlessly to and fro awhile, and then went over to the fort and into Captain Bogg's house, which adjoined the blockhouse. Here she found Lydia preparing flax. "I saw you racing by on your pony. Goodness, how you can ride! I should be afraid of breaking my neck," exclaimed Lydia, as Betty entered. "My ride was spoiled," said Betty, petulantly. "Spoiled? By what--whom?" "By a man, of course," retorted Betty, whose temper still was high. "It is always a man that spoils everything." "Why, Betty, what in the world do you mean? I never heard you talk that way," said Lydia, opening her blue eyes in astonishment. "Well, Lyde, I'll tell you. I was riding down the river road and just as I came to the end of the clearing a man jumped out from behind some bushes and grasped Madcap's bridle. Imagine! For a moment I was frightened out of my wits. I instantly thought of the Girtys, who, I have heard, have evinced a fondness for kidnapping little girls. Then the fellow said he was on guard and ordered me, actually commanded me to go home." "Oh, is that all?" said Lydia, laughing. "No, that is not all. He--he said I was a pretty little girl and that he was sorry I could not have my own way; that his present occupation was pleasant, and that the situation had its charm. The very idea. He was most impertinent," and Betty's telltale cheeks reddened again at the recollection. "Betty, I do not think your experience was so dreadful, certainly nothing to put you out as it has," said Lydia, laughing merrily. "Be serious. You know we are out in the backwoods now and must not expect so much of the men. These rough border men know little of refinement like that with which you have been familiar. Some of them are quiet and never speak unless addressed; their simplicity is remarkable; Lew Wetzel and your brother Jonathan, when they are not fighting Indians, are examples. On the other hand, some of them are boisterous and if they get anything to drink they will make trouble for you. Why, I went to a party one night after I had been here only a few weeks and they played a game in which every man in the place kissed me." "Gracious! Please tell me when any such games are likely to be proposed and I'll stay home," said Betty. "I have learned to get along very well by simply making the best of it," continued Lydia. "And to tell the truth, I have learned to respect these rugged fellows. They are uncouth; they have no manners, but their hearts are honest and true, and that is of much greater importance in frontiersmen than the little attentions and courtesies upon which women are apt to lay too much stress." "I think you speak sensibly and I shall try and be more reasonable hereafter. But, to return to the man who spoiled my ride. He, at least, is no frontiersman, notwithstanding his gun and his buckskin suit. He is an educated man. His manner and accent showed that. Then he looked at me so differently. I know it was that soldier from Fort Pitt." "Mr. Clarke? Why, of course!" exclaimed Lydia, clapping her hands in glee. "How stupid of me!" "You seem to be amused," said Betty, frowning. "Oh, Betty, it is such a good joke." "Is it? I fail to see it." "But I can. I am very much amused. You see, I heard Mr. Clarke say, after papa told him there were lots of pretty girls here, that he usually succeeded in finding those things out and without any assistance. And the very first day he has met you and made you angry. It is delightful." "Lyde, I never knew you could be so horrid." "It is evident that Mr. Clarke is not only discerning, but not backward in expressing his thoughts. Betty, I see a romance." "Don't be ridiculous," retorted Betty, with an angry blush. "Of course, he had a right to stop me, and perhaps he did me a good turn by keeping me inside the clearing, though I cannot imagine why he hid behind the bushes. But he might have been polite. He made me angry. He was so cool and--and--" "I see," interrupted Lydia, teasingly. "He failed to recognize your importance." "Nonsense, Lydia. I hope you do not think I am a silly little fool. It is only that I have not been accustomed to that kind of treatment, and I will not have it." Lydia was rather pleased that some one had appeared on the scene who did not at once bow down before Betty, and therefore she took the young man's side of the argument. "Do not be hard on poor Mr. Clarke. Maybe he mistook you for an Indian girl. He is handsome. I am sure you saw that." "Oh, I don't remember how he looked," said Betty. She did remember, but would not admit it. The conversation drifted into other channels after this, and soon twilight came stealing down on them. As Betty rose to go there came a hurried tap on the door. "I wonder who would knock like that," said Lydia, rising "Betty, wait a moment while I open the door." On doing this she discovered Clarke standing on the step with his cap in his hand. "Why, Mr. Clarke! Will you come in?" exclaimed Lydia. "Thank you, only for a moment," said Alfred. "I cannot stay. I came to find Betty. Is she here?" He had not observed Betty, who had stepped back into the shadow of the darkening room. At his question Lydia became so embarrassed she did not know what to say or do, and stood looking helplessly at him. But Betty was equal to the occasion. At the mention of her first name in such a familiar manner by this stranger, who had already grievously offended her once before that day, Betty stood perfectly still a moment, speechless with surprise, then she stepped quickly out of the shadow. Clarke turned as he heard her step and looked straight into a pair of dark, scornful eyes and a face pale with anger. "If it be necessary that you use my name, and I do not see how that can be possible, will you please have courtesy enough to say Miss Zane?" she cried haughtily. Lydia recovered her composure sufficiently to falter out: "Betty, allow me to introduce--" "Do not trouble yourself, Lydia. I have met this person once before to-day, and I do not care for an introduction." When Alfred found himself gazing into the face that had haunted him all the afternoon, he forgot for the moment all about his errand. He was finally brought to a realization of the true state of affairs by Lydia's words. "Mr. Clarke, you are all wet. What has happened?" she exclaimed, noticing the water dripping from his garments. Suddenly a light broke in on Alfred. So the girl he had accosted on the road and "Betty" were one and the same person. His face flushed. He felt that his rudeness on that occasion may have merited censure, but that it had not justified the humiliation she had put upon him. These two persons, so strangely brought together, and on whom Fate had made her inscrutable designs, looked steadily into each other's eyes. What mysterious force thrilled through Alfred Clarke and made Betty Zane tremble? "Miss Boggs, I am twice unfortunate," said Alfred, tuning to Lydia, and there was an earnest ring in his deep voice "This time I am indeed blameless. I have just left Colonel Zane's house, where there has been an accident, and I was dispatched to find 'Betty,' being entirely ignorant as to who she might be. Colonel Zane did not stop to explain. Miss Zane is needed at the house, that is all." And without so much as a glance at Betty he bowed low to Lydia and then strode out of the open door. "What did he say?" asked Betty, in a small trembling voice, all her anger and resentment vanished. "There has been an accident. He did not say what or to whom. You must hurry home. Oh, Betty, I hope no one has been hurt! And you were very unkind to Mr. Clarke. I am sure he is a gentleman, and you might have waited a moment to learn what he meant." Betty did not answer, but flew out of the door and down the path to the gate of the fort. She was almost breathless when she reached Colonel Zane's house, and hesitated on the step before entering. Summoning her courage she pushed open the door. The first thing that struck her after the bright light was the pungent odor of strong liniment. She saw several women neighbors whispering together. Major McColloch and Jonathan Zane were standing by a couch over which Mrs. Zane was bending. Colonel Zane sat at the foot of the couch. Betty saw this in the first rapid glance, and then, as the Colonel's wife moved aside, she saw a prostrate figure, a white face and dark eyes that smiled at her. "Betty," came in a low voice from those pale lips. Her heart leaped and then seemed to cease beating. Many long years had passed since she had heard that voice, but it had never been forgotten. It was the best beloved voice of her childhood, and with it came the sweet memories of her brother and playmate. With a cry of joy she fell on her knees beside him and threw her arms around his neck. "Oh, Isaac, brother, brother!" she cried, as she kissed him again and again. "Can it really be you? Oh, it is too good to be true! Thank God! I have prayed and prayed that you would be restored to us." Then she began to cry and laugh at the same time in that strange way in which a woman relieves a heart too full of joy. "Yes, Betty. It is all that is left of me," he said, running his hand caressingly over the dark head that lay on his breast. "Betty, you must not excite him," said Colonel Zane. "So you have not forgotten me?" whispered Isaac. "No, indeed, Isaac. I have never forgotten," answered Betty, softly. "Only last night I spoke of you and wondered if you were living. And now you are here. Oh, I am so happy!" The quivering lips and the dark eyes bright with tears spoke eloquently of her joy. "Major will you tell Captain Boggs to come over after supper? Isaac will be able to talk a little by then, and he has some news of the Indians," said Colonel Zane. "And ask the young man who saved my life to come that I may thank him," said Isaac. "Saved your life?" exclaimed Betty, turning to her brother, in surprise, while a dark red flush spread over her face. A humiliating thought had flashed into her mind. "Saved his life, of course," said Colonel Zane, answering for Isaac. "Young Clarke pulled him out of the river. Didn't he tell you?" "No," said Betty, rather faintly. "Well, he is a modest young fellow. He saved Isaac's life, there is no doubt of that. You will hear all about it after supper. Don't make Isaac talk any more at present." Betty hid her face on Isaac's shoulder and remained quiet a few moments; then, rising, she kissed his cheek and went quietly to her room. Once there she threw herself on the bed and tried to think. The events of the day, coming after a long string of monotonous, wearying days, had been confusing; they had succeeded one another in such rapid order as to leave no time for reflection. The meeting by the river with the rude but interesting stranger; the shock to her dignity; Lydia's kindly advice; the stranger again, this time emerging from the dark depths of disgrace into the luminous light as the hero of her brother's rescue--all these thoughts jumbled in her mind making it difficult for her to think clearly. But after a time one thing forced itself upon her. She could not help being conscious that she had wronged some one to whom she would be forever indebted. Nothing could alter that. She was under an eternal obligation to the man who had saved the life she loved best on earth. She had unjustly scorned and insulted the man to whom she owed the life of her brother. Betty was passionate and quick-tempered, but she was generous and tender-hearted as well, and when she realized how unkind and cruel she kind been she felt very miserable. Her position admitted of no retreat. No matter how much pride rebelled; no matter how much she disliked to retract anything she had said, she knew no other course lay open to her. She would have to apologize to Mr. Clarke. How could she? What would she say? She remembered how cold and stern his face had been as he turned from her to Lydia. Perplexed and unhappy, Betty did what any girl in her position would have done: she resorted to the consoling and unfailing privilege of her sex--a good cry. When she became composed again she got up and bathed her hot cheeks, brushed her hair, and changed her gown for a becoming one of white. She tied a red ribbon about her throat and put a rosette in her hair. She had forgotten all about the Indians. By the time Mrs. Zane called her for supper she had her mind made up to ask Mr. Clarke's pardon, tell him she was sorry, and that she hoped they might be friends. Isaac Zane's fame had spread from the Potomac to Detroit and Louisville. Many an anxious mother on the border used the story of his captivity as a means to frighten truant youngsters who had evinced a love for running wild in the woods. The evening of Isaac's return every one in the settlement called to welcome home the wanderer. In spite of the troubled times and the dark cloud hanging over them they made the occasion one of rejoicing. Old John Bennet, the biggest and merriest man in the colony, came in and roared his appreciation of Isaac's return. He was a huge man, and when he stalked into the room he made the floor shake with his heavy tread. His honest face expressed his pleasure as he stood over Isaac and nearly crushed his hand. "Glad to see you, Isaac. Always knew you would come back. Always said so. There are not enough damn redskins on the river to keep you prisoner." "I think they managed to keep him long enough," remarked Silas Zane. "Well, here comes the hero," said Colonel Zane, as Clarke entered, accompanied by Captain Boggs, Major McColloch and Jonathan. "Any sign of Wetzel or the Indians?" Jonathan had not yet seen his brother, and he went over and seized Isaac's hand and wrung it without speaking. "There are no Indians on this side of the river," said Major McColloch, in answer to the Colonel's question. "Mr. Clarke, you do not seem impressed with your importance," said Colonel Zane. "My sister said you did not tell her what part you took in Isaac's rescue." "I hardly deserve all the credit," answered Alfred. "Your big black dog merits a great deal of it." "Well, I consider your first day at the fort a very satisfactory one, and an augury of that fortune you came west to find." "How are you?" said Alfred, going up to the couch where Isaac lay. "I am doing well, thanks to you," said Isaac, warmly shaking Alfred's hand. "It is good to see you pulling out all right," answered Alfred. "I tell you, I feared you were in a bad way when I got you out of the water." Isaac reclined on the couch with his head and shoulder propped up by pillows. He was the handsomest of the brothers. His face would have been but for the marks of privation, singularly like Betty's; the same low, level brows and dark eyes; the same mouth, though the lips were stronger and without the soft curves which made his sister's mouth so sweet. Betty appeared at the door, and seeing the room filled with men she hesitated a moment before coming forward. In her white dress she made such a dainty picture that she seemed out of place among those surroundings. Alfred Clarke, for one, thought such a charming vision was wasted on the rough settlers, every one of whom wore a faded and dirty buckskin suit and a belt containing a knife and a tomahawk. Colonel Zane stepped up to Betty and placing his arm around her turned toward Clarke with pride in his eyes. "Betty, I want to make you acquainted with the hero of the hour, Mr. Alfred Clarke. This is my sister." Betty bowed to Alfred, but lowered her eyes instantly on encountering the young man's gaze. "I have had the pleasure of meeting Miss Zane twice today," said Alfred. "Twice?" asked Colonel Zane, turning to Betty. She did not answer, but disengaged herself from his arm and sat down by Isaac. "It was on the river road that I first met Miss Zane, although I did not know her then," answered Alfred. "I had some difficulty in stopping her pony from going to Fort Pitt, or some other place down the river." "Ha! Ha! Well, I know she rides that pony pretty hard," said Colonel Zane, with his hearty laugh. "I'll tell you, Clarke, we have some riders here in the settlement. Have you heard of Major McColloch's leap over the hill?" "I have heard it mentioned, and I would like to hear the story," responded Alfred. "I am fond of horses, and think I can ride a little myself. I am afraid I shall be compelled to change my mind." "That is a fine animal you rode from Fort Pitt," remarked the Major. "I would like to own him." "Come, draw your chairs up and he'll listen to Isaac's story," said Colonel Zane. "I have not much of a story to tell," said Isaac, in a voice still weak and low. "I have some bad news, I am sorry to say, but I shall leave that for the last. This year, if it had been completed, would have made my tenth year as a captive of the Wyandots. This last period of captivity, which has been nearly four years, I have not been ill-treated and have enjoyed more comfort than any of you can imagine. Probably you are all familiar with the reason for my long captivity. Because of the interest of Myeerah, the Indian Princess, they have importuned me for years to be adopted into the tribe, marry the White Crane, as they call Myeerah, and become a Wyandot chief. To this I would never consent, though I have been careful not to provoke the Indians. I was allowed the freedom of the camp, but have always been closely watched. I should still be with the Indians had I not suspected that Hamilton, the British Governor, had formed a plan with the Hurons, Shawnees, Delawares, and other tribes, to strike a terrible blow at the whites along, the river. For months I have watched the Indians preparing for an expedition, the extent of which they had never before undertaken. I finally learned from Myeerah that my suspicions were well founded. A favorable chance to escape presented and I took it and got away. I outran all the braves, even Arrowswift, the Wyandot runner, who shot me through the arm. I have had a hard time of it these last three or four days, living on herbs and roots, and when I reached the river I was ready to drop. I pushed a log into the water and started to drift over. When the old dog saw me I knew I was safe if I could hold on. Once, when the young man pointed his gun at me, I thought it was all over. I could not shout very loud." "Were you going to shoot?" asked Colonel Zane of Clarke. "I took him for an Indian, but fortunately I discovered my mistake in time," answered Alfred. "Are the Indians on the way here?" asked Jonathan. "That I cannot say. At present the Wyandots are at home. But I know that the British and the Indians will make a combined attack on the settlements. It may be a month, or a year, but it is coming." "And Hamilton, the hair buyer, the scalp buyer, is behind the plan," said Colonel Zane, in disgust. "The Indians have their wrongs. I sympathize with them in many ways. We have robbed them, broken faith with them, and have not lived up to the treaties. Pipe and Wingenund are particularly bitter toward the whites. I understand Cornplanter is also. He would give anything for Jonathan's scalp, and I believe any of the tribes would give a hundred of their best warriors for 'Black Wind,' as they call Lew Wetzel." "Have you ever seen Red Fox?" asked Jonathan, who was sitting near the fire and as usual saying but little. He was the wildest and most untamable of all the Zanes. Most of the time he spent in the woods, not so much to fight Indians, as Wetzel did, but for pure love of outdoor life. At home he was thoughtful and silent. "Yes, I have seen him," answered Isaac. "He is a Shawnee chief and one of the fiercest warriors in that tribe of fighters. He was at Indian-head, which is the name of one of the Wyandot villages, when I visited there last, and he had two hundred of his best braves with him." "He is a bad Indian. Wetzel and I know him. He swore he would hang our scalps up in his wigwam," said Jonathan. "What has he in particular against you?" asked Colonel Zane. "Of course, Wetzel is the enemy of all Indians." "Several years ago Wetzel and I were on a hunt down the river at the place called Girty's Point, where we fell in with the tracks of five Shawnees. I was for coming home, but Wetzel would not hear of it. We trailed the Indians and, coming up on them after dark, we tomahawked them. One of them got away crippled, but we could not follow him because we discovered that they had a white girl as captive, and one of the red devils, thinking we were a rescuing party, had tomahawked her. She was not quite dead. We did all we could to save her life. She died and we buried her on the spot. They were Red Fox's braves and were on their way to his camp with the prisoner. A year or so afterwards I learned from a friendly Indian that the Shawnee chief had sworn to kill us. No doubt he will be a leader in the coming attack." "We are living in the midst of terrible times," remarked Colonel Zane. "Indeed, these are the times that try men's souls, but I firmly believe the day is not far distant when the redmen will be driven far over the border." "Is the Indian Princess pretty?" asked Betty of Isaac. "Indeed she is, Betty, almost as beautiful as you are," said Isaac. "She is tall and very fair for an Indian. But I have something to tell about her more interesting than that. Since I have been with the Wyandots this last time I have discovered a little of the jealously guarded secret of Myeerah's mother. When Tarhe and his band of Hurons lived in Canada their home was in the Muskoka Lakes region on the Moon river. The old warriors tell wonderful stories of the beauty of that country. Tarhe took captive some French travellers, among them a woman named La Durante. She had a beautiful little girl. The prisoners, except this little girl, were released. When she grew up Tarhe married her. Myeerah is her child. Once Tarhe took his wife to Detroit and she was seen there by an old Frenchman who went crazy over her and said she was his child. Tarhe never went to the white settlements again. So you see, Myeerah is from a great French family on her mother's side, as this is old Frenchman was probably Chevalier La Durante, and Myeerah's grandfather." "I would love to see her, and yet I hate her. What an odd name she has," said Betty. "It is the Indian name for the white crane, a rare and beautiful bird. I never saw one. The name has been celebrated among the Hurons as long as any one of them can remember. The Indians call her the White Crane, or Walk-in-the-Water, because of her love for wading in the stream." "I think we have made Isaac talk enough for one night," said Colonel Zane. "He is tired out. Major, tell Isaac and Betty, and Mr. Clarke, too, of your jump over the cliff." "I have heard of that leap from the Indians," said Isaac. "Major, from what hill did you jump your horse?" asked Alfred. "You know the bare rocky bluff that stands out prominently on the hill across the creek. From that spot Colonel Zane first saw the valley, and from there I leaped my horse. I can never convince myself that it really happened. Often I look up at that cliff in doubt. But the Indians and Colonel Zane, Jonathan, Wetzel and others say they actually saw the deed done, so I must accept it," said Major McColloch. "It seems incredible!" said Alfred. "I cannot understand how a man or horse could go over that precipice and live." "That is what we all say," responded the Colonel. "I suppose I shall have to tell the story. We have fighters and makers of history here, but few talkers." "I am anxious to hear it," answered Clarke, "and I am curious to see this man Wetzel, whose fame has reached as far as my home, way down in Virginia." "You will have your wish gratified soon, I have no doubt," resumed the Colonel. "Well, now for the story of McColloch's mad ride for life and his wonderful leap down Wheeling hill. A year ago, when the fort was besieged by the Indians, the Major got through the lines and made off for Short Creek. He returned next morning with forty mounted men. They marched boldly up to the gate, and all succeeded in getting inside save the gallant Major, who had waited to be the last man to go in. Finding it impossible to make the short distance without going under the fire of the Indians, who had rushed up to prevent the relief party from entering the fort, he wheeled his big stallion, and, followed by the yelling band of savages, he took the road leading around back of the fort to the top of the bluff. The road lay along the edge of the cliff and I saw the Major turn and wave his rifle at us, evidently with the desire of assuring us that he was safe. Suddenly, on the very summit of the hill, he reined in his horse as if undecided. I knew in an instant what had happened. The Major had run right into the returning party of Indians, which had been sent out to intercept our reinforcements. In a moment more we heard the exultant yells of the savages, and saw them gliding from tree to tree, slowly lengthening out their line and surrounding the unfortunate Major. They did not fire a shot. We in the fort were stupefied with horror, and stood helplessly with our useless guns, watching and waiting for the seemingly inevitable doom of our comrade. Not so with the Major! Knowing that he was a marked man by the Indians and feeling that any death was preferable to the gauntlet, the knife, the stake and torch of the merciless savage, he had grasped at a desperate chance. He saw his enemies stealthily darting from rock to tree, and tree to bush, creeping through the brush, and slipping closer and closer every moment. On three sides were his hated foes and on the remaining side--the abyss. Without a moment's hesitation the intrepid Major spurred his horse at the precipice. Never shall I forget that thrilling moment. The three hundred savages were silent as they realized the Major's intention. Those in the fort watched with staring eyes. A few bounds and the noble steed reared high on his hind legs. Outlined by the clear blue sky the magnificent animal stood for one brief instant, his black mane flying in the wind, his head thrown up and his front hoofs pawing the air like Marcus Curtius' mailed steed of old, and then down with a crash, a cloud of dust, and the crackling of pine limbs. A long yell went up from the Indians below, while those above ran to the edge of the cliff. With cries of wonder and baffled vengeance they gesticulated toward the dark ravine into which horse and rider had plunged rather than wait to meet a more cruel death. The precipice at this point is over three hundred feet in height, and in places is almost perpendicular. We believed the Major to be lying crushed and mangled on the rocks. Imagine our frenzy of joy when we saw the daring soldier and his horse dash out of the bushes that skirt the base of the cliff, cross the creek, and come galloping to the fort in safety." "It was wonderful! Wonderful!" exclaimed Isaac, his eyes glistening. "No wonder the Indians call you the 'Flying Chief.'" "Had the Major not jumped into the clump of pine trees which grow thickly some thirty feet below the summit he would not now be alive," said Colonel Zane. "I am certain of that. Nevertheless that does not detract from the courage of his deed. He had no time to pick out the best place to jump. He simply took his one chance, and came out all right. That leap will live in the minds of men as long as yonder bluff stands a monument to McColloch's ride for life." Alfred had listened with intense interest to the Colonel's recital. When it ended, although his pulses quickened and his soul expanded with awe and reverence for the hero of that ride, he sat silent. Alfred honored courage in a man more than any other quality. He marvelled at the simplicity of these bordermen who, he thought, took the most wonderful adventures and daring escapes as a matter of course, a compulsory part of their daily lives. He had already, in one day, had more excitement than had ever befallen him, and was beginning to believe his thirst for a free life of stirring action would be quenched long before he had learned to become useful in his new sphere. During the remaining half hour of his call on his lately acquired friends, he took little part in the conversation, but sat quietly watching the changeful expressions on Betty's face, and listening to Colonel Zane's jokes. When he rose to go he bade his host good-night, and expressed a wish that Isaac, who had fallen asleep, might have a speedy recovery. He turned toward the door to find that Betty had intercepted him. "Mr. Clarke," she said, extending a little hand that trembled slightly. "I wish to say--that--I want to say that my feelings have changed. I am sorry for what I said over at Lydia's. I spoke hastily and rudely. You have saved my brother's life. I will be forever grateful to you. It is useless to try to thank you. I--I hope we may be friends." Alfred found it desperately hard to resist that low voice, and those dark eyes which were raised shyly, yet bravely, to his. But he had been deeply hurt. He pretended not to see the friendly hand held out to him, and his voice was cold when he answered her. "I am glad to have been of some service," he said, "but I think you overrate my action. Your brother would not have drowned, I am sure. You owe me nothing. Good-night." Betty stood still one moment staring at the door through which he had gone before she realized that her overtures of friendship had been politely, but coldly, ignored. She had actually been snubbed. The impossible had happened to Elizabeth Zane. Her first sensation after she recovered from her momentary bewilderment was one of amusement, and she laughed in a constrained manner; but, presently, two bright red spots appeared in her cheeks, and she looked quickly around to see if any of the others had noticed the incident. None of them had been paying any attention to her and she breathed a sigh of relief. It was bad enough to be snubbed without having others see it. That would have been too humiliating. Her eyes flashed fire as she remembered the disdain in Clarke's face, and that she had not been clever enough to see it in time. "Tige, come here!" called Colonel Zane. "What ails the dog?" The dog had jumped to his feet and ran to the door, where he sniffed at the crack over the threshold. His aspect was fierce and threatening. He uttered low growls and then two short barks. Those in the room heard a soft moccasined footfall outside. The next instant the door opened wide and a tall figure stood disclosed. "Wetzel!" exclaimed Colonel Zane. A hush fell on the little company after that exclamation, and all eyes were fastened on the new comer. Well did the stranger merit close attention. He stalked into the room, leaned his long rifle against the mantelpiece and spread out his hands to the fire. He was clad from head to foot in fringed and beaded buckskin, which showed evidence of a long and arduous tramp. It was torn and wet and covered with mud. He was a magnificently made man, six feet in height, and stood straight as an arrow. His wide shoulders, and his muscular, though not heavy, limbs denoted wonderful strength and activity. His long hair, black as a raven's wing, hung far down his shoulders. Presently he turned and the light shone on a remarkable face. So calm and cold and stern it was that it seemed chiselled out of marble. The most striking features were its unusual pallor, and the eyes, which were coal black, and piercing as the dagger's point. "If you have any bad news out with it," cried Colonel Zane, impatiently. "No need fer alarm," said Wetzel. He smiled slightly as he saw Betty's apprehensive face. "Don't look scared, Betty. The redskins are miles away and goin' fer the Kanawha settlement." CHAPTER III. Many weeks of quiet followed the events of the last chapter. The settlers planted their corn, harvested their wheat and labored in the fields during the whole of one spring and summer without hearing the dreaded war cry of the Indians. Colonel Zane, who had been a disbursing officer in the army of Lord Dunmore, where he had attained the rank of Colonel, visited Fort Pitt during the summer in the hope of increasing the number of soldiers in his garrison. His efforts proved fruitless. He returned to Fort Henry by way of the river with several pioneers, who with their families were bound for Fort Henry. One of these pioneers was a minister who worked in the fields every week day and on Sundays preached the Gospel to those who gathered in the meeting house. Alfred Clarke had taken up his permanent abode at the fort, where he had been installed as one of the regular garrison. His duties, as well as those of the nine other members of the garrison, were light. For two hours out of the twenty-four he was on guard. Thus he had ample time to acquaint himself with the settlers and their families. Alfred and Isaac had now become firm friends. They spent many hours fishing in the river, and roaming the woods in the vicinity, as Colonel Zane would not allow Isaac to stray far from the fort. Alfred became a regular visitor at Colonel Zane's house. He saw Betty every day, but as yet, nothing had mended the breach between them. They were civil to each other when chance threw them together, but Betty usually left the room on some pretext soon after he entered. Alfred regretted his hasty exhibition of resentment and would have been glad to establish friendly relations with her. But she would not give him an opportunity. She avoided him on all possible occasions. Though Alfred was fast succumbing to the charm of Betty's beautiful face, though his desire to be near her had grown well nigh resistless, his pride had not yet broken down. Many of the summer evenings found him on the Colonel's doorstep, smoking a pipe, or playing with the children. He was that rare and best company--a good listener. Although he laughed at Colonel Zane's stories, and never tired of hearing of Isaac's experiences among the Indians, it is probable he would not have partaken of the Colonel's hospitality nearly so often had it not been that he usually saw Betty, and if he got only a glimpse of her he went away satisfied. On Sundays he attended the services at the little church and listened to Betty's sweet voice as she led the singing. There were a number of girls at the fort near Betty's age. With all of these Alfred was popular. He appeared so entirely different from the usual young man on the frontier that he was more than welcome everywhere. Girls in the backwoods are much the same as girls in thickly populated and civilized districts. They liked his manly ways; his frank and pleasant manners; and when to these virtues he added a certain deferential regard, a courtliness to which they were unaccustomed, they were all the better pleased. He paid the young women little attentions, such as calling on them, taking them to parties and out driving, but there was not one of them who could think that she, in particular, interested him. The girls noticed, however, that he never approached Betty after service, or on any occasion, and while it caused some wonder and gossip among them, for Betty enjoyed the distinction of being the belle of the border, they were secretly pleased. Little hints and knowing smiles, with which girls are so skillful, made known to Betty all of this, and, although she was apparently indifferent, it hurt her sensitive feelings. It had the effect of making her believe she hated the cause of it more than ever. What would have happened had things gone on in this way, I am not prepared to say; probably had not a meddling Fate decided to take a hand in the game, Betty would have continued to think she hated Alfred, and I would never have had occasion to write his story; but Fate did interfere, and, one day in the early fall, brought about an incident which changed the whole world for the two young people. It was the afternoon of an Indian summer day--in that most beautiful time of all the year--and Betty, accompanied by her dog, had wandered up the hillside into the woods. From the hilltop the broad river could be seen winding away in the distance, and a soft, bluish, smoky haze hung over the water. The forest seemed to be on fire. The yellow leaves of the poplars, the brown of the white and black oaks, the red and purple of the maples, and the green of the pines and hemlocks flamed in a glorious blaze of color. A stillness, which was only broken now and then by the twittering of birds uttering the plaintive notes peculiar to them in the autumn as they band together before their pilgrimage to the far south, pervaded the forest. Betty loved the woods, and she knew all the trees. She could tell their names by the bark or the shape of the leaves. The giant black oak, with its smooth shiny bark and sturdy limbs, the chestnut with its rugged, seamed sides and bristling burrs, the hickory with its lofty height and curled shelling bark, were all well known and well loved by Betty. Many times had she wondered at the trembling, quivering leaves of the aspen, and the foliage of the silver-leaf as it glinted in the sun. To-day, especially, as she walked through the woods, did their beauty appeal to her. In the little sunny patches of clearing which were scattered here and there in the grove, great clusters of goldenrod grew profusely. The golden heads swayed gracefully on the long stems Betty gathered a few sprigs and added to them a bunch of warmly tinted maple leaves. The chestnuts burrs were opening. As Betty mounted a little rocky eminence and reached out for a limb of a chestnut tree, she lost her footing and fell. Her right foot had twisted under her as she went down, and when a sharp pain shot through it she was unable to repress a cry. She got up, tenderly placed the foot on the ground and tried her weight on it, which caused acute pain. She unlaced and removed her moccasin to find that her ankle had commenced to swell. Assured that she had sprained it, and aware of the serious consequences of an injury of that nature, she felt greatly distressed. Another effort to place her foot on the ground and bear her weight on it caused such severe pain that she was compelled to give up the attempt. Sinking down by the trunk of the tree and leaning her head against it she tried to think of a way out of her difficulty. The fort, which she could plainly see, seemed a long distance off, although it was only a little way down the grassy slope. She looked and looked, but not a person was to be seen. She called to Tige. She remembered that he had been chasing a squirrel a short while ago, but now there was no sign of him. He did not come at her call. How annoying! If Tige were only there she could have sent him for help. She shouted several times, but the distance was too great for her voice to carry to the fort. The mocking echo of her call came back from the bluff that rose to her left. Betty now began to be alarmed in earnest, and the tears started to roll down her cheeks. The throbbing pain in her ankle, the dread of having to remain out in that lonesome forest after dark, and the fear that she might not be found for hours, caused Betty's usually brave spirit to falter; she was weeping unreservedly. In reality she had been there only a few minutes--although they seemed hours to her--when she heard the light tread of moccasined feet on the moss behind her. Starting up with a cry of joy she turned and looked up into the astonished face of Alfred Clarke. Returning from a hunt back in the woods he had walked up to her before being aware of her presence. In a single glance he saw the wildflowers scattered beside her, the little moccasin turned inside out, the woebegone, tearstained face, and he knew Betty had come to grief. Confused and vexed, Betty sank back at the foot of the tree. It is probable she would have encountered Girty or a member of his band of redmen, rather than have this young man find her in this predicament. It provoked her to think that of all the people at the fort it should be the only one she could not welcome who should find her in such a sad plight. "Why, Miss Zane!" he exclaimed, after a moment of hesitation. "What in the world has happened? Have you been hurt? May I help you?" "It is nothing," said Betty, bravely, as she gathered up her flowers and the moccasin and rose slowly to her feet. "Thank you, but you need not wait." The cold words nettled Alfred and he was in the act of turning away from her when he caught, for the fleetest part of a second, the full gaze of her eyes. He stopped short. A closer scrutiny of her face convinced him that she was suffering and endeavoring with all her strength to conceal it. "But I will wait. I think you have hurt yourself. Lean upon my arm," he said, quietly. "Please let me help you," he continued, going nearer to her. But Betty refused his assistance. She would not even allow him to take the goldenrod from her arms. After a few hesitating steps she paused and lifted her foot from the ground. "Here, you must not try to walk a step farther," he said, resolutely, noting how white she had suddenly become. "You have sprained your ankle and are needlessly torturing yourself. Please let me carry you?" "Oh, no, no, no!" cried Betty, in evident distress. "I will manage. It is not so--very--far." She resumed the slow and painful walking, but she had taken only a few steps when she stopped again and this time a low moan issued from her lips. She swayed slightly backward and if Alfred had not dropped his rifle and caught her she would have fallen. "Will you--please--for some one?" she whispered faintly, at the same time pushing him away. "How absurd!" burst out Alfred, indignantly. "Am I then, so distasteful to you that you would rather wait here and suffer a half hour longer while I go for assistance? It is only common courtesy on my part. I do not want to carry you. I think you would be quite heavy." He said this in a hard, bitter tone, deeply hurt that she would not accept even a little kindness from him. He looked away from her and waited. Presently a soft, half-smothered sob came from Betty and it expressed such utter wretchedness that his heart melted. After all she was only a child. He turned to see the tears running down her cheeks, and with a suppressed imprecation upon the wilfulness of young women in general, and this one in particular, he stepped forward and before she could offer any resistance, he had taken her up in his arms, goldenrod and all, and had started off at a rapid walk toward the fort. Betty cried out in angry surprise, struggled violently for a moment, and then, as suddenly, lay quietly in his arms. His anger changed to self-reproach as he realized what a light burden she made. He looked down at the dark head lying on his shoulder. Her face was hidden by the dusky rippling hair, which tumbled over his breast, brushed against his cheek, and blew across his lips. The touch of those fragrant tresses was a soft caress. Almost unconsciously he pressed her closer to his heart. And as a sweet mad longing grew upon him he was blind to all save that he held her in his arms, that uncertainty was gone forever, and that he loved her. With these thoughts running riot in his brain he carried her down the hill to Colonel Zane's house. The negro, Sam, who came out of the kitchen, dropped the bucket he had in his hand and ran into the house when he saw them. When Alfred reached the gate Colonel Zane and Isaac were hurrying out to meet him. "For Heaven's sake! What has happened? Is she badly hurt? I have always looked for this," said the Colonel, excitedly. "You need not look so alarmed," answered Alfred. "She has only sprained her ankle, and trying to walk afterward hurt her so badly that she became faint and I had to carry her." "Dear me, is that all?" said Mrs. Zane, who had also come out. "We were terribly frightened. Sam came running into the house with some kind of a wild story. Said he knew you would be the death of Betty." "How ridiculous! Colonel Zane, that servant of yours never fails to say something against me," said Alfred, as he carried Betty into the house. "He doesn't like you. But you need not mind Sam. He is getting old and we humor him, perhaps too much. We are certainly indebted to you," returned the Colonel. Betty was laid on the couch and consigned to the skillful hands of Mrs. Zane, who pronounced the injury a bad sprain. "Well, Betty, this will keep you quiet for a few days," said she, with a touch of humor, as she gently felt the swollen ankle. "Alfred, you have been our good angel so often that I don't see how we shall ever reward you," said Isaac to Alfred. "Oh, that time will come. Don't worry about that," said Alfred, jestingly, and then, turning to the others he continued, earnestly. "I will apologize for the manner in which I disregarded Miss Zane's wish not to help her. I am sure I could do no less. I believe my rudeness has spared her considerable suffering." "What did he mean, Betts?" asked Isaac, going back to his sister after he had closed the door. "Didn't you want him to help you?" Betty did not answer. She sat on the couch while Mrs. Zane held the little bare foot and slowly poured the hot water over the swollen and discolored ankle. Betty's lips were pale. She winced every time Mrs. Zane touched her foot, but as yet she had not uttered even a sigh. "Betty, does it hurt much?" asked Isaac. "Hurt? Do you think I am made of wood? Of course it hurts," retorted Betty. "That water is so hot. Bessie, will not cold water do as well?" "I am sorry. I won't tease any more," said Isaac, taking his sister's hand. "I'll tell you what, Betty, we owe Alfred Clarke a great deal, you and I. I am going to tell you something so you will know how much more you owe him. Do you remember last month when that red heifer of yours got away. Well, Clarke chased her away and finally caught her in the woods. He asked me to say I had caught her. Somehow or other he seems to be afraid of you. I wish you and he would be good friends. He is a mighty fine fellow." In spite of the pain Betty was suffering a bright blush suffused her face at the words of her brother, who, blind as brothers are in regard to their own sisters, went on praising his friend. Betty was confined to the house a week or more and during this enforced idleness she had ample time for reflection and opportunity to inquire into the perplexed state of her mind. The small room, which Betty called her own, faced the river and fort. Most of the day she lay by the window trying to read her favorite books, but often she gazed out on the quiet scene, the rolling river, the everchanging trees and the pastures in which the red and white cows grazed peacefully; or she would watch with idle, dreamy eyes the flight of the crows over the hills, and the graceful motion of the hawk as he sailed around and around in the azure sky, looking like a white sail far out on a summer sea. But Betty's mind was at variance with this peaceful scene. The consciousness of a change, which she could not readily define, in her feelings toward Alfred Clarke, vexed and irritated her. Why did she think of him so often? True, he had saved her brother's life. Still she was compelled to admit to herself that this was not the reason. Try as she would, she could not banish the thought of him. Over and over again, a thousand times, came the recollection of that moment when he had taken her up in his arms as though she were a child. Some vague feeling stirred in her heart as she remembered the strong yet gentle clasp of his arms. Several times from her window she had seen him coming across the square between the fort and her brother's house, and womanlike, unseen herself, she had watched him. How erect was his carriage. How pleasant his deep voice sounded as she heard him talking to her brother. Day by day, as her ankle grew stronger and she knew she could not remain much longer in her room, she dreaded more and more the thought of meeting him. She could not understand herself; she had strange dreams; she cried seemingly without the slightest cause and she was restless and unhappy. Finally she grew angry and scolded herself. She said she was silly and sentimental. This had the effect of making her bolder, but it did not quiet her unrest. Betty did not know that the little blind God, who steals unawares on his victim, had marked her for his own, and that all this sweet perplexity was the unconscious awakening of the heart. One afternoon, near the end of Betty's siege indoors, two of her friends, Lydia Boggs and Alice Reynolds, called to see her. Alice had bright blue eyes, and her nut brown hair hung in rebellious curls around her demure and pretty face. An adorable dimple lay hidden in her rosy cheek and flashed into light with her smiles. "Betty, you are a lazy thing!" exclaimed Lydia. "Lying here all day long doing nothing but gaze out of the window." "Girls, I am glad you came over," said Betty. "I am blue. Perhaps you will cheer me up." "Betty needs some one of the sterner sex to cheer her," said Alice, mischievously, her eyes twinkling. "Don't you think so, Lydia?" "Of course," answered Lydia. "When I get blue--" "Please spare me," interrupted Betty, holding up her hands in protest. "I have not a single doubt that your masculine remedies are sufficient for all your ills. Girls who have lost their interest in the old pleasures, who spend their spare time in making linen and quilts, and who have sunk their very personalities in a great big tyrant of a man, are not liable to get blue. They are afraid he may see a tear or a frown. But thank goodness, I have not yet reached that stage." "Oh, Betty Zane! Just you wait! Wait!" exclaimed Lydia, shaking her finger at Betty. "Your turn is coming. When it does do not expect any mercy from us, for you shalt never get it." "Unfortunately, you and Alice have monopolized the attentions of the only two eligible young men at the fort," said Betty, with a laugh. "Nonsense there plenty of young men all eager for our favor, you little coquette," answered Lydia. "Harry Martin, Will Metzer, Captain Swearengen, of Short Creek, and others too numerous to count. Look at Lew Wetzel and Billy Bennet." "Lew cares for nothing except hunting Indians and Billy's only a boy," said Betty. "Well, have it your own way," said Lydia. "Only this, I know Billy adores you, for he told me so, and a better lad never lived." "Lyde, you forget to include one other among those prostrate before Betty's charms," said Alice. "Oh, yes, you mean Mr. Clarke. To be sure, I had forgotten him," answered Lydia. "How odd that he should be the one to find you the day you hurt your foot. Was it an accident?" "Of course. I slipped off the bank," said Betty. "No, no. I don't mean that. Was his finding you an accident?" "Do you imagine I waylaid Mr. Clarke, and then sprained my ankle on purpose?" said Betty, who began to look dangerous. "Certainly not that; only it seems so odd that he should be the one to rescue all the damsels in distress. Day before yesterday he stopped a runaway horse, and saved Nell Metzer who was in the wagon, a severe shaking up, if not something more serious. She is desperately in love with him. She told me Mr. Clarke--" "I really do not care to hear about it," interrupted Betty. "But, Betty, tell us. Wasn't it dreadful, his carrying you?" asked Alice, with a sly glance at Betty. "You know you are so--so prudish, one may say. Did he take you in his arms? It must have been very embarrassing for you, considering your dislike of Mr. Clarke, and he so much in love with--" "You hateful girls," cried Betty, throwing a pillow at Alice, who just managed to dodge it. "I wish you would go home." "Never mind, Betty. We will not tease anymore," said Lydia, putting her arm around Betty. "Come, Alice, we will tell Betty you have named the day for your wedding. See! She is all eyes now." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The young people of the frontier settlements were usually married before they were twenty. This was owing to the fact that there was little distinction of rank and family pride. The object of the pioneers in moving West was, of course, to better their condition; but, the realization of their dependence on one another, the common cause of their labors, and the terrible dangers to which they were continually exposed, brought them together as one large family. Therefore, early love affairs were encouraged--not frowned upon as they are to-day--and they usually resulted in early marriages. However, do not let it be imagined that the path of the youthful swain was strewn with flowers. Courting or "sparking" his sweetheart had a painful as well as a joyous side. Many and varied were the tricks played on the fortunate lover by the gallants who had vied with him for the favor of the maid. Brave, indeed, he who won her. If he marched up to her home in the early evening he was made the object of innumerable jests, even the young lady's family indulging in and enjoying the banter. Later, when he come out of the door, it was more than likely that, if it were winter, he would be met by a volley of water soaked snowballs, or big buckets of icewater, or a mountain of snow shoved off the roof by some trickster, who had waited patiently for such an opportunity. On summer nights his horse would be stolen, led far into the woods and tied, or the wheels of his wagon would be taken off and hidden, leaving him to walk home. Usually the successful lover, and especially if he lived at a distance, would make his way only once a week and then late at night to the home of his betrothed. Silently, like a thief in the dark, he would crawl through the grass and shrubs until beneath her window. At a low signal, prearranged between them, she would slip to the door and let him in without disturbing the parents. Fearing to make a light, and perhaps welcoming that excuse to enjoy the darkness beloved by sweethearts, they would sit quietly, whispering low, until the brightening in the east betokened the break of day, and then he was off, happy and lighthearted, to his labors. A wedding was looked forward to with much pleasure by old and young. Practically, it meant the only gathering of the settlers which was not accompanied by the work of reaping the harvest, building a cabin, planning an expedition to relieve some distant settlement, or a defense for themselves. For all, it meant a rollicking good time; to the old people a feast, and the looking on at the merriment of their children--to the young folk, a pleasing break in the monotony of their busy lives, a day given up to fun and gossip, a day of romance, a wedding, and best of all, a dance. Therefore Alice Reynold's wedding proved a great event to the inhabitants of Fort Henry. The day dawned bright and clear. The sun, rising like a ball of red gold, cast its yellow beams over the bare, brown hills, shining on the cabin roofs white with frost, and making the delicate weblike coat of ice on the river sparkle as if it had been sprinkled with powdered diamonds. William Martin, the groom, and his attendants, met at an appointed time to celebrate an old time-honored custom which always took place before the party started for the house of the bride. This performance was called "the race for the bottle." A number of young men, selected by the groom, were asked to take part in this race, which was to be run over as rough and dangerous a track as could be found. The worse the road, the more ditches, bogs, trees, stumps, brush, in fact, the more obstacles of every kind, the better, as all these afforded opportunity for daring and expert horsemanship. The English fox race, now famous on three continents, while it involves risk and is sometimes dangerous, cannot, in the sense of hazard to life and limb, be compared to this race for the bottle. On this day the run was not less exciting than usual. The horses were placed as nearly abreast as possible and the starter gave an Indian yell. Then followed the cracking of whips, the furious pounding of heavy hoofs, the commands of the contestants, and the yells of the onlookers. Away they went at a mad pace down the road. The course extended a mile straight away down the creek bottom. The first hundred yards the horses were bunched. At the ditch beyond the creek bridge a beautiful, clean limbed animal darted from among the furiously galloping horses and sailed over the deep furrow like a bird. All recognized the rider as Alfred Clarke on his black thoroughbred. Close behind was George Martin mounted on a large roan of powerful frame and long stride. Through the willows they dashed, over logs and brush heaps, up the little ridges of rising ground, and down the shallow gullies, unheeding the stinging branches and the splashing water. Half the distance covered and Alfred turned, to find the roan close behind. On a level road he would have laughed at the attempt of that horse to keep up with his racer, but he was beginning to fear that the strong limbed stallion deserved his reputation. Directly before them rose a pile of logs and matted brush, placed there by the daredevil settlers who had mapped out the route. It was too high for any horse to be put at. With pale cheek and clinched teeth Alfred touched the spurs to Roger and then threw himself forward. The gallant beast responded nobly. Up, up, up he rose, clearing all but the topmost branches. Alfred turned again and saw the giant roan make the leap without touching a twig. The next instant Roger went splash into a swamp. He sank to his knees in the soft black soil. He could move but one foot at a time, and Alfred saw at a glance he had won the race. The great weight of the roan handicapped him here. When Alfred reached the other side of the bog, where the bottle was swinging from a branch of a tree, his rival's horse was floundering hopelessly in the middle of the treacherous mire. The remaining three horsemen, who had come up by this time, seeing that it would be useless to attempt further efforts, had drawn up on the bank. With friendly shouts to Clarke, they acknowledged themselves beaten. There were no judges required for this race, because the man who reached the bottle first won it. The five men returned to the starting point, where the victor was greeted by loud whoops. The groom got the first drink from the bottle, then came the attendants, and others in order, after which the bottle was put away to be kept as a memento of the occasion. The party now repaired to the village and marched to the home of the bride. The hour for the observance of the marriage rites was just before the midday meal. When the groom reached the bride's home he found her in readiness. Sweet and pretty Alice looked in her gray linsey gown, perfectly plain and simple though it was, without an ornament or a ribbon. Proud indeed looked her lover as he took her hand and led her up to the waiting minister. When the whisperings had ceased the minister asked who gave this woman to be married. Alice's father answered. "Will you take this woman to be your wedded wife, to love, cherish and protect her all the days of her life?" asked the minister. "I will," answered a deep bass voice. "Will you take this man to be your wedded husband, to love, honor and obey him all the days of your life?" "I will," said Alice, in a low tone. "I pronounce you man and wife. Those whom God has joined together let no man put asunder." There was a brief prayer and the ceremony ended. Then followed the congratulations of relatives and friends. The felicitations were apt to be trying to the nerves of even the best tempered groom. The hand shakes, the heavy slaps on the back, and the pommeling he received at the hands of his intimate friends were as nothing compared to the anguish of mind he endured while they were kissing his wife. The young bucks would not have considered it a real wedding had they been prevented from kissing the bride, and for that matter, every girl within reach. So fast as the burly young settlers could push themselves through the densely packed rooms they kissed the bride, and then the first girl they came to. Betty and Lydia had been Alice's maids of honor. This being Betty's first experience at a frontier wedding, it developed that she was much in need of Lydia's advice, which she had previously disdained. She had rested secure in her dignity. Poor Betty! The first man to kiss Alice was George Martin, a big, strong fellow, who gathered his brother's bride into his arms and gave her a bearish hug and a resounding kiss. Releasing her he turned toward Lydia and Betty. Lydia eluded him, but one of his great hands clasped around Betty's wrist. She tried to look haughty, but with everyone laughing, and the young man's face expressive of honest fun and happiness she found it impossible. She stood still and only turned her face a little to one side while George kissed her. The young men now made a rush for her. With blushing cheeks Betty, unable to stand her ground any longer, ran to her brother, the Colonel. He pushed her away with a laugh. She turned to Major McColloch, who held out his arms to her. With an exclamation she wrenched herself free from a young man, who had caught her hand, and flew to the Major. But alas for Betty! The Major was not proof against the temptation and he kissed her himself. "Traitor!" cried Betty, breaking away from him. Poor Betty was in despair. She had just made up her mind to submit when she caught sight of Wetzel's familiar figure. She ran to him and the hunter put one of his long arms around her. "I reckon I kin take care of you, Betty," he said, a smile playing over his usually stern face. "See here, you young bucks. Betty don't want to be kissed, and if you keep on pesterin' her I'll have to scalp a few of you." The merriment grew as the day progressed. During the wedding feast great hilarity prevailed. It culminated in the dance which followed the dinner. The long room of the block-house had been decorated with evergreens, autumn leaves and goldenrod, which were scattered profusely about, hiding the blackened walls and bare rafters. Numerous blazing pine knots, fastened on sticks which were stuck into the walls, lighted up a scene, which for color and animation could not have been surpassed. Colonel Zane's old slave, Sam, who furnished the music, sat on a raised platform at the upper end of the hall, and the way he sawed away on his fiddle, accompanying the movements of his arm with a swaying of his body and a stamping of his heavy foot, showed he had a hearty appreciation of his own value. Prominent among the men and women standing and sitting near the platform could be distinguished the tall forms of Jonathan Zane, Major McColloch and Wetzel, all, as usual, dressed in their hunting costumes and carrying long rifles. The other men had made more or less effort to improve their appearance. Bright homespun shirts and scarfs had replaced the everyday buckskin garments. Major McColloch was talking to Colonel Zane. The genial faces of both reflected the pleasure they felt in the enjoyment of the younger people. Jonathan Zane stood near the door. Moody and silent he watched the dance. Wetzel leaned against the wall. The black barrel of his rifle lay in the hollow of his arm. The hunter was gravely contemplating the members of the bridal party who were dancing in front of him. When the dance ended Lydia and Betty stopped before Wetzel and Betty said: "Lew, aren't you going to ask us to dance?" The hunter looked down into the happy, gleaming faces, and smiling in his half sad way, answered: "Every man to his gifts." "But you can dance. I want you to put aside your gun long enough to dance with me. If I waited for you to ask me, I fear I should have to wait a long time. Come, Lew, here I am asking you, and I know the other men are dying to dance with me," said Betty, coaxingly, in a roguish voice. Wetzel never refused a request of Betty's, and so, laying aside his weapons, he danced with her, to the wonder and admiration of all. Colonel Zane clapped his hands, and everyone stared in amazement at the unprecedented sight Wetzel danced not ungracefully. He was wonderfully light on his feet. His striking figure, the long black hair, and the fancifully embroidered costume he wore contrasted strangely with Betty's slender, graceful form and pretty gray dress. "Well, well, Lewis, I would not have believed anything but the evidence of my own eyes," said Colonel Zane, with a laugh, as Betty and Wetzel approached him. "If all the men could dance as well as Lew, the girls would be thankful, I can assure you," said Betty. "Betty, I declare you grow prettier every day," said old John Bennet, who was standing with the Colonel and the Major. "If I were only a young man once more I should try my chances with you, and I wouldn't give up very easily." "I do not know, Uncle John, but I am inclined to think that if you were a young man and should come a-wooing you would not get a rebuff from me," answered Betty, smiling on the old man, of whom she was very fond. "Miss Zane, will you dance with me?" The voice sounded close by Betty's side. She recognized it, and an unaccountable sensation of shyness suddenly came over her. She had firmly made up her mind, should Mr. Clarke ask her to dance, that she would tell him she was tired, or engaged for that number--anything so that she could avoid dancing with him. But, now that the moment had come she either forgot her resolution or lacked the courage to keep it, for as the music commenced, she turned and without saying a word or looking at him, she placed her hand on his arm. He whirled her away. She gave a start of surprise and delight at the familiar step and then gave herself up to the charm of the dance. Supported by his strong arm she floated around the room in a sort of dream. Dancing as they did was new to the young people at the Fort--it was a style then in vogue in the east--and everyone looked on with great interest and curiosity. But all too soon the dance ended and before Betty had recovered her composure she found that her partner had led her to a secluded seat in the lower end of the hall. The bench was partly obscured from the dancers by masses of autumn leaves. "That was a very pleasant dance," said Alfred. "Miss Boggs told me you danced the round dance." "I was much surprised and pleased," said Betty, who had indeed enjoyed it. "It has been a delightful day," went on Alfred, seeing that Betty was still confused. "I almost killed myself in that race for the bottle this morning. I never saw such logs and brush heaps and ditches in my life. I am sure that if the fever of recklessness which seemed in the air had not suddenly seized me I would never have put my horse at such leaps." "I heard my brother say your horse was one of the best he had ever seen, and that you rode superbly," murmured Betty. "Well, to be honest, I would not care to take that ride again. It certainly was not fair to the horse." "How do you like the fort by this time?" "Miss Zane, I am learning to love this free, wild life. I really think I was made for the frontier. The odd customs and manners which seemed strange at first have become very acceptable to me now. I find everyone so honest and simple and brave. Here one must work to live, which is right. Do you know, I never worked in my life until I came to Fort Henry. My life was all uselessness, idleness." "I can hardly believe that," answered Betty. "You have learned to dance and ride and--" "What?" asked Alfred, as Betty hesitated. "Never mind. It was an accomplishment with which the girls credited you," said Betty, with a little laugh. "I suppose I did not deserve it. I heard I had a singular aptitude for discovering young ladies in distress." "Have you become well acquainted with the boys?" asked Betty, hastening to change the subject. "Oh, yes, particularly with your Indianized brother, Isaac. He is the finest fellow, as well as the most interesting, I ever knew. I like Colonel Zane immensely too. The dark, quiet fellow, Jack, or John, they call him, is not like your other brothers. The hunter, Wetzel, inspires me with awe. Everyone has been most kind to me and I have almost forgotten that I was a wanderer." "I am glad to hear that," said Betty. "Miss Zane," continued Alfred, "doubtless you have heard that I came West because I was compelled to leave my home. Please do not believe everything you hear of me. Some day I may tell you my story if you care to hear it. Suffice it to say now that I left my home of my own free will and I could go back to-morrow." "I did not mean to imply--" began Betty, coloring. "Of course not. But tell me about yourself. Is it not rather dull and lonesome here for you?" "It was last winter. But I have been contented and happy this summer. Of course, it is not Philadelphia life, and I miss the excitement and gayety of my uncle's house. I knew my place was with my brothers. My aunt pleaded with me to live with her and not go to the wilderness. I had everything I wanted there--luxury, society, parties, balls, dances, friends--all that the heart of a girl could desire, but I preferred to come to this little frontier settlement. Strange choice for a girl, was it not?" "Unusual, yes," answered Alfred, gravely. "And I cannot but wonder what motives actuated our coming to Fort Henry. I came to seek my fortune. You came to bring sunshine into the home of your brother, and left your fortune behind you. Well, your motive has the element of nobility. Mine has nothing but that of recklessness. I would like to read the future." "I do not think it is right to have such a wish. With the veil rolled away could you work as hard, accomplish as much? I do not want to know the future. Perhaps some of it will be unhappy. I have made my choice and will cheerfully abide by it. I rather envy your being a man. You have the world to conquer. A woman--what can she do? She can knead the dough, ply the distaff, and sit by the lattice and watch and wait." "Let us postpone such melancholy thoughts until some future day. I have not as yet said anything that I intended. I wish to tell you how sorry I am that I acted in such a rude way the night your brother came home. I do not know what made me do so, but I know I have regretted it ever since. Will you forgive me and may we not be friends?" "I--I do not know," said Betty, surprised and vaguely troubled by the earnest light in his eyes. "But why? Surely you will make some little allowance for a naturally quick temper, and you know you did not--that you were--" "Yes, I remember I was hasty and unkind. But I made amends, or at least, I tried to do so." "Try to overlook my stupidity. I will not give up until you forgive me. Consider how much you can avoid by being generous." "Very well, then, I will forgive you," said Betty, who had arrived at the conclusion that this young man was one of determination. "Thank you. I promise you shall never regret it. And the sprained ankle? It must be well, as I noticed you danced beautifully." "I am compelled to believe what the girls say--that you are inclined to the language of compliment. My ankle is nearly well, thank you. It hurts a little now and then." "Speaking of your accident reminds me of the day it happened," said Alfred, watching her closely. He desired to tease her a little, but he was not sure of his ground. "I had been all day in the woods with nothing but my thoughts--mostly unhappy ones--for company. When I met you I pretended to be surprised. As a matter of fact I was not, for I had followed your dog. He took a liking to me and I was extremely pleased, I assure you. Well, I saw your face a moment before you knew I was as near you. When you heard my footsteps you turned with a relieved and joyous cry. When you saw whom it was your glad expression changed, and if I had been a hostile Wyandot you could not have looked more unfriendly. Such a woeful, tear-stained face I never saw." "Mr. Clarke, please do not speak any more of that," said Betty with dignity. "I desire that you forget it." "I will forget all except that it was I who had the happiness of finding you and of helping you. I cannot forget that. I am sure we should never have been friends but for that accident." "There is Isaac. He is looking for me," answered Betty, rising. "Wait a moment longer--please. He will find you," said Alfred, detaining her. "Since you have been so kind I have grown bolder. May I come over to see you to-morrow?" He looked straight down into the dark eyes which wavered and fell before he had completed his question. "There is Isaac. He cannot see me here. I must go." "But not before telling me. What is the good of your forgiving me if I may not see you. Please say yes." "You may come," answered Betty, half amused and half provoked at his persistence. "I should think you would know that such permission invariably goes with a young woman's forgiveness." "Hello, here you are. What a time I have had in finding you," said Isaac, coming up with flushed face and eyes bright with excitement. "Alfred, what do you mean by hiding the belle of the dance away like this? I want to dance with you, Betts. I am having a fine time. I have not danced anything but Indian dances for ages. Sorry to take her away, Alfred. I can see she doesn't want to go. Ha! Ha!" and with a mischievous look at both of them he led Betty away. Alfred kept his seat awhile lost in thought. Suddenly he remembered that it would look strange if he did not make himself agreeable, so he got up and found a partner. He danced with Alice, Lydia, and the other young ladies. After an hour he slipped away to his room. He wished to be alone. He wanted to think; to decide whether it would be best for him to stay at the fort, or ride away in the darkness and never return. With the friendly touch of Betty's hand the madness with which he had been battling for weeks rushed over him stronger than ever. The thrill of that soft little palm remained with him, and he pressed the hand it had touched to his lips. For a long hour he sat by his window. He could dimly see the broad winding river, with its curtain of pale gray mist, and beyond, the dark outline of the forest. A cool breeze from the water fanned his heated brow, and the quiet and solitude soothed him. CHAPTER IV. "Good morning, Harry. Where are you going so early?" called Betty from the doorway. A lad was passing down the path in front of Colonel Zane's house as Betty hailed him. He carried a rifle almost as long as himself. "Mornin', Betty. I am goin' 'cross the crick fer that turkey I hear gobblin'," he answered, stopping at the gate and smiling brightly at Betty. "Hello, Harry Bennet. Going after that turkey? I have heard him several mornings and he must be a big, healthy gobbler," said Colonel Zane, stepping to the door. "You are going to have company. Here comes Wetzel." "Good morning, Lew. Are you too off on a turkey hunt?" said Betty. "Listen," said the hunter, as he stopped and leaned against the gate. They listened. All was quiet save for the tinkle of a cow-bell in the pasture adjoining the Colonel's barn. Presently the silence was broken by a long, shrill, peculiar cry. "Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug-chug." "Well, it's a turkey, all right, and I'll bet a big gobbler," remarked Colonel Zane, as the cry ceased. "Has Jonathan heard it?" asked Wetzel. "Not that I know of. Why do you ask?" said the Colonel, in a low tone. "Look here, Lew, is that not a genuine call?" "Goodbye, Harry, be sure and bring me a turkey," called Betty, as she disappeared. "I calkilate it's a real turkey," answered the hunter, and motioning the lad to stay behind, he shouldered his rifle and passed swiftly down the path. Of all the Wetzel family--a family noted from one end of the frontier to the other--Lewis was as the most famous. The early history of West Virginia and Ohio is replete with the daring deeds of this wilderness roamer, this lone hunter and insatiable Nemesis, justly called the greatest Indian slayer known to men. When Lewis was about twenty years old, and his brothers John and Martin little older, they left their Virginia home for a protracted hunt. On their return they found the smoking ruins of the home, the mangled remains of father and mother, the naked and violated bodies of their sisters, and the scalped and bleeding corpse of a baby brother. Lewis Wetzel swore sleepless and eternal vengeance on the whole Indian race. Terribly did he carry out that resolution. From that time forward he lived most of the time in the woods, and an Indian who crossed his trail was a doomed man. The various Indian tribes gave him different names. The Shawnees called him "Long Knife;" the Hurons, "Destroyer;" the Delawares, "Death Wind," and any one of these names would chill the heart of the stoutest warrior. To most of the famed pioneer hunters of the border, Indian fighting was only a side issue--generally a necessary one--but with Wetzel it was the business of his life. He lived solely to kill Indians. He plunged recklessly into the strife, and was never content unless roaming the wilderness solitudes, trailing the savages to their very homes and ambushing the village bridlepath like a panther waiting for his prey. Often in the gray of the morning the Indians, sleeping around their camp fire, were awakened by a horrible, screeching yell. They started up in terror only to fall victims to the tomahawk of their merciless foe, or to hear a rifle shot and get a glimpse of a form with flying black hair disappearing with wonderful quickness in the forest. Wetzel always left death behind him, and he was gone before his demoniac yell ceased to echo throughout the woods. Although often pursued, he invariably eluded the Indians, for he was the fleetest runner on the border. For many years he was considered the right hand of the defense of the fort. The Indians held him in superstitious dread, and the fact that he was known to be in the settlement had averted more than one attack by the Indians. Many regarded Wetzel as a savage, a man who was mad for the blood of the red men, and without one redeeming quality. But this was an unjust opinion. When that restless fever for revenge left him--it was not always with him--he was quiet and peaceable. To those few who knew him well he was even amiable. But Wetzel, although known to everyone, cared for few. He spent little time in the settlements and rarely spoke except when addressed. Nature had singularly fitted him for his pre-eminent position among scouts and hunters. He was tall and broad across the shoulders; his strength, agility and endurance were marvelous; he had an eagle eye, the sagacity of the bloodhound, and that intuitive knowledge which plays such an important part in a hunter's life. He knew not fear. He was daring where daring was the wiser part. Crafty, tireless and implacable, Wetzel was incomparable in his vocation. His long raven-black hair, of which he was vain, when combed out reached to within a foot of the ground. He had a rare scalp, one for which the Indians would have bartered anything. A favorite Indian decoy, and the most fatal one, was the imitation of the call of the wild turkey. It had often happened that men from the settlements who had gone out for a turkey which had been gobbling, had not returned. For several mornings Wetzel had heard a turkey call, and becoming suspicious of it, had determined to satisfy himself. On the east side of the creek hill there was a cavern some fifty or sixty yards above the water. The entrance to this cavern was concealed by vines and foliage. Wetzel knew of it, and, crossing the stream some distance above, he made a wide circuit and came up back of the cave. Here he concealed himself in a clump of bushes and waited. He had not been there long when directly below him sounded the cry, "Chug-a-lug, Chug-a-lug, Chug-a-lug." At the same time the polished head and brawny shoulders of an Indian warrior rose out of the cavern. Peering cautiously around, the savage again gave the peculiar cry, and then sank back out of sight. Wetzel screened himself safely in his position and watched the savage repeat the action at least ten times before he made up his mind that the Indian was alone in the cave. When he had satisfied himself of this he took a quick aim at the twisted tuft of hair and fired. Without waiting to see the result of his shot--so well did he trust his unerring aim--he climbed down the steep bank and brushing aside the vines entered the cave. A stalwart Indian lay in the entrance with his face pressed down on the vines. He still clutched in his sinewy fingers the buckhorn mouthpiece with which he had made the calls that had resulted in his death. "Huron," muttered the hunter to himself as he ran the keen edge of his knife around the twisted tuft of hair and tore off the scalp-lock. The cave showed evidence of having been inhabited for some time. There was a cunningly contrived fireplace made of stones, against which pieces of birch bark were placed in such a position that not a ray of light could get out of the cavern. The bed of black coals between the stones still smoked; a quantity of parched corn lay on a little rocky shelf which jutted out from the wall; a piece of jerked meat and a buckskin pouch hung from a peg. Suddenly Wetzel dropped on his knees and began examining the footprints in the sandy floor of the cavern. He measured the length and width of the dead warrior's foot. He closely scrutinized every moccasin print. He crawled to the opening of the cavern and carefully surveyed the moss. Then he rose to his feet. A remarkable transformation had come over him during the last few moments. His face had changed; the calm expression was replaced by one sullen and fierce: his lips were set in a thin, cruel line, and a strange light glittered in his eyes. He slowly pursued a course lending gradually down to the creek. At intervals he would stop and listen. The strange voices of the woods were not mysteries to him. They were more familiar to him than the voices of men. He recalled that, while on his circuit over the ridge to get behind the cavern, he had heard the report of a rifle far off in the direction of the chestnut grove, but, as that was a favorite place of the settlers for shooting squirrels, he had not thought anything of it at the time. Now it had a peculiar significance. He turned abruptly from the trail he had been following and plunged down the steep hill. Crossing the creek he took to the cover of the willows, which grew profusely along the banks, and striking a sort of bridle path he started on a run. He ran easily, as though accustomed to that mode of travel, and his long strides covered a couple of miles in short order. Coming to the rugged bluff, which marked the end of the ridge, he stopped and walked slowly along the edge of the water. He struck the trail of the Indians where it crossed the creek, just where he expected. There were several moccasin tracks in the wet sand and, in some of the depressions made by the heels the rounded edges of the imprints were still smooth and intact. The little pools of muddy water, which still lay in these hollows, were other indications to his keen eyes that the Indians had passed this point early that morning. The trail led up the hill and far into the woods. Never in doubt the hunter kept on his course; like a shadow he passed from tree to tree and from bush to bush; silently, cautiously, but rapidly he followed the tracks of the Indians. When he had penetrated the dark backwoods of the Black Forest tangled underbrush, windfalls and gullies crossed his path and rendered fast trailing impossible. Before these almost impassible barriers he stopped and peered on all sides, studying the lay of the land, the deadfalls, the gorges, and all the time keeping in mind the probable route of the redskins. Then he turned aside to avoid the roughest travelling. Sometimes these detours were only a few hundred feet long; often they were miles; but nearly always he struck the trail again. This almost superhuman knowledge of the Indian's ways of traversing the forest, which probably no man could have possessed without giving his life to the hunting of Indians, was the one feature of Wetzel's woodcraft which placed him so far above other hunters, and made him so dreaded by the savages. Descending a knoll he entered a glade where the trees grew farther apart and the underbrush was only knee high. The black soil showed that the tract of land had been burned over. On the banks of a babbling brook which wound its way through this open space, the hunter found tracks which brought an exclamation from him. Clearly defined in the soft earth was the impress of a white man's moccasin. The footprints of an Indian toe inward. Those of a white man are just the opposite. A little farther on Wetzel came to a slight crushing of the moss, where he concluded some heavy body had fallen. As he had seen the tracks of a buck and doe all the way down the brook he thought it probable one of them had been shot by the white hunter. He found a pool of blood surrounded by moccasin prints; and from that spot the trail led straight toward the west, showing that for some reason the Indians had changed their direction. This new move puzzled the hunter, and he leaned against the trunk of a tree, while he revolved in his mind the reasons for this abrupt departure--for such he believed it. The trail he had followed for miles was the devious trail of hunting Indians, stealing slowly and stealthily along watching for their prey, whether it be man or beast. The trail toward the west was straight as the crow flies; the moccasin prints that indented the soil were wide apart, and to an inexperienced eye looked like the track of one Indian. To Wetzel this indicated that the Indians had all stepped in the tracks of a leader. As was usually his way, Wetzel decided quickly. He had calculated that there were eight Indians in all, not counting the chief whom he had shot. This party of Indians had either killed or captured the white man who had been hunting. Wetzel believed that a part of the Indians would push on with all possible speed, leaving some of their number to ambush the trail or double back on it to see if they were pursued. An hour of patient waiting, in which he never moved from his position, proved the wisdom of his judgment. Suddenly, away at the other end of the grove, he caught a flash of brown, of a living, moving something, like the flitting of a bird behind a tree. Was it a bird or a squirrel? Then again he saw it, almost lost in the shade of the forest. Several minutes passed, in which Wetzel never moved and hardly breathed. The shadow had disappeared behind a tree. He fixed his keen eyes on that tree and presently a dark object glided from it and darted stealthily forward to another tree. One, two, three dark forms followed the first one. They were Indian warriors, and they moved so quickly that only the eyes of a woodsman like Wetzel could have discerned their movements at that distance. Probably most hunters would have taken to their heels while there was yet time. The thought did not occur to Wetzel. He slowly raised the hammer of his rifle. As the Indians came into plain view he saw they did not suspect his presence, but were returning on the trail in their customary cautious manner. When the first warrior reached a big oak tree some two hundred yards distant, the long, black barrel of the hunter's rifle began slowly, almost imperceptibly, to rise, and as it reached a level the savage stepped forward from the tree. With the sharp report of the weapon he staggered and fell. Wetzel sprang up and knowing that his only escape was in rapid flight, with his well known yell, he bounded off at the top of his speed. The remaining Indians discharged their guns at the fleeing, dodging figure, but without effect. So rapidly did he dart in and out among the trees that an effectual aim was impossible. Then, with loud yells, the Indians, drawing their tomahawks, started in pursuit, expecting soon to overtake their victim. In the early years of his Indian hunting, Wetzel had perfected himself in a practice which had saved his life many tunes, and had added much to his fame. He could reload his rifle while running at topmost speed. His extraordinary fleetness enabled him to keep ahead of his pursuers until his rifle was reloaded. This trick he now employed. Keeping up his uneven pace until his gun was ready, he turned quickly and shot the nearest Indian dead in his tracks. The next Indian had by this time nearly come up with him and close enough to throw his tomahawk, which whizzed dangerously near Wetzel's head. But he leaped forward again and soon his rifle was reloaded. Every time he looked around the Indians treed, afraid to face his unerring weapon. After running a mile or more in this manner, he reached an open space in the woods where he wheeled suddenly on his pursuers. The foremost Indian jumped behind a tree, but, as it did not entirely screen his body, he, too, fell a victim to the hunter's aim. The Indian must have been desperately wounded, for his companion now abandoned the chase and went to his assistance. Together they disappeared in the forest. Wetzel, seeing that he was no longer pursued, slackened his pace and proceeded thoughtfully toward the settlement. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * That same day, several hours after Wetzel's departure in quest of the turkey, Alfred Clarke strolled over from the fort and found Colonel Zane in the yard. The Colonel was industriously stirring the contents of a huge copper kettle which swung over a brisk wood fire. The honeyed fragrance of apple-butter mingled with the pungent odor of burning hickory. "Morning, Alfred, you see they have me at it," was the Colonel's salute. "So I observe," answered Alfred, as he seated himself on the wood-pile. "What is it you are churning so vigorously?" "Apple-butter, my boy, apple-butter. I don't allow even Bessie to help when I am making apple-butter." "Colonel Zane, I have come over to ask a favor. Ever since you notified us that you intended sending an expedition up the river I have been worried about my horse Roger. He is too light for a pack horse, and I cannot take two horses." "I'll let you have the bay. He is big and strong enough. That black horse of yours is a beauty. You leave Roger with me and if you never come back I'll be in a fine horse. Ha, Ha! But, seriously, Clarke, this proposed trip is a hazardous undertaking, and if you would rather stay--" "You misunderstand me," quickly replied Alfred, who had flushed. "I do not care about myself. I'll go and take my medicine. But I do mind about my horse." "That's right. Always think of your horses. I'll have Sam take the best of care of Roger." "What is the nature of this excursion, and how long shall we be gone?" "Jonathan will guide the party. He says it will take six weeks if you have pleasant weather. You are to go by way of Short Creek, where you will help put up a blockhouse. Then you go to Fort Pitt. There you will embark on a raft with the supplies I need and make the return journey by water. You will probably smell gunpowder before you get back." "What shall we do with the horses?" "Bring them along with you on the raft, of course." "That is a new way to travel with horses," said Alfred, looking dubiously at the swift river. "Will there be any way to get news from Fort Henry while we are away?" "Yes, there will be several runners." "Mr. Clarke, I am going to feed my pets. Would you like to see them?" asked a voice which brought Alfred to his feet. He turned and saw Betty. Her dog followed her, carrying a basket. "I shall be delighted," answered Alfred. "Have you more pets than Tige and Madcap?" "Oh, yes, indeed. I have a bear, six squirrels, one of them white, and some pigeons." Betty led the way to an enclosure adjoining Colonel Zane's barn. It was about twenty feet square, made of pine saplings which had been split and driven firmly into the ground. As Betty took down a bar and opened the small gate a number of white pigeons fluttered down from the roof of the barn, several of them alighting on her shoulders. A half-grown black bear came out of a kennel and shuffled toward her. He was unmistakably glad to see her, but he avoided going near Tige, and looked doubtfully at the young man. But after Alfred had stroked his head and had spoken to him he seemed disposed to be friendly, for he sniffed around Alfred's knees and then stood up and put his paws against the young man's shoulders. "Here, Caesar, get down," said Betty. "He always wants to wrestle, especially with anyone of whom he is not suspicious. He is very tame and will do almost anything. Indeed, you would marvel at his intelligence. He never forgets an injury. If anyone plays a trick on him you may be sure that person will not get a second opportunity. The night we caught him Tige chased him up a tree and Jonathan climbed the tree and lassoed him. Ever since he has evinced a hatred of Jonathan, and if I should leave Tige alone with him there would be a terrible fight. But for that I could allow Caesar to run free about the yard." "He looks bright and sagacious," remarked Alfred. "He is, but sometimes he gets into mischief. I nearly died laughing one day. Bessie, my brother's wife, you know, had the big kettle on the fire, just as you saw it a moment ago, only this time she was boiling down maple syrup. Tige was out with some of the men and I let Caesar loose awhile. If there is anything he loves it is maple sugar, so when he smelled the syrup he pulled down the kettle and the hot syrup went all over his nose. Oh, his howls were dreadful to hear. The funniest part about it was he seemed to think it was intentional, for he remained sulky and cross with me for two weeks." "I can understand your love for animals," said Alfred. "I think there are many interesting things about wild creatures. There are comparatively few animals down in Virginia where I used to live, and my opportunities to study them have been limited." "Here are my squirrels," said Betty, unfastening the door of a cage. A number of squirrels ran out. Several jumped to the ground. One perched on top of the box. Another sprang on Betty's shoulder. "I fasten them up every night, for I'm afraid the weasels and foxes will get them. The white squirrel is the only albino we have seen around here. It took Jonathan weeks to trap him, but once captured he soon grew tame. Is he not pretty?" "He certainly is. I never saw one before; in fact, I did not know such a beautiful little animal existed," answered Alfred, looking in admiration at the graceful creature, as he leaped from the shelf to Betty's arm and ate from her hand, his great, bushy white tail arching over his back and his small pink eyes shining. "There! Listen," said Betty. "Look at the fox squirrel, the big brownish red one. I call him the Captain, because he always wants to boss the others. I had another fox squirrel, older than this fellow, and he ran things to suit himself, until one day the grays united their forces and routed him. I think they would have killed him had I not freed him. Well, this one is commencing the same way. Do you hear that odd clicking noise? That comes from the Captain's teeth, and he is angry and jealous because I show so much attention to this one. He always does that, and he would fight too if I were not careful. It is a singular fact, though, that the white squirrel has not even a little pugnacity. He either cannot fight, or he is too well behaved. Here, Mr. Clarke, show Snowball this nut, and then hide it in your pocket, and see him find it." Alfred did as he was told, except that while he pretended to put the nut in his pocket he really kept it concealed in his hand. The pet squirrel leaped lightly on Alfred's shoulder, ran over his breast, peeped in all his pockets, and even pushed his cap to one side of his head. Then he ran down Alfred's arm, sniffed in his coat sleeve, and finally wedged a cold little nose between his closed fingers. "There, he has found it, even though you did not play fair," said Betty, laughing gaily. Alfred never forgot the picture Betty made standing there with the red cap on her dusky hair, and the loving smile upon her face as she talked to her pets. A white fan-tail pigeon had alighted on her shoulder and was picking daintily at the piece of cracker she held between her lips. The squirrels were all sitting up, each with a nut in his little paws, and each with an alert and cunning look in the corner of his eye, to prevent, no doubt, being surprised out of a portion of his nut. Caesar was lying on all fours, growling and tearing at his breakfast, while the dog looked on with a superior air, as if he knew they would not have had any breakfast but for him. "Are you fond of canoeing and fishing?" asked Betty, as they returned to the house. "Indeed I am. Isaac has taken me out on the river often. Canoeing may be pleasant for a girl, but I never knew one who cared for fishing." "Now you behold one. I love dear old Izaak Walton. Of course, you have read his books?" "I am ashamed to say I have not." "And you say you are a fisherman? Well, you haste a great pleasure in store, as well as an opportunity to learn something of the 'contemplative man's recreation.' I shall lend you the books." "I have not seen a book since I came to Fort Henry." "I have a fine little library, and you are welcome to any of my books. But to return to fishing. I love it, and yet I nearly always allow the fish to go free. Sometimes I bring home a pretty sunfish, place him in a tub of water, watch him and try to tame him. But I must admit failure. It is the association which makes fishing so delightful. The canoe gliding down a swift stream, the open air, the blue sky, the birds and trees and flowers--these are what I love. Come and see my canoe." Thus Betty rattled on as she led the way through the sitting-room and kitchen to Colonel Zane's magazine and store-house which opened into the kitchen. This little low-roofed hut contained a variety of things. Boxes, barrels and farming implements filled one corner; packs of dried skins were piled against the wall; some otter and fox pelts were stretched on the wall, and a number of powder kegs lined a shelf. A slender canoe swung from ropes thrown over the rafters. Alfred slipped it out of the loops and carried it outside. The canoe was a superb specimen of Indian handiwork. It had a length of fourteen feet and was made of birch bark, stretched over a light framework of basswood. The bow curved gracefully upward, ending in a carved image representing a warrior's head. The sides were beautifully ornamented and decorated in fanciful Indian designs. "My brother's Indian guide, Tomepomehala, a Shawnee chief, made it for me. You see this design on the bow. The arrow and the arm mean in Indian language, 'The race is to the swift and the strong.' The canoe is very light. See, I can easily carry it," said Betty, lifting it from the grass. She ran into the house and presently came out with two rods, a book and a basket. "These are Jack's rods. He cut them out of the heart of ten-year-old basswood trees, so he says. We must be careful of them." Alfred examined the rods with the eye of a connoisseur and pronounced them perfect. "These rods have been made by a lover of the art. Anyone with half an eye could see that. What shall we use for bait?" he said. "Sam got me some this morning." "Did you expect to go?" asked Alfred, looking up in surprise. "Yes, I intended going, and as you said you were coming over, I meant to ask you to accompany me." "That was kind of you." "Where are you young people going?" called Colonel Zane, stopping in his task. "We are going down to the sycamore," answered Betty. "Very well. But be certain and stay on this side of the creek and do not go out on the river," said the Colonel. "Why, Eb, what do you mean? One might think Mr. Clarke and I were children," exclaimed Betty. "You certainly aren't much more. But that is not my reason. Never mind the reason. Do as I say or do not go," said Colonel Zane. "All right, brother. I shall not forget," said Betty, soberly, looking at the Colonel. He had not spoken in his usual teasing way, and she was at a loss to understand him. "Come, Mr. Clarke, you carry the canoe and follow me down this path and look sharp for roots and stones or you may trip." "Where is Isaac?" asked Alfred, as he lightly swung the canoe over his shoulder. "He took his rifle and went up to the chestnut grove an hour or more ago." A few minutes' walk down the willow skirted path and they reached the creek. Here it was a narrow stream, hardly fifty feet wide, shallow, and full of stones over which the clear brown water rushed noisily. "Is it not rather risky going down there?" asked Alfred as he noticed the swift current and the numerous boulders poking treacherous heads just above the water. "Of course. That is the great pleasure in canoeing," said Betty, calmly. "If you would rather walk--" "No, I'll go if I drown. I was thinking of you." "It is safe enough if you can handle a paddle," said Betty, with a smile at his hesitation. "And, of course, if your partner in the canoe sits trim." "Perhaps you had better allow me to use the paddle. Where did you learn to steer a canoe?" "I believe you are actually afraid. Why, I was born on the Potomac, and have used a paddle since I was old enough to lift one. Come, place the canoe in here and we will keep to the near shore until we reach the bend. There is a little fall just below this and I love to shoot it." He steadied the canoe with one hand while he held out the other to help her, but she stepped nimbly aboard without his assistance. "Wait a moment while I catch some crickets and grasshoppers." "Gracious! What a fisherman. Don't you know we have had frost?" "That's so," said Alfred, abashed by her simple remark. "But you might find some crickets under those logs," said Betty. She laughed merrily at the awkward spectacle made by Alfred crawling over the ground, improvising a sort of trap out of his hat, and pouncing down on a poor little insect. "Now, get in carefully, and give the canoe a push. There, we are off," she said, taking up the paddle. The little bark glided slowly down stream at first hugging the bank as though reluctant to trust itself to the deeper water, and then gathering headway as a few gentle strokes of the paddle swerved it into the current. Betty knelt on one knee and skillfully plied the paddle, using the Indian stroke in which the paddle was not removed from the water. "This is great!" exclaimed Alfred, as he leaned back in the bow facing her. "There is nothing more to be desired. This beautiful clear stream, the air so fresh, the gold lined banks, the autumn leaves, a guide who--" "Look," said Betty. "There is the fall over which we must pass." He looked ahead and saw that they were swiftly approaching two huge stones that reared themselves high out of the water. They were only a few yards apart and surrounded by smaller rocks, about high the water rushed white with foam. "Please do not move!" cried Betty, her eyes shining bright with excitement. Indeed, the situation was too novel for Alfred to do anything but feel a keen enjoyment. He had made up his mind that he was sure to get a ducking, but, as he watched Betty's easy, yet vigorous sweeps with the paddle, and her smiling, yet resolute lips, he felt reassured. He could see that the fall was not a great one, only a few feet, but one of those glancing sheets of water like a mill race, and he well knew that if they struck a stone disaster would be theirs. Twenty feet above the white-capped wave which marked the fall, Betty gave a strong forward pull on the paddle, a deep stroke which momentarily retarded their progress even in that swift current, and then, a short backward stroke, far under the stern of the canoe, and the little vessel turned straight, almost in the middle of the course between the two rocks. As she raised her paddle into the canoe and smiled at the fascinated young man, the bow dipped, and with that peculiar downward movement, that swift, exhilarating rush so dearly loved by canoeists, they shot down the smooth incline of water, were lost for a moment in a white cloud of mist, and in another they coated into a placid pool. "Was not that delightful?" she asked, with just a little conscious pride glowing in her dark eyes. "Miss Zane, it was more than that. I apologize for my suspicions. You have admirable skill. I only wish that on my voyage down the River of Life I could have such a sure eye and hand to guide me through the dangerous reefs and rapids." "You are poetical," said Betty, who laughed, and at the same time blushed slightly. "But you are right about the guide. Jonathan says 'always get a good guide,' and as guiding is his work he ought to know. But this has nothing in common with fishing, and here is my favorite place under the old sycamore." With a long sweep of the paddle she ran the canoe alongside a stone beneath a great tree which spread its long branches over the creek and shaded the pool. It was a grand old tree and must have guarded that sylvan spot for centuries. The gnarled and knotted trunk was scarred and seamed with the ravages of time. The upper part was dead. Long limbs extended skyward, gaunt and bare, like the masts of a storm beaten vessel. The lower branches were white and shining, relieved here and there by brown patches of bark which curled up like old parchment as they shelled away from the inner bark. The ground beneath the tree was carpeted with a velvety moss with little plots of grass and clusters of maiden-hair fern growing on it. From under an overhanging rock on the bank a spring of crystal water bubbled forth. Alfred rigged up the rods, and baiting a hook directed Betty to throw her line well out into the current and let it float down into the eddy. She complied, and hardly had the line reached the circle of the eddy, where bits of white foam floated round and round, when there was a slight splash, a scream from Betty and she was standing up in the canoe holding tightly to her rod. "Be careful!" exclaimed Alfred. "Sit down. You will have the canoe upset in a moment. Hold your rod steady and keep the line taut. That's right. Now lead him round toward me. There," and grasping the line he lifted a fine rock bass over the side of the canoe. "Oh! I always get so intensely excited," breathlessly cried Betty. "I can't help it. Jonathan always declares he will never take me fishing again. Let me see the fish. It's a goggle-eye. Isn't he pretty? Look how funny he bats his eyes," and she laughed gleefully as she gingerly picked up the fish by the tail and dropped him into the water. "Now, Mr. Goggle-eye, if you are wise, in future you will beware of tempting looking bugs." For an hour they had splendid sport. The pool teemed with sunfish. The bait would scarcely touch the water when the little orange colored fellows would rush for it. Now and then a black bass darted wickedly through the school of sunfish and stole the morsel from them. Or a sharp-nosed fiery-eyed pickerel--vulture of the water--rising to the surface, and, supreme in his indifference to man or fish, would swim lazily round until he had discovered the cause of all this commotion among the smaller fishes, and then, opening wide his jaws would take the bait with one voracious snap. Presently something took hold of Betty's line and moved out toward the middle of the pool. She struck and the next instant her rod was bent double and the tip under water. "Pull your rod up!" shouted Alfred. "Here, hand it to me." But it was too late. A surge right and left, a vicious tug, and Betty's line floated on the surface of the water. "Now, isn't that too bad? He has broken my line. Goodness, I never before felt such a strong fish. What shall I do?" "You should be thankful you were not pulled in. I have been in a state of fear ever since we commenced fishing. You move round in this canoe as though it were a raft. Let me paddle out to that little ripple and try once there; then we will stop. I know you are tired." Near the center of the pool a half submerged rock checked the current and caused a little ripple of the water. Several times Alfred had seen the dark shadow of a large fish followed by a swirl of the water, and the frantic leaping of little bright-sided minnows in all directions. As his hook, baited with a lively shiner, floated over the spot, a long, yellow object shot from out that shaded lair. There was a splash, not unlike that made by the sharp edge of a paddle impelled by a short, powerful stroke, the minnow disappeared, and the broad tail of the fish flapped on the water. The instant Alfred struck, the water boiled and the big fish leaped clear into the air, shaking himself convulsively to get rid of the hook. He made mad rushes up and down the pool, under the canoe, into the swift current and against the rocks, but all to no avail. Steadily Alfred increased the strain on the line and gradually it began to tell, for the plunges of the fish became shorter and less frequent. Once again, in a last magnificent effort, he leaped straight into the air, and failing to get loose, gave up the struggle and was drawn gasping and exhausted to the side of the canoe. "Are you afraid to touch him?" asked Alfred. "Indeed I am not," answered Betty. "Then run your hand gently down the line, slip your fingers in under his gills and lift him over the side carefully." "Five pounds," exclaimed Alfred, when the fish lay at his feet. "This is the largest black bass I ever caught. It is pity to take such a beautiful fish out of his element." "Let him go, then. May I?" said Betty. "No, you have allowed them all to go, even the pickerel which I think ought to be killed. We will keep this fellow alive, and place him in that nice clear pool over in the fort-yard." "I like to watch you play a fish," said Betty. "Jonathan always hauls them right out. You are so skillful. You let this fish run so far and then you checked him. Then you gave him a line to go the other way, and no doubt he felt free once more when you stopped him again." "You are expressing a sentiment which has been, is, and always will be particularly pleasing to the fair sex, I believe," observed Alfred, smiling rather grimly as he wound up his line. "Would you mind being explicit?" she questioned. Alfred had laughed and was about to answer when the whip-like crack of a rifle came from the hillside. The echoes of the shot reverberated from hill to hill and were finally lost far down the valley. "What can that be?" exclaimed Alfred anxiously, recalling Colonel Zane's odd manner when they were about to leave the house. "I am not sure, but I think that is my turkey, unless Lew Wetzel happened to miss his aim," said Betty, laughing. "And that is such an unprecedented thing that it can hardly be considered. Turkeys are scarce this season. Jonathan says the foxes and wolves ate up the broods. Lew heard this turkey calling and he made little Harry Bennet, who had started out with his gun, stay at home and went after Mr. Gobbler himself." "Is that all? Well, that is nothing to get alarmed about, is it? I actually had a feeling of fear, or a presentiment, we might say." They beached the canoe and spread out the lunch in the shade near the spring. Alfred threw himself at length upon the grass and Betty sat leaning against the tree. She took a biscuit in one hand, a pickle in the other, and began to chat volubly to Alfred of her school life, and of Philadelphia, and the friends she had made there. At length, remarking his abstraction, she said: "You are not listening to me." "I beg your pardon. My thoughts did wander. I was thinking of my mother. Something about you reminds me of her. I do not know what, unless it is that little mannerism you have of pursing up your lips when you hesitate or stop to think." "Tell me of her," said Betty, seeing his softened mood. "My mother was very beautiful, and as good as she was lovely. I never had a care until my father died. Then she married again, and as I did not get on with my step-father I ran away from home. I have not been in Virginia for four years." "Do you get homesick?" "Indeed I do. While at Fort Pitt I used to have spells of the blues which lasted for days. For a time I felt more contented here. But I fear the old fever of restlessness will come over me again. I can speak freely to you because I know you will understand, and I feel sure of your sympathy. My father wanted me to be a minister. He sent me to the theological seminary at Princeton, where for two years I tried to study. Then my father died. I went home and looked after things until my mother married again. That changed everything for me. I ran away and have since been a wanderer. I feel that I am not lazy, that I am not afraid of work, but four years have drifted by and I have nothing to show for it. I am discouraged. Perhaps that is wrong, but tell me how I can help it. I have not the stoicism of the hunter, Wetzel, nor have I the philosophy of your brother. I could not be content to sit on my doorstep and smoke my pipe and watch the wheat and corn grow. And then, this life of the borderman, environed as it is by untold dangers, leads me, fascinates me, and yet appalls me with the fear that here I shall fall a victim to an Indian's bullet or spear, and find a nameless grave." A long silence ensued. Alfred had spoken quietly, but with an undercurrent of bitterness that saddened Betty. For the first time she saw a shadow of pain in his eyes. She looked away down the valley, not seeing the brown and gold hills boldly defined against the blue sky, nor the beauty of the river as the setting sun cast a ruddy glow on the water. Her companion's words had touched an unknown chord in her heart. When finally she turned to answer him a beautiful light shone in her eyes, a light that shines not on land or sea--the light of woman's hope. "Mr. Clarke," she said, and her voice was soft and low, "I am only a girl, but I can understand. You are unhappy. Try to rise above it. Who knows what will befall this little settlement? It may be swept away by the savages, and it may grow to be a mighty city. It must take that chance. So must you, so must we all take chances. You are here. Find your work and do it cheerfully, honestly, and let the future take care of itself. And let me say--do not be offended--beware of idleness and drink. They are as great a danger--nay, greater than the Indians." "Miss Zane, if you were to ask me not to drink I would never touch a drop again," said Alfred, earnestly. "I did not ask that," answered Betty, flushing slightly. "But I shall remember it as a promise and some day I may ask it of you." He looked wonderingly at the girl beside him. He had spent most of his life among educated and cultured people. He had passed several years in the backwoods. But with all his experience with people he had to confess that this young woman was as a revelation to him. She could ride like an Indian and shoot like a hunter. He had heard that she could run almost as swiftly as her brothers. Evidently she feared nothing, for he had just seen an example of her courage in a deed that had tried even his own nerve, and, withal, she was a bright, happy girl, earnest and true, possessing all the softer graces of his sisters, and that exquisite touch of feminine delicacy and refinement which appeals more to men than any other virtue. "Have you not met Mr. Miller before he came here from Fort Pitt?" asked Betty. "Why do you ask?" "I think he mentioned something of the kind." "What else did he say?" "Why--Mr. Clarke, I hardly remember." "I see," said Alfred, his face darkening. "He has talked about me. I do not care what he said. I knew him at Fort Pitt, and we had trouble there. I venture to say he has told no one about it. He certainly would not shine in the story. But I am not a tattler." "It is not very difficult to see that you do not like him. Jonathan does not, either. He says Mr. Miller was friendly with McKee, and the notorious Simon Girty, the soldiers who deserted from Fort Pitt and went to the Indians. The girls like him however." "Usually if a man is good looking and pleasant that is enough for the girls. I noticed that he paid you a great deal of attention at the dance. He danced three times with you." "Did he? How observing you are," said Betty, giving him a little sidelong glance. "Well, he is very agreeable, and he dances better than many of the young men." "I wonder if Wetzel got the turkey. I have heard no more shots," said Alfred, showing plainly that he wished to change the subject. "Oh, look there! Quick!" exclaimed Betty, pointing toward the hillside. He looked in the direction indicated and saw a doe and a spotted fawn wading into the shallow water. The mother stood motionless a moment, with head erect and long ears extended. Then she drooped her graceful head and drank thirstily of the cool water. The fawn splashed playfully round while its mother was drinking. It would dash a few paces into the stream and then look back to see if its mother approved. Evidently she did not, for she would stop her drinking and call the fawn back to her side with a soft, crooning noise. Suddenly she raised her head, the long ears shot up, and she seemed to sniff the air. She waded through the deeper water to get round a rocky bluff which ran out into the creek. Then she turned and called the little one. The fawn waded until the water reached its knees, then stopped and uttered piteous little bleats. Encouraged by the soft crooning it plunged into the deep water and with great splashing and floundering managed to swim the short distance. Its slender legs shook as it staggered up the bank. Exhausted or frightened, it shrank close to its mother. Together they disappeared in the willows which fringed the side of the hill. "Was not that little fellow cute? I have had several fawns, but have never had the heart to keep them," said Betty. Then, as Alfred made no motion to speak, she continued: "You do not seem very talkative." "I have nothing to say. You will think me dull. The fact is when I feel deepest I am least able to express myself." "I will read to you." said Betty taking up the book. He lay back against the grassy bank and gazed dreamily at the many hued trees on the little hillside; at the bare rugged sides of McColloch's Rock which frowned down upon them. A silver-breasted eagle sailed slowly round and round in the blue sky, far above the bluff. Alfred wondered what mysterious power sustained that solitary bird as he floated high in the air without perceptible movement of his broad wings. He envied the king of birds his reign over that illimitable space, his far-reaching vision, and his freedom. Round and round the eagle soared, higher and higher, with each perfect circle, and at last, for an instant poising as lightly as if he were about to perch on his lonely crag, he arched his wings and swooped down through the air with the swiftness of a falling arrow. Betty's low voice, the water rushing so musically over the falls, the great yellow leaves falling into the pool, the gentle breeze stirring the clusters of goldenrod--all came softly to Alfred as he lay there with half closed eyes. The time slipped swiftly by as only such time can. "I fear the melancholy spirit of the day has prevailed upon you," said Betty, half wistfully. "You did not know I had stopped reading, and I do not believe you heard my favorite poem. I have tried to give you a pleasant afternoon and have failed." "No, no," said Alfred, looking at her with a blue flame in his eyes. "The afternoon has been perfect. I have forgotten my role, and have allowed you to see my real self, something I have tried to hide from all." "And are you always sad when you are sincere?" "Not always. But I am often sad. Is it any wonder? Is not all nature sad? Listen! There is the song of the oriole. Breaking in on the stillness it is mournful. The breeze is sad, the brook is sad, this dying Indian summer day is sad. Life itself is sad." "Oh, no. Life is beautiful." "You are a child," said he, with a thrill in his deep voice "I hope you may always be as you are to-day, in heart, at least." "It grows late. See, the shadows are falling. We must go." "You know I am going away to-morrow. I don't want to go. Perhaps that is why I have been such poor company today. I have a presentiment of evil I am afraid I may never come back." "I am sorry you must go." "Do you really mean that?" asked Alfred, earnestly, bending toward her "You know it is a very dangerous undertaking. Would you care if I never returned?" She looked up and their eyes met. She had raised her head haughtily, as if questioning his right to speak to her in that manner, but as she saw the unspoken appeal in his eyes her own wavered and fell while a warm color crept into her cheek. "Yes, I would be sorry," she said, gravely. Then, after a moment: "You must portage the canoe round the falls, and from there we can paddle back to the path." The return trip made, they approached the house. As they turned the corner they saw Colonel Zane standing at the door talking to Wetzel. They saw that the Colonel looked pale and distressed, and the face of the hunter was dark and gloomy. "Lew, did you get my turkey?" said Betty, after a moment of hesitation. A nameless fear filled her breast. For answer Wetzel threw back the flaps of his coat and there at his belt hung a small tuft of black hair. Betty knew at once it was the scalp-lock of an Indian. Her face turned white and she placed a hand on the hunter's arm. "What do you mean? That is an Indian's scalp. Lew, you look so strange. Tell me, is it because we went off in the canoe and have been in danger?" "Betty, Isaac has been captured again," said the Colonel. "Oh, no, no, no," cried Betty in agonized tones, and wringing her hands. Then, excitedly, "Something can be done; you must pursue them. Oh, Lew, Mr. Clarke, cannot you rescue him? They have not had time to go far." "Isaac went to the chestnut grove this morning. If he had stayed there he would not have been captured. But he went far into the Black Forest. The turkey call we heard across the creek was made by a Wyandot concealed in the cave. Lewis tells me that a number of Indians have camped there for days. He shot the one who was calling and followed the others until he found where they had taken Isaac's trail." Betty turned to the younger man with tearful eyes, and with beseeching voice implored them to save her brother. "I am ready to follow you," said Clarke to Wetzel. The hunter shook his head, but did not answer. "It is that hateful White Crane," passionately burst out Betty, as the Colonel's wife led her weeping into the house. "Did you get more than one shot at them?" asked Clarke. The hunter nodded, and the slight, inscrutable smile flitted across his stern features. He never spoke of his deeds. For this reason many of the thrilling adventures which he must have had will forever remain unrevealed. That evening there was sadness at Colonel Zane's supper table. They felt the absence of the Colonel's usual spirits, his teasing of Betty, and his cheerful conversation. He had nothing to say. Betty sat at the table a little while, and then got up and left the room saying she could not eat. Jonathan, on hearing of his brother's recapture, did not speak, but retired in gloomy silence. Silas was the only one of the family who was not utterly depressed. He said it could have been a great deal worse; that they must make the best of it, and that the sooner Isaac married his Indian Princess the better for his scalp and for the happiness of all concerned. "I remember Myeerah very well," he said. "It was eight years ago, and she was only a child. Even then she was very proud and willful, and the loveliest girl I ever laid eyes on." Alfred Clarke staid late at Colonel Zane's that night. Before going away for so many weeks he wished to have a few more moments alone with Betty. But a favorable opportunity did not present itself during the evening, so when he had bade them all goodbye and goodnight, except Betty, who opened the door for him, he said softly to her: "It is bright moonlight outside. Come, please, and walk to the gate with me." A full moon shone serenely down on hill and dale, flooding the valley with its pure white light and bathing the pastures in its glory; at the foot of the bluff the waves of the river gleamed like myriads of stars all twinkling and dancing on a bed of snowy clouds. Thus illumined the river wound down the valley, its brilliance growing fainter and fainter until at last, resembling the shimmering of a silver thread which joined the earth to heaven, it disappeared in the horizon. "I must say goodbye," said Alfred, as they reached the gate. "Friends must part. I am sorry you must go, Mr. Clarke, and I trust you may return safe. It seems only yesterday that you saved my brother's life, and I was so grateful and happy. Now he is gone." "You should not think about it so much nor brood over it," answered the young man. "Grieving will not bring him back nor do you any good. It is not nearly so bad as if he had been captured by some other tribe. Wetzel assures us that Isaac was taken alive. Please do not grieve." "I have cried until I cannot cry any more. I am so unhappy. We were children together, and I have always loved him better than any one since my mother died. To have him back again and then to lose him! Oh! I cannot bear it." She covered her face with her hands and a low sob escaped her. "Don't, don't grieve," he said in an unsteady voice, as he took the little hands in his and pulled them away from her face. Betty trembled. Something in his voice, a tone she had never heard before startled her. She looked up at him half unconscious that he still held her hands in his. Never had she appeared so lovely. "You cannot understand my feelings." "I loved my mother." "But you have not lost her. That makes all the difference." "I want to comfort you and I am powerless. I am unable to say what--I--" He stopped short. As he stood gazing down into her sweet face, burning, passionate words came to his lips; but he was dumb; he could not speak. All day long he had been living in a dream. Now he realized that but a moment remained for him to be near the girl he loved so well. He was leaving her, perhaps never to see her again, or to return to find her another's. A fierce pain tore his heart. "You--you are holding my hands," faltered Betty, in a doubtful, troubled voice. She looked up into his face and saw that it was pale with suppressed emotion. Alfred was mad indeed. He forgot everything. In that moment the world held nothing for him save that fair face. Her eyes, uplifted to his in the moonlight, beamed with a soft radiance. They were honest eyes, just now filled with innocent sadness and regret, but they drew him with irresistible power. Without realizing in the least what he was doing he yielded to the impulse. Bending his head he kissed the tremulous lips. "Oh," whispered Betty, standing still as a statue and looking at him with wonderful eyes. Then, as reason returned, a hot flush dyed her face, and wrenching her hands free she struck him across the cheek. "For God's sake, Betty, I did not mean to do that! Wait. I have something to tell you. For pity's sake, let me explain," he cried, as the full enormity of his offence dawned upon him. Betty was deaf to the imploring voice, for she ran into the house and slammed the door. He called to her, but received no answer. He knocked on the door, but it remained closed. He stood still awhile, trying to collect his thoughts, and to find a way to undo the mischief he had wrought. When the real significance of his act came to him he groaned in spirit. What a fool he had been! Only a few short hours and he must start on a perilous journey, leaving the girl he loved in ignorance of his real intentions. Who was to tell her that he loved her? Who was to tell her that it was because his whole heart and soul had gone to her that he had kissed her? With bowed head he slowly walked away toward the fort, totally oblivious of the fact that a young girl, with hands pressed tightly over her breast to try to still a madly beating heart, watched him from her window until he disappeared into the shadow of the block-house. Alfred paced up and down his room the four remaining hours of that eventful day. When the light was breaking in at the east and dawn near at hand he heard the rough voices of men and the tramping of iron-shod hoofs. The hour of his departure was at hand. He sat down at his table and by the aid of the dim light from a pine knot he wrote a hurried letter to Betty. A little hope revived in his heart as he thought that perhaps all might yet be well. Surely some one would be up to whom he could intrust the letter, and if no one he would run over and slip it under the door of Colonel Zane's house. In the gray of the early morning Alfred rode out with the daring band of heavily armed men, all grim and stern, each silent with the thought of the man who knows he may never return. Soon the settlement was left far behind. CHAPTER V. During the last few days, in which the frost had cracked open the hickory nuts, and in which the squirrels had been busily collecting and storing away their supply of nuts for winter use, it had been Isaac's wont to shoulder his rifle, walk up the hill, and spend the morning in the grove. On this crisp autumn morning he had started off as usual, and had been called back by Col. Zane, who advised him not to wander far from the settlement. This admonition, kind and brotherly though it was, annoyed Isaac. Like all the Zanes he had born in him an intense love for the solitude of the wilderness. There were times when nothing could satisfy him but the calm of the deep woods. One of these moods possessed him now. Courageous to a fault and daring where daring was not always the wiser part, Isaac lacked the practical sense of the Colonel and the cool judgment of Jonathan. Impatient of restraint, independent in spirit, and it must be admitted, in his persistence in doing as he liked instead of what he ought to do, he resembled Betty more than he did his brothers. Feeling secure in his ability to take care of himself, for he knew he was an experienced hunter and woodsman, he resolved to take a long tramp in the forest. This resolution was strengthened by the fact that he did not believe what the Colonel and Jonathan had told him--that it was not improbable some of the Wyandot braves were lurking in the vicinity, bent on killing or recapturing him. At any rate he did not fear it. Once in the shade of the great trees the fever of discontent left him, and, forgetting all except the happiness of being surrounded by the silent oaks, he penetrated deeper and deeper into the forest. The brushing of a branch against a tree, the thud of a falling nut, the dart of a squirrel, and the sight of a bushy tail disappearing round a limb--all these things which indicated that the little gray fellows were working in the tree-tops, and which would usually have brought Isaac to a standstill, now did not seem to interest him. At times he stooped to examine the tender shoots growing at the foot of a sassafras tree. Then, again, he closely examined marks he found in the soft banks of the streams. He went on and on. Two hours of this still-hunting found him on the bank of a shallow gully through which a brook went rippling and babbling over the mossy green stones. The forest was dense here; rugged oaks and tall poplars grew high over the tops of the first growth of white oaks and beeches; the wild grapevines which coiled round the trees like gigantic serpents, spread out in the upper branches and obscured the sun; witch-hopples and laurel bushes grew thickly; monarchs of the forest, felled by some bygone storm, lay rotting on the ground; and in places the wind-falls were so thick and high as to be impenetrable. Isaac hesitated. He realized that he had plunged far into the Black Forest. Here it was gloomy; a dreamy quiet prevailed, that deep calm of the wilderness, unbroken save for the distant note of the hermit-thrush, the strange bird whose lonely cry, given at long intervals, pierced the stillness. Although Isaac had never seen one of these birds, he was familiar with that cry which was never heard except in the deepest woods, far from the haunts of man. A black squirrel ran down a tree and seeing the hunter scampered away in alarm. Isaac knew the habits of the black squirrel, that it was a denizen of the wildest woods and frequented only places remote from civilization. The song of the hermit and the sight of the black squirrel caused Isaac to stop and reflect, with the result that he concluded he had gone much farther from the fort than he had intended. He turned to retrace his steps when a faint sound from down the ravine came to his sharp ears. There was no instinct to warn him that a hideously painted face was raised a moment over the clump of laurel bushes to his left, and that a pair of keen eyes watched every move he made. Unconscious of impending evil Isaac stopped and looked around him. Suddenly above the musical babble of the brook and the rustle of the leaves by the breeze came a repetition of the sound. He crouched close by the trunk of a tree and strained his ears. All was quiet for some moments. Then he heard the patter, patter of little hoofs coming down the stream. Nearer and nearer they came. Sometimes they were almost inaudible and again he heard them clearly and distinctly. Then there came a splashing and the faint hollow sound caused by hard hoofs striking the stones in shallow water. Finally the sounds ceased. Cautiously peering from behind the tree Isaac saw a doe standing on the bank fifty yards down the brook. Trembling she had stopped as if in doubt or uncertainty. Her ears pointed straight upward, and she lifted one front foot from the ground like a thoroughbred pointer. Isaac knew a doe always led the way through the woods and if there were other deer they would come up unless warned by the doe. Presently the willows parted and a magnificent buck with wide spreading antlers stepped out and stood motionless on the bank. Although they were down the wind Isaac knew the deer suspected some hidden danger. They looked steadily at the clump of laurels at Isaac's left, a circumstance he remarked at the time, but did not understand the real significance of until long afterward. Following the ringing report of Isaac's rifle the buck sprang almost across the stream, leaped convulsively up the bank, reached the top, and then his strength failing, slid down into the stream, where, in his dying struggles, his hoofs beat the water into white foam. The doe had disappeared like a brown flash. Isaac, congratulating himself on such a fortunate shot--for rarely indeed does a deer fall dead in his tracks even when shot through the heart--rose from his crouching position and commenced to reload his rifle. With great care he poured the powder into the palm of his hand, measuring the quantity with his eye--for it was an evidence of a hunter's skill to be able to get the proper quantity for the ball. Then he put the charge into the barrel. Placing a little greased linsey rag, about half an inch square, over the muzzle, he laid a small lead bullet on it, and with the ramrod began to push the ball into the barrel. A slight rustle behind him, which sounded to him like the gliding of a rattlesnake over the leaves, caused him to start and turn round. But he was too late. A crushing blow on the head from a club in the hand of a brawny Indian laid him senseless on the ground. When Isaac regained his senses he felt a throbbing pain in his head, and then he opened his eyes he was so dizzy that he was unable to discern objects clearly. After a few moments his sight returned. When he had struggled to a sitting posture he discovered that his hands were bound with buckskin thongs. By his side he saw two long poles of basswood, with some strips of green bark and pieces of grapevine laced across and tied fast to the poles. Evidently this had served as a litter on which he had been carried. From his wet clothes and the position of the sun, now low in the west, he concluded he had been brought across the river and was now miles from the fort. In front of him he saw three Indians sitting before a fire. One of them was cutting thin slices from a haunch of deer meat, another was drinking from a gourd, and the third was roasting a piece of venison which he held on a sharpened stick. Isaac knew at once the Indians were Wyandots, and he saw they were in full war paint. They were not young braves, but middle aged warriors. One of them Isaac recognized as Crow, a chief of one of the Wyandot tribes, and a warrior renowned for his daring and for his ability to make his way in a straight line through the wilderness. Crow was a short, heavy Indian and his frame denoted great strength. He had a broad forehead, high cheek bones, prominent nose and his face would have been handsome and intelligent but for the scar which ran across his cheek, giving him a sinister look. "Hugh!" said Crow, as he looked up and saw Isaac staring at him. The other Indians immediately gave vent to a like exclamation. "Crow, you caught me again," said Isaac, in the Wyandot tongue, which he spoke fluently. "The white chief is sure of eye and swift of foot, but he cannot escape the Huron. Crow has been five times on his trail since the moon was bright. The white chief's eyes were shut and his ears were deaf," answered the Indian loftily. "How long have you been near the fort?" "Two moons have the warriors of Myeerah hunted the pale face." "Have you any more Indians with you?" The chief nodded and said a party of nine Wyandots had been in the vicinity of Wheeling for a month. He named some of the warriors. Isaac was surprised to learn of the renowned chiefs who had been sent to recapture him. Not to mention Crow, the Delaware chiefs Son-of-Wingenund and Wapatomeka were among the most cunning and sagacious Indians of the west. Isaac reflected that his year's absence from Myeerah had not caused her to forget him. Crow untied Isaac's hands and gave him water and venison. Then he picked up his rifle and with a word to the Indians he stepped into the underbrush that skirted the little dale, and was lost to view. Isaac's head ached and throbbed so that after he had satisfied his thirst and hunger he was glad to close his eyes and lean back against the tree. Engrossed in thoughts of the home he might never see again, he had lain there an hour without moving, when he was aroused from his meditations by low guttural exclamations from the Indians. Opening his eyes he saw Crow and another Indian enter the glade, leading and half supporting a third savage. They helped this Indian to the log, where he sat down slowly and wearily, holding one hand over his breast. He was a magnificent specimen of Indian manhood, almost a giant in stature, with broad shoulders in proportion to his height. His head-dress and the gold rings which encircled his bare muscular arms indicated that he was a chief high in power. The seven eagle plumes in his scalp-lock represented seven warriors that he had killed in battle. Little sticks of wood plaited in his coal black hair and painted different colors showed to an Indian eye how many times this chief had been wounded by bullet, knife, or tomahawk. His face was calm. If he suffered he allowed no sign of it to escape him. He gazed thoughtfully into the fire, slowly the while untying the belt which contained his knife and tomahawk. The weapons were raised and held before him, one in each hand, and then waved on high. The action was repeated three times. Then slowly and reluctantly the Indian lowered them as if he knew their work on earth was done. It was growing dark and the bright blaze from the camp fire lighted up the glade, thus enabling Isaac to see the drooping figure on the log, and in the background Crow, holding a whispered consultation with the other Indians. Isaac heard enough of the colloquy to guess the facts. The chief had been desperately rounded; the palefaces were on their trail, and a march must be commenced at once. Isaac knew the wounded chief. He was the Delaware Son-of-Wingenund. He married a Wyandot squaw, had spent much of his time in the Wyandot village and on warring expeditions which the two friendly nations made on other tribes. Isaac had hunted with him, slept under the same blanket with him, and had grown to like him. As Isaac moved slightly in his position the chief saw him. He straightened up, threw back the hunting shirt and pointed to a small hole in his broad breast. A slender stream of blood issued from the wound and flowed down his chest. "Wind-of-Death is a great white chief. His gun is always loaded," he said calmly, and a look of pride gleamed across his dark face, as though he gloried in the wound made by such a warrior. "Deathwind" was one of the many names given to Wetzel by the savages, and a thrill of hope shot through Isaac's heart when he saw the Indians feared Wetzel was on their track. This hope was short lived, however, for when he considered the probabilities of the thing he knew that pursuit would only result in his death before the settlers could come up with the Indians, and he concluded that Wetzel, familiar with every trick of the redmen, would be the first to think of the hopelessness of rescuing him and so would not attempt it. The four Indians now returned to the fire and stood beside the chief. It was evident to them that his end was imminent. He sang in a low, not unmusical tone the death-chant of the Hurons. His companions silently bowed their heads. When he had finished singing he slowly rose to his great height, showing a commanding figure. Slowly his features lost their stern pride, his face softened, and his dark eyes, gazing straight into the gloom of the forest, bespoke a superhuman vision. "Wingenund has been a great chief. He has crossed his last trail. The deeds of Wingenund will be told in the wigwams of the Lenape," said the chief in a loud voice, and then sank back into the arms of his comrades. They laid him gently down. A convulsive shudder shook the stricken warrior's frame. Then, starting up he straightened out his long arm and clutched wildly at the air with his sinewy fingers as if to grasp and hold the life that was escaping him. Isaac could see the fixed, sombre light in the eyes, and the pallor of death stealing over the face of the chief. He turned his eyes away from the sad spectacle, and when he looked again the majestic figure lay still. The moon sailed out from behind a cloud and shed its mellow light down on the little glade. It showed the four Indians digging a grave beneath the oak tree. No word was spoken. They worked with their tomahawks on the soft duff and soon their task was completed. A bed of moss and ferns lined the last resting place of the chief. His weapons were placed beside him, to go with him to the Happy Hunting Ground, the eternal home of the redmen, where the redmen believe the sun will always shine, and where they will be free from their cruel white foes. When the grave had been filled and the log rolled on it the Indians stood by it a moment, each speaking a few words in a low tone, while the night wind moaned the dead chief's requiem through the tree tops. Accustomed as Isaac was to the bloody conflicts common to the Indians, and to the tragedy that surrounded the life of a borderman, the ghastly sight had unnerved him. The last glimpse of that stern, dark face, of that powerful form, as the moon brightened up the spot in seeming pity, he felt he could never forget. His thoughts were interrupted by the harsh voice of Crow bidding him get up. He was told that the slightest inclination on his part to lag behind on the march before them, or in any way to make their trail plainer, would be the signal for his death. With that Crow cut the thongs which bound Isaac's legs and placing him between two of the Indians, led the way into the forest. Moving like spectres in the moonlight they marched on and on for hours. Crow was well named. He led them up the stony ridges where their footsteps left no mark, and where even a dog could not find their trail; down into the valleys and into the shallow streams where the running water would soon wash away all trace of their tracks; then out on the open plain, where the soft, springy grass retained little impress of their moccasins. Single file they marched in the leader's tracks as he led them onward through the dark forests, out under the shining moon, never slacking his rapid pace, ever in a straight line, and yet avoiding the roughest going with that unerring instinct which was this Indian's gift. Toward dawn the moon went down, leaving them in darkness, but this made no difference, for, guided by the stars, Crow kept straight on his course. Not till break of day did he come to a halt. Then, on the banks of a narrow stream, the Indians kindled a fire and broiled some of the venison. Crow told Isaac he could rest, so he made haste to avail himself of the permission, and almost instantly was wrapped in the deep slumber of exhaustion. Three of the Indians followed suit, and Crow stood guard. Sleepless, tireless, he paced to and fro on the bank his keen eyes vigilant for signs of pursuers. The sun was high when the party resumed their flight toward the west. Crow plunged into the brook and waded several miles before he took to the woods on the other shore. Isaac suffered severely from the sharp and slippery stones, which in no wise bothered the Indians. His feet were cut and bruised; still he struggled on without complaining. They rested part of the night, and the next day the Indians, now deeming themselves practically safe from pursuit, did not exercise unusual care to conceal their trail. That evening about dusk they came to a rapidly flowing stream which ran northwest. Crow and one of the other Indians parted the willows on the bank at this point and dragged forth a long birch-bark canoe which they ran into the stream. Isaac recognized the spot. It was near the head of Mad River, the river which ran through the Wyandot settlements. Two of the Indians took the bow, the third Indian and Isaac sat in the middle, back to back, and Crow knelt in the stern. Once launched on that wild ride Isaac forgot his uneasiness and his bruises. The night was beautiful; he loved the water, and was not lacking in sentiment. He gave himself up to the charm of the silver moonlight, of the changing scenery, and the musical gurgle of the water. Had it not been for the cruel face of Crow, he could have imagined himself on one of those enchanted canoes in fairyland, of which he had read when a boy. Ever varying pictures presented themselves at the range, impelled by vigorous arms, flew over the shining bosom of the stream. Here, in a sharp bend, was a narrow place where the trees on each bank interlaced their branches and hid the moon, making a dark and dim retreat. Then came a short series of ripples, with merry, bouncing waves and foamy currents; below lay a long, smooth reach of water, deep and placid, mirroring the moon and the countless stars. Noiseless as a shadow the canoe glided down this stretch, the paddle dipping regularly, flashing brightly, and scattering diamond drops in the clear moonlight. Another turn in the stream and a sound like the roar of an approaching storm as it is borne on a rising wind, broke the silence. It was the roar of rapids or falls. The stream narrowed; the water ran swifter; rocky ledges rose on both sides, gradually getting higher and higher. Crow rose to his feet and looked ahead. Then he dropped to his knees and turned the head of the canoe into the middle of the stream. The roar became deafening. Looking forward Isaac saw that they were entering a dark gorge. In another moment the canoe pitched over a fall and shot between two high, rocky bluffs. These walls ran up almost perpendicularly two hundred feet; the space between was scarcely twenty feet wide, and the water fairly screamed as it rushed madly through its narrow passage. In the center it was like a glancing sheet of glass, weird and dark, and was bordered on the sides by white, seething foam-capped waves which tore and dashed and leaped at their stony confines. Though the danger was great, though Death lurked in those jagged stones and in those black waits Isaac felt no fear, he knew the strength of that arm, now rigid and again moving with lightning swiftness; he knew the power of the eye which guided them. Once more out under the starry sky; rifts, shallows, narrows, and lake-like basins were passed swiftly. At length as the sky was becoming gray in the east, they passed into the shadow of what was called the Standing Stone. This was a peculiarly shaped stone-faced bluff, standing high over the river, and taking its name from Tarhe, or Standing Stone, chief of all the Hurons. At the first sight of that well known landmark, which stood by the Wyandot village, there mingled with Isaac's despondency and resentment some other feeling that was akin to pleasure; with a quickening of the pulse came a confusion of expectancy and bitter memories as he thought of the dark eyed maiden from whom he had fled a year ago. "Co-wee-Co-woe," called out one of the Indians in the bow of the canoe. The signal was heard, for immediately an answering shout came from the shore. When a few moments later the canoe grated softly on a pebbly beach. Isaac saw, indistinctly in the morning mist, the faint outlines of tepees and wigwams, and he knew he was once more in the encampment of the Wyandots. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Late in the afternoon of that day Isaac was awakened from his heavy slumber and told that the chief had summoned him. He got up from the buffalo robes upon which he had flung himself that morning, stretched his aching limbs, and walked to the door of the lodge. The view before him was so familiar that it seemed as if he had suddenly come home after being absent a long time. The last rays of the setting sun shone ruddy and bright over the top of the Standing Stone; they touched the scores of lodges and wigwams which dotted the little valley; they crimsoned the swift, narrow river, rushing noisily over its rocky bed. The banks of the stream were lined with rows of canoes; here and there a bridge made of a single tree spanned the stream. From the camp fires long, thin columns of blue smoke curled lazily upward; giant maple trees, in them garb of purple and gold, rose high above the wigwams, adding a further beauty to this peaceful scene. As Isaac was led down a lane between two long lines of tepees the watching Indians did not make the demonstration that usually marked the capture of a paleface. Some of the old squaws looked up from their work round the campfires and steaming kettles and grinned as the prisoner passed. The braves who were sitting upon their blankets and smoking their long pipes, or lounging before the warm blazes maintained a stolid indifference; the dusky maidens smiled shyly, and the little Indian boys, with whom Isaac had always been a great favorite, manifested their joy by yelling and running after him. One youngster grasped Isaac round the leg and held on until he was pulled away. In the center of the village were several lodges connected with one another and larger and more imposing than the surrounding tepees. These were the wigwams of the chief, and thither Isaac was conducted. The guards led him to a large and circular apartment and left him there alone. This room was the council-room. It contained nothing but a low seat and a knotted war-club. Isaac heard the rattle of beads and bear claws, and as he turned a tall and majestic Indian entered the room. It was Tarhe, the chief of all the Wyandots. Though Tarhe was over seventy, he walked erect; his calm face, dark as a bronze mask, showed no trace of his advanced age. Every line and feature of his face had race in it; the high forehead, the square, protruding jaw, the stern mouth, the falcon eyes--all denoted the pride and unbending will of the last of the Tarhes. "The White Eagle is again in the power of Tarhe," said the chief in his native tongue. "Though he had the swiftness of the bounding deer or the flight of the eagle it would avail him not. The wild geese as they fly northward are not swifter than the warriors of Tarhe. Swifter than all is the vengeance of the Huron. The young paleface has cost the lives of some great warriors. What has he to say?" "It was not my fault," answered Isaac quickly. "I was struck down from behind and had no chance to use a weapon. I have never raised my hand against a Wyandot. Crow will tell you that. If my people and friends kill your braves I am not to blame. Yet I have had good cause to shed Huron blood. Your warriors have taken me from my home and have wounded me many times." "The White Chief speaks well. Tarhe believes his words," answered Tarhe in his sonorous voice. "The Lenapee seek the death of the pale face. Wingenund grieves for his son. He is Tarhe's friend. Tarhe is old and wise and he is king here. He can save the White Chief from Wingenund and Cornplanter. Listen. Tarhe is old and he has no son. He will make you a great chief and give you lands and braves and honors. He shall not ask you to raise your hand against your people, but help to bring peace. Tarhe does not love this war. He wants only justice. He wants only to keep his lands, his horses, and his people. The White Chief is known to be brave; his step is light, his eye is keen, and his bullet is true. For many long moons Tarhe's daughter has been like the singing bird without its mate. She sings no more. She shall be the White Chief's wife. She has the blood of her mother and not that of the last of the Tarhes. Thus the mistakes of Tarhe's youth come to disappoint his old age. He is the friend of the young paleface. Tarhe has said. Now go and make your peace with Myeerah." The chief motioned toward the back of the lodge. Isaac stepped forward and went through another large room, evidently the chief's, as it was fitted up with a wild and barbaric splendor. Isaac hesitated before a bearskin curtain at the farther end of the chief's lodge. He had been there many times before, but never with such conflicting emotions. What was it that made his heart beat faster? With a quick movement he lifted the curtain and passed under it. The room which he entered was circular in shape and furnished with all the bright colors and luxuriance known to the Indian. Buffalo robes covered the smooth, hard-packed clay floor; animals, allegorical pictures, and fanciful Indian designs had been painted on the wall; bows and arrows, shields, strings of bright-colored beads and Indian scarfs hung round the room. The wall was made of dried deerskins sewed together and fastened over long poles which were planted in the ground and bent until the ends met overhead. An oval-shaped opening let in the light. Through a narrow aperture, which served as a door leading to a smaller apartment, could be seen a low couch covered with red blankets, and a glimpse of many hued garments hanging on the wall. As Isaac entered the room a slender maiden ran impulsively to him and throwing her arms round his neck hid her face on his breast. A few broken, incoherent words escaped her lips. Isaac disengaged himself from the clinging arms and put her from him. The face raised to his was strikingly beautiful. Oval in shape, it was as white as his own, with a broad, low brow and regular features. The eyes were large and dark and they dilated and quickened with a thousand shadows of thought. "Myeerah, I am taken again. This time there has been blood shed. The Delaware chief was killed, and I do not know how many more Indians. The chiefs are all for putting me to death. I am in great danger. Why could you not leave me in peace?" At his first words the maiden sighed and turned sorrowfully and proudly away from the angry face of the young man. A short silence ensued. "Then you are not glad to see Myeerah?" she said, in English. Her voice was music. It rang low, sweet, clear-toned as a bell. "What has that to do with it? Under some circumstances I would be glad to see you. But to be dragged back here and perhaps murdered--no, I don't welcome it. Look at this mark where Crow hit me," said Isaac, passionately, bowing his head to enable her to see the bruise where the club had struck him. "I am sorry," said Myeerah, gently. "I know that I am in great danger from the Delawares." "The daughter of Tarhe has saved your life before and will save it again." "They may kill me in spite of you." "They will not dare. Do not forget that I saved you from the Shawnees. What did my father say to you?" "He assured me that he was my friend and that he would protect me from Wingenund. But I must marry you and become one of the tribe. I cannot do that. And that is why I am sure they will kill me." "You are angry now. I will tell you. Myeerah tried hard to win your love, and when you ran away from her she was proud for a long time. But there was no singing of birds, no music of the waters, no beauty in anything after you left her. Life became unbearable without you. Then Myeerah remembered that she was a daughter of kings. She summoned the bravest and greatest warriors of two tribes and said to them. 'Go and bring to me the paleface, White Eagle. Bring him to me alive or dead. If alive, Myeerah will smile once more upon her warriors. If dead, she will look once upon his face and die. Ever since Myeerah was old enough to remember she has thought of you. Would you wish her to be inconstant, like the moon?'" "It is not what I wish you to be. It is that I cannot live always without seeing my people. I told you that a year ago." "You told me other things in that past time before you ran away. They were tender words that were sweet to the ear of the Indian maiden. Have you forgotten them?" "I have not forgotten them. I am not without feeling. You do not understand. Since I have been home this last time, I have realized more than ever that I could not live away from my home." "Is there any maiden in your old home whom you have learned to love more than Myeerah?" He did not reply, but looked gloomily out of the opening in the wall. Myeerah had placed her hold upon his arm, and as he did not answer the hand tightened its grasp. "She shall never have you." The low tones vibrated with intense feeling, with a deathless resolve. Isaac laughed bitterly and looked up at her. Myeerah's face was pale and her eyes burned like fire. "I should not be surprised if you gave me up to the Delawares," said Isaac, coldly. "I am prepared for it, and I would not care very much. I have despaired of your ever becoming civilized enough to understand the misery of my sister and family. Why not let the Indians kill me?" He knew how to wound her. A quick, shuddery cry broke from her lips. She stood before him with bowed head and wept. When she spoke again her voice was broken and pleading. "You are cruel and unjust. Though Myeerah has Indian blood she is a white woman. She can feel as your people do. In your anger and bitterness you forget that Myeerah saved you from the knife of the Shawnees. You forget her tenderness; you forget that she nursed you when you were wounded. Myeerah has a heart to break. Has she not suffered? Is she not laughed at, scorned, called a 'paleface' by the other tribes? She thanks the Great Spirit for the Indian blood that keep her true. The white man changes his loves and his wives. That is not an Indian gift." "No, Myeerah, I did not say so. There is no other woman. It is that I am wretched and sick at heart. Do you not see that this will end in a tragedy some day? Can you not realize that we would be happier if you would let me go? If you love me you would not want to see me dead. If I do not marry you they will kill me; if I try to escape again they win kill me. Let me go free." "I cannot! I cannot!" she cried. "You have taught me many of the ways of your people, but you cannot change my nature." "Why cannot you free me?" "I love you, and I will not live without you." "Then come and go to my home and live there with me," said Isaac, taking the weeping maiden in his arms. "I know that my people will welcome you." "Myeerah would be pitied and scorned," she said, sadly, shaking her head. Isaac tried hard to steel his heart against her, but he was only mortal and he failed. The charm of her presence influenced him; her love wrung tenderness from him. Those dark eyes, so proud to all others, but which gazed wistfully and yearningly into his, stirred his heart to its depths. He kissed the tear-wet cheeks and smiled upon her. "Well, since I am a prisoner once more, I must make the best of it. Do not look so sad. We shall talk of this another day. Come, let us go and find my little friend, Captain Jack. He remembered me, for he ran out and grasped my knee and they pulled him away." CHAPTER VI. When the first French explorers invaded the northwest, about the year 1615, the Wyandot Indians occupied the territory between Georgian Bay and the Muskoka Lakes in Ontario. These Frenchmen named the tribe Huron because of the manner in which they wore their hair. At this period the Hurons were at war with the Iroquois, and the two tribes kept up a bitter fight until in 1649, when the Hurons suffered a decisive defeat. They then abandoned their villages and sought other hunting grounds. They travelled south and settled in Ohio along the south and west shores of Lake Erie. The present site of Zanesfield, named from Isaac Zane, marks the spot where the largest tribe of Hurons once lived. In a grove of maples on the banks of a swift little river named Mad River, the Hurons built their lodges and their wigwams. The stately elk and graceful deer abounded in this fertile valley, and countless herds of bison browsed upon the uplands. There for many years the Hurons lived a peaceful and contented life. The long war cry was not heard. They were at peace with the neighboring tribes. Tarhe, the Huron chief, attained great influence with the Delawares. He became a friend of Logan, the Mingo chief. With the invasion of the valley of the Ohio by the whites, with the march into the wilderness of that wild-turkey breed of heroes of which Boone, Kenton, the Zanes, and the Wetzels were the first, the Indian's nature gradually changed until he became a fierce and relentless foe. The Hurons had sided with the French in Pontiac's war, and in the Revolution they aided the British. They allied themselves with the Mingoes, Delawares and Shawnees and made a fierce war on the Virginian pioneers. Some powerful influence must have engendered this implacable hatred in these tribes, particularly in the Mingo and the Wyandot. The war between the Indians and the settlers along the Pennsylvania and West Virginia borders was known as "Dunmore's War." The Hurons, Mingoes, and Delawares living in the "hunter's paradise" west of the Ohio River, seeing their land sold by the Iroquois and the occupation of their possessions by a daring band of white men naturally were filled with fierce anger and hate. But remembering the past bloody war and British punishment they slowly moved backward toward the setting sun and kept the peace. In 1774 a canoe filled with friendly Wyandots was attacked by white men below Yellow Creek and the Indians were killed. Later the same year a party of men under Colonel Cresop made an unprovoked and dastardly massacre of the family and relatives of Logan. This attack reflected the deepest dishonor upon all the white men concerned, and was the principal cause of the long and bloody war which followed. The settlers on the border sent messengers to Governor Dunmore at Williamsburg for immediate relief parties. Knowing well that the Indians would not allow this massacre to go unavenged the frontiersmen erected forts and blockhouses. Logan, the famous Mingo chief, had been a noted friend of the white men. After the murder of his people he made ceaseless war upon them. He incited the wrath of the Hurons and the Delawares. He went on the warpath, and when his lust for vengeance had been satisfied he sent the following remarkable address to Lord Dunmore: "I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin and he gave him not meat: if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate of peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as they passed and said: 'Logan is the friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have lived with you but for the injuries of one man, Colonel Cresop, who, last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relatives of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called upon me for vengeance. I have sought it: I have killed many; I have glutted my vengeance. For my country I will rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear; he could not turn upon his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one." The war between the Indians and the pioneers was waged for years. The settlers pushed farther and farther into the wilderness. The Indians, who at first sought only to save their farms and their stock, now fought for revenge. That is why every ambitious pioneer who went out upon those borders carried his life in his hands; why there was always the danger of being shot or tomahawked from behind every tree; why wife and children were constantly in fear of the terrible enemy. To creep unawares upon a foe and strike him in the dark was Indian warfare; to an Indian it was not dishonorable; it was not cowardly. He was taught to hide in the long grass like a snake, to shoot from coverts, to worm his way stealthily through the dense woods and to ambush the paleface's trail. Horrible cruelties, such as torturing white prisoners and burning them at the stake were never heard of before the war made upon the Indians by the whites. Comparatively little is known of the real character of the Indian of that time. We ourselves sit before our warm fires and talk of the deeds of the redman. We while away an hour by reading Pontiac's siege of Detroit, of the battle of Braddock's fields, and of Custer's last charge. We lay the book down with a fervent expression of thankfulness that the day of the horrible redman is past. Because little has been written on the subject, no thought is given to the long years of deceit and treachery practiced upon Pontiac; we are ignorant of the causes which led to the slaughter of Braddock's army, and we know little of the life of bitterness suffered by Sitting Bull. Many intelligent white men, who were acquainted with the true life of the Indian before he was harassed and driven to desperation by the pioneers, said that he had been cruelly wronged. Many white men in those days loved the Indian life so well that they left the settlements and lived with the Indians. Boone, who knew the Indian nature, said the honesty and the simplicity of the Indian were remarkable. Kenton said he had been happy among the Indians. Col. Zane had many Indian friends. Isaac Zane, who lived most of his life with the Wyandots, said the American redman had been wrongfully judged a bloodthirsty savage, an ignorant, thieving wretch, capable of not one virtue. He said the free picturesque life of the Indians would have appealed to any white man; that it had a wonderful charm, and that before the war with the whites the Indians were kind to their prisoners, and sought only to make Indians of them. He told tales of how easily white boys become Indianized, so attached to the wild life and freedom of the redmen that it was impossible to get the captives to return to civilized life. The boys had been permitted to grow wild with the Indian lads; to fish and shoot and swim with them; to play the Indian games--to live idle, joyous lives. He said these white boys had been ransomed and taken from captivity and returned to their homes and, although a close watch has kept on them, they contrived to escape and return to the Indians, and that while they were back among civilized people it was difficult to keep the boys dressed. In summer time it was useless to attempt it. The strongest hemp-linen shirts, made with the strongest collar and wrist-band, would directly be torn off and the little rascals found swimming in the river or rolling on the sand. If we may believe what these men have said--and there seems no good reason why we may not--the Indian was very different from the impression given of him. There can be little doubt that the redman once lived a noble and blameless life; that he was simple, honest and brave, that he had a regard for honor and a respect for a promise far exceeding that of most white men. Think of the beautiful poetry and legends left by these silent men: men who were a part of the woods; men whose music was the sighing of the wind, the rustling of the leaf, the murmur of the brook; men whose simple joys were the chase of the stag, and the light in the dark eye of a maiden. If we wish to find the highest type of the American Indian we must look for him before he was driven west by the land-seeking pioneer and before he was degraded by the rum-selling French trader. The French claimed all the land watered by the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The French Canadian was a restless, roaming adventurer and he found his vocation in the fur-trade. This fur-trade engendered a strange class of men--bush-rangers they were called--whose work was to paddle the canoe along the lakes and streams and exchange their cheap rum for the valuable furs of the Indians. To these men the Indians of the west owe their degradation. These bush-rangers or coureurs-des-bois, perverted the Indians and sank into barbarism with them. The few travellers there in those days were often surprised to find in the wigwams of the Indians men who acknowledged the blood of France, yet who had lost all semblance to the white man. They lived in their tepee with their Indian squaws and lolled on their blankets while the squaws cooked their venison and did all the work. They let their hair grow long and wore feathers in it; they painted their faces hideously with ochre and vermilion. These were the worthless traders and adventurers who, from the year 1748 to 1783, encroached on the hunting grounds of the Indians and explored the wilderness, seeking out the remote tribes and trading the villainous rum for the rare pelts. In 1784 the French authorities, realizing that these vagrants were demoralizing the Indians, warned them to get off the soil. Finding this course ineffectual they arrested those that could be apprehended and sent them to Canada. But it was too late: the harm had been done: the poor, ignorant savage had tasted of the terrible "fire-water," as he called the rum and his ruin was inevitable. It was a singular fact that almost every Indian who had once tasted strong drink, was unable to resist the desire for more. When a trader came to one of the Indian hamlets the braves purchased a keg of rum and then they held a council to see who was to get drunk and who was to keep sober. It was necessary to have some sober Indians in camp, otherwise the drunken braves would kill one another. The weapons would have to be concealed. When the Indians had finished one keg of rum they would buy another, and so on until not a beaver-skin was left. Then the trader would move or when the Indians sobered up they would be much dejected, for invariably they would find that some had been wounded, others crippled, and often several had been killed. Logan, using all his eloquence, travelled from village to village visiting the different tribes and making speeches. He urged the Indians to shun the dreaded "fire-water." He exclaimed against the whites for introducing liquor to the Indians and thus debasing them. At the same time Logan admitted his own fondness for rum. This intelligent and noble Indian was murdered in a drunken fight shortly after sending his address to Lord Dunmore. Thus it was that the poor Indians had no chance to avert their downfall; the steadily increasing tide of land-stealing settlers rolling westward, and the insidious, debasing, soul-destroying liquor were the noble redman's doom. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Isaac Zane dropped back not altogether unhappily into his old place in the wigwam, in the hunting parties, and in the Indian games. When the braves were in camp, the greatest part of the day was spent in shooting and running matches, in canoe races, in wrestling, and in the game of ball. The chiefs and the older braves who had won their laurels and the maidens of the tribe looked on and applauded. Isaac entered into all these pastimes, partly because he had a natural love for them, and partly because he wished to win the regard of the Indians. In wrestling, and in those sports which required weight and endurance, he usually suffered defeat. In a foot race there was not a brave in the entire tribe who could keep even with him. But it was with the rifle that Isaac won his greatest distinction. The Indians never learned the finer shooting with the rifle. Some few of them could shoot well, but for the most part they were poor marksmen. Accordingly, Isaac was always taken on the fall hunt. Every autumn there were three parties sent out to bring in the supply of meat for the winter. Because of Isaac's fine marksmanship he was always taken with the bear hunters. Bear hunting was exciting and dangerous work. Before the weather got very cold and winter actually set in the bears crawled into a hole in a tree or a cave in the rocks, where they hibernated. A favorite place for them was in hollow trees. When the Indians found a tree with the scratches of a bear on it and a hole large enough to admit the body of a bear, an Indian climbed up the tree and with a long pole tried to punch Bruin out of his den. Often this was a hazardous undertaking, for the bear would get angry on being disturbed in his winter sleep and would rush out before the Indian could reach a place of safety. At times there were even two or three bears in one den. Sometimes the bear would refuse to come out, and on these occasions, which were rare, the hunters would resort to fire. A piece of dry, rotten wood was fastened to a long pole and was set on fire. When this was pushed in on the bear he would give a sniff and a growl and come out in a hurry. The buffalo and elk were hunted with the bow and arrow. This effective weapon did not make a noise and frighten the game. The wary Indian crawled through the high grass until within easy range and sometimes killed several buffalo or elk before the herd became alarmed. The meat was then jerked. This consisted in cutting it into thin strips and drying it in the sun. Afterwards it was hung up in the lodges. The skins were stretched on poles to dry, and when cured they served as robes, clothing and wigwam-coverings. The Indians were fond of honey and maple sugar. The finding of a hive of bees, or a good run of maple syrup was an occasion for general rejoicing. They found the honey in hollow trees, and they obtained the maple sugar in two ways. When the sap came up in the maple trees a hole was bored in the trees about a foot from the ground and a small tube, usually made from a piece of alder, was inserted in the hole. Through this the sap was carried into a vessel which was placed under the tree. This sap was boiled down in kettles. If the Indians had no kettles they made the frost take the place of heat in preparing the sugar. They used shallow vessels made of bark, and these were filled with water and the maple sap. It was left to freeze over night and in the morning the ice was broken and thrown away. The sugar did not freeze. When this process had been repeated several times the residue was very good maple sugar. Isaac did more than his share toward the work of provisioning the village for the winter. But he enjoyed it. He was particularly fond of fishing by moonlight. Early November was the best season for this sport, and the Indians caught large numbers of fish. They placed a torch in the bow of a canoe and paddled noiselessly over the stream. In the clear water a bright light would so attract and fascinate the fish that they would lie motionless near the bottom of the shallow stream. One cold night Isaac was in the bow of the canoe. Seeing a large fish he whispered to the Indians with him to exercise caution. His guides paddled noiselessly through the water. Isaac stood up and raised the spear, ready to strike. In another second Isaac had cast the iron, but in his eagerness he overbalanced himself and plunged head first into the icy current, making a great splash and spoiling any further fishing. Incidents like this were a source of infinite amusement to the Indians. Before the autumn evenings grew too cold the Indian held their courting dances. All unmarried maidens and braves in the village were expected to take part in these dances. In the bright light of huge fires, and watched by the chiefs, the old men, the squaws, and the children, the maidens and the braves, arrayed in their gaudiest apparel, marched into the circle. They formed two lines a few paces apart. Each held in the right hand a dry gourd which contained pebbles. Advancing toward one another they sang the courting song, keeping time to the tune with the rattling of the pebbles. When they met in the center the braves bent forward and whispered a word to the maidens. At a certain point in the song, which was indicated by a louder note, the maidens would change their positions, and this was continued until every brave had whispered to every maiden, when the dance ended. Isaac took part in all these pleasures; he entered into every phase of the Indian's life; he hunted, worked, played, danced, and sang with faithfulness. But when the long, dreary winter days came with their ice-laden breezes, enforcing idleness on the Indians, he became restless. Sometimes for days he would be morose and gloomy, keeping beside his own tent and not mingling with the Indians. At such times Myeerah did not question him. Even in his happier hours his diversions were not many. He never tired of watching and studying the Indian children. When he had an opportunity without being observed, which was seldom, he amused himself with the papooses. The Indian baby was strapped to a flat piece of wood and covered with a broad flap of buckskin. The squaws hung these primitive baby carriages up on the pole of a tepee, on a branch of a tree, or threw them round anywhere. Isaac never heard a papoose cry. He often pulled down the flap of buckskin and looked at the solemn little fellow, who would stare up at him with big, wondering eyes. Isaac's most intimate friend was a six-year-old Indian boy, whom he called Captain Jack. He was the son of Thundercloud, the war-chief of the Hurons. Jack made a brave picture in his buckskin hunting suit and his war bonnet. Already he could stick tenaciously on the back of a racing mustang and with his little bow he could place arrow after arrow in the center of the target. Knowing Captain Jack would some day be a mighty chief, Isaac taught him to speak English. He endeavored to make Jack love him, so that when the lad should grow to be a man he would remember his white brother and show mercy to the prisoners who fell into his power. Another of Isaac's favorites was a half-breed Ottawa Indian, a distant relative of Tarhe's. This Indian was very old; no one knew how old; his face was seamed and scarred and wrinkled. Bent and shrunken was his form. He slept most of the time, but at long intervals he would brighten up and tell of his prowess when a warrior. One of his favorite stories was of the part he had taken in the events of that fatal and memorable July 2, 1755, when Gen. Braddock and his English army were massacred by the French and Indians near Fort Duquesne. The old chief told how Beaujeu with his Frenchmen and his five hundred Indians ambushed Braddock's army, surrounded the soldiers, fired from the ravines, the trees, the long grass, poured a pitiless hail of bullets on the bewildered British soldiers, who, unaccustomed to this deadly and unseen foe, huddled under the trees like herds of frightened sheep, and were shot down with hardly an effort to defend themselves. The old chief related that fifteen years after that battle he went to the Kanawha settlement to see the Big Chief, Gen. George Washington, who was travelling on the Kanawha. He told Gen. Washington how he had fought in the battle of Braddock's Fields; how he had shot and killed Gen. Braddock; how he had fired repeatedly at Washington, and had killed two horses under him, and how at last he came to the conclusion that Washington was protected by the Great Spirit who destined him for a great future. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Myeerah was the Indian name for a rare and beautiful bird--the white crane--commonly called by the Indians, Walk-in-the-Water. It had been the name of Tarhe's mother and grandmother. The present Myeerah was the daughter of a French woman, who had been taken captive at a very early age, adopted into the Huron tribe, and married to Tarhe. The only child of this union was Myeerah. She grew to be beautiful woman and was known in Detroit and the Canadian forts as Tarhe's white daughter. The old chief often visited the towns along the lake shore, and so proud was he of Myeerah that he always had her accompany him. White men travelled far to look at the Indian beauty. Many French soldiers wooed her in vain. Once, while Tarhe was in Detroit, a noted French family tried in every way to get possession of Myeerah. The head of this family believed he saw in Myeerah the child of his long lost daughter. Tarhe hurried away from the city and never returned to the white settlement. Myeerah was only five years old at the time of the capture of the Zane brothers and it was at this early age that she formed the attachment for Isaac Zane which clung to her all her life. She was seven when the men came from Detroit to ransom the brothers, and she showed such grief when she learned that Isaac was to be returned to his people that Tarhe refused to accept any ransom for Isaac. As Myeerah grew older her childish fancy for the white boy deepened into an intense love. But while this love tendered her inexorable to Isaac on the question of giving him his freedom, it undoubtedly saved his life as well as the lives of other white prisoners, on more than one occasion. To the white captives who fell into the hands of the Hurons, she was kind and merciful; many of the wounded she had tended with her own hands, and many poor wretches she had saved from the gauntlet and the stake. When her efforts to persuade her father to save any one were unavailing she would retire in sorrow to her lodge and remain there. Her infatuation for the White Eagle, the Huron name for Isaac, was an old story; it was known to all the tribes and had long ceased to be questioned. At first some of the Delawares and the Shawnee braves, who had failed to win Myeerah's love, had openly scorned her for her love for the pale face. The Wyandot warriors to a man worshipped her; they would have marched straight into the jaws of death at her command; they resented the insults which had been cast on their princess, and they had wiped them out in blood: now none dared taunt her. In the spring following Isaac's recapture a very serious accident befell him. He had become expert in the Indian game of ball, which is a game resembling the Canadian lacrosse, and from which, in fact, it had been adopted. Goals were placed at both ends of a level plain. Each party of Indians chose a goal which they endeavored to defend and at the same time would try to carry the ball over their opponent's line. A well contested game of Indian ball presented a scene of wonderful effort and excitement. Hundreds of strong and supple braves could be seen running over the plain, darting this way and that, or struggling in a yelling, kicking, fighting mass, all in a mad scramble to get the ball. As Isaac had his share of the Zane swiftness of foot, at times his really remarkable fleetness enabled him to get control of the ball. In front of the band of yelling savages he would carry it down the field, and evading the guards at the goal, would throw it between the posts. This was a feat of which any brave could be proud. During one of these games Red Fox, a Wyandot brave, who had long been hopelessly in love with Myeerah, and who cordially hated Isaac, used this opportunity for revenge. Red Fox, who was a swift runner, had vied with Isaac for the honors, but being defeated in the end, he had yielded to his jealous frenzy and had struck Isaac a terrible blow on the head with his bat. It happened to be a glancing blow or Isaac's life would have been ended then and there. As it was he had a deep gash in his head. The Indians carried him to his lodge and the medicine men of the tribe were summoned. When Isaac recovered consciousness he asked for Myeerah and entreated her not to punish Red Fox. He knew that such a course would only increase his difficulties, and, on the other hand, if he saved the life of the Indian who had struck him in such a cowardly manner such an act would appeal favorably to the Indians. His entreaties had no effect on Myeerah, who was furious, and who said that if Red Fox, who had escaped, ever returned he would pay for his unprovoked assault with his life, even if she had to kill him herself. Isaac knew that Myeerah would keep her word. He dreaded every morning that the old squaw who prepared his meals would bring him the news that his assailant had been slain. Red Fox was a popular brave, and there were many Indians who believed the blow he had struck Isaac was not intentional. Isaac worried needlessly, however, for Red Fox never came back, and nothing could be learned as to his whereabouts. It was during his convalescence that Isaac learned really to love the Indian maiden. She showed such distress in the first days after his injury, and such happiness when he was out of danger and on the road to recovery that Isaac wondered at her. She attended him with anxious solicitude; when she bathed and bandaged his wound her every touch was a tender caress; she sat by him for hours; her low voice made soft melody as she sang the Huron love songs. The moments were sweet to Isaac when in the gathering twilight she leaned her head on his shoulder while they listened to the evening carol of the whip-poor-will. Days passed and at length Isaac was entirely well. One day when the air was laden with the warm breath of summer Myeerah and Isaac walked by the river. "You are sad again," said Myeerah. "I am homesick. I want to see my people. Myeerah, you have named me rightly. The Eagle can never be happy unless he is free." "The Eagle can be happy with his mate. And what life could be freer than a Huron's? I hope always that you will grow content." "It has been a long time now, Myeerah, since I have spoken with you of my freedom. Will you ever free me? Or must I take again those awful chances of escape? I cannot always live here in this way. Some day I shall be killed while trying to get away, and then, if you truly love me, you will never forgive yourself." "Does not Myeerah truly love you?" she asked, gazing straight into his eyes, her own misty and sad. "I do not doubt that, but I think sometimes that it is not the right kind of love. It is too savage. No man should be made a prisoner for no other reason than that he is loved by a woman. I have tried to teach you many things; the language of my people, their ways and thoughts, but I have failed to civilize you. I cannot make you understand that it is unwomanly--do not turn away. I am not indifferent. I have learned to care for you. Your beauty and tenderness have made anything else impossible." "Myeerah is proud of her beauty, if it pleases the Eagle. Her beauty and her love are his. Yet the Eagle's words make Myeerah sad. She cannot tell what she feels. The pale face's words flow swiftly and smoothly like rippling waters, but Myeerah's heart is full and her lips are dumb." Myeerah and Isaac stopped under a spreading elm tree the branches of which drooped over and shaded the river. The action of the high water had worn away the earth round the roots of the old elm, leaving them bare and dry when the stream was low. As though Nature had been jealous in the interest of lovers, she had twisted and curled the roots into a curiously shaped bench just above the water, which was secluded enough to escape all eyes except those of the beaver and the muskrat. The bank above was carpeted with fresh, dewy grass; blue bells and violets hid modestly under their dark green leaves; delicate ferns, like wonderful fairy lace, lifted their dainty heads to sway in the summer breeze. In this quiet nook the lovers passed many hours. "Then, if my White Chief has learned to care for me, he must not try to escape," whispered Myeerah, tenderly, as she crept into Isaac's arms and laid her head on his breast. "I love you. I love you. What will become of Myeerah if you leave her? Could she ever be happy? Could she ever forget? No, no, I will keep my captive." "I cannot persuade you to let me go?" "If I free you I will come and lie here," cried Myeerah, pointing to the dark pool. "Then come with me to my home and live there." "Go with you to the village of the pale faces, where Myeerah would be scorned, pointed at as your captors laughed at and pitied? No! No!" "But you would not be," said Isaac, eagerly. "You would be my wife. My sister and people will love you. Come, Myeerah save me from this bondage; come home with me and I will make you happy." "It can never be," she said, sadly, after a long pause. "How would we ever reach the fort by the big river? Tarhe loves his daughter and will not give her up. If we tried to get away the braves would overtake us and then even Myeerah could not save your life. You would be killed. I dare not try. No, no, Myeerah loves too well for that." "You might make the attempt," said Isaac, turning away in bitter disappointment. "If you loved me you could not see me suffer." "Never say that again," cried Myeerah, pain and scorn in her dark eyes. "Can an Indian Princess who has the blood of great chiefs in her veins prove her love in any way that she has not? Some day you will know that you wrong me. I am Tarhe's daughter. A Huron does not lie." They slowly wended their way back to the camp, both miserable at heart; Isaac longing to see his home and friends, and yet with tenderness in his heart for the Indian maiden who would not free him; Myeerah with pity and love for him and a fear that her long cherished dream could never be realized. One dark, stormy night, when the rain beat down in torrents and the swollen river raged almost to its banks, Isaac slipped out of his lodge unobserved and under cover of the pitchy darkness he got safely between the lines of tepees to the river. He had just the opportunity for which he had been praying. He plunged into the water and floating down with the swift current he soon got out of sight of the flickering camp fires. Half a mile below he left the water and ran along the bank until he came to a large tree, a landmark he remembered, when he turned abruptly to the east and struck out through the dense woods. He travelled due east all that night and the next day without resting, and with nothing to eat except a small piece of jerked buffalo meat which he had taken the precaution to hide in his hunting shirt. He rested part of the second night and next morning pushed on toward the east. He had expected to reach the Ohio that day, but he did not and he noticed that the ground seemed to be gradually rising. He did not come across any swampy lands or saw grass or vegetation characteristic of the lowlands. He stopped and tried to get his bearings. The country was unknown to him, but he believed he knew the general lay of the ridges and the water-courses. The fourth day found Isaac hopelessly lost in the woods. He was famished, having eaten but a few herbs and berries in the last two days; his buckskin garments were torn in tatters; his moccasins were worn out and his feet lacerated by the sharp thorns. Darkness was fast approaching when he first realized that he was lost. He waited hopefully for the appearance of the north star--that most faithful of hunter's guides--but the sky clouded over and no stars appeared. Tired out and hopeless he dragged his weary body into a dense laurel thicket end lay down to wait for dawn. The dismal hoot of an owl nearby, the stealthy steps of some soft-footed animal prowling round the thicket, and the mournful sough of the wind in the treetops kept him awake for hours, but at last he fell asleep. CHAPTER VII. The chilling rains of November and December's flurry of snow had passed and mid-winter with its icy blasts had set in. The Black Forest had changed autumn's gay crimson and yellow to the somber hue of winter and now looked indescribably dreary. An ice gorge had formed in the bend of the river at the head of the island and from bank to bank logs, driftwood, broken ice and giant floes were packed and jammed so tightly as to resist the action of the mighty current. This natural bridge would remain solid until spring had loosened the frozen grip of old winter. The hills surrounding Fort Henry were white with snow. The huge drifts were on a level with Col. Zane's fence and in some places the top rail had disappeared. The pine trees in the yard were weighted down and drooped helplessly with their white burden. On this frosty January morning the only signs of life round the settlement were a man and a dog walking up Wheeling hill. The man carried a rifle, an axe, and several steel traps. His snow-shoes sank into the drifts as he labored up the steep hill. All at once he stopped. The big black dog had put his nose high in the air and had sniffed at the cold wind. "Well, Tige, old fellow, what is it?" said Jonathan Zane, for this was he. The dog answered with a low whine. Jonathan looked up and down the creek valley and along the hillside, but he saw no living thing. Snow, snow everywhere, its white monotony relieved here and there by a black tree trunk. Tige sniffed again and then growled. Turning his ear to the breeze Jonathan heard faint yelps from far over the hilltop. He dropped his axe and the traps and ran the remaining short distance up the hill. When he reached the summit the clear baying of hunting wolves was borne to his ears. The hill sloped gradually on the other side, ending in a white, unbroken plain which extended to the edge of the laurel thicket a quarter of a mile distant. Jonathan could not see the wolves, but he heard distinctly their peculiar, broken howls. They were in pursuit of something, whether quadruped or man he could not decide. Another moment and he was no longer in doubt, for a deer dashed out of the thicket. Jonathan saw that it was a buck and that he was well nigh exhausted; his head swung low from side to side; he sank slowly to his knees, and showed every indication of distress. The next instant the baying of the wolves, which had ceased for a moment, sounded close at hand. The buck staggered to his feet; he turned this way and that. When he saw the man and the dog he started toward them without a moment's hesitation. At a warning word from Jonathan the dog sank on the snow. Jonathan stepped behind a tree, which, however, was not large enough to screen his body. He thought the buck would pass close by him and he determined to shoot at the most favorable moment. The buck, however, showed no intention of passing by; in his abject terror he saw in the man and the dog foes less terrible than those which were yelping on his trail. He came on in a lame uneven trot, making straight for the tree. When he reached the tree he crouched, or rather fell, on the ground within a yard of Jonathan and his dog. He quivered and twitched; his nostrils flared; at every pant drops of blood flecked the snow; his great dark eyes had a strained and awful look, almost human in its agony. Another yelp from the thicket and Jonathan looked up in time to see five timber wolves, gaunt, hungry looking beasts, burst from the bushes. With their noses close to the snow they followed the trail. When they came to the spot where the deer had fallen a chorus of angry, thirsty howls filled the air. "Well, if this doesn't beat me! I thought I knew a little about deer," said Jonathan. "Tige, we will save this buck from those gray devils if it costs a leg. Steady now, old fellow, wait." When the wolves were within fifty yards of the tree and coming swiftly Jonathan threw his rifle forward and yelled with all the power of his strong lungs: "Hi! Hi! Hi! Take 'em, Tige!" In trying to stop quickly on the slippery snowcrust the wolves fell all over themselves. One dropped dead and another fell wounded at the report of Jonathan's rifle. The others turned tail and loped swiftly off into the thicket. Tige made short work of the wounded one. "Old White Tail, if you were the last buck in the valley, I would not harm you," said Jonathan, looking at the panting deer. "You need have no farther fear of that pack of cowards." So saying Jonathan called to Tige and wended his way down the hill toward the settlement. An hour afterward he was sitting in Col. Zane's comfortable cabin, where all was warmth and cheerfulness. Blazing hickory logs roared and crackled in the stone fireplace. "Hello, Jack, where did you come from?" said Col. Zane, who had just come in. "Haven't seen you since we were snowed up. Come over to see about the horses? If I were you I would not undertake that trip to Fort Pitt until the weather breaks. You could go in the sled, of course, but if you care anything for my advice you will stay home. This weather will hold on for some time. Let Lord Dunmore wait." "I guess we are in for some stiff weather." "Haven't a doubt of it. I told Bessie last fall we might expect a hard winter. Everything indicated it. Look at the thick corn-husks. The hulls of the nuts from the shell-bark here in the yard were larger and tougher than I ever saw them. Last October Tige killed a raccoon that had the wooliest kind of a fur. I could have given you a dozen signs of a hard winter. We shall still have a month or six weeks of it. In a week will be ground-hog day and you had better wait and decide after that." "I tell you, Eb, I get tired chopping wood and hanging round the house." "Aha! another moody spell," said Col. Zane, glancing kindly at his brother. "Jack, if you were married you would outgrow those 'blue-devils.' I used to have them. It runs in the family to be moody. I have known our father to take his gun and go into the woods and stay there until he had fought out the spell. I have done that myself, but once I married Bessie I have had no return of the old feeling. Get married, Jack, and then you will settle down and work. You will not have time to roam around alone in the woods." "I prefer the spells, as you call them, any day," answered Jonathan, with a short laugh. "A man with my disposition has no right to get married. This weather is trying, for it keeps me indoors. I cannot hunt because we do not need the meat. And even if I did want to hunt I should not have to go out of sight of the fort. There were three deer in front of the barn this morning. They were nearly starved. They ran off a little at sight of me, but in a few moments came back for the hay I pitched out of the loft. This afternoon Tige and I saved a big buck from a pack of wolves. The buck came right up to me. I could have touched him. This storm is sending the deer down from the hills." "You are right. It is too bad. Severe weather like this will kill more deer than an army could. Have you been doing anything with your traps?" "Yes, I have thirty traps out." "If you are going, tell Sam to fetch down another load of fodder before he unhitches." "Eb, I have no patience with your brothers," said Col. Zane's wife to him after he had closed the door. "They are all alike; forever wanting to be on the go. If it isn't Indians it is something else. The very idea of going up the river in this weather. If Jonathan doesn't care for himself he should think of the horses." "My dear, I was just as wild and discontented as Jack before I met you," remarked Col. Zane. "You may not think so, but a home and pretty little woman will do wonders for any man. My brothers have nothing to keep them steady." "Perhaps. I do not believe that Jonathan ever will get married. Silas may; he certainly has been keeping company long enough with Mary Bennet. You are the only Zane who has conquered that adventurous spirit and the desire to be always roaming the woods in search of something to kill. Your old boy, Noah, is growing up like all the Zanes. He fights with all the children in the settlement. I cannot break him of it. He is not a bully, for I have never known him to do anything mean or cruel. It is just sheer love of fighting." "Ha! Ha! I fear you will not break him of that," answered Col. Zane. "It is a good joke to say he gets it all from the Zanes. How about the McCollochs? What have you to say of your father and the Major and John McColloch? They are not anything if not the fighting kind. It's the best trait the youngster could have, out here on the border. He'll need it all. Don't worry about him. Where is Betty?" "I told her to take the children out for a sled ride. Betty needs exercise. She stays indoors too much, and of late she looks pale." "What! Betty not looking well! She was never ill in her life. I have noticed no change in her." "No, I daresay you have not. You men can't see anything. But I can, and I tell you, Betty is very different from the girl she used to be. Most of the time she sits and gazes out of her window. She used to be so bright, and when she was not romping with the children she busied herself with her needle. Yesterday as I entered her room she hurriedly picked up a book, and, I think, intentionally hid her face behind it. I saw she had been crying." "Come to think of it, I believe I have missed Betty," said Col. Zane, gravely. "She seems more quiet. Is she unhappy? When did you first see this change?" "I think it a little while after Mr. Clarke left here last fall." "Clarke! What has he to do with Betty? What are you driving at?" exclaimed the Colonel, stopping in front of his wife. His faced had paled slightly. "I had forgotten Clarke. Bess, you can't mean--" "Now, Eb, do not get that look on your face. You always frighten me," answered his wife, as she quietly placed her hand on his arm. "I do not mean anything much, certainly nothing against Mr. Clarke. He was a true gentleman. I really liked him." "So did I," interrupted the Colonel. "I believe Betty cared for Mr. Clarke. She was always different with him. He has gone away and has forgotten her. That is strange to us, because we cannot imagine any one indifferent to our beautiful Betty. Nevertheless, no matter how attractive a woman may be men sometimes love and ride away. I hear the children coming now. Do not let Betty see that we have been talking about her. She is as quick as a steel trap." A peal of childish laughter came from without. The door opened and Betty ran in, followed by the sturdy, rosy-checked youngsters. All three were white with snow. "We have had great fun," said Betty. "We went over the bank once and tumbled off the sled into the snow. Then we had a snow-balling contest, and the boys compelled me to strike my colors and fly for the house." Col. Zane looked closely at his sister. Her cheeks were flowing with health; her eyes were sparkling with pleasure. Failing to observe any indication of the change in Betty which his wife had spoken, he concluded that women were better qualified to judge their own sex than were men. He had to confess to himself that the only change he could see in his sister was that she grew prettier every day of her life. "Oh, papa. I hit Sam right in the head with a big snow-ball, and I made Betty run into the house, and I slid down to all by myself. Sam was afraid," said Noah to his father. "Noah, if Sammy saw the danger in sliding down the hill he was braver than you. Now both of you run to Annie and have these wet things taken off." "I must go get on dry clothes myself," said Betty. "I am nearly frozen. It is growing colder. I saw Jack come in. Is he going to Fort Pitt?" "No. He has decided to wait until good weather. I met Mr. Miller over at the garrison this afternoon and he wants you to go on the sled-ride to-night. There is to be a dance down at Watkins' place. All the young people are going. It is a long ride, but I guess it will be perfectly safe. Silas and Wetzel are going. Dress yourself warmly and go with them. You have never seen old Grandma Watkins." "I shall be pleased to go," said Betty. Betty's room was very cozy, considering that it was in a pioneer's cabin. It had two windows, the larger of which opened on the side toward the river. The walls had been smoothly plastered and covered with white birch-bark. They were adorned with a few pictures and Indian ornaments. A bright homespun carpet covered the floor. A small bookcase stood in the corner. The other furniture consisted of two chairs, a small table, a bureau with a mirror, and a large wardrobe. It was in this last that Betty kept the gowns which she had brought from Philadelphia, and which were the wonder of all the girls in the village. "I wonder why Eb looked so closely at me," mused Betty, as she slipped on her little moccasins. "Usually he is not anxious to have me go so far from the fort; and now he seemed to think I would enjoy this dance to-night. I wonder what Bessie has been telling him." Betty threw some wood on the smouldering fire in the little stone grate and sat down to think. Like every one who has a humiliating secret, Betty was eternally suspicious and feared the very walls would guess it. Swift as light came the thought that her brother and his wife had suspected her secret and had been talking about her, perhaps pitying her. With this thought came the fear that if she had betrayed herself to the Colonel's wife she might have done so to others. The consciousness that this might well be true and that even now the girls might be talking and laughing at her caused her exceeding shame and bitterness. Many weeks had passed since that last night that Betty and Alfred Clarke had been together. In due time Col. Zane's men returned and Betty learned from Jonathan that Alfred had left them at Ft. Pitt, saying he was going south to his old home. At first she had expected some word from Alfred, a letter, or if not that, surely an apology for his conduct on that last evening they had been together. But Jonathan brought her no word, and after hoping against hope and wearing away the long days looking for a letter that never came, she ceased to hope and plunged into despair. The last few months had changed her life; changed it as only constant thinking, and suffering that must be hidden from the world, can change the life of a young girl. She had been so intent on her own thoughts, so deep in her dreams that she had taken no heed of other people. She did not know that those who loved her were always thinking of her welfare and would naturally see even a slight change in her. With a sudden shock of surprise and pain she realized that to-day for the first time in a month she had played with the boys. Sammy had asked her why she did not laugh any more. Now she understood the mad antics of Tige that morning; Madcap's whinney of delight; the chattering of the squirrels, and Caesar's pranks in the snow. She had neglected her pets. She had neglected her work, her friends, the boys' lessons; and her brother. For what? What would her girl friends say? That she was pining for a lover who had forgotten her. They would say that and it would be true. She did think of him constantly. With bitter pain she recalled the first days of the acquaintance which now seemed so long past; how much she had disliked Alfred; how angry she had been with him and how contemptuously she had spurned his first proffer of friendship; how, little by little, her pride had been subdued; then the struggle with her heart. And, at last, after he had gone, came the realization that the moments spent with him had been the sweetest of her life. She thought of him as she used to see him stand before her; so good to look at; so strong and masterful, and yet so gentle. "Oh, I cannot bear it," whispered Betty with a half sob, giving up to a rush of tender feeling. "I love him. I love him, and I cannot forget him. Oh, I am so ashamed." Betty bowed her head on her knees. Her slight form quivered a while and then grew still. When a half hour later she raised her head her face was pale and cold. It bore the look of a girl who had suddenly become a woman; a woman who saw the battle of life before her and who was ready to fight. Stern resolve gleamed from her flashing eyes; there was no faltering in those set lips. Betty was a Zane and the Zanes came of a fighting race. Their blood had ever been hot and passionate; the blood of men quick to love and quick to hate. It had flowed in the veins of daring, reckless men who had fought and died for their country; men who had won their sweethearts with the sword; men who had had unconquerable spirits. It was this fighting instinct that now rose in Betty; it gave her strength and pride to defend her secret; the resolve to fight against the longing in her heart. "I will forget him! I will tear him out of my heart!" she exclaimed passionately. "He never deserved my love. He did not care. I was a little fool to let him amuse himself with me. He went away and forgot. I hate him." At length Betty subdued her excitement, and when she went down to supper a few minutes later she tried to maintain a cheerful composure of manner and to chat with her old-time vivacity. "Bessie, I am sure you have exaggerated things," remarked Col. Zane after Betty had gone upstairs to dress for the dance. "Perhaps it is only that Betty grows a little tired of this howling wilderness. Small wonder if she does. You know she has always been used to comfort and many young people, places to go and all that. This is her first winter on the frontier. She'll come round all right." "Have it your way, Ebenezer," answered his wife with a look of amused contempt on her face. "I am sure I hope you are right. By the way, what do you think of this Ralfe Miller? He has been much with Betty of late." "I do not know the fellow, Bessie. He seems agreeable. He is a good-looking young man. Why do you ask?" "The Major told me that Miller had a bad name at Pitt, and that he had been a friend of Simon Girty before Girty became a renegade." "Humph! I'll have to speak to Sam. As for knowing Girty, there is nothing terrible in that. All the women seem to think that Simon is the very prince of devils. I have known all the Girtys for years. Simon was not a bad fellow before he went over to the Indians. It is his brother James who has committed most of those deeds which have made the name of Girty so infamous." "I don't like Miller," continued Mrs. Zane in a hesitating way. "I must admit that I have no sensible reason for my dislike. He is pleasant and agreeable, yes, but behind it there is a certain intensity. That man has something on his mind." "If he is in love with Betty, as you seem to think, he has enough on his mind. I'll vouch for that," said Col. Zane. "Betty is inclined to be a coquette. If she liked Clarke pretty well, it may be a lesson to her." "I wish she were married and settled down. It may have been no great harm for Betty to have had many admirers while in Philadelphia, but out here on the border it will never do. These men will not have it. There will be trouble come of Betty's coquettishness." "Why, Bessie, she is only a child. What would you have her do? Marry the first man who asked her?" "The clod-hoppers are coming," said Mrs. Zane as the jingling of sleigh bells broke the stillness. Col. Zane sprang up and opened the door. A broad stream of light flashed from the room and lighted up the road. Three powerful teams stood before the door. They were hitched to sleds, or clod-hoppers, which were nothing more than wagon-beds fastened on wooden runners. A chorus of merry shouts greeted Col. Zane as he appeared in the doorway. "All right! all right! Here she is," he cried, as Betty ran down the steps. The Colonel bundled her in a buffalo robe in a corner of the foremost sled. At her feet he placed a buckskin bag containing a hot stone Mrs. Zane thoughtfully had provided. "All ready here. Let them go," called the Colonel. "You will have clear weather. Coming back look well to the traces and keep a watch for the wolves." The long whips cracked, the bells jingled, the impatient horses plunged forward and away they went over the glistening snow. The night was clear and cold; countless stars blinked in the black vault overhead; the pale moon cast its wintry light down on a white and frozen world. As the runners glided swiftly and smoothly onward showers of dry snow like fine powder flew from under the horses' hoofs and soon whitened the black-robed figures in the sleds. The way led down the hill past the Fort, over the creek bridge and along the road that skirted the Black Forest. The ride was long; it led up and down hills, and through a lengthy stretch of gloomy forest. Sometimes the drivers walked the horses up a steep climb and again raced them along a level bottom. Making a turn in the road they saw a bright light in the distance which marked their destination. In five minutes the horses dashed into a wide clearing. An immense log fire burned in front of a two-story structure. Streams of light poured from the small windows; the squeaking of fiddles, the shuffling of many feet, and gay laughter came through the open door. The steaming horses were unhitched, covered carefully with robes and led into sheltered places, while the merry party disappeared into the house. The occasion was the celebration of the birthday of old Dan Watkins' daughter. Dan was one of the oldest settlers along the river; in fact, he had located his farm several years after Col. Zane had founded the settlement. He was noted for his open-handed dealing and kindness of heart. He had loaned many a head of cattle which had never been returned, and many a sack of flour had left his mill unpaid for in grain. He was a good shot, he would lay a tree on the ground as quickly as any man who ever swung an axe, and he could drink more whiskey than any man in the valley. Dan stood at the door with a smile of welcome upon his rugged features and a handshake and a pleasant word for everyone. His daughter Susan greeted the men with a little curtsy and kissed the girls upon the cheek. Susan was not pretty, though she was strong and healthy; her laughing blue eyes assured a sunny disposition, and she numbered her suitors by the score. The young people lost no time. Soon the floor was covered with their whirling forms. In one corner of the room sat a little dried-up old woman with white hair and bright dark eyes. This was Grandma Watkins. She was very old, so old that no one knew her age, but she was still vigorous enough to do her day's work with more pleasure than many a younger woman. Just now she was talking to Wetzel, who leaned upon his inseparable rifle and listened to her chatter. The hunter liked the old lady and would often stop at her cabin while on his way to the settlement and leave at her door a fat turkey or a haunch of venison. "Lew Wetzel, I am ashamed of you." Grandmother Watkins was saying. "Put that gun in the corner and get out there and dance. Enjoy yourself. You are only a boy yet." "I'd better look on, mother," answered the hunter. "Pshaw! You can hop and skip around like any of then and laugh too if you want. I hope that pretty sister of Eb Zane has caught your fancy." "She is not for the like of me," he said gently "I haven't the gifts." "Don't talk about gifts. Not to an old woman who has lived three times and more your age," she said impatiently. "It is not gifts a woman wants out here in the West. If she does 'twill do her no good. She needs a strong arm to build cabins, a quick eye with a rifle, and a fearless heart. What border-women want are houses and children. They must bring up men, men to drive the redskins back, men to till the soil, or else what is the good of our suffering here." "You are right," said Wetzel thoughtfully. "But I'd hate to see a flower like Betty Zane in a rude hunter's cabin." "I have known the Zanes for forty year' and I never saw one yet that was afraid of work. And you might win her if you would give up running mad after Indians. I'll allow no woman would put up with that. You have killed many Indians. You ought to be satisfied." "Fightin' redskins is somethin' I can't help," said the hunter, slowly shaking his head. "If I got married the fever would come on and I'd leave home. No, I'm no good for a woman. Fightin' is all I'm good for." "Why not fight for her, then? Don't let one of these boys walk off with her. Look at her. She likes fun and admiration. I believe you do care for her. Why not try to win her?" "Who is that tall man with her?" continued the old lady as Wetzel did not answer. "There, they have gone into the other room. Who is he?" "His name is Miller." "Lewis, I don't like him. I have been watching him all evening. I'm a contrary old woman, I know, but I have seen a good many men in my time, and his face is not honest. He is in love with her. Does she care for him?" "No, Betty doesn't care for Miller. She's just full of life and fun." "You may be mistaken. All the Zanes are fire and brimstone and this girl is a Zane clear through. Go and fetch her to me, Lewis. I'll tell you if there's a chance for you." "Dear mother, perhaps there's a wife in Heaven for me. There's none on earth," said the hunter, a sad smile flitting over his calm face. Ralfe Miller, whose actions had occasioned the remarks of the old lady, would have been conspicuous in any assembly of men. There was something in his dark face that compelled interest and yet left the observer in doubt. His square chin, deep-set eyes and firm mouth denoted a strong and indomitable will. He looked a man whom it would be dangerous to cross. Little was known of Miller's history. He hailed from Ft. Pitt, where he had a reputation as a good soldier, but a man of morose and quarrelsome disposition. It was whispered that he drank, and that he had been friendly with the renegades McKee, Elliott, and Girty. He had passed the fall and winter at Ft. Henry, serving on garrison duty. Since he had made the acquaintance of Betty he had shown her all the attention possible. On this night a close observer would have seen that Miller was laboring under some strong feeling. A half-subdued fire gleamed from his dark eyes. A peculiar nervous twitching of his nostrils betrayed a poorly suppressed excitement. All evening he followed Betty like a shadow. Her kindness may have encouraged him. She danced often with him and showed a certain preference for his society. Alice and Lydia were puzzled by Betty's manner. As they were intimate friends they believed they knew something of her likes and dislikes. Had not Betty told them she did not care for Mr. Miller? What was the meaning of the arch glances she bestowed upon him, if she did not care for him? To be sure, it was nothing wonderful for Betty to smile,--she was always prodigal of her smiles--but she had never been known to encourage any man. The truth was that Betty had put her new resolution into effect; to be as merry and charming as any fancy-free maiden could possibly be, and the farthest removed from a young lady pining for an absent and indifferent sweetheart. To her sorrow Betty played her part too well. Except to Wetzel, whose keen eyes little escaped, there was no significance in Miller's hilarity one moment and sudden thoughtfulness the next. And if there had been, it would have excited no comment. Most of the young men had sampled some of old Dan's best rye and their flushed faces and unusual spirits did not result altogether from the exercise of the dance. After one of the reels Miller led Betty, with whom he had been dancing, into one of the side rooms. Round the dimly lighted room were benches upon which were seated some of the dancers. Betty was uneasy in mind and now wished that she had remained at home. They had exchanged several commonplace remarks when the music struck up and Betty rose quickly to her feet. "See, the others have gone. Let us return," she said. "Wait," said Miller hurriedly. "Do not go just yet. I wish to speak to you. I have asked you many times if you will marry me. Now I ask you again." "Mr. Miller, I thanked you and begged you not to cause us both pain by again referring to that subject," answered Betty with dignity. "If you will persist in bringing it up we cannot be friends any longer." "Wait, please wait. I have told you that I will not take 'No' for an answer. I love you with all my heart and soul and I cannot give you up." His voice was low and hoarse and thrilled with a strong man's passion. Betty looked up into his face and tears of compassion filled her eyes. Her heart softened to this man, and her conscience gave her a little twinge of remorse. Could she not have averted all this? No doubt she had been much to blame, and this thought made her voice very low and sweet as she answered him. "I like you as a friend, Mr. Miller, but we can never be more than friends. I am very sorry for you, and angry with myself that I did not try to help you instead of making it worse. Please do not speak of this again. Come, let us join the others." They were quite alone in the room. As Betty finished speaking and started for the door Miller intercepted her. She recoiled in alarm from his white face. "No, you don't go yet. I won't give you up so easily. No woman can play fast and loose with me! Do you understand? What have you meant all this winter? You encouraged me. You know you did," he cried passionately. "I thought you were a gentleman. I have really taken the trouble to defend you against persons who evidently were not misled as to your real nature. I will not listen to you," said Betty coldly. She turned away from him, all her softened feeling changed to scorn. "You shall listen to me," he whispered as he grasped her wrist and pulled her backward. All the man's brutal passion had been aroused. The fierce border blood boiled within his heart. Unmasked he showed himself in his true colors a frontier desperado. His eyes gleamed dark and lurid beneath his bent brows and a short, desperate laugh passed his lips. "I will make you love me, my proud beauty. I shall have you yet, one way or another." "Let me go. How dare you touch me!" cried Betty, the hot blood coloring her face. She struck him a stinging blow with her free hand and struggled with all her might to free herself; but she was powerless in his iron grasp. Closer he drew her. "If it costs me my life I will kiss you for that blow," he muttered hoarsely. "Oh, you coward! you ruffian! Release me or I will scream." She had opened her lips to call for help when she saw a dark figure cross the threshold. She recognized the tall form of Wetzel. The hunter stood still in the doorway for a second and then with the swiftness of light he sprang forward. The single straightening of his arm sent Miller backward over a bench to the floor with a crashing sound. Miller rose with some difficulty and stood with one hand to his head. "Lew, don't draw your knife," cried Betty as she saw Wetzel's hand go inside his hunting shirt. She had thrown herself in front of him as Miller got to his feet. With both little hands she clung to the brawny arm of the hunter, but she could not stay it. Wetzel's hand slipped to his belt. "For God's sake, Lew, do not kill him," implored Betty, gazing horror-stricken at the glittering eyes of the hunter. "You have punished him enough. He only tried to kiss me. I was partly to blame. Put your knife away. Do not shed blood. For my sake, Lew, for my sake!" When Betty found that she could not hold Wetzel's arm she threw her arms round his neck and clung to him with all her young strength. No doubt her action averted a tragedy. If Miller had been inclined to draw a weapon then he might have had a good opportunity to use it. He had the reputation of being quick with his knife, and many of his past fights testified that he was not a coward. But he made no effort to attack Wetzel. It was certain that he measured with his eye the distance to the door. Wetzel was not like other men. Irrespective of his wonderful strength and agility there was something about the Indian hunter that terrified all men. Miller shrank before those eyes. He knew that never in all his life of adventure had he been as near death as at that moment. There was nothing between him and eternity but the delicate arms of this frail girl. At a slight wave of the hunter's hand towards the door he turned and passed out. "Oh, how dreadful!" cried Betty, dropping upon a bench with a sob of relief. "I am glad you came when you did even though you frightened me more than he did. Promise me that you will not do Miller any further harm. If you had fought it would all have been on my account; one or both of you might have been killed. Don't look at me so. I do not care for him. I never did. Now that I know him I despise him. He lost his senses and tried to kiss me. I could have killed him myself." Wetzel did not answer. Betty had been holding his hand in both her own while she spoke impulsively. "I understand how difficult it is for you to overlook an insult to me," she continued earnestly. "But I ask it of you. You are my best friend, almost my brother, and I promise you that if he ever speaks a word to me again that is not what it should be I will tell you." "I reckon I'll let him go, considerin' how set on it you are." "But remember, Lew, that he is revengeful and you must be on the lookout," said Betty gravely as she recalled the malignant gleam in Miller's eyes. "He's dangerous only like a moccasin snake that hides in the grass." "Am I all right? Do I look mussed or--or excited--or anything?" asked Betty. Lewis smiled as she turned round for his benefit. Her hair was a little awry and the lace at her neck disarranged. The natural bloom had not quite returned to her cheeks. With a look in his eyes that would have mystified Betty for many a day had she but seen it he ran his gaze over the dainty figure. Then reassuring her that she looked as well as ever, he led her into the dance-room. "So this is Betty Zane. Dear child, kiss me," said Grandmother Watkins when Wetzel had brought Betty up to her. "Now, let me get a good look at you. Well, well, you are a true Zane. Black hair and eyes; all fire and pride. Child, I knew your father and mother long before you were born. Your father was a fine man but a proud one. And how do you like the frontier? Are you enjoying yourself?" "Oh, yes, indeed," said Betty, smiling brightly at the old lady. "Well, dearie, have a good time while you can. Life is hard in a pioneer's cabin. You will not always have the Colonel to look after you. They tell me you have been to some grand school in Philadelphia. Learning is very well, but it will not help you in the cabin of one of these rough men." "There is a great need of education in all the pioneers' homes. I have persuaded brother Eb to have a schoolteacher at the Fort next spring." "First teach the boys to plow and the girls to make Johnny cake. How much you favor your brother Isaac. He used to come and see me often. So must you in summertime. Poor lad, I suppose he is dead by this time. I have seen so many brave and good lads go. There now, I did not mean to make you sad," and the old lady patted Betty's hand and sighed. "He often spoke of you and said that I must come with him to see you. Now he is gone," said Betty. "Yes, he is gone, Betty, but you must not be sad while you are so young. Wait until you are old like I am. How long have you known Lew Wetzel?" "All my life. He used to carry me in his arm, when I was a baby. Of course I do not remember that, but as far back as I can go in memory I can see Lew. Oh, the many times he has saved me from disaster! But why do you ask?" "I think Lew Wetzel cares more for you than for all the world. He is as silent as an Indian, but I am an old woman and I can read men's hearts. If he could be made to give up his wandering life he would be the best man on the border." "Oh, indeed I think you are wrong. Lew does not care for me in that way," said Betty, surprised and troubled by the old lady's vehemence. A loud blast from a hunting-horn directed the attention of all to the platform at the upper end of the hall, where Dan Watkins stood. The fiddlers ceased playing, the dancers stopped, and all looked expectantly. The scene was simple strong, and earnest. The light in the eyes of these maidens shone like the light from the pine cones on the walls. It beamed soft and warm. These fearless sons of the wilderness, these sturdy sons of progress, standing there clasping the hands of their partners and with faces glowing with happiness, forgetful of all save the enjoyment of the moment, were ready to go out on the morrow and battle unto the death for the homes and the lives of their loved ones. "Friends," said Dan when the hum of voices had ceased "I never thought as how I'd have to get up here and make a speech to-night or I might have taken to the woods. Howsomever, mother and Susan says as it's gettin' late it's about time we had some supper. Somewhere in the big cake is hid a gold ring. If one of the girls gets it she can keep it as a gift from Susan, and should one of the boys find it he may make a present to his best girl. And in the bargain he gets to kiss Susan. She made some objection about this and said that part of the game didn't go, but I reckon the lucky young man will decide that for hisself. And now to the festal board." Ample justice was done to the turkey, the venison, and the bear meat. Grandmother Watkins' delicious apple and pumpkin pies for which she was renowned, disappeared as by magic. Likewise the cakes and the sweet cider and the apple butter vanished. When the big cake had been cut and divided among the guests, Wetzel discovered the gold ring within his share. He presented the ring to Betty, and gave his privilege of kissing Susan to George Reynolds, with the remark: "George, I calkilate Susan would like it better if you do the kissin' part." Now it was known to all that George had long been an ardent admirer of Susan's, and it was suspected that she was not indifferent to him. Nevertheless, she protested that it was not fair. George acted like a man who had the opportunity of his life. Amid uproarious laughter he ran Susan all over the room, and when he caught her he pulled her hands away from her blushing face and bestowed a right hearty kiss on her cheek. To everyone's surprise and to Wetzel's discomfiture, Susan walked up to him and saying that as he had taken such an easy way out of it she intended to punish him by kissing him. And so she did. Poor Lewis' face looked the picture of dismay. Probably he had never been kissed before in his life. Happy hours speed away on the wings of the wind. The feasting over, the good-byes were spoken, the girls were wrapped in the warm robes, for it was now intensely cold, and soon the horses, eager to start on the long homeward journey, were pulling hard on their bits. On the party's return trip there was an absence of the hilarity which had prevailed on their coming. The bells were taken off before the sleds left the blockhouse, and the traces and the harness examined and tightened with the caution of men who were apprehensive of danger and who would take no chances. In winter time the foes most feared by the settlers were the timber wolves. Thousands of these savage beasts infested the wild forest regions which bounded the lonely roads, and their wonderful power of scent and swift and tireless pursuit made a long night ride a thing to be dreaded. While the horses moved swiftly danger from wolves was not imminent; but carelessness or some mishap to a trace or a wheel had been the cause of more than one tragedy. Therefore it was not remarkable that the drivers of our party breathed a sigh of relief when the top of the last steep hill had been reached. The girls were quiet, and tired out and cold they pressed close to one another; the men were silent and watchful. When they were half way home and had just reached the outskirts of the Black Forest the keen ear of Wetzel caught the cry of a wolf. It came from the south and sounded so faint that Wetzel believed at first that he had been mistaken. A few moments passed in which the hunter turned his ear to the south. He had about made up his mind that he had only imagined he had heard something when the unmistakable yelp of a wolf came down on the wind. Then another, this time clear and distinct, caused the driver to turn and whisper to Wetzel. The hunter spoke in a low tone and the driver whipped up his horses. From out the depths of the dark woods along which they were riding came a long and mournful howl. It was a wolf answering the call of his mate. This time the horses heard it, for they threw back their ears and increased their speed. The girls heard it, for they shrank closer to the men. There is that which is frightful in the cry of a wolf. When one is safe in camp before a roaring fire the short, sharp bark of a wolf is startling, and the long howl will make one shudder. It is so lonely and dismal. It makes no difference whether it be given while the wolf is sitting on his haunches near some cabin waiting for the remains of the settler's dinner, or while he is in full chase after his prey--the cry is equally wild, savage and bloodcurdling. Betty had never heard it and though she was brave, when the howl from the forest had its answer in another howl from the creek thicket, she slipped her little mittened hand under Wetzel's arm and looked up at him with frightened eyes. In half an hour the full chorus of yelps, barks and howls swelled hideously on the air, and the ever increasing pack of wolves could be seen scarcely a hundred yards behind the sleds. The patter of their swiftly flying feet on the snow could be distinctly heard. The slender, dark forms came nearer and nearer every moment. Presently the wolves had approached close enough for the occupants of the sleds to see their shining eyes looking like little balls of green fire. A gaunt beast bolder than the others, and evidently the leader of the pack, bounded forward until he was only a few yards from the last sled. At every jump he opened his great jaws and uttered a quick bark as if to embolden his followers. Almost simultaneously with the red flame that burst from Wetzel's rifle came a sharp yelp of agony from the leader. He rolled over and over. Instantly followed a horrible mingling of snarls and barks, and snapping of jaws as the band fought over the body of their luckless comrade. This short delay gave the advantage to the horses. When the wolves again appeared they were a long way behind. The distance to the fort was now short and the horses were urged to their utmost. The wolves kept up the chase until they reached the creek bridge and the mill. Then they slowed up: the howling became desultory, and finally the dark forms disappeared in the thickets. CHAPTER VIII. Winter dragged by uneventfully for Betty. Unlike the other pioneer girls, who were kept busy all the time with their mending, and linsey weaving, and household duties, Betty had nothing to divert her but her embroidery and her reading. These she found very tiresome. Her maid was devoted to her and never left a thing undone. Annie was old Sam's daughter, and she had waited on Betty since she had been a baby. The cleaning or mending or darning--anything in the shape of work that would have helped pass away the monotonous hours for Betty, was always done before she could lift her hand. During the day she passed hours in her little room, and most of them were dreamed away by her window. Lydia and Alice came over sometimes and whiled away the tedious moments with their bright chatter and merry laughter, their castle-building, and their romancing on heroes and love and marriage as girls always will until the end of time. They had not forgotten Mr. Clarke, but as Betty had rebuked them with a dignity which forbade any further teasing on that score, they had transferred their fun-making to the use of Mr. Miller's name. Fearing her brothers' wrath Betty had not told them of the scene with Miller at the dance. She had learned enough of rough border justice to dread the consequence of such a disclosure. She permitted Miller to come to the house, although she never saw him alone. Miller had accepted this favor gratefully. He said that on the night of the dance he had been a little the worse for Dan Watkins' strong liquor, and that, together with his bitter disappointment, made him act in the mad way which had so grievously offended her. He exerted himself to win her forgiveness. Betty was always tender-hearted, and though she did not trust him, she said they might still be friends, but that that depended on his respect for her forbearance. Miller had promised he would never refer to the old subject and he had kept his word. Indeed Betty welcomed any diversion for the long winter evenings. Occasionally some of the young people visited her, and they sang and danced, roasted apples, popped chestnuts, and played games. Often Wetzel and Major McColloch came in after supper. Betty would come down and sing for them, and afterward would coax Indian lore and woodcraft from Wetzel, or she would play checkers with the Major. If she succeeded in winning from him, which in truth was not often, she teased him unmercifully. When Col. Zane and the Major had settled down to their series of games, from which nothing short of Indians could have diverted them, Betty sat by Wetzel. The silent man of the woods, an appellation the hunter had earned by his reticence, talked for Betty as he would for no one else. One night while Col. Zane, his wife and Betty were entertaining Capt. Boggs and Major McColloch and several of Betty's girls friends, after the usual music and singing, storytelling became the order of the evening. Little Noah told of the time he had climbed the apple-tree in the yard after a raccoon and got severely bitten. "One day," said Noah, "I heard Tige barking out in the orchard and I ran out there and saw a funny little fur ball up in the tree with a black tail and white rings around it. It looked like a pretty cat with a sharp nose. Every time Tige barked the little animal showed his teeth and swelled up his back. I wanted him for a pet. I got Sam to give me a sack and I climbed the tree and the nearer I got to him the farther he backed down the limb. I followed him and put out the sack to put it over his head and he bit me. I fell from the limb, but he fell too and Tige killed him and Sam stuffed him for me." "Noah, you are quite a valiant hunter," said Betty. "Now, Jonathan, remember that you promised to tell me of your meeting with Daniel Boone." "It was over on the Muskingong near the mouth of the Sandusky. I was hunting in the open woods along the bank when I saw an Indian. He saw me at the same time and we both treed. There we stood a long time each afraid to change position. Finally I began to act tired and resorted to an old ruse. I put my coon-skin cap on my ramrod and cautiously poked it from behind the tree, expecting every second to hear the whistle of the redskin's bullet. Instead I heard a jolly voice yell: 'Hey, young feller, you'll have to try something better'n that.' I looked and saw a white man standing out in the open and shaking all over with laughter. I went up to him and found him to be a big strong fellow with an honest, merry face. He said: 'I'm Boone.' I was considerably taken aback, especially when I saw he knew I was a white man all the time. We camped and hunted along the river a week and at the Falls of the Muskingong he struck out for his Kentucky home." "Here is Wetzel," said Col. Zane, who had risen and gone to the door. "Now, Betty, try and get Lew to tell us something." "Come, Lewis, here is a seat by me," said Betty. "We have been pleasantly passing the time. We have had bear stories, snake stories, ghost stories--all kinds of tales. Will you tell us one?" "Lewis, did you ever have a chance to kill a hostile Indian and not take it?" asked Col. Zane. "Never but once," answered Lewis. "Tell us about it. I imagine it will be interesting." "Well, I ain't good at tellin' things," began Lewis. "I reckon I've seen some strange sights. I kin tell you about the only redskin I ever let off. Three years ago I was takin' a fall hunt over on the Big Sandy, and I run into a party of Shawnees. I plugged a chief and started to run. There was some good runners and I couldn't shake 'em in the open country. Comin' to the Ohio I jumped in and swum across, keepin' my rifle and powder dry by holdin' 'em up. I hid in some bulrushes and waited. Pretty soon along comes three Injuns, and when they saw where I had taken to the water they stopped and held a short pow-wow. Then they all took to the water. This was what I was waitin' for. When they got nearly acrosst I shot the first redskin, and loadin' quick got a bullet into the others. The last Injun did not sink. I watched him go floatin' down stream expectin' every minute to see him go under as he was hurt so bad he could hardly keep his head above water. He floated down a long ways and the current carried him to a pile of driftwood which had lodged against a little island. I saw the Injun crawl up on the drift. I went down stream and by keepin' the island between me and him I got out to where he was. I pulled my tomahawk and went around the head of the island and found the redskin leanin' against a big log. He was a young brave and a fine lookin strong feller. He was tryin' to stop the blood from my bullet-hole in his side. When he saw me he tried to get up, but he was too weak. He smiled, pointed to the wound and said: 'Deathwind not heap times bad shot.' Then he bowed his head and waited for the tomahawk. Well, I picked him up and carried him ashore and made a shack by a spring. I staid there with him. When he got well enough to stand a few days' travel I got him across the river and givin' him a hunk of deer meat I told him to go, and if I ever saw him again I'd make a better shot. "A year afterwards I trailed two Shawnees into Wingenund's camp and got surrounded and captured. The Delaware chief is my great enemy. They beat me, shot salt into my legs, made me run the gauntlet, tied me on the back of a wild mustang. Then they got ready to burn me at the stake. That night they painted my face black and held the usual death dances. Some of the braves got drunk and worked themselves into a frenzy. I allowed I'd never see daylight. I seen that one of the braves left to guard me was the young feller I had wounded the year before. He never took no notice of me. In the gray of the early mornin' when all were asleep and the other watch dozin' I felt cold steel between my wrists and my buckskin thongs dropped off. Then my feet were cut loose. I looked round and in the dim light I seen my young brave. He handed me my own rifle, knife and tomahawk, put his finger on his lips and with a bright smile, as if to say he was square with me, he pointed to the east. I was out of sight in a minute." "How noble of him!" exclaimed Betty, her eyes all aglow. "He paid his debt to you, perhaps at the price of his life." "I have never known an Indian to forget a promise, or a kind action, or an injury," observed Col. Zane. "Are the Indians half as bad as they are called?" asked Betty. "I have heard as many stories of their nobility as of their cruelty." "The Indians consider that they have been robbed and driven from their homes. What we think hideously inhuman is war to them," answered Col. Zane. "When I came here from Fort Pitt I expected to see and fight Indians every day," said Capt. Boggs. "I have been here at Wheeling for nearly two years and have never seen a hostile Indian. There have been some Indians in the vicinity during that time but not one has shown himself to me. I'm not up to Indian tricks, I know, but I think the last siege must have been enough for them. I don't believe we shall have any more trouble from them." "Captain," called out Col. Zane, banging his hand on the table. "I'll bet you my best horse to a keg of gunpowder that you see enough Indians before you are a year older to make you wish you had never seen or heard of the western border." "And I'll go you the same bet," said Major McColloch. "You see, Captain, you must understand a little of the nature of the Indian," continued Col. Zane. "We have had proof that the Delawares and the Shawnees have been preparing for an expedition for months. We shall have another siege some day and to my thinking it will be a longer and harder one than the last. What say you, Wetzel?" "I ain't sayin' much, but I don't calkilate on goin' on any long hunts this summer," answered the hunter. "And do you think Tarhe, Wingenund, Pipe, Cornplanter, and all those chiefs will unite their forces and attack us?" asked Betty of Wetzel. "Cornplanter won't. He has been paid for most of his land and he ain't so bitter. Tarhe is not likely to bother us. But Pipe and Wingenund and Red Fox--they all want blood." "Have you seen these chiefs?" said Betty. "Yes, I know 'em all and they all know me," answered the hunter. "I've watched over many a trail waitin' for one of 'em. If I can ever get a shot at any of 'em I'll give up Injuns and go farmin'. Good night, Betty." "What a strange man is Wetzel," mused Betty, after the visitors had gone. "Do you know, Eb, he is not at all like any one else. I have seen the girls shudder at the mention of his name and I have heard them say they could not look in his eyes. He does not affect me that way. It is not often I can get him to talk, but sometimes he tells me beautiful thing about the woods; how he lives in the wilderness, his home under the great trees; how every leaf on the trees and every blade of grass has its joy for him as well as its knowledge; how he curls up in his little bark shack and is lulled to sleep by the sighing of the wind through the pine tops. He told me he has often watched the stars for hours at a time. I know there is a waterfall back in the Black Forest somewhere that Lewis goes to, simply to sit and watch the water tumble over the precipice." "Wetzel is a wonderful character, even to those who know him only as an Indian slayer and a man who wants no other occupation. Some day he will go off on one of these long jaunts and will never return. That is certain. The day is fast approaching when a man like Wetzel will be of no use in life. Now, he is a necessity. Like Tige he can smell Indians. Betty, I believe Lewis tells you so much and is so kind and gentle toward you because he cares for you." "Of course Lew likes me. I know he does and I want him to," said Betty. "But he does not care as you seem to think. Grandmother Watkins said the same. I am sure both of you are wrong." "Did Dan's mother tell you that? Well, she's pretty shrewd. It's quite likely, Betty, quite likely. It seems to me you are not so quick witted as you used to be." "Why so?" asked Betty, quickly. "Well, you used to be different somehow," said her brother, as he patted her hand. "Do you mean I am more thoughtful?" "Yes, and sometimes you seem sad." "I have tried to be brave and--and happy," said Betty, her voice trembling slightly. "Yes, yes, I know you have, Betty. You have done wonderfully well here in this dead place. But tell me, don't be angry, don't you think too much of some one?" "You have no right to ask me that," said Betty, flushing and turning away toward the stairway. "Well, well, child, don't mind me. I did not mean anything. There, good night, Betty." Long after she had gone up-stairs Col. Zane sat by his fireside. From time to time he sighed. He thought of the old Virginia home and of the smile of his mother. It seemed only a few short years since he had promised her that he would take care of the baby sister. How had he kept that promise made when Betty was a little thing bouncing on his knee? It seemed only yesterday. How swift the flight of time! Already Betty was a woman; her sweet, gay girlhood had passed; already a shadow had fallen on her face, the shadow of a secret sorrow. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * March with its blustering winds had departed, and now April's showers and sunshine were gladdening the hearts of the settlers. Patches of green freshened the slopes of the hills; the lilac bushes showed tiny leaves, and the maple-buds were bursting. Yesterday a blue-bird--surest harbinger of spring--had alighted on the fence-post and had sung his plaintive song. A few more days and the blossoms were out mingling their pink and white with the green; the red-bud, the hawthorne, and the dog-wood were in bloom, checkering the hillsides. "Bessie, spring is here," said Col. Zane, as he stood in the doorway. "The air is fresh, the sun shines warm, the birds are singing; it makes me feel good." "Yes, it is pleasant to have spring with us again," answered his wife. "I think, though, that in winter I am happier. In summer I am always worried. I am afraid for the children to be out of my sight, and when you are away on a hunt I am distraught until you are home safe." "Well, if the redskins let us alone this summer it will be something new," he said, laughing. "By the way, Bess, some new people came to the fort last night. They rafted down from the Monongahela settlements. Some of the women suffered considerably. I intend to offer them the cabin on the hill until they can cut the timber and run up a house. Sam said the cabin roof leaked and the chimney smoked, but with a little work I think they can be made more comfortable there than at the block-house." "It is the only vacant cabin in the settlement. I can accommodate the women folks here." "Well, we'll see about it. I don't want you and Betty inconvenienced. I'll send Sam up to the cabin and have him fix things up a bit and make it more habitable." The door opened, admitting Col. Zane's elder boy. The lad's face was dirty, his nose was all bloody, and a big bruise showed over his right eye. "For the land's sake!" exclaimed his mother. "Look at the boy. Noah, come here. What have you been doing?" Noah crept close to his mother and grasping her apron with both hands hid his face. Mrs. Zane turned the boy around and wiped his discolored features with a wet towel. She gave him a little shake and said: "Noah, have you been fighting again?" "Let him go and I'll tell you about it," said the Colonel, and when the youngster had disappeared he continued: "Right after breakfast Noah went with me down to the mill. I noticed several children playing in front of Reihart's blacksmith shop. I went in, leaving Noah outside. I got a plow-share which I had left with Reihart to be repaired. He came to the door with me and all at once he said: 'look at the kids.' I looked and saw Noah walk up to a boy and say something to him. The lad was a stranger, and I have no doubt belongs to these new people I told you about. He was bigger than Noah. At first the older boy appeared very friendly and evidently wanted to join the others in their game. I guess Noah did not approve of this, for after he had looked the stranger over he hauled away and punched the lad soundly. To make it short the strange boy gave Noah the worst beating he ever got in his life. I told Noah to come straight to you and confess." "Well, did you ever!" ejaculated Mrs. Zane. "Noah is a bad boy. And you stood and watched him fight. You are laughing about it now. Ebenezer Zane, I would not put it beneath you to set Noah to fighting. I know you used to make the little niggers fight. Anyway, it serves Noah right and I hope it will be a lesson to him." "I'll make you a bet, Bessie," said the Colonel, with another laugh. "I'll bet you that unless we lock him up, Noah will fight that boy every day or every time he meets him." "I won't bet," said Mrs. Zane, with a smile of resignation. "Where's Betts? I haven't seen her this morning. I am going over to Short Creek to-morrow or next day, and think I'll take her with me. You know I am to get a commission to lay out several settlements along the river, and I want to get some work finished at Short Creek this spring. Mrs. Raymer'll be delighted to have Betty. Shall I take her?" "By all means. A visit there will brighten her up and do her good." "Well, what on earth have you been doing?" cried the Colonel. His remark had been called forth by a charming vision that had entered by the open door. Betty--for it was she--wore a little red cap set jauntily on her black hair. Her linsey dress was crumpled and covered with hayseed. "I've been in the hay-mow," said Betty, waving a small basket. "For a week that old black hen has circumvented me, but at last I have conquered. I found the nest in the farthest corner under the hay." "How did you get up in the loft?" inquired Mrs. Zane. "Bessie, I climbed up the ladder of course. I acknowledge being unusually light-hearted and happy this morning, but I have not as yet grown wings. Sam said I could not climb up that straight ladder, but I found it easy enough." "You should not climb up into the loft," said Mrs. Zane, in a severe tone. "Only last fall Hugh Bennet's little boy slid off the hay down into one of the stalls and the horse kicked him nearly to death." "Oh, fiddlesticks, Bessie, I am not a baby," said Betty, with vehemence. "There is not a horse in the barn but would stand on his hind legs before he would step on me, let alone kick me." "I don't know, Betty, but I think that black horse Mr. Clarke left here would kick any one," remarked the Colonel. "Oh, no, he would not hurt me." "Betty, we have had pleasant weather for about three days," said the Colonel, gravely. "In that time you have let out that crazy bear of yours to turn everything topsy-turvy. Only yesterday I got my hands in the paint you have put on your canoe. If you had asked my advice I would have told you that painting your canoe should not have been done for a month yet. Silas told me you fell down the creek hill; Sam said you tried to drive his team over the bluff, and so on. We are happy to see you get back your old time spirits, but could you not be a little more careful? Your versatility is bewildering. We do not know what to look for next. I fully expect to see you brought to the house some day maimed for life, or all that beautiful black hair gone to decorate some Huron's lodge." "I tell you I am perfectly delighted that the weather is again so I can go out. I am tired to death of staying indoors. This morning I could have cried for very joy. Bessie will soon be lecturing me about Madcap. I must not ride farther than the fort. Well, I don't care. I intend to ride all over." "Betty, I do not wish you to think I am lecturing you," said the Colonel's wife. "But you are as wild as a March hare and some one must tell you things. Now listen. My brother, the Major, told me that Simon Girty, the renegade, had been heard to say that he had seen Eb Zane's little sister and that if he ever got his hands on her he would make a squaw of her. I am not teasing you. I am telling you the truth. Girty saw you when you were at Fort Pitt two years ago. Now what would you do if he caught you on one of your lonely rides and carried you off to his wigwam? He has done things like that before. James Girty carried off one of the Johnson girls. Her brothers tried to rescue her and lost their lives. It is a common trick of the Indians." "What would I do if Mr. Simon Girty tried to make a squaw of me?" exclaimed Betty, her eyes flashing fire. "Why, I'd kill him!" "I believe it, Betts, on my word I do," spoke up the Colonel. "But let us hope you may never see Girty. All I ask is that you be careful. I am going over to Short Creek to-morrow. Will you go with me? I know Mrs. Raymer will be pleased to see you." "Oh, Eb, that will be delightful!" "Very well, get ready and we shall start early in the morning." Two weeks later Betty returned from Short Creek and seemed to have profited much by her short visit. Col. Zane remarked with satisfaction to his wife that Betty had regained all her former cheerfulness. The morning after Betty's return was a perfect spring morning--the first in that month of May-days. The sun shone bright and warm; the mayflowers blossomed; the trailing arbutus scented the air; everywhere the grass and the leaves looked fresh and green; swallows flitted in and out of the barn door; the blue-birds twittered; a meadow-lark caroled forth his pure melody, and the busy hum of bees came from the fragrant apple-blossoms. "Mis' Betty, Madcap 'pears powerfo' skittenish," said old Sam, when he had led the pony to where Betty stood on the hitching block. "Whoa, dar, you rascal." Betty laughed as she leaped lightly into the saddle, and soon she was flying over the old familiar road, down across the creek bridge, past the old grist-mill, around the fort and then out on the river bluff. The Indian pony was fiery and mettlesome. He pranced and side-stepped, galloped and trotted by turns. He seemed as glad to get out again into the warm sunshine as was Betty herself. He tore down the road a mile at his best speed. Coming back Betty pulled him into a walk. Presently her musings were interrupted by a sharp switch in the face from a twig of a tree. She stopped the pony and broke off the offending branch. As she looked around the recollection of what had happened to her in that very spot flashed into her mind. It was here that she had been stopped by the man who had passed almost as swiftly out of her life as he had crossed her path that memorable afternoon. She fell to musing on the old perplexing question. After all could there not have been some mistake? Perhaps she might have misjudged him? And then the old spirit, which resented her thinking of him in that softened mood, rose and fought the old battle over again. But as often happened the mood conquered, and Betty permitted herself to sink for the moment into the sad thoughts which returned like a mournful strain of music once sung by beloved voices, now forever silent. She could not resist the desire to ride down to the old sycamore. The pony turned into the bridle-path that led down the bluff and the sure-footed beast picked his way carefully over the roots and stones. Betty's heart beat quicker when she saw the noble tree under whose spreading branches she had spent the happiest day of her life. The old monarch of the forest was not one whit changed by the wild winds of winter. The dew sparkled on the nearly full grown leaves; the little sycamore balls were already as large as marbles. Betty drew rein at the top of the bank and looked absently at the tree and into the foam covered pool beneath. At that moment her eyes saw nothing physical. They held the faraway light of the dreamer, the look that sees so much of the past and nothing of the present. Presently her reflections were broken by the actions of the pony. Madcap had thrown up her head, laid back her ears and commenced to paw the ground with her forefeet. Betty looked round to see the cause of Madcap's excitement. What was that! She saw a tall figure clad in brown leaning against the stone. She saw a long fishing-rod. What was there so familiar in the poise of that figure? Madcap dislodged a stone from the path and it went rattling down the rock, slope and fell with a splash into the water. The man heard it, turned and faced the hillside. Betty recognized Alfred Clarke. For a moment she believed she must be dreaming. She had had many dreams of the old sycamore. She looked again. Yes, it was he. Pale, worn, and older he undoubtedly looked, but the features were surely those of Alfred Clarke. Her heart gave a great bound and then seemed to stop beating while a very agony of joy surged over her and made her faint. So he still lived. That was her first thought, glad and joyous, and then memory returning, her face went white as with clenched teeth she wheeled Madcap and struck her with the switch. Once on the level bluff she urged her toward the house at a furious pace. Col. Zane had just stepped out of the barn door and his face took on an expression of amazement when he saw the pony come tearing up the road, Betty's hair flying in the wind and with a face as white as if she were pursued by a thousand yelling Indians. "Say, Betts, what the deuce is wrong?" cried the Colonel, when Betty reached the fence. "Why did you not tell me that man was here again?" she demanded in intense excitement. "That man! What man?" asked Col. Zane, considerably taken back by this angry apparition. "Mr. Clarke, of course. Just as if you did not know. I suppose you thought it a fine opportunity for one of your jokes." "Oh, Clarke. Well, the fact is I just found it out myself. Haven't I been away as well as you? I certainly cannot imagine how any man could create such evident excitement in your mind. Poor Clarke, what has he done now?" "You might have told me. Somebody could have told me and saved me from making a fool of myself," retorted Betty, who was plainly on the verge of tears. "I rode down to the old sycamore tree and he saw me in, of all the places in the world, the one place where I would not want him to see me." "Huh!" said the Colonel, who often gave vent to the Indian exclamation. "Is that all? I thought something had happened." "All! Is it not enough? I would rather have died. He is a man and he will think I followed him down there, that I was thinking of--that--Oh!" cried Betty, passionately, and then she strode into the house, slammed the door, and left the Colonel, lost in wonder. "Humph! These women beat me. I can't make them out, and the older I grow the worse I get," he said, as he led the pony into the stable. Betty ran up-stairs to her room, her head in a whirl stronger than the surprise of Alfred's unexpected appearance in Fort Henry and stronger than the mortification in having been discovered going to a spot she should have been too proud to remember was the bitter sweet consciousness that his mere presence had thrilled her through and through. It hurt her and made her hate herself in that moment. She hid her face in shame at the thought that she could not help being glad to see the man who had only trifled with her, the man who had considered the acquaintance of so little consequence that he had never taken the trouble to write her a line or send her a message. She wrung her trembling hands. She endeavored to still that throbbing heart and to conquer that sweet vague feeling which had crept over her and made her weak. The tears began to come and with a sob she threw herself on the bed and buried her head in the pillow. An hour after, when Betty had quieted herself and had seated herself by the window a light knock sounded on the door and Col. Zane entered. He hesitated and came in rather timidly, for Betty was not to be taken liberties with, and seeing her by the window he crossed the room and sat down by her side. Betty did not remember her father or her mother. Long ago when she was a child she had gone to her brother, laid her head on his shoulder and told him all her troubles. The desire grew strong within her now. There was comfort in the strong clasp of his hand. She was not proof against it, and her dark head fell on his shoulder. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Alfred Clarke had indeed made his reappearance in Fort Henry. The preceding October when he left the settlement to go on the expedition up the Monongahela River his intention had been to return to the fort as soon as he had finished his work, but what he did do was only another illustration of that fatality which affects everything. Man hopefully makes his plans and an inexorable destiny works out what it has in store for him. The men of the expedition returned to Fort Henry in due time, but Alfred had been unable to accompany them. He had sustained a painful injury and had been compelled to go to Fort Pitt for medical assistance. While there he had received word that his mother was lying very ill at his old home in Southern Virginia and if he wished to see her alive he must not delay in reaching her bedside. He left Fort Pitt at once and went to his home, where he remained until his mother's death. She had been the only tie that bound him to the old home, and now that she was gone he determined to leave the scene of his boyhood forever. Alfred was the rightful heir to all of the property, but an unjust and selfish stepfather stood between him and any contentment he might have found there. He decided he would be a soldier of fortune. He loved the daring life of a ranger, and preferred to take his chances with the hardy settlers on the border rather than live the idle life of a gentleman farmer. He declared his intention to his step-father, who ill-concealed his satisfaction at the turn affairs had taken. Then Alfred packed his belongings, secured his mother's jewels, and with one sad, backward glance rode away from the stately old mansion. It was Sunday morning and Clarke had been two days in Fort Henry. From his little room in the block-house he surveyed the well-remembered scene. The rolling hills, the broad river, the green forests seemed like old friends. "Here I am again," he mused. "What a fool a man can be. I have left a fine old plantation, slaves, horses, a country noted for its pretty women--for what? Here there can be nothing for me but Indians, hard work, privation, and trouble. Yet I could not get here quickly enough. Pshaw! What use to speak of the possibilities of a new country. I cannot deceive myself. It is she. I would walk a thousand miles and starve myself for months just for one glimpse of her sweet face. Knowing this what care I for all the rest. How strange she should ride down to the old sycamore tree yesterday the moment I was there and thinking of her. Evidently she had just returned from her visit. I wonder if she ever cared. I wonder if she ever thinks of me. Shall I accept that incident as a happy augury? Well, I am here to find out and find out I will. Aha! there goes the church bell." Laughing a little at his eagerness he brushed his coat, put on his cap and went down stairs. The settlers with their families were going into the meeting house. As Alfred started up the steps he met Lydia Boggs. "Why, Mr. Clarke, I heard you had returned," she said, smiling pleasantly and extending her hand. "Welcome to the fort. I am very glad to see you." While they were chatting her father and Col. Zane came up and both greeted the young man warmly. "Well, well, back on the frontier," said the Colonel, in his hearty way. "Glad to see you at the fort again. I tell you, Clarke, I have taken a fancy to that black horse you left me last fall. I did not know what to think when Jonathan brought back my horse. To tell you the truth I always looked for you to come back. What have you been doing all winter?" "I have been at home. My mother was ill all winter and she died in April." "My lad, that's bad news. I am sorry," said Col. Zane putting his hand kindly on the young man's shoulder. "I was wondering what gave you that older and graver look. It's hard, lad, but it's the way of life." "I have come back to get my old place with you, Col. Zane, if you will give it to me." "I will, and can promise you more in the future. I am going to open a road through to Maysville, Kentucky, and start several new settlements along the river. I will need young men, and am more than glad you have returned." "Thank you, Col. Zane. That is more than I could have hoped for." Alfred caught sight of a trim figure in a gray linsey gown coming down the road. There were several young people approaching, but he saw only Betty. By some evil chance Betty walked with Ralfe Miller, and for some mysterious reason, which women always keep to themselves, she smiled and looked up into his face at a time of all times she should not have done so. Alfred's heart turned to lead. When the young people reached the steps the eyes of the rivals met for one brief second, but that was long enough for them to understand each other. They did not speak. Lydia hesitated and looked toward Betty. "Betty, here is--" began Col. Zane, but Betty passed them with flaming cheeks and with not so much as a glance at Alfred. It was an awkward moment for him. "Let us go in," he said composedly, and they filed into the church. As long as he lived Alfred Clarke never forgot that hour. His pride kept him chained in his seat. Outwardly he maintained his composure, but inwardly his brain seemed throbbing, whirling, bursting. What an idiot he had been! He understood now why his letter had never been answered. Betty loved Miller, a man who hated him, a man who would leave no stone unturned to destroy even a little liking which she might have felt for him. Once again Miller had crossed his path and worsted him. With a sudden sickening sense of despair he realized that all his fond hopes had been but dreams, a fool's dreams. The dream of that moment when he would give her his mother's jewels, the dream of that charming face uplifted to his, the dream of the little cottage to which he would hurry after his day's work and find her waiting at the gate,--these dreams must be dispelled forever. He could barely wait until the end of the service. He wanted to be alone; to fight it out with himself; to crush out of his heart that fair image. At length the hour ended and he got out before the congregation and hurried to his room. Betty had company all that afternoon and it was late in the day when Col. Zane ascended the stairs and entered her room to find her alone. "Betty, I wish to know why you ignored Mr. Clarke this morning?" said Col. Zane, looking down on his sister. There was a gleam in his eye and an expression about his mouth seldom seen in the Colonel's features. "I do not know that it concerns any one but myself," answered Betty quickly, as her head went higher and her eyes flashed with a gleam not unlike that in her brother's. "I beg your pardon. I do not agree with you," replied Col. Zane. "It does concern others. You cannot do things like that in this little place where every one knows all about you and expect it to pass unnoticed. Martin's wife saw you cut Clarke and you know what a gossip she is. Already every one is talking about you and Clarke." "To that I am indifferent." "But I care. I won't have people talking about you," replied the Colonel, who began to lose patience. Usually he had the best temper imaginable. "Last fall you allowed Clarke to pay you a good deal of attention and apparently you were on good terms when he went away. Now that he has returned you won't even speak to him. You let this fellow Miller run after you. In my estimation Miller is not to be compared to Clarke, and judging from the warm greetings I saw Clarke receive this morning, there are a number of folk who agree with me. Not that I am praising Clarke. I simply say this because to Bessie, to Jack, to everyone, your act is incomprehensible. People are calling you a flirt and saying that they would prefer some country manners." "I have not allowed Mr. Miller to run after me, as you are pleased to term it," retorted Betty with indignation. "I do not like him. I never see him any more unless you or Bessie or some one else is present. You know that. I cannot prevent him from walking to church with me." "No, I suppose not, but are you entirely innocent of those sweet glances which you gave him this morning?" "I did not," cried Betty with an angry blush. "I won't be called a flirt by you or by anyone else. The moment I am civil to some man all these old maids and old women say I am flirting. It is outrageous." "Now, Betty, don't get excited. We are getting from the question. Why are you not civil to Clarke?" asked Col. Zane. She did not answer and after a moment he continued. "If there is anything about Clarke that I do not know and that I should know I want you to tell me. Personally I like the fellow. I am not saying that to make you think you ought to like him because I do. You might not care for him at all, but that would be no good reason for your actions. Betty, in these frontier settlements a man is soon known for his real worth. Every one at the Fort liked Clarke. The youngsters adored him. Jessie liked him very much. You know he and Isaac became good friends. I think he acted like a man to-day. I saw the look Miller gave him. I don't like this fellow Miller, anyway. Now, I am taking the trouble to tell you my side of the argument. It is not a question of your liking Clarke--that is none of my affair. It is simply that either he is not the man we all think him or you are acting in a way unbecoming a Zane. I do not purpose to have this state of affairs continue. Now, enough of this beating about the bush." Betty had seen the Colonel angry more than once, but never with her. It was quite certain she had angered him and she forgot her own resentment. Her heart had warmed with her brother's praise of Clarke. Then as she remembered the past she felt a scorn for her weakness and such a revulsion of feeling that she cried out passionately: "He is a trifler. He never cared for me. He insulted me." Col. Zane reached for his hat, got up without saying another word and went down stairs. Betty had not intended to say quite what she had and instantly regretted her hasty words. She called to the Colonel, but he did not answer her, nor return. "Betty, what in the world could you have said to my husband?" said Mrs. Zane as she entered the room. She was breathless from running up the stairs and her comely face wore a look of concern. "He was as white as that sheet and he stalked off toward the Fort without a word to me." "I simply told him Mr. Clarke had insulted me," answered Betty calmly. "Great Heavens! Betty, what have you done?" exclaimed Mrs. Zane. "You don't know Eb when he is angry. He is a big fool over you, anyway. He is liable to kill Clarke." Betty's blood was up now and she said that would not be a matter of much importance. "When did he insult you?" asked the elder woman, yielding to her natural curiosity. "It was last October." "Pooh! It took you a long time to tell it. I don't believe it amounted to much. Mr. Clarke did not appear to be the sort of a man to insult anyone. All the girls were crazy about him last year. If he was not all right they would not have been." "I do not care if they were. The girls can have him and welcome. I don't want him. I never did. I am tired of hearing everyone eulogize him. I hate him. Do you hear? I hate him! And I wish you would go away and leave me alone." "Well, Betty, all I will say is that you are a remarkable young woman," answered Mrs. Zane, who saw plainly that Betty's violent outburst was a prelude to a storm of weeping. "I don't believe a word you have said. I don't believe you hate him. There!" Col. Zane walked straight to the Fort, entered the block-house and knocked on the door of Clarke's room. A voice bade him come in. He shoved open the door and went into the room. Clarke had evidently just returned from a tramp in the hills, for his garments were covered with burrs and his boots were dusty. He looked tired, but his face was calm. "Why, Col. Zane! Have a seat. What can I do for you?" "I have come to ask you to explain a remark of my sister's." "Very well, I am at your service," answered Alfred slowly lighting his pipe, after which he looked straight into Col. Zane's face. "My sister informs me that you insulted her last fall before you left the Fort. I am sure you are neither a liar nor a coward, and I expect you to answer as a man." "Col. Zane, I am not a liar, and I hope I am not a coward," said Alfred coolly. He took a long pull on his pipe and blew a puff of white smoke toward the ceiling. "I believe you, but I must have an explanation. There is something wrong somewhere. I saw Betty pass you without speaking this morning. I did not like it and I took her to task about it. She then said you had insulted her. Betty is prone to exaggerate, especially when angry, but she never told me a lie in her life. Ever since you pulled Isaac out of the river I have taken an interest in you. That's why I'd like to avoid any trouble. But this thing has gone far enough. Now be sensible, swallow your pride and let me hear your side of the story." Alfred had turned pale at his visitor's first words. There was no mistaking Col. Zane's manner. Alfred well knew that the Colonel, if he found Betty had really been insulted, would call him out and kill him. Col. Zane spoke quietly, ever kindly, but there was an undercurrent of intense feeling in his voice, a certain deadly intent which boded ill to anyone who might cross him at that moment. Alfred's first impulse was a reckless desire to tell Col. Zane he had nothing to explain and that he stood ready to give any satisfaction in his power. But he wisely thought better of this. It struck him that this would not be fair, for no matter what the girl had done the Colonel had always been his friend. So Alfred pulled himself together and resolved to make a clean breast of the whole affair. "Col. Zane, I do not feel that I owe your sister anything, and what I am going to tell you is simply because you have always been my friend, and I do not want you to have any wrong ideas about me. I'll tell you the truth and you can be the judge as to whether or not I insulted your sister. I fell in love with her, almost at first sight. The night after the Indians recaptured your brother, Betty and I stood out in the moonlight and she looked so bewitching and I felt so sorry for her and so carried away by my love for her that I yielded to a momentary impulse and kissed her. I simply could not help it. There is no excuse for me. She struck me across the face and ran into the house. I had intended that night to tell her of my love and place my fate in her hands, but, of course, the unfortunate occurrence made that impossible. As I was to leave at dawn next day, I remained up all night, thinking what I ought to do. Finally I decided to write. I wrote her a letter, telling her all and begging her to become my wife. I gave the letter to your slave, Sam, and told him it was a matter of life and death, and not to lose the letter nor fail to give it to Betty. I have had no answer to that letter. Today she coldly ignored me. That is my story, Col. Zane." "Well, I don't believe she got the letter," said Col. Zane. "She has not acted like a young lady who has had the privilege of saying 'yes' or 'no' to you. And Sam never had any use for you. He disliked you from the first, and never failed to say something against you." "I'll kill that d--n nigger if he did not deliver that letter," said Clarke, jumping up in his excitement. "I never thought of that. Good Heaven! What could she have thought of me? She would think I had gone away without a word. If she knew I really loved her she could not think so terribly of me." "There is more to be explained, but I am satisfied with your side of it," said Col. Zane. "Now I'll go to Sam and see what has become of that letter. I am glad I am justified in thinking of you as I have. I imagine this thing has hurt you and I don't wonder at it. Maybe we can untangle the problem yet. My advice would be--but never mind that now. Anyway, I'm your friend in this matter. I'll let you know the result of my talk with Sam." "I thought that young fellow was a gentleman," mused Col. Zane as he crossed the green square and started up the hill toward the cabins. He found the old negro seated on his doorstep. "Sam, what did you do with a letter Mr. Clarke gave you last October and instructed you to deliver to Betty?" "I dun recollec' no lettah, sah," replied Sam. "Now, Sam, don't lie about it. Clarke has just told me that he gave you the letter. What did you do with it?" "Masse Zane, I ain dun seen no lettah," answered the old darkey, taking a dingy pipe from his mouth and rolling his eyes at his master. "If you lie again I will punish you," said Col. Zane sternly. "You are getting old, Sam, and I would not like to whip you, but I will if you do not find that letter." Sam grumbled, and shuffled inside the cabin. Col. Zane heard him rummaging around. Presently he came back to the door and handed a very badly soiled paper to the Colonel. "What possessed you to do this, Sam? You have always been honest. Your act has caused great misunderstanding and it might have led to worse." "He's one of dem no good Southern white trash; he's good fer nuttin'," said Sam. "I saw yo' sistah, Mis' Betty, wit him, and I seen she was gittin' fond of him, and I says I ain't gwinter have Mis' Betty runnin' off wif him. And I'se never gibbin de lettah to her." That was all the explanation Sam would vouchsafe, and Col. Zane, knowing it would be useless to say more to the well-meaning but ignorant and superstitious old negro, turned and wended his way back to the house. He looked at the paper and saw that it was addressed to Elizabeth Zane, and that the ink was faded until the letters were scarcely visible. "What have you there?" asked his wife, who had watched him go up the hill to the negro's cabin. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that her husband's face had recovered its usual placid expression. "It is a little letter for that young fire-brand up stairs, and, I believe it will clear up the mystery. Clarke gave it to Sam last fall and Sam never gave it to Betty." "I hope with all my heart it may settle Betty. She worries me to death with her love affairs." Col. Zane went up stairs and found the young lady exactly as he had left her. She gave an impatient toss of her head as he entered. "Well, Madam, I have here something that may excite even your interest." he said cheerily. "What?" asked Betty with a start. She flushed crimson when she saw the letter and at first refused to take it from her brother. She was at a loss to understand his cheerful demeanor. He had been anything but pleasant a few moments since. "Here, take it. It is a letter from Mr. Clarke which you should have received last fall. That last morning he gave this letter to Sam to deliver to you, and the crazy old nigger kept it. However, it is too late to talk of that, only it does seem a great pity. I feel sorry for both of you. Clarke never will forgive you, even if you want him to, which I am sure you do not. I don't know exactly what is in this letter, but I know it will make you ashamed to think you did not trust him." With this parting reproof the Colonel walked out, leaving Betty completely bewildered. The words "too late," "never forgive," and "a great pity" rang through her head. What did he mean? She tore the letter open with trembling hands and holding it up to the now fast-waning light, she read "Dear Betty: "If you had waited only a moment longer I know you would not have been so angry with me. The words I wanted so much to say choked me and I could not speak them. I love you. I have loved you from the very first moment, that blessed moment when I looked up over your pony's head to see the sweetest face the sun ever shone on. I'll be the happiest man on earth if you will say you care a little for me and promise to be my wife. "It was wrong to kiss you and I beg your forgiveness. Could you but see your face as I saw it last night in the moonlight, I would not need to plead: you would know that the impulse which swayed me was irresistible. In that kiss I gave you my hope, my love, my life, my all. Let it plead for me. "I expect to return from Ft. Pitt in about six or eight weeks, but I cannot wait until then for your answer. "With hope I sign myself, "Yours until death, "Alfred." Betty read the letter through. The page blurred before her eyes; a sensation of oppression and giddiness made her reach out helplessly with both hands. Then she slipped forward and fell on the floor. For the first time in all her young life Betty had fainted. Col. Zane found her lying pale and quiet under the window. CHAPTER IX. Yantwaia, or, as he was more commonly called, Cornplanter, was originally a Seneca chief, but when the five war tribes consolidated, forming the historical "Five Nations," he became their leader. An old historian said of this renowned chieftain: "Tradition says that the blood of a famous white man coursed through the veins of Cornplanter. The tribe he led was originally ruled by an Indian queen of singular power and beauty. She was born to govern her people by the force of her character. Many a great chief importuned her to become his wife, but she preferred to cling to her power and dignity. When this white man, then a very young man, came to the Ohio valley the queen fell in love with him, and Cornplanter was their son." Cornplanter lived to a great age. He was a wise counsellor, a great leader, and he died when he was one hundred years old, having had more conceded to him by the white men than any other chieftain. General Washington wrote of him: "The merits of Cornplanter and his friendship for the United States are well known and shall not be forgotten." But Cornplanter had not always been a friend to the palefaces. During Dunmore's war and for years after, he was one of the most vindictive of the savage leaders against the invading pioneers. It was during this period of Cornplanter's activity against the whites that Isaac Zane had the misfortune to fall into the great chief's power. We remember Isaac last when, lost in the woods, weak from hunger and exposure, he had crawled into a thicket and had gone to sleep. He was awakened by a dog licking his face. He heard Indian voices. He got up and ran as fast as he could, but exhausted as he was he proved no match for his pursuers. They came up with him and seeing that he was unable to defend himself they grasped him by the arms and led him down a well-worn bridle-path. "D--n poor run. No good legs," said one of his captors, and at this the other two Indians laughed. Then they whooped and yelled, at which signal other Indians joined them. Isaac saw that they were leading him into a large encampment. He asked the big savage who led him what camp it was, and learned that he had fallen into the hands of Cornplanter. While being marched through the large Indian village Isaac saw unmistakable indications of war. There was a busy hum on all sides; the squaws were preparing large quantities of buffalo meat, cutting it in long, thin strips, and were parching corn in stone vessels. The braves were cleaning rifles, sharpening tomahawks, and mixing war paints. All these things Isaac knew to be preparations for long marches and for battle. That night he heard speech after speech in the lodge next to the one in which he lay, but they were in an unknown tongue. Later he heard the yelling of the Indians and the dull thud of their feet as they stamped on the ground. He heard the ring of the tomahawks as they were struck into hard wood. The Indians were dancing the war-dance round the war-post. This continued with some little intermission all the four days that Isaac lay in the lodge rapidly recovering his strength. The fifth day a man came into the lodge. He was tall and powerful, his hair fell over his shoulders and he wore the scanty buckskin dress of the Indian. But Isaac knew at once he was a white man, perhaps one of the many French traders who passed through the Indian village. "Your name is Zane," said the man in English, looking sharply at Isaac. "That is my name. Who are you?" asked Isaac in great surprise. "I am Girty. I've never seen you, but I knew Col. Zane and Jonathan well. I've seen your sister; you all favor one another." "Are you Simon Girty?" "Yes." "I have heard of your influence with the Indians. Can you do anything to get me out of this?" "How did you happen to git over here? You are not many miles from Wingenund's Camp," said Girty, giving Isaac another sharp look from his small black eyes. "Girty, I assure you I am not a spy. I escaped from the Wyandot village on Mad River and after traveling three days I lost my way. I went to sleep in a thicket and when I awoke an Indian dog had found me. I heard voices and saw three Indians. I got up and ran, but they easily caught me." "I know about you. Old Tarhe has a daughter who kept you from bein' ransomed." "Yes, and I wish I were back there. I don't like the look of things." "You are right, Zane. You got ketched at a bad time. The Indians are mad. I suppose you don't know that Col. Crawford massacred a lot of Indians a few days ago. It'll go hard with any white man that gits captured. I'm afraid I can't do nothin' for you." A few words concerning Simon Girty, the White Savage. He had two brothers, James and George, who had been desperadoes before they were adopted by the Delawares, and who eventually became fierce and relentless savages. Simon had been captured at the same time as his brothers, but he did not at once fall under the influence of the unsettled, free-and-easy life of the Indians. It is probable that while in captivity he acquired the power of commanding the Indians' interest and learned the secret of ruling them--two capabilities few white men ever possessed. It is certain that he, like the noted French-Canadian Joucaire, delighted to sit round the camp fires and to go into the council-lodge and talk to the assembled Indians. At the outbreak of the revolution Girty was a commissioned officer of militia at Ft. Pitt. He deserted from the Fort, taking with him the Tories McKee and Elliott, and twelve soldiers, and these traitors spread as much terror among the Delaware Indians as they did among the whites. The Delawares had been one of the few peacefully disposed tribes. In order to get them to join their forces with Governor Hamilton, the British commander, Girty declared that Gen. Washington had been killed, that Congress had been dispersed, and that the British were winning all the battles. Girty spoke most of the Indian languages, and Hamilton employed him to go among the different Indian tribes and incite them to greater hatred of the pioneers. This proved to be just the life that suited him. He soon rose to have a great and bad influence on all the tribes. He became noted for his assisting the Indians in marauds, for his midnight forays, for his scalpings, and his efforts to capture white women, and for his devilish cunning and cruelty. For many years Girty was the Deathshead of the frontier. The mention of his name alone created terror in any household; in every pioneer's cabin it made the children cry out in fear and paled the cheeks of the stoutest-hearted wife. It is difficult to conceive of a white man's being such a fiend in human guise. The only explanation that can be given is that renegades rage against the cause of their own blood with the fury of insanity rather than with the malignity of a naturally ferocious temper. In justice to Simon Girty it must be said that facts not known until his death showed he was not so cruel and base as believed; that some deeds of kindness were attributed to him; that he risked his life to save Kenton from the stake, and that many of the terrible crimes laid at his door were really committed by his savage brothers. Isaac Zane suffered no annoyance at the hands of Cornplanter's braves until the seventh day of his imprisonment. He saw no one except the squaw who brought him corn and meat. On that day two savages came for him and led him into the immense council-lodge of the Five Nations. Cornplanter sat between his right-hand chiefs, Big Tree and Half Town, and surrounded by the other chiefs of the tribes. An aged Indian stood in the center of the lodge and addressed the others. The listening savages sat immovable, their faces as cold and stern as stone masks. Apparently they did not heed the entrance of the prisoner. "Zane, they're havin' a council," whispered a voice in Isaac's ear. Isaac turned and recognized Girty. "I want to prepare you for the worst." "Is there, then, no hope for me?" asked Isaac. "I'm afraid not," continued the renegade, speaking in a low whisper. "They wouldn't let me speak at the council. I told Cornplanter that killin' you might bring the Hurons down on him, but he wouldn't listen. Yesterday, in the camp of the Delawares, I saw Col. Crawford burnt at the stake. He was a friend of mine at Pitt, and I didn't dare to say one word to the frenzied Indians. I had to watch the torture. Pipe and Wingenund, both old friends of Crawford, stood by and watched him walk round the stake on the red-hot coals five hours." Isaac shuddered at the words of the renegade, but did not answer. He had felt from the first that his case was hopeless, and that no opportunity for escape could possibly present itself in such a large encampment. He set his teeth hard and resolved to show the red devils how a white man could die. Several speeches were made by different chiefs and then an impressive oration by Big Tree. At the conclusion of the speeches, which were in an unknown tongue to Isaac, Cornplanter handed a war-club to Half Town. This chief got up, walked to the end of the circle, and there brought the club down on the ground with a resounding thud. Then he passed the club to Big Tree. In a solemn and dignified manner every chief duplicated Half Town's performance with the club. Isaac watched the ceremony as if fascinated. He had seen a war-club used in the councils of the Hurons and knew that striking it on the ground signified war and death. "White man, you are a killer of Indians," said Cornplanter in good English. "When the sun shines again you die." A brave came forward and painted Isaac's face black. This Isaac knew to indicate that death awaited him on the morrow. On his way back to his prison-lodge he saw that a war-dance was in progress. A hundred braves with tomahawks, knives, and mallets in their hands were circling round a post and keeping time to the low music of a muffled drum. Close together, with heads bowed, they marched. At certain moments, which they led up to with a dancing on rigid legs and a stamping with their feet, they wheeled, and uttering hideous yells, started to march in the other direction. When this had been repeated three times a brave stepped from the line, advanced, and struck his knife or tomahawk into the post. Then with a loud voice he proclaimed his past exploits and great deeds in war. The other Indians greeted this with loud yells of applause and a flourishing of weapons. Then the whole ceremony was gone through again. That afternoon many of the Indians visited Isaac in his lodge and shook their fists at him and pointed their knives at him. They hissed and groaned at him. Their vindictive faces expressed the malignant joy they felt at the expectation of putting him to the torture. When night came Isaac's guards laced up the lodge-door and shut him from the sight of the maddened Indians. The darkness that gradually enveloped him was a relief. By and by all was silent except for the occasional yell of a drunken savage. To Isaac it sounded like a long, rolling death-cry echoing throughout the encampment and murdering his sleep. Its horrible meaning made him shiver and his flesh creep. At length even that yell ceased. The watch-dogs quieted down and the perfect stillness which ensued could almost be felt. Through Isaac's mind ran over and over again the same words. His last night to live! His last night to live! He forced himself to think of other things. He lay there in the darkness of his tent, but he was far away in thought, far away in the past with his mother and brothers before they had come to this bloodthirsty country. His thoughts wandered to the days of his boyhood when he used to drive the sows to the pasture on the hillside, and in his dreamy, disordered fancy he was once more letting down the bars of the gate. Then he was wading in the brook and whacking the green frogs with his stick. Old playmates' faces, forgotten for years, were there looking at him from the dark wall of his wigwam. There was Andrew's face; the faces of his other brothers; the laughing face of his sister; the serene face of his mother. As he lay there with the shadow of death over him sweet was the thought that soon he would be reunited with that mother. The images faded slowly away, swallowed up in the gloom. Suddenly a vision appeared to him. A radiant white light illumined the lodge and shone full on the beautiful face of the Indian maiden who had loved him so well. Myeerah's dark eyes were bright with an undying love and her lips smiled hope. A rude kick dispelled Isaac's dreams. A brawny savage pulled him to his feet and pushed him outside of the lodge. It was early morning. The sun had just cleared the low hills in the east and its red beams crimsoned the edges of the clouds of fog which hung over the river like a great white curtain. Though the air was warm, Isaac shivered a little as the breeze blew softly against his cheek. He took one long look toward the rising sun, toward that east he had hoped to see, and then resolutely turned his face away forever. Early though it was the Indians were astir and their whooping rang throughout the valley. Down the main street of the village the guards led the prisoner, followed by a screaming mob of squaws and young braves and children who threw sticks and stones at the hated Long Knife. Soon the inhabitants of the camp congregated on the green oval in the midst of the lodges. When the prisoner appeared they formed in two long lines facing each other, and several feet apart. Isaac was to run the gauntlet--one of the severest of Indian tortures. With the exception of Cornplanter and several of his chiefs, every Indian in the village was in line. Little Indian boys hardly large enough to sling a stone; maidens and squaws with switches or spears; athletic young braves with flashing tomahawks; grim, matured warriors swinging knotted war clubs,--all were there in line, yelling and brandishing their weapons in a manner frightful to behold. The word was given, and stripped to the waist, Isaac bounded forward fleet as a deer. He knew the Indian way of running the gauntlet. The head of that long lane contained the warriors and older braves and it was here that the great danger lay. Between these lines he sped like a flash, dodging this way and that, running close in under the raised weapons, taking what blows he could on his uplifted arms, knocking this warrior over and doubling that one up with a lightning blow in the stomach, never slacking his speed for one stride, so that it was extremely difficult for the Indians to strike him effectually. Once past that formidable array, Isaac's gauntlet was run, for the squaws and children scattered screaming before the sweep of his powerful arms. The old chiefs grunted their approval. There was a bruise on Isaac's forehead and a few drops of blood mingled with the beads of perspiration. Several lumps and scratches showed on his bare shoulders and arms, but he had escaped any serious injury. This was a feat almost without a parallel in gauntlet running. When he had been tied with wet buckskin thongs to the post in the center of the oval, the youths, the younger braves, and the squaws began circling round him, yelling like so many demons. The old squaws thrust sharpened sticks, which had been soaked in salt water, into his flesh. The maidens struck him with willows which left red welts on his white shoulders. The braves buried the blades of their tomahawks in the post as near as possible to his head without actually hitting him. Isaac knew the Indian nature well. To command the respect of the savages was the only way to lessen his torture. He knew that a cry for mercy would only increase his sufferings and not hasten his death,--indeed it would prolong both. He had resolved to die without a moan. He had determined to show absolute indifference to his torture, which was the only way to appeal to the savage nature, and if anything could, make the Indians show mercy. Or, if he could taunt them into killing him at once he would be spared all the terrible agony which they were in the habit of inflicting on their victims. One handsome young brave twirled a glittering tomahawk which he threw from a distance of ten, fifteen, and twenty feet and every time the sharp blade of the hatchet sank deep into the stake within an inch of Isaac's head. With a proud and disdainful look Isaac gazed straight before him and paid no heed to his tormentor. "Does the Indian boy think he can frighten a white warrior?" said Isaac scornfully at length. "Let him go and earn his eagle plumes. The pale face laughs at him." The young brave understood the Huron language, for he gave a frightful yell and cast his tomahawk again, this time shaving a lock of hair from Isaac's head. This was what Isaac had prayed for. He hoped that one of these glittering hatchets would be propelled less skillfully than its predecessors and would kill him instantly. But the enraged brave had no other opportunity to cast his weapon, for the Indians jeered at him and pushed him from the line. Other braves tried their proficiency in the art of throwing knives and tomahawks, but their efforts called forth only words of derision from Isaac. They left the weapons sticking in the post until round Isaac's head and shoulders there was scarcely room for another. "The White Eagle is tired of boys," cried Isaac to a chief dancing near. "What has he done that he be made the plaything of children? Let him die the death of a chief." The maidens had long since desisted in their efforts to torment the prisoner. Even the hardened old squaws had withdrawn. The prisoner's proud, handsome face, his upright bearing, his scorn for his enemies, his indifference to the cuts and bruises, and red welts upon his clear white skin had won their hearts. Not so with the braves. Seeing that the pale face scorned all efforts to make him flinch, the young brave turned to Big Tree. At a command from this chief the Indians stopped their maneuvering round the post and formed a large circle. In another moment a tall warrior appeared carrying an armful of fagots. In spite of his iron nerve Isaac shuddered with horror. He had anticipated running the gauntlet, having his nails pulled out, powder and salt shot into his flesh, being scalped alive and a host of other Indian tortures, but as he had killed no members of this tribe he had not thought of being burned alive. God, it was too horrible! The Indians were now quiet. Their songs and dances would break out soon enough. They piled fagot after fagot round Isaac's feet. The Indian warrior knelt on the ground the steel clicked on the flint; a little shower of sparks dropped on the pieces of punk and then--a tiny flame shot up, and slender little column of blue smoke floated on the air. Isaac shut his teeth hard and prayed with all his soul for a speedy death. Simon Girty came hurriedly through the lines of waiting, watching Indians. He had obtained permission to speak to the man of his own color. "Zane, you made a brave stand. Any other time but this it might have saved you. If you want I'll get word to your people." And then bending and placing his mouth close to Isaac's ear, he whispered, "I did all I could for you, but it must have been too late." "Try and tell them at Ft. Henry," Isaac said simply. There was a little cracking of dried wood and then a narrow tongue of red flame darted up from the pile of fagots and licked at the buckskin fringe on the prisoner's legging. At this supreme moment when the attention of all centered on that motionless figure lashed to the stake, and when only the low chanting of the death-song broke the stillness, a long, piercing yell rang out on the quiet morning air. So strong, so sudden, so startling was the break in that almost perfect calm that for a moment afterward there was a silence as of death. All eyes turned to the ridge of rising ground whence that sound had come. Now came the unmistakable thunder of horses' hoofs pounding furiously on the rocky ground. A moment of paralyzed inaction ensued. The Indians stood bewildered, petrified. Then on that ridge of rising ground stood, silhouetted against the blue sky, a great black horse with arching neck and flying mane. Astride him sat a plumed warrior, who waved his rifle high in the air. Again that shrill screeching yell came floating to the ears of the astonished Indians. The prisoner had seen that horse and rider before; he had heard that long yell; his heart bounded with hope. The Indians knew that yell; it was the terrible war-cry of the Hurons. A horse followed closely after the leader, and then another appeared on the crest of the hill. Then came two abreast, and then four abreast, and now the hill was black with plunging horses. They galloped swiftly down the slope and into the narrow street of the village. When the black horse entered the oval the train of racing horses extended to the top of the ridge. The plumes of the riders streamed gracefully on the breeze; their feathers shone; their weapons glittered in the bright sunlight. Never was there more complete surprise. In the earlier morning the Hurons had crept up to within a rifle shot of the encampment, and at an opportune moment when all the scouts and runners were round the torture-stake, they had reached the hillside from which they rode into the village before the inhabitants knew what had happened. Not an Indian raised a weapon. There were screams from the women and children, a shouted command from Big Tree, and then all stood still and waited. Thundercloud, the war chief of the Wyandots, pulled his black stallion back on his haunches not twenty feet from the prisoner at the stake. His band of painted devils closed in behind him. Full two hundred strong were they and all picked warriors tried and true. They were naked to the waist. Across their brawny chests ran a broad bar of flaming red paint; hideous designs in black and white covered their faces. Every head had been clean-shaven except where the scalp lock bristled like a porcupine's quills. Each warrior carried a plumed spear, a tomahawk, and a rifle. The shining heads, with the little tufts of hair tied tightly close to the scalp, were enough to show that these Indians were on the war-path. From the back of one of the foremost horses a slender figure dropped and darted toward the prisoner at the stake. Surely that wildly flying hair proved this was not a warrior. Swift as a flash of light this figure reached the stake, the blazing fagots scattered right and left; a naked blade gleamed; the thongs fell from the prisoner's wrists; and the front ranks of the Hurons opened and closed on the freed man. The deliverer turned to the gaping Indians, disclosing to their gaze the pale and beautiful face of Myeerah, the Wyandot Princes. "Summon your chief," she commanded. The tall form of the Seneca chief moved from among the warriors and with slow and measured tread approached the maiden. His bearing fitted the leader of five nations of Indians. It was of one who knew that he was the wisest of chiefs, the hero of a hundred battles. Who dared beard him in his den? Who dared defy the greatest power in all Indian tribes? When he stood before the maiden he folded his arms and waited for her to speak. "Myeerah claims the White Eagle," she said. Cornplanter did not answer at once. He had never seen Myeerah, though he had heard many stories of her loveliness. Now he was face to face with the Indian Princess whose fame had been the theme of many an Indian romance, and whose beauty had been sung of in many an Indian song. The beautiful girl stood erect and fearless. Her disordered garments, torn and bedraggled and stained from the long ride, ill-concealed the grace of her form. Her hair rippled from the uncovered head and fell in dusky splendor over her shoulders; her dark eyes shone with a stern and steady fire: her bosom swelled with each deep breath. She was the daughter of great chiefs; she looked the embodiment of savage love. "The Huron squaw is brave," said Cornplanter. "By what right does she come to free my captive?" "He is an adopted Wyandot." "Why does the paleface hide like a fox near the camp of Cornplanter?" "He ran away. He lost the trail to the Fort on the river." "Cornplanter takes prisoners to kill; not to free." "If you will not give him up Myeerah will take him," she answered, pointing to the long line of mounted warriors. "And should harm befall Tarhe's daughter it will be avenged." Cornplanter looked at Thundercloud. Well he knew that chief's prowess in the field. He ran his eyes over the silent, watching Hurons, and then back to the sombre face of their leader. Thundercloud sat rigid upon his stallion; his head held high; every muscle tense and strong for instant action. He was ready and eager for the fray. He, and every one of his warriors, would fight like a thousand tigers for their Princess--the pride of the proud race of Wyandots. Cornplanter saw this and he felt that on the eve of important marches he dared not sacrifice one of his braves for any reason, much less a worthless pale face; and yet to let the prisoner go galled the haughty spirit of the Seneca chief. "The Long Knife is not worth the life of one of my dogs," he said, with scorn in his deep voice. "If Cornplanter willed he could drive the Hurons before him like leaves before the storm. Let Myeerah take the pale face back to her wigwam and there feed him and make a squaw of him. When he stings like a snake in the grass remember the chief's words. Cornplanter turns on his heel from the Huron maiden who forgets her blood." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * When the sun reached its zenith it shone down upon a long line of mounted Indians riding single file along the narrow trail and like a huge serpent winding through the forest and over the plain. They were Wyandot Indians, and Isaac Zane rode among them. Freed from the terrible fate which had menaced him, and knowing that he was once more on his way to the Huron encampment, he had accepted his destiny and quarreled no more with fate. He was thankful beyond all words for his rescue from the stake. Coming to a clear, rapid stream, the warriors dismounted and rested while their horses drank thirstily of the cool water. An Indian touched Isaac on the arm and silently pointed toward the huge maple tree under which Thundercloud and Myeerah were sitting. Isaac turned his horse and rode the short distance intervening. When he got near he saw that Myeerah stood with one arm over her pony's neck. She raised eyes that were weary and sad, which yet held a lofty and noble resolve. "White Eagle, this stream leads straight to the Fort on the river," she said briefly, almost coldly. "Follow it, and when the sun reaches the top of yonder hill you will be with your people. Go, you are free." She turned her face away. Isaac's head whirled in his amazement. He could not believe his ears. He looked closely at her and saw that though her face was calm her throat swelled, and the hand which lay over the neck of her pony clenched the bridle in a fierce grasp. Isaac glanced at Thundercloud and the other Indians near by. They sat unconcerned with the invariable unreadable expression. "Myeerah, what do you mean?" asked Isaac. "The words of Cornplanter cut deep into the heart of Myeerah," she answered bitterly. "They were true. The Eagle does not care for Myeerah. She shall no longer keep him in a cage. He is free to fly away." "The Eagle does not want his freedom. I love you, Myeerah. You have saved me and I am yours. If you will go home with me and marry me there as my people are married I will go back to the Wyandot village." Myeerah's eyes softened with unutterable love. With a quick cry she was in his arms. After a few moments of forgetfulness Myeerah spoke to Thundercloud and waved her hand toward the west. The chief swung himself over his horse, shouted a single command, and rode down the bank into the water. His warriors followed him, wading their horses into the shallow creek, with never backward look. When the last rider had disappeared in the willows the lovers turned their horses eastward. CHAPTER X. It was near the close of a day in early summer. A small group of persons surrounded Col. Zane where he sat on his doorstep. From time to time he took the long Indian pipe from his mouth and blew great clouds of smoke over his head. Major McColloch and Capt. Boggs were there. Silas Zane half reclined on the grass. The Colonel's wife stood in the door-way, and Betty sat on the lower step with her head leaning against her brother's knee. They all had grave faces. Jonathan Zane had returned that day after an absence of three weeks, and was now answering the many questions with which he was plied. "Don't ask me any more and I'll tell you the whole thing," he had just said, while wiping the perspiration from his brow. His face was worn; his beard ragged and unkempt; his appearance suggestive of extreme fatigue. "It was this way: Colonel Crawford had four hundred and eighty men under him, with Slover and me acting as guides. This was a large force of men and comprised soldiers from Pitt and the other forts and settlers from all along the river. You see, Crawford wanted to crush the Shawnees at one blow. When we reached the Sandusky River, which we did after an arduous march, not one Indian did we see. You know Crawford expected to surprise the Shawnee camp, and when he found it deserted he didn't know what to do. Slover and I both advised an immediate retreat. Crawford would not listen to us. I tried to explain to him that ever since the Guadenhutten massacre keen-eyed Indian scouts had been watching the border. The news of the present expedition had been carried by fleet runners to the different Indian tribes and they were working like hives of angry bees. The deserted Shawnee village meant to me that the alarm had been sounded in the towns of the Shawnees and the Delawares; perhaps also in the Wyandot towns to the north. Colonel Crawford was obdurate and insisted on resuming the march into the Indian country. The next day we met the Indians coming directly toward us. It was the combined force of the Delaware chiefs, Pipe and Wingenund. The battle had hardly commenced when the redskins were reinforced by four hundred warriors under Shanshota, the Huron chief. The enemy skulked behind trees and rocks, hid in ravines, and crawled through the long grass. They could be picked off only by Indian hunters, of whom Crawford had but few--probably fifty all told. All that day we managed to keep our position, though we lost sixty men. That night we lay down to rest by great fires which we built, to prevent night surprises. "Early next morning we resumed the fight. I saw Simon Girty on his white horse. He was urging and cheering the Indians on to desperate fighting. Their fire became so deadly that we were forced to retreat. In the afternoon Slover, who had been out scouting, returned with the information that a mounted force was approaching, and that he believed they were the reinforcements which Col. Crawford expected. The reinforcements came up and proved to be Butler's British rangers from Detroit. This stunned Crawford's soldiers. The fire of the enemy became hotter and hotter. Our men were falling like leaves around us. They threw aside their rifles and ran, many of them right into the hands of the savages. I believe some of the experienced bordermen escaped but most of Crawford's force met death on the field. I hid in a hollow log. Next day when I felt that it could be done safely I crawled out. I saw scalped and mutilated bodies everywhere, but did not find Col. Crawford's body. The Indians had taken all the clothing, weapons, blankets and everything of value. The Wyandots took a northwest trail and the Delawares and the Shawnees traveled east. I followed the latter because their trail led toward home. Three days later I stood on the high bluff above Wingenund's camp. From there I saw Col. Crawford tied to a stake and a fire started at his feet. I was not five hundred yards from the camp. I saw the war chiefs, Pipe and Wingenund; I saw Simon Girty and a British officer in uniform. The chiefs and Girty were once Crawford's friends. They stood calmly by and watched the poor victim slowly burn to death. The Indians yelled and danced round the stake; they devised every kind of hellish torture. When at last an Indian ran in and tore off the scalp of the still living man I could bear to see no more, and I turned and ran. I have been in some tough places, but this last was the worst." "My God! it is awful--and to think that man Girty was once a white man," cried Col. Zane. "He came very near being a dead man," said Jonathan, with grim humor. "I got a long shot at him and killed his big white horse." "It's a pity you missed him," said Silas Zane. "Here comes Wetzel. What will he say about the massacre?" remarked Major McColloch. Wetzel joined the group at that moment and shook hands with Jonathan. When interrogated about the failure of Col. Crawford's expedition Wetzel said that Slover had just made his appearance at the cabin of Hugh Bennet, and that he was without clothing and almost dead from exposure. "I'm glad Slover got out alive. He was against the march all along. If Crawford had listened to us he would have averted this terrible affair and saved his own life. Lew, did Slover know how many men got out?" asked Jonathan. "He said not many. The redskins killed all the prisoners exceptin' Crawford and Knight." "I saw Col. Crawford burned at the stake. I did not see Dr. Knight. Maybe they murdered him before I reached the camp of the Delawares," said Jonathan. "Wetzel, in your judgment, what effect will this massacre and Crawford's death have on the border?" inquired Col. Zane. "It means another bloody year like 1777," answered Wetzel. "We are liable to have trouble with the Indians any day. You mean that." "There'll be war all along the river. Hamilton is hatchin' some new devil's trick with Girty. Col. Zane, I calkilate that Girty has a spy in the river settlements and knows as much about the forts and defense as you do." "You can't mean a white spy." "Yes, just that." "That is a strong assertion, Lewis, but coming from you it means something. Step aside here and explain yourself," said Col. Zane, getting up and walking out to the fence. "I don't like the looks of things," said the hunter. "A month ago I ketched this man Miller pokin' his nose round the block-house where he hadn't ought to be. And I kep' watchin' him. If my suspicions is correct he's playin' some deep game. I ain't got any proof, but things looks bad." "That's strange, Lewis," said Col. Zane soberly. "Now that you mention it I remember Jonathan said he met Miller near the Kanawha three weeks ago. That was when Crawford's expedition was on the way to the Shawnee villages. The Colonel tried to enlist Miller, but Miller said he was in a hurry to get back to the Fort. And he hasn't come back yet." "I ain't surprised. Now, Col. Zane, you are in command here. I'm not a soldier and for that reason I'm all the better to watch Miller. He won't suspect me. You give me authority and I'll round up his little game." "By all means, Lewis. Go about it your own way, and report anything to me. Remember you may be mistaken and give Miller the benefit of the doubt. I don't like the fellow. He has a way of appearing and disappearing, and for no apparent reason, that makes me distrust him. But for Heaven's sake, Lew, how would he profit by betraying us?" "I don't know. All I know is he'll bear watchin'." "My gracious, Lew Wetzel!" exclaimed Betty as her brother and the hunter rejoined the others. "Have you come all the way over here without a gun? And you have on a new suit of buckskin." Lewis stood a moment by Betty, gazing down at her with his slight smile. He looked exceedingly well. His face was not yet bronzed by summer suns. His long black hair, of which he was as proud as a woman could have been, and of which he took as much care as he did of his rifle, waved over his shoulders. "Betty, this is my birthday, but that ain't the reason I've got my fine feathers on. I'm goin' to try and make an impression on you," replied Lewis, smiling. "I declare, this is very sudden. But you have succeeded. Who made the suit? And where did you get all that pretty fringe and those beautiful beads?" "That stuff I picked up round an Injun camp. The suit I made myself." "I think, Lewis, I must get you to help me make my new gown," said Betty, roguishly. "Well, I must be getting' back," said Wetzel, rising. "Oh, don't go yet. You have not talked to me at all," said Betty petulantly. She walked to the gate with him. "What can an Injun hunter say to amuse the belle of the border?" "I don't want to be amused exactly. I mean I'm not used to being unnoticed, especially by you." And then in a lower tone she continued: "What did you mean about Mr. Miller? I heard his name and Eb looked worried. What did you tell him?" "Never mind now, Betty. Maybe I'll tell you some day. It's enough for you to know the Colonel don't like Miller and that I think he is a bad man. You don't care nothin' for Miller, do you Betty?" "Not in the least." "Don't see him any more, Betty. Good-night, now, I must be goin' to supper." "Lew, stop! or I shall run after you." "And what good would your runnin' do?" said Lewis "You'd never ketch me. Why, I could give you twenty paces start and beat you to yon tree." "You can't. Come, try it," retorted Betty, catching hold of her skirt. She could never have allowed a challenge like that to pass. "Ha! ha! We are in for a race, Betty. if you beat him, start or no start, you will have accomplished something never done before," said Col. Zane. "Come, Silas, step off twenty paces and make them long ones," said Betty, who was in earnest. "We'll make it forty paces," said Silas, as he commenced taking immense strides. "What is Lewis looking at?" remarked Col. Zane's wife. Wetzel, in taking his position for the race, had faced the river. Mrs. Zane had seen him start suddenly, straighten up and for a moment stand like a statue. Her exclamation drew he attention of the others to the hunter. "Look!" he cried, waving his hand toward the river. "I declare, Wetzel, you are always seeing something. Where shall I look? Ah, yes, there is a dark form moving along the bank. By jove! I believe it's an Indian," said Col. Zane. Jonathan darted into the house. When he reappeared second later he had three rifles. "I see horses, Lew. What do you make out?" said Jonathan. "It's a bold manoeuvre for Indians unless they have a strong force." "Hostile Injuns wouldn't show themselves like that. Maybe they ain't redskins at all. We'll go down to the bluff." "Oh, yes, let us go," cried Betty, walking down the path toward Wetzel. Col. Zane followed her, and presently the whole party were on their way to the river. When they reached the bluff they saw two horses come down the opposite bank and enter the water. Then they seemed to fade from view. The tall trees cast a dark shadow over the water and the horses had become lost in this obscurity. Col. Zane and Jonathan walked up and down the bank seeking to find a place which afforded a clearer view of the river. "There they come," shouted Silas. "Yes, I see them just swimming out of the shadow," said Col. Zane. "Both horses have riders. Lewis, what can you make out?" "It's Isaac and an Indian girl," answered Wetzel. This startling announcement created a commotion in the little group. It was followed by a chorus of exclamations. "Heavens! Wetzel, you have wonderful eyes. I hope to God you are right. There, I see the foremost rider waving his hand," cried Col. Zane. "Oh, Bessie, Bessie! I believe Lew is right. Look at Tige," said Betty excitedly. Everybody had forgotten the dog. He had come down the path with Betty and had pressed close to her. First he trembled, then whined, then with a loud bark he ran down the bank and dashed into the water. "Hel-lo, Betts," came the cry across the water. There was no mistaking that clear voice. It was Isaac's. Although the sun had long gone down behind the hills daylight lingered. It was bright enough for the watchers to recognize Isaac Zane. He sat high on his horse and in his hand he held the bridle of a pony that was swimming beside him. The pony bore the slender figure of a girl. She was bending forward and her hands were twisted in the pony's mane. By this time the Colonel and Jonathan were standing in the shallow water waiting to grasp the reins and lead the horses up the steep bank. Attracted by the unusual sight of a wildly gesticulating group on the river bluff, the settlers from the Fort hurried down to the scene of action. Capt. Boggs and Alfred Clarke joined the crowd. Old Sam came running down from the barn. All were intensely excited and Col. Zane and Jonathan reached for the bridles and led the horses up the slippery incline. "Eb, Jack, Silas, here I am alive and well," cried Isaac as he leaped from his horse. "Betty, you darling, it's Isaac. Don't stand staring as if I were a ghost." Whereupon Betty ran to him, flung her arms around his neck and clung to him. Isaac kissed her tenderly and disengaged himself from her arms. "You'll get all wet. Glad to see me? Well, I never had such a happy moment in my life. Betty, I have brought you home one whom you must love. This is Myeerah, your sister. She is wet and cold. Take her home and make her warm and comfortable. You must forget all the past, for Myeerah has saved me from the stake." Betty had forgotten the other. At her brother's words she turned and saw a slender form. Even the wet, mud-stained and ragged Indian costume failed to hide the grace of that figure. She saw a beautiful face, as white as her own, and dark eyes full of unshed tears. "The Eagle is free," said the Indian girl in her low, musical voice. "You have brought him home to us. Come," said Betty taking the hand of the trembling maiden. The settlers crowded round Isaac and greeted him warmly while they plied him with innumerable questions. Was he free? Who was the Indian girl? Had he run off with her? Were the Indians preparing for war? On the way to the Colonel's house Isaac told briefly of his escape from the Wyandots, of his capture by Cornplanter, and of his rescue. He also mentioned the preparations for war he had seen in Cornplanter's camp, and Girty's story of Col. Crawford's death. "How does it come that you have the Indian girl with you?" asked Col. Zane as they left the curious settlers and entered the house. "I am going to marry Myeerah and I brought her with me for that purpose. When we are married I will go back to the Wyandots and live with them until peace is declared." "Humph! Will it be declared?" "Myeerah has promised it, and I believe she can bring it about, especially if I marry her. Peace with the Hurons may help to bring about peace with the Shawnees. I shall never cease to work for that end; but even if peace cannot be secured, my duty still is to Myeerah. She saved me from a most horrible death." "If your marriage with this Indian girl will secure the friendly offices of that grim old warrior Tarhe, it is far more than fighting will ever do. I do not want you to go back. Would we ever see you again?" "Oh, yes, often I hope. You see, if I marry Myeerah the Hurons will allow me every liberty." "Well, that puts a different light on the subject." "Oh, how I wish you and Jonathan could have seen Thundercloud and his two hundred warriors ride into Cornplanter's camp. It was magnificent! The braves were all crowded near the stake where I was bound. The fire had been lighted. Suddenly the silence was shattered by an awful yell. It was Thundercloud's yell. I knew it because I had heard it before, and anyone who had once heard that yell could never forget it. In what seemed an incredibly short time Thundercloud's warriors were lined up in the middle of the camp. The surprise was so complete that, had it been necessary, they could have ridden Cornplanter's braves down, killed many, routed the others, and burned the village. Cornplanter will not get over that surprise in many a moon." Betty had always hated the very mention of the Indian girl who had been the cause of her brother's long absence from home. But she was so happy in the knowledge of his return that she felt that it was in her power to forgive much; more over, the white, weary face of the Indian maiden touched Betty's warm heart. With her quick intuition she had divined that this was even a greater trial for Myeerah. Undoubtedly the Indian girl feared the scorn of her lover's people. She showed it in her trembling hands, in her fearful glances. Finding that Myeerah could speak and understand English, Betty became more interested in her charge every moment. She set about to make Myeerah comfortable, and while she removed the wet and stained garments she talked all the time. She told her how happy she was that Isaac was alive and well. She said Myeerah's heroism in saving him should atone for all the past, and that Isaac's family would welcome her in his home. Gradually Myeerah's agitation subsided under Betty's sweet graciousness, and by the time Betty had dressed her in a white gown, had brushed the dark hair and added a bright ribbon to the simple toilet, Myeerah had so far forgotten her fears as to take a shy pleasure in the picture of herself in the mirror. As for Betty, she gave vent to a little cry of delight. "Oh, you are perfectly lovely," cried Betty. "In that gown no one would know you as a Wyandot princess." "Myeerah's mother was a white woman." "I have heard your story, Myeerah, and it is wonderful. You must tell me all about your life with the Indians. You speak my language almost as well as I do. Who taught you?" "Myeerah learned to talk with the White Eagle. She can speak French with the Coureurs-des-bois." "That's more than I can do, Myeerah. And I had French teacher," said Betty, laughing. "Hello, up there," came Isaac's voice from below. "Come up, Isaac," called Betty. "Is this my Indian sweetheart?" exclaimed Isaac, stopping at the door. "Betty, isn't she--" "Yes," answered Betty, "she is simply beautiful." "Come, Myeerah, we must go down to supper," said Isaac, taking her in his arms and kissing her. "Now you must not be afraid, nor mind being looked at." "Everyone will be kind to you," said Betty, taking her hand. Myeerah had slipped from Isaac's arm and hesitated and hung back. "Come," continued Betty, "I will stay with you, and you need not talk if you do not wish." Thus reassured Myeerah allowed Betty to lead her down stairs. Isaac had gone ahead and was waiting at the door. The big room was brilliantly lighted with pine knots. Mrs. Zane was arranging the dishes on the table. Old Sam and Annie were hurrying to and fro from the kitchen. Col. Zane had just come up the cellar stairs carrying a mouldy looking cask. From its appearance it might have been a powder keg, but the merry twinkle in the Colonel's eyes showed that the cask contained something as precious, perhaps, as powder, but not quite so dangerous. It was a cask of wine over thirty years old. With Col. Zane's other effects it had stood the test of the long wagon-train journey over the Virginia mountains, and of the raft-ride down the Ohio. Col. Zane thought the feast he had arranged for Isaac would be a fitting occasion for the breaking of the cask. Major McCullough, Capt. Boggs and Hugh Bennet had been invited. Wetzel had been persuaded to come. Betty's friends Lydia and Alice were there. As Isaac, with an air of pride, led the two girls into the room Old Sam saw them and he exclaimed, "For de Lawd's sakes, Marsh Zane, dar's two pippins, sure can't tell 'em from one anudder." Betty and Myeerah did resemble each other. They were of about the same size, tall and slender. Betty was rosy, bright-eyed and smiling; Myeerah was pale one moment and red the next. "Friends, this is Myeerah, the daughter of Tarhe," said Isaac simply. "We are to be married to-morrow." "Oh, why did you not tell me?" asked Betty in great surprise. "She said nothing about it." "You see Myeerah has that most excellent trait in a woman--knowing when to keep silent," answered Isaac with a smile. The door opened at this moment, admitting Will Martin and Alfred Clarke. "Everybody is here now, Bessie, and I guess we may as well sit down to supper," said Col. Zane. "And, good friends, let me say that this is an occasion for rejoicing. It is not so much a marriage that I mean. That we might have any day if Lydia or Betty would show some of the alacrity which got a good husband for Alice. Isaac is a free man and we expect his marriage will bring about peace with a powerful tribe of Indians. To us, and particularly to you, young people, that is a matter of great importance. The friendship of the Hurons cannot but exert an influence on other tribes. I, myself, may live to see the day that my dream shall be realized--peaceful and friendly relations with the Indians, the freedom of the soil, well-tilled farms and growing settlements, and at last, the opening of this glorious country to the world. Therefore, let us rejoice; let every one be happy; let your gayest laugh ring out, and tell your best story." Betty had blushed painfully at the entrance of Alfred and again at the Colonel's remark. To add to her embarrassment she found herself seated opposite Alfred at the table. This was the first time he had been near her since the Sunday at the meeting-house, and the incident had a singular effect on Betty. She found herself possessed, all at once, of an unaccountable shyness, and she could not lift her eyes from her plate. But at length she managed to steal a glance at Alfred. She failed to see any signs in his beaming face of the broken spirit of which her brother had hinted. He looked very well indeed. He was eating his dinner like any other healthy man, and talking and laughing with Lydia. This developed another unaccountable feeling in Betty, but this time it was resentment. Who ever heard of a man, who was as much in love as his letter said, looking well and enjoying himself with any other than the object of his affections? He had got over it, that was all. Just then Alfred turned and gazed full into Betty's eyes. She lowered them instantly, but not so quickly that she failed to see in his a reproach. "You are going to stay with us a while, are you not?" asked Betty of Isaac. "No, Betts, not more than a day or so. Now, do not look so distressed. I do not go back as a prisoner. Myeerah and I can often come and visit you. But just now I want to get back and try to prevent the Delawares from urging Tarhe to war." "Isaac, I believe you are doing the wisest thing possible," said Capt. Boggs. "And when I look at your bride-to-be I confess I do not see how you remained single so long." "That's so, Captain," answered Isaac. "But you see, I have never been satisfied or contented in captivity, I wanted nothing but to be free." "In other words, you were blind," remarked Alfred, smiling at Isaac. "Yes, Alfred, was. And I imagine had you been in my place you would have discovered the beauty and virtue of my Princess long before I did. Nevertheless, please do not favor Myeerah with so many admiring glances. She is not used to it. And that reminds me that I must expect trouble tomorrow. All you fellows will want to kiss her." "And Betty is going to be maid of honor. She, too, will have her troubles," remarked Col. Zane. "Think of that, Alfred," said Isaac "A chance to kiss the two prettiest girls on the border--a chance of a lifetime." "It is customary, is it not?" said Alfred coolly. "Yes, it's a custom, if you can catch the girl," answered Col. Zane. Betty's face flushed at Alfred's cool assumption. How dared he? In spite of her will she could not resist the power that compelled her to look at him. As plainly as if it were written there, she saw in his steady blue eyes the light of a memory--the memory of a kiss. And Betty dropped her head, her face burning, her heart on fire with shame, and love, and regret. "It'll be a good chance for me, too," said Wetzel. His remark instantly turned attention to himself. "The idea is absurd," said Isaac. "Why, Lew Wetzel, you could not be made to kiss any girl." "I would not be backward about it," said Col. Zane. "You have forgotten the fuss you made when the boys were kissing me," said Mrs. Zane with a fine scorn. "My dear," said Col. Zane, in an aggrieved tone, "I did not make so much of a fuss, as you call it, until they had kissed you a great many times more than was reasonable." "Isaac, tell us one thing more," said Capt. Boggs. "How did Myeerah learn of your capture by Cornplanter? Surely she could not have trailed you?" "Will you tell us?" said Isaac to Myeerah. "A bird sang it to me," answered Myeerah. "She will never tell, that is certain," said Isaac. "And for that reason I believe Simon Girty got word to her that I was in the hands of Cornplanter. At the last moment when the Indians were lashing me to the stake Girty came to me and said he must have been too late." "Yes, Girty might have done that," said Col. Zane. "I suppose, though he dared not interfere in behalf of poor Crawford." "Isaac, Can you get Myeerah to talk? I love to hear her speak," said Betty, in an aside. "Myeerah, will you sing a Huron love-song?" said Isaac "Or, if you do not wish to sing, tell a story. I want them to know how well you can speak our language." "What shall Myeerah say?" she said, shyly. "Tell them the legend of the Standing Stone." "A beautiful Indian girl once dwelt in the pine forests," began Myeerah, with her eyes cast down and her hand seeking Isaac's. "Her voice was like rippling waters, her beauty like the rising sun. From near and from far came warriors to see the fair face of this maiden. She smiled on them all and they called her Smiling Moon. Now there lived on the Great Lake a Wyandot chief. He was young and bold. No warrior was as great as Tarhe. Smiling Moon cast a spell on his heart. He came many times to woo her and make her his wife. But Smiling Moon said: 'Go, do great deeds, an come again.' "Tarhe searched the east and the west. He brought her strange gifts from strange lands. She said: 'Go and slay my enemies.' Tarhe went forth in his war paint and killed the braves who named her Smiling Moon. He came again to her and she said: 'Run swifter than the deer, be more cunning than the beaver, dive deeper than the loon.' "Tarhe passed once more to the island where dwelt Smiling Moon. The ice was thick, the snow was deep. Smiling Moon turned not from her warm fire as she said: 'The chief is a great warrior, but Smiling Moon is not easily won. It is cold. Change winter into summer and then Smiling Moon will love him.' "Tarhe cried in a loud voice to the Great Spirit: 'Make me a master.' "A voice out of the forest answered: 'Tarhe, great warrior, wise chief, waste not thy time, go back to thy wigwam.' "Tarhe unheeding cried 'Tarhe wins or dies. Make him a master so that he may drive the ice northward.' "Stormed the wild tempest; thundered the rivers of ice; chill blew the north wind, the cold northwest wind, against the mild south wind; snow-spirits and hail-spirits fled before the warm raindrops; the white mountains melted, and lo! it was summer. "On the mountain top Tarhe waited for his bride. Never wearying, ever faithful he watched many years. There he turned to stone. There he stands to-day, the Standing Stone of ages. And Smiling Moon, changed by the Great Spirit into the Night Wind, forever wails her lament at dusk through the forest trees, and moans over the mountain tops." Myeerah's story elicited cheers and praises from all. She was entreated to tell another, but smilingly shook her head. Now that her shyness had worn off to some extent she took great interest in the jest and the general conversation. Col. Zane's fine old wine flowed like water. The custom was to fill a guest's cup as soon as it was empty. Drinking much was rather encouraged than otherwise. But Col. Zane never allowed this custom to go too far in his house. "Friends, the hour grows late," he said. "To-morrow, after the great event, we shall have games, shooting matches, running races, and contests of all kinds. Capt. Boggs and I have arranged to give prizes, and I expect the girls can give something to lend a zest to the competition." "Will the girls have a chance in these races?" asked Isaac. "If so, I should like to see Betty and Myeerah run." "Betty can outrun any woman, red or white, on the border," said Wetzel. "And she could make some of the men run their level best." "Well, perhaps we shall give her one opportunity to-morrow," observed the Colonel. "She used to be good at running but it seems to me that of late she has taken to books and--" "Oh, Eb! that is untrue," interrupted Betty. Col. Zane laughed and patted his sister's cheek. "Never mind, Betty," and then, rising, he continued, "Now let us drink to the bride and groom-to-be. Capt. Boggs, I call on you." "We drink to the bride's fair beauty; we drink to the groom's good luck," said Capt. Boggs, raising his cup. "Do not forget the maid-of-honor," said Isaac. "Yes, and the maid-of-honor. Mr. Clarke, will you say something appropriate?" asked Col. Zane. Rising, Clarke said: "I would be glad to speak fittingly on this occasion, but I do not think I can do it justice. I believe as Col. Zane does, that this Indian Princess is the first link in that chain of peace which will some day unite the red men and the white men. Instead of the White Crane she should be called the White Dove. Gentlemen, rise and drink to her long life and happiness." The toast was drunk. Then Clarke refilled his cup and holding it high over his head he looked at Betty. "Gentlemen, to the maid-of-honor. Miss Zane, your health, your happiness, in this good old wine." "I thank you," murmured Betty with downcast eyes. "I bid you all good-night. Come, Myeerah." Once more alone with Betty, the Indian girl turned to her with eyes like twin stars. "My sister has made me very happy," whispered Myeerah in her soft, low voice. "Myeerah's heart is full." "I believe you are happy, for I know you love Isaac dearly." "Myeerah has always loved him. She will love his sister." "And I will love you," said Betty. "I will love you because you have saved him. Ah! Myeerah, yours has been wonderful, wonderful love." "My sister is loved," whispered Myeerah. "Myeerah saw the look in the eyes of the great hunter. It was the sad light of the moon on the water. He loves you. And the other looked at my sister with eyes like the blue of northern skies. He, too, loves you." "Hush!" whispered Betty, trembling and hiding her face. "Hush! Myeerah, do not speak of him." CHAPTER XI. He following afternoon the sun shone fair and warm; the sweet smell of the tan-bark pervaded the air and the birds sang their gladsome songs. The scene before the grim battle-scarred old fort was not without its picturesqueness. The low vine-covered cabins on the hill side looked more like picture houses than like real habitations of men; the mill with its burned-out roof--a reminder of the Indians--and its great wheel, now silent and still, might have been from its lonely and dilapidated appearance a hundred years old. On a little knoll carpeted with velvety grass sat Isaac and his Indian bride. He had selected this vantage point because it afforded a fine view of the green square where the races and the matches were to take place. Admiring women stood around him and gazed at his wife. They gossiped in whispers about her white skin, her little hands, her beauty. The girls stared with wide open and wondering eyes. The youngsters ran round and round the little group; they pushed each other over, and rolled in the long grass, and screamed with delight. It was to be a gala occasion and every man, woman and child in the settlement had assembled on the green. Col. Zane and Sam were planting a post in the center of the square. It was to be used in the shooting matches. Capt. Boggs and Major McColloch were arranging the contestants in order. Jonathan Zane, Will Martin, Alfred Clarke--all the young men were carefully charging and priming their rifles. Betty was sitting on the black stallion which Col. Zane had generously offered as first prize. She was in the gayest of moods and had just coaxed Isaac to lift her on the tall horse, from which height she purposed watching the sports. Wetzel alone did not seem infected by the spirit of gladsomeness which pervaded. He stood apart leaning on his long rifle and taking no interest in the proceedings behind him. He was absorbed in contemplating the forest on the opposite shore of the river. "Well, boys, I guess we are ready for the fun," called Col. Zane, cheerily. "Only one shot apiece, mind you, except in case of a tie. Now, everybody shoot his best." The first contest was a shooting match known as "driving the nail." It was as the name indicated, nothing less than shooting at the head of a nail. In the absence of a nail--for nails were scarce--one was usually fashioned from a knife blade, or an old file, or even a piece of silver. The nail was driven lightly into the stake, the contestants shot at it from a distance as great as the eyesight permitted. To drive the nail hard and fast into the wood at one hundred yards was a feat seldom accomplished. By many hunters it was deemed more difficult than "snuffing the candle," another border pastime, which consisted of placing in the dark at any distance a lighted candle, and then putting out the flame with a single rifle ball. Many settlers, particularly those who handled the plow more than the rifle, sighted from a rest, and placed a piece of moss under the rife-barrel to prevent its spring at the discharge. The match began. Of the first six shooters Jonathan Zane and Alfred Clarke scored the best shots. Each placed a bullet in the half-inch circle round the nail. "Alfred, very good, indeed," said Col. Zane. "You have made a decided improvement since the last shooting-match." Six other settlers took their turns. All were unsuccessful in getting a shot inside the little circle. Thus a tie between Alfred and Jonathan had to be decided. "Shoot close, Alfred," yelled Isaac. "I hope you beat him. He always won from me and then crowed over it." Alfred's second shot went wide of the mark, and as Jonathan placed another bullet in the circle, this time nearer the center, Alfred had to acknowledge defeat. "Here comes Miller," said Silas Zane. "Perhaps he will want a try." Col. Zane looked round. Miller had joined the party. He carried his rifle and accoutrements, and evidently had just returned to the settlement. He nodded pleasantly to all. "Miller, will you take a shot for the first prize, which I was about to award to Jonathan?" said Col. Zane. "No. I am a little late, and not entitled to a shot. I will take a try for the others," answered Miller. At the arrival of Miller on the scene Wetzel had changed his position to one nearer the crowd. The dog, Tige, trotted closely at his heels. No one heard Tige's low growl or Wetzel's stern word to silence him. Throwing his arm over Betty's pony, Wetzel apparently watched the shooters. In reality he studied intently Miller's every movement. "I expect some good shooting for this prize," said Col. Zane, waving a beautifully embroidered buckskin bullet pouch, which was one of Betty's donations. Jonathan having won his prize was out of the lists and could compete no more. This entitled Alfred to the first shot for second prize. He felt he would give anything he possessed to win the dainty trifle which the Colonel had waved aloft. Twice he raised his rifle in his exceeding earnestness to score a good shot and each time lowered the barrel. When finally he did shoot the bullet embedded itself in the second circle. It was a good shot, but he knew it would never win that prize. "A little nervous, eh?" remarked Miller, with a half sneer on his swarthy face. Several young settlers followed in succession, but their aims were poor. Then little Harry Bennet took his stand. Harry had won many prizes in former matches, and many of the pioneers considered him one of the best shots in the country. "Only a few more after you, Harry," said Col. Zane. "You have a good chance." "All right, Colonel. That's Betty's prize and somebody'll have to do some mighty tall shootin' to beat me," said the lad, his blue eyes flashing as he toed the mark. Shouts and cheers of approval greeted his attempt. The bullet had passed into the wood so close to the nail that a knife blade could not have been inserted between. Miller's turn came next. He was a fine marksman and he knew it. With the confidence born of long experience and knowledge of his weapon, he took a careful though quick aim and fired. He turned away satisfied that he would carry off the coveted prize. He had nicked the nail. But Miller reckoned without his host. Betty had seen the result of his shot and the self-satisfied smile on his face. She watched several of the settlers make poor attempts at the nail, and then, convinced that not one of the other contestants could do so well as Miller, she slipped off the horse and ran around to where Wetzel was standing by her pony. "Lew, I believe Miller will win my prize," she whispered, placing her hand on the hunter's arm. "He has scratched the nail, and I am sure no one except you can do better. I do not want Miller to have anything of mine." "And, little girl, you want me to shoot fer you," said Lewis. "Yes, Lew, please come and shoot for me." It was said of Wetzel that he never wasted powder. He never entered into the races and shooting-matches of the settlers, yet it was well known that he was the fleetest runner and the most unerring shot on the frontier. Therefore, it was with surprise and pleasure that Col. Zane heard the hunter say he guessed he would like one shot anyway. Miller looked on with a grim smile. He knew that, Wetzel or no Wetzel, it would take a remarkably clever shot to beat his. "This shot's for Betty," said Wetzel as he stepped to the mark. He fastened his keen eyes on the stake. At that distance the head of the nail looked like a tiny black speck. Wetzel took one of the locks of hair that waved over his broad shoulders and held it up in front of his eyes a moment. He thus ascertained that there was not any perceptible breeze. The long black barrel started slowly to rise--it seemed to the interested onlookers that it would never reach a level and when, at last, it became rigid, there was a single second in which man and rifle appeared as if carved out of stone. Then followed a burst of red flame, a puff of white smoke, a clear ringing report. Many thought the hunter had missed altogether. It seemed that the nail had not changed its position; there was no bullet hole in the white lime wash that had been smeared round the nail. But on close inspection the nail was found to have been driven to its head in the wood. "A wonderful shot!" exclaimed Col. Zane. "Lewis, I don't remember having seen the like more than once or twice in my life." Wetzel made no answer. He moved away to his former position and commenced to reload his rifle. Betty came running up to him, holding in her hand the prize bullet pouch. "Oh, Lew, if I dared I would kiss you. It pleases me more for you to have won my prize than if any one else had won it. And it was the finest, straightest shot ever made." "Betty, it's a little fancy for redskins, but it'll be a keepsake," answered Lewis, his eyes reflecting the bright smile on her face. Friendly rivalry in feats that called for strength, speed and daring was the diversion of the youth of that period, and the pioneers conducted this good-natured but spirited sport strictly on its merits. Each contestant strove his utmost to outdo his opponent. It was hardly to be expected that Alfred would carry off any of the laurels. Used as he had been to comparative idleness he was no match for the hardy lads who had been brought up and trained to a life of action, wherein a ten mile walk behind a plow, or a cord of wood chopped in a day, were trifles. Alfred lost in the foot-race and the sackrace, but by dint of exerting himself to the limit of his strength, he did manage to take one fall out of the best wrestler. He was content to stop here, and, throwing himself on the grass, endeavored to recover his breath. He felt happier today than for some time past. Twice during the afternoon he had met Betty's eyes and the look he encountered there made his heart stir with a strange feeling of fear and hope. While he was ruminating on what had happened between Betty and himself he allowed his eyes to wander from one person to another. When his gaze alighted on Wetzel it became riveted there. The hunter's attitude struck him as singular. Wetzel had his face half turned toward the boys romping near him and he leaned carelessly against a white oak tree. But a close observer would have seen, as Alfred did, that there was a certain alertness in that rigid and motionless figure. Wetzel's eyes were fixed on the western end of the island. Almost involuntarily Alfred's eyes sought the same direction. The western end of the island ran out into a long low point covered with briars, rushes and saw-grass. As Alfred directed his gaze along the water line of this point he distinctly saw a dark form flit from one bush to another. He was positive he had not been mistaken. He got up slowly and unconcernedly, and strolled over to Wetzel. "Wetzel, I saw an object just now," he said in a low tone. "It was moving behind those bushes at the head of the island. I am not sure whether it was an animal or an Indian." "Injuns. Go back and be natur'l like. Don't say nothin' and watch Miller," whispered Wetzel. Much perturbed by the developments of the last few moments, and wondering what was going to happen, Alfred turned away. He had scarcely reached the others when he heard Betty's voice raised in indignant protest. "I tell you I did swim my pony across the river," cried Betty. "It was just even with that point and the river was higher than it is now." "You probably overestimated your feat," said Miller, with his disagreeable, doubtful smile. "I have seen the river so low that it could be waded, and then it would be a very easy matter to cross. But now your pony could not swim half the distance." "I'll show you," answered Betty, her black eyes flashing. She put her foot in the stirrup and leaped on Madcap. "Now, Betty, don't try that foolish ride again," implored Mrs. Zane. "What do you care whether strangers believe or not? Eb, make her come back." Col. Bane only laughed and made no attempt to detain Betty. He rather indulged her caprices. "Stop her!" cried Clarke. "Betty, where are you goin'?" said Wetzel, grabbing at Madcap's bridle. But Betty was too quick for him. She avoided the hunter, and with a saucy laugh she wheeled the fiery little pony and urged her over the bank. Almost before any one could divine her purpose she had Madcap in the water up to her knees. "Betty, stop!" cried Wetzel. She paid no attention to his call. In another moment the pony would be off the shoal and swimming. "Stop! Turn back, Betty, or I'll shoot the pony," shouted Wetzel, and this time there was a ring of deadly earnestness in his voice. With the words he had cocked and thrown forward the long rifle. Betty heard, and in alarm she turned her pony. She looked up with great surprise and concern, for she knew Wetzel was not one to trifle. "For God's sake!" exclaimed Colonel Zane, looking in amazement at the hunter's face, which was now white and stern. "Why, Lew, you do not mean you would shoot Madcap?" said Betty, reproachfully, as she reached the shore. All present in that watching crowd were silent, awaiting the hunter's answer. They felt that mysterious power which portends the revelation of strange events. Col. Zane and Jonathan knew the instant they saw Wetzel that something extraordinary was coming. His face had grown cold and gray; his lips were tightly compressed; his eyes dilated and shone with a peculiar lustre. "Where were you headin' your pony?" asked Wetzel. "I wanted to reach that point where the water is shallow," answered Betty. "That's what I thought. Well, Betty, hostile Injuns are hidin' and waitin' fer you in them high rushes right where you were makin' fer," said Wetzel. Then he shouldered his rifle and walked rapidly away. "Oh, he cannot be serious!" cried Betty. "Oh, how foolish am I." "Get back up from the river, everybody," commanded Col. Zane. "Col. Zane," said Clarke, walking beside the Colonel up the bank, "I saw Wetzel watching the island in a manner that I thought odd, under the circumstances, and I watched too. Presently I saw a dark form dart behind a bush. I went over and told Wetzel, and he said there were Indians on the island." "This is most d--n strange," said Col. Zane, frowning heavily. "Wetzel's suspicions, Miller turns up, teases Betty attempting that foolhardy trick, and then--Indians! It may be a coincidence, but it looks bad." "Col. Zane, don't you think Wetzel may be mistaken?" said Miller, coming up. "I came over from the other side this morning and I did not see any Indian sign. Probably Wetzel has caused needless excitement." "It does not follow that because you came from over the river there are no Indians there," answered Col. Zane, sharply. "Do you presume to criticise Wetzel's judgment?" "I saw an Indian!" cried Clarke, facing Miller with blazing eyes. "And if you say I did not, you lie! What is more, I believe you know more than any one else about it. I watched you. I saw you were uneasy and that you looked across the river from time to time. Perhaps you had better explain to Col. Zane the reason you taunted his sister into attempting that ride." With a snarl more like that of a tiger than of a human being, Miller sprang at Clarke. His face was dark with malignant hatred, as he reached for and drew an ugly knife. There were cries of fright from the children and screams from the women. Alfred stepped aside with the wonderful quickness of the trained boxer and shot out his right arm. His fist caught Miller a hard blow on the head, knocking him down and sending the knife flying in the air. It had all happened so quickly that everyone was as if paralyzed. The settlers stood still and watched Miller rise slowly to his feet. "Give me my knife!" he cried hoarsely. The knife had fallen at the feet of Major McColloch, who had concealed it with his foot. "Let this end right here," ordered Col. Zane. "Clarke, you have made a very strong statement. Have you anything to substantiate your words?" "I think I have," said Clarke. He was standing erect, his face white and his eyes like blue steel. "I knew him at Ft. Pitt. He was a liar and a drunkard there. He was a friend of the Indians and of the British. What he was there he must be here. It was Wetzel who told me to watch him. Wetzel and I both think he knew the Indians were on the island." "Col. Zane, it is false," said Miller, huskily. "He is trying to put you against me. He hates me because your sister--" "You cur!" cried Clarke, striking at Miller. Col. Zane struck up the infuriated young man's arm. "Give us knives, or anything," panted Clarke. "Yes, let us fight it out now," said Miller. "Capt. Boggs, take Clarke to the block-house. Make him stay there if you have to lock him up," commanded Col. Zane. "Miller, as for you, I cannot condemn you without proof. If I knew positively that there were Indians on the island and that you were aware of it, you would be a dead man in less time than it takes to say it. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and twenty-four hours to leave the Fort." The villagers dispersed and went to their homes. They were inclined to take Clarke's side. Miller had become disliked. His drinking habits and his arrogant and bold manner had slowly undermined the friendships he had made during the early part of his stay at Ft. Henry; while Clarke's good humor and willingness to help any one, his gentleness with the children, and his several acts of heroism had strengthened their regard. "Jonathan, this looks like some of Girty's work. I wish I knew the truth," said Col. Zane, as he, his brothers and Betty and Myeerah entered the house. "Confound it! We can't have even one afternoon of enjoyment. I must see Lewis. I cannot be sure of Clarke. He is evidently bitter against Miller. That would have been a terrible fight. Those fellows have had trouble before, and I am afraid we have not seen the last of their quarrel." "If they meet again--but how can you keep them apart?" said Silas. "If Miller leaves the Fort without killing Clarke he'll hide around in the woods and wait for a chance to shoot him." "Not with Wetzel here," answered Col. Zane. "Betty, do you see what your--" he began, turning to his sister, but when he saw her white and miserable face he said no more. "Don't mind, Betts. It wasn't any fault of yours," said Isaac, putting his arm tenderly round the trembling girl. "I for another believe Clarke was right when he said Miller knew there were Indians over the river. It looks like a plot to abduct you. Have no fear for Alfred. He can take care of himself. He showed that pretty well." An hour later Clarke had finished his supper and was sitting by his window smoking his pipe. His anger had cooled somewhat and his reflections were not of the pleasantest kind. He regretted that he lowered himself so far as to fight with a man little better than an outlaw. Still there was a grim satisfaction in the thought of the blow he had given Miller. He remembered he had asked for a knife and that his enemy and he be permitted to fight to the death. After all to have ended, then and there, the feud between them would have been the better course; for he well knew Miller's desperate character, that he had killed more than one white man, and that now a fair fight might not be possible. Well, he thought, what did it matter? He was not going to worry himself. He did not care much, one way or another. He had no home; he could not make one without the woman he loved. He was a Soldier of Fortune; he was at the mercy of Fate, and he would drift along and let what came be welcome. A soft footfall on the stairs and a knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. "Come in," he said. The door opened and Wetzel strode into the room. "I come over to say somethin' to you," said the hunter taking the chair by the window and placing his rifle over his knee. "I will be pleased to listen or talk, as you desire," said Alfred. "I don't mind tellin' you that the punch you give Miller was what he deserved. If he and Girty didn't hatch up that trick to ketch Betty, I don't know nothin'. But we can't prove nothin' on him yet. Mebbe he knew about the redskins; mebbe he didn't. Personally, I think he did. But I can't kill a white man because I think somethin'. I'd have to know fer sure. What I want to say is to put you on your guard against the baddest man on the river." "I am aware of that," answered Alfred. "I knew his record at Ft. Pitt. What would you have me do?" "Keep close till he's gone." "That would be cowardly." "No, it wouldn't. He'd shoot you from behind some tree or cabin." "Well, I'm much obliged to you for your kind advice, but for all that I won't stay in the house," said Alfred, beginning to wonder at the hunter's earnest manner. "You're in love with Betty, ain't you?" The question came with Wetzel's usual bluntness and it staggered Alfred. He could not be angry, and he did not know what to say. The hunter went on: "You needn't say so, because I know it. And I know she loves you and that's why I want you to look out fer Miller." "My God! man, you're crazy," said Alfred, laughing scornfully. "She cares nothing for me." "That's your great failin', young feller. You fly off'en the handle too easy. And so does Betty. You both care fer each other and are unhappy about it. Now, you don't know Betty, and she keeps misunderstandin' you." "For Heaven's sake! Wetzel, if you know anything tell me. Love her? Why, the words are weak! I love her so well that an hour ago I would have welcomed death at Miller's hands only to fall and die at her feet defending her. Your words set me on fire. What right have you to say that? How do you know?" The hunter leaned forward and put his hand on Alfred's shoulder. On his pale face was that sublime light which comes to great souls when they give up a life long secret, or when they sacrifice what is best beloved. His broad chest heaved: his deep voice trembled. "Listen. I'm not a man fer words, and it's hard to tell. Betty loves you. I've carried her in my arms when she was a baby. I've made her toys and played with her when she was a little girl. I know all her moods. I can read her like I do the moss, and the leaves, and the bark of the forest. I've loved her all my life. That's why I know she loves you. I can feel it. Her happiness is the only dear thing left on earth fer me. And that's why I'm your friend." In the silence that followed his words the door opened and closed and he was gone. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Betty awoke with a start. She was wide awake in a second. The moonbeams came through the leaves of the maple tree near her window and cast fantastic shadows on the wall of her room. Betty lay quiet, watching the fairy-like figures on the wall and listening intently. What had awakened her? The night was still; the crow of a cock in the distance proclaimed that the hour of dawn was near at hand. She waited for Tige's bark under her window, or Sam's voice, or the kicking and trampling of horses in the barn--sounds that usually broke her slumbers in the morning. But no such noises were forthcoming. Suddenly she heard a light, quick tap, tap, and then a rattling in the corner. It was like no sound but that made by a pebble striking the floor, bounding and rolling across the room. There it was again. Some one was tossing stones in at her window. She slipped out of bed, ran, and leaned on the window-sill and looked out. The moon was going down behind the hill, but there was light enough for her to distinguish objects. She saw a dark figure crouching by the fence. "Who is it?" said Betty, a little frightened, but more curious. "Sh-h-h, it's Miller," came the answer, spoken in low voice. The bent form straightened and stood erect. It stepped forward under Betty's window. The light was dim, but Betty recognized the dark face of Miller. He carried a rifle in his hand and a pack on his shoulder. "Go away, or I'll call my brother. I will not listen to you," said Betty, making a move to leave the window. "Sh-h-h, not so loud," said Miller, in a quick, hoarse whisper. "You'd better listen. I am going across the border to join Girty. He is going to bring the Indians and the British here to burn the settlement. If you will go away with me I'll save the lives of your brothers and their families. I have aided Girty and I have influence with him. If you won't go you'll be taken captive and you'll see all your friends and relatives scalped and burned. Quick, your answer." "Never, traitor! Monster! I'd be burned at the stake before I'd go a step with you!" cried Betty. "Then remember that you've crossed a desperate man. If you escape the massacre you will beg on your knees to me. This settlement is doomed. Now, go to your white-faced lover. You'll find him cold. Ha! Ha! Ha!" and with a taunting laugh he leaped the fence and disappeared in the gloom. Betty sank to the floor stunned, horrified. She shuddered at the malignity expressed in Miller's words. How had she ever been deceived in him? He was in league with Girty. At heart he was a savage, a renegade. Betty went over his words, one by one. "Your white-faced lover. You will find him cold," whispered Betty. "What did he mean?" Then came the thought. Miller had murdered Clarke. Betty gave one agonized quiver, as if a knife had been thrust into her side, and then her paralyzed limbs recovered the power of action. She flew out into the passage-way and pounded on her brother's door. "Eb! Eb! Get up! Quickly, for God's sake!" she cried. A smothered exclamation, a woman's quick voice, the heavy thud of feet striking the floor followed Betty's alarm. Then the door opened. "Hello, Betts, what's up?" said Col. Zane, in his rapid voice. At the same moment the door at the end of the hall opened and Isaac came out. "Eb, Betty, I heard voices out doors and in the house. What's the row?" "Oh, Isaac! Oh, Eb! Something terrible has happened!" cried Betty, breathlessly. "Then it is no time to get excited," said the Colonel, calmly. He placed his arm round Betty and drew her into the room. "Isaac, get down the rifles. Now, Betty, time is precious. Tell me quickly, briefly." "I was awakened by a stone rolling on the floor. I ran to the window and saw a man by the fence. He came under my window and I saw it was Miller. He said he was going to join Girty. He said if I would go with him he would save the lives of all my relatives. If I would not they would all be killed, massacred, burned alive, and I would be taken away as his captive. I told him I'd rather die before I'd go with him. Then he said we were all doomed, and that my white-faced lover was already cold. With that he gave a laugh which made my flesh creep and ran on toward the river. Oh! he has murdered Mr. Clarke." "Hell! What a fiend!" cried Col. Zane, hurriedly getting into his clothes. "Betts, you had a gun in there. Why didn't you shoot him? Why didn't I pay more attention to Wetzel's advice?" "You should have allowed Clarke to kill him yesterday," said Isaac. "Like as not he'll have Girty here with a lot of howling devils. What's to be done?" "I'll send Wetzel after him and that'll soon wind up his ball of yarn," answered Col. Zane. "Please--go--and find--if Mr. Clarke--" "Yes, Betty, I'll go at once. You must not lose courage, Betty. It's quite probable that Miller has killed Alfred and that there's worse to follow." "I'll come, Eb, as soon as I have told Myeerah. She is scared half to death," said Isaac, starting for the door. "All right, only hurry," said Col. Zane, grabbing his rifle. Without wasting more words, and lacing up his hunting shirt as he went he ran out of the room. The first rays of dawn came streaking in at the window. The chill gray light brought no cheer with its herald of the birth of another day. For what might the morning sun disclose? It might shine on a long line of painted Indians. The fresh breeze from over the river might bring the long war whoop of the savage. No wonder Noah and his brother, awakened by the voice of their father, sat up in their little bed and looked about with frightened eyes. No wonder Mrs. Zane's face blanched. How many times she had seen her husband grasp his rifle and run out to meet danger! "Bessie," said Betty. "If it's true I will not be able to bear it. It's all my fault." "Nonsense! You heard Eb say Miller and Clarke had quarreled before. They hated each other before they ever saw you." A door banged, quick footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Isaac came rushing into the room. Betty, deathly pale, stood with her hands pressed to her bosom, and looked at Isaac with a question in her eyes that her tongue could not speak. "Betty, Alfred's badly hurt, but he's alive. I can tell you no more now," said Isaac. "Bessie, bring your needle, silk linen, liniment--everything you need for a bad knife wound, and come quickly." Betty's haggard face changed as if some warm light had been reflected on it; her lips moved, and with a sob of thankfulness she fled to her room. Two hours later, while Annie was serving breakfast to Betty and Myeerah, Col. Zane strode into the room. "Well, one has to eat whatever happens," he said, his clouded face brightening somewhat. "Betty, there's been bad work, bad work. When I got to Clarke's room I found him lying on the bed with a knife sticking in him. As it is we are doubtful about pulling him through." "May I see him?" whispered Betty, with pale lips. "If the worst comes to the worst I'll take you over. But it would do no good now and would surely unnerve you. He still has a fighting chance." "Did they fight, or was Mr. Clarke stabbed in his sleep?" "Miller climbed into Clarke's window and knifed him in the dark. As I came over I met Wetzel and told him I wanted him to trail Miller and find if there is any truth in his threat about Girty and the Indians. Sam just now found Tige tied fast in the fence corner back of the barn. That explains the mystery of Miller's getting so near the house. You know he always took pains to make friends with Tige. The poor dog was helpless; his legs were tied and his jaws bound fast. Oh, Miller is as cunning as an Indian! He has had this all planned out, and he has had more than one arrow to his bow. But, if I mistake not he has shot his last one." "Miller must be safe from pursuit by this time," said Betty. "Safe for the present, yes," answered Col. Zane, "but while Jonathan and Wetzel live I would not give a snap of my fingers for Miller's chances. Hello, I hear some one talking. I sent for Jack and the Major." The Colonel threw open the door. Wetzel, Major McColloch, Jonathan and Silas Zane were approaching. They were all heavily armed. Wetzel was equipped for a long chase. Double leggins were laced round his legs. A buckskin knapsack was strapped to his shoulders. "Major, I want you and Jonathan to watch the river," said Col. Zane. "Silas, you are to go to the mouth of Yellow Creek and reconnoiter. We are in for a siege. It may be twenty-four hours and it may be ten days. In the meantime I will get the Fort in shape to meet the attack. Lewis, you have your orders. Have you anything to suggest?" "I'll take the dog," answered Wetzel. "He'll save time for me. I'll stick to Miller's trail and find Girty's forces. I've believed all along that Miller was helpin' Girty, and I'm thinkin' that where Miller goes there I'll find Girty and his redskins. If it's night when I get back I'll give the call of the hoot-owl three times, quick, so Jack and the Major will know I want to get back across the river." "All right, Lewis, we'll be expecting you any time," said Col. Zane. "Betty, I'm goin' now and I want to tell you somethin'," said Wetzel, as Betty appeared. "Come as far as the end of the path with me." "I'm sorry you must go. But Tige seems delighted," said Betty, walking beside Wetzel, while the dog ran on before. "Betty, I wanted to tell you to stay close like to the house, fer this feller Miller has been layin' traps fer you, and the Injuns is on the war-path. Don't ride your pony, and stay home now." "Indeed, I shall never again do anything as foolish as I did yesterday. I have learned my lesson. And Oh! Lew, I am so grateful to you for saving me. When will you return to the Fort?" "Mebbe never, Betty." "Oh, no. Don't say that. I know all this Indian talk will blow over, as it always does, and you will come back and everything will be all right again." "I hope it'll be as you say, Betty, but there's no tellin', there's no tellin'." "You are going to see if the Indians are making preparations to besiege the Fort?" "Yes, I am goin' fer that. And if I happen to find Miller on my way I'll give him Betty's regards." Betty shivered at his covert meaning. Long ago in a moment of playfulness, Betty had scratched her name on the hunter's rifle. Ever after that Wetzel called his fatal weapon by her name. "If you were going simply to avenge I would not let you go. That wretch will get his just due some day, never fear for that." "Betty, 'taint likely he'll get away from me, and if he does there's Jonathan. This mornin' when we trailed Miller down to the river bank Jonathan points across the river and says: 'You or me,' and I says: 'Me,' so it's all settled." "Will Mr. Clarke live?" said Betty, in an altered tone, asking the question which was uppermost in her mind. "I think so, I hope so. He's a husky young chap and the cut wasn't bad. He lost so much blood. That's why he's so weak. If he gets well he'll have somethin' to tell you." "Lew, what do you mean?" demanded Betty, quickly. "Me and him had a long talk last night and--" "You did not go to him and talk of me, did you?" said Betty, reproachfully. They had now reached the end of the path. Wetzel stopped and dropped the butt of his rifle on the ground. Tige looked on and wagged his tail. Presently the hunter spoke. "Yes, we talked about you." "Oh! Lewis. What did--could you have said?" faltered Betty. "You think I hadn't ought to speak to him of you?" "I do not see why you should. Of course you are my good friend, but he--it is not like you to speak of me." "Fer once I don't agree with you. I knew how it was with him so I told him. I knew how it was with you so I told him, and I know how it is with me, so I told him that too." "With you?" whispered Betty. "Yes, with me. That kind of gives me a right, don't it, considerin' it's all fer your happiness?" "With you?" echoed Betty in a low tone. She was beginning to realize that she had not known this man. She looked up at him. His eyes were misty with an unutterable sadness. "Oh, no! No! Lew. Say it is not true," she cried, piteously. All in a moment Betty's burdens became too heavy for her. She wrung her little hands. Her brother's kindly advice, Bessie's warnings, and old Grandmother Watkins' words came back to her. For the first time she believed what they said--that Wetzel loved her. All at once the scales fell from her eyes and she saw this man as he really was. All the thousand and one things he had done for her, his simple teaching, his thoughtfulness, his faithfulness, and his watchful protection--all came crowding on her as debts that she could never pay. For now what could she give this man to whom she owed more than her life? Nothing. It was too late. Her love could have reclaimed him, could have put an end to that solitary wandering, and have made him a good, happy man. "Yes, Betty, it's time to tell it. I've loved you always," he said softly. She covered her face and sobbed. Wetzel put his arm round her and drew her to him until the dark head rested on his shoulder. Thus they stood a moment. "Don't cry, little one," he said, tenderly. "Don't grieve fer me. My love fer you has been the only good in my life. It's been happiness to love you. Don't think of me. I can see you and Alfred in a happy home, surrounded by bright-eyed children. There'll be a brave lad named fer me, and when I come, if I ever do, I'll tell him stories, and learn him the secrets of the woods, and how to shoot, and things I know so well." "I am so wretched--so miserable. To think I have been so--so blind, and I have teased you--and--it might have been--only now it's too late," said Betty, between her sobs. "Yes, I know, and it's better so. This man you love rings true. He has learnin' and edication. I have nothin' but muscle and a quick eye. And that'll serve you and Alfred when you are in danger. I'm goin' now. Stand here till I'm out of sight." "Kiss me goodbye," whispered Betty. The hunter bent his head and kissed her on the brow. Then he turned and with a rapid step went along the bluff toward the west. When he reached the laurel bushes which fringed the edge of the forest he looked back. He saw the slender gray clad figure standing motionless in the narrow path. He waved his hand and then turned and plunged into the forest. The dog looked back, raised his head and gave a long, mournful howl. Then, he too disappeared. A mile west of the settlement Wetzel abandoned the forest and picked his way down the steep bluff to the river. Here he prepared to swim to the western shore. He took off his buckskin garments, spread them out on the ground, placed his knapsack in the middle, and rolling all into a small bundle tied it round his rifle. Grasping the rifle just above the hammer he waded into the water up to his waist and then, turning easily on his back he held the rifle straight up, allowing the butt to rest on his breast. This left his right arm unhampered. With a powerful back-arm stroke he rapidly swam the river, which was deep and narrow at this point. In a quarter of an hour he was once more in his dry suit. He was now two miles below the island, where yesterday the Indians had been concealed, and where this morning Miller had crossed. Wetzel knew Miller expected to be trailed, and that he would use every art and cunning of woodcraft to elude his pursuers, or to lead them into a death-trap. Wetzel believed Miller had joined the Indians, who had undoubtedly been waiting for him, or for a signal from him, and that he would use them to ambush the trail. Therefore Wetzel decided he would try to strike Miller's tracks far west of the river. He risked a great deal in attempting this because it was possible he might fail to find any trace of the spy. But Wetzel wasted not one second. His course was chosen. With all possible speed, which meant with him walking only when he could not run, he traveled northwest. If Miller had taken the direction Wetzel suspected, the trails of the two men would cross about ten miles from the Ohio. But the hunter had not traversed more than a mile of the forest when the dog put his nose high in the air and growled. Wetzel slowed down into a walk and moved cautiously onward, peering through the green aisles of the woods. A few rods farther on Tige uttered another growl and put his nose to the ground. He found a trail. On examination Wetzel discovered in the moss two moccasin tracks. Two Indians had passed that point that morning. They were going northwest directly toward the camp of Wingenund. Wetzel stuck close to the trail all that day and an hour before dusk he heard the sharp crack of a rifle. A moment afterward a doe came crashing through the thicket to Wetzel's right and bounding across a little brook she disappeared. A tree with a bushy, leafy top had been uprooted by a storm and had fallen across the stream at this point. Wetzel crawled among the branches. The dog followed and lay down beside him. Before darkness set in Wetzel saw that the clear water of the brook had been roiled; therefore, he concluded that somewhere upstream Indians had waded into the brook. Probably they had killed a deer and were getting their evening meal. Hours passed. Twilight deepened into darkness. One by one the stars appeared; then the crescent moon rose over the wooded hill in the west, and the hunter never moved. With his head leaning against the log he sat quiet and patient. At midnight he whispered to the dog, and crawling from his hiding place glided stealthily up the stream. Far ahead from the dark depths of the forest peeped the flickering light of a camp-fire. Wetzel consumed a half hour in approaching within one hundred feet of this light. Then he got down on his hands and knees and crawled behind a tree on top of the little ridge which had obstructed a view of the camp scene. From this vantage point Wetzel saw a clear space surrounded by pines and hemlocks. In the center of this glade a fire burned briskly. Two Indians lay wrapped in their blankets, sound asleep. Wetzel pressed the dog close to the ground, laid aside his rifle, drew his tomahawk, and lying flat on his breast commenced to work his way, inch by inch, toward the sleeping savages. The tall ferns trembled as the hunter wormed his way among them, but there was no sound, not a snapping of a twig nor a rustling of a leaf. The nightwind sighed softly through the pines; it blew the bright sparks from the burning logs, and fanned the embers into a red glow; it swept caressingly over the sleeping savages, but it could not warn them that another wind, the Wind-of-Death, was near at hand. A quarter of an hour elapsed. Nearer and nearer; slowly but surely drew the hunter. With what wonderful patience and self-control did this cold-blooded Nemesis approach his victims! Probably any other Indian slayer would have fired his rifle and then rushed to combat with a knife or a tomahawk. Not so Wetzel. He scorned to use powder. He crept forward like a snake gliding upon its prey. He slid one hand in front of him and pressed it down on the moss, at first gently, then firmly, and when he had secured a good hold he slowly dragged his body forward the length of his arm. At last his dark form rose and stood over the unconscious Indians, like a minister of Doom. The tomahawk flashed once, twice in the firelight, and the Indians, without a moan, and with a convulsive quivering and straightening of their bodies, passed from the tired sleep of nature to the eternal sleep of death. Foregoing his usual custom of taking the scalps, Wetzel hurriedly left the glade. He had found that the Indians were Shawnees and he had expected they were Delawares. He knew Miller's red comrades belonged to the latter tribe. The presence of Shawnees so near the settlement confirmed his belief that a concerted movement was to be made on the whites in the near future. He would not have been surprised to find the woods full of redskins. He spent the remainder of that night close under the side of a log with the dog curled up beside him. Next morning Wetzel ran across the trail of a white man and six Indians. He tracked them all that day and half of the night before he again rested. By noon of the following day he came in sight of the cliff from which Jonathan Zane had watched the sufferings of Col. Crawford. Wetzel now made his favorite move, a wide detour, and came up on the other side of the encampment. From the top of the bluff he saw down into the village of the Delawares. The valley was alive with Indians; they were working like beavers; some with weapons, some painting themselves, and others dancing war-dances. Packs were being strapped on the backs of ponies. Everywhere was the hurry and bustle of the preparation for war. The dancing and the singing were kept up half the night. At daybreak Wetzel was at his post. A little after sunrise he heard a long yell which he believed announced the arrival of an important party. And so it turned out. Amid thrill yelling and whooping, the like of which Wetzel had never before heard, Simon Girty rode into Wingenund's camp at the head of one hundred Shawnee warriors and two hundred British Rangers from Detroit. Wetzel recoiled when he saw the red uniforms of the Britishers and their bayonets. Including Pipe's and Wingenund's braves the total force which was going to march against the Fort exceeded six hundred. An impotent frenzy possessed Wetzel as he watched the orderly marching of the Rangers and the proud bearing of the Indian warriors. Miller had spoken the truth. Ft. Henry vas doomed. "Tige, there's one of them struttin' turkey cocks as won't see the Ohio," said Wetzel to the dog. Hurriedly slipping from round his neck the bullet-pouch that Betty had given him, he shook out a bullet and with the point of his knife he scratched deep in the soft lead the letter W. Then he cut the bullet half through. This done he detached the pouch from the cord and running the cord through the cut in the bullet he bit the lead. He tied the string round the neck of the dog and pointing eastward he said: "Home." The intelligent animal understood perfectly. His duty was to get that warning home. His clear brown eyes as much as said: "I will not fail." He wagged his tail, licked the hunter's hand, bounded away and disappeared in the forest. Wetzel rested easier in mind. He knew the dog would stop for nothing, and that he stood a far better chance of reaching the Fort in safety than did he himself. With a lurid light in his eyes Wetzel now turned to the Indians. He would never leave that spot without sending a leaden messenger into the heart of someone in that camp. Glancing on all sides he at length selected a place where it was possible he might approach near enough to the camp to get a shot. He carefully studied the lay of the ground, the trees, rocks, bushes, grass,--everything that could help screen him from the keen eye of savage scouts. When he had marked his course he commenced his perilous descent. In an hour he had reached the bottom of the cliff. Dropping flat on the ground, he once more started his snail-like crawl. A stretch of swampy ground, luxuriant with rushes and saw-grass, made a part of the way easy for him, though it led through mud, and slime, and stagnant water. Frogs and turtles warming their backs in the sunshine scampered in alarm from their logs. Lizards blinked at him. Moccasin snakes darted wicked forked tongues at him and then glided out of reach of his tomahawk. The frogs had stopped their deep bass notes. A swamp-blackbird rose in fright from her nest in the saw-grass, and twittering plaintively fluttered round and round over the pond. The flight of the bird worried Wetzel. Such little things as these might attract the attention of some Indian scout. But he hoped that in the excitement of the war preparations these unusual disturbances would escape notice. At last he gained the other side of the swamp. At the end of the cornfield before him was the clump of laurel which he had marked from the cliff as his objective point. The Indian corn was now about five feet high. Wetzel passed through this field unseen. He reached the laurel bushes, where he dropped to the ground and lay quiet a few minutes. In the dash which he would soon make to the forest he needed all his breath and all his fleetness. He looked to the right to see how far the woods was from where he lay. Not more than one hundred feet. He was safe. Once in the dark shade of those trees, and with his foes behind him, he could defy the whole race of Delawares. He looked to his rifle, freshened the powder in the pan, carefully adjusted the flint, and then rose quietly to his feet. Wetzel's keen gaze, as he swept it from left to right, took in every detail of the camp. He was almost in the village. A tepee stood not twenty feet from his hiding-place. He could have tossed a stone in the midst of squaws, and braves, and chiefs. The main body of Indians was in the center of the camp. The British were lined up further on. Both Indians and soldiers were resting on their arms and waiting. Suddenly Wetzel started and his heart leaped. Under a maple tree not one hundred and fifty yards distant stood four men in earnest consultation. One was an Indian. Wetzel recognized the fierce, stern face, the haughty, erect figure. He knew that long, trailing war-bonnet. It could have adorned the head of but one chief--Wingenund, the sachem of the Delawares. A British officer, girdled and epauletted, stood next to Wingenund. Simon Girty, the renegade, and Miller, the traitor, completed the group. Wetzel sank to his knees. The perspiration poured from his face. The mighty hunter trembled, but it was from eagerness. Was not Girty, the white savage, the bane of the poor settlers, within range of a weapon that never failed? Was not the murderous chieftain, who had once whipped and tortured him, who had burned Crawford alive, there in plain sight? Wetzel revelled a moment in fiendish glee. He passed his hands tenderly over the long barrel of his rifle. In that moment as never before he gloried in his power--a power which enabled him to put a bullet in the eye of a squirrel at the distance these men were from him. But only for an instant did the hunter yield to this feeling. He knew too well the value of time and opportunity. He rose again to his feet and peered out from under the shading laurel branches. As he did so the dark face of Miller turned full toward him. A tremor, like the intense thrill of a tiger when he is about to spring, ran over Wetzel's frame. In his mad gladness at being within rifle-shot of his great Indian foe, Wetzel had forgotten the man he had trailed for two days. He had forgotten Miller. He had only one shot--and Betty was to be avenged. He gritted his teeth. The Delaware chief was as safe as though he were a thousand miles away. This opportunity for which Wetzel had waited so many years, and the successful issue of which would have gone so far toward the fulfillment of a life's purpose, was worse than useless. A great temptation assailed the hunter. Wetzel's face was white when he raised the rifle; his dark eye, gleaming vengefully, ran along the barrel. The little bead on the front sight first covered the British officer, and then the broad breast of Girty. It moved reluctantly and searched out the heart of Wingenund, where it lingered for a fleeting instant. At last it rested upon the swarthy face of Miller. "Fer Betty," muttered the hunter, between his clenched teeth as he pressed the trigger. The spiteful report awoke a thousand echoes. When the shot broke the stillness Miller was talking and gesticulating. His hand dropped inertly; he stood upright for a second, his head slowly bowing and his body swaying perceptibly. Then he plunged forward like a log, his face striking the sand. He never moved again. He was dead even before he struck the ground. Blank silence followed this tragic denouement. Wingenund, a cruel and relentless Indian, but never a traitor, pointed to the small bloody hole in the middle of Miller's forehead, and then nodded his head solemnly. The wondering Indians stood aghast. Then with loud yells the braves ran to the cornfield; they searched the laurel bushes. But they only discovered several moccasin prints in the sand, and a puff of white smoke wafting away upon the summer breeze. CHAPTER XII. Alfred Clarke lay between life and death. Miller's knife-thrust, although it had made a deep and dangerous wound, had not pierced any vital part; the amount of blood lost made Alfred's condition precarious. Indeed, he would not have lived through that first day but for a wonderful vitality. Col. Zane's wife, to whom had been consigned the delicate task of dressing the wound, shook her head when she first saw the direction of the cut. She found on a closer examination that the knife-blade had been deflected by a rib, and had just missed the lungs. The wound was bathed, sewed up, and bandaged, and the greatest precaution taken to prevent the sufferer from loosening the linen. Every day when Mrs. Zane returned from the bedside of the young man she would be met at the door by Betty, who, in that time of suspense, had lost her bloom, and whose pale face showed the effects of sleepless nights. "Betty, would you mind going over to the Fort and relieving Mrs. Martin an hour or two?" said Mrs. Zane one day as she came home, looking worn and weary. "We are both tired to death, and Nell Metzar was unable to come. Clarke is unconscious, and will not know you, besides he is sleeping now." Betty hurried over to Capt. Boggs' cabin, next the blockhouse, where Alfred lay, and with a palpitating heart and a trepidation wholly out of keeping with the brave front she managed to assume, she knocked gently on the door. "Ah, Betty, 'tis you, bless your heart," said a matronly little woman who opened the door. "Come right in. He is sleeping now, poor fellow, and it's the first real sleep he has had. He has been raving crazy forty-eight hours." "Mrs. Martin, what shall I do?" whispered Betty. "Oh, just watch him, my dear," answered the elder woman. "If you need me send one of the lads up to the house for me. I shall return as soon as I can. Keep the flies away--they are bothersome--and bathe his head every little while. If he wakes and tries to sit up, as he does sometimes, hold him back. He is as weak as a cat. If he raves, soothe him by talking to him. I must go now, dearie." Betty was left alone in the little room. Though she had taken a seat near the bed where Alfred lay, she had not dared to look at him. Presently conquering her emotion, Betty turned her gaze on the bed. Alfred was lying easily on his back, and notwithstanding the warmth of the day he was covered with a quilt. The light from the window shone on his face. How deathly white it was! There was not a vestige of color in it; the brow looked like chiseled marble; dark shadows underlined the eyes, and the whole face was expressive of weariness and pain. There are times when a woman's love is all motherliness. All at once this man seemed to Betty like a helpless child. She felt her heart go out to the poor sufferer with a feeling before unknown. She forgot her pride and her fears and her disappointments. She remembered only that this strong man lay there at death's door because he had resented an insult to her. The past with all its bitterness rolled away and was lost, and in its place welled up a tide of forgiveness strong and sweet and hopeful. Her love, like a fire that had been choked and smothered, smouldering but never extinct, and which blazes up with the first breeze, warmed and quickened to life with the touch of her hand on his forehead. An hour passed. Betty was now at her ease and happier than she had been for months. Her patient continued to sleep peacefully and dreamlessly. With a feeling of womanly curiosity Betty looked around the room. Over the rude mantelpiece were hung a sword, a brace of pistols, and two pictures. These last interested Betty very much. They were portraits; one of them was a likeness of a sweet-faced woman who Betty instinctively knew was his mother. Her eyes lingered tenderly on that face, so like the one lying on the pillow. The other portrait was of a beautiful girl whose dark, magnetic eyes challenged Betty. Was this his sister or--someone else? She could not restrain a jealous twinge, and she felt annoyed to find herself comparing that face with her own. She looked no longer at that portrait, but recommenced her survey of the room. Upon the door hung a broad-brimmed hat with eagle plumes stuck in the band. A pair of hightopped riding-boots, a saddle, and a bridle lay on the floor in the corner. The table was covered with Indian pipes, tobacco pouches, spurs, silk stocks, and other articles. Suddenly Betty felt that some one was watching her. She turned timidly toward the bed and became much frightened when she encountered the intense gaze from a pair of steel-blue eyes. She almost fell from the chair; but presently she recollected that Alfred had been unconscious for days, and that he would not know who was watching by his bedside. "Mother, is that you?" asked Alfred, in a weak, low voice. "Yes, I am here," answered Betty, remembering the old woman's words about soothing the sufferer. "But I thought you were ill." "I was, but I am better now, and it is you who are ill." "My head hurts so." "Let me bathe it for you." "How long have I been home?" Betty bathed and cooled his heated brow. He caught and held her hands, looking wonderingly at her the while. "Mother, somehow I thought you had died. I must have dreamed it. I am very happy; but tell me, did a message come for me to-day?" Betty shook her head, for she could not speak. She saw he was living in the past, and he was praying for the letter which she would gladly have written had she but known. "No message, and it is now so long." "It will come to-morrow," whispered Betty. "Now, mother, that is what you always say," said the invalid, as he began to toss his head wearily to and fro. "Will she never tell me? It is not like her to keep me in suspense. She was the sweetest, truest, loveliest girl in all the world. When I get well, mother, I ant going to find out if she loves me." "I am sure she does. I know she loves you," answered Betty. "It is very good of you to say that," he went on in his rambling talk. "Some day I'll bring her to you and we'll make her a queen here in the old home. I'll be a better son now and not run away from home again. I've given the dear old mother many a heartache, but that's all past now. The wanderer has come home. Kiss me good-night, mother." Betty looked down with tear-blurred eyes on the haggard face. Unconsciously she had been running her fingers through the fair hair that lay so damp over his brow. Her pity and tenderness had carried her far beyond herself, and at the last words she bent her head and kissed him on the lips. "Who are you? You are not my mother. She is dead," he cried, starting up wildly, and looking at her with brilliant eyes. Betty dropped the fan and rose quickly to her feet. What had she done? A terrible thought had flashed into her mind. Suppose he were not delirious, and had been deceiving her. Oh! for a hiding-place, or that the floor would swallow her. Oh! if some one would only come. Footsteps sounded on the stairs and Betty ran to the door. To her great relief Mrs. Martin was coming up. "You can run home now, there's a dear," said the old lady. "We have several watchers for to-night. It will not be long now when he will commence to mend, or else he will die. Poor boy, please God that he gets well. Has he been good? Did he call for any particular young lady? Never fear, Betty, I'll keep the secret. He'll never know you were here unless you tell him yourself." Meanwhile the days had been busy ones for Col. Zane. In anticipation of an attack from the Indians, the settlers had been fortifying their refuge and making the block-house as nearly impregnable as possible. Everything that was movable and was of value they put inside the stockade fence, out of reach of the destructive redskins. All the horses and cattle were driven into the inclosure. Wagon-loads of hay, grain and food were stored away in the block-house. Never before had there been such excitement on the frontier. Runners from Ft. Pitt, Short Creek, and other settlements confirmed the rumor that all the towns along the Ohio were preparing for war. Not since the outbreak of the Revolution had there been so much confusion and alarm among the pioneers. To be sure, those on the very verge of the frontier, as at Ft. Henry, had heretofore little to fear from the British. During most of this time there had been comparative peace on the western border, excepting those occasional murders, raids, and massacres perpetrated by the different Indian tribes, and instigated no doubt by Girty and the British at Detroit. Now all kinds of rumors were afloat: Washington was defeated; a close alliance between England and the confederated western tribes had been formed; Girty had British power and wealth back of him. These and many more alarming reports travelled from settlement to settlement. The death of Col. Crawford had been a terrible shock to the whole country. On the border spread an universal gloom, and the low, sullen mutterings of revengeful wrath. Crawford had been so prominent a man, so popular, and, except in his last and fatal expedition, such an efficient leader that his sudden taking off was almost a national calamity. In fact no one felt it more keenly than did Washington himself, for Crawford was his esteemed friend. Col. Zane believed Ft. Henry had been marked by the British and the Indians. The last runner from Ft. Pitt had informed him that the description of Miller tallied with that of one of the ten men who had deserted from Ft. Pitt in 1778 with the tories Girth, McKee, and Elliott. Col. Zane was now satisfied that Miller was an agent of Girty and therefore of the British. So since all the weaknesses of the Fort, the number of the garrison, and the favorable conditions for a siege were known to Girty, there was nothing left for Col. Zane and his men but to make a brave stand. Jonathan Zane and Major McColloch watched the river. Wetzel had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him. Some pioneers said he would never return. But Col. Zane believed Wetzel would walk into the Fort, as he had done many times in the last ten years, with full information concerning the doings of the Indians. However, the days passed and nothing happened. Their work completed, the settlers waited for the first sign of an enemy. But as none came, gradually their fears were dispelled and they began to think the alarm had been a false one. All this time Alfred Clarke was recovering his health and strength. The day came when he was able to leave his bed and sit by the window. How glad it made him feel to look out on the green woods and the broad, winding river; how sweet to his ears were the songs of the birds; how soothing was the drowsy hum of the bees in the fragrant honeysuckle by his window. His hold on life had been slight and life was good. He smiled in pitying derision as he remembered his recklessness. He had not been in love with life. In his gloomy moods he had often thought life was hardly worth the living. What sickly sentiment! He had been on the brink of the grave, but he had been snatched back from the dark river of Death. It needed but this to show him the joy of breathing, the glory of loving, the sweetness of living. He resolved that for him there would be no more drifting, no more purposelessness. If what Wetzel had told him was true, if he really had not loved in vain, then his cup of happiness was overflowing. Like a far-off and almost forgotten strain of music some memory struggled to take definite shape in his mind; but it was so hazy, so vague, so impalpable, that he could remember nothing clearly. Isaac Zane and his Indian bride called on Alfred that afternoon. "Alfred, I can't tell you how glad I am to see you up again," said Isaac, earnestly, as he wrung Alfred's hand. "Say, but it was a tight squeeze! It has been a bad time for you." Nothing could have been more pleasing than Myeerah's shy yet eloquent greeting. She gave Alfred her little hand and said in her figurative style of speaking, "Myeerah is happy for you and for others. You are strong like the West Wind that never dies." "Myeerah and I are going this afternoon, and we came over to say good-bye to you. We intend riding down the river fifteen miles and then crossing, to avoid running into any band of Indians." "And how does Myeerah like the settlement by this time?" "Oh, she is getting on famously. Betty and she have fallen in love with each other. It is amusing to hear Betty try to talk in the Wyandot tongue, and to see Myeerah's consternation when Betty gives her a lesson in deportment." "I rather fancy it would be interesting, too. Are you not going back to the Wyandots at a dangerous time?" "As to that I can't say. I believe, though, it is better that I get back to Tarhe's camp before we have any trouble with the Indians. I am anxious to get there before Girty or some of his agents." "Well, if you must go, good luck to you, and may we meet again." "It will not be long, I am sure. And, old man," he continued, with a bright smile, "when Myeerah and I come again to Ft. Henry we expect to find all well with you. Cheer up, and good-bye." All the preparations had been made for the departure of Isaac and Myeerah to their far-off Indian home. They were to ride the Indian ponies on which they had arrived at the Fort. Col. Zane had given Isaac one of his pack horses. This animal carried blankets, clothing, and food which insured comparative comfort in the long ride through the wilderness. "We will follow the old trail until we reach the hickory swale," Isaac was saying to the Colonel, "and then we will turn off and make for the river. Once across the Ohio we can make the trip in two days." "I think you'll make it all right," said Col. Zane. "Even if I do meet Indians I shall have no fear, for I have a protector here," answered Isaac as he led Myeerah's pony to the step. "Good-bye, Myeerah; he is yours, but do not forget he is dear to us," said Betty, embracing and kissing the Indian girl. "My sister does not know Myeerah. The White Eagle will return." "Good-bye, Betts, don't cry. I shall come home again. And when I do I hope I shall be in time to celebrate another event, this time with you as the heroine. Good-bye. Goodbye." The ponies cantered down the road. At the bend Isaac and Myeerah turned and waved their hands until the foliage of the trees hid them from view. "Well, these things happen naturally enough. I suppose they must be. But I should much have preferred Isaac staying here. Hello! What the deuce is that? By Lord! It's Tige!" The exclamation following Col. Zane's remarks had been called forth by Betty's dog. He came limping painfully up the road from the direction of the river. When he saw Col. Zane he whined and crawled to the Colonel's feet. The dog was wet and covered with burrs, and his beautiful glossy coat, which had been Betty's pride, was dripping with blood. "Silas, Jonathan, come here," cried Col. Zane. "Here's Tige, back without Wetzel, and the poor dog has been shot almost to pieces. What does it mean?" "Indians," said Jonathan, coming out of the house with Silas, and Mrs. Zane and Betty, who had heard the Colonel's call. "He has come a long way. Look at his feet. They are torn and bruised," continued Jonathan. "And he has been near Wingenund's camp. You see that red clay on his paws. There is no red clay that I know of round here, and there are miles of it this side of the Delaware camp." "What is the matter with Tige?" asked Betty. "He is done for. Shot through, poor fellow. How did he ever reach home?" said Silas. "Oh, I hope not! Dear old Tige," said Betty as she knelt and tenderly placed the head of the dog in her lap. "Why, what is this? I never put that there. Eb, Jack, look here. There is a string around his neck," and Betty pointed excitedly to a thin cord which was almost concealed in the thick curly hair. "Good gracious! Eb, look! It is the string off the prize bullet pouch I made, and that Wetzel won on Isaac's wedding day. It is a message from Lew," said Betty. "Well, by Heavens! This is strange. So it is. I remember that string. Cut it off, Jack," said Col. Zane. When Jonathan had cut the string and held it up they all saw the lead bullet. Col. Zane examined it and showed them what had been rudely scratched on it. "A letter W. Does that mean Wetzel?" asked the Colonel. "It means war. It's a warning from Wetzel--not the slightest doubt of that," said Jonathan. "Wetzel sends this because he knows we are to be attacked, and because there must have been great doubt of his getting back to tell us. And Tige has been shot on his way home." This called the attention to the dog, which had been momentarily forgotten. His head rolled from Betty's knee; a quiver shook his frame; he struggled to rise to his feet, but his strength was too far spent; he crawled close to Betty's feet; his eyes looked up at her with almost human affection; then they closed, and he lay still. Tige was dead. "It is all over, Betty. Tige will romp no more. He will never be forgotten, for he was faithful to the end. Jonathan, tell the Major of Wetzel's warning, and both of you go back to your posts on the river. Silas, send Capt. Boggs to me." An hour after the death of Tige the settlers were waiting for the ring of the meeting-house bell to summon them to the Fort. Supper at Col. Zane's that night was not the occasion of good-humored jest and pleasant conversation. Mrs. Zane's face wore a distressed and troubled look; Betty was pale and quiet; even the Colonel was gloomy; and the children, missing the usual cheerfulness of the evening meal, shrank close to their mother. Darkness slowly settled down; and with it came a feeling of relief, at least for the night, for the Indians rarely attacked the settlements after dark. Capt. Boggs came over and he and Col. Zane conversed in low tones. "The first thing in the morning I want you to ride over to Short Creek for reinforcements. I'll send the Major also and by a different route. I expect to hear tonight from Wetzel. Twelve times has he crossed that threshold with the information which made an Indian surprise impossible. And I feel sure he will come again." "What was that?" said Betty, who was sitting on the doorstep. "Sh-h!" whispered Col. Zane, holding up his finger. The night was warm and still. In the perfect quiet which followed the Colonel's whispered exclamation the listeners heard the beating of their hearts. Then from the river bank came the cry of an owl; low but clear it came floating to their ears, its single melancholy note thrilling them. Faint and far off in the direction of the island sounded the answer. "I knew it. I told you. We shall know all presently," said Col. Zane. "The first call was Jonathan's, and it was answered." The moments dragged away. The children had fallen asleep on the bearskin rug. Mrs. Zane and Betty had heard the Colonel's voice, and sat with white faces, waiting, waiting for they knew not what. A familiar, light-moccasined tread sounded on the path, a tall figure loomed up from the darkness; it came up the path, passed up the steps, and crossed the threshold. "Wetzel!" exclaimed Col. Zane and Capt. Boggs. It was indeed the hunter. How startling was his appearance! The buckskin hunting coat and leggins were wet, torn and bespattered with mud; the water ran and dripped from him to form little muddy pools on the floor; only his rifle and powder horn were dry. His face was ghastly white except where a bullet wound appeared on his temple, from which the blood had oozed down over his cheek. An unearthly light gleamed from his eyes. In that moment Wetzel was an appalling sight. "Col. Zane, I'd been here days before, but I run into some Shawnees, and they gave me a hard chase. I have to report that Girty, with four hundred Injuns and two hundred Britishers, are on the way to Ft. Henry." "My God!" exclaimed Col. Zane. Strong man as he was the hunter's words had unnerved him. The loud and clear tone of the church-bell rang out on the still night air. Only once it sounded, but it reverberated among the hills, and its single deep-toned ring was like a knell. The listeners almost expected to hear it followed by the fearful war-cry, that cry which betokened for many desolation and death. CHAPTER XIII. Morning found the settlers, with the exception of Col. Zane, his brother Jonathan, the negro Sam, and Martin Wetzel, all within the Fort. Col. Zane had determined, long before, that in the event of another siege, he would use his house as an outpost. Twice it had been destroyed by fire at the hands of the Indians. Therefore, surrounding himself by these men, who were all expert marksmen, Col. Zane resolved to protect his property and at the same time render valuable aid to the Fort. Early that morning a pirogue loaded with cannon balls, from Ft. Pitt and bound for Louisville, had arrived and Captain Sullivan, with his crew of three men, had demanded admittance. In the absence of Capt. Boggs and Major McColloch, both of whom had been dispatched for reinforcements, Col. Zane had placed his brother Silas in command of the Fort. Sullivan informed Silas that he and his men had been fired on by Indians and that they sought the protection of the Fort. The services of himself and men, which he volunteered, were gratefully accepted. All told, the little force in the block-house did not exceed forty-two, and that counting the boys and the women who could handle rifles. The few preparations had been completed and now the settlers were awaiting the appearance of the enemy. Few words were spoken. The children were secured where they would be out of the way of flying bullets. They were huddled together silent and frightened; pale-faced but resolute women passed up and down the length of the block-house; some carried buckets of water and baskets of food; others were tearing bandages; grim-faced men peered from the portholes; all were listening for the war-cry. They had not long to wait. Before noon the well-known whoop came from the wooded shore of the river, and it was soon followed by the appearance of hundreds of Indians. The river, which was low, at once became a scene of great animation. From a placid, smoothly flowing stream it was turned into a muddy, splashing, turbulent torrent. The mounted warriors urged their steeds down the bank and into the water; the unmounted improvised rafts and placed their weapons and ammunition upon them; then they swam and pushed, kicked and yelled their way across; other Indians swam, holding the bridles of the pack-horses. A detachment of British soldiers followed the Indians. In an hour the entire army appeared on the river bluff not three hundred yards from the Fort. They were in no hurry to begin the attack. Especially did the Indians seem to enjoy the lull before the storm, and as they stalked to and fro in plain sight of the garrison, or stood in groups watching the Fort, they were seen in all their hideous war-paint and formidable battle-array. They were exultant. Their plumes and eagle feathers waved proudly in the morning breeze. Now and then the long, peculiarly broken yell of the Shawnees rang out clear and strong. The soldiers were drawn off to one side and well out of range of the settlers' guns. Their red coats and flashing bayonets were new to most of the little band of men in the block-house. "Ho, the Fort!" It was a strong, authoritative voice and came from a man mounted on a black horse. "Well, Girty, what is it?" shouted Silas Zane. "We demand unconditional surrender," was the answer. "You will never get it," replied Silas. "Take more time to think it over. You see we have a force here large enough to take the Fort in an hour." "That remains to be seen," shouted some one through porthole. An hour passed. The soldiers and the Indians lounged around on the grass and walked to and fro on the bluff. At intervals a taunting Indian yell, horrible in its suggestiveness came floating on the air. When the hour was up three mounted men rode out in advance of the waiting Indians. One was clad in buckskin, another in the uniform of a British officer, and the third was an Indian chief whose powerful form was naked except for his buckskin belt and legging. "Will you surrender?" came in the harsh and arrogant voice of the renegade. "Never! Go back to your squaws!" yelled Sullivan. "I am Capt. Pratt of the Queen's Rangers. If you surrender I will give you the best protection King George affords," shouted the officer. "To hell with lying George! Go back to your hair-buying Hamilton and tell him the whole British army could not make us surrender," roared Hugh Bennet. "If you do not give up, the Fort will be attacked and burned. Your men will be massacred and your women given to the Indians," said Girty. "You will never take a man, woman or child alive," yelled Silas. "We remember Crawford, you white traitor, and we are not going to give up to be butchered. Come on with your red-jackets and your red-devils. We are ready." "We have captured and killed the messenger you sent out, and now all hope of succor must be abandoned. Your doom is sealed." "What kind of a man was he?" shouted Sullivan. "A fine, active young fellow," answered the outlaw. "That's a lie," snapped Sullivan, "he was an old, gray haired man." As the officer and the outlaw chief turned, apparently to consult their companion, a small puff of white smoke shot forth from one of the portholes of the block-house. It was followed by the ringing report of a rifle. The Indian chief clutched wildly at his breast, fell forward on his horse, and after vainly trying to keep his seat, slipped to the ground. He raised himself once, then fell backward and lay still. Full two hundred yards was not proof against Wetzel's deadly smallbore, and Red Fox, the foremost war chieftain of the Shawnees, lay dead, a victim to the hunter's vengeance. It was characteristic of Wetzel that he picked the chief, for he could have shot either the British officer or the renegade. They retreated out of range, leaving the body of the chief where it had fallen, while the horse, giving a frightened snort, galloped toward the woods. Wetzel's yell coming quickly after his shot, excited the Indians to a very frenzy, and they started on a run for the Fort, discharging their rifles and screeching like so many demons. In the cloud of smoke which at once enveloped the scene the Indians spread out and surrounded the Fort. A tremendous rush by a large party of Indians was made for the gate of the Fort. They attacked it fiercely with their tomahawks, and a log which they used as a battering-ram. But the stout gate withstood their united efforts, and the galling fire from the portholes soon forced them to fall back and seek cover behind the trees and the rocks. From these points of vantage they kept up an uninterrupted fire. The soldiers had made a dash at the stockade-fence, yelling derision at the small French cannon which was mounted on top of the block-house. They thought it a "dummy" because they had learned that in the 1777 siege the garrison had no real cannon, but had tried to utilize a wooden one. They yelled and hooted and mocked at this piece and dared the garrison to fire it. Sullivan, who was in charge of the cannon, bided his time. When the soldiers were massed closely together and making another rush for the stockade-fence Sullivan turned loose the little "bulldog," spreading consternation and destruction in the British ranks. "Stand back! Stand back!" Capt. Pratt was heard to yell. "By God! there's no wood about that gun." After this the besiegers withdrew for a breathing spell. At this early stage of the siege the Indians were seen to board Sullivan's pirogue, and it was soon discovered they were carrying the cannon balls from the boat to the top of the bluff. In their simple minds they had conceived a happy thought. They procured a white-oak log probably a foot in diameter, split it through the middle and hollowed out the inside with their tomahawks. Then with iron chains and bars, which they took from Reihart's blacksmith shop, they bound and securely fastened the sides together. They dragged the improvised cannon nearer to the Fort, placed it on two logs and weighted it down with stones. A heavy charge of powder and ball was then rammed into the wooden gun. The soldiers, though much interested in the manoeuvre, moved back to a safe distance, while many of the Indians crowded round the new weapon. The torch was applied; there was a red flash--boom! The hillside was shaken by the tremendous explosion, and when the smoke lifted from the scene the naked forms of the Indians could be seen writhing in agony on the ground. Not a vestige of the wooden gun remained. The iron chains had proved terrible death-dealing missiles to the Indians near the gun. The Indians now took to their natural methods of warfare. They hid in the long grass, in the deserted cabins, behind the trees and up in the branches. Not an Indian was visible, but the rain of bullets pattered steadily against the block-house. Every bush and every tree spouted little puffs of white smoke, and the leaden messengers of Death whistled through the air. After another unsuccessful effort to destroy a section of the stockade-fence the soldiers had retired. Their red jackets made them a conspicuous mark for the sharp-eyed settlers. Capt. Pratt had been shot through the thigh. He suffered great pain, and was deeply chagrined by the surprising and formidable defense of the garrison which he had been led to believe would fall an easy prey to the King's soldiers. He had lost one-third of his men. Those who were left refused to run straight in the face of certain death. They had not been drilled to fight an unseen enemy. Capt. Pratt was compelled to order a retreat to the river bluff, where he conferred with Girty. Inside the block-house was great activity, but no confusion. That little band of fighters might have been drilled for a king's bodyguard. Kneeling before each porthole on the river side of the Fort was a man who would fight while there was breath left in him. He did not discharge his weapon aimlessly as the Indians did, but waited until he saw the outline of an Indian form, or a red coat, or a puff of white smoke; then he would thrust the rifle-barrel forward, take a quick aim and fire. By the side of every man stood a heroic woman whose face was blanched, but who spoke never a word as she put the muzzle of the hot rifle into a bucket of water, cooled the barrel, wiped it dry and passed it back to the man beside her. Silas Zane had been wounded at the first fire. A glancing ball had struck him on the head, inflicting a painful scalp wound. It was now being dressed by Col. Zane's wife, whose skilled fingers were already tired with the washing and the bandaging of the injuries received by the defenders. In all that horrible din of battle, the shrill yells of the savages, the hoarse shouts of the settlers, the boom of the cannon overhead, the cracking of rifles and the whistling of bullets; in all that din of appalling noise, and amid the stifling smoke, the smell of burned powder, the sickening sight of the desperately wounded and the already dead, the Colonel's brave wife had never faltered. She was here and there; binding the wounds, helping Lydia and Betty mould bullets, encouraging the men, and by her example, enabling those women to whom border war was new to bear up under the awful strain. Sullivan, who had been on top of the block-house, came down the ladder almost without touching it. Blood was running down his bare arm and dripping from the ends of his fingers. "Zane, Martin has been shot," he said hoarsely. "The same Indian who shot away these fingers did it. The bullets seem to come from some elevation. Send some scout up there and find out where that damned Indian is hiding." "Martin shot? God, his poor wife! Is he dead?" said Silas. "Not yet. Bennet is bringing him down. Here, I want this hand tied up, so that my gun won't be so slippery." Wetzel was seen stalking from one porthole to another. His fearful yell sounded above all the others. He seemed to bear a charmed life, for not a bullet had so much as scratched him. Silas communicated to him what Sullivan had said. The hunter mounted the ladder and went up on the roof. Soon he reappeared, descended into the room and ran into the west end of the block-house. He kneeled before a porthole through which he pushed the long black barrel of his rifle. Silas and Sullivan followed him and looked in the direction indicated by his weapon. It pointed toward the bushy top of a tall poplar tree which stood on the hill west of the Fort. Presently a little cloud of white smoke issued from the leafy branches, and it was no sooner seen than Wetzel's rifle was discharged. There was a great commotion among the leaves, the branches swayed and thrashed, and then a dark body plunged downward to strike on the rocky slope of the bluff and roll swiftly out of sight. The hunter's unnatural yell pealed out. "Great God! The man's crazy," cried Sullivan, staring at Wetzel's demon-like face. "No, no. It's his way," answered Silas. At that moment the huge frame of Bennet filled up the opening in the roof and started down the ladder. In one arm he carried the limp body of a young man. When he reached the floor he laid the body down and beckoned to Mrs. Zane. Those watching saw that the young man was Will Martin, and that he was still alive. But it was evident that he had not long to live. His face had a leaden hue and his eyes were bright and glassy. Alice, his wife, flung herself on her knees beside him and tenderly raised the drooping head. No words could express the agony in her face as she raised it to Mrs. Zane. In it was a mute appeal, an unutterable prayer for hope. Mrs. Zane turned sorrowfully to her task. There was no need of her skill here. Alfred Clarke, who had been ordered to take Martin's place on top of the block-house, paused a moment in silent sympathy. When he saw that little hole in the bared chest, from which the blood welled up in an awful stream, he shuddered and passed on. Betty looked up from her work and then turned away sick and faint. Her mute lips moved as if in prayer. Alice was left alone with her dying husband. She tenderly supported his head on her bosom, leaned her face against his and kissed the cold, numb lips. She murmured into his already deaf ear the old tender names. He knew her, for he made a feeble effort to pass his arm round her neck. A smile illumined his face. Then death claimed him. With wild, distended eyes and with hands pressed tightly to her temples Alice rose slowly to her feet. "Oh, God! Oh, God!" she cried. Her prayer was answered. In a momentary lull in the battle was heard the deadly hiss of a bullet as it sped through one of the portholes. It ended with a slight sickening spat as the lead struck the flesh. Then Alice, without a cry, fell on the husband's breast. Silas Zane found her lying dead with the body of her husband clasped closely in her arms. He threw a blanket over them and went on his wearying round of the bastions. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The besiegers had been greatly harassed and hampered by the continual fire from Col. Zane's house. It was exceedingly difficult for the Indians, and impossible for the British, to approach near enough to the Colonel's house to get an effective shot. Col. Zane and his men had the advantage of being on higher ground. Also they had four rifles to a man, and they used every spare moment for reloading. Thus they were enabled to pour a deadly fire into the ranks of the enemy, and to give the impression of being much stronger in force than they really were. About dusk the firing ceased and the Indians repaired to the river bluff. Shortly afterward their camp-fires were extinguished and all became dark and quiet. Two hours passed. Fortunately the clouds, which had at first obscured the moon, cleared away somewhat and enough light was shed on the scene to enable the watchers to discern objects near by. Col. Zane had just called together his men for a conference. He suspected some cunning deviltry on part of the Indians. "Sam, take what stuff to eat you can lay your hands on and go up to the loft. Keep a sharp lookout and report anything to Jonathan or me," said the Colonel. All afternoon Jonathan Zane had loaded and fired his rifles in sullen and dogged determination. He had burst one rifle and disabled another. The other men were fine marksmen, but it was undoubtedly Jonathan's unerring aim that made the house so unapproachable. He used an extremely heavy, large bore rifle. In the hands of a man strong enough to stand its fierce recoil it was a veritable cannon. The Indians had soon learned to respect the range of that rifle, and they gave the cabin a wide berth. But now that darkness had enveloped the valley the advantage lay with the savages. Col. Zane glanced apprehensively at the blackened face of his brother. "Do you think the Fort can hold out?" he asked in a husky voice. He was a bold man, but he thought now of his wife and children. "I don't know," answered Jonathan. "I saw that big Shawnee chief today. His name is Fire. He is well named. He is a fiend. Girty has a picked band." "The Fort has held out surprisingly well against such combined and fierce attacks. The Indians are desperate. You can easily see that in the way in which they almost threw their lives away. The green square is covered with dead Indians." "If help does not come in twenty-four hours not one man will escape alive. Even Wetzel could not break through that line of Indians. But if we can hold the Indians off a day longer they will get tired and discouraged. Girty will not be able to hold them much longer. The British don't count. It's not their kind of war. They can't shoot, and so far as I can see they haven't done much damage." "To your posts, men, and every man think of the women and children in the block-house." For a long time, which seemed hours to the waiting and watching settlers, not a sound could be heard, nor any sign of the enemy seen. Thin clouds had again drifted over the moon, allowing only a pale, wan light to shine down on the valley. Time dragged on and the clouds grew thicker and denser until the moon and the stars were totally obscured. Still no sign or sound of the savages. "What was that?" suddenly whispered Col. Zane. "It was a low whistle from Sam. We'd better go up," said Jonathan. They went up the stairs to the second floor from which they ascended to the loft by means of a ladder. The loft was as black as pitch. In that Egyptian darkness it was no use to look for anything, so they crawled on their hands and knees over the piles of hides and leather which lay on the floor. When they reached the small window they made out the form of the negro. "What is it, Sam?" whispered Jonathan. "Look, see thar, Massa Zane," came the answer in a hoarse whisper from the negro and at the same time he pointed down toward the ground. Col. Zane put his head alongside Jonathan's and all three men peered out into the darkness. "Jack, can you see anything?" said Col. Zane. "No, but wait a minute until the moon throws a light." A breeze had sprung up. The clouds were passing rapidly over the moon, and at long intervals a rift between the clouds let enough light through to brighten the square for an instant. "Now, Massa Zane, thar!" exclaimed the slave. "I can't see a thing. Can you, Jack?" "I am not sure yet. I can see something, but whether it is a log or not I don't know." Just then there was a faint light like the brightening of a firefly, or like the blowing of a tiny spark from a stick of burning wood. Jonathan uttered a low curse. "D--n 'em! At their old tricks with fire. I thought all this quiet meant something. The grass out there is full of Indians, and they are carrying lighted arrows under them so as to cover the light. But we'll fool the red devils this time" "I can see 'em, Massa Zane." "Sh-h-h! no more talk," whispered Col. Zane. The men waited with cocked rifles. Another spark rose seemingly out of the earth. This time it was nearer the house. No sooner had its feeble light disappeared than the report of the negro's rifle awoke the sleeping echoes. It was succeeded by a yell which seemed to come from under the window. Several dark forms rose so suddenly that they appeared to spring out of the ground. Then came the peculiar twang of Indian bows. There were showers of sparks and little streaks of fire with long tails like comets winged their parabolic flight toward the cabin. Falling short they hissed and sputtered in the grass. Jonathan's rifle spoke and one of the fleeing forms tumbled to the earth. A series of long yells from all around the Fort greeted this last shot, but not an Indian fired a rifle. Fire-tipped arrows were now shot at the block-house, but not one took effect, although a few struck the stockade-fence. Col. Zane had taken the precaution to have the high grass and the clusters of goldenrod cut down all round the Fort. The wisdom of this course now became evident, for the wily savages could not crawl near enough to send their fiery arrows on the roof of the block-house. This attempt failing, the Indians drew back to hatch up some other plot to burn the Fort. "Look!" suddenly exclaimed Jonathan. Far down the road, perhaps five hundred yards from the Fort, a point of light had appeared. At first it was still, and then it took an odd jerky motion, to this side and to that, up and down like a jack-o-lantern. "What the hell?" muttered Col. Zane, sorely puzzled. "Jack, by all that's strange it's getting bigger." Sure enough the spark of fire, or whatever it was, grew larger and larger. Col. Zane thought it might be a light carried by a man on horseback. But if this were true where was the clatter of the horse's hoofs? On that rocky blur no horse could run noiselessly. It could not be a horse. Fascinated and troubled by this new mystery which seemed to presage evil to them the watchers waited with that patience known only to those accustomed to danger. They knew that whatever it was, it was some satanic stratagem of the savages, and that it would come all too soon. The light was now zigzagging back and forth across the road, and approaching the Fort with marvelous rapidity. Now its motion was like the wide swinging of a lighted lantern on a dark night. A moment more of breathless suspense and the lithe form of an Indian brave could be seen behind the light. He was running with almost incredible swiftness down the road in the direction of the Fort. Passing at full speed within seventy-five yards of the stockade-fence the Indian shot his arrow. Like a fiery serpent flying through the air the missile sped onward in its graceful flight, going clear over the block-house, and striking with a spiteful thud the roof of one of the cabins beyond. Unhurt by the volley that was fired at him, the daring brave passed swiftly out of sight. Deeds like this were dear to the hearts of the savages. They were deeds which made a warrior of a brave, and for which honor any Indian would risk his life over and over again. The exultant yells which greeted this performance proclaimed its success. The breeze had already fanned the smouldering arrow into a blaze and the dry roof of the cabin had caught fire and was burning fiercely. "That infernal redskin is going to do that again," ejaculated Jonathan. It was indeed true. That same small bright light could be seen coming down the road gathering headway with every second. No doubt the same Indian, emboldened by his success, and maddened with that thirst for glory so often fatal to his kind, was again making the effort to fire the block-house. The eyes of Col. Zane and his companions were fastened on the light as it came nearer and nearer with its changing motion. The burning cabin brightened the square before the Fort. The slender, shadowy figure of the Indian could be plainly seen emerging from the gloom. So swiftly did he run that he seemed to have wings. Now he was in the full glare of the light. What a magnificent nerve, what a terrible assurance there was in his action! It seemed to paralyze all. The red arrow emitted a shower of sparks as it was discharged. This time it winged its way straight and true and imbedded itself in the roof of the block-house. Almost at the same instant a solitary rifle shot rang out and the daring warrior plunged headlong, sliding face downward in the dust of the road, while from the Fort came that demoniac yell now grown so familiar. "Wetzel's compliments," muttered Jonathan. "But the mischief is done. Look at that damned burning arrow. If it doesn't blow out the Fort will go." The arrow was visible, but it seemed a mere spark. It alternately paled and glowed. One moment it almost went out, and the next it gleamed brightly. To the men, compelled to look on and powerless to prevent the burning of the now apparently doomed block-house, that spark was like the eye of Hell. "Ho, the Fort," yelled Col. Zane with all the power of his strong lungs. "Ho, Silas, the roof is on fire!" Pandemonium had now broken out among the Indians. They could be plainly seen in the red glare thrown by the burning cabin. It had been a very dry season, the rough shingles were like tinder, and the inflammable material burst quickly into great flames, lighting up the valley as far as the edge of the forest. It was an awe-inspiring and a horrible spectacle. Columns of yellow and black smoke rolled heavenward; every object seemed dyed a deep crimson; the trees assumed fantastic shapes; the river veiled itself under a red glow. Above the roaring and crackling of the flames rose the inhuman yelling of the savages. Like demons of the inferno they ran to and fro, their naked painted bodies shining in the glare. One group of savages formed a circle and danced hands-around a stump as gayly as a band of school-girls at a May party. They wrestled with and hugged one another; they hopped, skipped and jumped, and in every possible way manifested their fiendish joy. The British took no part in this revelry. To their credit it must be said they kept in the background as though ashamed of this horrible fire-war on people of their own blood. "Why don't they fire the cannon?" impatiently said Col. Zane. "Why don't they do something?" "Perhaps it is disabled, or maybe they are short of ammunition," suggested Jonathan. "The block-house will burn down before our eyes. Look! The hell-hounds have set fire to the fence. I see men running and throwing water." "I see something on the roof of the block-house," cried Jonathan. "There, down towards the east end of the roof and in the shadow of the chimney. And as I'm a living sinner it's a man crawling towards that blazing arrow. The Indians have not discovered him yet. He is still in the shadow. But they'll see him. God! What a nervy thing to do in the face of all those redskins. It is almost certain death!" "Yes, and they see him," said the Colonel. With shrill yells the Indians bounded forward and aimed and fired their rifles at the crouching figure of the man. Some hid behind the logs they had rolled toward the Fort; others boldly faced the steady fire now pouring from the portholes. The savages saw in the movement of that man an attempt to defeat their long-cherished hope of burning the Fort. Seeing he was discovered, the man did not hesitate, nor did he lose a second. Swiftly he jumped and ran toward the end of the roof where the burning arrow, now surrounded by blazing shingles, was sticking in the roof. How he ever ran along that slanting roof and with a pail in his hand was incomprehensible. In moments like that men become superhuman. It all happened in an instant. He reached the arrow, kicked it over the wall, and then dashed the bucket of water on the blazing shingles. In that single instant, wherein his tall form was outlined against the bright light behind him, he presented the fairest kind of a mark for the Indians. Scores of rifles were levelled and discharged at him. The bullets pattered like hail on the roof of the block-house, but apparently none found their mark, for the man ran back and disappeared. "It was Clarke!" exclaimed Col. Zane. "No one but Clarke has such light hair. Wasn't that a plucky thing?" "It has saved the block-house for to-night," answered Jonathan. "See, the Indians are falling back. They can't stand in the face of that shooting. Hurrah! Look at them fall! It could not have happened better. The light from the cabin will prevent any more close attacks for an hour and daylight is near." CHAPTER XIV. The sun rose red. Its ruddy rays peeped over the eastern hills, kissed the tree-tops, glinted along the stony bluffs, and chased away the gloom of night from the valley. Its warm gleams penetrated the portholes of the Fort and cast long bright shadows on the walls; but it brought little cheer to the sleepless and almost exhausted defenders. It brought to many of the settlers the familiar old sailor's maxim: "Redness 'a the morning, sailor's warning." Rising in its crimson glory the sun flooded the valley, dyeing the river, the leaves, the grass, the stones, tingeing everything with that awful color which stained the stairs, the benches, the floor, even the portholes of the block-house. Historians call this the time that tried men's souls. If it tried the men think what it must have been to those grand, heroic women. Though they had helped the men load and fire nearly forty-eight hours; though they had worked without a moment's rest and were now ready to succumb to exhaustion; though the long room was full of stifling smoke and the sickening odor of burned wood and powder, and though the row of silent, covered bodies had steadily lengthened, the thought of giving up never occurred to the women. Death there would be sweet compared to what it would be at the hands of the redmen. At sunrise Silas Zane, bare-chested, his face dark and fierce, strode into the bastion which was connected with the blockhouse. It was a small shedlike room, and with portholes opening to the river and the forest. This bastion had seen the severest fighting. Five men had been killed here. As Silas entered four haggard and powder-begrimed men, who were kneeling before the portholes, looked up at him. A dead man lay in one corner. "Smith's dead. That makes fifteen," said Silas. "Fifteen out of forty-two, that leaves twenty-seven. We must hold out. Len, don't expose yourselves recklessly. How goes it at the south bastion?" "All right. There's been firin' over there all night," answered one of the men. "I guess it's been kinder warm over that way. But I ain't heard any shootin' for some time." "Young Bennet is over there, and if the men needed anything they would send him for it," answered Silas. "I'll send some food and water. Anything else?" "Powder. We're nigh out of powder," replied the man addressed. "And we might jes as well make ready fer a high old time. The red devils hadn't been quiet all this last hour fer nothin'." Silas passed along the narrow hallway which led from the bastion into the main room of the block-house. As he turned the corner at the head of the stairway he encountered a boy who was dragging himself up the steps. "Hello! Who's this? Why, Harry!" exclaimed Silas, grasping the boy and drawing him into the room. Once in the light Silas saw that the lad was so weak he could hardly stand. He was covered with blood. It dripped from a bandage wound tightly about his arm; it oozed through a hole in his hunting shirt, and it flowed from a wound over his temple. The shadow of death was already stealing over the pallid face, but from the grey eyes shone an indomitable spirit, a spirit which nothing but death could quench. "Quick!" the lad panted. "Send men to the south wall. The redskins are breakin' in where the water from the spring runs under the fence." "Where are Metzar and the other men?" "Dead! Killed last night. I've been there alone all night. I kept on shootin'. Then I gets plugged here under the chin. Knowin' it's all up with me I deserted my post when I heard the Injuns choppin' on the fence where it was on fire last night. But I only--run--because--they're gettin' in." "Wetzel, Bennet, Clarke!" yelled Silas, as he laid the boy on the bench. Almost as Silas spoke the tall form of the hunter confronted him. Clarke and the other men were almost as prompt. "Wetzel, run to the south wall. The Indians are cutting a hole through the fence." Wetzel turned, grabbed his rifle and an axe and was gone like a flash. "Sullivan, you handle the men here. Bessie, do what you can for this brave lad. Come, Bennet, Clarke, we must follow Wetzel," commanded Silas. Mrs. Zane hastened to the side of the fainting lad. She washed away the blood from the wound over his temple. She saw that a bullet had glanced on the bone and that the wound was not deep or dangerous. She unlaced the hunting shirt at the neck and pulled the flaps apart. There on the right breast, on a line with the apex of the lung, was a horrible gaping wound. A murderous British slug had passed through the lad. From the hole at every heart-beat poured the dark, crimson life-tide. Mrs. Zane turned her white face away for a second; then she folded a small piece of linen, pressed it tightly over the wound, and wrapped a towel round the lad's breast. "Don't waste time on me. It's all over," he whispered. "Will you call Betty here a minute?" Betty came, white-faced and horror-stricken. For forty hours she had been living in a maze of terror. Her movements had almost become mechanical. She had almost ceased to hear and feel. But the light in the eyes of this dying boy brought her back to the horrible reality of the present. "Oh, Harry! Harry! Harry!" was all Betty could whisper. "I'm goin', Betty. And I wanted--you to say a little prayer for me--and say good-bye to me," he panted. Betty knelt by the bench and tried to pray. "I hated to run, Betty, but I waited and waited and nobody came, and the Injuns was getting' in. They'll find dead Injuns in piles out there. I was shootin' fer you, Betty, and every time I aimed I thought of you." The lad rambled on, his voice growing weaker and weaker and finally ceasing. The hand which had clasped Betty's so closely loosened its hold. His eyes closed. Betty thought he was dead, but no! he still breathed. Suddenly his eyes opened. The shadow of pain was gone. In its place shone a beautiful radiance. "Betty, I've cared a lot for you--and I'm dyin'--happy because I've fought fer you--and somethin' tells me--you'll--be saved. Good-bye." A smile transformed his face and his gray eyes gazed steadily into hers. Then his head fell back. With a sigh his brave spirit fled. Hugh Bennet looked once at the pale face of his son, then he ran down the stairs after Silas and Clarke. When the three men emerged from behind Capt. Boggs' cabin, which was adjacent to the block-house, and which hid the south wall from their view, they were two hundred feet from Wetzel. They heard the heavy thump of a log being rammed against the fence; then a splitting and splintering of one of the six-inch oak planks. Another and another smashing blow and the lower half of one of the planks fell inwards, leaving an aperture large enough to admit an Indian. The men dashed forward to the assistance of Wetzel, who stood by the hole with upraised axe. At the same moment a shot rang out. Bennet stumbled and fell headlong. An Indian had shot through the hole in the fence. Silas and Alfred sheered off toward the fence, out of line. When within twenty yards of Wetzel they saw a swarthy-faced and athletic savage squeeze through the narrow crevice. He had not straightened up before the axe, wielded by the giant hunter, descended on his head, cracking his skull as if it were an eggshell. The savage sank to the earth without even a moan. Another savage naked and powerful, slipped in. He had to stoop to get through. He raised himself, and seeing Wetzel, he tried to dodge the lightning sweep of the axe. It missed his head, at which it had been aimed, but struck just over the shoulders, and buried itself in flesh and bone. The Indian uttered an agonizing yell which ended in a choking, gurgling sound as the blood spurted from his throat. Wetzel pulled the weapon from the body of his victim, and with the same motion he swung it around. This time the blunt end met the next Indian's head with a thud like that made by the butcher when he strikes the bullock to the ground. The Indian's rifle dropped, his tomahawk flew into the air, while his body rolled down the little embankment into the spring. Another and another Indian met the same fate. Then two Indians endeavored to get through the aperture. The awful axe swung by those steel arms, dispatched both of than in the twinkling of an eye. Their bodies stuck in the hole. Silas and Alfred stood riveted to the spot. Just then Wetzel in all his horrible glory was a sight to freeze the marrow of any man. He had cast aside his hunting shirt in that run to the fence and was now stripped to the waist. He was covered with blood. The muscles of his broad back and his brawny arms swelled and rippled under the brown skin. At every swing of the gory axe he let out a yell the like of which had never before been heard by the white men. It was the hunter's mad yell of revenge. In his thirst for vengeance he had forgotten that he was defending the Fort with its women and its children; he was fighting because he loved to kill. Silas Zane heard the increasing clamor outside and knew that hundreds of Indians were being drawn to the spot. Something must be done at once. He looked around and his eyes fell on a pile of white-oak logs that had been hauled inside the Fort. They had been placed there by Col. Zane, with wise forethought. Silas grabbed Clarke and pulled him toward the pile of logs, at the same time communicating his plan. Together they carried a log to the fence and dropped it in front of the hole. Wetzel immediately stepped on it and took a vicious swing at an Indian who was trying to poke his rifle sideways through the hole. This Indian had discharged his weapon twice. While Wetzel held the Indians at bay, Silas and Clarke piled the logs one upon another, until the hole was closed. This effectually fortified and barricaded the weak place in the stockade fence. The settlers in the bastions were now pouring such a hot fire into the ranks of the savage that they were compelled to retreat out of range. While Wetzel washed the blood from his arms and his shoulders Silas and Alfred hurried back to where Bennet had fallen. They expected to find him dead, and were overjoyed to see the big settler calmly sitting by the brook binding up a wound in his shoulder. "It's nothin' much. Jest a scratch, but it tumbled me over," he said. "I was comin' to help you. That was the wust Injun scrap I ever saw. Why didn't you keep on lettin' 'em come in? The red varmints would'a kept on comin' and Wetzel was good fer the whole tribe. All you'd had to do was to drag the dead Injuns aside and give him elbow room." Wetzel joined them at this moment, and they hurried back to the block-house. The firing had ceased on the bluff. They met Sullivan at the steps of the Fort. He was evidently coming in search of them. "Zane, the Indians and the Britishers are getting ready for more determined and persistent effort than any that has yet been made," said Sullivan. "How so?" asked Silas. "They have got hammers from the blacksmith's shop, and they boarded my boat and found a keg of nails. Now they are making a number of ladders. If they make a rush all at once and place ladders against the fence we'll have the Fort full of Indians in ten minutes. They can't stand in the face of a cannon charge. We _must_ use the cannon." "Clarke, go into Capt. Boggs' cabin and fetch out two kegs of powder," said Silas. The young man turned in the direction of the cabin, while Silas and the others ascended the stairs. "The firing seems to be all on the south side," said Silas, "and is not so heavy as it was." "Yes, as I said, the Indians on the river front are busy with their new plans," answered Sullivan. "Why does not Clarke return?" said Silas, after waiting a few moments at the door of the long room. "We have no time to lose. I want to divide one keg of that powder among the men." Clarke appeared at the moment. He was breathing heavily as though he had run up the stairs, or was laboring under a powerful emotion. His face was gray. "I could not find any powder!" he exclaimed. "I searched every nook and corner in Capt. Boggs' house. There is no powder there." A brief silence ensued. Everyone in the block-house heard the young man's voice. No one moved. They all seemed waiting for someone to speak. Finally Silas Zane burst out: "Not find it? You surely could not have looked well. Capt. Boggs himself told me there were three kegs of powder in the storeroom. I will go and find it myself." Alfred did not answer, but sat down on a bench with an odd numb feeling round his heart. He knew what was coming. He had been in the Captain's house and had seen those kegs of powder. He knew exactly where they had been. Now they were not on the accustomed shelf, nor at any other place in the storeroom. While he sat there waiting for the awful truth to dawn on the garrison, his eyes roved from one end of the room to the other. At last they found what they were seeking. A young woman knelt before a charcoal fire which she was blowing with a bellows. It was Betty. Her face was pale and weary, her hair dishevelled, her shapely arms blackened with charcoal, but notwithstanding she looked calm, resolute, self-contained. Lydia was kneeling by her side holding a bullet-mould on a block of wood. Betty lifted the ladle from the red coals and poured the hot metal with a steady hand and an admirable precision. Too much or too little lead would make an imperfect ball. The little missile had to be just so for those soft-metal, smooth-bore rifles. Then Lydia dipped the mould in a bucket of water, removed it and knocked it on the floor. A small, shiny lead bullet rolled out. She rubbed it with a greasy rag and then dropped it in a jar. For nearly forty hours, without sleep or rest, almost without food, those brave girls had been at their post. Silas Zane came running into the room. His face was ghastly, even his lips were white and drawn. "Sullivan, in God's name, what can we do? The powder is gone!" he cried in a strident voice. "Gone?" repeated several voices. "Gone?" echoed Sullivan. "Where?" "God knows. I found where the kegs stood a few days ago. There were marks in the dust. They have been moved." "Perhaps Boggs put them here somewhere," said Sullivan. "We will look." "No use. No use. We were always careful to keep the powder out of here on account of fire. The kegs are gone, gone." "Miller stole them," said Wetzel in his calm voice. "What difference does that make now?" burst out Silas, turning passionately on the hunter, whose quiet voice in that moment seemed so unfeeling. "They're gone!" In the silence which ensued after these words the men looked at each other with slowly whitening faces. There was no need of words. Their eyes told one another what was coming. The fate which had overtaken so many border forts was to be theirs. They were lost! And every man thought not of himself, cared not for himself, but for those innocent children, those brave young girls and heroic women. A man can die. He is glorious when he calmly accepts death; but when he fights like a tiger, when he stands at bay his back to the wall, a broken weapon in his hand, bloody, defiant, game to the end, then he is sublime. Then he wrings respect from the souls of even his bitterest foes. Then he is avenged even in his death. But what can women do in times of war? They help, they cheer, they inspire, and if their cause is lost they must accept death or worse. Few women have the courage for self-destruction. "To the victor belong the spoils," and women have ever been the spoils of war. No wonder Silas Zane and his men weakened in that moment. With only a few charges for their rifles and none for the cannon how could they hope to hold out against the savages? Alone they could have drawn their tomahawks and have made a dash through the lines of Indians, but with the women and the children that was impossible. "Wetzel, what can we do? For God's sake, advise us!" said Silas hoarsely. "We cannot hold the Fort without powder. We cannot leave the women here. We had better tomahawk every woman in the block-house than let her fall into the hands of Girty." "Send someone fer powder," answered Wetzel. "Do you think it possible," said Silas quickly, a ray of hope lighting up his haggard features. "There's plenty of powder in Eb's cabin. Whom shall we send? Who will volunteer?" Three men stepped forward, and others made a movement. "They'd plug a man full of lead afore he'd get ten foot from the gate," said Wetzel. "I'd go myself, but it wouldn't do no good. Send a boy, and one as can run like a streak." "There are no lads big enough to carry a keg of powder. Harry Bennett might go," said Silas. "How is he, Bessie?" "He is dead," answered Mrs. Zane. Wetzel made a motion with his hands and turned away. A short, intense silence followed this indication of hopelessness from him. The women understood, for some of them covered their faces, while others sobbed. "I will go." It was Betty's voice, and it rang clear and vibrant throughout the room. The miserable women raised their drooping heads, thrilled by that fresh young voice. The men looked stupefied. Clarke seemed turned to stone. Wetzel came quickly toward her. "Impossible!" said Sullivan. Silas Zane shook his head as if the idea were absurd. "Let me go, brother, let me go?" pleaded Betty as she placed her little hands softly, caressingly on her brother's bare arm. "I know it is only a forlorn chance, but still it is a chance. Let me take it. I would rather die that way than remain here and wait for death." "Silas, it ain't a bad plan," broke in Wetzel. "Betty can run like a deer. And bein' a woman they may let her get to the cabin without shootin'." Silas stood with arms folded across his broad chest. As he gazed at his sister great tears coursed down his dark cheeks and splashed on the hands which so tenderly clasped his own. Betty stood before him transformed; all signs of weariness had vanished; her eyes shone with a fateful resolve; her white and eager face was surpassingly beautiful with its light of hope, of prayer, of heroism. "Let me go, brother. You know I can run, and oh! I will fly today. Every moment is precious. Who knows? Perhaps Capt. Boggs is already near at hand with help. You cannot spare a man. Let me go." "Betty, Heaven bless and save you, you shall go," said Silas. "No! No! Do not let her go!" cried Clarke, throwing himself before them. He was trembling, his eyes were wild, and he had the appearance of a man suddenly gone mad. "She shall not go," he cried. "What authority have you here?" demanded Silas Zane, sternly. "What right have you to speak?" "None, unless it is that I love her and I will go for her," answered Alfred desperately. "Stand back!" cried Wetzel, placing his powerful hard on Clarke's breast and pushing him backward. "If you love her you don't want to have her wait here for them red devils," and he waved his hand toward the river. "If she gets back she'll save the Fort. If she fails she'll at least escape Girty." Betty gazed into the hunter's eyes and then into Alfred's. She understood both men. One was sending her out to her death because he knew it would be a thousand times more merciful than the fate which awaited her at the hands of the Indians. The other had not the strength to watch her go to her death. He had offered himself rather than see her take such fearful chances. "I know. If it were possible you would both save me," said Betty, simply. "Now you can do nothing but pray that God may spare my life long enough to reach the gate. Silas, I am ready." Downstairs a little group of white-faced men were standing before the gateway. Silas Zane had withdrawn the iron bar. Sullivan stood ready to swing in the ponderous gate. Wetzel was speaking with a clearness and a rapidity which were wonderful under the circumstances. "When we let you out you'll have a clear path. Run, but not very fast. Save your speed. Tell the Colonel to empty a keg of powder in a table cloth. Throw it over your shoulder and start back. Run like you was racin' with me, and keep on comin' if you do get hit. Now go!" The huge gate creaked and swung in. Betty ran out, looking straight before her. She had covered half the distance between the Fort and the Colonel's house when long taunting yells filled the air. "Squaw! Waugh! Squaw! Waugh!" yelled the Indians in contempt. Not a shot did they fire. The yells ran all along the river front, showing that hundreds of Indians had seen the slight figure running up the gentle slope toward the cabin. Betty obeyed Wetzel's instructions to the letter. She ran easily and not at all hurriedly, and was as cool as if there had not been an Indian within miles. Col. Zane had seen the gate open and Betty come forth. When she bounded up the steps he flung open that door and she ran into his arms. "Betts, for God's sake! What's this?" he cried. "We are out of powder. Empty a keg of powder into a table cloth. Quick! I've not a second to lose," she answered, at the same time slipping off her outer skirt. She wanted nothing to hinder that run for the block-house. Jonathan Zane heard Betty's first words and disappeared into the magazine-room. He came out with a keg in his arms. With one blow of an axe he smashed in the top of the keg. In a twinkling a long black stream of the precious stuff was piling up in a little hill in the center of the table. Then the corners of the table cloth were caught up, turned and twisted, and the bag of powder was thrown over Betty's shoulder. "Brave girl, so help me God, you are going to do it!" cried Col. Zane, throwing open the door. "I know you can. Run as you never ran in all your life." Like an arrow sprung from a bow Betty flashed past the Colonel and out on the green. Scarcely ten of the long hundred yards had been covered by her flying feet when a roar of angry shouts and yells warned Betty that the keen-eyed savages saw the bag of powder and now knew they had been deceived by a girl. The cracking of rifles began at a point on the bluff nearest Col. Zane's house, and extended in a half circle to the eastern end of the clearing. The leaden messengers of Death whistled past Betty. They sped before her and behind her, scattering pebbles in her path, striking up the dust, and ploughing little furrows in the ground. A quarter of the distance covered! Betty had passed the top of the knoll now and she was going down the gentle slope like the wind. None but a fine marksman could have hit that small, flitting figure. The yelling and screeching had become deafening. The reports of the rifles blended in a roar. Yet above it all Betty heard Wetzel's stentorian yell. It lent wings to her feet. Half the distance covered! A hot, stinging pain shot through Betty's arm, but she heeded it not. The bullets were raining about her. They sang over her head; hissed close to her ears, and cut the grass in front of her; they pattered like hail on the stockade-fence, but still untouched, unharmed, the slender brown figure sped toward the gate. Three-fourths of the distance covered! A tug at the flying hair, and a long, black tress cut off by a bullet, floated away on the breeze. Betty saw the big gate swing; she saw the tall figure of the hunter; she saw her brother. Only a few more yards! On! On! On! A blinding red mist obscured her sight. She lost the opening in the fence, but unheeding she rushed on. Another second and she stumbled; she felt herself grasped by eager arms; she heard the gate slam and the iron bar shoot into place; then she felt and heard no more. Silas Zane bounded up the stairs with a doubly precious burden in his arms. A mighty cheer greeted his entrance. It aroused Alfred Clarke, who had bowed his head on the bench and had lost all sense of time and place. What were the women sobbing and crying over? To whom belonged that white face? Of course, it was the face of the girl he loved. The face of the girl who had gone to her death. And he writhed in his agony. Then something wonderful happened. A warm, living flush swept over that pale face. The eyelids fluttered; they opened, and the dark eyes, radiant, beautiful, gazed straight into Alfred's. Still Alfred could not believe his eyes. That pale face and the wonderful eyes belonged to the ghost of his sweetheart. They had come back to haunt him. Then he heard a voice. "O-h! but that brown place burns!" Alfred saw a bare and shapely arm. Its beauty was marred by a cruel red welt. He heard that same sweet voice laugh and cry together. Then he came back to life and hope. With one bound he sprang to a porthole. "God, what a woman!" he said between his teeth, as he thrust the rifle forward. It was indeed not a time for inaction. The Indians, realizing they had been tricked and had lost a golden opportunity, rushed at the Fort with renewed energy. They attacked from all sides and with the persistent fury of savages long disappointed in their hopes. They were received with a scathing, deadly fire. Bang! roared the cannon, and the detachment of savages dropped their ladders and fled. The little "bull dog" was turned on its swivel and directed at another rush of Indians. Bang! and the bullets, chainlinks, and bits of iron ploughed through the ranks of the enemy. The Indians never lived who could stand in the face of well-aimed cannon-shot. They fell back. The settlers, inspired, carried beyond themselves by the heroism of a girl, fought as they had never fought before. Every shot went to a redskin's heart, impelled by the powder for which a brave girl had offered her life, guided by hands and arms of iron, and aimed by eyes as fixed and stern as Fate, every bullet shed the life-blood of a warrior. Slowly and sullenly the red men gave way before that fire. Foot by foot they retired. Girty was seen no more. Fire, the Shawnee chief, lay dead in the road almost in the same spot where two days before his brother chief, Red Fox, had bit the dust. The British had long since retreated. When night came the exhausted and almost famished besiegers sought rest and food. The moon came out clear and beautiful, as if ashamed at her traitor's part of the night before, and brightened up the valley, bathing the Fort, the river, and the forest in her silver light. Shortly after daybreak the next morning the Indians, despairing of success, held a pow-wow. While they were grouped in plain view of the garrison, and probably conferring over the question of raising the siege, the long, peculiar whoop of an Indian spy, who had been sent out to watch for the approach of a relief party, rang out. This seemed a signal for retreat. Scarcely had the shrill cry ceased to echo in the hills when the Indians and the British, abandoning their dead, moved rapidly across the river. After a short interval a mounted force was seen galloping up the creek road. It proved to be Capt. Boggs, Swearengen, and Williamson with seventy men. Great was the rejoicing. Capt. Boggs had expected to find only the ashes of the Fort. And the gallant little garrison, although saddened by the loss of half its original number, rejoiced that it had repulsed the united forces of braves and British. CHAPTER XV. Peace and quiet reigned ones more at Ft. Henry. Before the glorious autumn days had waned, the settlers had repaired the damage done to their cabins, and many of them were now occupied with the fall plowing. Never had the Fort experienced such busy days. Many new faces were seen in the little meeting-house. Pioneers from Virginia, from Ft. Pitt, and eastward had learned that Fort Henry had repulsed the biggest force of Indians and soldiers that Governor Hamilton and his minions could muster. Settlers from all points along the river were flocking to Col. Zane's settlement. New cabins dotted the hillside; cabins and barns in all stages of construction could be seen. The sounds of hammers, the ringing stroke of the axe, and the crashing down of mighty pines or poplars were heard all day long. Col. Zane sat oftener and longer than ever before in his favorite seat on his doorstep. On this evening he had just returned from a hard day in the fields, and sat down to rest a moment before going to supper. A few days previous Isaac Zane and Myeerah had come to the settlement. Myeerah brought a treaty of peace signed by Tarhe and the other Wyandot chieftains. The once implacable Huron was now ready to be friendly with the white people. Col. Zane and his brothers signed the treaty, and Betty, by dint of much persuasion, prevailed on Wetzel to bury the hatchet with the Hurons. So Myeerah's love, like the love of many other women, accomplished more than years of war and bloodshed. The genial and happy smile never left Col. Zane's face, and as he saw the well-laden rafts coming down the river, and the air of liveliness and animation about the growing settlement, his smile broadened into one of pride and satisfaction. The prophecy that he had made twelve years before was fulfilled. His dream was realized. The wild, beautiful spot where he had once built a bark shack and camped half a year without seeing a white man was now the scene of a bustling settlement; and he believed he would live to see that settlement grow into a prosperous city. He did not think of the thousands of acres which would one day make him a wealthy man. He was a pioneer at heart; he had opened up that rich new country; he had conquered all obstacles, and that was enough to make him content. "Papa, when shall I be big enough to fight bars and bufflers and Injuns?" asked Noah, stopping in his play and straddling his father's knee. "My boy, did you not have Indians enough a short time ago?" "But, papa, I did not get to see any. I heard the shooting and yelling. Sammy was afraid, but I wasn't. I wanted to look out of the little holes, but they locked us up in the dark room." "If that boy ever grows up to be like Jonathan or Wetzel it will be the death of me," said the Colonel's wife, who had heard the lad's chatter. "Don't worry, Bessie. When Noah grows to be a man the Indians will be gone." Col. Zane heard the galloping of a horse and looking up saw Clarke coming down the road on his black thoroughbred. The Colonel rose and walked out to the hitching-block, where Clarke had reined in his fiery steed. "Ah, Alfred. Been out for a ride?" "Yes, I have been giving Roger a little exercise." "That's a magnificent animal. I never get tired watching him move. He's the best bit of horseflesh on the river. By the way, we have not seen much of you since the siege. Of course you have been busy. Getting ready to put on the harness, eh? Well, that's what we want the young men to do. Come over and see us." "I have been trying to come. You know how it is with me--about Betty, I mean. Col. Zane, I--I love her. That's all." "Yes, I know, Alfred, and I don't wonder at your fears. But I have always liked you, and now I guess it's about time for me to put a spoke in your wheel of fortune. If Betty cares for you--and I have a sneaking idea she does--I will give her to you." "I have nothing. I gave up everything when I left home." "My lad, never mind about that," said the Colonel, laying his hand on Clarke's knee. "We don't need riches. I have so often said that we need nothing out here on the border but honest hearts and strong, willing hands. These you have. That is enough for me and for my people, and as for land, why, I have enough for an army of young men. I got my land cheap. That whole island there I bought from Cornplanter. You can have that island or any tract of land along the river. Some day I shall put you at the head of my men. It will take you years to cut that road through to Maysville. Oh, I have plenty of work for you." "Col. Zane, I cannot thank you," answered Alfred, with emotion. "I shall try to merit your friendship and esteem. Will you please tell your sister I shall come over in the morning and beg to see her alone." "That I will, Alfred. Goodnight." Col. Zane strode across his threshold with a happy smile on his face. He loved to joke and tease, and never lost an opportunity. "Things seem to be working out all right. Now for some fun with Her Highness," he said to himself. As the Colonel surveyed the pleasant home scene he felt he had nothing more to wish for. The youngsters were playing with a shaggy little pup which had already taken Tige's place in their fickle affections. His wife was crooning a lullaby as she gently rocked the cradle to and fro. A wonderful mite of humanity peacefully slumbered in that old cradle. Annie was beginning to set the table for the evening meal. Isaac lay with a contented smile on his face, fast asleep on the couch, where, only a short time before, he had been laid bleeding and almost dead. Betty was reading to Myeerah, whose eyes were rapturously bright as she leaned her head against her sister and listened to the low voice. "Well, Betty, what do you think?" said Col. Zane, stopping before the girls. "What do I think?" retorted Betty. "Why, I think you are very rude to interrupt me. I am reading to Myeerah her first novel." "I have a very important message for you." "For me? What! From whom?" "Guess." Betty ran through a list of most of her acquaintances, but after each name her brother shook his head. "Oh, well, I don't care," she finally said. The color in her cheeks had heightened noticeably. "Very well. If you do not care, I will say nothing more," said Col. Zane. At this juncture Annie called them to supper. Later, when Col. Zane sat on the doorstep smoking, Betty came and sat beside him with her head resting against his shoulder. The Colonel smoked on in silence. Presently the dusky head moved restlessly. "Eb, tell me the message," whispered Betty. "Message? What message?" asked Col. Zone. "What are you talking about?" "Do not tease--not now. Tell me." There was an undercurrent of wistfulness in Betty's voice which touched the kindhearted brother. "Well, to-day a certain young man asked me if he could relieve me of the responsibility of looking after a certain young lady." "Oh----" "Wait a moment. I told him I would be delighted." "Eb, that was unkind." "Then he asked me to tell her he was coming over to-morrow morning to fix it up with her." "Oh, horrible!" cried Betty. "Were those the words he used?" "Betts, to tell the honest truth, he did not say much of anything. He just said: 'I love her,' and his eyes blazed." Betty uttered a half articulate cry and ran to her room. Her heart was throbbing. What could she do? She felt that if she looked once into her lover's eyes she would have no strength. How dared she allow herself to be so weak! Yet she knew this was the end. She could deceive him no longer. For she felt a stir in her heart, stronger than all, beyond all resistance, an exquisite agony, the sweet, blind, tumultuous exultation of the woman who loves and is loved. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * "Bess, what do you think?" said Col. Zane, going into the kitchen next morning, after he had returned from the pasture. "Clarke just came over and asked for Betty. I called her. She came down looking as sweet and cool as one of the lilies out by the spring. She said: 'Why, Mr. Clarke, you are almost a stranger. I am pleased to see you. Indeed, we are all very glad to know you have recovered from your severe burns.' She went on talking like that for all the world like a girl who didn't care a snap for him. And she knows as well as I do. Not only that, she has been actually breaking her heart over him all these months. How did she do it? Oh, you women beat me all hollow!" "Would you expect Betty to fall into his arms?" asked the Colonel's worthy spouse, indignantly. "Not exactly. But she was too cool, too friendly. Poor Alfred looked as if he hadn't slept. He was nervous and scared to death. When Betty ran up stairs I put a bug in Alfred's ear. He'll be all right now, if he follows my advice." "Humph! What did Colonel Ebenezer Zane tell him?" asked Bessie, in disgust. "Oh, not much. I simply told him not to lose his nerve; that a woman never meant 'no'; that she often says it only to be made say 'yes.' And I ended up with telling him if she got a little skittish, as thoroughbreds do sometimes, to try a strong arm. That was my way." "Col. Zane, if my memory does not fail me, you were as humble and beseeching as the proudest girl could desire." "I beseeching? Never!" "I hope Alfred's wooing may go well. I like him very much. But I'm afraid. Betty has such a spirit that it is quite likely she will refuse him for no other reason than that he built his cabin before he asked her." "Nonsense. He asked her long ago. Never fear, Bess, my sister will come back as meek as a lamb." Meanwhile Betty and Alfred were strolling down the familiar path toward the river. The October air was fresh with a suspicion of frost. The clear notes of a hunter's horn came floating down from the hills. A flock of wild geese had alighted on the marshy ground at the end of the island where they kept up a continual honk! honk! The brown hills, the red forest, and the yellow fields were now at the height of their autumnal beauty. Soon the November north wind would thrash the trees bare, and bow the proud heads of the daisies and the goldenrod; but just now they flashed in the sun, and swayed back and forth in all their glory. "I see you limp. Are you not entirely well?" Betty was saying. "Oh, I am getting along famously, thank you," said Alfred. "This one foot was quite severely burned and is still tender." "You have had your share of injuries. I heard my brother say you had been wounded three times within a year." "Four times." "Jonathan told of the axe wound; then the wound Miller gave you, and finally the burns. These make three, do they not?" "Yes, but you see, all three could not be compared to the one you forgot to mention." "Let us hurry past here," said Betty, hastening to change the subject. "This is where you had the dreadful fight with Miller." "As Miller did go to meet Girty, and as he did not return to the Fort with the renegade, we must believe he is dead. Of course, we do not know this to be actually a fact. But something makes me think so. Jonathan and Wetzel have not said anything; I can't get any satisfaction on that score from either; but I am sure neither of them would rest until Miller was dead." "I think you are right. But we may never know. All I can tell you is that Wetzel and Jack trailed Miller to the river, and then they both came back. I was the last to see Lewis that night before he left on Miller's trail. It isn't likely I shall forget what Lewis said and how he looked. Miller was a wicked man; yes, a traitor." "He was a bad man, and he nearly succeeded in every one of his plans. I have not the slightest doubt that had he refrained from taking part in the shooting match he would have succeeded in abducting you, in killing me, and in leading Girty here long before he was expected." "There are many things that may never be explained, but one thing Miller did always mystify us. How did he succeed in binding Tige?" "To my way of thinking that was not so difficult as climbing into my room and almost killing me, or stealing the powder from Capt. Boggs' room." "The last, at least, gave me a chance to help," said Betty, with a touch of her odd roguishness. "That was the grandest thing a woman ever did," said Alfred, in a low tone. "Oh, no, I only ran fast." "I would have given the world to have seen you, but I was lying on the bench wishing I were dead. I did not have strength to look out of a porthole. Oh! that horrible time! I can never forget it. I lie awake at night and hear the yelling and shooting. Then I dream of running over the burning roofs and it all comes back so vividly I can almost feel the flames and smell the burnt wood. Then I wake up and think of that awful moment when you were carried into the blockhouse white, and, as I thought, dead." "But I wasn't. And I think it best for us to forget that horrible siege. It is past. It is a miracle that any one was spared. Ebenezer says we should not grieve for those who are gone; they were heroic; they saved the Fort. He says too, that we shall never again be troubled by Indians. Therefore let us forget and be happy. I have forgotten Miller. You can afford to do the same." "Yes, I forgive him." Then, after a long silence, Alfred continued, "Will you go down to the old sycamore?" Down the winding path they went. Coming to a steep place in the rocky bank Alfred jumped down and then turned to help Betty. But she avoided his gaze, pretended to not see his outstretched hands, and leaped lightly down beside him. He looked at her with perplexity and anxiety in his eyes. Before he could speak she ran on ahead of him and climbed down the bank to the pool. He followed slowly, thoughtfully. The supreme moment had come. He knew it, and somehow he did not feel the confidence the Colonel had inspired in him. It had been easy for him to think of subduing this imperious young lady; but when the time came to assert his will he found he could not remember what he had intended to say, and his feelings were divided between his love for her and the horrible fear that he should lose her. When he reached the sycamore tree he found her sitting behind it with a cluster of yellow daisies in her lap. Alfred gazed at her, conscious that all his hopes of happiness were dependent on the next few words that would issue from her smiling lips. The little brown hands, which were now rather nervously arranging the flowers, held more than his life. "Are they not sweet?" asked Betty, giving him a fleeting glance. "We call them 'black-eyed Susans.' Could anything be lovelier than that soft, dark brown?" "Yes," answered Alfred, looking into her eyes. "But--but you are not looking at my daisies at all," said Betty, lowering her eyes. "No, I am not," said Alfred. Then suddenly: "A year ago this very day we were here." "Here? Oh, yes, I believe I do remember. It was the day we came in my canoe and had such fine fishing." "Is that all you remember?" "I can recollect nothing in particular. It was so long ago." "I suppose you will say you had no idea why I wanted you to come to this spot in particular." "I supposed you simply wanted to take a walk, and it is very pleasant here." "Then Col. Zane did not tell you?" demanded Alfred. Receiving no reply he went on. "Did you read my letter?" "What letter?" "The letter old Sam should have given you last fall. Did you read it?" "Yes," answered Betty, faintly. "Did your brother tell you I wanted to see you this morning?" "Yes, he told me, and it made me very angry," said Betty, raising her head. There was a bright red spot in each cheek. "You--you seemed to think you--that I--well--I did not like it." "I think I understand; but you are entirely wrong. I have never thought you cared for me. My wildest dreams never left me any confidence. Col. Zane and Wetzel both had some deluded notion that you cared--" "But they had no right to say that or to think it," said Betty, passionately. She sprang to her feet, scattering the daisies over the grass. "For them to presume that I cared for you is absurd. I never gave them any reason to think so, for--for I--I don't." "Very well, then, there is nothing more to be said," answered Alfred, in a voice that was calm and slightly cold. "I'm sorry if you have been annoyed. I have been mad, of course, but I promise you that you need fear no further annoyance from me. Come, I think we should return to the house." And he turned and walked slowly up the path. He had taken perhaps a dozen steps when she called him. "Mr. Clarke, come back." Alfred retraced his steps and stood before her again. Then he saw a different Betty. The haughty poise had disappeared. Her head was bowed. Her little hands were tightly pressed over a throbbing bosom. "Well," said Alfred, after a moment. "Why--why are you in such a hurry to go?" "I have learned what I wanted to know. And after that I do not imagine I would be very agreeable. I am going back. Are you coming?" "I did not mean quite what I said," whispered Betty. "Then what did you mean?" asked Alfred, in a stern voice. "I don't know. Please don't speak so." "Betty, forgive my harshness. Can you expect a man to feel as I do and remain calm? You know I love you. You must not trifle any longer. You must not fight any longer." "But I can't help fighting." "Look at me," said Alfred, taking her hands. "Let me see your eyes. I believe you care a little for me, or else you wouldn't have called me back. I love you. Can you understand that?" "Yes, I can; and I think you should love me a great deal to make up for what you made me suffer." "Betty, look at me." Slowly she raised her head and lifted the downcast eyes. Those telltale traitors no longer hid her secret. With a glad cry Alfred caught her in his arms. She tried to hide her face, but he got his hand under her chin and held it firmly so that the sweet crimson lips were very near his own. Then he slowly bent his head. Betty saw his intention, closed her eyes and whispered. "Alfred, please don't--it's not fair--I beg of you--Oh!" That kiss was Betty's undoing. She uttered a strange little cry. Then her dark head found a hiding place over his heart, and her slender form, which a moment before had resisted so fiercely, sank yielding into his embrace. "Betty, do you dare tell me now that you do not care for me?" Alfred whispered into the dusky hair which rippled over his breast. Betty was brave even in her surrender. Her hands moved slowly upward along his arms, slipped over his shoulders, and clasped round his neck. Then she lifted a flushed and tearstained face with tremulous lips and wonderful shining eyes. "Alfred, I do love you--with my whole heart I love you. I never knew until now." The hours flew apace. The prolonged ringing of the dinner bell brought the lovers back to earth, and to the realization that the world held others than themselves. Slowly they climbed the familiar path, but this time as never before. They walked hand in hand. From the blur they looked back. They wanted to make sure they were not dreaming. The water rushed over the fall more musically than ever before; the white patches of foam floated round and round the shady pool; the leaves of the sycamore rustled cheerily in the breeze. On a dead branch a wood-pecker hammered industriously. "Before we get out of sight of that dear old tree I want to make a confession," said Betty, as she stood before Alfred. She was pulling at the fringe on his hunting-coat. "You need not make confessions to me." "But this was dreadful; it preys on my conscience." "Very well, I will be your judge. Your punishment shall be slight." "One day when you were lying unconscious from your wound, Bessie sent me to watch you. I nursed you for hours; and--and--do not think badly of me--I--I kissed you." "My darling," cried the enraptured young man. When they at last reached the house they found Col. Zane on the doorstep. "Where on earth have you been?" he said. "Wetzel was here. He said he would not wait to see you. There he goes up the hill. He is behind that laurel." They looked and presently saw the tall figure of the hunter emerge from the bushes. He stopped and leaned on his rifle. For a minute he remained motionless. Then he waved his hand and plunged into the thicket. Betty sighed and Alfred said: "Poor Wetzel! ever restless, ever roaming." "Hello, there!" exclaimed a gay voice. The lovers turned to see the smiling face of Isaac, and over his shoulder Myeerah's happy face beaming on them. "Alfred, you are a lucky dog. You can thank Myeerah and me for this; because if I had not taken to the river and nearly drowned myself to give you that opportunity you would not wear that happy face to-day. Blush away, Betts, it becomes you mightily." "Bessie, here they are!" cried Col. Zane, in his hearty voice. "She is tamed at last. No excuses, Alfred, in to dinner you go." Col. Zane pushed the young people up the steps before him, and stopping on the threshold while he knocked the ashes from his pipe, he smiled contentedly. AFTERWORD. Betty lived all her after life on the scene of her famous exploit. She became a happy wife and mother. When she grew to be an old lady, with her grandchildren about her knee, she delighted to tell them that when a girl she had run the gauntlet of the Indians. Col. Zane became the friend of all redmen. He maintained a trading-post for many years, and his dealings were ever kind and honorable. After the country got settled he received from time to time various marks of distinction from the State, Colonial, and National governments. His most noted achievement was completed about 1796. President Washington, desiring to open a National road from Fort Henry to Maysville, Kentucky, paid a great tribute to Col. Zane's ability by employing him to undertake the arduous task. His brother Jonathan and the Indian guide, Tomepomehala, rendered valuable aid in blazing out the path through the wilderness. This road, famous for many years as Zane's Trace, opened the beautiful Ohio valley to the ambitious pioneer. For this service Congress granted Col. Zane the privilege of locating military warrants upon three sections of land, each a square mile in extent, which property the government eventually presented to him. Col. Zane was the founder of Wheeling, Zanesville, Martin's Ferry, and Bridgeport. He died in 1811. Isaac Zane received from the government a patent of ten thousand acres of land on Mad river. He established his home in the center of this tract, where he lived with the Wyandot until his death. A white settlement sprang up, prospered, and grew, and today it is the thriving city of Zanesfield. Jonathan Zane settled down after peace was declared with the Indians, found himself a wife, and eventually became an influential citizen. However, he never lost his love for the wild woods. At times he would take down the old rifle and disappear for two or three days. He always returned cheerful and happy from these lonely hunts. Wetzel alone did not take kindly to the march of civilization; but then he was a hunter, not a pioneer. He kept his word of peace with his old enemies, the Hurons, though he never abandoned his wandering and vengeful quests after the Delawares. As the years passed Wetzel grew more silent and taciturn. From time to time he visited Ft. Henry, and on these visits he spent hours playing with Betty's children. But he was restless in the settlement, and his sojourns grew briefer and more infrequent as time rolled on. True to his conviction that no wife existed on earth for him, he never married. His home was the trackless wilds, where he was true to his calling--a foe to the redman. Wonderful to relate his long, black hair never adorned the walls of an Indian's lodge, where a warrior might point with grim pride and say: "No more does the Deathwind blow over the hills and vales." We could tell of how his keen eye once again saw Wingenund over the sights of his fatal rifle, and how he was once again a prisoner in the camp of that lifelong foe, but that's another story, which, perhaps, we may tell some day. To-day the beautiful city of Wheeling rises on the banks of the Ohio, where the yells of the Indians once blanched the cheeks of the pioneers. The broad, winding river rolls on as of yore; it alone remains unchanged. What were Indians and pioneers, forts and cities to it? Eons of time before human beings lived it flowed slowly toward the sea, and ages after men and their works are dust, it will roll on placidly with its eternal scheme of nature. Upon the island still stand noble beeches, oaks, and chestnuts--trees that long ago have covered up their bullet-scars, but they could tell, had they the power to speak, many a wild thrilling tale. Beautiful parks and stately mansions grace the island; and polished equipages roll over the ground that once knew naught save the soft tread of the deer and the moccasin. McColloch's Rock still juts boldly out over the river as deep and rugged as when the brave Major leaped to everlasting fame. Wetzel's Cave, so named to this day, remains on the side of the bluff overlooking the creek. The grapevines and wild rose-bushes still cluster round the cavern-entrance, where, long ago, the wily savage was wont to lie in wait for the settler, lured there by the false turkey-call. The boys visit the cave on Saturday afternoons and play "Injuns." Not long since the writer spent a quiet afternoon there, listening to the musical flow of the brook, and dreaming of those who had lived and loved, fought and died by that stream one hundred and twenty years ago. The city with its long blocks of buildings, its spires and bridges, faded away, leaving the scene as it was in the days of Fort Henry--unobscured by smoke, the river undotted by pulling boats, and everywhere the green and verdant forest. Nothing was wanting in that dream picture: Betty tearing along on her pony; the pioneer plowing in the field; the stealthy approach of the savage; Wetzel and Jonathan watching the river; the deer browsing with the cows in the pasture, and the old fort, grim and menacing on the bluff--all were there as natural as in those times which tried men's souls. And as the writer awoke to the realities of life, that his dreams were of long ago, he was saddened by the thought that the labor of the pioneer is ended; his faithful, heroic wife's work is done. That beautiful country, which their sacrifices made ours, will ever be a monument to them. Sad, too, is the thought that the poor Indian is unmourned. He is almost forgotten; he is in the shadow; his songs are sung; no more will he sing to his dusky bride: his deeds are done; no more will he boast of his all-conquering arm or of his speed like the Northwind; no more will his heart bound at the whistle of the stag, for he sleeps in the shade of the oaks, under the moss and the ferns. 
29306	----	images generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Kentuckiana Digital Library. See http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;view=toc;idno=b92-161-29919559 Transcriber's note: Spellings and hyphenations are as in the original document. Hyphenation was inconsistent, with the following words appearing both with and without hyphens: saw-mill, tread-mill, drift-wood, back-set, cotton-wood, farm-house, semi-circular, search-light, fire-brick, out-door, ship-yard(s), and house-boat(s). The name "Céleron" is used interchangebly with "Céloron". AFLOAT ON THE OHIO An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo by REUBEN GOLD THWAITES Secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Editor of "The Jesuit Relations," Author of "The Colonies, 1492-1750," "Historic Waterways," "The Story of Wisconsin," "Our Cycling Tour in England," etc., etc. Chicago Way & Williams 1897 Copyright by Reuben Gold Thwaites A.D., 1897 _To FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER, Ph. D., Professor of American History in the University of Wisconsin, who loves his native West and with rare insight and gift of phrase interprets her story, this Log of the "Pilgrim" is cordially inscribed._ CONTENTS. PAGE Preface. xi Chapter I. On the Monongahela--The over-mountain path--Redstone Old Fort--The Youghiogheny--Braddock's defeat. 1 Chapter II. First day on the Ohio--At Logstown. 22 Chapter III. Shingis Old Town--The dynamiter--Yellow Creek. 29 Chapter IV. An industrial region--Steubenville--Mingo Bottom--In a steel mill--Indian character. 39 Chapter V. House-boat life--Decadence of steamboat traffic--Wheeling, and Wheeling Creek. 50 Chapter VI. The Big Grave--Washington and Round Bottom--A lazy man's paradise--Captina Creek--George Rogers Clark at Fish Creek--Southern types. 64 Chapter VII. In Dixie--Oil and natural gas, at Witten's Bottom--The Long Reach--Photographing crackers--Visitors in camp. 77 Chapter VIII. Life ashore and afloat--Marietta, "the Plymouth Rock of the West"--The Little Kanawha--The story of Blennerhassett's Island. 87 Chapter IX. Poor whites--First library in the West--An hour at Hockingport--A hermit fisher. 99 Chapter X. Cliff-dwellers, on Long Bottom--Pomeroy Bend--Letart's Island, and Rapids--Game, in the early day--Rainy weather--In a "cracker" home. 109 Chapter XI. Battle of Point Pleasant--The story of Gallipolis--Rosebud--Huntington--The genesis of a houseboater. 125 Chapter XII. In a fog--The Big Sandy--Rainy weather--Operatic gypsies--An ancient tavern. 139 Chapter XIII. The Scioto, and the Shawanese--A night at Rome--Limestone--Keels, flats, and boatmen of the olden time. 150 Chapter XIV. Produce-boats--A dead town--On the Great Bend--Grant's birthplace--The Little Miami--The genesis of Cincinnati. 168 Chapter XV. The story of North Bend--The "shakes"--Driftwood--Rabbit hash--A side-trip to Big Bone Lick. 182 Chapter XVI. New Switzerland--An old-time river pilot--Houseboat life on the lower reaches--A philosopher in rags--Wooded solitudes--Arrival at Louisville. 202 Chapter XVII. Storied Louisville--Red Indians and white--A night on Sand Island--New Albany--Riverside hermits--The river falling--A deserted village--An ideal camp. 218 Chapter XVIII. Village life--A traveling photographer--On a country road--Studies in color--Again among colliers--In sweet content--A ferry romance. 233 Chapter XIX. Fishermen's tales--Skiff nomenclature--Green River--Evansville--Henderson--Audubon and Rafinesque--Floating shops--The Wabash. 251 Chapter XX. Shawneetown--Farm-houses on stilts--Cave-in-Rock--Island nights. 267 Chapter XXI. The Cumberland and the Tennessee--Stately solitudes--Old Fort Massac--Dead towns in Egypt--The last camp--Cairo. 280 _Appendix A._--Historical outline of Ohio Valley settlement. 296 _Appendix B._--Selected list of Journals of previous travelers down the Ohio. 320 Index. 329 PREFACE. There were four of us pilgrims--my Wife, our Boy of ten and a half years, the Doctor, and I. My object in going--the others went for the outing--was to gather "local color" for work in Western history. The Ohio River was an important factor in the development of the West. I wished to know the great waterway intimately in its various phases,--to see with my own eyes what the borderers saw; in imagination, to redress the pioneer stage, and repeople it. A motley company have here performed their parts: Savages of the mound-building age, rearing upon these banks curious earthworks for archæologists of the nineteenth century to puzzle over; Iroquois war-parties, silently swooping upon sleeping villages of the Shawanese, and in noisy glee returning to the New York lakes, laden with spoils and captives; La Salle, prince of French explorers and coureurs de bois, standing at the Falls of the Ohio, and seeking to fathom the geographical mysteries of the continent; French and English fur-traders, in bitter contention for the patronage of the red man; borderers of the rival nations, shedding each other's blood in protracted partisan wars; surveyors like Washington and Boone and the McAfees, clad in fringed hunting-shirts and leathern leggings, mapping out future states; hardy frontiersmen, fighting, hunting, or farming, as occasion demanded; George Rogers Clark, descending the river with his handful of heroic Virginians to win for the United States the great Northwest, and for himself the laurels of fame; the Marietta pilgrims, beating Revolutionary swords into Ohio plowshares; and all that succeeding tide of immigrants from our own Atlantic coast and every corner of Europe, pouring down the great valley to plant powerful commonwealths beyond the mountains. A richly-varied panorama of life passes before us as we contemplate the glowing story of the Ohio. In making our historical pilgrimage we might more easily have "steamboated" the river,--to use a verb in local vogue; but, from the deck of a steamer, scenes take on a different aspect than when viewed from near the level of the flood; for a passenger by such a craft, the vistas of a winding stream change so rapidly that he does not realize how it seemed to the canoeist or flatboatman of old; and there are too many modern distractions about such a mode of progress. To our minds, the manner of our going should as nearly as possible be that of the pioneer himself--hence our skiff, and our nightly camp in primitive fashion. The trip was successful, whatever the point of view. Physically, those six weeks "Afloat on the Ohio" were a model outing--at times rough, to be sure, but exhilarating, health-giving, brain-inspiring. The Log of the "Pilgrim" seeks faintly to outline our experiences, but no words can adequately describe the wooded hill-slopes which day by day girt us in; the romantic ravines which corrugate the rim of the Ohio's basin; the beautiful islands which stud the glistening tide; the great affluents which, winding down for a thousand miles, from the Blue Ridge, the Cumberland, and the Great Smoky, pour their floods into the central stream; the giant trees--sycamores, pawpaws, cork elms, catalpas, walnuts, and what not--which everywhere are in view in this woodland world; the strange and lovely flowers we saw; the curious people we met, black and white, and the varieties of dialect which caught our ear; the details of our charming gypsy life, ashore and afloat, during which we were conscious of the red blood tingling through our veins, and, alert to the whisperings of Nature, were careless of the workaday world, so far away,--simply glad to be alive. For the better understanding of the numerous historical references in the Log, I have thought it well to present in the Appendix a brief sketch of the settlement of the Ohio Valley. To this Appendix, as a preliminary reading, I invite those who may care to follow "Pilgrim" and her crew upon their long journey from historic Redstone down to the Father of Waters. A selected list of Journals of previous travelers down the Ohio, has been added, for the benefit of students of the social and economic history of this important gateway to the continental interior. R. G. T. Madison, Wis., October, 1897. AFLOAT ON THE OHIO CHAPTER I. On the Monongahela--The over-mountain path--Redstone Old Fort--The Youghiogheny--Braddock's defeat. In camp near Charleroi, Pa., Friday, May 4.--Pilgrim, built for the glassy lakes and smooth-flowing rivers of Wisconsin, had suffered unwonted indignities in her rough journey of a thousand miles in a box-car. But beyond a leaky seam or two, which the Doctor had righted with clouts and putty, and some ugly scratches which were only paint-deep, she was in fair trim as she gracefully lay at the foot of the Brownsville shipyard this morning and received her lading. There were spectators in abundance. Brownsville, in the olden day, had seen many an expedition set out from this spot for the grand tour of the Ohio, but not in the personal recollection of any in this throng of idlers, for the era of the flatboat and pirogue now belongs to history. Our expedition is a revival, and therein lies novelty. However, the historic spirit was not evident among our visitors--railway men, coal miners loafing out the duration of a strike, shipyard hands lying in wait for busier times, small boys blessed with as much leisure as curiosity, and that wonder of wonders, a bashful newspaper reporter. Their chief concern centered in the query, how Pilgrim could hold that goodly heap of luggage and still have room to spare for four passengers? It became evident that her capacity is akin to that of the magician's bag. "A dandy skiff, gents!" said the foreman of the shipyard, as we settled into our seats--the Doctor bow, I stroke, with W---- and the Boy in the stern sheets. Having in silence critically watched us for a half hour, seated on a capstan, his red flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows, and well-corded chest and throat bared to wind and weather, this remark of the foreman was evidently the studied judgment of an expert. It was taken as such by the good-natured crowd, which, as we pushed off into the stream, lustily joined in a chorus of "Good-bye!" and "Good luck to yees, an' ye don't git th' missus drowndid 'fore ye git to Cairo!" The current is slight on these lower reaches of the Monongahela. It comes down gayly enough from the West Virginia hills, over many a rapid, and through swirls and eddies in plenty, until Morgantown is reached; and then, settling into a more sedate course, is at Brownsville finally converted into a mere mill-pond, by the back-set of the four slack-water dams between there and Pittsburg. This means solid rowing for the first sixty miles of our journey, with a current scarcely perceptible. The thought of it suggests lunch. At the mouth of Redstone Creek, a mile below Dunlap Creek, our port of departure, we turn in to a shaly beach at the foot of a wooded slope, in semi-rusticity, and fortify the inner man. A famous spot, this Redstone Creek. Between its mouth and that of Dunlap's was made, upon the site of extensive Indian fortification mounds, the first English agricultural settlement west of the Alleghanies. It is unsafe to establish dates for first discoveries, or for first settlements. The wanderers who, first of all white men, penetrated the fastnesses of the wilderness were mostly of the sort who left no documentary traces behind them. It is probable, however, that the first Redstone settlement was made as early as 1750, the year following the establishment of the Ohio Company, which had been chartered by the English crown and given a half-million acres of land west of the mountains and south of the Ohio River, provided it established thereon a hundred families within seven years. "Redstone Old Fort"--the name had reference to the aboriginal earthworks--played a part in the Fort Necessity and Braddock campaigns and in later frontier wars; and, being the western terminus of the over-mountain road known at various historic periods as Nemacolin's Path, Braddock's Road, and Cumberland Pike, was for many years the chief point of departure for Virginia expeditions down the Ohio River. Washington, who had large landed interests on the Ohio, knew Redstone well; and here George Rogers Clark set out (1778) upon flatboats, with his rough-and-ready Virginia volunteers, to capture the country north of the Ohio for the American arms--one of the least known, but most momentous conquests in history. Early in the nineteenth century, Redstone became Brownsville. But, whether as Redstone or Brownsville, it was, in its day, like most "jumping off" places on the edge of civilization, a veritable Sodom. Wrote good old John Pope, in his Journal of 1790, and in the same strain scores of other veracious chroniclers: "At this Place we were detained about a Week, experiencing every Disgust which Rooks and Harpies could excite." Here thrived extensive yards in which were built flatboats, arks, keel boats, and all that miscellaneous collection of water craft which, with their roisterly crews, were the life of the Ohio before the introduction of steam rendered vessels of deeper draught essential; whereupon much of the shipping business went down the river to better stages of water, first to Pittsburg, thence to Wheeling, and to Steubenville. All that is of the past. Brownsville is still a busy corner of the world, though of a different sort, with all its romance gone. To the student of Western history, Brownsville will always be a shrine--albeit a smoky, dusty shrine, with the smell of lubricators and the clang of hammers, and much talk thereabout of the glories of Mammon. The Monongahela is a characteristic mountain trough. From an altitude of four or five hundred feet, the country falls in sharp steeps to a narrow alluvial bench, and then a broad beach of shale and pebble; the slopes are broken, here and there, where deep, shadowy ravines come winding down, bearing muddy contributions to the greater flood. The higher hills are crowned with forest trees, the lower ofttimes checkered with brown fields, recently planted, and rows of vines trimmed low to stakes, as in the fashion of the Rhine. The stream, though still majestic in its sweep, is henceforth a commercial slack-water, lined with noisy, grimy, matter-of-fact manufacturing towns, for the most part literally abutting one upon the other all of the way down to Pittsburg, and fast defiling the once picturesque banks with the gruesome offal of coal mines and iron plants. Surprising is the density of settlement along the river. Often, four or five full-fledged cities are at once in view from our boat, the air is thick with sooty smoke belched from hundreds of stacks, the ear is almost deafened with the whirr and roar and bang of milling industries. Tipples of bituminous coal-shafts are ever in sight--begrimed scaffolds of wood and iron, arranged for dumping the product of the mines into both barges and railway cars. Either bank is lined with railways, in sight of which we shall almost continually float, all the way down to Cairo, nearly eleven hundred miles away. At each tipple is a miners' hamlet; a row of cottages or huts, cast in a common mold, either unpainted, or bedaubed with that cheap, ugly red with which one is familiar in railway bridges and rural barns. Sometimes these huts, though in the mass dreary enough, are kept in neat repair; but often are they sadly out of elbows--pigs and children promiscuously at their doors, paneless sash stuffed with rags, unsightly litter strewn around, misery stamped on every feature of the homeless tenements. Dreariest of all is a deserted mining village, and there are many such--the shaft having been worked out, or an unquenchable subterranean fire left to smolder in neglect. Here the tipple has fallen into creaking decrepitude; the cabins are without windows or doors--these having been taken to some newer hamlet; ridge-poles are sunken, chimneys tottering; soot covers the gaunt bones, which for all the world are like a row of skeletons, perched high, and grinning down at you in their misery; while the black offal of the pit, covering deep the original beauty of the once green slope, is in its turn being veiled with climbing weeds--such is Nature's haste, when untrammeled, to heal the scars wrought by man. A mile or two below Charleroi is Lock No. 4, the first of the quartet of obstructions between Brownsville and Pittsburg. We are encamped a mile below the dam, in a cozy little willowed nook; a rod behind our ample tent rises the face of an alluvial terrace, occupied by a grain-field, running back for an hundred yards to the hills, at the base of which is a railway track. Across the river, here some two hundred and fifty yards wide, the dark, rocky bluffs, slashed with numerous ravines, ascend sharply from the flood; at the quarried base, a wagon road and the customary railway; and upon the stony beach, two or three rough shelter-tents, housing the Black Diamond Brass Band, of Monongahela City, out on a week's picnic to while away the period of the strike. It was seven o'clock when we struck camp, and our frugal repast was finished by lantern-light. The sun sets early in this narrow trough through the foothills of the Laurel range. * * * * * McKeesport, Pa., Saturday, May 5th.--Out there on the beach, near Charleroi, with the sail for an awning, Pilgrim had been converted into a boudoir for the Doctor, who, snuggled in his sleeping-bag, emitted an occasional snore--echoes from the Land of Nod. W---- and our Boy of ten summers, on their canvas folding-cots, were peacefully oblivious of the noises of the night, and needed the kiss of dawn to rouse them. But for me, always a light sleeper, and as yet unused to our airy bedroom, the crickets chirruped through the long watches. Two or three freighters passed in the night, with monotonous swish-swish and swelling wake. It arouses something akin to awe, this passage of a steamer's wake upon the beach, a dozen feet from the door of one's tent. First, the water is sucked down, leaving for a moment a wet streak of sand or gravel, a dozen feet in width; in quick succession come heavy, booming waves, running at an acute angle with the shore, breaking at once into angry foam, and wasting themselves far up on the strand, for a few moments making bedlam with any driftwood which chances to have made lodgment there. When suddenly awakened by this boisterous turmoil, the first thought is that a dam has broken and a flood is at hand; but, by the time you rise upon your elbow, the scurrying uproar lessens, and gradually dies away along a more distant shore. We were slow in getting off this morning. But the dense fog had been loath to lift; and at first the stove smoked badly, until we discovered and removed the source of trouble. This stove is an ingenious contrivance of the Doctor's--a box of sheet-iron, of slight weight, so arranged as to be folded into an incredibly small space; a vast improvement for cooking purposes over an open camp-fire, which Pilgrim's crew know, from long experience in far distant fields, to be a vexation to eyes and soul. Coaling hamlets more or less deserted were frequent this morning--unpainted, windowless, ragged wrecks. At the inhabited mining villages, either close to the strand or well up on hillside ledges, idle men were everywhere about. Women and boys and girls were stockingless and shoeless, and often dirty to a degree. But, when conversed with, we found them independent, respectful, and self-respecting folk. Occasionally I would, for the mere sake of meeting these workaday brothers of ours, with canteen slung on shoulder, climb the steep flight of stairs cut in the clay bank, and on reaching the terrace inquire for drinking water, talking familiarly with the folk who came to meet me at the well-curb. There are old-fashioned Dutch ovens in nearly every yard, a few chickens, and often a shed for the cow, that is off on her daily climb over the neighboring hills. Through the black pall of shale, a few vegetables struggle feebly to the light; in the corners of the palings, are hollyhocks and four-o'clocks; and, on window-sills, rows of battered tin cans, resplendent in blue and yellow labels, are the homes of verbenas and geraniums, in sickly bloom. Now and then, a back door in the dreary block is distinguished by an arbored trellis bearing a grape-vine, and furnishing for the weary housewife a shady kitchen, _al fresco_. As a rule, however, there is little attempt to better the homeless shelter furnished by the corporation. We restocked with provisions at Monongahela City, a smart, newish town, and at Elizabeth, old and dingy. It was at Elizabeth, then Elizabethtown, that travelers from the Eastern States, over the old Philadelphia Road, chiefly took boat for the Ohio--the Virginians still clinging to Redstone, as the terminus of the Braddock Road. Elizabethtown, in flatboat days, was the seat of a considerable boat-building industry, its yards in time turning out steamboats for the New Orleans trade, and even sea-going sailing craft; but, to-day, coal barges are the principal output of her decaying shipyards. By this time, the duties of our little ship's company are well defined. W---- supervises the cuisine, most important of all offices; the Doctor is chief navigator, assistant cook, and hewer of wood; it falls to my lot to purchase supplies, to be carrier of water, to pitch tent and make beds, and, while breakfast is being cooked, to dismantle the camp and, so far as may be, to repack Pilgrim; the Boy collects driftwood, wipes dishes, and helps at what he can--while all hands row or paddle through the livelong day, as whim or need dictates. Lock No. 3, at Walton, necessitated a portage of the load, over the left bank. It is a steep, rocky climb, and the descent on the lower side, strewn with stone chips, destructive to shoe-leather. The Doctor and I let Pilgrim herself down with a long rope, over a shallow spot in the apron of the dam. At six o'clock a camping-ground for the night became desirable. We were fortunate, last evening, to find a bit of rustic country in which to pitch our tent; but all through this afternoon both banks of the river were lined with village after village, city after city, scarcely a garden patch between them--Wilson, Coal Valley, Lostock, Glassport, Dravosburg, and a dozen others not recorded on our map, which bears date of 1882. The sun was setting behind the rim of the river basin, when we reached the broad mouth of the Youghiogheny (pr. Yock-i-o-gai'-ny), which is implanted with a cluster of iron-mill towns, of which McKeesport is the center. So far as we could see down the Monongahela, the air was thick with the smoke of glowing chimneys, and the pulsating whang of steel-making plants and rolling-mills made the air tremble. The view up the "Yough" was more inviting; so, with oars and paddle firmly set, we turned off our course and lustily pulled against the strong current of the tributary. A score or two of house-boats lay tied to the McKeesport shore or were bolstered high upon the beach; a fleet of Yough steamers had their noses to the wharf; a half-dozen fishermen were setting nets; and, high over all, with lofty spans of iron cobweb, several railway and wagon bridges spanned the gliding stream. It was a mile and a half up the Yough before we reached the open country; and then only the rapidly-gathering dusk drove us ashore, for on near approach the prospect was not pleasing. Finally settling into this damp, shallow pocket in the shelving bank, we find broad-girthed elms and maples screening us from all save the river front, the high bank in the rear fringed with blue violets which emit a delicious odor, backed by a field of waving corn stretching off toward heavily-wooded hills. Our supper cooked and eaten by lantern-light, we vote ourselves as, after all, serenely content out here in the starlight--at peace with the world, and very close to Nature's heart. There come to us, on the cool evening breeze, faint echoes of the never-ceasing clang of McKeesport iron mills, down on the Monongahela shore. But it is not of these we talk, lounging in the welcome warmth of the camp-fire; it is of the age of romance, a hundred and forty odd years ago, when Major Washington and Christopher Gist, with famished horses, floundered in the ice hereabout, upon their famous midwinter trip to Fort Le Boeuf; when the "Forks of the Yough" became the extreme outpost of Western advance, with all the accompanying horrors of frontier war; and later, when McKeesport for a time rivaled Redstone and Elizabethtown as a center for boat-building and a point of departure for the Ohio. * * * * * Pittsburg, Sunday, May 6th.--Many of the trees are already in full leaf. The trillium is fading. We are in the full tide of early summer, up here in the mountains, and our long journey of six weeks is southward and toward the plain. The lower Ohio may soon be a bake-oven, and the middle of June will be upon us before far-away Cairo is reached. It behooves us to be up and doing. The river, flowing by our door, is an ever-pressing invitation to be onward; it stops not for Sunday, nor ever stops--and why should we, mere drift upon the passing tide? There was a smart thunder-shower during breakfast, followed by a cool, cloudy morning. At eleven o'clock Pilgrim was laden. A south-eastern breeze ruffled the waters of the Yough, and for the first time the Doctor ordered up the sail, with W---- at the sheet. It was not long before Pilgrim had the water "singing at her prow." With a rush, we flew past the factories, the house-boats, and the shabby street-ends of McKeesport, out into the Monongahela, where, luckily, the wind still held. At McKeesport, the hills on the right are of a relatively low altitude, smooth and well rounded. It was here that Braddock, in his slow progress toward Fort Duquesne, first crossed the Monongahela, to the wide, level bottom on the left bank. He had found the inner country to the right of the river and below the Yough too rough and hilly for his march, hence had turned back toward the Monongahela, fording the river to take advantage of the less difficult bottom. Some four miles below this first crossing, hills reapproach the left bank, till the bottom ceases; the right thenceforth becomes the more favorable side for marching. With great pomp, he recrossed the Monongahela just below the point where Turtle Creek enters from the east. Within a hillside ravine, but a hundred yards inland, the brilliant column fell into an ambuscade of Indians and French half-breeds, suffering that heart-sickening defeat which will ever live as one of the most tragic events in American history. The noisy iron-manufacturing town of Braddock now occupies the site of Braddock's defeat. Not far from the old ford stretches the great dam of Lock No. 2, which we portaged, with the usual difficulties of steep, stony banks. Braddock is but eight miles across country from Pittsburg, although twelve by river. We have, all the way down, an almost constant succession of iron and steel-making towns, chief among them Homestead, on the left bank, seven miles above Pittsburg. The great strike of July, 1892, with its attendant horrors, is a lurid chapter in the story of American industry. With shuddering interest, we view the famous great bank of ugly slag at the base of the steel mills, where the barges housing the Pinkerton guards were burned by the mob. To-day, the Homesteaders are enjoying their Sunday afternoon outing along the town shore--nurses pushing baby carriages, self-absorbed lovers holding hands upon riverside benches, merry-makers rowing in skiffs or crossing the river in crowded ferries; the electric cars, following either side of the stream as far down as Pittsburg, crowded to suffocation with gayly-attired folk. They look little like rioters; yet it seems but the other day when Homestead men and women and children were hysterically reveling in atrocities akin to those of the Paris commune. Approaching Pittsburg, the high steeps are everywhere crowded with houses--great masses of smoke-color, dotted all over with white shades and sparkling windows, which seem, in the gray afternoon, to be ten thousand eyes coldly staring down at Pilgrim and her crew from all over the flanking hillsides. Lock No. 1, the last barrier between us and the Ohio, is a mile or two up the Monongahela, with warehouses and manufacturing plants closely hemming it in on either side. A portage, unaided, appears to be impossible here, and we resolve to lock through. But it is Sunday, and the lock is closed. Above, a dozen down-going steamboats are moored to the shore, waiting for midnight and the resumption of business; while below, a similar line of ascending boats is awaiting the close of the day of rest. Pilgrim, however, cannot hang up at the levee with any comfort to her crew; it is necessary, with evening at hand, and a thunder-storm angrily rising over the Pittsburg hills, to get out of this grimy pool, flanked about with iron and coal yards, chimney stacks, and a forest of shipping, and to quickly seek the open country lower down on the Ohio. The lock-keepers appreciated our situation. Two or three sturdy, courteous men helped us carry our cargo, by an intricate official route, over coils of rope and chains, over lines of shafting, and along dizzy walks overhanging the yawning basin; while the Doctor, directed to a certain chute in midstream, took unladen Pilgrim over the great dam, with a wild swoop which made our eyes swim to witness from the lock. We had laboriously been rowing on slack-water, all the way from Brownsville, with the help of an hour's sail this morning; whereas, now that we were in the strong current below the dam, we had but to gently paddle to glide swiftly on our way. A hundred steamers, more or less, lay closely packed with their bows upon the right, or principal city wharf. It was raining at last, and we donned our storm wraps. No doubt yellow Pilgrim,--thought hereabout to be a frail craft for these waters,--her crew all poncho-clad, slipping silently through the dark water swishing at their sterns, was a novelty to the steamboat men, for they leaned lazily over their railings, the officers on the upper deck, engineers and roustabouts on the lower, and watched us curiously. Our period of elation was brief. Black storm-clouds, jagged and portentous, were scurrying across the sky; and by the time we had reached the forks, where the Monongahela, in the heart of the city, joins forces with the Alleghany, Pilgrim was being buffeted about on a chop sea produced by cross currents and a northwest gale. She can weather an ordinary storm, but this experience was too much for her. When a passing steamer threw out long lines of frothy waves to add to the disturbance, they broke over our gunwales; and W---- with the coffee pot and the Boy with a tin basin were hard pushed to keep the water below the thwarts. Seeking the friendly shelter of a house-boat, of which there were scores tied to the left bank, we trusted our drenched luggage to the care of its proprietor, placed Pilgrim in a snug harbor hard by, and, hurrying up a steep flight of steps leading from the levee to the terrace above, found a suburban hotel just as its office clock struck eight. Across the Ohio, through the blinding storm, the dark outlines of Pittsburg and Allegheny City are spangled with electric lamps which throw toward us long, shimmering lances of light, in which the mighty stream, gray, mysterious, tempest-tossed, is seen to be surging onward with majestic sweep. Upon its bosom we are to be borne for a thousand miles. Our introduction has been unpropitious; it is to be hoped that on further acquaintance we may be better pleased with La Belle Rivière. CHAPTER II. First day on the Ohio--At Logstown. Beaver River, Monday, May 7th.--We have to-day rowed and paddled under a cloudless sky, but in the teeth of frequent squalls, with heavy waves freely dashing their spray upon us. At such times a goodly current, aided by numerous wing-dams, appears of little avail; for, when we rested upon our oars, Pilgrim would be unmercifully driven up stream. Thus it has been an almost continual fight to make progress, and our five-and-twenty miles represent a hard day's work. We were overloaded, that was certain; so we stopped at Chartier, three miles down the river from Pittsburg, and sent on our portly bag of conventional traveling clothes by express to Cincinnati, where we intend stopping for a day. This leaves us in our rough boating costumes for all the smaller towns _en route_. What we may lose in possible social embarrassments, we gain in lightened cargo. Here at the mouth of Chartier's Creek was "Chartier's Old Town" of a century and a third ago; a straggling, unkempt Indian village then, but at least the banks were lovely, and the rolling distances clothed with majestic trees. To-day, these creek banks, connected with numerous iron bridges, are the dumping-ground for cinders, slag, rubbish of every degree of foulness; the bare hillsides are crowded with the ugly dwellings of iron-workers; the atmosphere is thick with smoke. Washington, one of the greatest land speculators of his time, owned over 32,000 acres along the Ohio. He held a patent from Lord Dunmore, dated July 5, 1775, for nearly 3,000 acres lying about the mouth of this stream. In accordance with the free-and-easy habit of trans-Alleghany pioneers, ten men squatted on the tract, greatly to the indignation of the Father of his Country, who in 1784 brought against them a successful suit for ejectment. Twelve years later, more familiar with this than with most of his land grants, he sold it to a friend for $12,000. Just below Chartier are the picturesque McKee's Rocks, where is the first riffle in the Ohio. We "take" it with a swoop, the white-capped waves dancing about us in a miniature rapid. Then we are in the open country, and for the first time find what the great river is like. The character of the banks, for some distance below Pittsburg, differs from that of the Monongahela. The hills are lower, less precipitous, more graceful. There is a delightful roundness of mass and shade. Beautiful villas occupy commanding situations on hillsides and hilltops; we catch glimpses of spires and cupolas, singly or in groups, peeping above the trees; and now and then a pretty suburban railway station. The railways upon either bank are built on neat terraces, and, far from marring the scene, agreeably give life to it; now and then, three such terraces are to be traced, one above the other, against the dark background of wood and field--the lower and upper devoted to rival railway lines, the central one to the common way. The mouths of the beautiful tributary ravines are crossed either by graceful iron spans, which frame charming undercut glimpses of sparkling waterfalls and deep tangles of moss and fern, or by graceful stone arches draped with vines. There are terraced vineyards, after the fashion of the Rhineland, and the gentle arts of the florist and the truck-gardener are much in evidence. The winding river frequently sweeps at the base of rocky escarpments, but upon one side or the other there are now invariably bottom lands--narrow on these upper reaches, but we shall find them gradually widen and lengthen as we descend. The reaches are from four to seven miles in length, but these, too, are to lengthen in the middle waters. Islands are frequent, all day. The largest is Neville's, five miles long and thickly strewn with villas and market-gardens; still others are but long sandbars grown to willows, and but temporarily in sight, for the stage of water is low just now, not over seven feet in the channel. Emerging from the immediate suburbs of Pittsburg, the fields broaden, farmsteads are occasionally to be seen nestled in the undulations of the hills, woodlands become more dense. There are, however, small rustic towns in plenty; we are seldom out of sight of these. Climbing a steep clay slope on the left bank, we visited one of them--Shousetown, fourteen miles below the city. A sad-eyed, shabby place, with the pipe line for natural gas sprawling hither and yon upon the surface of the ground, except at the street crossings, where a few inches of protecting earth have been laid upon it. The tariff levied by the gas company is ten cents per month for each light, and a dollar and a half for a cook-stove. We passed, this afternoon, one of the most interesting historic points upon the river--the picturesque site of ancient Logstown, upon the summit of a low, steep ridge on the right bank, just below Economy, and eighteen miles from Pittsburg. Logstown was a Shawanese village as early as 1727-30, and already a notable fur-trading post when Conrad Weiser visited it in 1748. Washington and Gist stopped at "Loggestown" for five days on their visit to the French at Fort Le Boeuf, and several famous Indian treaties were signed there. A short distance below, Anthony Wayne's Western army was encamped during the winter of 1792-93, the place being then styled Legionville. In 1824 George Rapp founded in the neighborhood a German socialist community, and this later settlement survives to the present day in the thriving little rustic town of Economy. At four o'clock we struck camp on a heavily-willowed shore, at the apex of the great northern bend of the Ohio (25 miles).[A] Across the river, on a broad level bottom, are the manufacturing towns of Rochester and Beaver, divided by the Beaver River; in their rear, well-rounded hills rise gracefully, checkered with brown fields and woods in many shades of green, in the midst of which the flowering white dogwood rears its stately spray. Our sloping willowed sand-beach, of a hundred feet in width, is thick strewn with driftwood; back of this a clay bank, eight feet sheer, and a narrow bottom cut up with small fruit and vegetable patches; the gardeners' neat frame houses peeping from groves of apple, pear and cherry, upon the flanking hillsides. A lofty oil-well derrick surmounts the edge of the terrace a hundred yards below our camp. The bushes and the ground round about the well are black and slimy with crude petroleum, that has escaped during the boring process, and the air is heavy with its odor. We are upon the edge of the far-stretching oil and gas-well region, and shall soon become familiar enough with such sights and smells in the neighborhood of our nightly camps. No sooner had Pilgrim been turned up against a tree to dry, and a smooth sandy open chosen for the camp, than the proprietor of the soil appeared--a middling-sized, lanky man, with a red face and a sandy goatee surmounting a collarless white shirt all bestained with tobacco juice. He inquired rather sharply concerning us, but when informed of our innocent errand, and that we should stay with him but the night, he promptly softened, explaining that the presence of marauding fishermen and house-boat folk was incompatible with gardening for profit, and he would have none of them touch upon his shore. As to us, we were welcome to stop throughout our pleasure, an invitation he reinforced by sitting upon a stump, whittling vigorously meanwhile, and glibly gossiping with the Doctor and me for a half-hour, on crop conditions and the state of the country--"bein' sociable like," he said, "an' hav'n' nuth'n 'gin you folks, as knows what's what, I kin see with half a eye!" [Footnote A: Figures in parentheses, similarly placed throughout the volume, indicate the meandered river mileage from Pittsburg, according to the map of the Corps of Engineers, U.S.A., published in 1881. The actual mileage of the channel is a trifle greater.] CHAPTER III. Shingis Old Town--The dynamiter--Yellow Creek. Kneistley's Cluster, W. Va., Tuesday, May 8th.--We were off at a quarter past seven, and among the earliest shoppers in Rochester, on the east bank of the Beaver, where supplies were laid in for the day. This busy, prosperous-looking place bears little resemblance to the squalid Indian village which Gist found here in November, 1750. It was then the seat of Barney Curran, an Indian trader--the same Curran whom Washington, three years later, employed in the mission to Venango. But the smaller sister town of Beaver, on the lower side of the mouth,--or rather the western outskirts of Beaver a mile below the mouth,--has the most ancient history. On account of a ford across the Beaver, about where is now a slack-water dam, the neighborhood became of early importance to the French as a fur-trading center. With customary liberality toward the Indians, whom they assiduously cultivated, the French, in 1756, built for them, on this site, a substantial town, which the English indifferently called Sarikonk, Sohkon, King Beaver's Town, or Shingis Old Town. During the French and Indian War, the place was prominent as a rendezvous for the enemies of American borderers; numerous bloody forays were planned here, and hither were brought to be adopted into the tribes, or to be cruelly tortured, according to savage whim, many of the captives whose tales have made lurid the history of the Ohio Valley. Passing Beaver River, the Ohio enters upon its grand sweep to the southwest. The wide uplands at once become more rustic, especially those of the left bank, which no longer is threaded by a railway, as heretofore all the way from Brownsville. The two ranges of undulating hills, some three hundred and fifty feet high, forming the rim of the basin, are about a half mile apart; while the river itself is perhaps a third of a mile in width, leaving narrow bottoms on alternate sides, as the stream in gentle curves rebounds from the rocky base of one hill to that of another. When winding about such a base, there is at this stage of the water a sloping, stony beach, some ten to twenty yards in width, from which ascends the sharp steep, for the most part heavily tree-clad--maples, birches, elms and oaks of goodly girth, the latter as yet in but half-leaf. On the "bottom side" of the river, the alluvial terrace presents a sheer wall of clay rising from eight to a dozen feet above the beach, which is often thick-grown with willows, whose roots hold the soil from becoming too easy a prey to the encroaching current. Sycamores now begin to appear in the bottoms, although of less size than we shall meet below. Sometimes the little towns we see occupy a narrow and more or less rocky bench upon the hill side of the stream, but settlement is chiefly found upon the bottoms. Shippingsport (32 miles), on the left bank, where we stopped this noon for eggs, butter, and fresh water, is on a narrow hill bench--a dry, woe-begone hamlet, side-tracked from the path of the world's progress. While I was on shore, negotiating with the sleepy storekeeper, Pilgrim and her crew waited alongside the flatboat which serves as the town ferry. There they were visited by a breezy, red-faced young man, in a blue flannel shirt and a black slouch hat, who was soon enough at his ease to lie flat upon the ferry gunwale, his cheeks supported by his hands, and talk to W---- and the Doctor as if they were old friends. He was a dealer in nitroglycerin cartridges, he said, and pointed to a long, rakish-looking skiff hard by, which bore a red flag at its prow. "Ye see that? Thet there red flag? Well, thet's the law on us glyser_een_ fellers--over five hundred poun's, two flags; un'er five hundred, one flag. I've two hundred and fifty, I have. I tell yer th' steamboats steer clear o' me, an' don' yer fergit it, neither; they jist give me a wide berth, they do, yew bet! 'n' th' railroads, they don' carry no glyser_een_ cartridge, they don't--all uv it by skiff, like yer see me goin'." These cartridges, he explained, are dropped into oil or gas wells whose owners are desirous of accelerating the flow. The cartridge, in exploding, enlarges the hole, and often the output of the well is at once increased by several hundred per cent. The young fellow had the air of a self-confident rustic, with little experience in the world. Indeed, it seemed from his elated manner as if this might be his first trip from home, and the blowing of oil wells an incidental speculation. The Boy, quick at inventive nomenclature, and fresh from a reading of Robert Louis Stevenson, called our visitor "the Dynamiter," and by that title I suppose we shall always remember him. The Dynamiter confided to his listeners that he was going down the river for "a clean hundred miles, and that's right smart fur, ain't it? How fur down be yees goin'?" The Doctor replied that we were going nine hundred; whereat the man of explosives gave vent to his feelings in a prolonged whistle, then a horse laugh, and "Oh come, now! Don' be givin' us taffy! Say, hones' Injun, how fur down air yew fellers goin', anyhow?" It was with some difficulty that he could comprehend the fact. A hundred miles on the river was a great outing for this village lad; nine hundred was rather beyond his comprehension, although he finally compromised by "allowing" that we might be going as far as Cincinnati. Wouldn't the Doctor go into partnership with him? He had no caps for his cartridges, and if the Doctor would buy caps and "stan' in with him on the cost of the glyser_een_," they would, regardless of Ohio statutes, blow up the fish in unfrequented portions of the river, and make two hundred dollars apiece by carrying the spoils in to Wheeling. The Doctor, as a law-abiding citizen, good-naturedly declined; and upon my return to the flat, the Dynamiter was handing the Boy a huge stick of barber-pole candy, saying, "Well, yew fellers, we'll part friends, anyhow--but sorry yew won't go in on this spec'; there's right smart money in 't, 'n' don' yer fergit it!" By the middle of the afternoon we reached the boundary line (40 miles) between Pennsylvania on the east and Ohio and West Virginia on the west. The last Pennsylvania settlements are a half mile above the boundary--Smith's Ferry (right), an old and somewhat decayed village, on a broad, low bottom at the mouth of the picturesque Little Beaver Creek;[A] and Georgetown (left), a prosperous-looking, sedate town, with tidy lawns running down to the edge of the terrace, below which is a shelving stone beach of generous width. Two high iron towers supporting the cable of a current ferry add dignity to the twin settlements. A stone monument, six feet high, just observable through the willows on the right shore, marks the boundary; while upon the left bank, surmounting a high, rock-strewn beach, is the dilapidated frame house of a West Virginia "cracker," through whose garden-patch the line takes its way, unobserved and unthought of by pigs, chickens and children, which in hopeless promiscuity swarm the interstate premises. For many days to come we are to have Ohio on the right bank and West Virginia on the left. There is no perceptible change, of course, in the contour of the rugged hills which hem us in; yet somehow it stirs the blood to reflect that quite within the recollection of all of us in Pilgrim's crew, save the Boy, that left bank was the house of bondage, and that right the land of freedom, and this river of ours the highway between. East Liverpool (44 miles) and Wellsville (48 miles) are long stretches of pottery and tile-making works, both of them on the Ohio shore. There is nothing there to lure us, however, and we determined to camp on the banks of Yellow Creek (51 miles), a peaceful little Ohio stream some two rods in width, its mouth crossed by two great iron spans, for railway and highway. But although Yellow Creek winds most gracefully and is altogether a charming bit of rustic water, deep-set amid picturesque slopes of field and wood, we fail to find upon its banks an appropriate camping-place. Upon one side a country road closely skirts the shore, and on the other a railway, while for the mile or more we pushed along small farmsteads almost abutted. Hence we retrace our path to the great river, and, dropping down-stream for two miles, find what we seek upon the lower end of the chief of Kneistly's Cluster--two islands on the West Virginia side of the channel. It is storied ground, this neighborhood of ours. Over there at the mouth of Yellow Creek was, a hundred and twenty years ago, the camp of Logan, the Mingo chief; opposite, on the West Virginia shore, Baker's Bottom, where occurred the treacherous massacre of Logan's family. The tragedy is interwoven with the history of the trans-Alleghany border; and schoolboys have in many lands and tongues recited the pathetic defense of the poor Mingo, who, more sinned against than sinning, was crushed in the inevitable struggle between savagery and civilization. "Who is there to mourn for Logan?" We are high and dry on our willowed island. Above, just out of sight, are moored a brace of steam pile-drivers engaged in strengthening the dam which unites us with Baker's Bottom. To the left lies a broad stretch of gravel strand, beyond which is the narrow water fed by the overflow of the dam; to the right, the broad steamboat channel rolls between us and the Ohio hills, while the far-reaching vista downstream is a feast of shade and tint, by land and water, with the lights and smoke of New Cumberland and Sloan's Station faintly discernible near the horizon. All about us lies a beautiful world of woodland. The whistle of quails innumerable broke upon us in the twilight, succeeding to the calls of rose-breasted grosbeaks and a goodly company of daylight followers; in this darkening hour, the low, plaintive note of the whip-poor-will is heard on every hand, now and then interrupted by the hoarse bark of owls. There is a gentle tinkling of cowbells on the Ohio shore, and on both are human voices confused by distance. All pervading is the deep, sullen roar of a great wing-dam, a half mile or so down-stream. The camp is gypsy-like. Our washing lies spread on bushes, where it will catch the first peep of morning sun. Perishable provisions rest in notches of trees, where the cool evening breeze will strike them. Seated upon the "grub" box, I am writing up our log by aid of the lantern hung from a branch overhead, while W----, ever busy, sits by with her mending. Lying in the moonlight, which through the sprawling willows gayly checkers our sand bank, the Doctor and the Boy are discussing the doings of Br'er Rabbit--for we are in the Southland now, and may any day meet good Uncle Remus. [Footnote A: On this creek was the hunting-cabin of the Seneca (Mingo) chief, Half King, who sent a message of welcome to Washington, when the latter was on his way to Great Meadows (1754).] CHAPTER IV. An industrial region--Steubenville--Mingo Bottom--In a steel mill--Indian character. Mingo Junction, Ohio, Wednesday, May 9th.--We had a cold night upon our island. Upon arising this morning, a heavy fog enveloped us, at first completely veiling the sun; soon it became faintly visible, a great ball of burnished copper reflected in the dimpled flood which poured between us and the Ohio shore. Weeds and willows were sopping wet, as was also our wash, and the breakfast fire was a comfortable companion. But by the time we were off, the cloud had lifted, and the sun gushed out with promise of a warm day. Throughout the morning, Pilgrim glided through a thickly settled district, reminding us of the Monongahela. Sewer-pipe and vitrified-brick works, and iron and steel plants, abound on the narrow bottoms. The factories and mills themselves generally wear a prosperous look; but the dependent towns vary in appearance, from clusters of shabby, down-at-the-heel cabins, to lines of neat and well-painted houses and shops. We visited the vitrified-brick works at New Cumberland, W. Va. (56 miles), where the proprietor kindly explained his methods, and talked freely of his business. It was the old story, too close a competition for profit, although the use of brick pavements is fast spreading. Fire clay available for the purpose is abundant on the banks of the Ohio all the way from Pittsburg to Kingston (60 miles). A few miles below New Cumberland, on the Ohio shore, we inspected the tile works at Freeman, and admired the dexterity which the workmen had attained. But what interested us most of all was the appalling havoc which these clay and iron industries are making with the once beautiful banks of the river. Each of them has a large daily output of debris, which is dumped unmercifully upon the water's edge in heaps from fifty to a hundred feet high. Sometimes for nearly a mile in length, the natural bank is deep buried out of sight; and we have from our canoe naught but a dismal wall of rubbish, crowding upon the river to the uttermost limit of governmental allowance. Fifty years hence, if these enterprises multiply at the present ratio, and continue their present methods, the Upper Ohio will roll between continuous banks of clay and iron offal, down to Wheeling and beyond. Before noon we had left behind us this industrial region, and were again in rustic surroundings. The wind had gone down, the atmosphere was oppressively warm, the sun's reflection from the glassy stream came with almost scalding effect upon our faces. We had rigged an awning over some willow hoops, but it could not protect us from this reflection. For an hour or two--one may as well be honest--we fairly sweltered upon our pilgrimage, until at last a light breeze ruffled the water and brought blessed relief. The hills are not as high as hitherto, and are more broken. Yet they have a certain majestic sweep, and for the most part are forest-mantled from base to summit. Between them the river winds with noble grace, continually giving us fresh vistas, often of surpassing loveliness. The bottoms are broader now, and frequently semicircular, with fine farms upon them, and prosperous villages nestled in generous groves. Many of the houses betoken age, or what passes for it in this relatively new country, being of the colonial pattern, with fan-shaped windows above the doors, Grecian pillars flanking the front porch, and wearing the air of comfortable respectability. Beautiful islands lend variety to the scene, some of them mere willowed "tow-heads" largely submerged in times of flood, while others are of a permanent character, often occupied by farms. We have with us a copy of Cuming's _Western Pilot_ (Cincinnati, 1834), which is still a practicable guide for the Ohio, as the river's shore lines are not subject to so rapid changes as those of the Mississippi; but many of the islands in Cuming's are not now to be found, having been swept away in floods, and we encounter few new ones. It is clear that the islands are not so numerous as sixty years ago. The present works of the United States Corps of Engineers tend to permanency in the _status quo_; doubtless the government map of 1881 will remain an authoritative chart for a half century or more to come. W----'s enthusiasm for botany frequently takes us ashore. Landing at the foot of some eroded steep which, with ragged charm, rises sharply from the gravelly beach, we fasten Pilgrim's painter to a stone, and go scrambling over the hillside in search of flowers, bearing in mind the Boy's constant plea, to "Get only one of a kind," and leave the rest for seed; for other travelers may come this way, and 'tis a sin indeed to exterminate a botanical rarity. But we find no rarities to-day--only solomon's seal, trillium, wild ginger, cranebill, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild columbine. Poison ivy is on every hand, in these tangled woods, with ferns of many varieties--chiefly maidenhair, walking leaf, and bladder. The view from projecting rocks, in these lofty places, is ever inspiring; the country spread out below us, as in a relief map; the great glistening river winding through its hilly trough; a rumpled country for a few miles on either side, gradually trending into broad plains, checkered with fields on which farmsteads and rustic villages are the chessmen. At one o'clock we were at Steubenville, Ohio (67 miles), where the broad stoned wharf leads sharply up to the smart, well-built, substantial town of some sixteen thousand inhabitants. W---- and I had some shopping to do there, while the Doctor and the Boy remained down at the inevitable wharf-boat, and gossiped with the philosophical agent, who bemoaned the decadence of steamboat traffic in general, and the rapidly falling stage of water in particular. Three miles below Steubenville is Mingo Junction, where we are the guests of a friend who is superintendent of the iron and steel works here. The population of Mingo is twenty-five hundred. From seven to twelve hundred are employed in the works, according to the exigencies of business. Ten per cent of them are Hungarians and Slavonians--a larger proportion would be dangerous, our host avers, because of the tendency of these people to "run the town" when sufficiently numerous to make it possible. The Slavs in the iron towns come to America for a few years, intent solely on saving every dollar within reach. They are willing to work for wages which from the American standard seem low, but to them almost fabulous; herd together in surprising promiscuity; maintain a low scale of clothing and diet, often to the ruin of health; and eventually return to Eastern Europe, where their savings constitute a little fortune upon which they can end their days in ease. This sort of competition is fast degrading legitimate American labor. Its regulation ought not to be thought impossible. A visit to a great steel-making plant, in full operation, is an event in a man's life. Particularly remarkable is the weird spectacle presented at night, with the furnaces fiercely gleaming, the fresh ingots smoking hot, the Bessemer converter "blowing off," the great cranes moving about like things of life, bearing giant kettles of molten steel; and amidst it all, human life held so cheaply. Nearer to mediæval notions of hell comes this fiery scene than anything imagined by Dante. The working life of one of these men is not over ten years, B---- says. A decade of this intense heat, compared to which a breath of outdoor air in the close mill-yard, with the midsummer sun in the nineties, seems chilly, wears a man out--"only fit for the boneyard then, sir," was the laconic estimate of an intelligent boss whom I questioned on the subject. Wages run from ninety cents to five dollars a day, with far more at the former rate than the latter. A ninety-cent man working in a place so hot that were water from a hose turned upon him it would at once be resolved into scalding steam, deserves our sympathy. It is pleasing to find in our friend, the superintendent, a strong fellow-feeling for his men, and a desire to do all in his power to alleviate their condition. He has accomplished much in improving the _morale_ of the town; but deep-seated, inexorable economic conditions, apparently beyond present control, render nugatory any attempts to better the financial condition of the underpaid majority. Mingo Junction--"Mingo Bottom" of old--was an interesting locality in frontier days. On this fertile river beach was long one of the strongest of the Mingo villages. During the last week of May, 1782, Crawford's little army rendezvoused here, en route to Sandusky, a hundred and fifty miles distant, and intent on the destruction of the Wyandot towns. But the Indians had not been surprised, and the army was driven back with slaughter, reaching Mingo the middle of June, bereft of its commander. Crawford, who was a warm friend of Washington, suffered almost unprecedented torture at the stake, his fate sending a thrill of horror through all the Western settlements. Let us not be too harsh in our judgment of these red Indians. At first, the white colonists from Europe were regarded by them as of supernatural origin, and hospitality, veneration, and confidence were displayed toward the new-comers. But the mortality of the Europeans was soon made painfully evident to them. When the early Spaniards, and afterward the English, kidnaped tribesmen for sale into slavery, or for use as captive guides, and even murdered them on slight provocation, distrust and hatred naturally succeeded to the sentiment of awe. Like many savage races, like the earlier Romans, the Indian looked upon the member of every tribe with which he had not made a formal peace as a public enemy; hence he felt justified in wreaking his vengeance on the race, whenever he failed to find individual offenders. He was exceptionally cruel, his mode of warfare was skulking, he could not easily be reached in the forest fastnesses which he alone knew well, and his strokes fell heaviest on women and children; so that whites came to fear and unspeakably to loathe the savage, and often added greatly to the bitterness of the struggle by retaliation in kind. The white borderers themselves were frequently brutal, reckless, lawless; and under such conditions, clashing was inevitable. But worse agents of discord than the agricultural colonists were the itinerants who traveled through the woods visiting the tribes, exchanging goods for furs; these often cheated and robbed the Indian, taught him the use of intoxicants, bullied and browbeat him, appropriated his women, and in general introduced serious demoralization into the native camps. The bulk of the whites doubtless intended to treat the Indian honorably; but the forest traders were beyond the pale of law, and news of the details of their transactions seldom reached the coast settlements. As a neighbor, the Indian was difficult to deal with, whether in the negotiation of treaties of amity, or in the purchase of lands. Having but a loose system of government, there was no really responsible head, and no compact was secure from the interference of malcontents, who would not be bound by treaties made by the chiefs. The English felt that the red men were not putting the land to its full use, that much of the territory was growing up as a waste, that they were best entitled to it who could make it the most productive. On the other hand, the earlier cessions of land were made under a total misconception; the Indians supposed that the new-comers would, after a few years of occupancy, pass on and leave the tract again to the natives. There was no compromise possible between races with precisely opposite views of property in land. The struggle was inevitable--civilization against savagery. No sentimental notions could prevent it. It was in the nature of things that the weaker must give way. The Indian was a formidable antagonist, and there were times when the result of the struggle seemed uncertain; but in the end he went to the wall. In judging the vanquished enemy of our civilization, let us not underestimate his intellect, or the many good qualities which were mingled with his savage vices, or fail to credit him with sublime courage, and a tribal patriotism which no disaster could cool. CHAPTER V. Houseboat life--Decadence of steamboat traffic--Wheeling, and Wheeling Creek. Above Moundsville, W. Va., Thursday, May 10th.--Our friends saw us off at the gravelly beach just below the "works." There was a slight breeze ahead, but the atmosphere was agreeable, and Pilgrim bore a happy crew, now as brown as gypsies; the first painful effects of sunburn are over, and we are hardened in skin and muscle to any vicissitudes which are likely to be met upon our voyage. Rough weather, river mud, and all the other exigencies of a moving camp, are beginning to tell upon clothing; we are becoming like gypsies in raiment, as well as color. But what a soul-satisfying life is this gypsying! We possess the world, while afloat on the Ohio! There are, in the course of the summer, so many sorts of people traveling by the river,--steamboat passengers, campers, fishers, house-boat folk, and what not,--that we attract little attention of ourselves, but Pilgrim is indeed a curiosity hereabout. What remarks we overhear are about her,--"Honey skiff, that!" "Right smart skiff!" "Good skiff for her place, but no good for this yere river!" and so on. She is a lap-streak, square-sterned craft, of white cedar three-eighths of an inch thick; fifteen feet in length and four of beam; weighs just a hundred pounds; comfortably holds us and our luggage, with plenty of spare room to move about in; is easily propelled, and as stanch as can be made. Upon these waters, we meet nothing like her. Not counting the curious floating boxes and punts, which are knocked together out of driftwood, by boys and poor whites, and are numerous all along shore, the regulation Ohio river skiff is built on graceful lines, but of inch boards, heavily ribbed, and is a sorry weight to handle. The contention is, that to withstand the swash of steamboat wakes breaking upon the shore, and the rush of drift in times of flood, a heavy skiff is necessary; there is a tendency to decry Pilgrim as a plaything, unadapted to the great river. A reasonable degree of care at all times, however, and keeping the boat drawn high on the beach when not in use,--such care as we are familiar with upon our Wisconsin inland lakes,--would render the employment of such as she quite practicable, and greatly lessen the labor of rowing on this waterway. The houseboats, dozens of which we see daily, interest us greatly. They are scows, or "flats," greatly differing in size, with low-ceilinged cabins built upon them--sometimes of one room, sometimes of half a dozen, and varying in character from a mere shanty to a well-appointed cottage. Perhaps the greater number of these craft are afloat in the river, and moored to the bank, with a gang-plank running to shore; others are "beached," having found a comfortable nook in some higher stage of water, and been fastened there, propped level with timbers and driftwood. Among the houseboat folk are young working couples starting out in life, and hoping ultimately to gain a foothold on land; unfortunate people, who are making a fresh start; men regularly employed in riverside factories and mills; invalids, who, at small expense, are trying the fresh-air cure; others, who drift up and down the Ohio, seeking casual work; and legitimate fishermen, who find it convenient to be near their nets, and to move about according to the needs of their calling. But a goodly proportion of these boats are inhabited by the lowest class of the population,--poor "crackers" who have managed to scrape together enough money to buy, or enough energy and driftwood to build, such a craft; and, near or at the towns, many are occupied by gamblers, illicit liquor dealers, and others who, while plying nefarious trades, make a pretense of following the occupation of the Apostles. Houseboat people, whether beached or afloat, pay no rent, and heretofore have paid no taxes. Kentucky has recently passed, more as a police regulation than as a means of revenue, an act levying a State tax of twenty-five dollars upon each craft of this character; and the other commonwealths abutting upon the river are considering the policy of doing likewise. The houseboat men have, however, recently formed a protective association, and propose to fight the new laws on constitutional grounds, the contention being that the Ohio is a national highway, and that commerce upon it cannot be hampered by State taxes. This view does not, however, affect the taxability of "beached" boats, which are clearly squatters on State soil. Both in town and country, the riffraff of the houseboat element are in disfavor. It is not uncommon for them, beached or tied up, to remain unmolested in one spot for years, with their pigs, chickens, and little garden patch about them, mayhap a swarm or two of bees, and a cow enjoying free pasturage along the weedy bank or on neighboring hills. Occasionally, however, as the result of spasmodic local agitation, they are by wholesale ordered to betake themselves to some more hospitable shore; and not a few farmers, like our friend at Beaver River, are quick to pattern after the city police, and order their visitors to move on the moment they seek a mooring. For the truth is, the majority of those who "live on the river," as the phrase goes, have the reputation of being pilferers; farmers tell sad tales of despoiled chicken-roosts and vegetable gardens. From fishing, shooting, collecting chance driftwood, and leading a desultory life along shore, like the wreckers of old they naturally fall into this thieving habit. Having neither rent nor taxes to pay, and for the most part not voting, and having no share in the political or social life of landsmen, they are in the State, yet not of it,--a class unto themselves, whose condition is well worthy the study of economists. Interspersed with the houseboat folk, although of different character, are those whose business leads them to dwell as nomads upon the river--merchant peddlers, who spend a day or two at some rustic landing, while scouring the neighborhood for oil-barrels and junk, which they load in great heaps upon the flat roofs of their cabins, giving therefor, at goodly prices, groceries, crockery, and notions,--often bartering their wares for eggs and dairy products, to be disposed of to passing steamers, whose clerks in turn "pack" them for the largest market on their route; blacksmiths, who moor their floating shops to country beach or village levee, wherever business can be had; floating theaters and opera companies, with large barges built as play-houses, towed from town to town by their gaudily-painted tugs, on which may occasionally be perched the vociferous "steam piano" of our circus days, "whose soul-stirring music can be heard for four miles;" traveling sawyers, with old steamboats made over into sawmills, employed by farmers to "work up" into lumber such logs as they can from time to time bring down to the shore--the product being oftenest used in the neighborhood, but occasionally rafted, and floated to the nearest large town; and a miscellaneous lot of traveling craftsmen who live and work afloat,--chairmakers, upholsterers, feather and mattress renovators, photographers,--who land at the villages, scatter abroad their advertising cards, and stay so long as the ensuing patronage warrants. A motley assortment, these neighbors of ours, an uncultivated field for the fiction writers. We have struck up acquaintance with many of them, and they are not bad fellows, as the world goes. Philosophers all, and loquacious to a degree. But they cannot, for the life of them, fathom the mystery of our cruise. We are not in trade? we are not fishing? we are not canvassers? we are not show-people? "What 'n 'tarnation air ye, anny way? Oh, come now! No fellers is do'n' th' river fur fun, that's sartin--ye're jist gov'm'nt agints! That's my way o' think'n'. Well, 'f ye kin find fun in 't, then done go ahead, I say! But all same, we'll be friends, won't we? Yew bet strangers! Ye're welcome t' all in this yere shanty boat--ain't no bakky 'bout yer close, yew fellers?" We meet with abundant courtesy of this rude sort, and weaponless sleep well o' nights, fearing naught from our comrades for the nonce. We again have railways on either bank. The iron horse has almost eclipsed the "fire canoe," as the Indians picturesquely styled the steamboat. We occasionally see boats tied up to the wharves, evidently not in commission; but, in actual operation, we seldom meet or pass over one or two daily. To be sure, the low stage of water,--from six to eight feet thus far, and falling daily,--and the coal strike, militate against navigation interests. But the truth is, there is very little business now left for steamboats, beyond the movement of coal, stone, bricks, and other bulky material, some way freight, and a light passenger traffic. The railroads are quicker and surer, and of course competition lowers the charges. The heavy manufacturing interests along the river now depend little upon the steamers, although originally established here because of them. I asked our friend, the superintendent at Mingo, what advantage was gained by having his plant upon the river. He replied: "We can get all the water we want, and we use a great deal of it; and it is convenient to empty our slag upon the banks; but our chief interest here is in the fact that Mingo is a railway junction." By rail he gets his coal and ore, and ships away his product. Were the coal to come a considerable distance, the river would be the cheaper road; but it is obtained from neighboring hill mines that are practically owned by the railways. This coal, by the way, costs $1.10 at the shaft mouth, and $1.75 landed at the Mingo works. As for the sewer-pipe, brick, and pottery works, they are along stream because of the great beds of clay exposed by the erosion of the river. It is fortunate for the stability of these towns, that the Ohio flows along the transcontinental pathway westward, so that the great railway lines may serve them without deflection from their natural course. Had the great stream flowed south instead of west, the industries of the valley doubtless would gradually have been removed to the transverse highways of the new commerce, save where these latter crossed the river, and thus have left scores of once thriving communities mere 'longshore wrecks of their former selves. This is not possible, now. The steamboat traffic may still further waste, until the river is no longer serviceable save as a continental drainage ditch; but, chiefly because of its railways, the Ohio Valley will continue to be the seat of an industrial population which shall wax fat upon the growth of the nation's needs. By the middle of the afternoon, we were at Wheeling (91 miles). The town has fifty thousand inhabitants, is substantially built, of a distinctly Southern aspect; well stretched out along the river, but narrow; with gaunt, treeless, gully-washed hills of clay rising abruptly behind, giving the place a most forbidding appearance from the water. There are several fine bridges spanning the Ohio; and Wheeling Creek, which empties on the lower edge of town, is crossed by a maze of steel spans and stone arches; the well-paved wharf, sloping upward from the Ohio, is nearly as broad and imposing as that of Pittsburg;[A] houseboats are here by the score, some of them the haunts of fishing clubs, as we judge from the names emblazoned on their sides--"Mystic Crew," "South Side Club," and the like. For the first time upon our tour, negroes are abundant upon the streets and lounging along the river front. They vary in color from yellow to inky blackness, and in raiment from the "dude," smart in straw hat, collars and cuffs, and white-frilled shirt with glass-diamond pin, to the steamboat roustabout, all slouch and rags, and evil-eyed. Wheeling Island (300 acres), up to thirty years ago mentioned in travelers' journals as a rare beauty-spot, is to-day thick-set with cottages of factory hands and small villas, and commonplace; while smoky Bridgeport, opposite on the Ohio side, was from our vantage-point a mere smudge upon the landscape. Wheeling Creek is famous in Western history. The three Zane brothers, Ebenezer, Jonathan and Silas,--typical, old-fashioned names these, bespeaking the God-fearing, Bible-loving, Scotch-Presbyterian stock from which sprang so large a proportion of trans-Alleghany pioneers,--explored this region as early as 1769, built cabins, and made improvements--Silas at the forks of the creek, and Ebenezer and Jonathan at the mouth. During three or four years, it was a hard fight between them and the Indians; but, though several times driven from the scene, the Zane brothers stubbornly reappeared, and rebuilt their burned habitations. Before the Revolutionary War broke out, the fortified home of the Zanes, at the creek mouth, was a favorite stopping stage in the savage-haunted wilderness; and many a traveler in those early days has left us in his journal a thankful account of his tarrying here. The Zane stockade developed into Fort Fincastle, in Lord Dunmore's time; then, Fort Henry, during the Revolution; and everyone who knows his Western history at all has read of the three famous sieges of Wheeling (1777, 1781, and 1782), and the daring deeds of its men and women, which help illumine the pages of border annals. Finally, by 1784, the fort at Wheeling, that had never surrendered, was demolished as no longer necessary, for the wall of savage resistance was now pushed far westward. Wheeling had become the western end of a wagon road across the Panhandle, from Redstone, and here were fitted out many flatboat expeditions for the lower Ohio; later, in steamboat days, the shallow water of the upper river caused Wheeling to be in midsummer the highest port attainable; and to this day it holds its ground as the upper terminus of several steamboat lines. Below Wheeling are several miles of factory towns nestled by the strand, and numerous coal tipples, with their begrimed villages. Fishermen have been frequent to-day, in houseboats of high and low degree, and in land camps composed of tents and board shanties, with rows of seines and tarred pound-nets stretched in the sun to dry; tow-headed children abound, almost as nude as the pigs and dogs and chickens amongst which they waddle and roll; women-folk busy themselves with the multifarious cares of home-keeping, while their lords are in shady nooks mending nets, or listlessly examining trout lines which appear to yield but empty hooks; they tell us that when the river is falling, fish bite not, and yet they serenely angle on, dreaming their lives away. A half mile above Big Grave Creek (101 miles), we, too, hurry into camp on a shelving bank of sand, deep-fringed with willows; for over the western hills thunder-clouds are rising, with wind gusts. Level fields stretch back of us for a quarter of a mile, to the hills which bound the bottom; at our front door majestically rolls the growing river, perhaps a third of a mile in width, black with the reflection of the sky, and wrinkled now and then with squalls which scurry over its bubbling surface.[B] The storm does not break, but the bending tree-tops crone, and toads innumerable rend the air with their screaming whistles. We had great ado, during the cooking of dinner, to prevent them from hopping into our little stove, as it gleamed brightly in the early dusk; and have adopted special precautions to keep them from the tent, as they jump about in the tall grass, appeasing their insectivorous appetites. [Footnote A: Upon the Ohio and kindred rivers, the term "wharf" applies to the river beach when graded and paved, ready for the reception of steamers. Such a wharf must not be confounded with a lake or seaside wharf, a staging projected into the water.] [Footnote B: It was in this neighborhood, a mile or two above our camp, where the bottom is narrower, that Capt. William Foreman and twenty other Virginia militiamen were killed in an Indian ambuscade, Sept. 27, 1777. An inscribed stone monument was erected on the spot in 1835, but we could not find it.] CHAPTER VI. The Big Grave--Washington, and Round Bottom--A lazy man's Paradise--Captina Creek--George Rogers Clark at Fish Creek--Southern types. Near Fishing Creek, Friday, May 11th.--There had been rain during the night, with fierce wind gusts, but during breakfast the atmosphere quieted, and we had a genial, semi-cloudy morning. Off at 8 o'clock, Pilgrim's crew were soon exploring Moundsville. There are five thousand people in this old, faded, countrified town. They show you with pride the State Penitentiary of West Virginia, a solemn-looking pile of dark gray stone, with the feeble battlements and towers common to American prison architecture. But the chief feature of the place is the great Indian mound--the "Big Grave" of early chroniclers. This earthwork is one of the largest now remaining in the United States, being sixty-eight feet high and a hundred in diameter at the base, and has for over a century attracted the attention of travelers and archæologists. We found it at the end of a straggling street, on the edge of the town, a quarter of a mile back from the river. Around the mound has been left a narrow plat of ground, utilized as a cornfield; and the stout picket fence which encloses it bears peremptory notice that admission is forbidden. However, as the proprietor was not easily accessible, we exercised the privilege of historical pilgrims, and, letting ourselves in through the gate, picked our way through rows of corn, and ascended the great cone. It is covered with a heavy growth of white oaks, some of them three feet in diameter, among which the path picturesquely zigzags. The summit is fifty-five feet in diameter, and the center somewhat depressed, like a basin. From the middle of this basin a shaft some twenty-five feet in diameter has been sunk by explorers, for a distance of perhaps fifty feet; at one time, a level tunnel connected the bottom of this shaft with the side of the cone, but it has been mostly obliterated. A score of years ago, tunnel and shaft were utilized as the leading attractions of a beer garden--to such base uses may a great historical landmark descend! Dickens, who apparently wrote the greater part of his _American Notes_ while suffering from dyspepsia, has a note of appreciation for the Big Grave: "... the host of Indians who lie buried in a great mound yonder--so old that mighty oaks and other forest trees have struck their roots into its earth; and so high that it is a hill, even among the hills that Nature planted around it. The very river, as though it shared one's feelings of compassion for the extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly here, in their blessed ignorance of white existence, hundreds of years ago, steals out of its way to ripple near this mound; and there are few places where the Ohio sparkles more brightly than in the Big Grave Creek." There is a sharp bend in the river, just below Moundsville, with Dillon's Bottom stretching long and wide at the apex on the Ohio shore--flat green fields, dotted with little white farmsteads, each set low in its apple grove, and a convoluted wall of dark hills hemming them in along the northern horizon. Then below this comes Round Bottom, its counterpart on the West Virginia side, and coursing through it a pretty meadow creek, Butler's Run. Writes Washington, in 1781, to a correspondent who is thinking of renting lands in this region: "I have a small tract called the round bottom containing about 600 Acres, which would also let. It lyes on the Ohio, opposite to pipe Creek, and a little above Capteening." Across the half mile of river are the little levels and great slopes of the Ohio hills, through which breaks this same Pipe Creek; and hereabout Cresap's band murdered a number of inoffensive Shawanese, a tragedy which was one of the inciting causes of Lord Dunmore's War (1774). We crossed over into Ohio, and pulled up on the gravelly spit at the mouth of Pipe. While the others were botanizing high on the mountain side, I went along a beach path toward a group of whitewashed cabins, intent on replenishing the canteen. Upon opening the gate of one of them, two grizzly dogs came bounding out, threatening to test the strength of my corduroy trousers. The proprietor cautiously peered from a window, and, much to my relief, called off the animals. Satisfied, apparently, that I was not the visitor he expected, the fellow lounged out and sat upon the steps, where I joined him. He was a tall, raw-boned, loose-jointed young man, with a dirty, buttonless flannel shirt which revealed a hairy breast; upon his trousers hung a variety of patches, in many stages of grease and decrepitude; a gray slouch hat shaded his little fishy eyes and hollow, yellow cheeks; and the snaky ends of his yellow mustache were stiff with accumulations of dried tobacco juice. His fat, waddling wife, in a greasy black gown, followed with bare feet, and, arms akimbo, listened in the open door. A coal company owns the rocky river front, here and at many places below, and lets these cabins to the poor-white element, so numerous on the Ohio's banks. The renter is privileged to cultivate whatever land he can clear on the rocky, precipitous slopes, which is seldom more than half an acre to the cabin; and he may, if he can afford a cow, let her run wild in the scrub. The coal vein, a few rods back of the house, is only a few inches thick, and poor in quality, but is freely resorted to by the cotters. He worked whenever he could find a job, my host said--in the coal mines and quarries, or on the bottom farms, or the railroad which skirts the bank at his feet. "But I tell ye, sir, th' _I_talians and Hungarians is spoil'n' this yere country fur white men; 'n' I do'n' see no prospect for hits be'n' better till they get shoved out uv 't!" Yet he said that life wasn't so hard here as it was in some parts he had heard tell of--the climate was mild, that he "'lowed;" a fellow could go out and get a free bucket of coal from the hillside "back yon;" he might get all the "light wood 'n' patchin' stuff" he wanted, from the river drift; could, when he "hankered after 'em," catch fish off his own front-door yard; and pick up a dollar now and then at odd jobs, when the rent was to be paid, or the "ol' woman" wanted a dress, or he a new coat. This is clearly the lazy man's Paradise. I do not remember to have heard that the South Sea Islanders, in the ante-missionary days, had an easier time of it than this. What new fortune will befall my friend when he gets the Italians and Hungarians "shoved out," and "things pick up a bit," I cannot conceive. A pleasing panorama he has from his doorway--across the river, the fertile fields of Round Bottom, once Washington's; Captina Island, just below, long and thickly-willowed, dreamily afloat in a glassy sea, reflecting every change of light; the whole girt about with the wide uplands of the winding valley, and overhead the march of sunny clouds. Captina Creek (108 miles) is not far down on the Ohio bank, and beside it the little hamlet of Powhattan Point, with the West Virginia hills thereabout exceptionally high and steep, and wooded to the very top. Washington, who knew the Ohio well, down to the Great Kanawha, wrote of this creek in 1770: "A pretty large creek on the west side, called by Nicholson [his interpreter] Fox-Grape-Vine, by others Captema creek, on which, eight miles up, is the town called Grape-Vine Town." Captina village is its white successor. But there were also Indians at the mouth of the creek; for when George Rogers Clark and his missionary companion, Jones, two years later camped opposite on the Virginia shore, they went over to make a morning call on the natives, who repaid it in the evening, doubtless each time receiving freely from the white men's bounty. The next day was Sunday, and the travelers remained in camp, Jones recording in his journal that he "instructed what Indians came over." In the course of his prayer, the missionary was particularly impressed by the attitude of the chief of Grape-Vine Town, named Frank Stephens, who professed to believe in the Christian God; and he naively writes, "I was informed that, all the time, the Indians looked very seriously at me." Jones appears to have been impressed also with the hardness of the beach, where they camped in the open, doubtless to avoid surprises: "Instead of feathers, my bed was gravel-stones, by the river side ... which at first seemed not to suit me, but afterward it became more natural." In those days, traveling was beset with difficulties, both ashore and afloat. Eight years later (spring of 1780), three flatboats were descending the Ohio, laden with families intending to settle in Kentucky, when they suffered a common fate, being attacked by Indians off Captina Creek. Several men and a child were killed, and twenty-one persons were carried into captivity--among them, Catherine Malott, a girl in her teens, who subsequently became the wife of that most notorious of border renegades, Simon Girty. On the West Virginia shore, not over a third of a mile below Captina Creek, empties Grave Yard Run, a modest rivulet. It would of itself not be noticeable amid the crowd of minor creeks and runs, coursing down to the great river through rugged ravines which corrugate the banks. But it has a history. Here, late in October or early in November, 1772, young George Rogers Clark made his first stake west of the Alleghanies, rudely cultivating a few acres of forest land on what is now called Cresap's Bottom, surveying for the neighbors, and in the evenings teaching their children in the little log cabin of his friend, Yates Conwell, at the mouth of Fish Creek, a few miles below. Fish Creek was in itself famous as one of the sections of the great Indian trail, "The Warrior Branch," which, starting in Tennessee, came northward through Kentucky and Southern Ohio, and, proceeding by way of this creek, crossed over to Dunkard Creek, thence to the mouth of Redstone. Washington stopped at Conwell's in March or April, 1774; but Clark was away from home at the time, and the "Father of his Country" never met the man who has been dubbed the "Washington of the West." Lord Dunmore's War was hatching, and a few months later the Fish Creek surveyor and schoolmaster had entered upon his life work as an Indian fighter. At Bearsville (126 miles) we first meet a phenomenon common to the Ohio--the edges of the alluvial bottom being higher than the fields back of them, forming a natural levee, above which curiously rise to our view the spires and chimneys of the village. Harris' _Journal_ (1803) made early note of this, and advanced an acceptable theory: "We frequently remarked that the banks are higher at the margin than at a little distance back. I account for it in this manner: Large trees, which are brought down the river by the inundations, are lodged upon the borders of the bank, but cannot be floated far upon the champaign, because obstructed by the growth of wood. Retaining their situation when the waters subside, they obstruct and detain the leaves and mud, which would else recoil into the stream, and thus, in process of time, form a bank higher than the interior flats." Tied up to Bearsville landing is a gayly painted barge, the home of Price's Floating Opera Company, and in front its towing-steamer, "Troubadour." A steam calliope is part of the visible furniture of the establishment, and its praises as a noise-maker are sung in large type in the handbills which, with numerous colored lithographs of the performers, adorn the shop windows in the neighboring river towns. Two miles farther down, on a high bank at the mouth of Fishing Creek, lies New Martinsville, West Va. (127 miles), a rather shabby town of fifteen hundred souls. As W---- and I passed up the main street, seeking for a grocery, we noticed that the public hall was being decorated for a dance to come off to-night; and placards advertising the event were everywhere rivaling the gaudy prints of the floating opera. Meanwhile, a talkative native was interviewing the Doctor, down at the river side. It required some good-natured fencing on the part of our skipper to prevent the Virginian from learning all about our respective families away back to the third generation. He was a short, chubby man, with a Dixie goatee, his flannel shirt negligée, and a wide-brimmed straw hat jauntily set on the back of his head. He was sociable, and sat astride of our beached prow, punctuating his remarks with squirts of tobacco juice, and a bit of lath with which he meditatively tapped the gunwale, the meantime, with some skill, casting pebbles into the water with his bare toes. "Ax'n yer pardon, ma'm!" he said, scrambling from his perch upon W----'s appearance; and then, pushing us off, he bowed with much Southern gallantry, and hat in hand begged we would come again to New Martinsville, and stay longer. The hills lining these reaches are lower than above, yet graceful in their sweeping lines. Conical mounds sometimes surmount them, relics of the prehistoric time when our Indians held to the curious fashion of building earthworks. We no longer entertain the notion that a separate and a prouder race of wild men than we know erected these tumuli. That pleasant fiction has departed from us; but the works are none the less interesting, now that more is known of their origin. Two miles below New Martinsville, on the West Virginia shore, we pitch camp, just as the light begins to sink over the Ohio hills. The atmosphere is sweet with the odor of wild grape blossoms, and the willow also is in bloom. Poison ivy, to whose baneful touch fortunately none of us appear susceptible, grows everywhere about. From the farmhouse on the narrow bottom to our rear comes the melodious tinkle-tinkle of cow bells. The operatic calliope is in full blast, at Bearsville, its shrieks and snorts coming down to us through four miles of space, all too plainly borne by the northern breeze; and now and then we hear the squeak of the New Martinsville fiddles. There are no mosquitoes as yet, but burly May-chafers come stupidly dashing against our tent, and the toads are piping merrily. CHAPTER VII. In Dixie--Oil and natural gas, at Witten's Bottom--The Long Reach--Photographing crackers--Visitors in camp. Above Marietta, Saturday, May 12th.--Since the middle of yesterday afternoon we have been in Dixie,--that is, when we are on the West Virginia shore. The famous Mason and Dixon Line (lat. 39° 43' 26") touches the Ohio at the mouth of Proctor's Run (121-1/2 miles). There was a heavy fog this morning, on land and river. But through shifting rifts made by the morning breeze, we had kaleidoscopic, cloud-framed pictures of the dark, jutting headlands which hem us in; of little white cabins clustered by the country road which on either bank crawls along narrow terraces between overtopping steeps and sprawling beach, or winds through fertile bottoms, according to whether the river approaches or recedes from its inclosing bluffs; of hillside fields, tipped at various angles of ascent, sometimes green with springing grain, but oftenest gray or brown or yellow, freshly planted,--charming patches of color, in this somber-hued world of sloping woodland. At Williamson's Island (134 miles) the fog lifted. The air was heavy with the odor of petroleum. All about us were the ugly, towering derricks of oil and natural gas wells--Witten's Bottom on the right, with its abutting hills; the West Virginia woods across the river, and the maple-strewn island between, all covered with scaffolds. The country looks like a rumpled fox-and-geese board, with pegs stuck all over it. A mile and a half below lies Sistersville, W. Va., the emporium of this greasy neighborhood--great red oil-tanks and smoky refineries its chiefest glory; crude and raw, like the product it handles. We landed at Witten's Bottom,--W----, the Boy, and I,--while the Doctor, philosophically preferring to take the oily elephant for granted, piloted Pilgrim to the rendezvous a mile below. Oil was "struck" here two or three years ago, and now within a distance of a few miles there are hundreds of wells--"two hun'rd in this yere gravel alone, sir!" I was told by a red-headed man in a red shirt, who lived with his numerous family in a twelve-foot-square box at the rear of a pumping engine. An engine serves several wells,--the tumbling-rods, rudely boxed in, stretching off through the fields and over the hills to wherever needed. The operatives dwell in little shanties scattered conveniently about; in front of each is a vertical half-inch pipe, six or eight feet high, bearing a half bushel of natural-gas flame which burns and tosses night and day, winter and summer, making the Bottom a warm corner of the earth, when the unassisted temperature is in the eighties. It is a bewildering scene, with all these derricks thickly scattered around, engines noisily puffing, walking-beams forever rearing and plunging, the country cobwebbed with tumbling-rods and pipe lines, the shanties of the operatives with their rude lamp-posts, and the face of Nature so besmeared with the crude output of the wells that every twig and leaf is thick with grease. Just above Witten's commences the Long Reach of the Ohio--a charming panorama, for sixteen and a half miles in a nearly straight line to the southwest. Little towns line the alternating bottoms, and farmsteads are numerous on the slopes. But they are rocky and narrow, these gentle shoulders of the hills, and a poor class of folk occupy them--half fishers, half farmers, a cross between my Round Bottom friend and the houseboat nomads. A picturesquely-dilapidated log house, with whitewashed porch in front, and a vine arbor at the rear, attracted our attention at the foot of the reach, near Grape Island. I clambered up, to photograph it. The ice was broken by asking for a drink of water. A gaunt girl of eighteen, the elder of two, with bare feet, her snaky hair streaming unkempt about a smirking face, went with a broken-nosed pitcher to a run, which could be heard splashing over its rocky bed near by. The meanwhile, I took a seat in the customary arcade between the living room and kitchen, and talked with her fat, greasy, red-nosed father, who confided to me that he was "a pi'neer from way back." He occupied his own land--a rare circumstance among these riverside "crackers;" had a hundred and thirty acres, worth twenty dollars the acre; "jist yon ways," back of the house, in the cliff-side, there was a coal vein two feet thick, as yet only "worked" for his own fuel; and lately, he had struck a bank of firebrick clay which might some day be a "good thing for th' gals." On leaving, I casually mentioned my desire to photograph the family on the porch, where the light was good. While I walked around the house outside, they passed through the front room, which seemed to be the common dormitory as well as parlor. To my surprise and chagrin, the girls and their dowdy mother had, in those brief moments of transition, contrived to arrange their hair and dress to a degree which took from them all those picturesque qualities with which they had been invested at the time of my arrival. The father was being reproved, as he emerged upon the porch, for not "slick'n' his ha'r, and wash'n' and fix'n' up, afore hay'n' his pictur' taken;" but the old fellow was obdurate, and joined me in remonstrance against this transformation to the commonplace, on the part of his women-folk. However, there was no profit in arguing with them, and I took my snap-shot with a conviction that the film was being wasted. We were in several small towns to-day, in pursuance of the policy of distributing our shopping, so as to see as much of the shore life as practicable. Chief among them have been New Matamoras (141 miles) and St. Mary's (154 miles), in West Virginia, and Newport, in Ohio (155 miles). Rather dingy villages, these--each, after their kind, with a stone wharf thick-grown with weeds; a flouring mill at the head of the landing; a few cheap-looking, battlemented stores; boys and men lounging about with that air of comfortable idling which impresses one as the main characteristic of rustic hamlets, where nobody seems ever to have anything to do; a ferry running to the opposite shore--for cattle and wagons, a heavy flat, with railings, made to drift with the current; and for foot passengers, a lumbering skiff, with oars chucking noisily in their roomy locks. Every now and then we run across bunches of oil and gas wells; and great signs, like those advertising boards which greet railway travelers approaching our large cities, are here and there perched upon the banks, notifying steamboat pilots, in letters a foot high, that a pipe line here crosses the river, the vicinity being consequently unsafe for mooring. Our camp, to-night, is on a bit of grassy ledge at the summit of a rocky bank, ten miles above Marietta, on the Ohio side. A rod or so back of us is the country road, which winds along at the foot of a precipitous steep. It is narrow quarters here, and too near the highway for comfort, but nothing better seemed to offer at the time we needed it; and the outlook is pleasant, through the fringing oaks and elms, across the broad river into West Virginia. We had not yet pitched tent, and all hands were still clambering over the rocks with Pilgrim's cargo, rather glad that there was no more of it, when our first camp-bore appeared--a middling-sized man, florid as to complexion, with a mustache and goatee, and in a suit of seedy black, surmounted by a crushed-in Derby hat; and, after the fashion of the country, giving evidence, on his collarless white shirt, of a free use of chewing tobacco. I have seldom met a fellow with better staying qualities. He was a strawberry grower, he said, and having been into Newport, a half dozen miles up river, was walking to his home, which was a mile or two off in the hills. Would we object if, for a few moments, he tarried here by the roadside? and perhaps we could accommodate him with a drink of water? Patiently did he watch the preparation of dinner, and spice each dish with commendations of W----'s skill at making the most of her few utensils. Right glibly he chattered on; now about the decadence of womankind; now about strawberry-growing upon these Ohio hills--with the crop just coming on, and berries selling at a shilling to-day, in Marietta, when they ought to be worth twenty cents; now on politics, and of course he was a Populist; now on the hard times, and did we believe in free silver? He would take no bite with us, but sat and talked and talked, despite plain hints, growing plainer with the progress of time, that his family needed him at nightfall. Dinner was eaten, and dishes washed; the others left on a botanical round-up, and I produced my writing materials, with remarks upon the lateness of the hour. At last our guest arose, shook the grass from his clothes, with a shake of hands bade me good-night, wishing me to convey his "good-bye" to the rest of our party, and as politely as possible expressed the great pleasure which the visit had given him. Some farmer boys came down the hillside to fish at the bank, and talked pleasantly of their work and of the ever-changing phases of the river. Other farmers passed our roadside door, in wagons, on buckboards, by horseback, and on foot; in neighborly tone, but with ill-disguised curiosity in their eyes, wishing me good evening. When the long twilight was almost gone, and the moon an hour high over the purple dusk of the West Virginia hills, the botanists returned, aglow with their exercise, and rich with trophies of blue and dwarf larkspur, pink and white stone-crop, trailing arbutus, and great laurel. And then, as we were preparing to retire, a sleek and dapper fellow, though with clothes rather the worse for wear, came trudging along the road toward Marietta. Seeing our camp, he asked for a drink. Being apparently disposed to tarry, the Doctor, to get him started, offered to walk a piece with him. Our comrade staid out so long, that at last I went down the road in search of him, and found the pair sitting on a moonlit bank, as cozily as if they had been always friends. The stranger had revealed to the Doctor that he was a street fakir, "by perfesh," and had "struck it rich" in Chicago during the World's Fair, but somehow had lost the greater part of his gains, and was now associated with his brother, who had a junk-boat; the brother was "well heeled," and staid and kept store at the boat, while the fakir, as the walking partner, "rustled 'round 'mong th' grangers, to stir up trade." The Doctor had, in their talk, let slip something about certain Florida experiences, and when I arrived on the scene was being skillfully questioned by his companion as to the probabilities of "a feller o' my perfesh ketch'n' on, down thar?" The result of this pumping process must have been satisfactory: for when we parted with him, the fakir declared he was "go'n' try't on thar, next winter, 'f I bust me bottom dollar!" CHAPTER VIII. Life ashore and afloat--Marietta, "the Plymouth Rock of the West"--The Little Kanawha--The story of Blennerhassett's Island. Blennerhassett's Island, Sunday, May 13th.--The day broke without fog, at our camp on the rocky steep above Marietta. The eastern sky was veiled with summer clouds, all gayly flushed by the rising sun, and in the serene silence of the morning there hung the scent of dew, and earth, and trees. In the east, the distant edges of the West Virginia hills were aglow with the mounting light before it had yet peeped over into the river trough, where a silvery haze lent peculiar charm to flood and bank. Up river, one of the Three Brothers isles, dark and heavily forested, seemed in the middle ground to float on air. A bewitching picture this, until at last the sun sprang clear and strong above the fringing hills, and the spell was broken. The steamboat traffic is improving as we get lower down. Last evening, between landing and bedtime, a half dozen passed us, up and down, breathing heavily as dragons might, and leaving behind them foamy wakes which loudly broke upon the shore. Before morning, I was at intervals awakened by as many more. A striking spectacle, the passage of a big river steamer in the night; you hear, fast approaching, a labored pant; suddenly, around the bend, or emerging from behind an island, the long white monster glides into view, lanterns gleaming on two lines of deck, her electric searchlight uneasily flitting to and fro, first on one landmark, then on another, her engine bell sharply clanging, the measured pant developing into a burly, all-pervading roar, which gradually declines into a pant again--and then she disappears as she came, her swelling wake rudely ruffling the moonlit stream. We caught up with a large lumber raft this morning, descending from Pittsburg to Cincinnati. The half-dozen men in charge were housed midway in a rude little shanty, and relieved each other at the sweeps--two at bow, and two astern. It is an easy, lounging life, most of the way, with some difficulties in the shallows, and in passing beneath the great bridges. They travel night and day, except in the not infrequent wind-storms blowing up stream; and it will take them another week to cover the three hundred miles between this and their destination. Far different fellows, these commonplace raftsmen of to-day, from the "lumber boys" of a half-century or more ago, when the river towns were regularly "painted red" by the men who followed the Ohio by raft or flatboat. Life along shore was then more picturesque than comfortable. Later, we stopped on the Ohio shore to chat with a group of farmers having a Sunday talk, their seat a drift log, in the shade of a willowed bank. They proved to be market gardeners and fruit-growers--well-to-do men of their class, and intelligent in conversation; all of them descendants of the sturdy New Englanders who settled these parts. While the others were discussing small fruits with these transplanted Yankees, who proved quite as full of curiosity about us as we concerning them, I went down shore a hundred yards, struggling through the dense fringe of willows, to photograph a junk-boat just putting off into the stream. The two rough-bearded, merry-eyed fellows at the sweeps were setting their craft broadside to the stream--that "the current might have more holt of her," the chief explained. They were interested in the kodak, and readily posed as I wished, but wanted to see what had been taken, having the common notion that it is like a tintype camera, with results at once attainable. They offered our party a ride for the rest of the day, if we would row alongside and come aboard, but I thanked them, saying their craft was too slow for our needs; at which they laughed heartily, and "'lowed" we might be traders, too, anxious to get in ahead of them--"but there's plenty o' room o' th' river, for yew an' we, stranger! Well, good luck to yees! We'll see yer down below, somewhar, I reckon!" Just before lunch, we were at Marietta, at the mouth of the Muskingum (171 miles), a fine stream, here two hundred and fifty yards wide. A storied river, this Muskingum. We first definitely hear of it in 1748, the year the original Ohio Company was formed. Céloron was here the year following, with his little band of French soldiers and Indians, vainly endeavoring to turn English traders out of the Ohio Valley. Christopher Gist came, some months later; then the trader Croghan, for "Old Wyandot Town," the Indian village at the mouth, was a noted center in Western forest traffic. Moravian missionaries appeared in due time, establishing on the banks of the Muskingum the ill-fated convert villages of Schönbrunn, Gnadenhütten, and Salem. In 1785, Fort Harmar was reared on the site of Wyandot Town. Lastly, in the early spring of 1788, came, in Ohio river flatboats, that famous body of New England veterans of the Revolution, under Gen. Rufus Putnam, and planted Marietta--"the Plymouth Rock of the West." We smile at these Ohio pilgrims, for dignifying the hills which girt in the Marietta bottom, with the names of the seven on which Rome is said to be built--for having a Campus Martius and a Sacra Via, and all that, out here among the sycamore stumps and the wild Indians. But a classical revival was just then vigorously affecting American thought, and it would have been strange if these sturdy New Englanders had not felt its influence, fresh as they were from out the shadows of Harvard and Yale, and in the awesome presence of crowds of huge monumental earthworks, whose age, in their day, was believed to far outdate the foundations of the Eternal City itself. They loved learning for learning's sake; and here, in the log-cabins of Marietta, eight hundred miles west of their beloved Boston, among many another good thing they did for posterity, they established the principle of public education at public cost, as a national principle. They were soldier colonists. Washington, out of a full heart, for he dearly loved the West, said of them: "No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum. Information, property, and strength will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community." And when, in 1825, La Fayette had read to him the list of Marietta pioneers,--nearly fifty military officers among them,--he cried: "I know them all! I saw them at Brandywine, Yorktown, and Rhode Island. They were the bravest of the brave!" Yet, for a long time, Marietta met with small measure of success. Miasma, Indian ravages, and the conservative temperament of the people combined to render slow the growth of this Western Plymouth. There were, for a time, extensive ship-building yards here; but that industry gradually declined, with the growth of railway systems. In our day, Marietta, with its ten thousand inhabitants, prospers chiefly as a market town and an educational center, with some manufacturing interests. We were struck to-day, as we tarried there for an hour or two, with the remarkable resemblance it has in public and private architecture, and in general tone, to a typical New England town--say, for example, Burlington, Vt. Omitting its river front, and its Mound Cemetery, Marietta might be set bodily down almost anywhere in Massachusetts, or Vermont, or Connecticut, and the chance traveler would see little in the place to remind him of the West. I know of no other town out of New England of which the same might be said. Below Marietta, the river bottoms are, for miles together, edged with broad stretches of sloping beach, either deep with sand or naturally paved with pebbles--sometimes treeless, but often strewn with clumps of willow and maple and scrub sycamore. The hills, now rounder, less ambitious, and more widely separated, are checkered with fields and forests, and the bottom lands are of more generous breadth. Pleasant islands stud the peaceful stream. The sylvan foliage has by this time attained very nearly its fullest size. The horse chestnut, the pawpaw, the grape, and the willow are in bloom. A gentle pastoral scene is this through which we glide. It is evident that it would be a scalding day but for the gentle breeze astern; setting sail, we gladly drop our oars, and, with the water rippling at our prow, sweep blithely down the long southern reach to Parkersburg, W. Va., at the mouth of the Little Kanawha (183 miles). In the full glare of the scorching sun, Parkersburg looks harsh and dry. But it is well built, and, as seen from the river, apparently prosperous. The Ohio is here crossed by the once famous million-dollar bridge of the Baltimore & Ohio railway. The wharf is at the junction of the two streams, but chiefly on the shore of the unattractive Little Kanawha, which is spanned by several bridges, and abounds in steamers and houseboats moored to the land. Clark and Jones did not think well of Little Kanawha lands, yet there were several families on the river as early as 1763, and Trent, Croghan, and other Fort Pitt fur-traders had posts here. There were only half-a-dozen houses in 1800, and Parkersburg itself was not laid out until ten years later. Blennerhassett's Island lies two miles below--a broad, dark mass of forest, at the head joined by a dam to the West Virginia shore, from which it is separated by a slender channel. Blennerhassett's is some three and a half miles long; of its five hundred acres, four hundred are under cultivation in three separate tenant farms. We landed at the upper end, where Blennerhassett had his wharf, facing the Ohio shore, and found that we were trespassing upon "The Blennerhassett Pleasure Grounds." A seedy-looking man, who represented himself to be the proprietor, promptly accosted us and levied a "landing fee" of ten cents per head, which included the right to remain over night. A little questioning developed the fact that thirty acres at the head of the island belong to this man, who rents the ground to a market gardener,--together with the comfortable farmhouse which occupies the site of Blennerhassett's mansion,--but reserves to himself the privilege of levying toll on visitors. He declared to me that fifteen thousand people came to the island each summer, generally in large railway and steamboat excursions, which gives him an easily-acquired income sufficient for his needs. It is a pity that so famous a place is not a public park. The touching story of the Blennerhassetts is one of the best known in Western annals. Rich in culture and worldly possessions, but wildly impracticable, Harman Blennerhassett and his beautiful wife came to America in 1798. Buying this lovely island in the Ohio, six hundred miles west of tidewater, they built a large mansion, which they furnished luxuriously, adorning it with fine pictures and statuary. Here, in the midst of beautiful grounds, while Blennerhassett studied astronomy, chemistry, and galvanism, his brilliant spouse dispensed rare hospitality to their many distinguished guests; for, in those days, it was part of a rich young man's education to take a journey down the Ohio, into "the Western parts," and on returning home to write a book about it. But there came a serpent to this Eden. Aaron Burr was among their visitors (1805), while upon his journey to New Orleans, where he hoped to set on foot a scheme to seize either Texas or Mexico, and set up a republic with himself at the head. He interested the susceptible Blennerhassetts in his plans, the import of which they probably little understood; but the fantastic Englishman had suffered a considerable reduction of fortune, and was anxious to recoup, and Burr's representations were aglow with the promise of such rewards in the golden southwest as Cortes and Coronado sought. Blennerhassett's purse was opened to the enterprise of Burr; large sums were spent in boats and munitions, which were, tradition says, for a time hid in the bayou which, close by our camp, runs deep into the island forest. It has been filled in by the present proprietor, but its bold shore lines, all hung with giant sycamores, are still in evidence. President Jefferson's proclamation (October, 1806) shattered the plot, and Blennerhassett fled to join Burr at the mouth of the Cumberland. Both were finally arrested (1807), and tried for treason, but acquitted on technical grounds. In the meantime, people from the neighboring country sacked Blennerhassett's house; then came creditors, and with great waste seized his property; the beautiful place was still further pillaged by lawless ruffians, and turned into ignoble uses; later, the mansion itself was burned through the carelessness of negroes--and now, all they can show us are the old well and the noble trees which once graced the lawn. As for the Blennerhassetts themselves, they wandered far and wide, everywhere the victims of misfortune. He died on the Island of Guernsey (1831), a disappointed office-seeker; she, returning to America to seek redress from Congress for the spoliation of her home, passed away in New York, before the claim was allowed, and was buried by the Sisters of Charity. CHAPTER IX. Poor whites--First library in the West--An hour at Hockingport--A hermit fisher. Long Bottom, Monday, May 14th.--Pushing up stream for two miles this morning, the commissary department replenished the day's stores at Parkersburg. Forepaugh's circus was in town, and crowds of rustics were coming in by wagon road, railway trains, and steamers and ferries on both rivers. The streets of the quaint, dingy Southern town were teeming with humanity, mainly negroes and poor whites. Among the latter, flat, pallid faces, either flabby or too lean, were under the swarms of blue, white, and yellow sunbonnets--sad faces, with lack-luster eyes, coarse hair of undecided hue, and coarser speech. These Audreys of Dixie-land are the product of centuries of ill-treatment on our soil; indented white servants to the early coast colonists were in the main their ancestors; with slave competition, the white laborer in the South lost caste until even the negro despised him; and ill-nurture has done the rest. Then, too, in these bottoms, malaria has wrought its work, especially among the underfed; you see it in the yellow skin and nerveless tone of these lanky rustics, who are in town to enjoy the one bright holiday of their weary year. Across the river, in Ohio, is Belpré (short for Belle Prairie, and now locally pronounced Bel'pry), settled by Revolutionary soldiers, on the Marietta grant, in 1789-90. I always think well of Belpré, because here was established the first circulating library in the Northwest. Old Israel Putnam, he of the wolf-den and Bunker Hill, amassed many books. His son Israel, on moving to Belpré in 1796, carried a considerable part of the collection with him--no small undertaking this, at a time when goods had to be carted all the way from Connecticut, over rivers and mountains to the Ohio, and then floated down river by flatboat, with a high tariff for every pound of freight. Young Israel was public-spirited, and, having been at so great cost and trouble to get this library out to the wilderness, desired his fellow-colonists to enjoy it with him. It would have been unfair not to distribute the expense, so a stock company was formed, and shares were sold at ten dollars each. Of the blessings wrought in this rude frontier community by the books which the elder Israel had collected for his Connecticut fireside, there can be no more eloquent testimony than that borne by an old settler, who, in 1802, writes to an Eastern friend: "In order to make the long winter evenings pass more smoothly, by great exertion I purchased a share in the Belpré library, six miles distant. Many a night have I passed (using pine knots instead of candles) reading to my wife while she sat hatcheling, carding or spinning." The association was dissolved in 1815 or 1816, and the books distributed among the shareholders; many of these volumes are still extant in this vicinity, and several are in the college museum at Marietta. There are few descendants hereabout of the original New England settlers, and they live miles apart on the Ohio shore. We went up to visit one, living opposite Blennerhassett's Island. Notice of our coming had preceded us, and we were warmly welcomed at a substantial farmhouse in the outskirts of Belpré, with every evidence about of abundant prosperity. The maternal great-grandfather of our host for an hour was Rufus Putnam, an ancestor to be proud of. Five acres of gooseberries are grown on the place, and other small-fruits in proportion--all for the Parkersburg market, whence much is shipped north to Cleveland. Our host confessed to a little malaria, even on this upper terrace--or "second bottom," as they style it--but "the land is good, though with many stones--natural conditions, you know, for New Englanders." It was pleasant for a New England man, not long removed from his native soil, to find these people, who are a century away from home, still claiming kinship. At the Big Hockhocking River (197 miles), on a high, semicircular bottom, is Hockingport, a hamlet with a population of three hundred. Here, on a still higher bench, a quarter of a mile back from the river, Lord Dunmore built Fort Gower, one of a chain of posts along his march against the Northwest Indians (1774). It was from here that he marched to the Pickaway Plains, on the Scioto (near Circleville, O.), and concluded that treaty of peace to which Chief Logan refused his consent. There are some remains yet left of this palisaded earthwork of a century and a quarter ago, but the greater part has been obliterated by plowing, and a dwelling occupies a portion of the site. It had been very warm, and we had needed an awning as far down as Hockingport, where we cooled off by lying on the grass in the shade of the village blacksmith's shop, which is, as well, the ferry-house, with the bell hung between two tall posts at the top of the bank, its rope dangling down for public use. The smith-ferryman came out with his wife--a burly, good-natured couple--and joined us in our lounging, for it is not every day that river travelers put in at this dreamy, far-away port. The wife had camped with her husband, when he was boss of a railway construction gang, and both of them frankly envied us our trip. So did a neighboring storekeeper, a tall, lean, grave young man, clean-shaven, coatless and vestless, with a blue-glass stud on his collarless white shirt. Apparently there was no danger of customers walking away with his goods, for he left his store-door open to all comers, not once glancing thitherward in the half-hour he sat with us on a stick of timber, in which he pensively carved his name. Life goes easily in Hockingport. Years ago there was some business up the Big Hocking (short for Big Hockhocking), a stream of a half-dozen rods' width, but now no steamer ventures up--the railroads do it all; as for the Ohio--well, the steamers now and then put off a box or bale for the four shop-keepers, and once in a while a passenger patronizes the landing. There is still a little country traffic, and formerly a sawmill was in operation here; you see its ruins down there below. Hockingport is a type of several rustic hamlets we have seen to-day; they are often in pairs, one either side of the river, for companionship's sake. We are idling, despite the knowledge that on turning every big bend we are getting farther and farther south, and mid-June on the Lower Ohio is apt to be sub-tropical. But the sinking sun gives us a shadowy right bank, and that is most welcome. The current is only spasmodically good. Every night the river falls from three to six inches, and there are long stretches of slack-water. The steamers pick their way carefully; we do not give them as wide a berth as formerly, for the wakes they turn are no longer savage--but wakes, even when sent out by stern-wheelers at full speed, now give us little trouble; it did not take long to learn the knack of "taking" them. Whether you meet them at right angles, or in the trough, there is the same delicious sensation of rising and falling on the long swells--there is no danger, so long as you are outside the line of foaming breakers; within those, you may ship water, which is not desirable when there is a cargo. But the boys at the towns sometimes put out in their rude punts into the very vortex of disturbance, being dashed about in the white roar at the base of the ponderous paddle wheels, like a Fiji Islander in his surf-boat. We heard, the other day, of a boatload of daring youngsters being caught by the wheel, their craft smashed into kindling-wood, and they themselves all drowned but one. The hills, to-day, sometimes break sharply off, leaving an eroded, often vine-festooned palisade some fifty feet in height, at the base of which is a long, tree-clad slope of debris; then, a narrow, level terrace from fifty to a hundred yards in width, which drops suddenly to a rocky beach; this in turn is often lined along the water's edge with irregularly-shaped boulders, from the size of Pilgrim to fifteen or twenty feet in height, and worn smooth with the grinding action of the river. The effect is highly picturesque. We shall have much of this below. At the foot of one of these palisades lay a shanty-boat, with nets sprawled over the roof to dry, and a live-box anchored hard by. "Hello, the boat!" brought to the window the head of the lone fisherman, who dreamily peered at us as we announced our wish to become his customers. A sort of poor-white Neptune, this tall, lean, lantern-jawed old fellow, with great round, iron-rimmed spectacles over his fishy eyes, his hair and beard in long, snaky locks, and clothing in dirty tatters. As he put out in his skiff to reach the live-box, he continuously spewed tobacco juice about him, and in an undertone growled garrulously, as though used to soliloquize in his hermitage, where he lay at outs with the world. He had been in this spot for two years, he said, and sold fish to the daily Parkersburg steamer--when there were any fish. But, for six months past, he "hadn't made enough to keep him in grub," and had now and then to go up to the city and earn something. For forty years had he followed the apostles' calling on "this yere Ohio," and the fishing was never so poor as now--yes, sir! hard times had struck his business, just like other folks'. He thought the oil wells were tainting the water, and the fish wouldn't breed--and the iron slag, too, was spoiling the river, and he knew it. He finally produced for us, out of his box, a three-pound fish,--white perch, calico bass, and catfish formed his stock in trade,--but, before handing it over, demanded the requisite fifteen cents. Evidently he had had dealings with a dishonest world, this hermit fisher, and had learned a thing or two. Perfect camping places are not to be found every day. There are so many things to think of--a good landing place; good height above the water level, in case of a sudden rise; a dry, shady, level spot for the tent; plenty of wood, and, if possible, a spring; and not too close proximity to a house. Occasionally we meet with what we want, when we want it; but quite as often, ideal camping places, while abundant half the day, are not to be found at five o'clock, our usual hour for homeseeking. The Doctor is our agent for this task, for, being bow oar, he can clamber out most easily. This evening, he ranged both shores for a considerable distance, with ill success, so that we are settled on a narrow Ohio sand-beach, in the midst of a sparse willow copse, only two feet above the river. Dinner was had at the very water's edge. After a time, a wind-storm arose and flapped the tent right vigorously, causing us to pin down tightly and weight the sod-cloth; while, amid distant thundering, every preparation was made for a speedy embarkation in the event of flood. The bellow of the frogs all about us, the scream of toads, and the heavy swash of passing steamers dangerously near our door, will be a sufficient lullaby to-night. CHAPTER X. Cliff-dwellers on Long Bottom--Pomeroy Bend--Letart's Island and Rapids--Game in the early day--Rainy weather--In a "cracker" home. Letart's Island, Tuesday, May 15th.--After we had gone to bed last night,--we in the tent, the Doctor and Pilgrim under the fly, which serves as a porch roof,--the heavenly floodgates lifted; the rain, coming in sheets, beat a fierce tattoo on the tightly-stretched canvas, and visions of a sudden rise in the fickle river were uppermost in our dreams. Everything about us was sopping at daybreak; but the sun rose clear and warm from a bed of eastern clouds, and the midnight gale had softened to a gentle breeze. Palisades were frequent to-day. We stopped just below camp, at an especially picturesque Ohio hamlet,--Long Bottom (207 miles),--where the dozen or so cottages are built close against the bald rock. Clambering over great water-worn boulders, at the river's brink, the Doctor and I made our way up through a dense tangle of willows and poison ivy and grape-vines, emerging upon the country road which passes at the foot of this row of modern cliff-dwellings. For the most part, little gardens, with neat palings, run down from the cottages to the road. One sprawling log house, fairly embowered in vines, and overtopped by the palisade rising sheer for thirty feet above its back door, looked in this setting for all the world like an Alpine chalet, lacking only stones on the roof to complete the picture. I took a kodak shot at this, also at a group of tousle-headed children at the door of a decrepit shanty built entirely within a crevice of the rock--their Hibernian mother, with one hand holding an apron over her head, and the other shielding her eyes, shrilly crying to a neighboring cliff-dweller: "Miss McCarthy! Miss McCarthy! There's a feller here, a photergraph'n' all the people in the Bottom! Come, quick!" Then they eagerly pressed around me, Germans and Irish, big and little, women and children mostly, asking for a view of the picture, which I gave all in turn by letting them peep into the ground-glass "finder"--a pretty picture, they said it was, with the colors all in, and "wonderfully like," though a wee bit small. Speaking of color, we are daily struck with the brilliant hues in the workaday dresses of women and children seen along the river. Red calico predominates, but blues and yellows, and even greens, are seen, brightly splashing the somber landscape. After Long Bottom, we enter upon the south-sweeping Pomeroy Bend of the Ohio, commencing at Murraysville (208 miles) and ending at Pomeroy (247 miles). It is of itself a series of smaller bends, and, as we twist about upon our course, the wind strikes us successively on all quarters; sometimes giving the Doctor a chance to try his sail, which he raises on the slightest provocation,--but at all times agreeably ruffling the surface that would otherwise reflect the glowing sun like a mirror. The sloping margins of the rich bottoms are now often cultivated almost to the very edge of the stream, with a line of willow trees left as a protecting fringe. Farmers doing this take a gambling risk of a summer rise. Where the margins have been left untouched by the plow, there is a dense mass of vegetation--sycamores, big of girth and towering to a hundred feet or more, abound on every hand; the willows are phenomenally-rapid growers; and in all available space is the rank, thick-standing growth of an annual locally styled "horse-weed," which rears a cane-like stalk full eighteen or twenty feet high--it has now attained but four or five feet, but the dry stalks of last year's growth are everywhere about, showing what a formidable barrier to landing these giant weeds must be in midsummer. We chose for a camping place Letart's Island (232 miles), on the West Virginia side, not far below Milwood. From the head, where our tent is pitched on a sandy knoll thick-grown to willows, a long gravel spit runs far over toward the Ohio shore. The West Virginia channel is narrow, slow and shallow; that between us and Ohio has been lessened by the island to half its usual width, and the current sweeps by at a six-mile gait, in which the Doctor and I found it difficult to keep our footing while having our customary evening dip. Our island is two long, forested humps of sand, connected by a stretch of gravel beach, giving every evidence of being submerged in times of flood; everywhere are chaotic heaps of driftwood, many cords in extent; derelict trees are lodged in the tops of the highest willows and maples--ghostly giants sprawling in the moonlight; there is an abandon of vegetable debris, layer after layer laid down in sandy coverlids. Wild grasses, which flourish on all these flooded lands, here attain enormous size. Dispensing with our cots for the nonce, we have spread our blankets over heaps of dried grass pulled from the monster tufts of last year's growth. The Ohio is capable of raising giant floods; it is still falling with us, but there are signs at hand, beyond the slight sprinkle which cooled the air for us at bedtime, of rainy weather after the long drouth. When the feeders in the Alleghanies begin to swell, we shall perch high o' nights. * * * * * Near Cheshire, O., Wednesday, May 16th.--The fine current at the island gave us a noble start this morning. The river soon widens, but Letart's Falls, a mile or two below, continue the movement, and we went fairly spinning on our way. These so-called falls, rapids rather, long possessed the imagination of early travelers. Some of the chroniclers have, while describing them, indulged in flights of fancy.[A] They are of slight consequence, however, even at this low stage of water, save to the careless canoeist who has had no experience in rapid water, well-strewn with sunken boulders. The scenery of the locality is wild, and somewhat impressive. The Ohio bank is steep and rugged, abounding in narrow little terraces of red clay, deeply gullied, and dotted with rough, mean shanties. It all had a forbidding aspect, when viewed in the blinding sun; but before we had passed, an intervening cloud cast a deep shadow over the scene, and, softening the effect, made the picture more pleasing. Croghan was at Letart (1765), on one of his land-viewing trips for the Ohio Company, and tells us that he saw a "vast migrating herd" of buffalo cross the river here. In the beginning of colonization in this valley, buffalo and elk were to be seen in herds of astonishing size; traces of their well-beaten paths through the hills, and toward the salt licks of Kentucky and Illinois, were observable until within recent years. Gordon, an early traveler down the Ohio (1766), speaks of "great herds of buffalo, we observed on the beaches of the river and islands into which they come for air, and coolness in the heat of the day;" he commenced his raids on them a hundred miles below Pittsburg. Hutchins (1778) says, "the whole country abounds in Bears, Elks, Buffaloe, Deer, Turkies, &c."[B] Bears, panthers, wolves, eagles, and wild turkeys were indeed very plenty at first, but soon became extinct. The theory is advanced by Dr. Doddridge, in his _Notes on Virginia_, that hunters' dogs introduced hydrophobia among the wolves, and this ridded the country of them sooner than they would naturally have gone; but they were still so numerous in 1817, that the traveler Palmer heard them nightly, "barking on both banks." Venomous serpents were also numerous in pioneer days, and stayed longer. The story is told of a tumulus up toward Moundsville, that abounded in snakes, particularly rattlers. The settlers thought to dig them out, but they came to such a mass of human bones that that plan was abandoned. Then they instituted a blockade, by erecting a tight-board fence around the mound, and, thus entrapping the reptiles, extirpated the colony in a few days. Paroquets were once abundant west of the Alleghanies, up to the southern shore of the Great Lakes, and great flocks haunted the salt springs; but to-day they may be found only in the middle Southern states. There were, in a state of nature, no crows, blackbirds, or song-birds in this valley; they followed in the wake of the colonist. The honey bee came with the white man,--or rather, just preceded him. Rats followed the first settlers, then opossums, and fox squirrels still later. It is thought, too, that the sand-hill and whooping cranes, and the great blue herons which we daily see in their stately flight, are birds of these later days, when the neighborhood of man has frightened away the enemies which once kept them from thriving in the valley. Turkey buzzards appear to remain alone of the ancient birds; the earliest travelers note their presence in great flocks, and to-day there are few vistas open to us, without from one to dozens of them wheeling about in mid-air, seeking what they may devour. Public opinion in the valley is opposed to the wanton killing of these scavengers, so useful in a climate as warm as this. Three miles below Letart's Rapids, is the motley settlement of Antiquity, O., a long row of cabins and cottages nestled at the base of a high, vine-clad palisade, similar to that which yesterday we visited at Long Bottom. Some of these cliff-dwellings are picturesque, some exhibit the prosperity of their owners, but many are squalid. At the water's edge is that which has given its name to the locality, an ancient rock, which once bore some curious Indian carving. Hall (1820) found only one figure remaining, "a man in a sitting posture, making a pipe;" to-day, even thus much has been largely obliterated by the elements. But Antiquity itself is not quite dead. There is a ship-yard here; and a sawmill in active operation, besides the ruins of two others. We also passed Racine (240 miles), another Ohio town--a considerable place, no doubt, although only the tops of the buildings were, from the river level, to be seen above the high bank; these, and an enticing view up the wharf-street. Of more immediate interest, just then, were the heavens, now black and threatening. Putting in hurriedly to the West Virginia shore, we pitched tent on a shelving clay beach, shielded by the ever-present willows, and in five minutes had everything under shelter. With a rumble and bang, and a great flurry of wind, the thunder-storm broke upon us in full fury. There had been no time to run a ditch around the tent, so we spread our cargo atop of the cots. The Boy engineered riverward the streams of water which flowed in beneath the canvas; W----, ever practical, caught rain from the dripping fly, and did the family washing, while the Doctor and I prepared a rather pasty lunch. An hour later, we bailed out Pilgrim, and once more ventured upon our way. It is a busy district between Racine and Sheffield (251 miles). For eleven miles, upon the Ohio bank, there are few breaks between the towns,--Racine, Syracuse, Minersville, Pomeroy, Coalport, Middleport, and Sheffield. Coal mines and salt works abound, with other industries interspersed; and the neighborhood appears highly prosperous. Its metropolis is Pomeroy, in shape a "shoe-string" town,--much of it not over two blocks wide, and stretching along for two miles, at the foot of high palisades. West Virginia is not far behind, in enterprise, with the salt-work towns of New Haven, Hartford, and Mason City,--bespeaking, in their names, a Connecticut ancestry. The afternoon sun gushed out, and the face of Nature was cleanly beautiful, as, leaving the convolutions of the Pomeroy Bend, we entered upon that long river-sweep to the south-by-southwest, which extends from Pomeroy to the Big Sandy, a distance of sixty-eight miles. A mile or two below Cheshire, O. (256 miles), we put in for the night on the West Virginia shore. There is a natural pier of rocky ledge, above that a sloping beach of jagged stone, and then the little grassy terrace which we have made our home. Searching for milk and eggs, I walked along a railway track and then up through a cornfield, to a little log farm-house, whose broad porch was shingled with "shakes" and shaded by a lusty grape-vine. Fences, house, and outbuildings had been newly whitewashed, and there was all about an uncommon air of neatness. A stout little girl of eleven or twelve, met me at the narrow gate opening through the garden palings. It may be because a gypsying trip like this roughens one in many ways,--for man, with long living near to Nature's heart, becomes of the earth, earthy,--that she at first regarded me with suspicious eyes, and, with one hand resting gracefully on her hip, parleyed over the gate, as to what price I was paying in cash, for eggs and milk, and where I hailed from. With her wealth of blond hair done up in a saucy knot behind; her round, honest face; her lips thick, and parted over pearly teeth; her nose saucily _retrousse_; and her flashing, outspoken blue eyes, this barefooted child of Nature had a certain air of authority, a consciousness of power, which made her womanly beyond her years. She must have seen that I admired her, this little "cracker" queen, in her clean but tattered calico frock; for her mood soon melted, and with much grace she ushered me within the house. Calling Sam, an eight-year-old, to "keep the gen'lem'n comp'ny," she prettily excused herself, and scampered off up the hillside in search of the cows. A barefooted, loose-jointed, gaunt, sandy-haired, freckled, open-eyed youngster is Sam. He came lounging into the room, and, taking my hat, hung it on a peg above the fireplace; then, dropping into a big rocking-chair, with his muddy legs hanging over an arm, at once, with a curious, old-fashioned air, began "keeping company" by telling me of the new litter of pigs, with as little diffidence as though I were an old neighbor who had dropped in on the way to the cross-roads. "And thet thar new Shanghai rooster, mister, ain't he a beauty? He cost a dollar, he did--a dollar in silver, sir!" There was no difficulty in drawing Sam out. He is frankness itself. What was he going to make of himself? Well, he "'lowed" he wanted to be either a locomotive engineer or a steamboat captain--hadn't made up his mind which. "But whatever a boy wants to be, he will be!" said Sam, with the decided tone of a man of the world, who had seen things. I asked Sam what the attractions were in the life of an engine driver. He "'lowed" they went so fast through the world, and saw so many different people; and in their lifetime served on different roads, maybe, and surely they must meet with some excitement. And in that of a steamboat captain? "Oh! now yew're talk'n', mister! A right smart business, thet! A boss'n' o' people 'round, a seein' o' th' world, and noth'n' 't all to do! Now, that's right smart, I take it!" It was plain where his heart lay. He saw the steamers pass the farm daily, and once he had watched one unload at Point Pleasant--well, that was the life for him! Sam will have to be up and doing, if he is to be the monarch of a stern-wheeler on the Ohio; but many another "cracker" boy has attained this exalted station, and Sam is of the sort to win his way. Soon the kine came lowing into the yard, and my piquant young friend who had met me at the gate stood in the doorway talking with us both, while their brother Charley, an awkward, self-conscious lad of ten, took my pail and milked into it the required two quarts. It is a large, square room, where I was so agreeably entertained. The well-chinked logs are scrupulously whitewashed; the parental bed, with gay pillow shams, bought from a peddler, occupies one corner; a huge brick fireplace opens black and yawning, into the base of a great cobblestone chimney reared against the house without, after the fashion of the country; on pegs about, hang the best clothes of the family; while a sewing-machine, a deal table, a cheap little mirror as big as my palm, a few unframed chromos, and a gaudy "Family Record" chart hung in an old looking-glass frame,--with appropriate holes for tintypes of father, mother and children,--complete the furnishings of the apartment, which is parlor, sitting-room, dining-room, and bedroom all in one. My little queen was evidently proud of her throne-room, and noted with satisfaction my interest in the Family Record. When I had paid her for butter and eggs, at retail rates, she threw in an extra egg, and, despite my protests, would have Charley take the pail out to the cow, "for an extra squirt or two, for good measure!" I was bidding them all good-bye, and the queen was pressing me to come again in the morning "fer more stuff, ef ye 'lowed yew wanted any," when the mother of the little brood appeared from over the fields, where she had been to carry water to her lord. A fair, intelligent, rather fine-looking woman, but barefooted like the rest; from her neck behind, dangled a red sunbonnet, and a sunny-haired child of five was in her arms--"sort o' weak in her lungs, poor thing!" she sadly said, as I snapped my fingers at the smiling tot. I tarried a moment with the good mother, as, sitting upon the porch, she serenely smiled upon her children, whose eyes were now lit with responsive love; and I wondered if there were not some romance hidden here, whereby a dash of gentler blood had through this sweet-tempered woman been infused into the coarse clay of the bottom. [Footnote A: Notably, Ashe's _Travels_; but Palmer, while saying that "they are the only obstruction to the navigation of the Ohio, except the rapids at Louisville," declares them to be of slight difficulty, and, referring to Ashe's account, says, "Like great part of his book, it is all romance."] [Footnote B: The last buffalo on record, in the Upper Ohio region, was killed in the Great Kanawha Valley, a dozen miles from Charleston, W. Va., in 1815. Five years later, in the same vicinity, was killed probably the last elk seen east of the Ohio.] CHAPTER XI. Battle of Point Pleasant--The story of Gallipolis--Rosebud--Huntington--The genesis of a house-boater. Near Glenwood, W. Va., Thursday, May 17th.--By eight o'clock this morning we were in Point Pleasant, W. Va., at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River (263 miles). Céloron was here, the eighteenth of August, 1749, and on the east bank of the river, the site of the present village, buried at the foot of an elm one of his leaden plates asserting the claim of France to the Ohio basin. Ninety-seven years later, a boy unearthed this interesting but futile proclamation, and it rests to-day in the museum of the Virginia Historical Society. The Great Kanawha Valley long had a romantic interest for Englishmen concerned in Western lands. It was in the grant to the old Ohio Company; but that corporation, handicapped in many ways, was practically dead by the time of Lord Dunmore's war. It had many rivals, more or less ephemeral, among them the scheme of George Mercer (1773) to have the territory between the Alleghanies and the Ohio--the West Virginia of to-day--erected into the "Province of Vandalia," with himself as governor, and his capital at the mouth of the Great Kanawha. Washington owned a ten-thousand-acre tract on both sides of the river, commencing a short distance above the mouth, which he surveyed in person, in October, 1770; and in 1773 we find him advertising to sell or lease it; among the inducements he offered was, "the scheme for establishing a new government on the Ohio," and the contiguity of his lands "to the seat of government, which, it is more than probable, will be fixed at the mouth of the Great Kanawha." Had not the Revolution broken out, and nipped this and many another budding plan for Western colonization, there is little doubt that what we call West Virginia would have been established as a state, a century earlier than it was.[A] A few days ago we were at Mingo Bottom, where lived Chief Logan, whose family were treacherously slaughtered by border ruffians (1774). The Mingos, ablaze with the fire of vengeance, carried the war-pipe through the neighboring villages; runners were sent in every direction to rouse the tribes; tomahawks were unearthed, war-posts were planted; messages of defiance sent to the Virginians; and in a few days Lord Dunmore's war was in full swing, from Cumberland Gap to Fort Pitt, from the Alleghanies to the Wabash. His lordship, then governor of Virginia, was full of energy, and proved himself a competent military manager. The settlers were organized; the rude log forts were garrisoned; forays were made against the Indian villages as far away as Muskingum, and an army of nearly three thousand backwoodsmen, armed with smooth-bores and clad in fringed buckskin hunting-shirts, was put in the field. One division of this army, eleven hundred strong, under Gen. Andrew Lewis, descended the Great Kanawha River, and on Point Pleasant met Cornstalk, a famous Shawnee chief, who, while at first peaceful, had by the Logan tragedy been made a fierce enemy of the whites, and was now the leader of a thousand picked warriors, gathered from all parts of the Northwest. On the 10th of October, from dawn until dusk, was here waged in a gloomy forest one of the most bloody and stubborn hand-to-hand battles ever fought between Indians and whites--especially notable, too, because for the first time the rivals were about equal in number. The combatants stood behind trees, in Indian fashion, and it is hard to say who displayed the best generalship, Cornstalk or Lewis.[B] When the pall of night covered the hideous contest, the whites had lost one-fifth of their number, while the savages had sustained but half as many casualties. Cornstalk's followers had had enough, however, and withdrew before daylight, leaving the field to the Americans. A few days later, General Lewis joined Lord Dunmore--who headed the other wing of the army, which had proceeded by the way of Forts Pitt and Gower--on the Pickaway plains, in Ohio; and there a treaty was made with the Indians, who assented to every proposition made them. They surrendered all claim to lands south of the Ohio River, returned their white prisoners and stolen horses, and gave hostages for future good behavior. Here at Point Pleasant, a year later, Fort Randolph was built, and garrisoned by a hundred men; for, despite the treaty, the Indians were still troublesome. For a long time, Pittsburg, Redstone, and Randolph were the only garrisoned forts on the frontier. The Point Pleasant of to-day is a dull, sleepy town of twenty-five hundred inhabitants, with that unkempt air and preponderance of lounging negroes, so common to small Southern communities. The bottom is rolling, fringed with large hills, and on the Ohio side drops suddenly for fifty feet to a shelving beach of gravel and clay. Crooked Creek, in whose narrow, winding valley some of the severest fighting was had, empties into the Kanawha a half-mile up the stream, at the back of the town. It was painful to meet several men of intelligence, who had long been engaged in trade here, to whom the Battle of Point Pleasant was a shadowy event, whose date they could not fix, nor whose importance understand; it seemed to be little more a part of their lives, than an obscure contest between Matabeles and whites, in far-off Africa. It is time that our Western and Southern folk were awakened to an appreciation of the fact that they have a history at their doors, quite as significant in the annals of civilization as that which induces pilgrimages to Ticonderoga and Bunker Hill. Four miles below, Pilgrim was beached for a time at Gallipolis, O. (267 miles), which has a story all its own. The district belonged, a century ago, to the Scioto Company, an offshoot of the Marietta enterprise. Joel Barlow, the "poet of the Revolution," was sent to Paris (May, 1788) as agent for the sale of lands. As the result of his personal popularity there, and his flaming immigration circulars and maps, he disposed of a hundred thousand acres; to settle on which, six hundred French emigrants sailed for America, in February, 1790. They were peculiarly unsuited for colonization, even under the most favorable conditions--being in the main physicians, jewelers and other artisans, a few mechanics, and noblemen's servants, while many were without trade or profession. Upon arrival in Alexandria, Va., they found that their deeds were valueless, the land never having been paid for by the Scioto speculators; moreover, the tract was filled with hostile Indians. However, five hundred of them pushed on to the region, by way of Redstone, and reached here by flatboat, in a destitute condition. The Marietta neighbors were as kind as circumstances would allow, and cabins were built for them on what is now the Public Square of Gallipolis. But they were ignorant of the first principles of forestry or gardening; the initial winter was exceptionally severe, Indian forays sapped the life of the colony, yellow fever decimated the survivors; and, altogether, the little settlement suffered a series of disasters almost unparalleled in the story of American colonization. Although finally reimbursed by Congress with a special land grant, the emigrants gradually died off, until now, so at least we were assured, but three families of descendants of the original Gauls are now living here. It was the American element, aided by sturdy Germans, who in time took hold of the decayed French settlement, and built up the prosperous little town of six thousand inhabitants which we find to-day. It is a conservative town, with little perceptible increase in population; but there are many fine brick blocks, the stores have large stocks attractively displayed, and there is in general a comfortable tone about the place, which pleases a stranger. The Public Square, where the first Gauls had their little forted town, appears to occupy the space of three or four city blocks; there is the customary band-stand in the center, and seats plentifully provided along the graveled walks which divide neat plots of grass. Over the riverward entrance to the square, is an arch of gas-pipe, perforated for illumination, and bearing the dates, "1790-1890,"--a relic, this, of the centennial which Gallipolis celebrated in the last-named year. It was with some difficulty that we found a camping-place, this evening. For several miles, the approaches were nearly knee-deep in mud for a dozen feet back from the water's edge, or else the banks were too steep, or the farmers had cultivated so closely to the brink as to leave us no room for the tent. In one gruesome spot on the Ohio bank, where a projecting log fortunately served as a pier, the Doctor landed for a prospecting tour; while I ascended a zigzag path, through steep and rugged land, to a nest of squalid cabins perched by a shabby hillside road. A vicious dog came down to meet me half-way, and might have succeeded in carrying off a portion of my clothing had not his owner whistled him back. A queer, dingy, human wasp-nest, this dirty little shanty hamlet of Rosebud. Pigs and children wallowed in comradeship, and as every cabin on the precipitous slope necessarily has a basement, this is used as the common barn for chickens, goats, pigs, and cow. It was pleasant to find that there was no sweet milk to be had in Rosebud, for it is kept in open pans, in these fetid rooms, and soon sours--and the cows had not yet come down from the hills. Water, too, was at a premium. There was none to be had, save what had fallen from the clouds, and been stored in a foul cistern, which seemed common property. I drew a pailful of it, not to displease the disheveled group which surrounded me, full of questions; but on the first turning in the lane, emptied the vessel upon the back of a pig, which was darting by with murderous squeal. The long twilight was well nigh spent, when, on the Ohio side a mile or two above Glenwood, W. Va. (287 miles), we came upon a wide, level beach of gravel, below a sloping, willowed terrace, above which sharply rose the "second bottom." Ascending an angling farm roadway, while the others pitched camp, I walked over the undulating bottom to the nearest of a group of small, neat farmhouses, and applied for milk. While a buxom maid went out and milked a Jersey, that had chanced to come home ahead of her fellows, I sat on the rear porch gossiping with the farm-wife--a Pennsylvania-Dutch dame of ample proportions, attired in light-blue calico, and with huge spectacles over her broad, flat nose. She and her "man" own a hundred and fifty acres on the bottom, with three cows and other stock in proportion, and sell butter to those neighbors who have no cows, and to houseboat people. As for these latter, though they were her customers, she had none too good an opinion of them; they pretended to fish, but in reality only picked up a living from the farmers; nevertheless, she did know of some "weakly, delicate people" who had taken to boat life for economy's sake, and because an invalid could at least fish, and his family help him at it. * * * * * Near Huntington, W. Va., Friday, May 18th.--Backed by ravine-grooved hills, and edged at the waterside with great picturesque boulders, planed and polished by the ever-rushing river, the little bottom farms along our path to-day are pretty bits. But the houses are the reverse of this, having much the aspect of slave-cabins of the olden time--small, one-story, log and frame shanties, roof and gables shingled with "shakes," and little vegetable gardens inclosed by palings. The majority of these small farmers--whose tracts seldom exceed a hundred acres--rent their land, rather than own it. The plan seems to be half-and-half as to crops, with a rental fee for house and pasturage. One man, having a hundred-and-twenty acres, told me he paid three dollars a month for his house, and for pasturage a dollar a month per head. We were in several of the small towns to-day. At Millersport, O. (293 miles), while W---- and the Doctor were up town, the Boy and I remained at the wharf-boat to talk with the owner. The wharf-boat is a conspicuous object at every landing of importance, being a covered barge used as a storehouse for coming and going steamboat freight. It is a private enterprise, for public convenience, with certain monopolistic privileges at the incorporated towns. This Millersport boat cost twelve hundred dollars; the proprietor charges twenty per cent of each freight-bill, for handling and storing goods, a fee of twenty-five cents for each steamer that lands, and certain special fees for live stock. Athalia, Haskellville and Guyandotte were other representative towns. Stave-making appears to be the chief industry, and, as timber is getting scarce, the communities show signs of decay. We had been told, above, that Huntington, W. Va. (306 miles), was "a right smart chunk of a town." And it is. There are sixteen thousand people here, in a finely-built city spread over a broad, flat plain. Brick and stone business buildings abound; the broad streets are paved with brick, and an electric-car line runs out along the bottom, through the suburb of Ceredo, W. Va., to Catlettsburg, Ky., nine miles away. Huntington is the center of a large group of riverside towns supported by iron-making and other industries--Guyandotte and Ceredo, in West Virginia; Catlettsburg, just over the border in Kentucky; and Proctorville, Broderickville, Frampton, Burlington, and South Point, on the opposite shore. We are camping to-night in the dense willow grove which lines the West Virginia beach from Huntington to the Big Sandy. Above us, on the wide terrace, are fields and orchards, beyond which we occasionally hear the gong of electric cars. A public path runs by the tent, leading from the lower settlements into Huntington. Among our visitors have been two houseboat men, whose craft is moored a quarter of a mile below. One of them is tall, thick-set, forty, with a round, florid face, and huge mustaches,--evidently a jolly fellow at his best, despite a certain dubious, piratical air; a jaunty, narrow-brimmed straw hat is perched over one ear, to add to the general effect; and between his teeth a corn-cob pipe. His younger companion is medium-sized, slim, and loose-jointed, with a baggy gait, his cap thrown over his head, with the visor in the rear--a rustic clown, not yet outgrown his freckles. But three weeks from the parental farm in Putnam County, Ky., the world is as yet a romance to him. The fellow is interesting, because in him can be seen the genesis of a considerable element of the houseboat fraternity. I wonder how long it will be before his partner has him broken in as a river-pirate of the first water. [Footnote A: Washington was much interested in a plan to connect, by a canal, the James and Great Kanawha Rivers, separated at their sources by a portage of but a few miles in length. The distance from Point Pleasant to Richmond is 485 miles. In 1785, Virginia incorporated the James River Company, of which Washington was the first president. The project hung fire, because of "party spirit and sectional jealousies," until 1832, when a new company was incorporated, under which the James was improved (1836-53), but the Kanawha was untouched. In 1874, United States engineers presented a plan calling for an expenditure of sixty millions, but there the matter rests. The Kanawha is navigable by large steamers for sixty miles, up to the falls at Charleston, and beyond almost to its source, by light craft.] [Footnote B: Hall, in _Romance of Western History_ (1820), says that when Washington was tendered command of the Revolutionary army, he replied that it should rather be given to Gen. Andrew Lewis, of whose military abilities he had a high opinion. Lewis was a captain in the Little Meadows affair (1752), and a companion of Washington in Braddock's defeat (1755).] CHAPTER XII. In a fog--The Big Sandy--Rainy weather--Operatic gypsies--An ancient tavern. Ironton, O., Saturday, May 19th.--When we turned in, last night, it was refreshingly cool. Heavy clouds were scurrying across the face of the moon. By midnight, a copious rain was falling, wind-gusts were flapping our roof, and a sudden drop in temperature rendered sadly inadequate all the clothing we could muster into service. We slept late, in consequence, and, after rigging a wind-break with the rubber blankets, during breakfast huddled around the stove which had been brought in to replace Pilgrim under the fly. When, at half-past nine, we pushed off, our houseboat neighbors thrust their heads from the window and waved us farewell. A dense fog hung like a cloud over land and river. There was a stiff north-east wind, which we avoided by seeking the Ohio shore, where the high hills formed a break; there too, the current was swift, and carried us down right merrily. Shattered by the wind, great banks of fog rolled up stream, sometimes enveloping us so as to narrow our view to a radius of a dozen rods,--again, through the rifts, giving us momentary glimpses on the right, of rich green hills, towering dark and steep above us, iridescent with browns, and grays, and many shades of green; of whitewashed cabins, single or in groups, standing out with startling distinctness from sombre backgrounds; of houseboats, many-hued, moored to willowed banks or bolstered high upon shaly beaches; of the opposite bottom, with its corrugated cliff of clay; and, now and then, a slowly-puffing steamboat cautiously feeling its way through the chilling gloom--a monster to be avoided by little Pilgrim and her crew, for the possibility of being run down in a fog is not pleasant to contemplate. On board one of these steamers was a sorry company--apparently a Sunday-school excursion. Children in gala dress huddled in swarms on the lee of the great smoke-stacks, and in imagination we heard their teeth chatter as they glided by us and in another moment were engulfed in the mist. We catch sight for a moment, through a cloud crevasse, of Ceredo, the last town in West Virginia--a small saw-milling community stuck upon the edge of the clay cliff, with the broad level bottom stretching out behind like a prairie. A giant railway bridge here spans the Ohio--a weird, impressive thing, as we sweep under it in the swirling current, and crane our necks to see the great stone piers lose themselves in the cloud. But the Big Sandy River (315 miles), which divides West Virginia and Kentucky, was wholly lost to view. In an opening a few moments later, however, we had a glimpse of the dark line of her valley, below which the hills again descend to the Ohio's bank. Catlettsburg, the first Kentucky town, is at the junction, and extends along the foot of the ridge for a mile or two, apparently not over two blocks wide, with a few outlying shanties on the shoulders of the uplands. Washington was surveying here, on the Big Sandy, in 1770, and entered for one John Fry 2,084 acres round the site of Louisa, a dozen miles up the river; this was the first survey made in Kentucky--but a few months later than Boone's first advent as a hunter on the "dark and bloody ground," and five years before the first permanent settlement in the State. Washington deserves to be remembered as a Kentucky pioneer. We have not only steamers to avoid,--they appear to be unusually numerous about here,--but snags as well. With care, the whereabouts of a steamer can be distinguished as it steals upon us, from the superior whiteness of its column of "exhaust," penetrating the bank of dark gray fog; and occasionally the echoes are awakened by the burly roar of its whistle, which, in times like this, acts as a fog-horn. But the snag is an insidious enemy, not revealing itself until we are within a rod or two, and then there is a quick cry of warning from the stern sheets--"Hard a-port!" or "Starboard, quick!" and only a strong side-pull, aided by W----'s paddle, sends us free from the jagged, branching mass which might readily have swamped poor Pilgrim had she taken it at full tilt. At Ashland, Ky. (320 miles), we stopped for supplies. There are six thousand inhabitants here, with some good buildings and a fine, broad, stone wharf, but it is rather a dingy place. The steamer "Bonanza" had just landed. On the double row of flaggings leading up to the summit of the bank, were two ant-like processions of Kentucky folk--one, leisurely climbing townward with their bags and bundles, the other hurrying down with theirs to the boat, which was ringing its bell, blowing off steam, and in other ways creating an uproar which seemed to turn the heads of the negro roustabouts and draymen, who bustled around with a great chatter and much false motion. The railway may be doing the bulk of the business, but it does it unostentatiously; the steamboat makes far more disturbance in the world, and is a finer spectacle. Dozens of boys are lounging at the wharf foot, watching the lively scene with fascinated eyes, probably every one of them stoutly possessed of an ambition akin to that of my young friend in the Cheshire Bottom. A rain-storm broke the fog--a cold, raw, miserable rain. No clothing we could don appeared to suffice against the chill; and so at last we pitched camp upon the Ohio shore, three miles above the Ironton wharf (325 miles). It is a muddy, dreary nest up here, among the dripping willows. Just behind us on the slope, is the inclined track of the Norfolk & Western railway-transfer, down which trains are slid to a huge slip, and thence ferried over the river into Kentucky; above that, on a narrow terrace, is an ordinary railway line; and still higher, up a slippery clay bank, lies the cottage-strewn bottom which stretches on into Ironton (13,000 inhabitants). We were a sorry-looking party, at lunch this noon, hovering over the smoking stove which was set in the tent door, with a wind-screen in front, and moist bedding hung all about in the vain hope of drying it in the feeble heat. And sorrier still, through the long afternoon, as, each encased in a sleeping-bag, we sat upon our cots circling around the stove, W---- reading to us between chattering teeth from Barrie's _When a Man's Single_. 'Tis good Scottish weather we're having; but somehow our thoughts could not rest on Thrums, and we were, for the nonce, a wee bit miserable. Dinner degenerated into a smoky bite, and then at dusk there was a council of war. The air hangs thick with moisture, our possessions are in various stages from damp to sopping wet, and efforts at drying over the little stove are futile under such conditions. It was demonstrated that there was not bed-clothing enough, in such an emergency as this; indeed, an inspection of that which was merely damp, revealed the fact that but one person could be made comfortable to-night. Our bachelor Doctor volunteered to be that one. So we bade him God-speed, and with toilet bag in hand I led my little family up a tortuous path, so slippery in the rain that we were obliged in our muddy climb to cling to grass-clumps and bushes. And thus, wet and bedraggled, did we sally forth upon the Ironton Bottom, seeking shelter for the night. Fortunately we had not far to seek. A kindly family took us in, despite our gruesome aspect and our unlikely story--for what manner of folk are we, that go trapesing about in a skiff, in such weather as this, coming from nobody knows where and camping o' nights in the muddy river bottoms? Instead of sending us on, in the drenching rain, to a hotel, three miles down the road, or offering us a ticket on the Associated Charities, these blessed people open their hearts and their beds to us, without question, and what more can weary pilgrims pray for? * * * * * Sciotoville, O., Sunday, May 20th.--After breakfast, and settling our modest score, we rejoined the Doctor, and at ten o'clock pulled out again; being bidden good-bye at the landing, by the children of our hostess, who had sent us by them a bottle of fresh milk as a parting gift. It had rained almost continuously, throughout the night. To-day we have a dark gray sky, with fickle winds. A charming color study, all along our path; the reds and grays and yellows of the high clay-banks which edge the reciprocating bottoms, the browns and yellows of hillside fields, the deep greens of forest verdure, the vivid white of bankside cabins, and, in the background of each new vista, bold headlands veiled in blue. W---- and the Boy are in the stern sheets, wrapped in blankets, for there is a smart chill in the air, and we at the oars pull lively for warmth. In our twisting course, sometimes we have a favoring breeze, and the Doctor rears the sail; but it is a brief delight, for the next turn brings the wind in our teeth, and we set to the blades with renewed energy. In the main, we make good time. The sugar-loaf hills, with their castellated escarpments, go marching by with stately sweep. Greenup Court House (334 miles) is a bright little Kentucky county-seat, well-built at the feet of thickly-forested uplands. At the lower end of the village, the Little Sandy enters through a wooded dale, which near the mouth opens into a broad meadow. Not many miles below, is a high sloping beach, picturesquely bestrewn with gigantic boulders which have in ages past rolled down from the hill-tops above. Here, among the rocks, we again set up a rude screen from the still piercing wind; and, each wrapped in a gay blanket, lunch as operatic gypsies might, in a romantic glen, enjoying mightily our steaming chocolate, and the warmth of our friendly stove--for dessert, taking a merry scamper for flowers, over the ragged ascent from whence the boulders came. Everywhere about is the trumpet creeper, but not yet in bloom. The Indian turnip is in blossom here, and so the smaller Solomon's seal, yellow spikes of toad-flax, blue and pink phlox, glossy May apple; high up on the hillside, the fire pink and wintergreen; and, down by the sandy shore, great beds of blue wild lupin, and occasionally stately spikes of the familiar moth mullein. With the temperature falling rapidly, and a drizzling rain taking the starch out of our enthusiasm, we early sought a camping ground. For miles along here, springs ooze from the base of the high clay bank walling in the wide and rocky Ohio beach, and dry spots are few and far between. We found one, however, a half mile above Little Scioto River (346 miles),[A] with drift-wood enough to furnish us for years, and the beach thick-strewn with fossils of a considerable variety of small bivalves, which latter greatly delighted the Doctor and the Boy, who have brought enough specimens to the tent door to stock a college museum. Dinner over, the crew hauled Pilgrim under cover, and within prepared for her sailing-master a cosy bed, with the entire ship's stock of sleeping-bags and blankets. W----, the Boy, and I then started off to find quarters in Sciotoville (1,000 inhabitants), which lies just below the river's mouth, here a dozen rods wide. Scrambling up the slimy bank, through a maze of thorn trees, brambles, and sycamore scrubs, we gained the fertile bottom above, all luscious with tall grasses bespangled with wild red roses and the showy pentstemon. The country road leading into the village is some distance inland, but at last we found it just beyond a patch of Indian corn waist high, and followed it, through a covered bridge, and down to a little hotel at the lower end of town. A quaint, old-fashioned house, the Sciotoville tavern, with an inner gallery looking out into a small garden of peaches, apples, pears, plums, and grapes--a famous grape country this, by the way. In our room, opening from the gallery, is an antique high-post bedstead; everywhere about are similar relics of an early day. In keeping with the air of serene old age, which pervades the hostelry, is the white-haired landlady herself. In well-starched apron, white cap, and gold-rimmed glasses, she benignly sits rocking by the office stove, her feet on the fender, reading Wallace's _Prince of India_; and looking, for all the world, as if she had just stepped out of some old portrait of--well, of a tavern-keeping Martha Washington. [Footnote A: Two miles up the Little Scioto, Pine Creek enters. Perhaps a mile and a half up this creek was, in 1771, a Mingo town called Horse Head Bottom, which cuts some figure in border history as a nest of Indian marauders.] CHAPTER XIII. The Scioto, and the Shawanese--A night at Rome--Limestone--Keels, flats, and boatmen of the olden time. Rome, O., Monday, May 21st.--At intervals through the night, rain fell, and the temperature was but 46° at sunrise. However, by the time we were afloat, the sun was fitfully gleaming through masses of gray cloud, for a time giving promise of a warmer day. Dark shadows rested on the romantic ravines, and on the deep hollows of the hills; but elsewhere over this gentle landscape of wooded amphitheatres, broad green meadows, rocky escarpments, and many-colored fields, light and shade gayly chased each other. Never were the vistas of the widening river more beautiful than to-day. There are saw-mill and fire-brick industries in the little towns, which would be shabby enough in the full glare of day. But they are all glorified in this changing light, which brings out the rich yellows and reds in sharp relief against the gloomy background of the hills, and mellows into loveliness the soft grays of unpainted wood. At the mouth of the Scioto (354 miles), is Portsmouth, O. (15,000 inhabitants), a well-built, substantial town, with good shops. It lies on a hill-backed terrace some forty feet above the level of the neighboring bottoms, which give evidence of being victims of the high floods periodically covering the low lands about the junction of the rivers. Just across the Scioto is Alexandria, and on the Kentucky side of the Ohio can be seen the white hamlet of Springville, at the feet of the dentated hills which here closely approach the river. The country about the mouth of the Scioto has long figured in Western annals. Being a favorite rendezvous for the Shawanese, it naturally became a resort for French and English fur-traders. The principal part of the first Shawanese village--Shannoah Town, in the old journals--was below the Scioto's mouth, on the site of Alexandria; it was the chief town of this considerable tribe, and here Gist was warned back, when in March, 1751, he ventured thus far while inspecting lands for the Ohio Company. Two years later, there was a great--perhaps an unprecedented--flood in the Ohio, the water rising fifty feet above the ordinary level, and destroying the larger part of the Shawanese village. Some of the Indians moved to the Little Miami, and others up the Scioto, where they built, successively, Old and New Chillicothe; but the majority remained, and rebuilt their town on the higher land north of the Scioto, where Portsmouth now stands. An outlying band had had, from before Gist's day, a small town across the Ohio, the site of Springville; and it was here that George Croghan had his stone trading house, which was doubtless, after the manner of the times, a frontier fortress. In the French and Indian war (1758), the Shawanese, tiring of continual conflict, withdrew from their Ohio River settlements to Old (or Upper) Chillicothe, and thus closed the once important fur-trade at the mouth of the Scioto. It was while the Indian town at Portsmouth was still new (1755), that a party of Shawanese brought here a Mrs. Mary Inglis, whom they had captured while upon a scalping foray into Southwestern Virginia. The story of the remarkable escape of this woman, at Big Bone Lick, of her long and terrible flight through the wilderness along the southern bank of the Ohio and up the Great Kanawha Valley, and her final return to home and kindred, who viewed her as one delivered from the grave, is one of the most thrilling in Western history.[A] Although the Shawanese had removed from their villages on the Ohio, they still lived in new towns in the north, within easy striking distance of the great river; and, until the close of the eighteenth century, were a continual source of alarm to those whose business led them to follow this otherwise inviting highway to the continental interior. Flatboats bearing traders, immigrants, and travelers were frequently waylaid by the savages, who exhausted a fertile ingenuity in luring their victims to an ambuscade ashore; and, when not successful in this, would in narrow channels, or when the current swept the craft near land, subject the voyagers to a fierce fusilade of bullets, against which even stout plank barricades proved of small avail. Vanceburgh, Ky. (375 miles), is a little town at the bottom of a pretty amphitheatre of hills. There was a floating photographer there, as we passed, with a gang-plank run out to the shore, and framed specimens of his work hung along the town side of his ample barge. Men with teams were getting wagon-loads of sand from the beach, for building purposes. And, a mile or two down, a floating saw and planing-mill--the "Clipper," which we had seen before, up river--was busied upon logs which were being rolled down the beach from the bank above. There are several such mills upon the river, all seemingly occupied with "tramp work," for there is a deal of logging carried on, in a small and careful way, by farmers living on these wooded hills. Vanceburgh was for the time bathed in sunlight; but, as we continued on our way, a heavy rain-cloud came creeping up over the dark Ohio hills, and, descending, cut off our view, at last lustily pelting us as we sat encased in rubber. We had been in our ponchos most of the day, as much for warmth as for shelter; for there was an all-pervading chill, which the fickle sun, breaking its early promise, had failed to dissipate. Thus, amid showers alternating with sunbeams, we proceeded unto Rome (381 miles). An Ohio village, this Rome, and so fallen from its once proud estate that its postoffice no longer bears the name--it is simply "Stout's," if, in these degenerate days, you would send a letter hither. It was smartly raining, when we put in on the stony beach above Rome. The tent went up in a hurry, and under it the cargo; but by the time all was housed the sun gushed out again, and, stretching a line, we soon had our bedding hung to dry. It is a charming situation; in this melting atmosphere, we have perhaps the most striking effects of cloud, hill, bottom, islands, and glancing river, which have yet been vouchsafed us. The Romans, like most rural folk along the river below Wheeling, chiefly drink cistern water. Earlier in our pilgrimage, we stoutly declined to patronize these rain-water reservoirs, and I would daily go far afield in search of a well; but lately, necessity has driven us to accept the cistern, and often we find it even preferable to the well, on those rare occasions when the latter can be found at villages or farm-houses. But there are cisterns and cisterns--foul holes like that at Rosebud, others that are neatness itself, with all manner of grades between. As for river water, ever yellow with clay, and thick as to motes, much of it is used in the country parts. This morning, a bevy of negroes came down the bank from a Kentucky field; and each in turn, creeping out on a drift log,--for the ground is usually muddy a few feet up from the water's edge,--lay flat on his stomach and drank greedily from the roily mess. At dusk, there was again a damp chill, and for the third time we left the Doctor to keep bachelor's hall upon the beach. It was raining smartly by the time the tavern was reached, nearly a mile down the bank. Our advent caused a rare scurrying to and fro, for two commercial "drummers," who were to depart by the early morning boat, occupied the "reg'lar spar' room," the landlady informed us, and a bit of a cubby-hole off the back stairs had to be arranged for us. Guests are rarities, at the hostelry in Rome. * * * * * Near Ripley, O., Tuesday, May 22nd.--There was an inch of snow last night, on the hills about, and a morning Cincinnati paper records a heavy fall in the Pennsylvania mountains. The storm is general, and the river rose two feet over night. When we set off, in mid-morning, it was raining heavily; but in less than an hour the clouds broke, and the rest of the day has been an alternation of chilling showers and bursts of warm sunshine, with the same succession, of alluring vistas, over which play broad bands of changing light and shade, and overhead the storm clouds torn and tossed in the upper currents. Our landlord at Rome asserted at breakfast that Kentucky was fifty years behind the Ohio side, in improvements of every sort. Thus far, we have not ourselves noticed differences of that degree. Doubtless before the late civil war,--all the ante-bellum travelers agree in this,--when the blight of slavery was resting on Virginia and Kentucky, the south shore of the Ohio was as another country; but to-day, so far as we can ascertain from a surface view, the little villages on either side are equally dingy and woe-begone, and large Southern towns like Wheeling, Parkersburg, Point Pleasant, and Maysville are very nearly an offset to Steubenville, Marietta, Pomeroy, Ironton, and Portsmouth. North-shore towns of wealth and prominence are more numerous than on the Dixie bank, and are as a rule larger and somewhat better kept, with the negro element less conspicuous; but to say that the difference is anywhere near as marked as the landlord averred, or as my own previous reading on the subject led me to expect, is grossly to exaggerate. After leaving Manchester, O. (394 miles), with a beautiful island at its door, there are spasmodic evidences of the nearness of a great city market. A large proportion of the hills are completely denuded of their timber, and patched with rectangular fields of green, brown, and yellow; upon the bottoms there are frequent truck farms; now and then are stone quarries upon the banks, with capacious barges moored in front; and upon one or two rocky ledges were stone-crushers, getting out material for concrete pavements. When we ask the bargemen, in passing, whither their loads are destined, the invariable reply is, "The city"--meaning Cincinnati, still seventy miles away. Limestone Creek (405 miles) occupies a large space in Western story, for so insignificant a stream. It is now not over a rod in width, and at no season can it be over two or three. One finds it with difficulty along the mill-strewn shore of Maysville, Ky., the modern outgrowth of the Limestone village of pioneer days. Limestone, settled four years before Marietta or Cincinnati, was long Kentucky's chief port of entry on the Ohio; immigrants to the new state, who came down the Ohio, almost invariably booked for this point, thence taking stage to Lexington, and travelers in the early day seldom passed it by unvisited. But years before there was any settlement here, the valley of Limestone Creek, which comes gently down from low-lying hills, was regarded as a convenient doorway into Kentucky. When (1776) George Rogers Clark was coming down the river from Pittsburg, with powder given by Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, for the defence of Kentucky settlers from British-incited savages, he was chased by the latter, and, putting into this creek, hastily buried the precious cargo on its banks. From here it was cautiously taken overland to the little forts, by relays of pioneers, through a gauntlet of murderous fire. About twenty-five miles from Limestone, too, was another attraction of the early time,--the great Blue Lick sulphur spring; here, in a valley surrounded by wooded hills, formerly congregated great herds of buffalo and deer, which licked the salty earth, and hunters soon learned that this was a royal ground for game. The Battle of the Blue Lick (1782) will ever be famous in the annals of Kentucky. The Ohio was a mighty waterway into the continental interior, in the olden days of Limestone. Its only compeer was the so-called "Wilderness Road," overland through Cumberland Gap--the successor of "Boone's trail," just as Braddock's Road was the outgrowth of "Nemacolin's path." Until several years after the Revolutionary War, the country north of the Ohio was still Indian land, and settlement was restricted to the region south of the river; so that practically all West-going roads from the coast colonies centered either on Fort Pitt or Redstone, or on Cumberland Gap. On the out-going trip, the Wilderness Road was the more toilsome of the two, but it was safer, for the Ohio's banks were beset with thieving and often murdering savages. In returning east, many who had descended the river preferred going overland through the Gap, to painfully pulling up stream through the shallows, with the danger of Indians many times greater than when gliding down the deep current. The distance over the two routes from Philadelphia, was nearly equal, when the windings of the river were taken into account; but the Carolinians and the Georgians found Boone's Wilderness Road the shorter of the two, in their migrations to the promised land of "Ol' Kaintuck." And we should not overlook the fact, that of much importance was still a third route, up the James and down the Great Kanawha; a route whose advantage to Virginia, Washington early saw, and tried in vain to have improved by a canal connecting the two rivers.[B] Even before the opening of the Revolution, the Ohio was the path of a considerable emigration. We have seen Washington going down to the Great Kanawha with his surveying party, in 1770, and finding that settlers were hurrying into the country for a hundred miles below Fort Pitt. By the close of the Revolution, the Ohio was a familiar stream. Pittsburg, from a small trading hamlet and fording-place, had grown by 1785 to have a thousand inhabitants, chiefly supported by boat-building and the Kentucky carrying trade; and boat-yards were common up both the Monongahela and the Youghiogheny, for a distance of sixty miles. Nevertheless, it was not until 1792 that there were regular conveniences for carrying passengers and freight down the Ohio; the emigrant or trader, on arrival at Pittsburg or Redstone, had generally to wait until he could either charter a boat or have one built for him, although sometimes he found a chance "passenger flat" going down.[C] This difficulty in securing river transportation was one of the reasons why the majority chose the Wilderness Road. "The first thing that strikes a stranger from the Atlantic," says Flint (1814), "is the singular, whimsical, and amusing spectacle of the varieties of water-craft, of all shapes and structures." These, Flint, who knew the river well, separates into seven classes: (1) "Stately barges," the size of an Atlantic schooner, with "a raised and outlandish-looking deck;" one of these required a crew of twenty-five to work it up stream. (2) Keel-boats--long, slender, and graceful in form, carrying from fifteen to thirty tons, easily propelled over the shallows, and much used in low water, and in hunting trips to Missouri, Arkansas, and the Red River country. (3) Kentucky flats (or "broad-horns"), "a species of ark, very nearly resembling a New England pig-stye;" these were from forty to a hundred feet in length, fifteen feet in beam, and carried from twenty to seventy tons. Some of these flats were not unlike the house-boats of to-day. "It is no uncommon spectacle to see a large family, old and young, servants, cattle, hogs, horses, sheep, fowls, and animals of all kinds," all embarked on one such bottom. (4) Covered "sleds," ferry-flats, or Alleghany skiffs, carrying from eight to twelve tons. (5) Pirogues, of from two to four tons burthen, "sometimes hollowed from one big tree, or the trunks of two trees united, and a plank rim fitted to the upper part." (6) Common skiffs and dug-outs. (7) "Monstrous anomalies," not classifiable, and often whimsical in design. To these might be added the "floating shops or stores, with a small flag out to indicate their character," so frequently seen by Palmer (1817), and thriftily surviving unto this day, minus the flag. And Hall (1828) speaks of a flat-bottomed row-boat, "twelve feet long, with high sides and roof," carrying an aged couple down the river, they cared not where, so long as they could find a comfortable home in the West, for their declining and now childless years. The first four classes here enumerated, were allowed to drift down stream with the current, being steered by long sweeps hung on pivots. The average speed was about three miles an hour, but the distances made were considerable, from the fact that in the earliest days they were, from fear of Indians, usually kept on the move through day and night,--the crew taking turns at the sweeps, that the craft might not be hung up on shore or entangled in the numerous snags and sawyers. In going up stream, the sweeps served as oars, and in the shallows long pushing-poles were used. As for the boatmen who professionally propelled the keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves--"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number of such boats frequently traveled in company. After the Indian scare was over, they generally stopped over night in the settlements, and the arrival of a squadron was certain to be followed by a disturbance akin to those so familiar a few years ago in our Southwest, when the cowboys would undertake to "paint a town red." The boatmen were reckless of life, limb, and reputation, and were often more numerous than those of the villagers who cared to enforce the laws; while there was always present an element which abetted and throve on the vice of the river-men. The result was that mischief, debauchery, and outrage ran riot, and in the inevitable fights the citizens were generally beaten. The introduction of steamboats (1814) soon effected a revolution. A steamer could carry ten times as much as a barge, could go five times as fast, and required fewer men; it traveled at night, quickly passing from one port to another, pausing only to discharge or receive cargo; its owners and officers were men of character and responsibility, with much wealth in their charge, and insisted on discipline and correct deportment. The flatboat and the keel-boat were soon laid up to rot on the banks; and the boatmen either became respectable steamboat hands and farmers, or went into the Far West, where wild life was still possible. Shipment on the river, in the flatboat days, was only during the spring and autumnal floods; although an occasional summer rise, such as we are now getting, would cause a general activity. In the autumn of 1818, Hall reports that three millions of dollars' worth of merchandise were lying on the shores of the Monongahela, waiting for a rise of water to float them to their destination. "The Western merchants were lounging discontentedly about the streets of Pittsburg, or moping idly in its taverns, like the victims of an ague." The steamers did something to alleviate this condition of affairs; but it was not until the coming of railways, to carry goods quickly and cheaply across country to deep-water ports like Wheeling, that permanent relief was felt. But what of the Maysville of to-day? It extends on both sides of Limestone Creek for about two miles along the Kentucky shore, at no point apparently over five squares wide, and for the most part but two or three; for back of it forested hills rise sharply. There is a variety of industries, the business quarter is substantially built, and there are numerous comfortable homes with pretty lawns. On the opposite shore is Aberdeen, where Kentucky swains and lasses, who for one reason or another fail to get a license at home, find marriage made easy--a peaceful, pleasant, white village, with trees a-plenty, and romantic hills shutting out the north wind. We are camped to-night on a picturesque sand-slope, at the foot of a willow-edged bottom, and some seven feet above the river level. We need to perch high, for the storm has been general through the basin, and the Ohio is rising steadily. [Footnote A: See Shaler's _Kentucky_ (Amer. Commonwealth series), Collins's _History of Kentucky_, and Hale's _Trans-Alleghany Pioneers_. Shaler gives the date as 1756; but Hale, a specialist in border annals, makes it 1755.] [Footnote B: See _ante_, p. 126.] [Footnote C: Palmer (1817) paid five dollars for his passage from Pittsburg to Cincinnati (465 miles), without food, and fifty cents per hundred pounds for freight to Marietta. Imlay (1792) says the rate in his time from Pittsburg to Limestone was twenty-five cents per hundred. In 1803, Harris paid four dollars-and-a-half per hundred for freight, by wagon from Baltimore to Pittsburg.] CHAPTER XIV. Produce boats--A dead town--On the Great Bend--Grant's birthplace--The Little Miami--The genesis of Cincinnati. Point Pleasant, O., Wednesday, May 23rd.--The river rose three feet during the night. Steamers go now at full speed, no longer fearing the bars; and the swash upon shore was so violent that I was more than once awakened, each time to find the water line creeping nearer and nearer to the tent door. As we sweep onward to-day, upon an accelerated current, the fringing willows, whose roots before the rise were many feet up the slopes of sand and gravel, are gracefully dipping their boughs in the rushing flood. With the rise, come the sweepings of the beaches--bits of lumber, fallen trees, barrels, boxes, 'longshore rubbish of every sort; sometimes it hangs in ragged rafts, and we steer clear of such, for Pilgrim's progress is greater than that of these unwelcome companions of the voyage, and we wish no entangling alliances. Much tobacco is raised on the rounded, gently-sloping hills below Maysville. Away up on the acclivities, in sheltered spots near the fields in which they are to be transplanted, or in fence-corners in the ever-broadening bottoms, we note white patches of thin cloth pinned down over the young plants to protect them from untoward frosts. There are many tobacco warehouses to be seen along the banks--apparently farmers coöperate in maintaining such; and in front of each, a roadway leads down to the water's edge, indicating a steamboat landing. On the town wharves are often seen portly barrels,--locally, "puncheons,"--filled with the weed, awaiting shipment by boat; most of the product goes to Louisville, but there are also large buyers in the smaller Kentucky towns. Occasionally, to-day, we have seen moored to some rustic landing a great covered barge, quite of the fashion of the golden age of Ohio boating. At one end, a room is partitioned off to serve as cabin, and the sweeps are operated from the roof. These are produce-boats, which are laden with coarse vegetables and sometimes live stock, and floated down to Cincinnati or Louisville, and even to St. Louis and New Orleans. In ante-bellum days, produce-boats were common enough, and much money was made by speculative buyers who would dispose of their cargo in the most favorable port, sell the barge, and then return by rail or steamer; just as, in still earlier days, the keel or flatboat owner would sell both freight and vessel on the Lower Mississippi,--or abandon the craft if he could not sell it,--and "hoof it home," as a contemporary chronicler puts it. Ripley, Levanna (417 miles), Higginsport (421 miles), Chilo (431 miles), Neville (435 miles), and Point Pleasant (442 miles) are the Ohio towns to-day; and Dover (417 miles), Augusta (424 miles), and Foster (435 miles), their rivals on the Kentucky shore. Sawmills and distilleries are the leading industries, and there are broad paved wharves; but a listless air pervades them all, as if once they basked in the light of better days. Foster is rather the shabbiest of the lot. As I passed through to find the postoffice, at the upper edge of town, where the hills come down to meet the bottom, I saw that half of the store buildings still intact were closed, many dwellings and warehouses were in ruins, and numerous open cellars were grown to grass and weeds. Few people were in sight, and they loafing at the corners. The postoffice occupied a vacated store, evidently not swept these six months past. The youthful master, with chair tilted back and his feet on an old washstand which did duty as office table, was listlessly whittling a finger-ring from a peach-stone; but shoving his feet along, he made room for me to write a postal card which I had brought for the purpose. "What is the matter with this town?" I asked, as I scratched away. "Daid, I reck'n!" and he blew away the peach-stone dust which had accumulated in the folds of his greasy vest. "Yes, I see it is dead. What killed it?" "Oh! just gone daid--sort o' nat'ral daith, I reck'n." We had a pretty view this morning, three or four miles below Augusta, from the top of a tree-denuded Kentucky hill, some two hundred and fifty feet high. Hauling Pilgrim into the willows, we set out over a low, cultivated bottom, whose edges were being lapped by the rising river, to the detriment of the springing corn; then scrambling up the terrace on which the Chesapeake & Ohio railway runs, we crawled under a barb-wire fence, and ascended through a pasture, our right of way contested for a moment by a gigantic Berkshire boar, which was not easily vanquished. When at last we gained the top, by dint of clambering over rail-fences and up steep slopes bestrewn with mulleins and boulders, and over patches of freshly-plowed hardscrabble, the sight was well worth the rough climb. The broad Ohio bottom, opposite, was thick-dotted with orchard clumps, from which rose the white houses and barns of small tillers. On the generous slopes of the Kentucky hills, all corrugated with wooded ravines, were scores of fertile farmsteads, each with its ample tobacco shed--the better class of farmers on the hilltops, their buildings often silhouetted against the western sky, and the meaner sort down low on the river's bank. Through this pastoral scene, the broad river winds with noble sweep, until, both above and below, it loses itself in the purple mist of the distant hills. We are now upon the Great Bend of the Ohio, beginning at Neville (435 miles) and ending at Harris's Landing (519 miles), with North Bend (482 miles) at the apex. The bend is itself a series of convolutions, and our point of view is ever changing, so that we have kaleidoscopic vistas,--and with each new setting, good-humoredly dispute with each other, we at the oars, and the others in the stern-sheets, as to which is the more beautiful, the unfolding or the dissolving view. Our camp to-night is beside a little hillside torrent on the lower edge of Point Pleasant. We are well up on the rocky slope; an abandoned stone-quarry lies back of us, up the hill a bit; and leading into the village, half a mile away, is a picturesque country road, overhung with sumacs and honey locusts--overtopped on one side by a precipitous pasture, and on the other dropping suddenly to a beach thick-grown to willows, maples, and scrub sycamores. The Boy and I made an expedition into the town, for milk and water, but were obliged to climb one of the sharpest ascents hereabout, before our search was rewarded. A pretty little farmstead it is, up there on the lofty hill above us, with a wealth of chickens and an ample dairy, and fat fields and woods gently sloping backward into the interior. The good farm-wife was surprised that I was willing to "pack" commodities, so plentiful with her, down so steep a path; but canoeing pilgrims must not falter at trifles such as this. Point Pleasant is the birthplace of General Grant. Not every hamlet has its hero, hereabout. Everyone we met this evening,--seeing we were strangers, the Boy and I,--told us of this halo which crowns their home. * * * * * Cincinnati, Thursday, May 24th.--During the night there were frequent heavy downpours, during which the swollen torrent by our side roared among its boulders right lustily; and occasionally a heavy farm-wagon crossed the country bridge which spans the ravine just above us, its rumblings echoing in the quarried glen for all the world like distant thunder. Before turning in, each built a cairn upon the beach, at the point which he thought the water might reach by morning. The Boy, more venturesome than the rest, piled his cairn highest up the slope; and when daylight revealed the fact that the river, in its four-feet rise, had crept nearest his goal, there was much juvenile rejoicing. There is a gray sky, this morning. With a cold headwind on the starboard quarter, we hug the lee of the Ohio shore. The river is well up in the willows now. Crowding Pilgrim as closely as we may, within the narrow belt of unruffled water, our oars are swept by their bending boughs, which lightly tremble on the surface of the flood. The numerous rock-cumbered ravines, coursing down the hills or through the bottom lands, a few days since held but slender streams, or were, the most of them, wholly dry; but now they are brimming with noisy currents all flecked with foam--pretty pictures, these yawning gullies, overhung with cottonwoods and sycamores, with thick undergrowth of green-brier and wild columbine, and the yellow buds of the celandine poppy. The hills are showing better cultivation, as we approach the great city. The farm-houses are in better style, the market gardens larger, prosperity more evident. Among the pleasing sights are frequent farmsteads at the summits of the slopes, with orchards and vineyards, and gardens and fields, stretching down almost to the river--quite, indeed, on the Ohio side, but in Kentucky flanked at the base by the railway terrace. Numerous ferries connect the Kentucky railway stations with the eastern bank; one, which we saw just above New Richmond, O. (446 miles), was run by horse power, a weary nag in a tread-mill above each side-paddle. Although Kentucky has the railway, there is just here apparent a greater degree of thrift in Ohio--the towns more numerous, fields and truck-gardens more ample, on the whole a better class of farm-houses, and frequently, along the country road which closely skirts the shore, comfortable little broad-balconied inns, dependent on the trade of fishing and outing parties. Just below the Newport waterworks are several coal-barge harbors--mooring-grounds where barges lie in waiting, until hauled off by tugs to the storage wharves. In the rear of one of these fleets, at the base of a market garden, we found a sunny nook for lunch--for here on the Kentucky side the cold wind has full sweep, and we are glad of shelter when at rest. Across the river is a broad, low bottom given up to market gardeners, who jealously cultivate down to the water's edge, leaving the merest fringe of willows to protect their domain. At the foot of this fertile plain, the Little Miami River (460 miles) pours its muddy contribution into the Ohio; and beyond this rises the amphitheater of hills on which Cincinnati (466 miles) is mainly built. We see but the outskirts here, for two miles below us there is a sharp bend in the river, and only a dark pall of smoke marks where the city lies. But these outlying slopes are well dotted with gray and white groups of settlement, separated by stretches of woodland over which play changing lights, for cloud masses are sweeping the Ohio hills while we are still basking in the sun. Above us, crowning the Kentucky ascents, or nestled on their wooded shoulders, are many beautiful villas, evidently the homes of the ultra-wealthy. Close at hand we have the pleasant chink-chink of caulking hammers, for barges are built and repaired in this snug harbor. Now and then a river tug comes, with noisy bluster of smoke and steam, and amid much tightening and slackening of rope, and wild profanity, takes captive a laden barge,--as a cowboy might a refractory steer in the midst of a herd,--and hauls it off to be disgorged down stream. And just as we conclude our lunch, German women come with hoes to practice the gentle art of horticulture--a characteristic conglomeration, in the heart of our busy West; the millionaire on the hill-top, the tiller on the slope, shipwright on the beach, and grimy Commerce master of the flood. Setting afloat on a boiling current, thick with driftwood, we soon were coursing between city-lined shores--on the Kentucky side, Newport and Covington, respectively above and below Licking River; and in an hour were making our way through the labyrinth of steamers thickly moored with their noses to land, and cautiously creeping around to a quiet spot at the stern of a giant wharf-boat--no slight task this, with the river "on the jump," and a false move liable to swamp us if we strike an obstruction at full gait. No doubt we all breathed freer when Pilgrim, too, was beached,--although it be only confessed in the privacy of the log. With her and her cargo safely stored in the wharf-boat, we sought a hotel, and, regaining our bag of clothing,--shipped ahead of us from McKee's Rocks,--donned urban attire for an inspection of the city. And a noble city it is, that has grown out of the two block-houses which George Rogers Clark planted here in 1780, on his raid against the Indians of Chillicothe. In 1788, John Cleves Symmes, the first United States judge of the Northwest Territory, purchased from Congress a million acres of land, lying on the Ohio between the two Miami Rivers. Matthias Denman bought from him a square mile at the eastern end of the grant, "on a most delightful high bank" opposite the Licking, and--on a cash valuation for the land, of two hundred dollars--took in with him as partners Robert Patterson and John Filson. Filson was a schoolmaster, had written the first history of Kentucky, and seems to have enjoyed much local distinction. To him was entrusted the task of inventing a name for the settlement which the company proposed to plant here. The outcome was "Losantiville," a pedagogical hash of Greek, Latin, and French: _L_, for Licking; _os_, mouth; _anti_, opposite; _ville_, city--Licking-opposite-City, or City-opposite-Licking, whichever is preferred. This was in August. The Fates work quickly, for in October poor Filson was scalped by the Indians in the neighborhood of the Big Miami, before a settler had yet been enticed to Losantiville. But the survivors knew how to "boom" a town; lots were given away by lottery to intending actual settlers; and in a few months Symmes was able to write that "It populates considerably." A few weeks previous to the planting of Losantiville, a party of men from Redstone had settled Columbia, at the mouth of the Little Miami, about where the suburb of California now is; and, a few weeks later, a third colony was started by Symmes himself at North Bend, near the Big Miami, at the western extremity of his grant; and this, the judge wished to make the capital of the new Northwest Territory. At first, it was a race between these three colonies. A few miles below North Bend, Fort Finney had been built in 1785-86, hence the Bend had at first the start; but a high flood dampened its prospects, the troops were withdrawn from this neighborhood to Louisville, and in the winter of 1789-90 Fort Washington was built at Losantiville by General Harmar. The neighborhood of the new fortress became, in the ensuing Indian war, the center of the district. To Losantiville, with its fort, came Arthur St. Clair, the new governor of the Northwest Territory (January, 1790); and, making his headquarters here, laid violent hands on Filson's invention, at once changing the name to Cincinnati, in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, of which the new official was a prominent member--"so that," Symmes sorrowfully writes, "Losantiville will become extinct." Five years of Indian campaigning followed, the features of which were the crushing defeats of Harmar and St. Clair, and the final victory of Mad Anthony Wayne at Fallen Timbers. It was not until the Treaty of Greenville (1795), the result of Wayne's brilliant dash into the wilderness, that the Revolutionary War may properly be said to have ended in the West. Those were stirring times on the Ohio, both ashore and afloat; but, amidst them all, Cincinnati grew apace. Ellicott, in 1796, speaks of it as "a very respectable place," and in 1814, Flint found it the only port that could be called a town, from Steubenville to Natchez, a distance of fifteen hundred miles; in 1825 he reports it greatly grown, and crowded with immigrants from Europe and from our own Eastern states. The impetus thus early gained has never lessened, and Cincinnati is to-day one of the best built and most substantial cities in the Union. CHAPTER XV. The story of North Bend--The "shakes"--Driftwood--Rabbit Hash--A side-trip To Big Bone Lick. Near Petersburg, Ky., Friday, May 25th.--This morning, an hour before noon, as we looked upon the river from the top of the Cincinnati wharf, a wild scene presented itself. The shore up and down, as far as could be seen, was densely lined with packets and freighters; beyond them, the great stream, here half a mile wide, was rushing past like a mill-race, and black with all manner of drift, some of it formed into great rafts from each of which sprawled a network of huge branches. Had we been strangers to this offscouring of a thousand miles of beach, swirling past us at a six-mile gait, we might well have doubted the prudence of launching little Pilgrim upon such a sea. But for two days past, we had been amidst something of the sort, and knew that to cautious canoeists it was less dangerous than it appeared. A strong head wind, meeting this surging tide, is lashing it into a white-capped fury. But lying to with paddle and oars, and dodging ferries and towing-tugs as best we may, Pilgrim bears us swiftly past the long line of steamers at the wharf, past Newport and Covington, and the insignificant Licking,[A] and out under great railway bridges which cobweb the sky. Soon Cincinnati, shrouded in smoke, has disappeared around the bend, and we are in the fast-thinning suburbs--homes of beer-gardens and excursion barges, havens for freight-flats, and villas of low and high degree. When we are out here in the swim, the drift-strewn stream has a more peaceful aspect than when looked at from the shore. Instead of rushing past as if dooming to destruction everything else afloat, the debris falls behind, when we row, for our progress is then the greater. Dropping our oars, our gruesome companions on the river pass us slowly, for they catch less wind than we; and then, so silent the steady march of all, we seem to be drifting up-stream, until on glancing at the shore the hills appear to be swiftly going down and the willow fringes up,--until the sight makes us dizzy, and we are content to be at quits with these optical delusions. We no longer have the beach of gravel or sand, or strip of clay knee-deep in mud. The water, now twelve feet higher than before the rise, has covered all; it is, indeed, swaying the branches of sycamores and willows, and meeting the edges of the corn-fields of venturesome farmers who have cultivated far down, taking the risk of a "June fresh." Often could we, if we wished, row quite within the bulwark of willows, where a week ago we would have ventured to camp. The Kentucky side, to-day, from Covington out, has been thoroughly rustic, seldom broken by settlement; while Ohio has given us a succession of suburban towns all the way out to North Bend (482 miles), which is a small manufacturing place, lying on a narrow bottom at the base of a convolution of gentle, wooded hills. One sees that Cincinnati has a better and a broader base; North Bend was handicapped by nature, in its early race. When Ohio came into the Union (1803), it was specified that the boundary between her and Indiana should be a line running due north from the mouth of the Big Miami. But the latter, an erratic stream, frequently the victim of floods, comes wriggling down to the Ohio through a broad bottom grown thick to willows, and in times of high water its mouth is a changeable locality. The boundary monument is planted on the meridian of what was the mouth, ninety-odd years ago; but to-day the Miami breaks through an opening in the quivering line of willow forest, a hundred yards eastward (487 miles). Garrison Creek is a modest Kentucky affluent, just above the Miami's mouth. At the point, a group of rustics sat on a log at the bank-top, watching us approach. Landing in search of milk and water, I was taken by one of them in a lumbersome skiff a short distance up the creek, and presented to his family. They are genuine "crackers," of the coarsest type--tall, lean, sallow, fishy-eyed, with tow-colored hair, an ungainly gait, barefooted, and in nondescript clothing all patches and tatters. The tousle-headed woman, surrounded by her copies in miniature, keeps the milk neatly, in an outer dairy, perhaps because of market requirements; but in the crazy old log-house, pigs and chickens are free comers, and the cistern from which they drink is foul. Here in this damp, low pocket of a bottom, annually flooded to the door-sill, in the midst of vegetation of the rankest order, and quite unheedful of the simplest of sanitary laws, these yellow-skinned "crackers" are cradled, wedded, and biered. And there are thousands like unto them, for we are now in the heart of the "shake" country, and shall hear enough of the plague through the remainder of our pilgrimage. As for ourselves, we fear not, for it is not until autumn that danger is imminent, and we are taking due precaution under the Doctor's guidance. Two miles beyond, is the Indiana town of Lawrenceburg, with the unkempt aspect so common to the small river places; and two miles still farther, on a Kentucky bottom, Petersburg, whose chiefest building, as viewed from the stream, is a huge distillery. On a high sandy terrace, a mile or so below, we pitch our nightly camp. All about are willows, rustling musically in the evening breeze, and, soaring far aloft, the now familiar sycamores. Nearly opposite, in Indiana, the little city of Aurora is sparkling with points of light, strains of dance music reach us over the way, and occasional shouts and gay laughter; while now and then, in the thickening dusk of the long day, we hear skiffs go chucking by from Petersburg way, and the gleeful voices of men and women doubtless being ferried to the ball. * * * * * Near Warsaw, Ky., Saturday, May 26th.--Our first mosquito appeared last night, but he was easily slaughtered. It has been a comfort to be free, thus far, from these pests of camp life. We had prepared for them by laying in a bolt of black tarlatan at Wheeling,--greatly superior this, to ordinary white mosquito bar,--but thus far it has remained in the shopman's wrapper. The fog this morning was of the heaviest. At 4 o'clock we were awakened by the sharp clanging of a pilot's signal bell, and there, poking her nose in among our willows, a dozen feet from the tent, was the "Big Sandy," one of the St. Louis & Cincinnati packet line. She had evidently lost her bearings in the mist; but with a deal of ringing, and a noisy churning of the water by the reversed paddle-wheel, pulled out and disappeared into the gloom. The river, still rising, is sweeping down an ever-increasing body of rubbish. Islands and beaches, away back to the Alleghanies on the main stream, and on thousands of miles of affluents, are yielding up those vast rafts of drift-wood and fallen timber, which have continually impressed us on our way with a sense of the enormous wastage everywhere in progress--necessary, of course, in view of the prohibitive cost of transportation. Nevertheless, one thinks pitifully of the tens of thousands who, in congested districts, each winter suffer unto death for want of fuel; and here is this wealth of forest debris, the useless plaything of the river. But not only wreckage of this character is borne upon the flood. The thievish river has picked up valuable saw-logs that have run astray, lumber of many sorts, boxes, barrels--and now and then the body of a cow or horse that has tumbled to its death from some treacherous clay-cliff or rocky terrace. The beaches have been swept clean by the rushing flood, of whatever lay upon them, be it good or bad, for the great scavenger exercises no discretion. The bulk of the matter now follows the current in an almost solid raft, as it caroms from shore to shore. Having swift water everywhere at this stage, for the most part we avoid entangling Pilgrim in the procession, but row upon the outskirts, interested in the curious medley, and observant of the many birds which perch upon the branches of the floating trees and sing blithely on their way. The current bears hard upon the Aurora beach, and townsfolk by scores are out in skiffs or are standing by the water's edge, engaged with boat-hooks in spearing choice morsels from the debris rushing by their door--heaping it upon the shore to dry, or gathering it in little rafts which they moor to the bank. It is a busy scene; the wreckers, men, women, and children alike, are so engaged in their grab-bag game that they have no eyes for us; unobserved, we watch them at close range, and speculate upon their respective chances. Rabbit Hash, Ky. (502 miles), is a crude hamlet of a hundred souls, lying nestled in a green amphitheater. A horse-power ferry runs over to the larger village of Rising Sun, its Indiana neighbor. There is a small general store in Rabbit Hash, with postoffice and paint-shop attachment, and near by a tobacco warehouse and a blacksmith shop, with a few cottages scattered at intervals over the bottom. The postmaster, who is also the storekeeper and painter, greeted me with joy, as I deposited with him mail-matter bearing eighteen cents' worth of stamps; for his is one of those offices where the salary is the value of the stamps cancelled. It is not every day that so liberal a patron comes along. "Jemimi! Bill! but guv'm'nt business 's look'n' up--there'll be some o' th' rest o' us a-want'n this yere off'c', a ter nex' 'lection, I reck'n'." It was the blacksmith, who is also the ferryman, who thus bantered the delighted postmaster,--a broad-faced, big-chested, brown-armed man, with his neck-muscles standing out like cords, and his mild blue eyes dancing with fun, this rustic disciple of Tubal Cain. He sat just without the door, leather apron on, and his red shirt-sleeves rolled up, playing checkers on an upturned soap-box, with a jolly fat farmer from the hill-country, whose broad straw hat was cocked on the back of his bald head. The merry laughter of the two was infectious. The half-dozen spectators, small farmers whose teams and saddle-horses were hitched to the postoffice railing, were themselves hilarious over the game; and a saffron-skinned, hollow-cheeked woman in a blue sunbonnet, and with a market-basket over her arm, stopped for a moment at the threshold to look on, and then passed within the store, her eyes having caught the merriment, although her facial muscles had apparently lost their power of smiling. Joining the little company, I found that the farmer was a blundering player, but made up in fun what he lacked in science. I tried to ascertain the origin of the name Rabbit Hash, as applied to the hamlet. Every one had a different opinion, evidently invented on the spur of the moment, but all "'lowed" that none but the tobacco agent could tell, and he was off in the country for the day; as for themselves, they had, they confessed, never thought of it before. It always had been Rabbit Hash, and like enough would be to the end of time. We are on the lookout for Big Bone Creek, wishing to make a side trip to the famous Big Bone Lick, but among the many openings through the willows of the Kentucky shore we may well miss it, hence make constant inquiry as we proceed. There was a houseboat in the mouth of one goodly affluent. As we hove in sight, a fat woman, whose gunny-sack apron was her chief attire, hurried up the gang-plank and disappeared within. "Hello, the boat!" one of us hailed. The woman's fuzzy head appeared at the window. "What creek is this?" "Gunpowder, I reck'n!"--in a deep, man-like voice. "How far below is Big Bone?" "Jist a piece!" "How many miles?" "Two, I reck'n." Big Bone Creek (512 miles), some fifty or sixty feet wide at the mouth, opens through a willow patch, between pretty, sloping hills. A houseboat lay just within--a favorite situation for them, these creek mouths, for here they are undisturbed by steamer wakes, and the fishing is usually good. The proprietor, a rather distinguished-looking mulatto, despite his old clothes and plantation straw-hat, was sitting in a chair at his cabin door, angling; his white wife was leaning over him lovingly, as we shot into the scene, but at once withdrew inside. This man, with his side-whiskers and fine air, may have been a head-waiter or a dance-fiddler in better days; but his soft, plaintive voice, and hacking cough, bespoke the invalid. He told us what he knew about the creek, which was little enough, as he had but recently come to these parts. At an ordinary stage in the Ohio, the Big Bone cannot be ascended in a skiff for more than half a mile; now, upon the backset, we are able to proceed for two miles, leaving but another two miles of walking to the Lick itself. The creek curves gracefully around the bases of the sugar-loaf hills of the interior. Under the swaying arch of willows, and of ragged, sprawling sycamores, their bark all patched with green and gray and buff and white, we have charming vistas--the quiet water, thick grown with aquatic plants; the winding banks, bearing green-dragons and many another flower loving damp shade; the frequent rocky palisades, oozing with springs; and great blue herons, stretching their long necks in wonder, and then setting off with a stately flight which reminds one of the cranes on Japanese ware. Through the dense fringe of vegetation, we have occasional glimpses of the hillside farms--their sloping fields sprinkled with stones, their often barren pastures, numerous abandoned tracts overgrown with weeds, and blue-grass lush in the meadows. Along the edges of the Creek, and in little pocket bottoms, the varied vegetation has a sub-tropical luxuriance, and in this now close, warm air, there is a rank smell suggestive of malaria. These bottoms are annually overflowed, so that the crude little farmsteads are on the rising ground--whitewashed cabins, many of them of logs, serve as houses; for stock, there are the veriest shanties, affording practically no shelter; best of all, the rude tobacco-drying sheds, in many of which some of last year's crop can still be seen, hanging on the strips. We are out of the world, here; and barefooted men and boys, who with listless air are fishing from the banks, gaze at us in dull wonder as we thread our tortuous way. Finally, we learned that we could with profit go no higher. Before us were two miles of what was described as the roughest sort of hill road, and the afternoon sun was powerful; so W---- accepted the invitation of a rustic fisherman to rest with his "women folks" in a little cabin up the hill a bit. Seeing her safely housed with the good-natured "cracker" farm-wife, the Doctor, the Boy, and I trudged off toward Big Bone Lick. The waxy clay of the roadbed had recently been wetted by a shower; the walking, consequently, was none of the best. But we were repaid with charming views of hill and vale, a softly-rolling scene dotted with little gray and brown fields, clumps of woodland, rail-fenced pastures, and cabins of the crudest sort--for in the autumn-tide, the curse of malaria haunts the basin of the Big Bone, and none but he of fortune spurned would care here in this beauty-spot to plant his vine and fig-tree. Now and then our path leads us across the winding creek, which in these upper reaches tumbles noisily over ledges of jagged rock, above which luxuriant sycamores, and elms, and maples arch gracefully. At each picturesque fording-place, with its inevitable watering-pool, are stepping-stones for foot pilgrims; often a flock of geese are sailing in the pool, with craned necks and flapping wings hissing defiance to disturbers of their sylvan peace. The travelers we meet are on horseback--most of them the yellow-skinned, hollow-cheeked folk, with lack-luster eyes, whom we note in the cabin doors, or dawdling about their daily routine. On nearing the Lick, two young horsewomen, out of the common, look interestedly at us, and I stop to inquire the way, although the village spire is peering above the tree-tops yonder. Pretty, buxom, sweet-faced lassies, these, with soft, pleasant voices, each with her market-basket over her arm, going homeward from shopping. It would be interesting to know their story--what it is that brings these daughters of a brighter world here into this valley of the living death. Two hundred yards farther, where the road forks, and the one at the right hand ascends to the small hamlet of Big Bone Lick, there is an interesting picture beneath the way-post: a girl in a blue calico gown, her face deep hidden in her red sunbonnet, sits upon a chestnut mount, with a laden market-basket before her; while by her side, astride a coal-black pony, which fretfully paws to be on his way, is a roughly dressed youth, his face shaded by a broad slouched hat of the cowboy order. They have evidently met there by appointment, and are so earnestly conversing--she with her hand resting lovingly, perhaps deprecatingly, upon his bridle-arm, and his free hand nervously stroking her horse's mane, while his eyes are far afield--that they do not observe us as we pass; and we are free to weave from the incident any sort of cracker romance which fancy may dictate. The source of Big Bone Creek is a marshy basin some fifty acres in extent, rimmed with gently-sloping hills, and freely pitted with copious springs of a water strongly sulphurous in taste, with a suggestion of salt. The odor is so powerful as to be all-pervading, a quarter of a mile away, and to be readily detected at twice that distance. This collection of springs constitutes Big Bone Lick, probably the most famous of the many similar licks in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. The salt licks of the Ohio basin were from the earliest times resorted to in great numbers by wild beasts, and were favorite camping-grounds for Indians, and for white hunters and explorers. This one was first visited by the French as early as 1729, and became famous because of the great quantities of remains of animals which lay all over the marsh, particularly noticeable being the gigantic bones of the extinct mammoth--hence the name adopted by the earliest American hunters, "Big Bone." These monsters had evidently been mired in the swamp, while seeking to lick the salty mud, and died in their tracks. Pioneer chronicles abound in references to the Lick, and we read frequently of hunting-parties using the ribs of the mammoth for tent poles, and sections of the vertebræ as camp stools and tables. But in our own day, there are no surface evidences of this once rich treasure of giant fossils; although occasionally a "find" is made by enterprising excavators,--several bones having thus been unearthed only a week ago. They are now on exhibition in the neighboring village, preparatory to being shipped to an Eastern museum. As we hurried back over the rolling highway, thunder-clouds grandly rose out of the west, and great drops of rain gave us moist warning of the coming storm. W---- was watching us from the cabin door, as we made the last turning in the road, and, accompanied by the farm-wife and her two daughters, came tripping down to the landing. She had been entertained in the one down-stairs room, as royally as these honest cracker women-folk knew how; seated in the family rocking-chair, she had heard in those two hours the social gossip of a wide neighborhood; learned, too, that the cold, wet weather of the last fortnight had killed turkey-chicks and goslings by the score; heard of the damage being done to corn and tobacco, by the prevalent high water; was told how Bess and Brindle fared, off in the rocky pasture which yields little else than mulleins; and how far back Towser had to go, to claim relationship to a collie. "And weren't we really show-people, going down the river this way, in a skiff? or, if we weren't show-people, had we an agency for something? or, were we only in trade?" It seems a difficult task to make these people on the bottoms believe that we are skiffing it for pleasure--it is a sort of pleasure so far removed from their notions of the fitness of things; and so at last we have given up trying, and let them think of our pilgrimage what they will. The entire family now assembled on the muddy bank, and bade us a really affectionate farewell, as if we had been, in this isolated corner of the world, most welcome guests who were going all too soon. In a few strokes of the oars we were rounding the bend; and waving our hands at the little knot of watchers, went forth from their lives, doubtless forever. The storm soon burst upon us in full fury. Clad in rubber, we rested under giant trees, or beneath projecting rock ledges, taking advantage of occasional lulls to push on for a few rods to some new shelter. The numerous little hillside runs which, in our journey up, were but dry gullies choked with leaves and boulders, were now brimming with muddy torrents, rushing all foam-flecked and with deafening roar into the central stream. At last the cloud curtain rolled away, the sun gushed out with fiery rays, the arch of foliage sparkled with splendor--in meadow and on hillside, the face of Nature was cleanly beautiful. At the creek mouth, the distinguished mulatto still was fishing from his chair, and standing by his side was his wife throwing a spoon. They nodded to us pleasantly, as old friends returned. Gliding by their boat, Pilgrim was soon once more in the full current of the swift-flowing Ohio. We are high up to-night, on a little grass terrace in Kentucky, two miles above Warsaw. The usual country road lies back of us, a rod or two, and then a slender field surmounted by a woodland hill. Fortune favors us, almost nightly, with beautiful abiding-places. In no place could we sleep more comfortably than in our cotton home. [Footnote A: So called from the Big Buffalo Lick, upon its banks.] CHAPTER XVI. New Switzerland--An old-time river pilot--Houseboat life, on the lower reaches--A philosopher in rags--Wooded solitudes--Arrival at Louisville. Near Madison, Ind., Sunday, May 27th.--At supper last night, a houseboat fisherman, going by in his skiff, parted the willows fringing our beach, and offered to sell us some of his wares. We bought from him a two-pound catfish, which he tethered to a bush overhanging the water, until we were ready to dress it; giving us warning, that meanwhile it would be best to have an eye on our purchase, or the turtles would devour it. Hungry thieves, these turtles, the fisherman said; you could leave nothing edible in water or on land, unprotected, without constant fear of the reptiles--which reminds me that yesterday the Doctor and the Boy found on the beach a beautiful box tortoise. Our fish was swimming around finely, at the end of his cord, when the executioner arrived, and when finally hung up in a tree was safe from the marauders. This morning the fisherman was around again, hoping to obtain another dime from the commissariat; but though we had breakfasted creditably from the little "cat," we had no thought of stocking our larder with his kind. So the grizzly man of nets took a fresh chew of tobacco, and sat a while in his boat, "pass'n' th' time o' day" with us, punctuating his remarks with frequent expectorations. The new Kentucky houseboat law taxes each craft of this sort seven-and-a-half dollars, he said: five dollars going to the State, and the remainder to the collector. There was to be a patrol boat, "to see that th' fellers done step to th' cap'n's office an' settle." But the houseboaters were going to combine and fight the law on constitutional grounds, for they had been told that it was clearly an interference with commerce on a national highway. As for the houseboaters voting--well, some of them did, but the most of them didn't. The Indiana registry law requires a six months' residence, and in Kentucky it is a full year, so that a houseboat man who moves about any, "jes' isn't in it, sir, thet's all." However, our visitor was not much disturbed over the practical disfranchisement of his class--it seemed, rather, to amuse him; he was much more concerned in the new tax, which he thought an outrageous imposition. In bidding us a cheery good-bye, he noticed my kodak. "Yees be one o' them photygraph parties, hey?" and laughed knowingly, as though he had caught me in a familiar trick. No child of nature so simple, in these days, as not to recognize a kodak. Warsaw, Ky. (524 miles), just below, has some bankside evidences of manufacturing, but on the whole is rather down at the heel. A contrast this, to Vevay (533 miles), on the Indiana shore, which, though a small town on a low-lying bottom, is neat and apparently prosperous. Vevay was settled in 1803, by John James Dufour and several associates, from the District of Vevay, in Switzerland, who purchased from Congress four square miles hereabout, and, christening it New Switzerland, sought to establish extensive vineyards in the heart of this middle West. The Swiss prospered. The colony has had sufficient vitality to preserve many of its original characteristics unto the present day. Much of the land in the neighborhood is still owned by the descendants of Dufour and his fellows, but the vineyards are not much in evidence. In fact, the grape-growing industry on the banks of the Ohio, although commenced at different points with great promise, by French, Swiss, Germans, and Americans alike, has not realized their expectations. The Ohio has proved to be unlike the Rhine in this respect. In the long run, the vine in America appears to fare better in a more northern latitude. Three miles above Vevay, near Plum Creek, I was interested in the Indiana farm upon which Heathcoat Picket settled in 1795--some say in 1790. In his day, Picket was a notable flatboat pilot. He was credited with having conducted more craft down the river to New Orleans, than any other man of his time--going down on the boat, and returning on foot. It is said that he made over twenty trips of this character, which is certainly a marvelous record at a time when there were only Indian trails through the more than a thousand miles of dense forest between Vevay and New Orleans, and when a savage enemy might be expected to lurk behind any tree, ready to slay the rash pale-face. Picket's must have been a life of continuous adventure, as thrilling as the career of Daniel Boone himself; yet he is now known to but a local antiquarian or two, and one stumbles across him only in foot-notes. The border annals of the West abound with incidents as romantic as any which have been applauded by men. Daniel Boone is not the only hero of the frontier; he is not even the chief hero,--he is but a type, whom an accident of literature has made conspicuous. The Kentucky River (541 miles) enters at Carrollton, Ky.,--a well-to-do town, with busy-looking wharves upon both streams,--through a wide and rather uninteresting bottom. But, over beyond this, one sees that it has come down through a deep-cut valley, rimmed with dark, rolling hills, which speak eloquently of a diversified landscape along its banks. The Indian Kentucky, a small stream but half-a-dozen rods wide, enters from the north, five miles below--"Injun Kaintuck," it was called by a jovial junk-boat man stationed at the mouth of the tributary. There are, on the Ohio, several examples of this peculiar nomenclature: a river enters from the south, and another affluent coming in from the north, nearly opposite, will have the same name with the prefix "Indian." The reason is obvious; the land north of the Ohio remained Indian territory many years after Kentucky and Virginia were recognized as white man's country, hence the convenient distinction--the river coming in from the north, near the Kentucky, for instance, became "Indian Kentucky," and so on through the list. Houseboats are less frequent, in these reaches of the river. The towns are fewer and smaller than above; consequently there is less demand for fish, or for desultory labor. Yet we seldom pass a day, in the most rustic sections, without seeing from half-a-dozen to a dozen of these craft. Sometimes they are a few rods up the mouths of tributaries, half hidden by willows and overhanging sycamores; or, in picturesque little openings of the willow fringe along the main shore; or, boldly planted at the base of some rocky ledge. At the towns, they are variously situated: in the water, up the beach a way, or high upon the bottom, whither some great flood has carried them in years gone by. Occasionally, when high and dry upon the land, they have a bit of vegetable garden about them, rented for a time from the farmer; but, even with the floaters, chickens are commonly kept, generally in a coop on the roof, connected with the shore by a special gang-plank for the fowls; and the other day, we saw a thrifty houseboater who had several colonies of bees. There was a rise of only two feet, last night; evidently the flood is nearly at its greatest. We are now twenty feet above the level of ten days ago, and are frequently swirling along over what were then sharp, stony slopes, and brushing the topmost boughs of the lower lines of willows and scrub sycamores. Thus we have a better view of the country; and, approaching closely to the banks, can from our seats at any time pluck blue lupine by the armful. It thrives mightily on these gravelled shores, and so do the bignonia vine, the poison ivy, and the Virginia creeper. The hills are steeper, now, especially in Indiana; many of them, although stony, worked-out, and almost worthless, are still, in patches, cultivated to the very top; but for the most part they are clothed in restful green. Overhead, in the summer haze, turkey-buzzards wheel gracefully, occasionally chased by audacious hawks; and in the woods, we hear the warble of song-birds. Shadowy, idle scenes, these rustic reaches of the lower Ohio, through which man may dream in Nature's lap, all regardless of the workaday world. It was early evening when we passed Madison, Ind. (553 miles), a fairly-prosperous factory town of about twelve thousand souls. Scores of the inhabitants were out in boats, collecting driftwood; and upon the wharf was a great crowd of people, waiting for an excursion boat which was to return them to Louisville, whence they had come for a day's outing. It was a lifeless, melancholy party, as excursion folk are apt to be at the close of a gala day, and they wearily stared at us as we paddled past. Just below, on the Kentucky shore, on my usual search for milk and water, I landed at a cluster of rude cottages set in pleasant market gardens. While the others drifted by with Pilgrim, I had a goodly walk before finding milk, for a cow is considered a luxury among these small riverside cultivators; the man who owns one sells milk to his poorer neighbors. Such a nabob was at last found. The animal was called down from the rocky hills, by her barefooted owner, who, lank and malaria-skinned, leaned wearily against the well-curb, while his wife, also guiltless of hose and shoes, milked into my pail direct from the lean and hungry brindle. By the time the crew were reunited, storm-clouds, thick and black, were fast rising in the west. Scudding down shore for a mile, with oars and paddle aiding the swift current, we failed to find a proper camping-place on the muddy bank of the far-stretching bottom. Rain-drops were now pattering on our rubber spreads, and it was evident that a blow was coming; but despite this, we bent to the work with renewed vigor, and shot across to the lee shore of Indiana--finally landing in the midst of a heavy shower, and hurriedly pitching tent on a rocky slope at the base of a vertical bank of clay. Above us, a government beacon shines brightly through the persistent storm, with the keeper's neat little house and garden a hundred yards away. In the tree-tops, up a heavily-forested hill beyond, the wind moans right dismally. In this sheltered nook, we shall be but lulled to sleep with the ceaseless pelting of the rain. * * * * * Louisville, Monday, May 28th.--At midnight, the heavens cleared, with a cold north wind; the early morning atmosphere was nipping, and we were glad of the shelter of the tent during breakfast. The river fell eight inches during the night, and on either bank is a muddy strip, which will rapidly widen as the water goes down. Below us, twenty rods or so, moored to the boulder-strewn shore, was a shanty-boat. In the bustle of landing, last night, we had not noticed this neighbor, and it was pitch-dark before we had time to get our bearings. I think it is the most dilapidated affair we have seen on the river--the frame of the cabin is out of plumb, old clothes serve for sides and flap loudly in the wind; while two little boys, who peered at us through slits in the airy walls, looked fairly miserable with cold. The proprietor of the craft came up to visit us, while breakfast was being prepared, and remained until we were ready to depart--a tall, slouchy fellow, clothed in shreds and patches; he was in the prime of life, with a depressed nose set in a battered, though not unpleasant countenance. None of our party had ever before seen such garments on a human being--old bits of flannel, frayed strips of bagging-stuff, and other curious odds and ends of fabrics, in all the primitive colors, the whole roughly basted together with sack-thread. He was a philosopher, was this rag-tag-and-bob-tail of a man, a philosopher with some mother-wit about him. For an hour, he sat on his haunches, crouching over our little stove, and following with cat-like care W----'s every movement in the culinary art; she felt she was under the eye of a critic who, though not voicing his opinions, looked as if he knew a thing or two. As a conversationist, our visitor was fluent to a fault. It required but slight urging to draw him out. His history, and that of his fathers for three generations back, he recited in much detail. He himself had, in his best days, been a sub-contractor in railway construction; but fate had gone against him, and he had fallen to the low estate of a shanty-boatman. His wife had "gone back on him," and he was left with two little boys, whom he proposed to bring up as gentlemen--"yaas, sir-r, gen'lem'n, yew hear me! ef I _is_ only a shanty-boat feller!" "I thote I'd come to visit uv ye," he had said by way of introduction; "ye're frum a city, ain't yer? Yaas, I jist thote hit. City folks is a more 'com'dat'n' 'n country folks. Why? Waal, yew fellers jist go back 'ere in th' hills away, 'n them thar country folks they'd hardly answer ye, they're thet selfish-like. Give me city folks, I say, fer get'n' long with!" And then, in a rambling monologue, while chewing a straw, he discussed humanity in general, and the professions in particular. "I ain't got no use fer lawyers--mighty hard show them fellers has, fer get'n' to heaven. As fer doctors--waal, they'll hev hard sledd'n, too; but them fellers has to do piles o' dis'gree'bl' work, they do; I'd jist rather fish fer a liv'n', then be a doctor! Still, sir-r, give me an eddicated man every time, says I. Waal, sir-r, 'n' ye hear me, one o' th' richest fellers right here in Madison, wuz born 'n' riz on a shanty-boat, 'n' no mistake. He jist done pick up his eddication from folks pass'n' by, jes' as yew fellers is a passin', 'n' they might say a few wuds o' information to him. He done git a fine eddication jes' thet way, 'n' they ain't no flies on him, these days, when money-gett'n' is 'roun'. Jes' noth'n' like it, sir-r! Eddication does th' biz!" An observant man was this philosopher, and had studied human nature to some purpose. He described the condition of the poor farmers along the river, as being pitiful; they had no money to hire help, and were an odd lot, anyway--the farther back in the hills you get, the worse they are. He loved to talk about himself and his lowly condition, in contrast with his former glory as a sub-contractor on the railway. When a man was down, he said, he lost all his friends--and, to illustrate this familiar phase of life, told two stories which he had often read in a book that he owned. They were curious, old-fashioned tales of feudal days, evidently written in a former century,--he did not know the title of the volume,--and he related them in what evidently were the actual words of the author: a curious recitation, in the pedantic literary style of the ancient story-teller, but in the dialect of an Ohio-river "cracker." His greatest ambition, he told us, was to own a floating sawmill; although he carefully inquired about the laws regulating peddlers in our State, and intimated that sometime he might look us up in that capacity, in our Northern home. As we approach Louisville to-day, the settlements somewhat increase in number, although none of the villages are of great size; and, especially in Kentucky, they are from ten to twenty miles apart. The fine hills continue close upon our path until a few miles above Louisville, when they recede, leaving on the Kentucky side a broad, flat plain several miles square, for the city's growth. For the most part, these stony slopes are well wooded with elm, buckeye, maple, ash, oak, locust, hickory, sycamore, cotton-wood, a few cedars, and here and there a catalpa and a pawpaw giving a touch of tropical luxuriance to the hillside forest; while blackberry bushes, bignonia vines, and poison ivy, are everywhere abundant; otherwise, there is little of interest to the botanist. Redbirds, catbirds, bluebirds, blackbirds, and crows are chattering noisily in the trees, and turkey-buzzards everywhere swirl and swoop in mid-air. The narrow little bottoms are sandy; and on lowland as well as highland there is much poor, rock-bewitched soil. The little whitewashed farmsteads look pretty enough in the morning haze, lying half hid in forest clumps; but upon approach they invariably prove unkempt and dirty, and swarming with shiftless, barefooted, unhealthy folk, whom no imagination can invest with picturesque qualities. Their ragged, unpainted tobacco-sheds are straggling about, over the hills; and here and there a white patch in the corner of a gray field indicates a nursery of tobacco plants, soon to be transplanted into ampler soil. It is not uncommon to find upon a hillside a freshly-built log-cabin, set in the midst of a clearing, with bristling stumps all around, reminding one of the homes of new settlers on the far-away logging-streams of Northern Wisconsin or Minnesota; the resemblance is the closer, for such notches cut in the edge of the Indiana and Kentucky wilderness are often found after a row of many miles through a winding forest solitude apparently but little changed from primeval conditions. Now and then we come across quarries, where stone is slid down great chutes to barges which lie moored by the rocky bank; and frequently is the stream lined with great boulders, which stand knee-deep in the flood that eddies and gurgles around them. On the upper edge of the great Louisville plain, we pitched tent in the middle of the afternoon; and, having brought our bag of land-clothes with us in the skiff, from Cincinnati, took turns under the canvas in effecting what transformation was desirable, preparatory to a visit in the city. In the early twilight we were floating past Towhead Island, with its almost solid flank of houseboats, threading our way through a little fleet of pleasure yachts, and at last shooting into the snug harbor of the Boat Club. The good-natured captain of the U. S. Life Saving Station took Pilgrim and her cargo in charge for the night, and by dusk we were bowling over metropolitan pavements _en route_ to the house of our friend--strange contrast, this lap of luxury, to the soldier-like simplicity of our canvas home. We have been roughing it for so long,--less than a month, although it seems a year,--that all these conveniences of civilization, these social conventionalities, have to us a sort of foreign air. Thus easily may man descend into the savage state. CHAPTER XVII. Storied Louisville--Red Indians and white--A night on Sand Island--New Albany--Riverside hermits--The river falling--A deserted village--An ideal camp. Sand Island, Tuesday, May 29th.--Our Louisville host is the best living authority on the annals of his town. It was a delight and an inspiration to go with him, to-day, the rounds of the historic places. Much that was to me heretofore foggy in Louisville story was made clear, upon becoming familiar with the setting. The contention is made that La Salle was here at the Falls of the Ohio, during the closing months of 1669; but it was over a century later, under British domination, before a settlement was thought of. Dr. John Connolly entertained a scheme for founding a town at the Falls, but Lord Dunmore's War (1774), and the Revolution quickly following, combined to put an end to it; so that when George Rogers Clark arrived on the scene with his little band of Virginian volunteers (May, 1778), en route to capture the Northwest for the State of Virginia, he found naught but a savage-haunted wilderness. His log fort on Corn Island, in the midst of the rapids, served as a base of military operations, and was the nucleus of American settlement, although later the inhabitants moved to the mainland, and founded Louisville. The falls at Louisville are the only considerable obstruction to Ohio-River navigation. At an average stage, the descent is but twenty-seven feet in two-and-a-half miles; in high flood, the rapids degenerate into merely swift water, without danger to descending craft. At ordinary height, it was the custom of pioneer boatmen, in descending, to lighten their craft of at least a third of the cargo, and thus pass them down to the foot of the north-side portage (Clarksville, Ind.), which is three-quarters of a mile in length; going up, lightened boats were towed against the stream. With the advent of larger craft, a canal with locks became necessary--the Louisville and Portland Canal of to-day, which is operated by the general government. The action of the water, hastened by the destruction of trees whose roots originally bound the loose soil, has greatly worn the islands in the rapids. Little is now left of historic Corn Island, and that little is, at low water, being blasted and ground into cement by a mill hard by on the main shore. To-day, with a flood of nearly twenty feet above the normal stage of the season, not much of the island is visible,--clumps of willows and sycamores, swayed by the rushing current, giving a general idea of the contour. Goose Island, although much smaller than in Clark's day, is a considerable tract of wooded land, with a rock foundation. Clark was once its owner, his home being opposite on the Indiana shore, where he had a fine view of the river, the rapids, and the several islands. As for Clarksville, somewhat lower down, and back from the river a half mile, it is now but a cluster of dwellings on the outskirts of New Albany, a manufacturing town which is rapidly absorbing all the neighboring territory. Feeling obliged to make an early start, we concluded to pass the night just below the canal on Sand Island, lying between New Albany and Louisville's noisy manufacturing suburb, Portland. An historic spot is this insular home of ours. At the treaty of Fort Charlotte, Cornstalk told Lord Dunmore the legend familiar among Ohio River savages--that here, in ages past, occurred the last great battle between the white and the red Indians. It is one of the puzzles of the antiquarians, this tradition that white Indians once lived in the land, but were swept away by the reds; Cornstalk had used it to spur his followers to mighty deeds, it was a precedent which Pontiac dwelt upon when organizing his conspiracy, and King Philip is said to have been inspired by it. But this is no place to discuss the genesis of the tale. Suffice it, that on Sand Island have been discovered great quantities of ancient remains. No doubt, in its day, it was an over-filled burying-ground. Noises, far different from the clash of savage arms, are in the air to-night. Far above our heads a great iron bridge crosses the Ohio, some of its piers resting on the island,--a busy combination thoroughfare for steam and electric railways, for pedestrians and for vehicles, plying between New Albany and Portland. The whirr of the trolley, the scream and rumble of locomotives, the rattle of wagons; and just above the island head, the burly roar of steamboats signaling the locks,--these are the sounds which are prevalent. Through all this hubbub, electric lamps are flashing, and just now a steamer's search-light swept our island shore, lingering for a moment upon the little camp, doubtless while the pilot satisfied his curiosity. Let us hope that savage warriors never o' nights walk the earth above their graves; for such scenes as this might well cause those whose bones lie here to doubt their senses. * * * * * Near Brandenburg, Ky., Wednesday, 30th.--We stopped at New Albany, Ind. (603 miles), this morning, to stock the larder and to forward our shore-clothes by express to Cairo. It is a neat and busy manufacturing town, with an excellent public market. A gala aspect was prevalent, for it is Memorial Day; the shops and principal buildings were gay with bunting, and men in Grand Army uniforms stood in knots at the street corners. The broad, fertile plain on both sides of the river, upon which Louisville and New Albany are the principal towns, extends for eight or nine miles below the rapids. The first hills to approach the stream are those in Indiana. Salt River, some ten or twelve rods wide, enters from the south twenty-one miles below New Albany, between uninteresting high clay banks, with the lazy-looking little village of West Point, Ky., occupying a small rise of ground just below the mouth. The Kentucky hills come close to the bank, a mile or two farther down, and then the familiar characteristics of the reaches above Louisville are resumed--hills and bottoms, sparsely settled with ragged farmsteads, regularly alternating. At five o'clock we put in at a rocky ledge on the Indiana side, a mile-and-a-half above Brandenburg. Behind us rises a precipitous hill, tree-clad to the summit. The Doctor found up there a new phlox and a pretty pink stone-crop, to add to our herbarium, while here as elsewhere the bignonia grows profusely in every crevice of the rock. At dark, two ragged and ill-smelling young shanty-boat men, who are moored hard by, came up to see us, and by our camp-fire to whittle chips and drone about hard times. But at last we tired of their idle gossip, which had in it no element of the picturesque, and got rid of them by hinting our desire to turn in. The towns were few to-day, and small. Brandenburg, with eight hundred souls, was the largest--a sleepy, ill-paved, shambling place, with apparently nobody engaged in any serious calling; its chief distinction is an architectural monstrosity, which we were told is the court-house. The little white hamlet of New Amsterdam, Ind. (650 miles), looked trim and bright in the midst of a green thicket. Richardson's Landing, Ky., is a disheveled row of old deserted houses, once used by lime-burners, with a great barge wrecked upon the beach. At the small, characterless Indiana village of Leavenworth (658 miles), I sought a traveling photographer, of whom I had been told at Brandenburg. My quest was for a dark-room where I might recharge my exhausted kodak; but the man of plates had packed up his tent and moved on--I would no doubt find him in Alton, Ind., fifteen miles lower down. We have had stately, eroded hills, and broad, fertile bottoms, hemming us in all day, and marvelous ox-bows in the erratic stream. The hillsides are heavily wooded, sometimes the slopes coming straight down to the stony beach, without intervening terrace; where there are such terraces, they are narrow and rocky, and the homes of shanty-men; but upon the bottoms are whitewashed dwellings of frame or log, tenanted by a better class, who sometimes have goodly orchards and extensive corn-cribs. The villages are generally in the deep-cut notches of the hills, where the interior can be conveniently reached by a wagon-road--a country "rumpled like this," they say, for ten or twelve miles back, and then stretching off into level plains of fertility. Now and then, a deserted cabin on the terraces,--windowless and gaunt,--tells the story of some "cracker" family that malaria had killed off, or that has "pulled up stakes" and gone to seek a better land. At Leavenworth, the river, which has been flowing northwest for thirty miles, takes a sudden sweep to the southwest, and thenceforward we have a rapid current. However, we need still to ply our blades, for there is a stiff head-wind, with an eager nip in it, to escape which we seek the lee as often as may be, and bask in the undisturbed sunlight. Right glad we were, at luncheon-time, to find a sheltered nook amidst a heap of boulders on the Kentucky shore, and to sit on the sun-warmed sand and drink hot tea by the side of a camp-fire, rejoicing in the kindness of Providence. There are few houseboats, since leaving Louisville; to-day we have seen but three or four--one of them merrily going up stream, under full sail. Islands, too, are few--the Upper and Lower Blue River, a pretty pair, being the first we have met since Sunday. The water is falling, it now being three or four feet below the stage of a few days since, as can readily be seen from the broad dado of mud left on the leaves of willows and sycamores; while the drift, recently an ever-present feature of the current, is rapidly lodging in the branches of the willows and piling up against the sand-spits; and scrawling snags and bobbing sawyers are catching on the bars, and being held for the next "fresh." There is little life along shore, in these lower waters. There are two lines of ever-widening, willowed beach of rock and sand or mud; above them, perpendicular walls of clay, which edge either rocky terraces backed by grand sweeps of convoluted hills,--sometimes wooded to the top, and sometimes eroded into palisades,--or wide-stretching bottoms given over to small farms or maybe dense tangles of forest. In the midst of this world of shade, nestle the whitewashed cabins of the small tillers; but though they swarm with children, it is not often that the inhabitants appear by the riverside. We catch a glimpse of them when landing on our petty errands, we now and then see a houseboater at his nets, and in the villages a few lackadaisical folk are lounging by the wharf; but as a rule, in these closing days of our pilgrimage, we glide through what is almost a solitude. The imagination has not to go far afield, to rehabilitate the river as it appeared to the earliest voyagers. Late in the afternoon, as usual wishing water and milk, we put ashore in Indiana, where a rustic landing indicated a settlement of some sort, although our view was confined to a pretty, wooded bank, and an unpainted warehouse at the top of the path. It was a fertile bottom, a half-mile wide, and stretching a mile or two along the river. Three neat houses, one of them of logs, constituted the village, and all about were grain-fields rippled into waves by the northwest breeze. The first house, a quarter of a mile inland, I reached by a country roadway; it proved to be the postoffice of Point Sandy. Chickens clucked around me, a spaniel came fawning for attention, a tethered cow mooed plaintively, but no human being was visible. At last I discovered a penciled notice pinned to the horse-block, to the effect that the postmaster had gone into Alton (five miles distant) for the day; and should William Askins call in his absence, the said Askins was to remember that he promised to call yesterday, but never came; and now would he be kind enough to come without fail to-morrow before sundown, or the postmaster would be obliged to write that letter they had spoken about. It was quite evident that Askins had not called; for he surely would not have left that mysterious notice sticking there, for all Point Sandy to read and gossip over. It is to be hoped that there will be no bloodshed over this affair; across the way, in Kentucky, there would be no doubt as to the outcome. I looked at Boss, and wondered whether in Indiana it were felony to milk another man's cow in his absence, with no ginger jar at hand, into which to drop a compensatory dime. Then I saw that she was dry, and concluded that to attempt it might be thought a violation of ethics. The postmaster's well, too, proved to be a cistern,--pardon the Hibernicism,--and so I went farther. The other frame house also turned out to be deserted, but evidently only for the day, for the lilac bushes in the front yard were hung with men's flannel shirts drying in the sun. A buck goat came bleating toward me, with many a flourish of his horns, from which it was plain to be seen why the family wash was not spread upon the grass. From here I followed a narrow path through a wheat-field, the grain up to my shoulders, toward the log dwelling. A mangy little cur disputed my right to knock at the door; but, flourishing my two tin pails at him, he flew yelping to take refuge in the hen-coop. To my summons at the portal, there came no response, save the mewing of the cat within. It was clear that the people of Point Sandy were not at home, to-day. I would have retreated to the boat, but, chancing to glance up at the overhanging hills which edge in the bottom, saw two men sitting on a boulder in front of a rude log hut on the brink of a cliff, curiously watching my movements on the plain. Thankful, now, that the postmaster's cow had gone dry, and that these observant mountaineers had not had an opportunity to misinterpret my conduct, I at once hurried toward the hill, hopeful that at the top some bovine might be housed, whose product could lawfully be acquired. But after a long and laborious climb, over shifting stones and ragged ledges, I was met with the discouraging information that the only cow in these parts was Hawkins' cow, and Hawkins was the postmaster,--"down yon, whar yew were a-read'n' th' notices on th' hoss-block." Neither had they any water, up there on the cliff-top--"don' use very much, stranger; 'n' what we do, we done git at Smithfield's, in th' log-house down yon, 'n' I reck'n their cistern's done gone dry, anyhow!" "But what is the matter down there?" I asked of the old man,--they were father and son, this lounging pair who thus loftily sat in judgment on the little world at their feet; "why are all the folks away from home?" He looked surprised, and took a fresh chew while cogitating on my alarming ignorance of Point Sandy affairs: "Why, ain' ye heared? I thote ev'ry feller on th' river knew thet yere--why, ol' Hawkins, his wife's brother's buried in Alton to-day, 'n' th' neighbors done gwine t' th' fun'ral. Whar your shanty-boat been beached, thet ye ain' heared thet yere?" As the sun neared the horizon, we tried other places below, with no better success; and two miles above Alton, Ind. (673 miles), struck camp at sundown, without milk for our coffee--for water, being obliged to settle and boil the roily element which bears us onward through the lengthening days. Were there no hardships, this would be no pilgrimage worthy of the name. We are out, philosophically to take the world as it is; he who is not content to do so, had best not stir from home. But our camping-place, to-night, is ideal. We are upon a narrow, grassy ledge; below us, the sloping beach astrewn with jagged rocks; behind us rises steeply a grand hillside forest, in which lie, mantled with moss and lichens, and deep buried in undergrowth, boulders as large as a "cracker's" hut; romantic glens abound, and a little run comes noisily down a ravine hard by,--it is a witching back-door, filled with surprises at every turn. Beeches, elms, maples, lindens, pawpaws, tulip trees, here attain a monster growth,--with grape-vines, their fruit now set, hanging in great festoons from the branches; and all about, are the flowers which thrive best in shady solitudes--wild licorice, a small green-brier, and, although not yet in bloom, the sessile trillium. We are thoroughly isolated; a half-mile above us, faintly gleams a government beacon, and we noticed on landing that three-quarters of a mile below is a small cabin flanking the hill. Naught disturbs our quiet, save the calls of the birds at roosting-time, and now and then the hoarse bellow of a passing packet, with its legacy of boisterous wake. CHAPTER XVIII. Village life--A traveling photographer--On a country road--Studies in color--Again among colliers--In sweet content--A ferry romance. Near Troy, Ind., Friday, June 1st.--Below Alton, the hills are not so high as above. We have, however, the same thoroughly rustic landscape, the same small farms on the bottoms and wretched cabins on the slopes, the same frontier-like clearings thick with stumps, the same shabby little villages, and frequent ox-bow windings of the generous stream, with lovely vistas unfolding and dissolving with panoramic regularity. It is not a region where houseboaters flourish--there is but one every ten miles or so; as for steamboats, we see on an average one a day, while two or three usually pass us in the night. A dry, unpainted little place is Alton, Ind., with three down-at-the-heel shops, a tavern, a saloon, and a few dwellings; there was no bread obtainable here, for love or money, and we were fain to be content with a bag of crackers from the postoffice grocery. The promised photographer, who appears to be a rapid traveler, was said to have gone on to Concordia, eight miles below. Deep Water Landing, Ind. (676 miles), is a short row of new, whitewashed houses, with a great board sign displaying the name of the hamlet, doubtless to attract the attention of pilots. A rude little show-case, nailed up beside the door of the house at the head of the landing-path, contains tempting samples of crockery and tinware. Apparently some enterprising soul is trying to grow a town here, on this narrow ledge of clay, with his landing and his shop as a nucleus. But it is an unlikely spot, and I doubt if his "boom" will develop to the corner-lot stage. Rono, Ind., a mile below, with its limewashed buildings set in a bower of trees, at the base of a bald bluff, is a rather pretty study in gray and green and white. The most notable feature is a little school-house-like Masonic hall set high on a stone foundation, with a steep outer stairway--which gives one an impression that Rono is a victim of floods, and that the brethren occasionally come in boats to lodge-meetings. Concordia, Ky. (681 miles), rests on the summit of a steep clay bank, from which men were loading a barge with bark. Great piles of blocks, for staves, ornamented the crest of the rise--a considerable industry for these parts, we were told. But the photographer, whom we were chasing, had "taken" every Concordian who wished his services, and moved on to Derby, another Kentucky village, which at last we found, six miles father down the river. The principal occupation of the people of Derby is getting out timber from the hillside forests, six to ten miles in the interior. Oak, elm, and sycamore railway-ties are the specialty, these being worth twenty cents each when landed upon the wharf. A few months ago, Derby was completely destroyed by fire, but, although the timber business is on the wane here, much of the place was rebuilt on the old foundations; hence the fresh, unpainted buildings, with battlement fronts, which, with the prevalence of open-door saloons and a woodsy swagger on the part of the inhabitants, give the place a breezy, frontier aspect now seldom to be met with this side of the Rockies. Here at last was the traveling photographer. His tent, flapping loudly in the wind, occupied an empty lot in the heart of the village--a saloon on either side, and a lumberman's boarding house across the way, where the "artist" was at dinner, pending which I waited for him at the door of his canvas gallery. He evidently seeks to magnify his calling, does this raw youth of the camera, by affecting what he conceives to be the traditional garb of the artistic Bohemian, but which resembles more closely the costume of the minstrel stage--a battered silk hat, surmounting flowing locks glistening with hair-oil; a loose velveteen jacket, over a gay figured vest; and a great brass watch-chain, from which dangle silver coins. As this grotesque dandy, evidently not long from his native village, came mincing across the road in patent-leather slippers, smoking a cigarette, with one thumb in an arm-hole of his vest, and the other hand twirling an incipient mustache, he was plainly conscious of creating something of a swell in Derby. It was a crazy little dark-room to which I was shown--a portable affair, much like a coffin-case, which I expected momentarily to upset as I stood within, and be smothered in a cloud of ill-smelling chemicals. However, with care I finally emerged without accident, and sufficiently compensated the artist, who seemed not over-favorable to amateur competition, although he chatted freely enough about his business. It generally took him ten days, he said, to "finish" a town of five or six hundred inhabitants, like Derby. He traveled on steamers with his tenting outfit, but next season hoped to have money enough to "do the thing in style," in a houseboat of his own, an establishment which would cost say four hundred dollars; then, in the winter, he could beach himself at some fair-sized town, and perhaps make his board by running a local gallery, taking to the water again on the earliest spring "fresh." "I could live like a fight'n' cock then, cap'n, yew jist bet yer bottom dollar!" The temperature mounted with the progress of the day; and, the wind dying down, the atmosphere was oppressive. By the time Stephensport, Ky. (695 miles), was reached, in the middle of the afternoon, the sun was beating fiercely upon the glassy flood, and our awning came again into play, although it could not save us from the annoyance of the reflection. The barren clay bank at the mouth of Sinking Creek, upon which lies Stephensport, seemed fairly ablaze with heat, as I went up into the straggling hamlet to seek for supplies. There were no eggs to be had here; but, at last, milk was found in the farther end of the village, at a modest little cottage quite embowered in roses, with two century plants in tubs in the back-yard, and a trim fruit and vegetable garden to the rear of that, enclosed in palings. I remained a few minutes to chat with the little housewife, who knows her roses well, and is versed in the gentle art of horticulture. But her horizon is painfully narrow--first and dearest, the plants about her, which is not so bad; in a larger way, Stephensport and its petty affairs; but beyond that very little, and that little vague. It is ever thus, in such far-away, side-tracked villages as this--the world lies in the basin of the hills which these people see from their doors; if they have something to love and do for, as this good woman has in her bushes, seeds, and bulbs, then may they dwell happily in rustic obscurity; but where, as is more common, the small-beer of neighborhood gossip is their meat and drink, there are no folk on the footstool more wretched than the denizens of a dead little hamlet like Stephensport. We are housed this night on the Kentucky side, a mile-and-a-half above Cloverport, whose half-dozen lights are glimmering in the stream. In the gloaming, while dinner was being prepared, a ragged but sturdy wanderer came into camp. He was, he said, a mountaineer looking for work on the bottom farms; heretofore he had, when he wanted it, always found it; but this season no one appeared to have any money to expend for labor, and it seemed likely he would be obliged to return home without receiving an offer. We made the stranger no offer of a seat at our humble board, having no desire that he pass the night in our neighborhood; for darkness was coming on apace, and, if he long tarried, the woodland road would be as black as a pocket before he could reach Cloverport, his alleged destination. So starting him off with a biscuit or two, he was soon on his way toward the village, whistling a lively tune. * * * * * Crooked Creek, Ind., Saturday, 2d.--We had but fairly got to bed last night, after our late dinner, when the heavens suddenly darkened, fierce gusts of wind shook the tent violently, and then rain fell in blinding sheets. For a time it was lively work for the Doctor and me, tightening guy-ropes and ditching in the soft sand, for we were in an exposed position, catching the full force of the storm. At last, everything secured, we in serenity slept it out, awakening to find a beautiful morning, the grape-perfumed air as clear as crystal, the outlines of woods and hills and streams standing out with sharp definition, and over all a hushed charm most soothing to the spirit. Cloverport (705 miles) is a typical Kentucky town, of somewhat less than four thousand inhabitants. The wharf-boat, which runs up and down an iron tramway, according to the height of the flood, was swarming with negroes, watching with keen delight the departure of the "E. D. Rogan," as she noisily backed out into the river and scattered the crowd with great showers of spray from her gigantic stern-wheel. It was a busy scene on board--negro roustabouts shipping the gang-plank, and singing in a low pitch an old-time plantation melody; stokers, stripped to the waist, shoveling coal into the gaping furnaces; chambermaids hanging the ship's linen out to dry; passengers crowded by the shore rail, on the main deck; the bustling mate shouting orders, apparently for the benefit of landsmen, for no one on board appeared to heed him; and high up, in front of the pilot-house, the spruce captain, in gold-laced cap, and glass in hand, as immovable as the Sphinx. At the head of the slope were a picturesque medley of colored folk, of true Southern plantation types, so seldom seen north of Dixie. Two wee picaninnies, drawn in an express cart by a half-dozen other sable elfs, attracted our attention, as W---- and I went up-town for our day's marketing. We stopped to take a snap-shot at them, to the intense satisfaction of the little kink-haired mother of the twins, who, barring her blue calico gown, looked as if she might have just stepped out of a Zulu group. Cloverport has brick-works, gas wells, a flouring-mill, and other industries. The streets are unkempt, as in most Kentucky towns, and mules attached to crazy little carts are the chief beasts of burden; but the shops are well-stocked; there were many farmers in town, on horse and mule back, doing their Saturday shopping; and an air of business confidence prevails. In this district, coal-mines again appear, with their riverside tipples, and their offal defiling the banks. In general, these reaches have many of the aspects of the Monongahela, although the hills are lower, and mining is on a smaller scale. Cannelton, Ind. (717 miles), is the headquarters of the American Cannel Coal Co.; there are, also, woolen and cotton mills, sewer-pipe factories, and potteries. W---- and I went up into the town, on an errand for supplies,--we distribute our small patronage, for the sake of frequently going ashore,--and were interested in noting the cheery tone of the business men, who reported that the financial depression, noticeable elsewhere in the Ohio Valley, has practically been unfelt here. Hawesville, Ky., just across the river, has a similarly prosperous look, but we did not row across to inspect it at close range. Tell City, Ind., three miles below, is another flourishing factory town, whose wharf-boat was the scene of much bustle. Four miles still lower down lies the sleepy little Indiana village of Troy, which appears to have profited nothing from having lively neighbors. From the neighborhood of Derby, the environing hills had, as we proceeded, been lessening in height, although still ruggedly beautiful. A mile or two below Troy, both ranges suddenly roll back into the interior, leaving broad bottoms on either hand, occasionally edged with high clay banks, through which the river has cut its devious way. At other times, these bottoms slope gently to the beach and everywhere are cultivated with such care that often no room is left for the willow fringe, which heretofore has been an ever-present feature of the landscape. Hereafter, to the mouth, we shall for the most part row between parallel walls of clay, with here and there a bankside ledge of rock and shale, and now and then a cragged spur running out to meet the river. We have now entered the great corn and tobacco belt of the Lower Ohio, the region of annual overflow, where the towns seek the highlands, and the bottom farmers erect their few crude buildings on posts, prepared in case of exceptional flood to take to boats. The prevalent eagerness on the part of farmers to obtain the utmost from their land made it difficult, this evening, to find a proper camping-place. We finally found a narrow triangle of clay terrace, in Indiana, at the mouth of Crooked Creek (727 miles), where not long since had tarried a houseboater engaged in making rustic furniture. It is a pretty little bit, in a group of big willows and sycamores, and would be comfortable but for the sand-flies, which for the first time give us annoyance. The creek itself, some four rods wide, and overhung with stately trees, winds gracefully through the rich bottom; we have found it a charming water to explore, being able to proceed for nearly a mile through lovely little wide-spreads abounding in lilies and sweet with the odor of grape-blossoms. Across the river, at Emmerick's Landing,--a little cluster of unpainted cabins,--lies the white barge of a photographer, just such a home as the Derby artist covets. The Ohio is here about half-a-mile wide, but high-pitched voices of people on the opposite bank are plainly heard across the smooth sounding-board; and in the quiet evening air comes to us the "chuck-chuck" of oars nearly a mile away. Following a torrid afternoon, with exasperating headwinds, this cool, fresh atmosphere, in the long twilight, is inspiring. Overhead is the slender streak of the moon's first quarter, its reflection shimmering in the broad and placid stream rushing noiselessly by us to the sea. In blissful content we sit upon the bank, and drink in the glories of the night. The days of our pilgrimage are nearing their end, but our enthusiasm for this _al fresco_ life is in no measure abating. That we might ever thus dream and drift upon the river of life, far from the labored strivings of the world, is our secret wish, to-night. We had long been sitting thus, having silent communion with our thoughts, when the Boy, his little head resting on W----'s shoulder, broke the spell by murmuring from the fullness of his heart, "Mother, why cannot we keep on doing this, always?" * * * * * Yellowbank Island, Sunday, June 3d.--Pilgrim still attracts more attention than her passengers. When we stop at the village wharfs, or grate our keel upon some rustic landing, it is not long before the Doctor, who now always remains with the boat, no matter who goes ashore, is surrounded by an admiring group, who rap Pilgrim on the ribs, try to lift her by the bow, and study her graceful lines with the air of connoisseurs. Barefooted men fishing on the shores, in broad straw hats, and blue jeans, invariably "pass the time o' day" with us as we glide by, crying out as a parting salute, "Ye've a honey skiff, thar!" or, "Right smart skiff, thet yere!" We have many long, dreary reaches to-day. Clay banks twelve to twenty feet in height, and growing taller as the water recedes, rise sheer on either side. Fringing the top of each is often a row of locusts, whose roots in a feeble way hold the soil; but the river cuts in at the base, wherever the changing current impinges on the shore, and at low water great slices, with a gurgling splash, fall into the stream, which now is of the color of dull gold, from the clay held in solution. Often, ruins of buildings may be seen upon the brink, that have collapsed from this undercut of the fickle flood; and many others, still inhabited, are in dangerous proximity to the edge, only biding their time. This morning, we passed the Indiana hamlets of Lewisport (731 miles) and Grand View (736 miles), and by noon were at Rockport (741 miles), a smart little city of three thousand souls, romantically perched upon a great rock, which on the right bank rises abruptly from the wide expanse of bottom. From the river, there is little to be seen of Rockport save two wharves,--one above, the other below, the bold cliff which springs sheer for a hundred feet above the stream,--two angling roads leading up into the town, a house or two on the edge of the hill and a huge water-tower crowning all. A few miles below, we ran through a narrow channel, a few rods wide, separating an elongated island from the Indiana shore. It much resembles the small tributary streams, with a lush undergrowth of weeds down to the water's edge, and arched with monster sycamores, elms, maples and persimmons. Frequently had we seen skiffs upon the shore, arranged with stern paddle-wheels, turned by levers operated by men standing or sitting in the boat. But we had seen none in operation until, shooting down this side channel, we met such a craft coming up, manned by two fellows, who seemed to be having a treadmill task of it; they assured us, however, that when a man was used to manipulating the levers he found it easier than rowing, especially in ascending stream. Yellowbank Island, our camp to-night, lies nearest the Indiana shore, with Owensboro, Ky. (749 miles), just across the way. We have had no more beautiful home on our long pilgrimage than this sandy islet, heavily grown to stately willows. While the others were preparing dinner, I pulled across the rapid current to an Indiana ferry-landing, where there is a row of mean frame cabins, like the negro quarters of a Southern farm, all elevated on posts some four feet above the level. A half-dozen families live there, all of them small tenant farmers, save the ferryman--a strapping, good-natured fellow, who appears to be the nabob of the community. Several hollow sycamore stumps house sows and their litters; but the only cow in the neighborhood is owned by a young man who, when I came up, was watering some refractory mules at a pump-trough. He paused long enough to summon Boss and milk a half-gallon into my pail, accepting my dime with a degree of thankfulness which was quite unnecessary, considering that it was _quid pro quo_. Tobacco is a more important crop than corn hereabout, he said; farmers are rather impatiently waiting for rain, to set out the young plants. His only outbuilding is a monster corn-crib, set high on posts--the airy basement, no better than an open shed, serving for a stable; during the few weeks of severe winter weather, horses and cow are removed to the main floor, and canvas nailed around the sides to keep out the wind. Even this slight protection is not vouchsafed stock by all planters; the majority of them appear to provide only rain shelters, and even these can be of slight avail in a driving storm. Later, in the failing light, W---- and I pulled together over to the "cracker" settlement, seeking drinking-water. A stout young man was seated on the end of the ferry barge, talking earnestly with the ferryman's daughter, a not unattractive girl, but pale and thin, as these women are apt to be. Evidently they are lovers, and not ashamed of it, for they gave us a friendly smile as we knotted our painter to the barge-rail, and expressed great interest in Pilgrim, she being of a pattern new to them. We are in a noisy corner of the world. Over on the Indiana bottom, a squeaky fiddle is grinding out dance-tunes, hymns and ballads with charming indifference. We thought we detected in a high-pitched "Annie Laurie" the voice of the ferryman's daughter. There seems, too, to be a deal of rowing on the river, evidently Owensboro folk getting back to town from a day in the country, and country folk hieing home after a day in the city. The ferryman is in much demand, judging from the frequent ringing of his bell,--one on either bank, set between two tall posts, with a rope dangling from the arm. At early dusk, the cracked bell of the Owensboro Bethel resounded harshly in our ears, as it advertised an evening service for the floating population; and now the wheezy strains of a melodeon tell us that, although we stayed away, doubtless others have been attracted thither. The sepulchral roars of passing steamers echo along the wooded shore, the night wind rustles the tree-tops, Owensboro dogs are much awake, and the electric lamps of the city throw upon our canvas screen the fantastic shadows of leaves and dancing boughs. CHAPTER XIX. Fishermen's tales--Skiff nomenclature--Green River--Evansville--Henderson--Audubon and Rafinesque--Floating trade--The Wabash. Green River Towhead, Monday, June 4th.--We were shopping in Owensboro, this morning, soon after seven o'clock. The business quarter was just stirring into life; and the negroes who were lounging about on every hand were still drowsy, as if they had passed the night there, and were reluctant to be up and doing. There is a pretty court-house in a green park, the streets are well paved, and the shops clean and bright, with their wares mostly under the awnings on the sidewalk, for people appear to live much out of doors here--and well they may, with the temperature 73° at this early hour, and every promise of a scorching day. I wonder if a fisherman could, if he tried, be exact in his statements. One of them, below Owensboro, who kept us company for a mile or two down stream, declared that at this stage of the water he made forty and fifty dollars a week, "'n' I reck'n I ote to be contint." A few miles farther on, another complained that when the river was falling, the water was so muddy the fish would not bite; and even in the best of seasons, a fisherman had "a hard pull uv it; hit ain't no business fer a decent man!" The other day, when the river was rising, a Cincinnati follower of the apostle's calling averred that there was no use fishing when the water was coming up. As the variable Ohio is like the ocean tide, ever rising or falling, it would seem that the thousands in this valley who make fishing their livelihood must be playing a losing game. There are many beautiful islands on these lower reaches of the river. We followed the narrow channel between Little Hurricane and the Kentucky shore, a charming run of two or three miles, with both banks a dense tangle of drift-wood, weeds and vines. Between Three-Mile Island and Indiana, is another interesting cut-short, where the shores are undisturbed by the work of the main stream, and trees and undergrowth come down to the water's edge; the air is quivering with the songs of birds, and resonant with sweet smells; while over stumps, and dead and fallen trees, grape-vines luxuriantly festoon and cluster. Near the pretty group of French Islands, two government dredges, with their boarding barges, were moored to the Kentucky shore--waiting for coal, we were told, before resuming operations in the planting of a dike. I took a snap-shot at the fleet, and heard one man shout to another, "Bill, did yer notice they've a photograph gallery aboard?" They appear to be a jolly lot, these dredgers, and inclined to take life easily, in accordance with the traditions of government employ. We frequently see skiffs hauled upon the beach, or moored between two protecting posts, to prevent their being swamped by steamer wakes. The names they bear interest us, as betokening, perhaps, the proclivities of their owners. "Little Joe," "Little Jim," "Little Maggie," and like diminutives, are common here, as upon the towing-tugs and steam ferries of broader waters--and now and then we have, by contrast, "Xerxes," "Achilles," "Hercules." Sometimes the skiff is named after its owner's wife or sweetheart, as "Maggie G.," "Polly H.," or from the rustic goddesses, "Pomona," "Flora," "Ceres;" on the Kentucky shore, we have noted "Stonewall Jackson," and "Robert E. Lee," and one Ohio boat was labeled "Little Phil." Literature we found represented to-day, by "Octave Thanet"--the only case on record, for the Ohio-River "cracker" is not greatly given to books. Slang claims for its own, many of these knockabout craft--"U. Bet," "Git Thair," "Go it, Eli," "Whoa, Emma!" and nondescripts, like "Two Doves," "Poker Chip," and "Game Chicken," are not infrequent. In these stately solitudes, towns are far between. Enterprise, Ind. (755 miles), is an unpainted village with a dismal view--back of and around it, wide bottom lands, with hills in the far distance; up and down the river, precipitous banks of clay, with willow fringes on that portion of the shore which is not being cut by the impinging current. Scuffletown, Ky. (767 miles), is uninviting. Newburgh, on the edge of a bluff, across the river in Indiana, is a ragged little place that has seen better days; but the backward view of Newburgh, from below Three-Mile Island, made a pretty picture, the whites and reds of the town standing out in sharp relief against the dark background of the hill. Green River (775 miles), a gentle, rustic stream, enters through the wide bottoms of Kentucky. We had difficulty in finding it in the wilderness of willows--might not have succeeded, indeed, had not the red smokestack of a small steamer suddenly appeared above the bushes. Soon, the puffing craft debouched upon the Ohio, and, quickly overtaking us, passed down toward Evansville. Green River Towhead, two miles below, claimed us for the night. There is a shanty, midway on the island, and at the lower end the landing of a railway-transfer. We have our camp at the upper end, in a bed of spotless white sand, thick grown to dwarf willows. Entangled drift-wood lies about in monster heaps, lodged in depressions of the land, or against stout tree-trunks; a low bar of gravel connects our home with Green River Island, lying close against the Indiana bank; sand-flies freely joined us at dinner, and I hear, as I write, the drone of a solitary mosquito,--the first in many days; while upon the bar, at sunset, a score of turkey-buzzards held silent council, some of them occasionally rising and wheeling about in mid-air, then slowly lighting and stretching their necks, and flapping their wings most solemnly, before rejoining the conference. * * * * * Cypress Bend, Tuesday, 5th.--The temperature had materially fallen during the night, and the morning opened gray and hazy. Evansville, Ind. (783 miles), made a charming Turneresque study, as her steeples and factory chimneys developed through the mist. It is a fine, well-built town, of some fifty thousand inhabitants, with a beautiful little postoffice in the Gothic style--a refutation, this, of the well-worn assertion that there are no creditable government buildings in our small American cities. A railway bridge here crosses the Ohio, numerous sawmills line the bank; altogether, there is business bustle, the like of which we have not seen since leaving Louisville. Henderson (795 miles) is a substantial Kentucky town of nine thousand souls, with large tobacco interests, we are told, ranking next to Louisville in this regard. Through the morning, the mist had been thickening. While we were passing beneath the railway bridge at Henderson, thunder sounded, and the western sky suddenly blackened. Pulling rapidly in to the town shore, shelter was found beneath the overhanging deck of a deserted wharf-boat. We had just completed preparations with the rubber blankets and ponchos, when the deluge came. But the sheltering deck was not water-tight; soon the rain came pouring in upon us through the uncaulked cracks, and we were nearly as badly off in our close-smelling quarters as in the open. However, we were a merry party under there, with the Doctor giving us a touch of "Br'er Rabbit," and the boy relating a fantastic dream he had had on the Towhead last night; while I told them the story of Audubon, whose name will ever be associated with Henderson. The great naturalist was in business at Louisville, early in the century; but in 1812, he failed in this venture, and moved to Henderson, where his neighbors thought him a trifle daft,--and certainly he was a ne'er-do-well, wandering around the woods, with hair hanging down on his shoulders, a far-away look in his eyes, and communing with the birds. In 1818, the botanist Rafinesque, on the first of his several tramps down the Ohio valley,--he had a favorite saying, that the only way for a botanist to travel, was to walk,--stopped over at Henderson to visit this crazy fellow of whom he had heard. Rafinesque had a hope that Audubon might buy some of his colored drawings; but when he saw the wonderful pictures which Audubon had made, he acknowledged that his own were inferior--a sore confession for Rafinesque, who was an egotist of the first water. Audubon had but humble quarters, for it was hard work in those days for him to keep the wolf from the door; nevertheless, he entertained the distinguished traveler, whom he was himself destined to far eclipse. One night, a bat flew into Rafinesque's bedroom, and in driving it out he used his host's fine Cremona as a club, thus making kindling-wood of it. Two years later, still steeped in poverty, Audubon left Henderson. It was 1826 before he became known to the world of science, when little of his life was left in which to enjoy the fame at last awarded him. We had lunch on Henderson Island, three miles down, and for warmth walked briskly about on the strand, among the willow clumps. It rained again, after we had taken our seats in the boat, and the head-wind which sprang up was not unwelcome, for it necessitated a right lively pull to make headway. W---- and the Boy, in the stern-sheets, were not uncomfortable when swathed to the chin in the blankets which ordinarily serve us as cushions. Ten miles below Henderson, was a little fleet of houseboats, lying in a thicket of willows along the Indiana beach. We stopped at one of them, and bought a small catfish for dinner. The fishermen seemed a happy company, in this isolated spot. The women were engaged in household work, but the men were spending the afternoon collected in the cabin of one of their number, who had recently arrived from Green River. While waiting for the fish to be caught in a live-box, I visited with the little band. It was a comfortable room, furnished rather better than the average shore cabin, and the Green River man's family of half-a-dozen were well-kept, pleasant-faced, and polite. Altogether it was a much more respectable houseboat company than any we have yet seen on the river. But the fish-stories which that Green River man tells, with an honest-like, open-eyed sobriety, would do credit to Munchausen. The rain, at first spasmodic, became at last persistent. Two miles farther down, at Cypress Bend (806 miles), we ran into an Indiana hill, where on a steep slope of yellow shale, all strewn with rocks, our tent was hurriedly pitched. There was no driving of pegs into this stony base, so we weighted down the canvas with round-heads, and fastened our guys to bushes and boulders as best we might. Huddled around the little stove, under the fly, the crew dined sumptuously _en course_, from canned soup down to strawberries for dessert,--for Evansville is a good market. It is not always, we pilgrims fare thus high--the resources of Rome, Thebes, Bethlehem, Herculaneum, and the other classic towns with which the Ohio's banks are dotted, being none of the best. Some days, we are fortunate to have aught in our larder. * * * * * Brown's Island, Wednesday, 6th.--This morning's camp-fire was welcome for its warmth. The sky has been clear, but a sharp, cold wind has prevailed throughout the day, quite counteracting the sun's rays; we noticed townsfolk going about in overcoats, their hands in their pockets. In the ox-bow curves, the breeze came in turn from every quarter, sometimes dead ahead and again pushing us swiftly on. In seeking the lee shore, Pilgrim pursued a zigzag course, back and forth between the States,--now under the brow of towering clay banks, corrugated by the flood, and honeycombed by swallows, which in flocks screamed and circled over our heads; again, closely brushing the fringe of willows and sycamores and maples on low-lying shores. Thus did we for the most part paddle in placid water, while above us the wind whistled in the tree-tops, rustled the blooming elders and the tall grasses of the plain, and, out in the open river, caused white-caps to dance right merrily. We met at intervals to-day, several houseboats, the most of them bearing the inscription prescribed by the new Kentucky license law, which is now being enforced, the essential features of which inscription are the home and name of the owner, and the date at which the license expires. The standard of education among houseboaters is evinced by the legend borne by a trader's craft which we boarded near Slim Island: "Lisens exp.rs Maye the 24 1895." The young woman in charge, a slender creature in a brilliant red calico gown, with blue ribbons at the corsage, had been but recently married to her lord, who was back in the country stirring up trade. She had few notions of business, and allowed us to put our own prices on such articles as we purchased. The stock was a curious medley--a few staple groceries, bacon and dried beef, candies, crockery, hardware, tobacco, a small line of patent medicines, in which blood-purifiers chiefly prevailed, bitters, ginger beer, and a glass case in which were displayed two or three women's straw hats, gaudily-trimmed. The woman said their custom was, to tie up to some convenient shore and "buy a little stuff o' the farmers, 'n' in that way trade springs up," and thus become known. Two or three weeks would exhaust any neighborhood, whereupon they would move on for a dozen miles or so. Late in the autumn, they select a comfortable beach, and lie by for the winter. Mt. Vernon, Ind. (819 miles), is on a high, rolling plain, with a rather pretty little court-house set in a park of grass, some good business buildings, and huge flouring-mills, which appear to be the leading industry. Another flouring-mill town, with the addition of the characteristic Kentucky distillery, is Uniontown (833 miles), on the southern shore--a bright, neat little city, backed by smooth, picturesque green hills. The feature of the day was the entrance, through a dreary stretch of clay banks, of the Wabash River (838 miles), which divides Indiana from Illinois. Three hundred and sixty yards wide at the mouth, about half the width of the Ohio, it is the most important of the latter's northern affluents, and pours into the main stream a swift-rushing body of clear, green water, which at first boldly pushes over to the heavily-willowed Kentucky shore the roily mess of the Ohio, and for several miles exerts a considerable influence in clarification. The Lower Wabash, flowing through a soft clay bottom, runs an erratic course, and its mouth is a variable location, so that the bounds of Illinois and Indiana, hereabout, fluctuate east and west according to the exigencies of the floods. The far-reaching bottom itself, however, is apparently of slight value, giving evidence, in the dreary clumps of dead timber, of being frequently inundated. An interesting stream is the Wabash, from an historical point of view. La Salle knew of it in 1677, and was planning to prosecute his fur trade over the Maumee and the Wabash; but the Iroquois held the portage, and for nearly forty years thereafter forbade its use by whites. Joliet thought the Wabash the headwaters of what we know as the Lower Ohio, and in his map (1673) styled the latter the Wabash, down to its mouth. Vincennes, an old Wabash town, was one of the posts captured so heroically for the Americans by George Rogers Clark, during the Revolutionary War. In 1814, there was established at New Harmony, also on the Wabash, the communistic seat of the Harmonists, who had moved thither from Pennsylvania, to which, dissatisfied with the West, they returned ten years later. Numerous islands have to-day beautified the Ohio. Despite their inartistic names, Diamond and Slim are tipped at head and foot with charming banks and willowed sand, and each center is clothed in a luxurious forest, rimmed by a gravelly beach piled high with drift and gnarled roots: the whole, with startling clearness, inversely reflected in the mirrored flood. Wabash Island, opposite the mouth of the great tributary, is an insular woodland several miles in length. Among the prettiest of these jewels studding our silvery path, is the upmost of the little group known as Brown's Islands, on which we are passing the night. It was an easy landing on the hard sand, and a comfortable carry to a level opening in the willows, where we have a model camp with a great round sycamore block for a table; an Evansville newspaper does duty as a tablecloth, and two logs rolled alongside make seats. Four miles below, the smoke of Shawneetown (848 miles) rises lazily above the dark level line of woods; while across the river, in Kentucky, there is an unbroken forest fringe, without sign of life as far as the eye can reach. A long glistening bar of sand connects our little island home with the Illinois mainland; upon it was being held, in the long twilight, that evening council of turkey-buzzards, which we so often witness when in an island camp. Sand-pipers went fearlessly about among them, bobbing their little tails with nervous vehemence; redbirds trilled their good-nights in the tree-tops; and, daintily wading in the sandy shallows, object lessons in patience, were great blue herons, carefully peering for the prey which never seems to be found. As night closed in upon us, owls dismally hooted in the mainland woods, buzzards betook themselves to inland roosts, herons winged their stately flight to I know not where, and over on the Kentucky shore could faintly be heard the barking of dogs at the little "cracker" farmsteads hid deep in the lowland forest. CHAPTER XX. Shawneetown--Farm-houses on stilts--Cave-in-Rock--An island night. Half-Moon Bar, Thursday, June 7th.--A head-breeze prevailed all day, strong enough to fan us into a sense of coolness, but leaving the water as unruffled as a mill-pond; thus did we seem, in the vivid reflections of the early morning, to be sailing between double lines of shore, lovely in their groupings of luxuriant trees and tangled heaps of vine-clad drift. It was a hazy, mirage-producing atmosphere, the river appearing to melt away in space, and the ever-charming island heads looming unsupported in mid-air. From the woods, the piercing note of locusts filled the air as with the ceaseless rattle of pebbles against innumerable window-panes. At a distance, Shawneetown appears as if built upon higher land than the neighboring bottom; but this proves, on approach, to be an optical illusion, for the town is walled in by a levee some thirty feet in height, above the top of which loom its chimneys and spires. Shawneetown, laid out in 1808, soon became an important post on the Lower Ohio, and indeed ranked with Kaskaskia as one of the principal Illinois towns, although in 1817 it still only contained from thirty to forty log dwellings. During the reign of the Ohio-River bargemen,[A] it was notorious as the headquarters of the roughest elements in that boisterous class, and frequently the scene of most barbarous outrages--"the odious receptacle," says a chronicler of the time, "of filth and villany." In those lively days, which lasted with more or less vigor until about 1830,--by which time, steamboats had finally overcome popular prejudice and gained the upper hand in river transportation,--the people of Shawneetown were largely dependent on the trade of the salt works of the neighboring Saline Reserve. The salt-licks--at which in early days the bones of the mammoth were found, as at Big Bone Lick--commenced a few miles below the town, and embraced a district of about ninety thousand acres. While Illinois was still a Territory, these salines were rented by the United States to individuals, but were granted to the new State (1818) in perpetuity. The trade, in time, decreased with the decadence of river traffic; and Shawneetown has since had but slow growth--it now being a dreary little place of three thousand inhabitants, with unmistakable evidences of having long since seen its best days. The farmers upon the wide bottoms of the lower reaches now invariably have their dwellings, corn-cribs, and tobacco-sheds set upon posts, varying from five to ten feet high, according to the surrounding elevation above the normal river level. At present we are, as a rule, hemmed in by banks full thirty or forty feet in height above the present stage. After a hard climb up the steps which are frequently found cut into the clay, to facilitate access to the river, it is with something akin to awe that we look upon these buildings on stilts, for they bespeak, in times of great flood, a rise in the river of between fifty and sixty feet. Three miles above Saline River, I scrambled up to photograph a farm-house of this character. In order to get the building within the field of the camera, it was necessary to mount a cob-house of loose rails, which did duty as a pig-pen. A young woman of eighteen or twenty years, attired in a dazzling-red calico gown, came out on the front balcony to see the operation; and, for a touch of life, I held her in talk until the picture was taken. She was not at all averse to thus posing, and chatted as familiarly as though we were old friends. The water, my model said, came at least once a year to the main floor of the house, some ten feet above the level of the land, and forty feet above the normal river stage; "every few years" it rose to the eaves of this story-and-a-half dwelling, when the family would embark in boats, hieing off to the back-lying hills, a mile-and-a-half away. An event of this sort seemed quite commonplace to the girl, and not at all to be viewed as a calamity. As in other houses of the bottom farmers of this district, there is no wall-paper, no plaster upon the walls, and little or nothing else to be injured by water. Their few household possessions can readily be packed into a scow, together with the live-stock, and behold the family is ready, if need be, to float away to the ends of the world. As a matter of fact, if they carry food enough with them, and a rain-proof tent, their season on the hills is but a prolonged picnic. When the waters sufficiently subside, they float back again to their home; the river mud is scraped out of the rooms, the kitchen-stove rubbed up a bit, and soon everything is again at rights, with a fresh layer of alluvial deposit to fertilize the fields. Few of these small farmers own the lands they till; from Pittsburg down, the great majority of Ohio River planters are but tenants. The old families that once owned the soil are living in the neighboring towns, or in other parts of the country, and renting out their acres to these cultivators. We were told that the rental fee around Owensboro is usually in kind,--fourteen bushels of good, salable corn being the rate per acre. In "Egypt," as Southern Illinois is called, the average rent is four or five dollars in money, except in years when the water remains long upon the ground, and thus shortens the season; then the fee is correspondingly reduced. The girl on the balcony averred, that in 1893 it amounted to one-third the value of the average yield. The numerous huge stilted corn cribs we see are constructed so that wagons can drive up into them, and, after unloading in bins on either side, descend another incline at the far end. Sometimes a portion of the crib is boarded up for a residence, with windows, and a little balcony which does double duty as a porch and a landing-stage for the boats in time of high water. Scattered about on the level are loosely-built sheds of rails, for stock, which practically live _al fresco_, so far as actual storm-shelter goes. Usually the flooded bottoms are denuded of trees, save perhaps a narrow fringe along the bank, and a few dead trunks scattered here and there; while back, a third or a half-mile from the river, lies a dense line of forest, far beyond which rises the low rim of the basin. But just below Saline River (857 miles), a lazy little stream of a few rods' width, the hills, now perhaps eighty or a hundred feet in height, again approach to the water's edge; and henceforth to the mouth we are to have alternating semi-circular, wooded bottoms and shaly, often palisaded uplands, grown to scrub and vines much in the fashion of some of the middle reaches. A trading-boat was moored just within the Saline, where we stopped for lunch under a clump of sycamores. The owner obtains butter and eggs from the farmers, in exchange for his varied wares, and sells them at a goodly profit to passing steamers, which will always stop when flagged. Approaching Cave-in-Rock, Ill. (869 miles), the right bank is for several miles an almost continuous palisade of lime-stone, thick-studded with black and brown flints. In the breaking down of this escarpment, popularly styled Battery Rocks, numerous caves have been formed, the largest of which gave the place its name. It is a rather low opening into the rock, perhaps two hundred feet deep, and the floor some twenty feet above the present level of the river; in times of flood, it is frequently so filled with water that boats enter, and thousands of silly people have, in two or three generations past, carved or painted their names upon the vaulted roof.[B] From this large entrance hall, a chimney-like hole in the roof leads to other chambers, said to be imposing and widely ramified--"not unlike a Gothic cathedral," said Ashe, an early English traveler (1806), who appears to have everywhere in these Western wilds sought the marvellous, and found it. About 1801, a band of robbers made these inner recesses their home, and frequently sallied thence to rob passing boats, and incidentally to murder the crews. As for the little hamlet of Cave-in-Rock, nestled in a break in the palisade, a few hundred yards below, it was, between 1801 and 1805, the seat of another species of brigandage--a land speculation, wherein schemers waxed rich from the confusion engendered by conflicting claims of settlers, the outgrowth of carelessly-phrased Indian treaties and overlapping French and English patents. From 1804 to 1810, a Congressional committee was engaged in straightening out this weary tangle; and its decisions, ratified by Congress, are to-day the foundation of many land-titles in Indiana and Illinois. We are in camp to-night upon the Illinois shore, opposite Half-Moon Bar (872 miles), and a mile above Hurricane Island. Towering above us are great sycamores, cypress, maples, and elms, and all about a dense jungle of grasses, vines, and monster weeds--the rank horse-weed being now some ten feet high, with a stem an inch in diameter; the dead stalks of last year's growth, in the broad rolling fields to our rear, indicate a possibility of sixteen feet, and an apparent desire to out-rival the corn. Cane-brake, too, is prevalent hereabout, with stalks two inches or more thick. The mulberries are reddening, the Doctor reports on his return with the Boy from a botanizing expedition, and black-caps are turning; while bergamot and vervain are among the plants newly added to the herbarium. * * * * * Stewart's Island, Friday, 8th.--We arose this morning to find the tent as wet from dew and fog as if there had been a shower, and the bushes by the landing were sparkling with great beads of moisture. The bold, black head of Hurricane Island stood out with startling distinctness, framed in rolling fog; through a cloud-bank on the horizon, the sun was bursting with the dull glow of burnished copper. By the time of starting, the fog had lifted, and the sun swung clear in a steel-blue sky; but there was still a soft haze on land and river, which dreamily closed the ever-changing vistas, and we seemed to float through an enchanted land. The approach to Elizabethtown, Ill. (877 miles), is picturesque; but of the dry little town of seven hundred souls, with its rocky, undulating streets set in a break in the line of palisades, very little is to be seen from the river. Quarrying for paving-stones appears to be the chief pursuit of the Elizabethans. At Rose Clare, Ill., a string of shanties three miles below, are two idle plants of the Argyle Lead and Fluor-Spar Mining Co. Carrsville, Ky., is another arid, hillside hamlet, with striking escarpments stretching above and below for several miles. Mammoth boulders, a dozen or more feet in height, relics doubtless of once formidable cliffs, here line the riverside. The palisaded hills reappear in Illinois, commencing at Parkinson's Landing, a dreary little settlement on a waste of barren, stony slope flanking the perpendicular wall. Just above Golconda Island (890 miles), on the Illinois side, we were witness to a "meet" of farmers for a squirrel-hunt, a favorite amusement in these parts. There were five men upon a side, all carrying guns; as we passed, they were shaking hands, preparatory to separating for the battue. Upon the bank above, in a grove of cypress, pawpaw, and sycamore, their horses were standing, unhitched from the poles of the wagons in which they had been driven, and, tied to trees, feeding from boxes set upon the ground. It was pleasant to see that these people, who must lead dreary lives upon the malaria-stricken and flood-washed bottoms, occasionally take a holiday with a spice of rational adventure in it; although there is the probability that this squirrel-hunt may be followed to-night by a roystering at the village tavern, the losing side paying the score. We reached Stewart's Island (901 miles) at five o'clock, and went into camp upon the landing-beach of hard, white sand, facing Kentucky. The island is two miles long, the owner living in Bird's Point Landing, Ky., just below us--a rather shabby but picturesquely-situated little village, at the base of pretty, wooded hills. A hundred and fifty acres of the island are planted to corn, and the owner's laborers--a white overseer and five blacks--are housed a half-mile above us, in a rude cabin half-hidden in a generous maple grove. The white man soon came down to the strand, riding his mule, and both drank freely from the muddy river. He was a fairly-intelligent young fellow, and proud of his mount--no need of lines, he said, for "this yer mule; ye on'y say 'gee!' and 'haw!' and he done git thar ev'ry time, sir-r! 'Pears to me, he jist done think it out to hisself, like a man would. Hit ain't no use try'n' boss that yere mule, he's thet ugly when he's sot on 't--but jist pat him on th' naick and say, 'So thar, Solomon!' and thar ain't no one knows how to act better 'n he." As we were at dinner, in the twilight, the five negroes also came riding down the angling roadway, in picturesque single file, singing snatches of camp-meeting songs in that weird minor key with which we are so familiar in "jubilee" music. Across the river, a Kentucky darky, riding a mule along the dusky woodland road at the base of the hills, and evidently going home from his work in the fields, was singing at the top of his bent, apparently as a stimulus to failing courage. Our islanders shouted at him in derision. The shoreman's replies, which lacked not for spice, came clear and sharp across the half-mile of smooth water, and his tormentors quickly ceased chaffing. Having all drunk copiously, men and mules resumed their line of march up the bank, and disappeared as they came, still chanting the crude melodies of their people. An hour later, we could hear them at the cabin, singing "John Brown's Body" and other old friends--with the moon, bright and clear in its first quarter, adding a touch of romance to the scene. [Footnote A: See Chapter XIII.] [Footnote B: "Scrawled over by that class of aspiring travelers who defile noble monuments with their worthless names."--Irving, in _The Alhambra_.] CHAPTER XXI. The Cumberland and the Tennessee--Stately Solitudes--Old Fort Massac--Dead towns in Egypt--The last camp--Cairo. Opposite Metropolis, Ill., Saturday, June 9th.--As we were dressing this morning, at half-past five, the echoes were again awakened by the vociferous negro on the Kentucky shore, who was going out to his work again, as noisy as ever. One of our own black men walked down the bank, ostensibly to light his pipe at the breakfast fire, but really to satisfy a pardonable curiosity regarding us. The singing brother on the mainland appeared to amuse him, and he paused to listen, saying, "Dat yere nigger, he got too loud voice!" Then, when he had left our camp and regained the top of the bank, he leaned upon his hoe and yelled: "Say, niggah, ober dere! whar you git dat mule?" "Who you holl'rin' at, you brack island niggah?" was the quick reply. "You lan' niggah, you tink you smart!" "I'se so smart, I done want no liv'n' on island, wi' gang boss, 'n not 'lowed go 'way!" The tuneful darky had evidently here touched a tender spot, for our man turned back into the field to his work; and the other, kicking the mule into action, trotted off to the tune of "Dar's a meet'n' here, to-night!" We went up into the field, to see the laborers cultivating corn. The sun was blazing hot, without a breath of air stirring, but the great black fellows seemed to mind it not, chattering away to themselves like magpies, and keeping up their conversation by shouts, when separated from each other at the ends of plow-rows. A natural levee, eight and ten feet high, and studded with large tree-willows, rims in the island farm like the edge of a basin. We were told that this served as a barrier only against the June "fresh," for the regular spring floods invariably swamp the place; but what is left within the bowl, when the outer waters subside, soon leaches through the sandy soil. After passing the pretty shores of Dog Island, not far below, the bold, dark headland of Cumberland Island soon bursts upon our view. We follow the narrow eastern channel, in order to greet the Cumberland River (909 miles), which half-way down its island name-sake,--at the woe-begone little village of Smithland, Ky.--empties a generous flood into the Ohio. The Cumberland, perhaps a quarter-of-a-mile wide, debouches through high clay banks, which might readily be melted in the turbulent cross-currents produced by the mingling of the rivers; but to avoid this, the government engineers have built a wing-dam running out from the foot of the Cumberland, nearly half-way into the main river. This quickly unites the two streams, and the reinforced Ohio is thereafter perceptibly widened. Tramp steamers are numerous, on these lower reaches. We have seen perhaps a dozen such to-day, stopping at the farm landings as well as at the crude and infrequent hamlets,--mere notches of settlement in the wooded lines of shore,--doing a small business in chance cargoes and in passengers who flag them from the bank. A sultry atmosphere has been with us through the day. The glassy surface of the river has, when not lashed into foam by passing boats, dazzled the eyes most painfully. The hills, from below Stewart's Island, have receded on either side, generally leaving either low, broad, heavily-timbered bottoms, or high clay banks which stretch back wide plains of yellow and gray corn-land--frequently inundated, but highly productive. Now and then the encroaching river has remained too long in some belt of forest, and we have great clumps of dead trees, which spring aloft in stately picturesqueness, thickly-clad to the limb-tips with Virginia creeper. A bit of shaly hillside occasionally abuts upon the river, though less frequently than above; and often such a spur has lying at its feet a row of half-immersed boulders, delicately carpeted with mosses and with clinging vines. The Tennessee River (918 miles), the largest of the Ohio's tributaries, is, where it enters, about half the width of the latter. Coming down through a broad, forested bottom, with several pretty islands off its mouth, it presents a pleasing picture. Here again the government has been obliged to put in costly works to stop the ravages of the mingling torrents in the soft alluvial banks. The Ohio, with the united waters of the Cumberland and the Tennessee, henceforth flows majestically to the Mississippi, a full mile wide between her shores. Paducah (13,000 inhabitants), next to Louisville Kentucky's most important river port, lies on a high plain just below the Tennessee. It is a stirring little city, with the usual large proportion of negroes, and the out-door business life everywhere met with in the South. Saw-mills, iron plants, and ship-yards line the bank; at the wharf are large steamers doing a considerable business up the Cumberland and Tennessee, and between Paducah and Cairo and St. Louis; and there is a considerable ferry business to and from the Illinois suburb of Brooklyn. Seven miles below the Tennessee, on the Illinois side, we sought relief from the blazing sun within the mouth of Seven Mile Creek, which is cut deep through sloping banks of mud, and overhung by great sprawling sycamores. These always interest us from the generosity of their height and girth, and from their great variety of color-tones, induced by the patchy scaling of the bark--soft grays, buffs, greens, and ivory whites prevailing. When sufficiently refreshed in this cool bower, we ventured once more into the fierce light of the open river, and two miles below shot into the broader and more inviting Massac Creek (928 miles), just as, of old, George Rogers Clark did with his little flotilla, when _en route_ to capture Kaskaskia. Clark, in his Journal written long after the event, said that this creek is a mile above Fort Massac; his memory failed him--as a matter of fact, the steep, low hill of iron-stained gravel and clay, on which the old stronghold was built, is but two hundred yards below.[A] The French commander who, in October, 1758, evacuated and burned Fort Duquesne on the approach of the English army under General Forbes, dropped down the Ohio for nearly a thousand miles, and built "a new fort on a beautiful eminence on the north bank of the river." But there was a fortified post on this hillock at a much earlier date (about 1711), erected as a headquarters for missionaries, and to guard French fur-traders from marauding Cherokees; and Pownall's map notes one here in 1751. This fort of 1758 was but an enlarged edition of the old. The new stronghold, with a garrison of a hundred men, was the last built by the French upon the Ohio, and it was occupied by them until they evacuated the country in 1763. England does not appear to have made any attempt to repair and occupy the works then destroyed by the French, although urged to do so by her military agents in the West. Had they held Fort Massac, no doubt Clark's expedition to capture the Northwest for the Americans might easily have been nipped in the bud; as it was, the old fortress was a ruin when he "reposed" on the banks of the creek at its feet. When, in 1793-1794, the French agent Genet was fomenting his scheme for capturing Louisiana and Florida from Spain, by the aid of Western filibusters, old Fort Massac was thought of as a rallying-point and base of supplies; but St. Clair's proclamation of March 24, 1794, ordering General Wayne to restore and garrison the place, for the purpose of preventing the proposed expedition from passing down the river, ended the conspiracy, and Genet left the country. A year later, Spain, who had at intervals sought to detach the Westerners from the Union, and ally them with her interests beyond the Mississippi, renewed her attempts at corrupting the Kentuckians, and gained to her cause no less a man than George Rogers Clark himself. Among other designs, Fort Massac was to be captured by the adventurers, whom Spain was to supply with the sinews of war. There was much mysterious correspondence between the latter's corruption agent, Thomas Power, and the American General Wilkinson, at Detroit; but finally Power, in disguise, was sent out of the country under guard, by way of Fort Massac, and his escape into Spanish territory practically ended this interesting episode in Western history. The fort was occupied as a military post by our government until the close of the War of 1812-15; what we see to-day, are the ruins of the establishment then abandoned. No doubt the face of this rugged promontory of gravel has, within a century, suffered much from floods; but the remains of the earthwork on the crest of the cliff, some fifty feet above the present river-stage, are still easily traceable throughout. The fort was about forty yards square, with a bastion at each corner; there are the remains of an unstoned well near the center; the ditch surrounding the earthwork is still some two-and-a-half or three feet below the surrounding level, and the breastwork about two feet above the inner level; no doubt, palisades once surmounted the work, and were relied upon as the chief protection from assault. The grounds, a pleasant grassy grove several acres in extent, are now enclosed by a rail fence, and neatly maintained as a public park by the little city of Metropolis, which lies not far below. It was a commanding view of land and river, which was enjoyed by the garrison of old Fort Massac. Up stream, there is a straight stretch of eleven miles to the mouth of the Tennessee; both up and down, the shore lines are under full survey, until they melt away in the distance. No enemy could well surprise the holders of this key to the Lower Ohio. Our camp is on the sandy beach opposite Metropolis, and two hundred yards below the Kentucky end of the ferry. Behind us lies a deep forest, with sycamores six and eight feet in diameter; a country road curving off through the woods, to the sparse rustic settlement lying some two miles in the interior--on higher ground than this wooded bottom, which is annually overflowed. Now and then the blustering little steam-ferry comes across to land Kentucky farm-folk and their mules, going home from a Saturday's shopping in Metropolis. Occasionally a fisherman passes, lagging on his oars to scan us and our quarters; and from one of them, we purchased a fish. As the still, cool night crept on, Metropolis was astir; across the mile of intervening water, darted tremulous shafts of light; we heard voices singing and laughing, a fiddle in its highest notes, the puffing of a stationary engine, and the bay and yelp of countless dogs. Later, a packet swooped down with smothered roar, and threw its electric search-light on the city wharf, revealing a crowd of negroes gathered there, like moths in the radiance of a candle; there were gay shouts, and a mad scampering--we could see it all, as plainly as if in ordinary light it had been but a third of the distance; and then the roustabouts struck up a weird song as they ran out the gang-plank, and, laden with boxes and bales, began swarming ashore, like a procession of black ants carrying pupa cases. * * * * * Mound City Towhead, Sunday, 10th.--During the night, burglarious pigs would have raided our larder, but the crash of a falling kettle wakened us suddenly, as did geese the ancient Romans. The Doctor and I sallied forth in our pajamas, with clods of clay in hand, to send the enemy flying back into the forest, snorting and squealing with baffled rage. We were afloat at half-past seven, under an unclouded sky, with the sun sharply reflected from the smooth surface of the river, and the temperature rapidly mounting. The Fort Massac ridge extends down stream as far as Mound City, but soon degenerates into a ridge of clay varying in height from twenty-five to fifty feet above the water level. Upon the low-lying bottom of the Kentucky shore, is still an interminable dark line of forest. The settlements are meager, and now wholly in Illinois: For instance, Joppa (936 miles), a row of a half-dozen unpainted, dilapidated buildings, chiefly stores and abandoned warehouses, bespeaking a river traffic of the olden time, that has gone to decay; a hot, dreary, baking spot, this Joppa, as it lies sprawling upon the clay ridge, flanked by a low, wide gravel beach, on which gaunt, bell-ringing cows are wandering, eating the leaves of fallen trees, for lack of better pasturage. Our pilot map, of sixty years ago, records the presence of Wilkinsonville (942 miles), on the site of old Fort Wilkinson of the War of 1812-15, but no one along the banks appears to have ever heard of it; however, after much searching, we found the place for ourselves, on an eminence of fifty feet, with two or three farm-houses as the sole relics of the old establishment. Caledonia (Olmstead P.O.), nine miles down, consists of several large buildings on a hill set well back from the river. Mound City (959 miles),--the "America" of our time-worn map,--in whose outskirts we are camped to-night, is a busy town with furniture factories, lumber mills, ship-yards, and a railway transfer. Below that, stretches the vast extent of swamp and low woodland on which Cairo (967 miles) has with infinite pains been built--like "brave little Holland," holding her own against the floods solely by virtue of her encircling dike. Houseboats have been few, to-day, and they of the shanty order and generally stranded high upon the beach. One sees now and then, on the Illinois ridge, the cheap log or frame house of a "cracker," the very picture of desolate despair; but on the Kentucky shore are few signs of life, for the bottom lies so low that it is frequently inundated, and settlement ventures no nearer than two or three miles from the riverside. A fisherman comes occasionally into view, upon this wide expanse of wood and water and clay-banks; sometimes we hail him in passing, always getting a respectful answer, but a stare of innocent curiosity. Our last home upon the Ohio is facing the Kentucky shore, on the cleanly sand-beach of Mound City Towhead, a small island which in times of high water is but a bar. The tent is screened in a willow clump; just below us, on higher ground, sycamores soar heavenward, gayly festooned with vines, hiding from us Mound City and the Illinois mainland. Across the river, a Kentucky negro is singing in the gloaming; but it is over a mile away, and, while the tune is plain, the words are lost. Children's voices, and the bay of hounds, come wafted to us from the northern shore. A steamer's wake rolls along our island strand, dangerously near the camp-fire; the river is still falling, however, and we no longer fear the encroachments of the flood. The Doctor and I found a secluded nook, where in the moonlight we took our final plunge. It is sad, this bidding good-bye to the stream which has floated us so merrily for a thousand miles, from the mountains down to the plain. We elders linger long by the last camp-fire, to talk in fond reminiscence of the six weeks afloat; while the Boy no doubt dreams peacefully of houseboats and fishermen, of gigantic bridges and flashing steel-plants, of coal-mines and oil-wells, of pioneers and Indians, and all that--of six weeks of kaleidoscopic sensations, at an age when the mind is keenly active, and the heart open to impressions which can never be dimmed so long as his little life shall last. * * * * * Cairo, Monday, 11th.--At our island camp, last night, we were but nine miles from the mouth of the Ohio, a distance which could easily have been made before sundown; but we preferred to reach our destination in the morning, the better to arrange for railway transportation, hence our agreeable pause upon the Towhead. Before embarking for the last run, this morning, we made a neat heap on the beach, of such of our stores, edible and wearable, as had been requisite to the trip, but were not worth the cost of sending home. Feeling confident that some passing fisherman would soon be tempted ashore to inspect this curious landmark, and yet might be troubled by nice scruples as to the policy of appropriating the find, we conspicuously labeled it: "Abandoned by the owners! The finder is welcome to the lot." Quickly passing Mound City, now bustling with life, Pilgrim closely skirted the monotonous clay-banks of Illinois, swept rapidly under the monster railway bridge which stalks high above the flood, and loses itself over the tree-tops of the Kentucky bottom, and at a quarter-past eight o'clock was pulled up at Cairo, with the Mississippi in plain sight over there, through the opening in the forest. In another hour or two, she will be housed in a box-car; and we, her crew, having again donned the garb of landsmen, will be speeding toward our northern home, this pilgrimage but a memory. Such a memory! As we dropped below the Towhead, the Boy, for once silent, wistfully gazed astern. When at last Pilgrim had been hauled upon the railway levee, and the Doctor and I had gone to summon a shipping clerk, the lad looked pleadingly into W----'s face. In tones half-choked with tears, he expressed the sentiment of all: "Mother, is it really ended? Why can't we go back to Brownsville, and do it all over again?" [Footnote A: "In the evening of the same day I ran my Boats into a small Creek about one mile above the old Fort Missack; Reposed ourselves for the night, and in the morning took a Rout to the Northwest."--Clark's letter to Mason.] APPENDIX A. Historical outline of Ohio Valley settlement. Englishmen had no sooner set foot upon our continent, than they began to penetrate inland with the hope of soon reaching the Western Ocean, which the coast savages, almost as ignorant of the geography of the interior as the Europeans themselves, declared lay just beyond the mountains. In 1586, we find Ralph Lane, governor of Raleigh's ill-fated colony, leading his men up the Roanoke River for a hundred miles, only to turn back disheartened at the rapids and falls, which necessitated frequent portages through the forest jungles. Twenty years later (1606), Christopher Newport and the redoubtable John Smith, of Jamestown, ascended the James as far as the falls--now Richmond, Va.; and Newport himself, the following year, succeeded in reaching a point forty miles beyond, but here again was appalled by the difficulties and returned. There was, after this, a deal of brave talk about scaling the mountains; but nothing further was done until 1650, when Edward Bland and Edward Pennant again tried the Roanoke, though without penetrating the wilderness far beyond Lane's turning point. It is recorded that, in 1669, John Lederer, an adventurous German surgeon, commissioned as an explorer by Governor Berkeley, ascended to the summit of the Blue Ridge, in Madison County, Va.; but although he was once more on the spot the following season, with a goodly company of horsemen and Indians, and had a bird's-eye view of the over-mountain country, he does not appear to have descended into the world of woodland which lay stretched between him and the setting sun. It seems to be well established that the very next year (1671), a party under Abraham Wood, one of Governor Berkeley's major-generals, penetrated as far as the Great Falls of the Great Kanawha, only eighty miles from the Ohio--doubtless the first English exploration of waters flowing into the latter river. The Great Kanawha was, by Wood himself, called New River, but the geographers of the time styled it Wood's. The last title was finally dropped; the stream above the mouth of the Gauley is, however, still known as New. These several adventurers had now demonstrated that while the waters beyond the mountains were not the Western Ocean, they possibly led to such a sea; and it came to be recognized, too, that the continent was not as narrow as had up to this time been supposed. Meanwhile, the French of Canada were casting eager eyes toward the Ohio, as a gateway to the continental interior. But the French-hating Iroquois held fast the upper waters of the Mohawk, Delaware, and Susquehanna, and the long but narrow watershed sloping northerly to the Great Lakes, so that the westering Ohio was for many years sealed to New France. An important factor in American history this, for it left the great valley practically free from whites while the English settlements were strengthening on the seaboard; when at last the French were ready aggressively to enter upon the coveted field, they had in the English colonists formidable and finally successful rivals. It is believed by many, and the theory is not unreasonable, that the great French fur-trader and explorer, La Salle, was at the Falls of the Ohio (site of Louisville) "in the autumn or early winter of 1669." How he got there, is another question. Some antiquarians believe that he reached the Alleghany by way of the Chautauqua portage, and descended the Ohio to the Falls; others, that he ascended the Maumee from Lake Erie, and, descending the Wabash, thus, discovered the Ohio. It was reserved for the geographer Franquelin to give, in his map of 1688, the first fairly-accurate idea of the Ohio's path; and Father Hennepin's large map of 1697 showed that much had meanwhile been learned about the river. No doubt, by this time, the great waterway was well-known to many of the most adventurous French and English fur-traders, possibly better to the latter than to the former; unfortunately, these men left few records behind them, by which to trace their discoveries. As early as 1684, we incidentally hear of the Ohio as a principal route for the Iroquois, who brought peltries "from the direction of the Illinois" to the English at Albany, and the French at Quebec. Two years after this, ten English trading-canoes, loaded with goods, were seen on Lake Erie by French agents, who in great alarm wrote home to Quebec about them. Writes De Nonville to Seignelay, "I consider it a matter of importance to preclude the English from this trade, as they doubtless would entirely ruin ours--as well by the cheaper bargains they would give the Indians, as by attracting to themselves the French of our colony who are in the habit of resorting to the woods." Herein lay the gist of the whole matter: The legalized monopoly granted to the great fur-trade companies of New France, with the official corruption necessary to create and perpetuate that monopoly, made the French trade an expensive business, consequently goods were dear. On the other hand, the trade of the English was untrammeled, and a lively competition lowered prices. The French cajoled the Indians, and fraternized with them in their camps; whereas, the English despised the savages, and made little attempt to disguise their sentiments. The French, while claiming all the country west of the Alleghanies, cared little for agricultural colonization; they would keep the wilderness intact, for the fostering of wild animals, upon the trade in whose furs depended the welfare of New France--and this, too, was the policy of the savage. By English statesmen at home, our continental interior was also chiefly prized for its forest trade, which yielded rich returns for the merchant adventurers of London. The policies of the English colonists and of their general government were ever clashing. The latter looked upon the Indian trade as an entering wedge; they thought of the West as a place for growth. Close upon the heels of the path-breaking trader, went the cattle-raiser, and, following him, the agricultural settler looking for cheap, fresh, and broader lands. No edicts of the Board of Trade could repress these backwoodsmen; savages could and did beat them back for a time, but the annals of the border are lurid with the bloody struggle of the borderers for a clearing in the Western forest. The greater part of them were Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas--a hardy race, who knew not defeat. Steadily they pushed back the rampart of savagery, and won the Ohio valley for civilization. The Indian early recognized the land-grabbing temper of the English, and felt that a struggle to the death was impending. The French browbeat their savage allies, and, easily inflaming their passions, kept the body of them almost continually at war with the English--the Iroquois excepted, not because the latter were English-lovers, or did not understand the aim of English colonization, but because the earliest French had won their undying enmity. Amidst all this weary strife, the Indian, a born trader who dearly loved a bargain, never failed to recognize that the goods of his French friends were dear, and that those of his enemies, the English, were cheap. We find frequent evidences that for a hundred years the tribesmen of the Upper Lakes carried on an illicit trade with the hated English, whenever the usually-wary French were thought to be napping. It is certain that English forest traders were upon the Ohio in the year 1700. In 1715,--the year before Governor Spotswood of Virginia, "with much feasting and parade," made his famous expedition over the Blue Ridge,--there was a complaint that traders from Carolina had reached the villages on the Wabash, and were poaching on the French preserves. French military officers built little log stockades along that stream, and tried in vain to induce the Indians of the valley to remove to St. Joseph's River, out of the sphere of English influence. Everywhere did French traders meet English competitors, who were not to be frightened by orders to move off the field. New France, therefore, determined to connect Canada and Louisiana by a chain of forts throughout the length of the Mississippi basin, which should not only secure untrammeled communication between these far-separated colonies, but aid in maintaining French supremacy throughout the region. Yet in 1725 we still hear of "the English from Carolina" busily trading with the Miamis under the very shadow of the guns of Fort Ouiatanon (near Lafayette, Ind.), and the French still vainly scolding thereat. What was going on upon the Wabash, was true elsewhere in the Ohio basin, as far south as the Creek towns on the sources of the Tennessee. About this time, Pennsylvania and Virginia began to exhibit interest in their own overlapping claims to lands in the country northwest of the Ohio. Those colonies were now settled close to the base of the mountains, and there was heard a popular clamor for pastures new. French ownership of the over-mountain region was denied, and in 1728 Pennsylvania "viewed with alarm the encroachments of the French." The issue was now joined; both sides claimed the field, but, as usual, the contest was at first among the rival forest traders. In the Virginia and Pennsylvania capitals, the transmontane country was still a misty region. In 1729, Col. William Byrd, an authority on things Virginian, was able to write that nothing was then known in that colony of the sources of the Potomac, Roanoke, and Shenandoah. It was not until 1736 that Col. William Mayo, in laying out the boundaries of Lord Fairfax's generous estate, discovered in the Alleghanies the head-spring of the Potomac, where ten years later was planted the famous "Fairfax Stone," the southwest point of the boundary between Virginia and Maryland. That very same year (1746), M. de Léry, chief engineer of New France, went with a detachment of troops from Lake Erie to Chautauqua Lake, and proceeded thence by Conewango Creek and Alleghany River to the Ohio, which he carefully surveyed down to the mouth of the Great Miami. Affairs moved slowly in those days. New France was corrupt and weak, and the English colonists, unaided by the home government, were not strong. For many years, nothing of importance came out of this rivalry of French and English in the Ohio Valley, save the petty quarrels of fur-traders, and the occasional adventure of some Englishman taken prisoner by Indians in a border foray, and carried far into the wilderness to meet with experiences the horror of which, as preserved in their published narratives, to this day causes the blood of the reader to curdle. Now and then, there were voluntary adventurers into these strange lands. Such were John Howard, John Peter Salling, and two other Virginians who, the story goes, went overland (1740 or 1741) under commission of their inquisitive governor, to explore the country to the Mississippi. They went down Coal and Wood's Rivers to the Ohio, which in Salling's journal is called the "Alleghany." Finally, a party of French, negroes, and Indians took them prisoners and carried them to New Orleans, where on meager fare they were held in prison for eighteen months. They escaped at last, and had many curious adventures by land and sea, until they reached home, from which they had been absent two years and three months. There are now few countries on the globe where a party of travelers could meet with adventures such as these. At last, the plot thickened; the tragedy was hastened to a close. France now formally asserted her right to all countries drained by streams emptying into the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi. This vast empire would have extended from the comb of the Rockies on the west--discovered in 1743 by the brothers La Vérendrye--to the crest of the Appalachians on the east, thus including the western part of New York and New England. The narrow strip of the Atlantic coast alone would have been left to the domination of Great Britain. The demand made by France, if acceded to, meant the death-blow to English colonization on the American mainland; and yet it was made not without reason. French explorers, missionaries, and fur-traders had, with great enterprise and fortitude, swarmed over the entire region, carrying the flag, the religion, and the commerce of France into the farthest forest wilds; while the colonists of their rival, busy in solidly welding their industrial commonwealths, had as yet scarcely peeped over the Alleghany barrier. It was asserted on behalf of Great Britain, that the charters of her coast colonies carried their bounds far into the West; further, that as, by the treaty of Utrecht (1713), France had acknowledged the suzerainty of the British king over the Iroquois confederacy, the English were entitled to all lands "conquered" by those Indians, whose war-paths had extended from the Ottawa River on the north to the Carolinas on the south, and whose forays reached alike to the Mississippi and to New England. In this view was made, in 1744, the famous treaty at Lancaster, Pa., whereat the Iroquois, impelled by rum and presents, pretended to give to the English entire control of the Ohio Valley, under the claim that the former had in various encounters conquered the Shawanese of that region and were therefore entitled to it. It is obvious that a country occasionally raided by marauding bands of savages, whose homes are far away, cannot properly be considered theirs by conquest. Meanwhile, both sides were preparing to occupy and hold the contested field. New France already had a weak chain of waterside forts and commercial stations,--the rendezvous of fur-traders, priests, travelers, and friendly Indians,--extending, with long intervening stretches of savage-haunted wilderness, through the heart of the continent, from Lower Canada to her outlying post of New Orleans. It is not necessary here to enter into the details of the ensuing French and Indian War, the story of which Parkman has told us so well. Suffice it briefly to mention a few only of its features, so far as they affect the Ohio itself. The Iroquois, although concluding with the English this treaty of Lancaster, "on which, as a corner-stone, lay the claim of the colonists to the West," were by this time, as the result of wily French diplomacy, growing suspicious of their English protectors; at the same time, having on several occasions been severely punished by the French, they were less rancorous in their opposition to New France. For this reason, just as the English were getting ready to make good their claim to the Ohio by actual colonization, the Iroquois began to let in the French at the back door. In 1749, Galissonière, then governor of New France, dispatched to the great valley a party of soldiers under Céloron de Bienville, with directions to conduct a thorough exploration, to bury at the mouths of principal streams lead plates graven with the French claim,--a custom of those days,--and to drive out English traders, Céloron proceeded over the Lake Chautauqua route, from Lake Erie to the Alleghany River, and thence down the Ohio to the Miami, returning to Lake Erie over the old Maumee portage. English traders, who could not be driven out, were found swarming into the country, and his report was discouraging. The French realized that they could not maintain connection between New Orleans and their settlements on the St. Lawrence, if driven from the Ohio valley. The governor sent home a plea for the shipment of ten thousand French peasants to settle the region; but the government at Paris was just then as indifferent to New France as was King George to his colonies, and the settlers were not sent. Meanwhile, the English were not idle. The first settlement they made west of the mountains, was on New River, a branch of the Kanawha (1748); in the same season, several adventurous Virginians hunted and made land-claims in Kentucky and Tennessee. Before the close of the following year (1749), there had been formed, for fur-trading and colonizing purposes, the Ohio Company, composed of wealthy Virginians, among whom were two brothers of Washington. King George granted the company five hundred thousand acres, south of and along the Ohio River, on which they were to plant a hundred families and build and maintain a fort. As a base of supplies, they built a fortified trading-house at Will's Creek (now Cumberland, Md.), near the head of the Potomac, and developed a trail ("Nemacolin's Path"), sixty miles long, across the Laurel Hills to the mouth of Redstone Creek, on the Monongahela, where was built another stockade (1752). Christopher Gist, a famous backwoodsman, was sent (1750), the year after Céloron's expedition, to explore the country as far down as the falls of the Ohio, and select lands for the new company. Gist's favorable report greatly stimulated interest in the Western country. In his travels, he met many Scotch-Irish fur-traders who had passed into the West through the mountain valleys of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas. His negotiations with the natives were of great value to the English cause. It was early seen, by English and French alike, that an immense advantage would accrue to the nation first in possession of what is now the site of Pittsburg, the meeting-place of the Monongahela and Alleghany rivers to form the Ohio--the "Forks of the Ohio," as it was then called. In the spring of 1753, a French force occupied the new fifteen-mile portage route between Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.) and French Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany. On the banks of French Creek they built Fort Le Boeuf, a stout log-stockade. It had been planned to erect another fort at the Forks of the Ohio, one hundred and twenty miles below; but disease in the camp prevented the completion of the scheme. What followed is familiar to all who have taken any interest whatever in Western history. In November, Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent one of his major-generals, young George Washington, with Gist as a companion, to remonstrate with the French at Le Boeuf for occupying land "so notoriously known to be the property of the Crown of Great Britain." The French politely turned the messengers back. In the following April (1754), Washington set out with a small command, by the way of Will's Creek, to forcibly occupy the Forks. His advance party were building a fort there, when the French appeared and easily drove them off. Then followed Washington's defeat at Great Meadows (July 4). The French were now supreme at their new Fort Duquesne. The following year, General Braddock set out from Virginia, also by Nemacolin's Path; but, on that fateful ninth of July, fell in the slaughter-pen which had been set for him at Turtle Creek by the Indians of the Upper Lakes, under the leadership of a French fur-trader from far-off Wisconsin. From the time of Braddock's defeat until the close of the war, French traders, with savage allies, poured the vials of their wrath upon the encroaching settlements of the English backwoodsmen. Nemacolin's Path, now known as Braddock's Road, made for the Indians of the Ohio an easy pathway to the English borders of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland. In the parallel valleys of the Alleghanies was waged a partisan warfare, which in bitterness has probably not had its equal in all the long history of the efforts of expanding civilization to beat down the encircling walls of barbarism. In 1758, Canada was attacked by several English expeditions, the most of which were successful. One of these was headed by General John Forbes, and directed against Fort Duquesne. After a remarkable forest march, overcoming mighty obstacles, Forbes arrived at his destination to find that the French had blown up the fortifications, some of the troops retreating to Lake Erie and others to rehabilitate Fort Massac on the Lower Ohio. Thus England gained possession of the valley. New France had been cut in twain. The English Fort Pitt commanded the Forks of the Ohio, and French rule in America was now doomed. The fall of Quebec soon followed (1759), then of Montreal (1760); and in 1763 was signed the Treaty of Paris, by which England obtained possession of all the territory east of the Mississippi River, except the city of New Orleans and a small outlying district. In order to please the savages of the interior, and to cultivate the fur-trade,--perhaps also, to act as a check upon the westward growth of the too-ambitious coast colonies,--King George III. took early occasion to command his "loving subjects" in America not to purchase or settle lands beyond the mountains, "without our especial leave and license." It is needless to say that this injunction was not obeyed. The expansion of the English colonies in America was irresistible; the Great West was theirs, and they proceeded in due time to occupy it. Long before the close of the French and Indian War, English colonists--whom we will now, for convenience, call Americans--had made agricultural settlements in the Ohio basin. As early as 1752, we have seen, the Redstone fort was built. In 1753, the French forces, on retiring from Great Meadows, burned several log cabins on the Monongahela. The interesting story of the colonizing of the Redstone district, at the western end of Braddock's Road, has been outlined in Chapter I. of the text; and it has been shown, in the course of the narrative of the pilgrimage, how other districts were slowly settled in the face of savage opposition. Although driven back in numerous Indian wars, these American borderers had come to the Ohio valley to stay. We have seen the early attempt of the Ohio Company to settle the valley. Its agents blazed the way, but the French and Indian War, and the Revolution soon following, tended to discourage the aspirations of the adventurers, and the organization finally lapsed. Western land speculators were as active in those days as now, and Washington was chief among them. We find him first interested in the valley, through broad acres acquired on land-grants issued for military services in the French and Indian War; Revolutionary bounty claims made him a still larger landholder on Western waters; and, to the close of the century, he was actively interested in schemes to develop the region. We are not in the habit of so regarding him, but both by frequent personal presence in the Ohio valley, and extensive interests at stake there, the Father of his Country was the most conspicuous of Western pioneers. Dearly did Washington love the West, which he knew so well; when the Revolutionary cause looked dark, and it seemed possible that England might seize the coast settlements, he is said to have cried, "We will retire beyond the mountains, and be free!" and in his declining years he seemed to regret that he was too old to join his former comrades of the camp, in their colony at Marietta. As early as 1754, Franklin, in his famous Albany Plan of Union for the colonies, had a device for establishing new states in the West, upon lands purchased from the Indians. In 1773, he displayed interest in the Walpole plan for another colony,--variously called Pittsylvania, Vandalia, and New Barataria--with its proposed capital at the mouth of the Great Kanawha. There were, too, several other Western colonial schemes,--among them the Henderson colony of Transylvania, between the Cumberland and the Tennessee, the seat of which was Boonesborough. Readers of Roosevelt well know its brief but brilliant career, intimately connected with the development of Tennessee and Kentucky. But the most of these hopeful enterprises came to grief with the political secession of the colonies; and when the coast States ceded their Western land-claims to the new general government, and the Ordinance of 1787 provided for the organization of the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, there was no room for further enterprises of this character.[A] The story of the Ohio is the story of the West. With the close of the Revolution, came a rush of travel down the great river. It was more or less checked by border warfare, which lasted until 1794; but in that year, Anthony Wayne, at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, broke the backbone of savagery east of the Mississippi; the Tecumseh uprising (1812-13) came too late seriously to affect the dwellers on the Ohio. There were two great over-mountain highways thither, one of them being Braddock's Road, with Redstone (now Brownsville, Pa.) and Pittsburg as its termini; the other was Boone's old trail, or Cumberland Gap. With the latter, this sketch has naught to do. By the close of the Revolution, Pittsburg--in Gist's day, but a squalid Indian village, and a fording-place--was still only "a distant out-post, merely a foothold in the Far West." By 1785, there were a thousand people there, chiefly engaged in the fur-trade and in forwarding emigrants and goods to the rapidly-growing settlements on the middle and lower reaches of the river. The population had doubled by 1803. By 1812 there was to be seen here just the sort of bustling, vicious frontier town, with battlement-fronts and ragged streets, which Buffalo and then Detroit became in after years. Cincinnati and Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City, had still later, each in turn, their share of this experience; and, not many years ago, Bismarck, Omaha, and Leadville. From Philadelphia and Baltimore and Richmond, there were running to Pittsburg or Redstone regular lines of stages for the better class of passengers; freight wagons laden with immense bales of goods were to be seen in great caravans, which frequently were "stalled" in the mud of the mountain roads; emigrants from all parts of the Eastern States, and many countries of Europe, often toiled painfully on foot over these execrable highways, with their bundles on their backs, or following scrawny cattle harnessed to makeshift vehicles; and now and then came a well-to-do equestrian with his pack-horses,--generally an Englishman,--who was out to see the country, and upon his return to write a book about it. At Pittsburg, and points on the Alleghany, Youghiogheny, and Monongahela, were boat-building yards which turned out to order a curious medley of craft--arks, flat- and keel-boats, barges, pirogues, and schooners of every design conceivable to fertile brain. Upon these, travelers took passage for the then Far West, down the swift-rolling Ohio. There have descended to us a swarm of published journals by English and Americans alike, giving pictures, more or less graphic, of the men and manners of the frontier; none is without interest, even if in its pages the priggish author but unconsciously shows himself, and fails to hold the mirror up to the rest of nature. With the introduction of steamboats,--the first was in 1811, but they were slow to gain headway against popular prejudice,--the old river life, with its picturesque but rowdy boatmen, its unwieldy flats and keels and arks, began to pass away, and water traffic to approach the prosaic stage; the crossing of the mountains by the railway did away with the boisterous freighters, the stages, and the coaching-taverns; and when, at last, the river became paralleled by the iron way, the glory of the steamboat epoch itself faded, riverside towns adjusted themselves to the new highways of commerce, new centers arose, and "side-tracked" ports fell into decay. [Footnote A: See Turner's "Western State-Making in the Revolutionary Era," in _Amer. Hist. Rev._, Vol. I.; also, Alden's "New Governments West of the Alleghanies," _Bull. Univ. Wis._, Hist. Series, Vol. II.] APPENDIX B. Selected list of Journals of previous travelers down the Ohio. _Gist, Christopher._ Gist's Journals; with historical, geographical, and ethnological notes, and biographies of his contemporaries, by William M. Darlington. Pittsburg, 1893. Gist's trip down the valley, from October, 1750, to May, 1751, was on horseback, as far as the site of Frankfort, Ky. On his second trip into Kentucky, from November, 1751, to March 11, 1752, he touched the river at few points. _Gordon, Harry._ Extracts from the Journal of Captain Harry Gordon, chief engineer in the Western department in North America, who was sent from Fort Pitt, on the River Ohio, down the said river, etc., to Illinois, in 1766. Published in Pownall's "Topographical Description of North America," Appendix, p. 2. _Washington, George._ Journal of a tour to the Ohio River. [Writings, ed. by Ford, vol. II. New York, 1889.] The trip lasted from October 5 to December 1, 1770. The party went in boats from Fort Pitt, as far down as the mouth of the Great Kanawha. This journal is the best on the subject, written in the eighteenth century. _Pownall, T._ A topographical description of such parts of North America as are contained in the [annexed] map of the Middle British Colonies, etc. London, 1776. Contains "Extracts from Capt. Harry Gordon's Journal," "Extracts from Mr. Lewis Evans' Journal" of 1743, and "Christopher Gist's Journal" of 1750-51. _Hutchins, Thomas._ Topographical description of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina, comprehending the Rivers Ohio, Kenhawa, Sioto, Cherokee, Wabash, Illinois, Mississippi, etc. London, 1778. _St. John, M._ Lettres d'un cultivateur Americain. Paris, 1787, 3 vols. Vol. 3 contains an account of the author's boat trip down the river, in 1784. _De Vigni, Antoine F. S._ Relation of his voyage down the Ohio River from Pittsburg to the Falls, in 1788. Graphic and animated account by a French physician who came out with the Scioto Company's immigrants to Gallipolis. Given in "Proc. Amer. Antiq. Soc.", Vol. XI., pp. 369-380. _May, John._ Journal and letters [to the Ohio country, 1788-89], Cincinnati, 1873. One of the best, for economic views. May was a Boston merchant. _Forman, Samuel S._ Narrative of a journey down the Ohio and Mississippi in 1789-90. With a memoir and illustrative notes, by Lyman C. Draper. Cincinnati, 1888. A lively and appreciative account. Touches social life at the garrisons, _en route_. _Ellicott, Andrew._ Journal of the late commissioner on behalf of the United States during part of the year 1796, the years 1797, 1798, 1799, and part of the year 1800: for determining the boundary between the United States and Spain. Philadelphia, 1803. His trip down the river was in 1796. _Baily, Francis._ Journal of a tour in unsettled parts of North America, in 1796 and 1797. London, 1856. The author's river voyage was in 1796. _Harris, Thaddeus Mason._ Journal of a tour into the territory northwest of the Alleghany Mountains; made in the spring of the year 1803. Boston, 1805. A valuable work. The author traveled on a flatboat. _Michaux, F. A._ Travels to the west of the Alleghany Mountains. London (2nd ed.), 1805. Excellent, for economic conditions. The expedition was made in 1802. _Ashe, Thomas._ Travels in America, performed in 1806. London, 1808. Among the best of the early journals, although abounding in exaggerations. _Cuming, F._ Sketches of a tour to the Western country, etc., commenced in 1807 and concluded in 1809. Pittsburg, 1810. _Bradbury, John._ Travels [1809-11] in the interior of America. Liverpool, 1817. _Melish, John._ Travels in the United States of America [1811]. Philadelphia, 1812, 2 vols. Vol. 2 contains the journal of the author's voyage down the river, in a skiff. The account of means of early navigation is graphic. _Flint, Timothy._ Recollections of the last ten years. Boston, 1826. There is no better account of boats, and river life generally, in 1814-15, the time of Flint's voyage. _Fearon, Henry Bradshaw._ Sketches of America [1817]. London, 1819. _Palmer, John._ Journal of travels in the United States of North America [1817]. London, 1818. _Evans, Estwick._ A pedestrian tour [1818] of four thousand miles through the Western states and territories. Concord, N. H., 1819. _Birkbeck, Morris._ Notes on a journey in America, from the coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois. London, 1818. The author traveled, in 1817, by light wagon from Richmond to Pittsburg; and from Pittsburg to Cincinnati by horseback. This book, interesting for economic conditions, together with the author's "Letters from Illinois," did much to inspire emigration to Illinois from England. His English colony, at English Prairie, Ill., was much visited by travelers of the period. _Faux, W._ Journal of a tour to the United States [in 1819]. Excellent pictures of American life and agricultural methods, by an English gentleman farmer. Attacks Birkbeck's roseate views. _Ogden, George W._ Letters from the West, comprising a tour through the Western country [1821], and a residence of two summers in the States of Ohio and Kentucky. New Bedford, Mass., 1823. _Welby, Adlard._ A visit to North America and the English settlements in Illinois. London, 1821. The author went by horseback, occasionally touching the river towns. _Beltrami, J. C._ Pilgrimage in Europe and America. London, 1828, 2 vols. In Vol. II the author describes a steamboat journey in 1823, from Pittsburg to the mouth. _Hall, James._ Letters from the West. London, 1828. Valuable for scenery, manners, and customs, and anecdotes of early Western settlement. _Anonymous._ The Americans as they are; described by a tour through the valley of the Mississippi. London, 1828. _Trollope, Mrs._ [Frances M.]. Domestic manners of the Americans. London and New York, 1832. A lively caricature, the precursor of Dickens' "American Notes." Mrs. Trollope's voyages on the Ohio were in 1828 and 1830. _Vigne, Godfrey T._ Six months in America. London, 1832, 2 vols. _Hamilton, T._ Men and manners in America. Philadelphia, 1833. Includes a steamboat journey from Pittsburg to New Orleans. _Alexander, Capt. J. E._ Transatlantic sketches. London, 1833, 2 vols. Vol. II. has an account of a trip up the river. _Stuart, James._ Three years in North America. New York, 1833, 2 vols. Vol. II. includes a voyage up the Ohio. The author takes issue, throughout, with Mrs. Trollope. _Brackenridge, H. M._ Recollections of persons and places in the West. Philadelphia, 1834. Describes river trips, during the first decade of the century. _Tudor, Henry._ Narrative of a tour [1831-32] in North America. London, 1834, 2 vols. The Ohio trip is in Vol. II. _Arfwedson, C. D._ The United States and Canada, in 1832, 1833, and 1834. London, 1834, 2 vols. In Vol. II is a report of a steamboat trip up the river. _Latrobe, Charles Joseph._ The rambler in North America. New York, 1835, 2 vols. Vol. II has an account of a descending steamboat voyage. _Anonymous._ A winter in the West. By a New Yorker. New York (2nd ed.), 1835, 2 vols. In Vol. I. is an entertaining account of a stage-coach ride in 1833, from Pittsburg to Cleveland, touching all settlements on the Upper Ohio down to Beaver River. _Nichols, Thomas L._ Forty years of American life. London, 1864, 2 vols. In Vol. I. the author tells of a steamboat tour from Pittsburg to New Orleans, in 1840. _Dickens, Charles._ American notes. New York, 1842. Dickens, in 1841, traveled in steamboats from Pittsburg to St. Louis. His dyspeptic comments on life and manners in the United States, at the time grated harshly on the ears of our people; but afterward, they grew strong and wise enough to smile at them. The book is to-day, like Mrs. Trollope's, entertaining reading for an American. _Rubio_ (pseud.). Rambles in the United States and Canada, in 1845. London, 1846. A typical English growler, who thinks America "the most disagreeable of all disagreeable countries;" nevertheless, he says of the Ohio, "a finer thousand miles of river scenery could hardly be found in the wide world." _Mackay, Alex._ The Western world; or, travels in the United States in 1846-47. London, 1849. Good for its character sketches, glimpses of slavery, and report of economic conditions. _Robertson, James._ A few months in America [winter of 1853-54]. London, n. d. Chiefly statistical. _Murray, Charles Augustus._ Travels in North America. London, 1854, 2 vols. Vol. I has the Ohio-river trip. The author is an appreciative Englishman, and tells his story well. _Murray, Henry A._ Lands of the slave and the free. London, 1855, 2 vols. In Vol. I is an account of an Ohio-river voyage. _Ferguson, William._ America by river and rail [in 1855]. London, 1856. _Lloyd, James T._ Steamboat directory, and disasters on the Western waters. Cincinnati, 1856. Valuable for stories and records of the early days of river transportation. _Anonymous._ A short American tramp in the fall of 1864. By the editor of "Life in Normandy." Edinburgh, 1865. An English geologist's journal. Distorted and overdrawn, on the travel side. He took steamer from St. Louis to Cincinnati. _Bishop, Nathaniel H._ Four months in a sneak-box. Boston, 1879. The author, in the winter of 1875-76, voyaged in an open boat from Pittsburg to New Orleans, and along the Gulf coast to Florida. INDEX. Aberdeen, Ky., 167. Albany, N.Y., 299, 316. Alden, George H., 316. Alexander, J. E., 325. Alexandria, O., 151. Alexandria, Va., 131. Allegheny City, Pa., 21. Alton, Ind., 224, 228, 231, 233, 234. America, Ill. _See_ Mound City, Ill. Antiquity, O., 115. Arfwedson, C. D., 326. Ashe, Thomas, 114, 273, 323. Ashland, Ky., 142, 143. Athalia, O., 136. Audubon, John James, 257, 258. Augusta, Ky., 170, 171. Aurora, Ind., 186, 187. Baker's Bottom, W. Va., 36. Baily, Francis, 322. Baltimore, 162, 318. Barlow, Joel, 130, 131. Bearsville, O., 73, 74. Beaver, Pa., 27-30. Belpré, O., 100-102. Beltrami, J. C., 324. Berkeley, Sir William, 297. Bethlehem, Ind., 260. Big Bone Lick, 152, 153, 191, 195-198, 268. Big Grave Creek, 62-66. Bird's Point Landing, Ky., 277. Birkbeck, Morris, 323, 324. Bishop, Nathaniel H., 328. Bismarck, N. D., 318. Bland, Edward, 297. Blennerhassett, Harman, 95-98. Blennerhassett's Island, 95-98, 101. Blue Lick, 160. Boone, Daniel, 142, 206. Boonesborough, Ky., 316. Boone's Trail. _See_ Wilderness Road. Brackenridge, H. M., 325, 326. Bradbury, John, 323. Braddock, Gen. Edward, 4, 16, 17, 128, 312. Braddock, Pa., 17. Braddock's Road, 4, 12, 160, 312, 314, 317. Brandenburg, Ind., 223, 224. Bridgeport, O., 60. Broderickville, O., 137. Brooklyn, Ill., 284. Brown's Islands, 265, 266. Brownsville, Pa., 1-6, 8, 12, 15, 19, 30, 61, 129, 131, 160, 162, 180, 295, 314, 317, 318. Buffalo, N. Y., 318. Burlington, O., 137. Burr, Aaron, 96, 97. Butler's Run, 67. Byrd, Col. William, 304. Cairo, Ill., 7, 15, 222, 284, 291, 294, 295. California, O., 180. Caledonia, Ill. _See_ Olmstead, Ill. Cannelton, Ind., 242. Captina, O., 70, 71. Captina Creek, 67, 70-72. Captina Island, 69, 70. Carrollton, Ky., 206. Carrsville, Ky., 276. Catlettsburg, Ky., 137, 141. Cave-in-Rock, Ill., 273, 274. Céleron de Bienville, 90, 125, 309, 310. Ceredo, W. Va., 137, 141. Charleroi, Pa., 5, 8, 9. Charleston, W. Va., 115, 127. Chartier, Pa., 5, 8, 9. Chartier's Creek, 23. Cherokee Indians, 286. Cheshire, O., 119. Chesapeake & Ohio railway, 172. Chicago, 318. Chillicothe, O., 152, 179. Chilo, O., 170. Cincinnati, 88, 157, 159, 162, 170, 177-184, 217, 252, 318, 324, 328. Circleville, O., 102. Clark, George Rogers, 4, 5, 70, 72, 73, 94, 159, 178, 179, 218-220, 264, 285-287. Clarksville, Ind., 219, 220. Cloverport, Ky., 239-242. Coal Valley, Pa., 13. Collins, Richard H., 153. Columbia, O., 180. Concordia, Ky., 234, 235. Conewango Creek, 304. Connolly, Dr. John, 218. Conwell, Yates, 72. Corn Island, 219, 220. Cornstalk, Shawanee chief, 128, 129, 221. Covington, Ky., 178, 183, 184. Crawford, Col. William, 46. Creek Indians, 303. Cresap, Michael, 67. Cresap's Bottom, 72. Croghan, George, 91, 95, 114, 152. Crooked Creek, 130, 244. Cumberland, Md., 310. Cumberland Gap, 127, 160-162, 317. Cumberland Island, 282. Cumberland Pike. _See_ Braddock's Road. Cuming, F., 322, 323. Curran, Barney, 29. Cypress Bend, 260. Darlington, William M., 320. Doddridge, Joseph, 115. Deep Water Landing, Ind., 234. De Léry, Gaspard Chaussegros, 304. Denman, Matthias, 179. De Nonville, Gov. Jacques René de Brisay, 300. Derby, Ky., 235-237, 243, 244. Detroit, Mich., 287, 318. De Vigni, Antoine F. S., 321. Diamond Island, 264. Dickens, Charles, 66, 325, 326. Dillon's Bottom, 66. Dinwiddie, Gov. Robert, 311. Dog Island, 281, 282. Dover, Ky., 170. Draper, Lyman C., 321. Dravosburg, Pa., 13. Dufour, John James, 204, 205. Dunkard Creek, 72. Dunlap Creek, 3. Dunmore, Lord, 23, 61, 102, 103, 125-129, 218, 221. East Liverpool, O., 35. Economy, Pa., 26. Elizabeth, Pa., 12, 15. Elizabethtown, Ill., 275, 276. Ellicott, Andrew, 181, 322. Emmerick's Landing, Ky., 244. English Prairie, Ill., 324. Enterprise, Ind., 254. Erie, Pa., 311. Evans, Estwick, 323. Evans, Lewis, 321. Evansville, Ind., 255, 256, 260, 265. Fairfax, Lord, 304. Fallen Timbers, 181, 317. Falls of Ohio. _See_ Louisville, Ky. Faux, W., 324. Fearon, Henry Bradshaw, 323. Ferguson, William, 327. Filson, John, 179-181. Fish Creek, 72, 73. Fishing Creek, 74. Flint, Timothy, 162, 163, 181, 323. Forbes, Gen. John, 285, 313. Forks of the Ohio. _See_ Pittsburg. Forman, Samuel S., 322. Foreman, Capt. William, 63. Fort Charlotte, 221. Duquesne, 16, 17, 285, 312, 313. _See_ Pittsburg. Fincastle, 61. Finney, 180. Gower, 102, 103, 129. Harmar, 91. Henry, 61. Le Boeuf, 15, 26, 311, 312. Massac, 285-288, 290, 313. Necessity, 4. Pitt, 127, 129, 160-162. _See_ Pittsburg. Randolph, 129. Washington, 180. Wilkinson, 291. Foster, Ky., 170, 171. Frampton, O., 137. Frankfort, Ky., 320. Franklin, Benjamin, 316. Franquelin, Jean B. L., 299. Freeman, O., 40. French, in Ohio valley, 15, 17, 29, 30, 90, 125, 131, 132, 197, 205, 285, 286, 298-313, 321. French Creek, 311. French Islands, 253. Fry, John, 141. Galissonière, Count de, 308. Gallipolis, O., 130-133. Garrison Creek, 185. Genet, Edmund Charles, 286. George III., king, 309, 310, 313, 314. Georgetown, Pa., 34. Germans, in Ohio valley, 26, 132, 205. Girty, Simon, 71. Gist, Christopher, 15, 26, 29, 91, 151, 152, 310, 311, 317, 320, 321. Glassport, Pa., 13. Glenwood, W. Va., 134. Gnadenhütten, 91. Golconda Island, 276. Goose Island, 220. Gordon, Harry, 115, 320, 321. Grand View, Ind., 246. Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., 174. Grape Island, 80. Grape-Vine Town. _See_ Captina, O. Grave Yard Run, 72. Great Meadows, 312, 314. Green River Island, 255. Green River Towhead, 255, 256. Greenup Court House, Ky., 147. Greenville. O., treaty of, 181. Gunpowder Creek, 192. Guyandotte, W. Va., 136. Hale, John P., 153. Half King, 34. Half-Moon Bar, 274. Hall, James, 117, 128, 164, 325. Hamilton, T., 325. Harmar, Gen. Josiah, 180, 181. Harmonists, 264. Harris, Thaddeus Mason, 162, 322. Harris's Landing, 173. Hartford, W. Va., 119. Haskellville, O., 136. Hawesville, Ky., 242. Henderson, Ky., 256-259. Henderson, Richard, 316. Henderson Island, 258. Hennepin, Father Louis, 299. Henry, Patrick, 159. Herculaneum, Ind., 260. Higginsport, O., 170. Hockingport, O., 102-104. Homestead, Pa., 17, 18. Horse Head Bottom, 148. House-boat life, 50-57, 62, 134, 135, 203, 204, 207, 208. Howard, John, 305, 306. Hungarians, in Ohio valley, 44, 45, 69. Huntington, W. Va., 136-139. Hurricane Island, 274, 275. Hutchins, Thomas, 115, 321. Imlay, Gilbert, 162. Inglis, Mrs. Mary, 152, 153. Ironton, O., 143-146, 157. Iroquois Indians, 264, 298, 299, 302, 307, 308. Irving, Washington, 273. Italians, in Ohio valley, 69. Jamestown, Va., 296. Jefferson, Thomas, 97. Joliet, Louis, 264. Jones, Rev. David, 70, 71, 94. Joppa, Ill., 290, 291. Kansas City, 318. Kaskaskia, Ill., 268, 285. King Philip, 221. Kingston, O., 40. Kneistly's Cluster Islands, 36-39. La Fayette, Marquis de, 92. Lake Chautauqua, 299, 304, 309. Lake Erie, 299, 304, 309, 313. Lancaster, Pa., 307. Lane, Ralph, 296, 297. La Salle, Chevalier de, 218, 263, 264, 298, 299. Latrobe, Charles Joseph, 326. La Vérendrye Brothers, 306. Lawrenceburg, Ind., 186. Leadville, Colo., 318. Leavenworth, Ind., 224, 225. Lederer, John, 297. Letart's Falls, 113, 114, 117. Letart's Island, 112. Levanna, O., 170. Lewis, Gen. Andrew, 128, 129. Lewisport, Ind., 246. Lexington, Ky., 159. Limestone Creek, 158, 159, 162, 167. Little Beaver Creek, 34. Little Hurricane Island, 252. Little Meadows, 128. Lloyd. James T., 328. Logan, Mingo chief, 36, 37, 102, 103, 127, 128. Logstown, Pa., 26. Long Bottom, O., 109-111, 117. Long Reach, 79, 80. Losantiville. _See_ Cincinnati. Lostock, Pa., 13. Louisa, Ky., 141, 142. Louisville, Ky., 114, 169, 170, 180, 209, 214-223, 226, 256, 284, 298, 299. Lower Blue River Island, 226. Mackay, Alex., 327. McKee's Rocks, 23, 178. McKeesport, Pa., 13-16. Madison, Ind., 209-214. Madison County, Va., 297. Malott, Catherine, 71. Manchester, O., 157. Marietta, O., 83-85, 87, 90-93, 130, 131, 157, 159, 162, 315. Mason and Dixon line, 77. Mason City, W. Va., 119. Massac Creek, 285. May, John, 321. May, Col. William, 304. Maysville, Ky., 157, 159, 167, 169. Melish, John, 323. Mercer, George, 126. Metropolis, Ill., 288, 289. Miami Indians, 303. Michaux, F. A., 322. Middleport, O., 118. Millersport, O., 136. Milwood, W. Va., 112. Minersville, O., 118. Mingo Bottom, 127. Mingo Indians, 36, 37, 46, 127, 148. Mingo Junction, O., 44-50, 57, 58. Monongahela City, Pa., 8, 12. Montreal, 313. Moravian missionaries, 91. Morgantown, Pa., 3. Mound builders, 3, 4, 64-66. Mound City, Ill., 290-292, 294. Mound City Towhead, 292-295. Moundsville, W. Va., 64-66, 115. Mt. Vernon, Ind., 262. Murray, Charles Augustus, 327. Murray, Henry A., 327. Murraysville, W. Va., 111. Natchez, Miss., 181. Nemacolin's Path, 160, 310, 312. _See_ Braddock's Road. Neville, O., 170, 173. Neville's Island, 25. New Albany, Ind., 220-223. New Amsterdam, Ind., 224. New Barataria, 316. Newburgh, Ind., 254, 255. New Cumberland, W. Va., 37, 40. New Harmony, Ind., 264. New Haven, W. Va., 119. New Martinsville, W. Va., 74-77. New Matamoras, W. Va., 82. New Orleans, 12, 96, 97, 170, 205, 305, 309, 313, 325, 328. Newport, Christopher, 296. Newport, Ky., 176, 178, 183. Newport, O., 82, 83. New Richmond, O., 176. Nichols, Thomas L., 326. Nicholson, interpreter, 70. Norfolk & Western Railway, 144. North Bend, O., 173, 180, 181, 184. Northwest Territory, 316. Ogden, George W., 324. Ohio Company, 4, 90, 114, 125, 152, 310, 314, 315. Old Wyandot Town, 91. Olmstead, Ill., 291. Omaha, Nebr., 318. Owensboro, Ky., 248-251, 271. Paducah, Ky., 284. Palmer, John, 114, 115, 162, 164, 323. Parkersburg, W. Va., 94, 95, 99, 100, 102, 157. Parkinson's Landing, Ill., 276. Parkman, Francis, 308. Patterson, Robert, 179. Pennant, Edward, 297. Petersburg, Ky., 186, 187. Philadelphia, 12, 161, 318. Pickaway Plains, 102, 103, 129. Picket, Heathcoat, 205, 206. Pine Creek, 148. Pipe Creek, 67. Pittsburg, 3, 5, 6, 8, 17-22, 24, 25, 27, 40, 59, 88, 129, 159, 166, 271, 311-313, 316-318, 320, 321, 323, 324, 326, 328. Plum Creek, 205. Point Pleasant, W. Va., 125, 127-130, 157, 170, 173, 174. Point Sandy, Ind., 227-231. Pomeroy, O., 111, 118, 119, 157. Pomeroy Bend, 111, 119. Pontiac, Indian chief, 221. Pope, John, 5. Portland, Ky., 219-221 Portsmouth, O., 151-153, 157. Power, Thomas, 287. Powhattan Point, W. Va., 70. Pownall, T., 286, 320, 321. Presque Isle, 311. Proctor's Run, 77. Proctorville, O., 137. Putnam, Israel, Jr., 100, 101. Putnam, Israel, Sr., 100. Putnam, Gen. Rufus, 91, 102. Quebec, 299, 313. Rabbit Hash, Ky., 189-191. Racine, O., 117, 118. Rafinesque, Constantine S., 257, 258 Rapp, George, 26. Redstone Creek, 3-5, 72, 310. Redstone Old Fort. _See_ Brownsville, Pa. Richardson's Landing, Ky., 224. Richmond, Va., 296, 318, 324. Ripley, O., 170. Rising Sun, Ind., 189. River Alleghany, 20, 299, 304, 305, 309, 311, 318. Beaver, 27-30. Big Hockhocking, 102-104. Big Miami, 179, 180, 185. Big Sandy, 119, 137, 141. Cherokee, 321. Coal, 305. Cumberland, 97, 282, 284, 316. Delaware, 298. Gauley, 298. Great Kanawha, 70, 115, 125-130, 153, 161, 297, 309, 316, 321. Great Miami, 304. Green, 255, 259. Illinois, 321. Indian Kentucky, 206, 207. James, 126, 127, 161, 296. Kentucky, 206. Licking, 179, 183. Little Kanawha, 94, 95. Little Miami, 152, 177, 179, 180. Little Sandy, 147. Little Scioto, 148. Maumee, 264, 299, 309. Miami, 309. Mississippi, 284, 294, 303, 306, 307, 313, 321. Mohawk, 298. Monongahela, 1-20, 39, 162, 166, 310, 311, 318. Muskingum, 90, 91, 127. New, 297, 298, 309. Ottawa, 307. Potomac, 304, 310. Roanoke, 296, 297, 304. St. Joseph's, 303. St. Lawrence, 306, 309. Saline, 269, 272, 273. Salt, 223. Shenandoah, 304. Scioto, 102, 103, 151-153, 321. Susquehanna, 298. Tennessee, 283, 284, 288, 303, 316. Wabash, 127, 263, 264, 302, 321. Wood, 305. _See_ New. Youghiogheny, 13-16, 162, 318. Robertson, James, 327. Rochester, Pa., 27-30. Rockport, Ind., 246, 247. Rocky Mountains, discovery of, 306. Rome, O., 155-157, 260. Rono, Ind., 234, 235. Roosevelt, Theodore, 316. Rosebud, O., 133, 134, 156. Rose Clare, Ill., 276. Round Bottom, 66, 69. St. Clair, Gen. Arthur, 180, 181, 286. St. John, M., 321. St. Louis, 170, 284, 318, 326, 328. St. Mary's, W. Va., 82. Salem, O., 91. Saline Reserve (Illinois), 268, 269. Salling, John Peter, 305, 306. Sand Island, 220-222. Sandusky, O., 46. Sarikonk. _See_ Beaver, Pa. Schönbrunn, 91. Scioto Company, 130-132, 321. Sciotoville, O., 148-150. Scotch-Irish, in Ohio valley, 60, 61, 301, 310. Scuffletown, Ky., 254. Seignelay, Marquis de, 300. Seneca Indians, 34. Seven Mile Creek, 284, 285. Shaler, Nathaniel S., 153. Shannoah Town, 151, 152. Shawanee Indians, 26, 67, 128-130, 151-153, 307. Shawneetown, Ill., 267-269. Sheffield, O., 118. Shingis Old Town. _See_ Beaver, Pa. Shippingsport, Pa., 31-34. Shousetown, Pa., 25. Sinking Creek, 238. Sistersville, W. Va., 78. Slavonians, in Ohio valley, 44, 45. Slim Island, 261, 264. Sloan's Station, O., 37. Smith, John, 296. Smithland, Ky., 282. Smith's Ferry, Pa., 34. Sohkon. _See_ Beaver, Pa. South Point, O., 137. Spaniards, Western conspiracy, of, 286, 287. Springville, Ky., 151, 152. Spotswood, Gov. Alexander, 302. Steamboats, first on Ohio, 165, 166. Stephens, Frank, 71. Stephensport, Ky., 237-239. Steubenville, O., 5, 43, 44, 157, 181. Stewart's Island, 277-281, 283. Stuart, James, 325. Swiss, in Ohio valley, 204, 205. Symmes, John Cleves, 179-181. Syracuse, O., 118. Tecumseh, Indian chief, 317. Tell City, Ind., 242. Three Brothers Islands, 87. Three-Mile Island, 252, 254. Transylvania, 316. Treaty, of Lancaster, Pa., 307, 308; of Paris, 313; of Utrecht, 307. Trent, William, 95. Tudor, Henry, 326. Turner, Frederick J., 316. Turtle Creek, 17, 312. Trollope, Frances M., 325, 327. Troy, Ind., 243. Uniontown, Ky., 262, 263. Upper Blue River Island, 226. Vandalia, Province of, 126, 316. Vanceburgh, Ky., 154. Venango, 29. Vevay, Ind., 204, 205. Vigne, Godfrey T., 325. Vincennes, Ind., 264. Wabash Island, 264. Walpole, Thomas, 316. Walton, Pa., 13. Warrior Branch, 72. Wars, French and Indian, 15, 17, 29, 30, 90, 91, 152, 153, 285, 286, 308, 314, 315; Pontiac's, 221; Lord Dunmore's, 36, 37, 61, 67, 72, 73, 102, 103, 125-129, 218, 221; Revolution, 61, 63, 91, 92, 100, 126, 128, 130, 151-161, 181, 182, 264, 315, 317; of 1812-15, 287, 291. Warsaw, Ky., 200, 204. Washington, George, 4, 15, 23, 26, 29, 34, 46, 67, 69, 70, 72, 92, 126-128, 141, 142, 161, 310-312, 315, 320, 321. Wayne, Anthony, 26, 181, 286, 317. Weiser, Conrad, 26. Welby, Adlard, 324. Wellsville, O., 35. West Point, Ky., 223. Wheeling, W. Va., 5, 41, 59-62, 155, 157, 167, 187. Wheeling Creek, 59-61. Wheeling Island, 60. Wilderness Road, 160-162, 317. Wilkinson, Gen. James, 287. Wilkinsonville, Ill., 291. Williamson's Island, 78. Wills Creek, 310, 312. Wilson, Pa., 13. Witten's Bottom, 78, 79. Wood, Abraham, 297. Wyandot Indians, 46, 91. Yellowbank Island, 248-250. Yellow Creek, 35, 36. Zane Brothers, 60, 61. THIS BOOK HAS BEEN PRINTED DURING OCTOBER, 1897, BY THE BLAKELY PRINTING COMPANY. CHICAGO, FOR WAY & WILLIAMS. 
44823	----	NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY DOWN THE OHIO AND MISSISSIPPI IN 1789-90. BY MAJ. SAMUEL S. FORMAN WITH A MEMOIR AND ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES BY LYMAN C. DRAPER CINCINNATI ROBERT CLARKE & CO. 1888 COPYRIGHT. PREFATORY NOTE. I acknowledge my indebtedness to a friend of the Forman family for calling my attention to the interesting narrative of Major Samuel S. Forman's early journey down the Ohio and Mississippi, and for aiding me in securing a copy for publication. The manuscript of this monograph, as now presented, has been submitted to friends and kindred of Major Forman, who knew him long and well, and they have accorded it their warm approval. With their kind approbation, I feel encouraged to offer this little contribution to western historical literature to an enlightened public. L. C. D. Madison, Wis. MEMOIR OF MAJOR SAMUEL S. FORMAN. Every addition to our stock of information touching early western history and adventure, and of the pioneer customs and habits of a hundred years ago, deserves a kindly reception. The following narrative of a journey down the Ohio and Mississippi, in 1789-90, was not reduced to writing till 1849, after a lapse of sixty years; but an unusually fine memory enabled Major Forman to relate such incidents of his trip as left a lasting impression upon him, alike with interest and general accuracy. A sketch of the writer will give us a better insight into his trustworthiness and character. Major Forman, the third son of Samuel and Helena Denise Forman, was born at Middletown Point, Monmouth county, New Jersey, July 21, 1765. He was too young to participate in the Revolutionary war, during the stirring period of 1776 to 1780, in New Jersey; but his elder brothers, Jonathan and Denise, were prominent and active throughout the great struggle. Major Forman has recorded some incidents of the war that occurred in his region of New Jersey, and within his own knowledge, worthy of preservation as interesting scraps of Revolutionary history. At one time, a cousin of his, Tunis Forman, about seventeen years of age, met two Tory robbers, and after one had fired at him and missed, he, getting the advantage of them in the adjustment of his gun, forced them to throw down their weapons, when he marched them several miles before him, and lodged them in jail at Freehold. For this brave act, young Forman received a large reward.[1] [1] This incident, occurring in May, 1780, is related in Barber and Howe's _New Jersey Historical Collection_, 345-6. During the period while Major Henry Lee and his famous Light Dragoons were serving in New Jersey, intelligence came of the marauding operations of a band of Tory robbers, located in the extensive pine woods toward Barnegat, in Monmouth county, whose head-quarters were at a secret cave in that region. Lee dispatched a select party of fearless men, who approached the dangerous region in a farmer's wagon, concealed under a covering of straw. Fagans, the robber leader, with some followers, stopped the wagon to plunder it, when the concealed dragoons immediately put a ball through Fagans's head, and with his fall his associates fled. Fagans's body was conveyed to Barkalow's woods, the usual place of execution for such culprits, and there exposed on a gibbet till the flesh dropped from the bones. Mr. Forman mentions that his father, Samuel Forman, did not escape a visit from the Tories and British. At one time, they made a descent upon the village of Middletown Point. There was a mill at this place, which was well known and much resorted to for a great distance; and some of these Tory invaders had been employed in the erection of this mill, and were personally well known to the citizens, and it would appear that their object was, at least, to capture Samuel Forman, if not to kill him. They plundered the houses of the settlement, destroying what they could not carry off, boasting that they had aided in building the mill, and now assisted in kindling the fire in the bolting box to burn it down. They had surprised the guard placed for the protection of the place, killing several of their number, who had been their schoolmates in former years. Samuel Forman eluded their vigilance, but lost heavily by this invasion, for he owned almost all of one side of Middletown Point, and part of both sides of Main street. He never applied to Congress for any remuneration for his losses. He died in 1792, in his seventy-eighth year. In this foray, the enemy burned two store-houses of Mr. John H. Burrows, robbed his house, and took him prisoner to New York. After several months, he was exchanged, and returned home. My brother, Denise Forman, entered the service when he was about sixteen years old. He was in the battle of Germantown--in which engagement eighteen of the Forman connection took part--where the Americans were badly used, on account of the British having some light artillery in a large stone house. Our army had to retreat; when that took place, Lieutenant Schenck, under whom brother Denise served, took Denise's gun, and told him to take fast hold of his coat, and cling to it during the retreat. General David Forman conducted himself so well, that General Washington tendered his aid in securing a command in the Continental army; but General Forman declined the offer, as he believed he could be more serviceable to remain with the militia in Monmouth county, New Jersey, as they were continually harassed there by the enemy from Staten Island and New York. After this, Denise Forman engaged under a Captain Tyler, who had charge of a few gun-boats that coasted along the Jersey shore, to annoy and oppose the enemy. When the British fleet lay at anchor near Sandy Hook, Captain Tyler went, in the night, and surprised a large sloop at anchor among the men-of-war. Tyler's party boarded the sloop, secured the sailors, weighed anchor, and got her out from the fleet, and took her up Middletown creek, all without any fighting. The whole enterprise was conducted with so much judgment, that the sailor prisoners dared not speak or give the least sign of alarm. "When we first touched the sloop," said Denise Forman, "I felt for a moment a little streaked, but it was soon over, and then we worked fearlessly to get the vessel under weigh, without alarming the fleet." These gun-boats were all propelled by muffled oars, that dipped in and out of the water so as to make no noise; nor did any of the men speak above their breath. On the gunwale of the boat, a strip of heavy canvas was nailed, the inner edge having been left unfastened, under which were concealed their swords, guns, and other implements for use in a combat, and so placed that each man could, at an instant's notice, lay his hand upon his own weapon. Even in port, the men belonging to Tyler's party were not allowed to talk or speak to other people, as a matter of precaution; and the captain always spoke in an undertone, and if a man laid down an oar, it was always done as noiselessly as possible. At one time, fifteen hundred British and Tories landed on Middletown shore, and marched from six to ten miles back into the country. A beacon, placed on a conspicuous hill, was fired for the purpose of giving an alarm; and soon the militia of the country, understanding the notice, gathered, and opposed the enemy. In Pleasant Valley they checked their advance. Uncle John Schenck and brother Denise so closely cornered a British or Tory officer of this party in a barn-yard, that he jumped from his horse, took to his heels and escaped, leaving his horse behind him. Major Burrows[2] happened to be at home at that time, on a visit to his family. Some of the Americans dressed themselves in British red coats, which had been captured. The Rev. Mr. DuBois, who, like a good patriot, had turned out on this occasion, with his fowling-piece, when Major Burrows rode near by, eked out in British uniform; Mr. DuBois spoke to Captain Schenck, his brother-in-law, "Look, there is a good shot," and, suiting the action to the word, took deliberate aim. Captain Schenck, better understanding the situation, quickly knocked up the clergyman's gun, with the explanation--"Don't shoot; that's Major Burrows." Mr. DuBois supposed he was aiming at a British officer, within point blank shot, who was endeavoring to rejoin his fellows. [2] Major John Burrows was first a captain in Colonel David Forman's regiment. Forman had the nick-name of "Black David," to distinguish him from a relative of the same name, and he was always a terror to the Tories; and Captain Burrows, from his efficiency against these marauders, was called by those enemies of the country, "Black David's Devil." January 1, 1777, Captain Burrows was made a captain in Spencer's regiment on Continental establishment; and, January 22, 1779, he was promoted to the rank of major, serving in Sullivan's campaign against the hostile Six Nations, and remaining in the army till the close of the war. Several years after, he went on a journey to the interior of Georgia, in an unhealthy season, when he probably sickened and died, for he was never heard of afterward. Major Burrows left an interesting journal of Sullivan's campaign, which appears in the splendid volume on that campaign issued by the State of New York, in 1887. The original MS. journal is preserved by his grand-daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Breese Stevens, of Sconondoa, Oneida county, New York. Denise Forman's next move was to enlist with Captain Philip Freneau, the well-known poet, who sailed from Philadelphia in a letter of marque, the _Aurora_, against British commerce on the high seas. While not long out, sailing toward the West Indies, Freneau and his adventurous vessel were captured by their enemies, sent to New York, and all incarcerated on board of the _Scorpion_, one of the prison ships floating in New York harbor and Wallabout Bay, its unhappy prisoners experiencing almost untold horrors. Captain Freneau, at least, was subsequently transferred to what he denominated "the loathesome _Hunter_." These prison ships attained an unenviable reputation for maltreating and half-starving their hapless and ill-fated victims, hundreds of whom died in consequence of their inhuman treatment. This sad experience became the subject of one of Freneau's subsequent poems, emanating from the depths of his embittered soul recollections. Brother Denise used to relate to me, after his return home, that, when on the prison ship, he had to shut his eyes whenever he ate the sea-biscuit or drank the water assigned him, so full were they of vermin! Freneau, in his poem, thus alludes to the fare with which the poor prisoners were treated: "See, captain, see! what rotten bones we pick. What kills the healthy can not cure the sick. Not dogs on _such_ by Christian men are fed; And see, good master, see that lousy bread!" "Your meat or bread," this man of flint replied, "Is not my care to manage or provide; But this, damn'd rebel dogs, I'd have you know, That better than you merit we bestow. Out of my sight!" No more he deigned to say, But whisk'd about, and, frowning, strode away. When the survivors were exchanged, after their long imprisonment, they were so weak and emaciated that they could scarcely walk--perfect living skeletons; and my brother, after his return home, was confined to his bed, and for several days nearly all hope of his recovery was abandoned; but he at length providentially recovered. Denise Forman received a captain's commission when a war was threatened with France, in 1798, and when the army was disbanded, he settled on a farm in Freehold, where he spent the remainder of his days. About 1790, Captain Freneau married my sister Eleanor. He was a prominent Anti-Federalist in his day, and edited various Democratic papers at different places, and was for a time translating clerk in the State Department. While he was able to translate the French documents, he found it cost him more than he received to get those in other foreign languages properly translated, and after a while he resigned. He had in early life been a college-mate with James Madison, at Princeton, and has been aptly called the "patriot poet" of the Revolution, his effusions having been useful to the cause of the country during its great struggle for independence. He lost his life in a violent snow-storm, in December, 1832, in his eighty-first year, near Monmouth, New Jersey. While attending grammar-school, the latter part of the Revolutionary war, at Freehold, young Forman records: The hottest part of the battle of Monmouth was about this spot, where my brother-in-law, Major Burrows, lived after he left the army, and with whom I and some fellow-students boarded. Our path to the school-house crossed a grave where a remarkably tall British officer was buried. We opened the grave; a few pieces only of blanket, which encompassed the corpse, remained. One school-mate, Barnes Smock, was a very tall person, but the thigh bones of this unfortunate officer far outmeasured his. I believe this was the only engagement when the two opposing armies had recourse to the bayonet,[3] and this was the place of that charge. The battle took place on the Sabbath. A British cannon ball went through Rev. Dr. Woodhull's church. Dr. Woodhull was now one of my teachers. The two armies lay upon their arms all night after the battle. General Washington and General La Fayette slept in their cloaks under an apple-tree in Mr. Henry Perrine's orchard. It was Washington's intention to have renewed the battle the next day, but the British, in the course of the night, stole a march as fast as they could for their fleet at Sandy Hook. [3] This is an error. Bayonet charges were resorted to by Morgan at the Cowpens, and in other engagements. In the spring of 1783, when peace was dawning, many of the old citizens of New York City, who had been exiled from their homes for some seven years, began to return to their abandoned domiciles, even before the British evacuation. Among them was Major Benjamin Ledyard, who had married my oldest sister. In September of that year, at the instance of my sister Ledyard, I went to New York as a member of her family. Every day I saw the British soldiers. Indeed, a young lieutenant boarded a short time in our family, as many families received the British officers as an act of courtesy. Even before the British evacuation, the American officers were permitted to cross over into the city, and frequently came, visiting the coffee-houses and other places of public resort. Here they would meet British officers, and some of them evinced a strong inclination to make disturbance with their late competitors, throwing out hints or casting reflections well calculated to provoke personal combats. There was a Captain Stakes, of the American Light Dragoons, a fine, large, well-built man, who had no fear about him. It was said, when he entered the coffee-house, that the British officers exercised a wholesome caution how they treated him, after some of them had made a feint in testing his powers. But it all happily passed over without harm. It was finally agreed between General Washington and Sir Guy Carleton that New York should be evacuated November 25th. In the morning of that day, the British army paraded in the Bowery. The Americans also paraded, and marched down till they came very close to each other, so that the officers of both armies held friendly parleys. The streets were crowded with people on an occasion so interesting. I hurried by the redcoats till I reached the Americans, where I knew I would be safe. So I sauntered about among the officer. Presently, an American officer seized me by the hand, when, I looking up at him, he said, encouragingly: "Don't be afraid, Sammy. I know your brother Jonathan. He is an officer in the same line with me, and my name is Cumming."[4] He continued to hold me by the hand till orders were given to advance. He advised me to keep on the sidewalk, as I might get run over in the street. [4] This was John N. Cumming, who rose from a lieutenant to be lieutenant-colonel, commanding the Third New Jersey Regiment, serving the entire war. The British steadily marched in the direction of their vessels, while the Americans advanced down Queen (since Pearl) street; the British embarking on board their fleet on East river, I believe, near Whitehall, and the Americans headed directly to Fort George, on the point where the Battery now is. Stockades were around the fort, and the large gate was opened. When the British evacuated the fort, they unreefed the halyards of the tall flag-staff, greased the pole, so that it was some time before the American flag was hoisted. At length, a young soldier[5] succeeded in climbing the pole, properly arranged the halyards, when up ran the striped and star-spangled banner, amid the deafening shouts of the multitude, that seemed to shake the city. It is easier to imagine than to describe the rejoicing, and the brilliancy of the fireworks that evening. [5] The editor, while at Saratoga Springs, in 1838, took occasion to visit the venerable Anthony Glean, who resided in the town of Saratoga, and who was reputed to be the person who climbed the greased flag-staff at the evacuation of New York, and who himself claimed to have performed that feat. He was then a well-to-do farmer, enjoying a pension for his revolutionary services, and lived two or three years later, till he had reached the age of well-nigh ninety. The newspapers of that period often referred to him as the hero of the flag-staff exploit, and no one called it in question. After the evacuation, Mr. Forman witnessed the affectionate and affecting parting of Washington and his officers, when he entered a barge at Whitehall wharf, manned by sea captains in white frocks, who rowed him to the Jersey shore, to take the stage for Philadelphia, on his way to Congress. Mr. Forman also saw General Washington while presiding over the convention of 1787, to form a Constitution for the new Republic. The general was attired in citizen's dress--blue coat, cocked hat, hair in queue, crossed and powdered. He walked alone to the State House, the place of meeting, and seemed pressed down in thought. A few moments before General Washington took his seat on the rostrum, the venerable Dr. Franklin, one of the Pennsylvania delegates, was brought in by a posse of men in his sedan, and helped into the hall, he being severely afflicted with palsy or paralysis at the time. On the adoption of the Constitution, a great celebration was held in New York to commemorate the event, which Mr. Forman also witnessed. A large procession was formed, composed of men of all avocations in life, and each represented by some insignia of his own trade or profession, marching through the streets with banners, flags, and stirring music. A full-rigged vessel, called "The Federal Ship Hamilton," was drawn in the procession, and located in Bowling Green, where it remained until it fell to pieces by age. After spending some years as a clerk in mercantile establishments in New York City, and once going as supercargo to dispose of a load of flour to Charleston, he engaged in merchandising at Middletown Point, New Jersey. Mr. Forman subsequently made the journey down the Ohio and Mississippi, in 1789-'90, as given in considerable detail in the narrative which follows. While spending the winter of 1792-'93 in Philadelphia, he witnessed the inauguration of Washington as President, at the beginning of his second term of office, and was within six feet of him when he took the oath of office. "I cast my eyes over the vast crowd," says Major Forman, "and every eye seemed riveted on the great chief. On Washington's right sat Chief-Justice Cushing, and on his left Senator Langdon, of New Hampshire. After sitting a little while in profound silence, the senator arose, and asked the President if he was ready to take the oath of office. General Washington rose up, having a paper in his left hand, when he made a very short address. Then Judge Cushing stood up, with a large open Bible before him, facing the President, who laid his hand upon the sacred volume, and very deliberately and distinctly repeated the oath of office as pronounced by the chief-justice. When Washington repeated his own name, as he did at the conclusion of the ceremony, it made my blood run cold. The whole proceedings were performed with great solemnity. General Washington was dressed in deep mourning, for, it was said, a favorite nephew who had lived at Mount Vernon during the Revolutionary war. He wore his mourning sword. Mrs. Washington was about the middling stature, and pretty fleshy." Mr. Forman now entered into the employ of the Holland Land Company, through their agents, Theophilus Cazenove and John Lincklaen, to found a settlement in the back part of the State of New York, where that company had purchased a large body of land. He accordingly headed a party, in conjunction with Mr. Lincklaen, for this purpose, conveying a load of merchandise to the point of operations, passing in batteaus up the Mohawk to old Fort Schuyler, now Utica, beyond which it was necessary to open up a road for the teams and loads of goods; lodging in the woods when necessary, living on raw pork and bread, which was better than the bill of fare at the well-known tavern in that region, kept by John Dennie, the half Indian--"no bread, no meat;" and one of Dennie's descendants indignantly resented being referred to as an Indian--"Me no Indian; only Frenchman and squaw!" At length, May 8, 1793, the party arrived on the beautiful body of water, since known as Cazenovia Lake, and founded the village of Cazenovia, where Mr. Forman engaged in felling trees, and erecting the necessary houses in which to live and do business, and in this rising settlement he engaged in merchandising for several years. He held many public positions of honor and trust; was county clerk, secretary for over thirty years of a turnpike company; served as major in a regiment of militia early organized at Cazenovia. The latter years of his life he spent in Syracuse, where he was greatly respected for his worth, his fine conversational powers, his social and generous feelings. He lived to the great age of over ninety-seven years, dying August 16, 1862. His closing years were embittered over the distracted condition of his country, embroiled in fratricidal war, and his prayer was that the proud flag which he witnessed when it was placed over the ramparts of Fort George, November 25, 1783, might again wave its ample folds over a firmly united American Confederacy. His patriotic prayer was answered, though he did not himself live to witness it. NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY DOWN THE OHIO AND MISSISSIPPI, 1789-'90. General David Forman,[6] of New Jersey, entered into a negotiation with the Spanish minister, Don Diego de Gardoque, for his brother, Ezekiel Forman, of Philadelphia, to emigrate with his family and sixty odd colored people, and settle in the Natchez country, then under Spanish authority. [6] General Forman was born near Englishtown, Monmouth Co., New Jersey. He was, during the Revolutionary war, a terror to the tories of his region, and as brigadier-general commanded the Jersey troops at the battle of Germantown. No less than eighteen of the Forman connection were in his brigade in this engagement. He was subsequently a county judge, and member of the council of state. He died about 1812. I agreed with General Forman to accompany the emigrating party; and, about the last of November, 1789, having closed up my little business at Middletown Point, New Jersey, I set out from the general's residence, in Freehold, with Captain Benajah Osmun, an old continental captain, who was at that time the faithful overseer of the general's blacks. There were sixty men, women, and children, and they were the best set of blacks I ever saw together. I knew the most of them, and all were well-behaved, except two rather ill-tempered fellows. General Forman purchased some more, who had intermarried with his own, so as not to separate families. They were all well fed and well clothed. We had, I believe, four teams of four horses each, and one two-horse wagon, all covered with tow-cloth, while Captain Osmun and I rode on horseback. After the distressing scene of taking leave--for the general's family and blacks were almost all in tears--we sat out upon our long journey. The first night we camped on the plains near Cranberry, having accomplished only about twelve or fifteen miles. The captain and I had a bed put under one of the wagons; the sides of the wagon had tenter-hooks, and curtains made to hook up to them, with loops to peg the bottom to the ground. The colored people mostly slept in their wagons. In the night a heavy rain fell, when the captain and I fared badly. The ground was level, and the water, unable to run off, gave us a good soaking. I had on a new pair of handsome buckskin small clothes; the rain spoiled their beauty, and the wetting and subsequent shrinkage rendered them very uncomfortable to wear. The next morning we commenced our journey as early as possible. We drove to Princeton, where we tarried awhile, and all were made comfortable. We crossed the Delaware five miles above Trenton. On arriving at Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, the authorities stopped us, as we somewhat expected they would do. General Forman had furnished me with all the necessary papers relating to the transportation of slaves through New Jersey and Pennsylvania. While Judge Hubley was examining the papers, the servant women informed me that the females of the city came out of their houses and inquired of them whether they could spin, knit, sew, and do housework, and whether they were willing to go to the South; so, if the authorities stopped us, they could all soon have new homes. But our colored women laughed at the Lancaster ladies, who seemed mortified when they learned that we could not be detained. In Westmoreland county we had a little trouble with a drunken justice of the peace and some free blacks. These free blacks, as we learned from a faithful old colored woman, furnished the two ill-tempered blacks of our party with old swords and pistols, but nothing serious grew out of it. The weather began to grow very cold, the roads bad, and traveling tedious. We encamped one night in the woods, kindled a fire, and turned the tails of the wagons all inward, thus forming a circle around the fire. Another night we came to a vacant cabin without a floor; we made a large fire, and all who chose took their bedding and slept in the cabin, some remaining in the wagons. The captain and I had our beds spread before the fire. One Saturday evening, we were apprehensive of being obliged to encamp again in the woods. I went ahead, hoping to find night quarters. I rode up to a log house and went in; it was growing dark, and I began to ask the landlord to accommodate us for the night, addressing myself to a tall, lean man. Before I got through with my inquiry, he caught me up in his arms, as if I were merely a small child, and exclaimed: "Mighty souls! if this is not little Sammy Forman," and, hugging and kissing me, added, "Why, don't you remember Charley Morgan? Yes, you can have any thing I have, and we will do the best we can for you." This was somewhere in the Alleghany mountains, and here we remained till Monday, buying wheat, and sending it to mill, and converting a fat steer into meat, so that we were well provided for, for awhile. This Charley Morgan entered the regular service as a corporal in my brother Jonathan's company, when he was a captain, and raised his company in the vicinity of Middletown Point, New Jersey. He could ape the simpleton very well, and was sent as a spy into the British army, and returned safe with the desired information. I was surprised to meet him in this far-off mountain region. Somewhere about Fort Littleton or Fort Loudon, our funds ran out. When we left General Forman, he told me that Uncle Ezekiel Forman would leave Philadelphia with his family, and overtake us in time to supply our wants. But he did not start as soon as he expected, and on his way in the mountains the top of his carriage got broken by a leaning tree, which somewhat detained him, so that we arrived at Pittsburg two or three days before him. One morning, while in the neighborhood of Fort Littleton or Fort Loudon, I offered to sell my horse to the landlord where we took breakfast; he kept a store as well as a tavern, and was wealthy. The price of the horse I put very low, when the landlord asked why I offered him so cheap. I informed him that I was out of funds, and had expected that Ezekiel Forman, who owned the colored people, would have overtaken us before our means became exhausted. He replied: "I know your uncle, and I will lend you as much money as you need, and take your order on him, as he will stop here on his way. Now, step with me to the store." Pointing to the large piles of silver dollars on the counter in the store, he said: "Step up and help yourself to as much as you want, and give me your order." This was an unexpected favor. When uncle arrived, he satisfied the order. It had taken us near three weeks to journey from Monmouth to Pittsburg. After our arrival at this place, our first business was to find situations for our numerous family, while awaiting the rise of the Ohio, and to lay in provisions for our long river voyage. Colonel Turnbull, late of Philadelphia, and an acquaintance of uncle, politely offered him the use of a vacant house and store-room, exactly such apartments as were wanted. The colored people were all comfortably housed also. The horses and wagons were sold at a great sacrifice--uncle retaining only his handsome coach horses and carriage, which he took to Natchez on a tobacco boat, which Captain Osmun commanded, and on board of which the colored field hands were conveyed. These boats were flat-bottomed, and boarded over the top, and appeared like floating houses. Uncle's boat was a seventy feet keel-boat, decked over, with a cabin for lodging purposes, but too low to stand up erect. The beds and bedding lay on the floor, and the insides lined with plank to prevent the Indians from penetrating through with their balls, should they attack us. We had a large quantity of dry goods, and a few were opened and bartered in payment for boats and provisions. On board of the keel-boat, uncle and family found comfortable quarters. Mr. and Mrs. Forman, Augusta, Margaret, and Frances, aged about nine, eleven, and thirteen, and David Forman and Miss Betsey Church, the latter housekeeper and companion for Aunt Forman, an excellent woman, who had lived in the family several years, and occasionally took the head of the table. I and five or six others, two mechanics, and about eight or ten house servants, were also occupants of this boat. The family received much polite attention while in Pittsburg. By the time we got prepared for our departure, the Ohio river rose. We tarried there about a month. Both boats were armed with rifles, pistols, etc. It being in Indian war time, all boats descending that long river, of about eleven hundred miles, were liable to be attacked every hour by a merciless foe, oftentimes led on by renegade whites. Uncle fixed on a certain Sabbath, as was the custom in those days, to embark on ship-board. On that day, the polite and hospitable Colonel Turnbull, then a widower, gave uncle an elegant dinner, and invited several gentlemen to grace the occasion with their presence. After dinner, which was not prolonged, we embarked on board our little squadron. Colonel Wm. Wyckoff, and his brother-in-law, Kenneth Scudder, of Monmouth county, New Jersey, accompanied us on our voyage. The colonel had been, seven years previous to this, an Indian trader, and was now on his way to Nashville, Tennessee. Uncle Forman's keel-boat, Captain Osmun's flat-boat, and Colonel Wyckoff's small keel-boat constituted our little fleet. The day of our departure was remarkably pleasant. Our number altogether must have reached very nearly a hundred. The dinner party accompanied us to our boats, and the wharf was covered with citizens. The river was very high, and the current rapid. It was on the Monongahela where we embarked. Our keel-boat took the lead. These boats are guided by oars, seldom used, except the steering oar, or when passing islands, as the current goes about six or seven miles an hour. As the waters were now high, the current was perhaps eight or nine miles an hour. Before day-break next morning we made a narrow escape from destruction, from our ignorance of river navigation. We had an anchor and cable attached to our keel-boat. The cable was made fast to small posts over the forecastle, where were fenders all around the little deck. When it began to grow dark, the anchor was thrown over, in hopes of holding us fast till morning, while the other boats were to tie up to trees along the river bank. As soon as the anchor fastened itself in the river bottom, the boat gave a little lurch or side motion, when the cable tore away all the frame-work around the deck, causing a great alarm. Several little black children were on deck at the time, and as it had now become quite dark, it could not be ascertained, in the excitement of the moment, whether any of them had been thrown into the water. Fortunately none were missing. During our confusion, Captain Osmun's boat passed ours, a few minutes after the accident, and we soon passed him, he hailing us, saying that he was entangled in the top of a large tree, which had caved into the river, and requested the small row-boat to assist him. Uncle Forman immediately dispatched the two mechanics, with the small boat, to his assistance. Osmun got clear of the tree without injury, and the two mechanics rowed hard, almost all night, before they overtook him. Mrs. Forman and daughters braved out our trying situation very firmly. After we lost our anchor, Uncle Forman took a chair, and seated himself on the forecastle, like a pilot, and I took the helm. He kept watch, notifying me when to change the direction of the boat. When he cried out to me, "port your helm," it was to keep straight in the middle of the stream; if to bear to the left, he would cry out, "starboard;" if to the right, "larboard." I was not able to manage the helm alone, and had a man with me to assist in pulling as directed. Uncle Forman and I were the only ones of our party who understood sailor's terms. Ours was a perilous situation till we landed at Wheeling; it was the most distressing night I ever experienced. The next morning, all our boats landed at Wheeling, Virginia, rated at ninety-six miles from Pittsburg. Here we obtained a large steering oar for the keel-boat, as the strong current kept the rudder from acting, without the application of great strength. Having adjusted matters, we set out again. We seldom ventured to land on our journey, for fear of lurking Indians. One day, we discovered large flocks of wild turkeys flying about in the woods on shore. The blacksmith, who was a fine, active young man, asked Uncle Forman to set him on shore, and give him a chance to kill some of them. The little boat was manned, and taking his rifle and a favorite dog, he soon landed. But he had not been long on shore, before he ran back to the river's bank, and made signs for the boat to come and take him on board. When safely among his friends, he said that he came to a large fire, and, from appearances, he supposed a party of Indians was not far off. He, however, lost his fine dog, for he dared not call him. We landed and stopped at Marietta, at the mouth of the Muskingum, where was a United States garrison. Some of the officers were acquainted with the family. It was a very agreeable occurrence to meet with old acquaintances in such a dreary place. The young ladies were good singers, and entertained the officers awhile with their vocal music. This night, we felt secure in sleeping away the fatigues of the journey. Governor St. Clair had his family here. There were a few other families, also; but all protected by the troops. I believe there was no other settlement[7] until we arrived at Fort Washington, now Cincinnati, some three hundred miles below Marietta. [7] Mr. Forman forgot to mention Limestone, now Maysville, Kentucky, some sixty miles above Cincinnati, an older settlement by some four years than Marietta or Cincinnati. Perhaps it was passed in the night, and unobserved. And Columbia, too, at the mouth of the Little Miami, about six miles above Cincinnati, and a few months its senior in settlement. A few hundred yards above Fort Washington, we landed our boats, when Uncle Forman, Colonel Wyckoff, and I went on shore, and walked up to head-quarters, to pay our respects to General Harmar, the commander of our troops in the North-western Territory. The general received us with much politeness. As we were about taking leave of him, he kindly invited us to remain and take a family dinner with him, observing to Uncle, that we should have the opportunity of testing the deliciousness of what he may never have partaken before--the haunch of a fine buffalo. It being near dining hour, the invitation was, of course, accepted. As the general and lady were acquainted with Uncle and Aunt Forman in Philadelphia, they very politely extended their kindness by asking that Uncle, Aunt, and their family, together with Colonel Wyckoff and Brother-in-law Scudder and Captain Osmun, would spend the next day with them, which was accepted with great pleasure. General Harmar directed where to move our little fleet, so that all should be safe under military guard. We then returned to our boats, and conveyed them down to the appointed place. The next morning, after breakfast, and after attending to our toilets, we repaired to General Harmar's head-quarters, where we were all received most cordially. Our company consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Forman, their three daughters, and Master David Forman, Miss Church, Captain Osmun, S. S. Forman, Colonel Wyckoff, and Mr. Scudder--eleven in all. Mrs. Forman and Mrs. Harmar resembled each other as much as though they were sisters. The general invited some of his officers to share his hospitalities, also, and we had a most sumptuous dinner and tea. Before it was quite dark, we took leave of our hospitable friends. I had the honor of a seat at the table next to the general. While at dinner, the officer of the day called on General Harmar for the countersign, so as to place out the sentinels. Captain Kirby,[8] of the army, who dined with us, was directed by the general to accompany us on our return to our boats. Just before we came to the sentinel, Captain Kirby asked us to halt, until he could advance and give the countersign, which is done with much prudence. I sauntered along, and happened to hear the challenge by the guard, and the reply of the captain. The countersign was, I believe, "Forman." [8] Neither the _Dictionary of the Army_, the _MS. Harmar Papers_, nor the _Journal of Major Denny_, who was then an aide to General Harmar, make any mention of a Captain Kirby. It is probable, that William Kersey was the officer referred to. He served in New Jersey during the Revolution, rising from a private to a captaincy by brevet at the close of the war. At this period, early in 1790, he was a lieutenant. Probably, by courtesy of his rank and title in the Revolution, he was called captain. He attained that rank the following year; major, in 1794; and died, March 21, 1800. In the morning, Captain Osmun said to me, that, after paying our respects to General Harmar, he wanted me to accompany him to the quarters of the other officers, as he probably knew all of them; that they were old continental officers retained in service, and he added: "They all know your brother, Colonel Jonathan Forman,[9] of the Revolution, and will be glad to see you on his account." We, accordingly, after our interview with General Harmar, went to their quarters. They recollected Captain Osmun, and he introduced me, when they welcomed me most cordially, and made many inquiries after my brother. [9] Jonathan Forman was born October 16, 1755; was educated at Princeton College, where he was a fellow-student with James Madison, and entering the army in 1776 served as captain for five years, during which he participated in Sullivan's campaign against the hostile Six Nations; and, promoted to the rank of major in 1781, he served under La Fayette in Virginia; and early in 1783 he was made a lieutenant-colonel, and continued in the army till the end of the war. He headed a regiment against the whisky insurgents of West Pennsylvania in 1794, and two years later he removed to Cazenovia, N. Y., where he filled the position of supervisor, member of the legislature and brigadier-general in the militia. He married Miss Mary Ledyard, of New London, Conn., who "went over her shoe tops in blood," in the barn where the wounded lay, the morning after Arnold's descent on New London and Fort Griswold, on Groton Heights, where her uncle, Colonel William Ledyard, was killed in cold blood after his surrender. General Forman died at Cazenovia, May 25, 1809, in his sixty-fourth year, and his remains repose in the beautiful cemetery at that place. I think it was in the autumn of 1790 that General Harmar was defeated by the Indians, and most of these brave officers were killed. At that period officers wore three-cornered hats, and by that means nearly all of them were singled out and killed, as they could be so easily distinguished from others. Some distance above Fort Washington, the Scioto river empties into the Ohio. Near this river was a cave, which the whites had not discovered till after Harmar's defeat. Here the Indians would sally out against boats ascending the Ohio. A canoe passed us the day before we passed the Scioto, which had been fired into at that point, one man having been shot through the shoulder, another through the calf of the leg, while the third escaped unhurt. When these poor fellows arrived at Fort Washington, they waited for us. After our arrival, understanding that we were going to tarry a day, they set off. Harmar's defeat caused a French settlement near the Scioto to be broken up;[10] some of them were killed by the Indians. [10] The Gallipolis settlement was much annoyed by the Indians; some of the poor French settlers were killed, others abandoned the place, but the settlement was maintained, despite all their trials and sufferings. I must mention an anecdote about my friend, Captain Osmun. At the battle of Long Island, and capture of New York by the British, many American prisoners were taken, Captain Osmun among them. He pretended to be a little acquainted with the profession of physic, but he never studied it, and could bleed, draw teeth, etc. A German officer had a very sick child, the case baffling the skill of all the English and German physicians, and the child's recovery was given up as hopeless. At last it was suggested to call in the rebel doctor. So Osmun was sent for. He suppressed as well as he could his half-comical, half-quizzical expression, and assumed a serious look; felt of the child's pulse, and merely said he would prepare some pills and call again. He accordingly did so, giving the necessary directions, and promised to call at the proper time to learn the effect. When he called the third time the child had grown much better, and finally recovered. He said that all he did for the little sufferer was to administer a little powder-post, mixed up with rye-bread, made into little pills. He said he knew they could do no harm, if they did no good, and regarded himself as only an instrument in the hands of the Almighty in saving the child's life. The father of the child gave him almost a handful of guineas. Prior to this occurrence he had, while a prisoner, suffered for the necessaries of life, but thenceforward he was able to procure needful comforts till his exchange. The next morning, after our entertainment by General Harmar and lady, we renewed our journey, floating rapidly down the Belle Riviere. Nothing of moment occurred till our arrival at Louisville, at the Falls of the Ohio. The weather now grew so severely cold, in the latter part of January, 1790, that the river became blocked with ice. Here we laid up, disembarked, and took a house in the village, the front part of which was furnished for a store, which exactly suited us, and which was gratuitously offered to Uncle Forman by a Mr. Rhea, of Tennessee. We were remarkably fortunate in this respect, both here and at Pittsburg. Here I opened a store from our stock of goods, and took tobacco in payment, which was the object in bringing the merchandise. Louisville then contained about sixty dwelling-houses. Directly opposite was Fort Jefferson,[11] which was, I believe, only a captain's command. At the Great Miami was Judge Symmes's settlement,[12] which dragged heavily along at that time, having been allowed only a sergeant's command for its protection. [11] This is evidently an error of memory; it was known as Fort Steuben, located where Jeffersonville now is. [12] Trivial circumstances sometimes change the fate of nations, and so it would seem they do of cities also. North Bend might have become the great commercial metropolis of the Miami country, instead of Cincinnati, but for an affair of the heart, if we may credit the tradition preserved by Judge Burnet in his _Notes on the North-western Territory_. Ensign Francis Luce had been detailed, with a small force, for the protection of the North Bend settlement, and to locate a suitable site for a block-house. While the ensign was keenly but very leisurely on the lookout for a proper location, he made a discovery far more interesting to him--a beautiful black-eyed lady, the wife of one of the settlers. Luce became infatuated with her charms, and her husband, seeing the danger to which he was exposed if he remained where he was, resolved at once to remove to Cincinnati. The gallant ensign was equal to the unexpected emergency, for he now began to discover what he had not discovered before, that North Bend was not, after all, so desirable a locality for the contemplated block-house as Cincinnati, and forthwith apprised Judge Symmes of these views, who strenuously opposed the movement. But the judge's arguments were not so effective as the sparkling eyes of the fair dulcinea then at Cincinnati. And so Luce and his military force were transplanted in double-quick time to Cincinnati; and where the troops were the settlers congregated for their protection and safety. And so, the Queen City of the West followed the fortunes of this unnamed forest queen, who so completely beguiled the impressible ensign. In this case there was no ten years' war, as in the case of the beautiful Spartan dame, which ended in the destruction of Troy; but, by Luce's infatuation and removal, North Bend was as much fated as though the combined Indians of the North-west had blotted it out of existence. Soon after this portentious removal, Luce, on May 1, 1790, resigned from the army--whether on account of his fair charmer, history fails to tell us. This romantic story has been doubted by some, but Judge Burnet was an early settler of Cincinnati, and had good opportunities to get at the facts; and when I met the judge, fully forty years ago, he seemed not the man likely to indulge in romancing. That General Harmar, in forwarding Luce's resignation to the War Office, seemed particularly anxious that it should be accepted, would seem to imply that, for this intrigue, or some other cause, the general was desirous of ridding the service of him. Besides Symmes', there was no other settlement between Cincinnati and Louisville, except that of a French gentleman named Lacassangue, a few miles above Louisville, who began a vineyard on the Indian side of the river; and one day Indians visited it, killing his people, and destroying his vines.[13] Mr. Lacassangue was a polite, hospitable man, and gave elegant dinners. [13] Michael Lacassangue, a Frenchman of education, settled in Louisville as a merchant prior to March, 1789, when General Harmar addressed him as a merchant there. He located a station on the northern shore of the Ohio, three miles above Fort Steuben, now Jeffersonville, where he had purchased land in the Clark grant. In a MS. letter of Captain Joseph Ashton, commanding at Fort Steuben, addressed to General Harmar, April 3, 1790, these facts are given relative to the attack on Lacassangue's station. That on the preceding March 29th, the Indians made their attack, killing one man. There were only two men, their wives, and fourteen children in the station. Word was immediately conveyed to Captain Ashton of their situation, who detached a sergeant and fourteen men to their relief, and who arrived there, Captain Ashton states, in sixteen minutes after receiving intelligence of the attack. The Indians, three in number, had decamped, and were pursued several miles until their trail was lost on a dry ridge. The families were removed to Fort Steuben, and thus the station was, for a time, broken up. Mr. Lacassangue must have been quite a prominent trader at Louisville in his day. About the first of June, 1790, Colonel Vigo, an enterprising trader of the Illinois country, consigned to him 4,000 pounds of lead, brought by Major Doughty from Kaskaskia. Mr. Lacassangue made efforts, in after years, to give character to his new town of Cassania--a name evidently coined out of his own--hoping from its more healthful situation, and better location for the landing of vessels destined to pass the Falls, to supplant Louisville. The little place, General Collot says, had in 1796, when he saw it, "only two or three houses, and a store." The ambitious effort was a vain one, and Cassania soon became lost to the geographical nomenclature of the country. Mr. Lacassangue died in 1797. A nephew of Mrs. Washington of the name of Dandridge lived with Mr. Lacassangue. When I returned to Philadelphia, I there met him again; he resided at General Washington's. While the Dandridge family stayed at Louisville, they received much attention. It was the custom of the citizens, when any persons of note arrived there, to get up a ball in their honor. They would choose managers; circulate a subscription paper to meet the expenses of the dance. Every signer, except strangers, must provide his partner, see her safe there and home again. We had scarcely got located before a subscription paper was presented to Uncle Forman and myself. But the first ball after our arrival proved a failure, owing to the inclemency of the weather, so that no ladies could attend. General Wilkinson happened in town, and though he and Uncle Forman stayed but a little while, the young blades were disposed for a frolic. Some time before this a ball was tendered to General St. Clair, when the youngsters had a row, and destroyed the most of the breakable articles that the house afforded. But such instances of rudeness occurred only when no ladies were present. Not long after the failure on account of the weather, the scheme for a dance was renewed, and, at length, we had an elegant collection of southern fair. The ball was opened by a minuet by Uncle Forman and a southern lady--Aunt Forman did not dance. This was the last time, I believe, that I saw that elegant dance performed. Then two managers went around with numbers on paper in a hat--one going to the ladies, the other to the gentlemen. When the manager calls for lady No. 1, the lady drawing that number stands up, and is led upon the floor, awaiting for gentleman No. 1, who, when called, takes his place, and is introduced by the manager to the lady. So they proceed with the drawing of couples until the floor is full for the dance. I, in my turn, was drawn, and introduced to my dancing partner from Maryland, and we were called to the first dance. This lady happened to be acquainted with Uncle Forman's oldest son, General Thomas Marsh Forman, which circumstance rendered our casual meeting all the more agreeable. The officers of the garrison over the river generally attended, and they brought the military music along. I became well acquainted with the officers. Dr. Carmichael,[14] of the army, used often to come over and sit in my store. [14] Dr. John F. Carmichael, from New Jersey, entered the army in September, 1789, and, with the exception of a few months, retained his position till his resignation in June, 1804. It was the last of February, I believe, when Uncle Forman and his little fleet took their departure from Louisville, destined for the Natchez country. The river was now free from ice. There subsequently came a report, that when they reached what was called the low country, below the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, they were captured by the Indians. I was in a painful suspense for a long time, and until I heard from them. While Uncle Forman and party were sojourning in Louisville, there was, it appears, a white man there, who learned the names of Ezekiel Forman and Captain Osmun, their place of destination, and all about them. This fellow was a decoyer, who lived among the Indians, and whose business it was to lure boats ashore for purposes of murder and robbery. At some point below the mouth of the Tennessee, this renegade saw the boats approaching, ran on the beach, imploring, upon his bended knees, that Mr. Forman, calling him by name, would come ashore and take him on board, as he had just escaped from the Indians. Mr. Forman began to steer for his relief, when Captain Osmun, who was a little way in the rear, hailed Uncle, warning him to keep in the middle of the stream, as he saw Indians in hiding behind trees along the bank where the wily decoyer was playing his treacherous part. Giving heed to this admonition, Uncle Forman kept clear of the dangerous shore. Then an old Indian, finding that his plot was exposed, ran down to the beach, hailing the boats: "Where you go?" It is not clear what could have been the Indian's motive in making a display of himself, and seeking the information already known to his renegade associate. But for the circumstance of Captain Osmun being in the rear, and discovering the exposed Indians screened behind trees, the whole party might have been lured on shore and massacred. It seems that, after boats entered the Mississippi, they were not molested by the Indians, as they were not at war with the Spaniards. I was left in Louisville, with a store of goods. When I had disposed of them, I was directed to join Uncle Forman at Natchez; but some considerable time was necessary to trade off my stock, and convert it into tobacco. I spent my time very pleasantly at Louisville. The southern people are remarkably friendly to strangers. One family, in particular, Mr. and Mrs. Ashby, were as kind to me as though I had been their own son. They soon called on Uncle and Aunt Forman, showing all possible attention, and soon became quite familiar. One day, Mr. Ashby called, and inquired of Aunt for "_old_ Mr. Forman." "I tell you, Mr. Ashby," Mrs. Forman laughingly replied, "you shall not call my husband _old_. Please to refer to him as Mr. Forman, and our nephew as Mr. Sam. Forman." Mr. Ashby took the suggestion in good part, and promised ready obedience. After Uncle and Aunt Forman left for the Natchez country, Mrs. Ashby would come to my store like a mother, and inquire into the condition of my lodgings, and sent bed and bedding, and had a kind old woman examine my trunk, taking out all my clothing, first airing and then nicely replacing them, and kindly did all my washing during my stay. Mr. Ashby had a farm a little way out of town, but he and his family came in very often. Mrs. Ashby never came without making me a motherly call, and looking over my clothing to see if any repairs were needed. I never parted with briefly-made acquaintances with so much regret. I became very intimate with a Mr. Smith, from New York, a young gentleman about my own age. The Virginians, as were most of the Louisville people, were very fond of dancing. Smith and I agreed to let each other know when a hop was in agitation, and they were very frequent. When notified by him of one such occasion, I apologized for not being able to go, as I had no suitable pumps. "You have purchased," said he, "a parcel of elegant moccasins for your New York ladies. You don a pair, and I will another." "Good! good!" we mutually ejaculated. So we engaged our favorite partners, and attended the ball. It was something new to appear in such an assembly decked off in such Indian gear; but they were much admired, and, at the next dance, almost all appeared in moccasins. So, it seems, we led the ton, and introduced a new fashion. There was but one tavern and one boarding-house in the place. The boarding-house was kept by a Dr. Walter, who was also the pilot to take boats over the Falls; and he was, moreover, a great hunter and fisherman. One day in April, I think, at some public festival, several of our boarders, the leader was the Commissary of the Army, proposed to have what they called _a setting_, and asked me to join them. I had often heard the commissary relate his exploits--drinking egg-nog was then all the go. I declined to share in the frolic, fearing the influence of these southern blades on such occasions. In the course of the night, I was alarmed by the rattling of stones thrown against my store-door and window-shutters. At first, I thought it might be Indians. The clatter was kept up, and the glass windows all broken. I finally concluded that it was the work of the egg-nog party. Not only were my windows completely shattered, but my store door was broken open by the pelting of large stones. These egg-nog disturbers served Captain Thomas, the landlord, in the same way as they had done me. The next morning, when we all met at the breakfast table at our boarding-house, scarcely a word was spoken during the meal. As I went out of the door, passing my friend, the commissary, I asked him if he would direct my windows glazed, and some little carpenter work done. He pretended to be astonished how they should have been broken. I made no reply, but walked back to my store, only looked at him and smiled. In the afternoon, at Captain Thomas's, the business assumed almost a tragical form--dirks were nearly drawn; however, it was amicably settled. The next morning these gentlemen asked me if I would be satisfied if my windows and door were made whole. I answered in the affirmative, and asked them whether they had not acted very imprudently, situated as we were on the frontiers in time of Indian warfare. "You know," said I, "that it was but a little time since that Captain Thomas and some others saw Indians in the night making, as they supposed, for my store, when I kept it up by Bear Grass creek; and a few people got together in the night, and followed the Indian trail out of the village without alarming me. The Indians evidently thought themselves discovered, and retired, hence I escaped. In consequence of this alarm, I immediately moved from that place to the center of the village, into the corner building opposite the tavern." It was observed one Sunday morning, soon after starting my store, that it was not opened on that day, as other establishments were; and I was asked why I kept my store closed--that Sunday had not crossed the mountains, and that I was the first person who kept his store shut on that day. I told them that I brought the Sabbath with me. It so happened that I had the honor of being the first to observe the day in Louisville. Directly opposite to me a billiard table was kept. It was customary at the south for ladies to indulge in billiards, considering it a genteel and healthful amusement. During the morning hours, a few ladies used to honor me with a call, when I would spend a little while in that pleasant recreation; but I never gambled, and ladies' company is always more agreeable than gentlemen's. Besides, if you play with gentlemen, it is apt to lead to gambling; and it was consequently better to pay for the use of the table with ladies, when one improves in manners from their refinement. One day Captain Thomas brought a little negro boy to my store, tendering me his services while I remained in Louisville; that he should be of no expense to me, but live at home, and come over regularly and do my chores, tote water, sweep my store, clean my shoes, etc. The captain explained that he had another boy of about the same age and size, and that one was better than both. I had a spruce colored barber, who was also a tailor, the pleasure of whose company I occasionally had in helping out in my labors. Sometime about the latter part of May, perhaps, four tobacco boats arrived at Louisville on their way to New Orleans, under the respective command of Captain Andrew Bayard, Captain Winters, and Captain Gano, of New York, and Captain January, of Kentucky. Captain Bayard's boat received some injury in passing over the Falls of the Ohio, and he had to unload to repair damages. I had been some time negotiating with a rich planter, Mr. Buckner, of Louisville. After I had heard of the accident to Captain Bayard's boat, Mr. Buckner came into the village. I got him in my store, locked the door, and told him that now was the time to close our long-talked-of trade, so that I could have the company of this descending fleet. After spending the night in conversation, I gave up my bed to Mr. Buckner, and threw down some blankets and coarse clothes for my own lodging. To make a long story short, we effected a trade--closing out my store of goods to him. He bought me a tobacco boat, loaded her with this product of the country, and got matters and things arranged so that I was ready to accompany the descending fleet. Of these tobacco traders, I was partially acquainted with Mr. Bayard. I had at Louisville a competitor in trade, a young Irish gentleman, but he could not succeed. My boat was loaded below the Falls, and by some means the hands suffered her to break from her fastenings, and went a mile or two down stream before they brought her to. I put my blanket on board of Mr. Bayard's boat, and got on board with him, and took my tea with him. In the evening, being moonlight, my canoe, with an old sailor, came for me. I took some blankets and wrapped them around my arms carelessly. I jumped into the canoe; and the sailor, it seems, had taken a little too much whisky, so that when he pushed off from Mr. Bayard's boat, in order to clear its bow, he leaned over so far as to make the canoe dip water; and, in recovering his position, he leaned so far the other way that the canoe filled. My arms being entangled with the blankets, I was totally helpless. Mr. Bayard's hands jumped into their small boat, came to my rescue, and saved me from a watery grave. Partly from economy, and partly from lack of time to secure another hand, I attempted to manage my tobacco boat, which was somewhat smaller than the usual size, with less than the usual supply of boatmen. This made it come hard on me, whose unskilled strength was but half that of an ordinary man. I had this old sailor with me for one watch, and an old North-western man and a Jerseyman for another. The boats would follow the current, except when passing islands, when the men must all beat their oars. I believe the old sailor, while on board, was a little deranged. After I discharged him at Natchez, he was found, I was told, in the woods, dead. Nothing of any moment occurred while descending the Ohio, until we reached Fort Massac, an old French fortification, about thirty miles above the mouth of the Ohio. It was a beautiful spot. All of the captains, and some of the hands, with a small boat, went on shore, while our tobacco boats glided gently along. When we landed, we separated in squads, and visited the old deserted ramparts, which appeared quite fresh. It was in the afternoon, just after a refreshing shower. Those first arriving at the intrenchment, espied a fresh moccasin track. We all looked at it, and then at each other, and, without uttering a word, all faced about, and ran as fast as possible for the little boat. Some hit its locality, while others struck the river too high up, and others, too low. Those of us who missed our way concluded, in our fright, that the Indians had cut us off; and no one had thought to take his rifle but me, and I feared that I should be the first to fall. After we were all safe on one of the tobacco boats, we recovered our speech, and each one told how he felt, and what he thought, during our flight to the boats. This locality of Fort Massac, we understood, was the direct way from the Ohio, in that country, to St. Louis, and probably the track we saw was that of some lonely Indian; and, judging from its freshness, the one who made it was as much frightened from our numbers as we were at our unexpected discovery. I will note a little circumstance that occurred during our passage down the Ohio. One day, I was ahead of the fleet, when one of the boats passed by suddenly, when we observed by the woods that we were standing still--evidently aground, or fast on something below the surface. I gave notice to the boats behind to come on, and take position between my boat and shore, hoping, by this means, to raise a temporary swell in the river, and, by fastening a rope to my boat, and extending along beside the others, and making the other end fast to a tree on shore, be enabled to get loose. While thus engaged, we heard a whistle, like that of a quail. Some observed that quail never kept in the woods, and we felt some fear that it might be Indians; but we continued our efforts at the rope, and the boat was soon so far moved that we discovered that we were fast upon a planter--that is, the body of a tree firmly embedded in the river bottom. At last, the men could partly stand upon it, and, with a hand-saw, so weakened it that it broke off, and we were released. Another dangerous obstruction is a tree becoming undermined and falling into the river, and the roots fastening themselves in the muddy bottom, while, by the constant action of the current, the limbs wear off, and the body keeps sawing up and down with great force, rising frequently several feet above the water, and then sinking as much below. These are called "sawyers," and often cause accidents to unsuspecting navigators. When we arrived at the mouth of the Ohio, we stopped. I fastened my boat to trees, and the other boats did likewise. We kept watch, with an ax in hand, to cut the fastenings in case of a surprise by Indians. Here were marks of buffalo having rested. Where the waters of the Mississippi and Ohio mingle, they look like putting dirty soap-suds and pure water together. So we filled all our vessels that were water-tight, for fear we might suffer for want of good water on our voyage. But we found out, afterward, that the Mississippi was very good water, when filtered. After we got all arranged, the second day after we embarked, the captains agreed that we would, in rotation, dine together, which rendered our journey more pleasant. Mr. Bayard's and my boat were frequently fastened together while descending the Ohio, but on the Mississippi, from the turbulence of the stream, it was not possible to do so. The first day that we entered the Mississippi, we discharged all our rifles and pistols, as we were then out of danger from the hostile Indians. In the afternoon, we had a strong wind ahead, which made a heavy sea, accompanied with thunder and lightning. The waves ran so high that we felt in danger of foundering. The forward boat pulled hard for shore, which we all followed. Presently, we saw an Indian canoe pulling for that boat. I asked my North-western man what that meant. He looked wild, but did not know what to make of it. I directed the men to pull away, and I would keep an eye upon the suspicious visitors, and at the same time load our rifles and pistols again. Reaching the advanced boat, the Indians were kindly received, and no fighting; and, instead of hostile demonstrations, they lent a hand in rowing. After much hard work, we at length all effected a landing in safety. We then prepared for dinner. It so happened that it was my turn to receive the captains at dinner. Having a large piece of fresh beef--enough and to spare, I invited three of our copper-faces to dine with us. Dinner over, Captain Gano set the example of _pitching the fork_ into the beef, as we used, in our school days, to pitch the fork into the ground. So the Indians, one after the other, imitated the captain, and very dextrously pitched their forks also into the beef, thinking, probably, that it was a white man's ceremony that should be observed. After dinner, at the conclusion of the pitching incident, I mixed some whisky and water in the only glass I had, and handed it to one of the captains; and then repeating it, filling the tumbler equally alike in quantity, handed it in succession to the others. When I came to the Indians, not knowing their relative rank, I happened to present the glass to the lowest in order, as I discovered by his declining it; but when I came to the leader, he took the offering, and reaching out his hand to me in a genteel and graceful manner, shook mine heartily; and then repeated the cordial shake with each of the others, not omitting his own people, and then drank our healths as politely, I imagine, as Lord Chesterfield could have done. The other Indians were similarly treated, and, in turn, as gracefully acknowledged the compliment. They all appeared much pleased with their reception. This ceremony over, our men asked leave to visit the opposite side of the river, where these Indians had a large encampment. This granted, they all went to get their rifles. The Indians seemed to understand etiquette and politeness, and objected to the men going armed. But, instead of speaking to the men, they addressed the captains of the boats, saying: "We have no objections to your men going among our people, if they don't take their rifles. We came among you as friends, bringing no arms along." We, of course, told our men to leave their rifles behind. They did so. Returning, they reported that there were a good many Indians there. By some means, some of our men must have let the Indians have _la tafia_--a cheap variety of rum distilled from molasses. At all events, they became very much intoxicated, "and we," said the visitors, "were very apprehensive of difficulty; but a squaw told us that the Indians could not fight, as she had secreted all their knives, and we were very much relieved when morning appeared, so we could bid good-by to our new acquaintances." The next day we arrived at _L'Anse a la Graisse_, which place, or adjoining it, bears the name of New Madrid, which is the American part of the little village settled under the auspices of Colonel George Morgan. Uncle Forman wrote me by all means to call at this Spanish post, as he had left my name with the genteel commandant there, who would expect to see me. In the morning, after breakfast, we all prepared our toilets preparatory to paying our respects to the officer of the place. The captains did me the honor of making me the foreman of the party, as my name would be familiar to the commandant. I regret that I have forgotten his name.[15] We made our call at as early an hour as we could, so that we might pursue our voyage without any unnecessary waste of time. [15] In July, 1789, less than a year before, Lieutenant Pierre Foucher, with four officers and thirty soldiers, had been sent from New Orleans to establish a post at this place, as stated in _Gayarre's Louisiana_, 1854, p. 268. It is generally asserted that this settlement was commenced as early as 1780; but the Spanish census of Louisiana, both in 1785 and 1788, make no mention of the place. Arrived at the gate, the guard was so anxious to trade his tame raccoon with our men that he scarcely took any notice of us. We went to head-quarters; there was but little ceremony. When we were shown into the commander's presence, I stepped toward him a little in advance of my friends, and announced my name. I was most cordially and familiarly received. Then I introduced my friends, mentioning their respective places of residence. After a little conversation, we rose to retire, when the commandant advanced near me, and politely asked me to dine with him an hour after twelve o'clock, and bring my accompanying friends with me. I turned to the gentlemen for their concurrence, which they gave, when we all returned to our boats. I then observed to my friends that the commandant would expect some present from us--such was the custom--and what should it be? Mr. Bayard, I believe, asked me to suggest some thing in our power to tender. I then remarked, that, as we had a plenty of good hams, that we fill a barrel, and send them to our host; that they might prove as acceptable as any thing. The proposition met the approval of all, and the hams were accordingly sent at once, with perhaps an accompanying note. At one hour after twelve o'clock, I well remember, we found ourselves comfortably seated at the hospitable board of the Spanish commandant, who expressed much delight at receiving our fine present. He gave us an elegant dinner in the Spanish style, and plenty of good wine and liquors, and coffee without cream. The commandant, addressing me, while we were indulging in the liquids before us, said that we must drink to the health of the ladies in our sweet liquors. "So," said he, "we will drink the health of the Misses Forman"--my worthy cousins, who had preceded us in a visit to this garrison. After dinner, the commandant invited us to take a walk in the fine prairies. He said he could drive a coach-and-four through these open woods to St. Louis. There came up a thunder-storm and sharp lightning, and he asked me what I called that in English, and I told him, when he pleasantly observed: "You learn me to talk English, and I will learn you French." Returning to head-quarters, we took tea, and then got up to take our final leave. "O, no!" said he, "I can't spare you, gentlemen. I'm all alone. Please to come to-morrow, one hour after twelve, and dine again with me." So, at the appointed time, we were on hand again. The same kind hospitality was accorded us as on the preceding day. In the evening, we thought we should surely tender the last farewell. But no; we must come again, for the third day, to enjoy his good company and delightful viands. That evening, there was a Spanish dance, all common people making up the company--French, Canadians, Spaniards, Americans. The belle of the room was Cherokee Katy, a beautiful little squaw, dressed in Spanish style, with a turban on her head, and decked off very handsomely. On these occasions, a king and queen were chosen to be sovereigns for the next meeting. The commandant was asked to honor them by taking a partner, and sharing in the mazy dance, which, of course, he declined; and we also had an invitation, but declined also. The commandant said he always went to these happy gatherings, and sat a little while, and once, he added, he played a little while on his own violin, for his own and their amusement. He expressed much regret at parting with us. He said he was so lonesome. He was a man not over thirty, I suppose, highly accomplished, and spoke pretty good English. I fear he was, in after years, swallowed up in the earthquake,[16] which destroyed many; among them, I believe, a Mr. Morris, who was a brother to Mrs. Hurd; a Mr. Lintot, from Natchez, who was a passenger with me from New Orleans to Philadelphia. [16] We learn, from Gayarre's _History of the Spanish Domination of Louisiana_, that, in July, 1789, Pierre Foucher, a lieutenant of the regiment of Louisiana, was sent, with two sergeants, two corporals, and thirty soldiers, to build a fort at New Madrid, and take the civil and military command of that district, with instructions to govern those new colonists in such a way as to make them feel that they had found among the Spaniards the state of ease and comfort of which they were in quest. Colonel John Pope, in his _Tour Through the Western and Southern States_, states, under date, March 12, 1791: "Breakfasted and dined with Signor Pedro Foucher, commandant at New Madrid. The garrison consists of about ninety men, who are well supplied with food and raiment. They have an excellent train of artillery, which appears to be their chief defense. Two regular companies of musqueteers, with charged bayonets, might take this place. Of this opinion is the commandant himself, who complains that he is not sufficiently supported. He is a Creole of French extraction, of Patagonian size, polite in his manners, and of a most noble presence." Lieutenant Foucher must have left the country long before the great earthquake of 1811-12. The Spaniards evacuated their posts on the Mississippi to the north of 31st degree in 1798; and, two years later, transferred the country to France, and, in 1803, it was purchased by the United States. On our entering the Mississippi, we had agreed that the foremost boat should fire a gun as a token for landing, if they saw a favorable spot after the middle of the afternoon. It was not possible to run in safety during the night. It so happened that every afternoon we had a thunder shower and head wind. Nothing special occurred, I believe, till our arrival at Natchez. There was no settlement from _L'Anse a la Graisse_ to _Bayou Pierre_, something like sixty miles above Natchez. At Bayou Pierre lived Colonel Bruin,[17] of the Virginia Continental line, who, after the war, took letters from General Washington to the governor of that country while it belonged to Spain, and secured a fine land grant. I once visited Colonel Bruin, with a gentleman from Natchez. That section of country is remarkably handsome, and the soil rich. The colonel's dwelling-house was on the top of a large mound, and his barn on another, near by. These mounds are common in the Ohio and Mississippi countries, and no tradition gives their origin. [17] Colonel Peter Bryan Bruin, son of an Irish gentleman, who had become implicated in the Irish Rebellion of 1756, and confiscation and exile were his penalty. He brought with him to America his only son, who was reared a merchant. In the War of the Revolution, he entered Morgan's famous riflemen as a lieutenant, shared in the assault on Quebec, where he was made a prisoner, and confined in a prison ship, infected with small-pox, for six months. He was finally exchanged, and at length promoted to the rank of major, serving to the end of the war. Soon after settling near the mouth of Bayou Pierre, he was appointed alcalde, or magistrate, under the Spanish Government; and when the Mississippi Territory was organized, in 1798, he was appointed one of the three territorial judges, remaining in office until he resigned, in 1810. He lived till a good old age, was a devoted patriot, and a man of high moral character. While in Louisville, I bought a young cub bear, and kept him chained in the back room of my store. He was about a month or two old when I got him; and when I went down the river, I took him along to Natchez. When twelve or fifteen months old, he became very saucy; I only could keep him in subjection. When he became too troublesome, Uncle Forman had him killed, and invited several gentlemen to join him in partaking of his bear dinner. When our little fleet of five boats first came in sight of the village of Natchez, it presented quite a formidable appearance, and caused a little alarm at the fort; the drum beat to arms, but the affright soon subsided. About this time, a report circulated that general somebody, I have forgotten his name, was in Kentucky raising troops destined against that country; but it all evaporated.[18] [18] This refers to the proposed settlement at the Walnut Hills, at the mouth of the Yazoo, under the auspices of the famous Yazoo Company, composed mostly of prominent South Carolina and Georgia gentlemen. Dr. John O'Fallon, who subsequently married a sister of General George Rogers Clark, located at Louisville, Ky., as the agent and active partner in that region and endeavored to enlist General Clark as the military leader of the enterprise; but it would appear that the general declined the command, and Colonel John Holder, a noted Kentucky pioneer and Indian fighter, was chosen in his place. But nothing was accomplished. The original grant was obtained by bribery, fraud, and corruption, from the Georgia Legislature; and a subsequent legislature repudiated the transaction, and ordered all the documents and records connected with it to be burned in the public square. Natchez was then a small place, with houses generally of a mean structure, built mostly on the low bank of the river, and on the hillside. The fort was on a handsome, commanding spot, on the elevated ground, from which was a most extensive view up the river, and over the surrounding country. The governor's house was not far from the garrison. Uncle Forman had at first hired a large house, about half-way up the hill from the landing, where he lived until he bought a plantation of five hundred acres on the bank of St. Catherine's creek, about four miles from Natchez. This he regarded as only a temporary abode, until he could become better acquainted with the country. The place had a small clearing and a log house on it, and he put up another log house to correspond with it, about fourteen feet apart, connecting them with boards, with a piazza in front of the whole. The usual term applied to such a structure was that it was "two pens and a passage." This connecting passage made a fine hall, and altogether gave it a good and comfortable appearance. Boards were scarce, and I do not remember of seeing any saw or grist-mills in the country. Uncle Forman had a horse-mill, something like a cider-mill, to grind corn for family use. In range with his dwelling he built a number of negro houses, some distance off, on the bank of St. Catherine's creek. It made quite a pretty street. The little creek was extremely convenient. The negroes the first year cleared a large field for tobacco, for the cultivation of that article was the object of Mr. Forman's migration to that country. After my arrival, and while sojourning at Natchez, Uncle Forman asked me if I intended to apply to the government for lands. I replied that I did not want any. He said he was glad of it, unless I remained in the country. He hinted something to the effect that one of the Spanish officers, who talked of leaving the country, had an elegant plantation, with negroes for its cultivation, and he thought of buying it, if I would stay and take it; that if I took land of government, and sold out, it might give umbrage to the governor, and I, being a relation, he suffer by it. I told him my father was loath to let me come away, and I promised that I would return if my life was spared me. After this, Surveyor-General Dunbar,[19] much to my surprise, called on me, and said that he brought the survey and map of my land, and presented a bill of sixty dollars for his services. I told him that I had not asked for land, nor had Governor Gayoso ever said any thing to me about land, nor did I want any. General Dunbar replied that the governor directed him to survey for Don Samuel S. Forman eight hundred acres of land, and that it was the best and most valuable tract that he knew of in the district, including a beautiful stream of water, with a gravelly bottom--rare in that country; that it was well located, near a Mr. Ellis, at the White Cliffs, and advised me by all means to take it. Uncle Forman happened to be absent, and I was in doubt what to do. At last I paid the bill and took the papers. The largest quantity that the Spanish Government gave to a young man who settled in that country was two hundred and forty acres, so the governor showed much friendship by complimenting me with so large a grant. [19] Sir William Dunbar, son of Sir Archibald Dunbar, was born at Elgin, Scotland, and received a superior education in Glasgow and London. On account of failing health, he obtained a stock of goods for the Indian trade; and, landing in Philadelphia in April, 1771, took his goods to Fort Pitt, and about 1773 he went to West Florida to form a plantation. He suffered much during the period of the Revolution, and in 1772 settled near Natchez, became chief surveyor under the Spanish Government, and in 1798 he was appointed astronomical commissioner on the part of Spain in establishing the boundary. He was shortly after appointed by Governor Sargeant, on the organization of Mississippi Territory, under the United States Government, chief judge of the Court of Quarter Sessions. He corresponded with the most distinguished scientific men of his time, and contributed to the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. He died in 1810, leaving many descendants. I must go back a little, and state that my good traveling companions, Messrs. Bayard, Gano, Winters, and January, parted from me, and continued their journey down the river. Uncle Forman had been acquainted with Mr. Bayard, in Philadelphia, and their meeting in a distant and foreign country was very gratifying. The interview was very brief, for Mr. Bayard and associates were anxious to pursue their voyage. At Natchez we made many agreeable acquaintances. Governor Gayoso, a bachelor, was very affable and pleasant, and had an English education. The fort-major, Stephen Minor,[20] was a Jerseyman from Princeton, and Mr. Hutchins,[21] a wealthy planter, was a brother to Thomas Hutchins, the geographer-general of the United States. His wife was a Conover, from near Freehold village, and knew more about Freehold than I did. Also a Mr. Moore, a wealthy planter, Mr. Bernard Lintot, who moved from Vermont before the war, and Mr. Ellis, a wealthy planter--all having large families, sons and daughters, very genteel and accomplished. These all lived from eight to fourteen miles from us. [20] Stephen Minor was a native of Pennsylvania, well-educated, and early made his way West; first to St. Louis, and then to New Orleans, and was soon appointed to official station by the Spanish Government, rising eventually to the governorship at Natchez, and so continuing till the evacuation of the country. He then became a citizen of the United States, and was useful to the country. He died in after years at Concord, Mississippi. [21] Colonel Anthony Hutchins was a native of New Jersey; early migrated to North Carolina, and in 1772 explored the Natchez country, settling permanently at the White Apple village, twelve miles from Natchez, the following year, and survived the troubles of the Revolution, and died when past eighty years of age. In the village of Natchez resided Monsieur and Madam Mansanteo--Spanish Jews, I think--who were the most kind and hospitable of people. These families, in town and country, formed our principal associates. Governor Gayoso told us, after we moved out to St. Catherine, that there would always be a plate for us at his table. The year 1790 was a very sickly one for unacclimated persons in the Natchez country. All our family adults had more or less fever, and fever and ague. Uncle Forman was severely afflicted with gout--a lump almost as big as a small hen's egg swelled out at one of his elbows, with something of the appearance of chalk. Poor Betsey Church was taken with a fever, and died in a few days; a great loss to the family, having been a valuable and much respected member of it for many years. I was the only adult of the family who was not confined to the house with sickness. Stephen Minor, the fort-major, married the eldest daughter of the planter, Mr. Ellis. Our family was much visited by the Spanish officers, who were very genteel men; and Major Minor was very intimate, and seemed to take much interest in us. When the time was fixed for my departure, by the way of New Orleans, and thence by sea to Philadelphia, Uncle Forman said: "Well, you must direct Moses, the coachman, to get up the carriage, take two of your cousins with you, and take leave of all your good friends." The carriage, which had its top broken off crossing the mountains in Pennsylvania, had been fitted up in Natchez, with neat bannister work around the top of the body, which rendered it more convenient for the country. We sometimes took the family in it, and went out strawberrying over the prairies. Cousins Augusta and Margaret accompanied me on my farewell tour. Ours was the first four-wheeled carriage that ever passed over those grounds--I can't say roads, for the highway was only what was called a bridle-path--all traveling at that day was on horseback. When we visited one place, some of our friends from another locality meeting us there would ascertain the day we designed visiting their house, that they might have the cane-brakes along the trail cleared away sufficient to permit the comfortable passage of the carriage; and we must, moreover, be on time, or some small gust of wind might again obstruct the passage. Our visits were all very pleasant save the unhappy part of the final bidding each other farewell. During this excursion, Governor Gayoso had given permission for a Baptist clergyman to preach one Sunday, which was the first time a protestant minister had been allowed to hold religious services. The meeting was held at Colonel Hutchins'. We went from the residence of some friends in that vicinity. After service we were invited to stay and dine at Colonel Hutchins'. When we were ready to depart, all came out of the house to see us off, and I asked the ladies in a jocose way to join us in the ride, when they began to climb over the wheels as though they might endanger the safety of the carriage; but this frolicsome banter over, we took our departure. We spent several days in performing this friendly round of visits--by-gone days of happiness never to return. When I was about leaving the country, Governor Gayoso asked me what I intended to do with my land. I replied, that if I did not return in a year or two, that his excellency could do what he pleased with it. Some years after, when I lived in Cazenovia, I contemplated going back, and went to my large chest, which had traveled with me from Pittsburg to New Orleans, and thence in all my tramps and changes, where I supposed all my Spanish papers were safe in a little drawer; but, to my surprise, they were missing, and I never could tell what became of them, as I kept the chest locked, and retained the key. So vanished my eight hundred acres of valuable land in the promising Mississippi country. On the arrival of Colonel Wyckoff, with his brother-in-law, Scudder, from Tennessee, preparations were made for our departure. Uncle Forman went down to New Orleans with us. It was in June, 1791, I believe, that we left Natchez. The parting with my kindred was most trying and affecting, having traveled and hazarded our lives together for so many hundred miles, and never expecting to meet again in this life. Many of the poor colored people, too, came and took leave of me, with tears streaming down their cheeks. Take them altogether, they were the finest lot of servants I ever saw. They were sensible that they were all well cared for--well fed, well clothed, well housed, each family living separately, and they were treated with kindness. Captain Osmun,[22] their overseer, was a kind-hearted man, and used them well. They had ocular proof of their happy situation when compared with their neighbor's servants. It was the custom of the country to exchange work at times; and, one day, one of our men came to me, and said: "I don't think it is right to exchange work with these planters; for I can, with ease, do more work than any two of their men;" and added, "their men pound their corn over night for their next day's supply, and they are too weak to work." Poor fellows, corn was all they had to eat. [22] Benajah Osmun served, as Mr. Forman has previously stated, at the defeat of General Washington's troops on Long Island, in August, 1776, when he was made a prisoner; he was then, apparently, a soldier in the ranks. On January 1, 1777, he was appointed a second lieutenant and quartermaster in Colonel Shreve's Second New Jersey regiment, which he subsequently resigned. In September, 1778, he again entered the army as an ensign in the second regiment; was a prisoner of war on April 25, 1780; made a lieutenant January 1, 1781, retiring at the close of the war with the brevet rank of captain. In 1802, he was made lieutenant-colonel of the Adams county militia; and when Colonel Burr visited the country, in 1807, on his mysterious mission, he was the guest of Colonel Osmun, who was one of his two bondsmen for his appearance at court, for they were fellow officers in the Revolution. Colonel Osmun settled a plantation at the foot of Half Way hill, near Natchez, became wealthy, and there died, a bachelor, at a good old age. Uncle Forman and I stopped the first night with Mr. Ellis, at the White Cliffs, and next day embarked on board of a boat for New Orleans. On our way down we sometimes went on shore and took a bowl of chocolate for breakfast with some rich planter, a very common custom of the country. The night before our arrival at New Orleans we put up with a Catholic priest; some gentlemen of our company were well acquainted between Natchez and New Orleans, and had learned the desirable stopping places. The good priest received us kindly, gave us an excellent supper, plenty of wine, and was himself very lively. We took breakfast with him the next morning; and before our departure the priest came up to me with a silver plate in his hand, on which were two fine looking pears, which he tendered me. He looked at first very serious; but, remembering his good humor the previous evening, I suspected his fun had not yet all run out. I eyed him pretty close, and while thanking him, I rather hesitated, when he urged me to take them. I knew no pears grew in that country. I finally took one, weighed it in my hand, and looked at him, till he bursted out into a loud laugh. They were ingeniously wrought out of stone or marble, and looked exactly like pears. I brought them home and gave them to a friend. Arriving in New Orleans, we took lodgings, and our first business was to wait on his excellency Governor Miro. Mr. Forman settling within his government with so large a number of people, under an arrangement with the Spanish ambassador at New York, Don Diego de Gardoque, gave him a high standing. Uncle Forman was in person a fine-looking man, very neat, prepossessing, and of genteel deportment, so that he was always much noticed. As there was then no vessel in port destined for the United States, I had to delay a couple of weeks for one. At length the brig Navarre, Captain McFadden, made its appearance, and soon loaded for Philadelphia. There were a number of Americans in waiting, who engaged their passage with me, on this vessel. Uncle Forman did not leave the city until after the Navarre had taken its departure. He suggested that I should take a formal leave of Governor Miro and his secretary, Don Andre. The secretary was a large, fine-looking man. I politely asked him if he had any commands for the cape--Cape Francois, a fine town in the northern part of St. Domingo, usually dignified with the designation of the _The Cape_--for which port, I believe, the vessel cleared. "I know not," said the secretary, "to what cape you are going--only take good care of yourself." After all were on board, the brig dropped down two or three miles, where the passengers went ashore, and laid in provisions enough, the captain said, to have carried us to London after our arrival in Philadelphia. I may mention something about distances as computed in those days. From Natchez to New Orleans was called three hundred miles by water, and only one hundred and fifty by land. From New Orleans to the Balize, at the mouth of the Mississippi, was reckoned one hundred and five miles. It was said that such was the immense volume of the Mississippi river that it kept its course and muddy appearance for a league out at sea. There were no ladies among the passengers. We entered into an arrangement that each passenger should, in rotation, act as caterer for the party for each day. It fell to my lot to lead off in this friendly service. We got along very nicely, and with a good deal of mirthful pleasure, for a couple of weeks, enjoying our viands and wine as comfortably as if at a regular boarding house. The captain's wife, however, was something of a drawback to our enjoyment. She was a vinegary looking creature, and as cross and saucy as her looks betokened, was low-bred, ill-tempered, and succeeded in making herself particularly disagreeable. During the pleasant weather portion of our voyage, she managed, without cause, to raise a quarrel with every passenger; and what added to her naturally embittered feeling, was that we only laughed at her folly. When we arrived in sight of Cuba, the wind arose, and blew almost a hurricane, causing a heavy sea. We were in such danger of being cast away on the Florida reefs that the captain summoned all hands on deck for counsel. But, providentially, we escaped. For near two weeks no cooking could be done, and each one was thankful to take whatever he could obtain in one hand, and hold fast to something with the other, such was the rolling and pitching of our frail vessel. Most of the passengers were sea-sick; I was among the few who escaped from that sickening nausea. One night the rain was so heavy, the lightning so vivid, and thunder so tremendous, that the vessel trembled at every clap; when I went to my friend Wyckoff, as well as others who were asleep, informing them that it was a moment of no little danger and excitement. Captain McFadden was a most profane man. But during the hours of our distress and danger he became very mild and humble, but it lasted no longer than the storm. The vinegary Mrs. McFadden, too, was very sensibly affected during this trying period; for, standing in the companion-way, leading to the cabin, she very humbly and demurely said that she would go below and make her peace. We all thought she could not be too quick about it. She was a veritable Katharine, but he was not a Petruchio. Before we arrived at the capes of the Delaware, an American sailor, who had made his escape from a British man-of-war at the mouth of the Mississippi, sickened and died on board our craft. When we got into the Delaware, the sailors took his remains on shore and gave them a decent sepulture. At length we reached Philadelphia in safety. GENERAL INDEX. Prefatory note, 3 Memoir of Major S. S. Forman, 5 Forman's narrative, 5 Tunis Forman captures two Tories, 6 Major Lee's strategy, 6 British foray at Middletown Point, 6, 7 Major Burrows's loss and captivity, 7 Denise Forman's services, 7 General David Forman, 7 German town battle, 7 Capture of a British sloop, 8 A British and Tory scout, 9 Services of Major Burrows, 9 Major Burrows's narrow escape, 9, 10 Denise Forman and Philip Freneau, 10 Sufferings in British prison ships, 10, 11 Captain Freneau's after-life, 11, 12 Monmouth battle, 12 Fugitives return to New York, 12 British evacuate New York, 13-15 Lieutenant-Colonel J. N. Cumming, 14 Anthony Glean noticed, 14 Washington parting with his officers, 15 Washington and Franklin in Federal Convention, 15 Washington's second inauguration, 16 Major Forman settles at Cazenovia, N. Y., 17 His subsequent career, 17, 18 His narrative--departure for the Ohio, 19 Detention at Lancaster, 20 Meeting Charley Morgan, 22 Scant of funds for traveling, 22 Arrival at Pittsburg, 23 Flat-bottomed boats for the journey, 23 Colonel Turnbull's entertainment, 24 Departure down the river, 25 Difficulties of navigation, 25, 26 Arrival at Wheeling, 26 Flocks of wild turkeys, 26 Arrival at Marietta, 27 Limestone and Columbia, 27 Arrival at Cincinnati, 27 General Harmar's hospitality, 27, 28 Captain Kirby _vs._ Captain Kersey, 28, 29 General Jonathan Forman noticed, 29 General Harmar's defeat, 30 Indian rendezvous at Scioto, 30 Gallipolis settlement, 30, 31 Anecdote of Captain Osmun, 31 Arrival at Louisville, 32 Fort Jefferson; Fort Steuben, 32 Ensign Luce and North Bend, 32, 33 Lacassangue and his station, 33, 34 Early dancing parties at Louisville, 35, 36 Generals Wilkinson and St. Clair, 35 Dr. John F. Carmichael, 36 Ezekiel Forman starts for Natchez, 36 Effort to lure ashore and destroy Forman's party, 37 Louisville incidents; Ashby and family; Mr. Smith; moccasins at balls, 38, 39 An egg-nog frolic, 39, 40 The Sabbath kept by S. S. Forman, 40 A billiard-table at Louisville, 40, 41 A fleet of tobacco boats, 41 Mr. Buckner purchases Mr. Forman's goods, 42 Mr. Forman's mishap, 42 Departure from Louisville, 42, 43 Incident at Fort Massac, 43 Planters and sawyers, 44 Mouth of the Ohio, 44, 45 An Indian alarm, 45 Indian visit; dinner, 46 Visit Indian village, 46, 47 Arrival at _L'Anse a la Graisse_, 47 Lieutenant Foucher's hospitality, 48-50 Lieutenant Foucher noticed, 47, 48-50 Colonel Pope's tour cited, 50 Colonel P. B. Bruin noticed, 51, 52 A cub bear, 52 Arrival at Natchez, 52 Walnut Hills settlement project, 52, 53 Dr. O'Fallon; General Clark; Colonel Holder, 52, 53 Natchez and surroundings, 53 Sir Wm. Dunbar noticed, 54 S. S. Forman's land grant, 55, 58, 59 Fine society at Natchez, 56 Mons. and Madam Mansanteo, 56 Major Stephen Minor noticed, 56, 57 Colonel Anthony Hutchins noticed, 56 Sickly at Natchez in 1790, 56, 57 A round of visits, 57, 58 Bad treatment of servants, 59 Colonel Osmun noticed, 59, 60 Departure for New Orleans, 60 A genial priest, 60, 61 Voyage and incidents to Philadelphia, 61-63 ROBERT CLARKE & CO., CINCINNATI, O. HAVE JUST PUBLISHED Major Forman's Narrative. Narrative of a Journey down the Ohio and Mississippi in 1789-90. By Major Samuel S. Forman, of New Jersey. With a Memoir and Illustrative Notes. By Lyman C. Draper, LL.D. of Wisconsin. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents. General David Forman of New Jersey in 1789, entered into a negotiation with the Spanish minister Don Diego de Gardoque, for his brother Ezekiel Forman of Philadelphia, to emigrate with his family, and about sixty colored people, men, women and children, and settle in the Natchez country, then under Spanish authority. Major Samuel S. Forman accompanied this emigrating party, and in this narrative gives a minute account of their trip, the places they passed through and at which they stopped, prominent people they met, with many curious particulars. This book has not been stereotyped, and the edition is a limited one. _Sent by mail, prepaid, on receipt of the price._ ROBERT CLARKE & CO., _Publishers_, Cincinnati, O. Transcriber's Note Archaic spelling is preserved as printed. Inconsistency in the use of apostrophes in date ranges is preserved as printed. Minor punctuation errors have been repaired. There were some instances of a single inconsistent spelling of a proper noun where it appears more than once. These, along with apparent typographic errors, have been repaired as follows: Page 19--Foreman amended to Forman--General David Forman, ... Page 37--beech amended to beach--... ran on the beach, imploring ... Page 37--Osmnn amended to Osmun--But for the circumstance of Captain Osmun ... Page 51--à amended to a--... from _L'Anse a la Graisse_ to _Bayou Pierre_, ... Page 57--afflcted amended to afflicted--Uncle Forman was severely afflicted ... Page 58--Pittsburgh amended to Pittsburg--... which had traveled with me from Pittsburg ... Page 60--ta amended to at--... of the country to exchange work at times; ... Page 63--Wickoff amended to Wyckoff--... when I went to my friend Wyckoff, ... Page 66--mocassins amended to moccasins--... Mr. Smith; moccasins at balls, ... Page 67--Madame Mansant amended to Madam Mansanteo--Mons. and Madam Mansanteo, 56 
44268	----	Transcriber's Note Some typographical features could not be reproduced in this version. Italics are therefore delimited with the underscore character as _italic_. Any words or phrases appearing in mixed case using small capital letters, are shifted to all upper case. Please note that the longitudes used in this text, which predates the establishment of Greenwich as the reference, used the nation's capitol, Washington, D.C. (approx. W 77°) as its basis. Thus, Cincinnati, at W 84° 30' on p. 1, is placed at a longitude of 7° 31'. Also, on p. 33, the location of the state of Indiana is mistakenly given using seconds (") of longitude, rather than minutes ('). These were corrected. The spelling of place names was fluid at the time and all are retained here. Footnotes, which appeared on the bottom of pages, have been relocated to follow the paragraph where they are referenced. They have been lettered consecutively from A to K for ease of reference. Please consult the transcriber's end note at the bottom of this text for any other details. THE AMERICANS AS THEY ARE; DESCRIBED IN A TOUR THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. BY THE AUTHOR OF "AUSTRIA AS IT IS." LONDON: HURST, CHANCE, AND CO. ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD. 1828. LONDON: Printed by Bradbury and Dent, St. Dunstan's-ct., Fleet-st. ADVERTISEMENT. The publication of this tour was intended for the year 1827. Several circumstances have prevented it. The American is, as far as relates to his own country, justly supposed to be prone to exaggeration. English travellers, on the contrary, are apt to undervalue brother Jonathan and his country. The Author has twice seen these countries, of whose present state he gives a sketch in the following pages. He is far from claiming for his work any sort of literary merit. Truth and practical observation are his chief points. Whether his opinions and statements are correct, it remains for the reader to judge, and experience to confirm. _London, March, 1828._ PREFACE. Upwards of half a century has now elapsed since the independence of the United States became firmly established. During this period two great questions have been solved, exposing the fallacies of human calculations, which anticipated only present anarchy and ultimate dissolution as the fate of the new Republics. The possibility of a people governing themselves, and being prosperous and happy, time, the sure ordeal of all projects, has at length demonstrated. Their political infancy is over, they are approaching towards manhood, and fully sensible of their strength, their first magistrate has ventured to utter those important words contained in his address of 1820: that "notwithstanding their neutrality, they would consider any attempt on the part of the European Powers, to extend their system to any portion of THEIR hemisphere, as dangerous to their peace and safety; and that they could not admit of any projects of colonization on the part of Europe." Thus, for the first time, they have asserted their right of taking a part DE FACTO in the great transactions of European Powers, and pronounced their declaration in a tone, which has certainly contributed to the abandonment of those intentions which were fast ripening into execution. The important influence of American liberty throughout the civilised world, has been already apparent; and more especially in France, in the South American revolutions, and in the commotions in Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Piedmont. These owe their origin, not to any instigation on the part of the United States, but to the influence of their example in raising the standard of freedom, and more than all, to the success which crowned their efforts. Great has been on the other hand, the influence of European politics on the North American nation. A party, existing since the revolution, and extending its ramifications over the whole United States, is now growing into importance, and guided by the principles of European diplomacy, is rooting itself deeper and deeper, drawing within its ranks the wealthy, the enlightened, the dissatisfied; thus adding every day to its strength. We see, in short, the principle of monarchy developing itself in the United States, and though it is not attempted to establish it by means of a revolution, which would infallibly fail, there is a design to bring it about by that cunning, cautious, and I may add, American way, which must eventually succeed; unless the spirit of freedom be sufficiently powerful to neutralize the subtle poison in its progress, or to triumph over its revolutionary results. There have occurred many changes in the United States within the last ten years. The present rulers have succeeded in so amalgamating opinions, that whatever may be said to the contrary, only two parties are now in existence. These are the monarchists, who would become governors, and the republicans, who would not be governed. The object proposed in the following pages has been to exhibit to the eyes of the European world, the real state of American affairs, divested of all prejudice, and all party spirit. Adams on the whole is a favourite with Great Britain. This empire however, has no reason to admire him; should his plans succeed, the cost to Great Britain would be the loss of her last possession in North America. But as long as the American Republic continues united, this unwieldy mass of twenty-four states can never become dangerous. Of the different orders of society, there is yet little to be said, but they are developing themselves as fast as wealth, ambition, luxury, and the sciences on the one side, and poverty, ignorance, and indirect oppression on the other, will permit them. There, as every where else, this is the natural course of things. To show the state of society in general, and the relative bearings of the different classes to each other, and thus to afford a clear idea of what the United States really are, is the second object attempted in this work. To represent social intercourse and prevailing habits in such a manner as to enable the future emigrant to follow the prescribed track, and to settle with security and advantage to himself and to his new country; to afford him the means of judging for himself, by giving him a complete view of public and private life in general, as well as of each profession or business in particular, is the third object here contemplated. The capitalist, the merchant, the farmer, the physician, the lawyer, the mechanic, cannot fail, I trust, to find adequate information respecting the course which, on their settling in the Union, will be the most eligible to pursue. Farther explanation I think unnecessary. He who would consider the following condensed picture of Trans-atlantic society and manners insufficient, would not be better informed, if I were to enlarge the work to twice its size. Such an objection would shew him to be unfit to adventure in the character of a settler in a country where so many snares will beset his path, and call for no small degree of natural shrewdness and penetration. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Cincinnati.--Parting glance at Ohio.--Its Government and Inhabitants. CHAPTER II. Tour through the state of Kentucky.--Bigbonelick.--Mammoths.--Two Kentuckian Characters.--Kentuckian Scenes. CHAPTER III. Vevay.--Geographical Sketch of the state of Indiana--Madison.-- Charleston.--Jeffersonville.--Clarksville.--New Albany.--The Falls of Ohio. CHAPTER IV. Louisville.--Canal of Louisville.--Its Commerce.--Surrounding Country.--Sketch of the state of Kentucky, and of its Inhabitants. CHAPTER V. A Keel-boat journey.--Description of the preparations.--Fall of the Country.--Troy.--Lady Washington.--The River sport.-- Owensborough.--Henderson. CHAPTER VI. Mr. Owen's of Lanark, formerly Rapp's settlement.--Remarks on it.--Keel-boat Scenes.--Cave in Rock.--Cumberland and Tennessee rivers.--Fort Massai. CHAPTER VII. The Mississippi.--General Features of the state of Illinois, and of its Inhabitants. CHAPTER VIII. Excursion to St. Louis.--Fall of the Country.--Sketch of the state of Missouri.--Return to Trinity. CHAPTER IX. The state of Tennessee.--Steam boats on the Mississippi.--Flat Boats. CHAPTER X. Scenery along the Mississippi.--Hopefield.--St. Helena.--Arkansas Territory.--Spanish Moss.--Vixburgh. CHAPTER XI. The city of Natchez.--Excursion to Palmira.--Plantations.--The cotton planter of the state of Mississippi.--Remarks.--Return to Natchez. CHAPTER XII. Arrival at New Orleans.--Cursory reflections. CHAPTER XIII. Topographical sketch of the City of New Orleans. CHAPTER XIV. The situation of New Orleans considered in a commercial point of view. CHAPTER XV. Characteristic features of the Inhabitants of New Orleans and of Louisiana.--Creoles.--Anglo Americans. CHAPTER XVI. Frenchmen.--Free people of colour.--Slaves.--Public spirit.-- Education.--State of religious worship.--Public entertainments.-- Theatres.--Balls, &c. CHAPTER XVII. The Climate of Louisiana.--The yellow fever. CHAPTER XVIII. Hints for Emigrants to Louisiana.--Planters.--Farmers.--Merchants.-- Mechanics. CHAPTER XIX. Geographical features of the state of Louisiana.--Conclusion. AMERICA. CHAPTER I. Cincinnati.--Parting Glance at Ohio.--Character of its Government and its Inhabitants. The city of Cincinnati is the largest in the state of Ohio: for the last eight years it has left even Pittsburgh far behind. It is situated in 39° 5' 54" north latitude, and 7° 31' west longitude, on the second bank of the Ohio, rising gradually and extending to the west, the north, and the east, for a distance of several miles. The lower part of the city below the new warehouse, is exposed, during the spring tides, to inundations which are not, however, productive of serious consequences; the whole mass of water turning to the Kentuckian shore. The river is here about a mile wide, and assumes the form of a half moon. When viewed from the high banks, the mighty sheet of water, rolling down in a deep bed, affords a splendid sight. In 1780, the spot where now stands one of the prettiest towns of the Union, was a native forest. In that year, the first attempt was made at forming a settlement in the country, by erecting a blockhouse, which was called Fort Washington, and was enlarged at a subsequent period. In the year 1788, Judge Symmes laid out the town, whose occupants he drew from the New England States. Successive attacks, however, of the Indians wearied them out, and the greater part withdrew. The battle gained by General Wayne over these natives, tranquillised the country; and after the year 1794, Cincinnati rapidly improved. It became the capital of the western district, which was erected into a territorial government. When Ohio was declared an independent state, in the year 1800, Cincinnati continued to be the seat of the legislature till 1806. Fort Washington has since made room for peaceful dwellings. Their number is at present 1560, with 12,000 inhabitants. The streets are regular, broad, and mostly well paved. The main street, which runs the length of a mile from the court-house down to the quay, is elegant.--Among the public buildings, the court-house is constructed in an extremely simple but noble style; the Episcopalian, the Catholic, and the Presbyterian churches, the academy and the United States' bank, are handsome buildings. Besides these, are churches for Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Swedenborghians, Unitarians, a Lancasterian school, the farmers', the mechanics', and the Cincinnati banks, a reading room with a well provided library, five newspaper printing offices;--among these papers are the Cincinnati Literary Gazette, and a price current--and the land office for the southern part of the state. The colonnade of the theatre is, however, a strange specimen of the architectural genius of the backwoods. Among the manufacturing establishments, the principal are,--the steam mill on the river, a saw-mill, cloth and cotton manufactories, several steam engines, iron and nail manufactories, all on the steam principle. Cincinnati carries on an important trade with New Orleans, and it may be considered as the staple of the state. The produce of the whole state is brought to Cincinnati, and shipped down the Ohio and Mississippi. The only impediments to its uninterrupted trade, are the falls of the Ohio at Louisville, which obstruct the navigation during eight months in the year. These obstacles are now on the point of being removed. The exports from Cincinnati are flour, whisky, salt, hams, pork, beef, dried and fresh fruits, corn, &c.; the imports are cotton, sugar, rice, indigo, tobacco, coffee, and spices. The manufactured goods are generally brought in waggons from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and discharged there. In order to improve the commerce of Cincinnati, an insurance company has been formed. There is a committee established for the inspection of vessels running between New Orleans and this place. There are a number of steam and other boats building at the present time. For the benefit of travellers, &c., a line of steam boats is established between Cincinnati and Louisville; and they start regularly every second day, performing the voyage of 115 miles to Louisville in twelve, and back again in twenty hours. There are in Cincinnati a great number of wholesale, commission, and retail merchants; but the want of ready money is as much felt here as anywhere else, and causes a stagnation of business. The inhabitants are chiefly American born, with some admixture of Germans, French, and Irish. As the former are mostly from the New England States, the general character of the inhabitants has taken an adventurous turn, which is conspicuous in their buildings. Most of the houses in the city are elegant, many are truly beautiful; but they belong to the bank of the United States, which possesses at least 200 of the finest houses in Cincinnati. The building mania obtained such strong hold of the inhabitants, that most of them forgot their actual means; and accordingly, having drawn money from the bank which they were unable to refund, they had at last to give up lots and buildings to the United States' bank. Though this city possesses in itself many advantages over other towns of the Ohio, and has much the start of them in point of commerce and manufactures, yet there is little expectation of its increasing in the same proportion as it has hitherto done. Neither of the canals which are intended to join the Ohio, will come up as far as this town. The great Ohio canal is to run near the mouth of the Sciota river; the _Dayton_ canal below Cincinnati; and these places will attract a considerable part of the population. The third canal, which is to connect the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and of the Ohio, will be more advantageous to the towns of Upper Ohio, Marietta, Steubenville, and Wheeling. Commerce will thus be more equally divided, and Cincinnati cannot always expect to continue as it has hitherto been, the staple of the trade to the southward of the Ohio. The merchant possessed of a moderate capital, if he consult his interest, will not establish himself at Cincinnati, but at one of the intermediate places of the above-mentioned three canals. The farmer has eligible spots in the Tuscarora valleys, about New Lancaster, Columbus, Franklintown, Pickaway, Chilicathe, and especially in the Sandusky counties on lake Erie. Mechanics, such as carpenters, cabinet makers, &c., will also find these new settlements more advantageous markets for their industry than the city of Cincinnati itself. The manufacturers, of every kind, will choose either Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, but still give the preference to the former, in spite of its smoke and dirt, as the place most favoured by natural position, which must necessarily become the first manufacturing town of the Union, notwithstanding the well-known inactivity of the Pennsylvanians. But as the state of Ohio must look to its manufactures, unless it chooses to continue a loser by the exchange of its raw produce; Cincinnati, whose manufactures have attained a high degree of perfection, favoured as it is by its coal mines, its water communication, and the fertility and consequent cheapness of the necessaries of life, must always possess very great advantages. Travellers arriving from the north, proceed to the south by way of Louisville on board a steam boat; and coming from thence, they go either to the eastward to Philadelphia by the mail stage, or by the same conveyance northward, through Chilicathe and Columbus, to lake Erie, where they embark for Buffalo. During my stay, on the twenty-fifth of October, a question of some importance for the inhabitants of Cincinnati was to be decided. It was concerning a stricter police and its necessary regulations. The city council, with the wealthier class of inhabitants, had been for some time previous to the decision, engaged in preparing and gaining over the multitude. I went to the court-house in company with Mr. Bama, a wholesale merchant, and several gentlemen, to hear the speeches delivered on both sides, and the result of the motion. It was four o'clock when we arrived, and about 600 persons were assembled in and outside of the court-house. The noise, however, was such, that it was impossible to hear more than detached periods. At eight o'clock, when almost dark, they had gone through the business, and the poll was about to commence. The party for abridging public liberty was ordered to go out on the left:--those who insisted on the preservation of the present order of things, were to draw off to the right. On arriving before the court-house, they ranged themselves in two separate ranks, each of which was counted by the presiding judge. There was a majority of 72 votes in favour of the party which upheld the present system, and the question was, therefore, decided in favour of popular liberty. I found here, as well as everywhere else, that the freedom of a community is nowhere more exposed to encroachments than in large towns, where dissipation and occupations of every kind are likely to engross the attention of the people, who leave the magistrates to do what they please. The city council were on the point of obtaining the majority, had it not been for the farmers whom the market-day had drawn to town. These, of course, did not fail to open the eyes of the honest burghers; and the question was accordingly negatived. The prevailing manners of society at Cincinnati, are those peculiar to larger cities, without the formalities and mannerism of the eastern sea ports. Freedom of thought prevails in a high degree, and toleration is exercised without limitation. The women are considered very handsome; their deportment is free from pride; but simple and unassuming as they appear, they evince a high taste for literary and mental accomplishments. The Literary Gazette owes its origin to their united efforts. There is no doubt that the commanding situation of this beautiful town, its majestic river, its mild climate, which may be compared to the south of France, and the liberal spirit of its inhabitants, contribute to render this place, both in a physical and moral point of view, one of the most eligible residences in the Union. As much, indeed, may be said of the state of Ohio in general. It combines in itself all the elements that tend to make its inhabitants the happiest people on the face of the earth. Nature has done every thing in favour of this country. In point of fertility, it excels every one of the thirteen old states; and, owing to its political institutions, and the abolition of slavery, it has taken the lead among those newly created. Ohio is bounded on the north by lake Erie, on the west by the state of Indiana, on the south by the river Ohio, and on the east by Pennsylvania, comprising an area of 4,000 square miles; it is divided into 71 counties, and has a population of 72,000 souls. This state forms the eastern extremity of the great valley of the Mississippi, which has the Alleghany for its eastern, and the Rocky Mountains for its western boundary, sinking by degrees as it approaches the Mississippi, and extending more than a thousand miles towards the south. The climate of this state, which presents for the most part the form of an elevated plain, running between the mountainous Pennsylvania and the swampy Mississippi states, is temperate, extending from 38° 28', to 72° 58' northern latitude, and from 3° 32', to 7° 40' west longitude. Its temperature varies less than that of other states. Its soil is inexhaustible; its fertility, especially in the northern and southern parts, being truly astonishing; and though some portions have been cultivated upwards of thirty years without being manured, the land still yields the same quantity of produce. The northern inhabitants of the state send their produce down to New York by lake Erie, and the Buffalo canal; the southern find a market in Louisiana and New Orleans. The middle part suffered greatly from the want of water communication, to which they are now on the point of applying a remedy, in order to obtain an intercourse with New York; which, as it is well known, has effected by means of a canal, a water communication with lake Erie. The Ohions commenced a canal in the year 1825, beginning at Cleveland on the shores of lake Erie, taking thence a southern course through Tuscarora county at Zanesville, turning to the right six miles below Columbus, and running down to the shores of the Ohio. It is intended to be completed in the space of three years. The state of Ohio expects from this canal, which if the pecuniary means be considered may be called a gigantic undertaking, a ready market for its produce in the city and state of New York; looking forward, at the same time, to become the staple for the trade between New York and New Orleans. It cannot fail, however, to be productive of still greater advantage to the United States in general, and to the cities of New York and New Orleans in particular, which will thus have the means of a land or water communication, over a space of nearly 3,000 miles. The first idea of this canal originated with the state of New York; the citizens of which, when they had finished their own, encouraged those of Ohio to enter upon a similar undertaking. Encouragement was not much wanting; the plan of joining the waters of the Hudson and the Mississippi was taken up with enthusiasm; canal committees were formed; most of the towns in the state sent their deputies, and after the customary debates, the resolution was adopted. The only difficulty was to raise the requisite funds. New York offered to defray the necessary expenses, if allowed the revenue arising from the new canal, for a certain period. The pride of the Ohions revolted against the proposition; they preferred raising a loan in New York. In this respect the government of the state committed a great error. A loan of three millions of dollars, and the necessary evils attendant upon it, are certainly a heavy burthen to a new state, which can scarcely reckon an existence of forty years, especially as the new canal may be considered a continuation of the great one of New York, and as the advantage resulting from it to the state can bear no comparison with that which New York derives from its own. New York, already the most important commercial city of the Union, will, after the completion of this canal, enjoy the trade of the western and south-western states, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi, &c.; and thus the Ohio canal will rather contribute to the aggrandizement of New York, than to that of Ohio. Their debt, so out of proportion with the resources of the state, made the people of Ohio relax in their ardour for carrying this project into effect, and gave rise to discontent against the administration of the state. But the same case happened in New York, and the exultation of the inhabitants of Ohio, when they see the work accomplished, will scarcely yield to that which was manifested by the people of the former state. There is, nevertheless, not any city in the state of Ohio to be compared with New York, Philadelphia, or Boston, nor is it probable there will be. At the same time this want is largely compensated by the absence of immorality and luxury--evils necessarily attached to large and opulent cities--which may be said to attract the heart's blood of the country, and send forth the very dregs of it in return. In Ohio, wealth is not accumulated in one place, or in a few hands; it is visibly diffused over the whole community. The country towns and villages are invariably constructed in a more elegant and tasteful manner than those of Pennsylvania, and the Northern states. There is something grand in their plan and execution, though the prevailing want or insufficiency of means to carry them through, is still an obstacle in the way. The farms and country houses are elegant; I saw hundreds of them, which no English nobleman would be ashamed of. They are generally of brick, sometimes of wood, and built in a tasteful style. The turnpike roads are in excellent order. It is astonishing to see what has been done during a few years, and under an increasing scarcity of money, by the mere dint of industry. The traveller will seldom have reason to rail at bad roads or bad taverns; I could only complain of one of the latter, which stands upon a road that is seldom travelled. In every county town there are at least two elegant inns, and the tables are loaded with such a variety of venison and dishes of every kind, that even a _gourmand_ could not justly complain. The whole state bespeaks a wealthy condition, which, far removed from riches, rests on the surest foundation--the fertility of the soil, and the persevering industry of its cultivators. Although behind-hand, perhaps, with the Yankees in literary accomplishments, they are far more liberal, and intelligent, being endowed with a strong and enterprising mind. Crimes are here less frequently committed, the inhabitants consisting of the most respectable classes of the eastern and foreign states. Only men of moderate property came into the state; the wealthy were deterred by the difficulties attending a new settlement; the indigent by the impossibility of getting vacant lands, and thus the state remained equally free from money-born aristocrats, (certainly the worst in the world), and from beggars. Its form of government bears internal evidence of this, the governor of Ohio having neither the revenue, nor the power of the eastern governors. He is elected for the term of two years. The constitution bespeaks independence and liberality. The number of senators cannot exceed thirty, nor the representatives seventy-two. The general assembly has the sole power of enacting laws, the signature of the governor being in no case necessary. The judges are chosen by the legislature for seven years, and the justices of the peace for the term of three years, by their respective townships. The resolutions of their assembly are quite free from that narrow-minded prejudice found in Pennsylvania and the southern states, which sees in the law of Moses the only rule for direction, and loses sight of that liberal spirit which pervades the law of Christ. The inhabitants of Ohio are not, however, so religious as their neighbours, the Pennsylvanians. Their ministers exercise little influence; and numerous sects contribute greatly to lessen their authority, which is certainly not the case in the north. The people of Ohio are equally free from the uncultivated and rude character of the western American, and from the innate wiliness of the Yankees. This state is not unlike a vigorous and blooming youth, who is approaching to manhood, and whose natural form and manner excite our just admiration. CHAPTER II. Tour through Kentucky.--Bigbonelick.--Mammoths.--Two Kentuckian Characters.--Kentuckian Scenes. After a stay of six days in Cincinnati I departed; crossed the Ohio in the ferryboat, and landed in the state of Kentucky, at Newport, a small country town of Campbell county. It contains, besides the government arsenal for the western states, a court-house, and about 100 buildings, scattered irregularly upon the eminence. From thence to Bigbonelick, the distance is 23 miles; the country is more hilly than on the other side of the river; it is, however, fertile, the stratum being generally limestone. The growth of timber is very fine; the trees are beech, sugar-maple, and sycamore. The contrast between Ohio and Kentucky is striking, and the baneful influence of slavery is very soon discovered. Instead of elegant farms, orchards, meadows, corn and wheat fields carefully enclosed, you see patches planted with tobacco, the leaves neglected; and instead of well-looking houses, a sort of double cabins, like those inhabited in the north of Pennsylvania by the poorest classes. In one part lives the family, in the other is the kitchen; behind these, are the wretched cabins of the negroes, bearing a resemblance to pigsties, with half a dozen black children playing about them on the ground. About three o'clock I arrived at Bigbonelick, well known for its Mammoth bones. The lands ten miles on this side of Bigbone are of an indifferent character, dreary and mountainous. The valley of Bigbone is about a mile long, and of equal breadth; it no doubt has been the scene of some great convulsion of nature. The water is seen oozing forth from the many bogs, and has a saltish taste, impregnated with saltpetre and sulphur. These quagmires are covered with a thin grass, which has the same taste. Their depth is said to be unfathomable. Whether the Mammoth bones which are found here, were brought into the valley by a convulsion of the earth, by an inundation, or whether the animals sunk down when in search of food, remains to be decided. The first two suppositions seem authorised by the circumstance, that bones were found, not on their carcases, but scattered, which could not be the case if they were swallowed up alive. The same revolution of nature which carried elephants and palm-trees to Siberia and Lapland, and the lions of Africa to the coast of Gibraltar, may, in like manner, have brought these animals to Bigbonelick. The tradition handed down to us by the Indians respecting them, is remarkable. "In ancient times, it is said, a herd of these tremendous animals came to the Bigbonelicks, and commenced an universal destruction among the buffaloes, bears, and elks, which had been created for the Indians. The Great Spirit looking down from above, became so enraged at the sight, that taking some of his thunderbolts he descended, seated himself on a neighbouring rock which still bears the print of his footsteps, and hurling down the bolts among the destroyers, killed them all with the exception of the big bull, which, turning its front to the bolts, shook them off; but being struck at last in the side, he turned round, and with a tremendous leap bounded over the Ohio, the Wabash, the Illinois, and the great lakes, beyond which he is still living at the present day." Some few weeks later, I spoke with an Indian trader at Trinity. According to his account, he found in one of his excursions, traces of a large animal, belonging to none of the species known to him, and equal in size to the elephant. On making inquiries of an old Indian, the latter ascribed the traces to an immense, but very rare animal, the race of which was almost destroyed by the Great Spirit; there remaining but very few on the other side of the lakes. He also pretended that he had seen one of those animals: whether the tale of the Indian, or that of the trader, a class of people somewhat prone to exaggeration, be true or not, I am incapable of deciding. I afterwards met this man at New Orleans, and requested him to go along with me to one of my acquaintances, in order to furnish further information on this subject, and enable me to give publicity to it, but he pretended business, and refused to accompany me. The researches which were undertaken here, were amply rewarded. The greatest part of the early discoveries has been transmitted to London; a fine collection is exhibiting in the Museum at Philadelphia, and in the Levee at New Orleans. The road from Bigbonelick is, for the distance of ten miles, dreary and the country barren. I arrived late at a farm-house, of rather a better appearance, where I intended to stop the night. The first night's lodging convinced me but too plainly, that the inhabitants of this state, justly called in New York, half horse and half alligator, had not yet assumed a milder character. The farmer, or rather planter, was absent with his wife; and his brother, who took care of the farm, was at a horse race; an old man, however, with his daughter, answered my application for a lodging, in the affirmative. I was supping upon slices of bacon, roasted corn bread, and some milk, when the brother of the farmer returned from the races with his neighbour. Both had led horses besides those on which they rode. Before dismounting they discharged their pistols. Each of the Kentuckians had a pistol in his girdle, and a poniard in the breast pocket. Before resuming my supper I was pressed to take a dram. With a quart bottle in one hand, and with the other drawing the remains of tobacco from his mouth, in rather a nauseous manner, the host drank for half a minute out of the bottle; then took from the slave the can with water, and handed the bottle to me, the mouth of which had assumed, from the remains of the tobacco, a brownish colour. The Kentuckian looked displeased when I wiped the bottle. I however took no notice of him, but presented it, after having drunk, to his friend. We sat down. "How far are you come to day?" asked the landlord. "From Cincinnati." "You don't live in Cincinnati, I guess, do you?" "No, sir." "And where do you live?" "In Pennsylvania." "A fine distance!" exclaimed my host, "I like the people of Pennsylvania better than those G----d d----d Yankees, but still they are no Kentuckians." I gave my full and hearty assent. "The Kentuckians," continued my landlord, "are astonishingly mighty people; they are the very first people on earth!" "Yes, sir." "They are immensely great, and wonderfully powerful people; ar'nt they?" "Yes, sir." "They are ten thousand times superior to any nation on earth." "Yes, sir." "How do you like Kentucky?" "Very well, sir; I travelled through it four years ago." "G--d d--n my s--l t----e----l d----n!" roared he. "The Pennsylvanians have not a square mile of land in their state, equal to our poor lands. Bill," turning now to his neighbour on the left, "Bill has been marked in a mighty fine style. G--d d--n, &c., he blooded like a hog." "Yes," replied the neighbour, "Sam has stabbed exceedingly well, I presume. Bill has to wait four weeks before he may be on his legs again, if he will be at all. G--d d--n! but to tell Isaac, his horse, which he thinks so much of, is a poor beast compared with his--and so to give him the lie. I would have knocked him down, come what might _out of it_. But Dick and John!"--and now these two fellows broke out into roaring shouts of horse laughter. "How his eyes twinkled, he looked quite as squire Toms, when laying all night over the bottle; I guess he never will be able to set his eyes a-right." "He does not see," said the neighbour; "the one is quite out of its socket, and Joe was obliged to carry him home." "Why, the seconds are wonderfully lovely fellows, I warrant you; they did not spoil the sport with interfering." "Yes, they bore John an old grudge." "Oh, certainly--it was a mighty fine sport; I would not for the world have missed it. G--d d--n! Dick is a fine gouger--the second turn--John down--and both thumbs in his eyes.--I presume you have races in Pennsylvania?" turning to me. "Yes, sir." "And fightings and gougings?" "No, sir." With an expressive look towards his neighbour, he continued: "Yes, the Pennsylvanians are a quiet, religious sort of people; they don't kill anything but their hogs, and prefer giving their money to their parsons." The evening passed in these and similar conversations, of which the above are mere specimens; and it was eleven o'clock before the interesting pair separated. Some miles below Mr. White's farm, the road divides into two, the one leading to Newcastle, the other to the Ohio. I stopped at a farm fifteen miles from my former night's lodging. The landlord was mounting his horse for Newcastle; his wife sat in the kitchen, surrounded by eight negro girls, all busy knitting and sewing. The girls seemed to be in excellent spirits, and were tolerably well dressed; the house rather indicated affluence, though it was far from possessing the order and cleanliness of a few of only half its value in Ohio. It was a simple brick house; but constructed without the least attention to the rules of symmetry. The fields were in a very indifferent state. Behind the dwelling, were seen some negro infants at play, while an old negro woman was preparing my breakfast. The family had thirty-five slaves, both young and old, forming a capital of at least 10,000 dollars. "Was not I a fool?" asked the open-hearted landlady, "to marry Mr. Forth, who had but twelve slaves, and a plantation, with seven children; but they are provided for;--whereas I had fourteen slaves, and a plantation too, after my first husband's decease, and no children at all."--"I don't know," was my reply, afraid of engaging the old lady in further discussion. While descanting upon this theme, and on the advantages resulting to her happy husband from a match so disparaging on her part, I was allowed to take my breakfast, when some yells and hallooing called us to the door. A troop of horsemen were passing. Two of the party had each a negro slave running before him, secured by a rope fastened to an iron collar. A tremendous horsewhip reminded them at intervals to quicken their pace. The bloody backs and necks of these wretches, bespoke a too frequent application of the lash. The third negro had, however, the hardest lot. The rope of his collar was fastened to the saddle string of the third horseman, and the miserable creature had thus no alternative left, but to keep an equal pace with the trotting horse, or to be dragged through ditches, thorns, and copsewood. His feet and legs, all covered with blood, exhibited a dreadful spectacle. The three slaves had run away two days before, dreading transportation to Mississippi or Louisiana. "Look here," said Mrs. Forth, calling her black girls, "what is done with the bad negroes, who run away from their good masters!" With an indifference, and a laughing countenance, which clearly shewed how accustomed these poor children were to the like scenes, they expressed their sentiments at this disgusting conduct. The road from Mr. Forth's plantation runs a considerable distance along ridges, descending finally into the bottom lands along the Ohio. These are exceedingly fertile. The growth of timber is extremely luxuriant. I measured a sycamore of common size, and found it seventeen feet in diameter; their height is truly astonishing. The soil is of a deep brown colour, and where it is turned up, proves to be blackish. The stratum is generally limestone. I crossed the Ohio at Ghent, in Kentucky, opposite to Vevay, in Indiana. CHAPTER III. Vevay.--Geographical Sketch of the State of Indiana.--Madison.-- Charlestown--its Court.--Jeffersonville.--Clarksville.--New Albany.--The Falls of the Ohio. Vevay, in Indiana, became a settlement twenty years ago, by Swiss emigrants, who obtained a grant of land, equal to 200 acres for each family, under the condition of cultivating the vine; they accordingly settled here, and laid out vineyards. The original settlers may have amounted to thirty; others joined them afterwards, and in this manner was founded the county town of New Switzerland, in Indiana, which consists almost exclusively of these French and Swiss settlers. They have their vineyards below the town, on the banks of the river Ohio. The vines, however, have degenerated, and the produce is an indifferent beverage, resembling any thing but claret, as it had been represented. Two of them have attempted to cultivate the river hills, and the vineyards laid out there are rather of a better sort. The town is on the decline; it has a court-house, and two stores very ill supplied. The condition of these, and the absence of lawyers, are sure indications of the poverty of the inhabitants, if broken windows, and doors falling from their hinges, should leave any doubt on the subject; they are, however, a merry set of people, and balls are held regularly every month. In the evening arrived ten teams laden with fifty emigrants from Kentucky, going to settle in Indiana; their reasons for doing this were numerous. Although they had bought their lands in Kentucky twice over, they had to give them up a third time, their titles having proved invalid; but still they would have remained, had it not been for the insolent behaviour of their more wealthy neighbours, who, in consequence of these emigrants having no slaves, and being thus obliged to work for themselves, not only treated them as slaves, but even encouraged their own blacks to give them every kind of annoyance, and to rob them--for no other reason than their dislike to have paupers for neighbours. My landlord assured me that at least 200 waggons had passed from the Kentucky side, through Vevay, during the present season, all full of emigrants, discouraged from continuing among these lawless people. The state of Indiana, which I had now entered, begins below Cincinnati, running down the big Miami westward to the big Wabash, which separates this country from the Illinois. To the south, it is bounded by the Ohio; to the north, by lake Michigan; thus extending from 37° 50', to 42° 10', north latitude; and from 7° 40', to 10° 47', west longitude. Like the state of Ohio, it belongs to the class coming within the range of the great valley of the Mississippi. It exhibits nearly the same features as the state of Ohio, with the exception, that it approaches nearer to the Mississippi than its eastern neighbour, and is the second slope of the eastern part of the valley of the Mississippi: it declines more than Ohio, being but 250 feet above lake Erie, and 210 feet above lake Michigan, which is one hundred feet less in elevation than the state of Ohio. Two ridges of mountains, or rather hills, traverse the country; the Knobs, or Silver-hills, running ten miles below Louisville, in a north-eastern direction, and the Illinois mountains appearing from the west, and running to the north-east, where they fall to a level with the high plains of lake Michigan. These hills have a perfect sameness. The climate is rather milder than that of Ohio. Cotton and tobacco are raised by the farmers in sufficient quantities for their home consumption. The growth of timber is the same as in Ohio. The vallies are interspersed with sycamores and beeches; and below the falls, with maples, and cotton and walnut-trees. The hills are covered with beech, sassafras, and logwood. This state, though not inferior to Ohio in fertility, and taken in general, perhaps, superior to it, has one great defect. It has no sufficient water communication, and thus the inhabitants have no market for their produce. There is not in this state any river of importance, the Ohio which washes its southern borders excepted. A scarcity of money therefore is more severely felt here, than in any other state of the Union. This want of inter-communication, added to the circumstance that the state of Ohio had already engrossed the whole surplus population from the eastern states, had a prejudicial effect upon Indiana, its original population being in general by no means so respectable as that of Ohio. In the north-west it was peopled by French emigrants, from Canada; in the south, on the banks of the Ohio, and farther up, by Kentuckians, who fled from their country for debt, or similar causes. The state thus became the refuge of adventurers and idlers of every description. A proof of this may be seen in the character of its towns, as well as in the nature of the improvements that have been carried on in the country. The towns, though some of them had an earlier existence than many in Ohio, are, in point of regularity, style of building, and cleanliness, far inferior to those of the former state. The wandering spirit of the inhabitants seems still to contend with the principle of steadiness in the very construction of their buildings. They are mostly a rude set of people, just emerging from previous bad habits, from whom such friendly assistance as honest neighbours afford, or mutual intercourse and good will, can hardly be expected. The case is rather different in the interior of the country, and on the Wabash, the finest part of the state, where respectable settlements have been formed by Americans from the east. Wherever the latter constitute the majority, every necessary assistance may be expected. For adventurers of all descriptions, Indiana holds out allurements of every kind. Numbers of Germans, French, and Irish, are scattered in the towns, and over the country, carrying on the business of bakers, grocers, store, grog shops, and tavern keepers. In time, these people will become steady from necessity, and consequently prosperous. The number of the inhabitants of Indiana amounts to 215,000. Its admission into the Union as a sovereign state, dates from the year 1815 to 1816; its constitution differs in some points from that of Ohio, and its governor is elected for the term of three years. Madisonville, the seat of justice for Jefferson-county, on the second bank of the Ohio, fifty-seven miles above its falls, contains at present 180 dwelling-houses, a court-house, four stores, three inns, a printing office--with 800 inhabitants, most of them Kentuckians. The innkeeper of the tavern at which I alighted, does no credit to the character of this people. He was engaged for some time in certain bank-note affairs, which qualified him for an imprisonment of ten years; he escaped, however, by the assistance of his legal friends, and of 1000 dollars. The opportunity of testifying his gratitude to these gentlemen soon presented itself. One of his neighbours, a boatman, had the misfortune to possess a wife who attracted his attention. Her husband knowing the temper of the man, resolved to sell all he had, and to move down to Louisville. Some days before his intended departure, he met Sheets in the street, and addressed him in these words: "Mr. Sheets, I ought to chastise you for making such shameful proposals to my wife;" so saying, he gently touched him with his cane. Sheets, without uttering a syllable, drew his poniard, and stabbed him in the breast. The unfortunate husband fell, exclaiming, "Oh, God! I am a dead man!"--"Not yet," said Sheets, drawing his poniard out of the wound, and running it a second time through his heart; "Now, my dear fellow, I guess we have done." This monster was seized and imprisoned, and his trial took place. _His_ countrymen took, as might be expected, a great interest in his fate. With the assistance of 3000 dollars, he even this time escaped the gallows. I read the issue of the trial, and the summons of the jury, in the county paper of 1823, which was actually handed to me in the evening by one of the guests. But a more remarkable circumstance is, that the inhabitants continue to frequent his tavern. At first they stayed away for some weeks; but in less than a month the affair was forgotten, and his house is now visited as before. The road from Madison to Charleston, leads through a fertile country, in some parts well cultivated. The distance from Madison is twenty-eight miles. It is the chief town of Clark county, and seems to advance more rapidly than Madison, the country about being pretty well peopled, and agriculture having made more progress than in any part of the state through which I had travelled. I found it to contain 170 houses and 750 inhabitants, five well stored tradesmen's shops, a printing office, and four inns. The town is about a mile distant from the river, on a high plain. When I arrived, the court was going to adjourn, and I hastened to the court-house. The presiding judge and his two associate judges were in their tribune, and the parties seated on boards laid across the stumps of trees. One of the lawyers having concluded his speech, the defendant was called upon. The gentleman in question, whom I took for a pedlar, stood close by my side in conversation with his party, holding in his hand half an apple, his teeth having taken a firm bite of the other half. At the moment his name was called, he walked with his mouth full, up to the rostrum, and kept eating his apple with perfect indifference. "Well," interrupted the judge impatient of the delay; "what have you to say against the charge? You know it is high time to break up the court, and I must go home." The gentleman at the bar now pocketted his apple, and having thus augmented the store of provision which he probably kept by him, looked as if he carried two knapsacks behind his coat. "It strikes me mightily,"--was the exordium of this speech, which in point of elegance and conciseness was a true sample of back-wood eloquence. Fortunately the speaker took the judge's hint; in less than half an hour he had done--in less than one hour the jurymen returned a verdict, the county transactions were finished, and the court broke up. From Charleston to Louisville, the distance is fourteen miles. The lands are fertile. Several very well looking farms shew a higher degree of cultivation, especially near Jeffersonville. There the road turns into an extensive valley formed by the alluvions of the Ohio. Jeffersonville, the seat of justice for Floyd-county, three quarters of a mile above the falls of the Ohio, was laid out in 1802, and has since increased to 160 houses, among which are a bank, a Presbyterian church, a warehouse, a cotton manufactory, a court-house, and an academy, with a land office, for the disposal of the United States' lands. The commerce of the inhabitants, 800 in number, is of some importance, though checked by the vicinity of Louisville, and by the circumstance, that the falls on the Indiana side are not to be approached, except at the highest rise. Two miles below this town, is the village of Clarksville, laid out in 1783, and forming part of the grant made to officers and soldiers of the Illinois regiment. It contains sixty houses and 300 inhabitants. New Albany, a mile below Clarksville, has a thousand inhabitants, and a great deal of activity, owing to its manufactory of steam engines, its saw mills, and the steam boats lying at anchor and generally repairing there. It is a place of importance, and though hitherto the resort of sailors, boatmen, and travellers, who go down the river in their own boats, it is annually on the increase. The Ohio is generally crossed above the falls at Jeffersonville. The sheet of water dammed up here by the natural ledge of rocks which forms the falls, expands to 5,230 feet in breadth. The falls of the Ohio, though they should not properly be called falls, cannot be seen when crossing the river, and the waters do not pour like the falls of Niagara over an horizontal rock down a considerable depth, but press through a rocky bed, about a mile long, which spreads across the river, and causes a decline of twenty-two feet in the course of two miles. When the waters are high, the rocks and the falls disappear entirely. Seen from Louisville at low water, they have by no means an imposing appearance. The majestic and broad river branches off into several small creeks, and assumes the form of mountain torrents forcing their way through the ledge of rocks. When the river rises, and only three islands are to be seen, the immense sheet of water rushing down the declivity at the rate of thirteen miles an hour, must afford a magnificent spectacle. At the time I saw it, the river was lower than it had been for a series of years. CHAPTER IV. Louisville.--Canal of Louisville--its Commerce.--Surrounding Country.--Sketch of the State of Kentucky and its Inhabitants, &c. The road from the landing-place to Louisville, leads through one of the finest and richest alluvial bottoms on the banks of the Ohio. They are here about seventy feet above the level of the water, and sufficiently high to protect the town from inundation, but there being no outlets for stagnant waters and ponds, epidemic diseases are frequent. A lottery is now established for the purpose of raising the necessary funds for draining these nuisances. Louisville extends in an oblong square about a mile down the river, and may be considered as the natural key to the Upper and Lower Ohio, and the most important staple for trade on this river, not excepting the city of Cincinnati. The commodities coming during the summer and autumn from southern states are landed here. Travellers who arrive by water, whether from the north or south, engage steam boats at this place either for New Orleans or for Cincinnati. These advantages made the inhabitants less desirous of having a canal, notwithstanding the solicitations of the states watered by the Ohio. The Congress has, at last, interposed; the canal is now contemplated. Probably this undertaking, in which not only the Upper states of the river Ohio, but the Union at large, are very much interested, is already commenced. By means of this canal, steam vessels will be enabled to avoid the falls, and to proceed to the upper Ohio at every season of the year. It is to be two miles and a half long; to open at the mouth of Beargrasscreek and to terminate at Shippingport. The highest ground is twenty-seven feet; upon an average twenty feet; and it is of a clayey substance, bottomed upon a rock. The expences are estimated at about 200,000 dollars, a trifle compared with the object to be accomplished. Louisville, the seat of justice for Jefferson county, in Kentucky, in 38° 8' north latitude, is about half the size of Cincinnati, and lies 105 miles below that city, by the Kentucky road through Newcastle, and 125 miles by the Kentucky and Indiana road. It is 1500 miles northeast of New Orleans. The town is laid out on a grand scale, the streets running parallel with the river, and intersected by others at right angles. The main street, about three quarters of a mile long, is elegant; most of the houses are three stories high; those of the other streets are of course inferior in size. The number of dwelling houses amounts to 700, inhabited by 4,500 souls, exclusive of travellers and boatmen. Louisville has no remarkable public buildings; the court-house and the Presbyterian church are the best. Besides these, the Episcopalians, Catholics, and Unitarians have their meeting houses. There are now three banks, including a branch bank of the United States, an insurance company, and four newspaper printing offices. A quay is now constructing which will greatly contribute to the security of the middle part of the town, opposite to the falls. The manufactories of Louisville are important; and the distilleries and rope walks on a large scale. Besides these there are soap, candle, cotton, glass, paper, and engine manufactories, all on the same principle, with grist and saw mills. The commerce of Louisville is still more important. Of the hundred steam boats plying on the Mississippi and Ohio, fifty at least are engaged during six months in the year in the trade with Louisville. They descend to New Orleans in six days, returning in double the time. Though the town is but half as large as Cincinnati, the credit of the merchants is more substantial, and the inhabitants are in general more wealthy. Luxury is carried to a higher pitch than in any other town on this side of the Alleghany mountains. Here is the only billiard-table[A] to be met with between Philadelphia and St. Louis. The owner has to pay a tax of 563 dollars--an enormous sum. [A] Of course this billiard table is not mentioned as a matter of importance, but merely to give a characteristic idea of the state of society in these parts. Notwithstanding the circulating library, the reading-room, and several houses where good society is to be met with, Louisville is not a pleasant town to reside in, owing to the character of the majority of its inhabitants, the Kentuckians. Louisville has an academy, but sends its youth to the college of Bairdstown, thirty miles to the southwest, where lectures are given by some French priests. Below Louisville, are the two villages of Shippingport and Portland; the former is two miles from the town, with 150 inhabitants, the latter at the distance of three miles, with fifty inhabitants, mostly boatmen and keepers of grog shops, for the lowest classes of people. The environs of Louisville are well cultivated, Portland and Shippingport excepted, the inhabitants of which are said to extend their notions of common property too far. Behind Louisville the country is delightful; the houses and plantations vying with each other in point of elegance and cultivation. The woods have greatly disappeared, and for the distance of twenty miles, the roads are lined in every direction with plantations. This town holds the rank of the second order in Kentucky, a country which, in latter times, has obtained a renown of somewhat ambiguous nature. It extends to the south, from the river Ohio, to the state of Tennessee, having for its eastern boundary the state of Virginia; and to the west, the river Mississippi, which separates it from the state of Missouri. It extends from 36° 30' to 39° 10' north latitude, and from 4° 78' to 12° 20' west longitude. It embraces an area of 40,000 square miles. Though under a southern degree of latitude, it enjoys a moderate temperature, which is also less variable than in the more eastern states. The two great rivers of the Mississippi and the Ohio, forming the boundary of this state, secure to it no inconsiderable trade. The productions of this beautiful country might, if properly cultivated, become inexhaustible sources of wealth and prosperity to its inhabitants; tobacco is a staple article, excelling in quality even that of Virginia, if properly managed: cotton thrives well in the southern parts of the state. Corn yields from forty to ninety bushels; wheat from thirty to sixty; melons, sweet potatoes, peaches, apples, plumbs, &c., attain a superior degree of perfection. One of the principal articles of trade is hemp, the culture of which has been brought to a high state of improvement; it constitutes one of the chief articles of export to New Orleans. Kentucky has not such extensive plains as Ohio, but is equally fertile, and less exposed to bilious and ague fevers. The stratum, which is generally limestone, is a sure sign of inexhaustible fertility. Hills alternating with valleys form landscapes, which though consisting of native forests, are in the highest degree picturesque. There are parts about Lexington and its environs, which nothing can exceed in beauty of scenery. Even Louisville, with its three islands, the majestic Ohio, and the surrounding little towns, possesses charms seldom rivalled in any country. Kentucky is, without the least exaggeration, one of the finest districts on the face of the earth. The climate is equal to that of the south of France; fruits of every kind arrive at the highest perfection; and it would be difficult to quit this country, did not the character of the inhabitants lessen one's regret at leaving it. But notwithstanding these natural advantages, the population has not increased either in wealth or numbers, in proportion to the more recent state of Ohio. The inhabitants consist chiefly of emigrants from Virginia, and North and South Carolina, and of descendants from back-wood settlers--a proud, fierce, and overbearing set of people. They established themselves under a state of continual warfare with the Indians, who took their revenge by communicating to their vanquishers their cruel and implacable spirit. This, indeed, is their principal feature. A Kentuckian will wait three or four weeks in the woods, for the moment of satiating his revenge; and he seldom or never forgives. The men are of an athletic form, and there may be found amongst them many models of truly masculine beauty. The number of inhabitants is now 57,000, including 15,000 slaves. Planters are among the most respectable class, and form the mass of the population. Lawyers are next, or equal to them in rank, no less than the merchants and manufacturers. Physicians and ministers are a degree lower; and last of all, are those mechanics and farmers not possessed of slaves. These are not treated better than the slaves themselves. The constitution inclines towards federalism, landed property being required to qualify a man for a public station. Ministers, of whatever form of worship, are wholly excluded from public offices. Kentucky is not a country that could be recommended to new settlers; slavery; insecure titles to land: the division of the courts of justice into two parts, furiously opposed to each other; an executive, whose present chief is a disgrace to his station, and whose son would be hung in chains, had he been in Great Britain; the worst paper-currency, &c., are serious warnings to every lover of peace and tranquillity. We abstain from farther particulars, as our purpose is to give a characteristic description of the Union, which would assuredly not gain by a faithful representation of the state of things in this country, during the last ten years. The Desha family, the emetic scene, the proceedings of the legislature, and of the courts of justice, Sharp's death, &c., are facts which belong rather to the history of the tomahawk savages, than to that of a civilised state. Passions must work with double power and effect, where wealth, and arbitrary sway over a herd of slaves, and a warfare of thirty years with savages, have sown the seeds of the most lawless arrogance, and an untameable spirit of revenge. The literary institutions, the Transylvanian university of Lexington, and the college of Bairdstown, have hitherto exercised very little influence over these fierce people. But a still worse feature observable in them, is an utter disregard of religious principles. Ohio has its sects, thereby evincing an interest in the performance of the highest of human duties. The Kentuckian rails at these, and at every form of worship; certainly a trait doubly afflicting and deplorable in a rising state. CHAPTER V. A Keel-boat Voyage--Description of the Preparations.--Face of the Country.--Troy.--Lady Washington.--The River Sport.--Owensborough.--Henderson. The Ohio still continuing low, and there being no prospect of proceeding to New Orleans by a steam boat, I resolved to embark on board a keel boat, in company with several ladies and gentlemen, who were returning to their plantations and their homes. The preparations in such a case, are to dispose of horse and gig, where one does not choose going by land through Nashville, and Natchez. There is not much pleasure to be derived from a passage on board a keel boat--a machine, fifty feet long and ten feet broad, shut up on every side; with two doors, two and a half feet high. It forms a species of wooden prison, containing commonly four rooms; the first for the steward, the second a dining room, the third a cabin for gentlemen, and the fourth a ladies' cabin. Each of these cabins was provided with an iron stove, one of which some days afterwards was very near sending us all to heaven, in the manner which the most Catholic king has been pleased to adopt in regard to us heretics. On the sides were our births, in double rows, six feet in length and two broad. In former times this manner of travelling was generally resorted to on the Ohio and Mississippi; the application of steam, however, has superseded these primitive conveyances, and I hope to the regret of no one. Our passage to Trinity, 515 miles by water, including provisions, &c., was twenty-five dollars. We were sure of meeting there with steam boats. The company consisted of two ladies with their families, returning to Louisiana; two others were going to Yellow-banks, with several governesses, nieces, &c.; in all ten ladies, with eleven gentlemen, considered a happy omen. Amongst the men were three planters from Louisiana and Mississippi; three merchants, one a Yankee, the other a Kentuckian, the third a Frenchman; a lawyer, from Tennessee; two physicians, one from the same state, the other from Kentucky, with a Kentuckian six and a half feet high. Of these persons the Kentuckian doctor was the most to be pitied. He was in the last stage of a pulmonary affection, and expected relief from the mild climate of Louisiana; but much as we did to alleviate the fate of this man, whose perpetual cough was as insufferable to us, as the constant fire he kept up in the stove, and which at last communicated to our boat, the poor fellow died three days after his arrival at New Orleans. Four individuals of less note joined the company, consisting of three slave-drivers, and a Yankee who travelled to make his fortune. We resigned ourselves to our lot, with as good a grace as we could, the Frenchman excepted, who found fault with every thing but the dinner, when he handled his knife and fork with uncommon activity. A captain, a mate, and a steward, composed the officers, twelve oarmen formed the crew, and forty slaves, who were to be transported to the states of Mississippi and Louisiana, were a sort of deck passengers, so that the whole cargo, inside and out, amounted to ninety persons. As long as the weather continued fine, the poor negroes had a tolerable lot, but when afterwards it began to rain, and they continued on a deck seven and a half feet broad, and forty-two long, without any covering over their heads, or being able to move, our kitchen being likewise upon deck, their situation became truly distressing, and one of the infants died shortly afterwards; another, as I was informed, fell into the Mississippi above Palmyra settlements. We took our meals in three divisions; the first consisting of the ladies and five gentlemen, who were helped by the other six gentlemen; afterwards the six remaining sat down with the three drivers, and the Yankee; the latter personages were, however, excused from helping the ladies. After them came the captain, with his boatmen. Our dinner was very good, because we took the precaution of making it part of our agreement that we should purchase such provisions as we thought proper. Our breakfast at the hour of eight, consisted of pigeons, ducks, sometimes opossum, roast beef, chickens, pork cakes, coffee and tea. Our dinner at three o'clock, in the same manner, with the addition of a haunch of venison or a turkey. Our supper at six, was the same as our breakfast. To fill up the intervals, we took at eleven a lunch, consisting of a _doddy_; at nine at night we had a tea party given by the ladies, and the said ten gentlemen alternately. We started the 7th of November, at four o'clock in the afternoon, instead of nine in the morning. The cause of this delay was the alteration which had to be made in the births; for it appeared that two of the Kentuckians were considerably longer than the space allotted to them. They were therefore to be made more _lengthy_ at the expense of the dining rooms. When every thing was ready we started, heartily tired of this delay. We had taken the precaution to provide ourselves with powder and shot, in order to make shooting excursions, having a skiff along side the boat. The landscape on both banks of the Ohio was still hilly, the shores varying from bottom lands to moderate hills, thus forming a boundary line between the interior of Kentucky which lay to our left, and Indiana and the river lands on our right. The cotton tree is almost the only one here, with the exception of beeches and sycamores. The first do not quite attain the height of the sycamore, but still they are seldom less than 140 feet high. The forests assume a more southern character; the shrub-grass, thistles and thorns, are stronger, and the vines of an astonishing size. At several places we were unable to land from the thickness of the natural hedges which lined the banks, presenting an impenetrable barrier. Pigeons now appeared in flocks of thousands and tens of thousands. On the morning of the following day we shot seventy-five, and in the afternoon seventy, without any difficulty. Troy, the seat of justice for Crawford county, in Indiana, was the first place we visited. It has a court-house, a printing-office, and about sixty houses. The inhabitants seem rather indolent. On our asking for apples, they demanded ten dollars for half a barrel; the price for a whole one in Louisville being no more than three dollars. We advised them to keep their apples, and to plant trees, which would enable them to raise some for themselves; and to put panes of glass in their windows, instead of old newspapers. The surrounding country is beautiful and fertile. Farms, however, become more scarce, and are in a state of more primitive simplicity. A block cabin not unlike a stable, with as many holes as there are logs in it, patches of ground planted with tobacco, sweet potatoes, and some corn, are the sole ornaments of these back-wood mansions. We purchased, below Troy, half a young bear, at the rate of five cents per pound. Two others which were skinned, indicated an abundance of these animals, and more application to the sport than seems compatible with the proper cultivation of these regions. The settlers have something of a savage appearance: their features are hard, and the tone of their voice denotes a violent disposition. Our Frenchman was bargaining for a turkey, with the farmer's son, an athletic youth. On being asked three dollars for it, the Frenchman turned round to Mr. B., saying: "I suppose the Kentuckians take us for fools." "What do you say, stranger," replied the youth, at the same time laying his heavy hand across the shoulders of the poor Frenchman, in rather a rough manner. The latter looked as if thunderstruck, and retired in the true style of the Great Nation, when they get a sound drubbing. We remarked on his return, the pains he took to repress his feelings at the coarseness of the Kentuckians. He was, however, discreet enough to keep his peace, and he did very well; but his spirit was gone, and he never afterwards undertook to make a bargain, except with old women, for a pot of milk, or a dozen of eggs, &c. Below Lady Washington, or Hanging Rock, as it is called,--a bare perpendicular rock a hundred feet above the water on the right side of the river, the mountains, or rather hills, cease by degrees, and are succeeded by a vast plain on both sides the high banks of the Ohio. We had here the enjoyment of some sport on the water: a deer was crossing the river, contracted in this place to about a thousand feet, when it was discovered by three Kentuckians, who were going to do the same. Our boat was about half a mile above the spot when we discovered the game. Four of us leaped into the skiff in order to intercept it. The deer continued its course towards the Indiana side, and it was easy for us to intercept its path. As soon as we were near enough, we aimed a blow at it with our oars, having in the hurry forgotten our guns. The deer then took the direction of the boat--we followed--the Kentuckians approached from the other side: full thirty minutes elapsed before these could come up with the animal and give it a blow. Though its strength was on the decline, it did not relax its efforts, but advanced again towards us without our being able to reach it. A second blow on the part of the Kentuckians, who were more expert in handling their oars, seemed to stun the noble animal; yet, summoning up its remaining strength, it went up the stream on the Kentucky side, and reached the shore, but so exhausted by long swimming and the two blows from the powerful Kentuckians, that on landing it staggered and fell, without being able to ascend the high bank. Instantly one of the Kentuckians rushed upon it, cutting asunder its knee joints. The deer, taking a sudden turn, made a plunge at the Kentuckian, tearing away part of his trowsers, and lacerating his leg. So sudden was the last effort of this animal, that but for the speedy arrival of his companion, who had been assisting the third Kentuckian in drawing the skiff closer to the shore, it would infallibly have ripped up its aggressor's bowels. The dirk of the second Kentuckian ended _the sport_, which had terminated in a rather serious way. By this time we had also reached the field of battle. "What do you want, gentlemen?" said the wounded Kentuckian, accosting us with his poniard in his hand. "Part of the deer, which you know you could not have got without our assistance?" They first looked at our party of four, then at our boat, which was already at the distance of a mile and a half from us. The wounded man seating himself, asked again, "What part do you choose?" "Half the deer, with the bowels, and tongue for our ladies." "Have you ladies on board your vessel?" "Yes, sir." Without uttering a word more, they skinned the venison, cleaned, and divided it. We stepped aside meanwhile, collected a couple of dollars, and offered them to the wounded man. He took the money, thanked us, and the other two carried the venison to our boat. We parted after cordially shaking hands. There was now an abundance of pigeons, venison, and bear's flesh on board our boat; the latter, when young, is delicious, having a very fine flavour, with rather a sweet and luscious taste. We were all partial to it except the Frenchman, who most likely took us for a species of these animals. But as thoughts are free, even in the most despotic countries, he had the privilege of thinking, without daring to utter a syllable--assuredly the severest punishment upon one of the Great Nation. On the third day we lost part of our company, as two of the ladies landed on the Yellow-banks, so called from the yellow colour of the shores, which formerly gave the name to the county town of Davies county, now Owensborough. It contains eighty buildings, including a court-house, a newspaper printing office, and three stores. The distance hence to Louisville, is 170 miles. From this village, down to the mouth of the Green river, wild vines grow very luxuriantly, forming a continued series of hedges. The grapes are used for wine, which is of a hard taste, but not a bad flavour; if properly attended to they would certainly yield an excellent produce. We gathered in a few minutes abundance of grapes, and found them juicy and very good. Near the mouth of the Green river, and up its banks, are several ponds of bitumen, a material which is used by the inhabitants for lamp oil. The country abounds in saltpetre, and saltlicks. On the same side, sixty miles below Owensborough, is laid out Henderson, the seat of justice for the county of the same name. It contains 500 inhabitants, 90 dwellings, and a courthouse. Some of the houses are in tolerable order, but the greatest part in a shattered condition, and the town has a dirty appearance. The Ohio forms a bend between Owensborough and Henderson, thus making the distance by water sixty miles, which by land-travelling would not exceed twenty. A species of the mistletoe here makes its appearance for the first time. The trees are covered with bunches of this plant, its foliage is yellow, the berries milk white, and so viscous as to serve for bird lime; when falling they adhere to the branches, and strike root in the bark of the trees. In the morning of the sixth day we arrived at Miller's Ferry, twenty miles above the mouth of the Wabash. As the Ohio makes a great bend in this place, and our navigation was very slow, Messrs. B----, R----, and myself, determined on taking a tour to Harmony, now Owen's settlement, fifteen miles distant from the ferry. The guide we took led us through a rich plain, with settlements scattered over it; the road was excellent, though a mere path, and we arrived at half-past ten. CHAPTER VI. Mr. Owen's of Lanark, formerly Rapp's Settlement.--Remarks on it.--Keel-boat Scenes.--Cave in Rock.--Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers.--Fort Massai. About a hundred and fifty houses, built on the Swabian plan, with the exception of Mr. Rapp's[B] former residence--a handsome brick house--presented themselves to our view. We were introduced to one of the managers, a Mr. Shnee, formerly a Lutheran minister, who entered very soon into particulars respecting Mr. Owen's ulterior views, in rather a pompous manner. This settlement, which is about thirty miles above the mouth of the big Wabash, in Indiana, was first established by Rapp, in the year 1817, and was now (in the year 1823), purchased by Mr. Owen, of Lanark, for the sum of 150,000 dollars. The society is to be established on a plan rather different from the one he has pursued in Scotland, and on a larger scale. Mr. Owen has, it is said, the pecuniary means as well as the ability to effect something of importance. A plan was shown and sold to us, according to which a new building of colossal dimensions is projected; and if Mr. Owen's means should not fall short of his good will, this edifice would certainly exhibit the most magnificent piece of architecture in the Union, the capitol at Washington excepted. This palace, when finished, is to receive his community. According to his views, as laid down in his publications, in the lectures held by him at Washington and at New York, and as stated in the verbal communications of the persons who represent him, he is about to form a society, unshackled by all those fetters which religion, education, prejudices, and manners have imposed upon the human species; and his followers will exhibit to the world the novel and interesting example of a community, which, laying aside every form of worship and all religious belief in a supreme being, shall be capable of enjoying the highest social happiness by no other means than the impulse of innate egotism. It has been the object of Mr. Owen's study to improve this egotism in the most rational manner, and to bring it to the highest degree of perfection; and in this sense he has published the Constitution, which is to be adopted by the community. It is distributed, if I recollect rightly, into three subdivisions, with seventy or more articles.--Mechanics of every description--people who have learned any useful art,--are admitted into this community. Those who pay 500 dollars, are free from any obligation to work. The time of the members is divided between working, reading, and dancing. A ball is given every day, and is regularly attended by the community. Divine service, or worship of any kind, is entirely excluded; in lieu of it, moreover, a ball is given on Sunday. The children are summoned to school by beat of drum. A newspaper is published, chiefly treating of their own affairs, and of the entertainments and the social regulations of the community, amounting to about 500 members, of both sexes, composed almost exclusively of adventurers of every nation, who expect joyful days. The settlement has not improved since the purchase, and there appeared to exist the greatest disorder and uncleanliness. This community has since been dissolved as was to have been expected. The Scotchman seems to have a very high notion of the power of egotism. He is certainly not wrong in this point; but if he intends to give still greater strength to a spirit which already works with too much effect in the Union, it may be feared that he will soon snap the cords of society asunder. According to his notions, and those of his people, all the legislators of ancient and modern times, religious as well as political, were either fools or impostors, who went in quest of prosperity on a mistaken principle, which he is now about to correct. Scotchmen, it is known, are sometimes liable to adopt strange notions, in which they always deem themselves infallible. I am acquainted with an honorable president of the quarter-sessions, who, as a true Swedenborghian, is fully convinced that he will preside again as judge in the other world, and that the German farmers will be there the same fools they are here, whom he may continue to cheat out of their property. Great Britain has no cause to envy the United States this acquisition. We stayed at this place about two hours, crossed the Wabash, and took the road to Shawneetown, through part of Mr. Birkbeck's settlement. The country is highly cultivated, and the difference between the steady Englishman of the Illinois side, and the rabble of Owen's settlement, is clearly seen in the style and character of the improvements carried on. [B] Eighteen miles from Pittsburgh on the road to Beaver, the new and third settlement of the Swabian separatists, called Economy, was established two years ago by Rapp, a man celebrated in the Union for his rustic sagacity. This man affords an instance of what persevering industry, united with sound sense, may effect.--When he arrived with his 400 followers from Germany, twenty years ago, their capital amounted to 35,000 dollars; and so poor were they at first, that their leader could not find credit for a barrel of salt. They are now worth at least a million of dollars. Their new settlement promises to thrive, and to become superior to those which they sold in Buttler County, Pennsylvania, and in Indiana on the Wabash. Nothing can exceed the authority exercised by this man over his flock. He unites both the spiritual and temporal power in his own person. He has with him a kind of Vice-Dictator in the person of his adopted son, (who is married to his daughter), and a council of twelve elders, who manage the domestic affairs of the community, now amounting to 1000 souls. When he was yet residing in Old Harmony, twenty-eight miles north of Pittsburgh, the bridge constructed over a creek which passes by the village, wanted repair. It was winter time; the ice seemed thick enough to allow of walking across. The creek, however, was deep, and 100 feet wide: Master Rapp, notwithstanding, ventured upon it, intending to come up to the pier. He was scarcely in the middle of the river, when the ice gave way. A number of his followers being assembled on the shores, were eager to assist him.--"Do you think," hallooed Rapp, "that the Lord will withdraw his hands from his elect, and that I need your help?" The poor fellows immediately dropped the boards, but at the same time Master Rapp sunk deeper into the creek. The danger at last conquered his shame and his confidence in supernatural aid, and he called lustily for assistance. Notwithstanding the cries of the American by-standers, "You d--d fools, let the tyrant go down, you will have his money, you will be free," they immediately threw boards on the ice, went up to him, and took him out of the water, amidst shouts of laughter from the unbelieving Americans. On the following Sunday he preached them a sermon, purporting that the Lord had visited their sins upon him, and that their disobedience to his commands was the cause of his sinking. The poor dupes literally believed all this, promised obedience, and both parties were satisfied. Several of his followers left him, being shocked at his law of celibacy, but such was his ascendancy over the female part of the community, that they chose rather to leave their husbands than their father Rapp, as they call him. Last year, however (1826), he abolished this kind of celibacy, hitherto so strictly observed, and on the 4th of July, eighteen couples were permitted to marry. This settlement is one of the finest villages in the west of Pennsylvania. A manufactory of steam engines, extensive parks of deer, two elks, and a magnificent palace for himself, splendidly furnished, show that he knows how to avail himself of his increasing wealth. The inhabitants of Pittsburgh make frequent excursions to this settlement, and though his manners savour of the Swabian peasant, yet his wealth and his hospitality have considerably diminished the contempt in which he was formerly held by the Anglo-Americans. We arrived at Shawneetown, where our boat was waiting for us, having travelled since seven o'clock in the morning a distance of forty miles. We found our boat's company in the utmost confusion. Our ladies had hitherto given a regular tea party at nine o'clock, out of their own stock of provisions. With the exception of guns, powder, shot, some hundred cigars, a few bottles of wine, the gentlemen were furnished with nothing. They went therefore to Shawneetown, a village twelve miles below the mouth of the Wabash, with sixty houses, and 300 inhabitants, of a very indifferent character, mostly labourers at the salt works of the Saline river. The party however were not so fortunate as to procure anything except a dried haunch of venison. On their return, the invalid doctor missed the negro girl he had brought to wait upon him, intending to sell her along with a male slave. She was gone. A search was commenced, but the honest inhabitants declared, with many G--d d--ns, that they did not know anything about her. The company discovered what was wanting, and persuaded the physician to offer a reward for her recovery. In less than half an hour, one of the worthy inhabitants came up with the run-away girl, leading her by a rope. He had shortly before assured some of the inquirers, under the pledge of a round oath, of his utter ignorance of the matter, whilst at the same time the slave was concealed in his kitchen. The second physician from Tennessee had the benevolent precaution of suggesting to the patient to keep himself cool. But every advice was thrown away. The Kentuckian could not resist striking the girl. With the utmost pain he raised himself up in his bed, to give her blows, which did himself infinitely more harm. When called upon to pay the reward of twenty dollars, his wrath rose to the highest pitch, and if he had had strength we should have witnessed a strange scene. He paid, however, and contented himself with binding her arms, and fastening her to the door-post, from which she was released by the following accident, which took place about eight o'clock, just as we returned from our excursion. One of the planters, a Kentuckian by birth, made a regular excursion, twice a day, to fetch milk and eggs for the company. The captain refused to dispatch the skiff for him, but the rest of the company sent it without asking the captain's leave. Some hours after the Kentuckian's return he heard of the captain's refusal, and immediately accused him of negligence, &c. The captain gave him the lie, and hardly was the word spoken, when the Kentuckian rushed upon the young man with a dirk in his hand. He was, however, prevented, when turning round, he ran to the other side to fetch an axe, declaring at the same time, with a G----d d----n, he would knock down any body who dared to oppose him. I stood with Mr. B. at the door. A quarrel ensued, and he was going to force it open, when several gentlemen came to our assistance. During this riot the stove became heated to such a degree, as unobserved by any one, to set fire to the wood beneath it, so that the birth of our patient was in flames in a moment. Quarrelling, and murderous thoughts gave way to the danger of being roasted alive. All hands, even the Kentuckian, were assiduous in their endeavours to extinguish the fire; but this could not be so easily accomplished, the boat being extremely crowded. At last we succeeded; the poor doctor had almost been forgotten, and was very near being burnt alive, had it not been for his second servant, who immediately laid hold of a bucket full of water, and poured it over his master. The behaviour of this invalid was strange beyond description, and shewed a degree of passion, at once ludicrous and pitiable. "For heaven's sake," exclaimed he, "I am roasting! no, I am drowning! the wretch has poured a whole bucket of water over me. Come hither, rascal!" The servant was obliged to approach, and tender his face to receive a box on the ear, certainly the most harmless he ever got; the master at the same time reproaching him with his villainy, and lamenting the consequences which this bath would bring upon him, such as rheumatism, fever, &c. We stood astonished and confounded at this man, the living image of a burnt-out volcano. "But for heaven's sake," said Mr. B., "Doctor, you would have been roasted alive but for your slave, and you have been the only cause of the fire, by the unsupportable heat you kept up in the stove; you must not do that again." "He is my slave," was the answer, "and should have stayed with me, instead of listening to your ungentlemanly disputes; then the fire would not have broken out." We assented to this, and peace was fully restored. The next day we proceeded on our journey, having the state of Illinois on our right, and Kentucky on our left. Thirteen miles below Saline river we visited the cave of Rock Island. The limestone wall, 120 feet high, runs for about half a mile along the right bank of the Ohio; nearly at its end is the entrance to the cave. A few steps bring you at once into the grotto, which is about sixty-five feet wide at the base, narrowing as you ascend, and forming an arch, the span of which is from twenty-five to thirty feet, extending to a length of 120 feet. Marine shells, feathers, and bones of bears, turkies, and wild geese, afford ample testimony that this place has not been visited by the curious alone, but has been the resort of numerous families, which had taken temporary refuge here. Our sporting excursions had generally pigeons, turkies, or opossums, for their object; below the cave, in the rocks, wild geese and ducks become very plentiful. Flocks of from forty to one hundred were flying over our heads in every direction, and augmenting in numbers as we approached the Mississippi. We shot this day seven geese and ducks, and passed the small villages of Cumberland, at the mouth of the river of that name, and Smithland, three miles below. Both villages are now springing up. The Cumberland is 720 feet wide at its mouth. The river Tennessee, thirteen miles below, is 700 feet. Eleven miles lower down, on the Illinois side, is fort Spassai, erected on a high bank and in a commanding position, which overlooks the Ohio, here a mile wide. The prospect for a distance of forty miles, is charming. The extraordinary beauty of the river, which the French very properly called _la belle rivière_, on both sides the majestic native forests, clad in their autumnal foliage, here and there an island in the midst of the stream, with its luxuriant growth of trees, not unlike enchanted gardens. The charm which is diffused over the whole scene can scarcely be described. The fort is garrisoned by a captain, with a company of regulars, who, however, suffer much from swamps in the rear of the fort. On the two following days we passed the county towns of Golconda, the seat of justice for Pope county; Vienna, for Johnson; and America, for Alexander county; villages which have nothing in common with the cities of which they remind you but the name. They are inhabited by some Kentuckians and loiterers, who spend part of their time in bringing down the Mississippi the produce of the country, for the transport of which they demand double wages, and are thus enabled to spend the rest of their time sitting cross-legged over their whiskey. The ninth day, about noon, we arrived at Trinity. I was heartily tired of this manner of travelling, and resolved to wait here with Mr. B., and Mrs. Th---- and family, for a steam-boat from St. Louis. The rest of the company went on in the boat, after an hour's stopping. Trinity, or as it was formerly called, Cairo, is situated four and a half miles above the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi, consisting only of a tavern and a store, kept by a Mr. Bershoud. The inundations occurring regularly every year, have hitherto prevented the formation of settlements at this place. Though these inundations rise every year from four to ten feet above the banks, as may be seen from the weeds remaining in clusters on the trees, the inhabitants of these two houses have, if we except the trouble of transporting their effects and goods to the upper story, but little to apprehend, the rise of the river being gradually slow, and its power being lessened by its circuitous course, and by the trees on its bank. From Trinity down to Baton Rouge, a distance of 900 miles, the houses are constructed in such a manner as to be secured against accidents; the foundations are stumps of trees, or low brick pillars, four feet high. The houses are so built, or rather laid upon these pillars, as to allow the water to pass beneath. Notwithstanding this precaution, the flood generally reaches to the lower apartments, and passengers coming from Trinity to New Orleans last February, had to get into the skiff sent for them, through the window of the second story. From Trinity to the mouth of the Ohio, are reckoned four and a half miles. We visited on the following morning, this remarkable spot, where two of the most important rivers unite. CHAPTER VII. The Mississippi.--General Features of the State of Illinois and its Inhabitants. The nearer we approached the Mississippi, the lower the country became, and the more imposing the scenery. By degrees the river Ohio loses its blue tinge, taking from the mightier stream a milky colour, which changes into a muddy white when very near the junction--this junction itself is one of the most magnificent sights. On the left hand the Ohio, half a mile wide, overpowered, as it were, by its mightier rival--in front the more gigantic Mississippi, one mile and a half broad, rolling down its vast volumes of water with incredible rapidity. Farther on, the high banks of the state of Missouri, with some farm buildings of a diminutive appearance, owing to the great distance; in the back ground, the colossal native forests of Missouri; and lastly, to the south, these two rivers united and turning majestically to the south-west. The deep silence which reigns in these regions, and which is interrupted only by the rushing sound of the waves, and the immense mass of water, produce the illusion that you are no longer standing upon firm ground; you are fearful less the earth should give way to the powerful element, which, pressed into so narrow a space, rolls on with irresistible force. I had formerly seen the falls of Niagara; but this scene, taken in the proper point of view, is in no respect inferior to that which they present. The immense number of streams which empty into the Mississippi, and caused it to be named, very appropriately, the _Father of Rivers_, render it powerful throughout the year; it generally rises in February, and falls in July. In September and October the autumnal rains begin; and they continue to swell it through the winter. When it overflows its banks, the Mississippi inundates the country on both sides, for an extent of from forty-five to fifty miles, thus forming an immense lake. From the mouth of the Ohio to Walnut hills, in the state of Mississippi, the difference between the lowest water and the highest inundation, is generally sixteen feet. The nearer it approaches the gulph of Mexico, the less is the flood. The water leaving its bed on the west side never returns, but forms into lakes and marshes. On the east side they find resistance from the high lands, that follow the meanderings of the river. Above Natchez, the river inundates the lands for a space of thirty miles. At Baton Rouge, the high lands take on a sudden a south-eastern direction, while the river turns to the south-west, thus leaving the waters to form the eastern swamps of Louisiana. It rises to thirty feet at that place; whilst at New Orleans it scarcely attains the height of twelve feet, and at the mouth no difference between a rise and fall is perceptible. Whoever comes to the Mississippi with the expectation of beholding a sea-like river flowing quietly along, will find himself disappointed. The magnitude of this river does not consist in its width but in its depth, and the immense quantity of water it pours out into the sea. At the mouth of the Ohio it is a mile and a half wide. This moderate breadth rather diminishes as it proceeds in its course. At New Orleans, after receiving the waters of some great tributary streams, it is not more than a mile in width, and in some places three quarters of a mile. Its depth, however, continues to increase; below the Ohio it is reckoned to be from thirty-five to fifty feet deep. Below the Arkansas to Natchez, from 100 to 150. From Natchez to New Orleans, from 150 to 250 feet. At its mouth, owing to the sand bar at the Paliseter, the depth greatly diminishes, and it is well known that vessels drawing eighteen feet of water can hardly enter the mouth of the stream. The waters of the Mississippi are not clear at any period of the year. This was the second time I saw it, when it was said to be very low; still its waters were of a muddy turbid appearance. When rising it changes to a muddy yellow. A glass filled with water from the Mississippi, deposits in a quarter of an hour a mass of mud equal to one tenth of the whole contents. But when clear, it is excellent for drinking, and superior to any I have tasted. It is generally used by those who inhabit its banks. The accommodations in Trinity are comfortable, and the tables are well furnished, but the prices exorbitant. It cannot, however, be expected to be otherwise, owing to the new settlers, whose anxiety never permits them to neglect an opportunity of improving their means on their first outset. We found this to be the case on all occasions. Whenever some of our passengers made purchases of trifles, such as cigars, &c., they had to pay five times as much as in Louisville. It is therefore advisable to provide oneself with every thing, when travelling in these backwoods; the generality of the settlers on these banks being needy adventurers, partly foreigners, partly Kentuckians, who, with a capital of not quite 100 dollars, with which they purchase some goods in New Orleans, begin their commercial career, and may be seen with both hands in their pockets, their legs on the table or chimney-piece, and cigars in their mouths, selling their goods for five hundred per cent above prime cost. Towards the north on the banks of the Mississippi, the settlers are generally Frenchmen, who now assume by degrees the American manners and language. Many of them are wealthy store-keepers, merchants, and farmers; but for the most part, however, a lightfooted kind of people, who, from their fathers, have inherited frivolity, and from their mothers, Indian women, uncleanliness. The towns of Kaskakia, Cahokia, &c., as well as several villages up the Mississippi to the Prairie des Chiens, owe their origin to them. The solid class of inhabitants live on the big and little Wabash, and between these two rivers and the Illinois. This is, no doubt, the finest part of the state, and one of the most delightful countries on the face of the earth. It is mostly inhabited by Americans and Englishmen. Agriculture, the breeding of cattle, and improvements of every kind, are making rapid progress. The settlements in Bond, Crawford, Edward's, Franklin, and White Counties, are to be considered as forming the main substance of the state. A number of elegant towns have arisen in the space of a few years: among others, Vandalia, the capital, and for these three years past the seat of government, with a state house and a projected university, for which 36,000 acres of land have been assigned. An excellent spirit is acknowledged to prevail among the inhabitants of this district. Still, however, the style of architecture--if the laying of logs or of bricks upon each other deserves this name--the manners, the attempted improvements, every thing announces a new land, which has only a few years since started into political existence, and the settlers of which do not yet evince any anxiety for the comforts of life. Illinois has now 80,000 inhabitants, 1500 of whom are people of colour; the rest are Americans, English, French, and a German settlement about Vandalia. The state was received into the Union in the year 1818. The constitution, with a governor and a secretary at its head, resembles that of the state of Ohio. In the year 1824, the question was again brought forward concerning the possession of slaves: it was, however, negatived, and we hope it will never be pressed upon the people. The state is much indebted in every point to the late Mr. Birkbeck, who died too soon for the welfare of his adopted country. He was considered as the father of the state, and whenever he could gain over a useful citizen, he spared no expense, and sacrificed a considerable part of his property in this manner. The people of Illinois, in acknowledgment of his services, had chosen him for secretary of the state, in which character he died in 1825. He was generally known under the name of Emperor of the Prairies, from the vast extent of natural meadows belonging to his lands. It is to be regretted, however, that Mr. Birkbeck was not acquainted with the country about Trinity. His large capital and the number of hands who joined him, would no doubt succeed in establishing a settlement here. This will sooner or later take place, and will eventually render it one of the finest towns in the United States, as the advantages of its situation are incalculable. Illinois is, in point of commerce, more advantageously situated than any of the Ohio states; being bounded on the west by the river Mississippi, which forms the line between this state and that of Missouri, to the east by the big Wabash, and to the south by the Ohio, the river Illinois running through it with some smaller rivers; thus affording it an open navigation to the north-west, the west, the south, and the east. Towards the north the banks of the Upper Mississippi form a range of hills which join the Illinois mountains to the east, and lowering by degrees lose themselves in the plains of lakes Huron and Michigan. The country is, on the whole, less elevated than Indiana, and forms the last slope of the northern valley of the Mississippi, the hills being intersected by a number of valleys, plains, prairies, and marshes. The fertility of this state is extraordinary, surpassing that of Indiana and Ohio. In beauty, variety of scenery, and fertility, it may vie with the most celebrated countries. Wheat thrives only on high land, the soil of the valleys being too rich. Corn gives for every bushel a hundred. Tobacco planted in Illinois, if well managed, is found to be superior to that of Kentucky and Virginia. Rice and indigo grow wild, their cultivation being neglected for want of hands. Pecans, a product of the West Indies, grow in abundance in the native forests. This state having a temperate climate, possesses many of the southern products. The timber is of colossal magnitude. Sycamores and cotton trees of an immense height, walnut, pecan trees, honey-locusts and maples, cover the surface of this country, and are the surest indications of an exceedingly rich soil. The most fertile parts of the state are the bottom lands along the Mississippi, Illinois, and the big and little Wabash. The country is complained of as being sickly. There is no doubt that a state which abounds in rivers, marshes, and ponds, must be subject to epidemic diseases, but the climate being temperate the fault lies very much with the settlers and the inhabitants themselves. The settler who chooses for his dwelling-house a spot on an eminence, and far from the marshes, taking at the same time the necessary precautions in point of dress, cleanliness, and the choice of victuals and beverage, may live without fear in these countries. All agree in this opinion, and I have myself experienced the correctness of it. The greatest part, however, of the new comers and inhabitants live upon milk or stagnant water taken from the first pond they meet with on their way, with a few slices of bacon. Their wardrobe consists of a single shirt, which is worn till it falls to pieces. It cannot, therefore, be matter of astonishment if agues and bilious fevers spread over the country, and even in this case a quart of corn brandy is their prescription. This being the general mode of living, and we may add of dying, among the lower classes, disease must necessarily spread its ravages with more rapidity. CHAPTER VIII. Excursion to St. Louis.--Face of the Country.--Sketch of the State of Missouri.--Return to Trinity. The steam-boat, the Pioneer, having come up to Trinity the following day, on its way to St. Louis, Mr. B. and I resolved to take a trip to the latter place, as the best chance that offered to get away as soon as possible. We started at ten o'clock in the morning, turned round the fork, and ascended the muddy Mississippi. The first town we saw was Hamburgh, on the Illinois side, consisting of nineteen frame dwellings and cabins, and four stores. On the left, in the state of Missouri, is Cape Girardeau. The settlement mostly consists of Frenchmen, and German Redemptioners. The town has not a very inviting appearance. One hundred and six miles above the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi, we landed at St. Genevieve to take in wood. This town is the principal mart for the Burton mines; it has a Catholic chapel, twenty stores, a printing office, 250 houses, and 1600 inhabitants. Twenty-four miles farther up the same side, is Herculaneum, with 300 inhabitants, a court-house, and a printing office. The town had been laid out and peopled by Kentuckians. There are several villages on the right and left bank, and some good-looking farms. On the third day, at twelve o'clock, we reached the town of St. Louis, 170 miles above the mouth of the Ohio, and thirteen miles below the junction of the Mississippi, and the Missouri. This town extends, in a truly picturesque situation, in 38° 33' north latitude, and 12° 58' west longitude, for the length of two miles along the river, in three parallel streets, rising one above the other in the form of terraces, on a stratum of limestone. The houses are for the most part built of this material, and surrounded with gardens. The number of buildings amounts to 620, that of the inhabitants to 5000. Its principal buildings are, a Catholic, and two Protestant churches, a branch bank of the United States, and the bank of St. Louis, the courthouse, the government-house, an academy, and a theatre; besides these, there are a number of wholesale and retail stores, two printing offices, and an abundance of coffee-shops, billiard-tables, and dancing-rooms. The trade of St. Louis is not so extensive as that of Louisville, and less liable to interruption, as the navigation is not impeded at any season of the year, the Mississippi, being at all times navigable for the largest vessels. An exception, indeed, occurred in 1802, when the Ohio and other rivers were almost dried up. The inhabitants of St. Louis and of Missouri, have therefore a never-failing channel for carrying their produce to market. This they generally do, when the rivers which empty themselves into the Mississippi, are so low that they have no apprehension of finding any competition in New Orleans. Last year, the market of New Orleans was almost exclusively supplied with produce from St. Louis and Missouri. Eighty dollars was the general price for a bullock, which at a later period would not have obtained twenty-five dollars; flour was at eight dollars, whereas, two months afterwards, abundance could be had for two and a half dollars. In the same proportion they sold every other article. It is this circumstance which contributes to the wealth of St. Louis, and of Missouri in general, to the detriment, on the other hand, of the Ohio States, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. At the time of our arrival at St. Louis, there were in its port, five steam vessels, and thirty-five other boats. St. Louis is a sort of New Orleans on a smaller scale; in both places are to be found a number of coffee-houses and dancing rooms. The French are seen engaged in the same amusements and passions that formerly characterised the creoles of Louisiana, with the exception, that the trade with the Indians has given to the French backwoods-men of St. Louis, a rather malicious and dishonest turn--a fault from which the creoles of Louisiana are free, owing to the greater respectability of their visitors and settlers, from Europe, and from the north of the Union. The majority of the inhabitants of this town, as well as of the state, consists of people descended from the French, of Kentuckians, and foreigners of every description--Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Irish, &c. Kentucky manners are fashionable. Not long before my arrival, there occurred a specimen of this, in an open assault and duel between two individuals in the public street. For the last five years, men of property and respectability, attracted by the superior advantages of the situation, have settled at St. Louis, and their example and influence have been conducive of some good to public morals. The enterprising spirit of the Americans is remarkable, even in this place and state. Within the twenty-three years that have elapsed since the cession of this country (part of the former Louisiana) to the Union, much more has been achieved in every point of view, than during the sixty years preceding, when it was in possession of France and Spain. Streets, villages, settlements, towns, and farms, have sprung up in every direction; the population has augmented from 20,000 to 84,000 inhabitants; and if they are not superior in wealth to their neighbours, it is certainly to be attributed to their want of industry, and to their passing the greater part of their time in grog-shops, or in dancing-companies, according to the prevailing custom. Slavery, which is introduced here, though so ill adapted to a northern state, contributes not a little to the aristocratic notions of the people, the least of whom, if he can call himself the master of one slave, would be ashamed to put his hand to any work. Still there is more ready money among the inhabitants, than in any of the western states, and prices are demanded accordingly. Cattle that fetch in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, ten dollars per head, are sold in Missouri for twenty-five dollars, and so in proportion. The country about St. Louis to the north, south, and west, consists of prairies, extending fifteen miles in every direction, with some very handsome farm houses, and numerous herds of cattle. Though in the same degree of northern latitude as the city of Washington, the climate is more severe, owing to the two rivers Missouri and Mississippi, whose waters coming from northern countries greatly contribute to cool the air. The cultivation of tobacco has not succeeded, and the produce chiefly consists of wheat, corn and cattle;--equally important is the profit from the lead mines, and the fur trade. The most improved settlements are those along the Mississippi, and on the Missouri they are beginning to be formed. Missouri was received into the Union in 1821, and is, with the exception of Virginia, the largest state of the Union, its area exceeding 60,000 square miles. To the north and west it borders on the Missouri territory; towards the east the Mississippi is the boundary between this state, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee; the Arkansas territory lies to the south. It extends from 36° to 40° 25' north latitude, and from 12° 50' to 18° 10' west longitude. The country forms an elevated plain, sloping considerably to the south, where it is crossed by the Ozark mountains. Marshes and mountains prevail more in the southern parts, high plains in the northern. Along the Mississippi and Missouri, the bottom lands are generally extremely fertile. The soils, however, cannot be altogether compared with that of Illinois. The possession of slaves is allowed by the constitution of this state, and their number amounts to 10,000; that of the rest of the inhabitants to 70,000. The form of government approaches very nearly that of Kentucky. We remained one day at St. Louis, and returned in the steam-boat, General Brown, to Trinity, where we took on board the ladies and some new passengers, returning from thence to the Mississippi. We passed several small islands, and a large one (Wolf's Island), and landed at New Madrid at midnight, for the purpose of taking in wood. This place is the seat of justice for the county of the same name; it has, however, no court-house, and is a rather wretched looking place, containing about thirty log and shattered farm houses, with 180 inhabitants, Spaniards, French, and Italians. The two stores being open, we visited them. They were but poorly provided, having about a dozen cotton handkerchiefs, one barrel of whiskey, and a heap of furs. Two Indians were stretched on the ground before the door, and in a sound sleep, with their guns by their side. The Mississippi is continually encroaching upon the town, and has already swept away many intended streets, as the inhabitants say, obliging them to move back to their no small disappointment. The surrounding country is highly fertile, and in the rear of the town there are several well cultivated cotton and rice plantations. A rich plain stretches along to the west, behind New Madrid, as far as the waters of Sherrimack. CHAPTER IX. The State of Tennessee.--Steam-boats on the Mississippi.--Flat-boats. We had now passed the western extremity of Kentucky, and had the state of Tennessee on our left. The eastern banks of the Mississippi, viz. on the Tennessee side, are throughout lower than the western or Missouri shores; presenting a series of marshes from which cypress trees and canebrack seem just emerging, lining them for hundreds of miles to the southward. Farther eastward, towards the rivers Tennessee and Cumberland, the soil is overgrown with sugar-maples, sycamore trees, walnuts, and honey-locusts; the mountains with white and live oak and hickory. The eastern part of the state resembles North Carolina. The middle part is by far the best. Cotton and tobacco are staple articles. Rice is cultivated with success. Hemp is not considered of the same quality as the Kentuckian, the climate being too warm. The tropical fruits, such as figs, thrive well; chesnuts are superior to those of the other states. Melons, peaches, and apples, are abundant. Tennessee is considered altogether a rich and fertile land. The inhabitants are liberal, noble hearted, and noted for their good conduct towards strangers. Several foreigners settled in the state, have attained a high degree of wealth and prosperity. There is no state in the Union where slavery has had less pernicious effects upon the character of the people. The inhabitants are mostly descendants of emigrants from North Carolina, and their hospitality is without bounds. This state extends, in an oblong square, from the shores of the Mississippi towards Virginia and North Carolina, in 35° to 36° 30' north latitude, and 4° 26' to 13° 5' west longitude. It is bounded on the east by Virginia and North Carolina; on the south by Georgia, Albania, and Mississippi; on the west by the river Mississippi, and on the north by Kentucky, comprising altogether 40,000 square miles. East Tennessee partakes more of the sandy character of North Carolina. West Tennessee of the marshes of the Mississippi valley. Its principal rivers are the Cumberland and Tennessee, with the Mississippi on the west, where however, with the exception of some very small settlements, there are no improvements of any kind. The canal proposed by Governor Troup, of Georgia, to Governor Carrott, of Tennessee, which is to bring this state into immediate connection with the Atlantic, will have a very beneficial effect, these two rivers being navigable for steam-boats only during three months in the year, and New Orleans being the only market for Tennessee. Notwithstanding its straitened commerce, the state is rapidly improving, and several of its towns, though not large are yet very elegant. The chief wealth of the state, however, consists in the plantations, and the farmer and planter live in a style, which at least in point of eating, cannot be exceeded by the wealthiest nobleman in any country. Among the towns of the state, Nashville holds the first rank. This town occupies a commanding situation, on a solid cliff of rocks on the south side of the Cumberland, 200 feet above the level of the banks. The river is navigable here during three months in the year for steam-boats of 300 tons burthen. Besides the court-house, three churches, two banks, including a branch bank of the United States, three printing offices, and a great number of wholesale and retail merchants, there is the seat of the district court for the western part of Tennessee. Several literary institutions, such as Cumberland college, a ladies' school, and reading-room with a public library, are evident proofs of a liberal spirit. This spirit is combined with unbounded hospitality. There is a number of houses, such as those of Governor Carrott, Major General Jackson, &c., where every respectable stranger is welcome, and may be sure of meeting with a select company. The surrounding country is beautiful, cotton plantations lining the banks of the river, and extending in every direction hither. The wealthier inhabitants generally retire during the summer months, from the stifling heats prevailing on the barren rocks upon which Nashville stands. Knoxville in east Tennessee, with 400 houses and 2,500 inhabitants, is of less importance; it is the seat of the supreme district court for east Tennessee, and has a bank, a college, and two churches. The country about Knoxville is far inferior to that round Nashville. The capital of Tennessee, Murfreesborough, has 1500 inhabitants, with a state-house, a bank, two printing-offices, &c. It communicates by water with Nashville, through Stonecreek. The situation seems not to be very judiciously chosen for a chief town. This was the state of things four years ago, when I passed through the place; but doubtless it has since proportionably increased. Our company being on this occasion of a less mixed, and a less troublesome character, we sailed down the majestic father of rivers, with minds well disposed to acknowledge our obligations to Mr. Fulton, for his happy idea of applying the power of steam to navigation. The settlers of the Mississippi valley, are in duty bound to raise a monument to the memory of a man, who has effected in their mode of conveyance so adventurous, and so successful a change. Not ten years have elapsed since the inhabitants of the west were used to toil like beasts of burden, in order to ascend the stream for a distance of ten or fifteen miles a day; and when in 1802, some boats belonging to Mr. R., of Nashville, arrived from New Orleans in eighty-seven days, this passage was considered the _ne plus ultra_ of quick travelling by water, and was instantly made known throughout the Union. A passenger now performs the same voyage in five days, sitting all the while in a comfortable state-room, which in point of fitting-up vies with the most elegant parlours, writing letters, or reading the newspapers, and if tired of these occupations, paying visits to the ladies, if he be permitted to do so; or otherwise pacing the deck, where his less fortunate fellow passengers are hanging in hammocks--an indication to many of what may be their future state. There is certainly not any nation that can boast of a greater disposition for travelling, than Brother Jonathan; and there is again nobody more at home than he, whether in a tavern, or on board a vessel; as he is in the habit of considering a tavern, a vessel, or a steam-boat, as a kind of public property. Yet on board a vessel, or a steam-boat, he is very tractable. The great difference of fare between a cabin and a deck passage, from Louisville to New Orleans, being for the former forty dollars, and for the latter eight dollars, contributes to establish a distinction in this assemblage of people, placing those who are found too light in the upper house, and the more weighty in the lower. The first have to find themselves, the others are provided with every thing in a manner which shows that private institutions for the benefit of the public, are certainly more patronised here than in most other countries. If the pecuniary resources of the citizen of the United States do not reach a very low ebb, he will certainly choose the cabin, his pride forbidding him to mix with the rabble, though the expence may fall too heavy upon him. That economical refinement which the French evince on these occasions, is not to be seen in America. When I proceeded four months ago from Havre to Rouen, in the Duchess of Angouleme steam-boat, among the 100 passengers who were on board, more than fifty well-looking people were seen unpacking their bundles, and regaling themselves with their contents--bread, chicken, cutlets, wine, &c., &c., a frugality which will hardly be found to contribute to the improvement of a spirit of enterprise. The Americans would be ashamed of this kind of parsimony, which must ever impede all public undertakings. Owing to this cause, the American steam-boats are in point of elegance superior to those of other nations; and none but the English are able to compete with them. The furniture, carpets, beds, &c., are throughout elegant, and in good condition. Some of the new steam-boats are provided with small rooms, each containing two births, which passengers may use for their accommodation in shaving, dressing, &c. The general regulations are suspended above the side board in a gilt frame, and are as binding as a law. They prohibit speaking to the pilot during the passage--visiting the ladies' state-room, without their consent--lying down upon the bed with shoes or boots on--smoking cigars in the state-room--and playing at cards after ten o'clock. The first transgression is punished with a fine; if repeated, the transgressor is sent ashore. The fare is excellent, and the breakfasts, dinners, and suppers, are provided with such a multiplicity of dishes, and even dainties, as would satisfy the most refined appetite. The beverage consists of rum, gin, brandy, claret, to be taken at pleasure during meals; but out of that time they are to be paid for. Distressing accidents will of course occasionally occur; the last of this kind was of a truly heart-rending nature: it happened four years ago, above Walnut-hills, in the steam-boat Tennessee. The night was tempestuous, the rain fell in torrents, and the captain, instead of landing and waiting until the weather cleared up, lost his senses, and ran on a sawyer[C]. The steam-boat was not sixty feet distant from the bank, which could not be distinguished, and she went down in a few seconds, together with 110 passengers, save a few who by accident reached the shore. Since that time, although steam-boats have sunk, no such loss of lives has occurred. This, however, is not to be compared with the hardships, the toils, the loss of health and life, to which the navigators of flat and keel-boats were formerly, and are still exposed, when going down the Mississippi. Nothing more uncouth than these flat-boats was ever sent forth from the hands of a carpenter. They are built of rude timber and planks, sixty feet in length, and twenty-five feet in breadth, and so unmanageable, that only the strong arm of a backwoodsman can keep them from running upon planters[D], sawyers, wooden-islands, and all the Scyllas and Charybdes, that are to be met with on the voyage. We found numbers of them along the Ohio, detained by low water; and from St. Louis down to New Orleans, sometimes fifteen, twenty, and thirty together. Their uncouth appearance, the boisterous and fierce manners of their crews, the immense distance they have already proceeded, make them truly objects of interest. One of these flat-boats is from the Upper Ohio, laden with pine-boards, planks, rye, whisky, flour; close to it, another from the falls of the Ohio, with corn in the ear and bulk, apples, peaches; a third, with hemp, tobacco, and cotton. In the fourth you may find horses regularly stabled together; in the next, cattle from the mouth of the Missouri; a sixth will have hogs, poultry, turkeys; and in a seventh you see peeping out of the holes, the woolly heads of slaves transported from Virginia and Kentucky, to the human flesh mart at New Orleans. They have come thousands of miles, and still have to proceed a thousand more, before they arrive at their place of destination. [C] Sawyers are bodies of trees fixed in the river, which yield to the pressure of the current, disappearing and appearing by turns above water, like the rotatory motion of the saw-mill, from which they have derived their name. They sometimes point up the stream, sometimes in the contrary direction. A steam-boat running on a sawyer, cannot escape destruction. [D] Planters are large bodies of trees, firmly fixed by their roots to the bottom of the river, in a perpendicular manner, and rising no more than a foot above the surface at low water. They are so firmly rooted, as to be unmoved by the shock of steam-boats running upon them. CHAPTER X. Scenery along the Mississippi.--Hopefield.--St. Helena.--Arkansas Territory.--Spanish Moss.--Vixburgh. We pursued our course at the rate of ten miles an hour, passing the Chickasaw Bluffs, Memphis, a small settlement on the Tennessee side, and a number of smaller and larger islands, from two to six miles in length, but seldom more than one in breadth. The sediment of the Mississippi is continually forming new sand banks, at the same time that its irresistible power carries away old ones. That river was, as I have already mentioned, very low, and the numerous sand banks on both sides contracted its channel into a bed scarcely more than half a mile broad. On these banks numberless flocks of wild ducks, geese, cranes, swans, and pelicans, stationed themselves in rows, extending sometimes a mile in length. As soon as the steam boat approaches, dashing through the water with the noise of thunder, and vomiting forth columns of smoke, they fly up in masses resembling clouds, and retire to their covers in the marshes and ponds contiguous to the banks of the Mississippi. They abound most 150 miles above Natchez, and hundreds of thousands are seen crossing the river in every direction. The scenery in view is an immense valley, with banks sixty feet above the water, forests of colossal trees on both sides, and the vast expanse of waters rolling with a velocity the more surprising, as the country stretches in a continued plain, with scarcely any perceptible decline. The rural scenery of the regions consists of detached cabins raised on huge stumps of trees; instead of windows there are the natural apertures of the logs joined together; in front of them woodstacks, for the use of the steam boats; ten or twelve deer, bear, or fox skins drying in the open air; some turkies and hogs, scattered over a corn patch, &c. Farms, or plantations, properly so called, are seldom to be met with here; the chief object of these settlers being the breed of cattle and poultry, for the use of steam-boats. The only trace of agriculture is a small tract of cotton field, which the settlers endeavour to improve. We stayed an hour and a half in Hopefield, opposite to the Chickasaw Bluffs, the chief village of Hempstead county, with ten houses. There are two taverns, such as may be expected in these parts, a store and a post office. Two hours later we saw the mouth of the Wolf river; the beautiful President's island, ten miles long, which with its colossal forests presents an imposing sight, with several small islands in its train. Among these is the Battle island, taking its name from a battle fought here between two Kentuckians, who compelled their captain to land them, and returned after half an hour, the one with his nose bitten off, the other with his eyes scooped out of their sockets! This night we arrived in the county town of St. Helena, ninety-five miles above the mouth of the Arkansas. The place was laid out a few years ago, and bids fair to become of some importance, from the extreme scarcity of spots adapted for towns on the banks of the Mississippi. The village is situated a quarter of a mile from the west bank. The cabin houses are built upon dwarfish round hills, resembling sugar loaves. Viewed from a distance they have a handsome appearance, which, however, considerably diminishes on approaching nearer to them. The spot is quite broken land. Two hundred yards further up, a ridge eighty feet above the level of the water, extends about a quarter of a mile, and six other houses are built upon it, amongst which is a tavern and store, with few articles besides a barrel of whisky for their Indian guests. A heap of furs, of every description, indicates that this trade is a very lucrative one. About thirty miles to the westward are the military lands, granted as a reward to the soldiers who served in the last war; only a few of them have come to settle on these grants. The distance from the eastern cities being so immense, the expenses of the journey, compared with the object they were about to attain, were so great, that most of them remained in the east. On the following morning we passed the mouth of the White river, and thirteen miles lower down the river Arkansas, a beautiful, wide, and very important stream, next in size to the Ohio, which after a course of 2,500 miles, 900 of which are navigable for steam-boats, empties itself into the Mississippi at this place. From this river the territory of Arkansas has taken its name. It was formerly part of Louisiana, then of Missouri, and has since 1819, been separated from the latter, and now forms a distinct territory extending from 33° to 36° north latitude, and from 11° 45' to 23° west longitude. Its area is computed to be above 100,000 square miles. With the exception of a few towns, such as Arkopolis, Post Arkansas, Little-rock, &c., and some other settlements of less note, it is not otherwise known than from the reports of the expeditions sent into the interior at various times. According to their accounts it differs in some essential points from the eastern states. The eastern part of this vast territory bears the character of the Mississippi valley, and abounds in well wooded plains, prairies, and marshes, in alternate succession, the latter occupying almost exclusively the tract of land situated between the rivers Arkansas and St. Francis towards the Ozark mountains. There the country rises; rocks and mountains become visible, announcing the approach to the Rocky mountains. Between these and the Ozark mountains are vast plains covered with salt crusts, imparting to the rivers flowing through the country a brackish taste. There have also been discovered valleys competing in point of fertility with the valley of the Mississippi; eminences covered for a distance of many miles with vines, whose grapes are said to be equal to the best produce of the Cape. In other places are vast plains, which owing to their stratum being gravel, produce but a short and dry grape, without any trees. The territory in the interior contains important mineral and vegetable treasures. The Volcanos, the Hotsprings, the Ouachitta lake, and other natural wonders, will soon attract general attention. From what was related to me by an eye witness who bestowed all his attention on them, they are undoubtedly of the first importance. The springs are six in number, and they are situated about ten miles from the Ouachitta, near a volcano. Their temperature being 150°, the use which visitors make of them consists in exposing themselves to the vapour. They are impregnated with carbonic acid, muriate of soda, and a small quantity of iron and calcareous matter. Hitherto, besides Indians and hunters, but few persons resorted to them until the last two years, when several gentlemen went thither for the recovery of their health. But the present total want of ready money in these deserted parts has prevented a more rapid improvement. The population amounts to 18,000 souls, 2,000 of whom are slaves. Mental improvement is here sought for in vain. The American reads his Bible, and if opportunity offers, he visits once a year a Methodist Missionary. The French care as little for one as for the other. Colleges, academies, or literary institutions there are none, but in Post Arkansas, Arkopolis, and Little-rock, schools are established. Those cannot be expected from a country without any political importance, and with a population scattered over such an immense extent. An extract from a newspaper published in Arkopolis, which I found in St. Helena, may give some idea of the honourables of these parts: "Mr. White respectfully begs leave to announce himself as candidate for their Representative, &c.--N.B. Tailoring business done in the best manner, and at the shortest notice!!" Arkansas has hitherto been the refuge for poor adventurers, foreigners, French soldiers, German redemptioners, with a few respectable American families; men of fortune preferring the state of Mississippi or Louisiana, where society and the comforts of life can be found with less difficulty. It is certain, however, that the western part of this territory is healthier than the western states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, and that the Rocky and Ozark chain, running from east to west, obviates one great evil--the sudden change of temperature, caused by the want of high mountains to resist the power of the north and south winds. A traveller who first visits the valley of the Mississippi, is led to believe that the waters of this immense river rise above the trees along its banks, leaving the branches covered with weeds and mud when they retire to their bed. It is Spanish moss or Tellandsea which presents that appearance to the traveller. It is firmly rooted in the apertures of the bark, and hangs down from the trees, not unlike long rough beards. This plant has a yellow blossom, and a pod containing the seed. It is found along the coast of the Mississippi, from St. Helena to below New Orleans, and is universally applied to all those purposes for which curled hair is used in the north. It is gathered from the trees with long hooks, afterwards put into water for a few days in order to rot the outer part, and then dried. The substance obtained by this simple process is a fine black fibre resembling horse hair. A mattrass stuffed in this manner may serve for a year, if not wetted; it then becomes dusty and requires that the moss should be taken out, beaten, and the mattress filled again, by which means it becomes more elastic than it was before. We passed several settlements and islands, the mouth of the Yazoo rivers, and on the third day we arrived at Vixburgh, or Walnut-hills. We were now 600 miles from the mouth of the Ohio, and in that whole distance had not seen either a hill or mountain, with the exception of a few mole-hills at St. Helena, which rose, perhaps, to the height of twenty or twenty-five feet above the endless plain. The first objects which interrupt the sameness of this grand but rather uniform scenery, are the Walnut-hills, on the east bank of the river, in the state of Mississippi. They rise singly and perfectly detached. There may be eight or nine in number, with a small house on the top of each. Close to the landing-place is the warehouse of Mr. Brown; and farther back, some merchant's stores, and two taverns. Half a mile from the bank rises a ridge about four miles long, and 300 feet high. This hill, notwithstanding its inconvenient situation, will probably be selected for the site of part of Vixburgh town, which was laid out two years ago, and is now the seat of justice for Warren county. It has already fifty houses and three stores. Several steam-boats are regularly employed in the cotton trade. As there is not a single place on the banks of the Mississippi, where a town of some extent could be built without being exposed to the floods, Vixburgh must very soon become a place of great importance for the upper part of the state of Mississippi. The surrounding country begins to be rapidly settled; and civilization, which is almost extinct for more than a 1000 miles up the Mississippi and the Ohio, here resumes its power, and increases the farther you descend towards New Orleans. On the following day we passed Warrington, Palmyra, Davies', Judge Smith's settlements, the Grand and Petit Golfe, and Gruinsburgh, and arrived at five o'clock in the evening at Natchez. CHAPTER XI. The Town of Natchez.--Excursion to Palmyra Plantations.--The Cotton Planters of the State of Mississippi.--Sketch of the State of Mississippi.--Return to Natchez. Rain, and a subsequent frost, had a week before our arrival dispelled that scourge of the south--the yellow fever. The inhabitants had returned from the places of safety, to which they had fled in every direction, and intercourse was again re-established, the town having resumed all the activity I had found in it three years before. The road to the town, properly so called, leads through a suburb, known by the name of Low Natchez, consisting of some warehouses and shops of every description. This place deserves, in every respect, the epithet of Low Natchez, being a true Gomorrha, and containing an assemblage of the lowest characters. Although fifteen years ago, a great part of the bluff buried in its fall, several of these wretches, and every rainy season exposes the survivors to the same fate, yet they seem unconscious of their danger. The road ascends to the town on both sides of these liquor shops, built as it were on the brink of a precipice. Natchez is situated on a hill, 250 feet above the level of the water. The prospect from this hill, or bluff, as it is called, is beautiful. At your feet you behold this nest of sinners, close to it four or five steam-boats, and thirty or forty keel and flat-boats anchoring in the port, with the bustle and noise attendant on these wandering arks. On the opposite bank of the Mississippi, which is here one mile and a quarter wide, you see the county town of Concordia, and on both sides of this little town, numerous plantations, with the stately mansion of the wealthy cotton planter, and the numerous cabins of his black dependents; and in the background, the whole scenery is girded by an immense ring of cypress forests, which seem, as it were, to bury themselves in the flats below the Mississippi. To the right and left a charming elevated plain extends, with numerous gardens, which, though it was then the end of November, still preserved their verdure, faded, indeed, into an autumnal hue. In the rear is the town of Natchez, of moderate dimensions; but elegant and regular as far as the broken ground would admit. The dwelling-houses, several of them with colonnades, exhibit throughout a high degree of wealth. The court-house, an academy, the United States' branch bank, and the bank of Natchez, three churches, three newspaper printing offices, one of which publishes a literary journal (the Ariel), a library and reading-room, are the public institutions, and they are very liberally patronised. Neither during my former journey, nor in the present visit, could I discover any foundation for the charge of narrowness of mind, which is made against the inhabitants. Their number amounts to 3,540, and their houses to 600. They are mostly planters, merchants, lawyers, and physicians, of Anglo-American extraction, with the exception of ten or twelve German families. Natchez is considered as a port, and on this ground the representative of the state obtained the most useless grant of money ever made--1500 dollars--for the purpose of erecting a light-house, at a place 410 miles distant from the sea. This town had been considered a healthier spot than New Orleans, until the two last years, when it was repeatedly visited by the yellow-fever, from which New Orleans remained free. It is yet doubtful whether this evil is to be ascribed to the dissolute life prevailing in lower Natchez, or to the oppressive heat which prevails on these high plains. The distance, however, from the cooling current of the Mississippi, short as it is, and the unwholesome rain-water, which is used for drinking, must contribute to create bilious fevers. The great pecuniary resources which the inhabitants of Natchez have at command, would make it an easy matter for them to obtain their water for drinking from the Mississippi, in the same manner as the inhabitants of Philadelphia have raised the waters of Schuylkill. The country about Natchez is an extensive and elevated plain, 200 feet above the level of the Mississippi, stretching 130 miles from north to south, and about forty miles to the eastward. Although a fertile tract of land, it is far inferior to the Mississippi bottom-lands. The upland cotton grown upon it, is inferior in quantity and quality to that of Mississippi growth. The soil, however, produces corn, vegetables, plumbs, peaches, and figs in abundance. I stayed two days in Natchez, and rode with a friend to the distance of fifty-five miles above Natchez, on the Mississippi, passing through Gibsonport, twenty-five miles from Natchez, and six miles from the Mississippi, a town having a court-house, a newspaper printing office, and about sixty houses, with 1100 inhabitants. The following day we arrived at Messrs. D.'s plantation. These two brothers having purchased, three years ago, 6500 acres of land, at the rate of two dollars an acre, landed with their slaves at their new purchase, from their former residence in Kentucky. The lands being a complete wilderness, their first occupation was to raise cabins for themselves and their slaves. This was accomplished in four weeks. They succeeded during the first year in clearing fifty acres of land, twenty-five of which were sown in the month of February with cotton seed, the rest with corn. This was was sufficient to defray the expense of the first year. The clearing of woods, however, in this country, if not canebrack bottom, is not so easy a matter as in the northern states. Numerous shrubs, thistles, and thorns, of an immense size, form hedges, which it is almost impossible to penetrate. To these obstructions may be added, snakes, muskitoes, and in the marshes, alligators, which, though not so dangerous as the Egyptian crocodile, are still a great annoyance. The trees are here destroyed in the same manner as in the north, by killing them. Shrubs, underwood, canebrack, are burnt, and the corn or cotton is planted instead. This is the work of the negroes, who labour under the superintendence of their masters, or, if he be a wealthy man, of his overseer. In the months of June or July, the ground is ploughed or turned up; the weeds and shrubs are cleared away, as is done in the case of Indian corn; the cultivation of cotton, though more troublesome, being conducted much in the same manner. In the month of October, the cotton begins to ripen, the buds open, and the white flower appears. The present is the season for gathering cotton. Three kinds of cotton seeds are now sown in the southern states; the green, the black, and the Mexican seed, which latter is considered to be the best. Of the green seed cotton, a slave may gather 150 pounds a day, of the other two kinds, the utmost that can be collected is 100 pounds. The buds are broken from the plants, and the cotton, with the seed, taken out and put into round baskets, which when filled are brought into the cotton yard, and spread along planks, for the purpose of drying. The cotton is from thence carried to the cotton gin, the machinery of which is put into motion by three or four horses. The cotton is thrown between a cylinder moving round a projecting saw; by this process the seed is separated from the cotton, which is then thrown back into a large receptacle, and afterwards pressed into bales. These are laid in stores and kept ready for shipping, in steam or flat boats to Natchez or New Orleans. The two brothers in this, the third, year from the date of their establishment, raised 200 bales of cotton from 200 acres of cleared land. According to their own estimation, and from what I know, they might have raised 350 bales, had it not been for a disaster which befel them in the spring of the year 1825. They were visited with a hurricane, which lifted their dwelling-house from the ground, carried it to a considerable distance and completely destroyed it, with the entire furniture. Mr. D----, who was at the plantation at the time, had great difficulty in escaping with his wife and child, though not without a fractured leg, from the effects of which he was still suffering. Not even a chair had been spared. The immense trees torn up by the roots and still lying in every direction upon the ground, the shattered cabins of his negroes, every thing presented indications of the havoc made in this disastrous night. Happily no human life was lost. This misfortune had, of course, considerably retarded the improvements in progress, and thrown them back for at least a twelvemonth. Still the planters calculated this year upon a profit of 10,000 dollars from their plantation; 4000 dollars may be deducted from this for household and other necessary expenses, leaving a clear profit of 6000 dollars. The original capital of the two brothers consisted, (including the value of their slaves), of 20,000 dollars. They paid half the purchase money when they took possession, and the rest in the present year. Their plantation is now worth 60,000 dollars. In the state of Mississippi, the principal article of cultivation is cotton, as it is the staple article of its commerce; corn and the breeding of cattle are considered as secondary objects, though many plantations reckon from 100 to 300 head of cattle, which have a free range in the vast forests in quest of food. Only those intended for fattening are kept at home and fed with cotton seed, which in a few weeks will make them exceedingly fat. Turkeys and poultry in general are found in abundance, and constitute with firewood the articles which are sold to steam-boats passing on their way. Indian corn supplies in these parts the place of rye or wheat. The slaves live exclusively on corn bread; their masters vary it with wheat cakes. Wheat, flour, whiskey, articles of dress, sacking, and blankets, come from the north, or from New Orleans. The dress of the planter during the summer months consists of a linen jacket, pantaloons of the same, Monroe boots, and a straw hat. During the winter he wears a cotton shirt and a cloth dress. That of his slaves during summer is a coarse cotton shirt and trowsers, with shoes called mocasins. In winter they are furnished with cotton trowsers, and a coat made of a woollen blanket. The females have dresses of the same materials. The manner of living of the southern planter differs little from that of the northern; he likes his doddy, which the northern planter or farmer is also known to be fond of; he lives on wheat cakes or Indian corn bread, and superintends his slaves at their work, as the northern does his hands. Of the effeminate and luxurious style in which the southern planters are said to indulge--of their pretended fondness for female slaves, without whose assistance they cannot find their beds, I have never had any proofs, though in both my journeys I have not passed less than a year in Mississippi and Louisiana, and know one half of the plantations. The American planter lives in a higher style than his northern fellow citizen: this is quite natural, considering that his income is very large, and his taxes trifling. His chief expense, however, consists in his travels or summer excursions to the north, where he is pleased to shew his southern magnificence in a display of pompous dissipation. This fault, with few exceptions, is general with southern planters. They save at home, and renounce the very comforts of life in order to have the means of spending more money during the summer at Saratoga, Boston, or New York. The slave always rises at five o'clock, and works till seven, then breakfasts--generally upon soup with corn bread, baked on a pan, and eaten warm with a piece of bacon or salt-meat. Their tasks are assigned to them by the master of the plantation, or if he has been settled for some years, by an overseer. Part of the negroes are engaged in the cotton gin, others in carpenters' or in cabinet work, each plantation having two or three mechanics among the slaves. A third part works in the cotton or corn fields. The females have likewise their tasks. One or two of the girls are housemaids; two more are cooks, one for the white, the other for the black family. The old negro women have the washing assigned to them. The dinner of the slaves consists of corn bread, a pudding of the same stuff, and salt or fresh meat. It is usual to give them a piece of meat, in order to keep them in good condition. The supper is of corn bread again, and a soup without meat. They seldom get any whiskey, and tavern keepers are prohibited by law from selling it to them. The first transgression is punished with a fine, the second with the loss of the tavern licence. On Sundays the slaves are exempt from working for their master, and permitted to attend to their family or their own concerns. Many of them are seen gleaning the cotton fields, collecting this way from eighty to a hundred pounds of cotton in one day. They are not, however, so well treated as in the northern slave states, where they are rather considered as domestics, who in many cases would not exchange their condition for that liberty which is enjoyed by the German peasantry. The northern slave is, for this reason, extremely afraid of transportation, which is a sort of punishment. The southern blacks frequently run away, and there is not a newspaper published, in which some escapes are not announced. The Anglo-Americans, however, treat their slaves throughout better than the French and their descendants, with whom the wretched blacks, (their general allowance being ten ears of Indian corn a day), experience a treatment in few respects better than that of a beast. The principle upon which the French descendant acts, is, that the slave ought to repay him in three years the expense of his purchase. But, strange to say, the worst of all are the free people of colour, who are equally permitted to possess slaves. To be transferred into the hands of their own race, is the most dreadful thing which can happen to a slave. Formal marriages rarely take place between slaves: if the negro youth feels himself attracted by the charms of a black beauty, their master allows them to cohabit. If the female slave is on a distant plantation, the youth is permitted to see her, provided he be trustworthy, and not suspected of an intention to effect his escape. The children belong to the mother, or rather to her master, who is not permitted to dispose of them before they are ten years of age. The punishment which masters are allowed to inflict on their slaves at home, is a flogging of thirty-nine lashes. The huts of these people are of rough logs; lower down the river they are of regular carpenter's work. The mansions of the American planters are in the easy American style--sometimes frame, mostly, however, brick-houses, constructed on four piles in the manner already described. Below Natchez, the dwelling houses of the planters are in the old-fashioned Spanish style, with immense roofs, but comfortable and adapted to the climate. The windows are high and provided with shutters. They have a summer dining room to the north, open on all sides so as to admit of a free current of air. In the southern parts, the planter is the most respectable and wealthy inhabitant. He lives contented, though his domestic peace is sometimes troubled by the accidents inseparable from the state of bondage in which his black family is kept. If he manages his affairs well, for which very little is wanting beyond common sense and activity, he cannot fail to become wealthy in a few years. I am acquainted with several gentlemen, who settled in these states ten years ago, with a capital of from 10 to 20,000 dollars. They are worth now at least 100,000 dollars. The great difference between these plantations and the northern farms, is the ready mart they are sure to find, and the high price they obtain for their produce. Though the prices of cotton are considerably reduced, yet the profit which is derived from a capital employed in a plantation is superior to any other. The price of a well-conditioned plantation is enormous. I can instance Mr. B., who having inherited one half of a plantation, bought the other half for 32,000 dollars. The failures in crops are of very rare occurrence in these parts, and generally in the fourth year after a plantation has been begun, the produce is equal to the capital employed in the establishment. The management of these plantations requires by no means a very enterprising turn of mind. I know some ladies who have established cotton plantations, and raise from four to five hundred bales a year, being assisted only by their overseer. Mrs. Barrow, Mrs. Hook, &c., &c., are instances in proof of what I advance. Those who are unable to bear the summer heats, or are not inured to the climate, reside in the north, leaving a trusty overseer in charge of the plantation. The distance from Natchez to Louisville or Cincinnati, between 11 and 1200 miles, may be performed in nine or ten days. The journey is a pleasant one, and is amply rewarded by the purchases which planters generally make in the north for themselves, their families, and their slaves. Indolence, luxury, and effeminacy, are vices that are but seldom to be met with in the American planter. He does not yield to the northern farmer in activity or industry. He cannot work in person without exposing himself to a bilious fever; but this is not necessary; the superintendence of his affairs is a sufficient occupation for him. In this state I found matters: after a serious and practical investigation, and much experience, I can pronounce it to be a safer way of employing a moderate capital in an advantageous manner, than any other which offers itself in the United States. There can scarcely be a country where there is greater facility for hunting than in these parts. Mr. D. being still lame from his late accident, was obliged to remain at home, but he provided us with a guide, in the person of the overseer of the Palmyra plantation, five miles above Mr. D.'s settlement. We mounted our horses, and arrived in a few minutes on the outside of the cotton-fields, a tract of canebrack bottom, extending about ten miles, where we expected to start a deer or a bear. We had not ridden above half an hour when we discovered a bear, which was killed. We proceeded afterwards to a marsh two miles behind the plantation, the resort of flocks of ducks and wild geese. We found about 300 of them, and having shot nine returned home. The bear was found to be a young one, weighing 150 pounds:--its flesh was excellent. These animals, as well as every description of game, are found in such prodigious numbers, that our landlord thought it not worth while sending his slaves such a distance for the ducks and geese we had shot in the pond; and they were, therefore, left for birds of prey to feast upon. The following day we made a shooting excursion with the overseer of Palmyra plantation. After partaking of some refreshments at his dwelling, we proceeded in his company. He superintends the plantation of Mrs. Turner, for an annual salary of 1500 dollars, with board, lodging, &c.; a sum which would be considered in the north as a first rate salary, suitable to any gentleman. Seven wild turkeys were the spoils of this day; we divided them equally amongst us, reserving the seventh to be roasted at Warrington for our dinner. Warrington, formerly the seat of justice for Warren county, which is now transferred to Vixburgh, though situated sixty feet above the water level of the Mississippi, is regularly inundated by the spring floods. This town is on the decline, owing to the removal of the seat of justice. It contains 200 inhabitants, with forty houses, five of which are built of brick, the rest of wood. Two lawyers, who are now on the move, two taverns, and two stores, are to be found here. The two store-keepers, who were extremely poor when they first settled here, eight years ago, are now worth above 20,000 dollars; one of them is going to establish a plantation. We returned in good time, being here at a distance of twenty miles from the plantation. Although the tract of country we came through is extremely fertile, yet there is a great difference in the soil. The plantation of Mr. D----, has undoubtedly the advantage over the six which came under our notice; his cotton is of a superior quality. The richness of the soil depends on the stratum. The best is considered to be that which is found to have three or four feet of river sediment on a red brownish earth; where sand or gravel forms the stratum, the land, though fertile, is not of so durable a quality. The growth of timber is generally the surest mode of ascertaining the nature of the soil; we measured on the plantation of Major Davis, some sycamores torn up by the hurricane, which were not less than 200 feet in length; and cotton trees of 170 feet. Where such a gigantic vegetation is seen, one may rely on the fertility and inexhaustible quality of the soil. Our guide gave me a proof of this: in one of his fields, he raised tobacco for ten successive years, without doing more than ploughing the earth; the produce, instead of diminishing, has rather increased both in quantity and quality. One can hardly conceive how a soil, apparently sandy, can be of a nature so inexhaustibly productive; the overflowing of the Mississippi, and the sediment left on the banks, account, however, sufficiently for it. The following day we took leave of our hospitable landlord, and returned. The country we passed through is one continued range of the most beautiful forests, opening some times to give place to a rising plantation. I counted between Palmyra and Natchez, twenty-five. The State of Mississippi was received into the Union in the year 1817. It extends from 30° 10' to 35° north latitude, and from 11° 30' to 14° 32' west longitude; and is bounded on the north by Tennessee, on the west by Arkansas and Louisiana, on the south by Louisiana and the gulf of Mexico, and on the east by Alabama. It comprises an area of 15,000 square miles. Though this state has acquired, this ten years past, a political existence, and in point of fertility is far superior to Missouri and Indiana, yet its population has not increased in the same proportion;--it does not exceed 80,000 souls, including 34,000 slaves. The emigrants to Mississippi, are either men of fortune, or needy adventurers. The middle classes, having from 2 to 3,000 dollars property, seldom chose to settle there, having no prospect of succeeding by dint of personal industry. The fatigue and labour in these hot and sultry climates, can only be borne by slaves; a white man who should attempt the same labour which kept him stout and hearty in the north, would soon be overcome by the heat of the climate. Most of the respectable settlers are therefore from Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Kentucky; having sold their property there, and emigrated with their slaves into this country. The North American, properly so called, from New England, New York, &c., seldom ventures so far. Owing to this cause, the towns in Mississippi and Louisiana, are neither so elegant nor so wealthy as those of the north. With the exception of places of commerce, such as New Orleans and Natchez, the towns of the state of Mississippi cannot be compared to those of other states of more recent date. These smaller towns of Mississippi and Louisiana, are generally inhabited by mechanics, tradesmen, tavern-keepers, and the poorer classes of the people. Those who have any fortune, prefer laying it out on plantations,--a sure and infallible source of wealth, and the most respectable occupation in the country. Merchants who have succeeded in making a fortune in these small towns, remove to more convenient places. The traveller who judges of the wealth of the country from the mean appearance of these villages and towns, would be greatly mistaken. In order to form a correct opinion he must visit the plantations, and he will be surprised at the high degree of prosperity and comfort enjoyed by the possessors. After a stay of three days in Natchez, I took a passage on board the steam-boat Helen MacGregor, which had lately returned from New Orleans to Walnut hills, and was on its way to the capital of Louisiana. The intercourse between Natchez and New Orleans is by water, travellers naturally preferring this easy and comfortable mode of conveyance by steam-boats to land journeys, rendered disagreeable by the wretchedness of the roads, and the still worse condition of the generality of inns. This evil has been occasioned by the former hospitality of the French creoles. Any one calling at a plantation was sure of a welcome reception. This hospitality has ceased, and the most respectable traveller is now likely to have the door shut in his face, owing to the misconduct of the Kentuckians. It was the practice of these gentlemen to call on their rambles at these plantations, where plenty of rum and brandy, with other accommodations, could be had for nothing. They behaved with an arrogance and presumption almost incredible, not unfrequently calling the creoles in their own houses French dogs, and knocking them down if they presumed to shew the least displeasure. These people are the horror of all creoles, who when they wish to describe the highest degree of barbarity, designate it by the name of Kentuckian. The worst of it is that the creoles, who are far from being eminent scholars, comprehend the whole north under the appellation of Kentucky. We started from Natchez at nine o'clock in the evening, took in 300 bales of cotton at Bayon Sarah[E], and some firewood a few miles below, and then passed Baton Rouge, the Bayons Plaquimines, Manchac, Tourche, both sides of the river being lined with beautiful plantations, and arrived on Sunday, at four o'clock, above New Orleans. [E] Bayons, outlets of the Mississippi, formed by nature. They are in great numbers, and carry its waters to the gulph of Mexico. Without these outlets, New Orleans would be destroyed by the spring floods in a few hours. CHAPTER XII. Arrival at New Orleans.--Cursory Reflections. It is certainly mournful for a traveller to dwell among the monuments of Pompeii, of Herculaneum, and of Rome. There, if he feels at all, he feels among these wrecks of past grandeur, that he is nothing. A totally different sensation possesses the mind on entering an American city. In these man beholds what he can contend with, and what he can accomplish, when his strength is not checked by the arbitrary will of a despot. New Orleans, the wet grave[F], where the hopes of thousands are buried; for eighty years the wretched asylum for the outcasts of France and Spain, who could not venture 100 paces beyond its gates without utterly sinking to the breast in mud, or being attacked by alligators; has become in the space of twenty-three years one of the most beautiful cities of the Union, inhabited by 40,000 persons, who trade with half the world. The view is splendid beyond description, when you pass down the stream, which is here a mile broad, rolls its immense volume of waters in a bed above 200 feet deep, and as if conscious of its strength, appears to look quietly on the bustle of the habitations of man. Both its banks are lined with charming sugar plantations, from the midst of which rises the airy mansion of the wealthy planter, surrounded with orange, banana, lime, and fig trees, the growth of a climate approaching to the torrid zone. In the rear you discover the cabins of the negroes and the sugar-houses, and just at the entrance of the port, groups of smaller houses, as if erected for the purpose of concealing the prospect of the town. As soon as the steam-boats pass these out posts, New Orleans, in the form of a half moon, appears in all its splendour. The river runs for a distance of four or five miles in a southern direction; here it suddenly takes an eastern course, which it pursues for the space of two miles, thus forming a semicircular bend. A single glance exhibits to view the harbour, the vessels at anchor, together with the city, situated as it were at the feet of the passenger. The first object that presents itself is the dirty and uncouth backwoods flat boat. Hams, ears of corn, apples, whiskey barrels, are strewed upon it, or are fixed to poles to direct the attention of the buyers. Close by are the rather more decent keel-boats, with cotton, furs, whiskey, flour; next the elegant steam-boat, which by its hissing and repeated sounds, announces either its arrival or departure, and sends forth immense columns of black smoke, that form into long clouds above the city. Farther on are the smaller merchant vessels, the sloops and schooners from the Havannah, Vera Cruz, Tampico; then the brigs; and lastly, the elegant ships appearing like a forest of masts[G]. [F] In New Orleans, water is found two feet below the surface. Those who cannot afford to procure a vault for their dead, are literally compelled to deposit them in the water. [G] The whole number of vessels then in port was 100 schooners, brigs, and ships. What in Philadelphia and even in New York is dispersed in several points, is here offered at once to the eye--a truly enchanting prospect. Most of the steam-boats were kept back by the lowness of the Ohio, at Cincinnati, Louisville, and Nashville; we landed, therefore, close to the shore without encountering any impediment. In a moment our state room was filled with five or six clerks, from the newspaper printing offices, and a dozen negroes; the former to inspect the log-book of the steam-boat, and to lay before their subscribers the names of the goods, and of the passengers arrived; the latter to offer their services in carrying our trunks. After labouring to climb over the mountains of cotton bales which obstructed our passage, we went on shore. The city had increased beyond expectation, within the last four years. More than 700 brick houses had been erected; a new street (the Levee), was already half finished; the houses throughout were solid, and more or less in an elegant style. It was on a Sunday that we arrived; the shops, the stores of the French and creoles, were open as usual, and if there were fewer buyers than on other days, the coffeehouses, grog-shops, and the _estaminets_, as they are called, of the French and German inhabitants, exhibited a more noisy scene. A kind of music, accompanied with human, or rather inhuman voices, resounded in almost every direction. This little respect paid to the Sabbath is a relic of the French revolution and of Buonaparte, for whom the French and the creoles of Louisiana have an unlimited respect, imitating him as poor minds generally do, as far as they are able, in his bad qualities, his contempt of venerable customs, and his egotism, and leaving his great deeds and the noble traits in his character to the imitation of others better qualified to appreciate them. To a new comer, accustomed in the north to the dignified and quiet keeping of the Sabbath, this appears very shocking. The Anglo-Americans, with few exceptions, remain even here faithful to their ancient custom of keeping the Sabbath holy. I had many opportunities of appreciating the importance of the keeping of the Sabbath, particularly in new states. A well regulated observance of this day is productive of incalculable benefits, and though it is sometimes carried too far in the northern states, as is certainly the case in Pennsylvania and New England, still the public ought firmly to maintain this institution in full force. The man who provides in six days for his personal wants, may dedicate the seventh to the improvement of his mind; and this he can only accomplish by abstaining from all trifling amusements. In a despotic monarchy the case is different; there the government has no doubt every reason for allowing its slaves, after six toilsome days of labour, the indulgence of twenty-four hours of amusement, that they may forget themselves and their fate in the dissipation of dancing, smoking, and drinking. The case ought to be otherwise in a republic, where even the poor constitute, or are about to constitute, part of the sovereign body. These ought to remember to what purposes they are destined, and not to allow themselves, under any circumstances, to be the dupes of others. The keeping of the Sabbath is their surest safeguard. If there were no opportunities offered for dancing, their sons and their daughters would stay at home, either reading their Bible, or attending to other appropriate intellectual occupations, and learning in this manner their rights and duties, and those of other people. The American has not deviated in this respect from his English kinsman. If you enter his dwelling on the Sabbath, you will find the family, old and young, quietly sitting down, the Bible in hand, thus preparing themselves for the toils and hardships to come, and acquiring the firmness and confidence so necessary in human life; a confidence, which we so justly admire in the British nation; as far distant from the bravado of the French, as the unfeeling and base stupidity of the Russians; and which never displays itself in brighter colours than in the hour of danger. We are in this manner enabled to account for those high traits of character in moments full of peril--traits not surpassed in the most brilliant and the most virtuous epochs of Greece or of Rome. A single fact will speak volumes--the Kent East Indiaman, burning and going down in the bay of Biscay, in 1825. Ladies, gentlemen, officers, and soldiers, all on board exhibited a magnanimity of heart, and a truly Christian heroism, which must fill even the most rancorous enemies of the British people with admiration and regard. What a different picture would have been presented to us, if half a regiment of Bonaparte's soldiers had been on board the ship! CHAPTER XIII. Topographical Sketch of the City of New Orleans. The city of New Orleans occupies an oblong area, extending 3960 feet along the eastern bank of Mississippi, embracing six squares, 319 feet in length, and of equal breadth. Above and below this parallelogram are the suburbs. Higher up is the suburb of St. Mary, still belonging to the city corporation; farther up, the suburbs Duplantier, Soulel, La Course, L'Annunciation, and Religieuses; below, the suburbs of Marigny, Daunois, and Clouet; in the rear, St. Claude and Johnsburgh. The seven streets, named Levee, Chartres-street, Royal-street, Bourbon, Burgundy, Toulouse, and Rampart, run parallel with the river, and are intersected at right angles by twelve others, running from the banks of the Mississippi, called the Levee, in the direction of the swamps, the Custom-house-street, Brenville, Conti, St. Louis, and Toulouse. The city, with the exception of Levee and Rampart-streets, is paved, an improvement which occasions great expense to the corporation, as the stones are imported; flags, however, are not wanting even in the most distant suburbs. The ground on which New Orleans is built, is a plain, descending about seven feet from the banks of the river, towards the swamps; and it is lower than the level of the Mississippi. It is secured by a levee, which would afford very little resistance 400 miles higher up; but here, where numerous bayons and natural channels have carried off part of the waters to the gulf of Mexico, it answers every purpose. About the city, the breadth of this plain is half a mile, and above it three-quarters of a mile, terminating in the back-ground in impenetrable swamps. The city and suburbs are lighted with reflecting lamps, suspended in the middle of the streets. Between the pavement and the road, gutters are made for the purpose of carrying off the filth into the swamps, of refreshing the air with the water of the Mississippi, with which these gutters communicate, and of allaying the dust during the hot season. There are now about 6000 buildings, large and small, in New Orleans. In the first mentioned three streets, and the greater part of the upper suburb, the houses are throughout of brick; some are plastered over to preserve them from the influence of the sultry climate. Though building materials of every kind are imported, and consequently very dear, yet the houses are rapidly changing from the uncouth Spanish style, to more elegant forms. The new houses are mostly three stories high, with balconies, and a summer-room with blinds. In the lower suburbs, frame houses, with Spanish roofs, are still prevalent. Two-thirds of the private buildings may at present be said to rival those of northern cities, of an equal population. The public edifices, however, are far inferior to those of the former, both in style and execution. The most prominent is the cathedral, in the middle of the town, separated from the bank of the Mississippi, by the parade ground. It is of Spanish architecture, with a façade of seventy feet, and a depth of 120, having on each side a steeple, and a small cupola in the centre, which gives an air of dignity to a heavy and ill-proportioned structure. All illusion, however, is dispelled on entering the church. The Catholics had the strange notion of painting the interior, taking for this purpose the most glaring colours that can be found--green and purple. The church is painted over in fresco, with these colours, and presents at one view a curious taste of the creoles. The interior is not overloaded with decorations, as Catholic churches generally are. The high altar, and two side ones, are, with an organ, its only ornaments. Two tombs contain the remains of Baron Carondolet and Mr. Marigny. On one side of the cathedral is the city-hall, and on the other, the Presbytire. The former, erected in 1795, presents a façade of 108 feet, in which the meetings of the city council are held. The Presbytire, 114 in front, was built in 1813, and is the seat of the supreme District Court, and of the Criminal Court of New Orleans. These two edifices, and the cathedral between them, form together a dignified whole. The government-house, at the corner of Toulouse and Levee-streets, is an old and decaying edifice, where the legislature of the state holds its meetings. In point of situation, (among grog shops), and of style, it may be considered the poorest state-house in the Union. The Protestants have three churches. The Episcopalian, at the corner of Bourbon and Canal-streets, is an octagon edifice, with a cupola, in bad taste. Out of gratitude to the late governor Clayborne, the inhabitants have erected in the church-yard, a monument to his memory, with the following inscription: THE CITIZENS OF NEW ORLEANS, TO TESTIFY THEIR RESPECT FOR THE VIRTUES OF W. C. C. CLAYBORNE, LATE GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF LOUISIANA, HAVE ERECTED THIS MONUMENT. The Presbyterian church, in the suburb of St. Mary, is a simple, but chaste building, the expense of which amounted to 55,000 dollars. The congregation being unwilling to defray the cost of its erection, it was sold by the sheriff, and is now the property of Mr. Levy, an Israelite, who leases it out to the congregation for 1500 dollars. The Methodist church is a frame building, erected in 1826. The public hospital, in Canal-street, consists of two square buildings, with wards for fever maladies; for dysentery; one for chronic diseases; another for females; a third for convalescents; a bathing-room, an apothecary's-room, and a room for the physicians and assistants. Out of 1842 patients who were received into this hospital in the year 1824, 500 died, and the rest were discharged; out of 1700 received in 1825, 271 died, the others recovered. The accommodations in this house seem to be respectable; it has one thing, however, in common with all hospitals, that no one is tempted to return to it a second time. There are now four banks in New Orleans; the United States Bank, with a capital of one million of dollars; the Bank of the State, the Louisiana Bank, and the Bank of New Orleans, each having likewise a capital of one million of dollars. The insurance offices are five in number: the Louisiana State Insurance Company, with a capital of 400,000 dollars; the Fire Insurance Company, with 300,000; the Mississippi and Marine Insurance Company, with 200,000; and the London Phoenix Insurance Company. New Orleans has no less than six masonic lodges, including the grand lodge of Louisiana; a French and an American theatre. The latter was built by a Mr. Caldwell, from Nashville, in Tennessee, who has also the management of it. It has the advantage in point of architecture, and the French theatre in the selectness of its audience. Close to the latter are the ball-rooms, where are given the only masked balls in the United States. Among the public buildings may be reckoned the three market halls, for the sale of provisions of every kind; one of them is in the city, the two others on the upper and lower suburbs, on the Levee. The nuns have removed two miles below the town, and this convent is now the residence of the Roman Catholic bishop. In the chapel divine service is performed; this chapel, and the cathedral, are the places of worship belonging to the Catholics. The cotton-pressing establishments deserve to be mentioned. These are now nine in number; the most important is that of Mr. Rilieux, at the corner of Poydras-street. It has three presses; one worked by steam, another by an hydraulic machine, and the third by horsepower. For the security of cotton bales, eight wells, a fire-engine, &c., are within the range of buildings; the expenses of which amounted to 150,000 dollars. The cotton press formerly belonged to a German commission merchant, who failed in consequence of his extravagant cotton speculations; it is simple, but of solid construction. It can receive 10,000 bales. The expenses of the building amounted to 90,000 dollars. Besides these are the presses of Shiff, a Jew from Germany, Debays, Lorger, &c. A steam saw-mill on the bank of the Mississippi, in the upper suburb, with a few iron foundries, are the only manufacturies in New Orleans; every thing being imported from the north. Carondolots canal is in the rear of the town, towards the marshes. The entrance is a basin, containing from thirty to fifty small vessels, and opening into a canal, or rather a ditch, which has been cut through the swamps, in order to join the Bayon St. John with New Orleans. Small vessels drawing no more than six feet of water, arrive from Mobile and Pensacola[H], through lake Pont Chartrain, Bayon St. John, and the above-mentioned canal at New Orleans, performing only a third of the way they would otherwise have to make by going up the Mississippi. They are in general freighted with wood, planks, bricks, cotton, &c.; and take in goods in return. This canal, which is of great importance for the part of the city lying contiguous to the swamps, was commenced by Baron Carondolet, but given up at a subsequent time, and resumed in the year 1815. Its cost was trifling compared with the advantages resulting to this city, and the salutary effects it must have in draining off part of the swamps. [H] Pensacola has been established as a port for the United States navy: 1825-1826. The president of the city council is a mayor, or Maire, a creole. His police regulations deserve every praise, and New Orleans, which less than fifteen years ago was the lurking hole of every assassin, is now in point of security not inferior to any other city. The revenues of the city corporation amount to 150,000 dollars, which are, however, found to be insufficient, and loans are resorted to in order to cover the expenses. When the United States took possession of New Orleans, this town consisted of 1000 houses, and 8000 inhabitants, black and white. In the year 1820, it amounted to near 27,000; namely, 8000 white males, 5314 white females, 1500 foreigners, 2500 men, and 400 women of colour, 3000 male, and 4,500 female slaves; the population of the parish being then 14,000. In the year 1821, the population was 29,000; in 1822 it had risen to 32,000; in the present year 1826, it amounts to upwards of 40,000; to be distinguished as follows: 14,500 white males, and 7500 white females, 1300 foreigners, 3690 free men, and 800 free women of colour, 5500 male, and 6300 female slaves. The population of the parish is 15,000. As New Orleans, notwithstanding its being 109 miles distant from the sea, is considered as a seaport, all the officers necessarily connected with a place of that description reside there, as well as consuls from every nation, having commercial intercourse with it;--from England, Russia, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, Hamburgh, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Sardinia, with others from the Southern Republics. CHAPTER XIV. The situation of New Orleans considered in a commercial point of view. New Orleans groaned for a long time under the yoke of the most wretched tyranny; its crowned possessors so far from doing any thing towards the improvement of a plan which, considered in a commercial light, has not its equal on the face of the earth, contributed as much as was in their power to circumscribe it. After two hours rain, every kind of communication in the city itself was quite impracticable; paving or lighting the streets was of course out of the question; assassinations were of almost daily occurrence: but this was not all--the place was to be a fortress in spite of common sense. It was thought proper to surround it with a wall eighteen feet wide and pallisadoes, five bastions, and redoubts, upon which some old cannon were mounted, perhaps for the purpose of keeping the Indians at a proper distance. The Americans pulled down those pitiful circumvallations which could have no other effect than to impede commerce, and erected others in a situation where they are likely to be of more advantage--along the passes of the Mississippi and of lake Pontchartrain. The city has improved in an astonishing degree during the twenty-three years that it has been incorporated with the United States; indeed much more in proportion than any other town of the Union, in spite of the yellow fever, the deadly miasmata, and the myriads of musquitoes; and it has now become one of the most elegant and wealthy cities of the republic. If, however, we consider its situation, it is susceptible of still greater improvements, and it must eventually become, what nature destined it to be, the first commercial city, and the emporium of America, notwithstanding the concurrence of many unfavourable circumstances, and the gross selfishness of its inhabitants. The incredible fertility of Louisiana, the Egypt of the west, and the fertility of the states of the valley of the Mississippi in general, which can be duly appreciated only by personal observation, must render New Orleans one of the most flourishing cities in the world. There is not a spot on the globe that presents a more favourable situation for trade. Standing on the extreme point of the longest river in the world, New Orleans commands all the commerce of the immense territory of the Mississippi, being the staple pointed out by nature for the countries watered by this stream, or by its tributaries--a territory exceeding a million of square miles. You may travel on board a steam-boat of 300 tons and upwards for an extent of 1000 miles from New Orleans up the Red river; 1500 miles up the Arkansas river; 3000 miles up the Missouri and its branches; 1700 miles on the Mississippi to the falls of St. Anthony; the same distance from New Orleans up the Illinois; 1200 miles to the north-east from New Orleans on the big Wabash; 1300 on the Tennessee; 1300 on the Cumberland, and 2300 miles on the Ohio up to Pittsburgh. Thus New Orleans has in its rear this immense territory, with a river 4200 miles long, (including the Missouri)[I]; besides the water communication which is about to be completed between New York and the river Ohio. The coast of Mexico, the West India islands, and the half of America to the south, the rest of America on its left, and the continent of Europe beyond the Atlantic. New Orleans is beyond a doubt the most important commercial point on the face of the earth[J]. Although the states along the Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, the territories of Missouri, and Arkansas, undoubtedly the finest part of the Union, have not yet a population of 3,000,000 inhabitants, their trade with New Orleans may be estimated by the fact, that not less than 1500 keel and flat boats, with nearly a hundred steam vessels, are engaged every year in the trade with this city. The capital laid out on these steam-boats amounts alone to above two million of dollars. The number of vessels that clear out is upward of 1000, which export more than 200,000 bales of cotton, 25,000 hogsheads of sugar, 17,000 hogsheads of tobacco, about 1250 tons of lead, with a considerable quantity of rice, furs, &c. Besides these staple articles, the produce of the northern states is exported to Mexico, the West Indies, the Havannah, and South America. The commerce of New Orleans increases regularly every year in proportion with the improvements in its own state, and in those of the Mississippi. The wealth accruing to the country and to the city from this commerce, is out of proportion with the number of inhabitants. There are many families who, in the course of a few years, have accumulated a property yielding an income of 50,000 dollars, and 25,000 is the usual income of respectable planters. No other place offers such chances for making a fortune in so easy a way. Plantations and commerce, if properly attended to, are the surest means of succeeding in the favourite object of man's great pursuit,--"money making." This accounts for the avidity with which thousands seek New Orleans, in spite of the yellow fever again making room for thousands in rapid succession. [I] The whole course of the Mississippi exceeds, the Missouri included, 4200 miles. This latter is its principal tributary stream, and superior in magnitude even to the Mississippi. [J] Below New Orleans there is no place well adapted for the site of a large city. CHAPTER XV. Characteristic features of the Inhabitants of New Orleans and Louisiana.--Creoles.--Anglo-Americans.--French.--Free People of Colour.--Slaves. At the time of the cession of Louisiana to the United States (1803), this country with its capital was inhabited by Creoles--descendants of French settlers. Many reasons as they may have to congratulate themselves upon their admission into the great political Union, whether considered in a religious or political point of view, there were, however, several causes which contributed to render them disaffected to the measure. This repugnance is far from being removed. The advantages on both sides were equal, or perhaps greater on the part of the United States. The central government and the generality of Americans behaved towards Louisiana in a becoming manner. But there is in the character of American freedom, especially in the deportment of an American towards foreigners and strangers in his own country, something repulsive. It is not the pride of a nobleman accustomed to be obeyed, nor the natural pride of an Englishman, who carries his sulky temper along with him, and finds fault with every thing: it is rather the pride of an adventurer--of an upstart, who exults at his not being a runaway himself, although the descendant of one. Louisiana immediately after its cession, was admitted to the full enjoyment of all the advantages connected with its prerogative, as one of the states of the Union, and its white natives, the Creoles, were considered as citizens born of the United States. But the moment the cession was made, crowds of needy Yankees, and what is worse, Kentuckians, spread all over the country, attracted by the hope of gain; the latter treating the inhabitants as little better than a purchased property. Full of prejudice towards the descendants of a nation, of which they knew little more than the proverb, "French dog," they, without knowing or condescending to learn their language, behaved towards these people as if the lands, as well as the inhabitants, could be seized without ceremony. This was certainly not the way of thinking, or the conduct of all the northern new comers, there being amongst them many a useful mechanic, merchant, planter, or lawyer; but the greater number came with a degree of presumption, which was in an inverse ratio with their unbounded and absolute ignorance. The creoles, with a proper sense of their own independence, naturally retreated from the intercourse of these intruders. On the other hand, the consequences of an oppressive colonial government, the natural effects of an enervating and sultry climate, could not fail giving to the character of the creoles, a certain tone of passiveness, which makes them an object of interest. They are not capable either of violent passions, or of strong exertions. Gentle and frugal, they abhor drunkenness and gluttony. Their eyes are generally black; but without fire or expression. Their countenances evince neither spirit nor animation; they can boast of very few men of superior talents. Their gait and figure are easy, and their colour generally pale. Though unable to endure great hardships, they are far from being cowards, as the events of the year 1815, and the numerous duels, sufficiently attest. The drawbacks from their character are, an overruling passion for frivolous amusements, an impatience of habit, a tendency for the luxurious enjoyment of the other sex, without being very scrupulous in their choice of either the black or the white race. Their greatest defect, however, is their indifference towards the poor, and towards their own slaves. They treat the former with cold contempt, and cannot easily be induced to assist their fellow-creatures. In this respect they are far inferior to their fellow-citizens of the north, whose example they may follow with much advantage in many things. The Union has already changed much, and the restless and active spirit of their northern fellow-citizens has altered their character, which now partakes much less of the Sybarite, than it formerly did; still, they can never be brought to exercise a mechanical trade, which they consider as below their dignity. The female sex of Louisiana, (the creoles), have in general an interesting appearance. A black languishing eye, colour rather too pale, figure of middle size, which partakes of _en bon point_, and does not exhibit any waist, are the characteristics of the fair sex. With a great deal of vivacity, they show, however, a proper sense of decorum. Adultery is seldom known among the better classes, notwithstanding the many grounds afforded to them by the infidelity of their husbands. As wives and mothers, they are entitled to every praise; they are more moderate in their expenses than the northern ladies, and though always neat and elegantly dressed, they seldom go beyond reasonable bounds. Several instances are known of their having displayed a high degree of fortitude. In sickness and danger, they are the inseparable assistants and companions of their husbands. In literary education, however, they are extremely deficient; and nothing can be more tiresome than a literary _tête a tête_ with a Creole lady. They receive their education in the convent of the Ursalines, where they learn reading, writing, some female works, and the piano-forte. It is superfluous to observe, being descendants from the French, that they are the best dancers in the United States. Americans from other parts of the Union, may be considered as constituting about three-eighths of the present population of the state, and of New Orleans. Brother Jonathan is to be found in all parts of the Union, and properly speaking, nowhere at home. After having settled in one place, at the distance of 1000 miles from his late residence, cleared lands, reared houses, farms, &c., he leaves his spot as soon as a better chance seems to offer itself. He is an adventurer, who would as soon remove to Mexico, or New South Wales, provided he could "make money" by the change. Most of those who settled in Louisiana grew wealthy either as planters or merchants, and really the wealthiest families of Louisiana are at present Americans from other parts of the Union, who likewise hold the most important public stations. The governors, as well as the members of congress, and senators, have hitherto been Americans, from the very natural reason, that the creoles could not speak the English language, although some important offices are filled by the latter. Nothing can exceed or surpass the suppleness of the Yankey; and the refined Frenchmen, with all their dexterity, may still profit from them and their kindred. The emigrant French are numerous in New Orleans. Among them are many very respectable merchants, some lawyers, physicians, &c., the greater part, however, consists of adventurers, hair-dressers, dancing-masters, performers, musicians, and the like. The French are of all men the least valuable acquisition for a new state. Of a lavish and wanton temper, they spend their time in trifles, which are of no importance to any but themselves. Dancing, fighting, riding, and love-making, are the daily occupation of these people. Their influence on a new and unsettled state, whose inhabitants have no correct opinion of true politeness and manners, is far from being advantageous. Without either religion, morality, or even education, they pretend to be the leaders of the _bon ton_, because they came from Paris, and they in general succeed. As for religion and principles, except a sort of _point d'honneur_, they are certainly a most contemptible set, and greatly contribute to promote immorality. There are a great number of Germans in New Orleans. These people, without being possessed of the smallest resources, embarked eight or ten years ago, and after having lost one-half, or three-parts of their comrades during the passage, they were sold as white slaves, or as they are called, Redemptioners, the moment of their arrival. Thus mixed with the negroes in the same kind of labour, they experience no more consideration than the latter; and their conduct certainly deserves no better treatment. Those who did not escape, were driven away by their masters for their immoderate drinking; and all, with few exceptions, were glad to get rid of such dregs. The watchmen and lamp-lighters are Germans, and hundreds of these people fell victims to the fever, between the years 1814 and 1822. The rest of the white population consists of English, Irish, Spaniards, and some Italians, amongst whom are several respectable houses. The free people of colour consist of emancipated slaves; but chiefly of the offspring of an intercourse between the whites and blacks, the cause of which is to be sought in the nature of the climate, where sensual passions are so easily excited. Of these descendants, the females in particular are very handsome, and generally destined for the gratification of the wealthier class of the French and the creoles, as their mothers had been before them. The American seldom or never indulges in such unrestrained pleasures. He usually marries early, and remains faithful to his wife. Of a more steady and religious turn, he pays strict attention to decorum and appearances, with certain isolated exceptions of course; but in general he is more solicitous and careful of his public character than the Frenchman, or foreigner, who has seldom any reputation to lose. The negroes form the lowest class. There are certainly found some amongst them who are entitled to praise for their honesty and fidelity towards their masters; but thousands, on the other hand, will exhibit the vicious nature of a debased and slavish character. There is no doubt, that a malignant and cruel disposition characterises, more or less, this black race. Whether it be inborn, or the result of slavery, I leave to others to decide. All that can be said in favour of emancipation, may be reduced in the compass of these few words: In the present state of things, if the general cultivation of Louisiana, and the southern states, is to proceed successfully, emancipation is impossible. In this climate, no white person could stand the labour; the act of emancipation itself, treacherous and barbarous as the slaves are, would subject their former masters to certain destruction and death. We are, indeed, very far behind hand in the study of the human character, and of the different gradations of the human species. Unjust, as it assuredly was, to traffic in fellow-creatures, as though they were so many heads of cattle, it is equally unjust now to infringe upon a property which has been transmitted from generation to generation, and which time has sanctioned, without adopting some method of public compensation. All that should be required is, that the slaves be treated with humanity--a law might be enacted to that effect. The slaves will then be improved, and become ripe for a state of emancipation, which may be granted at a future period, without danger or inconvenience to their masters. It is, however, to be regretted, that the slave population of Louisiana are not so well treated as in the north. The cupidity of their masters, and their solicitude to make a rapid fortune, subject those poor wretches to an oppressive labour, which they are hardly able to endure. They revolted in Louisiana on three occasions, and several white persons fell victims to their vengeance; they were, however, easily subdued, and the example set by the executions, contributed to restore tranquillity. It is impossible to form an idea of the degree of jealousy with which the southern population watch and defend their rights, touching this point. A question upon the right of a slave, as a human being, is almost one of life and death; and lawyers, whenever they presume to defend slaves, and to hint at their rights, are in imminent danger of being stoned like Jews. Not long ago, a gentleman of the bar, Mr. D--e, was very near meeting this fate. CHAPTER XVI. Public Spirit.--Education.--State of Religious Worship.--Public Entertainments, Theatres, Balls, &c. Heterogeneous as this population may seem, and as it really is, in manners, language, and principles, they all agree in one point--the pursuit after--"money." Americans, English, French, Germans, Spaniards, all come hither--to make money, and to stay here as long as money is to be made. Half the inhabitants may be said to be regularly settled; the rest are half-settlers. Merchants, store-keepers, remain only until they have amassed a fortune answering their expectations, and then remove to their former houses. Others reside here during the winter, to carry on business, and retire to the north in the month of May. That is the case with all the Yankee commission merchants. This has, of course, a sensible and an extensive influence upon the public, and may explain why New Orleans, though one of the wealthiest cities of the Union, is so backward in mental improvement. Even the better Anglo-American families disdain to spend their money in the country where they have earned it, and prefer removing to the north. The institutions for education are consequently inferior to those of any city of equal extent and less wealth, such as Richmond, and even Albany. The only literary institution in the state of Louisiana, the college of New Orleans, is now established, and is intended to be revived at some distance from the capital. Free schools are now (1826) formed in the city, after the manner of the northern states, with a president and professors; and by and bye they will be extended to the rest of the state. Another college, still inferior to the above-mentioned, is superintended by the Catholic clergy. Excepting the elements of reading, writing, mathematics, and latin, it affords no intellectual information. The best of these schools is kept by Mr. Shute, rector of the Episcopalian church, an enlightened and clever man, who fully deserves the popularity he has acquired. Reading, writing, geography, particular and universal history, are taught under his tuition, and in his own rectory. This school, and other private ones where the rudiments are taught, comprehend all the establishments for education in the state. With respect to the female sex, the creoles are educated by the nuns; the Protestant young ladies by some boarding-school mistresses, partly French, partly Americans, who come from the north. The better classes of the Anglo-Americans, however, prefer sending their daughters to a northern establishment, where they remain for two years, and then return to their homes. Among the charitable institutions must be mentioned the Poydras Asylum for young orphan girls, founded in 1804, by Mr. Poydras. The legislature voted 4000 dollars towards it. Sixty girls are now educating in this asylum. Upon the same plan, is a second asylum for boys, where, in 1825, forty were admitted. These, besides the hospital, are the only public institutions for the benefit of the poor. New Orleans has eight newspapers; among these the State, and two other papers, are published in English and French, a fourth in the Spanish, and the rest in the English. The best of them is the Louisiana Advertiser. There is not a place in the Union where religion is so little attended to as in New Orleans. For a population of 40,000 inhabitants, it has only four churches; Philadelphia, with 120,000 inhabitants, reckons upwards of eighty; New York upwards of sixty. The city of Pittsburgh, with a population of 10,000 souls, has ten churches, far superior to those in New Orleans. Among the Protestant churches, the high church is best provided for, and the members of this congregation are said to be liberal, which they are generally found to be. They have recently finished a rectory for their minister, and show that liberality which so eminently distinguishes them. Of the Presbyterians we have spoken before. Though they would run ten times on a Sunday to church, and hear even as many sermons, yet they neither pay their minister, who by the bye is far from being an amiable character, nor redeem their church out of the hands of Israel, but prefer keeping their money to contributing towards such objects. The creoles, who are Catholics, seldom visit their church, and when they do, it is only at Easter. They have a very learned bishop, named Dubourgh, a Frenchman, who is not however very popular, and is spoken of for his gallantries, though a man of sixty. It is whispered about that there is a living proof of this. A more religious character is Pere Antoine, a highly distinguished old Capuchin friar, enjoying universal love and popularity. The manner in which I saw the Governor and the city authorities, with the most respectable persons of the county, behave towards him, does as much credit to them as to the object of their consideration. Of the two theatres, the American is open during five, and the French during eight months in the year. The American theatre has the advantage of becoming more and more national and popular, although at present it is only resorted to by the lower class of the American population; boatmen, Kentuckians, Mississippi traders, and backwoods-men of every description. The pieces are execrably performed. The late Charles Von Weber would not have been much delighted at witnessing the performance of his Der Freyshutz, here metamorphosed into the wild huntsmen of Bohemia. Six violins, which played any thing but music, and some voices far from being human, performed the opera, which was applauded; the Kentuckians expressed their satisfaction in a hurrah, which made the very walls tremble. The interior of the theatre has still a mean appearance. The curtain consists of two sail cloths, and the horrible smell of whiskey and tobacco is a sufficient drawback for any person who would attempt to frequent this place of amusement. The French theatre performs the old classic productions of Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, with the addition of some new ones, such as Regulus, Marie Stuart, and William Tell. The best performer of this theatre, is Madame Clauzel. Towards the close of December, the carnival commences; society balls, masquerades, or routs, besides a number of private balls, are then the order of the day. The first, the third, and the last masquerade, and the society balls, are the most splendid. They are regularly attended by the daughters of the merchants and planters, who at this time come to the city. There is, however, nothing more tiresome than a masked ball in New Orleans. Some young merchants, and sons of planters, took it into their heads to assume the character of poor paddies, and they dressed themselves accordingly. This would have been for the most unaccomplished American or English Miss, a fair opportunity for displaying at least some wit. But the creole Demoiselles, when addressed by their lovers, had not a word to say, except, "Oh, we know that you are no Paddies--You are very respectable--You are the wealthy C." Another would say, "Oh, I know that you are not an Irishman--You are the rich Y." This was the conversation all round. Still more tedious are the public balls given in commemoration of the eighth of January, on the anniversary of the birth-day of Washington, &c. Until last year, and owing to the shyness of the creoles towards their new brothers, the Americans and creoles stood with their ladies apart, neither speaking nor dancing with one another. Last year both parties seemed willing to draw nearer to each other. Even these entertainments, as well as more important affairs, are very subordinate to the all-powerful desire of "making money." This is the final object of every one, and on every occasion. Any pursuit of a different tendency than that of gaining money, is neglected, and deemed unworthy of consideration. That which every town of 2000 inhabitants is now provided with, a reading-room and circulating library, you would seek in vain at New Orleans. Though the Anglo-Americans attempted to establish such an institution, which is indispensable in a great commercial city, it failed through the unwillingness of the creoles to trouble their heads with reading. Churches or theatres are not more patronised. To improve the moral condition is far from their thoughts, every one being bent upon--making money, as quickly as possible, in order the sooner to leave the place. New Orleans, considering its situation, should again be what it was lately, were it not for the detestable selfishness which pervades all classes, and has established a dominion over the mind, as painful as it is disgusting. The complaints about luxury are unfounded. The wealthy inhabitants live by no means in such high style as they do at New York, Boston, and even Richmond, upon a less income. There is no cause for finding fault with their extravagance, or their dissolute manners, not because they have better moral principles, but because they are too selfish to indulge in pleasures that would cost "money," and would mar their principal object, which is to amass it. The American from the north, whilst he inhabits New Orleans, lives in a style far inferior to that in which he indulges at home; and even if he be a permanent settler, he chooses rather to go to the north in order to spend his money there. Only three American houses can be said to receive good company, the rest are creoles. The living in New Orleans, however, is good, though expensive. Board and lodging in a respectable house, will cost sixty dollars a month; in an inferior one, forty. The proper season of business for strangers, and those not accustomed to the climate, is the winter. In the summer, every one retires to the north, or across the lake, only such persons remaining as are compelled from circumstances to do so. CHAPTER XVII. The Climate of Louisiana.--The Yellow Fever. That a country, the fourth part of which consists of marshes, stagnant waters, rivers, and lakes, and which is so near the torrid zone, cannot be altogether healthy, is not to be denied. Although Louisiana is not so salubrious a country as the creoles or settlers inured to the climate, would persuade us that it is; on the other hand it is not the seat of the plague, or of continued disease, as the North Americans or Europeans imagine. Louisiana is no doubt a most agreeable country during the winter and spring. The former commences in December, and continues through January. Rains and showers will sometimes fall, during several successive weeks, snow very seldom. North and north-east winds prevail; a south wind will occasionally change the temperature, on a sudden, from a northern April day to the heat of summer. The coldest winter experienced for twenty years past, was that of the year 1821; the gutters were choked up with ice, and water exposed in buckets, froze to the thickness of an inch and a half. Fahrenheit's thermometer fell to 20° below zero. In this year, the orange, lime, and even fig-trees were destroyed by the frost. Towards the close of January the Mississippi rises, and the ice of the Ohio breaks up. This river, seldom, however, causes an inundation. This is generally reserved for the Missouri, the principal river that empties itself into the Mississippi. With the month of February the spring breaks forth in Louisiana. Frequent rains fall in this month, the vegetation advances astonishingly, and the trees receive their new foliage. On the 1st of March we had potatoes grown in the open fields, pease, beans, and artichokes. South winds prevail alternately with north-west winds. The month of March is undoubtedly the finest season in Louisiana; there are sometimes night frosts, though scarcely felt by any one except the creoles, and the equally tender orange flowers. The thermometer is in this month at 68°-70°. At this time prevails a disease, the influenza, which arises from the sudden alternations of cold and warm weather; it has carried off several persons. It is always necessary to wear cotton shirts, whether in cold or warm weather. Towards the close of March, the fruit-trees have done blooming, the forests are clad in their new verdure, and all nature bursts out in the most exuberant vegetation; every thing develops itself in the country with gigantic strides. Already the musquitoes are beginning to make their troublesome appearance, and musquito bars become necessary. Still the heat is moderate, being cooled by the north winds and the refreshing waters of the Mississippi. May brings with it the heat of a northern summer, moderated however, by cooling north and north-east breezes. The thermometer is at 78° to 80°. At this season, frequent showers and hurricanes coming from the south, rage with the utmost fury in those extensive plains. With the month of June the heats become oppressive; there is not a breath of air to be felt; the musquitos come in millions; one is incessantly pursued by those troublesome insects. The worst, however, is, that they will sometimes force their way through the musquito bars. Nothing is more disagreeable than this buzzing sound, and the pain occasioned by their sting; they keep you from sleeping the whole night. Still they are not so troublesome as the millepedes, an insect whose sting causes a most painful sensation. In the month of July the heat increases. August, September, and October, are dangerous months in New Orleans. A deep silence reigns during this time in the city, most of the stores and magazines are shut up. No one is to be seen in the streets in the day time except negroes and people of colour. No carriage except the funeral hearse. At the approach of evening the doors open, and the inhabitants pour forth, to enjoy the air, and to walk on the Levee above and below the city. The yellow fever has not made its appearance since 1822. It is not the extraordinary heat which causes this baneful disease, the temperature seldom exceeding 100°. In the year 1825, when the thermometer rose in New York and Boston above 108°, it was in New Orleans, no more than 97°. It is the pestilential miasmata which rise from the swamps and marshes, and infect the air to a degree which it is difficult to describe. These oppressive exhalations load the air, and it is almost impossible to draw breath. If a breeze comes at all, it is a south wind, which, from its baneful influence, exhausts the last remaining force after throwing you into a dreadful state of perspiration. The years 1811, 1814, and 1823, were the most terrible of any for New Orleans. From sixty to eighty persons were buried every day, and nothing was to be seen but coffins carried about on all sides. Whole streets in the upper suburb, (inhabited chiefly by Americans and Germans) were cleared of their inhabitants, and New Orleans was literally one vast cemetery. Among the inhabitants, the poorer classes were mostly exposed to the attacks of the unsparing and deadly disease, as their situation did not permit them to stay at home; thus women were for this reason, less exposed to its effects; and least of all the wealthiest inhabitants, who were not compelled to quit their dwellings. The creoles and others who were seasoned to the climate, were little affected. The creole, mulatto, and negro women, are said to be the most skilful in the cure of the disease. In 1822, hundreds of patients died under the hands of the most experienced physicians, when these old women commonly succeeded in restoring their own patients. Their preservatives and medicines are as simple as they are efficacious, and every stranger who intends to stay the summer in New Orleans, should make himself acquainted with one of these women, in case a necessity should arise for requiring their attendance. They give such ample proofs of their superior skill, as to claim in this point a preference over the ablest physicians. The inhabitants are in general forewarned of the approaching disease, by the swarms of musquitoes; although they come in sufficient quantity every summer, they make their appearance in infinitely greater numbers previously to a yellow fever. This is said to have been the case on the three occasions already mentioned. At such a time all business is of course suspended. The port is empty, the stores are shut up. Those officers alone whose presence is indispensable, or who have overcome the yellow fever, will remain with a set of wretches, who, like beasts of prey feed upon the relics of the dead, speculating upon the misery of their fellow creatures so far, as not unfrequently to buy at auctions the very beds upon which they have been known to expire in a few days afterwards. The first rain, succeeded by a little frost, banishes the deadly guest, and every one returns to his former business. It is to be hoped, that this scourge of the land, if it should not be wholly extirpated, will at least become less prevalent for the future. The police regulations adopted during the last four years, have proved very effectual. Among these are a strict attention to cleanliness, watering the streets by means of the gutters, shutting up the grog-shops after nine o'clock; and removing from the city all the poor and houseless people, at the expense of the corporation, as soon as the least indication of approaching infection is perceived. These, and several other wise regulations will, it is hoped, contribute greatly to increase the population, and to give the new comers a firmer guarantee for their lives, than they have hitherto found. When the plans in contemplation shall have been carried into effect, and the swamps behind the city drained, a measure the more beneficial, as the soil of these swamps is beyond all imagination fertile; then the surrounding country, and the city itself, will become as healthy as any other part of the Union. With the increasing population, we have no doubt, that Louisiana will present the same features, as Egypt in former days, bearing, as it does, the most exact resemblance to that country. During six months, and already at the present time, it is a delightful place, successfully resorted to from the north, by persons in a weak state of health. The mildness of the climate, which even during the two winter months, is seldom interrupted by frost, the most luxuriant tropical fruits--bananas, pine-apples, oranges, lemons, figs, cocoa-nuts, &c., partly reared in the country, partly imported in ship loads from the Havannah, a distance of only a few hundred miles; excellent oysters, turtle of the best kind, arriving every hour; fish from the lake Pontchartrain; game, venison of all sorts; vegetables of the finest growth,--all these advantages give New Orleans a superiority over almost every other place. Sobriety, temperance, and moderation in the use of sensual enjoyments, and especially in the intercourse with the sex, with a strict attention to the state of health, and an instant resort to the necessary preservatives in case of derangement in the digestive system,--such are the precautions that will best enable a stranger to guard against the attacks of the disorders incident to this place. CHAPTER XVIII. Hints for Emigrants to Louisiana.--Planters, Farmers, Merchants, and Mechanics. Whoever emigrates from a northern to a southern climate, experiences more or less a change in his constitution; his blood is thinned, and in a state of greater effervescence, and his frame weakened in consequence. The least derangement in the digestive system in this case, produces a bilious fever. The new comers emigrating to Louisiana, are either planters, farmers, merchants, or mechanics. The former, being more or less wealthy, come for the purpose of establishing themselves, and usually buy sugar or cotton lands, on the banks of the Mississippi, or Red-river, which, though in general healthy, are, on the other hand, a sure grave to those who neglect taking the necessary precautions. Planters descend to Louisiana in the winter months; but as the heat increases every moment, and has a debilitating effect upon their bodies, accustomed to a cold climate, they attempt to counterbalance this weakness by an excessive use of spirituous liquors, to promote digestion. Notwithstanding bad omens, and in spite of the advice of their more experienced neighbours, their mania for making money keeps them there during the summer, and they fall victims to their avidity for gain. Whoever intends to establish a plantation in Louisiana, has the free choice between the low lands on the Mississippi, or the Red-river. There are upwards of 200,000 acres of sugar lands still unoccupied. He may settle himself on the banks of the above-mentioned rivers, without the least fear, the yellow fever seldom or never penetrating to the plantations. Thousands of planters live and continue there without experiencing any attack of sickness. After having bought his lands, and obtained possession, he may stay till the month of May, taking the necessary measures for the improvement of the plantation, leave his directions with his overseer, and remove to the north. His house, if along the banks of the Mississippi, should be built not far from the river, in order that he may enjoy the cooling freshness of its waters. In the rear of his plantation, and about his house, he sows the seed of sun-flowers, to preserve his slaves from the morning and night exhalations of the swamps; a measure which, trifling as it may seem, will have an incredible effect in improving the air. With a capital of 25,000 dollars, 5,500_l._ sterling, he may purchase at the present time, 2,000 acres of land, for a sum of from 3 to 4,000 dollars, and thirty stout slaves for 15,000 dollars; there will remain 7,000 for his first year's expenses. The establishment of a sugar plantation amounts to not more than the above stated sum of 25,000 dollars. The produce of the third year, if the plantation be properly managed, amounts to 150,000 pounds of sugar, valued at 12,000 dollars, besides the molasses, the sale of which will cover the household expenses; each negro, therefore, yielding a clear annual income of 400 dollars. Failures in sugar crops in plantations along the banks of the Mississippi, never occur, except beyond 30° 30' of north latitude. The planter, however, cannot expect any thing in the first year from his sugar fields; the canes yielding produce only eighteen months after having been planted. The planting takes place from August until December, by means of eye-slips. The process at the sugar-houses is sufficiently known. These plantations, if well managed and well attended to, are, owing to the great and constant demand for sugar, the surest way of realising a capital, though the management requires considerable care and attention. Cotton plantations are not to be judged according to the same estimate. A cotton plantation may now be established by means of a capital of 10,000 dollars. 3000 dollars for the purchase of 1500 or 2000 acres of land, on the banks of the Mississippi, from Baton Rouge up to the Walnut-hills, on both sides of the river; or what is still preferable, on the banks of the Red-river. Ten slaves at 5000 dollars, leaves 2000 for the first year's current expenses. The beginner will not find it difficult to clear fifty acres in the first twelve months; and to raise from twenty-five acres, thirty bales of cotton, the produce of which will, with the crop of corn from the remaining twenty-five acres, keep him for the first year, the cotton alone being worth 1500 dollars, independently of the corn. The following year he may raise sixty bales, giving an income of 3000 dollars, every slave thereby yielding about 300 dollars; proceeding thus in a manner which in a few years more will render his income equal to his original capital. There are still unappropriated above two millions of acres of cotton lands, of the very first quality, in the state of Louisiana; and though it sometimes happens that the plants are killed by the frosts, as was the case in the spring of 1826, these accidents seldom affect the profits. The management of a cotton plantation is by no means difficult, as it differs but little from that bestowed upon Indian corn, and requires only a strict superintendence over the negroes. The cultivation of indigo has latterly been neglected, though 200,000 acres of land in the state of Louisiana are well adapted for it. This neglect was occasioned by the injurious effects produced upon the labourer by the watering of the plants, and the exhalations from them. The cultivation of rice is more extensive. There are 200,000 acres unoccupied. Planters generally combine the cultivation of this plant with that of cotton or sugar. Tobacco of a superior quality is reared about Natchitoches and Alexandria; the produce is little inferior to that of Cuba. The price of a stout male negro is 500 dollars; if a mechanic, from 6 to 900 dollars; females from 350 to 400 dollars; so that 5000 dollars will purchase five men, two of them mechanics, and five stout women, and enable their master at once to set about a plantation, which will, in the course of three years, double the capital of the owner, without his exposing himself to any risk. The easy way in which the planters of Louisiana are found to accumulate wealth, excites in every one the desire of pursuing the same road, without having the necessary means at command. Hundreds of respectable farmers have paid with their lives for a neglect of this truth. Instigated by the anxiety to become rich, and unable withal to purchase slaves, they were under the necessity of labouring for themselves. The consequence was, they shortly fell victims to their mistaken notions. One can only be seasoned by degrees to the climate of Louisiana. To force the march of time and habit, is impossible. The more stout and healthy the person, the greater the risk. People who, allured by the prospect of wealth, would attempt to work in this climate as they were used to do in the north, would fall sick and die, without having provided for their children, who are then forced upon the charity of strangers. There are many tracts of second-rate land, equal to land of the best quality in the northern states, in the west and east of Louisiana, which are perfectly healthy, and where farmers of less property may buy lands, and establish labour and corn farms, or raise cattle in abundance. Those who have proceeded in this way, which is more proportioned to their means, have never failed to acquire in the course of time, a large fortune, as by the open water communication the produce can easily be conveyed to New Orleans, where, in the summer, they find a ready and advantageous market. These parts have hitherto been too much neglected, to which circumstance it is greatly owing that New Orleans, at certain seasons, is almost destitute of provisions, when the waters of the tributary rivers of the Mississippi, Ohio, &c., are low. A third class of settlers in Louisiana are merchants. New Orleans has unfortunately the credit of being a place to which wealth flows in streams, and it is consequently the resort of all adventurers from Europe and America, who come hither in the expectation, that they have only to be on the spot to make money. Thousands of these ill-fated adventurers have lost their lives in consequence. It is true, that most of the wealthy merchants were needy adventurers, who began with scarcely a dollar in their pockets, as pedlars, who sold pins and glass beads to the Indians. But the surest way for the merchant who wishes to begin with a small capital, will always be to settle in one of the smaller towns, Francisville, Alexandria, Natchitoches, Baton Rouge, &c. Those who have followed this course grew wealthy in a short time. I admit there is an exception with respect to such as have a sufficient capital to begin business with in the city itself, or to embark in commercial relation with Great Britain, the north of the Union, or the continent of Europe. The commission trade is advantageous in the extreme; and the clear income realised in commercial business by several merchants, amounts to 50,000 dollars a year. All the French, English, and Spaniards, who have established themselves in this place, have become rich, especially if the individuals of the latter nations were conversant with the French language. For manufacturers, there is in New Orleans little prospect. In a slave state, where of course hard labour is performed only by slaves, whose food consists of Indian corn, and at the most, of salt meat, and their dress of cotton trowsers, or a blanket rudely adapted to their shapes, the mechanic cannot find sufficient customers. Half of the inhabitants have no need of his assistance; and as he cannot renounce his habits of living on wheat flour, fresh meat, &c., provisions which at certain seasons are very dear in New Orleans, his existence there must be very precarious. The charges are proportionably enormous. The price for the making of a great coat, is from fourteen to sixteen dollars; of a coat, from ten to twelve dollars. The greatest part of the inhabitants, therefore, buy their own dresses ready made in the north. The wealthy alone employ these mechanics. There are yet several trades which would answer well in New Orleans, such as clever tailors, confectioners, &c. But as almost every article is brought into this country, the mechanics have rather a poor chance of succeeding, and if not provided with a sufficient capital, they are exposed to great penury until they can find customers. This class of people are very little respected, and hardly more so than the people of colour in Louisiana. CHAPTER XIX. Geographical Features of the State of Louisiana.--Conclusion. Louisiana lies under the same degree of north latitude as Egypt, and bears a striking resemblance to that country. Their soil, their climate, and their very rivers, exhibit the same features, with the exception, that the Mississippi runs from north to south, whereas the Nile takes an opposite course. Close to the eastern bank of the former, we find a continued series of Cyprus, swamps, and lakes, sometimes intersected by a tributary stream of the Mississippi, with elevated banks or hills. Farther towards the east are large tracts of lands, with pinewoods stretching towards the river Mobile, which resembles the Mississippi in every thing, except in size. Further southward, between the Mississippi and Mobile, we find the rivers Amite, Tickfah, Tangipao, Pearl, Pascagola, emptying themselves into a chain of lakes and swamps, running in a south-east direction from the Mississippi to the mouth of the Mobile. Further to the westward is the Mississippi in its meandering course, its banks lined with plantations from Natchez to New Orleans, each plantation extending half a mile back to the swamps. South of New Orleans, is another chain of swamps, lakes, and bayons, terminating in the gulf of Mexico. West of the Mississippi, a multitude of rivers flow in a thousand windings, lined with impenetrable forests of cyprus, cotton trees, and cedars, intermixed with canebrack and the palmetta. In this labyrinth of rivers, the Red-river, the Arkansas, the White-river, and Tensaw rivers are seen meandering. Farther east are the immense prairies of Opelausas, and Attacapas, interspersed here and there with rising farms, forests along the banks of the Red-river, and more to the westward the great prairies, the resort of innumerable buffaloes and of every kind of game. The Red-river, like the Mississippi, forms an impenetrable series of swamps and lakes. Beyond this river are seen pinewoods, from which issues the Ouachitta, losing itself afterwards in the Delta of the Mississippi. Beyond these pine woods, in a north western direction, rise the Mazernes mountains, extending from the east to west 200 miles, and forming the boundary line between east and west Louisiana. To the north and west of the Red-river, the country is dry and healthy, but of inferior quality; to the east we find a chain of lakes; to the south another chain. In summer they dry up, thus affording fine pasturage to buffaloes. In autumn, with the rising of the rivers, they again fill with water. Southward is a continued lake, intermixed with swamps, which terminate at last in the gulph of Mexico. Louisiana, though the smallest of the states and territories formed out of the ancient Louisiana, is by far the most important, and the central point of the western commonwealth. Its boundaries are, on the south, the Gulph of Mexico; on the west, the Mexican province of Tecas; on the north, the Arkansas territory, and the state of Mississippi; and on the east, the state of Mississippi, and Mexico. The number of inhabitants amounts to 190,000, 106,000 of whom are people of colour. The constitution of the state inclines to Federal. The governor, the senators, and the representatives, in order to be eligible, must be possessed of landed property--the former to the amount of at least 5000 dollars, the next 1000, and the latter 500. Every citizen of the state is qualified to vote. The government in this, as well as in every other state, is divided into three separate branches. The chief magistrate of the state is elected for the term of four years. Under him he has a secretary of state. The present governor is an Anglo-American; Mr. Johnson, the secretary, is a Creole. The legislative branch is composed of the senators, and of the house of representatives. The former consists of sixteen members, elected for the term of four years. They choose from among themselves a president, who takes the place of the governor, in case of the demise of the latter.[K] The house of representatives consists of forty-four members, headed by a speaker; the court of justice of three judges of the district court, a supreme judge of the criminal court of New Orleans, and eight district judges, with an equal number of district attorneys. The sessions are held every Monday. The parish and county courts have twenty-eight county or parish judges, twenty-six sheriffs, and 159 lawyers, to assist them in their labours. In a political view, the acquisition of Louisiana is no doubt the most important occurrence in the United States since the revolution; and, considered altogether, it may be called a second revolution. Independently of the pacific acquisition of a country containing nearly a million and a half of square miles, with the longest river in the world flowing through a valley several thousand miles in length and breadth, their geographical position is now secured, and they form, since the further acquisition of Florida, a whole and compact body, with a coast extending upwards of 1000 miles along the gulph of Mexico, and 500 miles on the Pacific ocean. Whether the vast increase of wealth amassed by most of those who settled on the banks of the Mississippi will prove strong enough to retain this political link unbroken, is very much to be doubted. It is very clear that the inhabitants of the valley of the Mississippi, and especially of Louisiana, entertain a feeling of estrangement from their northern fellow citizens. [K] The governor of Louisiana has 5000 dollars a year: the governors of other states either 2 or 3000 dollars. According to the American money, four dollars forty-four cents make a pound: a dollar has 100 cents. With the exception of a number of respectable Americans, Louisiana and the valley of the Mississippi have hitherto been the refuge of all classes of foreigners, good and bad, who sought here an asylum from oppression and poverty, or from the avenging arm of justice in their native countries. Many have not succeeded in their expectations--many have died--others returned, exasperated against a country which had disappointed their hopes, because they expected to find superior beings, and discovered that they were men neither worse nor better than their habits, propensities, country, climate, and a thousand other circumstances had made them. The fault was theirs. Though there exists not, perhaps, a country in the world where a fortune can be made in an easier way, yet it cannot be made without industry, steadiness, and a small capital to begin with--things in which these people were mostly deficient. And there is another circumstance not to be lost sight of. Whoever changes his country should have before him a complete view and a clear idea of the state in which he intends to settle, as well as of the rest of the Union: he ought to depend upon his own means, on himself in short, and not upon others. Upon no other terms will prosperity and happiness attend the emigrant's exertions in the United States. The foreign mechanic who, emigrating into the United States, selects the states of New York, Pennsylvania, or Ohio, will find sufficient occupation, his trade respected, and his industry rewarded by wealth and political consequence. The manufacturer with a moderate capital, will choose Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and the like places. The merchant who is possessed of 2 or 3000 dollars, and settles in Ohio, in the north western part of Pennsylvania, or over in Illinois, will, if he be prudent and steady, have no reason to complain of the Yankees. The farmer, with a capital of from 3 to 4000 dollars, will fix upon the state of Ohio, in preference to any other, especially if he comes accompanied only by his own family, and is therefore obliged to rely on the friendly assistance of his neighbours. He will there prefer the lands adjacent to navigable rivers, or to the rise of the new canal. If he goes beyond Ohio, he will find eligible situations in Illinois, and in Missouri. Any one who can command a capital exceeding 10,000 dollars, who is not incumbered with a large family, and whose mind does not revolt at the idea of being the owner of slaves, will choose the state of Mississippi, or of Louisiana, and realize there in a short time a fortune beyond his most sanguine expectations. He has his choice there of the unsold lands along the Mississippi, and Red-river, in the parishes of Plaquemines or Bayon Bastier; in the interior, of La Fourche, Iberville, Attacapas, Opelousas, Rapides, Nachitoches, Concordia, New Feliciana, and all the way up the Mississippi, to Walnut-hills, four hundred miles above New Orleans. All that has been urged against the unhealthiness of the country may be answered in these few words. Louisiana, though not at every season of the year equally salubrious, is far healthier than Cuba, Jamaica, and the West Indies in general. Thousands of people live free from the attacks of any kind of fever. On the plantations there is not the least danger.--In New Orleans the yellow fever has not appeared these four years past, and the place is so far from being unhealthy now, that the mortality for the last three years was less in this place than in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Cleanliness, sobriety, a strict attention to the digestive system, and the avoiding of strong liquors, and exposure to heat, or to the rising miasmata, will keep every one as healthy in Louisiana as any where else. The neglect of proper precautions will cause as serious inconvenience in Louisiana as in any other country. This is the real condition of the state, and those acquainted with it will readily bear testimony to the correctness of my opinion, that it holds out not only to British emigrants, but also to capitalists of that country, advantages far surpassing those of their own vast dominions in any quarter of the globe. In Louisiana they should embark a part of their capital, not in land speculations, or in buying extensive tracts, which they have to sell in the course of time in small parcels, but in plantations. These are sources of wealth far superior to the gold mines of Mexico, and are guaranteed by a firm constitution, and by the character and the habits of a liberal people, taken in the whole, whatever John Bull may have to say against it. In this manner may the said John Bull still reap the reward of his having formed and maintained the first settlements in the United States, at a vast expense of blood and treasure. This would be the means of drawing closer the now rather relaxed ties which formerly united him with his kinsman, for Brother Jonathan is neither so bad as John Bull supposes him to be, nor so faultless as he fancies himself.--_Medium tenuere beati._ THE END. TABLE OF THE STATES, COUNTIES, CITIES, TOWNS, AND VILLAGES. _Pittsburgh_, county town of _Alleghany_ county. _Alleghany_ (river), _Monongehela_ (river). _Oeconomy_, Rapp's Settlement in Beaver county. _Zanesville_, capital of _Muskiagum_ county. _New Lancaster_, capital of _Fairfield_ county. _Columbus_, capital of the State of _Ohio_. _Chilicothe_, capital of the _Sciota_ county. _Franklintown_, capital of _Franklin_ county. _Cincinnati_, capital of _Hamilton_ county. _Newport_, capital of _Campbell_ county, in _Kentucky_. _Vevay_, capital of _New Switzerland_ county, in the State of _Indiana_. _Madisonville_, capital of _Jefferson_ county. _Charlestown_, capital of _Clark_ county. _Jeffersonville_, capital of _Floyd_ county. _Clarkesville_ and _New Albany_, villages of _Floyd_ county. _Louisville_, capital of _Jefferson_ county, in _Kentucky_. _Shippingport_ and _Portland_, villages. _Troy_, capital of _Crawford_ county. _Owensborough_, capital of _Henderson_ county. _Harmony_, in _Indiana_, second settlement of _Rapp_, purchased 1823, by _Owen_, of _Lanark_. _Shawneetown_, in the State of _Illinois_. _Fort Massai_, in the State of _Illinois_. _Golconda_, capital of _Pope_ county. _Vienna_, capital of _Johnson_ county. _America_, capital of _Alexander_ county. _Trinity_, village of _Alexander_. _Kaskakia_, _Cahokia_, towns of _Illinois_. _Vandalia_, capital of the State of _Illinois_. _Hamburgh_, village in _Illinois_. _Cape Girardeau_, capital of the county of the same name. _St. Genevieve_ and _Herculaneum_, towns of the State of _Missouri_. _City of St. Louis_, capital of _Missouri_ (the state). _New Madrid_, capital of _New Madrid_ county. _Tennessee_, State of _Nashville_, _Knoxville_, towns of _Tennessee_, and _New Ereesborough_, capital of the State. _Hopefield_, capital of _Hempstead_ county. _St. Helena_, village of _Arkansas_ territory. _Vixburgh_, capital of _Warren_ county. _Warrington_, village of _Warren_ county. _Palmyra Plantations_, _Bruinsburgh_, _Natchez_ (city of), in the State of _Mississippi_. _Gibsonport_, capital of _Gibson_ county. _Baton Rouge_, _Plaquemines_, _Manchac_, _Bayon_, _Tourche_, the former the capital of the county, and the latter bayons. _New Orleans_ (city of), the capital of _Louisiana_. IN CHAPTER XIX. THE FOLLOWING RIVERS OCCUR. _Mobile_--the rivers _Amite_, _Tickfah_, _Tangipao_, _Pearl_, _Pascaguala_, _Arkansas_, _White_ and _Red-River_, _Tensaw_. _Plaquemines_, _Interior of la Tourche_, _Iberville_, _Attacapas_, _Opelousas_, _Rapides_, _Natchitoches_, _Concordia_, _Avoyelles_, _New Feliciana_, _Parishes of Louisiana_. N.B. The Counties in the State of Louisiana, are called Parishes. _Printed by Bradbury & Dent, Bolt-court, Fleet-street._ Transcriber's Note Minor errors in punctuation are corrected silently. In the final table of place names, 'New Ereesborough' is referred to as the state capital of Tennessee. This seems a corruption of 'Murfreesborough', which was the capital until 1826. The following issues, which were deemed printer's errors, and their resolutions are described here: p. ii [t]hroughout] Added. p. 80 approach[e]d Added. p. 82 Baton [D/R]ouge Corrected. p. 99 hickor[i]y Removed. p. 108 backswood-man / backwoods-man Corrected. p. 206 Fran[s]cisville Removed. 
41067	----	HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA VOLUME 11 [Illustration: A MILESTONE ON BRADDOCK'S ROAD [_See page 105, note 19_]] HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA VOLUME 11 Pioneer Roads and Experiences of Travelers (Volume I) BY ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT _With Illustrations_ [Illustration] THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY CLEVELAND, OHIO 1904 COPYRIGHT, 1904 BY THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE 11 I. THE EVOLUTION OF HIGHWAYS: FROM INDIAN TRAIL TO TURNPIKE 15 II. A PILGRIM ON THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD 106 III. ZANE'S TRACE AND THE MAYSVILLE PIKE 151 IV. PIONEER TRAVEL IN KENTUCKY 175 ILLUSTRATIONS I. A MILESTONE ON BRADDOCK'S ROAD _Frontispiece_ II. INDIAN TRAVAIL 19 III. OLD CONESTOGA FREIGHTER 50 IV. EARLIEST STYLE OF LOG TAVERN 87 V. WIDOW MCMURRAN'S TAVERN (Scrub Ridge, Pennsylvania Road) 134 VI. BRIDGE ON WHICH ZANE'S TRACE CROSSED THE MUSKINGUM RIVER AT ZANESVILLE, OHIO 162 VII. PIONEER VIEW OF HOUSES AT FORT CUMBERLAND, MARYLAND 191 PREFACE The first chapter of this volume presents an introduction to the two volumes of this series devoted to Pioneer Roads and Experiences of Travelers. The evolution of American highways from Indian trail to macadamized road is described; the Lancaster Turnpike, the first macadamized road in the United States, being taken as typical of roads of the latter sort. An experience of a noted traveler, Francis Baily, the eminent British astronomer, is presented in chapter two. The third chapter is devoted to the story of Zane's Trace from Virginia to Kentucky across Ohio, and its terminal, the famous Maysville Pike. It was this highway which precipitated President Jackson's veto of the Internal Improvement Bill of 1830, one of the epoch-making vetoes in our economic history. The last chapter is the vivid picture of Kentucky travel drawn by Judge James Hall in his description of "The Emigrants," in _Legends of the West_. The illustrations in this volume have been selected to show styles of pioneer architecture and means of locomotion, including types of earliest taverns, bridges, and vehicles. A. B. H. MARIETTA, OHIO, December 30, 1903. Pioneer Roads and Experiences of Travelers (Volume I) CHAPTER I THE EVOLUTION OF HIGHWAYS: FROM INDIAN TRAIL TO TURNPIKE We have considered in this series of monographs the opening of a number of Historic Roads and the part they played in the development of the most important phases of early American history. But our attitude has been that of one asking, Why?--we have not at proper length considered all that would be contained in the question, How? It will be greatly to our purpose now to inquire into the methods of road-making, and outline, briefly, the evolution of the first trodden paths to the great highways of civilization. From one aspect, and an instructive one, the question is one of width; few, if any, of our roads are longer than those old "threads of soil"--as Holland called the Indian trails; Braddock's Road was not longer than the trail he followed; even the Cumberland Road could probably have been followed its entire length by a parallel Indian path or a buffalo trace. But Braddock's Road was, in its day, a huge, broad track, twelve feet wide; and the Cumberland Road exceeded it in breadth nearly fifty feet. So our study may be pursued from the interesting standpoint of a widening vista; the belt of blue above our heads grows broader as we study the widening of the trail of the Indian. To one who has not followed the trails of the West or the Northland, the experience is always delightful. It is much the same delight as that felt in traversing a winding woodland road, intensified many fold. The incessant change of scenery, the continued surprises, the objects passed unseen yet not unguessed, those half-seen through a leafy vista amid the shimmering green; the pathway just in front very plain, but twenty feet beyond as absolutely hidden from your eyes as though it were a thousand miles away--such is the romance of following a trail. One's mind keeps as active as when looking at Niagara, and it is lulled by the lapsing of those leaves as if by the roar of that cataract. Yet the old trail, unlike our most modern roads, kept to the high ground; even in low places it seemed to attempt a double-bow knot in keeping to the points of highest altitude. But when once on the hills, the vista presented varied only with the altitude, save where hidden by the foliage. We do not choose the old "ridge roads" today for the view to be obtained, and we look continually up while the old-time traveler so often looked down. As we have hinted, elsewhere, many of our pioneer battles--those old battles of the trails--will be better understood when the position of the attacking armies is understood to have been on lower levels, the rifles shooting upward, the enemy often silhouetted against the very sky-line. [Illustration: INDIAN TRAVAIL] But the one characteristic to which, ordinarily, there was no exception, was the narrowness of these ancient routes. The Indian did not travel in single file because there was advantage in that formation; it was because his only routes were trails which he never widened or improved; and these would, ordinarily, admit only of one such person as broke them open. True, the Indians did have broader trails; but they were very local in character and led to maple-sugar orchards or salt wells. From such points to the Indian villages there ran what seemed not unlike our "ribbon roads"--the two tracks made by the "travail"--the two poles with crossbar that dragged on the ground behind the Indian ponies, upon which a little freight could be loaded. In certain instances such roads as these were to be found running between Indian villages and between villages and hunting grounds. They were the roads of times of peace. The war-time trails were always narrow and usually hard--the times of peace came few and far between. As we have stated, so narrow was the trail, that the traveler was drenched with water from the bushes on either hand. And so "blind"--to use a common pioneer word--were trails when overgrown, that they were difficult to find and more difficult to follow. Though an individual Indian frequently marked his way through the forest, for the benefit of others who were to follow him or for his own guidance in returning, the Indian trails in native state were never blazed. Thus, very narrow, exceedingly crooked, often overgrown, worn a foot or more into the ground, lay the routes on which white men built roads which have become historic. Let us note the first steps toward road-building, chronologically. The first phase of road-making (if it be dignified by such a title) was the broadening of the Indian path by the mere passing of wider loads over it. The beginning of the pack-horse era was announced by the need of greater quantities of merchandise and provisions in the West to which these paths led. The heavier the freight tied on either side of the pack-horse, the more were the bushes bruised and worn away, and the more the bed of the trail was tracked and trampled. The increasing of the fur-trade with the East at the beginning of the last half of the eighteenth century necessitated heavier loads for the trading ponies both "going in" and "coming out"--as the pioneers were wont to say. Up to this time, so far as the present writer's knowledge goes, the Indian never lifted a finger to make his paths better in any one respect; it seems probable that, oftentimes, when a stream was to be crossed, which could not be forded, the Indian bent his steps to the first fallen tree whose trunk made a natural bridge across the water. That an Indian never felled such a tree, it is impossible to say; but no such incident has come within my reading. It seems that this must have happened and perhaps was of frequent occurrence. Our first picture, then, of a "blind" trail is succeeded by one of a trail made rougher and a little wider merely by use; a trail over which perhaps the agents of a Croghan or a Gist pushed westward with more and more heavily-loaded pack-horses than had been customarily seen on the trails thither. Of course such trails as began now to have some appearance of roads were very few. As was true of the local paths in Massachusetts and Connecticut and Virginia, so of the long trails into the interior of the continent, very few answered all purposes. Probably by 1750 three routes, running through southwestern Pennsylvania, central Pennsylvania, and central New York, were worn deep and broad. By broad of course we mean that, in many places, pack-horses could meet and pass without serious danger to their loads. But there were, probably, only these three which at this time answered this description. And the wider and the harder they became, the narrower and the softer grew scores of lesser trails which heretofore had been somewhat traversed. It is not surprising that we find the daring missionary Zeisberger going to the Allegheny River like a beast on all fours through overgrown trails, or that Washington, floundering in the fall of 1784 along the upper Monongahela and Cheat Rivers, was compelled to give up returning to the South Branch (of the Potomac) by way of the ancient path from Dunkards Bottom. "As the path it is said is very blind & exceedingly grown up with briers," wrote Washington, September 25, 1784, in his Journal, "I resolved to try the other Rout, along the New Road to Sandy Creek; ..." This offers a signal instance in which an ancient route had become obsolete. Yet the one Washington pursued was not an Appian Way: "... we started at dawning of day, and passing along a small path much enclosed with weeds and bushes, loaded with Water from the overnights rain & the showers which were continually falling, we had an uncomfortable travel...."[1] Such was the "New Road." The two great roads opened westward by the armies of Washington, Braddock, and Forbes, whose history has been dealt with at length in this series, were opened along the line of trails partially widened by the pack-horses of the Ohio Company's agents (this course having been first marked out by Thomas Cresap) and those of the Pennsylvania traders. Another route led up the Mohawk, along the wide Iroquois Trail, and down the Onondaga to the present Oswego; this was a waterway route primarily, the two rivers (with the portage at Rome) offering more or less facilities for shipping the heavy baggage by batteaus. It was a portage path from the Hudson to Lake Ontario; the old landward trail to Niagara not being opened by an army.[2] Yet Braddock's Road, cut in 1755, was quite filled up with undergrowth in 1758 as we have noted. It was "a brush wood, by the sprouts from the old stumps."[3] In those primeval forests a road narrowed very fast, and quickly became impassable if not constantly cared for. The storms of a single fall or spring month and the heavy clouds of snow on the trees in winter kept the ground beneath well littered with broken limbs and branches. Here and there great trees were thrown by the winds across the traveled ways. And so a military road over which thousands may have passed would become, if left untouched, quite as impassable as the blindest trail in a short time. Other Indian trails which armies never traversed became slightly widened by agents of land companies, as in the case of Boone blazing his way through Cumberland Gap for Richard Henderson. For a considerable distance the path was widened, either by Boone or Martin himself, to Captain Joseph Martin's "station" in Powell's Valley. Thousands of traces were widened by early explorers and settlers who branched off from main traveled ways, or pushed ahead on an old buffalo trail; the path just mentioned, which Washington followed, was a buffalo trail, but had received the name of an early pioneer and was known as "McCulloch's Path." But our second picture holds good through many years--that trail, even though armies had passed over it, was still but a widened trail far down into the early pioneer days. Though wagons went westward with Braddock and Forbes, they were not seen again in the Alleghenies for more than twenty-five years. These were the days of the widened trails, the days of the long strings of jingling ponies bearing patiently westward salt and powder, bars of bended iron, and even mill-stones, and bringing back to the East furs and ginseng. Of this pack-saddle era--this age of the widened trail--very little has been written, and it cannot be passed here without a brief description. In Doddridge's _Notes_ we read: "The acquisition of the indispensable articles of salt, iron, steel and castings presented great difficulties to the first settlers of the western country. They had no stores of any kind, no salt, iron, nor iron works; nor had they money to make purchases where these articles could be obtained. Peltry and furs were their only resources before they had time to raise cattle and horses for sale in the Atlantic states. Every family collected what peltry and fur they could obtain throughout the year for the purpose of sending them over the mountains for barter. In the fall of the year, after seeding time, every family formed an association with some of their neighbors, for starting the little caravan. A master driver was to be selected from among them, who was to be assisted by one or more young men and sometimes a boy or two. The horses were fitted out with pack-saddles, to the latter part of which was fastened a pair of hobbles made of hickory withes--a bell and collar ornamented their necks. The bags provided for the conveyance of the salt were filled with feed for the horses; on the journey a part of this feed was left at convenient stages on the way down, to support the return of the caravan. Large wallets well filled with bread, jerk, boiled ham, and cheese furnished provision for the drivers. At night, after feeding, the horses, whether put in pasture or turned out into the woods, were hobbled and the bells were opened [unstuffed].... Each horse carried [back] two bushels of alum salt, weighing eighty-four pounds to the bushel." Another writer adds: "The caravan route from the Ohio river to Frederick [Maryland] crossed the stupendous ranges of the ... mountains.... The path, _scarcely two feet wide_, and travelled by horses in single file, roamed over hill and dale, through mountain defile, over craggy steeps, beneath impending rocks, and around points of dizzy heights, where one false step might hurl horse and rider into the abyss below. To prevent such accidents, the bulky baggage was removed in passing the dangerous defiles, to secure the horse from being thrown from his scanty foothold.... The horses, with their packs, were marched along in single file, the foremost led by the leader of the caravan, while each successive horse was tethered to the pack-saddle of the horse before him. A driver followed behind, to keep an eye upon the proper adjustment of the packs." The Pennsylvania historian Rupp informs us that in the Revolutionary period "five hundred pack-horses had been at one time in Carlisle [Pennsylvania], going thence to Shippensburg, Fort Loudon, and further westward, loaded with merchandise, also salt, iron, &c. The pack-horses used to carry bars of iron on their backs, crooked over and around their bodies; barrels or kegs were hung on each side of these. Colonel Snyder, of Chambersburg, in a conversation with the writer in August, 1845, said that he cleared many a day from $6 to $8 in crooking or bending iron and shoeing horses for western carriers at the time he was carrying on a blacksmith shop in the town of Chambersburg. The pack-horses were generally led in divisions of 12 or 15 horses, carrying about two hundred weight each ...; when the bridle road passed along declivities or over hills, the path was in some places washed out so deep that the packs or burdens came in contact with the ground or other impending obstacles, and were frequently displaced." Though we have been specifically noticing the Alleghenies we have at the same time described typical conditions that apply everywhere. The widened trail was the same in New England as in Kentucky or Pennsylvania--in fact the same, at one time, in old England as in New England. Travelers between Glasgow and London as late as 1739 found no turnpike till within a hundred miles of the metropolis. Elsewhere they traversed narrow causeways with an unmade, soft road on each side. Strings of pack-horses were occasionally passed, thirty or forty in a train. The foremost horse carried a bell so that travelers in advance would be warned to step aside and make room. The widened pack-horse routes were the main traveled ways of Scotland until a comparatively recent period. "When Lord Herward was sent, in 1760, from Ayrshire to the college at Edinburgh, the road was in such a state that servants were frequently sent forward with poles to sound the depths of the mosses and bogs which lay in their way. The mail was regularly dispatched between Edinburgh and London, on horseback, and went in the course of five or six days." In the sixteenth century carts without springs could not be taken into the country from London; it took Queen Henrietta four days to traverse Watling Street to Dover. Of one of Queen Elizabeth's journeys it is said: "It was marvelous for ease and expedition, for such is the perfect evenness of the new highway that Her Majesty left the coach only once, while the hinds and the folk of baser sort lifted it on their poles!" A traveler in an English coach of 1663 said: "This travel hath soe indisposed mee, yt I am resolved never to ride up againe in ye coatch." Thus the widened trail or bridle-path, as it was commonly known in some parts, was the universal predecessor of the highway. It needs to be observed, however, that winter travel in regions where much snow fell greatly influenced land travel. The buffalo and Indian did not travel in the winter, but white men in early days found it perhaps easier to make a journey on sleds in the snow than at any other time. In such seasons the bridle-paths were, of course, largely followed, especially in the forests; yet in the open, with the snow a foot and more in depth, many short cuts were made along the zig-zag paths and in numerous instances these short cuts became the regular routes thereafter for all time. An interesting instance is found in the "Narrative of Andrew J. Vieau, Sr.:" "This path between Green Bay [Wisconsin] and Milwaukee was originally an Indian trail, and very crooked; but the whites would straighten it by cutting across lots each winter with their jumpers [rude boxes on runners], wearing bare streaks through the thin covering [of snow], to be followed in the summer by foot and horseback travel along the shortened path."[4] This form of traveling was, of course, unknown save only where snow fell and remained upon the ground for a considerable time. Throughout New York State travel on snow was common and in the central portion of the state, where there was much wet ground in the olden time, it was easier to move heavy freight in the winter than in summer when the soft ground was treacherous. Even as late as the building of the Erie Canal in the second and third decades of the nineteenth century--long after the building of the Genesee Road--freight was hauled in the winter in preference to summer. In the annual report of the comissioners of the Erie Canal, dated January 25, 1819, we read that the roads were so wretched between Utica and Syracuse in the summer season that contractors who needed to lay up a supply of tools, provisions, etc., for their men, at interior points, purchased them in the winter before and sent the loads onward to their destinations in sleighs.[5] One of the reasons given by the Erie Canal commissioners for delays and increased expenses in the work on the canal in 1819, in their report delivered to the legislature February 18, 1820, was that the absence of snow in central New York in the winter of 1818-19 prevented the handling of heavy freight on solid roads; "no hard snow path could be found."[6] The soft roads of the summer time were useless so far as heavy loads of lumber, stone, lime, and tools were concerned. No winter picture of early America is so vivid as that presented by the eccentric Evans of New Hampshire, who, dressed in his Esquimau suit, made a midwinter pilgrimage throughout the country lying south of the Great Lakes from Albany to Detroit in 1818.[7] His experiences in moving across the Middle West with the blinding storms, the mountainous drifts of snow, the great icy cascades, the hurrying rivers, buried out of sight in their banks of ice and snow, and the far scattered little settlements lost to the world, helps one realize what traveling in winter meant in the days of the pioneer. The real work of opening roads in America began, of course, on the bridle-paths in the Atlantic slope. In 1639 a measure was passed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony reading: "Whereas the highways in this jurisdiction have not been laid out with such conveniency for travellers as were fit, nor as was intended by this court, but that in some places they are felt too straight, and in other places travelers are forced to go far about, it is therefore, ordered, that all highways shall be laid out before the next general court, so as may be with most ease and safety for travelers; and for this end every town shall choose two or three men, who shall join with two or three of the next town, and these shall have power to lay out the highways in each town where they may be most convenient; and those which are so deputed shall have power to lay out the highways where they may be most convenient, notwithstanding any man's propriety, or any corne ground, so as it occasion not the pulling down of any man's house, or laying open any garden or orchard; and in common [public] grounds, or where the soil is wet or miry, they shall lay out the ways the wider, as six, or eight, or ten rods, or more in common grounds." With the establishment of the government in the province of New York in 1664 the following regulation for road-making was established, which also obtained in Pennsylvania until William Penn's reign began: "In all public works for the safety and defence of the government, or the necessary conveniencies of bridges, highways, and common passengers, the governor or deputy governor and council shall send warrents to any justice, and the justices to the constable of the next town, or any other town within that jurisdiction, to send so many laborers and artificers as the warrent shall direct, which the constable and two others or more of the overseers shall forthwith execute, and the constable and overseers shall have power to give such wages as they shall judge the work to deserve, provided that no ordinary laborer shall be compelled to work from home above one week together. No man shall be compelled to do any public work or service unless the press [impressment] be grounded upon some known law of this government, or an act of the governor and council signifying the necessity thereof, in both which cases a reasonable allowance shall be made." A later amendment indicates the rudeness of these early roads: "The highways to be cleared as followeth, viz., the way to be made clear of standing and lying trees, at least ten feet broad; all stumps and shrubs to be cut close by the ground. The trees marked yearly on both sides--sufficient bridges to be made and kept over all marshy, swampy, and difficult dirty places, and whatever else shall be thought more necessary about the highways aforesaid." In Pennsylvania, under Penn, the grand jury laid out the roads, and the courts appointed overseers and fence-viewers, but in 1692 the townships were given the control of the roads. Eight years later the county roads were put in the hands of the county justices, and king's highways in the hands of the governor and his council. Each county was ordered to erect railed bridges at its expense over rivers, and to appoint its own overseers and fence-viewers. Even the slightest mention of these laws and regulations misrepresents the exact situation. Up to the time of the Revolutionary War it can almost be said that nothing had been done toward what we today know as road-building. Many routes were cleared of "standing and lying trees" and "stumps and shrubs" were cut "close by the ground"--but this only widened the path of the Indian and was only a faint beginning in road-building. The skiff, batteau, and horse attached to a sleigh or sled in winter, were the only, common means of conveying freight or passengers in the colonies at this period. We have spoken of the path across the Alleghenies in 1750 as being but a winding trace; save for the roughness of the territory traversed it was a fair road for its day, seek where the traveler might. In this case, as in so many others, the history of the postal service in the United States affords us most accurate and reliable information concerning our economic development. In the year mentioned, 1750, the mail between New York and Philadelphia was carried only once a week in summer and twice a month in winter. Forty years later there were only eighteen hundred odd miles of post roads in the whole United States. At that time (1790) only five mails a week passed between New York and Philadelphia. It may be said, loosely, that the widened trail became a road when wheeled vehicles began to pass over it. Carts and wagons were common in the Atlantic seaboard states as early and earlier than the Revolution. It was at the close of that war that wagons began to cross the Alleghenies into the Mississippi Basin. This first road was a road in "the state of nature." Nothing had been done to it but clearing it of trees and stumps. Yet what a tremendous piece of work was this. It is more or less difficult for us to realize just how densely wooded a country this was from the crest of the Alleghenies to the seaboard on the east, and from the mountains to central Indiana and Kentucky on the west. The pioneers fought their way westward through wood, like a bullet crushing through a board. Every step was retarded by a live, a dying, or a dead branch. The very trees, as if dreading the savage attack of the white man on the splendid forests of the interior, held out their bony arms and fingers, catching here a jacket and there a foot, in the attempt to stay the invasion of their silent haunts. These forests were very heavy overhead. The boughs were closely matted, in a life-and-death struggle for light and air. The forest vines bound them yet more inextricably together, until it was almost impossible to fell a tree with out first severing the huge arms which were bound fast to its neighbors. This dense overgrowth had an important influence over the pioneer traveler. It made the space beneath dark; the gloom of a real forest is never forgotten by the "tenderfoot" lumberman. The dense covering overhead made the forests extremely hot in the dog days of summer; no one can appreciate what "hot weather" means in a forest where the wind cannot descend through the trees save those who know our oldest forests. What made the forests hot in summer, on the other hand, tended to protect them from winter winds in cold weather. Yet, as a rule, there was little pioneer traveling in the Allegheny forests in winter. From May until November came the months of heaviest traffic on the first widened trails through these gloomy, heated forest aisles. It can be believed there was little tree-cutting on these first pioneer roads. Save in the laurel regions of the Allegheny and Cumberland Mountains, where the forest trees were supplanted by these smaller growths, there was little undergrowth; the absence of sunlight occasioned this, and rendered the old forest more easily traversed than one would suppose after reading many accounts of pioneer life. The principal interruption of travelers on the old trails was in the form of fallen trees and dead wood which had been brought to the ground by the storms. With the exception of the live trees which were blown over, these forms of impediment to travel were not especially menacing; the dead branches crumbled before an ax. The trees which were broken down or uprooted by the winds, however, were obstructions difficult to remove, and tended to make pioneer roads crooked, as often perhaps as standing trees. We can form some practical notion of the dangerous nature of falling trees by studying certain of the great improvements which were early projected in these woods. The Allegheny Portage Railway over the mountains of Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, and the Erie Canal in central New York, both offer illustrations to the point. The portage track was sent through an unbroken, uninhabited forest wilderness from Hollidaysburg to Johnstown in the twenties. In order to render the inclines safe from falling trees and breaking branches, a swath through the woods was cut one hundred and twenty feet wide.[8] The narrow trellis of the inclines scaled the mountain in the center of this avenue; wide as it was, a tree fifty feet long could have swept it away like paper. The Erie Canal was to be forty feet in width; a clean sixty foot aisle was opened through the forests before the digging could begin. Of course nothing like this could be done for pioneer highways; when the states began to appropriate money for state roads, then the pioneer routes were straightened by cutting some trees. It was all the scattered communities could do before this period to keep the falling trees and branches from blocking the old roads. Travelers wound in and out on one of the many tracks, stumbling, slipping, grinding on the roots, going around great trees that had not been removed, and keeping to the high ground when possible, for there the forest growth was less dense. The question immediately arises, What sort of vehicle could weather such roads? First in the van came the great clumsy cart, having immensely high and solid wooden wheels. These were obtained either by taking a thin slice from the butt of the greatest log that could be found in good condition, or by being built piecemeal by rude carpenters. These great wheels would go safely wherever oxen could draw them, many of their hubs being three feet from the ground. Thus the body of the cart would clear any ordinary brook and river at any ford which horses or oxen could cross. No rocks could severely injure such a massy vehicle, at the rate it usually moved, and no mere rut could disturb its stolid dignity. Like the oxen attached to it, the pioneer cart went on its lumbering way despising everything but bogs, great tree boles and precipices. These creaking carts could proceed, therefore, nearly on the ancient bridle-path of the pack-horse age. On the greater routes westward the introduction of wheeled vehicles necessitated some changes; now and then the deep-worn passage-way was impassable, and detours were made which, at a later day, became the main course. Here, where the widened trail climbed a steeper "hog-back" than usual, the cart-drivers made a roundabout road which was used in dry weather. There, where the old trail wound about a marshy piece of ground in all weathers, the cart-drivers would push on in a straight line during dry seasons. Thus the typical pioneer road even before the day of wagons was a many-track road and should most frequently be called a route--a word we have so frequently used in this series of monographs. Each of the few great historic roads was a route which could have been turned into a three, four, and five track course in very much the same way as railways become double-tracked by uniting a vast number of side-tracks. The most important reason for variation of routes was the wet and dry seasons; in the wet season advantage had to be taken of every practicable altitude. The Indian or foot traveler could easily gain the highest eminence at hand; the pack-horse could reach many but not all; the "travail" and cart could reach many, while the later wagon could climb only a few. In dry weather the low ground offered the easiest and quickest route. As a consequence every great route had what might almost be called its "wet" and "dry" roadways. In one of the early laws quoted we have seen that in wet or miry ground the roads should be laid out "six, eight, or ten rods [wide]," though elsewhere ten or twelve feet was considered a fair width for an early road. As a consequence, even before the day of wagons, the old routes of travel were often very wide, especially in wet places; in wet weather they were broader here than ever. But until the day of wagons the track-beds were not so frequently ruined. Of this it is now time to speak. By 1785 we may believe the great freight traffic by means of wagons had fully begun across the Alleghenies at many points. It is doubtful if anywhere else in the United States did "wagoning" and "wagoners" become so common or do such a thriving trade as on three or four trans-Allegheny routes between 1785 and 1850. The Atlantic Ocean and the rivers had been the arteries of trade between the colonies from the earliest times. The freight traffic by land in the seaboard states had amounted to little save in local cases, compared with the great industry of "freighting" which, about 1785, arose in Baltimore and Philadelphia and concerned the then Central West. This study, like that of our postal history, throws great light on the subject in hand. Road-building, in the abstract, began at the centers of population and spread slowly with the growth of population. For instance, in Revolutionary days Philadelphia was, as it were, a hub and from it a number of important roads, like spokes, struck out in all directions. Comparatively, these were few in number and exceedingly poor, yet they were enough and sufficiently easy to traverse to give Washington a deal of trouble in trying to prevent the avaricious country people from treacherously feeding the British invaders. These roads out from Philadelphia, for instance, were used by wagons longer distances each year. Beginning back at the middle of the eighteenth century it may be said that the wagon roads grew longer and the pack-horse routes or bridle-paths grew shorter each year. The freight was brought from the seaboard cities in wagons to the end of the wagon roads and there transferred to the pack-saddles. Referring to this era we have already quoted a passage in which it is said that five hundred pack-horses have been seen at one time at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. For a longer period than was perhaps true elsewhere, Carlisle was the end of the wagon road westward. A dozen bridle-paths converged here. Here all freight was transferred to the strings of patient ponies. Loudon, Pennsylvania, was another peculiar borderland depot later on. It will be remembered that when Richard Henderson and party advanced to Kentucky in 1775 they were able to use wagons as far as Captain Joseph Martin's "station" in Powell's Valley. At that point all freight had to be transferred to the backs of ponies for the climb over the Cumberlands. In the days of Marcus Whitman, who opened the first road across the Rocky Mountains, Fort Laramie, Wyoming, was the terminus of wagon travel in the far West. Thus pioneer roads unfolded, as it were, joint by joint, the rapidity depending on the volume of traffic, increase of population, and topography. [Illustration: OLD CONESTOGA FREIGHTER] The first improvement on these greater routes, after the necessary widening, was to enable wagons to avoid high ground. Here and there wagons pushed on beyond the established limit, and, finding the way not more desperate than much of the preceding "road," had gone on and on, until at last wagons came down the western slopes of the Alleghenies, and wagon traffic began to be considered possible--much to the chagrin of the cursing pack-horse men. No sooner was this fact accomplished than some attention was paid to the road. The wagons could not go everywhere the ponies or even the heavy carts had gone. They could not climb the steep knolls and remain on the rocky ridges. The lower grounds were, therefore, pursued and the wet grounds were made passable by "corduroying"--laying logs closely together to form a solid roadbed. So far as I can learn this work was done by everybody in particular and nobody in general. Those who were in charge of wagons were, of course, the most interested in keeping them from sinking out of sight in the mud-holes. When possible, such places were skirted; when high or impassable ground prevented this, the way was "corduroyed." We have spoken of the width of old-time bridle-paths; with the advent of the heavy freighter these wide routes were doubled and trebled in width. And, so long as the roadbeds remained in a "state of nature," the heavier the wagon traffic, the wider the roads became. We have described certain great tracks, like that of Braddock's Road, which can be followed today even in the open by the lasting marks those plunging freighters made in the soft ground. They suggest in their deep outline what the old wagon roads must have been; yet it must be remembered that only what we may call the main road is visible today--the innumerable side-tracks being obliterated because not so deeply worn. In a number of instances on Braddock's Road plain evidence remains of these side-tracks. Judging then from this evidence, and from accounts which have come down to us, the introduction of the freighter with its heavier loads and narrower wheels turned the wide, deeply worn bridle-paths and cart tracks into far wider and far deeper courses. The corduroy road had a tendency to contract the route, but even here, where the ground was softest, it became desperate traveling. Where one wagon had gone, leaving great black ruts behind it, another wagon would pass with greater difficulty leaving behind it yet deeper and yet more treacherous tracks. Heavy rains would fill each cavity with water, making the road nothing less than what in Illinois was known as a "sloo." The next wagoner would, therefore, push his unwilling horses into a veritable slough, perhaps having explored it with a pole to see if there was a bottom to be found there. In some instances the bottoms "fell out," and many a reckless driver has lost his load in pushing heedlessly into a bottomless pit. In case a bottom could be found the driver pushes on; if not, he finds a way about; if this is not possible he throws logs into the hole and makes an artificial bottom over which he proceeds. We can hardly imagine what it meant to get stalled on one of the old "hog wallow" roads on the frontier. True, many of our country roads today offer bogs quite as wide and deep as any ever known in western Virginia or Pennsylvania; and it is equally true that roads were but little better in the pioneer era on the outskirts of Philadelphia and Baltimore than far away in the mountains. It remains yet for the present writer to find a sufficiently barbarous incident to parallel one which occurred on the Old York (New York) Road just out of Philadelphia, in which half a horse's head was pulled off in attempting to haul a wagon from a hole in the road. "Jonathan Tyson, a farmer of 68 years of age [in 1844], of Abington, saw, at 16 years of age, much difficulty in going to the city [Philadelphia on York Road]: a dreadful mire of blackish mud rested near the present Rising Sun village.... He saw there the team of Mr. Nickum, of Chestnut hill, stalled; and in endeavoring to draw out the forehorse with an iron chain to his head, it slipped and tore off the lower jaw, and the horse died on the spot. There was a very bad piece of road nearer to the city, along the front of the Norris estate. It was frequent to see there horses struggling in mire to their knees. Mr. Tyson has seen thirteen lime wagons at a time stopped on the York road, near Logan's hill, to give one another assistance to draw through the mire; and the drivers could be seen with their trowsers rolled up, and joining team to team to draw out; at other times they set up a stake in the middle of the road to warn off wagons from the quicksand pits. Sometimes they tore down fences, and made new roads through the fields."[9] If such was the case almost within the city limits of Philadelphia, it is not difficult to realize what must have been the conditions which obtained far out on the continental routes. It became a serious problem to get stalled in the mountains late in the day; assistance was not always at hand--indeed the settlements were many miles apart in the early days. Many a driver, however, has been compelled to wade in, unhitch his horses, and spend the night by the bog into which his freight was settling lower and lower each hour. Fortunate he was if early day brought assistance. Sometimes it was necessary to unload wholly or in part, before a heavy wagon, once fairly "set," could be hauled out. Around such treacherous places ran a vast number of routes some of which were as dangerous--because used once too often--as the central track. In some places detours of miles in length could be made. A pilot was needed by every inexperienced person, and many blundering wiseacres lost their entire stock of worldly possessions in the old bogs and "sloos" and swamps of the "West." A town in Indiana was "very appropriately" named Mudholes, a name that would have been the most common in the country a century ago if only descriptive names had been allowed.[10] The condition of pioneer roads did, undoubtedly, influence the beginnings of towns and cities. On the longer routes it will be found that the steep hills almost invariably became the sites of villages because of physical conditions. "Long-a-coming," a New Jersey village, bore a very appropriate name.[11] The girls of Sussex, England, were said to be exceedingly long-limbed, and a facetious wag affirmed the reason to be that the Sussex mud was so deep and sticky that in drawing out the foot "by the strength of the ancle" the muscles, and then the bones, of the leg were lengthened! In 1708 when Prince George of Denmark went to meet Charles the Seventh of Spain traveling by coach, he traveled at the rate of nine miles in six hours--a tribute to the strength of Sussex mud. Charles Augustus Murray, in his _Travels in North America_, leaves us a humorous account of the mud-holes in the road from the Potomac to Fredericksburg, Maryland, and his experience upon it: "On the 27th of March I quitted Washington, to make a short tour in the districts of Virginia adjacent to the James River; comprising Richmond, the present capital, Williamsburgh, the former seat of colonial government, Norfolk, and other towns. "The first part of the journey is by steam-boat, descending the Potomac about sixty miles. The banks of this river, after passing Mount Vernon, are uninteresting, and I did not regret the speed of the Champion, which performed that distance in somewhat less than five hours; but this rate of travelling was amply neutralized by the movement of the stage which conveyed me from the landing-place to Fredericsburgh. I was informed that the distance was only twelve miles, and I was weak enough (in spite of my previous experience) to imagine that two hours would bring me thither, especially as the stage was drawn by six good nags, and driven by a lively cheerful fellow; but the road bade defiance to all these advantages--it was, indeed, such as to compel me to laugh out-right, notwithstanding the constant and severe bumping to which it subjected both the intellectual and sedentary parts of my person. "I had before tasted the sweets of mud-holes, huge stones, and remnants of pine-trees standing and cut down; but here was something new, namely, a bed of reddish-coloured clay, from one to two feet deep, so adhesive that the wheels were at times literally not visible in any one spot from the box to the tire, and the poor horses' feet sounded, when they drew them out (as a fellow-traveller observed), like the report of a pistol. I am sorry that I was not sufficiently acquainted with chemistry or mineralogy to analyze that wonderful clay and state its constituent parts; but if I were now called upon to give a receipt for a mess most nearly resembling it, I would write, 'Recipe--(nay, I must write the ingredients in English, for fear of taxing my Latin learning too severely)-- Ordinary clay 1 lb. Do. Pitch 1 lb. Bird-lime 6 oz. Putty 6 oz. Glue 1 lb. Red lead, or _colouring_ matter 6 oz. Fiat haustus--ægrot. terq. quaterq. quatiend.' "Whether the foregoing, with a proper admixture of hills, holes, stumps, and rocks, made a satisfactory _draught_ or not, I will refer to the unfortunate team--I, alas! can answer for the effectual application of the second part of the prescription, according to the Joe Miller version of 'When taken, to be well shaken!' "I arrived, however, without accident or serious bodily injury, at Fredericsburgh, having been _only_ three hours and a half in getting over the said twelve miles; and, in justice to the driver, I must say that I very much doubt whether any crack London whip could have driven those horses over that ground in the same time: there is not a sound that can emanate from human lungs, nor an argument of persuasion that can touch the feelings of a horse, that he did not employ, with a perseverance and success which commanded my admiration." Fancy these wild, rough routes which, combined, often covered half an acre, and sometimes spread out to a mile in total width, in freezing weather when every hub and tuft was as solid as ice. How many an anxious wagoner has pushed his horses to the bitter edge of exhaustion to gain his destination ere a freeze would stall him as completely as if his wagon-bed lay on the surface of a "quicksand pit." A heavy load could not be sent over a frozen pioneer road without wrecking the vehicle. Yet in some parts the freight traffic had to go on in the winter, as the hauling of cotton to market in the southern states. Such was the frightful condition of the old roads that four and five yoke of oxen conveyed only a ton of cotton so slowly that motion was almost imperceptible; and in the winter and spring, it has been said, with perhaps some tinge of truthfulness, that one could walk on dead oxen from Jackson to Vicksburg. The Bull-skin Road of pioneer days leading from the Pickaway Plains in Ohio to Detroit was so named from the large number of cattle which died on the long, rough route, their hides, to exaggerate again, lining the way. In our study of the Ohio River as a highway it was possible to emphasize the fact that the evolution of river craft indicated with great significance the evolution of social conditions in the region under review; the keel-boat meant more than canoe or pirogue, the barge or flat-boat more than the keel-boat, the brig and schooner more than the barge, and the steamboat far more than all preceding species. We affirmed that the change of craft on our rivers was more rapid than on land, because of the earlier adaptation of steam to vessels than to vehicles. But it is in point here to observe that, slow as were the changes on land, they were equally significant. The day of the freighter and the corduroy road was a brighter day for the expanding nation than that of the pack-horse and the bridle-path. The cost of shipping freight by pack-horses was tremendous. In 1794, during the Whiskey Insurrection in western Pennsylvania, the cost of shipping goods to Pittsburg by wagon ranged from five to ten dollars per hundred pounds; salt sold for five dollars a bushel, and iron and steel from fifteen to twenty cents per pound in Pittsburg. What must have been the price when one horse carried only from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty pounds? The freighter represented a growing population and the growing needs of the new empire in the West. The advent of the stagecoach marked a new era as much in advance of the old as was the day of the steamboat in advance of that of the barge and brig of early days. The social disturbance caused by the introduction of coaches on the pioneer roads of America gives us a glimpse of road conditions at this distant day to be gained no other way. A score of local histories give incidents showing the anger of those who had established the more important pack-horse lines across the continent at the coming of the stage. Coaches were overturned and passengers were maltreated; horses were injured, drivers were chastised and personal property ruined. Even while the Cumberland Road was being built the early coaches were in danger of assault by the workmen building the road, incited, no doubt, by the angry pack-horse men whose profession had been eclipsed. It is interesting in this connection to look again back to the mother-country and note the unrest which was occasioned by the introduction of stagecoaches on the bridle-paths of England. Early coaching there was described as destructive to trade, prejudicial to landed interests, destructive to the breed of horses,[11*] and as an interference with public resources. It was urged that travelers in coaches got listless, "not being able to endure frost, snow or rain, or to lodge in the fields!" Riding in coaches injured trade since "most gentlemen, before they travelled in coaches, used to ride with swords, belts, pistols, holsters, portmanteaus, and hat-cases, which, in these coaches, they have little or no occasion for: for, when they rode on horseback, they rode in one suit and carried another to wear when they came to their journey's end, or lay by the way; but in coaches a silk suit and an Indian gown, with a sash, silk stockings, and beaver hats, men ride in and carry no other with them, because they escape the wet and dirt, which on horseback they cannot avoid; whereas in two or three journeys on horseback, these clothes and hats were wont to be spoiled; which done, they were forced to have new very often, and that increased the consumption of the manufacturers; which travelling in coaches doth in no way do." If the pack-horse man's side of the question was not advocated with equally marvelous arguments in America we can be sure there was no lack of debate on the question whether the stagecoach was a sign of advancement or of deterioration. For instance, the mails could not be carried so rapidly by coach as by a horseman; and when messages were of importance in later days they were always sent by an express rider. The advent of the wagon and coach promised to throw hundreds of men out of employment. Business was vastly facilitated when the freighter and coach entered the field, but fewer "hands" were necessary. Again, the horses which formerly carried the freight of America on their backs were not of proper build and strength to draw heavy loads on either coach or wagon. They were ponies; they could carry a few score pounds with great skill over blind and ragged paths, but they could not draw the heavy wagons. Accordingly hundreds of owners of pack-horses were doomed to see an alarming deterioration in the value of their property when great, fine coach horses were shipped from distant parts to carry the freight and passenger loads of the stagecoach day. The change in form of American vehicles was small but their numbers increased within a few years prodigiously. Nominally this era must be termed that of the macadamized road, or roads made of layers of broken stone like the Cumberland Road. These roads were wider than any single track of any of the routes they followed, though thirty feet was the average maximum breadth. To a greater degree than would be surmised, the courses of the old roads were followed. It has been said that the Cumberland Road, though paralleling Braddock's Road from Cumberland to Laurel Hill, was not built on its bed more than a mile in the aggregate. After studying the ground I believe this is more or less incorrect; for what we should call Braddock's route was composed of many roads and tracks. One of these was a central road; the Cumberland Road may have been built on the bed of this central track only a short distance, but on one of the almost innumerable side-tracks, detours, and cut-offs, for many miles. At Great Meadows, for instance, it would seem that the Cumberland Road was separated from Braddock's by the width of the valley; yet as you move westward you cross the central track of Braddock's Road just before reaching Braddock's Grave. May not an old route have led from Great Meadows thither on the same hillside where we find the Cumberland Road today? The crookedness of these first stable roads, like many of the older streets in our cities,[12] indicates that the old corduroy road served in part as a guide for the later road-makers. It is a common thing in the mountains, either on the Cumberland or Pennsylvania state roads, to hear people say that had the older routes been even more strictly adhered to better grades would have been the result. A remarkable and truthful instance of this (for there cannot, in truth, be many) is the splendid way Braddock's old road sweeps to the top of Laurel Hill by gaining that strategic ridge which divides the heads of certain branches of the Youghiogheny on the one hand and Cheat River on the other near Washington's Rock. The Cumberland Road in the valley gains the same height (Laurel Hill) by a longer and far more difficult route. The stagecoach heralded the new age of road-building, but these new macadamized roads were few and far between; many roadways were widened and graded by states or counties, but they remained dirt roads; a few plank roads were built. The vast number of roads of better grade were built by one of the host of road and turnpike companies which sprang up in the first half of the nineteenth century. Specific mention of certain of these will be made later. Confining our view here to general conditions, we now see the Indian trail at its broadest. While the roads, in number, kept up with the vast increase of population, in quality they remained, as a rule, unchanged. Traveling by stage, except on the half dozen good roads then in existence, was, in 1825, far more uncomfortable than on the bridle-path on horseback half a century previous. It would be the same today if we could find a vehicle as inconvenient as an old-time stagecoach. In our "Experiences of Travelers" we shall give pictures of actual life on these pioneer roads of early days. A glimpse or two at these roads will not be out of place here. The route from Philadelphia to Baltimore is thus described by the _American Annual Register_ for 1796: "The roads from Philadelphia to Baltimore exhibit, for the greater part of the way, an aspect of savage desolation. Chasms to the depth of six, eight, or ten feet occur at numerous intervals. A stagecoach which left Philadelphia on the 5th of February, 1796, took five days to go to Baltimore. [Twenty miles a day]. The weather for the first four days was good. The roads are in a fearful condition. Coaches are overturned, passengers killed, and horses destroyed by the overwork put upon them. In winter sometimes no stage sets out for two weeks." Little wonder that in 1800, when President and Mrs. Adams tried to get to Washington from Baltimore, they got lost in the Maryland woods! Harriet Martineau, with her usual cleverness, thus touches upon our early roads: "... corduroy roads appear to have made a deep impression on the imaginations of the English, who seem to suppose that American roads are all corduroy. I can assure them that there is a large variety in American roads. There are the excellent limestone roads ... from Nashville, Tennessee, and some like them in Kentucky.... There is quite another sort of limestone road in Virginia, in traversing which the stage is dragged up from shelf [catch-water] to shelf, some of the shelves sloping so as to throw the passengers on one another, on either side alternately. Then there are the rich mud roads of Ohio, through whose deep red sloughs the stage goes slowly sousing after rain, and gently upsetting when the rut on one or the other side proves to be of a greater depth than was anticipated. Then there are the sandy roads of the pine barrens ... the ridge road, running parallel with a part of Lake Ontario.... Lastly there is the corduroy road, happily of rare occurrence, where, if the driver is merciful to his passengers, he drives them so as to give them the association of being on the way to a funeral, their involuntary sobs on each jolt helping the resemblance; or, if he be in a hurry, he shakes them like pills in a pill-box. I was never upset in a stage but once ...; and the worse the roads were, the more I was amused at the variety of devices by which we got on, through difficulties which appeared insurmountable, and the more I was edified at the gentleness with which our drivers treated female fears and fretfulness."[13] Perhaps it was of the Virginian roads here mentioned that Thomas Moore wrote: "Dear George! though every bone is aching, After the shaking I've had this week, over ruts and ridges, And bridges, Made of a few uneasy planks, In open ranks Over rivers of mud, whose names alone Would make the knees of stoutest man knock."[14] David Stevenson, an English civil engineer, leaves this record of a corduroy road from Lake Erie to Pittsburg: "On the road leading from Pittsburg on the Ohio to the town of Erie on the lake of that name, I saw all the varieties of forest road-making in great perfection. Sometimes our way lay for miles through extensive marshes, which we crossed by corduroy roads, ...; at others the coach stuck fast in the mud, from which it could be extricated only by the combined efforts of the coachman and passengers; and at one place we travelled for upwards of a quarter of a mile through a forest flooded with water, which stood to the height of several feet on many of the trees, and occasionally covered the naves of the coach-wheels. The distance of the route from Pittsburg to Erie is 128 miles, which was accomplished in forty-six hours ... although the conveyance ... carried the mail, and stopped only for breakfast, dinner, and tea, but there was considerable delay caused by the coach being once upset and several times mired."[15] "The horrible corduroy roads again made their appearance," records Captain Basil Hall, "in a more formidable shape, by the addition of deep, inky holes, which almost swallowed up the fore wheels of the wagon and bathed its hinder axle-tree. The jogging and plunging to which we were now exposed, and occasionally the bang when the vehicle reached the bottom of one of these abysses, were so new and remarkable that we tried to make a good joke of them.... I shall not compare this evening's drive to trotting up or down a pair of stairs, for, in that case, there would be some kind of regularity in the development of the bumps, but with us there was no wavering, no pause, and when we least expected a jolt, down we went, smack! dash! crash! forging, like a ship in a head-sea, right into a hole half a yard deep. At other times, when an ominous break in the road seemed to indicate the coming mischief, and we clung, grinning like grim death, to the railing at the sides of the wagon, expecting a concussion which in the next instant was to dislocate half the joints in our bodies, down we sank into a bed of mud, as softly as if the bottom and sides had been padded for our express accommodation." The first and most interesting macadamized road in the United States was the old Lancaster Turnpike, running from Philadelphia to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Its position among American roads is such that it deserves more than a mere mention. It has had several historians, as it well deserves, to whose accounts we are largely indebted for much of our information.[16] The charter name of this road was "The Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road Company;" it was granted April 9, 1792, and the work of building immediately began. The road was completed in 1794 at a cost of four hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars. When the subscription books were opened there was a tremendous rush to take the stock. The money raised for constructing and equipping this ancient highway with toll houses and bridges, as well as grading and macadamizing it, was by this sale of stock. In the Lancaster _Journal_ of Friday, February 5, 1796, the following notice appeared: "That agreeable to a by-law of stockholders, subscriptions will be opened at the Company's office in Philadelphia on Wednesday, the tenth of February next, for one hundred additional shares of capital stock in said company. The sum to be demanded for each share will be $300, with interest at six per cent. on the different instalments from the time they are severally called for, to be paid by original stockholders; one hundred dollars thereof to be paid at time of subscribing, and the remainder in three equal payments, at 30, 60 and 90 days, no person to be admitted to subscribe more than one share on the same day. By order of the Board. WILLIAM GOVETT, Secretary." "When location was fully determined upon," writes Mr. Witmer, "as you will observe, today, a more direct line could scarcely have been selected. Many of the curves which are found at the present time did not exist at that day, for it has been crowded and twisted by various improvements along its borders so that the original constructors are not responsible. So straight, indeed, was it from initial to terminal point that it was remarked by one of the engineers of the state railroad, constructed in 1834 (and now known as the Pennsylvania Railroad), that it was with the greatest difficulty that they kept their line off of the turnpike, and the subsequent experiences of the engineers of the same company verify the fact, as you will see. Today there is a tendency, wherever the line is straightened, to draw nearer to this old highway, paralleling it in many places for quite a distance, and as it approaches the city of Philadelphia, in one or two instances they have occupied the old road bed entirely, quietly crowding its old rival to a side, and crossing and recrossing it in many places. "You will often wonder as you pass over this highway, remembering the often-stated fact by some ancient wagoner or stage-driver (who today is scarcely to be found, most of them having thrown down the reins and put up for the night), that at that time there were almost continuous lines of Conestoga wagons, with their feed troughs suspended at the rear and the tar can swinging underneath, toiling up the long hills (for you will observe there was very little grading done when that roadway was constructed), and you wonder how it was possible to accommodate so much traffic as there was, in addition to stagecoaches and private conveyances, winding in and out among these long lines of wagons. But you must bear in mind that the roadway was very different then from what it is at the present time. "The narrow, macadamized surface, with its long grassy slope (the delight of the tramp and itinerant merchant, especially when a neighboring tree casts a cooling shadow over its surface), which same slope becomes a menace to belated and unfamiliar travelers on a dark night, threatening them with an overturn into what of more recent times is known as the Summer road, did not exist at that time, but the road had a regular slope from side ditch to center, as all good roads should have, and conveyances could pass anywhere from side to side. The macadam was carefully broken and no stone was allowed to be placed on the road that would not pass through a two-inch ring. A test was made which can be seen today about six miles east of Lancaster, where the roadway was regularly paved for a distance of one hundred feet from side to side, with a view of constructing the entire line in that way. But it proved too expensive, and was abandoned. Day, in his history, published in 1843,[17] makes mention of the whole roadway having been so constructed, but I think that must have been an error, as this is the only point where there is any appearance of this having been attempted, and can be seen at the present time when the upper surface has been worn off by the passing and repassing over it." The placing of tollgates on the Lancaster Pike is thus announced in the Lancaster _Journal_, previously mentioned, where the following notice appears: "The public are hereby informed that the President and Managers of the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road having perfected the very arduous and important work entrusted by the stockholders to their direction, have established toll gates at the following places on said road, and have appointed a toll gatherer at each gate, and that the rates of toll to be collected at the several gates are by resolution of the Board and agreeable to Act of Assembly fixed and established as below. The total distance from Lancaster to Philadelphia is 62 miles. Gate No. 1--2 miles W from Schuylkill, collect 3 miles Gate No. 2--5 miles W from Schuylkill, collect 5 miles Gate No. 3--10 miles W from Schuylkill, collect 7 miles Gate No. 4--20 miles W from Schuylkill, collect 10 miles Gate No. 5--29-1/2 miles W from Schuylkill, collect 10 miles Gate No. 6--40 miles W from Schuylkill, collect 10 miles Gate No. 7--49-1/2 miles W from Schuylkill, collect 10 miles Gate No. 8--58-1/8 miles W from Schuylkill, collect 5 miles Gate No. 9--Witmer's Bridge, collect 61 miles." There is also in the same journal, bearing date January 22, 1796, the following notice: "Sec. 13. And be it further enacted, by authority of aforesaid, that no wagon or other carriage with wheels the breadth of whose wheels shall not be four inches, shall be driven along said road between the first day of December and the first day of May following in any year or years, with a greater weight thereon than two and a half tons, or with more than three tons during the rest of the year; that no such carriage, the breadth of whose wheels shall not be seven inches, or being six inches or more shall roll at least ten inches, shall be drawn along said road between the said day of December and May with more than five tons, or with more than five and a half tons during the rest of the year; that no carriage or cart with two wheels, the breadth of whose wheels shall not be four inches, shall be drawn along said road with a greater weight thereon than one and a quarter tons between the said first days of December and May, or with more than one and a half tons during the rest of the year; no such carriage, whose wheels shall be of the breadth of seven inches shall be driven along the said road with more than two and one half tons between the first days of December and May, or more than three tons during the rest of the year; that no such carriage whose wheels shall not be ten inches in width shall be drawn along the said road between the first days of December and May with more than three and a half tons, or with more than four tons the rest of the year; that no cart, wagon or carriage of burden whatever, whose wheels shall not be the breadth of nine inches at least, shall be drawn or pass in or over the said road or any part thereof with more than six horses, nor shall more than eight horses be attached to any carriage whatsoever used on said road, and if any wagon or other carriage shall be drawn along said road by a greater number of horses or with a greater weight than is hereby permitted, one of the horses attached thereto shall be forfeited to the use of said company, to be seized and taken by any of their officers or servants, who shall have the privilege to choose which of the said horses they may think proper, excepting the shaft or wheel horse or horses, provided always that it shall and may be lawful for said company by their by-laws to alter any and all of the regulations here contained respecting burdens or carriages to be drawn over the said road and substituting other regulations, if on experience such alterations should be found conducive of public good." There were regular warehouses or freight stations in the various towns through which the Lancaster Pike passed, Mr. Witmer leaves record, where experienced loaders or packers were to be found who attended to filling these great curving wagons, which were elevated at each end and depressed in the centre; and it was quite an art to be able to so pack them with the various kinds of merchandise that they would carry safely, and at the same time to economize all the room necessary; and when fully loaded and ready for the journey it was no unusual case for the driver to be appealed to by some one who wished to follow Horace Greeley's advice and "go west," for permission to accompany him and earn a seat on the load, as well as share his mattress on the barroom floor at night by tending the lock or brake. Mr. Witmer was told by one of the largest and wealthiest iron masters of Pittsburg that his first advent to the Smoky City was on a load of salt in that capacity. "In regard to the freight or transportation companies," continues the annalist, "the Line Wagon Company was the most prominent. Stationed along this highway at designated points were drivers and horses, and it was their duty to be ready as soon as a wagon was delivered at the beginning of their section to use all despatch in forwarding it to the next one, thereby losing no time required to rest horses and driver, which would be required when the same driver and horses took charge of it all the way through. But, like many similar schemes, what appeared practical in theory did not work well in practice. Soon the wagons were neglected, each section caring only to deliver it to the one succeeding, caring little as to its condition, and soon the roadside was encumbered with wrecks and breakdowns and the driver and horses passed to and fro without any wagon or freight from terminal points of their sections, leaving the wagons and freight to be cared for by others more anxious for its removal than those directly in charge. So it was deemed best to return to the old system of making each driver responsible for his own wagon and outfit. "A wagoner, next to a stagecoach-driver, was a man of immense importance, and they were inclined to be clannish. They would not hesitate to unite against landlord, stage-driver or coachman who might cross their path, as in a case when a wedding party was on its way to Philadelphia, which consisted of several gigs. These were two-wheeled conveyances, very similar to our road-carts of the present day, except that they were much higher and had large loop springs in the rear just back of the seat; they were the fashionable conveyance of that day. When one of the gentlemen drivers, the foremost one (possibly the groom), was paying more attention to his fair companion than his horses, he drove against the leaders of one of the numerous wagons that were passing on in the same direction. It was an unpardonable offense and nothing short of an encounter in the stable yard or in front of the hotel could atone for such a breach of highway ethics. At a point where the party stopped to rest before continuing their journey the wagoners overtook them and they immediately called on the gentleman for redress. But seeing a friend in the party they claimed they would excuse the culprit on his friend's account; the offending party would not have it so, and said no friend of his should excuse him from getting a beating if he deserved it, and I have no doubt he prided himself on his muscular abilities also. However it was peaceably arranged and each pursued his way without any blood being shed or bones broken. That was one of the many similar occurrences which happened daily, many not ending so harmlessly. "The stage lines were not only the means of conveying the mails and passengers, but of also disseminating the news of great events along the line as they passed. The writer remembers hearing it stated that the stage came through from Philadelphia with a wide band of white muslin bound around the top, and in large letters was the announcement that peace had been declared, which was the closing of the second war with Great Britain, known as the War of 1812. What rejoicing it caused along the way as it passed!" [Illustration: EARLIEST STYLE OF LOG TAVERN] The taverns of this old turnpike were typical. Of them Mr. Moore writes: "Independent of the heavy freighting, numerous stage lines were organized for carrying passengers. As a result of this immense traffic, hotels sprung up all along the road, where relays of horses were kept, and where passengers were supplied with meals. Here, too, the teamsters found lodging and their animals were housed and cared for over night. The names of these hotels were characteristic of the times. Many were called after men who had borne conspicuous parts in the Revolutionary War that had just closed--such as Washington, Warren, Lafayette, and Wayne, while others represented the White and Black Horse, the Lion, Swan, Cross Keys, Ship, etc. They became favorite resorts for citizens of their respective neighborhoods, who wished at times to escape from the drudge and ennui of their rural homes and gaze upon the world as represented by the dashing stages and long lines of Conestoga wagons. Here neighbor met neighbor--it was the little sphere in which they all moved, lived and had their being. They sipped their whisky toddies together, which were dispensed at the rate of three cents a single glass, or for a finer quality, five for a Spanish quarter, with the landlord in, was asked; smoked cigars that were retailed four for a cent--discussed their home affairs, including politics, religion and other questions of the day, and came just as near settling them, as the present generation of men, that are filling their places, required large supplies and made convenient home markets for the sale of butter, eggs, and whatever else the farmers had to dispose of." In our history of the Cumberland Road the difference between a wagonhouse and a tavern was emphasized. Mr. Witmer gives an incident on the Lancaster Turnpike which presents vividly the social position of these two houses of entertainment: "It was considered a lasting disgrace for one of the stage taverns to entertain a wagoner and it was sure to lose the patronage of the better class of travel, should this become known. The following instance will show how carefully the line was drawn. In the writer's native village, about ten miles east of this city [Lancaster], when the traffic was unusually heavy and all the wagon taverns were full, a wagoner applied to the proprietor of the stage hotel for shelter and refreshment, and after a great deal of consideration on his part and persuasion on the part of the wagoner he consented, provided the guest would take his departure early in the morning, before there was any likelihood of any aristocratic arrivals, or the time for the stage to arrive at this point. As soon as he had taken his departure the hostlers and stable boys were put to work to clean up every vestige of straw or litter in front of the hotel that would be an indication of having entertained a wagoner over night!" The later history of the turnpike has been sketched by Mr. Moore as follows: "The turnpike company had enjoyed an uninterrupted era of prosperity for more than twenty-five years. During this time the dividends paid had been liberal--sometimes, it is said, exceeding fifteen per cent of the capital invested. But at the end of that time the parasite that destroys was gradually being developed. Another, and altogether new system of transportation had been invented--a railroad--and which had already achieved partial success in some places in Europe. It was about the year 1820 that this new method of transportation began to claim the serious attention of the progressive business men throughout the state. The feeling that some better system than the one in use must be found was fed and intensified by the fact that New York State was then constructing a canal from Albany to the lakes; that when completed it would give the business men of New York City an unbroken water route to the west.... "With the completion of the entire Pennsylvania canal system to Pittsburg, in 1834, the occupation of the famous old Conestoga teams was gone.[18] The same may also be said of the numerous lines of the stages that daily wended their way over the turnpike. The changes wrought were almost magical. Everyone who rode patronized the cars; and the freight was also forwarded by rail. The farmers, however, were not ruined as they had maintained they would be. Their horses, as well as drivers, were at once taken into the railway service and employed in drawing cars from one place to another. It was simply a change of vocation, and there still remained a market for grain, hay, straw and other produce of the farm. "The loss sustained by the holders of turnpike stock, however, was immeasurable. In a comparative sense, travel over the turnpike road was suspended. Receipts from tolls became very light and the dividends, when paid, were not only quite diminutive, but very far between. "The officers of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company have always been noted for their foresight, as well as shrewdness in protecting the business interests of their organization--and none have given more substantial evidence of these traits than its present chief officer, Mr. Alexander Cassatt. In the year 1876 the horse cars had been extended as far west as the Centennial buildings and it became apparent in a year or two thereafter that they might be still further extended over the turnpike in the direction of Paoli and thus become an annoying competitor for the local travel, which had been carefully nurtured and built up by the efforts of the railroad company. Under the leadership of Mr. Cassatt a company was organized to purchase the road. When all the preliminaries had been arranged a meeting of the subscribers to the purchasing fund was held on the twentieth day of April, 1880. The turnpike was purchased from Fifty-second Street to Paoli, about seventeen miles, for the sum of twenty thousand dollars. In the following June a charter was secured for the 'Lancaster Avenue Improvement Company,' and Mr. Cassatt was chosen president. The horse railroad was thus shut off from a further extension over the old turnpike. The new purchasers rebuilt the entire seventeen miles and there is today probably no better macadam road in the United States, nor one more scrupulously maintained than by 'The Lancaster Avenue Improvement Company.' Some parts of the turnpike road finally became so much out of repair that the traveling public refused to longer pay the tolls demanded. This was the case on that portion of the road lying between Paoli and Exton, a distance of some eight and a half miles. It traversed parts of the townships of Willistown and East and West Whiteland, in Chester County and upon notice of abandonment being served in 1880 upon the supervisors of these townships, those officials assumed the future care of the road. The turnpike was also abandoned from the borough of Coatesville to the Lancaster County line, a distance of about eight and one-half miles. This left only that portion of the turnpike lying between Exton station and the borough of Coatesville, a distance of some ten miles, under control of the old company, and upon which tollgates were maintained. The road was in a wretched repair and many persons driving over it refused to pay when tolls were demanded. The company, however, continued to employ collectors and gather shekels from those who were willing to pay and suffering those to pass who refused. "Thus the old company worried along and maintained its organization until 1899, when the 'Philadelphia and West Chester Traction Company,' made its appearance. This company thought it saw an opportunity to extend the railroad west over the turnpike at least as far as Downingtown, and possibly as far as the borough of Coatesville. Terms were finally agreed upon with the president of the Turnpike Company, and all the rights, titles and interests in the road then held by the original Turnpike Company, and which embraced that portion lying between Exton and the borough of Coatesville, were transferred to Mr. A. M. Taylor, as trustee, for ten dollars per share. The original issue was twelve hundred shares. It was estimated that at least two hundred shares would not materialize, being either lost or kept as souvenirs. The length of the road secured was about ten miles. The disposition of the old road may be enumerated as follows: SOLD To Hestonville Railroad 3 $10,000 To Lancaster and Williamstown Turnpike Company 15 10,000 To Lancaster Avenue Improvement Company 17 20,000 To A. M. Taylor, trustee (estimated) 10 10,000 -- ------ Total miles sold 45 Total purchase money received $50,000 ABANDONED Paoli to Exton 8-1/2 Coatesville to Lancaster Company line 8-1/2 ------ Total miles abandoned 17 "The distance from Coatesville to Philadelphia, via Whitford, a station on the Pennsylvania Railroad ten miles east of Coatesville, thence to West Chester and over the electric road, is somewhat less than by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Immediately after the purchase, Mr. Taylor announced that it was the intention of his company to extend their road to Downingtown, and, possibly, to Coatesville. But a charter for a trolley road does not carry with it the right of eminent domain. Upon investigation, Mr. Taylor discovered that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company owned property on both sides of the purchased turnpike, and that without the consent of that organization a trolley road could not be laid over the turnpike. He further discovered that at a point west of Downingtown the railroad company, in connection with one of its employees, owned a strip of land extending from the Valley Hill on the north to the Valley Hill on the south. The proposed extension of the trolley road, therefore, had to be abandoned. "As the turnpike road could not be used by the new purchasers for the purposes intended, it was a useless and annoying piece of property in their hands. A petition has already [1901] been filed in the Court of Quarter Sessions of Chester County looking toward having the road condemned. Judge Hemphill has appointed jurors to view the said turnpike road and fix the damages that may be due the present owners. Whatever damages may finally be agreed upon the county of Chester must pay, and the supervisors of the different townships through which the road passes will thereafter assume its care. This will probably be the last official act in which the title of the old organization will participate. 'Men may come and men may go,' and changes be made both in ownership and purposes of use, but whatever the future may have in store for this grand old public highway, the basic principle will always be: 'The Old Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike;' and as such forever remain a lasting monument to the courageous, progressive, and patriotic men whose capital entered into and made its construction possible." The principal rivals of the macadamized roads were the plank roads. The first plank road in America was built at Toronto, Canada, in 1835-36, during Sir Francis Bond Head's governorship. It was an experiment and one Darcy Boulton is said to have been the originator of the plan.[18*] In 1837 this method of road-building was introduced into the United States, Syracuse, New York, possessing the first plank road this side the Canadian border. In fifteen years there were two thousand one hundred and six miles of these roads in New York State alone, and the system had spread widely through the more prosperous and energetic states. Usually these roads were single-track, the track being built on the left hand side of the roadway; the latter became known as the "turn-out." The planks, measuring eight inches by three, were laid on stringers, these, in turn, resting on a more or less elaborately made bed. The average cost of plank roads in New York was a trifle less than two thousand dollars per mile. It will be remembered that the Cumberland Road cost on the average over ten thousand dollars per mile in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and three thousand four hundred dollars per mile west of the Ohio River. Its estimated cost per mile, without bridging, was six thousand dollars. It was natural, therefore, that plank roads should become popular--for the country was still a "wooden country," as the pioneers said. It was argued that the cost was "infinitely less--that it [plank road] is easier for the horse to draw upon--and that such a road costs less for repairs and is more durable than a Macadam road.... On the Salina and Central road, a few weeks back, for a wager, a team [two horses] brought in, without any extraordinary strain, six tons of iron from Brewerton, a distance of twelve miles, to Syracuse [New York].... Indeed, the farmer does not seem to make any calculations of the weight taken. He loads his wagon as best he can, and the only care is not to exceed the quantity which it will carry; whether the team can draw the load, is not a consideration...." Such arguments prevailed in the day when timber was considered almost a nuisance, and plank roads spread far and wide. Few who were acquainted with primitive conditions have left us anything vivid in the way of descriptions of roads and road-making. "The pioneers of our State," wrote Calvin Fletcher, in an exceedingly interesting paper read before the Indiana Centennial Association, July 4, 1900, "found Indian trails, which, with widening, proved easy lines of travel. Many of these afterward became fixtures through use, improvement, and legislation.... Next to the hearty handshake and ready lift at the handspike, where neighbors swapped work at log-rollings, was the greeting when, at fixed periods, all able-bodied men met to open up or work upon the roads. My child-feet pattered along many of the well-constructed thoroughfares of today when they were only indistinct tracings--long lines of deadened trees, deep-worn horse paths, and serpentine tracks of wabbling wagon wheels. The ever-recurring road-working days and their cheerful observance, with time's work in rotting and fire's work in removing dead tree and stump, at last let in long lines of sunshine to dry up the mud, to burn up the miasma, and to bless the wayfarer to other parts, as well as to disclose what these pioneer road-makers had done for themselves by opening up fields in the forests.... To perfect easily and naturally these industries requires three generations. The forests must be felled, logs rolled and burned, families reared, and in most cases the land to be paid for. When this is accomplished a faithful picture would reveal not only the changes that had been wrought, but a host of prematurely broken down men and women, besides an undue proportion resting peacefully in country graveyards. A second generation straightens out the fields at odd corners, pulls the stumps, drains the wet spots, and casting aside the sickle of their father, swings the cradle over broader fields; and even trenches upon the plans of the third generation by pushing the claim of the reaper, the mower and the thresher.... The labor of the three generations in road-making I class as follows: To the first generation belonged locating the roads and the clearing the timber from them. The wet places would become miry and were repaired by the use of logs.... The roots and stumps caused many holes, called chuck holes, which were repaired by using brush and dirt--with the uniform result that at each end of the corduroy or brush repairs, a new mud or chuck hole would be formed in time; and thus until timber and brush became exhausted did the pioneer pave the way for the public and himself to market, to court, and to elections. The second generation discovered a value in the inexhaustible beds of gravel in the rivers and creeks, as well as beneath the soil. Roadbeds were thrown up, and the side ditches thus formed contributed to sound wheeling. Legislation tempted capital to invest and tollgates sprang up until the third generation removed them and assumed the burden of large expenditures from public funds for public benefit. "And thus have passed away the nightmare of the farmer, the traveller, the mover and the mail-carrier--a nightmare that prevailed nine months of the year.... An experience of a trip from Indianapolis to Chicago in March, 1848, by mail stage is pertinent. It took the first twenty-four hours to reach Kirklin, in Boone County; the next twenty-four to Logansport, the next thirty-six to reach South Bend. A rest then of twenty-four hours on account of high water ahead; then thirty-six hours to Chicago--five days of hard travel in mud or on corduroy, or sand.... In the summer passenger coaches went through, but when wet weather came the mud wagon was used to carry passengers and mail, and when the mud became too deep the mail was piled into crates, canvas-covered, and hauled through. This was done also on the National [Cumberland], the Madison, the Cincinnati, the Lafayette and the Bloomington Roads." The _corvée_, or required work on the roads of France, has been given as one of the minor causes of the social unrest which reached its climax in the French Revolution. American peasants had no such hardship according to an anonymous rhymester: Oh, our life was tough and tearful, and its toil was often fearful, And often we grew faint beneath the load. But there came a glad vacation and a sweet alleviation, When we used to work our tax out on the road. When we used to work our tax out, then we felt the joys of leisure, And we felt no more the prick of labor's goad; Then we shared the golden treasure of sweet rest in fullest measure, When we used to work our tax out on the road. The macadam and plank roads saw the Indian trail at its widest and best. The railway has had a tendency to undo even such advances over pioneer roads as came in the heyday of macadam and plank roads. We have been going backward since 1840 rather than forward. The writer has had long acquaintance with what was, in 1830, the first turnpike in Ohio--the Warren and Ashtabula Road; it was probably a far better route in 1830 than in 1900. By worrying the horse you can not make more than four miles an hour over many parts of it. One ought to go into training preparatory to a carriage drive over either the Cumberland or the Pennsylvania road across the Alleghenies. As the trail was widened it grew better, but once at its maximum width it was eclipsed as an avenue by the railway and, exceptions aside, has since 1850 deteriorated. Every foot added in width, however, has contained a lesson in American history; every road, as we have said, indicates a need; and the wider the road, it may be added, the greater the need. An expanding nation, in a moment's time, burst westward through these narrow trails, and left them standing as open roadways. Few material objects today suggest to our eyes this marvelous movement. These old routes with their many winding tracks, the ponderous bridges and sagging mile-posts,[19] are relics of those momentous days. CHAPTER II A PILGRIM ON THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD The following chapter is from Francis Baily's volume, _A Journal of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North America_. It is an account of a journey in 1796 from Philadelphia to Pittsburg over the Pennsylvania road treated of in Volume V of this series. Francis Baily was an English scientist of very great reputation. It is to be doubted whether there is another account of a journey as far west as Mr. Baily's record takes us (Cincinnati, Ohio) written at so early a date by an equally famous foreign scholar and scientist. The route pursued was the old state road begun in 1785 running through Pennsylvania from Chambersburg, Bedford, and Greensburg to Pittsburg. Mr. Baily's itinerary is by ancient taverns, most of which have passed from recollection. From Pittsburg he went with a company of pioneers down the Ohio River to their new settlement near Cincinnati. In his experiences with these friends he gives us a vivid picture of pioneer travel north of the Ohio River. "There being no turnpikes in America, the roads are, of course, very bad in winter, though excellent in summer. I waited at Baltimore near a week before I could proceed on my journey, the roads being rendered impassable. There is, at present, but one turnpike-road on the continent, which is between Lancaster and Philadelphia,[20] a distance of sixty-six miles, and is a masterpiece of its kind; it is paved with stone the whole way, and overlaid with gravel, so that it is never obstructed during the most severe season. This practice is going to be adopted in other parts of that public-spirited state [Pennsylvania], though none of the other states have yet come into the measure. "From Baltimore to Philadelphia are ninety-eight miles; between which places there is no want of conveyance, as there are three or four stages run daily. In one of these I placed myself on the morning of _March 3rd, 1796_. A description of them perhaps would be amusing. The body of the carriage is closed in, about breast high; from the sides of which are raised six or eight small perpendicular posts, which support a covering--so that it is in fact a kind of open coach. From the top are suspended leather curtains, which may be either drawn up in fine weather, or let down in rainy or cold weather; and which button at the bottom. The inside is fitted up with four seats, placed one before the other; so that the whole of the passengers face the horses; each seat will contain three passengers; and the driver sits on the foremost, under the same cover with the rest of the company. The whole is suspended on springs; and the way to get into it is _in front_, as if you were getting into a covered cart. This mode of travelling, and which is the only one used in America, is very pleasant as you enjoy the country much more agreeably than when imprisoned in a close coach, inhaling and exhaling the same air a thousand times over, like a cow chewing the cud; but then it is not quite so desirable in disagreeable weather.[21] "We had not proceeded far on our journey before we began to encounter some of those inconveniences to which every person who travels in this country _in winter time_ is exposed. The roads, which in general were very bad, would in some places be impassable, so that we were obliged to get out and walk a considerable distance, and sometimes to 'put our shoulders to the wheel;' and this in the most unpleasant weather, as well as in the midst of mire and dirt. However, we did manage to get twelve miles to breakfast; and after that, to a little place called Bush, about thirteen miles farther, to dinner; and about nine o'clock at night we came to _Havre de Grace_, about twelve miles further, to supper; having walked nearly half the way up to our ancles in mud, in a most inclement season. Havre de Grace is a pretty little place, most delightfully situated on the banks of the Susquehannah river, which at this place is about a quarter of a mile broad; it is about a couple of miles above the mouth of the river, where it empties into the Chesapeak Bay; a fine view of which you have from the town. An excellent tavern is kept here by Mr. Barney ... and which is frequented by parties in the shooting season, for the sake of the wild fowl with which the Susquehannah so plentifully abounds; the canvass-back, a most delicious bird, frequents this river.... Next morning we got ferried across the river, and, breakfasting at the tavern on the other side, proceeded on our journey, encountering the same difficulties we had done the preceding day. About three miles from Barney's is a little place, called Principio, situated in a highly romantic country, where there is a large foundry for cannon and works for boring them, situated in a valley surrounded by a heap of rocks; the wheels of the works are turned by a stream of water running over some of these precipices. About three miles from this is another delightful place, called Charleston; I mean with respect to its _situation_; as to the town itself, it does not seem to improve at all, at which I very much wonder, as it is most advantageously situated at the head of the Chesapeak, of which and the country adjoining it commands a full and most charming view. We got about nine miles farther, to a town called Elkton, to dinner. This place has nothing in it to attract the attention of travellers. I shall therefore pass it by, to inform you that we intended getting to Newport, about eighteen miles, to sleep. It was four o'clock before we started; and we had not proceeded far on these miserable roads, ere night overtook us; and, as the fates would have it, our unlucky coachman drove us into a miry bog; and, in spite of all our endeavours, we could not get the coach out again; we were therefore obliged to _leave it there, with the whole of the baggage, all night_; and were driven to the necessity of seeking our way in the dark to the nearest house, which was about a mile and a half off; there, getting ourselves cleaned and a good supper, we went to bed. Next morning we found everything just as we left it; and, getting another coach, we proceeded on our journey, and, dining at Chester, got to Philadelphia about nine o'clock in the evening, completely tired of our ride, having been three days and three nights on the road. "I would not have been thus particular, but I wished to give you a specimen of the American mode of travelling, though you will understand that these difficulties are to be met with only at that season of the year when the frost breaks up, and the roads get sadly out of order; for in summer time nothing can be more agreeable, expeditious, and pleasant. The fare from Baltimore to Philadelphia is 6 dollars, or 27s., and the customary charges on the road are 1/2 dollar for breakfast, 1 dollar for dinner, wine not included, 1/2 dollar for supper, and 1/4 dollar for beds. These are their general prices, and they charge the same whatever they provide for you. By this, you will observe that travelling in these settled parts of the country is about as expensive as in England. "The country between Baltimore and Philadelphia is of a _clayey_ nature, mixed with a kind of gravel; yet still, in the hands of a skilful farmer, capable of yielding good produce. The land on each side of the road, and back into the country, was pretty well cultivated, and (though winter) bore marks of industry and economy. Hedges are not frequent; but instead of them they place split logs angular-wise on each other, making what they call a "worm fence," and which is raised about five feet high. This looks very slovenly, and, together with the stumps of trees remaining in all the new-cleared plantations, is a great _desight_ to the scenery of the country.... From Newark to New York is about nine miles, and the greatest part of the road is over a large swamp, which lies between and on each side of the Pasaik and Hackinsac rivers. Over this swamp they have made a causeway, which trembles the whole way as you go over it,[22] and shows how far the genius and industry of man will triumph over natural impediments. "To New York, which is ninety-six miles from Philadelphia, we were a day and a half in coming. The roads were not so bad as when we came from Baltimore. Our fare was 6 dollars, and the charges on the road the same as between Baltimore and Philadelphia:--viz., 1/2 dollar breakfast, 1 dollar dinner, 1/2 dollar supper, and 1/4 dollar lodging.... The inhabitants of New York are very fond of music, dancing, and plays; an attainment to excellence in the former has been considerably promoted by the frequent musical societies and concerts which are held in the city, many of the inhabitants being very good performers. As to dancing, there are two assembly-rooms in the city, which are pretty well frequented during the winter season; private balls are likewise not uncommon. They have two theatres, one of which is lately erected, and is capable of containing a great number of persons; there is an excellent company of comedians, who perform here in the winter. But the amusement of which they seem most passionately fond is that of sleighing, which is riding on the snow in what _you_ call _a sledge_, drawn by two horses. It is astonishing to see how anxiously persons of all ages and both sexes look out for a good fall of snow, that they may enjoy their favourite amusement; and when the happy time comes, to see how eager they are to engage every sleigh that is to be hired. Parties of twenty or thirty will sometimes go out of town in these vehicles towards evening, about six or eight miles, when, having sent for a fiddler, and danced till they are tired, they will return home again by moonlight, or, perhaps more often, by _day_ light. Whilst the snow is on the ground no other carriages are made use of, either for pleasure or service. The productions of the earth are brought to market in sleighs; merchandise is draughted about in sleighs; coaches are laid by, and the ladies and gentlemen mount the _silent_ car, and nothing is heard in the streets but the tinkling[23] of bells.... I set off on the _1st_ of _September, 1796_, to make a tour of the western country,--that land of Paradise, according to the flattering accounts given by Imlay and others. Wishing to go to the new city of Washington, _we_[24] took our route through Philadelphia and Baltimore, which I have already described. I shall not trouble you with any further remarks, excepting that as the season was just the reverse of what it was when I passed through this country last, it presented quite a different appearance from what I described to you in my former letters. Besides, there was none of that inconvenience from bad roads, so terrible to a traveller in the winter. On the contrary, we went on with a rapidity and safety equal to any mode of travelling in England. "From Baltimore to the new city of Washington is forty-five miles, where we arrived on the _5th_ of _October_ following. The road is well furnished with taverns, which in general are good, at least as good as can be expected in this part of the world. Close to Washington is a handsome town called Georgetown; in fact, it will form part of the new city; for, being so near the site intended for it, and being laid out nearly on the same plan, its streets will be only a prolongation of the streets laid out for the city of Washington: so it will in course of time lose its name of Georgetown, and adopt the general one of Washington. Much in the same manner the small places formerly separated from the metropolis of England have lost their name, and fallen under the general denomination of London. "Georgetown is situated on a hill close to the river Potomak; it presents a beautiful view from the surrounding country, of which also it commands a fine prospect. It is a seaport town, and some of their vessels are employed in the London trade. There are stages run daily between this place and Baltimore, for which you pay four dollars. There are also stages to and from Alexandria, a handsome and flourishing town situated on the Potomak, lower down the stream, and about eight miles off; for which you pay a fare of three quarters of a dollar. We put up at the Federal Arms whilst we were there. It is a good inn, but their charges are most extravagantly high.... At about half-past one, _October 7th_, we started on our journey over the Allegany mountains to Pittsburgh.[25] About fourteen miles on the road is a pretty little town called Montgomery Court House;[26] it contains some good houses, but the streets are narrow. About seven miles further is a little settlement, formed a few years back by Captain Lingham, called Middlebrook. Captain Lingham has a house on the road, near a mill, which he has erected; and here (following the example of many of his brother officers) he has retired from the toils and bustle of war, to spend his days in the enjoyments of a country life. We arrived here about six o'clock; the sun was just setting, yet there was time to go another stage; but, as we got into a part of the country where _taverns_[27] were not very frequent, we proposed stopping here this night. Accordingly, putting our horses up at a little tavern, (which, together with four or five more houses, composed the whole of the settlement,) we had a comfortable supper and went to bed. About half-past six the next morning we started from this place, and stopped, about seven miles on the road, at an old woman's of the name of Roberts.[28] This old woman (whose house, I believe, was the only one we saw on the road) acts at times in the capacity of a tavern-keeper: that is, a person travelling that way, and straitened for provisions, would most probably find something there for himself and his horse. The old lady was but just up when we called; her house had more the appearance of a hut than the habitation of an hostess, and when we entered there was scarcely room to turn round. We were loath to stop here; but there not being any other house near, we were obliged to do it, both for the sake of ourselves and our horses. We soon made her acquainted with our wants, and she, gathering together a few sticks, (for her fire was not yet lighted,) and getting a little meal and some water, mixed us up some cakes, which were soon dressed at the fire, and then all sitting down at the table, and having mixed some tea in a little pot, we enjoyed a very comfortable breakfast. The poor old woman, who was a widow, seemed to live in a deal of distress: the whole of her living was acquired by furnishing accommodation to travellers. When we were sitting over the fire, and partaking of our meal-cakes with this old woman, it brought to mind the story of Elijah and the widow, (I Kings, chap, xvii.,) particularly where she answers him with, 'As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but one handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.' The appositeness of our situations rendered this passage very striking, and made me look upon my hostess in a more favourable point of view than when I first saw her. I gave her something to render her situation more comfortable and happy. "Leaving this lonely habitation, we continued on our journey, and crossing the Sinecocy [Monocacy?] river, about eleven miles on the road, we reached Fredericktown, about four miles farther, at twelve o'clock. This is a large flourishing place, contains a number of good houses, and is a place of great trade, owing to its being the thoroughfare to the western country of Pennsylvania and the Ohio. There is a large manufactory of rifle-guns carried on here; but so great is the demand for them, that we could not meet with one in the whole place: they sell in general from 15 to 25 dollars each, according to their style of being mounted. The tavern where we stopped was kept by Mrs. Kemble: it is a tolerably good house. After dinner we left this place, and after going about three or four miles, we arrived at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. And here let me stop a little to make a few observations on the face of the country we have just passed over. From Georgetown to this place, it almost wholly consists of a sandy, gravelly soil, with difficulty repaying the husbandman for the trouble of tilling it. The face of the country is very uneven, being a constant succession of hill and dale. Little towns or villages are scattered over the country at the distance of seven or eight miles, which communicate with each other by roads which are almost inaccessible during the winter and spring months. Our charges on this part of the road were half a dollar each for breakfast and dinner and supper, without any distinction of fare. If our table were spread with all the profusion of American luxury, such as ham, cold beef, fried chicken, &c. &c., (which are not uncommon for breakfast in this part of the world), or whether we sat down to a dish of tea and hoe-cake, our charge was all the same. The accommodations we met with on the road were pretty well, considering the short time this country has been settled, and the character and disposition of its inhabitants, which are not those of the most polished nations, but a character and disposition arising from a consciousness of independence, accompanied by a spirit and manner highly characteristic of this consciousness. It is not education alone that forms this character of the Americans: it stands upon a firmer basis than this. The means of subsistence being so easy in the country, and their dependence on each other consequently so trifling, that spirit of servility to those above them so prevalent in European manners, is wholly unknown to them; and they pass their lives without any regard to the smiles or the frowns of men in power. "Nearly the whole of the way from Georgetown to Fredericktown we preserved a distant view of the Allegany Mountains, at whose feet we were now arrived. They presented to us one general bluff appearance, extending as far as our eye could see from the north-east to the south-west. Our approach to them was in a line perpendicular to that of their extension, so that they seemed to bid defiance to our progress. The _Allegany Mountains_ is a name given to a range of several ridges of mountains stretching from Vermont to Carolina, of which one ridge alone is properly called the Allegany Mountain. These ridges are nearly 170 miles in width; and the middle one, or the Allegany, forms the backbone of the rest. The ridge which first presented itself to our view, is called in Howell's Map the South Mountain. The road (which here began to be very rocky and stony) is carried over the least elevated part of the mountain, and from its summit we beheld that beautiful limestone valley so recommended by Brissot. On our descent from this mountain, we entered on one of the finest tracts of land in all America. The celebrated valley, which lies between this and the next ridge of mountains, extends from the Susquehanna on the north to Winchester on the south, is richly watered by several navigable streams, and is capable of producing every article which is raised in the neighbouring countries in the greatest abundance. It is inhabited chiefly by Germans and Dutch, who are an industrious race of men and excellent farmers. Their exertions have made this valley (bounded on each side by barren and inhospitable mountains) assume the appearance of a highly cultivated country, abounding in all the conveniences and some of the luxuries of life. Besides a general appearance of comfortable farms scattered over the face of the country, it can boast of several large and populous towns, which keep up a connexion with the cities on the Atlantic, and supply the interior of this mountainous country with the produce of distant nations. It was dark before we descended from this mountain; but we had not proceeded far in the valley when we came to a little place called Boone's-town, where we were glad to rest ourselves and horses after the fatigues of so rough a road. Boone's-town is eight miles from Fredericktown: it has not been settled above three or four years. We met with a very good tavern and excellent accommodations. "From Boone's-town, the next morning (_Sunday, October 9th, 1796_) we passed through Funk's-town, which is another new-settled place; and immediately on leaving this, Hagar's-town presented itself to our view, about two miles off: here we arrived to breakfast. Hagar's-town[29] is a large flourishing place, and contains some good houses. The streets are narrow, and, agreeably to a barbarous custom which they have in laying out new towns in America, the court-house is built in the _middle_ of the principal street, which is a great obstruction to the passage, as well as being of an uncouth appearance. This place is situated on a fine plain, and, like Frederick's-town, is a place of great trade, and also a manufactory for rifle-guns, of which we bought two at twenty dollars each. Here is a paper published weekly; and assemblies are held here during the winter. There is also a great deal of horse-racing in the neighbourhood at stated seasons. We put up at the Indian Queen, kept by Ragan: it is a good house and much frequented. "From Hagar's-town we proceeded on to Greencastle, which is a poor little place, but lately settled, and consisting of a few log-houses built along the road. We stopped at one of these houses, which they called the tavern, kept by one Lawrence; it was a poor miserable place. We were obliged to unsaddle our horses, put them into the stable, and feed them ourselves; and then, having got something to eat and refreshed ourselves, we got out of this place as soon as we could. Greencastle is eleven miles from Hagar's-town; and we had to go eleven miles farther that evening to Mr. Lindsay's, whom we had engaged at Baltimore to carry some goods to Pittsburgh in his waggons. His house lay at some distance from the road we were going, so that we struck across the woods to approach it; and, after having missed our way once or twice, we struck on a road which took us down to his house. Here we were hospitably entertained for two days by Mr. Lindsay and his father-in-law, Mr. Andrews, who have a very excellent farm, and live very comfortably in the truly American style. The place at which he resides is called the _Falling Springs_; for what reason they are called _falling_ springs I cannot conceive; they _rise_ from under an old tree, and the stream does not proceed three hundred yards before it turns a cyder-mill; and a little farther on turns a grist-mill. These mills belong to Mr. Andrews, as also does a large quantity of the land around; for in this country _all_ the farmers are landholders; Mr. and Mrs. Andrews are Irish; and they and their family are all settled in the neighbourhood. Their children are all brought up in industry, and have their time fully employed in performing the different necessary duties of the house and farm. Nevertheless, they appear to live very happy and comfortable. "_Tuesday, October 11th, 1796._--About eleven o'clock this morning we set off from Mr. Andrews's, in company with a party of several of the neighbouring farmers who were going to Chambersburgh to vote at an election. Chambersburgh is about three miles from Mr. Andrews's, and is a large and flourishing place, not inferior to Frederick's-town or Hagar's-town; being, like them, on the high road to the western country, it enjoys all the advantages which arise from such a continual body of people as are perpetually emigrating thither. I have seen ten and twenty waggons at a time in one of these towns, on their way to Pittsburgh and other parts of the Ohio, from thence to descend down that river to Kentucky. These waggons are loaded with the clothes and necessaries of a number of poor emigrants, who follow on foot with their wives and families, who are sometimes indulged with a ride when they are tired, or in bad weather. In this manner they will travel and take up their abode in the woods on the side of the road, like the gypsies in our country, taking their provisions with them, which they dress on the road's side, as occasion requires. "About thirteen miles from Chambersburgh, which we left in the afternoon, is a place called the _Mill_,[30] which is kept by some Dutchmen. We understood it was a tavern, but were disappointed; however, as it was now dark, and no tavern on the road for some distance, we were under the necessity of begging a lodging here, which was granted us at last with the greatest reluctance. Here we had rather an unfavourable specimen of Dutch manners. We were _kindly_ directed to take our horses to the stables, and take care of them ourselves, which we accordingly did; and, returning to the house, I was witness to a kind of meal I had never before experienced. First of all, some sour milk was warmed up and placed on the table. This at any other time would probably have made us sick; but having fasted nearly the whole day, and seeing no appearance of anything else likely to succeed it, we devoured it very soon; particularly as the whole family (of which there were seven or eight) partook of it likewise; all of us sitting round _one_ large bowl, and dipping our spoons in one after another. When this was finished a dish of stewed pork was served up, accompanied with some hot pickled cabbage, called in this part of the country "warm slaw." This was devoured in the same hoggish manner, every one trying to help himself first, and two or three eating off the same plate, and all in the midst of filth and dirt. After this was removed a large bowl of cold milk and bread was put on the table, which we partook of in the same manner as the first dish, and in the same disorder. The spoons were immediately taken out of the greasy pork dish, and (having been just cleaned by passing through the _mouth_) were put into the milk; and that, with all the _sang froid_ necessarily attending such habitual nastiness. Our _table_, which was none of the cleanest (for as to _cloth_, they had none in the house), was placed in the middle of the room, which appeared to me to be the receptacle of all the filth and rubbish in the house; and a fine large fire, which blazed at one end, served us instead of a candle. "Wishing to go to bed as soon as possible (though, by the by, we did not expect that our accommodations would be any of the most agreeable), we requested to be shown to our room, when, lo! we were ushered up a ladder, into a dirty place, where a little hole in the wall served for a window, and where there were four or five beds as dirty as need be. These beds did not consist (as most beds do) of blankets, sheets, &c., but were truly in the Dutch style, being literally nothing more than one feather bed placed on another, between which we were to creep and lie down. The man, after showing us this our place of destination, took the candle away, and left us to get in how we could, which we found some difficulty in doing at first; however, after having accomplished it, we slept very soundly till morning, when we found we had passed the night amongst the whole family, men, women, and children, who had occupied the other beds, and who had come up after we had been asleep. We got up early in the morning from this inhospitable and filthy place, and, saddling our horses, pursued our journey. [Illustration: WIDOW MCMURRAN'S TAVERN, SCRUB RIDGE, PENNSYLVANIA ROAD] "_October 12th, 1796._--At ten o'clock we arrived at McConnell's-town, in Cove Valley (thirteen miles), having first passed over a high ridge called, in Howell's Map, the North Mountain; and here we left that beautiful valley, which is enriched by so many streams, and abounds with such a profusion of the conveniences of life; a country than which, if we except Kentucky, is not to be found a more fertile one in the whole of the United States. "On our descent from the North Mountain we caught, through every opening of the woods, the distant view of McConnell's, whose white houses, contrasted with the _sea_ of woods by which it was surrounded, appeared like an island in the ocean. Our near approach to it, however, rendered it not quite so pleasing an object; for it consisted but of a few log-houses, built after the American manner, without any other ornament than that of being whitened on the _outside_. There was a pretty good tavern kept here by a Dutchwoman, where we stopped to breakfast; and, leaving this place, we crossed a hill called Scrubheath, at the end of which was Whyle's tavern (ten miles): we did not stop, but went to the top of Sideling Hill (two miles), where there is a tavern kept by Skinner, where we dined. Sideling Hill is so called from the road being carried over this ridge, _on the side of the hill_, the whole way; it is very steep in ascent, and towards the top appears very tremendous on looking down. "From this tavern to the Junietta, a branch of the Susquehannah river, is eight miles. The hill terminates at the river, and the road down to it is a narrow winding path, apparently cleft out of the mountain. It so happened that when we came to this defile, a travelling man with a number of packhorses had just entered it before us; and as it was impossible for us to pass them, we were obliged to follow them down this long winding passage to the river, at their own pace, which, poor animals, was none of the speediest. The sun, though not set, had been long hid from us by the neighbouring mountains, and would not lend us one ray to light us on our melancholy path. We fell into conversation with our fellow-traveller, and found that he had been to Philadelphia, where he had purchased a number of articles necessary to those who live in this part of the country, and which he was going to dispose of in the best manner possible. The gloominess of our path, and the temper of mind I happened to be then in, threw me into reflections on a comparison of this man's state with my own. At length a distant light broke me from my reverie, and indicated to us a near prospect of our enlargement from this obscure path; and the first thing that presented itself to our view was the Junietta river, which, flowing with a gentle stream between two very steep hills, covered with trees to the very top, the sun just shining, and enlightening the opposite side, though hid to us, presented one of the most enchanting and romantic scenes I ever experienced. From this place to Hartley's Tavern is eight miles, and this we had to go before night. It was sunset before we had reached the summit of the opposite hill of the river. From this hill we beheld ourselves in the midst of a mountainous and woody country; the Junietta winding and flowing on each side of us at the foot of the hill; the distant mountains appearing in all the _wildness of majesty_, and extending below the horizon. The moon had just begun to spread her silver light; and by her assistance we were enabled to reach our destined _port_. The road, which was carried along the side of a tremendously high hill, seemed to threaten us with instant death, if our horses should make a false step. Embosomed in woods, on a lonely path, we travelled by the kind light of the moon till near eight o'clock, when we reached our place of destination. It was a very comfortable house, kept by one Hartley, an Englishman, and situated in a gap of the mountains, called in this part of the country Warrior's Gap, and which affords an outlet or passage for the Junietta river, which here is a fine gentle stream. The country just about here was very mountainous; yet our landlord had got a very pleasant spot cleared and cultivated, and which furnished him with the principal necessaries of life. Finding this an agreeable place, we stopped here three days, and went up into the mountains to shoot; but, being very young hands at this diversion, we were always unsuccessful. "On _Saturday, October 15th_, we set off from Hartley's about eleven o'clock, and proceeded to Redford (six miles), which is a pleasant place, and agreeably situated, and contains a great many houses. The town is supplied with water from the neighbouring hills; conveyed in pipes to each house, and to a public place in the middle of the town. We left this place about half-past twelve, and proceeded to Ryan's tavern, at the foot of the Allegany mountain (eleven miles). Here we dined; and after dinner, we proceeded up the mountain, the top of which we reached about five o'clock; and here I was surprised to find a number of little streams of water flowing through some as fine land as is to be met with in the United States, and abounding with fish. This appearance upon the top of so high a mountain is not a little remarkable; but I have since found it to be the case in other ridges of mountains which I have passed over. We intended to have gone on to Webster's this evening, but the weather proving so bad, we called at a little house on the road, in order to stop during the night. But we were informed that they could not accommodate us; however, they directed us to a person about a mile off, where they thought we could get accommodated; accordingly, striking across the woods, we proceeded to this house, and, after some little trouble, and in a very tempestuous night, we found it out, and here took up our abode for the night. Our landlord's name was Statler, and his residence is about eight miles from Ryan's. Here we found a very comfortable habitation, and very good accommodation; and though situated at the top of the highest ridge of mountains, we experienced not only the comforts, but also some of the luxuries of life. From the stone which forms the base of this mountain they make mill-stones, which are sent to all parts of the country, and sell from fifteen to twenty and thirty dollars a pair. Land sells on these mountains for two dollars an acre. We found this so comfortable a place, that we stopped here to breakfast the next morning (_October 16th_), and then we proceeded to Webster's, at a place called Stoystown (nine miles), where there is a good tavern, and where we stopped to bait our horses. About a mile before we came to Webster's we passed over Stoney Creek, which has a great many different branches, and rather large, but most of them were dry, owing partly to the season, and partly to their lying so very high. About nine miles further we stopped at Murphy's, where we baited our horses; but the habitation was so uncomfortable, and their accommodations so miserable, that we could get nothing for ourselves; we were therefore obliged to defer till the evening taking any refreshment. On leaving this place we crossed Laurel Hill, which is near nine miles long, and which is the highest ridge of the Apalachian mountains: it is rather a ridge upon a ridge, than a mountain by itself, as it rises upon the Allegany ridge. The perpendicular height of this ridge is 4,200 feet; and in crossing it we were not a little incommoded by the cold winds and rain which generally infest the summit. This, together with the badness of the roads (being nothing but large loose stones), made it one of the most unpleasant rides I ever experienced. It was near dark before we descended this mountain; and we had then to go three miles to a poor miserable hut, where we were obliged to spend the night amidst the whole family and some other travellers, all scattered about in the same room. "About half-past six the next morning (_October 17th, 1796_) we set out from King's, and crossing Chestnut ridge, we arrived at Letty Bean's to breakfast (seven and a half miles). After crossing Chestnut ridge we took our leave of the Apalachian mountains, having passed 170 miles over them, from the Blue ridge to Chestnut ridge. These mountains are for the most part very stony and rocky, yet have a great quantity of fine land on them, even on their very summits. The roads which are carried over them are much better than I expected; and if from the tops of them you can (through an opening of the trees) gain a view of the surrounding country, it appears like a sea of woods; and all those hills which appeared very high in our passing over them, are lost in one wide plane, extending as far as the eye can reach, at least fifty or sixty miles, presenting a view not only novel, but also highly majestic. At other times, when you get between the declivities of the mountains, they appear in all the wildness of nature, forming the most romantic scenery the imagination can picture. It is not to be supposed, that immediately on leaving the Apalachian mountains the country subsides into a smooth level; on the contrary, for several miles, both on the eastern and western side, the country is very hilly, not to say sometimes mountainous; and it is said that the western side of the mountains is 300 feet above the level of the eastern side. "From the foot of the mountains to Pittsburgh is about forty miles, and here we arrived to dinner on the _18th October_, having gone, during our route, about 297 miles from Philadelphia. The accommodations we met with were, upon the whole, tolerably good; at least, such as a person (considering the country he was travelling in) might bear with: charges rather high. It cost us, together with our horses, two dollars a day each. The common charges on the eastern side of the mountains were:--For breakfast, dinner, and supper, 1/2 dollar each; oats, 12 cents. per gallon. On the western side, dinner and supper were charged sometimes 2s., sometimes 2s. 6d., and breakfasts, 18d., (Pennsylvania currency). For breakfast we generally used to have coffee, and buck-wheat cakes, and some fried venison or broiled chicken, meat being inseparable from an American breakfast; and whatever travellers happened to stop at the same place, sat down at the same table, and partook of the same dishes, whether they were poor, or whether they were rich; no distinction of persons being made in this part of the country.... "The waggons which come over the Allegany mountains from the Atlantic states, (bringing dry goods and foreign manufactures for the use of the back-country men,) return from this place generally empty; though sometimes they are laden with deer and bear skins and beaver furs, which are brought in by the hunters, and sometimes by the Indians, and exchanged at the stores for such articles as they may stand in need of." Passing down the Ohio River Mr. Baily proceeded with a pioneer party the leader of which, Mr. Heighway, was about to found a town on the banks of the Little Miami River in Ohio. Leaving the river at the newly located village of Columbia, Ohio, the party pushed on northward. Mr. Baily accompanied them out of curiosity, and his record is of utmost interest. "_Saturday, March 4th, 1797_,--the two waggons started, accompanied with a guide to conduct them through the wilderness, and three or four pioneers to clear the road of trees where there might be occasion; and on "_Monday, March 6th_,--Dr. Bean and myself started about noon, accompanied by several others in the neighbourhood; some of whom were tempted by curiosity, and others with a prospect of settling there. We were mounted on horses, and had each a gun; and across our saddles we had slung a large bag, containing some corn for our horses, and provision for ourselves, as also our blankets: the former was necessary, as the grass had not yet made its appearance in the woods. We kept the road as long as we could; and when that would not assist us any farther, we struck out into the woods; and towards sundown found ourselves about twenty miles from Columbia. Here, having spied a little brook running at the bottom of a hill, we made a halt, and kindling a fire, we fixed up our blankets into the form of a tent, and having fed both ourselves and our horses, we laid ourselves down to rest; one of us, by turns, keeping watch, lest the Indians should come and steal our horses. The next morning,-- "_Tuesday, March 7th_,--as soon as it was light, we continued our journey, and towards the middle of the day overtook our friend H.,[31] almost worn out with fatigue. The ground was so moist and swampy, and he had been obliged to come through such almost impassable ways, that it was with difficulty the horses could proceed; they were almost knocked up; his waggons had been over-turned twice or thrice;--in fact, he related to us such a dismal story of the trials both of patience and of mind which he had undergone, and I verily believe if the distance had been much greater, he would either have sunk under it, or have formed his settlement on the spot. We encouraged him with the prospect of a speedy termination, and the hopes of better ground to pass over; and with this his spirits seemed to be somewhat raised. We all encamped together this night, and made ourselves as happy and as comfortable as possible. My friend H. seemed also to put on the new man; and from this, and from his being naturally of a lively turn, we found that it was a great deal the want of society which had rendered him so desponding, and so out of spirits; for after we had cooked what little refreshment we had brought with us, and finished our repast, he sang us two or three good songs, (which he was capable of doing in a masterly style,) and seemed to take a pleasure in delaying as long as he could that time which we ought to have devoted to rest. As to my own part, I regarded the whole enterprise in a more philosophic point of view; and I may say with the Spectator, I considered myself as a silent observer of all that passed before me; and could not but fancy that I saw in this little society before me the counterpart of the primitive ages, when men used to wander about in the woods with all their substance, in the manner that the present race of Tartars do at this day. I could not but think that I saw in miniature the peregrinations of Abraham, or �neas, &c., &c. "The next morning, _Wednesday, March 8th_, by day-light, our cavalcade was in motion; and some of the party rode on first to discover the spot, for we were travelling without any other guide than what little knowledge of the country the men had acquired by hunting over it. I could not but with pleasure behold with what expedition the pioneers in front cleared the way for the waggon; there were but three or four of them, and they got the road clear as fast as the waggon could proceed. Whilst we were continuing on at this rate, we observed at some distance before us, a human being dart into the woods, and endeavour to flee from us. Ignorant what this might mean, we delayed the waggons, and some of us went into the woods and tracked the footsteps of a man for some little distance, when suddenly a negro made his appearance from behind some bushes, and hastily inquired whether there were any Indians in our party, or whether we had met with any. The hideousness of the man's countenance, (which was painted with large red spots upon a black ground,) and his sudden appearance, startled us at first; but soon guessing his situation, we put him beyond all apprehension, and informed him he was perfectly safe. He then began to inform us that he had been a prisoner among the Indians ever since the close of the last American war; and that he had meditated his escape ever since he had been in their hands, but that never, till now, had he been able to accomplish it.... "We could not but look upon the man with an eye of pity and compassion, and after giving him something to pursue his journey with, and desiring him to follow our track to Columbia, we separated. At about three or four o'clock the same afternoon, we had the satisfaction of seeing the Little Miami river. Here we halted, (for it was on the banks of this river that the town was laid out,) and we were soon joined by our other companions, who had proceeded on first, and who informed us that they had recognized the spot about half a mile higher up the river. We accordingly went on, and got the goods all out of the waggons that night, so that they might return again as soon as they thought proper. And here we could not but congratulate our friend H. upon his arrival at the seat of his new colony." CHAPTER III ZANE'S TRACE AND THE MAYSVILLE PIKE In the study of the Ohio River as a highway of immigration and commerce it was emphasized that in earliest pioneer days the ascent of the river was a serious and difficult problem. This was true, indeed, not on the Ohio alone, but on almost every river of importance in the United States. Of course brawny arms could force a canoe through flood-tides and rapids; but, as a general proposition, the floods of winter, with ice floating fast amid-stream and clinging in ragged blocks and floes along the shore, and the droughts of summer which left, even in the Ohio, great bars exposed so far to the light that the river could be forded here and there by children, made even canoe navigation well-nigh impossible. For other craft than light canoes navigation was utterly out of the question in the dry seasons and exceedingly dangerous on the icy winter floods at night--when the shore could not be approached. Such conditions as these gave origin to many of our land highways. Where pioneer homes were built beside a navigable river it was highly important to have a land thoroughfare leading back to the "old settlements" which could be traversed at all seasons. Many of our "river roads" came into existence, not because the valleys offered the easiest courses for land travel, but because pioneer settlements were made on river banks, and, as the rivers were often worthy of the common French name "Embarras," land courses were necessary. In the greater rivers this "homeward track," so to speak, frequently abandoned the winding valley and struck straight across the interior on the shortest available route. The founding of Kentucky in the lower Ohio Valley offers a specific instance to illustrate these generalizations, and brings us to the subject of a thoroughfare which was of commanding importance in the old West. We have elsewhere dealt at length with the first settlement of Kentucky, making clear the fact that the great road blazed by Boone through Cumberland Gap was the most important route in Kentucky's early history. The growth of the importance of the Ohio River as a thoroughfare and its final tremendous importance to Kentucky and the entire West has also been reviewed. But, despite this importance, the droughts of summer and the ice-torrents of winter made a landward route from Kentucky to Pennsylvania and the East an absolute necessity. Even when the river was navigable, the larger part of the craft which sailed it before 1820 were not capable of going up-stream. Heavy freight could be "poled" and "cordelled" up in the keel-boat and barge, but for all other return traffic, both freight and passenger, the land routes from Kentucky north and east were preferable. For many years the most available messenger and mail route from Cincinnati, Vincennes, and Louisville was over Boone's Wilderness Road through Cumberland Gap. But, as the eighteenth century neared its close, the large population of western Pennsylvania and northwestern Virginia made necessary better routes from the upper Ohio Valley across the Alleghenies; in turn, the new conditions demanded a route up the Ohio Valley from Kentucky to Pennsylvania. In our survey of Indian Thoroughfares, a slight path known as the Mingo Trail is mentioned as leading across eastern Ohio from Mingo Bottom near the present Steubenville, on the Ohio River, to the neighborhood of Zanesville on the Muskingum River.[32] Mingo Bottom was a well-known Indian camping-place; the name is preserved in the railway junction thereabouts, Mingo Junction. A distinct watershed offers thoroughfare southwesterly across to the Muskingum, and on this lay the old trail. The termini of this earliest known route were near two early settlements of whites; Mingo Bottom lies eight or nine miles north of Wheeling, one of the important stations in the days of border warfare. The Mingo Trail, swinging southward a little, became the route of white hunters and travelers who wished to cross what is now eastern Ohio. The Muskingum River terminus of the trail was Wills Town, as far down the Muskingum from Zanesville as Mingo Bottom was above Wheeling on the Ohio. It is altogether probable that a slight trace left the Wills Town trail and crossed the Muskingum at the mouth of Licking River--the present site of Zanesville. If a trail led thence westwardly toward the famed Pickaway Plains, it is recorded on none of our maps. We know, therefore, of only the Mingo Trail, running, let us say loosely, from Wheeling, West Virginia, to Zanesville, Ohio, which could have played any part in forming what soon became known as the first post road in all the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio. With the close of the Indian War and the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, the American possession of the Northwest was placed beyond question. A flood of emigrants at once left the eastern states for the Central West, and the return traffic, especially in the form of travelers and private mail packets, from Kentucky and Cincinnati, began at once to assume significant proportions, and Congress was compelled to facilitate travel by opening a post route two hundred and twenty-six miles in length from the upper to the lower Ohio. Accordingly, the following act: "_An Act to authorize Ebenezer Zane[33] to locate certain lands in the territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio_" was passed by Congress and approved May 17, 1796: "_Be it enacted, &c._, That, upon the conditions hereinafter mentioned, there shall be granted to Ebenezer Zane three tracts of land, not exceeding one mile square each, one on the Muskingum river, one on Hockhocking river, and one other on the north bank of Scioto river, and in such situations as shall best promote the utility of a road to be opened by him on the most eligible route between Wheeling and Limestone,[34] to be approved by the President of the United States, or such person as he shall appoint for that purpose; _Provided_, Such tracts shall not interfere with any existing claim, location, or survey; nor include any salt spring, nor the lands on either side of the river Hockhocking at the falls thereof. "SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That upon the said Zane's procuring, at his own expense, the said tracts to be surveyed, in such a way and manner as the President of the United States shall approve, and returning into the treasury of the United States plats thereof, together with warrents granted by the United States for military land bounties, to the amount of the number of acres contained in the said three tracts; and also, producing satisfactory proof, by the first day of January next, that the aforesaid road is opened, and ferries established upon the rivers aforesaid, for the accommodation of travellers, and giving security that such ferries shall be maintained during the pleasure of Congress; the President of the United States shall be, and he hereby is, authorized and empowered to issue letters patent, in the name and under the seal of the United States, thereby granting and conveying to the said Zane, and his heirs, the said tracts of land located and surveyed as aforesaid; which patents shall be countersigned by the secretary of state, and recorded in his office: _Provided always_, That the rates of ferriage, at such ferries, shall, from time to time, be ascertained [inspected] by any two of the judges of the territory northwest of the river Ohio, or such other authority as shall be appointed for that purpose. "APPROVED May 17, 1796."[35] Zane evidently went at once to work opening the road to Kentucky, his brother Jonathan, and son-in-law John McIntire, assisting largely in the work. The path was only made fit for horsemen, particularly mail-carriers. It is probable that the task was not more difficult than to cut away small trees on an Indian trace. It is sure that for a greater part of the distance from the Ohio to the Muskingum the Mingo Trail was followed, passing near the center of Belmont, Guernsey and Muskingum Counties. The route to the southwest from that point through Perry, Fairfield, Pickaway, Ross, Richland, Adams, and Brown Counties may or may not have followed the path of an Indian trace. No proof to the contrary being in existence, it is most reasonable to suppose that this, like most other pioneer routes, did follow a more or less plainly outlined Indian path. The new road crossed the Muskingum at the present site of the town well named Zanesville, the Hocking at Lancaster, the Scioto at Chillicothe, and the Ohio at Aberdeen, Ohio, opposite the old-time Limestone, Kentucky. [Illustration: BRIDGE ON WHICH ZANE'S TRACE CROSSED THE MUSKINGUM RIVER AT ZANESVILLE, OHIO] One George Sample was an early traveler on this National Road; paying a visit from the East to the Ohio country in 1797, he returned homeward by way of Zane's Trace or the Maysville Road, as the route was variously known. After purchasing a farm on Brush Creek, Adams County, Ohio, and locating a homeless emigrant on it, Mr. Sample "started back to Pennsylvania on horseback" according to his recorded recollections written in 1842;[36] "as there was no getting up the river at that day.[37] In our homeward trip we had very rough fare when we had any at all; but having calculated on hardships, we were not disappointed. There was one house (Treiber's) on Lick branch, five miles from where West Union[38] now is." Trebar--according to modern spelling--opened a tavern on his clearing in 1798 or 1799, but at the time of Sample's trip his house was not more public than the usual pioneer's home where the latch-string was always out.[39] "The next house," continues Mr. Sample, "was where Sinking spring or Middle-town is now.[40] The next was at Chillicothe, which was just then commenced. We encamped one night at Massie's run, say two or three miles from the falls of Paint creek, where the trace then crossed that stream. From Chillicothe to Lancaster the trace then went through the Pickaway plains. There was a cabin some three or four miles below the plains, and another at their eastern edge, and one or two more between that and Lancaster. Here we staid the third night. From Lancaster we went next day to Zanesville, passing several small beginnings. I recollect no improvement between Zanesville and Wheeling, except a small one at the mouth of Indian Wheeling creek, opposite to Wheeling. In this space we camped another night. From Wheeling we went home pretty well." The matter of ferriage was a most important item on pioneer roads as indicated by the Act of Congress quoted. The Court of General Quarter Sessions met at Adamsville, Adams County, December 12, 1797, and made the following the legal rates of ferriage across the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, both of which Zane's Trace crossed: _Scioto River:_ Man and horse 12-1/2 cents. Single 6-1/4 " Wagon and team 75 " Horned cattle (each) 6-1/4 " _Ohio River:_ Man and horse 18-1/2 " Single 9-1/4 " Wagon and team $1.15 Horned cattle 9-1/4 " [41] No sooner was Zane's Trace opened than the Government established a mail route between Wheeling and Maysville and Lexington. For the real terminus of the trace was not by any means at little Maysville; an ancient buffalo route and well-worn white man's road led into the interior of Kentucky from Maysville, known in history as the Maysville Road and Maysville Pike. On the Ohio side this mail route from Wheeling and Lexington was known by many titles in many years; it was the Limestone Road, the Maysville Pike, the Limestone and Chillicothe Road, and the Zanesville Pike; the Maysville and Zanesville Turnpike was constructed between Zanesville and the Ohio River. At Zanesville the road today is familiarly known as the Maysville Pike while in Kentucky it is commonly called the Zanesville Pike. "When the Indian trail gets widened, graded and bridged to a good road," wrote Emerson, "there is a benefactor, there is a missionary, a pacificator, a wealth-bringer, a maker of markets, a vent for industry."[42] The little road here under consideration is unique among American highways in its origin and in its history. It was demanded, not by war, but by civilization, not for exploration and settlement but by settlements that were already made and in need of communion and commerce. It was created by an act of Congress as truly as the Cumberland Road, which soon should, in part, supersede it. And finally it was on the subject of the Maysville Turnpike that the question of internal improvement by the national government was at last decided when, in 1830, President Jackson signed that veto which made the name of Maysville a household word throughout the United States. In 1825, after a delay which created great suspense in the West, the Cumberland Road at last leaped the Ohio River at Wheeling. Zane's Trace, now a wide, much-traveled avenue, offered a route westward to Zanesville which could be but little improved upon. The blazed tree gave way to the mile-stone and the pannier and saddle-bag to the rumbling stagecoach and the chaise. It is all a pretty, quiet picture and its story is totally unlike that of Boone's rough path over the Cumberlands. For settlements sprang up rapidly in this land of plenty; we have seen that there were beginnings at Chillicothe and Zanesville when Sample passed this way in 1797. By 1800, Zane's lots at the crossing of the Hockhocking (first known as New Lancaster, and later as Lancaster--from the town of that name in Pennsylvania) were selling; his terms and inducements to settlers, especially mechanics, are particularly interesting.[43] As intimated, the Kentucky division of the Maysville Pike--leading from the Ohio River through Washington, Paris, and Lexington--became famous in that it was made a test case to determine whether or not the Government had the right to assist in the building of purely state (local) roads by taking shares in local turnpike companies. This much-mooted question was settled once for all by President Andrew Jackson's veto of "A Bill Authorizing a subscription of stock in the Maysville, Washington, Paris, and Lexington Turnpike Road Company," which was passed by the House February 24, 1830. It read:[44] "_Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled_, That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to subscribe, in the name and for the use of the United States, for fifteen hundred shares of the capital stock of the Maysville, Washington, Paris, and Lexington Turnpike Road Company, and to pay for the same at such times, and in such proportions, as shall be required of, and paid by, the stockholders generally, by the rules and regulations of the aforesaid company, to be paid out of any money in the Treasury, not otherwise appropriated: _Provided_, That not more than one-third part of the sum, so subscribed for the use of the United States, shall be demanded in the present year, nor shall any greater sum be paid on the shares so subscribed for, than shall be proportioned to assessments made on individual or corporate stockholders. "SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That the said Secretary of the Treasury shall vote for the President and Directors of the aforesaid company, according to such number of shares as the United States may, at any time, hold in the stock thereof, and shall receive upon the said stock the proportion of the tolls which shall, from time to time, be due to the United States for the shares aforesaid, and shall have and enjoy, in behalf of the United States, every other right of stockholder in said Company." In his first annual message to Congress, dated December 8, 1829, President Jackson stated plainly his attitude to the great question of internal improvements. "As ... the period approaches when the application of the revenue to the payment of [national] debt will cease, the disposition of the surplus will present a subject for the serious deliberation of Congress.... Considered in connection with the difficulties which have heretofore attended appropriations for purposes of internal improvement, and with those which this experience tells us will certainly arise whenever power over such subjects may be exercised by the General Government, it is hoped that it may lead to the adoption of some plan which will reconcile the diversified interests of the States and strengthen the bonds which unite them.... To avoid these evils it appears to me that the most safe, just, and federal disposition which could be made of the surplus revenue would be its apportionment among the several States according to their ratio of representation, and should this measure not be found warranted by the Constitution that it would be expedient to propose to the States an amendment authorizing it."[45] In his veto of the Maysville Road bill President Jackson quoted the above paragraphs from his annual message, and, after citing both Madison's and Monroe's positions as to internal improvements of pure local character, continues: "The bill before me does not call for a more definate opinion upon the particular circumstances which will warrent appropriations of money by Congress to aid works of internal improvement, for although the extention of the power to apply money beyond that of carrying into effect the object for which it is appropriated has, as we have seen, been long claimed and exercised by the Federal Government, yet such grants have always been professedly under the control of the general principle that the works which might be thus aided should be 'of a general, not local, national, not State,' character. A disregard of this distinction would of necessity lead to the subversion of the federal system. That even this is an unsafe one, arbitrary in its nature, and liable, consequently, to great abuses, is too obvious to require the confirmation of experience. It is, however, sufficiently definate and imperative to my mind to forbid my approbation of any bill having the character of the one under consideration. I have given to its provisions ... reflection ... but I am not able to view it in any other light than as a measure of purely local character; or, if it can be considered national, that no further distinction between the appropriate duties of the General and State Governments need be attempted, for there can be no local interest that may not with equal propriety be denominated national. It has no connection with any established system of improvements; is exclusively within the limits of a State, starting at a point on the Ohio River and running out 60 miles to an interior town, and even as far as the State is interested conferring partial instead of general advantages. "Considering the magnitude and importance of the power, and the embarrassments to which, from the very nature of the thing, its exercise must necessarily be subjected, the real friends of internal improvement ought not to be willing to confide it to accident and chance. What is properly _national_ in its character or otherwise is an inquiry which is often extremely difficult of solution.... "If it be the wish of the people that the construction of roads and canals should be conducted by the Federal Government, it is not only highly expedient, but indispensably necessary, that a previous amendment of the Constitution, delegating the necessary power and defining and restricting its exercise with reference to the sovereignty of the States, should be made. The right to exercise as much jurisdiction as is necessary to preserve the works and to raise funds by the collection of tolls to keep them in repair can not be dispensed with. The Cumberland Road should be an instructive admonition of the consequences of acting without this right. Year after year contests are witnessed, growing out of efforts to obtain the necessary appropriations for completing and repairing this useful work. Whilst one Congress may claim and exercise the power, a succeeding one may deny it; and this fluctuation of opinion must be unavoidably fatal to any scheme which from its extent would promote the interests and elevate the character of the country.... "That a constitutional adjustment of this power upon equitable principles is in the highest degree desirable can scarcely be doubted, nor can it fail to be promoted by every sincere friend to the success of our political institutions."[46] The effect of Jackson's veto was far-reaching. It not only put an end to all thought of national aid to such local improvements as the Maysville Turnpike, but deprived such genuinely national promotions as the Baltimore and Ohio Railway of all hope of national aid. "President Jackson had strongly expressed his opposition to aiding state enterprises and schemes of internal improvement by appropriations from the central government," records a historian of that great enterprise; "from whatever source the opposition may have come, the [Baltimore and Ohio Railway] company recognized that it must not hope for aid from the national government."[47] The significance of Jackson's veto could not be more strongly presented. CHAPTER IV PIONEER TRAVEL IN KENTUCKY The following interesting and vivid picture of early travel in Kentucky is taken from Judge James Hall's _Legends of the West_ (Philadelphia, 1832); though largely a work of fiction, such descriptions as these are as lifelike as the original picture. The place at which the party landed was a small village on the bank of the [Ohio] river, distant about fifty miles from a settlement in the interior to which they were destined. "Here we are on dry land once more," said the Englishman as he jumped ashore; "come, Mr. Logan, let us go to the stage-house and take our seats." Logan smiled, and followed his companion. "My good friend," said Edgarton, to a tall, sallow man in a hunting-shirt, who sat on a log by the river with a rifle in his lap, "can you direct us to the stage-house?" "Well, I can't say that I can." "Perhaps you do not understand what we want," said Edgarton; "we wish to take seats in a mail-coach for ----." "Well, stranger, it's my sentimental belief that there isn't a coach, male or female, in the county." "This fellow is ignorant of our meaning," said Edgarton to Logan. "What's that you say, stranger? I _spose maybe_ you think I never _seed_ a coach? Well, it's a free country, and every man has a right to think what he pleases; but I reckon I've saw as many of _them are fixens_ as any other man. I was raised in Tennessee. I saw General Jackson once riding in the elegantest carriage that ever mortal man _sot_ his eyes on--with glass winders to it like a house, and _sort o'_ silk _curtings_. The harness was mounted with silver; it was _drawd_ by four blooded nags, and _druv_ by a mighty likely _nigger_ boy." The travellers passed on, and soon learned that there was indeed no stage in the country. Teams and carriages of any kind were difficult to be procured; and it was with some difficulty that two stout wagons were at last hired to carry Mr. Edgarton's movables, and a _dearborn_ obtained to convey his family, it being agreed that one of the gentlemen should drive the latter vehicle while the other walked, alternately. Arrangements were accordingly made to set out the next morning. The settlement in which Mr. Edgarton had judiciously determined to pitch his tent, and enjoy the healthful innocence and rural felicity of the farmer's life, was new; and the country to be traversed to reach it entirely unsettled. There were two or three houses scattered through the wilderness on the road, one of which the party might have reached by setting out early in the morning, and they had determined to do so. But there was so much fixing and preparing to be done, so much stowing of baggage and packing of trunks, such momentous preparations to guard against cold and heat, hunger and thirst, fatigue, accident, robbery, disease, and death, that it was near noon before the cavalcade was prepared to move. Even then they were delayed some minutes longer to give Mr. Edgarton time to oil the screws and renew the charges of his double-barrel gun and pocket-pistols. In vain he was told there were no highwaymen in America. His way lay chiefly through uninhabited forests; and he considered it a fact in natural history, as indisputable as any other elementary principle, that every such forest has its robbers. After all, he entirely neglected to put flints in his bran new locks instead of the wooden substitutes which the maker had placed there to protect his work from injury; and thus "doubly armed," he announced his readiness to start with an air of truly comic heroism. When they began their journey, new terrors arose. The road was sufficiently plain and firm for all rational purposes; that is to say, it _would do_ very well for those who only wanted to get along, and were content to make the best of it. It was a mere path beaten by a succession of travellers. No avenue had been cut for it through the woods; but the first pioneers had wound their way among the trees, avoiding obstacles by going round them, as the snake winds through the grass, and those who followed had trodden in their footsteps, until they had beaten a smooth road sufficiently wide to admit the passage of a single wagon. On either side was the thick forest, sometimes grown up with underbrush to the margin of the _trace_, and sometimes so open as to allow the eye to roam off to a considerable distance. Above was a dense canopy of interwoven branches. The wild and lonesome appearance, the deep shade, the interminable gloom of the woods, were frightful to our travellers. The difference between a wild forest in the simple majesty of nature, and the woodlands of cultivated countries, is very great. In the latter the underbrush has been removed by art or destroyed by domestic animals; the trees as they arrive at their growth are felled for use, and the remainder, less crowded, assume the spreading and rounded form of cultivated trees. The sunbeams reach the soil through the scattered foliage, the ground is trodden by grazing animals, and a hard sod is formed. However secluded such a spot may be, it bears the marks of civilization; the lowing of cattle is heard, and many species of songsters that hover round the habitations of men, and are never seen in the wilderness, here warble their notes. In the western forests of America all is grand and savage. The truth flashes instantly upon the mind of the observer, with the force of conviction, that Nature has been carrying on her operations here for ages undisturbed. The leaf has fallen from year to year; succeeding generations of trees have mouldered, spreading over the surface layer upon layer of decayed fibre, until the soil has acquired an astonishing depth and an unrivalled fertility. From this rich bed the trees are seen rearing their shafts to an astonishing height. The tendency of plants towards the light is well understood; of course, when trees are crowded closely together, instead of spreading, they shoot upwards, each endeavouring, as it were, to overtop his neighbours, and expending the whole force of the vegetative powers in rearing a great trunk to the greatest possible height, and then throwing out a top like an umbrella to the rays of the sun. The functions of vitality are carried on with vigor at the extremities, while the long stem is bare of leaves or branches; and when the undergrowth is removed nothing can exceed the gloomy grandeur of the elevated arches of foliage, supported by pillars of majestic size and venerable appearance. The great thickness and age of many of the trees is another striking peculiarity. They grow from age to age, attaining a gigantic size, and then fall, with a tremendous force, breaking down all that stands in their downward way, and heaping a great pile of timber on the ground, where it remains untouched until it is converted into soil. Mingled with all our timber are seen aspiring vines, which seem to have commenced their growth with that of the young trees, and risen with them, their tops still flourishing together far above the earth, while their stems are alike bare. The undergrowth consists of dense thickets, made up of the offspring of the larger trees, mixed with thorns, briers, dwarfish vines, and a great variety of shrubs. The ground is never covered with a firm sward, and seldom bears the grasses, or smaller plants, being covered from year to year with a dense mass of dried and decaying leaves, and shrouded in eternal shade. Such was the scene that met the eyes of our travellers, and had they been treated to a short excursion to the moon they would scarcely have witnessed any thing more novel. The wide-spread and trackless ocean had scarcely conveyed to their imaginations so vivid an impression of the vast and solitary grandeur of Nature, in her pathless wildernesses. They could hardly realize the expectation of travelling safely through such savage shades. The path, which could be seen only a few yards in advance, seemed continually to have terminated, leaving them no choice but to retrace their steps. Sometimes they came to a place where a tree had fallen across the road, and Edgarton would stop under the supposition that any further attempt to proceed was hopeless--until he saw the American drivers forsaking the track, guiding their teams among the trees, crushing down the young saplings that stood in their way, and thus winding round the obstacle, and back to the road, often through thickets so dense, that to the stranger's eye it seemed as if neither man nor beast could penetrate them. Sometimes on reaching the brink of a ravine or small stream, the bridge of logs, which previous travellers had erected, was found to be broken down, or the ford rendered impassable; and the wagoners with the same imperturbable good nature, and as if such accidents were matters of course, again left the road, and seeking out a new crossing-place, passed over with scarcely the appearance of difficulty. Once they came to a sheet of water, extending as far as the eye could reach, the tall trees standing in it as thickly as upon the dry ground, with tufts of grass and weeds instead of the usual undergrowth. "Is there a ferry here?" inquired Edgarton. "Oh no, sir, it's nothing but _a slash_." "What's that?" "Why, sir, jist a sort o' swamp." "What in the world shall we do?" "We'll jist put right ahead, sir; there's no dif-_fick_-ulty; it's nice good driving all about here. It's sort o' muddy, but there's good bottom to it all the way." On they went. To Edgarton it was like going to sea; for no road could be seen; nothing but the trackless surface of the water; but instead of looking down, where his eye could have penetrated to the bottom, he was glancing forward in the vain hope of seeing dry land. Generally the water was but a few inches deep, but sometimes they soused into a hole; then Edgarton groaned and the ladies screamed; and sometimes it got gradually deeper until the hubs of the wheels were immersed, and the Englishman then called to the wagoners to stop. "Don't be afeard, sir," one of them replied, "it is not bad; why this ain't nothing; it's right good going; it ain't a-going to swim your horse, no how." "Anything seems a good road to you where the horse will not have to swim," replied the Englishman surlily. "Why, bless you," said the backwoodsman, "this ain't no part of a priming to places that I've seed afore, no how. I've seed race paths in a worse fix than this. Don't you reckon, stranger, that if my team can drag this here heavy wagon, loaded down with plunder, you can sartainly get along with that _ar_ little carry-all, and nothing on the face of the _yeath_ to tote, but jist the women and children?" They had but one such swamp to pass. It was only about half a mile wide, and after travelling that far through the water, the firm soil of the woods, which before seemed gloomy, became cheerful by contrast; and Edgarton found at last, that however unpleasant such travelling may be to those who are not accustomed to it, it has really no dangers but such as are imaginary. As the cavalcade proceeded slowly, the ladies found it most pleasant to walk wherever the ground was sufficiently dry. Mrs. Edgarton and the children might be seen sauntering along, and keeping close to the carriage, for fear of being lost or captured by some nondescript monster of the wild, yet often halting to gather nosegays of wild flowers, or to examine some of the many natural curiosities which surrounded them.... The sun was about to set when the wagoners halted at an open spot, covered with a thick carpet of short grass, on the margin of a small stream of clear water. On inquiring the reason, Mr. Edgarton was assured that this was the best _campground_ on the route, and as there was no house within many miles, it was advisable to make arrangements for passing the night there. "Impossible!" exclaimed the European gentleman; "what! lie on the ground like beasts! we shall all catch our death of cold!" "I should never live through the night," groaned his fair partner.... "Don't let us stay here in the dark, papa," cried the children. Logan expressed the opinion that an encampment might be made quite comfortable, and the sentimental Julia declared that it would be "delightful!" Edgarton imprecated maledictions on the beggarly country which could not afford inns for travellers, and wondered if they expected a gentleman to nestle among the leaves like Robin Hood's foresters.... This storm, like other sudden gusts, soon blew over, and the party began in earnest to make the best of a bad business by rendering their situation as comfortable as possible. The wagoners, though highly amused at the fears of their companions, showed great alacrity and kindness in their endeavours to dissipate the apprehensions and provide for the comfort of foreigners; and, assisted by Mr. Logan, soon prepared a shelter. This was made by planting some large stakes in the ground, in the form of a square, filling up the sides and covering the tops with smaller poles, and suspending blankets over and around it, so as to form a complete enclosure. Mrs. Edgarton had a carpet taken from the wagons and spread on the ground; on this the beds were unpacked and laid, trunks were arranged for seats, and the emigrants surprised at finding themselves in a comfortable apartment, became as merry as they had been before despondent. A fire was kindled and the teakettle boiled, and there being a large store of bread and provisions already prepared, an excellent repast was soon placed before them, and eaten with the relish produced by severe exercise. The night had now closed in, but the blaze of a large fire and the light of several candles threw a brilliant gleam over the spot and heightened the cheerfulness of the evening meal. The arrangements for sleeping were very simple. The tent, which had been divided into two apartments by a curtain suspended in the middle, accommodated all of Mr. Edgarton's household: Logan drew on his greatcoat, and spreading a single blanket on the ground, threw himself down with his feet to the fire; the teamsters crept into their wagons, and the several parties soon enjoyed that luxury which, if Shakspeare may be believed, is often denied to the "head that wears a crown." The light of the morning brought with it cheerfulness and merriment. Refreshed from the fatigues of the preceding day, inspired with new confidence, and amused by the novelties that surrounded them, the emigrants were in high spirits. Breakfast was hastily prepared, and the happy party, seated in a circle on the grass, enjoyed their meal with a keen relish. The horses were then harnessed and the cavalcade renewed its march. The day was far advanced when they began to rise to more elevated ground than that over which they had travelled. The appearance of the woods was sensibly changed. They were now travelling over a high upland tract with a gently-waving surface, and instead of the rank vegetation, the dense foliage and gloomy shades by which they had been surrounded, beheld woodlands composed of smaller trees thinly scattered and intermingled with rich thickets of young timber. The growth though thick was low, so that the rays of the sun penetrated through many openings, and the beaten path which they pursued was entirely exposed to the genial beams. Groves of the wild apple, the plum, and the cherry, now in full bloom, added a rich beauty to the scene and a delightful fragrance to the air. But the greatest natural curiosity and the most attractive scenic exhibitions of our Western hemisphere was still in reserve; and a spontaneous expression of wonder and delight burst from the whole party, as they emerged from the woods and stood on the edge of _a prairie_. They entered a long vista, carpeted with grass, interspersed with numberless flowers, among which the blue violet predominated; while the edges of the forest on either hand were elegantly fringed with low thickets loaded with blossoms--those of the plum and cherry of snowy whiteness, and those of the crab-apple of a delicate pink. Above and beyond these were seen the rich green, the irregular outline, and the variegated light and shade of the forest. As if to produce the most beautiful perspective, and to afford every variety of aspect, the vista increased in width until it opened like the estuary of a great river into the broad prairie, and as our travellers advanced the woodlands receded on either hand, and sometimes indented by smaller avenues opening into the woods, and sometimes throwing out points of timber, so that the boundary of the plain resembled the irregular outline of a shore as traced on a map. [Illustration: PIONEER VIEW OF HOUSES AT FORT CUMBERLAND, MARYLAND] Delighted with the lovely aspect of Nature in these the most tasteful of her retreats, the party lingered along until they reached the margin of the broad prairie, where a noble expanse of scenery of the same character was spread out on a larger scale. They stood on a rising ground, and beheld before them a vast plain, undulating in its surface so as to present to the eye a series of swells and depressions, never broken nor abrupt, but always regular, and marked by curved lines. Here and there was seen a deep ravine or drain, by which the superfluous water was carried off, the sides of which were thickly set with willows. Clumps of elm and oak were scattered about far apart like little islands; a few solitary trees were seen, relieving the eye as it wandered over the ocean-like surface of this native meadow. It so happened that a variety of accidents and delays impeded the progress of our emigrants, so that the shadows of evening began to fall upon them, while they were yet far from the termination of their journey, and it became necessary again to seek a place of repose for the night. The prospect of encamping again had lost much of its terrors, but they were relieved from the contemplation of this last resource of the houseless, by the agreeable information that they were drawing near the house of a farmer who was in the habit of "accommodating travellers." It was further explained that Mr. Goodman did not keep a public-house, but that he was "well off," "had houseroom enough, and plenty to eat," and that "_of course_," according to the hospitable customs of the country, he entertained any strangers who sought shelter under his roof. Thither they bent their steps, anticipating from the description of it a homestead much larger and more comfortable than the cheerless-looking log-cabins which had thus far greeted their eyes, and which seemed to compose the only dwellings of the population. On arriving at the place, they were a little disappointed to find that the abundance of _houseroom_ which had been promised them was a mere figure of speech, an idiomatic expression by a native, having a comparative signification. The dwelling was a log house, differing from others only in being of a larger size and better construction. The logs were hewed and squared instead of being put up in their original state, with the bark on; the apertures were carefully closed, and the openings representing windows, instead of being stopped when urgent occasion required the exclusion of the atmosphere, by hats, old baskets, or cast-off garments, were filled with glass, in imitation of the dwellings of more highly civilized lands. The wealth of this farmer, consisting chiefly of the _plenty to eat_ which had been boasted, was amply illustrated by the noisy and numerous crowd of chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs, and cattle, that cackled, gobbled, and grunted about the house, filling the air with social though discordant sounds, and so obstructing the way as scarcely to leave room for the newly-arrived party to approach the door. As the cavalcade halted, the foremost driver made the fact known by a vociferous salutation. "Hal-low! Who keeps house?" A portly dame made her appearance at the door, and was saluted with,-- "How de do, ma'am--all well, ma'am?" "All right well, thank you, sir." "Here's some strangers that wants lodging; can we get to stay all night with you?" "Well, I don't know; _he's_ not at home, and I harly know what to say." "I'll answer for _him_," replied the driver, who understood distinctly that the pronoun used so emphatically by the good lady alluded to her inferior moiety; "he wouldn't turn away strangers at this time of day when the chickens is jist goin to roost. We've ben a travellin all day, and our critters is mighty tired and hungry, as well as the rest of us." "Well," said the woman, very cheerfully, "I reckon you can stay; if you can put up with such fare as we have, you are very welcome. My man will be back soon; he's only jist gone up to town." The whole party were now received into the dwelling of the backwoodsman by the smiling and voluble hostess, whose assiduous cordiality placed them at once at their ease in spite of the plain and primitive, and to them uncomfortable aspect of the log house. Indeed, nothing could be more uninviting in appearance to those who were accustomed only to the more convenient dwellings of a state of society farther advanced in the arts of social life. It was composed of two large apartments or separate cabins, connected by an area or space which was floored and roofed, but open at the sides, and which served as a convenient receptacle to hang saddles, bridles, and harness, or to stow travellers' baggage, while in fine weather it served as a place in which to eat or sit. In the room into which our party was shown there was neither plastering nor paper, nor any device of modern ingenuity to conceal the bare logs that formed the sides of the house, neither was there a carpet on the floor, nor any furniture for mere ornament. The absence of all superfluities and of many of the conveniences usually deemed essential in household economy was quite striking. A table, a few chairs, a small looking-glass, some cooking utensils, and a multitudinous array of women's apparel, hung round on wooden pins, as if for show, made up the meagre list, whether for parade or use, with the addition of several bedsteads closely ranged on one side of the room, supporting beds of the most plethoric and dropsical dimensions, covered with clean cotton bedding, and ostentatiously tricked out with gaudy, parti-colored quilts. The "man" soon made his appearance, a stout, weatherbeaten person, of rough exterior, but not less hospitably disposed than his better half, and the whole household were now actively astir to furnish forth the evening's repast, nor was their diligent kindness, nor the inquisitive though respectful cross-examination which accompanied it, at all diminished when they discovered that their guests were English people. Soon the ample fire-place, extending almost across one end of the house, was piled full of blazing logs; the cries of affrighted fowls and other significant notes of preparation announced that active operations were commenced in the culinary department. An array of pots and kettles, skillets, ovens, and frying-pans, covered the hearth, and the astonished travellers discovered that the room they occupied was not only used as a bedchamber, but "served them for parlour, and kitchen, and hall." We shall not attempt to describe the processes of making bread, cooking meat and vegetables, and preparing the delightful beverage of the evening meal, a portion of which took place in the presence of the surprised and amused guests, while other parts were conducted under a shed out of doors. A large table was soon spread with clean linen, and covered with a profusion of viands such as probably could not be found on the board of the mere peasant or labouring farmer in any other part of the world.[48] Coffee was there, with sweet milk and buttermilk in abundance; fried chickens, venison, and ham: cheese, sweetmeats, pickles, dried fruit, and honey; bread of wheat and corn, hot biscuits and cakes, with fresh butter; all well prepared and neat, and all pressed upon the hungry travellers with officious hospitality. Had the entertainment been furnished in regal style at some enchanted castle by invisible hands, the guests could scarcely have been more surprised by the profusion and variety of the backwoods repast, so far did the result produced exceed the apparent means afforded by the desolate-looking and scantily-furnished cabin. If our worthy travellers were surprised by the novelties of backwoods _inn_-hospitality which thus far had pressed upon them, how much was their wonder increased when the hour for retiring arrived, and the landlady apologized for being obliged to separate guests from their hosts. "Our family is so large," said the woman, "that we have to have two rooms. I shall have to put all of you strangers into a room by yourselves." The party were accordingly conducted into the other apartment, which was literally filled with arrangements for sleeping, there being several bedsteads, each of which was closely curtained with sheets, blankets, and coverlids hung around it for the occasion, while the whole floor was strewed with pallets. Here Mr. Edgarton and his whole party, including Logan and the teamsters, were expected to sleep. A popular poet, in allusion to this patriarchal custom, impertinently remarks, Some cavillers Object to sleep with fellow-travellers. And on this occasion the objection was uttered vehemently, the ladies declaring that martyrdom in any shape would be preferable to lodging thus like a drove of cattle. Unreasonable as such scruples might have seemed, they were so pertinaciously adhered to on the one side, and so obstinately resisted by the exceedingly difficult nature of the case on the other, that there is no knowing to what extremities matters might have gone, had not a compromise been effected by which Logan and the wagon-drivers were transferred into the room occupied by the farmer's family, while the Edgartons, the sister, the maid, the greyhound, the pug-dog, and the parrot, remained sole occupants of the apartment prepared for them. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Diary of George Washington, Sept. 2 to Oct. 4, 1784._ [2] Cf. "Journal of Lieut. Robert Parker," _The Pennsylvania Magazine_, vol. xxvii, No. 108, pp. 404-420. [3] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. v, p. 93. [4] _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, vol. xi, p. 230. [5] _Public Documents Relating to the New York Canals_ (New York, 1821), p. 312. [6] _Id._, pp. 352-353. [7] _A Pedestrious Tour_, by Estwick Evans. [8] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. xiii, ch. 4. [9] Watson's _Annals of Philadelphia_, vol. i, p. 257. [10] See "Hulme's Journal" in W. Cobbett's _A Year's Residence in the United States_ (1819), p. 490. [11] D. Hewett's _American Traveller_ (1825), p. 222. [11*] It is curious to note that while the introduction of coaches is said here to be injurious to the breed of horses, Macaulay, a century or so later, decried the passing of the coach and the old coaching days because this, too, meant the destruction of the breed of horses!--See _Historic Highways of America_, vol. x, p. 122. [12] Florida Avenue is said to have been the first street laid out on the present site of Washington, D. C. As it is the most crooked of all the streets and avenues this is easy to believe. [13] _Retrospect of Western Travel_, vol. i, pp. 88-89. [14] Moore's notes are as follows: On "ridges" (line 3): "What Mr. Weld [an English traveler in America] says of the national necessity of balancing or trimming the stage, in passing over some of the wretched roads in America, is by no means exaggerated. 'The driver frequently had to call to the passengers in the stage to lean out of the carriage, first on one side, then on the other, to prevent it from oversetting in the deep ruts, with which the road abounds. "Now, gentlemen, to the right!" upon which the passengers all stretched their bodies half out of the carriage to balance on that side. "Now, gentlemen, to the left!" and so on.'--_Weld's Travels._" On "bridges" (line 4): "Before the stage can pass one of these bridges the driver is obliged to stop and arrange the loose planks, of which it is composed, in the manner that best suits his ideas of safety, and as the planks are again disturbed by the passing of the coach, the next travelers who arrive have, of course, a new arrangement to make. Mahomet, as Sale tells us, was at some pains to imagine a precarious kind of bridge for the entrance of paradise, in order to enhance the pleasures of arrival. A Virginia bridge, I think, would have answered his purpose completely." [15] _Sketch of the Civil Engineering of North America_, pp. 132-133. [16] "The Oldest Turnpike in Pennsylvania," by Edward B. Moore, in Philadelphia _Press_ or Delaware County _American_, June 22, 1901; and "The Old Turnpike," by A. E. Witmer in _Lancaster County Historical Society Papers_, vol. ii (November, 1897), pp. 67-86. [17] Sherman Day, _Historical Collections of the State of Pennsylvania_ (Philadelphia, 1843). [18] The rise of the Pennsylvania canal and railway system will be treated in chapter four of _Historic Highways of America_, vol. xiii. [18*] For these and other facts concerning plank roads we are indebted to W. Kingsford's _History, Structure and Statistics of Plank Roads_ (1852). [19] The frontispiece to this volume represents a mile-stone which was erected beside Braddock's old road, near Frostburg, Maryland, during the Revolutionary War. On the reverse side it bears the legend, "Our Countrys Rights We Will Defend." On the front these words can be traced: "[12 ?] Miles to Fort Cumberland 29 Miles to Capt Smith's Inn & Bridge by Crossings. [Smithfield, Pennsylvania] the Best Road to Redstone Old Fort 64 M." The stone was once taken away for building purposes and broken; the town authorities of Frostburg ordered it to be cemented, returned and set up on its old-time site. [20] The Lancaster Turnpike. [21] "In these stages," as Brissot [Jean Pierre Brissot de Warville, _New Travels in the United States_ (London, 1794)] observes, "you meet with men of all professions. The member of congress is placed by the side of the shoemaker who elected him; they fraternise together, and converse with familiarity. You see no person here take upon him those important airs which you too often meet with in England."--BAILY. [22] It consists of several layers of large logs laid longitudinally, and parallel to each other, and covered at the top with earth.--BAILY. [23] The sleighs not making any noise when in motion over the snow, the horses are obliged by law to have little bells fastened around their necks, to warn foot-passengers of their approach.--BAILY. [24] I was in company with a gentleman of the name of Heighway, who was going down to the northwestern settlement to form a plantation.--BAILY. See p. 144. [25] By D. Hewett's _American Traveller_, the principal points on the Washington-Pittsburg route are given as follows: Distance. Montgomery c. h. 14. Clarksburg 13. Monocasy River 8. Fredericktown 7. Hagerstown 27. Pennsylvania State line 8. M'Connell'stown 20. Junietta River 17. Bedford 14. Stoyestown 27. Summit of Laurel Hill 13. Greensburg 26. Pittsburg 32. Total 226. [26] Mr. Hewett gives this note of Montgomery C. H.: "This village is also called Rockville. There is an extremely bad turnpike from Washington to this place, so much so, that the man who keeps the toll house, _after_ having taken toll, recommends travellers to go the _ola road_."--p. 51. [27] All the inns and public-houses on the road are called taverns.--BAILY. [28] Clarksburg. [29] Hagar's-town is ten miles from Boone's-town.--BAILY. [30] McDowell's Mill. [31] Mr. Heighway, an Englishman who settled now at Waynesville, Warren County, Ohio.--_History of Warren County, Ohio_ (Chicago, 1882), p. 412. [32] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. ii, p. 109. [33] The patriot-pioneer of Wheeling, the first settlement on the Ohio River below Pittsburg, which he founded in 1769, and where he lived until 1811. He was born in Virginia in 1747. [34] The importance of the historic _entrepôt_ Limestone Mason County, Kentucky (later named Maysville from one of its first inhabitants) has been suggested in Volume IX of this series (pp. 70, 89, 128). It was the most important entrance point into Kentucky on its northeastern river shore-line. What it was in earliest days, because of the buffalo trail into the interior, it remained down through the earlier and later pioneer era to the time of the building of the trunk railway lines. [35] _United States Statutes at Large, Private Laws 1789-1845, inclusive_, p. 27. [36] _American Pioneer_, vol. i, p. 158. [37] An exaggerated statement, yet much in accord with the truth, as we have previously observed. [38] County seat of Adams County, Ohio. [39] Evans and Stivers, _History of Adams County, Ohio_, p. 125. [40] Wilcoxon's clearing, Sinking Spring, Highland County, Ohio.--_Id._, p. 125. [41] _Id._, p. 88. [42] _Society and Solitude_, essay on "Civilization," pp. 25-26. [43] See Graham's _History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio_, pp. 133-134. [44] _Bills & Resolutions, House Reps., 1st Sess., 21st Cong., Part 2, 1829 & '30_, H. R., p. 285. [45] Richardson's _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_, vol. ii, pp. 451, 452. [46] _Id._, pp. 483-493. [47] Reizenstein's "The Economic History of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad," _Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Science_, fifteenth series, vii-viii, p. 23. [48] I cannot resist the opportunity of nailing to the counter a wretched fabrication of some traveller, who represents himself as dismounting at a Western house of entertainment, and inquiring the price of a dinner. The answer is, "Well, stranger--with wheat bread and chicken fixens, it would be fifty cents, but with corn bread and common doins, twenty-five cents." The slang here used is of the writer's own invention. No one ever heard in the West of "chicken fixens," or "common doins." On such occasions, the table is spread with everything that the house affords, or with whatever may be convenient, according to the means and temper of the entertainers. A meal is a meal, and the cost is the same, whether it be plentiful or otherwise.--HALL. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: 1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. 2. Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been corrected. 3. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the main text body. 4. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break. 
20455	----	[Illustration: STRICKEN] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE TRUE STORY OF OUR NATIONAL CALAMITY OF FLOOD, FIRE AND TORNADO The appalling loss of life, the terrible suffering of the homeless, the struggles for safety, and the noble heroism of those who risked life to save loved ones; the unprecedented loss of property, resulting in the laying waste of flourishing cities and towns HOW THE WHOLE NATION JOINED IN THE WORK OF RELIEF By LOGAN MARSHALL Author of "THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC," "THE UNIVERSAL HANDBOOK," "LIFE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT," "THE STORY OF POLAR CONQUEST," "MARSHALL'S HANDY MANUAL," Etc. PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED WITH AUTHENTIC PHOTOGRAPHS ----------------------------------------------------------------------- COPYRIGHT 1913, BY L. T. MYERS The material in this work is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States. All persons are warned against making any use of it without permission. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Prayer by Bishop David H. Greer: O Merciful God and Heavenly Father, who hast taught us in Thy holy word that Thou dost not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men, give ear to the prayers which we humbly offer to Thee in behalf of our brethren who are suffering from the great water floods. Cause them in their sorrow to experience the comfort of Thy presence, and in their bewilderment the guidance of Thy wisdom. Stir up, we beseech Thee, the wills of Thy people to minister with generous aid to their present needs, and so overrule in Thy providence this great and sore calamity that we may be brought nearer to Thee and be knit more closely one to another in sympathy and love. All which we humbly ask, through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Illustration: WHERE THE NATION'S SYMPATHIES ARE CENTERED] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Greatest Cataclysm in American History . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 CHAPTER II The Death-Bearing Flood at Dayton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 CHAPTER III Dayton's Menace of Fire and Famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 CHAPTER IV Dayton in the Throes of Distress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 CHAPTER V The Recuperation of Dayton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 CHAPTER VI Dayton: "The City of a Thousand Factories" . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 CHAPTER VII The Devastation of Columbus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 CHAPTER VIII Columbus: The Beautiful Capital of Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 CHAPTER IX Cincinnati: A New Center of Peril . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 CHAPTER X The Flood in Western Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 CHAPTER XI The Flood in Northern Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 CHAPTER XII The Flood in Eastern Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 CHAPTER XIII The Flood in Eastern Indiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 CHAPTER XIV The Desolation of Indianapolis and the Valley of the White River. . 184 CHAPTER XV The Roaring Torrent of the Wabash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 CHAPTER XVI The Plight of Peru: A Stricken City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 CHAPTER XVII The Death-Dealing Tornado at Omaha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 CHAPTER XVIII Struggles of Stricken Omaha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 CHAPTER XIX Omaha: "The Gate City of the West" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 CHAPTER XX Other Damage from the Nebraska Tornado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 CHAPTER XXI The Tornado in Iowa and Illinois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 CHAPTER XXII The Tornado in Kansas and Arkansas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 CHAPTER XXIII The Tornado in Indiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 CHAPTER XXIV The Tornado in Pennsylvania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 CHAPTER XXV The Freak Tornado in Alabama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 CHAPTER XXVI The Flood in New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 CHAPTER XXVII The Flood in Pennsylvania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 CHAPTER XXVIII The Flood in the Ohio Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 CHAPTER XXIX The Flood in the Mississippi Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 CHAPTER XXX Damage to Transportation, Mail and Telegraph Facilities . . . . . . 277 CHAPTER XXXI The Work of Relief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 CHAPTER XXXII Previous Great Floods and Tornadoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 CHAPTER XXXIII Lessons of the Cataclysm and Precautionary Measures . . . . . . . . 308 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Unleashed Gods By Percy Shaw Iron and rock are our slaves; We are liege to marble and steel; We go our ways through our purse-proud days, Lifting our voices in loud self-praise-- Forgetting the God at the wheel. We build our bulwarks of stone, Skyscraper and culvert and tower, Till the God of Flood, keen-nosed for blood, Drags our monuments into the mud In the space of a red-eyed hour. Kings of the oceans are we, With our liners of rocket speed, Till the God of Ice, in mist-filled trice, Calls to us harshly to pay his price As we sink to the deep-sea weed. Muscle and brain are our slaves; We are liege to iron and steel; But who shall say, tomorrow, today, That we shall not halt on our onward way To bow to the God at the wheel? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Illustration: HELPING HANDS] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER I THE GREATEST CATACLYSM IN AMERICAN HISTORY THE UNCONTROLLABLE FORCES OF NATURE--THE DEVASTATION OF OMAHA--THE TERROR OF THE FLOOD--A VIVID PICTURE OF THE FLOOD--THE TRAGEDY OF DEATH AND SUFFERING--THE SYMPATHY OF NATIONS--THE COURAGE OF THE STRICKEN--MEN THAT SHOWED THEMSELVES HEROES. Man is still the plaything of Nature. He boasts loudly of conquering it; the earth gives a little shiver and his cities collapse like the house of cards a child sets up. A French panegyrist said of our own Franklin: "He snatched the scepter from tyrants and the lightning from the skies," but the lightning strikes man dead and consumes his home. He thinks he has mastered the ocean, but the records of Lloyds refute him. He declares his independence of the winds upon the ocean, and the winds upon the land touch his proud constructions and they are wrecks. He imprisons the waters behind a dam and fetters the current of the rivers with bridges; they bestir themselves and the fetters snap, his towns are washed away and thousands of dead bodies float down the angry torrents. He burrows into the skin of the earth for treasure, and a thousand men find a living grave. Man has extorted many secrets from Nature; he can make a little use of a few of its forces; but he is impotent before its power. Thus we pause to reflect upon the most staggering and tragic cataclysm of Nature that has been visited upon our country since first our forefathers won it from the Indian--the unprecedented succession of tornadoes, floods, storms and blizzards, which in March, 1913, devastated vast areas of territory in Ohio, Indiana, Nebraska and a dozen other states, and which were followed fast by the ravages of fire, famine and disease. THE DEVASTATION OF OMAHA The terrible suddenness and irresistible power of such catastrophes make them an object of overwhelming fear. The evening of Easter Sunday in Omaha was doubtless as placid and uneventful as a thousand predecessors, until an appalling roar and increasing darkness announced to the initiated the approach of a tornado, and in a few minutes forty-seven city blocks were leveled to the ground. The fairest and best built part of the city could no more withstand this awful force than the weakest hovels. Twelve hundred buildings were destroyed, most of them homes, but among them many churches and school houses. The just and the unjust fared alike in this riot of destruction and then the tornado rushed on to find other objects on which to wreck its force in Council Bluffs and elsewhere. It left in its wake many fires, but fortunately also a heavy rain, while later a deep fall of snow covered up the scene of its awful destruction. THE TERROR OF THE FLOOD With the rest of the country, fair Dayton sorrowed for Omaha. Two days later Omaha, bowed and almost broken by her own misfortune, looked with sympathy across to Dayton, whose woe was even greater. A thousand communities in the United States read the story and in their own sense of security sent eager proffers of assistance to the striken districts. And not one of them has assurance that it may not be next. There is no sure definition of the course of the earthquake, the path of the wind, the time and place of the storm-cloud. Science has its limitations. Only the Infinite is master of these forces. In the legal parlance of the practice of torts such occurrences as these are known as "acts of God." Theologians who attempt to solve the mysteries of Providence have found in such occasions the evidence of Divine wrath and warning to the smitten people. But to seek the reason and to know the purpose, if there be purpose in it, is not necessary. The fact is enough. It challenges, staggers, calls a halt, compels men and women to think--and even to pray. But the flood did not confine itself to Dayton. It laid its watery hand of death and destruction over a whole tier of states from the Great Lakes to New England, and over the vast area to the southward which is veined by the Ohio River and its tributaries, and extending from the Mississippi Valley almost to the Atlantic seaboard. And as this awful deluge drained from the land into Nature's watercourses the demons of death and devastation danced attendance on its mad rush that laid waste the borderlands of the Mississippi River from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico. A VIVID PICTURE OF THE FLOOD Those who have never seen a great flood do not know the meaning of the Scriptural phrase, "the abomination of desolation." An explosion, a railroad wreck, even a fire--these are bad enough in their pictorial effect of shattered ruins and confusion. But for giving one an oppressive sense of death-like misery, there is nothing equal to a flood. I do not speak now of the loss of life, which is unspeakably dreadful, but of the scenic effect of the disaster. It just grips and benumbs you with its awfulness. In the flat country of the Middle West there is less likelihood of swift, complete destruction than in narrow valleys, like those of Johnstown and Austin in Pennsylvania. But the effect is, if anything, more gruesome. After the crest has passed there are miles and miles of inundated land, with only trees and half-submerged buildings and floating wreckage to break the monotony; just a vast lake of yellow, muddy water, swirling and boiling as it seeks to find its level. [Illustration: THE CITIES AND TOWNS INCLOSED BY THE HEAVY BLACK DOTTED LINES WERE THE CHIEF SUFFERERS BY THE SWEEP OF WATERS] The scene in a town is particularly ghastly. How ghastly it is, you would have realized if you could have gone with the writer into the flooded districts of Ohio and Indiana, traveling from point to point in automobiles and motor boats, penetrating to the heart of the flood in boats even before the waters receded, and afterwards on foot. The upper floors of houses not torn from their foundations look all right, but it fairly makes you sick to see the waves of turbid water lapping at second floor sills, with tangled tree branches and broken furniture floating about. It seems horrible--it is horrible--to think of that yellow flood pouring into pleasant rooms where a few hours before the family sat in peace and fancied security--roaring over the threshold, swirling higher and higher against the walls, setting the cherished household treasures astray, driving the furniture hither and thither, drowning out cheerful rooms in darkness and death. If anything can be worse than this, it is the scenes when the waters recede. The shade trees that stood in the streets so trim and beautiful are all bedraggled and bent, their branches festooned with floating wreckage and all manner of offensive things, their leaves sodden, their trunks caked with mud. The streets are seas of yellow ooze. Garden fences and hedges are twisted or torn away. Reeking heaps of indescribable refuse lie moldering where there were smooth lawns and bright flower beds. The houses that stand are all smeared with the dirt that shows the height of the flood. But inside those houses--that is the dreadful thing. The rooms that the water filled are like damp caves. Mud lies thick on the floors, the walls are streaked with slime, and the paper hangs down in dismal festoons. Some pictures may remain hanging, but they are all twisted and tarnished. The furniture is a tumbled mass of confusion and filth. But the worst is the reek of decay and death about the place. THE TRAGEDY OF DEATH AND SUFFERING But there is something greater in its tragedy than all this--something greater than a great region where splendid cities, towns and humble villages alike are without resource--something greater than a region of broken dams and embankments and of placid rivers gone mad in flood, bridgeless, uncontrollable, widened into lakes, into seas. It is the hundreds of dead who died a hideous death, and the hundreds of thousands of living who are left helpless and homeless, and all but hopeless. Just for one moment think--we in our warm, comfortable houses, comfortably clad, safe, smiling and happy--of the half million of our fellow creatures out yonder shivering and trembling and dying, in the grasp of the "destruction that wasteth at noonday," swiftly pursued by "the pestilence which walketh in darkness." The leaping terror of the flames climaxes the terror of the harrowing day and the helpless, hopeless night of agony and sorrow and despair. Think of the men, women, children and the little babies crushed and mangled amid the wreck of shattered homes--but yesterday as beautiful and bright as ours--the pallid faces of hundreds floating as corpses in the stately streets turned into rushing rivers by the relentless floods--brothers and sisters of ours, freezing and starving in homes turned suddenly into broken rafts and battered houseboats amid the muddy deluge, while the pitying stars look down at night upon thousands, wet, weeping, shivering, hungry, helpless and homeless, with the host of their unrecognized and unburied dead, in this frightful holocaust of fire and flood and pestilence. Think of the region where people are huddled shivering on hills or housetops, watching the swelling waters; where practically every convenience, means of communication, comfort, appliance of civilization has been wiped out or stopped; where there is little to eat and no way of getting food save from the country beyond the waters; where millionaire and pauper, Orville Wright and humble scrub-woman, stand shoulder to shoulder in the bread-line that winds towards the relief stations, all alike dependent for once on charity for the barest sustenance. THE SYMPATHY OF NATIONS These are the tragedies that touch our hearts. These are the tragedies that have brought messages of condolence from King George of England, from the King of Italy, from the Shah of Persia and from other monarchs of Europe. These are the tragedies that impelled a widow in a small town in Massachusetts, in sending her mite for the relief of the unfortunate, to write: "Just one year ago, when the ill-fated Titanic deprived me of my all, the Red Cross Society lost not a moment in coming to my aid." These are tragedies, too, that have prompted wage-earners all over the country to contribute to the relief of the flood sufferers a part of their own means of support that could ill be spared--soiled and worn bills and silver pieces laid down with unspoken sympathy by men and women and children, too, who wanted nothing said about it and turned and went out to face the struggle for existence again. These people did not think twice about whether they should help those in greater necessity than their own. They had been helping one another all their lives, and it seemed not so much a duty as a natural thing to do to respond to the call from the West, where people had lost their lives and others were homeless and suffering. THE COURAGE OF THE STRICKEN This spirit of helpfulness is a fine thing. But even finer was the spirit of self-help. Secretary Garrison's telegram to President Wilson from the flooded districts that the people in the towns and cities affected had the situation well in hand and that very little emergency assistance was needed, was a splendid testimonial to the courage and the resourcefulness of the people of the Middle West and the admirable cheerfulness which they exhibited during the trying days that followed the beginning of the calamity. There was not a whimper, but on the contrary there was a spirit of optimism that must prove to be most stimulating to the rest of the country. MEN THAT SHOWED THEMSELVES HEROES But perhaps the finest thing of all is the memory of the heroes that showed themselves. When death and disaster, in the form of flood and fire, swept Dayton, John H. Patterson arose with the tide to the level of events. Patterson is the man, more than any other, who brought cosmos out of chaos. When the flood was rising and nobody knew what the result would be, John H. Patterson began to wire for motor boats. He did not ask, he demanded. And the motor boats came. Patterson took all of the carpenters from the National Cash Register--one hundred and fifty skilled woodworkers--and set them to work making flat boats. The entire force of the great institution was at the disposal of the people who needed help. And not a man or a woman was docked or dropped from the payroll. Everybody had time and a third. As for John H. Patterson himself, he worked in three shifts of eight hours each; and for forty-eight hours he practically neither slept nor ate. And then, by way of rest, he took a Turkish bath and a horseback ride, and forty winks, and was again on the job--this man of seventy, who has known how to breathe and how to think and who carries with him the body of a wrestler and the lavish heart of youth! There were many other heroes--too many to mention here--but we cannot forget John A. Bell, the telephone operator who was driven to the roof of the building, where with emergency instruments he cut in on one of the wires, and for two days and nights, in the driving rain, without food or drink or dry clothing, kept the outside world informed as to what was going on and the needs of the sufferers. What Bell endured during those long hours was enough to kill the heart in a very strong man. Yet his greeting to Governor Cox, over the crippled wire Thursday morning, was: "Good morning, Governor. The sun is shining in Dayton." Could anything be finer! Men with such spirit are great men, and the spirit that was in John H. Patterson and John A. Bell is the same spirit that was in John Jacob Astor, and Archie Butt, and George B. Harris, and Charles M. Hayes, and the band of musicians on the Titanic that played in water waist deep. As I stood amid the slimy ruins of Dayton the day after the waters receded, Brigadier-General Wood said to me, "There go Patterson and Bell. Would you like to shake hands with them?" And I said, "Just now I would rather shake hands with those two men than own the National Cash Register Company." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Storms By Chester Firkins And you are still the Master. We have reared Cities and citadels of seeming might, But in the passing of a single night You rend them unto ruin. We who feared Nor flood nor wind nor wreckage fire-seared, We shudder helpless in the thunder-light; The garners cherished and the souls endeared Emptied and sudden-slaughtered in our sight. You, whom the Cave Man battled, whom we call Nature, because we know no better name, Goddess of gentleness and torture-flame, Still are you despot; still are we the thrall; Still we can only wait what Fate may fall From your wild pinions that no man can tame. Nor gold or gain, nor battlement or wall Shall guard us from the primal flood and flame. Our castled cities tower to your skies. 'Gainst wind and wave we pile our stone and mold. Powered of genius, panoplied of gold, We build the bastions of our high emprise. But yet, but let the plunging torrent rise, The winds awake on glutted rivers rolled-- We die as the reft robin fledgeling dies-- We perish as the beast in jungles old. We dream that we are conquerors of Earth; We think that we are mighty, that we dare Scorn your grim power--till we glimpse the flare Of burning Death 'mid holiness of Birth. What is our godliness and wisdom worth Against your strength embattled unaware? You are the Master, ever, everywhere, Deadly and gentle o'er the wide World's girth. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CHAPTER II THE DEATH-BEARING FLOOD AT DAYTON EXTENT OF THE FLOOD--THE RESERVOIR BREAKS--BUSINESS SECTION FLOODED--THOUSANDS MAROONED--MANY CREEP TO SAFETY BY CABLE--JOHN H. PATTERSON, CASH REGISTER HEAD, LEADS RELIEF--EMPLOYEES ASSIST IN RELIEF--SCENES OF HORROR--APPEALS FOR AID. It remained for two telephone operators to be the real factors in giving to the world the news of the first day of the flood which inundated Dayton, Ohio, and the whole of the Miami Valley on Tuesday, March 25th. One, in the main exchange at Dayton, flashed the last tidings that came out of the stricken city by telephone, and delivered to Governor Cox news which enabled him to grasp the situation and start the rescue work. The other was the operator at Phoneton, who served as a relay operator for the man in Dayton. They stood to their posts as long as the wires held, and worked all day and night. EXTENT OF THE FLOOD A seething flood of water from eight to twenty feet deep covered all but the outlying sections of the city by the evening of the 25th. Beneath the waters and within the ruined buildings lay the unnumbered dead. The flooded districts comprised practically a circle with a radius of a mile and a half, and in no place was the water less than six feet deep. In Main Street, in the downtown section, the water was twenty feet deep. The horror of the flooded district was heightened by more than a dozen fires which could be seen in the flooded district, but out of reach of fire fighters. Most of the business houses and nearly all residences had occupants. Downtown the offices were filled with men, fathers unable to get home, and the upper floors and on some of the roofs of the residences were helpless women and children. Hundreds of houses, substantial buildings in the residence districts, many of them with helpless occupants, were washed away. The water in the Miami River began rising Monday afternoon at the rate of six inches an hour and continued to rise throughout the night. The first break in the levee at Dayton came at four o'clock Tuesday morning at Stratford Avenue. This was followed by other breaks at East Second Street and Fifth. THE RESERVOIR BREAKS But the severity of the flood that hit Dayton was due to the collapse of the Loramie reservoir in Shelby County about seven o'clock on Tuesday morning, hurling millions of gallons of water into the swollen Miami. Rushing down the Miami Valley, the water carried everything before it at Piqua, Troy, Sidney, Dayton, Carrollton, Miamisburg and Hamilton. Three rivers, the Miami, Stillwater and Mad, and Wolf Creek conjoin in the heart of Dayton. As the city, particularly North Dayton, and a north section called Riverside, lies almost on a level with the four streams, it is protected from high water by levees twenty-five feet high, which guide the streams through the city from its northern to its southern end. [Illustration: NORTHERN PART OF DAYTON, AND WATER COURSES WHICH OVERWHELMED THE CITY] North Dayton is a manufacturing and residence district. Riverdale is a residence district. In the southern part of the city, on fairly high ground, is the great plant of the National Cash Register Company Wolf Creek, flowing into the Miami from the northwest, early got out of its banks and added to the flood flowing over the floors of the Williams Street and Edgewater Avenue bridges. Mad River, in the northern section, also got over its banks early. All of North Dayton, save the extreme uplands, was inundated. The Miami was more than a mile wide below the city, and thousands of acres were inundated. BUSINESS SECTION FLOODED At Third and Ludlow Streets, where were located the great Algonquin Hotel, a magnificent church, the great Y. M. C. A. building and the Hotel Atlas, were many feet of water. The central portion of the city was flooded, and the beautiful residence district, lying east of the exclusive boulevard district, was a Venice. Hundreds of homes were filled with floating furniture. The citizens, used to the slow-creeping floods of other years, were entirely mystified and distracted by this sudden, hurtling, seething flood that seemed to spring by night from the clouds that hovered low over the city and plunged their seas of water into the rivers that converge in the very heart of Dayton. Railroad and wagon bridges over the Miami River were swept away. The telephone operator at Phoneton said that from his window in the station he had seen a bridge one mile north of Dayton collapse and another bridge crossing the river at Tadmor, eleven miles north of Dayton, was expected to give way at any moment. Communication between Phoneton and Dayton, the operator said, was only intermittent, as the only available wire was being used by the linemen in their efforts to restore service. Troy and Tippecanoe City, north of Dayton, were both flooded and many people took refuge on the roofs of their homes. Below Dayton vast acreages were seas of yellow. Farms were lakes, roads were raceways through which raced the swollen streams. Telegraph service was maimed, and all sorts of communication was well-nigh impossible. THOUSANDS MAROONED Crowded in the upper stories of tall office buildings and residences, two miles each way from the center of the town, were thousands of persons whom it was impossible to approach. At Wyoming Street, three miles beyond what has heretofore been considered the danger line, water was running eight feet deep. The Western Union operator at Dodson, Ohio, said the office was filled with foreigners who had fled from Dayton. Looters were shooting people down in the streets, according to these refugees. They also reported that the Fifth Street bridge at Dayton had washed down against the railroad bridge and arrangements were being made to dynamite both structures. This bridge was dynamited in the afternoon, but the effect was not felt to any marked degree. The foreigners who sought refuge in the Dodson telegraph office were panic-stricken and told wild stories of the flood, saying nearly every part of the town was under water and the conditions becoming more serious. The breaking of the Tarleton reservoir, which supplies the drinking water, left the city without water and added great danger of typhoid in the use of flood water. Frank Purviance, an employee of the Terre Haute, Indianapolis and Eastern Traction Company, at Dayton, over the long-distance telephone said scores had been drowned there. "They're dying like rats in their homes; bodies are washing around the streets and there's no relief in sight," Purviance said. MANY CREEP TO SAFETY BY CABLE At Wyoming Station, on the South Side, where the National Cash Register Company centered its efforts at rescue, many saved their lives by creeping on a telephone cable, a hundred feet above the flood. At first linemen crept along the cables, carrying tow ropes to which flat-bottomed boats were attached. When the flood became so fierce that the boats no longer were able to make way against it, men and women crept along the cables to safety. Others, less daring, saw darkness fall and gave up hope of rescue. Those willing to risk their lives in the attempt to rescue found themselves helpless in the face of the water. The first to seek safety by sliding along the telegraph conduits was a man. Then came four women. The first of the women was Mrs. Luella Meyer. She was a widow with one son, a boy in knee-breeches. He got out on the wire and with the agility of a cat was soon across. But Mrs. Meyers, when over the boiling torrent, swayed as though faint, slipped and the crowd stood with bated breath. By a lucky chance her senses came back to her so that she could grasp one of the wires. Hand over hand she was able to pull herself slowly to the nearest pole, where she rested before again making the trial. This time she did not falter, but when she was picked up by the rescuers at the farthest pole toward safety she was limp from nervous and physical exhaustion. Four companies of the Third Regiment, Ohio National Guard, spent the night aiding the city officials in rescuing families in the flood-stricken districts. Telephone and railroad service was interrupted in every direction. John Hadkins and James Hosay, privates of the Ohio National Guard, were drowned while in acts of rescue. The body of an elderly woman floated down near Wyoming Street in the afternoon, but the current was so swift that it could not be recovered. The National Cash Register Company's plant, on a high hill, offered the only haven in the South End. Three women became mothers in the halls of its office buildings during the night. In the woodworking department of the National Cash Register Company boats were being turned out at the rate of ten an hour, and these were rushed to where the waters had crossed Main Street in a sort of gully. But the waters crept up and the strength of the current was far too strong for the crude punts, though they were the best that could be made in a hurry. Trip after trip was made and hundreds of the refugees were taken from this stretch of houses. JOHN H. PATTERSON, CASH REGISTER HEAD, LEADS RELIEF Although John H. Patterson, president of the National Cash Register Company of Dayton, which employs more than 7,100 persons, is nearly sixty-nine years old, and has led a life of unusual activity, he was out in a rowboat tugging at the oars and personally helping in the work of rescue. His two children, Frederick and Miss Dorothy, both in their early twenties, likewise were so engaged. When despatches came from Dayton late at night saying "the only organized relief movement is that which is being conducted by the National Cash Register Company," those who knew the fighting characteristics of the head of the big corporation were not surprised to receive the additional information that Mr. Patterson as usual was conducting the business of rescue and relief in person. The Dayton despatches in relating that young Frederick Patterson "is leading rescue parties" and that Miss Dorothy, "dressed in old clothes and her hair streaming with water, stood in the rain for hours receiving refugees," gave a notion that the children are one with the sire. EMPLOYEES ASSIST IN RELIEF The Cash Register plant is outside the flood zone. As soon as the waters rushed upon the city John Henry Patterson turned his entire force into a relief organization. Every wheel was stopped in the Cash Register plant early on Tuesday morning and the employees were set to work by Mr. Patterson to help the sufferers. Mr. Patterson bought up all the available food and had it carted to his plant to feed the homeless. Straw was quickly strewn on the factory floors, thus affording dry sleeping places for more than one thousand at night. Every employee of the corporation capable of working on boats was put to work at boat building. Mr. Patterson is said to have made a promise long ago to his wife, who was Katherine Beck, a school teacher of Brookline, Mass., when she was dying, that he would give special care to the comfort and welfare of his women and girl employees. The dining rooms in the big plant, the rest and recreation rooms and other architectural comforts provided for the women employees as a result of this promise came in very well in the rescue work. The dining rooms and the rest and recreation rooms all were used as eating halls in helping the sufferers. While Mr. Patterson was out pulling at the oars of one of his boats thirty-one of his company's automobiles were meeting the craft to hurry the refugees to the Cash Register plant and to dry clothing, food and beds. Mr. Patterson sent out an appeal for immediate food supplies and for doctors and medicine. By night three thousand homeless were housed in improvised quarters in the Cash Register offices. GIRL IN MAN'S CLOTHING "What is your name?" asked the registrars who received the refugees at the National Cash Register plant of a slender young person in men's clothes. "Nora Thuma," was the reply. "Nora?" they asked. "Yes, I'm a girl," was the answer. She had put on a man's suit in order to cross the perilous span of wires unhampered by skirts. She came in with Ralph Myers, his wife and their little baby. Myers had climbed a telephone wire pole first. He let down a rope to his wife, who tied to it a meal sack which contained their baby, three months old. Myers pulled the rope with its precious burden up and then let it down again to aid his wife to ascend from her perilous position. With the meal sack over his shoulder and his wife holding on to the two wires he walked along the cable a full block before he reached safety. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. A typical scene on the outskirts of Dayton. Here scores of houses were completely washed from their foundations and many of the inhabitants were drowned] [Illustration: Copyright by the International News Service. A view taken at Ludlow and Second Streets, Dayton, after the water had receded, showing one phase of the devastation resulting from the flood] SCENES OF HORROR Scenes of indescribable horror were reported by the rescuers under Brigadier-General George H. Wood. Among those who perished were said to have been ten members of the Ohio National Guard who were guarding a bridge. One man marooned with his family on the roof of his home shot and killed his wife and three children and then himself rather than suffer death in the flames, according to a report received by J. J. Munsell, employment superintendent of the National Cash Register Company, from a man who actually saw the occurrence. The bodies floated away on the flood. Rescuers tried to get to a raft that bore a man and four women that whirled like a spool in the rapid waters. Then suddenly the raft was sucked down in the water and another chapter was added to the tragedy. WOMAN LEAPS WITH BABY George H. Schaefer, a rescuer who went out into the flood with a skiff and saved a woman and baby, told of his perilous trip. "A house that had been torn from its foundation came floating up behind us," said Schaefer. "The woman was frightened. I told her there was no danger. "Suddenly she stood up and jumped over with her baby in her arms. She went straight down and never came up again." Then there was the horror that William Riley, a salesman for the National Cash Register Company, saw. "We saw a very old woman standing at the window of a house waiting for rescue," said Riley. "We rowed up to her. Suddenly the house parted and the woman was engulfed. It was the last we saw of her." There was the man who was nearly rescued. He had stepped into the skiff and then walked back into his home, which a short time later floated away with him. Incidents of this sort were multiplied. John Scott ascended a telegraph pole and guided across the cable to places of safety men, women and children rescued from flooded houses. Scott had guided a dozen persons across the swaying bridges of wire when an explosion that started a fire occurred. The shock knocked Scott from the pole and he fell into a tree. "The last I saw of him he was trying to get into the window of an abandoned house by way of one of the branches of the tree," said Frank Stevens, a fellow employee of Scott. "The house was in the path of the fire." APPEALS FOR AID Thousands of those who were fortunate enough to escape the first rush of the waters were fed on short rations, and appeals for help were sent out by many of the leading men of the city. Three carloads of foodstuffs arrived from Xenia, but there was no chance to deliver them to the victims of the flood until the following day. CRUEL NEED FOR AN ARK Frank Brandon, vice-president of the Dayton, Lebanon and Cincinnati Railroad, succeeded during the night in getting communication for a short time from Dayton to Lebanon. He said that the situation was appalling and beyond all control. "According to my advices, the situation beggars description," said Mr. Brandon. "What the people need most of all is boats. The water is high in every street and assistance late this afternoon was simply out of the question. My superintendent at Dayton told me that at least sixty had perished and probably a great many more, at the same time assuring me that unless something that closely approached a miracle happened the death list would run considerably higher. We are now rigging up several special trains and will make every effort possible to get into Dayton tonight." It was on these scenes of indescribable horror that the shades of night closed down. CHAPTER III DAYTON'S MENACE OF FIRE AND FAMINE FIRE BREAKS OUT--HUNDREDS IMPERILED BY FLAMES--THE CITY THREATENED--70,000 IMPRISONED BY THE WATER--"SEND US FOOD!"--PATTERSON CONTINUES RESCUE WORK--PHONE OPERATOR BELL A HERO--EXPERIENCES OF THE SUFFERERS--INSTANCES OF SELF-SACRIFICE--LOOTERS AT WORK. Scarcely had the appalling horror of the flood impressed itself on the stricken people of Dayton before a new danger arose to strike terror to their hearts--fire that could not be fought because there was no way to reach it and because the usual means for fire-fighting were paralyzed. FIRE BREAKS OUT One fire started from the explosion of an oil tank containing hundreds of gallons which bumped into a submerged building. The fire started in a row of buildings on Third Street near Jefferson, right in the heart of the business section, and not far from the Algonquin Hotel, the Y. M. C. A., and other large buildings. The report of the fire was sent out by Wire Chief Green, of the Bell Telephone Company, who said the fire was then within a block of the telephone exchange in which was located John A. Bell, who for more than twenty-four hours had kept the outside world informed as best he could of the catastrophe in Dayton. A. J. Seattle, owner of the house in which the fire started after a gas explosion, was blown into the air and killed instantly. Mrs. Shunk, a neighbor, was blown out of her home into the flood. After clinging to a telegraph pole for half an hour, she finally succumbed and was sucked under the waters. The explosion blew a stable filled with hay into the middle of the flooded street and this carried the flames to the opposite side. The next house to burn was Harry Lindsay's. Then Mary Kreidler's and then the home of Theodore C. Lindsay and other houses that had been carried away from their foundations floated into the flames and soon were on fire. The floating fires burned without restraint and communicated flames to many other buildings where families awaited help. The Beckel House was threatened and Jefferson Street was on fire on its east side from Third Street as far down as the Western Union office. Refugees driven from their places where they had sought safety from the floods were leaping from roof to roof to escape the new terror. The fire was rapidly approaching the Home Telephone plant. HUNDREDS IMPERILED BY FLAMES Another fire which started from an explosion in the Meyers Ice Cream Company place, near Wyoming Street, spread and burned the block on South Park, a block from Wyoming. Flames, starting at Vine and Main Streets, jumped Main Street and the houses on the other side were soon aflame. In the middle of the street were a few frame houses that had been washed from their foundations. These were swirled about for a time, and, as though to aid in the passing of the section by fire, they were cast into the path of the flames. Persons hurried from their roof tops, where they had been driven by the flood, to the roof tops of adjoining houses. A fire that appeared to threaten the entire business section was confined to the block bounded by Second and Third Streets and Jefferson and St. Clair Streets. In the block were the Fourth National Bank, Lattiman Drug Company, Evans' Wholesale Drug Company and several commission houses. This fire subsided somewhat by evening. Fire broke out in the buildings on Broad Street and many who had taken refuge in the upper floors were threatened with death in the smoke and flames. Sixteen persons were housed in the Home Telephone Building with a block and tackle rigged as a means of egress if the fire pressed them. GOVERNOR COX AIDS It was reported to Governor Cox that some had leaped from the buildings into the flood. The Governor received word via Springfield that 10,000 to 12,000 persons were in the burning buildings, fighting the fire by water lifted in buckets from the flood. Governor Cox asked the Associated Press to notify its West Virginia correspondents to get in touch with natural gas companies supplying Dayton with gas and ask them to shut off the supply of gas in Dayton, as the gas was feeding the conflagration there. Pleading that troops be sent to Dayton to relieve the flood sufferers, saying that their need was imperative, and that the town was at the mercy of looters and fires, George B. Smith, president of the chamber of commerce of Dayton, who escaped from the flooded city, wired Governor Cox from Arcanum. Governor Cox, following the information that Dayton was on fire and that those who had sought refuge in the upper stories of buildings were in danger, determined at six o'clock to reach Dayton with troops and assistance. THE CITY THREATENED It was impossible to get within two miles of the fire, and from that distance it appeared that explosions, probably of drugs, made the fire seem of larger proportions than it was. It appeared to have about burned itself out, and it was not believed it would spread to other blocks. It was impossible to ascertain, even approximately, the number of persons who might have been marooned in this section and who died after being trapped by flood and fire. The flames at night cast a red weird glow over the flood-stricken city that added to the fears of thousands of refugees and marooned persons, and led to apprehension that there might have been many of the water's prisoners in the burned buildings. Fire started anew at nine o'clock at night and burned fiercely. The men, women and children marooned in the Beckel Hotel were terror stricken when fire threatened the building for the second time at night. Since Tuesday morning two hundred and fifty persons had been in the place. Crowded in the upper stories of tall office buildings and residences in Dayton, two miles each way from the center of the town, were hundreds of persons whom it was impossible to approach. Hundreds of fires which it was impossible to fight were burning. The rescue boats were unable to get farther from the shore than the throw line would permit. They could not live in the current. At midnight residents of Dayton watching the course of the flames from across the wide stretch of flood waters believed the fire got its new start in the afternoon in the store of the Patterson Tool and Supply Company, on Third Street, just east of Jefferson, whence it ate its way west, apparently aided by escaping gas and exploding chemicals in two wholesale drug establishments. Throughout the night fires lighted the sky and illuminated the rushing waters. Fifty thousand people were jammed in the upper floors of their homes, with no gas, no drinking water, no light, no heat, no food. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. The flood at Watervliet, New York, showing buildings torn from their foundations and floating down the stream. Great damage and untold suffering resulted] [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. Rescuer leaving one of the houses in the flooded district and removing a family to safety] THE CREST OF THE FLOOD The crest of the Dayton flood passed about midnight, but the next few hours allowed no appreciable lowering in the water. Wednesday morning brought little hope of immediate relief to those who spent the night in horror, however, and it was feared that the number of drowned had been greatly increased during the twelve hours of darkness. Cloudy skies and a cold drizzling rain added to the dismal aspect of the city in the morning. The temperature fell steadily all night, and when daylight came the thermometers showed that it was only three degrees above freezing. The condition was welcomed, because it was expected that a hard freeze would aid materially in holding back the innumerable tributaries of the flooded streams and assist the earth in retaining the moisture that had been soaked into it steadily for the last five days. By ten-thirty the water depth had lessened about two feet. All stores and factories in the main part of the town were flooded to a depth of from eight to ten feet. Numerous residences and smaller buildings collapsed, but any estimate of the property loss was impossible. A morgue was established on the west side of the city, and efforts to recover the bodies and aid the suffering were pushed as rapidly as conditions permitted. Relief trains began to arrive in the stricken towns. Adjutant-General Speaks, with a small detachment of troops and a squad of linemen and operators, left Columbus early Wednesday in an effort to reach Dayton. The attempt was made by means of motor boats and automobiles in the hope to establish adequate telegraph or telephone communication with Dayton. MARTIAL LAW ESTABLISHED A message from Governor Cox ordered the entire Ohio National Guard to hold itself in readiness to proceed to Dayton as soon as it was possible to enter the city. "I understand the importance of having the militia there," he telegraphed. Soon afterward notice was posted in headquarters of the emergency committee announcing that the city was under martial law, and several companies of soldiers arrived from neighboring Ohio cities. The soldiers were employed to patrol edges of the burned district, and prevent looting of homes freed from the floods. The hundreds of refugees in the Y. M. C. A. building and in the Algonquin Hotel were facing possible short rations. Their food supplies were becoming limited and drinking water was at a premium. Forty boats were requisitioned by the city authorities and were patroling the city in an effort to save life and property. These craft were manned by volunteers. In front of the Central Union Telegraph office the water was still running so swiftly that horses could not go through it without swimming. One boat went by with two men in it, rowing desperately, trying to keep the bow to the waves. The boat overturned, but both men escaped drowning by swimming to a lamp post. They clung to the post for half an hour before a rope could be thrown to them. After repeated casts the line fell near enough to them to be caught, and the men were drawn into the second story window of the building. The telephone employees in the building fished chairs, dry goods boxes and a quantity of other floating property from the flood. The debris swept down the main business street with such force that every plate glass window was smashed. Only one sizable building had collapsed up to noon so far as the watchers in the telephone office could learn. This structure, an old one, was a three-story affair, near Ludlow Street, occupied by a harness manufacturing concern. 70,000 IMPRISONED BY THE WATER More than 70,000 persons either were unable to reach their homes or, held in their waterlocked houses, were unable to reach land. While those marooned in the offices and hotels were in no immediate danger of drowning there was no way food or drinking water could reach them until the flood receded. Those in the residences, however, were in constant danger both by flood and fire. First the frailer buildings were swept into the stream, many showing the faces of women and children peering from the windows. These were followed by more substantial brick buildings, until it became evident that no house in the flood zone was safe. The houses as a rule lasted but a few blocks before disintegrating. Incidents without number were narrated of persons in the flooded districts waving handkerchiefs and otherwise signaling for aid, being swept away before the eyes of the watchers on the margin of the waters. Many of the rescue boats were swept by the current against what had been fire plugs, trees and houses. They were crushed. Canoes and rowboats shared the same fate. What life existed in the district which the water covered was in constant danger and helpless until the flood subsided. Bodies were found as far out as Wayne Avenue, which is more than a mile from the river. At Fifth and Brown Streets the water reached a height of ten feet. At least one of those drowned met death in the Algonquin Hotel. The rumor that the St. Elizabeth Hospital with 600 patients had been swept away, which gained circulation Tuesday night, proved to have been false. Although it was impossible to reach the hospital, field glasses showed that the building was still standing. The water was not thought to be much above the first floor of the building, and it was hoped that the patients had not suffered. Dayton was practically cut off from wire communication until late in the afternoon. Then two wires into Cincinnati were obtained and operators plunged into great piles of telegrams from Dayton citizens, almost frantic in their desire to assure friends outside of their safety. Operators at opposite ends of the wires reported that thousands of telegrams were piled up at relay offices. These were from people anxious over the fate of Dayton kinsmen. Two oarsmen who braved the current that swirled through the business section of the city reported that the water at the Algonquin Hotel, at the southwest corner of Third and Ludlow Streets, was fifteen feet deep. From windows in the hotels and business buildings hundreds of the marooned begged piteously for rescue and food. The oarsmen said they saw no bodies floating on the flood tide, but declared that many persons must have perished in the waters' sudden rush through the streets. Oarsmen who worked into the outskirts of the business section at night reported that two hundred and fifty persons marooned in the Arcade building and two hundred imprisoned in the Y. M. C. A. building were begging for water. "SEND US FOOD!" Before the terror of fire had dwindled, gaunt hunger thrust its wolfish head on the scene. Famine became an immediate possibility. All of the supply and grocery houses were in the submerged district and there was not enough bread to last the survivors another day. Every grocer in the city was "sold out" before noon. The flood came with such suddenness that food supplies in homes were whisked away by the torrent that reached to second floors in almost the flash of an eye. Skiffs skirted the edge of the flooded districts attempting to take food to those whom it was impossible to carry off, but the fierce current discouragingly retarded this work. "Food, food, food," was the appeal that reached the outside world from the portions of Dayton north of the rivers. The plea came from a relief committee which started out in boats and met an employee of the American Telegraph and Telephone Company, who attempted to drive to Dayton. The telephone man immediately "cut in" on a line and transmitted the appeal. The relief committee had progressed less than two miles from Dayton when they met the telephone employee. They told him that any and all kinds of provisions were needed and could be distributed, but the relief must come soon if indescribable suffering was to be avoided. Police officers of Dayton who were able to get about at all were swearing in all available men as deputies, commandeering provisions and charging the expense to the State of Ohio. The available supplies were so slender, however, that thousands of persons on the north side of the river were already destitute. Efforts to learn the condition of the 2,500 inmates of the old soldiers' home on the west side brought a report that the institution was in no danger because of its location on a high hill. Leon A. Smith, one of the relief committee in North Dayton, was sworn in as a deputy justice of the peace with power to enlist other deputies to preserve order, guard against crimes and relieve distress. "What we need most," said Mr. Smith over the telephone, "is food for the living and assistance in recovering and burying the dead before an epidemic sets in." Farmers in the vicinity offered their teams to haul towards Dayton any supplies that could be gotten together, and the housewives of the countryside denuded their pantries. Relief committees issued the following statement: "An awful catastrophe has overtaken Dayton. The centers of Dayton and the residence district from the fair grounds hill to the high ground north of the city are under water. "Bring potatoes, rice, beans, vegetables, meat and bread and any other edibles that will sustain life. "We have cooking arrangements for several thousand. We are sending trucks to nearby towns, but ask that you haul to us, as far as possible." The first trainload of provisions from Cincinnati, with a detail of policemen to help in the rescue work, reached Dayton after being twelve hours on the road. This, with two cars from Springfield, relieved the immediate suffering. Word also was received that a carload of supplies was on the way from Detroit. Encouragement was received in a message from the Mayor of Springfield, who said he was sending six big trucks loaded with provisions that should reach Dayton early Thursday. With the arrival of motor boats Wednesday night it was hoped to begin to distribute provisions among the marooned early next morning. Messages from the flood's prisoners in the business section said children were crying for milk, while their elders suffered from thirst that grew hourly. Volunteers were called for to man boats and brave the dangerous currents in an attempt to get food to the suffering. PATTERSON CONTINUES RESCUE WORK Rescue work efficiently managed, in which John H. Patterson was a leading spirit, proceeded smoothly throughout the day. A boat, which was engaged in rescue work, capsized, and all of the crew but Frederick Patterson, son of John H. Patterson, were drowned. Young Patterson acted as captain of the crew. Missing members of families were restored to their loved ones through human clearing houses established at several points in the fringe of the flood district. Great ledgers filled with names presided over by volunteer bank clerks were at the disposal of persons seeking missing kinsmen. If these had registered in the clearing house their addresses were quickly given to the inquirer. Up to seven o'clock in the evening three thousand of the homeless were housed in different places of refuge, most of them being cared for at the plant of the National Cash Register Company. Scores of the waters' victims were being carried from their places of imprisonment late in the evening, and leaders of the rescuing parties were arranging for relays of torch bearers to light the work during the night. The powerful current on each cross street made it impossible for those manning the rowboats to pass a street crossing without the aid of tow ropes. Lines were stretched in many places and trolley boat paths brought many victims out. Every automobile in the city was pressed into service and used to meet paths and take the refugees at once to the hospitals. "Our greatest need is a dozen motor boats and men to run them," was the message contained in an appeal sent out by Mr. Patterson. Skiffs and rowboats could not live in torrents rushing through the city's principal streets. The big plant of the National Cash Register Company was made relief headquarters. As persons were rescued they were taken to a relief sub-station, where their names were recorded and they received first aid. At frequent intervals these lists were sent to relief headquarters and announced to crowds who waited in the rain for hours. Two expert oarsmen, Fred Patterson and Nelson Talbott, conquered the current for a short distance on Main Street late in the afternoon. "We penetrated to almost the center of the city," said Mr. Patterson. "Everywhere people yelled to us to rescue them, but it was impossible, for we were barely able to keep afloat. Large sums of money were offered us to take persons from perilous positions. The windows of the Algonquin Hotel seemed filled with faces, and the same conditions prevailed at most of the buildings we passed. We did not see any bodies, but the loss of life must have been great." At Xenia a relief committee was organized to send supplies to Dayton. All the churches were made ready for Dayton refugees. PHONE OPERATOR BELL A HERO Two employees of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, John A. Bell, wire chief at Dayton, and C. D. Williamson, wire chief at Phoneton, Ohio, by unprecedented devotion to duty kept Dayton in touch with the world. At midnight they had been on duty continuously for forty-eight hours, and, although there was no prospect of their being relieved, they gave not the slightest indication of any inclination to leave their posts. Bell reached the Dayton office before the flood broke on Tuesday morning. The water came with such suddenness that all batteries and power were out of commission before any measure could be taken to protect them. This left the wires without current and effectually cut off Dayton. Bell rummaged around and found a lineman's "test set." With this he made his way to the roof of the building, "cut in" on the line to Phoneton and reported to Williamson, whose batteries were still in condition. Over this meagre equipment messages were exchanged by means of the underground wires of the company, which held up until after the noon hour Tuesday before the cable in which they were incased gave way. The break, however, was south of Dayton, and Phoneton was still in touch with the flood-stricken city. Except for brief intervals, Bell remained on the roof of the building suffering the discomforts of pouring rain and low temperature, in order that the waiting world might have some word from Dayton. EXPERIENCES OF THE SUFFERERS Late in the afternoon several refugees told stories that gave an insight into conditions in East Dayton, hitherto unexplored. The flood victims declared they knew of no loss of life in this section, because a great number of people had availed themselves of warnings and fled. A Mrs. Van Denberg, who remained until the flood enveloped her home, when rescued declared she had seen no bodies in the flood. Sixty-five persons were marooned in the central police station. Nothing had been heard from Mayor Phillips, of Dayton, or from Brigadier-General Wood, marooned, it was believed, in North Dayton. The whole story of the Dayton disaster probably never will be told--the heroism of men; the martyrdom of women; the mad hysteria that seized some and caused them to jump into the flood and death; the torture of despair that gripped those who, imprisoned in their homes by the water, waited in vain for help until the advancing flames came and destroyed them. The most heartrending feature of the situation was the pitiable terror of the women and children. Many of them sat up and sobbed through the night refusing to believe that their fathers had been drowned in the satanic waters. Mrs. James Cassidy and her three children were brought from the flood last night. Mrs. Cassidy was grief-stricken over the report of the death of her husband by drowning. Even as she was being registered there was brought into rescue headquarters a drenched man who had to be carried. "Jim! Jim!" suddenly shrieked the woman. "That's you, Jim, isn't it? You aren't dead, Jim. Say you aren't dead." Jim had been rescued from drowning. The return of James Cassidy was the one bit of joy in the awful gloom at the rescue headquarters, where gathered the victims of flood, fire and famine. CRAZED BY HER EXPERIENCE A woman, maddened by the horrors of the day, fought with Bill Riley and his companion, Charles Wagner, who had rescued her in a boat. She bit Riley in the hand and choked Wagner, who sought to restrain her. The little boat swayed and was on the point of capsizing when the woman suddenly became calm and began to pray. A big sturdy man cried like a child in the offices of the National Cash Register Company. He had been to the hospitals, the schools where refugees are housed and to the churches--but in none of these was his family. In many similar cases relatives of the supposed dead were uncertain as to the fate of the missing. The money loss was heavy, but nobody cared about money loss, though it ran into the millions. In this hour of Dayton's woe money apparently was the most useless thing in the world. A graphic story was told by Edsy Vincent, a member of the Dayton fire department. His engine house was within a few doors of Taylor Street, where the break of the levee occurred. The department watchers, fearing being flood-bound, sounded the fire call simultaneously with the break in the levee. "When the horses, which were hitched in record time, reached the street," said Vincent, "we were met by a wall of water which must have been ten feet high. The driver was forced to turn and flee in the opposite direction to save the team and the apparatus." INSTANCES OF SELF-SACRIFICE The dark colors in these incidents were lightened here and there by stories of bravery exhibited by many of the flood prisoners. A woman with three children marooned in the upper floor of her home on the edge of the business district called to the oarsmen: "I know you can't take me off!" she cried, "but for the love of humanity take this loaf of bread and jug of molasses to Sarah Pruyn down the street; I know she's starving." Twice the boatmen attempted to take the food, but waves that eddied about the submerged house hurled them back. LOOTERS AT WORK Numerous stories of looting were told, and many prisoners were locked up. In most cases these had entered houses and had been searching for valuables. A gang of roughs went through the southern part of the city late at night instructing the people to extinguish all lights for fear of a gas explosion and then began raiding. The police dispersed them. All day and all night strings of automobiles were going back and forth. Those coming to Dayton were seeking friends or relatives. Those going back had people to take back with them. At night the temperature dropped suddenly. A blinding snowstorm and high winds followed close upon the fall of the thermometer. The blizzard weather caused added suffering. Survivors who escaped the horrors of a flood and fire stricken city at night were huddled roofless in an arctic storm. Countless men, women and children were marooned in the storm who had had no warm food or clothing since Tuesday morning. CHAPTER IV DAYTON IN THE THROES OF DISTRESS PITIABLE CONDITION OF MAROONED--FALSE REPORT CAUSES PANIC--THE FLOOD RECEDES--A SURVEY OF THE FLOOD'S DAMAGE--MARTIAL LAW ENFORCED--RESTORING SANITATION--FEEDING THE HOMELESS--PATTERSON CONTINUES NOBLE WORK--STORIES OF SURVIVORS. When Thursday morning dawned on stricken Dayton the food situation which had threatened to become serious was relieved temporarily by the arrival of a special train from Richmond, Indiana, bringing seven cars of provisions. Quartermaster Logan also received word from the United States Army quartermaster general that 300,000 rations had been ordered shipped from Chicago, 100 ranges and one complete quartermaster depot from Columbus, 3,300 tents, 100 hospitals tents and 400 stoves from Philadelphia, and 300,000 blankets and 500 bedsacks from St. Louis or Cincinnati. Quartermaster Logan was authorized to purchase in open market all rations needed. [Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE RIVERS AND CREEKS WHICH RUN THROUGH DAYTON, AND THE PRINCIPAL SECTIONS OF THE CITY] [Illustration: Showing the difficulties experienced by the rescuers in getting to the hundreds of people whose lives were imperiled by being caught in the flooded buildings] [Illustration: Copyright by George Grantham Bain. Mayor of Cleveland getting motor boats ready for relief work in Northern Ohio. For days after the flood reached its height, even strong boats could reach many of the marooned people only with great difficulty and risk] The thing that made the situation most difficult for concerted rescue work was the peculiar geographical situation of the town. It is divided into six sections: central Dayton, comprising the down-town business district; West Dayton, the territory extending several miles west of the big Miami; Riverdale, the northeast, across the river from the central district; Dayton View, the extreme northeast; Southern Dayton, the manufacturing district in which the National Cash Register Company's plant is located and separated from the central district by lowlands which were deep in flood water, and North Dayton, northwest of the business district, across the river from the business section. PITIABLE CONDITION OF MAROONED The river forms a horseshoe around the business district, making it impossible to reach that part until the torrents that poured down the valley should recede. Dayton View, West Dayton and Riverdale were the only sections between which communication was possible. The suburb of Riverdale up to Helena Street was penetrated by the down-town relief commission and conditions found much similar to those in the southern suburbs. Everyone was crowded to the second floors or roofs of their homes, but few of the more stable dwellings were washed away. North of Burns Avenue as far as Fourth Street the water was found to be from three to six feet deep. Beyond Fourth Street the water had receded to make it possible in many places to proceed on foot. Nothing was known of the foreign settlement in North Dayton close to the Miami River. It was this part of the city where the flood first made its way and where the occupants of the houses had ignored warnings to leave. It was here also that it was feared most of the deaths would occur. The only body found on Thursday was that of Charles Parker, a livery man, discovered in the court house yard. Captain of Police H. E. Lackhart declared that water in North Dayton, Miami City and East Dayton reached the housetops. His estimate of the number of dead in that district was three hundred. The bodies of a woman and a baby were seen floating down Jefferson Street, one of Dayton's main thoroughfares. It was thought that they came from the district north of the river. A report which had been current in the water district south of Main Street that Brigadier-General Wood had been fatally injured by falling plate glass, proved to be untrue. He continued in full charge of the relief work, although his arm had been badly cut. Parts of Main Street were impassable because of debris. At several points it comprised outbuildings that had struck more stable buildings and been dashed to pieces. Hourly apprehension for the appalling sights to be uncovered when the waters return to normal was growing. PLANS FOR FIGHTING PESTILENCE Pestilence was feared and sanitary and health officials mapped out their work. Sewers were burst by the flood, manholes were simply blown from the earth, and it was realized that many days must elapse before the water service could be restored and before street car companies could operate. Because of the lack of electric lights, and as a precaution against looting, military notices were posted, forbidding citizens to be on the streets between the hours of 6 P. M. and 5 A. M. Word was received that a number of motor boats with men to operate them were on the way from Cleveland and Cincinnati. The water receded rapidly during the day. An occasional snow flurry and biting gusts of wind added to the discomfort of the rescue crews, but they remained steadily at work. The Emergency Committee began publication of an official newspaper from the plant of the National Cash Register Company. It was a one-sheet poster designed for free circulation in all accessible parts of the city. Its leading article warned the people to beware of thieves and burglars. A thief was caught robbing homes of flood victims who had been taken to refuge stations. He was shot to death by state guardsmen. The progress of the first canoe into the water-bound district was greeted by appeals for bread and water. In nearly every house left standing wistful faces were to be seen pressed against window panes. All of these were asked whether there had been any deaths and with only a few exceptions all replied that there had not. Temporary morgues were established in the United Brethren Church and also at Fifth and Eagle Streets. At these points many bodies were cared for, chiefly those of women and children. FALSE REPORT CAUSES PANIC Needless suffering was caused during the day by an announcement of the breaking of the Lewistown reservoir. Men rushed through the uptown streets shouting: "Run for your lives! The reservoir has broken!" There was really no danger. The reservoir contained 17,000 acres of water space, but it was pointed out that the flood extended over several million acres and the worst possible effect of the breaking of the reservoir would be to retard the rescues and could not cause a rise of more than a foot. The waters at the time were seven feet lower than the high water of Tuesday night. The alarm was spread by a policeman who was posted on the edge of the flood district. Others were quick to take up the cry. Soon thousands of men and women crowded the streets. Many of them fled for the hills, but hundreds hurled themselves past guards and into the main office building of the National Cash Register Building, which was already crowded. Not until John H. Patterson, president of the company, had addressed the throng was any semblance of order restored. Mr. Patterson was appointed military aide in the southeast district of the city, with full control under martial law. He at once ordered every available motor car and truck to scour the farmhouses south of the city and confiscate all available food supplies. Colonel H. G. Catrow arrived with his military aides from Columbus in the afternoon and took charge of the militiamen. SIGHTSEERS BARRED FROM CITY Sightseers of Springfield who sought to visit Dayton received a rude shock. On the first train to the stricken city from Springfield were fifty linemen and three coaches full of people on a sightseeing tour. The Governor learned of this and on his orders when the train reached Dayton two soldiers were stationed at each car door and none but linemen were permitted to alight. The train was then run back to Springfield with its disappointed passengers. The Governor then ordered guardsmen at Springfield to let none board trains for Dayton who did not have a military pass. The purpose in this was to prevent idle visitors draining the limited food resources of Dayton. DYNAMITE AND LIME SENT Dynamite, gasoline and lime were sent from Springfield as supplies for the sanitary corps ordered there to prevent the spread of disease and a feared epidemic. The dynamite was needed to blow up dangerous obstructions, the gasoline to burn rubbish and the lime for disinfecting purposes. Mutiny broke out in the city workhouse, where one hundred prisoners were confined. Terror-stricken by the flood and fire, the prisoners were demanding freedom. They beat at their cell doors and shouted imprecations at their keepers. Superintendent Johnson applied to the militia for help. One workhouse prisoner was released because he knew how to run the water-works pumps. The two hundred and fifty guests of the Algonquin Hotel were kept comfortable except for the continuous dread that the fire would spread to them. The water reached the second floor, but all the supplies had been moved to places of safety, and those in the hotel experienced little discomfort. From Fourth Street to the Miami River, relief work was taken up by a committee headed by Chief of Police Allaback. All of the grocery stores were commandeered and, although in most cases the goods were covered with water, yet sufficient supplies were found to prevent great suffering among those in the interior dry strip. SUFFERERS CHEERFUL One of the remarkable features was the cheerful spirit with which flood victims viewed their plight. This was Dayton's first big flood in many years. Much of the submerged area had been considered safe, but as the majority of residents of these sections looked out on all sides upon a great sweep of muddy, swiftly moving water, they seemed undisturbed. In some of the poorer sections the attitude of the marooned was not so cheerful. As a motor boat passed beneath the second floor at one partly submerged house, a man leaned out and threatened to shoot the boat's occupants unless they rescued his wife and a baby that had been born the day before. The woman, almost dying, was let from the window by a rope and taken to a place of refuge. Further on, members of a motor boat party were startled by shots in the second floor of a house, about which five feet of water swirled. The boat was stopped and a man peered from a window. "Why are you shooting?" he was asked. "Oh, just amusing myself, shooting at rats that come upstairs. When are you going to take me out of here?" he replied. Three babies were born in one church during the afternoon. One was born in a boat while its mother was being conveyed to safety. Such scenes were common. WOMEN BECAME HYSTERICAL At the rescue stations the scenes enacted were heartrending and the most pitiful were witnessed at the temporary morgues. At the West Dayton morgue frantic crowds all day and night watched every body brought in, hoping against hope it was not that of some loved one. Women became hysterical at times when searching for missing members of their families whom they had failed to find at the relief stations. With the coming of nightfall Thursday the efforts to rescue more persons were slackened, and all of Dayton not in the central flood districts waited in dread for the nightly fires which had added horrors to the already terrible situation. The flood situation at night appeared brighter than in the morning. The water had fallen from three to five feet, the currents of the river and creek had slackened, and there was food enough left for the town's breakfast and dinner. As Galveston and San Francisco pulled themselves together after calamity so Dayton began pulling itself together on Friday of the week of the flood. Emerging from the waters and privation, citizens began co-operating with those who rushed to the rescue from outside. Considerable progress was made toward the restoration of order and in giving relief to those in the worst distress. Much cheer was taken from the fact that so far as loss of life was concerned it was not so great as had been feared, though no exact estimates were yet calculable. Financially the citizens had a great burden to bear. Investigators on Friday put the figures of the losses at double that of the previous day, making it $50,000,000. THE FLOOD RECEDES The down-town district was practically free of water. Fire engines pumped out the basement of the Algonquin Hotel, that the Algonquin's artesian well supply might be pumped into the empty city water mains for fire protection. Water was still from ten to fifteen feet deep in certain districts of the west side. A mile of residences on Linwood Avenue had been swept clear and nothing remained to indicate that the street had existed. A SURVEY OF THE FLOOD'S DAMAGE In a tour of the business sections it was found that the high stage of the flood had been nine feet at Third and Main Streets, the heart of the city. The tower of Steele High School was levelled and the Leonard Building on Main Street was undermined so that it collapsed. Other buildings stood up. The following buildings were found to have withstood the flood, furnishing shelter to about 7,000 people who were marooned in them since Tuesday: Conover Building, Kuhns Building, The Arcade, two Cappel Buildings, Callahan Bank Building, Schwind Building, Commercial Building, Mendenhall Building, Rike Kumler Building, Reibold Building, Elder & Johnson's building and United Brethren Publishing Company's building. NO PUBLIC BUILDINGS GONE None of the public buildings was destroyed. Among these buildings were the Dayton Club, Victoria, National and Colonial theatres, city hall, court house, Beckel, Phillips, Algonquin and Atlas hotels, Masonic temple, post office, Y. M. C. A. and various churches. The Log Cabin, 115 years old, the first house built in Dayton, still stood, although it is on the south bank of the Miami, right in the path of the flood. The electric light and gas plants were safe from the high water. The city's water comes from a reservoir high above the river. In Dayton less than one hundred bodies had been recovered by Friday night, though thousands were missing. The fire was out, however, and the flood had so receded that relief boats were able to get to practically all parts of the city. MOST HOUSES WRECKED Every house in the flooded district was practically ruined. Streets were so clogged with wreckage that it was almost impossible to get through them. "Strange to say, there was not much suffering in our particular neighborhood," declared George Armstrong, who had been marooned in the Capell furniture store building. "There was one woman with a three-weeks-old baby. We took excellent care of her. And did we pray? There never were such prayers in church. We had a case of whiskey and offered to send it off to persons who seemed exhausted. They refused to take it, although ordinarily they are not teetotallers." BOATMEN TOUR DISTRICTS Members of the United States life-saving crew of Louisville navigated sections of flooded Dayton heretofore unexplored, reporting conditions in North Dayton and Riverdale quite as deplorable as the first estimates concerning suffering were concerned. Cruising the southern end of Riverdale, where it was feared there would be found a big death list, Captain Gillooly, in charge of the crew from the United States life saving station at Louisville, Ky., reported conditions paralleling those in other sections of the stricken city, but only two bodies were reported as having been recovered. The flooded territory in Riverdale, which is a section of substantial home owners, was approximately seventeen blocks long and seven blocks wide. After having descended the Miami River, Captain Gillooly reported that in the south central section of Dayton, where the flood flowed wildest on Tuesday night and Wednesday, thousands of persons still were imprisoned in upper floors of their homes. He stated that from numerous inquiries among people whose residences had been inundated it appeared the life loss would not be nearly so large as it was placed by first reports. This section still was flooded, although the water rapidly was receding, and while a few corpses eddied out from the flood's edge, yet in the center of the area it was stated that only two bodies had been seen. DRINKING WATER DISTRIBUTED Captain Gillooly and his men distributed food and quantities of drinking water to a large number of the flood's prisoners. Arrangements also were made to provide the needy ones with the necessary supplies from time to time until the flood waters receded. At many different points along the route stops were made and the crew detoured away from the rivers. It was found that many of these detours could be made afoot, the water having rapidly fallen since the night. At no place was the water behind the levees deeper than four feet. The Louisville men took relief to several hundred families in the low district in the vicinity of Ludlow and Franklin Streets. Here the water had reached the roofs of all two-story buildings. Only a few of the most desperate cases were brought out, the first move being to leave bread and water in as many places as possible. Sixty Catholic sisters at the Academy of the Sisters of Notre Dame and eighteen persons for whom they had provided refuge were found to have been without food or water since Tuesday. There were several cases of illness, and the suffering had been intense. The life savers left bread and water and planned to take further help. Meanwhile Capt. H. A. Hansen and the crew from Cleveland were operating several boats in North Dayton. There many of the poorer class live, and few of the buildings were substantial. Dozens of them were swept away, upturned and shattered. Mayor Phillips was still marooned in his house, and G. B. Smith, president of the Chamber of Commerce, continued in active aid of relief operations. The Fourth National Bank Building, which was reported several times to have been destroyed by fire, was found untouched by the flames, although a building immediately adjoining was burned. The newspaper offices, the _News_ and _Herald_ and _Journal_ buildings, were safe, but none was issuing papers. The Cleveland battalion of engineers were the first of a horde of troops which began to pour into Dayton in the morning. They were immediately put at work distilling the water. The fifteen men of the Dayton Ohio National Guard companies, who had been on duty since midnight Tuesday, frankly had been unable to cope with the situation. The police force was also depleted by the fact that many of its members had been marooned by high water. The looter had been in high glee. MARTIAL LAW ENFORCED Strict martial law was put into force. With headquarters at Bamberger Park, Col. Zimmerman of the Fifth Ohio Regiment organized the forces of protection, and by noon every accessible section was under strict guard. Frequent fights and skirmishes were held with the pillagers, who sought to steal under the cover of darkness. Orders to shoot to kill looters on the third shot were issued to the militiamen. The pillaging of abandoned homes and stores and the slugging and robbing of men and women in the streets after nightfall had reached a desperate stage when the troops arrived, and drastic orders were necessary. "Shoot at the legs first, and then shoot to kill," was the way the soldiers were instructed to act. Colonel Zimmerman listened to thousands who sought passes to go through the flood area to reach marooned friends and kinsmen. Only a few were allowed to go, and these were compelled to prove special causes. To those who asserted they had starving friends, Colonel Zimmerman rejoined that provisions and medicines constantly were going into the inundated district. "Be satisfied you're not dead yet," was the Colonel's disposition of many of the applicants. All during the night and until dawn revolver and rifle shots had sounded. Most of the shooting was in the bottoms near the river, but about midnight there was a lively volley of shots, evidently an exchange of bullets, believed to have been between soldiers and pillagers. A robbery was thwarted when the police arrested a man who was escaping from the city with a satchel containing $50,000 in diamonds and jewelry which he had stolen from downtown jewelry shops. "Beware of thieves and burglars," said an official bulletin given wide circulation. "Don't leave your houses without protection. It was thieves who scared you about the reservoir and natural gas explosion. The natural gas has been turned off and there is no danger of explosions." REFUGEES IN FIGHTS At three o'clock Friday morning it was unofficially announced that three pillagers had been shot to death in various parts of the city during the night. Over in North Dayton, when the lowlands were inundated by the rush of the waters of the Mad River, the foreign population, which practically occupies that section, was driven to the upper floors and the housetops. With the extinguishing of the city's lights bedlam broke loose in various portions of North Dayton. Men in the frenzy of their trouble fell to desperate quarreling among themselves, and shots were heard at all hours of the day and night Wednesday and Thursday. There were unconfirmed reports that more than a dozen murders had been committed. Troops were ordered into this district to stop the conflicts. RESTORING SANITATION Problems of sanitation, the water supply and the reconstruction of the wrecked sewer system were resumed by engineers. Citizens were ordered to dig cesspools in their yards and to get rid of all garbage. Members of the State Board of Health, bringing carloads of lime and other disinfectants, reached here to ward off disease. A report was circulated that an epidemic of typhoid fever and pneumonia had developed in Riverdale and West Dayton. It was ascertained, however, that not a single well-developed case of either disease was known in the sections mentioned, although there was considerable sickness among the refugees, particularly women and children, due to privation. Three deaths from diphtheria in other sections were reported by Secretary of Health Board Miller. FEEDING THE HOMELESS The food situation was much brighter. The trucks sent from the Cash Register Company, manned by men with military orders to confiscate potatoes and food from the farmers, brought back a good supply of vegetables and several relief trains reached the city. The problem of providing for refugees was bravely faced by an army of workers, many of whom came from neighboring cities equipped with car loads and train loads of food. "We can't tell how much we need," said John M. Patterson "and we don't know yet in just what shape we want some of the supplies. For instance, there came a carload of flour. We can use it later, but if that flour had been made into bread it would have been immediately available for the persons imprisoned in their homes whom it has been impossible to remove. We could take bread to them, but flour is not serviceable." Many motor boats went into the flooded district taking food and water and bringing out persons who needed medical attention. Many of them were so weak from deprivation and suffering as to be scarcely able to move. Hundreds were taken to the Cash Register Hospital and other places where they could be aided. Among those taken out of the Algonquin Hotel were Stephen Patterson and his wife. Mr. Patterson is a brother of John H. Patterson, the cash register manufacturer. Great anxiety had been felt for their safety and also for Mrs. Frank Patterson, a sister-in-law. The latter was found in her home on West Fifth Street. HUNDREDS STAND BY HOMES In that section on the east side of the Miami River and north of the Mad River rescue work went forward with the two United States life-saving crews in charge. Hundreds of people living in upper stories and practically without food or water since Tuesday morning refused to leave their homes, believing they would have a better chance for safety there than elsewhere. Water and food were supplied them. Hundreds of others had left their homes, in some instances effecting exits by chopping holes through the roofs. Very few of these were accounted for. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. While the flood was raging, hundreds of fires which started throughout the flooded States were left to consume millions of dollars worth of property, and to destroy many lives, because of the inability of the fire-fighters to get near the burning buildings] [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. President John H. Patterson, of the National Cash Register Company, third man from the right, directing the work of rescue at Dayton, Ohio. Through his magnificent skill as an organizer, and his coolness of mind, scores of lives were saved that would otherwise have been lost, and a great deal of suffering was alleviated by his prompt measures of relief] A central morgue was established at the Probate Court building, and as fast as possible identifications were made. Many of the bodies thus far recovered, however, presented difficulties in the way of identification. Colonel Zimmerman reported that boatloads of provisions continuously were going into the still inundated districts. Milk for babies and medicine for invalids were not forgotten by the rescue squads. Governor Cox solved the problem of getting milk for Dayton's babies by confiscating in the name of the State the entire output of the Marysville dairies, and having it sent to the stricken city. The state also seized two cars of eggs at Springfield found in a railroad yard and sent them to Dayton. PATTERSON CONTINUES NOBLE WORK The dead bodies were placed in coffins as soon as they were identified. These coffins and decent burial for the victims were paid for by the President of the National Cash Register Company, who footed most of the bills in the tremendous and efficient work of relief. The weather was bitter cold, but the rain ceased to fall. Thousands of survivors who spent two nights marooned in buildings without light, heat or food on Friday night slept in warm beds. CHAPTER V THE RECUPERATION OF DAYTON SPIRITS GO UP--SECRETARY OF WAR GARRISON ON THE SCENE--CLEARING AWAY THE DEBRIS--BOAT CREWS SAVE 979--RELIEF ON BUSINESS BASIS--STRICT SANITARY MEASURES--TALES OF THE RESCUED--A SUMMARY OF WORK ACCOMPLISHED--RAILROADS AGAIN WORKING--COMMISSION GOVERNMENT ESTABLISHED--A HOME OF TENTS--MILLIONAIRES IN THE BREAD-LINE--ORVILLE WRIGHT'S ESCAPE--DEATH AND PROPERTY LOSS--THE TASK OF REBUILDING. Dayton passed Friday night in terror because of constant shooting by the militiamen. Just how many looters were killed was unknown, as information was refused. The facts figure only in military reports. Fifty shots were fired between midnight and three o'clock Saturday morning within hearing of the main hospital quarters in the National Cash Register Building. Civil workers in the center of the town, where efforts were being made to clear away debris, reported that five looters were shot after midnight. One of these was a negro who had succeeded in entering a Madison Street house where he was seen by a militiaman and shot in the act of looting. It is declared that only one of the five men shot was killed. Orders were issued to the soldiers to inflict summary execution on corpse robbers--ghouls who sneaked through the business and residence streets like hyenas after a battle. Dayton came out in force on Saturday to look around and judge for itself the extent of the tragedy that confronted its people. Business men with forces of assistants penetrated the business section and set about the task of learning whether they had been stripped of their possessions completely. Haggard faces, worn out with sleepless nights and days of weary struggle and apprehension for the future, brightened with the flush of new-born hope as some of the searchers found that the flood had not proved completely disastrous for them. Scores of business interests, not alone in the central section, but as well in the outlying manufacturing districts, faced ruin. The work of reconstruction, already in the forming, meant for them going back to the beginning for a fresh start, but on every hand one heard in spite of this words of hope and cheerfulness that the disaster was no greater. SPIRITS GO UP The bitter cold gave way to a day of sunshine and comparative warmth. The military authorities lifted the ban on uninterrupted travel about the city. This privilege and the brightness of the day brought most of the people out of their discouragement and great throngs appeared on the streets. They found the death toll smaller than they had expected and the property damage, while almost crushing in the size of the figures it represented, not so utterly annihilating as was generally feared. Military engineering experts began the work of extricating Dayton from its covering of debris, and its menace to general public health. H. E. Talbot, of Dayton, who built the Soo Locks, was placed in charge and the Pennsylvania Railroad sent in seventy-five engineers to assist him. While fifty additional experts appeared from other points, the Ohio National Guard Battalion of Engineers from Cleveland became a part of the organization to "sweep up" the city. Relief from the suffering because of the closing down of the public utilities bade fair to be accomplished by Sunday. The city lived up to its motto "Dayton does" with the amendment that if it cannot find a way it will make one. With real philosophy and high courage its people set about the arduous task of retrieving the ground and the fortunes they lost. The lives that were taken by the disaster were not sacrificed in vain. The Citizens' Committee, headed by John H. Patterson, the relief agency, and H. E. Talbot, determined to find a way to protect the city against a repetition of the horrors of the week. Things looked brighter. It was announced that on Sunday the water would be turned on in all the mains that were not broken, in order to give pure drinking water to practically the entire city, something the sanitary and engineering experts were working for as imperative if epidemics were to be avoided. Until such time as the city mains could be used, water was distributed from artesian wells by water carts and in kegs, which were carried to the various districts by the "flying squadron" of the auto relief corps. SECRETARY OF WAR GARRISON ON THE SCENE Secretary of War Garrison and his staff arrived at Dayton at noon, and immediately went into conference with John H. Patterson, chairman of the committee of fifteen, in charge of the relief work. Soon after Mr. Garrison arrived the relief committee began to call local physicians to consult with him to determine whether to place the city under federal control. It was said Dayton's sanitary condition appeared to warrant the presence of federal troops and government health experts. It was later decided to leave the city in control of the state militia and the local committee, except that sanitary experts from the federal health service should be brought to Dayton. Mr. Garrison stated that Major Thomas Rhoades, in co-operation with Major James C. Normoyle, would have charge in Dayton. Major Normoyle had experience in furthering relief in the Mississippi flood district last year. GARRISON'S REPORT Secretary Garrison gave out the substance of his telegram to President Wilson as follows: "I find the situation at Dayton to be as follows: "The flood has subsided so that they have communication with all parts of the city, no one being now in any position of peril or without food or shelter. The National Cash Register plant has been turned into a supply depot and lodging place for those who have no other present place. "Surgeon General Blue and some of his officers are here, as are also some naval surgeons. We are all working in concert. The Governor, the Mayor, the local committees and the citizens have all expressed much gratitude for the action of the National Government, and have welcomed us warmly, all of them stating that the fact that a direct representative has been sent to their community has been of the greatest benefit to the morale of the situation. "I find a competent force is already organized to clean up the streets, remove the debris and do general work of that description and has agreed to work under the direction of the army surgeon I leave in charge of sanitation. The National Guards have their Brigadier-General, George H. Wood, here in command of the military situation and he has cordially offered to co-operate in every way with our work of sanitation. "I think that the situation here is very satisfactory and that this community will find itself in a reassured position within a very short time and facing only then the problem of repair, restoration and rehabilitation. "I will go back to Cincinnati tonight to get into touch with matters left unfinished there and will go to Columbus at the earliest moment. Governor Cox tells me that he thinks matters are in a satisfactory condition at Columbus; that he has ample immediate supply of medicines and other necessities; and that much of each is on the way. The weather is very fine and there does not seem to be any cause for apprehension of further floods in the vicinity of Dayton." CLEARING AWAY THE DEBRIS Efforts were made to clear away debris in sections where the flood water had run off, and it was feared bodies might be found in these masses of wreckage. With well organized crews doing this work, others took food to persons still marooned in Riverdale and North Dayton. The two hundred and fifty persons marooned in the Algonquin Hotel, in the heart of the flood district, moved from their prison after the waters had receded. Most of them said there was a general scare at the fire which burned along Jefferson and Third Streets, on Wednesday night. There was one death in the hotel, Johnny Flynn, a bell boy. Several of the guests organized the majority after the flood waters had cut off escape on Tuesday, and for three evenings programs of entertainments were given in the hotel dining-room. It was decreed by a safety committee that any person who declined to contribute to the entertainment would be compelled figuratively to walk the plank. There were no dissenters. Among those marooned in hotels were one hundred from New York, Chicago, Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston and St. Louis. All were safe. A brilliant sunshine threw an uncanny light over the distorted scenes in the areas where the homes of 75,000 people were swept away or toppled over. A view down almost any street revealed among the wreckage, tumbled-over houses, pianos, household utensils and dead horses brushed together in indescribable confusion. At two points the bodies of horses were seen still caught in the tops of trees. Digging bodies out of the mud was the chief work of rescuing parties. The water had drained off from almost all the flooded area. In some instances the mud was several feet deep. The rush of the currents claimed the greatest toll of lives, judging from how most of the bodies recovered were found. They were washed up onto the ground from new-made rivers and many were found buried in the wreckage. In moving this workmen moved carefully, fearing they might tread upon bodies, but they were not found in groups. It was anticipated that the majority of the bodies of flood victims would be found buried under the debris in the Miami Canal under great piles of wreckage and far down the Miami River, at Miamisburg, Middletown and Hamilton. Those who were drowned for the most part were caught in the streets either while on their way to their places of business and employment or while trying to get to places of safety when forced to flee from their houses. Lieutenant Leatherman, surgeon of the Third Regiment, O. N. G., who went through the flood in West Dayton, said that he saw scores of dead bodies floating down the Miami River and many people were swimming, but there was not one chance in ten thousand that these were saved, he said. The policing of the city by the military was reorganized with Brigadier-General George H. Wood commanding and Captain Tyrus G. Reed as Adjutant General. The city was turned over into a military district of five military zones, and rigid orders were laid down for the conduct of its affairs. Chairmen of the various committees were unanimous in asking that word be spread broadcast that mere sightseeing visitors were not wanted. The railroads were informed of this attitude and conductors refused to accept passengers who could not show that their presence here was necessary. There were thousands of visitors in the city. Most of them were from surrounding towns. BOAT CREWS SAVE 979 The work of extending succor to the marooned inhabitants of the districts which were still flooded continued during the day. In many sections were to be seen rowboats, skiffs and canoes making their way with extreme difficulty among the heaps of wreckage and overturned houses among tangled meshes of telegraph, telephone and electric light wires, seeking out possible victims who had been uncared for. Among the organizations engaged in rescue work was the company of naval reserves from the United States ship Essex at Toledo, under command of Captain A. F. Nicklett. The company reached Dayton on a special relief train from Toledo Thursday and immediately launched a number of boats on the raging torrents which were sweeping the city from end to end. Up to six o'clock Saturday night the sailors had been constantly on duty and had to their credit a total of 979 lives saved, and they were not thinking of sleep when darkness fell. One crew in command of Ensign E. E. Diebald, with two boats, rescued 375 persons from the business section and that district immediately east of Main Street and west of Eagle Street. Many of the people were taken from their homes only after the sailors had mounted to the tops of partially overturned houses and chopped their way through to the attics where the inmates were huddled together waiting for death to enter. Another crew under Junior Lieutenant Ross Willoh succeeded in saving 360, while three boats in command of Senior Lieutenant Theodore Schmidt rescued 244 persons. The majority of these latter were taken from box cars, warehouses, freight sheds and grain elevators in the railroad yards. It was here that the water attained its greatest violence, rushing in whirlpools between the irregular buildings on either side of the tracks. Navigation was extremely perilous on account of many submerged box cars, flat cars and overturned sheds. Several times the sailors were capsized, but managed to keep with their boats and right them again. Not a single life was lost either among the reserves or among the hundreds whom they attempted to rescue. While sailors worked incessantly to save lives, Lieutenant Walter Gayhart, also of the ship's company, succeeded in establishing a supply station on East Fifth Street, where many refugees congregated, and issued rations to the suffering. He slept Saturday night after seventy-one hours of continuous labor. With the additional military forces which arrived the city was thoroughly policed. At night the city was in darkness again. It was impossible to do much relief work at night and the curfew order was due in part to the advisability of keeping the men where they could protect their own households if necessary. RELIEF ON BUSINESS BASIS The distribution of food supplies and clothing and relieving of distress was put on a business basis. Supplies reached Dayton in large quantities, and the relief stations were sufficiently organized to take care of the incoming refugees from the flood districts. The problem of caring for the homeless was still serious, but with all promise of warm weather it was hoped there would be less suffering. Health officers reported that there was only one car of lime in the city, and there was great need of more. Fifteen thousand persons were subsisting on rations given out under direction of the relief committee. Ten thousand of these, it was estimated, were in their homes, and food was carried to them in boats and automobiles. About five thousand were being cared for at the relief stations. This showed a marked reduction in the number of persons being publicly fed. There was plenty of food, and it was placed into baskets in lots to serve five persons for two days. Over candles given out with the food the people boiled coffee, but the other food was eaten cold. There was no gas and little coal. Announcement was made by the relief committee that until conditions became normal, no private messages to persons here would be delivered or answered, as the wire capacity was taxed to the utmost to carry official and public business. Major Dupuy stated that he feared an epidemic of some kind unless the most rigid sanitary rules were enforced. STRICT SANITARY MEASURES Major Dupuy stated that the city had been divided into six sanitary districts, each district in charge of an officer of the sanitary corps of the National Guard. Strict orders regarding the disposition of garbage were issued and the people were advised, by means of bulletins posted in conspicuous places in the streets, how best to preserve the public health. Several cars of lime reached the city and many more were en route from different points. A carload of ambulance supplies was on the way from Cincinnati. Members of the Citizens' Relief Committee were apprehensive of a water famine. It was believed there was little chance that the present supply could be made to last until the water mains were in use again. R. H. Grant, head of the Relief Supplies Committee, issued an appeal to all cities in the country asking that as much bottled water as possible be shipped to Dayton immediately. It was especially desired that this water be strictly pure, as it was practically impossible to boil the water for drinking purposes. Considering the number of persons affected by this flood, there was comparatively little sickness, the cold weather being responsible for this to a great extent. The cold caused great suffering among those marooned without food, water, or heat, but in the end it proved a blessing. Dr. William Colby Rucker, Assistant Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, who arrived from Washington at the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, with Surgeon General Rupert Blue, gave the following outline of the sanitary conditions existing in the city: "A survey of conditions in Dayton today shows that the sanitary situation is not so bad as was at first thought. Citizens have been warned to boil all drinking water and to bury refuse. City water is now flowing under twenty-pound pressure. Sewers in some sections are again in operation. The city expects to have others working tomorrow. "The city has been divided into six sanitary districts and tonight physicians who have been sworn in as district sanitary officers are being instructed as to their precise duties as heads of these districts." TALES OF THE RESCUED Pathetic scenes, so intense as to bring tears to the eyes of undertakers, were witnessed when scores of fear-stricken parents and children walked down the rows of dead lying upon slabs in the temporary morgues. In Riverdale and North Dayton, where the flood waters attained the greatest depth and degree of destructiveness, several thousand persons waded knee-deep in slimy mud, rummaging their desolated homes for clothing. All of this, of course, was soaked and plastered with mud, but it was dried on the hillsides, where the populace had taken refuge. In some places in these districts the water had so far receded as to render possible the beginning of the work of cleaning the lower floors of the mud and debris. The dead line around Riverdale, where the water remained about three feet in depth around most of the houses, continued to be maintained in order to guard against looting during the absence of residents. It was estimated that not more than a week would be required to immunize all homes requiring it outside of the Riverdale section, to free them from water and prepare them for cleansing. A SUMMARY OF WORK ACCOMPLISHED Following are some of the things accomplished since the flood broke over the city Tuesday morning: The water-works pumping station was in operation, but the distribution of water was greatly retarded by open pipes in wrecked houses. The pressure was feeble, but growing stronger as leaks were checked. The main sanitary sewer was in operation, although many of the laterals leading from houses were clogged with mud and backed-up water. The flood sewers, separate from the sanitary, were almost ready for service. These sewers carry off the rainfall from the gutters, and were needed to remove the water being pumped from basements. Sightseers in motor cars felt the heavy hand of public necessity when General Wood began impressing machines. The sightseers were ordered from their cars and the latter were pressed into public service. Protests were unavailing. The more stubborn surrendered at the points of rifles, and gave up their cars "until released by order of the chairman," as the placards placed in them read. The militia also began impressing citizens into service as workers. Men who had the appearance of being able-bodied, but idle, were questioned by officers of the National Guard; if they had not good reason for being in the streets, and no duties of a mandatory nature, they were pressed into service. The Sixth regiment, O. N. G., from Toledo and northern Ohio towns, which had been on duty in Dayton, commandeered a train when ordered to Cincinnati and departed before nightfall. The naval reserves from Toledo went on train. Coroner J. W. McKemy estimated that one hundred bodies had been recovered, though there was record of only seventy-two. He said some had been buried without usual official action and that in some cases he did not expect to get records. The postoffice was put out of business on Tuesday and it was not until Sunday that any sort of service was attempted. Telegraph and telephone service was almost entirely crippled until Saturday night, when even short messages were accepted only on condition that the sender assent to indefinite delays. Telegrams were relayed through Cincinnati. The only long-distance telephone wires in service were two private wires connecting with Cincinnati. On those who succeeded in securing permission to use these wires a time limit of three minutes conversation was imposed. No braver services were performed during the flood than those by the telegraph and telephone linemen who made possible the dissemination of news to hundreds of thousands of friends and relatives of Daytonians. They waded and swam icy floods and entered tottering buildings unhesitatingly in pursuit of their duty. Operators who had not removed shoes or clothing since last Tuesday were found Saturday. RAILROADS AGAIN WORKING Direct railroad communication was established Sunday night with Springfield, Ohio, Cincinnati and Richmond, Indiana. The Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton lines, on which Dayton passenger traffic depended mostly, were not working. The tracks leading into the Union Station were completely blocked and the few trains arriving discharged their passengers on the outskirts of the city. H. E. Talbott, who was commissioned by Governor Cox, chief engineer of the military zone, completed his plans for beginning the rehabilitation of the city. He announced that four departments had been created, with an assistant engineer in charge of each. One had charge of rebuilding the streets and alleys; another the levees along the rivers; another the sewerage system, and still another the bridges. [Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. Life lines strung across one of the streets. The rescuers caught persons carried down on wreckage in the raging flood and brought them to a place of safety] [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. Man walking along the telephone cables after escaping from his house, which was washed away by the flood. The houses in the center have been washed from their foundations and are floating away] Hundreds of persons still looking for relatives passed along the lines at the morgues, fearing they should find their loved ones there. Only a few bodies had not been identified. Because of the city's financial condition, the problem of paying the costs of rejuvenation caused great concern. The treasury was practically empty, and the borrowing capacity would be exhausted when $900,000 was raised. It was planned to seek immediate relief from the Legislature. By order of Governor Cox, the reign of martial law over Dayton was extended to take in the whole county. The flood did more than sweep away property, for it swept away the city administration, temporarily at least, and brought in what amounted to a commission form of government. The extension of the area under martial law developed from action taken by local dealers whose places were closed. They complained that saloons on the outskirts were sending whiskey into the city, and that considerable drunkenness had been observed. Brigadier-General Wood reported the situation to the Governor, and his action was prompt and decisive. COMMISSION GOVERNMENT ESTABLISHED As soon as martial law was proclaimed, the municipal administration was eclipsed. Brigadier-General Wood for the moment became supreme under the Governor. On the heels of this Mr. Patterson was appointed chairman of a committee of five to administer the affairs of the city. The militia was instructed to obey his orders and thus became a police force. Under martial law the city enjoyed the free services of the biggest business men and the most expert professional men in Montgomery County. Citizens who ventured into the streets were impressed from the time they left their doors that Dayton is steadied and perhaps somewhat depressed by the absolute grip of martial law. Soldier government was maintained inexorably. Owners of business places could not set foot on their property without the permission of the khaki-clad militiamen, standing at the curbs with loaded carbines. If a citizen found himself some distance from his home when the curfew rang at 6 P. M. his return was beset with much difficulty, because of the necessity of halting by the many sentries he encountered. A citizen fearsome enough to venture from his threshold after 8 P. M. literally took his life in his hands, because the fingers of the militia rested on hair triggers. Nine colored men and one white man were added to the seven suspected looters shot and killed since martial law was proclaimed. Absolute secrecy concerning the deaths was maintained by the military authorities. Citizens who heard repeated firing between midnight and dawn in the business center of Dayton and near Ludlow Street, in which were located many of the handsomest homes in Dayton, spread these reports. The reports were confirmed in a non-committal way by militiamen who were on duty in these sections, who admitted they had fired ball cartridges as a "warning" to suspected looters. The most detailed account of the death of the white man had it that he was halted near Main and Third Streets shortly after 2 A. M. He had one hand behind his back, and when ordered to open it two watches fell to the pavement. He was then searched and eighteen watches were found in his pockets. The sentry called a corporal's squad of six militiamen and reported the loot found on the prisoner. The prisoner was led to the wall of a near-by building, faced toward the wall, and the squad, which had received instruction from its commander, fired. A white band with a red insignia, made apparently to simulate a Red Cross badge, was taken from the man's arm, and the body was thrown into the canal. EXECUTIONS DENIED The nine colored men reported as killed were discovered by sentries in various parts of the city. A dozen militiamen on duty near Main and Third Streets, about 2 A. M., said that they had heard firing at the locality named, but attributed it to warning shots. One of the men said that a sergeant in his company told of shooting and killing a colored man Friday night, when the man tried to escape in a boat on the Miami Erie Canal. Brigadier General George H. Wood, when asked about the reports of squad-firing and the deaths of ten suspected looters, said: "There was some squad-firing after midnight by sentries posted in the Ludlow section, where are located the homes of some of Dayton's wealthiest citizens. But neither there nor in other sections of the city where shots were fired was any one killed. The report that executions followed the detection of militiamen caught looting are without foundation. There have been no drumhead or other courtmartials and none will take place while I am in command here in Dayton. "We have the situation well in hand. I have 1,400 doing sentry duty throughout the city and I intend to guard homes and suppress all lawlessness." In spite of the rigor of this military government of Dayton, praise of General Wood's administration was heard on every side. Citizens discredited the stories of executions of looters and were not over-inquisitive of details, because they realized that drastic measures were imperative under the existing conditions. In accordance with suggestions made Saturday by Secretary of War Garrison and General Leonard Wood, chief of staff, Major Thomas L. Rhoades, President Wilson's military aide, took charge of the sanitary campaign and permanent relief organization. He had for his chief lieutenant Eugene T. Lies, of Chicago, who was in command of the Red Cross forces. Investigation of the financial standing of every householder whose home has been damaged by the flood was begun. In worthy cases money or materials with which to make repairs were furnished from the Red Cross funds. A HOME OF TENTS Major Rhoades took up plans for establishing a tented camp in North Dayton in which to shelter residents of the flood districts. These flooded homes were inspected and when found to be unsanitary the occupants were invited to take up quarters in the tented camp. Where the invitation was refused recalcitrants were escorted by a corporal's guard to the camp and compelled to remain there until their homes were cleaned and fumigated. Major Rhoades was supported by the militia in carrying out a policy to immunize every home in Dayton if necessary, and thus minimize the danger of epidemics. The medical authorities forbade the use of old clothing until after it had been fumigated. It was urged upon the general public that old clothing was not desirable for fear it might bring a pestilence in some form to a city unable to cope with more disaster. Nothing to indicate the approach of an epidemic due to flood conditions was reported, although the number of diphtheria cases was slightly above normal. Eight persons suffering from diphtheria were at the Miami Valley Hospital. Seven of them were caught in a house with a person who had recently become ill with the disease. Four persons hemmed in with one who had measles were suffering with that disease. Typhoid fever and pneumonia were a little more prevalent than usual. Clear skies and warm sunshine contributed to the comfort of the city and made possible good progress in the work of redemption. Two hospitals in Dayton were flooded on the first floor, so all sick and injured were taken either to the Great Miami Hospital or to the state insane asylum. Eight persons whose minds temporarily became affected because of hardships suffered in the flood were cared for at the latter place. With warmer weather, the greatest problem was the removal of the carcasses of dead horses. Every available automobile truck and all the horse-drawn drays were impressed by the sanitary officials and hundreds of men were engaged all day removing the carcasses to the different incinerating plants and to vacant lots on the outskirts of the city, where they were burned. George F. Burba, Governor Cox's private secretary, reported to the state's executive that there were 40,000 persons in Dayton who must be fed and sheltered for at least a week, and 10,000 who were destitute. The latter were without either sufficient clothing or food, and until business activities were restored, they had to be financed and maintained in lodgings until they could become self-supporting. Theodore A. Burnett and T. H. Smith, government food inspectors, took charge of the food supply, in so far as inspection was concerned, and appointed twelve deputies. All shipments of supplies from other places were carefully examined before being given to the refugees. Particular attention was paid to meats and canned goods. Announcement was made that the particular need of the people was drinking water, shoes, clothing, picks and shovels. Money also was wanted, although a considerable amount had already been subscribed by cities throughout the country. Food was on hand in ample quantities, free to all, but the variety was limited to staples such as beans, potatoes, bread and canned vegetables. Of fresh meat there was practically none and butter and eggs were scarce. All food supplies were those contributed by the outside world and distributed from the various relief depots on the requisition of householders. Neither provision nor other stores received any consignment of goods. Citizens and visitors alike were impressed with the facts that Dayton's condition was distressing. A review of the streets from sunrise until the curfew bell's toll furnished a practical illustration of this. Except for the comparatively few householders who had supplies on hand in considerable quantities, daily sustenance was secured by the market basket method. This was as true of the fairly well-to-do families as of the laboring classes. HOW RATIONS WERE ISSUED The head of a family made out a requisition each morning stating his needs for the day. This requisition was presented at any of the supply depots, and on it were issued rations consisting of potatoes, canned meats, prunes or preserves, beans, biscuits or bread. Men, women and children with their baskets were seen in the streets throughout the day. Most of the absolutely destitute were cared for in one or another of the buildings comprising the huge plant of the National Cash Register Company, which is on high ground at the southern end of the city, untouched by the flood. On the ninth floor of the administration building, known as the office's club, and where there is a dining room with a capacity for 1,000, more than 5,000 destitute persons were fed daily. The menu for Sunday was a typical one, as follows: Breakfast--Oatmeal and milk, coffee and bread. Dinner--Vegetable soup, stewed canned meat, stewed corn, coffee and bread. Supper--Bean soup, potatoes, coffee or tea and bread with butter. John F. Patterson, head of the plant, had his dinner in this general dining room on Sunday. The only luxuries enjoyed by him and not provided for the others were hard-boiled eggs and preserved peaches. Among the most active of the uniformed waitresses was Mr. Patterson's nineteen-year-old daughter. Volunteer waitresses helped out their paid sisters during these days of hardship. Monday in Dayton was much like the days that immediately preceded it, except that rapid progress was made toward the restoration of the city to a habitable condition. Electric current was supplied Monday night in a limited residential district and in a few downtown buildings, and the narrow zone of street lighting was extended. Automobile fire engines were brought overland from Cincinnati to assist in pumping out basements. Ample telegraph equipment was installed in the Beckel House. Thousands of telegrams remained undelivered, and it was still impossible for the telegraph companies even to attempt delivery. The line of citizens waiting in front of the Western Union's temporary office, to ask for messages from friends, extended during the morning a full block. The Bell Telephone system promised partial restoration of service by Tuesday. Its plant manager, John A. Bell, complained of his linemen having been impeded by refusal of guardsmen to honor the military passes. This was called to the attention of Brigadier General Wood, commanding the Ohio Guard, and relief was given. Practically no newspapers had been received here since Tuesday and the people of Dayton grew very anxious to learn of conditions in other cities. News of the death of J. P. Morgan first reached the public through a bulletin posted by a representative of the Associated Press. Later the Dayton _News_, whose plant was inundated, put a two-page paper on the street in which a few details of the death of the financier were printed. Impressed and volunteer laborers were put to work Monday refilling the broken levees. Removal of dead animals was the most pressing work of sanitation. Major Thomas L. Rhoads, President Wilson's aide and personal representative in charge of sanitary work, said that the situation was quite encouraging; that hospital facilities so far were ample; no epidemics of disease were in evidence and in two weeks there would be substantial relief, although it would require two months to remove the dirt and debris. WOMEN SHOVEL IN STREETS Monday for the first time, offensive odors came from the mud and slime that was shovelled into the streets by householders and storekeepers. In this work men, women and children were engaged. Wives of prominent citizens were seen with shovel and hoe, some of them wearing their husbands' trousers and rubber boots, doing as best they could the work of men. On Monday, John H. Patterson, chairman of the Citizens' Relief Committee, issued the following statement: "Our committee has now at its disposal all the food and clothing necessary. Money, however, is required to put our city in condition to prevent the outbreak of diseases and to rehabilitate the thousands, many of whom have lost their homes entirely and all of whom have lost their household and personal effects. "The committee sends an urgent appeal to the citizens of the United States for the necessary funds. All contributions should be sent direct to W. F. Bippus, treasurer of the relief committee." MILLIONAIRES IN THE BREAD-LINE In the bread-line on Monday was Eugene J. Parney, a multi-millionaire, whose gifts to charity have been very large and who recently included $25,000 to the Y. M. C. A. of this city. The day after the flood he was offering $1,000 for enough wood alcohol to heat malted milk for his infant grandchild. Monday he was no more successful in buying provisions. He appeared with a basket on his arm, rubbed elbows with those nearest in the motley line and apparently none was more grateful than he when his basket was filled with beans, potatoes, canned vegetables, rice and other staples. He was eager to pay for his supplies, but money is refused at the supply depots. It was arranged to change this system on Tuesday to enable those well able to pay to do so. Fred B. Patterson, only son of John H. Patterson, stopped work in the morgue at his father's factory long enough to tell for the first time of the part he took in the rescue work. Like his sister Dorothy, who worked as a waitress feeding refugees, young Patterson was doing the things that many poor men had avoided. ORVILLE WRIGHT'S ESCAPE Orville Wright, the aeroplane builder, and his family, who had been marooned in the west side, reported to relief headquarters on Monday. The flood stopped just short of wiping out of existence the priceless models, records, plans and drawings--all in the original--of the Wright brothers, who gave the airship to the world. Out in West Dayton live the Wrights--Orville, his father, Bishop Wright, and Miss Katherine Wright, the sister, in a small, unpretentious frame house. Orville Wright and his father and sister were in the old homestead when the flood swept in. The aged father was placed in a boat, but instead of conveying him to a place of safety, the boatman carried him to a house nearby where he was marooned until the waters subsided three days later. Orville Wright and his sister escaped to safety on an auto truck, being carried through four feet of water. In fleeing, however, the inventor of the aeroplane was compelled to abandon the small factory adjoining the homestead in which were stored all of the originals from which the plans for the air craft were perfected. Had these gone, there would have remained nothing of the priceless data save what exists in the brain of Orville Wright. At the height of the flood a house adjoining the factory took fire. There were no means to fight the flames. For several hours the factory was in peril, but a special providence protected it and it came out of both flood and fire unscathed. "We were lucky," said Orville Wright, whimsically, on Monday. "It is the irony of fate that at the critical moment I was not able to get away with my folks on one of my own machines. However, we came through all right and there doesn't seem to be anything more to be said." Just one week after the coming of the deluge Governor Cox entered his home city for the first time, accompanied by several of the members of the Ohio Flood Relief Committee. Governor Cox praised Mr. Patterson for his invaluable part in the relief work. "Mr. Patterson is the one man who is in the eye of America more than any one other man," said the Governor. Mr. Patterson, after he returned Tuesday night in company with H. E. Talbott, chief engineer, from a tour of sections of Dayton that were swept by the flood, issued a statement in which he said: "Dayton is facing one of the gravest problems that any city of the world ever faced and we want the world to know we need money and food for our stricken people." In speaking of a tentative plan to ask the Federal Government for a loan of from $20,000,000 to $40,000,000 to be used in reconstruction work, Mr. Patterson said: "At a meeting of bankers and officials of the building associations this evening it was decided to make an appeal for Federal aid. The banks and building associations have $60,000,000 worth of assets which they will put up as collateral. It may be deemed advisable to ask the Government to give us some financial assistance. We feel that the disaster is an emergency which would justify extraordinary action on the part of Congress." Since Sunday more than $750,000 in cash was received from banks in Cincinnati to replace damaged money in local banks which remained closed until April 8th. DEATH AND PROPERTY LOSS Mr. Talbott estimated that the property loss in Montgomery County totaled at least $150,000,000. He declared that one manufacturing company alone had lost half a million dollars. Although several carloads of provisions were received on Tuesday, officials in charge of relief work stated that the food situation was a matter of grave concern. "We must have rations for more than 100,000 people for an indefinite period," Mr. Patterson declared. A carload of automobile tires, contributed by an Akron rubber company for use in relief work, arrived on Tuesday. One of the great losses sustained from the flood was that which befell the public library. An inspection of the institution disclosed the fact that the children's library, the medical library and the reference library had been wiped out of existence. Included in the loss were all the public and official accounts and copies of the newspapers dating from the first issues, back in 1822, none of which could be replaced. County Coroner John McKemy, who in the week following the flood handled nearly one hundred bodies, said that at least twenty-five bodies were disposed of before he was released from his imprisonment by the flood. He estimated that the number of lives lost from the flood in Dayton exceeded two hundred. THE TASK OF REBUILDING So day followed day in the recuperation of Dayton; but, looking ahead, it was evident to the magnificent corps of expert men in charge of the work that months must elapse before all Daytonians could again live in their own homes. There were 15,000 residences to plaster and paper before they could be occupied. There were 4,500 houses to build foundations under, to straighten, re-roof, put in doors and windows, rebuild chimneys and make other repairs before their owners could move in again. There were 2,000 houses to raze and new structures to be built. The Citizens' Relief Committee, on advices from engineers, decided that this reconstruction work would require four months, even if building material could be obtained promptly. So far as the business and industrial buildings were concerned, it was estimated by architects who looked over the different premises that it would require eight months before repair work and rebuilding could be accomplished. In the interim business was done in whatever premises were available. Thousands of men were employed, together with many teams of horses, and work was pushed to the utmost in all departments. Surveys of the damage done were made and large quantities of material were ordered by telegraph, to be shipped immediately. Generations must come and go before the Dayton flood will be forgotten, and standing out in bright contrast with all else there will perhaps remain longest the inspiring picture of the energy and fortitude with which the stricken residents set about the retrievement of their city from the devastation of the angry waters. CHAPTER VI DAYTON: "THE CITY OF A THOUSAND FACTORIES" SURVIVOR OF SIX FLOODS--ESTABLISHED BY REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIERS--PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS--OTHER OF DAYTON'S FEATURES OF INTEREST--A CITY OF CIVIC PRIDE--"A THOUSAND FACTORIES"--ITS SUCCESS. Dayton has stood in the shadow of disaster from flood ever since its foundation. No less than six times previous to the present inundation have the rivers which flow through it left their accustomed courses and brought death and destruction of property upon the town. The first of these floods occurred in 1805, the very year that Dayton was incorporated as a town. The sixth was in 1898 and the others in the years 1847, 1863, 1866 and 1886. The site of the present city was purchased in 1795 by a group of Revolutionary soldiers and laid out as a town in the following year by one of them, who named it after Jonathan Dayton, a Jerseyman who had fought in the Revolution and who later served in Congress and the United States Senate. It became the county seat of Montgomery County in 1803 and received its city charter in 1841, something more than a score of years after the opening of the Miami Canal gave a boom to its growth and prosperity. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. Crowds at the end of one of the streets which was turned into a racing river. Many persons floating down on the debris were rescued by willing hands as they neared this point] [Illustration: Copyright by George Grantham Bain. Even before the flood reached its height, the wood-working department of the National Cash Register Factory was busily putting together improvised boats that were afterwards of great value in rescuing marooned residents from their flooded homes] PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS Within the city limits the waters of Wolf Creek, Stillwater and Mad Rivers unite with those of the great Miami. The latter stream flows through the city from north to south. As it reaches the corporation limits at the north it sweeps to the westward and is joined by Stillwater River a mile and a half from the court house. Then it takes an easterly course for half a mile and is joined by the Mad River at a point about half a mile from the court house. The river then bends again to the west for more than half a mile and is joined by Wolf Creek. Its course lies thereafter to the southeast. Great bridges, some of them of great architectural beauty, cross all of these streams. The Miami Canal takes water from the Mad River about two miles northeast of the court house, runs parallel with the Mad River to its confluence with the Miami and then runs southward to the city limits. The city is regularly laid out, the street and house number plan being arranged with arithmetical exactness. Main Street is the center of this system and the house numbers begin from it or the point nearest it on the streets that run east or west. For the streets running north and south the house numbers begin on Third Street or the point nearest Third Street. Main and Third Streets are respectively the dividing lines of all streets crossing them. SPLENDID PUBLIC BUILDINGS The court house stands at Main and West Third Streets. Distances are measured from it, and it is at the center of the scheme according to which streets are laid out. Its original portion was modeled after the Greek Parthenon and is built of rough white marble taken from quarries in the vicinity. It is only one of the many buildings of which the city is proud. Among others are the Steele High School, St. Mary's College, Notre Dame Academy, Memorial Building, Arcade Building, Reibold Building, post office, Algonquin Hotel, public library and the Y. M. C. A. building. There is also the Union Biblical Seminary and a publishing house connected therewith. The Central Theological Seminary was established in 1908. Among charitable institutions are the Dayton State Hospital for the Insane, Miami Valley and St. Elizabeth hospitals, the Christian Deaconess', Widows' and Children's homes and the Door of Hope, a home for girls. Just outside the city is the central branch of the National Home for Disabled Soldiers. In addition to these buildings there are a number of very handsome churches. OTHER OF DAYTON'S FEATURES OF INTEREST Dayton is on the Erie, the Dayton and Union and the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroads. There are one hundred and twenty-five trains entering the city daily. The Union Station was opened to the public in July, 1900, and cost, including tracks, $900,000. The city has an area of ten and three-quarter square miles. The Mayor, Treasurer, Auditor, Solicitor, and Board of Public Service, of three members, are elected by popular election. The Board of Public Safety, of two members, and the Board of Health, are appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by Council. The City Council, composed of thirteen members from ten wards, is elected by popular vote, for two years, each member receiving an annual salary of $250. It is a legislative body only. The supply of water for the city is almost inexhaustible in quantity and of absolute purity. In 1904 there were one hundred and thirty-three miles of street mains, 1,300 fire hydrants and 15,503 service taps. The Fire Department has a force of ninety men, fourteen engine-houses, fifty horses maintained at a cost of $86,728.48, and with property worth $375,000. A complete system of surface and underground sewerage, both storm and sanitary, is provided. In 1904 there were sixty-seven and nine-tenths miles of storm sewerage. There are seven National Banks and two Savings and Trust Companies. Dayton takes rank as foremost in building associations of any city of its size in the country. A large number of the 20,000 or more homes in the city have been built with the aid of these associations. A potent force in the development of the city has been the electric traction lines, of which Dayton has more than any other city in Ohio. There are nine lines, with a total mileage of three hundred and eighty-five miles, which radiate in all directions through the populous and rich country of which Dayton forms the center. The city railway lines, three in number, have a total mileage of nearly one hundred miles and render excellent service. The Dayton public school system has for many years enjoyed the reputation of being one of the best school systems in the West. Dayton had the first library incorporated in the state, one having been established in 1805. The Public Library was opened in 1855 and is supported by public taxation, having an income of $18,000 per annum. There are five daily newspapers, each with weekly editions, besides seventeen church and other publications. There are also three large church publication houses. The city hospitals include the St. Elizabeth Hospital, the Miami Valley Hospital, and the Protestant Hospital, which has a large central building known as the Frank Patterson Memorial of Operative Surgery, one of the most complete buildings for its purpose in the United States. The Dayton State Hospital for the Insane is maintained by the state. The Hospital of the National Military Home which adjoins the city is the largest military hospital in the world and has an average of 600 patients, all of whom are veteran volunteer soldiers of the Civil and Cuban Wars. A CITY OF CIVIC PRIDE Dayton was early imbued with the spirit of civic pride and the results are seen in a system of drives and parks. The streets are well built and numerous good hard gravel roads radiate into the surrounding country, a fertile farming region which abounds in limestone. The levee along the Miami is made of hard gravel and is wide enough at the top to form a foundation for a drive. "A THOUSAND FACTORIES" Dayton is sometimes known as "the City of a Thousand Factories," and some of its varied industries are known throughout the world. Leading these is, of course, the National Cash Register Company, which employs something more than 7,000 men. In addition to cash registers there are manufactured agricultural machinery, clay-working machinery, cottonseed and linseed oil machinery, railway cars, carriages and wagons, automobiles, flying machines, sewing machines, paper, furniture, soap and tobacco. Almost every industrial product finds a maker in this town. Barnum & Smith are the well known manufacturers of street cars. There is the Davis Sewing Machine Company, the Speedwell Automobile Company and many others. Water-power in abundance is supplied from the Mad River. Dayton is the fifth largest city in Ohio. The final abstract of the Federal census for 1910 placed the population at 116,577, as compared with 85,333 in 1900 and 61,220 in 1890. With its industries so diversified, its banks and building associations so strong and uniformly successful, and with its people so well educated, it is one of the richest and most prosperous communities in the Union. CHAPTER VII THE DEVASTATION OF COLUMBUS THE RISING FLOOD--MOST OF THE CITY DARK--GREAT AREAS UNDER WATER--THE MILITIA IN CONTROL--THE RELIEF OF THE VICTIMS--THE EXTENT OF THE DISASTER--STORIES OF THE HORROR--ORDERS TO SHOOT LOOTERS--RECOVERING THE DEAD--GOVERNOR COX INDEFATIGABLE--HUNGRY REFUGEES SEIZE FOOD--INCIDENTS OF HEROISM--SCENES OF PATHOS--LOSS BY DEATH AND OF PROPERTY--THE WORK OF RECONSTRUCTION. At Columbus, on Tuesday night, March 25th, darkness settled down on a swirling flood that covered large areas of the city. Thousands of persons were separated from members of their families and were frantic because they were unable to get into communication with their homes. THE RISING FLOOD Hundreds of fathers, sons, brothers, sisters and daughters had left their homes on the west side of the city in the morning to go to work, before the Scioto River had reached a flood stage. Rising suddenly, the water cut them off from their homes and when night fell they only knew that their homes were flooded and that the members of their families were dependent for food and shelter on more fortunate neighbors. Because the city was in darkness, only meager details of the condition of the flood-marooned inhabitants were obtainable. Wringing their hands, weeping and appealing vainly for help, scores of girls crowded in as close to the water's edge in the darkness as state troops and policemen on duty would allow them, but there was no chance to cross the stream to their home district. MOST OF THE CITY DARK Owing to the high water, electric lights in the flooded district and a part of the business section of the city were out, and the water supply was cut off. The supply of gas was also cut off, with a view to preventing explosions. In Columbus the west side was practically wiped out, and the reported loss of life ranged from a half dozen to 200. Houses were floating down the river with people on their roofs. Several fires in the submerged district added to the horrors. Refugees slept in public buildings, while militia helped the police patrol the streets, which were in total darkness. It was estimated that over 10,000 persons were homeless on the west side as a result of the flood and that at least 15,000 were living on the second floors of their homes. Only about ten per cent of the street cars were able to operate and steam railroad and suburban lines were tied up. Damage amounting to $30,000 was done by fires in the west side during the afternoon, which for a time threatened greater damage owing to the water supply being cut off. Even had there been water, most of the fire-fighting facilities were on the east side of the city and unable to reach the section affected. GREAT AREA UNDER WATER Bridges connecting the west side with the eastern portion of Columbus were swept away shortly after noon. Dozens of smaller bridges went down. Hundreds of men were marooned in factories on the west side, and police and National Guardsmen were making rescues in boats where it was possible. All street car traffic was abandoned. Fifteen hundred homes were flooded. With a great roar the levee at the foot of Broad Street let go shortly before eleven o'clock, sending down a deluge of water that swelled the Scioto River and covered a great area. Several small buildings collapsed. Just before the break the police ordered all persons in the lowlands to leave their homes quickly and flee for high land. All fire and police apparatus assisted in the work. The residents were told not to stop for clothes or valuables. The Sandusky Street levee also collapsed, permitting the water to wash out a railroad embankment and pour into all the low districts between the river and Sandusky Street. With water to the hubs, a horse-drawn wagon galloped out West Broad Street filled with police, who shouted as they went a warning to all to fly to the hills. While being swept down the channel of the swollen Scioto River just as darkness was gathering late in the day, a man, woman and child were rescued from the roof of a house that had been torn from its foundation by the flood. Two other children of the same family fell into the water and were drowned. THE MILITIA IN CONTROL State troops at the order of Governor Cox patrolled the streets in the flooded sections of the city and scores of automobiles were busy carrying the suffering to higher ground. Meantime, the rain which began Sunday night continued, at times moderately and at other times in torrents. The fact that the water had already destroyed several bridges and broken a levee gave cause for the alarm that other levees might break and further damage result. Because of the proportions of the flood, which washed out nearly every bridge of steam and electric roads leading out of Columbus, nearly all train service was annulled. Floodgates were closed against all trains coming in or going out of Columbus on all roads except the Norfolk and Western. A train on that road practically swam into the Union Station at 9 P. M. after having crept along through high waters for most of the run from Portsmouth to Columbus. During the day several trains on roads from the East were detoured through Columbus over the Norfolk and Western, but this was discontinued because of washed-out bridges between Columbus and Pittsburgh and other points. Norfolk and Western officials said they had no assurance that they would be able to operate any trains from here. Ten solid miles of Pullman and other trains, including the Twentieth Century Flyer, on the Pennsylvania Railroad, extended from Lima to Lafayette, held up by a wash-out. Repairs allowed the trains to move on about eleven o'clock. In taking charge of the relief work Governor Cox issued an order directing Adjutant-General John C. Speaks to call out the entire National Guard of the state for duty in the flooded districts. BRIDGES SWEPT AWAY Bridges were swept away, barring those who would have fled to places of safety. The rush of waters caught hundreds in their homes, and as the darkness fell the scramble to escape became wild and foreboding. Those who were able to do anything sent their appeals for aid to outlying cities before the wires had absolutely failed. Added to the terrors of flood and darkness was that of fire. In the wild rush for places of safety that followed the first warning of the danger from the bursting levees, lamps were toppled over, electric wires were crossed and soon flames were mounting high in many sections of the city. Representative H. S. Bigelow introduced a bill in the legislature to appropriate $100,000 for the flood sufferers in Ohio, the money to be handled under the direction of the Governor. With no change in the number of reported dead in this city, estimates on Wednesday placed the probable dead at from one hundred to one hundred and fifty. Columbus was still being drenched and torn by flood waters of the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers. The scene of devastation on the west side was partly made visible to residents of other sections of the city for the first time in two days. The isolation of the western section again became real when the last remaining bridge gave way before the torrents. Numerous persons who were considered conservative asserted that they saw scores of bodies float down stream and dozens of persons carried away in their houses. Miss Esther Eis, rescued from her home on the west side, said she saw the house with George Griffin, wife and seven children collapse and disappear, and another house containing John Way, wife and five children, break up in the flood. Besides the actual tragedies that were enacted in connection with the flood the most exciting incident occurred at the announcement that the storage dam, several miles north of the city, had broken, sending its great flood to augment that of the Scioto River. The scene that followed was one of wild panic in all parts of the city. Patrolmen, soldiers and citizens in automobiles, tooting horns, ringing gongs and calling through megaphones a warning to every one to seek safety in the higher parts of the east side, sent thousands in flight, while many, stunned by the supposed impending disaster, collapsed from fear or gave way to hysteria. It was more than an hour before the report was officially denied. Police officials assert that the report was made to them by persons connected with the military end of the patrols. City officials said that the storage dam was holding fast against the millions of gallons of water that were being poured against it, and they expressed confidence that it would continue to do so despite the great pressure upon it. The Governor telegraphed the War Department at Washington, asking that 50,000 tents and 100,000 rations be made available for use and distribution by the Ohio National Guard. Governor Cox also sent out appeals for aid to the Governors of all the border States of Ohio, including Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky. Tents and provisions were badly needed, according to the Governor's appeal. After working all night in the Adjutant-General's office in the State House, officers of the Ohio National Guard reported that they had succeeded in assembling 3,500 militiamen, ready for service in the flood districts. Mobilized at all points of the state, companies and regiments of the Ohio military force started at daybreak on Wednesday for the stricken cities and towns as soon as arrangements for their transportation, the most serious problem confronting the militia headquarters, could be arranged. The relief which they carried was held back by the lack of railroad facilities everywhere. THE RELIEF OF THE VICTIMS Howard Elting, president of the Chicago Association of Commerce, telegraphed Governor Cox that citizens of Chicago were raising a relief fund for flood sufferers. "I am pleased to state," the telegram said, "that $100,000 will be placed at the disposal of Ohio through the American Red Cross Society." The Senate passed the Lowry Bill making appropriation for the relief of the flood sufferers, but increased the amount to $500,000. The action was taken in response to the following message from the Governor: "The flood disaster that has befallen our state is of such magnitude in loss of life and human suffering that I respectfully urge upon your honorable body the importance and propriety of making an appropriation for the succor of those in distress. "May I further suggest that it be of such size and made with such dispatch as to reflect the great heart and resource of our commonwealth?" THE EXTENT OF THE DISASTER On Thursday it was apparent that the part of the city between Central and Sandusky Avenues was almost wiped out, and estimates of the death toll of the flood in this city ran into the hundreds. It was not until Thursday when the waters began to recede, and after two nights of horror, during which hundreds of people clung to the housetops, while others sought safety in trees, that the fact dawned upon the inhabitants that their city had been visited by as great a calamity perhaps as that which had fallen upon the Miami Valley. The bodies of 200 persons lay huddled in the United Brethren Church on Avondale Avenue, according to O. H. Ossman, an undertaker, who explored the flood district in a rowboat. He said this report was made to him by a man who said he had been able to reach the building and look through the windows. Police who sought to confirm the story were unable to reach the church because of the current. Ossman said nineteen bodies had been taken to his undertaking rooms and that he has been asked to be prepared to care for sixty-nine other bodies. He said he counted fully two hundred bodies in wreckage on West Park Avenue. Members of searching parties who were able to explore the west side of the city, south of Broad Street, for the first time reported that that section was a scene of vast desolation for a great area, much of it being still under water. The names of more than a half hundred persons were placed under the caption "known dead," while the list of probable dead was too great to be collated at that time. The number of missing and unaccounted for, it was said, would reach far into the hundreds. An Associated Press operator, who was marooned for hours in the flood after it broke early Tuesday, reached the Columbus office Thursday after having traveled by a circuitous route covering more than forty-five miles in order to get into the main portion of the city. He saw more than a score of bodies washed through the flood, and said that house after house was carried away in the flood. Many of the small frame cottages were wrenched to pieces by the currents and their occupants thrown into the water to be seen no more. It was believed that many bodies would be found at the Sandusky Street bridge or lodged against such part of it as was left in the river at that point. Further exploration of that part of the west side was begun Thursday afternoon. Because she had no home after she was rescued from the flood district, Miss Florence P. Shaner and William G. Wahlenmaier were married. They had intended being married in May. The girl was rescued by Wahlenmaier. Her mother was drowned and their home swept away. STORIES OF THE HORROR Other men who had ventured into the flood district told corresponding stories of awful loss of life. To add to the horrors of the situation reports reached the State House that the buildings in the flood-swept district were being looted by men in rowboats. To meet this emergency and to better patrol the west side, which is under martial law, Governor Cox ordered Troop B of the National Guard to patrol the ruined section of the city. It was believed the cavalrymen could cover more territory than foot soldiers. As the waters receded the militia guarded the west side under arrangements made between the Adjutant-General's department and Chairman Nass of the Columbus Relief Committee. Hundreds of people were still marooned in flooded homes, their rescue up to that time being impossible because of the swift current of the river. Rescued people in dire straits were brought to the City Hall in a stream all day, where people by the hundreds waited to obtain news of missing relatives and friends. Families were separated, and men, women and children stood night and day at the edge of the water waiting for the flood to subside that they might reach abandoned homes. The body of a man was suspended in a tree near Glenwood Avenue, beyond reach of the rescuing parties. Other bodies were among debris washed up on the edge of the waters in the southwest end of the city. Near this debris were two submerged street cars. Many of the refugees were in state institutions on the high ground at the west end. The water fell several feet and some of the streets inundated could be traversed, but in the lowlands, where it was feared the greater number of dead would be found, it was several days before a thorough search could be instituted. Many of the refugees were in a pitiable condition when rescued. They were benumbed by the cold and suffering from hunger and exposure. FOUR BORN AS OTHERS DIE Colonel D. N. Oyser, an attache of the city sanitary department, reported that two truckloads of bodies were removed from one point on the west side. The cold wave which struck the section Wednesday night caused many to freeze, lose their grip, and drop into the water. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. Part of the residential section of Fremont, Ohio, flooded. The water reached to the second story of the houses] [Illustration: Copyright by George Grantham Bain. Carrying on the work of rescuing Dayton flood sufferers from their houses in the boats made for the purpose at the National Cash Register Factory] With military glasses rescuers standing on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad near Center Avenue could see several dead forms lying on the roof of a building to the east. Four babies were reported to have been born in a school house on the hilltop. According to those who invaded the stricken district, the churches, big state institutions and storerooms in the hilltop section were crowded with refugees. They tell stories of indescribable horrors. Former Mayor George S. Marshall, who was in telephone communication with Cecil Randall, his law partner, said that Mr. Randall estimated the death toll at several hundreds. Throngs of excited groups of people from the flood-stricken section of the city who were crowded into the temporary rescue quarters asserted that the estimate of Mr. Randall was not exaggerated. Neither the extent of the awful tragedies enacted during the sweeping away of homes nor the exact death tolls could be known for days until the mass of wreckage, houses and uprooted trees which were strewn on the level lowlands south of the city were uncovered. This mass of debris was under several feet of water, with swift currents running in many directions. Many of those rescued told of escaping from their homes by fractions of minutes, just before the rushing waters swept their homes away and crushed them like eggshells against bridges. Scores of entire families, these people assert, were swept down with their houses in the swift current. Every available inch of space in the Columbus State Hospital for the Insane and Mt. Carmel Hospital on the hilltop was occupied by refugees. Fire Chief Lauer, who was marooned on the hilltop beyond the flooded section, reaching that point of safety in his automobile just before the waters swept the lowlands, said that he saw scores of people standing on their porches as the waters swept down and that he could not see how scarcely any of them escaped. After two nights of horror, during which hundreds clung to housetops calling for help until their voices gave way, while dozens perched in the branches of trees, many were still beyond the reach of rescuers. ORDERS TO SHOOT LOOTERS J. W. Gaver, Justice of the Peace at Briggsdale, swore in several deputies and armed them, with instructions to shoot down all looters. Relief trains from Marysville and London, bearing food and clothing, relieved the situation in the refugee quarters on the hilltop, where hundreds of homeless were waiting news from relatives. Relief work was directed toward rescuing two hundred and fifty from the marooned plant of the Sun Manufacturing Company, where they had been imprisoned for two days without food or heat. One boat which got within hailing distance before it was stopped by the swirling current was informed that conditions were terrible. With a blinding snowstorm and the temperature falling, gnawed by hunger and suffering from the cold, the thousands of flood sufferers of the state faced the uncertainties which the freezing temperature was adding to their plight. Although some of the early morning reports said flood waters were receding slowly in some of the flooded sections there was scarcely a perceptible change in the flood height. In other places, even though receding, the water was still of such height as to maroon the sufferers, many of whom were suffering from exposure which followed their clinging throughout the night to some points of vantage above the murky waters. All were facing the chilly winds, blinding rain, sleet and snow. Governor Cox issued a proclamation declaring a holiday in all districts flooded in Ohio for the next ten days. This was done to protect negotiable paper that might be subject to presentation. Hundreds of the refugees harbored in the various relief stations and in private homes just outside of the flooded district were separated from relatives, and many of them believed that lost sons or daughters, fathers or mothers had perished. The authorities were fearful of looting in the flood district and the militia, under strict orders, in several cases arrested rescue workers and interfered with their work, suspecting them of looting. A large quantity of supplies was transported to the flood district by automobile and rail, and the refugees were made comfortable as fast as they could be released from the grip of the waters. RECOVERING THE DEAD Thursday's bodies were recovered from jams of driftwood that had piled up along the shallow shores of the flood. All of them were badly mutilated and in several cases identification was difficult. The authorities organized a squad of men to cover the entire inundated area in the search of bodies. Up to date fifty-one known dead had been reported. Hundreds of those whose homes were in the flooded district, but who were marooned in the business section of the city, away from their families, were able to get to the flood section Thursday by a circuitous route about twenty-five miles long. All manner of vehicles and pedestrians crowded the road throughout the day, and at the end of the way pathetic reunions of families separated since Tuesday took place in the muddy, flood-swept streets. Daniel A. Poling, general secretary of the Ohio Christian Endeavor Society, issued an appeal to the 160,000 Christian Endeavorers in the state, urging them to forward contributions to state headquarters. West Columbus remained virtually under martial law. Militia companies on duty were ordered to shoot looters on sight. Thousands of curious people and those with friends and relatives in the flooded districts were kept out of the west side by police and troopers. The city relief station, at the city hall, and the newspapers maintained and compiled lists of the rescued, as well as lists of the dead. By Friday order was being rapidly evolved out of chaos, and missing loved ones were being accounted for by hundreds. Ample shelter and food were being provided for the thousands of homeless. Flood waters drained off from the devastated districts, railroad service was slowly resumed and telegraph and telephone wires were being restrung. [Illustration: MAP SHOWING ONE OF THE CIRCUITOUS ROUTES BY WHICH NEWS OF THE FLOOD WAS CARRIED TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD] GOVERNOR COX INDEFATIGABLE For three days Governor Cox tirelessly accomplished the work of a dozen men, laboring from daylight to long past midnight to aid the unfortunates of Ohio. His hand guided everything done in the work of rescue and on Friday he turned his attention to new problems of preventing epidemics, safeguarding life and property, relieving the sufferings of surviving flood victims and the care of the dead. The hero of the Dayton disaster, John A. Bell, the telephone official who, marooned in a business block had been keeping Governor Cox informed every half hour of conditions in the stricken city and delivering orders through boatmen who rowed to his window, called the State House at daybreak and greeted the Executive with a cheery "Good morning, Governor. The sun is shining in Dayton." But sunshine gave way to a blizzard like a snowstorm later in the day and the reports coming from Bell were less cheering as the day advanced. On Friday the Governor seized the railways to insure passage of relief trains and to keep sightseers and looters away from the afflicted municipalities. The entire military force of Ohio was on duty in the flooded districts, which included practically the entire state. Because of the interrupted communications headquarters had not been able to keep fully in touch with the movements of all the troops. The officers in command in most cases had to determine routes and procure their own transportation. Under the most difficult conditions they uniformly showed both energy and ingenuity in reaching their destination. Estimates of the flood death list in Columbus continued to range from fifty to five hundred, although these figures represented largely opinions of officials on duty in the flood zone. The efforts of the authorities were directed almost entirely to relieving the suffering of those marooned in houses in the territory under water, and until all of these had been rescued the search for the dead did not begin in earnest. The waters receded slowly on Friday and the swirling currents abated a trifle, allowing the rescue boats a wider area of activity. ORGANIZING RELIEF George F. Unmacht, civil service clerk, connected with the quartermaster's department of the United States army, stationed at Chicago, arrived in Columbus Friday to assist in directing the distribution of supplies. Rations for 300,000 arrived together with tents for 20,000 persons; 100 hospital tents, 400 stoves, 29,000 blankets, 8,900 cots, 100 ranges. Officers at Columbus were ordered to report at Fort Wayne, Cincinnati, Youngstown and Hamilton, while a hospital corps was sent to the Columbus barracks. The Governor's attention on Friday was devoted largely to organization of the work of relief. He received telegrams notifying him of collections of more than $250,000. A New York newspaper had sent $150,000 subscribed to a fund it raised. Word was received that the Chicago Chamber of Commerce had raised $200,000, half of which had been forwarded to Ohio. Judge Alton B. Parker subscribed $5,000 and James J. Hill $5,000. A thousand dollars was sent from Walkerville, Ontario. Governor Dunne wired that a bill appropriating $100,000 for Ohio flood sufferers had been introduced in the Illinois Legislature, while Governor Osborne telegraphed that the Michigan Assembly had appropriated $20,000. Colonel Myron T. Herrick, of Cleveland, Ambassador to France, cabled his deep anxiety over the Ohio disaster, and Governor Cox in reply asked him to call a meeting of the Ohio Society in Paris and wire funds, saying the losses exceeded the San Francisco earthquake. The Ohio Society of Georgia wired the Governor it was sorry and it too was invited to show how much it was sorry. HUNGRY REFUGEES SEIZE FOOD The need for relief was indicated when a company of telephone linemen working outside of Columbus had their supplies taken from them by hungry flood refugees. Governor Cox recalled some of his former comments on the need of expenditures for the National Guard. "The National Guard," he said, "has saved itself. Its efficiency has been a revelation to me." In the organization so promptly effected by the Governor the moment the floods came, his most efficient aid came from Adjutant-General Speaks and the National Guard officers, and with the Guard the work of rescue and of maintaining order was made possible. The officers and men performed every duty faithfully. Martial law prevailed in most of the stricken cities and the soldiers prevented the looting of the abandoned houses and cared for the refugees. Colonel Wilson, of the Paymaster's Department, was made financial officer as well as treasurer of the relief funds. Under his direction and the Governor's supervision the Ohio relief commission prepared for a War Department audit, as is required by the Red Cross Society. The Governor demanded that there should be but one relief committee in the state, and to that end the local committees formed were subordinate to the state commission. INCIDENTS OF HEROISM The work of rescue brought out many striking incidents of personal heroism. From two o'clock Tuesday afternoon until nearly nightfall Wednesday Charles W. Underwood, a carpenter of this city, held two babes in his arms while he clung to the branch of a tree near the Greenlawn Cemetery, where he had been carried fully a mile by the current. One babe was his own, the other belonged to a neighbor, and as he clung to them he saw his own twelve-year-old daughter on another limb of the same tree weaken from exposure and die, her frail body swaying limply as it hung over the branch. He also saw a woman refugee in the same tree weaken and fall into the swirling waters. Underwood and the babes were finally rescued. Two hundred and thirty-three souls marooned in the building of the Sun Manufacturing Company succeeded in sending out a note by messenger, praising the work of John Brady, who, with a skiff, after his home was swept away, rescued two hundred men, women and children and brought them to the Sun plant. "Track out at Columbus because of floods," was the message that Albert E. Dutoit, a Hocking Valley Railway engineer, read when his train was stopped Wednesday at Walbridge, near Toledo. His heart gave a bound, for he knew his family must be threatened. He detached his engine from the train and started on his race with death. Like mad he shot his engine across the country between there and Columbus. All night Wednesday he tried to get through the military lines and succeeded on Thursday. He induced men in motor boats to rescue his family. In a few more moments, he had his eight-months-old baby in one arm with the other around the waist of his wife. The reunion brought tears of sympathy to the eyes of the rescuers. Mrs. Emil Wallace, living southwest of the city, in the lowlands, ran toward a hill when she saw the onrushing waters. She reached safety just as the water was up to her neck. Her home was submerged. A street car was washed a quarter of a mile away from the track. The conductor and half a dozen passengers were drowned like rats in a trap before they could get out of the car. Two unknown men lost their lives while trying to save a twelve-year-old girl from a raft floating near Greenlawn Avenue. On horseback the men fought desperately against the swift current of the flood until at last they were carried away. Nearly one hundred babies were born in the flood district and in the refuge camps between Tuesday morning and Saturday. In the majority of cases neither the mothers nor the babies received any medical attention. Many of the babies died from exposure. As the sun broke through a fringe of clouds Saturday morning it looked down upon scenes of utter devastation in the stricken west side of this city, where a mighty torrent of water had rendered what was a prosperous and happy community of 40,000 souls into a place of death, want and disaster. SCENES OF PATHOS The scenes were full of human pathos. Torn bodies, disfigured almost beyond recognition, were being dug from debris. Whole families, marooned for four long days and nights in the upper stories of houses that had escaped as if by miracle, many of them without food or water and in fear of constant death by flood or flame, were being reached by rescuers. Many of those rescued were in a critical condition from the long hours they had spent in the bitter cold--their clothing soaked by the incessant rainfall of three days and nights and no fuel or bedding with which to combat their fearful condition. The water was subsiding materially and the work of rescue was thus made easier. The work of the searching parties in the flooded district increased the list of bodies recovered from the water to sixty-one. All of these were lodged in the temporary morgue, and most of them were identified. Accurate estimates of the dead were still impossible. Safety Director Bargar said not more than one hundred had been drowned. Coroner Benkert asserted that the loss of life would reach 200, while former Mayor Marshall, commanding the rescue workers in the southern end of the flooded district held that both estimates were too high. Of the sixty-one bodies recovered twenty-seven had been identified. Estimates placed property loss at from $15,000,000 to $30,000,000. But no one seemed to care about the monetary loss. The city was staggered by the weight of human suffering. Governor Cox received a telegram from D. T. McCabe, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Lines, offering to transport free of charge all relief supplies to points in the flooded area of the state if properly consigned to the relief authorities. The Governor also received a telegram from Governor Ralston, of Indiana, saying that ten carloads of supplies had been started for Ohio points by Indiana relief organizations. Approximately one thousand persons, refugees from the Dayton flood, arrived in Columbus on Saturday, most of them having made their way by automobile and trains. As if pursued by tragedy, it fell to them that their landing place in this city should be within the radius of the recently-flooded hilltop district of the west side. The arrival of the refugees was unexpected and no arrangements had been made to care for them. Adjutant-General John C. Speaks was notified and said that the state would do the best that could be done to provide them with food and shelter. General Speaks said that the local relief committees were being sorely taxed, but that he had been advised by the Columbus relief committees that they would give all possible assistance in housing and feeding the Dayton arrivals. Scores of transfer wagons traversed the inundated streets carrying relief to the hundreds marooned in the upper stories of houses. An element adding to the difficulty of the situation was the refusal of hundreds to leave their homes in the submerged district. This despite the fact that they were compelled to live in damp upper stories, with little heat or cooking facilities and in the face of threatened illness. "We've saved our bedding and furniture, and that's all we have," said one of these. "We are not going to take any chances of losing that." City Health Officer Dr. Louis Kahn ordered an immediate cleaning up. The health authorities also called attention to the necessity of boiling all water for drinking purposes. Miss Mabel Boardman, head of the Red Cross Society, reached Cincinnati Saturday night. She came to confer with Governor Cox. The Governor again asserted that the property damage caused by the floods in Ohio would aggregate $300,000,000, and that this amount would be increased by the high water in the Ohio River. With the water fast receding in Columbus and the danger stage passed, the food problem promised on Sunday to become the most serious for the relief workers to solve. Mayor Hunt, of Cincinnati, had been sending food to Dayton and other places, but on Saturday as the flood descended upon his own city from the upper reaches of the Ohio River, he put an embargo on further exports of provisions. Though fifty-five carloads of provisions consigned to the state were in Columbus last night, and supply trains were headed for Ohio from Chicago, Washington, New York and other places, Governor Cox was by no means reassured that the relief in sight would be sufficient. All of the people in the marooned district were reached and those willing to leave their homes were brought over to the east side of the city and cared for in hospitals, private homes or temporary places of refuge. Boats and other contrivances were in constant use carrying provisions and fuel to those who could not leave their homes. Eight more bodies were recovered. A majority of the rescued presented a pitiable sight, some hardly able to stand on their feet and others, thinly clad and benumbed by the cold, trembled as they were lifted into the boats. The hospitals were crowded with people dangerously ill from days of exposure. The morgues, hospitals and places of refuge were constantly besieged by people looking for lost relatives. Those received related tales of horror and heroism unparalleled except in great disasters like the Titanic or Johnstown. A year-old baby, wrapped in a blanket, was washed ashore in front of the gates of the state institution for feeble-minded. Although chilled by the water the child was soon revived. Pinned to its underclothing was a piece of paper, upon which the name, "Walter Taylor," was written. The boy was restored to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Taylor, twenty-four hours later. The family had been penned in its home for two days. As the water rose gradually the parents moved to the second floor and then to the attic. Finally the father was forced to hold the child for hours above his head. Climbing out to the roof as a last resort, the baby was swept away and the parents had given it up for dead. Governor H. D. Hatfield, of West Virginia, arrived in Columbus at seven o'clock Sunday night on a special train from Charleston. The train brought supplies, motor boats and skiffs. The motor boats and skiffs were later taken through the different sections of the city to rescue hundreds who were marooned. The local military company took charge of the rescue work and pushed it forward as rapidly as conditions would permit. The sum of $50,000 was raised by voluntary contributions in Columbus for a relief fund. In addition, the city council voted $75,000, and great stores of provisions and clothing were contributed by local people and outsiders. Thousands of the homeless people were cared for in homes of those willing to share them, or in public halls. One thousand were fed daily in the Masonic Temple. In a statement full of feeling, issued Sunday evening, shortly before he left the Executive office for home and the first full night's rest he has had in more than a week, Governor Cox said: "Refreshed by the tears of the American people, Ohio stands ready from today to meet the crisis alone. "Ohio has risen from the floods. Such a pitiless blow from Nature as we sustained would have wiped out society and destroyed governments in other days. We cannot speak our gratitude to President Wilson for federal aid, to the Red Cross, to states, municipalities, trade organizations and individuals that sent funds and supplies. They will never know their contribution to humanity. "The relief situation, so far as food and clothing are concerned, is in hand. Thankful to her friends who succored her, Ohio faces tomorrow serene and confident." Governor Cox and members of the Legislature began on Monday an outline of reconstructive legislation, to be followed in all of the flood districts by the state. It was decided that the San Francisco relief plan should be placed into effect for the Ohio flood sufferers. Under this plan the relief was based upon property loss of the individual and the income loss incurred. The amount of relief each person received was prorated on such a basis. Upon the recommendation of Governor Cox, the Legislature recessed until next Monday, thereby giving state officials a week to formulate plans. Resolutions warmly thanking the citizens of New York State and Pennsylvania for their flood relief contributions were passed. All that human effort could accomplish on Tuesday failed to penetrate the part of the debris piled in the west side, where, it was believed, many of the bodies of persons missing finally would be recovered. As matters stood Tuesday night, however, eight more bodies had passed through the morgues. In addition to this number, was the body of James M. Kearney, a merchant, who was drowned several months ago, and which, cast up by the flood, was found lodged in a tree when the waters had receded. That many other bodies would be recovered after the army of men employed in the work had attacked the great pile of debris made at several points by wrecked homes was generally conceded. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. View of River Street In Troy, New York, showing the Collar, Cuff and Shirt Factory of Cluett, Peabody & Company, the largest of its kind in the world, closed on account of the floods. Thousands of people were thrown out of work on account of the overflowing of the Hudson] [Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood. Under the martial law established at Dayton, citizens were kept off the streets at night as a precaution against looting] LOSS BY DEATH AND OF PROPERTY Four more bodies were recovered Wednesday from flood wreckage, making the total of bodies found in this city stand at eighty-four. Of these all except seven were identified. Coroner Benkert, who made a wide-spread investigation among families, some members of which were among the missing, said that he estimated that at least one hundred and twenty-five bodies would be recovered. It was expected that other bodies that had been washed down the river would never be identified as Columbus victims. The property damage in Columbus, like the death toll, was confined principally to the west side, the business and manufacturing districts having gone almost unscathed. THE WORK OF RECONSTRUCTION Governor Cox and the State Relief Commission on Tuesday left on a tour of the state to visit cities and districts that were hit hardest by the flood to determine what relief was necessary in each case. Before their departure, however, conditions in Columbus were fast approaching normal, and the residents with a cheerful, courageous spirit had commenced the repair of their devastated city. CHAPTER VIII COLUMBUS: THE BEAUTIFUL CAPITAL OF OHIO CAPITAL OF OHIO SINCE 1810--EARLY HISTORY--CITY OF BEAUTIFUL STREETS AND RESIDENCES--SPLENDID PUBLIC COMMODITIES--TRADE AND INDUSTRIES--CHARACTERISTICS OF ITS RESIDENTS. Columbus, Ohio, the capital of the state and the county seat of Franklin County, is located at the center of the state at the junction of the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers, on a slightly elevated alluvial plain, and is nearly equidistant from Cincinnati, southwest; Cleveland, northeast; Toledo, northwest; and Marietta, southeast, the average distance from these points being one hundred and fifteen miles. It has a population of some 180,000. Columbus was made the capital by the legislature in 1810, and became the permanent capital in 1816, the original territorial and state capital having been Chillicothe. The first state buildings were of brick, and cost $85,000. The present massive buildings and additions are of dressed native gray limestone, in the Doric style of architecture. They cover nearly three acres of ground, and their total cost has been $2,500,000. CITY OF BEAUTIFUL STREETS AND RESIDENCES As early as 1812 Columbus was surveyed in rectangular squares; it was incorporated as a village in 1816, and chartered as a city in 1834. In general outline the city resembles a Maltese cross. It extends eight miles north and south, and seven miles east and west on its arms of expansion. Its longest streets, High and Broad, bisect the city north and south, and east and west respectively. The uniform width of the former is one hundred feet, and the breadth of the latter is one hundred and twenty feet. Broad Street is planted with four rows of shade-trees for its entire length east of Capitol Square, where it penetrates the fashionable residence district. High Street is the leading business thoroughfare. Capitol Square, a miniature park of ten acres, is situated at the intersection of these streets, two squares east of the Scioto River. The residence portions of the city contain many beautiful homes and fine mansions. There are numerous apartment buildings; the houses of the average people are substantial and comfortable. On the business streets are many handsome, commodious blocks; many steel, brick and stone office buildings, as well as commodious railway buildings and stations. The streets are wide, well paved and lighted, and are kept in good condition. SPLENDID PUBLIC COMMODITIES The police and fire departments are excellent; the water supply is pure and ample, and the sewerage system good. The waterworks are owned by the city. A large municipal electric-lighting plant was completed in 1908. Natural gas is the principal fuel for domestic use. Bituminous coal, in unlimited quantities, is found a few miles to the south. The church buildings of Columbus include those of the following religious denominations: Methodist Episcopal, United Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Disciples, Friends, Christian Scientist, Evangelical, Jewish, Independent German Protestant, German Evangelical Protestant, African Methodist Episcopal, Seventh Day Adventists and United Brethren. The newspapers and periodicals include English and German dailies, secular weeklies, and trade, professional, religious, fraternal and other publications. There are numerous public school buildings, four being devoted to high-school purposes. Among institutions for higher education are the Ohio State University, Capital City University and the Evangelical Theological Seminary. Professional schools include one dental and three medical colleges, and a law school; and there are also private and religious educational institutions. Columbus is the location of a state hospital for the insane; state institutes for the education of deaf mutes, blind and imbecile youth; the Ohio penitentiary; county, city and memorial buildings; five opera houses; and a board of trade building. There are five public parks and a United States military post, Fort Columbus. This post, known also as Columbus Barracks, was originally an arsenal, and now has quarters for eight companies of infantry. From Columbus steam railroads radiate to all parts of the state, intersecting all through lines running east, west, northwest, northeast and south; and interurban lines connect with a model street-railway system. TRADE AND INDUSTRIES Columbus is near the Ohio coal and iron fields, and has an extensive trade in coal, but its largest industrial interests are in manufactures, among which the more important are foundry and machine products, boots and shoes, patent medicines, carriages and wagons, malt liquors, oleomargarine, iron and steel, and steam railway cars. There are several large quarries adjacent to the city. CHARACTERISTICS OF ITS RESIDENTS The citizens of Columbus possess the characteristic push and enterprise of western people, and much of the culture and artistic taste of those in the east. The population is drawn chiefly from the counties in the state, and especially from those which are centrally located. The largest foreign elements are German, Irish, Welsh, English and Italian, and include scattered groups and individuals from almost every civilized and semi-civilized country in the world. CHAPTER IX CINCINNATI: A NEW CENTER OF PERIL A GREAT MANUFACTURING CITY--THE TUESDAY CLOUDBURST--ANXIOUS WAITING--HOMES SUBMERGED--FACTORIES FORCED TO CLOSE--THE SITUATION EVER GRAVER--EXPLOSIONS IN THE CITY--THE CRISIS--FLOOD DAMAGE. Scarcely had Dayton, Columbus and Zanesville begun their real battle for restoration when Cincinnati became a new peril center. Situated on the Ohio River at the point where the Muskingum, Scioto, the two Miamis, and the Licking were pouring their millions of gallons of flood water into the river, the city was bound to suffer. It seemed as if the Buckeye State would never be able to escape from the clutches of the great demon of flood. A GREAT MANUFACTURING CITY Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County, in the extreme southwest of the state, one of the great commercial and manufacturing centers of the Union, tenth in nominal rank, and seventh or eighth in fact. It is situated on the north bank of the Ohio River, almost exactly half way from its origin at Pittsburgh to its mouth at Cairo, Illinois. On the western side of the city from west to south runs Mill Creek, the remains of a once glacial stream, whose gently sloping valley, half a mile or more wide, forms an easy path into the heart of the city, and was an indispensable factor in determining its position. Highways, canals and railroads come through it, and the city's growth has pushed much farther up this valley than in other directions. The railroad stockyards are on its eastern slope. Cincinnati extends for about fourteen miles along the river front, to a width of about five in an irregular block north from it, but attains a width of six or seven miles at the extreme point along the creek valley. The bottom level below the bluffs along the riverside is the seat of the river shipping business, and has as well the usual fringe of low quarters; it is paved, and there is a broad public landing fronted by floating docks, wharf-boats, etc. Above are the wholesale and then the retail business streets, with great extent and variety of fine business architecture, and gridironed with electric roads. The principal lines converge at or near Fountain Square, and connect with a ring of beautiful suburbs, within and without the city limits, unsurpassed in America. Among the sights of interest is the busy public landing or levee. The Grand Central Depot, a terminal of several of the largest roads, is centrally situated near the river. Among the most prominent buildings are that of the United States Government Custom House, the City Hall, the City Hospital, the Springer Music Hall, the Odd Fellows and Masonic Temples, the Public Library, with 431,875 volumes, and the Museum of Natural History. St. Peter's Cathedral, St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Cathedral, St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, the First and Second Presbyterian Churches, and the Jewish Synagogue are handsome edifices. Fine hotels and theaters are numerous. The biennial musical festivals are famous. THE TUESDAY CLOUDBURST The troubles of Cincinnati began on Tuesday, March 25th, when the city experienced a cloudburst that started the gauge rising in the Ohio River, temporarily flooded the streets of the city and carried away two bridges over the White Water River, at Valley Junction a short distance to the south. PREPARING FOR THE WORST By Thursday Cincinnati was facing one of the worst floods in her history. It had rained steadily for twenty-four hours. The flood had entered several business houses in the lower section during the night and early morning found the entire "bottoms" a sea of moving vans, working up to their capacity. At eight o'clock in the evening the gauge showed 60, a rise of more than three feet since the same hour that morning. East and west of the city on the Ohio side of the river the lowlands were inundated and much damage done. In the low sections of the city many houses were flooded and the inhabitants of these sections fled to higher ground. Across the river at Newport and Covington, Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati, similar conditions prevailed and the police early warned dwellers of the danger that threatened. Dayton and Ludlow, other Kentucky suburbs, were also sufferers from the rising flood and many houses were already completely under water. [Illustration: TOPOGRAPHY OF STRICKEN SECTION OF TWO STATES Practically every town and city shown in this illustration suffered from the floods, most of them from loss of life and all of them from property damage.] A seventy-foot stage for Cincinnati was predicted. The Central Union Station was abandoned and all trains leaving or entering the city were detoured. ANXIOUS WAITING Slowly the treacherous waters rose while tired watchers waited anxiously. Conditions were not acute but distressing. The people knew that they must face conditions worse than the present. All the lowland to the west and east of the city had been submerged and also along the water front of the business section the commercial houses were gradually disappearing under the yellow river. Hundreds of families along the river front in Cincinnati had been forced to move by the encroaching river and many merchants had removed their goods from cellars and basements to higher ground. Chief of Police Copeland, however, had the flood work well in hand. The police were put on twelve-hour duty and worked in the flooded territory in rowboats. The city armory sheltered many persons and preparations were made to distribute food at the city jail. Nearly every landing place along the river front was piled high with furniture, bedding and other household effects. HOMES SUBMERGED Along the Kentucky shore conditions rapidly became worse. At Covington more than five hundred houses were submerged and their occupants given shelter and protection in public buildings. Plans were formulated to care for flood sufferers, and a meeting was held at Covington at which arrangements were made to raise a sufficient fund for the poor. At the same time arrangements also were made for policing the flood zone and preventing looting. The river-front section of Ludlow was deep under water and the residents had moved. Bromley was entirely cut off from other neighboring towns. Dayton, Kentucky, and other nearby small towns were in the same isolated condition, and there was much suffering in consequence. FACTORIES FORCED TO CLOSE Many of the large manufacturing plants closed because operatives were unable to reach their places of employment. Newport, which, with Covington, is directly opposite Cincinnati, forming the larger of the suburban sections, was in almost as bad a case as its neighboring city. The flood of water had risen in all parts of the town. One of the bridges across the Ohio had been closed, and the authorities were preparing to close others to the public, thus cutting off the south shore from communication with Cincinnati, and also closing practically the only railway outlet the latter city had to the South and East. No food shortage was anticipated, but warnings were issued by the mayor of this and other nearby cities that merchants must not take advantage of the situation to charge extortionate prices. All attempts of this nature in Cincinnati were promptly curbed by the authorities. THE SITUATION EVER GRAVER With nearly 15,000 persons in the towns on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River driven from their homes by the rising flood that was sweeping down the Ohio Valley and with more than 3,500 homes altogether or partly submerged, the flood situation in the vicinity of Cincinnati on Saturday was assuming graver proportions hourly. The water reached the second floor of a number of business houses along Front Street and was half way up on the first floor of several blocks of houses on Second Street. Several lines of the Cincinnati Traction Company, operating in the lower district were abandoned. Reassuring word from the packers, commission men and general produce merchants came early in the day, when it was estimated by experts that Cincinnati had enough food supplies to last at least ten days without inconveniencing any one. Railway service into and out of Cincinnati was virtually at a standstill. The Louisville and Nashville trains were leaving the city for the West on time, but arriving trains were much delayed. So far only one life had been lost as a direct result of the high waters here. Miss Anna Smith, the first victim, drowned in an attempt to reach Newport in a skiff that capsized in midstream. Her three men companions were rescued while swimming to shore. KENTUCKY SUBURBS IN TROUBLE Newport and Covington were virtually surrounded by water. Conditions there were worse than elsewhere and nearly ten thousand people were driven from their homes. Relief measures, however, were adequate. Manufacturing plants in the lowlands ceased. In these two cities the only fear was that health conditions would be seriously affected because of the clogging of the sewage system and the stagnation of back water. The water works and gas plants continued in operation, but the electric light plants had been forced to cease. In the Kentucky towns of Dayton, Ludlow, Bellevue and Bromley identical conditions existed, but in their cases all communication with Cincinnati, Newport and Covington was suspended. These towns remained in isolation until the water had fallen sufficiently to permit the operation of street cars on the south side of the river. In these towns there were 2,000 persons cared for by relief committees. More than 500 homes disappeared under the flood waters. Property damage assumed alarming proportions, especially as this was the second time within three months that the Ohio Valley had suffered from high water. By Sunday the outlook for Cincinnati was brighter. No trains had gone out of the city except south to Kentucky by way of Covington, and rail and telegraph communications were still badly demoralized, but fair, warm weather which had continued since Thursday had greatly helped the complex situation. It was predicted that the river would reach its greatest height at Cincinnati on Monday. EXPLOSIONS IN THE CITY Spreading over a vast expanse of territory in Cincinnati, as well as an almost equal amount in the various towns that lie along the river on the Kentucky shore, the Ohio continued to rise. During Saturday night the central part of the city was thrown into a semi-panic by an explosion that could be heard for miles. The Union Carbide Company, at Pearl and Elm Streets, had been destroyed in an explosion caused supposedly by the carbide coming in contact with water. The river reached the stage of 69.3 feet at noon, Saturday, and continued to rise at the rate of two-tenths of a foot every two hours. Two companies of the Ninth United States Infantry, stationed at Fort Thomas, Kentucky, were held in readiness to march at an instant's notice to Covington, where Mayor George S. Phillips feared the city might be in need of military protection due to high water that virtually surrounded the town. When the river stage reached more than 68 feet on Friday the gas plants were put out of commission and the city was in darkness. Of the few important towns in Kentucky, opposite Cincinnati, only one, Newport, maintained direct communication with Cincinnati. Through Newport communication was obtained with Covington by a circuitous route. In Newport there were already under water nearly one hundred and twenty square blocks, located in the section along the south bank of the Ohio River. The other towns, Bromley, Dayton and Ludlow, were still without outside communication, but reports from there were that there was no immediate need of assistance. THE CRISIS The river continued to mount. It rose two-tenths of a foot during Monday night and early Tuesday the stage was 69.8 feet. The weather forecaster, Devereaux, said he expected the river to rise another tenth, after which it probably would recede. Up-river points reported the river either stationary or falling slowly. At midnight Tuesday the river began to fall. The whole city breathed a sigh of relief. The Government stated that the river would be inside its banks within a week. FLOOD DAMAGE The direct and indirect damage caused in Cincinnati by the flooding of the river-front and low-lying residential sections was very great. An estimate of the indirect loss can never be made, while the direct loss is placed at more than $2,000,000. Across the river in the Kentucky suburbs conditions were deplorable. Estimates were that one thousand homes there had been inundated and that more than four thousand persons were homeless. CHAPTER X THE FLOOD IN WESTERN OHIO DISTRESS IN BELLEFONTAINE--PIQUA DELUGED--TROY A HEAVY SUFFERER--MIAMI ON THE RAMPAGE AT MIDDLETOWN--HAMILTON HARD HIT--BIG RESERVOIRS THREATENING--OLENTANGY RIVER A LAKE AT DELAWARE--FLOOD AT SPRINGFIELD--NEW RICHMOND UNDER WATER. The rushing torrent of water that swept down the Miami River, surging over Dayton, devastated a score or more of towns in its mad course from the creeks around Bellefontaine to the point southwest of Cincinnati where the waters of the Miami merge with those of the Ohio. DISTRESS IN BELLEFONTAINE Cries of distress arose from Bellefontaine on Wednesday, March 26th. At that time millions of gallons of water were pounding against the banks of the Lewiston reservoir, fifteen miles from Bellefontaine, and it was feared that if the increasing flood should burst the banks the lives of every inhabitant of the Lower Miami Valley would be imperiled. The immense reservoir at Lewiston did burst its banks between Lake View and Russell's Point and swept through the great Miami Valley like a tidal wave. It was this vast quantity of water, added to the already overflowing river, that inundated the cities of Sidney and Piqua. [Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. The engraving shows a view of Broadway, Watervliet, New York, the principal business street of that city, covered with eight feet of water] [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. The bridge shown in the illustration leads to the Carnegie Steel Company at Youngstown, Ohio. Ordinarily this bridge is far enough above the water to allow the large river steamers to pass under] At Sidney there was no loss of life, but the town was badly flooded and early reports of loss of life ran high. PIQUA DELUGED The flooded Miami swept over Piqua in a great deluge. The water reached the first floor of the Plaza Hotel, which is situated in the high part of the city. Panic-stricken the people fled from their homes or sought refuge in the upper stories of high buildings. Fire broke out in many places. At one point in the city the water was twelve feet deep. Many persons were drowned. Many lost all their possessions. Relief measures were taken by city authorities. The property loss was great, as most of the manufacturing plants were destroyed by the flood. A company of militia from Covington maintained order and cared for those made destitute by the flood. TROY A HEAVY SUFFERER The town of Troy was also a heavy sufferer. The state troops who arrived in the town on March 27th with provisions for Dayton were stranded. One-third of the town was cut off from gas, electricity and water supply. A train load of provisions arrived. The provisions were carefully distributed. One-half of the state troops left on foot for Dayton, following the tracks of the railroad. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - FLOOD EDITION THE PIQUA DAILY CALL Vol. 29 PIQUA, OHIO, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1913. No. 134 Calamity Strikes Piqua; Our City Bowed in Grief Appalling Loss of Human Life, and Great Destruction of Property. Thousands Are Homeless City Under Martial Law--Communications Cut Off with Outside World--Relief Station Established at the Y. M. C. A. Piqua is today a stricken city; a city bowed down, broken with grief. We have been visited by the greatest calamity in our history. The loss of life that has been suffered from the flood cannot be estimated now. It is sufficient now to tell that relief measures are being taken. The Business Men's Association, the Y. M. C. A. and citizens generally are co-operating with the city and military authorities to bring order out of chaos to rescue those confined in houses still standing in the flooded sections to house and feed the homeless. The city is practically under martial law. Company C. and Company A. of Covington are here and patrolling the city under the the direction of the city authorities. Last night, we regret to say, there was a beginning of looting and plundering in the south part of the city. Rigorous measures will be taken by the military and the police to repress and prevent such in the future. Piqua still is cut off from communication from the outside world. All the telegraph and telephone wires are down. Bridges and tracks are down on both railroads and no trains are running. The only outside communication possible has been by using a Pennsylvania freight engine to Bradford from which point it has been possible to use the telegraph. All the traction lines still are crippled and unable to run their cars in or out of the city. How soon it may be possible to re-open these lines of communication it is impossible to say. While greatly crippled the local telephone service has been maintained by both exchanges. The operators have done heroic work day and night ever since the first danger began to threaten. No mail has been received or sent out of Piqua since Monday. Local deliveries, of course, are impossible. North and south the C. H. & D. R. R. is crippled. From Sidney to Dayton the washout is practically complete. The Pennsylvania R. R. bridge was washed out at the east end, and there is no communication across the river. It is understood that much track has been washed out. A line is open to Bradford and westward. The Y. M. C. A., the Spring street, Favorite Hill Schools, the Presbyterian, Christian, Church of Christ, Grace M. E., St. Marys school hall, and countless homes have been opened freely to the flood sufferers. The Y. M. C. A. has been the center of the relief administration and from which all directions have been issued and to which the sufferers have come. Provisions can and are being brought from Fletcher and other places east to the sufferers who have reached the hills on the east of the river. This morning Mayor Kiser placed the fire department at work freeing the most necessary places from water. The electric light plant was first pumped out. Last night the city was in darkness except for gas, oil lamps, and candles. The hospital was found needing little attention. The damage to property is beyond calculation. Over 200 houses at least have been washed away and destroyed. Shawnee is practically wiped out. The above is a facsimile reproduction of the first page of _The Piqua Daily Call_, issued the day after the city was inundated by the flood. Ordinarily the Call is an eight-page newspaper, 17 � 20 inches in size. This issue consisted of four pages 7½ � 10 inches. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - MIAMISBURG CUT OFF Miamisburg, a town of eight thousand, was cut off for days. When news finally reached neighboring towns the death list was estimated at twenty-five. Later estimates placed it at less. Only one body has been recovered, but the property damage ran high. MIAMI ON THE RAMPAGE AT MIDDLETOWN As the result of the worst cloudburst known in twenty years the great bridge over the Miami River, at Middletown, was carried out on March 25th. Fifteen persons were afterward missing and scores of houses could be seen floating down the stream. The water and electric light plants were out of commission. Two hundred houses were under water, their former occupants finding shelter in the school houses, churches and city buildings. The great Miami River was a mile wide at this point. The city was practically cut off from the outside world. Tracks of both the Big Four and Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroads were under water and no trains were running. The tracks of the Ohio Electric Railway were washed out in many places. A portion of the state dam in the Miami River, north of Middletown, was washed away. Water from the river started the Maimi and Erie Canal on a rampage and submerged half of Lakeside, a suburb. The families of Harold Gillespie and Mrs. Mary Fisher were forced to flee from their homes in their night clothes. The casualty list could not be estimated with accuracy. It was believed that from fifty to one hundred had been claimed by the waters. About three o'clock the following morning the river began to fall slowly, but the situation was still dangerous. Supplies were rapidly running out, and a food famine was looked for. Misery was averted by the arrival of food late Thursday night, but building of fires was not permitted. The authorities feared an outbreak of flames similar to the Dayton conflagration. Ten thousand of the eighteen thousand population were homeless. HAMILTON HARD HIT Of all the cities in the Miami Valley with the exception of Dayton, Hamilton was hardest hit. Many persons killed, a thousand houses wrecked by the rushing torrent and 15,000 homeless was the toll of the flood in this city and environs, and the harrowing scenes attending flood disasters in the past decade faded into insignificance when compared with the havoc wrought by the latest deluge. Before darkness blotted out the scene on March 25th, house after house, with the occupants clinging to the roofs and screaming for help, floated on the breast of the flood, but the cries for help had to go unanswered because of the lack of boats. What little rescue work there was accomplished was done before night came on, as the rescuers were powerless after darkness. The city was then without light of any kind, the electric light and gas plants being ten feet under water. Soldiers rushed to this city from Columbus were in charge of the situation, the town being under martial law. The victims of the raging waters were caught like rats in a trap, so fast did the flood pour in on them, and few had even a fighting chance for their lives. Ghastly in the extreme was the situation. The cries of the women and children as they faced inevitable death, and the frantic but unsuccessful efforts of husbands and fathers to rescue loved ones, presented a scene that will go down in the history of world's catastrophes as one of the worst on record. Fire added to the horror of the situation when shortly after midnight the plant of the Champion Coated Paper Company, which is six blocks long by one block wide, broke into flames. In less than a quarter of an hour the entire factory was a mass of fire and there was no chance of checking its progress in the least as the water service needed by the fire department was put out of commission early in the day. The Beckett Company's paper mill, valued at $500,000 for buildings and equipment, collapsed into the flood the following morning. SUFFERING AMONG THE REFUGEES On Wednesday, March 26th, the river began to fall at the rate of nine inches an hour. After the season of awful horror the change brought hope. The work of rescue and relief, however, was exceedingly difficult. There were only a few boats that could be used in the work of rescue and relief. Ohio National Guardsmen who arrived from Cincinnati Tuesday night did heroic work. They came in four motor trucks and brought food and clothing with them. One of the trucks returned to Cincinnati for more boats. A relief train arrived from Indianapolis Wednesday morning and other cars and automobile trucks, loaded with supplies, managed to reach the outskirts of the city. The Lakeview Hotel, which had previously housed fifty refugees, collapsed early Wednesday, but all the occupants left in time to escape death. Williamsdale, Cooke, Otto and Overpeck, the north suburbs of Hamilton, were in ruins. On the west side of the river many residences were saved, but there was despair among the survivors, who were unable to get word from husbands and fathers who were caught on the east side and unable to cross after bridges were destroyed. Efforts to get lines across the river were futile. Provisions for the homeless continued arriving in abundance, but the gas, electric light and water plants were in ruins and this added to the terrors of the living. More than two hundred and fifty persons spent two days and nights in the little court house without light, food, water or heat, and often they were drenched with rain that leaked through holes in the roof. REMOVING THE DEAD As the flood waters receded on March 27th, the authorities immediately began the work of removing the dead. The first hour of the search saw ten bodies uncovered from the ruins, and the most conservative estimates placed the death roll at fifty. [Illustration: THE FLOOD IN MIAMI VALLEY The above map shows a part of Ohio which was devastated by the most disastrous flood in American history. A large number of small streams converge into larger streams and then into still larger water courses, several of which form a junction at Dayton, where the greatest loss of life and the heaviest damage to property occurred.] Piled high upon the east side of the court house on Friday were coffins awaiting the flood victims, whose bodies were being gathered as rapidly as possible. On April 3d, the city offered a reward of ten dollars for each body recovered from the debris left by the flood. Up to that time seventy-one bodies had been recovered. It was believed, however, that many bodies had been swept out of the Miami into the Ohio River and perhaps would never be found. DAMAGE OF $4,000,000 Secretary Garrison, of the War Department, who toured the flood district of Hamilton on March 30th, as the personal representative of President Wilson, was told that the property loss was estimated at $4,000,000. With Secretary Garrison were Major-General Wood, chief of staff of the army, and Major McCoy. They permeated the very heart of the city through zones of devastation which in many respects rivaled in horror those through which they passed in Dayton. They saw block after block in both the residential and business sections of the city, where street lines virtually were eliminated by upheaved and overturned houses jammed against each other and against the buildings which withstood the shock, in great and almost unbroken heaps of debris. South Lebanon was cut off from Lebanon by a raging current that swept all the surrounding farm lands, entailing a property loss of thousands of dollars. All rivers and creeks south of Dayton to Lebanon were swollen by a heavy rainfall. The flooding of the Miami at Cleves, seven miles below Cincinnati, caused the railroad embankment to break and that part of the town was under fifteen feet of water. The operator at Cleves said he distinctly heard cries for help, but he could not learn if there was any loss of life or the extent of the property damage. The following day the waters had receded, but part of the city was still under water; no loss of life was reported. Hartwell and the vicinity felt the force of the rising Mill Creek caused by the breaking of the canal at Lockland. The large factories at Ivorydale were forced to close down, and many thousands of employees were thrown out of work. BIG RESERVOIRS THREATENING The Grand Reservoir at Celina, Ohio, in the extreme western part of the state, seriously threatened Celina and the adjacent towns. For two days the very worst was feared, but on March 28th, the river was slightly lower and no water was flowing over the banks. OLENTANGY RIVER A LAKE AT DELAWARE The Olentangy River, ordinarily only a creek, became a lake that covered most of Delaware. In many places people were left clinging to trees, roof-tops and telegraph poles crying for assistance. The work of rescue was practically impossible because of the swift current of the flood, and most of those who were seen trying to save themselves were swept away to death. The village of Stratford, five miles to the south, was entirely under water and the loss great. Property damage in Delaware itself was estimated at $2,000,000. FLOOD AT SPRINGFIELD Springfield suffered the worst flood in its history. Both Buck Creek and Mad River broke from their banks and flooded the lowlands. Several hundred houses in the eastern section of the city were surrounded by water. They contained families who refused to abandon their homes. Many factories were compelled to close. There was no loss of life, but intense suffering due to insufficient food supply and the destruction of many homes. NEW RICHMOND UNDER WATER The flooding of the Ohio in the southwestern part of the state caused disaster in many other towns besides Cincinnati. On April 1st the entire town of New Richmond was under water. The people took up quarters on the hills surrounding the town. Provisions were received from Batavia and there was no suffering. No one was reported dead or missing. At Moscow, near New Richmond, fifty houses were washed from their foundations. CHAPTER XI THE FLOOD IN NORTHERN OHIO YOUNGSTOWN AND GIRARD--CLEVELAND AND ITS SUBURBS--AKRON--MASSILON, FREMONT AND TIFFIN. No section of the country suffered more extensively from the flood than Ohio, of which state no part seemed to escape. In the northern counties the loss of life and damage to property were quite as extensive as in many other parts. Fed by incessant rains, the Mahoning River rose at the rate of seven-eighths of an inch per hour until it reached a stage of twenty-five feet, which was ten feet higher than ever before recorded. Every large industrial plant in the city was flooded and fully 25,000 workmen were out of employment. The financial loss to the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, Republic Iron and Steel Company, Carnegie Steel Company and other plants easily reached $2,500,000, while the loss in wages to men was extremely heavy because of the fact that weeks elapsed before the industries were again able to operate at full capacity. Fully 14,000 workmen employed in various industries of the city are thrown out of employment as a result of the high water. At East Youngstown the Mahoning River was nearly half a mile wide and the Pennsylvania lines through the city and for a number of miles east were entirely submerged. The Austintown branch bridge of the Erie, which crosses the Mahoning River, was weighted down with a train to prevent its being washed away, the water having already reached the girders. Every bridge was guarded by policemen. But one pump was working at the water-works pumping station. The flood was the worst experienced by Youngstown since October, 1911, when millions of dollars of damage was done. Two hundred families were temporarily homeless, but the Chamber of Commerce with a relief fund of $10,000, attended promptly to their welfare. Youngstown's only water supply during the flood was from the Republic Rubber Company, pumping 3,000,000 gallons a day, and the Mahoning Valley Water Company, which turned 4,000,000 gallons a day into the city mains from its reservoir at Struthers. At Girard, northeast of Youngstown, Mrs. Frank Captis, who was rescued just before her home was swept away in the flood, gave birth to a baby boy at the home of a friend, where she was taken. The baby was named Noah. CLEVELAND AND ITS SUBURBS At Cleveland scores of families were driven out of their homes by the greatest flood in the city's history. Many narrow escapes from drowning were reported from all over the city, where people were being transferred in rowboats by police and other rescuers. One big bridge, in the heart of the city, used by the New York Central lines, went down. The steel steamer, "Mack," moored to it was unharmed. All traffic was kept off the bridge and no one was hurt. The loss exceeds $75,000. Other bridges were in danger. Boats broke from their moorings and battered the shore. Dynamite was used to open a way for the water into the lake. Great damage was done all along the Cuyahoga River through Cleveland, where hundreds of big manufacturing plants are located. Fifty thousand men were idle. The telegraph companies were crippled and many lights were out throughout the city, as the electric-light plants were partly under water. All the suburbs suffered severely. All railroad traffic in Cleveland was suspended because of washouts and no trains entered or left. The Lake Shore Railroad tracks along the shore of Lake Erie were thought immune, but that road suffered along with the Big Four, Pennsylvania and Wheeling and Lake Erie. Boston, Ohio, and Peninsula, Ohio, between twenty-five and twenty-eight miles south of Cleveland, on the Cuyahoga River, were submerged. The dam of the Cleveland and Akron Bag Company went out at four o'clock Thursday morning, March 27th, dropping thousands of tons of water into the valley in which the two villages, with a total population of about four thousand five hundred, are located. [Illustration: MAP SHOWING DANGEROUS RESERVOIRS IN OHIO] AKRON The big state reservoir three miles south of Akron, which supplies water for the Ohio Canal, broke Tuesday afternoon at two o'clock, sending a flood of millions of gallons of water which swept away farmhouses and other buildings from the banks of the canal and damaged several million dollars' worth of property. The huge volume of water which had been gathering in the three hundred-acre reservoir caused a report that there was danger of the concrete walls bursting. Most of those living near the canal sought refuge in Akron. When the heavy rain continued over night the dam began to show signs of wear. Cracks in the concrete appeared. All during the night horses were kept saddled to carry the news ahead if the danger became imminent. When the masonry showed flaws Thursday morning the riders were sent out. They started several hours before the dam collapsed, and warned everybody near the canal in time for them to escape. The rush of water from the broken dam struck the city within a few minutes after the break. Most of the bridges in the county were swept away. The city was in total darkness at night, and telephone and telegraph connections were destroyed. A few bodies were seen floating down the canal. Many houses were swept away. MASSILON, FREMONT AND TIFFIN At Massilon five known dead, three thousand homeless, half the town inundated and heavy property damage was the toll of flood water from the Tuscarawas River. The town was without light and gas. Citizens raised $11,000 to aid the sufferers. The effect of the flood at Fremont was very severe. The water in Main Street was fifteen feet deep. Wires were down and buildings collapsed. Several lives were lost. Death and intense suffering marked the great flood which swept clean the Sandusky valley. Tiffin became a city of desolation. Every bridge went down, and half the city was under water. Many were carried to death in the treacherous currents. CHAPTER XII THE FLOOD IN EASTERN OHIO MOUNT VERNON HARD HIT--MILLERSBURG CUT OFF--THE TUSCARAWAS RIVER--COSHOCTON IN DISTRESS--ENTIRE CITY OF ZANESVILLE UNDER WATER--MARIETTA FLOODED--SCIOTO RIVER AT CIRCLEVILLE--STRUGGLES OF CHILLICOTHE--FLOOD AND FIRE IN PORTSMOUTH--HOMELESS IN EAST LIVERPOOL AND WELLSVILLE--FLOOD WASHES STEUBENVILLE--HIGHEST FLOOD IN HISTORY OF GALLIPOLIS--IRONTON REQUESTS AID--A CRITICAL SITUATION. In the eastern part of the state there were two great floods, the flood of the Muskingum River and the flood of the Ohio River. Besides these there were many local floods of grave importance. Mount Vernon, in Knox County, was hard hit by the flood. Many lives were lost, communication was entirely cut off, and thousands of dollars worth of damage was done. Miles of track on the Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Ohio Railroads were washed away. MILLERSBURG COMPLETELY CUT OFF For two days Millersburg was completely cut off. The river rose four feet higher than ever before. It swept through the Cleveland, Akron and Columbus Railroad depot two feet deep, driving everybody out. Water, gas and electric light were shut off with the exception of one gas line. Telephone service was limited, hence nothing could be sent or received for two days--until intermittent communication was re-established. THE TUSCARAWAS RIVER The flood in the Tuscarawas River was the worst in its history. All the lowlands were under water, and a highway bridge west of Dennison was carried out by the tide. Two bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio, near Uhrichsville, were washed away, and the village of Lockport was cut off from all communication. Supplies in Lockport were exhausted and two men were reported drowned. Eighteen families were marooned in the school house at Port Washington, ten miles west of Dennison, on the Tuscarawas River. Operator A. W. Davis, of the Pan Handle Railroad, was isolated in a signal tower for several days without food or fire. Newcomerstown was isolated for four days. All houses in the village, with the exception of those on Rodney Hill, were flooded by the Tuscarawas River. There was no death, but great damage. Conditions throughout the Tuscarawas Valley were very bad. From a point near Uhrichsville, about one hundred miles west of Pittsburgh, to Coshocton, a distance of thirty miles, the valley was one great lake. Thousands of acres of the richest farm lands in Ohio were under water and the loss of live stock was heavy. COSHOCTON IN DISTRESS The Tuscarawas and Walhonding Rivers unite at Coshocton to form the Muskingum River, and it is the water from these swollen streams that poured down to Zanesville, thirty-two miles below, and thence to Marietta. Reports from points along the Muskingum River, all told the same story of destruction, flooded towns and great property damage. Many days were required to restore railway communication. Above Coshocton on the Walhonding River many villages were flooded and the loss to farmers was great. Coshocton itself naturally suffered. A railroad bridge on the Columbus division of the Pan Handle Railroad went out, and scores of highway bridges throughout the section were washed away. All the streams were torrents. ENTIRE CITY OF ZANESVILLE UNDER WATER "Entire city under water. It is coming into our office. Have placed the records as high as I possibly can and have done everything possible. The building next door has just collapsed and I am compelled to leave now for safety----" This message flashed across the wire as the operator at Zanesville fled for life. With fifteen reported dead, and the Muskingum River at a stage of forty feet and still rising, the city faced the worst flood in its history. The big Sixth Street bridge had already been swept away by the flood, and much of the business section was inundated. At least two thousand had been driven from their homes by the high water. Food was growing scarce and the water was threatening the light and water plants. The suffering during the night was intense. The temperature took a sudden drop and the thousands who were forced to spend the night marooned in buildings or on the hills without heat and proper clothing presented a spectacle to excite pity. With the break of day on March 27th, disorder and terror prevailed throughout the whole city. The Muskingum, in its rampage, was sixteen feet higher than the previous record mark set in 1898. The city was one vast lake and the waters covered the valley from hill to hill. Only the buildings high on the sides of the slopes escaped the ravages of the deluge. The water varied in depth from one to fifteen feet. Many lives were sacrificed. Six hundred buildings were torn from their foundations and swept away by the mill race currents, while many others collapsed and were hurled against those still holding. The water reached a depth of eight inches in the Clarendon and Rogge hotels at noon on Thursday. The court house was surrounded. In sections which were bearing the brunt of the deluge little could be done to relieve the people who were marooned in their houses and in the large buildings. Every effort was being directed by the city officials and volunteer relief parties to lend aid to the sufferers, but the swift, onward rush of the waters made the undertaking extra hazardous. The authorities turned their efforts toward relieving the suffering of women and children driven from their homes by the high water, and some progress had been made. Putnam lay in ruins. Muskingum and Linden Avenues had been washed out, and where three days before stood many residences, watchers from the highest buildings saw nothing but a waste of swirling waters. MARIETTA FLOODED The valley between Zanesville and Marietta became a surging lake, which picked up buildings and everything movable and carried them along with incredible speed. The loss of property was tremendous. Marietta suffered from the swollen waters of both the Muskingum and Ohio Rivers. The situation was serious on Wednesday; by Sunday it was alarming. At eight o'clock Saturday morning the river had reached the stage of 60.6 and was still rising. All the business section of the town was flooded and many residences were under water. There were no public utilities in operation and food and medical supplies were sorely needed. There were many rumors concerning loss of life, but the swift current prevented communication to those parts of the city where persons were reported drowned. Immediately upon reciept of the message from Whipple, a station on the Marietta Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, that Marietta was under water, preparations were made by the railroad company to send out a relief train from Cambridge. It reached Whipple Saturday night and from there help was brought to the distressed city. SCIOTO RIVER AT CIRCLEVILLE The flooded Scioto River, which surged through the streets of Columbus, carried destruction down through farm lands and towns to the Ohio River. Circleville, Chillicothe and Portsmouth, being the principal towns on the river course, suffered most. At Circleville on March 26th all the bridges had been washed away, and the Scioto River stood three feet higher than ever before. Another rise was promised. The city was cut off from railroad communication, and all trains on roads entering Circleville were annulled. STRUGGLES OF CHILLICOTHE Many dead, one hundred houses washed away, and property loss of $1,000,000--such was the tale of destruction in Chillicothe. On Friday, March 28th, the waters had begun to recede, leaving seven bodies hanging on the Kilgore bridge, three miles south of the city, but it was impossible to recover them immediately. Conditions were much improved, the light plant having been able to resume service, and the water supply also was now adequate. The water had receded from the streets, and all public utilities resumed operations. The homeless refugees were being cared for in the homes which withstood the flood and in school houses. Provisions were plentiful and there was no disorder. Many citizens were sworn in as deputy marshals. The looting problem was one difficulty for the authorities. Notwithstanding their efforts much looting took place. Near Omega, to the south, Mr. and Mrs. Hatfield and their family of seven children were drowned when their home, barn and all their other buildings were swept down the river. FLOOD AND FIRE IN PORTSMOUTH Portsmouth presented a picture of distress as the flood from the swollen Scioto and Ohio Rivers advanced. On the night of March 27th the Scioto bridge was swept away by the flood. By morning hundreds of persons had been driven from their homes, school houses had been thrown open to the homeless, the streets were filled with household goods and merchants in the heart of the city were moving their wares to places of safety in anticipation of flood conditions more serious than ever before. On March 29th the Ohio River stood at sixty-eight feet, the highest ever known, and was rising. Fire broke out in several places and was difficult to control because the flood had interfered with the water facilities. Efficient management, however, soon brought the situation under control. The arrival of the steamers, "Klondike" and "J. I. Ware," on March 31st, brought sufficient provisions to supply those in need for a week. HOMELESS IN EAST LIVERPOOL AND WELLSVILLE We have already seen the swollen waters of the Ohio at Cincinnati, Portsmouth and Marietta. It remains to treat of the devastation wrought in other Ohio River towns in the eastern and southern parts. At East Liverpool on March 27th, more than a thousand families were driven from their homes, five thousand potters were deprived of employment temporarily and the city water works were out of commission as the result of the flood. The electric light plant was seriously threatened and trolley lines were tied up. The following day the river had eclipsed the 48.8 foot stage of 1884. A stage of at least fifty-one feet was expected. Conditions remained the same, but the situation at Wellsville, a city of ten thousand, three miles south, was perilous. Over three thousand were homeless. The city is located on a flat promontory, with the eastern portion a slight apex against the fast rising stream. Back water had already made an island of the city, precluding any possibility of escape to the high hills. Both East Liverpool and Wellsville were in darkness because of the shutting down of the power plants. All the river front potteries and mills were idle. Street railway and railroad traffic was at a standstill. Police and fire departments of Wellsville and East Liverpool made many thrilling rescues during the day. Seven Italians, dumped from a skiff, were taken from the water half drowned. Food supplies were diminishing at Wellsville, there was no electricity or gas, the supply of coal was constantly lessening and the river still rising. FLOOD WASHES STEUBENVILLE At Steubenville the Ohio River at 9 o'clock on March 26th was at the 34.4-foot stage and rising at the rate of seven tenths of an inch an hour. The west part of the town was under water and twenty-five houses flooded. Many families were rescued by wagons. Five large manufacturing plants were forced to close down, throwing 1,300 men out of work. HIGHEST FLOOD IN HISTORY OF GALLIPOLIS The river at Gallipolis reached the sixty-seven-foot stage, six feet higher than ever before, but was gradually falling. The State Hospital remained unharmed, and was for a time taking care of two hundred people, while the town was taking care of three hundred. There was no loss of life. Traffic was at a standstill, and train service into Gallipolis suspended. IRONTON REQUESTS AID Ironton suffered by both flood and fire. A block and a half in the business center of the city were consumed by fire and several buildings were dynamited to check the flames. No loss of life occurred. A citizen of Ironton wired to a friend in Philadelphia: "Floods here awful. Any charity funds that can be directed here through clubs or otherwise would be appreciated." A CRITICAL SITUATION Even taking into account the tremendous seriousness of the flood in Dayton and Columbus, the situation all along the Ohio River was one that called for sympathy and sustained relief. Governor Cox, of Ohio, in one of his early proclamations covering relief work said: "There is every indication that the Ohio River will reach the highest stage in its history. Calls for food and clothing are coming from unexpected parts of the State. A critical situation has developed in all Ohio River towns. We are still greatly in need of help." CHAPTER XIII THE FLOOD IN EASTERN INDIANA HORROR OF THE RISING WATER--THE FOUR FLOODS--DISASTER IN BROOKVILLE--PEOPLE GATHERED IN CHURCHES--NEWS FROM LAUREL--SURGING FLOOD AT FORT WAYNE. "Every stream we crossed seemed to be a raging torrent, its waters racing at top speed," said one traveler who arrived in Chicago on March 26th. "We could hear the swish of the waters and hear the cries of people in distress," reported another. Yet these eye-witnesses could not see the worst of the four vast floods that swept over the state of Indiana, tying up the railroads, rendering thousands of persons homeless, killing scores of others, wiping out whole towns. Just how many persons lost their lives in the great floods will probably never be known. THE FOUR FLOODS Indiana had known many devastating floods, but none like to this in either destructive force or extent. On March 26th three distinct flood districts prevailed--the eastern part of the state including the valley of the White Water River and the Fort Wayne territory, the valley of the White River and its tributaries, and the valley of the Wabash. Later the flooding of the Ohio River and its tributaries added to the awful tale of disaster. The entire state was practically one huge sea, and every brook, creek and river exacted its toll of damage. The overflow, coming with astonishing suddenness, caught farmers throughout the state unprepared and the breaking of levees in many places forced persons living along the rivers to desert their homes. In the crowded cities it added woe upon woe. The appalling swiftness with which the waters rose found city as well as state unprepared. Streams that were brooks Easter morning had become raging torrents on Tuesday. Persons who retired in apparently safe homes Monday were rescued the following day from second-story windows with boats. Lowlands became vast lakes. The dawn of Wednesday, March 26th, found anxiety in Indiana centered in Brookville and Connersville, on the White Water River, from which frantic appeals for aid were received by Governor Ralston. Other despatches from the same region declared that the smaller towns of Metamora, Cedar Grove and Prenton were swept away completely. DISASTER IN BROOKVILLE Sixteen persons were drowned at Brookville, when they were caught by the east and west forks of White Water River which meet in that town. Survivors told of attempts of men, women and children to escape by the light of lanterns. Cross currents rushing along streets and alleys carried them down to a united stream a mile wide just south of the town. Five children, all of one family, were seen clinging to posts of an old-fashioned wooden bed when they were swept into the main stream and lost. The person from Connersville who first talked with the Governor said that a break in the White Water River levee had flooded the valley, sweeping many persons before it. After that it was impossible to re-establish communication even for a few minutes. Militia were ready all during the night to hurry to the town, but no train was operated in that direction. PEOPLE GATHERED IN CHURCHES Five wagon bridges, the Big Four Railroad bridge, the depot and a paper mill were utterly destroyed. Fifty summer houses on White Water River south of Brookville were washed away, foundations and all. People, bowed down by the calamity, gathered in churches, where religious services were held. None of the bodies were recovered for several days. Hall Schuster was drowned Thursday night in an attempt to cross the West Fork of the White River at Brookville to rescue Harlan Kennedy, a hermit, formerly a Methodist minister. Two hundred and fifty children rescued from the flood had only night clothes. Wagon trains carried food and clothing from Connersville to the stricken people. On Friday, March 28th, the list of known dead in Brookville was sixteen. Heavy loss of property and a food and fuel famine imminent were the precise situation. There were six persons missing, and it was feared that they had been drowned and their bodies washed away or buried in debris that had not yet been searched. Brookville was practically under martial law, and twenty men were driven out of the city after they were discovered looting damaged homes and buildings. NEWS FROM LAUREL News from Laurel reached Connersville on Saturday when Deputy Postmaster George Lockwood came through on horseback. He said the White Water River valley, eleven miles around Laurel, was flooded, and the damage estimated at $300,000. Four buildings and many small houses were wrecked in Laurel, but no lives were lost. Several farmers in the valley between Brookville and Laurel were missing and their houses had disappeared. Several other towns in the valley were inundated and many houses had been swept away. SURGING FLOOD AT FORT WAYNE At Fort Wayne, in the northeastern part of the state at the confluence of the St. Mary's and the Maumee Rivers, the flood surged for three days. A keeper in the Orphan Asylum and five men in a surfboat did splendid work in saving seventy-five inmates of the asylum from drowning. All life-saving stations in the flooded district devoted their utmost efforts to the work of rescue and used their funds and supplies without stint. The relief work was in every way well organized. SITUATION UNDER CONTROL On March 28th, with the flood receding at the rate of three inches an hour, Fort Wayne had the situation in control and stood ready to assist its less fortunate neighbors. Many of the refugees were able to get back into their homes. The property loss was estimated at $4,000,000, and it was almost certain that the loss of life would not exceed six. The pumping station had been started up the previous night, two locomotives sent by the Lake Shore Railroad furnishing the power. The water was being pumped from the river. The only drinking water available for several days was brought in bottles. CHAPTER XIV THE DESOLATION OF INDIANAPOLIS AND THE VALLEY OF THE WHITE RIVER THE TWO FORKS OF THE WHITE RIVER--WORST DAMAGE IN INDIANAPOLIS--SYSTEMATIC RESCUE WORK--THIEVES BENT ON PLUNDER--PREDICAMENT OF WEST INDIANAPOLIS--THE RECEDING WATERS--FLOOD VICTIMS HELPLESS--AN APRIL WEDDING--OTHER TOWNS AFFECTED. The two great forks of the White River and their tributaries drain about half of the area of Indiana. Indianapolis, the capital of the state, is situated on the West Fork. In this city and more particularly in West Indianapolis the torrent roaring through the White River valley did its worst damage. Hundreds of spectators were watching the river on Tuesday evening, March 25th, when, with a roar that could be heard for blocks, hundreds of tons of dirt in the Morris Street levee crumbled under the pressure, and great walls of water rushed through the opening. Men, women and children fought through the water toward a near-by bridge, which seemed to offer the only safety. Many houses were torn to pieces by the rush of the water, and others were carried away. Families in one-story homes were at the mercy of the sudden rush of water that followed. The people were literally trapped in their own houses. OTHER TOWNS AFFECTED Other towns affected by the flooding of the White River and its tributaries were Muncie, Elwood, Anderson, Noblesville, Bloomington, Washington, Newcastle, Rushville, Shelbyville, etc. At Noblesville the river was the highest it had been in thirty-three years, at Muncie a dike in the water plant broke and the city was without fire protection. At Rushville Flat Rock Creek waters rose with a roar, and clanging fire bells warned the people to flee. The entire business section was submerged. One person met death in Muncie; one in Newcastle; one in Rushville, and five in West Indianapolis. Indianapolis awoke the following morning to find the waters higher than ever appeared before, with a property loss that two days before would have been unbelievable. It was hard to bring the full realization of the damage to the people, who had no thought of a flood from streams that ordinarily are unimportant, aiding only in beautifying the city's parks and boulevard driveways. A NIGHT OF DISASTER AND FEAR During the night the water advanced upon the exclusive residence section along Fall Creek. It tore away one bridge, destroyed the city's most pretentious driveway and forced the families living along its banks to desert their palatial homes. A few hours before they had no idea they were in any danger, and were awakened by the militiamen to be ordered from the threatened buildings, only to find every hotel in the city full. They were cared for at the homes of friends. The Washington Street bridge over the White River that connects Indianapolis and West Indianapolis, which was closed for traffic late Tuesday night, in the early morning was torn apart by the waters, the floor of the structure being carried away. A DESOLATE CITY With the breaking of day came the proposition of feeding the refugees. The city appropriated money to supply immediate needs and a relief fund was started. Drinking water was at a premium, and water for bathing was practically unattainable. Schools were closed, and there was a general suspension of business. The water in some of the streets north of Fall Creek, only fifteen miles from the business district, swept everything before it. The street cars remained standing in the streets where they were stopped when the power house was flooded. All interurban lines were at a standstill and the steam roads had poor success in getting trains out of the city. Passenger trains were shut out of the city on the lines entering from the West, and the passengers were forced to share the lot of the homeless refugees. By Thursday conditions in Indianapolis were such that Governor Ralston was impelled to issue a proclamation asking for general relief. Five hundred refugees from West Indianapolis were brought in small boats to the Blaine Street wharf. Some of these had been clinging to trees for hours. Others were taken from floating houses. Women with babies were taken from the upper stories of houses. The refugees said that many had been killed in Wolf Hall when the floors of that building gave way under the strain of hundreds who had taken refuge there. Reports of death were everywhere exaggerated, owing to the difficulty of accurate knowledge and the shattered nerves of the sufferers. SYSTEMATIC RESCUE WORK Systematic rescue work was rendered more difficult by a storm of snow and sleet. Tomlinson Hall, the great civic gathering place of the city, was converted into a temporary hospital. The homeless men, women and children from West Indianapolis, Broad Ripple and other suburbs devastated by the White River were taken to the hall and were fed and given medical attention. From Fort Benjamin Harrison 500 blankets and 500 mattresses and cots were obtained. Citizens' committees were in charge of the work of distributing food and of raising money. It was estimated that 10,000 persons in Indianapolis alone were in need of immediate assistance. The situation was rendered graver by the outbreak of contagious diseases. Five women rescued and taken to Tomlinson Hall were suffering from pneumonia, and cases of whooping cough and measles were discovered among the refugees. There were numerous cases of pneumonia. Measles and whooping cough attacked the children. Nearly all of the doctors of the city volunteered their services and asked for volunteer nurses. Those suffering from contagious diseases were removed at once and inspectors from the city board of health aided by a corps of nurses detailed from various hospitals of the city set to work to prevent exposure of the refugees to contagion and to take care of the other sick. THIEVES BENT ON PLUNDER Thieves took advantage of the wrecking of lighting plants to plunder deserted houses and even to rob survivors of the flood. In West Indianapolis the vandals and robbers became so bold that Governor Ralston placed that section of the city under martial law and sent a company of militia to guard the streets. Orders were given to shoot on sight any one caught at robbery. PREDICAMENT OF WEST INDIANAPOLIS The greed of provision dealers angered Governor Ralston to such an extent that he started an investigation. Before the supply of bread available on the West Side had been exhausted, loaves were selling at twenty cents each. The supply of meat was entirely exhausted. That section of Indianapolis lying west of the river, where martial law was proclaimed, is the poorest in the city. The supply of meats, eggs, milk, coffee, bread and butter was practically exhausted before noon. Little except canned goods remained on the shelves of the grocers. Relief trains loaded with provisions were unable to enter this district. Members of the board of public safety and other city officials inspected the entire flooded district from motor boats and directed efficient organization of the relief workers, aiding the state troops and state officials in every possible way. THE RECEDING WATERS By Friday the White River had begun to fall slowly, and the work of caring for the suffering could be prosecuted vigorously. It was estimated that the property loss in the city and environs would reach $10,000,000. Part of this loss was in destroyed bridges. The Vandalia Railroad bridge over the White River went down Friday, carrying with it ten loaded cars. By Monday, March 31st, White River waters had returned to almost normal channel, and the areas that were covered were being searched to locate the bodies of any who might have been drowned. The city board of health prepared typhoid serum for 50,000 treatments to aid in warding off an epidemic. State troops were withdrawn. On Tuesday hundreds of homes were cleaned and, with furniture which could be salvaged and that supplied by the Relief Committee, the owners were able to resume housekeeping. Relief funds were still increasing and all persons who lost homes or furniture in the flood were being cared for. Many persons in the West Indianapolis flood district were treated with an anti-diphtheria vaccine, and Dr. T. V. Keene, in charge of the medical relief work in the flooded districts, said he feared no epidemic. FLOOD VICTIMS HELPLESS Hundreds of thousands of dollars were reported necessary to relieve suffering among the flood refugees in Indianapolis, according to the report of the General Relief Committee, made on Wednesday, April 2d, at a meeting in Mayor Shank's office. Plans for raising a vast sum of money, to be made available immediately to the sufferers, were discussed and it was decided to start popular subscriptions and designate places for contributions. Joseph C. Schaf, one of the investigators for the committee, said: "The flood victims are helpless. They need money and need it immediately. The men are trying to hold their jobs and let the women clean up the homes, and it is a disheartening task for which many are not physically able. Give them money immediately so they can pile their water-soaked mattresses and other furniture in the street and touch a match to it. That will give them new heart." Mr. Schaf increased his donation by $1,000, and several other members of the committee did likewise. CHAPTER XV THE ROARING TORRENT OF THE WABASH A BITTER TALE OF DESTRUCTION--MANY PEOPLE DRIVEN FROM HOMES--ALARMING CONDITIONS--THE PLIGHT OF KOKOMO--THE HOMELESS IN WABASH--DISTRESS OF LOGANSPORT--MILITARY CADETS AID IN RELIEF--NEW DISASTER AT LAFAYETTE--A SECOND HORROR IN TERRE HAUTE--THE RECEDING WATERS. Bitter was the tale of destruction in the valley of the Wabash River and its tributaries. A traveler journeying over the Wabash Railroad on Easter Sunday would have seen only the usual quiet little towns of the Middle West; three days later, if he could have looked down over the same territory he would have seen nothing but a raging torrent sweeping through the region like some fiendish monster devouring and destroying as it pursued its mad course. He would have found the entire Wabash Valley, including Logansport, Wabash, Lafayette and Peru, a desolate scene, its scores of prosperous cities absolutely paralyzed and cut off from the outer world. Telephone and telegraph wires were down everywhere; trains were not running and roads were obliterated. MANY PEOPLE DRIVEN FROM HOMES As early as Monday, March 24th, northern Indiana had suffered severe loss, due to the heavy rains of the previous twenty-four hours, which had carried away bridges, stopped railroad and interurban traffic, flooded store basements, driven people from their homes along the river banks, and washed away houses. At Hartford City there were seven feet of water in the paper mills and the merchants had lost heavily from flooded basements. At Portland water was standing three feet deep in the center of the city and the loss to merchants from damage to goods reached $100,000. The wind, which followed heavy rain, cut a path several hundred feet wide. At Kokomo the light, heat, power, gas and water plants were out of commission and the river was still rising. The city was without fire protection; South Kokomo, with 6,000 inhabitants, was cut off from the main city. It was declared to be the worst flood known in Wabash since 1883; and rain was still falling. Hundreds of residents of the lowlands abandoned their homes. Interurban traffic was paralyzed. ALARMING CONDITIONS Reports on the following day were still more alarming. The worst conditions prevailed in Kokomo, Wabash, Peru, Logansport, Lafayette and Terra Haute. Thousands of people all along the Wabash were crying for food and shelter. Wabash, Kokomo, Peru, Logansport and Lafayette were entirely cut off from communication with the outside world. A big snowstorm on the heels of a drop in temperature added to the suffering. Rescue work was carried on by volunteers, police, firemen and the state militia, and every place where there was a dry home was thrown open to the flood refugees. From many places frantic appeals for aid were received by the state officials, but lack of all means of transportation and crippled telephone and telegraph service forced the submerged towns to rely entirely upon their own resources. THE PLIGHT OF KOKOMO At Kokomo the water in some of the streets was eight feet deep and rushing like a mountain torrent. Schools and business were suspended and state troops patrolled the town as far as they were able. The homes of a thousand persons were submerged. No lives were lost, but there were many narrow escapes. Several persons were rescued from second story windows by the few boats available. Rafts could not be used because of the swiftness of the current. THE HOMELESS IN WABASH Seven hundred and fifty persons in Wabash were rendered homeless as the result of the high flood in the river. The city was without gas, water or lighting facilities. The mayor on Thursday, March 27th, issued a proclamation ordering that all saloons and business houses close at six o'clock. He instructed the police to keep people off the streets. There was no loss of life, but the property loss was estimated at $350,000. There was no communication with the outside world from Monday until Thursday afternoon. DISTRESS OF LOGANSPORT The business district and the south and west sides of Logansport were under water on Tuesday. The bridge at the country club had been washed away. Other bridges over the Wabash had been flooded. The moving vans were unable to handle all the persons trying to move out of the danger zone and the firemen of the city gave aid. The electric light and water plants were endangered. There was great suffering among the poorer people. Logansport was also cut off from telephone and telegraph communication. Two deaths by drowning were reported (later corrected to one) and ten houses were washed down stream. MILITARY CADETS AID IN RELIEF On Wednesday the flood waters of the Wabash were sixteen feet deep on the floors of the Pennsylvania Railroad Station, and cadets from the Culver Military Academy were rushed to the city to aid in the rescue and relief of scores of people marooned in the business districts. The Third Street bridge had been swept away. The bridge at Sixth Street was being washed out. The people were fleeing to the hills, where they were housed in school houses and churches. By indirect telephone routes on Thursday, Governor Ralston received an urgent call from Logansport for troops to aid in rescue work and to patrol the city. The city had been cut off from reliable communication with the outside world since Tuesday evening. The continuance of the high waters added hourly to the heavy property losses, and the snowstorm and bitter cold caused intense suffering. NEW DISASTER AT LAFAYETTE At 2 P. M. on Tuesday, March 25th, two spans of the bridge over the Wabash River at Lafayette went out, carrying a number of people with it. Boats below the bridge succeeded in rescuing all but one man. At 3.15 P. M. West Lafayette, where Purdue University is located, was cut off from Lafayette by the breaking of one of the levees and the submerging of the other. The river was two miles wide and business houses were preparing to move their wares, anticipating a three-foot rise during the night. No interurban lines were being operated and steam lines were making little effort to maintain train service. The business district and the south and west sides of Logansport were under water. The bridge at the Country Club had been washed away. A SECOND HORROR IN TERRA HAUTE All down the length of the Wabash the torrent raged. Hardly recovering from the daze of the Easter tornado, treated in another chapter, Terra Haute inside of forty-eight hours faced its second disaster, when the waters of the Wabash left the banks, flooding part of the residence section. The river was then rising at the rate of five inches an hour. Railroad traffic was suspended and interurban traction service had been abandoned. Residents of Taylorville, Robertsville and West Terre Haute deserted their homes, fleeing before the approaching waters. Five hundred homes were under water and the coal mines near the city were flooded. For two days the situation seemed to grow hourly more desperate. On Thursday the river had reached a stage of thirty-one feet six inches and was steadily rising. Four thousand persons were homeless, and those whose homes were on higher ground were without gas or electricity. Traffic was at a standstill. THE RECEDING WATERS But slowly the waters receded and the work of reconstruction was begun. On down the river the disaster-bringing torrent traveled. Throughout all southern Indiana the river reached unprecedented stages and hundreds were driven from their homes. Railroad lines were covered with water through many counties, and on March 31st the river was reported forty miles wide between Upton, Indiana, and Carmi, Illinois. CHAPTER XVI THE PLIGHT OF PERU: A STRICKEN CITY LAST MESSAGE FROM PERU--AT ONCE TO THE RESCUE--THOUSANDS MAROONED--TALES OF STRUGGLE--FAMINE AND DISEASE--GREED ABROAD IN THE CITY--REFUGEES URGED TO LEAVE--SEARCH FOR THE DEAD--SHAKING OFF DESPAIR. Of all the cities devastated by flood in Indiana, Peru was the most desolated. Situated on the Wabash River just below the entrance of the Mississinewa, it suffered more than any of the stricken cities through which the angry, swollen waters of the Wabash flowed. "This probably will be the last message you will get from Peru," said the man who telegraphed to Governor Ralston on March 25th, asking for coffins, food and clothing. "Two hundred or more are drowned and the remainder of the residents are waiting for daylight." AT ONCE TO THE RESCUE Governor Ralston immediately communicated with State Senator Fleming at Fort Wayne and asked him to forward the coffins and other supplies as requested. When the messages of distress from Peru were sent forth South Bend and other cities sprang nobly to the rescue. They found the people half crazed from exposure, want and fear. One of the rescue party who made the trip in the first boat that entered the city said: "The cry to be saved from those who saw the first boat was heartrending. Some of them threatened to jump into the water if we did not take them aboard. But it was impossible with the scant boat supply to take all away at once." THOUSANDS MAROONED Relief parties from South Bend were the first to arrive on the scene. They found hundreds of people huddled together in the court house square, which was three miles from the nearest dry land; hundreds more were marooned in the upper stories of buildings already rendered unsafe by the high water. There was no heat, no light, no water, and sanitary conditions were horrible. The only motor boat had broken and it was too dangerous to venture into the raging torrent in rowboats. This made it impossible for the South Bend relief volunteers to get blankets and food to the sufferers. TALES OF STRUGGLE Death faced hundreds of persons who were clinging to the roofs of buildings, where they sought refuge. Currents of muddy water from ten to twenty-five feet deep were running through the main streets at twenty miles an hour. Harry Lumley, a despatcher, lay on a table all Wednesday in the Peru station of the Lake Erie and Western Railroad, which the water had invaded, and kept open the line for relief trains. Dr. W. A. Huff, a dentist, started to South Peru with an unknown man Tuesday night. The boat capsized and Huff lodged in a tree, where he remained until Wednesday morning. His condition was critical. No effort was made to count the dead. "Our energies are being devoted entirely to saving those still living," said Lieutenant-Governor O'Neill. "It is impossible for us even to try to learn the whereabouts of the bodies just now." A VIGILANCE COMMITTEE Citizens, finding lawlessness in every block of the city above water, organized a vigilance committee with orders to shoot looters. On Wednesday night several thousand persons were still marooned in the court house, hospital, factory buildings and other structures because the various relief parties sent from South Bend and other cities had not sufficient boats to carry them to the nearest dry land. Snow was falling heavily and the suffering was intense, because of the lack of heating facilities. The city was in darkness, except for a scant supply of lanterns. FAMINE AND DISEASE But the height of the flood had been reached. On Thursday the water was receding three inches an hour. It had fallen four feet since the previous morning, but the current was still so swift on Canton Street and in South Peru, that it was impossible to investigate in rowboats the district in which the heaviest loss of life was supposed to have occurred. There were three inches of snow on the ground and it was still falling. Recovering from the flood, Peru organized to meet greater menaces, famine and disease. At a meeting in the courtroom at the county building, Lieutenant-Governor O'Neill was chosen head of the committee on organization. Hundreds of persons marooned in the second stories of their homes appealed to passing boats for food, fuel and water. Fishermen seized some of the boats and were taking the curious sightseeing. Persons who appropriated boats and tied them up were arrested. There were 500 persons at the Bears Hotel in Peru. Their only fire was a grate in the lobby. Two meals a day were served. The water had receded so that a Lake Erie and Western relief train was pulled up to the canning factory in the northeast part of the town and took out 200 persons marooned three days. They were taken to towns along Lake Erie. It was estimated that 2,000 persons had left the city and were being cared for in towns and school houses to the north. The relief committee discouraged the influx of people who came to Peru to see and eat, as there were more mouths to feed than there were provisions. Lieutenant-Governor O'Neill remained in Peru to insure whatever aid the state could give the sufferers. He ordered the Indiana Board of Health to send experts to make the city sanitary. These specialists had the co-operation of city and county medical societies and a score of physicians who came from other cities. [Illustration: Copyright by George Grantham Bain. Scores of strongly-built bridges like this throughout the flood districts were carried away by the raging torrents] [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. When the waters of the Hudson overflowed, hundreds of men, women and children were trapped in their homes near the river bank and were rescued with difficulty] TWELVE BODIES IN ONE HOUSE Twelve bodies were recovered in a single house in the southern part of Peru on Friday. This was taken to indicate that the loss of life in that section of the city was great, as it was there that dwellings were completely submerged before the occupants could vacate. "It is impossible to tell how many lives were lost at Peru," said one of the rescuers. Six survivors were suffocated in the overcrowded court house. The weather had turned severely cold, adding to the misery of the unsheltered, but the flood was falling rapidly. Terrible conditions prevailed among the refugees, who were increasing in numbers, as the waters receded. Sanitary conditions among the hundreds sheltered in the court house became so bad that boats removed many of them to other places. GREED ABROAD IN THE CITY The water was rushing back as fast as it came, leaving a coat of mud and slime. It was from this that the great danger of disease existed. The state board of health combined with the Peru board to help clean up. Relief workers and city officials joined to investigate statements concerning exorbitant prices for foodstuffs, and proposed to expose every merchant attempting to make money through the misfortunes of others. Several looters were arrested and others shot. One robber was shot by a citizen, who threw the body into the river. The work of rescue was greatly impeded by the selfishness of residents. An Indian of the Wallace circus secured a boat and charged people $200 before he would help them off. Instances were told of men who drew revolvers on the men and boys working in the boats, threatening to shoot if they did not take them in. REFUGEES URGED TO LEAVE Railroad officials and the relief committee urged refugees to accept the hospitality of the municipalities north. They hoped to be relieved of temporary care of 3,000 persons by sending them out of the city. Two railroads were bringing plenty of provisions within a half mile of the city, but the boats could not transport rapidly enough to the center where the supplies were being distributed. SEARCH FOR THE DEAD Systematic search for the dead was made, and the appalling early reports of hundreds of dead continued to shrink, although it was believed that the search would probably reveal more. The diminution was due to the discovery in the hills on the other side of the Wabash River of hundreds of persons who had been given up as dead. The streets were strewn with dead animals that had begun to decay in some sections. An epidemic was feared. One of the greatest obstacles which the people faced was that of ridding the city of the dead animals and filth in the low sections around the edge of the city proper into which disease-breeding filth had been washed. Water still covered these low sections, and seemed likely to remain there for a long time. There were few sections around the valley that could be used for burning dead animals. Citizens and officials who were becoming alarmed at the new danger estimated that at least 500 dead animals were strewn about the city of Peru alone. Most of them had to be fished out of the water wherever found, and it seemed an impossible task. SHAKING OFF DESPAIR Slowly the city began to shake off despair and repair the damage done. The property damage totaled $3,000,000. The Broadway bridge went down when a large house lodged against it and in turn carried away the Union Traction structure. As Peru emerged from the flood it became apparent that the death list probably would not run over twenty-five. The indirect death list as a result of the flood, however, went much higher, as scores of aged men and women, who for hours were forced to undergo terrible exposure and later to endure unsanitary conditions, perished soon after they were rescued. CHAPTER XVII THE DEATH-DEALING TORNADO AT OMAHA THE BOLT OUT OF THE BLACKNESS--RESCUERS WORKING IN DARK--A CITY TO THE RESCUE--PATH OF THE STORM--INTERRUPTED MERRYMAKERS--FAMILY MEET DEATH TOGETHER--FREAK TRAGEDIES--BRAVE TELEPHONE GIRLS--VIVID TALE OF THE STORM. Easter Sunday did not dawn very brightly in Omaha, but in the afternoon the sun came out warm and bright. The usual Easter promenaders thronged the streets in holiday attire. Then, as the afternoon wore on, clouds appeared in the sky. They gathered very quickly, came lower, and as they approached the earth there was suddenly a fall in the temperature. In a few minutes the sky turned black and then came the bolt of wind down out of the blackness. Through more than three miles of the city it cut a clean path of from three to seven blocks in width in which not a building was left whole. Then the storm mounted the bluffs and sped away to the northeast, carrying destruction with it. Omaha's destruction was kept secret from the world for several hours by the storm, for all wire communication was broken down in the wrecking of the homes. Messengers with the news stories had to go to Lincoln, the state capital, to give out first definite news of the disaster. During the early hours of the night uninjured citizens worked desperately to remove such persons as had been caught beneath razed buildings. No great number was killed in any one place. The wind swept along, taking its toll here and there. No sooner had the great wind passed than a second violent gale swept over much the same territory, but with lessened fury. The total number of dead in Omaha and suburbs amounted to 154; the number of homeless to 3,179. Fire started in the debris of many wrecked buildings in the Nebraska metropolis, and these were menaces for some time, as the fire companies were hindered by fallen walls and blockaded streets. A heavy rain followed the wind, however, and whilst it drenched the hundreds of homeless persons, it also put out the flames. RESCUERS WORKING IN DARK Rescue work started as soon as the people were able to hurry to the stricken district, but the night's work was by the light of lanterns and little was accomplished. The storm took down all the wires in its path and the electric power was shut off immediately to prevent further loss of life. All night the stricken section was patrolled by government troops from Fort Omaha. With the arrival of daylight, a train-load of militia from Lincoln and the presence in the city of Governor Morehead, the work was systematized. [Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE PATH OF THE TORNADO] The hospitals in Omaha Sunday night were full of injured, many of whom had not been identified, apparently because their friends were either dead or among the injured. A CITY TO THE RESCUE Immediately City Commissioners appropriated $25,000 for relief work; citizens present at the meeting organized and donated $25,000 more. The Citizens' Relief Committee was organized, composed of fifty citizens and an executive committee of seven to work with the seven city councilmen. Governor Morehead notified Mayor Dahlman that he would send a special message to the Legislature asking for the appropriation of sufficient funds to care for the homeless throughout the state. Cots were placed in the Auditorium, and those without shelter were housed here. The city purchasing agent arranged for enough beds to care for all those who could sleep in the Auditorium. The Elks' rooms were thrown open to the homeless and the Union Gospel Mission provided seventy-five men with beds. PATH OF THE STORM The storm appeared to have started at Fifty-fourth and Center Streets. From there it traveled north, veering slightly to the east, to Leavenworth Street. Then it took a northeasterly course to Fortieth and Farnam Streets, sweeping its way through everything. Still traveling a little east of north, it covered a course from Fortieth Street east to Thirty-fourth Street, six blocks. Striking Bemis Park, where the homes of the wealthy Omaha residents were located, the storm turned sharply to the east and passed along Parker and Blonde Streets, to Twenty-fourth Street, where its path was six blocks wide. In the latter section the damage was complete. Finally, at Fourteenth and Spencer Streets, the storm swept over the bluffs, high above the Missouri River, demolished the Missouri Pacific roundhouse, leveled the big trestle of the Illinois Central Railroad over Carter Lake, wrecked several buildings near the Rod and Gun Club, a fashionable outing place, and disappeared to the northeast. The Child Saving Institute was a veritable death house after the storm had spent its fury. Every available room was pressed into service, and one after another the dead and injured were brought into the house. INTERRUPTED MERRYMAKERS At the home of Patrick Hynes, a party in celebration of his eighty-first birthday was in progress. The guests had just begun dinner and were drinking a toast to the health of their host when the storm swept the house away. All the party succeeded in getting out with minor injuries, except a grandchild, who was internally injured. "The party had just begun dinner," said Mr. Hynes. "The young people were making merry and, old as I am, I had entered into the spirit. Suddenly there was a roaring sound. The next minute the house was in ruins. I wiggled around and out and aided the others in escaping." FAMILY MEET DEATH TOGETHER Cliff Daniels, his wife and their two children met death together. When soldiers, digging about the ruins of their home, found the four bodies, the two little girls were clasped in the arms of their mother, while the body of the father was over them, as if he had tried to shield them with his own body. When C. Saber discovered the crushed and almost unrecognizable body of his wife he fled down the street shrieking at the top of his voice. E. H. Smith, a private of the Signal Corps from Fort Omaha, became insane after helping carry several bodies, and collapsed. When he had regained consciousness it was necessary to take him to the post hospital, where he was placed under restraint. A. L. Green was on his back porch watching the storm when it broke. He said: "It came like a rushing and roaring torrent of water and passed right by us to the east. I went to my attic window immediately afterward and saw fires bursting forth from houses along the path of the storm. I could see five fires burning at once. The flames made a ghastly sight as they illuminated acres of razed buildings nearby." FREAK TRAGEDIES Among the freak tragedies of the tornado none is more remarkable than that at the Idlewild pool hall, Twenty-fourth and Lake Streets. Twenty-five negroes were killed. The story is told by the single survivor, John Brown, who was dug from the wreckage twelve hours after the demolition of the building. "Eight men were playing pool at one table," Brown says. "The rest of us were standing about watching. Without a moment's warning a terrific roar swept down through the room. The roof suddenly was lifted from above. The pool table shot straight upward, many feet into the air. "All of us still were unhurt." Insane with fear, but wondering, the negroes rushed beneath the open roof and gazed upward. Then the heavy pool table and pieces of the roof shot down. All were caught. Brown was dug from the wreckage twelve hours later, uninjured. HOUSE SPLIT ASUNDER Huddled with his family in the basement of his home at 3229 Cuming Street, Prof. E. W. Hunt saw the house split asunder. When he recovered consciousness beneath the wreckage he discovered that a last summer straw hat was cocked on the back of his head. It had been hanging in a bedroom closet three stories above before the tornado struck the house. The body of a girl about four was dropped into the arms of a pedestrian, Charles Allen, at Forty-fifth and Center Streets. Efforts to identify the child failed. In a field half a mile from their home were found the bodies of Mrs. Mary Rathkey and her two grown sons, Frank and James. All three were dead but no bruises were found. The wind had cut their clothing completely away. Mrs. F. Bryant, ninety-two, lived with her son, Dr. D. C. Bryant, at 3006 Sherman Avenue. She was in bed on the third floor of the house when the tornado struck. The three floors beneath her were shifted out and her bed fell to the basement. Except for the shock she was uninjured. Dr. Bryant and his wife were dropped to the basement from the ground floor. They, too, miraculously escaped injury. VIVID TALES OF THE STORM Perhaps the most vivid single description of the tornado's havoc was given by John Porter: "I stood on the rear porch of my home when the great cloud of the storm began its race across the city," he said. "Before it rushed the traditional 'ball of fire,' which was in reality a yellow cloud, spherical in shape. "My wife was visiting at the moment in the home of her father. I saw the house caught in the vortex of the cloud. It rose straight up into the air, its walls shattered and broken, but holding partially together. I am sure that I could not have moved an eyelash, if my life had depended upon the exertion. "From the risen house I saw a myriad of black specks falling to the earth. Then I watched that home soar upward. It hurtled five blocks through the murky twilight, sustained at a height of one hundred and fifty feet. "The Sacred Heart Convent was the target at which it was hurled. It struck the fifth story. The convent was demolished. The home of my father-in-law became splinters. "Then I recovered my senses partially, and ran to the site of the structure. God himself must have directed that storm, for my wife, her father and her mother had been dropped behind, only bruised." CHAPTER XVIII STRUGGLES OF STRICKEN OMAHA A BLIZZARD-LIKE STORM--COUNTING THE COST--"THE GREATEST CONCEIVABLE BLOW"--SEARCHING FOR THE DEAD--A DAY OF FUNERALS--MORE CASES OF DESTITUTION--PLANS FOR REBUILDING. As if the storm of Easter Sunday were not enough calamity, a blizzard-like storm descended upon the city of Omaha on Tuesday, adding to the grief and horror. The storm, which began shortly after midnight, and continued with gathering force, seriously hampered the work of rescue. More than three inches of snow covered the debris in the section of the city struck by the cyclone. It rendered uninhabitable the houses of many who had prepared to retain temporary homes in partly demolished structures. Women tugging at heavy beams, hoping against hope to find dear ones beneath the wreckage, men gruffly cheering their sorrowful mates, sniveling children wrapped about with shawls and blankets were the scenes which the sunrise this morning disclosed to the federal soldiers as they patrolled the afflicted district. Later, city officials gathered within the lines drawn around the district by the soldiers and distributed clothing and other necessities among the sufferers who had been rendered homeless by the tornado. COUNTING THE COST For the first time the people began to count the cost in lives and dollars. When a resumé was made it was apparently more appalling than those who had studied the result were willing to admit. One hundred and fifty-four lives were snuffed out within the city proper. Nearly five hundred were injured and eight of these died in local hospitals during the day. All Omaha rallied to the assistance of the desolate victims of the tornado. Hundreds of citizens responded promptly by offering their homes and money to aid in caring for the stricken. The City Commissioners appropriated $75,000 for relief work, and citizens at once subscribed to an equal amount. Governor Morehead sent a special message to the Legislature asking for an appropriation to care for the homeless throughout the state. "THE GREATEST CONCEIVABLE BLOW" After making an inspection of the devastated district, the Governor said: "This is my conception of hell. It is horrible, and it has presented a most complex situation. The loss of life and damage to property is the greatest conceivable blow, not only to Omaha, but to the entire state of Nebraska. I will call upon the state of Nebraska to render every assistance and I am sure the state will respond. "My horror and grief are beyond my powers of expression." SEARCHING FOR THE DEAD Groups of men, aided and encouraged by women and children, labored incessantly all day Tuesday among the ruins of homes and other buildings. Only portions of the ruins of some buildings within which persons were known to have been killed were removed. As quickly as bodies were found they were taken to temporary morgues. Relatives claimed most of the bodies, but some remained unidentified. Funerals and burials were held from all churches and homes. Cemeteries were thronged with grieving friends and relatives. MILITARY LAW Military law was strictly enforced throughout the storm area. Upon the soldiers rested the responsibility for looting and fires. The city Health Department made every effort to place the district in a sanitary condition as rapidly as possible. Garbage wagons and trash carts were the only vehicles admitted within the patrolled section. The water supply fortunately remained unimpaired. A DAY OF FUNERALS Another period of unseasonable cold followed Tuesday's snowstorm and increased the already long list of sufferers from the storm. Paying last rites occupied the time of thousands of persons on Wednesday. Fifty-two funerals silently wending their way to cemeteries brought home with greater force to the people of Omaha the full realization of the extent of Sunday's tornado. All day long, as fast as hearses could deposit the bodies at graves, a continual death procession was kept up. Many of the bodies recovered from Sunday's storm were cared for at undertaking establishments, and a great number of the funerals were held from those places. Whenever possible friends of stricken families took care of bodies and had them prepared for burial. In many instances churches were demolished in the districts covered by the storm and others were so badly wrecked as to prevent their being used for burial services. LITTLE CEREMONY There was little ceremony. As quickly as one funeral was over another began. Undertakers co-operated in arranging burials. In several instances where entire families were killed or where more than one member of a family awaited burial one funeral service was held. The funerals were a constant procession. One of the most pitiful of the funerals was that of Mrs. Mary Rathkey and two small children. Surviving Mrs. Rathkey is the husband and father, who is nearly demented over the disaster. Mrs. Rathkey and her children were killed in their home. MORE CASES OF DESTITUTION Many cases of destitution were reported on Wednesday. It took much time to prepare card indexes of sufferers' wants and to make requisitions on the central relief station at the Auditorium for supplies. While these formalities were being carried out want stalked through disconsolate homes from one corner of the city to the other. The task of caring for those needing food, clothing, supplies and money seemed to be too large for the relief forces. PLANS FOR REBUILDING As early as Tuesday plans for rebuilding the city were under way. The business men formed a corporation to conduct the undertaking in a systematic way, and to assist the unfortunates who lost their homes and personal effects. The Real Estate Exchange immediately took steps to prevent the raising of rents. Cases of alleged attempted extortion, however, were reported, some of them by members of the Exchange itself. Executives of that body decided to deal harshly with any owners found taking advantage of those forced to secure new homes on account of the tornado. A public appeal sent out by the Commercial Club stated that 642 homes were totally wrecked, 1,669 were damaged and 3,179 persons made homeless. There was need of reconstruction, indeed! [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. This scene shows the desolation caused by the tornado wrecking a whole street of houses at Omaha, Nebraska] [Illustration: Copyright by George Grantham Bain. A view showing the destructive force of the tornado at Omaha, where happy homes stood a few hours before. Many residents were caught as in a trap and instantly killed or fatally maimed] CHAPTER XIX OMAHA: "THE GATE CITY OF THE WEST" LARGEST CITY IN NEBRASKA--GATE TO THE WEST--GROWTH OF INDUSTRIES--SPLENDID INSTITUTIONS--A PROSPEROUS CITY--REMARKABLE ACTIVITY. Omaha, "the Gate City," largest in Nebraska, is a typical plains town, proud of its industry and its climb on the census list. It stands eighty feet above the Missouri on the west bank of that river opposite Council Bluffs, Iowa. For twenty-four square miles stretch its many churches, educational institutions and large manufacturing plants, with the pleasant residential section lying above. On the site of the present city Lewis and Clark in 1804 held council with the Indians. There were a trading station and stockade at the place in 1825 presided over by pioneer J. B. Royce. The first permanent settlement was made there in 1854. A tribe of Dakota Indians that lived in the region gave the city its name. When the Union Pacific Railroad was stretching steel hands westward in 1864 Omaha was the most northerly outfitting point for overland wagon trains to the far West. At that time it took its name of "Gate City" and then its sudden growth began. In 1910 the population was 124,000. GROWTH OF INDUSTRIES Because of its location it soon began to draw industries. Packing is one of its leading industries today. So extensive is this business that Omaha ranks third among cities of the United States in packing. Silver smelting, distilling and brewing are some of the other pursuits that keep its citizens busy. SPLENDID INSTITUTIONS Among the more important buildings are the Federal Building, Court House, a city hall, two high schools, one of which is among the finest in the country, a convention hall, the Auditorium and the Public Library. Omaha is the see of Roman Catholic and Protestant Episcopal bishoprics. Among the educational institutions are a state school for the deaf; the medical department and orthopedic branch of the University of Nebraska; a Presbyterian Theological Seminary; and Creighton University under Jesuit control. The principal newspapers are the _Omaha Bee_, _World-Herald_ and the _News_. The _Omaha Bee_ was established in 1871 by Edward Rosewater, who made it one of the most influential Republican journals in the West. The _World-Herald_, founded in 1865 by George L. Miller, was edited by William Jennings Bryan from 1894 to 1896. Omaha is the headquarters of the United States military department of the Missouri, and there are military posts at Fort Omaha, immediately north, and Fort Crook, ten miles south of the city. REMARKABLE ACTIVITY Prairie freighting and Missouri river navigation, were of importance before the construction of the Union Pacific railway, and the activity of the city in securing the freighting interest gave her an initial start over the other cities of the state. Council Bluffs was the legal, but Omaha the practical, eastern terminus of that great undertaking, work on which began at Omaha in December, 1863. The city was already connected as early as 1863 by telegraph with Chicago, St. Louis, and since 1861 with San Francisco. Lines of the present great Rock Island, Burlington and Northwestern railway systems all entered the city in the years 1867-1868. Meat-packing began as early as 1871, but its first great advance followed the removal of the Union stock-yards south of the city in 1884. South Omaha was rapidly built up around them. A Trans-Mississippi Exposition illustrating the progress and resources of the states west of the Mississippi was held at Omaha in 1898. It represented an investment of $2,000,000, and in spite of financial depression and wartime, ninety per cent of their subscriptions were returned in dividends to the stockholders. The original town site occupied an elongated and elevated river terrace, now given over wholly to business; behind this are hills and bluffs over which the residential districts have extended. CHAPTER XX OTHER DAMAGE FROM THE NEBRASKA TORNADO GREAT HAVOC IN NEBRASKA TOWNS--DESCRIPTION OF THE TORNADO--YUTAN A SUFFERER--THE TUMBLING HOUSES OF BENSON--CURIOUS TRAGEDIES--HOUSES TUMBLING ABOUT. The storm which lashed its way through Omaha on Easter Sunday had already carried havoc into other Nebraska towns. William Coon, president of an automobile company of Lincoln, Nebraska, gave a stirring description of the tornado as he saw it from the platform of an observation car on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad: DESCRIPTION OF THE TORNADO "For miles," he said, "it seemed as if the train were being pursued by the storm. We were approaching Ralston, Neb., when I first noticed the strange cloud mounting the sky. Before that it had been clear." Mr. Coon, from his observation car seat, saw the storm strike Ralston. "The passengers sat as if glued to their seats when the cloud struck," he said. "The engineer brought the engine to a stop and the passengers ran over to the wreckage of the houses. We could hear the groans of dying men and the wails and shrieks of injured women and children. I entered a house, or rather what had been a house, and beneath me lay a woman. I looked and I knew that she was dead. We got all of the injured out of the ruins and brought them to the train. "We were about to leave when our attention was called to a little house some distance from the others. It had been wrecked and moved from its foundation, but we found a mother and her little baby lying upon a bed uninjured. "The cloud wheeled and made towards South Omaha. We were not far behind, but our way was blocked by the debris the tornado had thrown on the tracks. Then, too, we stopped frequently to pick up the injured. There were some with their limbs torn off and all were cut and bleeding." A Chicagoan, who withheld his name, told of the scenes at Omaha when the train stopped there. He said: "I was just recovering from what I had seen on the train when we pulled into Omaha with the injured. It was night then, but such a night. The sky was lighted with a red glare, and the streets were filled with people who acted as though they were mad. Frequently the cries of the wounded, unloaded at the station, were drowned by terrific peals of thunder." It is difficult for any one who has not lived through a tornado to have any conception of what such a storm can do. Tornadic force means anything more than one hundred miles an hour. There have been instances where tornadoes have shaved off the stone sides of buildings as if they had been sliced away by a stonecutter. Forecaster Scarr, of New York, said that the tornado that wrought destruction in Nebraska may have been of the resistless kind that simply ground stone and brick to dust and carried up its electrified funnel the remnants of every building it struck. The tornado finally became almost like a mass of whirling steel, revolving faster than the blades of the swiftest planer and cutting everything to pieces in its course. YUTAN A SUFFERER The tornado first struck the little village of Yutan, southwest of Omaha. Yutan was practically wiped off the map and its population of four hundred left desolate. After the buildings had been razed the wreckage caught fire. "The town is burning! We'll all be killed!" some kept crying, and this added to the fears of the others. Many persons were killed and many injured. Waterloo, a village of about equal size to the northeast across the Platte River, suffered like damage. Wires were snapped off in all directions, and it took many hours to gather and circulate news of the disaster. Leaving desolation behind it the tornado swept at a rate of possibly one hundred and fifty miles an hour into Berlin. This little village had a population of about two hundred. The storm killed seven and injured thirty. The habitations were virtually wiped out. A church, an elevator and part of the residence of State Senator Buck were all that remained standing of what was a prosperous town. THE TUMBLING HOUSES OF BENSON On its way to Omaha the tornado struck Benson and Yutan. Benson is a thriving town of over three thousand. Here property damage was great and many persons were injured. As the houses began to tumble a little girl dressed in white started from one of the houses and ran down the street with her hands above her head. Just then the side of a house came soaring through the air, and shooting suddenly downward it struck the child and buried her beneath it. When the storm had passed, the injured were lying all about the streets. At Ralston, a suburb of Omaha, many were killed and much injury and destruction left in the path of the tornado. Late in the afternoon a copper-colored cloud was seen mounting toward the sky. The cloud grew rapidly and was traveling at tremendous speed. It assumed the form of a funnel and the air was filled with a curious, piercing noise. It swished across the railroad track and swept on its way toward the little town. Then the storm struck the town. Houses collapsed as though they were of paper. The roofs went sailing away and the sides fell in. Passengers in a passing train watched the destruction, and a cry of horror went up from every one. It was an awful sight. A farmer was standing on the doorstep when he noticed the funnel-shaped cloud. He called his wife and four children, and they all sought refuge in a cyclone cellar. Five minutes later their house went sailing away. CURIOUS TRAGEDIES Edward Mote, his wife and three children were sitting in their home chatting when the tornado suddenly carried them and their home to Paio Creek, one hundred yards away, and dropped them into the water. Mrs. Mote was drowned. Postmaster D. L. Ham, his daughter, Mrs. Kimball, and his grandchildren were standing in the doorway of their home when the wind struck. Mrs. Kimball and her two-year-old daughter Frances stepped outside the door, which slammed shut. Their bodies were found among the debris. H. E. Said and wife, bride and bridegroom of a month, were in the Ham house. Warned of approaching death by Mr. Ham, they sought solace in each other's arms. Thus they were found dead. Mr. Ham was slightly injured. HOUSES TUMBLING ABOUT There was a big threshing machine standing near one of the houses, and when the cloud struck it shot straight up into the air and was carried about forty rods. Houses were rolling and tumbling along the ground. A box car was carried along by the terrific air current for a quarter of a mile. When it split open six or seven men, who turned out to be part of a repair gang, dropped out. Some lay very still, while others feebly crawled about. A dozen other towns in the section of Nebraska surrounding Omaha were hard hit and many farming communities were destroyed. CHAPTER XXI THE TORNADO IN IOWA AND ILLINOIS MONSTER TORNADO SWEEPS ACROSS RIVER--DESTRUCTION IN IOWA--THE STORM-CLOUD OVER ILLINOIS--GALE AND FIRE IN CHICAGO. The monster tornado that wrought such havoc in Omaha leaped across the Missouri River and swished its wicked tail through Council Bluffs. Then it sped northeasterly, wrecking several villages before it finally disappeared. DESTRUCTION IN IOWA Reports from Mills County stated that it caused loss of life in every town in the county reached by telephone. Many deaths occurred at Glenwood and at Council Bluffs. Scattering towns all through the district reported one to two deaths. Eastern Council Bluffs suffered heavily, the storm breaking in the valley just east of the town proper and following the lines of the Milwaukee, Rock Island and Great Western railroads for a distance of a mile. The storm, which was accompanied by hail, rain, sleet, lightning and a gale which blew seventy miles an hour for a time, was felt most severely in the northwestern section of the city, where houses were overturned, windows broken, trees uprooted and electric light and trolley poles blown to the ground. Nearly fifty small fires resulted and hundreds of men, women and children fled from their homes in terror. Considerable damage was done to Des Plaines, Park Ridge and other suburbs. The property damage in the city and suburbs was estimated at more than $500,000. THE STORM-CLOUD OVER ILLINOIS Illinois also suffered severely from a tornado on the night of Easter, March 23d, and the following morning. The storm was less severe than that which struck Omaha, but the wind was blowing at a rate of seventy miles an hour for a time, and in Chicago alone thirty-two structures were damaged and a number of persons killed. Out in the state the heaviest suffering was at Rockford, Elgin, Wheaton, Bloomington, Galesburg, Peoria, Erie and Des Plaines. The aggregate loss in other communities was great. The storm covered all of Illinois north of Peoria. In Galesburg many buildings were moved from their foundations. Half a dozen residences in Peoria were demolished. All streams rose high and costly floods occurred along the Kankakee, Illinois and other rivers. GALE AND FIRE IN CHICAGO In Chicago all the elements seemed to meet Sunday night. The wind blew a violent gale; snow flew before it in some places; hail crashed windows in other parts of the city. Every available fire apparatus in the north and west sides of the city was called out to extinguish fires which broke out in business blocks and dwellings partly wrecked by the storm. A number of lives throughout the state were lost by this storm and the property loss was estimated at $2,500,000. A second storm on Monday caused great destruction in Mahanda. Thirty cars of a southbound Illinois Central freight train were blown from the track a mile north of the town. Two firemen were injured. CHAPTER XXII THE TORNADO IN KANSAS AND ARKANSAS THE "BLOWOUT" IN KANSAS--DAMAGE TO CROPS AND SOIL--DUST STORM COMES SUDDENLY--TORNADO IN ARKANSAS. Following a heavy downpour of rain on Easter Sunday night the atmosphere at Topeka, Kansas, was filled with dust until it had the appearance of a heavy fog. The dust came from the western part of the state where severe dust storms prevailed. In western Kansas the "blowout" has been as great a source of damage to the wheat fields as the drought or chinch bugs or hot winds. In the event of a drought there is always some hope of rain; with the hot winds there is hope of a cool spell; while the ravages of the chinch bugs may be checked in two or three ways. With the "blowout" there absolutely is no hope left, and not only is the wheat crop gone for good, but the ground sometimes is left in bad condition. The "blowout" is little understood by any one except the person who has witnessed a dust storm. Several years ago the "blowout" was much more common than now, although there is some damage in western counties every year from this source. DAMAGE TO CROPS AND SOIL The damage comes not only to the fields that have been blown out, but the adjoining fields, on to which the "drifting soil" has blown in great clouds and settled, have suffered likewise, and whole pastures have been known to be destroyed by the same means. For several years the farmers have been working night and day to devise some method to prevent the damage from "drifting soil," or "blowouts," as they are more commonly known. Senator Malone has introduced in the Kansas Legislature a bill providing that the county commissioners of any county where a "blowout" has commenced may call in agricultural experts and devise ways of stopping the drifting. The farmers of Thomas County held a meeting in Colby recently to discuss the situation and if possible arrive at some means by which the drifting of soil might be stopped from destroying the crops. These farmers reported that a strip of land between Colby and Rexford, about fifteen miles long and five miles wide, was blown out last season and in that territory not a single root of vegetation remained, and the top of the ground was as hard as the pavement on any street in Kansas City. The ground as far down as the plough went was completely blown away. When these fields were blown out the wheat was several inches high and before the wind came up the prospects were bright for a good crop. It took but a few hours for the wind to complete its work of destruction. The little town of Gem sits in about the center of the devastated land. DUST STORM COMES SUDDENLY A dust storm is not only unfortunate, but it is unpleasant in the extreme. It comes up sometimes very suddenly. The sun may be shining and not a cloud in sight. In less than five minutes the sun will be obscured from view and the air filled with dust, sand, gravel, sticks and other debris. Besides suffering from a dust storm, Kansas was stricken by floods due to heavy rain in some parts of the state. Hail and lightning accompanied the rain and did much damage. TORNADO IN ARKANSAS A tornado on Monday night, March 24th, eight miles southwest of Leslie, Arkansas, killed Mrs. John Couders and seriously injured John Couders and his son William, and James Trieste, his wife and three children. A tornado that passed over Clarksville, Arkansas, on Tuesday, killed Miss Ida Brazell and blew down many houses. At Rumeley five were killed and several injured. Couriers immediately sought aid, carrying news of great suffering in the mountains. Their tales were heart-moving. Lack of insurance, lack of funds and lack of knowledge of what to do when overtaken by calamity made the situation in small towns and in out-of-the-way places more pathetic than that of the unhappy homeless in some of the large cities affected by the tornado or the flood. To the latter relief was immediately sent--from neighboring places, from the whole country. The others, suffering no less, did not always even succeed in being heard. CHAPTER XXIII THE TORNADO IN INDIANA THE BRUNT OF THE STORM--MANY BURIED UNDER WRECKAGE--SLEEPERS HURLED FROM BEDS--FREAKS OF THE STORM--INJURED CARRIED TO HOSPITALS--ACUTE SUFFERING--RESCUE WORK--NATIONAL GUARD ON DUTY--TOWN OF PERTH LAID WASTE. The record of disaster by tornado was greater in Terre Haute than in any other place except Omaha. For two weeks before Easter a dense atmosphere hung over the city, which occasional heavy rainfalls did not clear. Then suddenly on Sunday night, about ten o'clock, the lightning flashed and loud peals of thunder followed. The tornado seemed to spring out of the southwestern part of the city as if it came from the swollen waters of the Wabash River. It first smashed into Gardentown, a suburb of the city, where a great many working people live, and every building in its path crumpled down before it. The lightning sped over building after building, setting many of them on fire. Parts of the Root Glass Company's plant were flattened. The end of the foundry room of the Gartland Factory, a solid brick wall eight inches thick, was caved in. Brick and stone structures suffered alike. MANY BURIED UNDER WRECKAGE In the streets were tangled masses of twisted electric wires spluttering out warnings of death for those who, careless of the first alarm, had rushed in to rescue those who had been buried under roofs and walls. Policemen, firemen and a host of volunteers struggled through the debris, sidestepping the live wires that had been torn from their fastenings. The heavy downpour of rain extinguished many fires, and the city of Terre Haute was thereby saved from destruction by fire. The large Greenwood public school was shattered and torn. The tornado, like a huge auger, bored into the roof and tore the shingles and rafters away and every window was hurled from its casing. This building was later converted into a hospital and morgue. SLEEPERS HURLED FROM BEDS In many instances death came to those who were asleep in their beds when their homes collapsed about them. In other cases the bodies were picked up as if by giant hands and hurled either to death or to terrible injury. Some were thrown more than a hundred feet. Above the roar of the wind and the rattle of the rain could be heard the screams of frantic women and children. The scenes were pitiful. Men and women were looking for loved ones, and when a torn and mangled form was taken from the debris, a woman's shriek would tell the story of a lost one found. [Illustration: Copyright by George Grantham Bain. Hundreds of buildings were demolished by the tornado at Terre Haute, Indiana, and many lives were lost] [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Scenes such as this could be duplicated hundreds of times to illustrate the demoniacal power of the tornado that laid waste the cities and towns through which it passed] [Illustration: THE REAPER] Charles Chadwick, a six-year-old boy, owed his escape to the fact that he left home, in the absence of his parents, to go to a moving-picture show. He was found walking along South Fifth Street after the storm, but his home could not be found as it had been blown away. Seven houses owned by Fred Housman, including the one he lived in, on the Lockport road, were swept away completely. Five wrecked autos were found on that road. Between Hulman and Voorhees Streets, in South Eighth, there was complete devastation. Twenty-five houses were leveled to the ground in this stretch. On the Lockport road, south of Idaho, at least sixteen houses were destroyed, but there were no fatalities and few were injured in this immediate neighborhood. MOTHER AND CHILD SWEPT AWAY Mrs. Flora Wood was hurled seven feet from her home, her small baby clasped in her arms. They were cared for at the Third United Brethren Church. The day-old baby of Mrs. Leonard Sloan was found in one corner of the bedroom of their home, while the mother lay in another corner. The entire top of the house had been blown away. William Rogers, Superintendent of the United Brethren Sunday-school, was buried beneath the walls of his home. He died while being carried to the school house. A large stone boarding house conducted by Mrs. Catherine Louden was wrecked and the aged woman and her son, Ralph Louden, were badly injured. Many houses were wrecked between Third and Fifth Streets in Voorhees Street. FREIGHT CAR USED AS HOSPITAL A freight car was pressed into service as a temporary medical quarter, when the fire wagons with the police and fire departments arrived on the scene. The live wires and burning debris made it impossible for the ambulances to get within two blocks of the scene, and the bodies had to be carried to safety by the rescuers. Six fires broke out in different parts of the devastated district, while the rescue work was being carried on. The strong winds still blowing fanned the flames and drove the rescuers from their work. FAMILY BURIED UNDER HOUSE Fred King, a glass blower at 2146 Dilman Street, was found with his wife and baby covered by the heavy timbers of their home that had collapsed when the storm struck it. King had been hurled from his bed a distance of ten feet. Two heavy timbers had almost crushed the life out of him. His wife was terribly injured. A few feet away the baby was picked up dead. The mother in her death struggles probably tried to save the baby by throwing it away from her. Near the Greenwood school several more were killed and many were injured. Mrs. E. J. Edwards, wife of a druggist, was knocked down by a heavy timber that broke her leg and pinned her to the ground. When she was found the woman was screaming for her child, and later the little fellow, eight years old, was picked up dead and carried to the Greenwood school building. Remarkable escapes were made in the twenty-four hundred block on South Third Street, some of the residents of the square being seriously injured. Mr. and Mrs. George Carmichael escaped from their home as it was blown away by the wind. Many families were separated in the excitement and for two hours after the storm had passed anxious husbands, mothers and children were searching the debris for absent members of their families. Many could not find the wrecked remains of their homes, so hopelessly tangled was the wreckage in the streets and on the sidewalks, and in several cases it was difficult even to find the place where the home had stood. INJURED CARRIED TO HOSPITALS Ambulances and moving vans were used to carry the injured to hospitals and as these were soon filled stables and homes were converted into temporary hospitals. More than two hundred persons were placed under the care of doctors, but many were only slightly hurt and in some cases women were found to be suffering merely from fright. These were soon dismissed to make room for those actually suffering. The scenes at the hospitals were pitiful. The agony of the sufferers was increased by the uncertainty as to the fate and condition of their families and friends. Little children, lying in bandages about the hospital, cried out in pain and fright. One little fellow with a big gash over his eye cried out for his mother as he was being taken to the operating room. His father sat near him and tried to lend what comfort was possible. A little girl in one of the large rooms of the hospital played and laughed on her bed while three anxious physicians worked with her sister, who had sustained a compound fracture of the leg and a dislocated shoulder. VICTIMS' FRIENDS CROWD TO FIND THEM Friends and relatives of people living in the storm devastated region soon crowded the halls of the hospitals, anxiously inquiring if those dear to them were among the victims. Many learned of the whereabouts of relatives or friends in the rooms of the hospital and crowded in to see them when this was possible, expressing joy that they had escaped from death beneath the falling walls and timbers of their homes. One man, when lifted on the operating table, was found to be dead. RESCUE WORK The rescue work was carried on rapidly, and Monday night all the homeless were cared for by charitable institutions and citizens, while the more seriously injured were carried to places where they could receive medical attention. In many cases private homes were turned into temporary hospitals. The scenes in the wrecked sections in Terre Haute brought tears to the eyes of the rescuers, whose attention often was called to the dying, trapped in the debris of their homes, by agonizing screams for aid. Some died before they could be freed from wreckage and others who were removed died afterward. NATIONAL GUARD ON DUTY A company of the Indiana National Guard was placed on duty in the devastated district early Monday morning while the work of searching the ruins for dead was still in progress. Over the entire area were scattered all kinds of household furniture, wearing apparel, beds and bedding. Looting began within a few moments and the police were at first too busy caring for the injured and removing the dead from the debris to protect property, but the members of the National Guard soon established an efficient patrol and the looters were not in evidence afterward. TOWN OF PERTH LAID WASTE The tornado which visited Terre Haute also struck Perth, in the northern part of Clay County, about ten o'clock and then vanished in the air. No lives were lost there and only one person was injured. Nearly every building in the little town of 400 population was wrecked or damaged. A brick store building, five two-story houses and seven cottages, the Congregational church, a school house, a three-story structure, barns and outhouses were completely demolished. CHAPTER XXIV THE TORNADO IN PENNSYLVANIA STORMS THROUGHOUT THE STATE--ALARM IN ALTOONA--FURIOUS WIND IN WILLIAMSPORT--HEAVY STORM IN SHAMOKIN--COLUMBIA IN DARKNESS--A VERITABLE TORNADO IN SCRANTON. The disturbances in the atmosphere which wrought such havoc in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana were also at work in Pennsylvania. Altoona, Williamsport, Marietta, Columbia and Scranton were among the towns suffering the greatest damage. The flood situation throughout the Keystone State will be treated in a later chapter. ALARM IN ALTOONA The storm struck Altoona on Tuesday, March 25th. With a crash that alarmed the entire neighborhood, eighty feet of the 162-foot steel stack at the Pennsylvania Central Light and Power Company's plant was blown down. The wind tore madly through the city and the rain fell in torrents. Many houses were unroofed and a number of smaller buildings were entirely demolished. No one was injured, but damage to the extent of at least $2,000 was reported. FURIOUS WINDS IN WILLIAMSPORT A heavy wind and rainstorm swept through Williamsport on the same afternoon, following a few hours of clear weather that came in the wake of twenty-four hours' rain. It unroofed a number of houses in the west end of the city, blew away the roofs of several cars in the Newberry Junction railroad yards, partially demolished a car inspector's office, sent twenty men in a panic from the second story of the New York Central offices, which they feared would be blown to pieces; blew in the front of a store on Grove Street and scattered canned goods for a block down the street and swept a path through a grove in the same section, prostrating a dozen giant oaks. Train service through Williamsport was seriously deranged all day Tuesday. A landslide that covered both tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad for sixty feet, with a mass of mud five feet deep, three miles east of Renovo, completely upset the train schedule on the Susquehanna Division. The slide occurred about seven o'clock in the morning, and it was not until eleven o'clock that the eastbound track was opened and passenger trains were let through. The westbound track was not cleared until the morning. While the blockade existed special trains were run from Williamsport. HEAVY STORM IN SHAMOKIN A terrific wind storm from the northwest swept through Shamokin Valley and Shamokin, followed by rain, which fell in torrents. This storm also occurred on Tuesday. Crops in country districts were torn up and badly damaged, while lowlands were flooded. Roofs on a number of barns and out-dwellings were blown away, and telephone and telegraph wires were put out of commission. COLUMBIA IN DARKNESS Columbia was struck by a severe electric storm accompanied by a downpour of rain on Tuesday evening. Lightning struck the local electric plant, doing considerable damage and putting the town in total darkness for the night. Many residents and storekeepers were compelled to resort to candles to help them out during the evening. A VERITABLE TORNADO IN SCRANTON In Scranton the storm of March 25th amounted to a veritable tornado. The Round Woods section of the city suffered most. The Clemons Silk Mill, owned by D. G. Derry, of Catasauqua, was unroofed and a 150-foot section of the roof was deposited on the adjacent engine room, partially demolishing the structure. The two sixty-foot smokestacks in the rear yard fell on top of the engine house. The roof of the warping department also fell on the engine house. The back walls of the warping department fell into the yard, while the upper part of the front walls fell in. The machines were six feet from the walls. The girls crouched under their machines and escaped serious injury. Several fainted and were carried out by foremen. Amelia Davis, a warper, was hit on the head by a brick as she hurried from the second floor. Tessie Carey, of Minooka, sustained a black eye and lacerations of the left side of the face by falling bricks. Gus Minnick, a repairer, working in the engine room, had just set his dinner pail where one of the stacks fell. There were altogether one hundred and fifty girls at work, but outside of bruises and scratches they were uninjured. The property damage was about $20,000. Much silk on the looms was ruined. A large tower was blown off a school. Three houses in the neighborhood were also badly damaged by the wind. The storm caused destruction in all parts of the city and adjoining places. Trees and fences were blown down in all parts of the city and in the adjoining country. The storm came from the west and its approach was preceded by an inky black sky which, coupled with thoughts of the havoc of Sunday's storm in Nebraska, caused a general consternation. A heavy downpour accompanied by thunder and lightning followed the tornado. CHAPTER XXV THE FREAK TORNADO IN ALABAMA FREAKS OF THE WIND--PITIABLE CHAOS--THE HERO OF LOWER PEACHTREE--EXTENT OF DAMAGE. Weird tales of horror and misery attended the tornado which swept over the little town of Lower Peachtree, Alabama, on Friday, March 21st, wrecking the entire village. After the tornado had passed, corpses with hair stripped from heads and divested of every thread of clothing were picked up. Naked men and women ran screaming in the semi-darkness. Chickens and hogs stripped of feathers and hair wandered in bewilderment among the ruins. Nailed unerringly into trees cleaned of their bark were pickets from fences that had been swept away. Where once had stood a big steamboat warehouse near the river was left the floor of the building standing upon which were the entire contents of the warehouse untouched by the terrific whirls of the wind. In the backyard of the Bryant home, buried in debris, was a chicken coop, not a splinter awry. Within it was a goose sitting meekly upon a dozen eggs which she had not left. The blast wrenched an iron bed from a house and wrapped it around a tree trunk as no human hand could have done. Crossing the river from the town it had desolated it bore away half of a soapstone bluff many feet in height and left the other half standing unmarred. Miss Mary Watson, a visitor in the Stabler home, was crossing a hallway when the tornado struck. She was swept through the hallway and to the rear of the house, where she was blown against a tree and her back broken. PITIABLE CHAOS In the business neighborhood everything was swept away except two grocery stores. They were thrown open as dispensaries of free provisions. No semblance of order could be brought from the pitiable chaos of the wrecked town until Sunday afternoon, when cool heads prevailed and the survivors and visitors who offered assistance were regularly organized into committees to attend to the needs of the sufferers. Troops from Fort Oglethorpe, with hospital corps and supplies for the relief of the sufferers arrived Sunday night and administered to the needs of the injured and homeless. THE HERO OF LOWER PEACHTREE Tributes to the bravery of Professor Griffin, a survivor of the tornado, were paid by many who visited the scene. Professor Griffin, after having been blown hundreds of feet from his home, returned bruised and bleeding to the center of the town and worked unceasingly to relieve the injured and to quiet survivors, insane with grief and excitement. Peter Milledge, whose wife and two children perished when their home was destroyed, went mad. EXTENT OF DAMAGE The Red Cross agent who investigated the situation at Lower Peachtree on Wednesday, March 26th, reported that sixty-eight were injured in the tornado which swept that section and that two hundred were destitute. CHAPTER XXVI THE FLOOD IN NEW YORK HUNDREDS OF HOMES IN BUFFALO FLOODED--THE PLIGHT OF ROCHESTER--VALLEY OF THE GENESEE PARALYZED--DRIVEN FROM HOMES AT OLEAN--WORST FLOOD IN HISTORY OF HORNELL--LAKE COUNTRY PARALYZED WITH FEAR--WATER COVERS PART OF BINGHAMTON--GLENS FALLS BRIDGE DOWN--DISTRESS IN FORT EDWARD--BIG PAPER COMPANY IN TROUBLE--HOMES ABANDONED IN SCHENECTADY--HIGH WATERS IN TROY--WATERVLIET FLOODED--ALBANY IN THE GRIP OF THE FLOOD. A tremendous downfall of rain, March 24th and 25th, developed some of the worst floods known in fifty years. Vast areas of New York were under water and hundreds of homes were swept away. On the night of March 25th the entire area of South Buffalo was under water, street car traffic was suspended and rowboats were plying the streets. The Buffalo River and Cazenovia Creek had both overflowed their banks with a rush at ten o'clock in the morning, and the dwellers in the South Park section of the city had no chance to escape. Hundreds of homes were soon flooded. Firemen were sent out in boats to rescue those who desired to leave. Hundreds of workers were marooned in distant parts of the city, unable to reach their homes. Within the city limits of Buffalo big manufacturing plants suffered $150,000 of damage. Many big oil tanks were overturned and crashed against buildings. Train service throughout the city was practically at a standstill, and miles of track east and south of the city were washed away. The main line of the Erie Railroad, between Buffalo and New York City, was washed out in many places. THE PLIGHT OF ROCHESTER Not since 1865, when Rochester, then a city of 50,000, suffered immense damage by floods, has the city faced such a serious situation as it did on the night of Friday, March 28th. Half the business section was under water, which in some sections was five feet deep. Water commenced to pour into Front, Mill and Andrew Streets early Thursday evening, and all through the night merchants worked to get their goods to higher ground. The big warehouse of the Graves Furniture Company in Mill Street was flooded so quickly that thousands of dollars damage was done to the goods. The following morning it was impossible to get through these streets except in boats and rafts, and the work of salvage was continued in this way. The newspaper offices of the _Post Express and Democrat_ and the _Chronicle_ had their basements flooded and the presses put out of commission. The Pennsylvania line into Rochester, which uses the bed of the old Genesee Canal, was put out of commission. The Erie and Lehigh Valley lines to villages to the south were blocked by the floods for several days. The only fatality of the flood occurred at six o'clock Sunday evening, when a boy who was paddling over the flooded meadow of the Genesee Valley Park was carried out into the river. The canoe was swept over the dam at Court Street. VALLEY OF THE GENESEE PARALYZED The whole valley of the Genesee was more or less paralyzed. As early as Wednesday the villages of Mount Morris and Dansville, in the Genesee River Valley, were under several feet of water, and the terrified folk who lived in the lowlands were hurrying to places of safety, abandoning their homes. Commerce was soon at a standstill, and conditions continued to grow more serious. They were in some localities worse than at any time since 1865. The washing out of bridges and the flooding of roads practically cut the villages off from the outside world. DRIVEN FROM HOMES AT OLEAN One thousand persons were driven from their homes at Olean by the high waters of the Canisteo and Hornell. John Cook was drowned while attempting to rescue others. Four oil tanks were floating about the city of Olean, and the coating of oil on the water made the danger from fire serious. The water was from three to ten feet deep. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. Showing what was once the town of Lower Peachtree. The six X's denote the places where houses stood before the tornado, in the heart of the main residential streets] [Illustration: Copyright by International News Service. One of the victims of the tornado at Omaha was picked up by the tornado and his corpse left suspended in the broken and twisted limbs of a tree] WORST FLOOD IN HISTORY OF HORNELL Following thirty hours of continued rain, Hornell, a small city in Steuben County, suffered the worst flood in its history. It swept down the Canisteo Valley, completely inundating the greater portion of the city of Hornell and half a dozen villages within a radius of ten miles. A thousand homes were flooded. The Canisteo Valley for a distance of forty miles was under water, and the situation was appalling. Roads were washed out, bridges gone and much property destroyed. The fire in every furnace in the flood district was out, and suffering was acute. LAKE COUNTRY PARALYZED WITH FEAR The lake region in the central western part of the state suffered heavily from floods. The villages of Marcellus, Camillus and Marietta, west of Syracuse, were threatened with extinction. The earthen bank, which adjoins the huge dam of Otisco Lake, weakened and, it was feared that if the flood conditions did not improve the bank would give way. Auburn was seriously threatened by the rising of Owasco Lake. The dam furnishing power to the Dunn and McCarthy shoe shops broke in the center and it was feared the rest of the structure would go down. Pumps were at work continuously in the Auburn water works at Owasco Lake to keep the engine and boiler pits free of water. The Lehigh Valley Railroad along Cayuga Lake, between Auburn and Ithaca, was under water for a distance of nine miles south of Kings Ferry. No trains were running on that branch. A small bridge at Farley's Point, near the lower end of Cayuga Lake, was washed away. An avalanche of mud and stones buried the railroad tracks near Kings Ferry. The incessant rains of two days raised the little creeks in the vicinity of Interlaken to torrents. Many bridges were washed out. Canandaigua Lake reached its highest level in sixteen years. Streets in Canandaigua were flooded. Floods due to breaks and overflows in the Erie Canal at Waterloo, Seneca Falls, Port Bryon and elsewhere, caused thousands of dollars loss. The Seneca River was over its banks. WATER COVERS PART OF BINGHAMTON At Binghamton, on the Susquehanna River, water covered the entire northwestern residence section of the city. All the manufacturing establishments along the river banks were closed. Boats were forced into use in the residence districts and the Fire Department, with three steamers, endeavored to keep down the water in the basements in the business section. GLENS FALLS BRIDGE DOWN But more serious than the conditions anywhere else in New York were those along the Hudson River Valley. Damage estimated at not less than $300,000 was caused by high water near Glens Falls, resulting from heavy rains, which fell for nearly a week. The steel suspension bridge, two hundred feet in length, across the Hudson between the city and South Glens Falls was destroyed. All records for high water were broken, the bridge being carried out after the steel supports underneath had been constantly pounded for hours by logs dashed against them by the raging waters. At Hadley, one of the plants of the Union Bag and Paper Company was completely flooded, and water was pouring from every window. It was feared that the structure might be destroyed. All paper mills in the section were closed down. DISTRESS IN FORT EDWARD At Fort Edward village $50,000 damage was done. About one hundred families were driven from their homes to seek shelter in higher parts of the village. Many parts of the village were submerged and in the main business section five feet of water filled the cellars on the river side of the street. The water had reached the windows of the first stories of many houses in the lower sections. Trains of loaded coal cars were used to hold down the monster railroad bridge of the Delaware and Hudson Company at this village while big jams of logs threatened to carry it out. BIG PAPER COMPANY IN TROUBLE At least 150 feet of the big dam of the International Paper Company at Corinth was carried out and the mill partly flooded. A small part of the same company's dam at Fort Edward was also carried out. The International was one of the heaviest losers. HOMES ABANDONED IN SCHENECTADY At Schenectady, just west of the Hudson on the Mohawk, houses on twenty-five streets were abandoned by their occupants. The entire lower section of the city was submerged. The whole Mohawk Valley was swept by the worst flood in its history. The Groff dam near Herkimer broke and several houses were carried away. A dam at Canajoharie threatened to go out. Three great canal gates at Fort Plain were swept away. The Amsterdam reservoir, which covers 680 acres, was weakened and a patrol was stationed there. HIGH WATERS IN TROY So great was the flood in Troy, on the Hudson below the entrance of the Mohawk, that martial law was practically declared. Members of two military companies patrolled the streets, relieving the tired firemen and police, many of whom had been on continuous duty for forty-eight hours. Mayor Burns did not sleep for two nights, taking charge in person of the Public Safety Department. Fires added to the seriousness of the flood situation and firemen were kept busy all day answering alarms in the flooded district. Damage estimated at thousands of dollars was done by the fire. For the first time in the history of Troy the newspapers, with one exception, were unable to go to press. One publication printed a four-page pamphlet on a hand press. Another was printed in Albany. Hundreds of families were rendered homeless, and relief stations in various parts of the city were filled with refugees. The city faced an epidemic of typhoid, and every effort was made to guard against it. WATERVLIET FLOODED In Watervliet the water in many places measured ten feet deep and the police station and post-office were flooded. One-third of Green Island was submerged. In Rensselaer, across the river from Albany, much damage and suffering were caused. The losses of logs in the regions to the north amounted to many thousands of dollars and the damage in the lumber district of Albany was heavy. ALBANY IN THE GRIP OF THE FLOOD On March 27th the river at Albany was seventeen feet above normal and was still rising. The power plants were put out of commission, street car traffic practically suspended and schools and factories closed. The city's filtration plant was threatened. The south end of the city was under water. Railroad service was crippled, mails delayed and telegraph and telephone service hampered. There was much damage to property, but no loss of life. The damage in Albany was estimated at $1,000,000. Governor Sulzer was informed that about $3,500,000 will be necessary to repair the embankments along the old and the new barge canal locks and dams. CHAPTER XXVII THE FLOOD IN PENNSYLVANIA TRAINS IN NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA TIED UP--MEADVILLE SUBMERGED--SHENANGO VALLEY IN DISTRESS--PANIC IN NEW CASTLE--BEAVER RIVER AT FLOOD--THE RISING ALLEGHENY AT WARREN--FEARS OF OIL CITY--GRAVE SITUATION OF PITTSBURGH. Many dead, hundreds ill, thousands homeless, and many millions of dollars' worth of property destroyed--such was the record of the flood in the Keystone State. By Tuesday, March 25th, railroad travel in northwestern Pennsylvania was seriously tied up on account of washouts, due to recent rains. Corry became the western terminal of the Erie Railroad, trains west of Corry being abandoned. Between Corry and Titusville were four washouts, tying up the Pennsylvania Railroad. MEADVILLE SUBMERGED In Meadville the situation was even worse. Once again Mill Run and Neason's Run, combined with the floods of French and Cussewago Creeks, overflowed the city. With the exception of a few of the high sections, the entire city was under water, which in some sections reached to the second story of homes. Business places on lower Chestnut, Water, Market and South Main Streets and Park Avenue were submerged, water running through the main rooms of the hotels and other business places. The waters had a clear sweep of nearly half of the city, and never before had the four streams combined for such a gambol. SHENANGO VALLEY IN DISTRESS Throughout the Shenango Valley hundreds of families were imprisoned in their homes and frantic efforts were made to rescue the marooned persons from their dangerous positions. At Sharon the greatest flood in the history of the city was experienced. Thousands of persons were thrown out of employment and the property loss was enormous. The entire town was inundated and a dozen or more bridges were wrecked. The loss of the United States Steel Corporation at Farrel, a suburb, was estimated at $200,000. The torrent swept swiftly upon Sharon. The crest reached a height of fifty feet. The released wall of water, gathering buildings, stacks of lumber, hundreds of logs and a mass of debris in its van as a giant battering ram, rolled like a giant hoop into the center of the thriving milling town. It followed the course of the Shenango, which bisects the city. After the flood unsuccessfully rammed the double line of steel buildings the torrent passed further to the center of the city. One pier of a concrete bridge, erected two years before, which spans Silver and Porter Streets, cracked off like a matchstick. The impact carried the block of concrete, weighing several tons, for a distance of a quarter of a mile. Fire added to the terror of the flood when Wishart's planing mill, on Railroad Street, was discovered to be in flames Tuesday afternoon. The steamers of the fire companies could not be taken close enough to pump water from the swollen Shenango. There was only one recourse--to take the supply of drinking water in the city's reservoir or permit the fire to burn and possibly jeopardize all the wooden buildings within a radius of a mile. Sharonites actually cheered the firemen as they saw their drinking water vanish. PANIC IN NEW CASTLE The flood waters of the Shenango caused great distress in New Castle and near-by places. The water put the lighting plants and the city water station out of commission. Fifteen hundred homes were submerged. Thousands had to flee. BEAVER RIVER AT FLOOD The Beaver River rose high and the entire valley from the Ohio River north was flooded. The towns of New Brighton, Fallston and Beaver Falls suffered most, and there was some damage at Rochester. Traffic on the railroads was suspended at daybreak, and not a trolley car was running in the valley. THE RISING ALLEGHENY AT WARREN At Warren and points all down the length of the Allegheny River to Pittsburgh, flood conditions were still more serious. For Warren itself the worst was feared. Hourly the flood situation grew worse. On Wednesday the water was rising at the rate of four inches an hour. The river threatened to cut a new channel through the south side of the city and scores of men were piling up sandbags to prevent this. [Illustration: MAP SHOWING SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA THAT WERE FLOODED] Captain U. G. Lyons assumed charge of the situation, and under his direction a life raft composed of barrels was made and launched in the Allegheny River. Thanks to the raft, not one life was lost from among the many who floated down the stream on debris. FEARS OF OIL CITY Oil City, on Oil Creek near its entrance to the Allegheny River, was in a serious plight. Oil Creek overflowed its banks and covered the portion of town that was devastated by the great fire and flood of 1892. The town was in a condition bordering on panic and business was suspended. More than seventy-five persons were removed from their homes in wagons, the water being from five to six feet deep. Railroads suffered heavily. Newspapers and industrial plants at Oil City were shut down because of flooded power rooms. Fires were prohibited and railroad locomotives were ordered to extinguish their fires to avoid any danger of igniting the oil. GIRL DROWNED AT FRANKLIN One death and extensive property damage were caused in the vicinity of Franklin by the flooded condition of the Allegheny River and French Creek. Every one in the flooded district was ordered to extinguish all fires, as benzine from the Titusville refineries was floating on the rising waters. GRAVE SITUATION OF PITTSBURGH In Pittsburgh the flood situation became serious by the evening of March 26th, and continued to grow rapidly worse. The gauge at Point Bridge shewed twenty-six feet at eight o'clock, four feet above the danger point, and the rivers were rising steadily. Rain was falling throughout the western watershed, and every stream in western Pennsylvania assumed the proportions of a raging torrent. In the Pittsburgh district 100,000 were idle, the workmen having been driven from the manufacturing plants by high waters. Ten miles of streets were converted into canals. In parts of the North Side the streets were under twelve feet of water. The policeboats patrolled the flooded district, carrying coal and food to families marooned in the upper floors of their homes. Pittsburgh's suburbs down the Ohio were all partly inundated. Ambridge, Woodlawn, Sewickley, Coraopolis and McKees Rocks residents were forced to desert their homes or take to the upper floors. Downtown the pumps were working in most of the hotels, theatres and office buildings. Business was nearly at a standstill. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of store goods was ruined. The Exposition Music Hall was holding four feet of water. No trains were running to the flooded regions. At least a score of railroad bridges had been destroyed, and miles of tracks carried away. The railroad damage contributed largely to the estimated total damage of $50,000,000. TOLL OF THE FLOOD AT SHAMOKIN In Central Pennsylvania, especially along the Susquehanna, the flood gripped many towns. At Shamokin mountain streams overflowed their banks, and in some instances water flowed down mine breaches and found its way to the lower levels of collieries. Mine pumps were run to their greatest capacity to prevent inundations. The Shamokin Creek, in Shamokin Valley, overflowed its banks in the lowlands and spread over acres of ground on either side of the creek channel. COLUMBIA AND MARIETTA FLOODED More than three inches of water fell at Columbia in a period of twenty-four hours. All the streams overflowed and much damage was done. Trains on the Columbia branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad ran through eighteen inches of water. The storm was accompanied by high winds, which unroofed scores of buildings. At Marietta, after a storm reported as the worst in many years, the flood situation was grave. The river rose high, fields were flooded and residents on Front Street were obliged to move to second stories. Two men upset in a boat along the York County shore while after ducks were drowned. DESTRUCTION AND DAMAGE IN MINING TOWNS Many of the mining towns in Pennsylvania were distressed by unprecedented floods. At Scranton the Lackawanna River overflowed its banks in various places. Richmond No. 1 and No. 2 collieries and the Delaware and Hudson "slope" colliery in North Scranton were compelled to shut down by reason of the water flooding the engine rooms. The Ontario and Western tracks at Providence and the Delaware and Hudson tracks at Dickson City were washed out. Water surrounded the Frisbie and the Bliss silk mills in Dickson City and the girls were marooned for the night. Six hundred people living on "Hungarian Flats," in the northern end of the city, became panic-stricken when water broke through the streets, and, taking their cattle and household goods, they fled to the hills at Throop. At Wilkes-Barre the Susquehanna reached the flood stage. The water went over the lowlands on the west side and Wilkes-Barre was cut off from many of its suburban towns, all traffic being stopped. The towns of Edwardsville, Kingston, Westmoor and West Nanticoke were partly under water. Five hundred families were driven from their homes and forced to seek safety. The water rose so rapidly that it was necessary to rescue women and children in rowboats. Considerable damage was done to property, but there was no loss of life. In Westmoor, Edwardsville and West Nanticoke the water reached the first floors of the buildings. Families were compelled to depart and leave their furnishings to be damaged by the water. As a result of heavy rains the water rose high in many of the mines of the Hazleton region. Railroad men were warned to be on guard for washouts. The Beaver Brook and Hazle Mountain mines closed on account of high water. The mules were removed from the Ebervale, Harleigh and Beaver Brook workings. At Shenandoah the storm that raged for two days did untold damage to the mines. At Kehley Run Colliery the water main that supplies the boilers with water was washed away and the colliery was compelled to shut down. The fires were hurriedly drawn, thereby preventing an explosion. At Bast Colliery, near Girardville, the water rushed into a mine breach and flooded the workers. It was with difficulty the miners escaped. Electric-light, telephone and telegraph wires were down in Shenandoah, and many homes in the lowlands were flooded. The trolley and steam roads were hampered by the heavy rains, and in many places tracks were washed out. Heavy floods caused the entombment of six men at the Buck Run Colliery, at Mount Pleasant, and a rescuing party worked up to their necks in water to get the men out alive. The softness of the earth caused the sagging of a breast, which was followed by a sudden rush of water, cutting off the escape of the entombed men. CHAPTER XXVIII THE FLOOD IN THE OHIO VALLEY PERIL IN THE OHIO VALLEY--DISTRESS AT WHEELING--PARKERSBURG UNDER WATER--KENTUCKY TOWNS SUBMERGED--IMPERILED TOWNS IN INDIANA--SHAWNEETOWN SUBMERGED--CAIRO FACING CRISIS--SITUATION HOURLY WORSE. While Dayton, Columbus and other cities of the Middle West were passing through the worst floods in their history, the Ohio River was preparing new perils. All along its course it carried destruction. DISTRESS AT WHEELING At Wheeling, as early as March 26th, several persons were drowned and many narrowly escaped death when a freshet swept down Wheeling Creek through Barton, Ohio. Two days later, with the crest of the flood past, Wheeling turned to take up in earnest the task of caring for her thousands of destitute and homeless. Although the loss in money ran into millions, few of those able to aid seemed to think of anything but the alleviation of want and suffering. Before noon Mayor Kirk had raised more than $6,000 for the relief fund, and most of the wealthy men and women of Wheeling had contributed. Churches, schools, clubs, auditorium, public halls and hundreds of private residences were thrown open to those driven from the lower quarters. PARKERSBURG UNDER WATER More than half the business district of Parkersburg and part of the residence section were under water on March 28th, with the Ohio River still rising. The gas, electric and water plants went out of commission soon after noon, and street cars stopped operations. All the newspaper plants were flooded out except that of the Parkersburg _Sentinel_, whose editorial force was taken to the building in boats, and worked on the second story while water was flowing through the rooms below them. A single page, printed on a proof press and containing the flood news of the Associated Press report, was delivered to newsboys in boats, who sold each copy at a fancy price, as the printing of the edition was limited to two a minute. KENTUCKY TOWNS SUBMERGED The crest of the Ohio river flood reached Louisville April 1st, with a stage of about forty-five feet. The railroad situation in Louisville became acute. The Louisville, Henderson and St. Louis suspended traffic entirely. The Louisville and Nashville from Cincinnati could reach the city only by detouring through Jeffersonville, Indiana, crossing the swollen Ohio on the Big Four bridge and returning via the Pennsylvania bridge to reach the Louisville and Nashville station, which was used also by the Pennsylvania trains. [Illustration: Copyright by American Press Association. Scene showing a section of Omaha entirely wrecked. On the left is all that remains of Idlewild Hall. At this spot a large number of people were killed] [Illustration: Copyright by the International News Service. A typical scene at one of the relief stations. Here men, who a few hours before had been millionaires, stood in line with their fellow citizens, quite as much dependent on these relief stations for sustenance as paupers. Orville Wright, the famous aviator, was one of the men in the bread line] Western Kentucky points continued to report rising water. Owensboro, Henderson and Wickliffe were centers of refuge for inhabitants of the lowlands, who fled before the flood. There were more than four thousand refugees at Wickliffe. At Paducah on April 3d the flood situation was rendered doubly grave by the fact that smallpox had broken out in the camp of colored refugees on Gregory Heights. Five hundred on the hill had been quarantined. IMPERILED TOWNS IN INDIANA The government relief boat "Scioto," in command of Lieutenant Hight, U. S. A., towed a barge load of provisions into Lawrenceburg, Indiana, on March 31st, to find but forty of the five thousand homes there not under water. When the boat proceeded to Aurora conditions were found almost as bad, with but five hundred homes free from the reach of the all-engulfing waters. The south levee at Lawrenceburg broke at 2.50 P. M. on March 29th. A wall of water poured through the opening and went raging through the center of the town, tearing up all before it. Houses were crushed like eggshells and the wreckage was carried four miles along the Miami to the fill on the main line of the Big Four. The break came when it was least expected, but the residents were warned to leave town, and no lives were lost. Water stood six feet deep in the streets. JEFFERSONVILLE AND EVANSVILLE FLOODED At Jeffersonville two hundred convicts from the Indiana Reformatory worked for nearly two days on the levee during the flood week, and through their work it was possible to save the town from the Ohio River. A committee of citizens of Jeffersonville perfected arrangements for a banquet to be given in honor of the gray-garbed men who saved their homes. The entertainment was planned for April 13th, at a cost of $1,000. Evansville citizens were alarmed at the continued rise of the Ohio, and all movables were carried to places of certain safety. On April 1st, the Government took charge of the flood situation. Captain W. K. Naylor hastened to commandeer steamboats and patrol the river to pick up flood sufferers. Mayor Charles Heilman left for Mount Vernon to take charge of rescue work in that section. Thirty thousand persons within a radius of ninety miles around Mount Vernon were calling for help on April 4th. The Howell levee, protecting two hundred families in Ingleside, between Evansville and Howell, gave way and the Ingleside district was inundated with depths of from six to ten feet. Minutemen had been posted all long the dangerous dike, and when the water began to pour over the top an alarm was sounded and all escaped. SHAWNEETOWN SUBMERGED Shawneetown, Illinois, was entirely cut off from the outside world. On the night of April 1st, the water in the streets was twelve feet deep. After another twenty-four hours, all that was left of Shawneetown were the few substantial brick and stone buildings behind the main levee, and they were considered unsafe. Less than one hundred persons remained in the former town of three thousand, and they were perched in the second and third stories of Main Street buildings, structures on the highest street in the town. A strong wind completed the destruction begun by the opening of the levee. CAIRO FACING CRISIS As usual, Cairo feared the worst from the on-sweeping flood of the Ohio River. The Cairo executive flood committee late on March 30th sent an appeal to President Wilson asking for aid for Cairo and towns nearby: "The worst flood ever known in the Ohio Valley and the Mississippi is now expected. All previous records at Cairo and south may be broken in a few days. We are making every effort in our power to take care of local situation, but the river communities near us should have assistance. Boats, sacks, food and other supplies are needed. May we not have the help of your great office for this district?" The Big Four levee, which protected the "drainage district," went out on April 1st. It was about five miles north of the city. Accordingly, as workmen were able to battle no longer with the levee situation in the drainage district, they were brought into Cairo and set to work along the river front. The state troops were sent in squads of five, each accompanied by a policeman, to visit the rendezvous of men who were unwilling to or had refused to work. All places of business which did not handle goods needed for the comfort and necessities of the people were closed in order to give opportunity to get out the strongest working force possible. Employees of closed concerns responded willingly for duty and reinforced to a great extent the work along the river front. The Rev. M. M. Love, of the Methodist Church, who has had charge of relief work in former years, was again at the head of the relief committee. He was given about twenty assistants and a temporary hospital, which was arranged on a large wharf boat in the river. The Seventh Regiment, which had headquarters in St. Mary's Park, moved its equipment into another large wharf boat. This placed all the quarters of troops on boats. About one half of the population had left the city. They were chiefly women and children. SITUATION HOURLY WORSE On the evening of April 2d, the city was in a state of anxiety never before experienced. The river gauge at 6.30 o'clock stood at 54.4, a stage three-tenths of an inch higher than any previous record. The inundation of the drainage district north of Cairo was complete. The flood waters were on a level with those in the Ohio River, and were prevented from flooding into the Mississippi only by the Mobile and Ohio levee. There were from 7,000 to 9,000 acres from seven to twenty feet under water. The greater number of industrial plants in the section were submerged up to the second-story windows, and many houses were completely under water. For more than a mile beyond the Illinois Central tracks and for several miles to the north from the big levee surrounding the district from Cairo there was nothing which was not touched by the vast field of water. Offers of relief, which were made by the Chicago Association of Commerce and the city of Peoria to Cairo, on April 5th, were accepted. The Chicago organization offered eight boats and sixty men to man them. From Peoria came word that a steamboat equipped for life-saving purposes was waiting for a call to Cairo. CHAPTER XXIX THE FLOOD IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY FLOOD OF THE MISSISSIPPI INEVITABLE--SOUTHEASTERN MISSOURI THREATENED--BAD BREAK IN LEVEE AT HICKMAN--STRENGTHENING THE LEVEES--MEMPHIS IN PERIL--DANGER ALL ALONG THE LINE--RIVER AT RECORD STAGE--RISING HOPE--A NATIONAL PROBLEM. On March 30th the Mississippi Valley was facing one of the worst floods in its history, and the steady advance of the river threatened a large section of country. The breaking of the levees along the Mississippi itself, an inevitable result of the great floods in tributary streams, had already begun. The district below St. Louis was a foot or more above the flood stage, although the big rise had not arrived. Preparations were being made to withstand a flood equal to that of 1912. Although the levees had been made higher in some places, it was not to be expected that they would be strong enough all along the river from St. Louis to the sea. In the lower sections of the Mississippi Valley it was feared there might be a repetition of the recent disasters in Ohio. At Charleston, Missouri, on March 30th, the flood conditions were growing more acute every hour. The city was filled with refugees from all directions. Belmont and Crosno, on the Mississippi River, south of Charleston, were submerged, and the residents fleeing to places of safety. East Prairie, Anniston and Wyatt, on the Cotton Belt Railroad, were shut off from the world and obliged to receive mail through the Charleston post-office. SOUTHEASTERN MISSOURI THREATENED The St. Louis and San Francisco embankment between Kilbourne and Kewanee, in the extreme southeastern part of Missouri, was cut early on April 5th at the direction of the railway officials to prevent the flooding of a large section of the track if the levee should break at a weak spot. The gap permitted the drainage of a large volume of overflow. One of the most thrilling of the stories was brought by Captain S. A. Martin and Captain H. A. Jamieson, of the Sixth Missouri National Guard. They were rescued in a launch from a section of levee which broke away at Bird Point, Missouri. Thirty-six of their men, they said, were on the levee section, which was two hundred yards long and ten feet wide, and was floating down the Mississippi. Commander McMunn, of the Naval Reserves, at once arranged for a steam launch and started out to rescue the Missouri soldiers. There was a swift current in the river, and the safety of the men caused their commanding officer much anxiety. BAD BREAK IN LEVEE AT HICKMAN The levee at Hickman, Kentucky, broke shortly after midday on April 4th, after a night of continuous rain, followed by a driving up-stream wind, flooding the factory district but causing no loss of life. The break, however, did not relieve the river situation at other points, because the water running through the break there was turned back to the main stream by the Government or Reelfoot levee, two miles below the town. The section flooded was occupied by several factories and the homes of hundreds of workmen. STRENGTHENING THE LEVEES All along the Mississippi men were at work strengthening the levees. The Government on March 29th prepared to rush 20,000 empty sacks to Modoc and other weak points in the St. Francis levee district. They were loaded on barges belonging to the Tennessee Construction Company of Memphis. The boats, which were from one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty feet in length, were used to house Arkansas convicts sent from Little Rock to do levee work. This trouble was felt in many places when the rising tide threatened life and property. Industrial anarchy and chaos reigned, and overwhelming, paralyzing fear seized the people. MEMPHIS IN PERIL On April 5th the protection levee along Bayou Gayoso gave way, flooding a small residence section in the northern portion of Memphis. The break occurred at a point just west of the St. Joseph Hospital, and within an hour several blocks of houses in the poorer section of the city had been flooded. Before night a section of the city three blocks wide and six to nine blocks long was covered with from three to six feet of water. DANGER ALL ALONG THE LINE The banks at Hopefield Point early began to cave in. More than an acre slid into the water just south of the point. The main shore line began to crumble, indicating that the oncoming high water would wash more than half the old point away. Gangs of men were busy working the north levee in Helena, Arkansas. Major T. C. Dabney, of the upper Mississippi levee district, sent out crews to raise the lowest places. Major Dabney did not anticipate great trouble, but said he believes in being prepared. A break in the levee in Holly Bush and Mounds, Arkansas, in April, 1912, put all the west bank lines out of commission for ten days. Miles of track were washed away. Fearing a repetition of this, the railroads and shippers agreed to operate a daily boat between Memphis and Helena. The first break in the main Mississippi River levee occurred on April 8th on the Arkansas side, just south of Memphis. Three counties were flooded by water which poured through a big cut in the wall. No loss of life was reported, the inhabitants having been warned in time that the levee was weakening. RIVER AT RECORD STAGE It was predicted that the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi, to the Gulf would go two feet higher than the highest stage reported in 1912, according to a flood warning issued by Captain C. O. Sherrill, United States Army Engineer, on April 2d. In 1912 the maximum of the river gauge at New Orleans showed nearly twenty-two feet. At that height, and even with the tide reduced by several immense crevasses, waters came over the New Orleans levees at a number of places, despite the fact that they were topped with several rows of sandbags. Captain Sherrill ascribed the unprecedented flood entirely to the rains in the river bed caused by last year's crevasses. He issued orders to have the levees from Vicksburg to Fort Jackson on both sides raised above the flood stage of 1912, and men and material were sent to all points along the river to combat the expected high water in the lower Mississippi. Colonel Townsend, head of the Mississippi River Commission, ten days previously predicted a stage as high as that of 1912, and sent out warnings to all engineers in the valley. It was acting upon his advice that Captain Sherrill began to assemble barges, quarter boats, bags, material and tools to be sent to points between Vicksburg and New Orleans for possible emergencies. In explaining why the river from Vicksburg to the mouth of the river would be higher than last year, Captain Sherrill pointed to the fact that crevasses both below and above the stretch in 1912 lowered the river there, whereas upon the present rise, with levees expected to confine the water, the crest naturally would be higher. Because of this fact the brunt of the high water was expected to strike that stretch, and any possible trouble to be looked for could be expected there, although the levees between Old River and Baton Rouge might also be in danger. RISING HOPE The hopes of the people began to rise as they learned that the entire Mississippi levee system was to be made two feet higher than the record of the flood last year. It was expected the work would be completed before the crest of the Ohio River flood reached the lower Mississippi Valley. On receipt of reports that two hundred families had been driven from their homes in the lowlands of the Atchafalaya River, near Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, owing to high water, and were in a destitute condition, local relief committees from New Orleans rushed a large quantity of supplies to that section. The appeal said if immediate aid was not received it was feared many would die of starvation. Inhabitants of the district were principally foreigners, who had reclaimed a part of their truck farms, which were destroyed by last year's flood. Their newly planted crops were abandoned. A NATIONAL PROBLEM It is a curious fact that the Mississippi has done as much to kill the old doctrine of states' rights as any other influence. For instance, Louisiana, after spending thirty millions of dollars on river problems, was quite willing to concede that the Mississippi was a national affair and that Federal aid was altogether desirable. But it is plain that the resources of the individual states as well as of the nation must be utilized for the prevention of floods. This is a task so vast that a united effort is required. CHAPTER XXX DAMAGE TO TRANSPORTATION, MAIL AND TELEGRAPH FACILITIES GREAT DAMAGE AND WASHOUTS--TICKETS SOLD SUBJECT TO DELAY--REPORTS OF TRACKS GONE--PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD A HEAVY SUFFERER--HEAVY LOSS ON BALTIMORE AND OHIO--ESTIMATED DAMAGE--FLOOD PLAYED HAVOC WITH MAILS--GENERAL PROSTRATION OF TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE WIRES. Only one railroad was working between New York and Chicago on the night of Wednesday, March 26th. That was the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern. Over the line were speeding the trains of the New York Central and allied lines, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Erie, passenger and freight service combined. Many trains were derailed in flooded territories. The following bulletin was given out at the office of W. C. Brown, president of the New York Central Railroad: "The main line of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway to Chicago is not affected to any extent by the heavy rains, and trains are departing practically on schedule between New York and Chicago. "The situation south of the Lake Shore line, however, is serious and no trains are being started out of Cleveland for Indianapolis, St. Louis, Dayton, Cincinnati and intermediate points. Through passengers for Columbus are being transferred at New London, Ohio, and handled through to destination." TICKETS SOLD SUBJECT TO DELAY Trains went out of the Grand Central Station of New York just the same, but no through western ticket was sold unless the purchaser was informed that it must be accepted subject to delay. When the Southwestern Limited left at four o'clock its ordinary Cincinnati sleeper had been renamed the Columbus sleeper and the Cincinnati man had to take a chance. When its other western expresses went forth the other Ohio, St. Louis and southern sleepers were all running on conditions. REPORTS OF TRACKS GONE The Erie Railroad west of Olean, the main line, was out of commission. According to reports received, there were at least one hundred and twenty washouts along that line farther west, with many bridges gone. Some of the washouts were a mile in length and with the tracks had gone the roadbed. Twenty trains bound west were stalled at various points, but all were in big towns, so the passengers did not suffer. PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD A HEAVY SUFFERER The Pennsylvania Railroad suffered more damage than any other. The service west of Pittsburgh was badly crippled. All through trains from the East to points on the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway west of Pittsburgh were temporarily discontinued. [Illustration: RAILROAD MAP OF THE FLOODED DISTRICT IN INDIANA, OHIO AND WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA] On the lines East, in the vicinity of Pittsburgh, Oil City, Erie and Buffalo, serious washouts developed, aggregating in length on the Allegheny Division, about two thousand five hundred feet of main track. Benjamin McKeen, general manager of the Pennsylvania Railroad's lines, west of Pittsburgh, informed Broad Street Station, Philadelphia, on Thursday, that all lines were blocked on both passenger and freight service, except between Pittsburgh and Cleveland by way of Alliance. "We are gradually getting our lines of communication established so that our information seems a little more definite, although the lines are working very unsatisfactorily yet at many points. "We have now gotten the Fort Wayne road open from Chicago to Mansfield with single track over the points where the breaks were, and we are actively at work, both east and west, for a distance of about seventy miles between Canton and Mansfield, where there are four bridges gone and quite a number of washouts, and the best figures we have now are that we will probably get the Fort Wayne line open by Monday morning. "We have found out definitely that our bridge at Piqua is still standing, although there are vast washouts at each side of it. We also know definitely that our bridge at Dayton is gone; also the four-span bridge over the Muskingum River at Zanesville is gone and there is some question as to whether our bridge over the Scioto River at Circleville is gone or not, as we have no definite information on this. "We have men and material all assembled and starting actively at work here and there wherever the water has receded sufficiently to permit us." On the Pennsylvania Railroad alone the loss amounted to millions of dollars. There was not only the tremendous loss due to the loss of tracks, roadbed and bridges, but also the loss of passenger and freight revenues. Everywhere it was conceded that the tie-up was the most serious and extensive in the history of the road. [Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros. Hundreds of substantial buildings were lifted from their foundations and piled up like broken cigar boxes simply by the awful sweep of the wind] [Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood. Some of the most prominent society women and girls in Dayton shouldered hoes and shovels in the work of cleaning up the city] HEAVY LOSS ON BALTIMORE AND OHIO The financial loss to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad aggregated millions of dollars in the destruction of property alone. President Willard was asked on Thursday for an estimate of the damage wrought by the floods. His reply was: "I cannot tell. I haven't an idea. I wish I could say that it would be $2,000,000, but I cannot. "I know that half a dozen bridges on the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton have been destroyed and bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio have been washed away. We have lost one of our largest bridges on the main road to Chicago, at Zanesville, Ohio, and it will probably be six months before we will have another completed bridge there, although we will have some bridge there soon. We hope to have our main line to Chicago open in twenty-four hours, and our main line to Cincinnati open in the same time. We cannot tell when we will have our line to St. Louis open." ESTIMATED DAMAGE Conservative estimates of the damage to railroad property in the flooded Middle West, plus the loss entailed by the suspension of traffic, ranged from $10,000,000 to $15,000,000. The entire railway system of Ohio and Indiana was practically put out of business for five days by the floods in the Middle West. To repair and replace the railways affected by this disaster, railway officials stated, would practically wipe out the surplus earnings of many railroads. In other cases dividends were threatened. The reason was, they said, that all such damage must be retrieved out of current earnings and could not be charged to capital. As an illustration of how the railroads spend money in such an emergency, it may be said that the Pennsylvania sent one hundred and fifty expert bridge builders out West from New York in one day soon after the flood. These men received record wages; they traveled in sleepers, with special dining cars. The company was sending steam-shovels and pile-drivers on limited trains and a first-class laborer could get a private compartment quicker than could a financier. "There will be improvements in railroading through all the districts every day from now on, but there will not be anything like a restoration of former conditions for months," said one railroad official. "It takes time to rebuild steel bridges, especially as the big steel plants have been experiencing a little trouble of their own." FLOOD PLAYED HAVOC WITH MAILS Storm, flood and fire in the Middle West played havoc with the United States mails. Postmaster-General Burleson announced on March 26th that the destruction wrought by the floods in Ohio and Indiana was so serious that it would be ten or twelve days before a regular mail service could be resumed with the remote districts. Reports showed that never before in the history of the service had there been such a serious interruption to the mails on account of floods. There was practically no local service on the railroads in the territory bounded by Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Terre Haute and the Ohio River. Mails to New York from points in Kentucky and Tennessee, from Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, Ohio, and all points south of the Ohio River came by way of Washington and were from five to seven hours late. The Arkansas and Oklahoma mails traveled by way of Chattanooga and Memphis. The representatives in the field were directed to be in constant communication with the department at Washington and to make every effort to supply the people in the flood districts with mail as rapidly as arrangements could be completed. Mails for distant points which regularly passed through the flooded sections were detoured north and south, resulting in unavoidable delay. GENERAL PROSTRATION OF TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE WIRES Never before in the history of the United States was there such a general prostration of telegraph and telephone wires as during the great flood. Chicago was "lost" to the East for part of a day, and it was found impossible to reach that city via the South. Throughout eastern Ohio service was paralyzed, and such few wires as could be obtained were flickering and often going down. The Western Union and Postal Telegraph Companies in New York announced on March 26th that they did not have a wire working in the thousands of square miles roughly marked by Indianapolis on the west, Pittsburgh on the east, Cleveland on the north and the Ohio River on the south. The Postal had but two wires working between New York and Chicago and these were routed by way of Buffalo. None of its wires south of Washington was working. An army of 10,000 men was sent into the region to repair the wires, but their work was almost impossible because of the inability of the railroads to transport their equipment. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company had the only facilities in the stricken sections and turned them over without reserve to the press associations, believing that in this manner the public could best be served. At the offices of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the Union Telegraph Company in New York, on March 28th, joint announcement was made as follows: "In the use of the necessarily limited wire facilities reaching the flooded districts of Ohio and neighboring states due importance is being given to messages to and from public officials, relief associations, the press and to such urgent messages as have to do with measures of relief, believing that thus the public will be best served until full service can be restored. "There has been no time during the past week when the combined facilities of the two companies have not afforded communication with the larger cities and towns, but local conditions render it impossible in many cases to deliver telegrams or to make local connections by telephone." CHAPTER XXXI THE WORK OF RELIEF PRESIDENT WILSON PROMPTLY IN DIRECTION--WASHINGTON ASTIR AS IN TIME OF WAR--BACKING OF CONGRESS PLEDGED--AMERICAN RED CROSS TO THE RESCUE--RAILROADS BRAVELY HELPING--RELIEF FROM STATES AND INDIVIDUALS--AN ARMY OF PEACE. The sympathetic response of the American people never fails to measure up to the summons of any calamity. Relief is plentiful and prompt. The awful story of the flood and tornado was no sooner told than the machinery of government, the organized forces of the Red Cross and individual efforts in every city within reach were co-operating to provide succor and supplies to the sufferers. Tents for shelter, cots, food by the trainload, hospital and medical supplies, were almost immediately on their way to the stricken district. WASHINGTON ASTIR AS IN TIME OF WAR The Federal Government was alive to the needs of the flooded districts of the Middle West with activity that almost surpassed the hustle and bustle of war times. Every department from the White House down, directed its energies toward the relief of distress and suffering in Ohio and Indiana. As the result of appeals from Governor Cox, the American Red Cross and others, President Wilson issued an appeal to the nation at large to help the sufferers. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - President Wilson's Messages For the Relief of the Stricken States To Mayor Dahlman, of Omaha: "I am deeply distressed at the news received from Nebraska. Can we help you in any way? "WOODROW WILSON." To Governor Ralston, of Indiana, and Governor Cox, of Ohio: "I deeply sympathize with the people of your state in the terrible disaster that has come upon them. Can the Federal Government assist in any way? "WOODROW WILSON." To the Nation: "The terrible floods in Ohio and Indiana have assumed the proportions of a national calamity. The loss of life and the infinite suffering involved prompt me to issue an earnest appeal to all who are able in however small a way to assist the labors of the American Red Cross to send contributions at once to the Red Cross at Washington or to the local treasurers of the society. "We should make this a common cause. The needs of those upon whom this sudden and overwhelming disaster has come should quicken everyone capable of sympathy and compassion to give immediate aid to those who are laboring to rescue and relieve. "WOODROW WILSON." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Indicating the gravity of the situation in Ohio, a telegram from Governor Cox was received by Secretary of War Garrison asking for food and medical supplies and tents for the sufferers. Secretary Garrison promptly took steps to meet the emergency, and the supplies requested were sent by express to Columbus. The two experienced officers who handled the Mississippi flood situation, Majors Normoyle and Logan, were also ordered to proceed to Columbus to aid Governor Cox. All troops in Western New York and all available troops in the Central Department were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to proceed to relief work in Ohio and Indiana, if needed. President Wilson issued his appeal for funds for the Red Cross following a conference with Miss Mabel Boardman, chairman of the relief board of the organization. The Secretary of the Treasury enlisted promptly in the relief movement, and the public health service and the life-saving service and marine hospital surgeons available were placed at the command of the state authorities. The public health hospitals at Detroit, Cleveland, Louisville, Cairo, Evansville and St. Louis were thrown open for the care of the flood victims. Surgeons P. W. Wille, of the Marine Hospital at Cleveland, was instructed to go to Columbus to co-operate with the state board of health. Dr. J. O. Cobb, of the Chicago Marine Hospital, was ordered to Indianapolis. BACKING OF CONGRESS PLEDGED The President was in his office all day Wednesday, March 26th, in close touch with the situation. He apprised the chairmen of the Senate and House appropriations committees that the government was going ahead with emergency expenditures on the assumption that Congress would back up the administration later. Both promised hearty support, and orders went out on every side for a gigantic work of relief. Major P. C. Fauntleroy was sent to Columbus to handle the medical supplies. Nine medical officers and fifty-four hospital corps men went from the Department of the East carrying a big supply of surgical dressings, anti-typhoid prophylactics and the complete "reserve medical supply" comprising hundreds of drugs sufficient to treat 20,000 patients for one month. Precautions against the spread of disease were to be handled by sanitation experts. Life-saving crews were ordered from Louisville to Dayton and from Lorain, Ohio, to Delaware, Ohio, and the public health service distributed its agents over the afflicted districts. SUPPLIES ON THE WAY By Friday more than double the apparently necessary medical supplies for the flood sufferers were on their way to Ohio and Indiana, a full quota of supplies having been started from the army supply warehouses at St. Louis and a second consignment from Washington. From the naval stores a huge consignment of wearing apparel and bedding for the sufferers was sent to Columbus. These supplies were started from the naval stores at New York. Paymaster-General Cowie made the arrangements under orders from Secretary of the Navy Daniels. The shipment included 12,000 blankets, 7,000 watch caps, 50,000 pairs of light weight drawers, 80,000 light weight undershirts, 30,000 heavy weight drawers, 30,000 heavy weight shirts, 4,200 navy jerseys, 15,000 khaki jumpers, 24,000 pairs of dungaree trousers, 8,000 overcoats, 24,000 pairs of shoes and 15,000 pairs of woolen socks. In addition to the clothing supply the Navy sent also 300,000 rations on the way to Columbus and Dayton. Paymaster Nesbit and Paymaster's Clerk Conell were in charge of the distribution. Assistant Secretary Roosevelt supplied them with $25,000 in currency with full authority to expend it for such supplies and services as they might find necessary. For a time President Wilson considered going himself to the flood districts; but reports from Secretary Garrison and others were so encouraging that he decided it was unnecessary. "Refreshed by the tears of the American people, Ohio stands ready from today to meet the crisis alone," wrote Governor Cox of Ohio on March 31st. After seeing the situation well in hand in Dayton, Secretary Garrison returned to Cincinnati and then proceeded to Columbus. By April 2d he was able to return to Washington. AMERICAN RED CROSS TO THE RESCUE From the first day when Miss Mabel T. Boardman conferred with President Wilson, the American Red Cross and the government worked hand in hand. At headquarters of the National Red Cross funds from all quarters of the Union rained in on the officials. Friday night the Red Cross headquarters had received more than $190,000 in cash and drafts, and basing their estimates on telegraphic advices from other points, they were assured that their total already exceeded $350,000. Boston sent in $32,000, Cleveland $33,000 subject to call. Baltimore notified Miss Boardman to draw on the local chapter of the order for $7,000. New York reported $75,000 in hand and the District of Columbia chapter had more than $25,000 ready for instant use. Henry C. Frick sent a check for $10,000 and John D. Rockefeller $5,000, with the suggestion that more was ready when needed. With Miss Boardman at the head of the party the Red Cross relief train left Washington Friday over the Chesapeake and Ohio, bound for Columbus. The train comprised six express coaches, two of which were loaded with steel cots for use of the homeless. Two others were loaded with bedding and clothing supplies and two with foodstuffs of all sorts. Hurrying to Omaha to assist in relief work in that city, Ernest P. Bicknell, of the American National Red Cross, halted in Chicago. Informed of the serious situation in Indiana and Ohio, he telegraphed to Omaha and received word that the relief work was well in hand. He then decided to go to the flood-stricken districts in Indiana and Ohio. Reaching Columbus, Mr. Bicknell had soon established Red Cross headquarters and the corps under his direction was working in closest harmony with the state flood relief committee, the Governor of Ohio and the United States army and navy relief officials. The disaster in the Middle West was the greatest the Red Cross Society was ever called upon to deal with. The amount of suffering entailed by the flood far exceeded that of the San Francisco earthquake and fire. RAILROADS BRAVELY HELPING Bravely the railroads worked their way into the stricken territory. While a blizzard raged in Ohio from Cleveland to Cincinnati, with the temperature down to twenty-eight degrees above zero, the railroads--which means all the railroads in every section, the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Baltimore and Ohio, and their allied lines--threw into the battle thousands upon thousands of men, trainload after trainload of machinery, and money rewards as a stimulus for the repair of miles of washed-out tracks and shattered bridges. Every division superintendent of every line in the district, his assistants, usually with some high executive officer of the system in control; every man and boy able to handle a pick or shovel or crowbar, to carry his end of a girder or drag a coil of rope, was out on the job. It was not for any selfish purpose that the roads threw this immense power into the work. Their object was to open up rail communication with the desolated cities, towns and villages and send relief trains with bread, with blankets, with medicines, doctors and nurses. It was not a race for money. "We will carry every pound of supplies for the devastated district free over any lines" announced the Pennsylvania, and it added free passage for doctors, nurses and every other good Samaritan. "No charge," was the echo of the New York Central, and that order went to every freight and passenger agent of the big system everywhere. The Baltimore and Ohio, the Erie, and every other line followed in an instant. The railroads helped all they could. RELIEF FROM STATES AND INDIVIDUALS If the nation was generous and prompt in its relief, neighboring states and individuals were not less so. Governors in many states and mayors of many cities, following the noble example of the President, issued appeals for help. Mayor Dahlman of Omaha and Governor Morehead of Nebraska bravely declined the help offered by President Wilson and others for sufferers from the tornado; but the flood-stricken districts, for whom recovery was far less easy, in many cases were obliged to appeal for aid. From towns throughout Ohio and Indiana came desperate cries for help, and to all of them a sympathetic nation listened and responded. AN ARMY OF PEACE If the great calamity stirred the hearts of the nation with pity, so did the prompt and splendid relief inspire enthusiasm. Even though the despatch of United States troops to the scene of devastation in the West lacked legal sanction the whole country unanimously approved the movement which thus itself becomes a signal to all nations, and a corroboration of the truth that the American is not hidebound by fantastic traditions when some serious achievement is to be done. Our soldiers in this case for the nonce became missionaries. Under the leadership of the Secretary of War, the troops carried clothes, food, medicaments, tents, blankets, and in short all the paraphernalia necessary to succor the distressed, assuage the pangs of suffering and restore normal conditions within the wide areas battered by the destructive elements. This peaceful use of our fighting men brings into realization the vision so strongly cherished by John Ruskin--the vision of the time when soldiership should develop into a form of modern knight-errantry, and the "passion to bless and save" should inspire those who were formerly drilled only in the exercises of conquest and slaughter. Americans may well be proud to reflect that this era, which a few decades ago seemed but the chimerical dream of a doctrinaire, has found its pledge and promise in the generous endeavors of our standing army. "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war." In narrowing the dimension of suffering, and lending a strong hand to those overwhelmed by calamity, our soldiers raised up the defeated from the sore battle of life. CHAPTER XXXII PREVIOUS GREAT FLOODS AND TORNADOES THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR--THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY--THE MISSISSIPPI ON A RAMPAGE--DESTRUCTION IN LOUISVILLE--THE ST. LOUIS TORNADO. Floods are not usually so dramatic and awe-inspiring as tornadoes, but they are even more destructive of life. The Johnstown flood of 1889, however, was dramatic and even spectacular--so swiftly did it come and so certainly could it have been avoided. It destroyed 2,235 lives, swept away ten millions of dollars worth of property, and carried unutterable grief into countless happy homes. Lying in a narrow valley were eight villages, aggregating 50,000 to 80,000 inhabitants, the largest of the eight being situated at the lower end, with about 25,000 inhabitants. Far up in the mountain, 300 feet above the chief village of the valley, hung a huge body of water. As nature had designed it, this had been a small lake with natural outlets, which prevented it from being a menace to the valley below. But the hand of man sought to improve the work of nature. An immense dam, 110 feet in height, held back the water till the lake was more than quadrupled in size. THE SWOLLEN WATERS These were the conditions on May 31, 1889. There had been heavy rains for several days. The artificially enlarged lake was really a receiving reservoir of the water-shed of the Alleghany Mountains. Every little stream running into it was swollen to a torrent. The lake, which in ordinary times was three and a half miles long, with an average width of over a mile, and a depth in some portions of 100 feet, was swollen into a volume of water of enormous proportions. Between it and the valley below there was a dam nearly 1,000 feet wide, 100 feet high, ninety feet thick at the base and twenty at the top. This barrier gave way and the water rushed into the valley in a solid wave with a perpendicular front of forty feet. It swept away the seven smaller villages like straw, hurled them, together with uncounted thousands of their inhabitants, upon the larger village, and then, with the accumulated ruin of the whole eight, dashed upon the stone bridge at the bottom of the valley. The bridge withstood the shock, and a new dam, as fateful with horror as the first had been, was formed. It held back the water so that the whole valley was a lake from twenty to forty feet in depth, with the remains of its villages beneath its surface. The wreckage of the ruined villages, piled from forty to sixty feet high, against the bridge, spread over a vast area, with countless bodies of the living and the dead crushed within it and struggling for life upon it, caught fire, and burned to the water's edge. When the flood came--a terrific punishment for the carelessness of the past--the doubters saw their homes washed away, their dear ones drowned; in some cases they did not even live to see the extent of the havoc wrought. Whole families were drowned like rats; houses were shattered to pieces or floated about on the water like wrecked ships. Intolerable was the suffering that followed--grief for the loss of dear ones, actual physical hurt, hunger and want. The problem for many in the eight towns was to begin life all over--and that without hope. Immediate suffering was in some measure prevented by the speedy help rendered by neighboring towns, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the entire nation. But nothing could undo the fearful damage of the past. THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY Great as was the Johnstown flood, it shrinks into insignificance before the appalling hurricane-brought flood of Galveston, which devastated the city and swept thousands of its inhabitants to their death. There is little in the new city which arose to remind one of the awful tragedy--unless it be the strong sea-walls constructed to keep out future floods. The storm came over the bay from the gulf before daylight Saturday morning, September 8, 1900. At 10 A. M. the inundation from the bay began, but even then no alarm was felt. The wind took on new strength and the waters were carried four blocks through the business section into Market Street. Ocean freighters dragged anchors in the channel and were soon crashing against the wharves. The wind reached the hurricane stage, blowing at something like one hundred and twenty miles an hour, and buildings began to crumble. By this time the bay water had reached a high point on Tremont Street. The gulf, however, was quiet. Then a remarkable thing happened. The wind suddenly shifted from the north to the southeast, the hurricane increased in fury, and, picking up the waters of the gulf, hurled them with crushing force against the four miles of residences stretched along the beach. There was nothing in the way of protection, and houses were knocked over like so many toy structures. By three o'clock the gulf had spread over the city and mingled in the streets with the waters of the bay. The violence of the wind continued. Higher and higher rose the water. Buildings began to collapse. Shrieks of agony were heard. One family of five took refuge in four different houses, abandoning each in turn just in time to save themselves. Hundreds, struck by the flying wreckage, fell unconscious in the water. SCENES OF HORROR When night settled down over the city the whole bay side was in process of destruction. Wreckage was thrown with the force of a catapult against houses which still offered resistance. Electric light and gas plants were flooded and the city was in darkness. In the cemeteries the dead of years were washed from their graves and carried across to the mainland. A tramp steamer was carried over to Virginia Point, then sent like a shot through three bridges. The steamers "Alamo" and "Red Cross" were dropped upon Pelican Flats, and when the waves retreated were left high and dry upon the sand. Yachts and sailboats were driven over the mainland and could be seen in the grass far beyond Texas City. Railroad cars loaded and empty were carried into the bay, and miles of track torn up and washed away. THE RECEDING WATERS Between ten and eleven the wind fell and the water began to recede, almost as rapidly as it had come. Before daylight the streets were clear of water, but covered with slime and choked with wreckage. It was not necessary to go to the beach to find the dead. They lay thick along the streets. A Committee of Public Safety was organized, and all men, white and black, were asked to assist in the removal of the dead. The superstitious negroes refused, but were finally compelled at the muzzle of guns to gather in the bodies. It was suggested that the burials be made at sea. Society men, clubmen, millionaires, longshoremen and negroes took up the work, loading the bodies on drays and conveying them to barges. The dreadful procession lasted all of Sunday and Monday. Three barge loads of dead were taken out to sea and given back to the waves. The weights, however, were not properly attached, and soon the corpses were back in the surf, washing on the beach. After the storm the weather turned milder. By Monday the city reeked with the smell of a charnel house and pestilence was in the air. The bodies of dead animals lay in the streets; the waters of the bay and gulf were thick with the dead. All the disinfectants in the city were quickly consumed. An earnest appeal for more was sent to Houston and other places. Tuesday a general cremation of the dead began. Trenches were dug and lined with wood. The corpses were tossed in, covered with more wood, saturated with oil, and set on fire. Later, bodies were collected and placed in piles of wreckage, and the whole then given to the flames. Men engaged in this horrible task frequently found relatives and friends among the dead. The men wore camphor bags under their noses, but frequently became so nauseated that they were forced to stop work. The fire purified the air, however, and disinfectants began to come in in answer to the appeal. The streets were covered with a solution of lime, and carbolic acid was showered everywhere. GALVESTON NOT THE ONLY SUFFERER And not only Galveston was a sufferer in this storm. For fifty miles along the coast, on both sides of the city, the storm found victims. The waters of the sea were carried inland ten miles all along the coast. The total loss of life in Galveston and near-by places amounted to 9,000; the property damage to $30,000,000. THE MISSISSIPPI ON A RAMPAGE "The Mississippi River in flood," says a recent writer, "takes everything with it. To watch the endless procession which the swift current carries by is to see all the properties of tragedies. The Mississippi in flood is the despoiler of homes. Houses come floating down the stream, outbuildings, furniture and myriads of smaller things, tossed by waves in the 'runs' or sailing on serenely in the broader stretches. Great trees go by. They are evidence that the Mississippi has asserted its majesty somewhere and has cut a new channel to please itself, eating away bank, growth, and all. Carcasses of cows and horses and dogs float down the stream, carrying a pair of buzzards, those scavengers who have so much work to do after the floods have receded. It is a terrible and a melancholy sight." THE FLOOD OF 1912 In April and May, 1912, the Mississippi reached a height never before equaled, and the great river went tearing through levee after levee on its resolute course to the sea. The river reached a maximum width of sixty miles, killed 1,000 persons, rendered 30,000 homeless, and caused damage to the amount of $50,000,000. By April 2d, Columbus, Missouri, was buried under fifteen feet of water, and in some parts of the town residences were wholly submerged. New Madrid was not much better off, and Hickman, Kentucky, looked like a small city of Venice. President Taft sent a hurry call to Congress for half a million dollars, and within fifteen minutes after his message was read, the lower house had passed an appropriation bill and sent it to the Senate, which laid everything else aside to give it right of way. By April 5th, the Reelfoot Lake district, covering 150 square miles of Kentucky farm land, was an inland lake and the river at Cairo, Illinois, had risen to nearly fifty-four feet, the average depth from St. Louis to New Orleans being ordinarily but nine feet. Cairo was for days surrounded by the torrents from the Ohio and the Mississippi beating at the levees, while to the north of the city factory buildings were immersed to their roofs or even entirely covered. By April 7th, the levee in Arkansas, seven miles south of Memphis, had a gap a mile long and Lake County, Tennessee, had no ground above water but a strip six miles long by four wide. By the middle of the month, the levees at Panther Forest, Arkansas; Alsatia, Louisiana; and Roosevelt, Louisiana, had succumbed, and a thousand square miles of fertile plantations were from five to seven feet under water. FARMS AND PLANTATIONS SUBMERGED Rain-storm after rain-storm caused the stream to swell, undermined dikes, and broke new crevasses all the way from Vicksburg to New Orleans. Hundred of farmers and their families, a majority of them negroes, were cut off and overwhelmed by the flood. For several weeks the people of New Orleans were under the fear that a large part of the city might be submerged and ruined. Near by vast sugar plantations were under water, while the prosperous town of Moreauville was inundated. Refugees' camps were established and relief work began. Many vessels assisted the army. Pitiful stories of famished and suffering victims of the flood were told, and the miles and miles of desolated country struck horror to the heart. They have a pregnant saying down there: "Come hell and high water." Some day, it is to be hoped, we are going to take the force out of that expression. DESTRUCTION IN LOUISVILLE Disaster by tornado is not so easy to avoid as disaster by flood. One of the most destructive storms of recent years was that which swept over Louisville, Kentucky, in the evening of March 27, 1890, killing 113 persons, injuring 200, and destroying property to the amount of $2,500,000. The storm came from the southwest and cut a path through the heart of the city three miles long and nearly a half mile wide. Nearly every building in its course was leveled to the ground or otherwise damaged. Outlying towns were also devastated by the storm, and flood calamities occurred simultaneously along the Mississippi. About eight o'clock the storm was raging with tremendous force. The rain fell in sheets, the lightning was constant and vivid, the wind blew ominously. The streets were soon miniature rivers, and telegraph and telephone poles began to snap. By 8.30 there was alarm all over the city, but before any measure of safety could be adopted the body of the mighty tempest dashed itself on the houses along Fifteenth Street and tore itself diagonally across the city, leaping the river at Front Street to Jeffersonville. The passage across the city was not continuous and in uniform direction, but the storm lifted itself up, fell with furious force on a block, then rolled over into adjacent blocks, when it rested a moment, then dashed furiously up and forward again, launching to the right and left with demoniacal whimsicality. Everything it touched suffered. Church steeples fell, crushing beneath their weight the buildings over which they had stood guard. Wrenching warehouses to fragments the tornado passed to the river front, leaving a broad swath of wreckage and dead bodies. The belt of destruction extended from the west side of Seventh Street as far as Ninth and Main Streets, and an equal width across to the point where the city was first touched. Along this path were demolished homes and wrecked business houses--the annihilated work of years. On the river the storm found full sway. The tawny water of the swollen Ohio became a lake of seething foam. Steamboat after steamboat was driven from its moorings and tossed like a drop of spray in the boiling stream. CITIZENS MADDENED WITH GRIEF Almost immediately after the storm had passed thousands crowded into the distressed district; maddened men and women fought and struggled through the debris trying to find some loved relative or friend. From every side arose the groans of the wounded and dying. About the Falls City Hotel groups thronged waiting for news. Fires burning in several places added to the horror, though no great damage was done by these. Crushed and blackened ruins marked the spot of the Union Depot, which collapsed during the storm, crushing a train which was just ready to depart. Every building, tree and telegraph pole in the district struck was leveled, and almost all the railroads entering the city were obliged to suspend all passenger and freight traffic. RESCUE, RELIEF AND RECONSTRUCTION The work of rescuing the mangled dead was bravely carried on the following day and before many hours the American genius for organization, order and action had met the demands of the overwhelming disaster. While the dead were still lying awaiting burial, plans were made to rebuild and resume again the work of life. The local police and militia kept order. The city authorities and board of trade organized relief corps. The brave spirit of self-reliance triumphed over the appalling calamity. Money for relief was sent to the city from many sources, and it is interesting to note that the citizens of Johnstown, who had suffered from the great catastrophe of the previous year, were among the first to offer help. They knew what desolation meant. THE ST. LOUIS TORNADO A far more terrible story of death and destruction is that of the St. Louis tornado of May 27, 1896, which lasted but half an hour, killed 306 persons and destroyed property to the amount of $12,000,000. The same tornado visited many places in Missouri and Illinois, causing an additional property loss of $1,000,000. The sky grew black at 4 P. M., the sun was eclipsed in the whirl of driving dust and dirt, mingled with the branches and leaves of trees, the boards of buildings and other loose material torn off by the wind. At times the wind blew eighty miles an hour. In that mad half hour, while property was crumbling and hundreds of human lives being snuffed out, thousands of maimed and bleeding persons were added to the awful harvest of devastation. FREAK DESTRUCTION Over in East St. Louis, where the houses were all frail structures, the destruction was greatest. The great Eads Bridge was twisted all out of shape, and freight cars were tossed to and fro, tumbled into ditches and driven sometimes into the fields many yards from where they had stood. The great Vandalia freight house fell in a heap of utter ruin, burying beneath it thirty-five men who had there sought refuge. The swath cut was three blocks wide and four miles long. The top of the bridge was knocked off as well as the big abutment. The Martell House was blown into the Cokokia Creek and many were buried in the ruins. To add to the horrors of the night the electric-light plants were rendered incapable of service, and the gas lamps were also shut off, leaving the city in utter darkness. Fire broke out in several portions of the city, and the fire department was unable to make an effective fight because of the choked condition of the streets and the large number of firemen who were engaged in the imperative work of rescuing the dead and wounded. ANNIHILATION The City Hospital, which fortunately survived the storm, was filled to overflowing with the injured. In addition to those who were killed in their houses and in the streets, scores of dead were carried away by the waters of the Mississippi River. Many steamers on the levee went down in the storm. From the "Great Republic," one of the largest steamers on the lower river, not a man escaped. The word "annihilation" is perhaps the only one that can adequately describe the awful work of the tornado. The rising of the sun in the morning revealed a scene of indescribable horror. The work of carrying out the maimed and dead immediately began, but it was a task of big proportions, as many bodies were totally buried under the debris. Hundreds of families were rendered homeless, and the business portion of the community was almost in absolute ruin. Lack of food added to the misery. Bread sold for fifteen cents a loaf. A large number of military tents were shipped into the city and many families found shelter in freight yards. The Ohio and Mississippi railroad companies issued permits for the use of their empty cars. Contributions to aid in the work of rebuilding and relief were received and the city council voted $100,000. It was several weeks before the city began to resume a normal existence. The presence of armed men and endless piles of debris, the suspension of traffic, the grief for departed dear ones, and the sight of the many injured, all contributed to a condition of solemnity and sorrow. "The memory of the strange and awful scenes that have been presented by East St. Louis for the past three days," said one clergyman of the city, "will live in the minds of its inhabitants for years. But our people are too courageous and energetic to be deterred from repairing the physical havoc wrought." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - PREVIOUS GREAT DISASTERS FLOODS Johnstown, Pa., breaking of the Conemaugh dam, May 31, 1889; 2,235 killed. Galveston, Tex., tidal wave, September 8, 1900; 9,000 killed. Mississippi Valley, May, 1912; 1,000 killed. WIND STORMS Adams County, Miss., May 7, 1840; 317 killed. Same county, June, 1842; 500 killed. Louisville, Ky., March 27, 1890; 113 killed, 200 injured; property loss, $2,500,000. Cherokee, Buena Vista and Pocahontas Counties, Iowa, July 6, 1893, 89 killed; property loss, $250,000. Little Rock, Ark., October 2, 1894; 4 killed; property loss, $500,000. Denton and Grayson Counties, Tex., May 15, 1896; 78 killed and 150 injured; property loss, $165,000. St. Louis and East St. Louis, Mo., May 27, 1896; 306 identified killed; property loss, $12,000,000. Same tornado visited many places in Missouri and Illinois, causing an additional property loss of $1,000,000. West India hurricane, September 29 and 30, 1896, covering Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York; 114 killed; property loss, $7,000,000. Eastern Michigan, May 25, 1897; 47 killed, 100 injured; property loss, $400,000. Galveston hurricane, September 8, 1900; 9,000 killed; property loss, $30,000,000; estimated wind velocity, 120 miles an hour. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CHAPTER XXXIII LESSONS OF THE CATACLYSM AND PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES NOT A VISITATION OF PUNISHMENT--THE HELPLESSNESS OF MAN BEFORE NATURE--THE KINSHIP OF HUMANITY--INCENTIVE TO ENTERPRISE--THE GREATEST LESSON--MEASURES AGAINST REPETITION OF DISASTER--UTILIZING NATURAL RESERVOIRS--PROMOTION OF FORESTRY--CONSTRUCTION OF DAMS--SECRETARY LANE'S PLAN--A PROBLEM FOR THE PANAMA ENGINEERS. With each succeeding dispatch from the districts stricken by flood and tornado it became clearer that the first impressions of the disaster, shocking as they were, fell not far beneath the dreadful reality. Hundreds overwhelmed in the rushing floods, hundreds of thousands spared from sudden death only to suffer hunger and thirst and hardship and the perils of fire, cities submerged, villages swept away, countless homes and vast industries destroyed, miles upon miles of populous land drowned under turbulent waters, and over all the grim shadows of starvation and disease--this catastrophe defies picture and parallel to express its desolating horror. The widespread calamity, which smote with its cruelest force the beautiful city of Dayton, is one of those for which no personal responsibility can be placed. Like the tidal flood which devastated Galveston and the earth upheaval which laid San Francisco in ruins, it is a convulsion which could not have been foreseen or stayed. NOT A VISITATION OF PUNISHMENT In the presence of such a fearful disaster there are few persons who will say, but there are some who will think, that this is in some manner a visitation decreed upon the communities which suffer. The very magnitude and superhuman force of it will suggest to many minds the thought of an ordered punishment and warning for offenses against a higher power. Such a concept, happily more rarely held than in earlier times, is, of course, revolting to sober judgment and to the instincts of religious reverence. For it would imply that multitudes of the innocent should suffer indescribable cruelty; it would attempt the impossible feat of justifying the smiting of Dayton, where the inhabitants lived lives of peaceful, helpful industry, and the sparing of communities where men serve the gods of dishonest wealth and vicious idleness. This was no vengeance decreed for human shortcomings. It was superhuman, but not supernatural. It was but a manifestation of the unchangeable, irresistible forces of nature, governed by physical laws which are inexorable. Nature knows neither revenge nor pity. She does not select her victims, nor does she turn aside to save the good who may be in her path. As her concern is not with individuals, but with the race, so she is moved not by mercy, but by law. To the limited vision of man, with his brief life, nature seems incredibly cruel and wasteful. Her teachings must be learned at fearful cost. Men will ask themselves what lessons are taught by this overwhelming sacrifice. THE HELPLESSNESS OF MAN BEFORE NATURE There is made plain, first, the utter powerlessness of man when he pits his strength against the full demonstration of the laws of nature. It is revealed, again, that there are forces which before all the might of human intellect remain unconquerable. The same grim lesson confronts the scientist whose babe is snatched from him by death; it confronts the millionaire who feels the chill of age creeping upon the frame that has upheld the finances of a nation and has made and unmade panics with the crooking of a finger. THE KINSHIP OF HUMANITY But there flows from such a catastrophe a brighter and better influence than this. With all its horror and shock, there comes inevitably a great joining of minds and hearts. The whole world feels the thrill of kinship and a common humanity. For the time being all conceptions of social caste and class distinction, the most unworthy thoughts of beings fashioned all in the image of their Maker, are leveled and forgotten. Indifference and selfishness disappear. Throughout the nation, throughout the world, there thrills the uplifting current of brotherhood, the consciousness that "we be of one blood." Wherever civilization has exercised its beneficent influence upon the minds of men there is felt, for a little time at least, the sense that all humanity is one; that the strife of man against man and nation against nation is but a pitiful thing, and that we may better concern ourselves with trying to make the common lot brighter and so soften the rigors of the existence we all must face. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WEALTH Specifically does not such an appalling event serve to awaken responsibility among the wealthy and powerful toward the poor and the weak? When all goes well, when there are no thunderous warnings such as this of the helplessness of man against the forces arrayed against him, the fortunate do not realize that for millions mere existence is a poignant struggle; that hunger and cold and disease prevail even when there are no ghastly floods to make them vivid and picturesque. We do not doubt that there are many who will be stirred by the shock of this dreadful story to a deeper and more sympathetic understanding with the conditions that surround them on every side. INCENTIVE TO ENTERPRISE If any further good can come from a catastrophe so cruel, it may be in the stimulating pride of race which it engenders. Such experiences have a unique effect upon the American nature. The greater the calamity which falls upon a community the greater seems to be the rebound. Destruction and hardship seem to open great reservoirs of latent energy, inventiveness and enterprise. Galveston, suddenly overwhelmed by a convulsion of nature, apparently was doomed to molder away in forgotten ruins; but her people cleared the wreck and built a greater city than before. Before the ashes of the old San Francisco had cooled the vision of a better community rose before her inhabitants, and they made it real. Calamity sets free such a flow of creative power that destruction itself makes for progress. These disasters concentrate upon constructive enterprise stories of emotional energy that in other times are expended in the fierce struggle of competitive existence. THE GREATEST LESSON But the great hidden teaching of disaster is that the laws of nature are eternal and inexorable; that they move with unerring precision and resistless force. And this truth applies not only to the tremendous powers of the hurricane, the flood and the earthquake, but to economic principles, which are simply a translation into human terms of the laws manifested in inanimate nature. The woman whose health is wrecked by overwork, the child whose body and mind are stunted by early labor, the tenement dweller who falls victim to disease because of unwholesome conditions of living--these are sacrifices to natural laws as much as are the thousands swept away in the floods. But, while the flood deaths are due to an outburst of the elements which man cannot control, these others are the result of his defiance of the laws of nature. There is another difference: The victims of economic wrongs due to cupidity and indifference outnumber a thousand to one the victims of natural causes beyond control. All the deaths in these fearful floods are less than those caused every year in a single large city by conditions that might be remedied. Nature decrees that those who do not have certain amounts of fresh air and food and rest shall die; the law is inexorable. But it is civilization which defies it and brings down the penalty. THE AWAKENING TO OTHER LAWS OF NATURE A stranger thought is that many whose hearts are melted by this disaster and whose checkbooks open to the suffering survivors are habitually indifferent to the more deadly conditions existing on all sides of their homes. Men contribute generously to the relief funds who, if asked to surrender a fractional part of their dividends in order to make work safer and more healthful and more humane for employees, would berate the suggestion as anarchistic. This is not due to hardness of heart; it is due to faults of vision. Men display such sympathy in one case and such ruthlessness in another simply because civilization has not yet advanced far enough to create generally the sense of responsibility which is called social consciousness. There are those who believe that the good impulses aroused by such events as now appeal to us tend to awaken this consciousness; on the other hand, a $5,000 contribution to a flood relief fund may, by salving the conscience of the giver, close his mind to the need for changing industrial conditions or expending some of his tenement rents for decent sanitation. Our own belief is that each calamity brings the minds of the nation into closer sympathy and hastens the day when all men will understand that the society they have builded is guilty of causing miseries just as great as those we are now witnessing, the defying the laws of nature because of indifference and greed. THE NEED FOR ACTION This country has suffered from many great floods in past years, but none so awful in its scope and terrible consequences. The present calamity must bring the country to its sober senses and make us see the positive necessity--the inevitable MUST--of taking immediate and adequate measures to guard against the repetition of such a disaster. "Strike while the iron is hot," has been the battle-cry of men of action throughout the world! And today, while the iron of adversity is hot in the bosom of the Republic, is the time to strike upon the ideas that are to make the heroic surgery of healing. What is the remedy for these mighty floods that are sweeping and ruining the interior country? Beyond the supreme consideration of the loss of life they are the financial tragedies of the century. They occur at rare intervals in Ohio and Indiana and in New York. But in the valley of the Mississippi and in the Ohio Valley they are almost an annual or bi-annual scourge of waters, terrific in suffering and appalling in cost. NOT A QUESTION OF COST No expenditure of public money is too great that will strengthen the defenses of the people against the giant forces of destruction in the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. No cost in national expenditure for permanent defense against such catastrophes would approximate the cost in a single decade to the pockets of the people, not to speak of the uncountable value of human life. Governor Cox, of Ohio, estimated that the damage in Ohio alone by the recent floods was more than $300,000,000--nearly as much as the cost of the Panama Canal. The total cost of the recent flood is vastly greater than that of the Panama Canal! The American Government can no longer stop to consider money in dealing with the problems of internal economy and of elemental humanity. The floods create an emergency as definite and imperative as war. It is time now to start some movement for the preservation of life and property against such occurrences. MEASURES AGAINST REPETITION OF DISASTER It is not the mission of this book to prescribe plans for meeting the situation. That must be the work of a corps of trained engineers who shall study the whole problem comprehensively and in detail. Rather it is our purpose here to bring home the overwhelming need for prompt action. We may be permitted, however, to point in a general way, and on high authority, the general lines that the necessary remedies must take. The river problems in the great central valleys present certain difficulties which engineers have been unable to overcome. If levees are constructed, it is found that the bed of the stream rises also, so that the situation is not materially changed. If channels are deepened, the fury of the floods is increased. If the construction of reservoirs is proposed, there are very important questions of location and danger. UTILIZING NATURAL RESERVOIRS In many places the Mississippi River, closely diked, flows high above the lands adjacent. Even at New Orleans, 107 miles from the Gulf, it is during high water ten to fifteen feet above the level of the city. Obviously the levee system, while useful everywhere and in some localities adequate, is not a universal remedy. Reservoirs properly constructed should be of service in storing the waters of many such rivers as those that have caused the havoc in Ohio and Indiana, but to meet the requirements they would have to be of enormous size, very numerous and costly, as Professor Willis S. Moore, chief of the Weather Bureau, points out. Nature itself has provided in lowlands throughout all of these valleys receptacles which, before men came, took up the surplus waters. We have reclaimed millions of acres of these lands on the theory that we could confine the rivers which once overflowed them, but thus far we have failed to establish the theory. It is probable that any successful national work for the control of rivers will have to start with the idea of utilizing some of these natural reservoirs. The lands would not be habitable of course, but for agriculture they would be enriched instead of, as now, devastated. To depopulate some such tracts would not be as costly or as terrible as to leave them to the sweep of irresistible torrents, repeated year after year. PROMOTION OF FORESTRY Despite Professor Moore's very positive denial of the value of reforestation as a preventive of floods, it is claimed by many authorities that much of the destruction is due to the fact that the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois have been almost denuded of such forests as originally stood there. No impediment is offered to the flow of water and disastrous results follow. But in any event there would have been great floods because of the location of the rainstorms as noted. CONSTRUCTION OF DAMS The topography of the country must be taken into account. Both valleys, the Miami particularly, are veined with streams tributary to the rivers, and in times of flood the water rises with amazing rapidity and spreads far and wide over the valley floor. The level character of the region in which Dayton itself lies and the fact that there is not enough pitch to the land below to carry off the water accounts for the depth and extent of the floods. Dayton has had many of them. What Congress can do to prevent or minimize them in future by putting the army engineers at work to construct dams for the collection and restraint of waters in the valleys north of the threatened cities must be done, whatever the cost. SECRETARY LANE'S PLAN Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, has outlined a plan for preventing such floods as devastated Ohio and Indiana. The plan hinges on the deepening and widening of the channels of all streams that are liable to flood conditions. Mr. Lane hopes to see the idea carried out through the cooperation of the Federal Government, with the aid of the states immediately endangered. Aside from the perpetual protection against flood, which he believes his plan would give to settlers in low regions, there are widespread districts along the Mississippi and many other rivers that would be thrown open to settlement. The land thus reclaimed from the swamps might go a long way, in Mr. Lane's opinion, to reimburse the states for the appropriations they would be called upon to make. Mr. Lane says: "The rainstorm, I know, was phenomenal, and even with the system I have suggested would have doubtless resulted in material damage and the loss of some lives. But flood conditions reappear every spring in some noticeable way, and my plan would obviate most of the resulting damage. "It will not do for Ohio or Indiana or even the two states together to spend their money generously in clearing the beds of the streams within their boundaries. That would merely carry the flood more swiftly to the state lines to the south, and the water would back more angrily than ever into what would quickly be great lakes. The thing is too large for the states alone. A harmonious, scientific system must be worked out by the federal authorities, and the states must then make their contributions in the way that will do the most good to the whole valley affected." SENATOR NEWLAND'S PLAN Senator Francis G. Newlands, of Nevada, who has made a long study of the whole subject of reclamation and conservation, and who speaks with authority on the subject says: "The appalling disasters in Ohio and Indiana bring home more forcibly than ever the conviction that our present method of dredging, levees and bank revetment in limited districts is fundamentally inadequate. These things will not protect dwellers on the lower reaches of our rivers so long as there is no control of the headwaters. "We must adopt an adequate system for the control of the run-off at the headwaters of the tributaries of the Mississippi. The people of Pittsburgh and Dayton are entitled to this, no less than the people of lower Mississippi are entitled to levees. I trust these floods will rouse the American conscience in these matters." Senator Newlands has urged that $50,000,000 a year be used for the next ten years to develop a comprehensive scheme of storing the excess flood waters at the heads of rivers. The Democratic platform contained a plank which promised the support of the party to a national scheme of river control. This has already been brought to the attention of President Wilson. With the horrible scenes of the inundated towns of Ohio and Indiana before them, this pledge is likely to become a living promise to the party in power. A PROBLEM FOR THE PANAMA ENGINEERS There is one thing to remember. Our stupendous enterprise of the Panama Canal will soon be completed. Its vast equipment of the world's newest and best machinery for digging and filling will be unemployed. The world's greatest engineer, Colonel Goethals, will also be at leisure. Why not then provide for the transfer of all the wonderful machinery at Panama, under personal charge and direction of Colonel Goethals, to the supreme necessities of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys? The whole American people would applaud and approve this disposition of our great engineer and his great equipment. This new national necessity is as vital and even more pressing than the Panama Canal. It is worthy of the great Republic and of the great engineer--an achievement if successful which would twin with Panama and make Colonel Goethals immortal and our country's beneficence and enterprise famous through all time. We have no force and no leader in this tragic emergency more potent for the defense of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys than Colonel Goethals and his Panama machinery. Let us send cheer to the flood-ravaged regions of our country by the assurance that this great man and this incomparable equipment will soon be consecrated to their relief. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Transcriber's Note: The following statement was a footnote against the page number, page 352, on this, the last page. The page number on the preceeding page was 319, requiring the following edxplanation.] The 32 pages of illustrations contained in this book are not included in the paging. Adding these 32 pages to the 320 pages of text makes a total of 352 pages. 
26965	----	[Illustration: THE WOUNDED PIONEER.] HEROES AND HUNTERS OF THE WEST: COMPRISING SKETCHES AND ADVENTURES OF BOONE, KENTON, BRADY, LOGAN, WHETZEL, FLEEHART, HUGHES, JOHNSTON, &c. PHILADELPHIA: H. C. PECK & THEO. BLISS. 1860. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, BY H. C. PECK & THEO. BLISS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. CONTENTS. Daniel Boone. 11 Simon Kenton. 19 George Rogers Clarke. 24 Benjamin Logan. 32 Samuel Brady. 38 Lewis Whetzel. 45 Caffree, M'Clure, and Davis. 58 Charles Johnston. 66 Joseph Logston. 74 Jesse Hughes. 81 Siege of Fort Henry. 87 Simon Girty. 103 Joshua Fleehart. 118 Indian Fight on the Little Muskingum. 129 Escape of Return J. Meigs. 137 Estill's Defeat. 144 A Pioneer Mother. 154 The Squatter's Wife and Daughter. 167 Captain William Hubbell. 173 Murder of Cornstalk and his Son. 185 The Massacre of Chicago. 189 The Two Friends. 211 Desertion of a young White Man, from a party of Indians. 219 Morgan's Triumph. 229 Massacre of Wyoming. 233 Heroic Women of the West. 243 Indian Strategem Foiled. 250 Blackbird. 265 A Desperate Adventure. 268 Adventure of Two Scouts. 276 A Young Hero of the West. 299 PREFACE. To the lovers of thrilling adventure, the title of this work would alone be its strongest recommendation. The exploits of the Heroes of the West, need but a simple narration to give them an irresistible charm. They display the bolder and rougher features of human nature in their noblest light, softened and directed by virtues that have appeared in the really heroic deeds of every age, and form pages in the history of this country destined to be read and admired when much that is now deemed more important is forgotten. It is true, that, with the lights of this age, we regard many of the deeds of our western pioneer as aggressive, barbarous, and unworthy of civilized men. But there is no truly noble heart that will not swell in admiration of the devotion and disinterestedness of Benjamin Logan, the self-reliant energy of Boone and Whetzel, and the steady firmness and consummate military skill of George Rogers Clarke. The people of this country need records of the lives of such men, and we have attempted to present these in an attractive form. [Illustration: CAPTURE OF BOONE.] HEROES OF THE WEST. DANIEL BOONE. In all notices of border life, the name of Daniel Boone appears first--as the hero and the father of the west. In him were united those qualities which make the accomplished frontiersman--daring, activity, and circumspection, while he was fitted beyond most of his contemporary borderers to lead and command. Daniel Boone was born either in Virginia or Pennsylvania, and at an early age settled in North Carolina, upon the banks of the Yadkin. In 1767, James Findley, the first white man who ever visited Kentucky, returned to the settlements of North Carolina, and gave such a glowing account of that wilderness, that Boone determined to venture into it, on a hunting expedition. Accordingly, in 1769, accompanied by Findley and four others, he commenced his journey. Kentucky was found to be all that the first adventurer had represented, and the hunters had fine sport. The country was uninhabited, but, during certain seasons, parties of the northern and southern Indians visited it upon hunting expeditions. These parties frequently engaged in fierce conflicts, and hence the beautiful region was known as the "dark and bloody ground." [Illustration: BATTLE OF BLUE LICKS.] On the 22d of December, 1769, Boone and one of his companions, named John Stuart, left their encampment on the Red river, and boldly followed a buffalo path far into the forest. While roving carelessly from canebrake to canebrake, they were suddenly alarmed by the appearance of a party of Indians, who, springing from their place of concealment, rushed upon them with a swiftness which rendered escape impossible. The hunters were seized, disarmed, and made prisoners. Under these terrible circumstances, Boone's presence of mind was admirable. He saw that there was no chance of immediate escape; but he encouraged his companion and constrained himself to follow the Indians in all their movements, with so constrained an air, that their vigilance began to relax. [Illustration: DANIEL BOONE.] On the seventh evening of the captivity of the hunter, the party encamped in a thick cane-break, and having built a large fire lay down to rest. About midnight, Boone, who had not closed his eyes, ascertained from the deep breathing of all around him, that the whole party, including Stuart, was in a deep sleep. Gently extricating himself from the savages who lay around him, he awoke Stuart, informed him of his determination to escape, and exhorted him to follow without noise. Stuart obeyed with quickness and silence. Rapidly moving through the forest, guided by the light of the stars and the barks of the trees, the hunters reached their former camp the next day, but found it plundered and deserted, with nothing remaining to show the fate of their companions. Soon afterwards, Stuart was shot and scalped, and Boone and his brother who had come into the wilderness from North Carolina, were left alone in the forest. Nay, for several months, Daniel had not a single companion, for his brother returned to North Carolina for ammunition. The hardy hunter was exposed to the greatest dangers, but he contrived to escape them all. In 1771, Boone and his brother returned to North Carolina, and Daniel, having sold what property he could not take with him, determined to take his family to Kentucky, and make a settlement. He was joined by others at "Powel's Valley," and commenced the journey, at the head of a considerable party of pioneers. Being attacked by the Indians, the adventurers were compelled to return, and it was not until 1774, that the indomitable Boone succeeded in conveying his family to the banks of the Kentucky, and founding Boonesborough. In the meantime, James Harrod had settled at the station called Harrodsburgh. Other stations were founded by Bryant and Logan--daring pioneers; but Boonesborough was the chief object of Indian hostility, and was exposed to almost incessant attack, from its foundation until after the bloody battle of Blue Licks. During this time, Daniel Boone was regarded as the chief support and counsellor of the settlers, and in all emergencies, his wisdom and valor was of the greatest service. He met with many adventures, and made some hair-breadth escapes, but survived all his perils and hardships and lived to a green old age, enjoying the respect and confidence of a large and happy community, which his indomitable spirit had been chiefly instrumental in founding. He never lost his love of the woods and the chase, and within a few weeks of his death might have been seen, rifle in hand, eager in the pursuit of game. [Illustration: SIMON KENTON.] [Illustration: LOGAN.] SIMON KENTON. Simon Kenton was born in Fauquier county, Virginia, on the 15th of May, 1755. His parents were poor, and until the age of sixteen his days seem to have been passed in the laborious drudgery of a farm. When he was about sixteen, an unfortunate occurrence threw him upon his own resources. A robust young farmer, named Leitchman, and he were rival suitors for the hand of a young coquette, and she being unable to decide between them, they took the matter into their own hands and fought a regular pitched battle at a solitary spot in the forest. After a severe struggle, Kenton triumphed, and left his antagonist upon the ground, apparently in the agonies of death. Without returning for a suit of clothing, the young conqueror fled westward, assumed the name of Butler, joined a party of daring hunters, and visited Kentucky, (1773.) In the wilderness he became an accomplished and successful hunter and spy, but suffered many hardships. In 1774, the Indian war, occasioned by the murder of the family of the chief, Logan, broke out, and Kenton entered the service of the Virginians as a spy, in which capacity he acted throughout the campaign, ending with the battle of Point Pleasant. He then explored the country on both sides of the Ohio, and hunted in company with a few other, in various parts of Kentucky. When Boonesborough was attacked by a large body of Indians, Simon took an active part in the defence, and in several of Boone's expeditions, our hero served as a spy, winning a high reputation. In the latter part of 1777, Kenton, having crossed the Ohio, on a horse-catching expedition, was overtaken and made captive by the Indians. Then commenced a series of tortures to which the annals of Indian warfare, so deeply tinged with horrors, afford few parallels. Having kicked and cuffed him, the savages tied him to a pole, in a very painful position, where they kept him till the next morning, then tied him on a wild colt and drove it swiftly through the woods to Chilicothe. Here he was tortured in various ways. The savages then carried him to Pickaway, where it was intended to burn him at the stake, but from this awful death, he was saved through the influence of the renegade, Simon Girty, who had been his early friend. Still, Kenton was carried about from village to village, and tortured many times. At length, he was taken to Detroit, an English post, where he was well-treated; and he recovered from his numerous wounds. In the summer of 1778, he succeeded in effecting his escape, and, after a long march, reached Kentucky. [Illustration: SIMON GIRTY.] Kenton was engaged in all the Indian expeditions up to Wayne's decisive campaign, in 1794, and was very serviceable as a spy. Few borderers had passed through so many hardships, and won so bright a reputation. He lived to a very old age, and saw the country, in which he had fought and suffered, formed into the busy and populous state of Ohio. In his latter days, he was very poor, and, but for the kindness of some distinguished friends, would have wanted for the necessaries of life. GEORGE ROGERS CLARKE. In natural genius for military command, few men of the west have equalled George Rogers Clarke. The conception and execution of the famous expedition against Kaskaskia and Vincennes displayed many of those qualities for which the best generals of the world have been eulogized, and would have done honor to a Clive. Clarke was born in Albermarle county, Virginia, in September, 1753. Like Washington, he engaged, at an early age, in the business of land surveying, and was fond of several branches of mathematics. On the breaking out of Dunmore's war, Clarke took command of a company, and fought bravely at the battle of Point Pleasant, being engaged in the only active operation of the right wing of the Virginians against the Indians. Peace was concluded soon after, by Lord Dunmore, and Clarke, whose gallant bearing had been noticed, was offered a commission in the royal service. But this he refused, as he apprehended that his native country would soon be at war with Great Britain. [Illustration: GEORGE ROGERS CLARKE.] Early in 1775, Clarke visited Kentucky as the favorite scene of adventure, and penetrated to Harrodsburgh. His talents were immediately appreciated by the Kentuckians, and he was placed in command of all the irregular troops in that wild region. In 1776, the young commander exerted himself with extraordinary ability to secure a political organization and the means of defence to Kentucky, and was so successful as to win the title of the founder of the commonwealth.[A] In partisan service against the Indians, Clarke was active and efficient; but his bold and comprehensive mind looked to checking savage inroads at their sources. He saw at a glance, that the red men were stimulated to outrages by the British garrisons of Detroit, Vincennes and Kaskaskia, and was satisfied that to put an end to them, those posts must be captured. Having sent two spies to reconnoitre Kaskaskia and Vincennes, and gained considerable intelligence of the situation of the enemy, the enterprising commander sought aid from the government of Virginia to enable him to carry out his designs. After some delay, money, supplies, and a few companies of troops were obtained. Clarke then proceeded to Corn Island, opposite the present city of Louisville. Here the objects of the expedition were disclosed. Some of the men murmured, and others attempted to desert; but the energy of Colonel Clarke secured obedience and even enthusiasm. The little band soon commenced its march through a wild and difficult country, and on the 4th of July, 1778, reached a spot within a few miles of the town of Kaskaskia. Clarke made his arrangements for a surprise with great skill and soon after dark, the town was captured without shedding a drop of blood. The inhabitants were at first terror-stricken and expected to be massacred, but they were soon convinced of their mistake by the bearing and representations of the Virginia commander. Cahokia was captured shortly afterwards, without difficulty. Clarke's situation was now extremely critical, and he duly appreciated the fact. Vincennes was still in front, so garrisoned, that it seemed madness to attempt its capture by direct attack. But a bold offensive movement could alone render the conquests which had been made, permanent and advantageous. A French priest, named Gibault, secured the favor of the inhabitants of Vincennes for the American interest, and the Indians of the neighborhood were conciliated by the able management of Colonel Clarke, who knew how to win the favor of the men better than any other borderer; but on the 29th of January, 1779, intelligence was received at Kaskaskia, where Clarke was then posted, that Governor Hamilton had taken possession of Vincennes, and meditated the re-capture of the other posts, preparatory to assailing the whole frontier, as far as Fort Pitt. [Illustration: BATTLE OF POINT PLEASANT.] Clarke determined to act upon the offensive immediately, as his only salvation. Mounting a galley with two four-pounders and four swivels, and manning it with forty-six men, he dispatched it up the Wabash, to the White River, and on the 7th of February, 1779, marched from Kaskaskia at the head of only one hundred and seventy men, over the drowned lands of the Wabash, against the British post. The march of Arnold by way of the Kennebec to Canada can alone be placed as a parallel with this difficult expedition. The indomitable spirit of Clarke sustained the band through the most incredible fatigues. On the 28th the expedition approached the town, still undiscovered. The American commander then issued a proclamation, intended to produce an impression that his force was large and confident of success, and invested the fort. So vigorously was the siege prosecuted that the garrison was reduced to straits, and Governor Hamilton compelled to capitulate. (24th of February, 1779.) This was a brilliant achievement and reflected the highest honor upon Colonel Clarke and his gallant band. Detroit was now in full view, and Clarke was confident he could capture it if he had but five hundred men; but he could not obtain that number, till the chances of success were annihilated, and thus his glorious expedition terminated. The object of the enterprise, however, which was the checking of Indian depredations, was accomplished. Clarke afterwards engaged in other military enterprises and held high civil offices in Kentucky; but at the capture of Vincennes his fame reached its greatest brilliancy, and posterity will not willingly let it die. ----- [A] Butler. BENJAMIN LOGAN. The real heroic spirit, which delights in braving the greatest dangers in the cause of humanity, was embodied in Benjamin Logan, one of the first settlers in Kentucky. This distinguished borderer was born in Augusta county, Virginia. At an early age he displayed the noble impulses of his heart; for upon the death of his father, when the laws of Virginia allowed him, as the eldest son, the whole property of the intestate, he sold the farm and distributed the money among his brothers and sisters, reserving a portion for his mother. At the age of twenty-one, Logan removed to the banks of the Holston, where he purchased a farm, and married. He served in Dunmore's war. In 1775, he removed to Kentucky, and soon became distinguished among the hardy frontiersmen for firmness, prudence, and humanity. In the following year he returned for his family, and brought them to a small settlement called Logan's Fort, not far from Harrodsburgh. [Illustration: LOGAN JOURNEYING INTO KENTUCKY.] On the morning of the 20th of May, 1777, the women were milking the cows at the gate of the little fort, and some of the garrison attending them, when a party of Indians appeared and fired at them. One man was shot dead, and two more wounded, one of them mortally. The whole party instantly ran into the fort, and closed the gate. The enemy quickly showed themselves at the edge of the canebrake, within rifle-shot of the gate, and seemed numerous and determined. A spectacle was now presented to the garrison which awakened interest and compassion. A man, named Harrison, had been severely wounded, and still lay near the spot where he had fallen. The poor fellow strove to crawl towards the fort, and succeeded in reaching a cluster of bushes, which, however, were too thin to shelter his person from the enemy. His wife and children in the fort were in deep distress at his situation. The case was one to try the hearts of men. The numbers of the garrison were so small, that it was thought folly to sacrifice any more lives in striving to save one seemingly far spent. Logan endeavored to persuade some of the men to accompany him in a sally; but the danger was so appalling that only one man, John Martin, could be induced to make the attempt. The gate was opened, and the two sallied forth, Logan leading the way. They had advanced about five steps, when Harrison made a vigorous attempt to rise, and Martin, supposing him able to help himself, sprang back within the gate. Harrison fell at full-length upon the grass. Logan paused a moment after the retreat of Martin, then sprang forward to the spot where Harrison lay, seized the wounded man in his arms, and in spite of a tremendous shower of balls poured from every side, reached the fort without receiving a scratch, though the gate and picketing near him were riddled and his clothes pierced in several places. Soon afterwards, the heroic Logan again performed an act of self-devotion. The fort was vigorously assailed, and although the little garrison made a brave defence, their destruction seemed imminent, on account of the scarcity of ammunition. Holston was the nearest point where supplies could be obtained. But who would brave so many dangers in the attempt to procure it? No one but Logan. After encouraging his men to hope for his speedy return, he crawled through the Indian encampment on a dark night, proceeded by by-paths, which no white man had then trodden, reached Holston, obtained a supply of powder and lead, returned by the same almost inaccessible paths, and got safe within the walls of the fort. The garrison was inspired with fresh courage, and in a few days, the appearance of Colonel Bowman, with a body of troops, compelled the savages to retire. Logan led several expeditions into the Indian country, and won a high renown as one of the boldest and most successful of Kentucky's heroes. When the Indian depredations were, in a great measure, checked, he devoted himself to civil affairs, and exerted considerable influence upon the politics of the country. Throughout his career, he was beloved and respected as a fearless, honest, and intelligent man. SAMUEL BRADY. Captain Samuel Brady was the Daniel Boone of Western Pennsylvania. As brave as a lion, as swift as a deer, and as cautious as a panther, he gave the Indians reason to tremble at the mention of his name. As the captain of the rangers he was the favorite of General Brodhead, the commander of the Pennsylvania forces, and regarded by the frontier inhabitants as their eye and arm. The father and brother of Captain Brady being killed by the Indians, it is said that our hero vowed to revenge their murder, and never be at peace with the Indians of any tribe. Many instances of such dreadful vows, made in moments of bitter anguish, occur in the history of our border, and, when we consider the circumstances, we can scarcely wonder at the number, though, as Christians, we should condemn such bloody resolutions. [Illustration: GENERAL BRODHEAD.] Many of Brady's exploits are upon record; and they are entitled to our admiration for their singular daring and ingenuity. One of the most remarkable is known in border history as Brady's Leap. The energetic Brodhead, by an expedition into the Indian country, had delivered such destructive blows that the savages were quieted for a time. The general kept spies out, however, for the purpose of guarding against sudden attacks on the settlements. One of the scouting parties, under the command of Captain Brady, had the French creek country assigned as their field of duty. The captain reached the waters of Slippery Rock, without seeing any signs of Indians. Here, however, he came on a trail, in the evening, which he followed till dark, without overtaking the enemy. The next morning the pursuit was renewed, and Brady overtook the Indians while they were at their morning meal. Unfortunately, another party of savages was in his rear, and when he fired upon those in front, he was in turn fired upon from behind. He was now between two fires, and greatly outnumbered. Two of his men fell, his tomahawk was shot from his side, and the enemy shouted for the expected triumph. There was no chance of successful defence in the position of the rangers, and they were compelled to break and flee. Brady ran towards the creek. The Indians pursued, certain of making him captive, on account of the direction he had taken. To increase their speed, they threw away their guns, and pressed forward with raised tomahawk. Brady saw his only chance of escape, which was to leap the creek, afterwards ascertained to be twenty-two feet wide and twenty deep. Determined never to fall alive into the hands of the Indians, he made a mighty effort, sprang across the abyss of waters and stood rifle in hand upon the opposite bank. As quick as lightning, he proceeded to load his rifle. A large Indian, who had been foremost in pursuit, came to the opposite bank, and after magnanimously doing justice to the captain by exclaiming "Blady make good jump!" made a rapid retreat. Brady next went to the place appointed as a rendezvous for his party, and finding there three of his men, commenced his homeward march, about half defeated. Three Indians had been killed while at their breakfast. The savages did not return that season, to do any injury to the whites, and early in the fall, moved off to join the British, who had to keep them during the winter, their corn having been destroyed by General Brodhead. Brady survived all his perils and hardships and lived to see the Indians completely humbled before those whites on whom they had committed so many outrages. [Illustration: MASSACRE OF MRS. WHETZEL AND HER CHILDREN.] LEWIS WHETZEL. The Whetzel family is remembered in the west for the courage, resolution, and skill in border warfare displayed by four of its members. Their names were Martin, Lewis, Jacob, and John. Of these, Lewis won the highest renown, and it is doubtful whether Boone, Brady, or Kenton equaled him in boldness of enterprise. In the hottest part of the Indian war, old Mr. Whetzel, who was a German, built his cabin some distance from the fort at Wheeling. One day, during the absence of the two oldest sons, Martin and John, a numerous party of Indians surrounded the house, killed, tomahawked and scalped old Mr. Whetzel, his wife, and the small children, and carried off Lewis, who was then about thirteen years old, and Jacob who was about eleven. Before the young captives had been carried far, Lewis contrived their escape. When these two boys grew to be men, they took a solemn oath never to make peace with the Indians as long as they had strength to wield a tomahawk or sight to draw a bead, and they kept their oath. The appearance of Lewis Whetzel was enough to strike terror into common men. He was about five feet ten inches high, having broad shoulders, a full breast, muscular limbs, a dark skin, somewhat pitted by the small pox, hair which, when combed out, reached to the calves of his legs, and black eyes, whose excited and vindictive glance would curdle the blood. He excelled in all exercises of strength and activity, could load his rifle while running with almost the swiftness of a deer, and was so habituated to constant action, that an imprisonment of three days, as ordered by General Harmar, was nearly fatal to him. He had the most thorough self-reliance as his long, solitary and perilous expeditions into the Indian country prove. [Illustration: INDIAN CHIEF.] In the year of 1782, Lewis Whetzel went with Thomas Mills, who had been in the campaign, to get a horse, which he had left near the place where St. Clairsville now stands. At the Indian Spring, two miles above St. Clairsville, on the Wheeling road, they were met by about forty Indians, who were in pursuit of the stragglers from the campaign. The Indians and the white men discovered each other about the same time. Lewis fired first, and killed an Indian; the fire from the Indians wounded Mr. Mills, and he was soon overtaken and killed. Four of the Indians then singled out, dropped their guns, and pursued Whetzel. Whetzel loaded his rifle as he ran. After running about half a mile, one of the Indians having got within eight or ten steps of him, Whetzel wheeled round and shot him down, ran on, and loaded as before. After going about three-quarters of a mile further, a second Indian came so close to him, that when he turned to fire, the Indian caught the muzzle of his gun, and as he expressed it, he and the Indian had a severe wring for it; he succeeded, however, in bringing the gun to the Indian's breast, and killed him on the spot. By this time, he, as well as the Indians, were pretty well tired; the pursuit was continued by the remaining two Indians. Whetzel, as before, loaded his gun, and stopped several times during the chase. When he did so the Indians treed themselves. After going something more than a mile, Whetzel took advantage of a little open piece of ground, over which the Indians were passing, a short distance behind him, to make a sudden stop for the purpose of shooting the foremost, who got behind a little sapling, which was too small to cover his body. Whetzel shot, and broke his thigh; the wound, in the issue, proved fatal. The last of the Indians then gave a little yell, and said, "No catch dat man--gun always loaded," and gave up the chase; glad, no doubt, to get off with his life. Another of this daring warrior's exploits is worthy of a place beside the most remarkable achievements of individual valor. In the year 1787, a party of Indians crossed the Ohio, killed a family, and scalped with impunity. This murder spread great alarm through the sparse settlements and revenge was not only resolved upon, but a handsome reward was offered for scalps. Major McMahan, who often led the borderers in their hardy expeditions, soon raised a company of twenty men, among whom was Lewis Whetzel. They crossed the Ohio and pursued the Indian trail until they came to the Muskingum river. There the spies discovered a large party of Indians encamped. Major McMahan fell back a short distance, and held a conference when a hasty retreat was resolved upon as the most prudent course, Lewis Whetzel refused to take part in the council, or join in the retreat. He said he came out to hunt Indians; they were now found and he would either lose his own scalp or take that of a "red skin." All arguments were thrown away upon this iron-willed man; he never submitted to the advice or control of others. His friends were compelled to leave him a solitary being surrounded by vigilant enemies. [Illustration: LEWIS WHETZEL'S SINGULAR ESCAPE.] As soon as the major's party had retired beyond the reach of danger, Whetzel shouldered his rifle, and marched off into a different part of the country, hoping that fortune would place a lone Indian in his way. He prowled through the woods like a panther, eager for prey, until the next evening, when he discovered a smoke curling up among the bushes. Creeping softly to the fire, he found two blankets and a small copper kettle, and concluded that it was the camp of two Indians. He concealed himself in the thick brush, in such a position that he could see the motions of the enemy. About sunset the two Indians came in, cooked and ate their supper, and then sat by the fire engaged in conversation. About nine o'clock one of them arose, shouldered his rifle, took a chunk of fire in his hand, and left the camp, doubtless in search of a deer-lick. The absence of this Indian was a source of vexation and disappointment to Whetzel, who had been so sure of his prey. He waited until near break of day, and still the expected one did not return. The concealed warrior could delay no longer. He walked cautiously to the camp, found his victim asleep, and drawing a knife buried it in the red man's heart. He then secured the scalp, and set off for home, where he arrived only one day after his companions. For the scalp, he claimed and received the reward. Here is another of Lewis Whetzel's remarkable exploits. Returning home from a hunt, north of the Ohio, he was walking along in that reckless manner, which is a consequence of fatigue, when his quick eye suddenly caught sight of an Indian in the act of raising his gun to fire. Both sprung like lightning to the woodman's forts, large trees, and there they stood for an hour, each afraid of the other. This quiet mode of warfare did not suit the restless Whetzel, and he set his invention to work to terminate it. Placing his bear-skin cap on the end of his ramrod, he protruded it slightly and cautiously as if he was putting his head to reconnoitre, and yet was hesitating in the venture. The simple savage was completely deceived. As soon as he saw the cap, he fired and it fell. Whetzel then sprang forward to the astonished red man, and with a shot from the unerring rifle brought him to the ground quite dead. The triumphant ranger then pursued his march homeward. But it was in a deliberate attack upon a party of four Indians that our hero displayed the climax of daring and resolution. While on a fall hunt, on the Muskingum, he came upon a camp of four savages, and with but little hesitation resolved to attempt their destruction. He concealed himself till midnight, and then stole cautiously upon the sleepers. As quick as thought, he cleft the skull of one of them. A second met the same fate, and as a third attempted to rise, confused by the horrid yells, which Whetzel gave with his blows, the tomahawk stretched him in death. The fourth Indian darted into the darkness of the wood and escaped, although Whetzel pursued him for some distance. Returning to camp, the ranger scalped his victims and then left for home. When asked on his return, "What luck?" he replied, "Not much. I treed four Indians, and one got away." Where shall we look for deeds of equal daring and hardihood? Martin, Jacob, and John Whetzel were bold warriors; and in the course of the Indian war, they secured many scalps; but they never obtained the reputation possessed by their brother, Lewis. All must condemn cruelty wherever displayed, but it is equally our duty to render just admiration to courage, daring, and indomitable energy, qualities in which the Whetzel brothers have rarely if ever been excelled. [Illustration: LEWIS WHETZEL'S STRATAGEM.] General Clark, the companion of Lewis in the celebrated tour across the Rocky Mountains, having heard much of Lewis Whetzel, in Kentucky, determined to secure his services for the exploring expedition. After considerable hesitation, Whetzel consented to go, and accompanied the party during the first three months' travel, but then declined going any further, and returned home. Shortly after this, he left again on a flat-boat, and never returned. He visited a relation, named Sikes, living about twenty miles in the interior, from Natchez, and there made his home, until the summer of 1808, when he died, leaving a fame for valor and skill in border warfare, which will not be allowed to perish. CAFFREE, M'CLURE, AND DAVIS. About 1784, horse-stealing was as common as hunting to the whites and Indians of the west. Thefts and reprisals were almost constantly made. Some southern Indians having stolen horses from Lincoln county, Kentucky, three young men, named Caffree, M'Clure, and Davis, set out in pursuit of them. Coming in sight of an Indian town, near the Tennessee river, they met three red men. The two parties made signs of peace, shook hands, and agreed to travel together. Both were suspicious, however, and at length, from various indications, the whites became satisfied of the treacherous intentions of the Indians, and resolved to anticipate then. Caffree being a very powerful man, proposed that he himself should seize one Indian, while Davis and M'Clure should shoot the other two. Caffree sprang boldly upon the nearest Indian, grasped his throat firmly, hurled him to the ground, and drawing a cord from his pocket attempted to tie him. At the same instant, Davis and M'Clure attempted to perform their respective parts. M'Clure killed his man, but Davis's gun missed fire. All three, _i. e._ the two white men, and the Indian at whom Davis had flashed, immediately took trees, and prepared for a skirmish, while Caffree remained upon the ground with the captured Indian--both exposed to the fire of the others. In a few seconds, the savage at whom Davis had flashed, shot Caffree as he lay upon the ground and gave him a mortal wound--and was instantly shot in turn by M'Clure who had reloaded his gun. Caffree becoming very weak, called upon Davis to come and assist him in tying the Indian, and directly afterwards expired. As Davis was running up to the assistance of his friend--the Indian released himself, killed his captor, sprung to his feet, and seizing Caffree's rifle, presented it menacingly at Davis, whose gun was not in order for service, and who ran off into the forest, closely pursued by the Indian. M'Clure hastily reloaded his gun and taking the rifle which Davis had dropped, followed them for some distance into the forest, making all signals which had been concerted between them in case of separation. All, however, was vain--he saw nothing more of Davis, nor could he ever afterwards learn his fate. As he never returned to Kentucky, however, he probably perished. [Illustration: A SOUTHERN INDIAN.] M'Clure, finding himself alone in the enemy's country, and surrounded by dead bodies, thought it prudent to abandon the object of the expedition and return to Kentucky. He accordingly retraced his steps, still bearing Davis' rifle in addition to his own. He had scarcely marched a mile, before he saw advancing from the opposite direction, an Indian warrior, riding a horse with a bell around its neck, and accompanied by a boy on foot. Dropping one of the rifles, which might have created suspicion, M'Clure advanced with an air of confidence, extending his hand and making other signs of peace. The opposite party appeared frankly to receive his overtures, and dismounting, seated himself upon a log, and drawing out his pipe, gave a few puffs himself, and then handed it to M'Clure. In a few minutes another bell was heard, at the distance of half a mile, and a second party of Indians appeared upon horseback. The Indian with M'Clure now coolly informed him by signs that when the horseman arrived, he (M'Clure) was to be bound and carried off as a prisoner with his feet tied under the horse's belly. In order to explain it more fully, the Indian got astride of the log, and locked his legs together underneath it. M'Clure, internally thanking the fellow for his excess of candor, determined to disappoint him, and while his enemy was busily engaged in riding the log, and mimicking the actions of a prisoner, he very quietly blew his brains out, and ran off into the woods. The Indian boy instantly mounted the belled horse, and rode off in an opposite direction. M'Clure was fiercely pursued by several small Indian dogs, that frequently ran between his legs and threw him down. After falling five or six times, his eyes became full of dust and he was totally blind. Despairing of escape, he doggedly lay upon his face, expecting every instant to feel the edge of the tomahawk. To his astonishment, however, no enemy appeared, and even the Indian dogs after tugging at him for a few minutes, and completely stripping him of his breeches, left him to continue his journey unmolested. Finding every thing quiet, in a few moments he arose, and taking up his gun continued his march to Kentucky. [Illustration: CAFFREE KILLED BY THE INDIAN.] CHARLES JOHNSTON. In March, 1790 a boat, containing four men and two women, passing down the Ohio, was induced by some renegade whites to approach the shore, near the mouth of the Sciota, and then attacked by a large party of Indians. A Mr. John May and one of the women were shot dead, and the others then surrendered. The chief of the band was an old warrior, named Chickatommo, and under his command were a number of renowned red men. When the prisoners were distributed, a young man named Charles Johnson, was given to a young Shawnee chief who is represented to have been a noble character. His name was Messhawa, and he had just reached the age of manhood. His person was tall and seemingly rather fitted for action than strength. His bearing was stately, and his countenance expressive of a noble disposition. He possessed great influence among those of his own tribe, which he exerted on the side of humanity. On the march, Messhawa repeatedly saved Johnson from the tortures which the other savages delighted to inflict, and the young captive saw some displays of generous exertion on the part of the chief which are worthy of a place in border history. [Illustration: MESSHAWA.] The warriors painted themselves in the most frightful colors, and performed a war dance, with the usual accompaniments. A stake, painted in alternate stripes of black and vermilion, was fixed in the ground, and the dancers moved in rapid but measured evolutions around it. They recounted, with great energy, the wrongs they had received from the whites.--Their lands had been taken from them--their corn cut up--their villages burnt--their friends slaughtered--every injury which they had received was dwelt upon, until their passions had become inflamed beyond control. Suddenly, Chickatommo darted from the circle of dancers, and with eyes flashing fire, ran up to the spot where Johnston was sitting, calmly contemplating the spectacle before him. When within reach he struck him a furious blow with his fist, and was preparing to repeat it, when Johnston seized him by the arms, and hastily demanded the cause of such unprovoked violence. Chickatommo, grinding his teeth with rage, shouted "Sit down, sit down!" Johnston obeyed, and the Indian, perceiving the two children within ten steps of him, snatched up a tomahawk, and advanced upon them with a quick step, and a determined look. The terrified little creatures instantly arose from the log on which they were sitting, and fled into the woods, uttering the most piercing screams, while their pursuer rapidly gained upon them with uplifted tomahawk. The girl, being the youngest, was soon overtaken, and would have been tomahawked, had not Messhawa bounded like a deer to her relief. He arrived barely in time to arrest the uplifted tomahawk of Chickatommo, after which, he seized him by the collar and hurled him violently backward to the distance of several paces. Snatching up the child in his arms, he then ran after the brother, intending to secure him likewise from the fury of his companion, but the boy, misconstruing his intention, continued his flight with such rapidity, and doubled several times with such address, that the chase was prolonged to the distance of several hundred yards. At length Messhawa succeeded in taking him. The boy, thinking himself lost, uttered a wild cry, which was echoed by his sister, but both were instantly calmed. Messhawa took them in his arms, spoke to them kindly, and soon convinced them that they had nothing to fear from him. He quickly reappeared, leading them gently by the hand, and soothing them in the Indian language, until they both clung to him closely for protection. No other incident disturbed the progress of the ceremonies, nor did Chickatommo appear to resent the violent interference of Messhawa. [Illustration: CHICKATOMMO.] After undergoing many hardships, Johnston was taken to Sandusky, where he was ransomed by a French trader. Messhawa took leave of his young captive with many expressions of esteem and friendship. This noble chief was in the battle of the Fallen Timber and afterwards became a devoted follower of the great Tecumseh--thus proving that while he was as humane as a civilized man, he was patriotic and high-spirited enough to resent the wrongs of his people. He was killed at the battle of the Thames, where the power of the Shawnees was for ever crushed. JOSEPH LOGSTON. Big Joe Logston was a noted character in the early history of the west. He was born and reared among the Alleghany mountains, near the source of the north branch of the Potomac, some twenty or thirty miles from any settlement. He was tall, muscular, excelled in all the athletic sports of the border, and was a first-rate shot. Soon after Joe arrived at years of discretion, his parents died, and he went out to the wilds of Kentucky. There, Indian incursions compelled him to take refuge in a fort. This pent up life was not at all to Joe's taste. He soon became very restless, and every day insisted on going out with others to hunt up cattle. At length no one would accompany him, and he resolved to go out alone. He rode the greater part of the day without finding any cattle, and then concluded to return to the fort. As he was riding along, eating some grapes, with which he had filled his hat, he heard the reports of the two rifles; one ball passed through the paps of his breast, which were very prominent, and the other struck the horse behind the saddle, causing the beast to sink in its tracks. [Illustration: INDIANS AMBUSHED FOR JOE LOGSTON.] Joe was on his feet in an instant and might have taken to his heels with the chances of escape greatly in his favor. But to him flight was never agreeable. The moment the guns were fired, an Indian sprang forward with an uplifted tomahawk; but as Joe raised his rifle, the savage jumped behind two saplings, and kept springing from one to the other to cover his body. The other Indian was soon discovered behind a tree loading his gun. When in the act of pushing down his bullet, he exposed his hips and Joe fired a load into him. The first Indian then sprang forward and threw his tomahawk at the head of the white warrior, who dodged it. Joe then clubbed his gun and made at the savage, thinking to knock him down. In striking, he missed, and the gun now reduced to the naked barrel, flew out of his hands. The two men then sprang at each other with no other weapons than those of nature. A desperate scuffle ensued. Joe could throw the Indian down, but could not hold him there. At length, however, by repeated heavy blows, he succeeded in keeping him down, and tried to choke him with the left hand while he kept the right free for contingencies. Directly, Joe saw the savage trying to draw a knife from its sheath, and waiting till it was about half way out, he grasped it quickly and sank it up to the handle in the breast of his foe, who groaned and expired. Springing to his feet, Joe saw the Indian he had crippled, propped against a log, trying to raise his gun to fire, but falling forward, every time he made the attempt. The borderer, having enough of fighting for one day, and not caring to be killed by a crippled Indian, made for the fort, where he arrived about nightfall. He was blood and dirt from crown to toe, and without horse, hat, or gun. The next morning a party went to Joe's battle-ground. On looking round, they found a trail, as if something had been dragged away, and at a little distance they came upon the big Indian, covered up with leaves. About a hundred yards farther, they found the Indian Joe had crippled, lying on his back, with his own knife sticking up to the hilt in his body, just below the breast bone, evidently to show that he had killed himself. Some years after this fight, Big Joe Logston lost his life in a contest with a gang of outlaws. He was one of those characters who were necessary to the settlement of the west, but who would not have been highly esteemed in civilized society. [Illustration: INDIAN IN AMBUSH] JESSE HUGHES. Jesse Hughes was born and reared in Clarksburgh, Harrison county, Virginia, on the head-waters of the Monongahela. He was a light-built, active man, and from his constant practice became one of the best hunters and Indian fighters on the frontier. Having a perfect knowledge of all the artifices of the Indians, he was quick to devise expedients to frustrate them. Of this, the following exploit is an illustration. At a time of great danger from Indian incursions, when the citizens in the neighborhood where in a fort at Clarksburgh, Hughes one morning observed a lad very hurriedly engaged in fixing his gun. "Jim," said he, "what are you doing that for?" "I am going to shoot a turkey that I hear gobbling on the hill side," replied Jim. "I hear no turkey," said Hughes. "Listen," said Jim. "There, didn't you hear it? Listen again!" "Well," said Hughes, after hearing it repeated, "I'll go and kill it." "No you won't. It's my turkey. I heard it first," said Jim. "Well," said Hughes, "but you know I am the best marksman; and besides, I don't want the turkey, you may have it." The lad then agreed that Hughes should go and kill it for him. Hughes went out of the fort on the side that was farthest from the supposed turkey, and running along the river, went up a ravine and came in on the rear, where, as he expected, he saw an Indian, sitting on a chestnut stump, surrounded by sprouts, gobbling and watching to see if any one would come from the fort to kill the turkey. Hughes crept up and shot him dead. The successful ranger then took off the scalp, and went into the fort, where Jim was waiting for the prize. "There, now," said Jim, "you have let the turkey go. I would have killed it if I had gone." "No," said Hughes, "I didn't let it go," and he threw down the scalp. "There, take your turkey, Jim; I don't want it." The lad nearly fainted, as he thought of the death he had so narrowly escaped, owing to the keen perception and good management of Mr. Hughes. The sagacity of our border hero was fully proved upon another occasion. About 1790, the Indians visited Clarksburgh, in the night, and contrived to steal a few horses, with which they made a hasty retreat. About daylight the next morning, a party of twenty-five or thirty men, among whom was Jesse Hughes, started in pursuit. They found a trail just outside of the settlement, and from the signs, supposed that the marauding party consisted of eight or ten Indians. A council was held to determine how the pursuit should be continued. Mr. Hughes was opposed to following the trail. He said he could pilot the party to the spot where the Indians would cross the Ohio, by a nearer way than the enemy could go, and thus render success certain. But the captain of the party insisted on following the trail. Mr. Hughes then pointed out the dangers of such a course. Suddenly, the captain, with unreasonable obstinacy, called aloud to those who were brave to follow him and let the cowards go home. Hughes knew the captain's remark was intended for him, but smothered his indignation and went on with the party. They had not pursued very far when the trail went down a drain, where the ridge on one side was very steep, with a ledge of rocks for a considerable distance. On the top of the cliff, two Indians lay in ambush, and when the company got opposite to them, they made a noise, which caused the whites to stop; that instant two of the company were mortally wounded, and before the rangers could get round to the top of the cliff, the Indians made their escape with ease. This was as Hughes had predicted. All then agreed that the plan rejected by the captain was the best, and urged Hughes to lead them to the Ohio river. This he consented to do, though fearful that the Indians would cross before he could reach the point. Leaving some of the company to take care of the wounded men, the party started, and arrived at the Ohio the next day, about an hour after the Indians had crossed. The water was yet muddy in the horses' trails, and the rafts that the red men had used were floating down the opposite shore. The company was now unanimous for returning home. Hughes said he wanted to find out who the cowards were. He said that if any of them would go with him, he would cross the river, and scalp some of the Indians. Not one could be found to accompany the daring ranger, who thus had full satisfaction for the captain's insult. He said he would go by himself, and take a scalp, or leave his own with the savages. The company started for home, and Hughes went up the river three or four miles, then made a raft, crossed the river, and camped for the night. The next day, he found the Indian trail, pursued it very cautiously, and about ten miles from the Ohio, came upon the camp. There was but one Indian in it; the rest were all out hunting. The red man was seated, singing, and playing on some bones, made into a rude musical instrument, when Hughes crept up and shot him. The ranger then took the scalp, and hastened home in triumph, to tell his adventures to his less daring companions. [Illustration: FORT HENRY.] SIEGE OF FORT HENRY. The siege of Fort Henry, at the mouth of Wheeling creek, in the year 1777, is one of the most memorable events in Indian warfare--remarkable for the indomitable bravery displayed by the garrison in general, and for some thrilling attendant incidents. The fort stood immediately on the left bank of the Ohio river, about a quarter of a mile above Wheeling creek, and at much less distance from an eminence which rises abruptly from the bottom land. The space inclosed was about three quarters of an acre. In shape the fort was a parallelogram, having a block-house at each corner with lines of pickets eight feet high between. Within the inclosures was a store-house, barrack-rooms, garrison-well, and a number of cabins for the use of families. The principal entrance was a gateway on the eastern side of the fort. Much of the adjacent land was cleared and cultivated, and near the base of the hill stood some twenty-five or thirty cabins, which form the rude beginning of the present city of Wheeling. The fort is said to have been planned by General George Rogers Clarke; and was constructed by Ebenezer Zane and John Caldwell. When first erected, it was called Fort Fincastle but the name was afterwards changed in compliment to Patrick Henry the renowned orator and patriotic governor of Virginia. At the time of the commencement of the siege, the garrison of Fort Henry numbered only forty-two men, some of whom were enfeebled by age while others were mere boys. All, however, were excellent marksmen, and most of them, skilled in border warfare. Colonel David Shepherd, was a brave and resolute officer in whom the borderers had full confidence. The store-house was well-supplied with small arms, particularly muskets, but sadly deficient in ammunition. In the early part of September, 1777, it was ascertained that a large Indian army was concentrating on the Sandusky river, under the command of the bold, active, and skilful renegade, Simon Girty. Colonel Shepherd had many trusty and efficient scouts on the watch; but Girty deceived them all and actually brought his whole force of between four and five hundred Indians before Fort Henry before his real object was discovered. [Illustration: PATRICK HENRY.] On the 26th, an alarm being given all the inhabitants in the vicinity repaired to the fort for safety. At break of day, on the 27th, Colonel Shepherd, wishing to dispatch an express to the nearest settlements for aid, sent a white man and a negro to bring in some horses. While these men were passing through the cornfield south of the fort, they encountered a party of six Indians, one of whom raised his gun and brought the white man to the ground. The negro fled and reached the fort without receiving any injury. As soon as he related his story, Colonel Shepherd dispatched Captain Mason, with fourteen men, to dislodge the Indians from the cornfield. Mason marched almost to the creek without finding any Indians, and was about to return, when he was furiously assailed in front, flank and rear by the whole of Girty's army. Of course, the little band was thrown into confusion, but the brave captain rallied his men, and taking the lead, hewed a passage through the savage host. In the struggle, more than half of the party were slain, and the gallant Mason severely wounded. An Indian fired at the captain at the distance of five paces and wounded, but did not disable him. Turning about, he hurled his gun, felled the savage to the earth, and then succeeded in hiding himself in a pile of fallen timbers, where he was compelled to remain to the end of the siege. Only two of his men survived the fight, and they owed their safety to the heaps of logs and brush which abounded in the cornfield. As soon as the perilous situation of Captain Mason became known at the fort, Captain Ogle was sent out with twelve men, to cover his retreat. This party fell into an ambuscade and two-thirds of the number were slain upon the spot. Captain Ogle found a place of concealment, where he was obliged to remain until the end of the siege. Sergeant Jacob Ogle, though mortally wounded, managed to escape, with two soldiers into the woods. The Indian army now advanced to the assault, with terrific yells. A few shots from the garrison, however, compelled them to halt. Girty then changed the order of attack. Parties of Indians were placed in such of the village-houses as commanded a view of the block-houses. A strong party occupied the yard of Ebenezer Zane, about fifty yards from the fort, using a paling fence as a cover, while the main force was posted under cover on the edge of a cornfield to act as occasion might require. Girty then appeared at the window of a cabin, with a white flag in his hand, and demanded the surrender of the fort in the name of his Britanic majesty. At this time, the garrison numbered only twelve men and two boys. Yet the gallant Colonel Shepherd promptly replied to the summons, that the fort should never be surrendered to the renegade. Girty renewed his proposition, but before he could finish his harangue, a thoughtless youth fired at the speaker and brought the conference to an abrupt termination. Girty disappeared, and in about fifteen minutes, the Indians opened a heavy fire upon the fort, and continued it without much intermission for the space of six hours. The fire of the little garrison, however, was much more destructive than that of the assailants. About one o'clock, the Indians ceased firing and fell back against the base of the hill. [Illustration: THE ALARM AT FORT HENRY.] The colonel resolved to take advantage of the intermission to send for a keg of powder, which was known to be in the house of Ebenezer Zane, about sixty yards from the fort. Several young men promptly volunteered for this dangerous service; but Shepherd could only spare one, and the young men could not determine who that should be. At this critical moment, a young lady, sister of Ebenezer Zane, came forward, and asked that she might be permitted to execute the service; and so earnestly did she argue for the proposition, that permission was reluctantly granted. The gate was opened, and the heroic girl passed out. The opening of the gate arrested the attention of several Indians who were straggling through the village, but they permitted Miss Zane to pass without molestation. When she reappeared with the powder in her arms, the Indians, suspecting the character of her burden, fired a volley at her, but she reached the fort in safety. Let the name of Elizabeth Zane be remembered among the heroic of her sex. About half-past two o'clock, the savages again advanced and renewed their fire. An impetuous attack was made upon the south side of the fort, but the garrison poured upon the assailants a destructive fire from the two lower block-houses. At the same time, a party of eighteen or twenty Indians, armed with rails and billets of wood, rushed out of Zane's yard and made an attempt to force open the gate of the fort. Five or six of the number were shot down, and then the attempt was abandoned. The Indians then opened a fire upon the fort from all sides, except that next the river, which afforded no shelter to besiegers. On the north and east the battle raged fiercely. As night came on the fire of the enemy slackened. Soon after dark, a party of savages advanced within sixty yards of the fort, bringing a hollow maple log which they had loaded to the muzzle and intended to use it as a cannon. The match was applied and the wooden piece bursted, killing or wounding several of those who stood near it. The disappointed party then dispersed. Late in the evening, Francis Duke, son-in-law of Colonel Shepherd, arriving from the Forks of Wheeling, was shot down before he could reach the fort. About four o'clock next morning, Colonel Swearingen, with fourteen men, arrived from Cross Creek, and was fortunate enough to fight his way into the fort without losing a single man. This reinforcement was cheering to the wearied garrison. More relief was at hand. About daybreak, Major Samuel M'Culloch, with forty mounted men from Short Creek, arrived. The gate was thrown open, and the men, though closely beset by the enemy, entered the fort. But Major M'Culloch was not so fortunate. The Indians crowded round and separated him from the party. After several ineffectual attempts to force his way to the gate, he turned and galloped off in the direction of Wheeling Hill. [Illustration: DARING FEAT OF ELIZABETH ZANE.] When he was hemmed in by the Indians before the fort, they might have taken his life without difficulty, but they had weighty reasons for desiring to take him alive. From the very commencement of the war, his reputation as an Indian hunter was as great as that of any white man on the north-western border. He had participated in so many rencontres that almost every warrior possessed a knowledge of his person. Among the Indians his name was a word of terror; they cherished against him feelings of the most phrenzied hatred, and there was not a Mingo or Wyandotte chief before Fort Henry who would not have given the lives of twenty of his warriors to secure to himself the living body of Major M'Culloch. When, therefore, the man whom they had long marked out as the first object of their vengeance, appeared in their midst, they made almost superhuman efforts to acquire possession of his person. The fleetness of M'Culloch's well-trained steed was scarcely greater than that of his enemies, who, with flying strides, moved on in pursuit. At length the hunter reached the top of the hill, and, turning to the left, darted along the ridge with the intention of making the best of his way to Shor' creek. A ride of a few hundred yards in that direction brought him suddenly in contact with a party of Indians who were returning to their camp from a marauding excursion to Mason's Bottom, on the eastern side of the hill. This party being too formidable in numbers to encounter single-handed, the major turned his horse about and rode over his own track, in the hope of discovering some other avenue to escape. A few paces only of his countermarch had been made, when he found himself confronted by his original pursuers, who had, by this time, gained the top of the ridge, and a third party was discovered pressing up the hill directly on his right. He was now completely hemmed in on three sides, and the fourth was almost a perpendicular precipice of one hundred and fifty feet descent, with Wheeling creek at its base. The imminence of his danger allowed him but little time to reflect upon his situation. In an instant he decided upon his course. Supporting his rifle in his left hand and carefully adjusting his reins with the other, he urged his horse to the brink of the bluff, and then made the leap which decided his fate. In the next moment the noble steed, still bearing his intrepid rider in safety, was at the foot of the precipice. M'Culloch immediately dashed across the creek, and was soon beyond reach of the Indians. After the escape of the major, the Indians concentrated at the foot of the hill, and soon after set fire to all the houses and fences outside of the fort, and killed about three hundred cattle. They then raised the siege and retired. The whole loss sustained by the whites during this remarkable siege, was twenty-six men killed and four or five wounded. The loss of the enemy was from sixty to one hundred men. As they removed their dead, exact information on the subject could not be obtained. The gallant Colonel Shepherd deserved the thanks of the frontier settlers for his conduct on this occasion, and Governor Henry appointed him county lieutenant as a token of his esteem. A number of females, who were in the fort, undismayed by the dreadful strife, employed themselves in running bullets and performing various little services; and thus excited much enthusiasm among the men. Perhaps, a more heroic band was never gathered together in garrison than that which defended Fort Henry, and it would be unjust to mention any one as particularly distinguished. We have named the commander only because of his position. [Illustration: TREMENDOUS LEAP OF MAJOR M'CULLOCH.] SIMON GIRTY. During the long warfare maintained between the pioneers of the west and the Indians, the latter were greatly assisted by some renegade white men. Of these, Simon Girty was the most noted and influential. He led several important expeditions against the settlements of Virginia and Kentucky, displayed much courage, energy, and conduct, and was the object of bitter hatred on the frontier. Recent investigations into the stirring events of his career have shown that however bad he might have been, much injustice has been done his memory by border historians. Simon Girty was born and reared in Western Pennsylvania, near the Virginia line. His parents are said to have been very dissipated, and this, perhaps, had some influence in disgusting him with life in the settlements. Becoming skilled in woodcraft, he served with young Simon Kenton, as a scout upon the frontiers. He joined the Virginia army in Dunmore's wars, and, it is said, showed considerable ambition to become distinguished as a soldier. He was disappointed, and so far from gaining promotion, was, for a trifling offence, publicly disgraced, it is said, through the influence of Colonel Gibson. The proud spirit of Girty could not brook such a blow. With a burning thirst for revenge, he fled from the settlements, and took refuge among the Wyandottes. The talents of the renegade were of the kind and of the degree to secure influence among the red men. He excelled the majority of them in council and field, and neither forgave a foe, nor forgot a friend. He was successful in many expeditions after plunder and scalps, and spared none because they were of his own race. He was cruel as many of the borderers were cruel. Becoming an Indian, he had an Indian's hatred of the whites. The borderers seldom showed a red man mercy, and they could not expect any better treatment in return. The exertions of Girty to save his friend, Simon Kenton, from a horrible death, have been noticed in another place. That he did not make such exertions more frequently on the side of humanity is scarcely a matter of wonder--inasmuch as he could not have done so consistently with a due regard to his own safety. After he had become a renegade, the borderers would not permit a return; and as he was forced to reside among the Indians, he was right in securing their favor. Besides saving Kenton, he posted his brother, James Girty, upon the banks of the Ohio, to warn passengers in boats not to be lured to the shore by the arts of the Indians, or of the white men in their service. This was a pure act of humanity. The conduct of Girty on another memorable occasion, the burning of Colonel William Crawford, was more suspicious. [Illustration: COLONEL CRAWFORD AND HIS FRIENDS, PRISONERS.] In the early part of the year 1782, the incursions of the Indians became so harassing and destructive to the inhabitants of Western Pennsylvania, that an expedition against the Wyandotte towns was concerted, and the command given to Colonel Crawford. On the 22d of May, the army, consisting of four hundred and fifty men, commenced its march, and proceeded due west as far as the Moravian towns, where some of the volunteers deserted. The main body, however, marched on, with unabated spirit. The Indians, discovering the advance of the invaders gathered a considerable force, and took up a strong position, determined to fight. Crawford moved forward in order of battle, and on the afternoon of the 6th of June, encountered the enemy. The conflict continued fiercely until night, when the Indians drew off, and Crawford's men slept on the field. In the morning, the battle was renewed, but at a greater distance, and, during the day, neither party suffered much. The delay, however, was fatal to Crawford; for the Indians received large reinforcements. As soon as it was dark, a council of war was held, and it was resolved to retreat as rapidly as possible. By nine o'clock, all the necessary arrangements had been made, and the retreat began in good order. After an advance of about a hundred yards, a firing was heard in the rear, and the troops, seized with a panic, broke and fled in confusion, each man trying to save himself. The Indians came on rapidly in pursuit and plied the tomahawk and scalping-knife without mercy. Colonel Crawford and Dr. Knight were captured, at a distance from the main body--which was soon dispersed in every direction. On the morning of the 10th of June, Crawford, Knight, and nine other prisoners, were conducted to the old town of Sandusky. The main body of the Indians halted within eight miles of the village; but as Colonel Crawford expressed great anxiety to speak with Simon Girty, who was then at Sandusky, he was permitted to go under the care of the Indians. On the morning of the 11th of June, the colonel was brought back from Sandusky on purpose to march into town with the other prisoners. To Knight's inquiry as to whether he had seen Girty, he replied in the affirmative, and added, that the renegade had promised to use his influence for the safety of the prisoners, though as the Indians were much exasperated by the recent outrages of the whites at Guadenhutten upon the unresisting Moravian red men, he was fearful that all pleading would be in vain. Soon afterwards, Captain Pipe, the great chief of the Delawares, appeared. This distinguished warrior had a prepossessing appearance and bland manners, and his language to the prisoners was kind. His purposes, however, were bloody and revengeful. With his own hands he painted every prisoner black! As they were conducted towards the town, the captives observed the bodies of four of their friends, tomahawked and scalped. This was regarded as a sad presage. In a short time, they overtook the five prisoners who remained alive. They were seated on the ground, and surrounded by a crowd of Indian squaws and boys, who taunted and menaced them. Crawford and Knight were compelled to sit down apart from the rest, and immediately afterwards the doctor was given to a Shawnee warrior, to be conducted to their town. The boys and squaws then fell upon the other prisoners, and tomahawked them in a moment. Crawford was then driven towards the village, Girty accompanying the party on horseback. Presently, a large fire was seen, around which were more than thirty warriors, and about double that number of boys and squaws. As soon as the colonel arrived, he was stripped naked, and compelled to sit on the ground. The squaws and boys then fell upon him, and beat him severely with their fists and sticks. In a few minutes, a large stake was fixed in the ground, and piles of hickory poles were spread around it. Colonel Crawford's hands were then tied behind his back; a strong rope was produced, one end of which was fastened to the ligature between his wrists, and the other tied to the bottom of the stake. The rope was long enough to permit him to walk round the stake several times and then return. Fire was then applied to the hickory poles, which lay in piles at the distance of six or seven yards from the stake. The colonel observing these terrible preparations, called to Girty, who sat on horseback, at the distance of a few yards from the fire, and asked if the Indians were going to burn him. Girty replied in the affirmative. The colonel heard the intelligence with firmness, merely observing that he would bear it with fortitude. When the hickory poles had been burnt asunder in the middle, Captain Pipe arose and addressed the crowd, in a tone of great energy, and with animated gestures, pointing frequently to the colonel, who regarded him with an appearance of unruffled composure. As soon as he had ended, a loud whoop burst from the assembled throng, and they all rushed at once upon the unfortunate Crawford. For several seconds, the crowd was so great around him, that Knight could not see what they were doing; but in a short time, they had dispersed sufficiently to give him a view of the colonel. His ears had been cut off, and the blood was streaming down each side of his face. A terrible scene of torture now commenced. The warriors shot charges of powder into his naked body, commencing with the calves of his legs, and continuing to his neck. The boys snatched the burning hickory poles and applied them to his flesh. As fast as he ran around the stake, to avoid one party of tormentors, he was promptly met at every turn by others, with burning poles, red hot irons, and rifles loaded with powder only; so that in a few minutes nearly one hundred charges of powder had been shot into his body, which had become black and blistered in a dreadful manner. The squaws would take up a quantity of coals and hot ashes, and throw them upon his body, so that in a few minutes he had nothing but fire to walk upon. [Illustration: CAPTAIN PIPE.] In the extremity of his agony, the unhappy colonel called aloud upon Girty, in tones which rang through Knight's brain with maddening effect: "Girty! Girty!! shoot me through the heart!! Quick! quick!! Do not refuse me!!" "Don't you see I have no gun, colonel!!" replied the renegade, bursting into a loud laugh, and then turning to an Indian beside him, he uttered some brutal jests upon the naked and miserable appearance of the prisoner. While this awful scene was being acted, Girty rode up to the spot where Dr. Knight stood, and told him that he had now had a foretaste of what was in reserve for him at the Shawnee towns. He swore that he need not expect to escape death, but should suffer it in all the extremity of torture. Knight, whose mind was deeply agitated at the sight of the fearful scene before him, took no notice of Girty, but preserved an impenetrable silence. Girty, after contemplating the colonel's sufferings for a few moments, turned again to Knight, and indulged in a bitter invective against a certain Colonel Gibson, from whom, he said, he had received deep injury; and dwelt upon the delight with which he would see him undergo such tortures as those which Crawford was then suffering. He observed, in a taunting tone, that most of the prisoners had said, that the white people would not injure him, if the chance of war was to throw him into their power; but that for his own part, he should be loath to try the experiment. "I think, (added he with a laugh,) that they would roast me alive, with more pleasure than those red fellows are now broiling the colonel! What is your opinion, doctor? Do you think they would be glad to see me?" Still Knight made no answer, and in a few minutes Girty rejoined the Indians. The terrible scene had now lasted more than two hours, and Crawford had become much exhausted. He walked slowly around the stake, spoke in a low tone, and earnestly besought God to look with compassion upon him, and pardon his sins. His nerves had lost much of their sensibility, and he no longer shrunk from the firebrands with which they incessantly touched him. At length he sunk in a fainting fit upon his face, and lay motionless. Instantly an Indian sprung upon his back, knelt lightly upon one knee, made a circular incision with his knife upon the crown of his head, and clapping the knife between his teeth, tore the scalp off with both hands. Scarcely had this been done, when a withered hag approached with a board full of burning embers, and poured them upon the crown of his head, now laid bare to the bone. The colonel groaned deeply, arose, and again walked slowly around the stake! But why continue a description so horrible? Nature at length could endure no more, and at a late hour in the night, he was released by death from the hands of his tormentors.[B] Whether Girty really took pleasure in the torture of Colonel Crawford, or was forced by circumstances to seem to enjoy it is a question which historians have generally been in too much haste to determine. It is well known that at the time of Crawford's expedition the Indians were very much exasperated by the cold-blooded slaughter of the Moravian red men at Guadenhutten--an atrocity without a parallel in border warfare, and to have seemed merciful to the whites for a single moment would have been fatal to Girty. Indeed, it is said, that, when he spoke of ransoming the colonel, Captain Pipe threatened him with death at the stake. Let justice be rendered even to the worst of criminals. Dr. Knight, made bold or desperate by the torture he had witnessed, effected his escape from the Shawnee warrior to whose care he was committed, and after much suffering, reached the settlements. From him the greater portion of the account of Crawford's death is derived, and corrected by the statements of Indians present on the occasion. Simon Girty never forsook the Indians among whom he had made his home; but his influence gradually diminished. Some accounts say that he perished in the battle of the Thames; while others assert that he lived to extreme old age in Canada, where his descendants are now highly respected citizens. ----- [B] M'Clurg. JOSHUA FLEEHART. Extraordinary strength and activity, with the most daring courage and a thorough knowledge of life in the woods, won for Joshua Fleehart a high reputation among the first settler's of Western Virginia and Ohio. When the Ohio Company founded its settlement at Marietta, in April, 1778, Fleehart was employed as a scout and a hunter. In this service he had no superior north of the Ohio. At periods of the greatest danger, when the Indians were known to be much incensed against the whites, he would start from the settlement with no companion but his dog, and ranging within about twenty miles of an Indian town, would build his cabin and trap and hunt during nearly the whole season. On one occasion this reckless contempt of danger almost cost the hunter his life. [Illustration: JOSHUA FLEEHART.] Having became tired of the sameness of garrison life, and panting for that freedom among the woods and hills to which he had always been accustomed, late in the fall of 1795, he took his canoe, rifle, traps, and blanket, with no one to accompany him, leaving even his faithful dog in the garrison with his family. As he was going into a dangerous neighborhood, he was fearful lest the voice of his dog might betray him. With a daring and intrepidity which few men possess, he pushed his canoe up the Sciota river a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, into the Indian country, amidst their best hunting-grounds for the bear and the beaver, where no white man had dared to venture. These two were the main object of his pursuit, and the hills of Brush creek were said to abound in bear, and the small streams that fell into the Sciota were well suited to the haunts of the beaver. The spot chosen for his winter's residence was within twenty-five or thirty miles of the Indian town of Chillicothe, but as they seldom go far to hunt in the winter, he had little to fear from their interruption. For ten or twelve weeks he trapped and hunted in this solitary region unmolested; luxuriating on the roasted tails of the beaver, and drinking the oil of the bear, an article of diet which is considered by the children of the forest as giving health to the body, with strength and activity to the limbs. His success had equalled his most sanguine expectations, and the winter passed away so quietly and so pleasantly, that he was hardly aware of its progress. About the middle of February, he began to make up the peltry he had captured into packages, and to load his canoe with the proceeds of his winter's hunt, which for safety had been secreted in the willows, a few miles below the little bark hut in which he had lived. The day before that which he had fixed on for his departure, as he was returning to his camp, just at evening, Fleehart's acute ear caught the report of a rifle in the direction of the Indian towns, but at so remote a distance, that none but a backwoodsman could have distinguished the sound. This hastened his preparations for decamping. Nevertheless he slept quietly, but rose the following morning before the dawn; cooked and ate his last meal in the little hut to which he had become quite attached. [Illustration: FLEEHART SHOOTING THE INDIAN.] The sun had just risen, while he was sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree, examining the priming and lock of his gun, casually casting a look up the river bank, he saw an Indian slowly approaching with his eyes intently fixed on the ground, carefully inspecting the track of his moccasins, left in the soft earth as he returned to his hut the evening before. He instantly cocked his gun, stepped behind a tree, and waited till the Indian came within the sure range of his shot. He then fired and the Indian fell. Rushing from the cover on his prostrate foe, he was about to apply the scalping knife; but seeing the shining silver broaches, and broad bands on his arms, he fell to cutting them loose, and tucking them into the bosom of his hunting shirt. While busily occupied in securing the spoils, the sharp crack of a rifle and the passage of the ball through the bullet pouch at his side, caused him to look up, when he saw three Indians within a hundred yards of him. They being too numerous for him to encounter, he seized his rifle and took to flight. The other two, as he ran, fired at him without effect. The chase was continued for several miles by two of the Indians, who were the swiftest runners. He often stopped and "treed," hoping to get a shot and kill or disable one of them, and then overcome the other at his leisure. His pursuers also "treed," and by flanking to the right and left, forced him to uncover or stand the chance of a shot. He finally concluded to leave the level grounds, on which the contest had thus far been held, and take to the high hills which lie back of the bottoms. His strong, muscular limbs here gave him the advantage, as he could ascend the steep hill sides more rapidly than his pursuers. The Indians, seeing they could not overtake him, as a last effort stopped and fired. One of the balls cut away the handle of his hunting-knife, jerking it so violently against his side, that for a moment he thought he was wounded. He immediately returned the fire, and, with a yell of vexation, they gave up the chase. Fleehart made a circuit among the hills, and just at dark came in to the river, near where the canoe lay hid. Springing lightly on board, he paddled down stream. Being greatly fatigued with the efforts of the day, he lay down in the canoe, and when he awoke in the morning the boat was just entering the Ohio river. Crossing over to the southern shore, he, in a few days, pushed his canoe up to Farmer's Castle, without further adventure, where he showed the rich packages of peltry, as the proceeds of his winter's hunt, and displayed the brilliant silver ornaments, as trophies of his victory, to the envy and admiration of his less venturous companions.[C] ----- [C] Hildreth's Pioneer History. [Illustration: A MOUNTED RANGER.] INDIAN FIGHT ON THE LITTLE MUSKINGUM. In the latter part of September, 1789, an alarm being given that Indians had been seen in the Campus Martius, on the Ohio, a party consisting of five or six rangers, ten volunteer citizens, and twelve regular soldiers was collected for pursuit. The men went up in canoes to the mouth of Duck creek, where they left their water craft. The more experienced rangers soon fell upon the trail, which they traced across the wide bottoms on to the Little Muskingum. At a point about half a mile below where Conner's mill now stands, the Indians forded the creek. In a hollow, between the hills, about a mile east of the creek, they discovered the smoke of their camp fire. The rangers now divided the volunteers into two flanking parties, with one of the spies at the head of each, and three of their number to act in front. By the time the flankers had come in range of the camp, the Indians discovered their pursuers, by the noise of the soldiers who lagged behind, and were not so cautious in their movement. They instantly fled up the run on which they were encamped. Two of their number leaving the main body, ascended the point of a hill, with a ravine on the right and left of it. [Illustration: AN INDIAN BRAVE.] The rangers now began to fire, while the Indians, each one taking his tree, returned the shot. One of the two Indians on the spur of the ridge was wounded through the hips, by one of the spies on the right, who pushed on manfully to gain the flanks of the enemy. The men in front came on more slowly, and as they began to ascend the point of the ridge, Ned Henderson, who was posted on high ground, cried out "Kerr! Kerr! there is an Indian behind that white oak, and he will kill some of you." Kerr instantly sprung behind a large tree, and Peter Anderson, who was near him, behind a hickory, too small to cover more than half his body, while John Wiser jumped down into the ravine. At that instant the Indian fired at Anderson, and as John looked over the edge of the bank to learn the effect of the shot, he saw Peter wiping the dust of the hickory bark out of his eyes. The ball grazed the tree, just opposite his nose, and glancing off did him no serious harm, but filling his eyes with the dust, and cutting his nose with the splinters. At the same time Henderson, with others, fired at the Indian, and he fell with several balls through his body. The brave fellow who was killed lost his life in a noble effort to aid his friend, who had been wounded through the hips, and could not spring up on to the little bench, or break in the ridge, where he was standing. While occupied in this labor of love, the rangers on his flanks had so far advanced, that the shelter of the friendly tree could no longer secure him from their shots, as it had done while his enemies were more in front of him. The wounded Indian escaped for the present, although it is probable he died soon after. The other five Indians, there being seven in the party, seeing that their enemies outnumbered them so greatly, after firing a few times, made a circuit to the right and came up in the rear of the soldiers, who were occupying themselves with the contents of the kettle of hog meat and potatoes, which the Indians in their hurry had left boiling over the fire. The first notice they had of their danger was the report of their rifles. It made a huge uproar among the musketeers, who taking to flight, ran in great alarm for protection to the rangers. As it happened the Indians were too far off to do much harm, and no one was injured but one poor fellow, who was shot through the seat of his trowsers, just grazing the skin. He tumbled into the brook by the side of the camp, screaming at the top of his voice, "I am kill'd, I am kill'd," greatly to the amusement of the rangers, who were soon at his side, and dragging him out of the water, searched in vain for the mortal wound. The dead Indian was scalped, and his rifle and blanket taken as the legitimate plunder of a conquered foe. The other five retreated out of reach of the rangers, after their feat of frightening the soldiers. They returned to the garrison, well pleased that none of their men were killed, but much vexed with the soldiers, whose indiscretion had prevented their destroying the whole of the Indians, had they encircled them as first arranged by the leaders of the party. It served as a warning to the Indians not to approach too near the Yankee garrison, as their rangers were brave men, whose eyes and ears were always open.[D] ----- [D] Hildreth's Pioneer History. [Illustration: THE DEFIANCE.] ESCAPE OF RETURN J. MEIGS. During the continuance of the Indian wars, from 1790 to 1795, it was customary for the inmates of all the garrisons to cultivate considerable fields of Indian corn and other vegetables near the walls of their defences. Although hazardous in the extreme, it was preferable to starvation. For a part of that time no provisions could be obtained from the older settlements above, on the Monongahela and Ohio; sometimes from a scarcity amongst themselves, and always at great hazard from Indians, who watched the river for the capture of boats. Another reason was the want of money; many of the settlers having expended a large share of their funds in the journey on, and for the purchase of lands, while others had not a single dollar; so that necessity compelled them to plant their fields. The war having commenced so soon after their arrival, and at a time when not expected, as a formal treaty was made with them at Marietta, in January, 1789, which by the way was only a piece of Indian diplomacy, they never intended to abide by it longer than suited their convenience, and no stores being laid up for a siege, they were taken entirely unprepared. So desperate were their circumstances at one period, that serious thoughts of abandoning the country were entertained by many of the leading men. Under these circumstances R. J. Meigs, then a young lawyer, was forced to lay aside the gown, and assume the use of both the sword and plough. It is true that but little ploughing was done, as much of the corn was then raised by planting the virgin soil with a hoe, amongst the stumps and logs of the clearing, after burning off the brush and light stuff. In this way large crops were invariably produced; so that nearly all the implements needed were the axe and the hoe. It so happened that Mr. Meigs, whose residence was in Campus Martius, the garrison on the east side of the Muskingum river, had planted a field of corn on the west side of that stream in the vicinity of Fort Harmar. To reach this field the river was to be crossed near his residence in a canoe, and the space between the landing and his crop, a distance of about half a mile, to be passed by an obscure path through a thick wood. [Illustration: AN INDIAN WARRIOR.] Early in June, 1792, Mr. Meigs, having completed the labor of the day a little before night, set out on his return home in company with Joseph Symonds and a colored boy, which he had brought with him as a servant from Connecticut. Immediately on leaving the field they entered the forest through which they had to pass before reaching the canoe. Symonds and the boy were unarmed; Mr. Meigs carried a small shot-gun, which he had taken with him for the purpose of shooting a turkey, which at that day abounded to an extent that would hardly be credited at this time. Flocks of several hundred were not uncommon, and of a size and fatness that would excite the admiration of an epicure of any period of the world, even of Apicius himself. Meeting, however, with no turkies, he had discharged his gun at a large snake which crossed his path. They had now arrived within a few rods of the landing, when two Indians, who had been for some time watching their movements and heard the discharge of the gun, sprang into the path behind them, fired and shot Symonds through the shoulder. He being an excellent swimmer, rushed down the bank and into the Muskingum river; where, turning on his back, he was enabled to support himself on the surface until he floated down near Fort Harmar, where he was taken up by a canoe. His wound, although a dangerous one, was healed, and he was alive twenty years afterwards. The black boy followed Symonds into the river as far as he could wade, but being no swimmer, was unable to get out of reach of the Indian who pursued them, and was seized and dragged on shore. The Indian who had captured him was desirous of making him a prisoner, which he so obstinately refused, and made so much resistance that he finally tomahawked and scalped him near the edge of the water. To this alternative he was in a manner compelled, rather than lose both prisoner and scalp, as the rangers and men at Campus Martius had commenced firing at him from the opposite shore. The first shot was fired by a spirited black man in the service of Commodore Abraham Whipple, who was employed near the river at the time. From some accident, it appears that only one of the Indians was armed with a rifle, while the other had a tomahawk and knife. After Symonds was shot, Mr. Meigs immediately faced about in order to retreat to Fort Harmar. The savage armed with the rifle, had placed himself in the path, intending to cut off his escape, but had no time to reload before his intended victim clubbed his gun and rushed upon his antagonist. As he passed, Mr. Meigs aimed a blow at his head, which the Indian returned with his rifle. From the rapidity of the movement, neither of them were seriously injured, although it staggered both considerably, yet neither fell to the ground. Instantly recovering from the shock, he pursued his course to the fort with the Indian close at his heels. Mr. Meigs was in the vigor of early manhood, and had, by frequent practice in the race, become a very swift runner. His foeman was also very fleet, and amongst the most active of their warriors, as none but such were sent into the settlements on marauding excursions. The race continued for sixty or eighty rods with little advantage on either side, when Mr. Meigs gradually increased his distance ahead, and leaping across a deep run that traversed the path, the Indian stopped on the brink, threw his tomahawk, and gave up the pursuit with one of those fierce yells which rage and disappointment both served to sharpen. It was distinctly heard at both the forts. About sixteen years since, an Indian tomahawk was ploughed up near this spot, and was most probably the one thrown at Mr. Meigs; as the rescue and pursuit from Fort Harmar was so immediate upon hearing the alarm, that he had no time to recover it. With the scalp of the poor black boy, the Indians ascended the abrupt side of the hill which overlooked the garrison, and shouting defiance to their foes, escaped in the forest. The excitement was very great at the garrison, and taught the inmates a useful lesson; that of being better armed and more on their guard when they went out on agricultural pursuits. Had Mr. Meigs tried any other expedient than that of facing his enemy and rushing instantly upon him, he must have lost his life, as the Indian was well aware of his gun being unloaded. On his right was the river, on his left a very high hill; beyond him the pathless forest, and between him and the fort his Indian foe. To his sudden and unexpected attack, to his dauntless and intrepid manner, and to his activity, he undoubtedly owed his life. ESTILL'S DEFEAT. One of the most remarkable pioneer fights, in the early history of the west, was that waged by Captain James Estill, and seventeen of his associates, on the 22d of March, 1782, with a party of Wyandotte Indians, twenty-five in number. Seventy-one years almost have elapsed since; yet one of the actors in that sanguinary struggle, Rev. Joseph Proctor, of Estill county, Kentucky, survived to the 2d of December, 1844, dying in the full enjoyment of his faculties at the age of ninety. His wife, the partner of his early privations and toils, and nearly as old as himself, deceased six months previously. On the 19th of March 1782, Indian rafts, without any one on them, were seen floating down the Kentucky river, past Boonesborough. Intelligence of this fact was immediately dispatched by Colonel Logan to Captain Estill, at his station fifteen miles from Boonesborough, and near the present site of Richmond, Kentucky, together with a force of fifteen men, who were directed to march from Lincoln county to Estill's assistance, instructing Captain Estill, if the Indians had not appeared there, to scour the country with a reconnoitring party, as it could not be known at what point the attack would be made. [Illustration: SLAUGHTER OF MISS INNES.] Estill lost not a moment in collecting a force to go in search of the savages, not doubting, from his knowledge of the Indian character, that they designed an immediate blow at his or some of the neighboring stations. From his own and the nearest stations, he raised twenty-five men. Whilst Estill and his men were on this excursion, the Indians suddenly appeared around his station at the dawn of day, on the 20th of March, killed and scalped Miss Innes, and took Munk, a slave of Captain Estill, captive. The Indians immediately and hastily retreated, in consequence of a highly exaggerated account which Munk gave them of the strength of the station, and number of fighting men in it. No sooner had the Indians commenced their retreat, than the women in the fort (the men being all absent except one on the sick list,) dispatched two boys, the late General Samuel South and Peter Hacket, to take the trail of Captain Estill and his men, and, overtaking them, give information of what had occurred at the fort. The boys succeeded in coming up with Captain Estill early on the morning of the 21st, between the mouths of Drowning creek and Red river. After a short search, Captain Estill's party struck the trail of the retreating Indians. It was resolved at once to make pursuit, and no time was lost in doing so. Five men of the party, however, who had families in the fort, feeling uneasy for their safety, and unwilling to trust their defence to the few who remained there, returned to the fort, leaving Captain Estill's party thirty-five in number. These pressed the pursuit of the retreating Indians, as rapidly as possible, but night coming on they encamped near the Little Mountain, at present the site of Mount Sterling. [Illustration: CAPTAIN ESTILL.] Early next morning they put forward, being obliged to leave ten of the men behind, whose horses were too jaded to travel further. They had not proceeded far until they discovered by fresh tracks of the Indians, that they were not far distant. They then marched in four lines until about an hour before sunset, when they discovered six of the savages helping themselves to rations from the body of a buffalo which they had killed. The company was ordered to dismount. With the usual impetuosity of Kentuckians, some of the party fired without regarding orders, and the Indians fled. One of the party, a Mr. David Cook, who acted as ensign, exceedingly ardent and active, had proceeded in advance of the company, and seeing an Indian halt, raised his gun and fired. At the same moment another Indian crossed on the opposite side, and they were both leveled with the same shot. This occurring in view of the whole company, inspired them all with a high degree of confidence. In the meantime, the main body of Indians had heard the alarm and returned, and the two hostile parties exactly matched in point of numbers, having twenty-five on each side, and were now face to face. The ground was highly favorable to the Indian mode of warfare; but Captain Estill and his men, without a moment's hesitation, boldly and fearlessly commenced an attack upon them, and the latter as boldly and fearlessly (for they were picked warriors) engaged in the bloody combat. It is, however, disgraceful to relate, that, at the very onset of the action, Lieutenant Miller, of Captain Estill's party, with six men under his command, "ingloriously fled" from the field, thereby placing in jeopardy the whole of their comrades, and causing the death of many brave soldiers. Hence, Estill's party numbered eighteen, and the Wyandottes twenty-five. The flank becoming thus unprotected, Captain Estill directed Cook with three men to occupy Miller's station, and repel the attack in that quarter to which this base act of cowardice exposed the whole party. The ensign with his party were taking the position assigned, when one of them discovered an Indian and shot him, and the three retreated to a little eminence whence they thought greater execution could be effected with less danger to themselves, but Cook continued to advance without noticing the absence of his party until he had discharged his gun with effect, when he immediately retreated, but after running some distance to a large tree, for the purpose of shelter in firing, he unfortunately got entangled in the tops of fallen timber, and halting for a moment, received a ball which struck him just below the shoulder blade, and came out below his collar bone. In the meantime, on the main field of battle, at the distance of fifty yards, the fight raged with great fury, lasting one hour and three-quarters. On either side wounds and death were inflicted, neither party advancing or retreating. "Every man to his man, and every man to his tree." Captain Estill at this period was covered with blood from a wound received early in the action; nine of his brave companions lay dead upon the field; and four others were so disabled by their wounds, as to be unable to continue the fight. Captain Estill's fighting men were now reduced to four. Among this number was Joseph Proctor. Captain Estill, the brave leader of this Spartan band, was now brought into a personal conflict with a powerful and active Wyandotte warrior. The conflict was for a time fierce and desperate, and keenly and anxiously watched by Proctor, with his finger on the trigger of his unerring rifle. Such, however, was the struggle between these fierce and powerful warriors, that Proctor could not shoot without greatly endangering the safety of his captain. Estill had had his arm broken the preceding summer in an engagement with the Indians; and, in the conflict with the warrior on this occasion, that arm gave way, and in an instant his savage foe buried his knife in Captain Estill's breast; but in the very same moment, the brave Proctor sent a ball from his rifle to the Wyandotte's heart. The survivors then drew off as by mutual consent.--Thus ended this memorable battle. It wanted nothing but the circumstance of numbers to make it the most memorable in ancient or modern times. The loss of the Indians, in killed and wounded, notwithstanding the disparity of numbers after the shameful retreat of Miller, was even greater than that of Captain Estill. It was afterwards ascertained by prisoners who were recaptured from the Wyandotte, that seventeen of the Indians had been killed, and two severely wounded. This battle was fought on the same day, with the disastrous battle of the Blue Licks, March 22d, 1782. There is a tradition derived from the Wyandotte towns, after the peace, that but one of the warriors engaged in this battle ever returned to his nation. It is certain that the chief who led on the Wyandottes with so much desperation, fell in the action. Throughout this bloody engagement the coolness and bravery of Proctor were unsurpassed. But his conduct after the battle has always, with those acquainted with it, elicited the warmest commendation. He brought off the field of battle, and most of the way to the station, a distance of forty miles, on his back, his badly wounded friend, the late brave Colonel William Irvine, so long and so favorably known in Kentucky. A PIONEER MOTHER. The mothers of the west deserve as wide a fame as their fearless husbands and brothers. In no situation were courage and resolution so much required in women as in the western wilderness, during the Indian wars, and even the celebrated heroines of European history seem to us ordinary in comparison. In the fall of 1779, Samuel Daviess, who resided in Bedford county, Virginia, moved with his family to Kentucky, and lived for a time, at Whitley's station, in Lincoln. After residing for some time in the station, he removed for a time to a place called Gilmer's Lick, some six or seven miles distant from said station, where he built a cabin, cleared some land, which he put in corn next season, not apprehending any danger from the Indians, although he was considered a frontier settler. But this imaginary state of security did not last long; for one morning in August, 1782, having stepped a few paces from his door, he was suddenly surprised by an Indian appearing between him and the door, with tomahawk uplifted, almost within striking distance. In this unexpected condition, and being entirely unarmed, his first thought was, that by running round the house, he could enter the door in safety, but to his surprise, in attempting to effect this object, as he approached the door he found the house full of Indians. Being closely pursued by the Indian first mentioned, he made his way into the cornfield, where he concealed himself with much difficulty, until the pursuing Indian had returned to the house. [Illustration: SCALPING.] Unable as he was to render any relief to his family, there being five Indians, he ran with the utmost speed to the station of his brother, a distance of five miles. As he approached the station, his undressed condition told the tale of his distresses, before he was able to tell it himself. Almost breathless, and with a faltering voice, he could only say, his wife and children were in the hands of the Indians. Scarcely was the communication made when he obtained a spare gun, and the five men in the station, well armed, followed him to his residence. When they arrived at the house, the Indians, as well as the family were found to be gone, and no evidence appeared that any of the family had been killed. A search was made to find the direction the Indians had taken; but owing to the dryness of the ground, and the adroit manner in which they had departed, no discovery could be made. In this study and perplexity, the party being all good woodsmen, took that direction in pursuit of the Indians, which they thought it most probable they would take. After going a few miles, their attention was arrested by the howling of a dog, which afterwards turned out to be a house-dog that had followed the family, and which the Indians had undertaken to kill, so as to avoid detection, which might happen from his occasionally barking. In attempting to kill the dog, he was only wounded, which produced the howling that was heard. The noise thus heard, satisfied them that they were near the Indians, and enabled them to rush forward with the utmost impetuosity. Two of the Indians being in the rear as spies, discovering the approach of the party, ran forward to where the Indians were with the family--one of them knocked down the oldest boy, about eleven years old, and while in the act of scalping him, was fired at, but without effect. Mrs. Daviess, seeing the agitation and alarm of the Indians, saved herself and sucking child, by jumping into a sink hole. The Indians did not stand to make fight, but fled in the most precipitate manner. In that way the family was rescued by nine o'clock in the morning, without the loss of a single life, and without any injury but that above mentioned. So soon as the boy had risen on his feet, the first words he spoke were, "Curse that Indian, he has got my scalp!" After the family had been rescued, Mrs. Daviess gave the following account of how the Indians had acted. [Illustration: GOING INTO CAPTIVITY.] A few minutes after her husband had opened the door and stepped out of the house, four Indians rushed in, whilst the fifth, as she afterwards learned, was in pursuit of her husband. Herself and children were in bed when the Indians entered the house. One of the Indians immediately made signs, by which she understood him to inquire how far it was to the next house. With an unusual presence of mind, knowing how important it would be to make the distance as far as possible, she raised both her hands, first counting the fingers of one hand, then of the other--making a distance of eight miles. The Indian then signed to her that she must rise; she immediately got up, and as soon as she could dress herself, commenced showing the Indians one article of clothing after another, which pleased them very much; and in that way, delayed them at the house nearly two hours. In the meantime, the Indian who had been in pursuit of her husband, returned with his hands stained with poke berries, which he held up, and with some violent gestures, and waving of his tomahawk, attempted to induce the belief, that the stain on his hands was the blood of her husband, and that he had killed him. She was enabled at once to discover the deception, and instead of producing any alarm on her part, she was satisfied that her husband had escaped uninjured. After the savages had plundered the house of everything that they could conveniently carry off with them, they started, taking Mrs. Daviess and her children--seven in number, as prisoners along with them. Some of the children were too young to travel as fast as the Indians wished, and discovering, as she believed, their intention to kill such of them as could not conveniently travel, she made the two oldest boys carry them on their backs. The Indians, in starting from the house, were very careful to leave no signs of the direction which they had taken, not even permitting the children to break a twig or weed, as they passed along. They had not gone far, before an Indian drew a knife and cut off a few inches of Mrs. Daviess' dress, so that she would not be interrupted in travelling. Mrs. Daviess was a woman of cool, deliberate courage, and accustomed to handle the gun so that she could shoot well, as many of the women were in the habit of doing in those days. She had contemplated, as a last resort, that if not rescued in the course of the day, when night came and the Indians had fallen asleep, she would rescue herself and children by killing as many of the Indians as she could--thinking that in a night attack as many of them as remained, would most probably run off. Such an attempt would now seem a species of madness; but to those who were acquainted with Mrs. Daviess, little doubt was entertained, that if the attempt had been made, it would have proved successful. The boy who had been scalped, was greatly disfigured, as the hair never after grew upon that part of the head. He often wished for an opportunity to avenge himself upon the Indians for the injury he had received. Unfortunately for himself, ten years afterwards, the Indians came to the neighborhood of his father and stole a number of horses. Himself and a party of men went in pursuit of them, and after following them for some days, the Indians finding that they were likely to be overtaken, placed themselves in ambush, and when their pursuers came up, killed young Daviess and one other man; so that he ultimately fell into their hands when about twenty-one years old. The next year after the father died; his death being caused, as it was supposed, by the extraordinary efforts he made to release his family from the Indians. We cannot close this account, without noticing an act of courage displayed by Mrs. Daviess, calculated to exhibit her character in its true point of view. Kentucky, in its early days, like most new countries, was occasionally troubled with men of abandoned character, who lived by stealing the property of others, and after committing their depredations, retired to their hiding places, thereby eluding the operation of the law. One of these marauders, a man of desperate character, who had committed extensive thefts from Mr. Daviess, as well as from his neighbors, was pursued by Daviess and a party whose property he had taken, in order to bring him to justice. While the party were in pursuit, the suspected individual, not knowing any one was pursuing him, came to the house of Daviess, armed with his gun and tomahawk--no person being at home but Mrs. Daviess and her children. After he had stepped in the house, Mrs. Daviess asked him if he would drink something--and having set a bottle of whiskey upon the table, requested him to help himself. The fellow not suspecting any danger, set his gun up by the door, and while drinking, Mrs. Daviess picked up his gun, and placing herself in the door, had the gun cocked and levelled upon him by the time he turned around, and in a peremptory manner, ordered him to take a seat, or she would shoot him. Struck with terror and alarm, he asked what he had done. She told him, he had stolen her husband's property, and that she intended to take care of him herself. In that condition, she held him a prisoner, until the party of men returned and took him into their possession. [Illustration: THE SQUATTER'S WIFE.] THE SQUATTER'S WIFE AND DAUGHTER. On the Illinois river, near two hundred miles from its junction with the Mississippi, there lived in 1812, an old pioneer, known in those days as "Old Parker the squatter." His family consisted of a wife and three children, the oldest a boy of nineteen, a girl of seventeen, and the youngest a boy of fourteen. At the time of which we write, Parker and his oldest boy had gone in company with three Indians on a hunt, expecting to be absent some five or six days.--The third day after the departure, one of the Indians returned to Parker's house, came in and sat himself down by the fire, lit his pipe and commenced smoking in silence. Mrs. Parker thought nothing of this, as it was no uncommon thing for one or sometimes more of a party of Indians to return abruptly from a hunt, at some sign they might consider ominous of bad luck, and in such instances were not very communicative. But at last the Indian broke silence with "ugh, old Parker die." This exclamation immediately drew Mrs. Parker's attention, who directly enquired of the Indian, what's the matter with Parker? The Indian responded Parker sick, tree fell on him, you go, he die. Mrs. Parker then asked the Indian if Parker had sent for her, and where he was? The replies of the Indian somewhat aroused her suspicions. She, however, came to the conclusion to send her son with the Indian to see what was the matter. The boy and Indian started. That night passed, and the next day too, and neither the boy or Indian returned. This confirmed Mrs. Parker in her opinion that there was foul play on the part of the Indians. So she and her daughter went to work and barricaded the door and windows in the best way they could. The youngest boy's rifle was the only one left, he not having taken it with him when he went to hunt after his father. The old lady took the rifle, the daughter the axe, and thus armed they determined to watch through the night; and defend themselves if necessary. They had not long to wait after night fall, for shortly after that some one commenced knocking at the door, crying out "Mother! mother!" but Mrs. Parker thought the voice was not exactly like that of her son--in order to ascertain the fact, she said "Jake, where are the Indians?" The reply which was "um gone," satisfied her on that point. She then said, as if speaking to her son, "Put your ear to the latch-hole of the door I want to tell you something before I open the door." The head was placed at the latch-hole, and the old lady fired through the same spot and killed an Indian. She stepped back from the door instantly, and it was well she did so, for quicker than I have penned the last two words two rifle bullets came crashing through the door. The old lady then said to her daughter, "Thank God there are but two, I must have killed the one at the door--they must be the three who went on the hunt with your father. If we can only kill or cripple another of them, we will be safe; now we must both be still after they fire again, and they will then break the door down, and I may be able to shoot another one; but if I miss them when getting in, you must use the axe."--The daughter equally courageous with her mother assured her she would. Soon after this conversation two more rifle bullets came crashing through the window. A death-like stillness ensued for about five minutes, when two more balls in quick succession were fired through the door, then followed a tremendous punching with a log, the door gave way, and with a fiendish yell an Indian was about to spring in, when the unerring rifle fired by the old lady stretched his lifeless body across the thresh-hold of the door. The remaining, or more properly the surviving Indian fired at random and ran, doing no injury. "Now" said the old heroine to her undaunted daughter "we must leave." Accordingly with the rifle and the axe, they went to the river, took the canoe, and without a mouthful of provision except one wild duck and two black birds which the mother shot, and which were eaten raw, did these two courageous hearts in six days arrive among the old French settlers at St. Louis. A party of about a dozen men crossed over into Illinois--and after an unsuccessful search returned without finding either Parker or his boys. They were never found. There are yet some of the old settlers in the neighborhood of Peoria who still point out the spot where "old Parker the squatter" lived. [Illustration: ATTACK ON CAPTAIN HUBBELL'S BOAT.] CAPTAIN WILLIAM HUBBELL. In the year 1791, when the Indians were very troublesome on the banks of the Ohio, Captain William Hubbell, Mr. Daniel Light, Mr. William Plascut, Mrs. Plascut and eight children embarked in a flat-bottomed boat to proceed down the Ohio. On their progress down the river, and soon after passing Pittsburgh, they saw evident traces of Indians along the banks, and there is every reason to believe that a boat which they overtook, and which, through carelessness, was suffered to run aground on an island, became a prey to these merciless savages. Though Captain Hubbell and his party stopped some time for it in a lower part of the river, it did not arrive, and has never to their knowledge been heard of since. Before they reached the mouth of the Great Kenhawa, they had by several successive additions, increased their number to twenty, consisting of nine men, three women, and eight children. The men, besides those mentioned above, were one John Stoner, an Irishman and a Dutchman, whose names are not recollected, Messrs. Ray and Tucker, and a Mr. Kilpatrick, whose two daughters also were of the party. Information received at Galliopolis confirmed the expectation, which appearance previously raised, of a serious conflict with a large body of Indians; and as Captain Hubbell had been regularly appointed commander of the boat, every possible preparation was made for a formidable and successful resistance of the anticipated attack. The nine men were divided into three watches for the night, which were alternately to continue awake, and be on the look out for two hours at a time. The arms on board, which consisted principally of old muskets, much out of order, were collected, loaded, and put in the best possible condition for service. About sunset on that day, the 23d of March, 1792, the party overtook a fleet of six boats descending the river in company, and intended to continue with them, but as their passengers seemed to be more disposed to dancing than fighting, and as soon after dark, notwithstanding the remonstrances of Captain Hubbell, they commenced fiddling and dancing instead of preparing their arms, and taking the necessary rest preparatory to battle, it was wisely considered more hazardous to be in such company, than to be alone. It was therefore determined to proceed rapidly forward by the aid of the oars, and leave those thoughtless fellow-travellers behind. One of the boats, however, belonging to the fleet, commanded by a Captain Greathouse, adopted the same plan, and for a while kept up with Captain Hubbell, but all its crew at length falling asleep, that boat also ceased to be propelled by the oars, and Captain Hubbell and his party proceeded steadily forward alone. Early in the night a canoe was dimly seen floating down the river, in which were probably Indians reconnoitering, and other evident indications were observed of the neighborhood and hostile intentions of a formidable party of savages. It was now agreed, that should the attack, as was probable, be deferred till morning, every man should be up before the dawn, in order to make as great a show as possible of numbers and of strength; and that, whenever the action should take place, the women and children should lie down on the cabin floor, and be protected as well as they could by the trunks and other baggage, which might be placed around them. In this perilous situation they continued during the night, and the captain, who had not slept more than one hour since he left Pittsburgh, was too deeply impressed with the imminent danger which surrounded him to obtain any rest at that time. [Illustration: A SIOUX CHIEF.] Just as daylight began to appear in the east, and before the men were up and at their posts, agreeably to arrangement, a voice at some distance below them, in a plaintive tone, repeatedly solicited them to come on shore, as there were some white persons who wished to obtain a passage in their boat. This the captain very naturally and correctly concluded to be an Indian artifice, and its only effect was to rouse the men, and place every one on his guard. The voice of entreaty was soon changed into the language of indignation and insult, and the sound of distant paddles announced the approach of the savage foe. At length three Indian canoes were seen through the mist of the morning rapidly advancing. With the utmost coolness the captain and his companions prepared to receive them. The chairs, tables, and other incumbrances were thrown into the river, in order to clear the deck for action. Every man took his position, and was ordered not to fire till the savages had approached so near, that, (to use the words of Captain Hubbell,) "the flash from the guns might singe their eye-brows;" and a special caution was given, that the men should fire successively, so that there might be no interval. On the arrival of the canoes, they were found to contain about twenty-five or thirty Indians each. As soon as they had approached within the reach of musket-shot, a general fire was given from one of them, which wounded Mr. Tucker through the hip so severely that his leg hung only by the flesh, and shot Mr. Light just below his ribs. The three canoes placed themselves at the bow, stern, and on the right side of the boat, so that they had an opportunity of raking in every direction. The fire now commenced from the boat, and had a powerful effect in checking the confidence and fury of the Indians. The captain after firing his own gun, took up that of one of the wounded men, raised it to his shoulder, and was about to discharge it, when a ball came and took away the lock; he coolly turned round, seized a brand of fire from the kettle which served for a caboose, and applying it to the pan, discharged the piece with effect. A very regular and constant fire was now kept up on both sides. The captain was just in the act of raising his gun a third time, when a ball passed through his right arm, and for a moment disabled him. Scarcely had he recovered from the shock, and re-acquired the use of his hand, which had been suddenly drawn up by the wound, when he observed the Indians in one of the canoes just about to board the boat in its bow, where the horses were placed belonging to the party. So near had they approached, that some of them had actually seized with their hands the side of the boat. Severely wounded as he was, he caught up a pair of horsemen's pistols and rushed forward to repel the attempt at boarding. On his approach the Indians fell back, and he discharged a pistol with effect at the foremost man. After firing the second pistol, he found himself without arms, and was compelled to retreat; but stepping back on a pile of small wood which had been prepared for burning in the kettle, the thought struck him, that it might be made use of in repelling the foe, and he continued for some time to strike them with it so forcibly and actively, that they were unable to enter the boat, and at length he wounded one of them so severely that with a yell they suddenly gave way. All the canoes then discontinued the contest, and directed their course to Captain Greathouse's boat, which was in sight. Here a striking contrast was exhibited to the firmness and intrepidity which had been displayed. Instead of resisting the attack, the people on board of this boat retired to the cabin in dismay. The Indians entered it without opposition, and rowed it to the shore, where they killed the captain and a lad of about fourteen years of age. The women they placed in the centre of their canoes, and manning them with fresh hands, again pursued Captain Hubbell and party. A melancholy alternative now presented itself to these brave but almost desponding men, either to fall a prey to the savages themselves, or to run the risk of shooting the women, who had been placed in the canoes in the hope of deriving protection from their presence. But "self preservation is the first law of nature," and the captain very justly remarked, there would not be much humanity in preserving their lives at such a sacrifice, merely that they might become victims of savage cruelty at some subsequent period. There were now but four men left on board of Captain Hubbell's boat, capable of defending it, and the captain himself was severely wounded in two places. The second attack, however, was resisted with almost incredible firmness and vigor. Whenever the Indians would rise to fire, their opponents would frequently give them the first shot, which in almost every instance would prove fatal. Notwithstanding the disparity of numbers, and the exhausted condition of the defenders of the boat, the Indians at length appeared to despair of success, and the canoes successively retired to the shore. Just as the last one was departing, Captain Hubbell called to the Indian, who was standing in the stern, and on his turning round, discharged his piece at him. When the smoke, which for a moment obstructed the vision, was dissipated, he was seen lying on his back, and appeared to be severely, perhaps mortally wounded. Unfortunately the boat now drifted near to the shore, where the Indians were collected, and a large concourse, probably between four and five hundred, were seen rushing down on the bank. Ray and Plascut, the only men remaining unhurt, were placed at the oars, and as the boat was not more than twenty yards from the shore, it was deemed prudent for all to lie down in as safe a position as possible, and attempt to push forward with the utmost practicable rapidity. While they continued in this situation, nine balls were shot into one oar, and ten into the other, without wounding the rowers, who were hidden from view, and protected by the side of the boat and the blankets in its stern. During this dreadful exposure to the fire of the savages, which continued about twenty minutes, Mr. Kilpatrick observed a particular Indian, whom he thought a favorable mark for his rifle, and, notwithstanding the solemn warning of Captain Hubbell, rose to shoot him, he immediately received a ball in his mouth, which passed out at the back part of his head, and was almost at the same moment shot through the heart. He fell among the horses that about the same time were killed, and presented to his afflicted daughters and fellow-travellers, who were witnesses of the awful occurrence, a spectacle of horror which we need not further attempt to describe. The boat was now providentially and suddenly carried out into the middle of the stream, and taken by the current beyond the reach of the enemy's balls. Our little band reduced as they were in numbers, wounded, afflicted, and almost exhausted by fatigue, were still unsubdued in spirit, and being assembled in all their strength, men, women, and children, with an appearance of triumph gave three hearty cheers, calling to the Indians to come on again, if they were fond of the sport. Thus ended this awful conflict, in which out of nine men, two only escaped unhurt. Tucker and Kilpatrick were killed on the spot, Stoner was mortally wounded, and died on his arrival at Limestone, and all the rest, excepting Ray and Plascut were severely wounded. The women and children were all uninjured, excepting a little son of Mr. Plascut, who, after the battle was over, came to the captain, and with great coolness requested him to take a ball out of his head. On examination, it appeared that a bullet which had passed through the side of the boat, had penetrated the forehead of this little hero, and remained under the skin. The captain took it out, and the youth, observing "that is not all," raised his arm, and exhibited a piece of bone at the point of his elbow, which had been shot off, and hung only by the skin. His mother exclaimed, "why did you not tell me of this?" "Because," he coolly replied, "the captain directed us to be silent during the action, and I thought you would be likely to make a noise if I told you." The boat made the best of its way down the river, and reached Limestone that night. From that time forth no boat was assailed by Indians on the Ohio. [Illustration: CORNSTALK.] MURDER OF CORNSTALK AND HIS SON. Cornstalk, the commander of the Indians in the battle of Point Pleasant, was possessed of a noble heart as well as a genius for war and negotiation. He was ever anxious to maintain an honorable place with the whites and they returned his friendly inclination by putting him to death. A Captain Arbuckle commanded the garrison of the fort, erected at Point Pleasant, after the battle fought by General Lewis with the Indians at that place, in October, 1774. In the succeeding year, when the revolutionary war had commenced, the agents of Great Britain exerted themselves to excite the Indians to hostility against the United States. The mass of Shawnees entertained a strong animosity against the Americans. But, two of their chiefs, Cornstalk and Redhawk, not participating in that animosity visited the garrison at the Point, where Arbuckle continued to command. Cornstalk represented his unwillingness to take a part in the war, on the British side: but stated, that his nation, except himself and his tribe, were determined on war with us, and he supposed, that he and his people would be compelled to go with the stream. On this intimation, Arbuckle resolved to detain the two chiefs, and a third Shawnees, who came with them to the fort, as hostages, under the expectation of preventing thereby any hostile efforts of the nation. On the day before these unfortunate Indians fell victims to the fury of the garrison, Elenipsico, the son of Cornstalk, repaired to Point Pleasant for the purpose of visiting his father, and on the next day, two men belonging to the garrison, whose names were Hamilton and Gillmore, crossed the Kenhawa, intending to hunt in the woods beyond it.--On their return from hunting, some Indians who had come to view the position at the Point, concealed themselves in the weeds near the mouth of the Kenhawa, and killed Gillmore while endeavoring to pass them. Colonel Stewart and Captain Arbuckle were standing on the opposite bank of the river, at that time and were surprised that a gun had been fired so near the fort, in violation of orders which had been issued inhibiting such an act. Hamilton ran down the bank, and cried out that Gillmore was killed. Captain Hall commanded the company to which Gillmore belonged. His men leaped into a canoe, and hastened to the relief of Hamilton. They brought the body of Gillmore weltering in blood, and the head scalped, across the river. The canoe had scarcely reached the shore, when Hall's men cried out "Let us kill the Indians in the fort." Captain Hall placed himself in front of his soldiers, and they ascended the river's bank, pale with rage, and carrying their loaded fire locks in their hands. Colonel Stewart and Captain Arbuckle exerted themselves in vain, to dissuade these men, exasperated to madness by the spectacle of Gillmore's corpse, from the cruel deed which they contemplated. They cocked their guns, threatening those gentlemen with instant death, if they did not desist, and rushed into the fort. The interpreter's wife, who had been a captive among the Indians, and felt an affection for them, ran to their cabin and informed them that Hall's soldiers were advancing with the intention of taking their lives, because they believed that the Indians who killed Gillmore, had come with Cornstalk's son the preceding day. This the young man solemnly denied, and averred that he knew nothing of them. His father, perceiving that Elenipsico was in great agitation, encouraged him and advised him not to fear. "If the great Spirit," said he, "has sent you here to be killed, you ought to die like a man!" As the soldiers approached the door, Cornstalk rose to meet them, and received seven or eight balls which instantly terminated his existence. His son was shot dead in the seat which he occupied. The Red Hawk made an attempt to climb the chimney, but fell by the fire of some of Hall's men. The other Indian, says Colonel Stewart, "was shamefully mangled, and I grieved to see him so long dying." This atrocious deed so exasperated the Shawnees that they immediately took up arms upon the side of the British, expressing their resolution to spare no American who should fall into their hands, and never to lay down arms while there was the remotest chance of successful hostility. Many a family in Virginia and Kentucky had reason to lament the slaughter of the noble Cornstalk and his son. THE MASSACRE OF CHICAGO. On the site of the present city of Chicago, a fort was erected in 1803. Feeling secure under this protection, several families built cabins and began to cultivate the ground in the vicinity. The large and powerful tribe of Pottawatomies occupied the neighboring country. When the war of 1812 broke out, the fort at Chicago was garrisoned by about fifty men, under the command of Captain Heald, and as it was so remote from the other American posts, General Hull determined that it should be abandoned. The following account of the subsequent disastrous events is abridged from Brown's History of Illinois. On the 7th of August, 1812, in the afternoon, Winnemeg, or Catfish, a friendly Indian of the Pottawatomie tribe, arrived at Chicago, and brought dispatches from General Hull, containing the first, and, at that time, the only intelligence of the declaration of war. General Hull's letter announced the capture of Mackinaw, and directed Captain Heald "to evacuate the fort at Chicago, if practicable, and, in that event, to distribute all the United States property contained in the fort, and the United States factory or agency, among the Indians in the neighborhood and repair to Fort Wayne." Winnemeg having delivered his dispatches to Captain Heald, and stated that he was acquainted with the purport of the communication he had brought, urged upon Captain Heald the policy of remaining in the fort, being supplied, as they were, with ammunition and provisions for a considerable time. In case, however, Captain Heald thought proper to evacuate the place, he urged upon him the propriety of doing so immediately, before the Pottawatomies (through whose country they must pass, and who were as yet ignorant of the object of his mission) could collect a force sufficient to oppose them. This advice though given in great earnestness, was not sufficiently regarded by Captain Heald; who observed, that he should evacuate the fort, but having received orders to distribute the public property among the Indians, he did not feel justified in leaving it until he had collected the Pottawatomies in its vicinity, and made an equitable distribution among them. Winnemeg then suggested the expediency of marching out and leaving every thing standing; "while the Indians," said he, "are dividing the spoils, the troops will be able to retreat without molestation." This advice was also unheeded, and an order for evacuating the fort was read next morning on parade. Captain Heald, in issuing it, had neglected to consult his junior officers, as it would have been natural for him to do in such an emergency, and as he probably would have done had there not been some coolness between him and Ensign Ronan. [Illustration: CAPTAIN HEALD IN COUNCIL WITH THE POTTAWATAMIES.] The lieutenant and ensign, after the promulgation of this order, waited on Captain Heald to learn his intentions; and being apprized; for the first time, of the course he intended to pursue, they remonstrated against it. Heald, however, deemed it advisable to assemble the Indians and distribute the public property among them, and ask of them an escort thither, with the promise of a considerable sum of money to be paid on their safe arrival; adding, that he had perfect confidence in the friendly professions of the Indians, from whom, as well as from the soldiers, the capture of Mackinaw had studiously been concealed. From this time forward, the junior officers stood aloof from their commander, and, considering his project as little short of madness, conversed as little upon the subject as possible. Dissatisfaction, however, soon filled the camp; the soldiers began to murmur, and insubordination assumed a threatening aspect. The savages, in the mean time became more and more troublesome; entered the fort occasionally, in defiance of the sentinels, and even made their way without ceremony into the quarters of its commanding officer. On one occasion an Indian, taking up a rifle fired it in the parlor of Captain Heald; some were of opinion that this was intended as the signal for an attack. The old chiefs at this time passed back and forth among the assembled groups, apparently agitated; and the squaws seemed much excited, as though some terrible calamity was impending. No further manifestations, however, of ill-feeling were exhibited, and the day passed without bloodshed. So infatuated at this time was Captain Heald, that he supposed he had wrought a favorable impression upon the savages, and that the little garrison could now march forth in safety. The Indians from the adjacent villages having at length arrived, a council was held on the 12th of August. It was attended, however, only by Captain Heald on the part of the military; the other officers refused to attend, having previously learned that a massacre was intended. This fact was communicated to Captain Heald; he insisted, however, on their going, and they resolutely persisted in their refusal. When Captain Heald left the fort, they repaired to the block-house, which overlooked the ground where the council was in session, and opening the portholes, pointed their cannon in its direction. This circumstance and their absence, it is supposed, saved the whites from massacre. [Illustration: BATTLE BETWEEN MOUNTED TROOPS AND THE INDIANS.] Captain Heald informed the Indians in council, that he would next day distribute among them all the goods in the United States factory, together with the ammunition and provisions with which the garrison was supplied; and desired of them an escort to Fort Wayne, promising them a reward on their arrival thither, in addition to the presents they were about to receive. The savages assented, with professions of friendship, to all he proposed, and promised all he required. The council was no sooner dismissed, than several observing the tone of feeling which prevailed, and anticipating from it no good to the garrison, waited on Captain Heald in order to open his eyes, if possible, to their condition. The impolicy of furnishing the Indians with arms and ammunition to be used against themselves, struck Captain Heald with so much force, that he resolved, without consulting his officers, to destroy all not required for immediate use. On August 13th, the goods in the factory store were distributed among the Indians, who had collected near the fort; and in the evening the ammunition, and also the liquor, belonging to the garrison, were carried, the former into the sally-port and thrown into the well, and the latter through the south gate, as silently as possible, to the river bank, where the heads of the barrels were knocked in, and their contents discharged into the stream. The Indians, however, suspecting the game, approached as near as possible and witnessed the whole scene. The spare muskets were broken up and thrown into the well, together with bags of shot, flints, and gun-screws, and other things; all, however, of but little value. On the 14th, the despondency of the garrison was for a while dispelled by the arrival of Captain Wells and fifteen friendly Miamies. Having heard at Fort Wayne of the error to evacuate Chicago, and knowing the hostile intentions of the Pottawatomies, he hastened thither in order to save, if possible, the little garrison from its doom. Having, on his arrival, learned that the ammunition had been destroyed, and the provisions distributed among the Indians, he saw there was no alternative. Preparations were therefore made for marching on the morrow. In the afternoon a second council was held with the Indians, at which they expressed their resentment at the destruction of the ammunition and liquor in the severest terms. Notwithstanding the precautions which had been observed, the knocking in of the heads of the whisky-barrels had been heard by the Indians, and the river next morning tasted, as some of them expressed it, "like strong grog." Murmurs and threats were everywhere heard; and nothing, apparently, was wanting but an opportunity for some public manifestation of their resentment. The morning of the 15th dawned as usual; the sun rose with uncommon splendor, and Lake Michigan "was a sheet of burnished gold." Early in the day a message was received in the American camp from To-pee-na-bee, a chief of the St. Joseph's band, informing them that mischief was brewing among the Pottawatomies, who had promised them protection. [Illustration: TO-PEE-NA-BEE.] About nine o'clock, the troops left the fort with martial music, and in military array. Captain Wells, at the head of the Miamies, led the van, his face blackened after the manner of the Indians. The garrison, with loaded arms, followed, and the wagons with the baggage, the women and children, the sick and the lame, closed the rear. The Pottawatomies, about five hundred in number, who had promised to escort them in safety to Fort Wayne leaving a little space, afterward followed. The party in advance took the beach road. They had no sooner arrived at the sand-hills which separate the prairie from the beach, about a mile and a half from the fort, when the Pottawatomies, instead of continuing in rear of the Americans, left the beach and took to the prairie; the sand-hills of course intervened, and presented a barrier between the Pottawatomies and the American and Miami line of march. This divergence had scarcely been effected, when Captain Wells, who, with the Miamies was considerably in advance, rode back and exclaimed, "They are about to attack us; form instantly and charge upon them." The word had scarcely been uttered, before a volley of musketry from behind the sand-hills was poured in upon them. The troops were brought immediately into a line and charged upon the bank. One man, a veteran of seventy, fell as they ascended. The battle at once became general. The Miamies fled in the outset; their chief rode up to the Pottawatomies, charged them with duplicity, and, brandishing his tomahawk, said, "he would be the first to head a party of Americans, and return to punish them for their treachery." He then turned his horse and galloped off in pursuit of his companions, who were then scouring across the prairie, and nothing was seen or heard of them more. The American troops behaved gallantly; though few in number, they sold their lives as dearly as possible. They felt, however, as if their time had come, and sought to forget all that was dear on earth. While the battle was raging, the surgeon, Doctor Voorhes, who was badly wounded, and whose horse had been shot from under him, approaching Mrs. Helm, the wife of Lieutenant Helm, (who was in the action, participating in all its vicissitudes,) observed, "Do you think," said he, "they will take our lives? I am badly wounded, but I think not mortally. Perhaps we can purchase safety by offering a large reward. Do you think," continued he, "there is any chance?" "Doctor Voorhes," replied Mrs. Helm, "let us not waste the few moments which yet remain in idle or ill-founded hopes. Our fate is inevitable; we must soon appear at the bar of God; let us make such preparations as are yet in our power." "Oh," said he, "I cannot die; I am unfit to die! If I had a short time to prepare! Death! oh, how awful!" At this moment, Ensign Ronan was fighting at a little distance with a tall and portly Indian; the former, mortally wounded, was nearly down, and struggling desperately upon one knee. Mrs. Helm, pointing her finger, and directing the attention of Doctor Voorhes thither, observed, "Look," said she, "at that young man; he dies like a soldier." "Yes," said Doctor Voorhes, "but he has no terrors of the future; he is an unbeliever." [Illustration: THE MASSACRE.] A young savage immediately raised his tomahawk to strike Mrs. Helm. She sprang instantly aside, and the blow intended for her head fell upon her shoulder; she thereupon seized him around his neck, and while exerting all her efforts to get possession of his scalping-knife, was seized by another Indian and dragged forcibly from his grasp. The latter bore her, struggling and resisting, toward the lake. Notwithstanding, however, the rapidity with which she was hurried along, she recognized, as she passed, the remains of the unfortunate surgeon stretched lifeless on the prairie. She was plunged immediately into the water and held there, notwithstanding her resistance, with a forcible hand. She shortly, however, perceived that the intention of her captor was not to drown her, as he held her in a position to keep her head above the water. Thus reassured, she looked at him attentively, and, in spite of his disguise, recognized the "white man's friend." It was Black Partridge. When the firing had ceased, her preserver bore her from the water and conducted her up the sand-bank. It was a beautiful day in August. The heat, however, of the sun was oppressive; and, walking through the sand, exposed to its burning rays, in her drenched condition--weary, and exhausted by efforts beyond her strength--anxious beyond measure to learn the fate of her friends, and alarmed for her own, her situation was one of agony. The troops having fought with desperation till two-thirds of their number were slain, the remainder twenty-seven in all, borne down by an overwhelming force, and exhausted by efforts hitherto unequalled, at length surrendered. They stipulated, however, for their own safety and for the safety of their remaining women and children. The wounded prisoners, however, in the hurry of the moment, were unfortunately omitted, or rather not particularly mentioned and were therefore regarded by the Indians as having been excluded. One of the soldiers' wives, having frequently been told that prisoners taken by the Indians were subjected to tortures worse than death, had from the first expressed a resolution never to be taken; and when a party of savages approached to make her their prisoner, she fought with desperation; and, though assured of kind treatment and protection, refused to surrender, and was literally cut in pieces and her mangled remains left on the field. After the surrender, one of the baggage wagons, containing twelve children, was assailed by a single savage and the whole number were massacred. All, without distinction of age or sex, fell at once beneath his murderous tomahawk. Captain Wells, who had as yet escaped unharmed, saw from a distance the whole of this murderous scene; and being apprized of the stipulation, and seeing it thus violated, exclaimed aloud, so as to be heard by the Pottawatomies around him, whose prisoner he then was, "If this be your game, I will kill too!" and turning his horse's head, instantly started for the Pottawatomie camp, where the squaws and Indian children had been left ere the battle began. He had no sooner started, than several Indians followed in his rear and discharged their rifles at him as he galloped across the prairie. He laid himself flat on the neck of his horse, and was apparently out of their reach, when the ball of one of his pursuers took effect, killing his horse and wounding him severely. He was again a prisoner; as the savages came up, Winnemeg and Wa-ban-see, two of their number, and both his friends, used all their endeavors in order to save him; they had disengaged him already from his horse, and were supporting him along, when Pee-so-tum, a Pottawatomie Indian, drawing his scalping-knife, stabbed him in the back, and thus inflicted a mortal wound. After struggling for a moment he fell, and breathed his last in the arms of his friends, a victim for those he had sought to save--a sacrifice to his own rash intentions. [Illustration: WINNEMEG, OR THE CATFISH.] The battle having ended, and the prisoners being secured, the latter were conducted to the Pottawatomie camp near the fort. Here the wife of Wau-bee-nee-mah, an Illinois chief, perceiving the exhausted condition of Mrs. Helm, took a kettle, and dipping up some water from the stream which flowed sluggishly by them, threw into it some maple sugar, and, stirring it up with her hand, gave her to drink. "It was," says Mrs. Helm, "the most delicious draught I had ever taken, and her kindness of manner, amid so much atrocity, touched my heart." Her attention, however, was soon directed to other objects. The fort, after the troops had marched out, became a scene of plunder. The cattle were shot down as they ran at large, and lay dead, or were dying around her. It called up afresh a remark of Ensign Ronan's, made before; "Such," said he, "is to be our fate--to be shot down like brutes." The wounded prisoners, we have already remarked, were not included in the stipulation made on the battle-field, as the _Indians understood it_. On reaching, therefore, the Pottawatomie camp, a scene followed which beggars description. A wounded soldier, lying on the ground, was violently assaulted by an old squaw, infuriated by the loss of friends or excited by the murderous scenes around her--who, seizing a pitchfork, attacked the wretched victim, now helpless, and exposed to the burning rays of the sun, his wounds already aggravated by its heat, and he writhing in torture. During the succeeding night, five other wounded prisoners were tomahawked. Those unwounded remained in the wigwams of their captors. The work of plunder being now completed, the fort next day was set on fire. A fair and equal distribution of all the finery belonging to the garrison had apparently been made, and shawls and ribands and feathers were scattered about the camp in great profusion. After suffering many hardships, Mrs. Helm, Mrs. Heald, and the surviving male prisoners were ransomed and sent back to their friends. A few of them, however, were not set at liberty until after the battle of the Thames. THE TWO FRIENDS. In August, 1786, Mr. Francis Downing, then a lad, was living in a fort, where subsequently some iron works were erected by Mr. Jacob Myers, which are now known by the name of Slate Creek works. About the 16th, a young man belonging to the fort, called upon Downing, and requested his assistance in hunting for a horse which had strayed away on the preceding evening. Downing readily complied, and the two friends traversed the woods in every direction, until at length, towards evening, they found themselves in a wild valley, at a distance of six or seven miles from the fort. Here Downing became alarmed and repeatedly assured his elder companion, (whose name was Yates,) that he heard sticks cracking behind them, and was confident that Indians were dogging them. Yates, being an experienced hunter, and from habit grown indifferent to the dangers of the woods, diverted himself freely at the expense of his young companion, often inquiring, at what price he rated his scalp, and offering to ensure it for sixpence. Downing, however, was not so easily satisfied. He observed, that in whatever direction they turned, the same ominous sounds continued to haunt them, and as Yates still treated his fears with the most perfect indifference, he determined to take his measures upon his own responsibility. Gradually slackening his pace, he permitted Yates to advance twenty or thirty steps in front of him, and immediately after descending a gentle hill, he suddenly sprung aside and hid himself in a thick cluster of whortleberry bushes. Yates, who at that time was performing some woodland ditty to the full extent of his lungs, was too much pleased with his own voice, to attend either to Downing or the Indians, and was quickly out of sight. Scarcely had he disappeared, when Downing, to his unspeakable terror, beheld two savages put aside the stalks of a canebrake, and looked out cautiously in the direction which Yates had taken. Fearful that they had seen him step aside, he determined to fire upon them, and trust to his heels for safety, but so unsteady was his hand, that in raising his gun to his shoulder, she went off before he had taken aim. He lost no time in following her example, and after having run fifty yards, he met Yates, who, alarmed at the report, was hastily retracing his steps. It was not necessary to inquire what was the matter. The enemy were in full view, pressing forward with great rapidity, and "devil take the hindmost," was the order of the day. Yates would not outstrip Downing, but ran by his side, although in so doing, he risked both of their lives. The Indians were well acquainted with the country, and soon took a path that diverged from the one which the whites followed, at one point and rejoined it at another, bearing the same relation to it that the string does to the bow. The two paths were at no point distant from each other more than one hundred yards, so that Yates and Downing could easily see the enemy gaining rapidly upon them. They reached the point of re-union first, however, and quickly came to a deep gully which it was necessary to recross, or retrace their steps. Yates cleared it without difficulty, but Downing being, much exhausted, fell short, falling with his breast against the opposite brink, rebounded with violence, and fell at full length on the bottom. The Indians crossed the ditch a few yards below him, and, eager for the capture of Yates, continued the pursuit, without appearing to notice Downing. The latter who at first had given himself up for lost, quickly recovered his strength, and began to walk slowly along the ditch, fearing to leave it lest the enemy should see him. As he advanced, however, the ditch became more shallow, until at length it ceased to protect him at all. Looking around cautiously, he saw one of the Indians returning apparently in quest of him. Unfortunately, he had neglected to reload his gun, while in the ditch, and as the Indian instantly advanced upon him, he had no resource but flight. Throwing away his gun, which was now useless, he plied his legs manfully, in ascending a long ridge which stretched before him, but the Indian gained upon him so rapidly, that he lost all hope of escape. Coming at length to a large poplar which had been blown up by the roots, he ran along the body of the tree upon one side while the Indian followed it upon the other, doubtless expecting to intercept him at the root. It happened that a large she bear was sucking her cubs in a bed which she had made at the root of the tree, and as the Indian reached that point, she instantly sprung upon him, and a prodigious uproar took place. The Indian yelled, and stabbed with his knife, the bear growled and saluted him with one of her most endearing "hugs;"--while Downing, fervently wishing her success, ran off through the woods, without waiting to see the event of the struggle. Downing reached the fort in safety, and found Yates reposing after a hot chase, having eluded his pursuers, and gained the fort two hours before him. On the next morning, they collected a party and returned to the poplar tree, but no traces either of the Indian or bear were to be found. They both probably escaped with their lives, although not without injury. [Illustration: DOWNING ALARMED AT THE NOISE OF THE INDIANS.] [Illustration: THE DESERTER ACTING AS A GUIDE.] DESERTION OF A YOUNG WHITE MAN, FROM A PARTY OF INDIANS. In the year 1787, the following incident occurred in Bourbon county Kentucky. One morning, about sun rise, a young man of wild and savage appearance, suddenly arose from a cluster of bushes in front of a cabin, and hailed the house in a barbarous dialect, which seemed neither exactly Indian nor English, but a collection of shreds and patches from which the graces of both were carefully excluded. His skin had evidently once been white--although now grievously tanned by constant exposure to the weather. His dress in every respect was that of an Indian, as were his gestures, tones and equipments, and his age could not be supposed to exceed twenty years. He talked volubly, but uncouthly, placed his hand upon his breast, gestured vehemently, and seemed very earnestly bent upon communicating something. He was invited to enter the cabin, and the neighbors quickly collected around him. He appeared involuntarily to shrink from contact with them--his eyes rolled rapidly around with a distrustful expression from one to the other, and his whole manner was that of a wild animal, just caught, and shrinking from the touch of its captors.--As several present understood the Indian tongue, they at length gathered the following circumstances as accurately as they could be translated, out of a language which seemed to be an "omnium gatherum" of all that was mongrel, uncouth and barbarous. He said that he had been taken by the Indians, when a child, but could neither recollect his name, nor the country of his birth.--That he had been adopted by an Indian warrior, who brought him up with his other sons, without making the slightest difference between them, and that under his father's roof, he had lived happily until within the last month. A few weeks before that time, his father, accompanied by himself and a younger brother, had hunted for some time upon the waters of the Miami, about forty miles from the spot where Cincinnati now stands, and after all their meat, skins, &c., had been properly secured, the old man determined to gratify his children by taking them upon a war expedition to Kentucky. They accordingly built a bark canoe, in which they crossed the Ohio, near the mouth of Licking, and having buried it, so as to secure it from the action of the sun, they advanced into the country and encamped at the distance of fifteen miles from the river. Here their father was alarmed by hearing an owl cry in a peculiar tone, which he declared boded death or captivity to themselves, if they continued their expedition--and announced his intention of returning without delay to the river. Both of his sons vehemently opposed this resolution, and at length prevailed upon the old man to disregard the owl's warning, and conduct them, as he had promised, against the frontiers of Kentucky. The party then composed themselves to sleep, but were quickly awakened by the father, who had again been warned in a dream that death awaited them in Kentucky, and again besought his children to release him from his promise and lose no time in returning home. Again they prevailed upon him to disregard the warning, and persevere in the march. He consented to gratify them, but declared he would not remain a moment longer in the camp which they now occupied, and accordingly they left it immediately, and marched on through the night, directing their course towards Bourbon county. In the evening they approached a house, that which he hailed and in which he was now speaking. Suddenly the desire of rejoining his people occupied his mind so strongly as to exclude every other idea, and seizing the first favorable opportunity, he had concealed himself in the bushes, and neglected to reply to all the signals which had been concerted for the purpose of collecting their party when scattered. This account appeared so extraordinary, and the young man's appearance was so wild and suspicious, that many of the neighbors suspected him of treachery, and thought that he should be arrested as a spy. Others opposed this resolution and gave full credit to his narrative. In order to satisfy themselves, however, they insisted upon his immediately conducting them to the spot where the canoe had been buried. To this the young man objected most vehemently, declaring that although he had deserted his father and brother, yet he would not betray them. These feelings were too delicate to meet with much sympathy from the rude borderers who surrounded him, and he was given to understand that nothing short of conducting them to the point of embarkation, would be accepted as an evidence of his sincerity.--With obvious reluctance he at length complied. From twenty to thirty men were quickly assembled, mounted upon good horses, and under the guidance of the deserter, they moved rapidly towards the mouth of Licking. On the road the young man informed them that he would first conduct them to the spot, where they had encamped when the scream of the owl alarmed his father, and where an iron kettle had been concealed in a hollow tree. He was probably induced to do this from the hope of delaying the pursuit so long as to afford his friends an opportunity of crossing the river in safety. But if such was his intention, no measure could have been more unfortunate. [Illustration: THE SURPRISE.] The whites approached the encampment in deep silence, and quickly perceived two Indians, an old man and a boy, seated by the fire and busily engaged in cooking some venison.--The deserter became much agitated at the sight of them, and so earnestly implored his countrymen not to kill them, that it was agreed to surround the encampment, and endeavor to secure them as prisoners. This was accordingly attempted, but so desperate was the resistance of the Indians, and so determined were their efforts to escape, that the whites were compelled to fire upon them, and the old man fell mortally wounded, while the boy, by an incredible display of address and activity, was enabled to escape. The deserter beheld his father fall, and throwing himself from his horse, he ran up to the spot where the old man lay bleeding, but still sensible, and falling upon his body, besought his forgiveness for being the unwilling cause of his death, and wept bitterly. His father evidently recognized him, and gave him his hand, but almost instantly afterwards expired. The white men now called upon him to conduct them at a gallop to the spot where the canoe was buried, expecting to reach it before the Indian boy and intercept him. The deserter in vain implored them to compassionate his feelings. He urged that he had already sufficiently demonstrated the truth of his former assertions, at the expense of his father's life, and earnestly entreated them to permit his younger brother to escape. His companions, however, were inexorable. Nothing but the blood of the young Indian would satisfy them, and the deserter was again compelled to act in the capacity of a guide. Within two hours they reached the designated spot. The canoe was still there, and no track could be seen upon the sand, so that it was evident that their victim had not yet arrived. Hastily dismounting, they tied their horses and concealed themselves within close rifle shot of the canoe. Within ten minutes after their arrival the Indian appeared in sight, walking swiftly towards them. He went straight to the spot where the canoe had been buried, and was in the act of digging it up, when he received a dozen balls through his body, and leaping high into the air fell dead upon the sand. He was scalped and buried where he fell, without having seen his brother, and probably without having known the treachery by which he and his father had lost their lives. The deserter remained but a short time in Bourbon, and never regained his tranquillity of mind. He shortly afterwards disappeared, but whether to seek his relations in Virginia or Pennsylvania, or whether disgusted by the ferocity of the whites, he returned to the Indians, has never yet been known. He was never heard of afterwards. [Illustration: MORGAN AND THE INDIAN.] MORGAN'S TRIUMPH. In 1779, a Mr. Morgan, of Prickett's Fort, West Virginia, was surprised in the woods by two Indians, who immediately gave chase. Being old and somewhat infirm, he faltered in the race, and was obliged to take refuge behind a tree; the Indians did the same, but one of them exposing his body, was shot by Morgan, and, after falling, stabbed himself. Morgan again fled; but his surviving antagonist gained rapidly upon him, and at length raised his gun to fire. Morgan adroitly stepped aside, and the ball passed him. Then each rushed to closer combat. Morgan, while striking with his gun, received the Indian's tomahawk, which cut off a finger, and knocked the gun from his grasp. Being an expert wrestler, he closed, and threw his antagonist; but he was speedily overturned, when the Indian, uttering the customary yell of triumph, began feeling for his knife. Its hilt was entangled in a woman's apron, which the savage had tied round his waist; and this apparent trivial circumstance saved the prostrate hunter. During the search, Morgan had seized his antagonist's fingers with his teeth, a position in which he used all becoming exertions to keep them. Meanwhile he assisted in the search for the knife. The Indian at length seized it, but so far towards the blade, that Morgan caught hold of the upper portion of the handle, and drew it through his adversary's hand, inflicting a deep wound. Both sprang erect, Morgan still holding on to the Indian's fingers, and having his body within his grasp. He had therefore all the advantage, and while his foe was struggling to disengage himself, he plunged the knife to the hilt in his body. The daring hunter returned to the fort in triumph. [Illustration: VIEW OF WYOMING.] [Illustration: COLONEL ZEBULON BUTLER.] MASSACRE OF WYOMING. The following account of the battle and massacre is taken from an interesting history of Wyoming, written by Isaac Chapman, Esq., late of Wilkesbarre. Judge Chapman lived upon the spot, and could hardly fail to have collected ample materials, and to give a correct narrative of the events which transpired there during the Revolutionary war. The inhabitants had collected in Forty Fort--the principal fort in the valley. The number of men was three hundred and sixty-eight. On the morning of the 3d of July, 1778, the officers of the garrison of Forty Fort held a council to determine on the propriety of marching from the fort, and attacking the enemy wherever found. The debates in this council of war are said to have been conducted with much warmth and animation. The ultimate determination was one on which depended the lives of the garrison and safety of the settlement. On one side it was contended that their enemies were daily increasing in numbers; that they would plunder the settlement of all kinds of property, and would accumulate the means of carrying on the war, while they themselves would become weaker; that the harvest would soon be ripe, and would be gathered or destroyed by their enemies, and all their means of sustenance during the succeeding winter would fail; that probably all their messengers were killed, and as there had been more than sufficient time, and no assistance arrived, they would probably receive none, and consequently now was the proper time to make an attack. On the other side it was argued, that probably some or all the messengers may have arrived at head-quarters, but that the absence of the commander-in-chief may have produced delay; that one or two weeks more may bring the desired assistance, and that to attack the enemy, superior as they were in number, out of the limits of their own fort, would produce almost certain destruction to the settlements and themselves, and captivity, and slavery, perhaps torture, to their wives and children. [Illustration: THE MASSACRE OF WYOMING.] While these debates were progressing, five men belonging to Wyoming, but who at that time held commissions in the continental army, arrived at the fort; they had received information that a force from Niagara had marched to destroy the settlements on the Susquehanna, and being unable to bring with them any reinforcement, they resigned their appointments, and hastened immediately to the protection of their families. They had heard nothing of the messengers, neither could they give any certain information as to the probability of relief. The prospect of receiving assistance became now extremely uncertain. The advocates for the attack prevailed in the council, and at dawn of day, on the morning of the 3d of July, the garrison left the fort, and began their march up the river, under the command of Colonel Zebulon Butler. Having proceeded about two miles, the troops halted for the purpose of detaching a reconnoitering party, to ascertain the situation of the enemy. The scout found the enemy in possession of Fort Wintermoot, and occupying huts immediately around it, carousing in supposed security; but on their return to the advancing column, they met two strolling Indians, by whom they were fired upon, and upon whom they immediately returned the fire without effect. The settlers hastened their march for the attack, but the Indians had given the alarm, and the advancing troops found the enemy already formed in order of battle a small distance from their fort, with their right flank covered by a swamp, and their left resting upon the bank of a river. The settlers immediately displayed their column and formed in corresponding order, but as the enemy was much superior in numbers, their line was much more extensive. Pine woods and bushes covered the battle-ground, in consequence of which, the movements of the troops could not be so quickly discovered, nor so well ascertained. Colonel Zebulon Butler had command of the right, and was opposed by Colonel John Butler at the head of the British troops on the left, Colonel Nathan Denison commanded the left, opposed by Brant at the head of his Indians on the enemy's right. The battle commenced at about forty rods distant, and continued about fifteen minutes through the woods and brush without much execution. At this time, Brant with his Indians having penetrated the swamp, turned the left flank of the settler's line, and with a terrible war-whoop and savage yell, made a desperate charge upon the troops composing that wing, which fell very fast, and were immediately cut to pieces with the tomahawk. Colonel Denison having ascertained that the savages were gaining the rear of the left, gave orders for that wing _to fall back_. At the same time, Colonel John Butler, finding that the line of settlers did not extend so far towards the river as his own, doubled that end of his line which was protected by a thick growth of brushwood, and having brought a party of his British regulars to act in column upon that wing, threw Colonel Zebulon Butler's into some confusion. The orders of Colonel Denison for his troops to fall back, having been understood by many to mean a retreat, the troops began to retire in much disorder. The savages considered this a flight, and commencing a most hideous yell, rushed forward with their rifles and tomahawks, and cut the retiring line to pieces. In this situation it was found impossible to rally and form the troops, and the rout became general throughout the line. The settlers fled in every direction, and were instantly followed by the savages, who killed or took prisoners whoever came within their reach. Some succeeded in reaching the river, and escaped by swimming across; others fled to the mountains, and the savages, too much occupied with plunder, gave up the pursuit. When the first intelligence was received in the village of Wilkesbarre that the battle was lost, the women fled with their children to the mountains on their way to the settlements on the Delaware, where many of them at length arrived after suffering extreme hardships. Many of the men who escaped the battle, together with their women and children, who were unable to travel on foot, took refuge in Wyoming fort, and on the following day (July 4th,) Butler and Brant, at the head of their combined forces, appeared before the fort, and demanded its surrender. The garrison being without any efficient means of defence, surrendered the fort on articles of capitulation, by which the settlers, upon giving up their fortifications, prisoners, and military stores, were to remain in the country unmolested, provided they did not again take up arms. In this battle about three hundred of the settlers were killed or missing, from a great part of whom no intelligence was ever afterward received. The conditions of the capitulation were entirely disregarded by the British and savage forces, and after the fort was delivered up, all kinds of barbarities were committed by them. The village of Wilkesbarre, consisting of twenty-three houses, was burnt; men and their wives were separated from each other, and carried into captivity: their property was plundered, and the settlement laid waste. The remainder of the inhabitants were driven from the valley, and compelled to proceed on foot sixty miles through the great swamp, almost without food or clothing. A number perished in the journey, principally women and children; some died of their wounds; others wandered from the path in search of food, and were lost, and those who survived called the wilderness through which they had passed, "the shades of death!" a name which it has since retained. [Illustration: THE BLOCK-HOUSE.] HEROIC WOMEN OF THE WEST. The following incidents are taken from a letter addressed by Captain Nathaniel Hart, of Woodford county, Kentucky, to Governor Morehead: DEAR SIR.--Connected with your address delivered at the celebration of the first settlement of Kentucky, at Boonesborough, the circumstances attending the escape and defence of Mrs. Woods, about the year 1784-5, near the Crab Orchard, in Lincoln county, may not be without interest. I have a distinct recollection of them. Mr. Woods, her husband, was absent from home, and early in the morning, being a short distance from her cabin, she discovered several Indians advancing towards it. She reached it before all but one, who was so far ahead of the others, that before she could close and fasten the door, he entered. Instantly he was seized by a lame negro man of the family, and after a short scuffle, they both fell--the negro underneath. But he held the Indian so fast, that he was unable to use either his scalping knife or tomahawk, when he called upon his young mistress to take the axe from under the bed, and dispatch him by a blow upon the head. She immediately attempted it: but the first attempt was a failure She repeated the blow and killed him. The other Indians were at the door endeavoring to force it open with their tomahawks. The negro rose, and proposed to Mrs. Woods to let in another, and they would soon dispose of the whole of them in the same way. The cabin was but a short distance from a station, the occupants of which, having discovered the perilous situation of the family, fired on the Indians, and killed another, when the remainder made their escape. [Illustration: MRS. DUREE OVER THE DEAD BODY OF HER HUSBAND.] This incident is not more extaordinary than one that happened, in the fall or winter of 1781-2, to some families belonging to our own fort at the White Oak Spring. My father settled this fort in 1779. It was situated about a mile above Boonesborough and in the same bottom of the river. It was composed principally of families from York county, Pennsylvania--orderly, respectable people, and the men good soldiers. But they were unaccustomed to Indian warfare, and the consequence was, that of some ten or twelve men, all were killed but two or three. During this period, Peter Duree, the elder, the principal man of the connection, determined to settle a new fort between Estill's station and the mouth of Muddy Creek, directly on the trace between the Cherokee and Shawnese towns. Having erected a cabin, his son-in-law, John Bullock and his family, and his son Peter Duree, his wife and two children, removed to it, taking a pair of hand mill stones with them. They remained for two or three days shut up in their cabin, but their corn meal being exhausted, they were compelled to venture out to cut a hollow tree in order to adjust their hand mill. They were attacked by Indians--Bullock, after running a short distance, fell. Duree reached the cabin, and threw himself upon the bed. Mrs. Bullock ran to the door to ascertain the fate of her husband--received a shot in the breast, and fell across the door sill. Mrs. Duree, not knowing whether her husband had been shot or had fainted, caught her by the feet, pulled her into the house and barred the door. She grasped a rifle and told her husband, she would help him to fight. He replied that he had been wounded and was dying. She then presented the gun through several port holes in quick succession--then calmly sat by her husband and closed his eyes in death. You would conclude that the scene ought to end here--but after waiting several hours, and seeing nothing more of the Indians, she sallied out in desperation to make her way to the White Oak Spring, with her infant in her arms, and a son, three or four years of age, following her. Afraid to pursue the trace, she entered the woods, and after running till she was nearly exhausted she came at length to the trace. She determined to follow it at all hazards, and having advanced a few miles further, she met the elder Mr. Duree, with his wife, and youngest son, with their baggage, on their way to the new station. The melancholy tidings induced them, of course, to return. They led their horses into an adjoining canebrake, unloaded them, and regained the White Oak Spring fort before daylight. It is impossible at this day to make a just impression of the sufferings of the pioneers about the period spoken of. The White Oak Spring fort in 1782, with perhaps one hundred souls in it, was reduced in August to three fighting white men--and I can say with truth, that for two or three weeks, my mother's family never unclothed themselves to sleep, nor were all of them, within the time, at their meals together, nor was any household business attempted. Food was prepared, and placed where those who chose could eat. It was the period when Bryant's station was besieged and for many days before and after that gloomy event, we were in constant expectation of being made prisoners. We made application to Colonel Logan for a guard, and obtained one, but not until the danger was measurably over. It then consisted of two men only. Colonel Logan did everything in his power, as county lieutenant, to sustain the different forts--but it was not a very easy matter to order a married man from a fort where his family was to defend some other--when his own was in imminent danger. I went with my mother in January, 1783, to Logan's station, to prove my father's will. He had fallen in the preceding July. Twenty armed men were of the party. Twenty-three widows were in attendance upon the court, to obtain letters of administration on the estates of their husbands, who had been killed during the past year. My mother went to Colonel Logan's, who received and treated her like a sister. [Illustration: GENERAL ST. CLAIR.] INDIAN STRATEGEM FOILED. The Chippewas are a numerous people inhabiting the country north of Lake Superior, and about the source of the Mississippi. They are divided into several tribes, and are distinguished by the number of blue or black lines tattooed on their cheeks and foreheads. Travellers have always described them as "the most peaceable tribe of Indians known in North America." They are not remarkable for their activity as hunters, and this no doubt is owing to the ease with which they can procure both game and fish. [Illustration: THE SENTINEL.] In their pursuit of deer, they sometimes drive them into the small lakes, and then spear them from their canoes; or shoot them with the bow and arrow, after having driven them into inclosures constructed for the purpose. Snares made of deer sinews, too, are frequently used for catching large and small game: and as these occupations are not beyond the strength of the old men and boys, they take a share in these toils, which among most of the tribes are left exclusively to the squaws. In person the Chippewas are not remarkable; they are generally robust, their complexion swarthy, their features broad, and their hair straight and black, which is the case in most of the Indian tribes. But they have not that piercing eye, which so generally animates the Indian countenance. The aspect of the women is more agreeable than that of the men; they wear their hair of a great length, and pay much attention to its arrangement, greasing it with considerable taste. They appear to be more attentive to the comforts of dress, and less anxious about its exterior than of their red brethren. Deer and fawn skins, dressed with the hair on, so skilfully that they are perfectly supple, compose their shirt or coat, which is girt round the waist with a belt, and reaches half way down the thigh. Their moccasins and leggins are generally sewn together, and the latter meet the belt to which they are fastened. A ruff or tippet surrounds the neck, and the skin of the deer's head is formed into a curious sort of cap. A robe of several deer skins sewn together is throw over the whole; this dress is sometimes worn single, but in winter it is always made double, the hair forming both the lining and the outside. Thus attired, a Chippewa will lay himself down on the snow and repose in comfort; and if in his wanderings across the numerous lakes with which his country abounds, he should fall short of provisions, he has only to cut a hole in the ice, when he seldom fails of taking a blackfish, or a bass, which he broils over his little wood fire with as much skill as a French cook. At the time of the French and Indian wars, the American army was encamped on the Plains of Chippewa. Colonel St. Clair, the commander, was a brave and meritorious officer, but his bravery sometimes amounted to rashness, and his enemies have accused him of indiscretion. In the present instance perhaps he may have merited the accusation, for the plain on which he had encamped was bordered by a dense forest, from which the Indian scouts could easily pick off his sentinels without in the least exposing themselves to danger. [Illustration: CHIPPEWA INDIANS FISHING ON THE ICE.] Five nights had passed, and every night the sentinel, who stood at a lonely out-post in the vicinity of the forest, had been shot; and these repeated disasters struck such dread among the remaining soldiers, that no one would come forward to offer to take the post, and the commander, knowing it was only throwing men's lives away, let it stand for a few nights unoccupied. At length, a rifleman of the Virginian corps, volunteered his services for this dangerous duty; he laughed at the fears of his companions, and told them he meant to return safe and drink his commander's health in the morning. The guard marched up soon after, and he shouldered his rifle and fell. He arrived at the place which had been so fatal to his comrades, and bidding his fellow soldiers "good night," assumed the duties of his post. The night was dark, thick clouds overspread the firmament, and hardly a star could be seen by the sentinel as he paced his lonely walk. All was silent except the gradually retreating footsteps of the guard; he marched onwards, then stopped and listened till he thought he heard the joyful sound of "All's well"--then all was still, and he sat down on a fallen tree and began to muse. Presently a low rustling among the bushes caught his ear; he gazed intently towards the spot whence the sound seemed to proceed, but he could see nothing save the impenetrable gloom of the forest. The sound grew nearer, and a well-known grunt informed him of the approach of a bear. The animal passed the soldier slowly, and then quietly sought the thicket to the left. At this moment the moon shone out bright through the parting clouds, and the wary soldier perceived the ornamented moccasin of a savage on what an instant before he believed to be a bear! He could have shot him in a moment, but he knew not how many other animals might be at hand; he therefore refrained, and having perfect knowledge of Indian subtilty, he quickly took off his hat and coat, hung them on a branch of a fallen tree, grasped his rifle, and silently crept towards the thicket. He had barely reached it, when an arrow, whizzing past his head, told him of the danger he had so narrowly escaped. He looked carefully round him, and on a little spot of cleared land he counted twelve Indians, some sitting, some lying full length on the thickly strewn leaves of the forest. Believing that they had already shot the sentinel, and little thinking there was any one within hearing, they were quite off their guard, and conversed aloud about their plans for the morrow. It appeared that a council of twelve chiefs was now held, in which they gravely deliberated on the most effectual means of annoying the enemy. It was decided that the next evening forty of their warriors should be in readiness at the hour when the sentinel should be left by his comrades, and that when they had retired a few paces, an arrow should silence him for ever, and they would then rush on and massacre the guard. This being concluded, they rose, and drawing the numerous folds of their ample robes closer round them, they marched off in Indian file through the gloomy forest, seeking some more distant spot, where the smoke of their nightly fire would not be observed by the white men. The sentinel rose from his hiding-place and returned to his post, and taking down his hat, found that an arrow had passed clean through it. He then wrapt himself in his watch-coat, and returned immediately to the camp; and without any delay demanded to speak to the commander, saying that he had something important to communicate. [Illustration: GENERAL MORGAN.] He was admitted, and when he had told all that he had seen and heard, the Colonel bestowed on him the commission of lieutenant of the Virginia corps, which had been made vacant by the death of one of his comrades a few nights back, and ordered him to be ready with a picket guard, to march an hour earlier than usual to the fatal out-post, there to place a hat and coat on the branches, and then lie in ambush for the intruders. The following evening, according to the orders given by Colonel St. Clair, a detachment of forty riflemen, with Lieutenant Morgan at their head, marched from the camp at half past seven in the evening towards the appointed spot, and having arranged the hat and coat so as to have the appearance of a soldier standing on guard, they stole silently away and hid themselves among the bushes. Here they lay for almost an hour before any signs of approaching Indians were heard. The night was cold and still, and the rising moon shone forth in all her beauty. The men were becoming impatient of their uncomfortable situation, for their clothes were not so well adapted to a bed of snow as the deer-skin robes of the hardy Chippewas. "Silence!" whispered Lieutenant Morgan--"I hear the rustling of the leaves." Presently a bear of the same description as had been seen the night before, passed near the ambush; it crept to the edge of the plain--reconnoitred--saw the sentinel at his post--retired towards the forest a few paces, and then, suddenly rising on his feet, let fly an arrow which brought the sham sentinel to the ground. So impatient were the Virginians to avenge the death of their comrades that they could scarcely wait till the lieutenant gave the word of command to fire--then they rose in a body, and before the Chippewas had time to draw their arrows or seize their tomahawks, more than half their number lay dead upon the plain. The rest fled to the forest, but the riflemen fired again, and killed or wounded several more of the enemy. They then returned in triumph to relate their exploits in the camp. Ten chiefs fell that night, and their fall was, undoubtedly, one principal cause of the French and Indian wars with the English. Lieutenant Morgan rose to be a captain, and at the termination of the war returned home, and lived on his own farm till the breaking out of the American war. And then, at the head of a corps of Virginia rifleman, appeared our hero, the brave and gallant Colonel Morgan, better known by the title of general, which he soon acquired by his courage and ability. [Illustration: BLACKBIRD.] BLACKBIRD. Among the first tribes of the Great Oregon Territory, which established friendly intercourse with the United States traders, were the Omahas. The boast of these Indians was a chief named Blackbird, who was a steadfast friend of the white men and the terror of the neighboring hostile tribes. Such were his skill, courage, and success in war, that friends and foes regarded him as enchanted. He delighted in trials of strength or agility, in which he always came off victorious. In addition to these qualities, he possessed a secret which rendered him more than human in the eyes of his barbarous followers. This was an acquaintance with the properties of arsenic, which he had obtained from a white trader. Whenever he was displeased with an Indian, he prophesied his death before a certain day, and the sure accomplishment of the prophecy rendered Blackbird an object of terror and reverence. On one occasion, the Poncas made an incursion into Blackbird's territory, and carried away a number of women and horses. He immediately collected his warriors and pursued them. The Poncas sheltered themselves behind a rude embankment, but their persevering enemy, gaining a good position, poured upon them a well-directed fire, which did fearful execution. The Ponca chief dispatched a herald, with the calumet, but he was immediately shot; a second herald experienced the same treatment. The chieftain's daughter, a young maiden of much personal beauty, then appeared before the stern foe, dressed with exquisite taste, and bearing the calumet. Blackbird's heart softened, he accepted the sacred emblem, and concluded a peace with his enemy. The pledge given and received was the beautiful Ponca maiden, as wife to the fierce chieftain of Omaha. For the first time the heart of Blackbird felt the genial influence of love. He loved the young creature who had saved her tribe, with all the ardor of untutored nature. But he was still a savage, and sometimes ungovernable bursts of rage would transport him beyond all bounds of affection or decency. In one of these, his beloved wife unwittingly offended him. He instantly drew his knife and laid her dead with a single blow. The dreadful deed calmed him in a moment. For a little while he looked at the beautiful corpse in stupid grief, and then, with his head wrapped in his robe, he sat down beside it. He ate no food, spake no word for three days. The remonstrances of his people were received with silence, and no one dared to uncover his face. At length one of them brought in a small child, and placed the foot of the unhappy warrior on its neck. Blackbird was moved by the significant appeal and throwing aside his robe, he arose and delivered an oration. The Omaha tribe were greatly thinned by small-pox, and to this loathsome disease their great chieftain fell a victim. His dying request was bold and fanciful. Near the source of the Missouri is a high solitary rock, round which the river winds in a nearly circular direction, and which commands a view of the adjacent country for many miles around. There Blackbird had often sat to watch for the canoes of the white traders, and there it was his dying request to be buried. He was to be mounted upon his horse, completely armed, so as to overlook his lands, and watch for the coming boat of the white men. His orders were obeyed; and on that same high promontory, over the tomb of the Indian warrior was raised his national banner, capped with the scalps which he had taken in battle. Of course the Indians regard the rock with superstitious reverence, and have their own stories of the scenes which occasionally take place on and around it. A DESPERATE ADVENTURE. While encamped on the 24th of April, at a spring near the Spanish Trail, we were surprised by the sudden appearance amongst us of two Mexicans; a man and a boy. The name of the man was Andreas Fuentas, and that of the boy, a handsome lad of eleven years old, Pablo Hernandez. With a cavalcade of about thirty horses, they had come out from Puebla de los Angelos, near the Pacific; had lost half their animals, stolen by the Indians, and now sought my camp for aid. Carson and Godey, two of my men, volunteered to pursue them, with the Mexican; and, well mounted, the three set off on the trail. In the evening, Fuentas returned, his horse having failed; but Carson and Godey had continued the pursuit. [Illustration: KIT. CARSON.] In the afternoon of the next day, a war-whoop was heard, such as Indians make when returning from a victorious enterprise; and soon Carson and Godey appeared driving before them a band of horses, recognised by Fuentas to be a part of those they had lost. Two bloody scalps, dangling from the end of Godey's gun, announced that they had overtaken the Indians as well as the horses. They had continued the pursuit alone after Fuentas left them, and towards nightfall entered the mountains into which the trail led. After sunset, the moon gave light until late in the night, when it entered a narrow defile, and was difficult to follow. Here they lay from midnight till morning. At daylight they resumed the pursuit, and at sunrise discovered the horses; and immediately dismounting and tying up their own, they crept cautiously to a rising ground which intervened, from the crest of which they perceived the encampment of four lodges close by. They proceeded quietly, and got within thirty or forty yards of their object, when a movement among the horses discovered them to the Indians. Giving the war shout, they instantly charged into the camp, regardless of the numbers which the four lodges might contain. The Indians received them with a flight of arrows, shot from their long bows, one of which passed through Godey's shirt collar, barely missing the neck. Our men fired their rifles upon a steady aim, and rushed in. Two Indians were stretched upon the ground, fatally pierced with bullets; the rest fled, except a lad, who was captured. The scalps of the fallen were instantly stripped off, but in the process, one of them, who had two balls through his body, sprung to his feet, the blood streaming from his skinned head, and uttered a hideous howl. The frightful spectacle appalled the stout hearts of our men; but they did what humanity required, and quickly terminated the agony of the gory savage. They were now masters of the camp, which was a pretty little recess in the mountain, with a fine spring, and apparently safe from all invasion. Great preparation had been made for feasting a large party, for it was a very proper place for a rendezvous, and for the celebration of such orgies as robbers of the desert would delight in. Several of the horses had been killed, skinned, and cut up--for the Indians living in the mountains, and only coming into the plains to rob and murder, make no other use of horses than to eat them. Large earthen vessels were on the fire, boiling and stewing the horse beef, and several baskets containing fifty or sixty pair of moccasins, indicated the presence or expectation of a large party. They released the boy who had given strong evidence of the stoicism, or something else of the savage character, by commencing his breakfast upon a horse's head as soon as he found he was not to be killed, but only tied as a prisoner. [Illustration: AN INDIAN CAMP.] Their object accomplished, our men gathered up all the surviving horses, fifteen in number, returned upon their trail, and rejoined us at our camp in the afternoon of the same day. They had rode about one hundred miles in the pursuit and return, and all in about thirty hours. The time, place, object and numbers considered, this expedition of Carson and Godey may be considered among the boldest and most disinterested which the annals of western adventure, so full of daring deeds, can present. Two men in a savage wilderness, pursue day and night an unknown body of Indians into the defiles of an unknown mountain--attack them on sight without counting numbers--and defeat them in an instant--and for what?--to punish the robbers of the desert, and revenge the wrongs of Mexicans whom they did not know. I repeat it was Carson and Godey who did this--the former an American, born, in Booneslick county, Missouri; the latter a Frenchman, born in St. Louis--and both trained to western enterprise from early life. ADVENTURE OF TWO SCOUTS. As early as the year 1790, the block-house and stockade, above the mouth of the Hockhocking river, was a frontier post for the hardy pioneer of that portion of the state from the Hockhocking to the Sciota, and from the Ohio river to the northern lakes. Then nature wore her undisturbed livery of dark and thick forests, interspersed with green and flowery prairies. Then the axe of the woodman had not been heard in the wilderness, nor the plough of the husbandmen marred the beauty of the green prairies. Among the rich and luxuriant valleys, that of the Hockhocking was pre-eminent for nature's richest gifts--and the portico of it whereon Lancaster now stands, was marked as the most luxuriant and picturesque, and became the seat of an Indian village, at a period so early, that the "memory of man runneth not parallel thereto." On the green sward of the prairie was held many a rude gambol of the Indians; and here, too, was many an assemblage of the warriors of one of the most powerful tribes, taking counsel for a "war-path," upon some weak or defenceless post. [Illustration: THE BLOCK-HOUSE.] Upon one of these stirring occasions, intelligence reached the little garrison above the mouth of the Hockhocking, that the Indians were gathering in force somewhere up the valley, for the purpose of striking a terrible and fatal blow on one of the few and scattered defences of the whites. A council was held by the garrison, and scouts were sent up the Hockhocking, in order to ascertain the strength of the foe, and the probable point of attack. In the month of October, and on one of the balmiest days of our Indian summer, two men could have been seen emerging out of the thick plumb and hazel bushes skirting the prairie, and stealthily climbing the eastern declivity of that most remarkable promontory, now known as Mount Pleasant, whose western summit gives a commanding view to the eye of what is doing on the prairie. This eminence was gained by our two adventurers and hardy scouts, and from this point they carefully observed the movements taking place on the prairie. Every day brought an accession of warriors to those already assembled, and every day the scouts witnessed from their eyrie, the horse-racing, leaping, running and throwing the deadly tomahawk by the warriors. The old sachems looking on with indifference--the squaws, for the most part, engaged in their usual drudgeries, and the papooses manifesting all the noisy and wayward joy of childhood. The arrival of any new party of savages was hailed by the terrible war-whoop, which striking the mural face of Mount Pleasant, was driven back into the various indentations of the surrounding hills, producing reverberation on reverberation, and echo on echo, till it seemed as if ten thousand fiends were gathered in their orgies. Such yells might well strike terror into the bosoms of those unaccustomed to them. To our scouts these were but martial music strains which waked their watchfulness, and strung their iron frames. From their early youth had they been always on the frontier, and therefore well practised in all the subtlety, craft, and cunning, as well as knowing the ferocity and bloodthirsty perseverance of the savage. They were therefore not likely to be circumvented by the cunning of their foes; and without a desperate struggle, would not fall victims to the scalping-knife. On several occasions, small parties of warriors left the prairies and ascended the Mount; at which times the scouts would hide in the fissures of the rocks, or lying by the side of some long prostrate tree, cover themselves with the sear and yellow leaf, and again leave their hiding places when their uninvited visitors had disappeared. [Illustration: A SHAWANESE WARRIOR.] For food they depended on jerked venison, and cold corn bread, with which their knapsacks had been well stored. Fire they dared not kindle, and the report of one of their rifles would bring upon them the entire force of the Indians. For drink they depended on some rain water, which still stood in excavations of the rocks, but in a few days this store was exhausted, and M'Clelland and White must abandon their enterprise or find a new supply. To accomplish this most hazardous affair, M'Clelland being the elder, resolved to make the attempt--with his trusty rifle in his grasp, and two canteens strung across his shoulders, he cautiously descended to the prairie, and skirting the hills on the north as much as possible within the hazel thickets, he struck a course for the Hockhocking river. He reached its margin, and turning an abrupt point of a hill, he found a beautiful fountain of limpid water, now known as the Cold Spring, within a few feet of the river. He filled his canteens and returned in safety to his watchful companion. It was now determined to have a fresh supply of water every day, and this duty was to be performed alternately. On one of these occasions, after White had filled his canteens, he sat a few moments, watching the limpid element, as it came gurgling out of the bosom of the earth--the light sound of footsteps caught his practised ear, and upon turning round, he saw two squaws within a few feet of him; these upon turning the jet of the hill had thus suddenly came upon him. The elder squaw gave one of those far-reaching whoops peculiar to the Indians. White at once comprehended his perilous situation--for if the alarm should reach the camp, he and his companion must inevitably perish. Self-preservation impelled him to inflict a noiseless death upon the squaws, and in such a manner as to leave no trace behind. Ever rapid in thought, and prompt in action, he sprang upon his victims with a rapidity and power of a panther, and grasping the throat of each, with one bound he sprang into the river, and rapidly thrust the head of the elder woman under the water, and making stronger efforts to submerge the younger, who, however, powerfully resisted. During the short struggle, the younger female addressed him in his own language, though almost in inarticulate sounds. Releasing his hold, she informed him, that, ten years before, she had been made a prisoner, on Grave Creek flats, and that the Indians, in her presence, butchered her mother and two sisters; and that an only brother had been captured with her, who succeeded on the second night in making his escape; but what had become of him she knew not. During the narrative, White, unobserved by the girl, had let go his grasp on the elder squaw, whose body soon floated where it would not, probably soon be found. He now directed the girl hastily to follow him, and with his usual energy and speed, pushed for the Mount. They had scarcely gone two hundred yards from the spring, before the alarm cry was heard some quarter of a mile down the stream. It was supposed that some warriors returning from a hunt, struck the Hockhocking just as the body of the drowned squaw floated past. White and the girl succeeded in reaching the Mount, where M'Clelland had been no indifferent spectator to the sudden commotion among the Indians, as the prairie warriors were seen to strike off in every direction, and before White and the girl had arrived, a party of some twenty warriors had already gained the eastern acclivity of the Mount, and were cautiously ascending, carefully keeping under cover. Soon the two scouts saw the swarthy faces of the foe, as they glided from tree to tree, and rock to rock, until the whole base of the Mount was surrounded, and all hopes of escape were cut off. [Illustration: A SHAWANESE CHIEF.] In this peril nothing was left, other than to sell their lives as dearly as possible; this they resolved to do, and advised the girl to escape to the Indians, and tell them she had been a captive to the scouts. She said, "No! Death, and that in presence of my people, is to me a thousand times sweeter than captivity--furnish me with a rifle, and I will show you that I can fight as well as die. This spot I leave not! here my bones shall lie bleaching with yours! and should either of you escape, you will carry the tidings of my death to my remaining relatives." Remonstrance proved fruitless; the two scouts matured their plans for a vigorous defence--opposing craft to craft, expedient to expedient, and an unerring fire of the deadly rifle. The attack now commenced in front, where, from the narrow backbone of the Mount, the savages had to advance in single file, but where they could avail themselves of the rock and trees. In advancing the warrior must be momentarily exposed, and two bare inches of his swarthy form was target enough for the unerring rifle of the scouts. After bravely maintaining the fight in front, and keeping the enemy in check, they discovered a new danger threatening them. The wary foe now made every preparation to attack them in flank, which could be most successfully and fatally done by reaching an insulated rock lying in one of the ravines on the southern hill side. This rock once gained by the Indians, they could bring the scouts under point blank shot of the rifle; and without the possibility of escape. Our brave scouts saw the hopelessness of their situation, which nothing could avert but brave companions and an unerring shot--them they had not. But the brave never despair. With this certain fate resting upon them, they had continued as calm, and as calculating, and as unwearied as the strongest desire of vengeance on a treacherous foe could produce. Soon M'Clelland saw a tall and swarthy figure preparing to spring from a cover so near the fatal rock, that a single bound must reach it, and all hope be destroyed. He felt that all depended on one advantageous shot, although but one inch of the warrior's body was exposed, and that at a distance of one hundred yards--he resolved to risk all--coolly he raised his rifle to his eyes, carefully shading the sight with his hand, he drew a bead so sure, that he felt conscious it would do--he touched the hair trigger with his finger--the hammer came down, but in place of striking fire, it crushed his flint into a hundred fragments! Although he felt that the savage must reach the fatal rock before he could adjust another flint, he proceeded to the task with the utmost composure, casting many a furtive glance towards the fearful point. Suddenly he saw the warrior stretching every muscle for the leap--and with the agility of a deer he made the spring--instead of reaching the rock he sprung ten feet in the air, and giving one terrific yell he fell upon the earth, and his dark corpse rolled fifty feet down the hill. He had evidently received a death shot from some unknown hand. A hundred voices from below re-echoed the terrible shout, and it was evident that they had lost a favorite warrior, as well as been foiled for a time in their most important movement. A very few moments proved that the advantage so mysteriously gained would be of short duration; for already the scouts caught a momentary glimpse of a swarthy warrior, cautiously advancing towards the cover so recently occupied by a fellow companion. Now, too, the attack in front was resumed with increased fury, so as to require the incessant fire of both scouts, to prevent the Indians from gaining the eminence--and in a short time M'Clelland saw the wary warrior turning a somerset, his corpse rolled down towards his companion: again a mysterious agent had interposed in their behalf. This second sacrifice cast dismay into the ranks of the assailants; and just as the sun was disappearing behind the western hills, the foe withdrew a short distance, for the purpose of devising new modes of attack. The respite came most seasonably to the scouts, who had bravely kept their position, and boldly maintained the unequal fight from the middle of the day. [Illustration: THE SCOUT.] Now, for the first time, was the girl missing, and the scouts supposed through terror she had escaped to her former captors, or that she had been killed during the fight. They were not long left to doubt, for in a few moments the girl was seen emerging from behind a rock and coming to them with a rifle in her hand. During the heat of the fight she saw a warrior fall, who had advanced some fifty yards before the main body in front. She at once resolved to possess herself of his rifle, and crouching in undergrowth she crept to the spot, and succeeded in her enterprise, being all the time exposed to the cross fire of the defenders and assailants--her practised eye had early noticed the fatal rock, and hers was the mysterious hand by which the two warriors had fallen--the last being the most wary, untiring, and bloodthirsty brave of the Shawnese tribe. He it was, who ten years previous had scalped the family of the girl, and been her captor. In the west, dark clouds were now gathering, and in an hour the whole heavens were shrouded in them; this darkness greatly embarrassed the scouts in their contemplated night retreat, for they might readily lose their way, or accidentally fall on the enemy--this being highly probable, if not inevitable. An hour's consultation decided their plans, and it was agreed that the girl, from her intimate knowledge of their localities, should lead the advance a few steps. Another advantage might be gained by this arrangement, for in case they should fall in with some out-post, the girl's knowledge of the Indian tongue, would, perhaps, enable her to deceive the sentinel: and so the sequel proved, for scarcely had they descended one hundred feet, when a low "whist" from the girl, warned them of present danger. [Illustration: THE RETURNED CAPTIVE.] The scouts sunk silently to the earth, where, by previous agreement, they were to remain till another signal was given them by the girl,--whose absence for more than a quarter of an hour now began to excite the most serious apprehensions. At length, she again appeared, and told them that she had succeeded in removing two sentinels who were directly in their route to a point some hundred feet distant. The descent was noiselessly resumed--the level gained, and the scouts followed their intrepid pioneer for half a mile in the most profound silence, when the barking of a small dog, within a few feet, apprised them of a new danger. The almost simultaneous click of the scouts' rifles was heard by the girl, who rapidly approached them, and stated that they were now in the midst of the Indian wigwams, and their lives depended on the most profound silence, and implicitly following her footsteps. A moment afterwards, the girl was accosted by a squaw, from an opening in the wigwam. She replied in the Indian language, and without stopping pressed forward. In a short time she stopped and assured the scouts that the village was cleared and that they were now in safety. She knew that every pass leading out of the prairie was safely guarded by Indians, and at once resolved to adopt the bold adventure of passing through the very centre of their village as the least hazardous. The result proved the correctness of her judgment. They now kept a course for the Ohio, being guided by the Hockhocking river--and after three days' march and suffering, the party arrived at the block-house in safety. Their escape from the Indians, prevented the contemplated attack; and the rescued girl proved to be the sister of the intrepid Neil Washburn, celebrated in Indian warfare as the renowned scout to Captain Kenton's bloody Kentuckians. [Illustration: THE YOUNG HERO CROSSING THE RIVER.] A YOUNG HERO OF THE WEST. To show of what material the boys were made, in the great heroic age of the west, we give the following, which we find in a recent communication from Major Nye, of Ohio. The scene of adventure was within the present limits of Wood county, Virginia. I have heard from Mr. Guthrie and others, that at Bellville a man had a son, quite a youth, say twelve or fourteen years of age, who had been used to firing his father's gun, as most boys did in those days. He heard, he supposed, turkeys on or near the bank of the Ohio, opposite that place, and asked his father to let him take his gun and kill one. His father knowing that the Indians often decoyed people by such noises, refused, saying it was probably an Indian. When he had gone to work, the boy took the gun and paddled his canoe over the river, but had the precaution to land some distance from where he had heard the turkey all the morning, probably from fear of scaring the game, and perhaps a little afraid of Indians. The banks were steep, and the boy cautiously advanced to where he could see without being seen. Watching awhile for his game, he happened to see an Indian cautiously looking over a log, to notice where the boy had landed. The lad fixed his gun at rest, watching the place where he had seen the Indian's head, and when it appeared again, fired, and the Indian disappeared. The boy dropped the gun and ran for his canoe, which he paddled over the river as soon as possible. When he reached home, he said, "Mother, I have killed an Indian!" and the mother replied, "No, you have not." "Yes, I have," said the boy. The father coming in, he made the same report to him, and received the same reply; but he constantly affirmed it was even so; and, as the gun was left, a party took the boy over the river to find it, and show the place where he shot the Indian, and behold, his words were found verified. The ball had entered the head, where the boy had affirmed he shot, between the eye and ear. THE END. 
26900	----	REPORT OF THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS for TRADE and PLANTATIONS ON THE PETITION OF THE Honourable THOMAS WALPOLE, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, JOHN SARGENT, and SAMUEL WHARTON, Esquires, and their ASSOCIATES; FOR A Grant of Lands on the RIVER OHIO, in North America; for the purpose of Erecting a new Government. WITH OBSERVATIONS and REMARKS. LONDON: Printed for J. ALMON, opposite Burlington-House, in Piccadilly. MDCCLXXII. REPORT OF The Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations. ON THE PETITION of the Honourable THOMAS WALPOLE and his Associates, for a Grant of Lands on the River OHIO in NORTH AMERICA. MY LORDS, Pursuant to your lordships order of the 25th May 1770, we have taken into our consideration the humble memorial of the honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, in behalf of themselves and their associates, setting forth (among other things) "That they presented a petition to his Majesty, in council, for a grant of lands in America (_parcel_ of the lands purchased by government of the Indians) in consideration of a price to be paid in purchase of the same; _that in pursuance of a suggestion which arose when the said petition was under consideration of the Lords Commissioners for trade and plantations_, the memorialists presented a petition to the Lords Commissioners of the treasury, proposing to purchase a larger tract of land on the river Ohio in America, sufficient for a separate government; whereupon their lordships were pleased to acquaint the memorialists, they had no objection to accepting the proposals made by them with respect to the purchase-money and quit-rent to be paid for the said tract of land, if it should be thought adviseable by those departments of government, to whom it belonged to judge of the propriety of the grant, both in point of policy and justice, that the grant should be made; in consequence whereof the memorialists humbly renew their application that a grant of said lands may be made to them, _reserving therein to all persons their just and legal rights to any parts or parcels of said lands which may be comprehended within the tract prayed for by the memorialists;_" whereupon we beg leave to report to your lordships, I. That according to the description of the tract of land prayed for by the memorialists, which description is annexed to their memorial, it appears to us to contain part of the dominion of Virginia, to the south of the river Ohio, and to extend several degrees of longitude westward from the western ridge of the Appalachian mountains, as will more fully appear to your Lordships from the annexed sketch of the said tract, which we have since caused to be delineated with as much exactness as possible, and herewith submit to your Lordships, to the end that your Lordships may judge with the greater precision of the situation of the lands prayed for in the memorial. II. From this sketch your Lordships will observe, that a very considerable part of the lands prayed for, lies beyond the line, which has, in consequence of his Majesty's orders for that purpose, been settled by treaty, as well with the tribes of the Six Nations, and their confederates, as with the Cherokee Indians, as the boundary line between his Majesty's territories and their hunting grounds; and as the faith of the crown is pledged in the most solemn manner both to the Six Nations and to the Cherokees, that notwithstanding the former of these nations had ceded the property in the lands to his Majesty, yet no settlements shall be made beyond that line, it is our duty to report to your Lordships our opinion, that it would on that account be highly improper to comply with the request of the memorial, _so far as it includes any lands beyond the said line_. It remains therefore, that we report to your Lordships our opinion, how far it may consist with good policy and with justice, that his Majesty should comply with that part of the memorial which relates to those lands which are situated to the east of that line, and are part of the dominion of Virginia. III. And first with regard to the policy, we take leave to remind your Lordships of that principle which was adopted by this Board, and approved and confirmed by his Majesty, immediately after the treaty of Paris, _viz._ the confining the western extent of settlements to such a distance from the sea coast, as that those settlements should lie _within the reach of the trade and commerce of this kingdom_, upon which the strength and riches of it depend, and also of the exercise of that authority and jurisdiction, which was conceived to be necessary for the preservation of the colonies, in a due subordination to, and dependance upon, the Mother Country; and these we apprehend to have been two capital objects of his Majesty's proclamation of the 7th of October 1763, by which his Majesty declares it to be his royal will and pleasure to reserve under his sovereignty, protection, and dominion, for the _use_ of the Indians, all the lands not included within the three new governments, the limits of which are described therein, as also all the lands and territories lying to the westward of the sources of the rivers which shall fall into the sea from the west and north-west, and by which, all persons are forbid to make any purchases or settlements whatever, or to take possession of any of the lands above reserved, without special licence for that purpose. IV. It is true indeed, that partly from _want of precision_ in describing the line intended to be marked out by the proclamation of 1763, and partly from a consideration of justice _in regard to legal titles to lands_, which had been settled beyond that line, it has been since thought fit to enter into engagements with the Indians, for fixing a more precise and determinate _boundary_ between his Majesty's territories and their hunting grounds. V. By this _boundary_, so far as it regards the case now in question, your Lordships will observe, that the hunting grounds of the Indians are reduced within narrower limits than were specified by the proclamation of 1763; we beg leave however, to submit to your Lordships, that the same principles of policy, in reference to settlements _at so great a distance_ from the sea coast _as to be out of the reach of all advantageous intercourse with this kingdom_, continue to exist in their full force and spirit; and, though various propositions for erecting new colonies in the interior parts of America have been, in consequence of this extension of the boundary line, submitted to the consideration of government (particularly in that part of the country wherein are situated the lands now prayed for, with a view to that object) yet the dangers and disadvantages of complying with such proposals have been so obvious, as to defeat every attempt made for carrying them into execution. VI. Many objections, besides those which we have already stated, occur to us to propositions of this kind; but as _every argument_ on this subject is _collected together with great force and precision_, in a representation made to his Majesty by the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations in March 1768, we beg leave to state them to your Lordships in their words. In that representation they deliver their opinion upon a proposition for settling new colonies in the interior country as follows, _viz._ "The proposition of forming inland colonies in America is, we humbly conceive, entirely new: it adopts principles in respect to American settlements, different from what have hitherto been the policy of this kingdom, and leads to a system which, if pursued through all its consequences, is, in the present state of that country, of the greatest importance. "The great object of colonizing upon the continent of North America, has been to improve and extend the commerce, navigation, and manufactures of this kingdom, upon which its strength and security depend. 1. "By promoting the advantageous fishery carried on upon the northern coast. 2. "By encouraging the growth and culture of naval stores, and of raw materials, to be transported hither in exchange for perfect manufactures and other merchandise. 3. "By securing a supply of lumber, provisions, and other necessaries, for the support of our establishments in the American islands. "In order to answer these salutary purposes, it has been the policy of this kingdom to confine her settlements as much as possible to the sea coast, and not to extend them to places inaccessible to shipping, and consequently more out of the reach of commerce; a plan, which, at the same time that it secured the attainment of these commercial objects, had the further political advantage of guarding against all interfering of foreign powers, and of enabling this kingdom to keep up a superior naval force in those seas, by the actual possession of such rivers and harbours as were proper stations for fleets in time of war. "Such, may it please your Majesty, have been the considerations inducing that plan of policy hitherto pursued in the settlement of your Majesty's American colonies, with which the private interest and sagacity of the settlers co-operated from the first establishments formed upon that continent: It was upon these principles, and with these views, that government undertook the settling of Novia Scotia in 1749; and it was from a view of the advantages represented to arise from it in these different articles, that it was so liberally supported by the aid of parliament. "The same motives, though operating in a less degree, and applying to fewer objects, did, as we humbly conceive, induce the forming the colonies of Georgia, East Florida, and West Florida, to the South, and the making those provincial arrangements in the proclamation of 1763, by which the interior country was left to the possession of the Indians. "Having thus briefly stated what has been the policy of this kingdom in respect to colonizing in America, it may be necessary to take a cursory view of what has been the effect of it in those colonies, where there has been sufficient time for that effect to discover itself; because, if it shall appear from the present state of these settlements, and the progress they have made, that they are likely to produce the advantages above stated, it will, we humbly apprehend, be a very strong argument against forming settlements in the interior country; more especially, when every advantage, derived from an established government, would naturally tend to draw the stream of population; fertility of soil and temperature of climate offering superior incitements to settlers, who, exposed to few hardships, and struggling with few difficulties, could, with little labour, earn an abundance for their own wants, but without a possibility of supplying ours with any considerable quantities. Nor would these inducements be confined in their operation to foreign emigrants, determining their choice where to settle, but would act most powerfully upon the inhabitants of the northern and southern latitudes of your Majesty's American dominions; who, ever suffering under the opposite extremes of heat and cold, would be equally tempted by a moderate climate to abandon latitudes peculiarly adapted to the production of those things, which are by Nature denied to us; and for the whole of which we should, without their assistance, stand indebted to, and dependant upon other countries. "It is well known that antecedent to the year 1749, all that part of the sea-coast of the British empire in America, which extends north-east from the province of Main to Canceau in Nova Scotia, and from thence to the mouth of St. Laurence river, lay waste and neglected; though naturally affording, or capable by art of producing, every species of naval stores; the seas abounding with whale, cod, and other valuable fish, and having many great rivers, bays, and harbours, fit for the reception of ships of war. Thus circumstanced, a consideration of the great commercial advantages which would follow from securing the possession of this country, combined with the evidence of the value set upon it by our enemies, who, during the war which terminated at that period, had, at an immense expence, attempted to wrest it from us, induced that plan, for the settlement of Novia Scotia, to which we have before referred; and which, being prosecuted with vigour, though at a very large expence to this kingdom, secured the possession of that province, and formed those establishments which contributed so greatly to facilitate and promote the success of your Majesty's arms in the late war. "The establishment of government in this part of America, having opened to the view and information of your Majesty's subjects in other colonies the great commercial advantages to be derived from it, induced a zeal for migration; and associations were formed for taking up lands, and making settlements, in this province, by principal persons residing in these colonies. "In consequence of these associations, upwards of ten thousand souls have passed from those colonies into Novia Scotia; who have either engaged in the fisheries, or become exporters of lumber and provisions to the West Indies. And further settlements, to the extent of twenty-one townships, of one hundred thousand acres each, have been engaged to be made there, by many of the principal persons in Pennsylvania, whose names and association for that purpose now lie before your Majesty in council. "The government of Massachussets Bay, as well as the proprietors of large tracts to the eastward of the province of Main, excited by the success of these settlements, are giving every encouragement to the like settlements in that valuable country, lying between them and Novia Scotia; and the proprietors of the twelve townships lately laid out there, by the Massachussets government, now solicit your Majesty for a confirmation of their title. "Such, may it please your Majesty, is the present state of the progress making in the settlement of the northern parts of the sea coasts of North America, in consequence of what appears to have been the policy adopted by this kingdom. And many persons of rank and substance here are proceeding to carry into execution the plan which your Majesty (pursuing the same principles of commercial policy) has approved for the settlement of the islands of St. John and Cape Breton, and of the new established colonies to the south. And, therefore, as we are fully convinced, that the encouraging settlements upon the sea coast of North America is founded in the true principles of commercial policy; as we find upon examination, that the happy effects of that policy are now beginning to open themselves, in the establishment of these branches of commerce, culture, and navigation, upon which the strength, wealth, and security of this kingdom depend; we cannot be of opinion, that it would in any view be adviseable, to divest your Majesty's subjects in America from the pursuit of those important objects, by adopting measures of a new policy, _at an expence to this kingdom, which in its present state it is unable to bear_. "This, may it please your Majesty, being the light in which we view the proposition of colonizing in the interior country, considered as a general principle of policy; we shall, in the next place, proceed to examine the several arguments urged in support of the particular establishments now recommended. "These arguments appear to us reducible to the following general propositions, viz. First, "That such colonies will promote population, and increase the demands for and consumption of British manufactures." Secondly, "That they will secure the fur trade, and prevent an illicit trade, or interfering of French or Spaniards with the Indians." Thirdly, "That they will be a defence and protection to the old colonies against the Indians." Fourthly, "That they will contribute to lessen the present heavy expence of supplying provisions to the different forts and garrisons." Lastly, "That they are necessary in respect to the inhabitants already residing in those places where they are proposed to be established, who require some form of civil government." "After what we have already stated with respect to the policy of encouraging colonies in the interior country as a general principle, we trust it will not be necessary to enter into an ample discussion of the arguments brought to support the foregoing propositions. "We admit as an undeniable principle of true policy, that with a view to prevent manufactures, it is necessary and proper to open an extent of territory for colonization proportioned to the increase of people, as a large number of inhabitants, cooped up in narrow limits, without a sufficiency of land for produce, would be compell'd to convert their attention and industry to manufactures; but we submit whether the encouragement given to the settlement of the colonies upon the sea coast, and the effect which such encouragement has had, have not already effectually provided for this object, as well as for increasing the demand for, and consumption of British manufactures, an advantage which, in our humble opinion, would not be promoted by these new colonies, which being proposed to be established, at the distance of _above fifteen hundred miles from the sea_, and in places which, upon the fullest evidence, are found to be utterly inaccessible to shipping, will, from their inability to find returns wherewith to pay for the manufactures of Great Britain, be probably led to manufacture for themselves; a consequence which experience shews has constantly attended in greater or lesser degree every inland settlement, and therefore ought, in our humble opinion, to be carefully guarded against, by _encouraging_ the settlement of that extensive tract of sea coast hitherto unoccupied; _which, together with the liberty that the inhabitants of the middle colonies will have_ (in consequence _of the proposed boundary line with the Indians_) of _gradually extending themselves backwards_, will more effectually and beneficially answer the object of encouraging population and consumption, than the erection of new governments; such gradual extension might through the medium of a continued population, upon even the same extent of territory, preserve a communication of mutual commercial benefits between its extremest parts and Great Britain, _impossible_ to _exist in colonies separated by immense tracts of unpeopled desart_.--As to the effect which it is supposed the colonies may have to increase and promote the fur trade, and to prevent all contraband trade or intercourse between the Indians under your Majesty's protection, and the French or Spaniards; it does appear to us, that the extension of the fur trade depends entirely upon the Indians being undisturbed in the possession of their hunting, grounds; that all colonizing does in its nature, and must in its consequences, operate to the prejudice of that branch of commerce, and that the French and Spaniard would be left in possession of a great part of what remained; as New Orleans would still continue the best and surest market. "As to the protection which it is supposed these new colonies may be capable of affording to the old ones, it will, in our opinion, appear on the slightest view of their situation, that so far from affording protection to the old colonies, they will stand most in need of it themselves. "It cannot be denied, that new colonies would be of advantage in raising provisions for the supply of such forts and garrisons as may be kept up in the neighbourhood of them; but as the degree of utility will be proportioned to the number and situation of these forts and garrisons, which upon the result of the present enquiry it may be thought adviseable to continue, so the force of the argument will depend upon that event. "The present French inhabitants in the neighbourhood of the Lakes will, in our humble opinion, be sufficient to furnish with provisions whatever posts may be necessary to be continued there; and as there are also French inhabitants settled in some parts of the country lying upon the Mississippi, between the rivers Illinois and the Ohio, it is to be hoped that a sufficient number of these may be induced to fix their abode, where the same convenience and advantage may be derived from them; but if no such circumstance were to exist, and no such assistance to be expected from it, the objections stated to the plan now under our consideration are superior to this, or any other advantage it can produce; and although civil establishments have frequently rendered the expence of an armed force necessary for their protection, one of the many objections to these now proposed, yet we humbly presume there never has been an instance of a government instituted merely with a view to supply a body of troops with suitable provisions; nor is it necessary in these instances for the settlements, already existing as above described, which being formed under military establishments, and ever subjected to military authority, do not, in our humble opinion, require any other superintendance than that of the military officers commanding at these posts. "In addition to this opinion of the Board of Trade, expressed in the foregoing recital, we further beg leave to refer your Lordships to the opinion of the Commander in Chief of his Majesty's forces in North America, who, in a letter laid before us by the Earl of Hillsborough, delivers his sentiments with regard to the settlements in the interior parts of America in the following words, viz. VII. "As to increasing the settlements to respectable provinces, and to colonization _in general terms_ in the _remote_ countries, I conceive it altogether inconsistent with sound policy; for there is little appearance that the advantages will arise from it which nations expect when they send out colonies into _foreign countries_; they can give no encouragement to the fishery, and though the country might afford some kind of naval stores, the distance would be too far to transport them; and for the same reason they could not supply the sugar islands with lumber and provisions. As for the raising wine, silk, and other commodities, the same may be said of the present colonies without planting others for the purpose at so vast a distance; but on the supposition that they would be raised, their very long transportation must probably make them too dear for any market. I do not apprehend the inhabitants could have any commodities to barter for manufactures except skins and furs, which will naturally decrease as the country increases in people, and the desarts are cultivated; so that in the course of a few years necessity would force them to provide manufactures of some kind for themselves; and when all connection upheld by commerce with the mother country shall cease, it may be expected, that an independancy on her government will soon follow; the pretence of forming barriers will have no end; wherever we settle, however remote, there must be a frontier; and there is room enough for the colonists to spread within our present limits, for a century to come. If we reflect how the people of themselves have gradually retired from the coast, we shall be convinced they want no encouragement to desert sea coasts, and go into the back countries, where the lands are better, and got upon easier terms; they are already almost out of the reach of law and government; neither the endeavours of government, or fear of Indians, has kept them properly within bounds; and it is apparently most for the interest of Great Britain to confine the colonies on the side of the back country, and to direct their settlements along the sea coast, where millions of acres are yet uncultivated. The lower provinces are still thinly inhabited, and not brought to the point of perfection that has been aimed at for the mutual benefit of Great Britain and themselves. Although America may supply the mother country with many articles, few of them are yet supplied in quantities equal to her consumption, the quantity of iron transported is not great, of hemp very small, and there are many other commodities not necessary to enumerate, which America has not yet been able to raise, notwithstanding the encouragement given her by bounties and premiums. The laying open new tracts of fertile territory in moderate climates might lessen her present produce; for it is the passion of every man to be a landholder, and the people have a natural disposition to rove in search of good lands, however distant. It may be a question likewise, whether colonization of the kind could be effected _without an Indian war, and fighting for every inch of ground_. The Indians have long been jealous of our power, and have no patience in seeing us approach their towns, and settle up on their hunting grounds; atonements may be made for a fraud discovered in a trader, and even the murder of some of their tribes, but _encroachments_ upon their lands have often produced serious consequences. The springs of the last general war are to be discovered near the Allegany mountains, and upon the banks of the Ohio. "It is so obvious, that settlers might raise provisions to feed the troops cheaper than it can be transported from the country below, that it is not necessary to explain it; but I must own I know no other use in settlements, or can give any other reason for supporting forts, than to protect the settlements, and keep the settlers in subjection to government. "I conceive, that to procure all the commerce it will afford, and as little expence to ourselves as we can, is the only object we shall have in view in the interior country, for a century to come; and I imagine it might be effected, by proper management, without either forts or settlements. Our manufactures are as much desired by the Indians, as their peltry is sought for by us; what was originally deemed a superfluity, or a luxury by the natives, is now become a necessary; they are disused to the bow, and can neither hunt, or make war without fire-arms, powder, and lead. The British provinces can only supply them with their necessaries, which they know, and for their own sakes would protect the trader, which they actually do at present. It would remain with us to prevent the trader's being guilty of frauds and impositions, and to pursue the same methods to that end, as are taken in the Southern district; and I must confess, though the plan pursued in that district might be improved by proper laws to support it, that I do not know a better, or more oeconomical plan for the management of trade; there are neither forts nor settlements, in the Southern department, and there are both in the Northern department; and your Lordships will be the best judge, which of them has given you the least trouble; in which we have had the fewest quarrels with, or complaints from the Indians. "I know of nothing so liable to bring on a serious quarrel with Indians _as an invasion of their property_. Let the savages enjoy their desarts in quiet; little bickerings that may unavoidably sometimes happen, may soon be accommodated; and I am of opinion, independent of the motives of common justice and humanity, that the principles of interest and policy, should induce us rather to protect than molest them: were they driven from their forests, the peltry trade would decrease; and it is _not impossible_ that worse savages would take refuge in them, for they might then become the asylum of fugitive Negroes, and idle vagabonds, escaped from justice, who in time might become formidable, and subsist by rapine, and plundering the lower countries." VIII. The opinions delivered in the foregoing recitals are so accurate and precise, as to make it almost unnecessary to add any thing more: But we beg leave to lay before your Lordships the sentiments of his Majesty's Governor of Georgia, upon the subject of large grants in the interior parts of America, whose knowledge and experience in the affairs of the colonies give great weight to his opinion. In a letter to us, on the subject of the mischiefs attending such grants, he expresses himself in the following manner, viz. "And now, my Lords, I beg your patience a moment, while I consider this matter in a more extensive point of view, and go a little further in declaring my sentiments and opinion, with respect to the granting of large bodies of land, in the back parts of the province of Georgia, or in any other of his Majesty's Northern colonies, at a distance from the sea-coast, or from such parts of any province as are already settled and inhabited. "And this matter, my Lords, appears to me, in a very serious and alarming light; and I humbly conceive may be attended with the greatest and worst of consequences; for, my Lords, if a vast territory be granted to any set of gentlemen, who really mean to people it, and actually do so, it must draw and carry out a great number of people from Great Britain; and I apprehend they will soon become a kind of separate and independent people, and who will set up for themselves; that they will soon have manufactures of their own; that they will neither take supplies from the mother country, or from the provinces, at the back of which they are settled; that being at a distance from the seat of government, courts, magistrates, &c. &c. they will be out of the reach and controul of law and government; that it will become a receptacle and kind of asylum for offenders, who will fly from justice to such new country or colony; and therefore crimes and offences will be committed, not only by the inhabitants of such new settlements, but elsewhere, and pass with impunity; and that in process of time (and perhaps at no great distance) they will become formidable enough, to oppose his Majesty's authority, disturb government, and even give law to the other or first settled part of the country, and throw every thing into confusion. "My Lords, I hope I shall not be thought impertinent, when I give my opinion freely, in a matter of so great consequence, as I conceive this to be; and, my Lords, I apprehend, that in all the American colonies, great care should be taken, that the lands on the sea-coast, should be thick settled with inhabitants, and well cultivated and improved; and that the settlements should be gradually extended back into the province, and as much connected as possible, to keep the people together in as narrow a compass _as the nature of the lands, and state of things will admit of_; and by which means there would probably become only one general view and interest amongst them, and the power of government and law would of course naturally and easily go with them, and matters thereby properly regulated, and kept in due order and obedience; and they would have no idea of resisting or transgressing either without being amenable to justice, and subject to punishment for any offences they may commit. "But, my Lords, to suffer a kind of _province within a province_, and one that may, indeed must in process of time become superior, and too big for the head, or original settlement or seat of government, to me conveys with it many ideas of consequence, of such a nature, as I apprehend are extremely dangerous and improper, and it would be the policy of government to avoid and prevent, whilst in their power to do so. "My ideas, my Lords, are not chimerical; I know something of the situation and state of things in America; and from some little occurrences or instances that have already really happened, I can very easily figure to myself what may, and, in short, what will certainly happen, if not prevented in time." IX. At the same time that we submit the foregoing reasoning against colonization in the interior country to your Lordships consideration, it is proper we should take notice of one argument, which has been invariably held forth in support or every proposition of this nature, and upon which the present proponents appear to lay great stress. It is urged, that such is the state of the country now proposed to be granted, and erected into a separate government, that no endeavours on the part of the crown can avail, to prevent its being settled by those who, by the increase of population in the middle colonies, are continually emigrating to the Westward, and forming themselves into colonies in that country, without the intervention or controul of government, and who, if suffered to continue in that lawless state of anarchy and confusion, will commit such abuses as cannot fail of involving us in quarrel and dispute with the Indians, and thereby endangering the security of his Majesty's colonies. We admit, that this is an argument that deserves attention; and we rather take notice of it in this place, because some of the objections stated by Governor Wright _lose their force upon the supposition that the grants against which he argues are to be erected into separate governments_. But we are clearly of opinion, that his arguments do, in the general view of them, as applied to the question of granting lands in the interior parts of America, stand unanswerable; and _admitting_ that the settlers in the country in question are _as numerous as report states them to be_, yet we submit to your Lordships, that this is a fact which does, in the nature of it, operate strongly in point of argument _against_ what is proposed; for if the foregoing reasoning has any weight, it certainly ought to induce your Lordships to advise his Majesty to take every method to _check_ the progress of these settlements, and _not_ to make such grants of the land as will have an immediate tendency to encourage them; a measure which we conceive is altogether as unnecessary as it is impolitic, as we see nothing to hinder the government of Virginia from extending the laws and constitution of that colony to such persons as may have already settled there _under legal titles_. X. And there is one objection suggested by Governor Wright to the extension of settlements in the interior country, which, we submit, deserves your Lordships particular attention, viz. the encouragement that is thereby held out to the emigration of his Majesty's European subjects; an argument which, in the present peculiar situation of this kingdom, demands very serious consideration, and has for some time past had so great weight with this Board, that it has induced us to deny our concurrence to many proposals for grants of land, even in those parts of the continent of America where, in all other respects, we are of opinion, that it consists with the true policy of this kingdom to encourage settlements; and this consideration of the certain bad consequences which must result from a continuance of such emigrations, as have lately taken place from various parts of his Majesty's European dominions, added to the constant drains to Africa, to the East Indies, and to the new ceded Islands, will we trust, with what has been before stated, be a sufficient answer to every argument that can be urged in support of the present memorial, so far as regards the consideration of it in point of policy. XI. With regard to the propriety in point of _justice_ of making the grant desired, we presume this consideration can have reference only to the case of such persons who have already possession of lands in that part of the country under legal titles derived from grants made by the Governor and Council of Virginia; upon which case we have only to observe, that it does appear to us, that there are _some_ such possessions held by persons who are not parties to the present Memorial; and therefore, if your Lordships shall be of opinion, that the making the grant desired would, notwithstanding the reservation proposed in respect to such titles, have the effect to disturb those possessions, or to expose the proprietors to suit and litigation, we do conceive, that, in that case, the grant would be objectionable in point of justice. XII. Upon the whole, therefore, we cannot recommend to your Lordships to advise his Majesty to comply with the prayer of this Memorial, either as to the erection of any parts of the lands into a separate government, or the making a grant of them to the Memorialists; but, on the contrary, we are of opinion, that settlements in that distant part of the country should be as much discouraged as possible; and that, in order thereto, it will be expedient, not only that the orders which have been given to the Governor of Virginia, not to make any further grants beyond the line prescribed by the proclamation of 1763, should be continued and enforced, but that another proclamation should be issued, declaratory of his Majesty's resolution not to allow, for the _present_, any new settlements beyond that line, and to forbid all persons from taking up or settling any lands in that part of the country. We are, My Lords, Your Lordships most obedient and Most humble servants, WHITEHALL, April 15, 1772. OBSERVATIONS on, and ANSWERS to, the foregoing REPORT. I. The first paragraph of the Report, we apprehend, was intended to establish two propositions as facts;--viz.-- First, That the tract of land agreed for with the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, contains _part_ of the dominion of Virginia. Second, That it extends several degrees of longitude _Westward_ from the Western ridge of the _Allegany_ mountains. On the first proposition we shall only remark, that no part of the above tract is to the _Eastward_ of the Allegany mountains;--and that these mountains must be considered as the true Western boundary of _Virginia_;--for the King was _not_ seised and possessed of a right _to the country Westward_ of the mountains, until his Majesty purchased it, in the year 1768, from the Six Nations: and since that time, there has not been any annexation of such purchase, or of any part thereof, to the colony of Virginia. On the second proposition,--we shall just observe, that the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations appear to us to be as erroneous in this as in the former proposition; for their Lordships say, that the tract of land under consideration _extends several degrees_ of longitude _Westward_. The truth is, that it is not more, on a medium, than one degree and a half of longitude from the Western ridge of the Allegany mountains to the river Ohio. II. It appears by the second paragraph, as if the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations apprehended,--that the lands south-westerly of the _boundary line_, marked on a map annexed to their Lordships _report_,--were either claimed by the Cherokees, or were their hunting grounds, or were the hunting grounds of the Six Nations and their confederates. As to any claim of the Cherokees to the above country, it is altogether new and indefensible; and never was heard of, until the appointment of Mr. Stewart to the superintendency of the Southern colonies, about the year 1764; and this, we flatter ourselves, will not only be obvious from the following state of facts, but that the right to _all the country_ on the Southerly side of the river Ohio, quite to the Cherokee River, is _now_ undoubtedly vested in the King, by the grant which the Six Nations made to his Majesty at Fort Stanwix, in November 1768.--In short, the lands from the _Great Kenhawa_ to the _Cherokee river_ never were, either the dwelling or hunting grounds of the _Cherokees_;--but formerly belonged to, and were inhabited by the _Shawanesse_, until such time as they were conquered by the Six Nations. Mr. Colden, the present Lieutenant Governor of New York, in his History of the Five Nations, observes, that about the year 1664, "the Five Nations being amply supplied by the English with firearms and ammunition, gave a full swing to their warlike genius. They carried their arms _as far South as Carolina_, to the Northward of New England, and as _far West as the river Mississippi_, over a vast country,--which extended 1200 miles in length from North to South, and 600 miles in breadth,--where they entirely destroyed whole nations, of whom there are no accounts remaining among the English." In 1701,--the Five Nations put all their hunting lands under the protection of the English, as appears by the records, and by the recital and confirmation thereof, in their deed to the King of the 4th September 1726;--and Governor Pownal, who many years ago diligently searched into the rights of the natives, and in particular into those of the Northern confederacy, says, in his book intituled, the _Administration of the Colonies_, "The right of the Five Nation confederacy to the hunting _lands of Ohio_, Ticûcksouchrondite and Scaniaderiada, by the conquest they made, in subduing the _Shaöanaes_, Delawares (as we call them) Twictwees and Oilinois, may be fairly proved, as they stood possessed thereof at the peace of Reswick 1697."--And confirmatory hereof, Mr. Lewis Evans, a gentleman of great American knowledge, in his map of the middle colonies, published in America in the year 1755, has laid down the country on the _South-easterly side_ of the river Ohio, _as the hunting lands of the Six Nations_; and in his Analysis to this map, he expressly says,--"The _Shawanesse_, who were formerly one of the most considerable nations of those parts of America, whose seat extended from _Kentucke_ South-westward to the Mississippi, have been subdued by the confederates (or Six Nations) _and the country since became their property_. No nation," Mr. Evans adds, "held out with greater resolution and bravery, and although they have been scattered in all parts for a while, they are again collected on _Ohio_, under the dominion of the confederates." At a congress held in the year 1744, by the provinces of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia with the Six Nations,--the Commissioners of Virginia, in a speech to the Sachems and Warriors of that confederacy, say, "tell us what nations of Indians you conquered any lands from in Virginia, how long it is since, and what possession you have had; and if it does appear, that there is any land on the _borders_ of Virginia that the Six Nations have a right to, we are willing to make you satisfaction." To this speech the Six Nations gave the following animated and decisive answer:--"All the world knows we conquered the several nations living on Sasquehanna, Cohongoranto [_i.e._ Powtomack] _and on the back of the great mountains in Virginia_;--the Conoy-uck-suck-roona, Cock-now-was-roonan, Tohoa-irough-roonan, and Connutskin-ough-roonaw _feel_ the effects of our conquests; being now a part of our nations, and their lands at _our_ disposal. We know very well, it hath often been said by the Virginians, that the King of England and the people of that colony conquered the people who lived there; but it is not true. We will allow, they conquered the Sachdagughronaw, and drove back the Tuskaroras [the first resided near the branches of James's River in Virginia, and the latter on these branches] and that they have, on that account, a right to some parts of Virginia; _but as to what lies beyond the mountains, we conquered the nations residing there, and that land_, if the Virginians ever get a _good right to it, it must be by us_." In the year 1750, the French seized four English traders, who were trading with the Six Nations, Shawanesse and Delawares, on the waters of the Ohio, and sent them prisoners to Quebeck, and from thence to France. In 1754, the French took a formal possession of the river Ohio, and built forts at Venango,--at the confluence of the Ohio and Monongehela, and at the _mouth of the Cherokee River_. In 1755, General Braddock was sent to America with an army, to remove the French from their possessions _over_ the Allegany mountains, and on the river Ohio; and on his arrival at Alexandria, held a council of war with the Governors of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and the Massachusets Bay;--And as these gentlemen well knew, that the country claimed by the French, _over the Allegany mountains, and South-westerly to the river Mississippi_, was the unquestionable property of the _six Nations_, and _not_ of the Cherokees, or any other tribe of Indians,--the General gave instructions to Sir William Johnson, to call together the Indians of the _Six Nations_, and lay before them their before-mentioned grant to the King in 1726,--wherein they had put all their hunting lands _under his Majesty's protection; to be guaranteed to them, and to their use_:--And as General Braddock's instructions are clearly declaratory of the right of the Six Nations to the lands under consideration, we shall here transcribe the conclusive words of them,--"And it appearing that the French have, from time to time, by fraud and violence, built strong forts _within the limits of the said lands_, contrary to the covenant chain of the said deed and treaties, you are, in my name, to assure the said nations, that I am come by his Majesty's order, to destroy all the said forts, and to build such others, _as shall protect and secure the said lands to them, their heirs and successors for ever_, according to the intent and spirit of the said treaty; and I do therefore call upon them to take up the hatchet, _and come and take possession of their own lands_." That General Braddock and the American Governors, were _not_ singular in their opinion, as to the right of the Six Nations to the land _over_ the Allegany mountains, and on both sides of the river Ohio, quite to the Mississippi,--is evident, from the memorials which passed between the British and French Courts in 1755. In a memorial delivered by the King's Ministers on the 7th June 1755, to the Duke Mirepoix, relative to the pretensions of France to the above-mentioned lands, they very justly observed--"As to the exposition, which is made in the French memorial of the 15th article of the treaty of Utrecht, the Court of Great Britain does not think it can have any foundation, either by the words or the intention of this treaty. 1st, "The Court of Great Britain cannot allow of this article, relating only to the persons of the Savages, and _not their country_: The words of this treaty are clear and precise, that is to say, the Five _Nations_ or Cantons, are subject to the dominion of Great Britain,--which, by the received exposition of all treaties, must relate to the _country_, as well to the persons of the inhabitants;--it is what France has acknowledged in the most solemn manner;--She has well weighed the importance of this acknowledgement, at the time of signing this treaty, and Great Britain can never give it up. The countries possessed by these Indians, _are very well known, and are not at all so undetermined_, as it is pretended in the memorial: they _possess_ and _make them over, as other proprietors do, in all other places_." 5th, "Whatever pretext might be alledged by France, in considering these countries as the appurtenances of Canada; _it is a certain truth, that they have belonged, and_ (as they have not been given up, _or made over_ to the English) _belong still to the same Indian nations_; which, by the 15th article of the treaty of Utrecht, France agreed not to molest,--Nullo in posterum impedimento, aut molestia afficiant." "Notwithstanding all that has been advanced in this article, the Court of Great Britain _cannot_ agree to France having the least title to the river Ohio, and the _territory in question_." [_N.B._ This was all the country, from the Allegany mountains to the Ohio, and down the same, and on both sides thereof to the river Mississippi.] "Even that of possession is not, nor can it be alledged on this occasion; since France cannot pretend to have had any such before the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, nor since, unless it be that of certain _forts_, unjustly erected lately _on the lands which evidently, belong to the Five Nations_, or which these have made over to the Crown of Great Britain or its subjects, as may be proved by treaties and acts of the greatest authority.--_What_ the Court of Great Britain _maintained, and what it insists upon_, is, _That the Five Nations of the Iroquois, acknowledged_ by France, _are_, by origin, or _by right of conquest_ the _lawful proprietors of the river Ohio, and the territory in question_: And as to the territory, which has been _yielded and made over by these people_ to Great Britain (which cannot but be owned must be the most just and lawful manner of making an acquisition of this sort) she reclaims it, as belonging to her, having continued cultivating it for above 20 years past, and having made settlements in several parts of it, from the sources even of the Ohio to Pichawillanes, in the center of the territory between the Ohio and the Wabache." In 1755, the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations were so solicitous to ascertain the territory of the Six Nations, that Dr. Mitchel, by their desire, published a large map of North America; and Mr. Pownal, the present Secretary of the Board of Trade, _then_ certified, as appears on the map,--That the Doctor was furnished with documents for the purpose from that Board.--In this map Dr. Mitchel observes, "That the Six Nations have extended their territories, ever since the year 1672, _when they subdued and were incorporated with the antient Shawanesse, the native proprietors of these countries, and the river Ohio_: Besides which, they likewise claim a right of conquest over the Illinois, and all the Mississippi, as far as they extend. This," he adds, "is confirmed by their own claims and possessions in 1742, which include all the bounds here laid down, and none have ever thought fit to dispute them." And, in confirmation of this right of the Six Nations to the country on the Ohio, as mentioned by the King's Ministers, in their memorial to the Duke of Mirepoix in 1755, we would just remark, that the Six Nations, Shawanesse and Delawares, were in the _actual occupation_ of the lands _Southward_ of the Great Kenhawa for some time after the French had encroached up on the river Ohio; and that in the year 1752, these tribes had a large town on Kentucke River,--238 miles below the _Sioto_:--That in the year 1754, they resided and hunted on the _Southerly_ side of the river Ohio, in the _Low Country_, at about 320 miles _below_ the Great Kenhawa;--and in the year 1755, they had also a large town opposite to the mouth of Sioto;--_at the very place_, which is the _Southern boundary_ line of the tract of land applied for by Mr. Walpole and his associates.--But it is a certain fact, that the Cherokees _never_ had any towns or settlements in the country, _Southward_ of the Great Kenhawa;--that they do _not_ hunt there, and that neither the Six Nations, Shawanesse nor Delawares, do _now_ reside or hunt on the Southerly side of the river Ohio, nor did _not_ for several years _before_ they sold the country to the King.--These are facts, which can be easily and fully proved. In October 1768, at a congress held with the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix, they observed to Sir William Johnson: "Now, brother, you who know all our affairs, must be sensible, that _our_ rights go much farther to the _Southward_ than the _Kenhawa_,--and that we have a very good and clear title as far _South_ as the _Cherokee River_, which we cannot allow to be the right of any other Indians, without doing wrong to our posterity, and acting unworthy those warriors who fought and conquered it;--we therefore expect this our right will be considered." In November 1768, the Six Nations sold to the King all the country on the Southerly side of the river Ohio, as far as to the Cherokee river; but notwithstanding that sale, as soon as it was understood in Virginia, that government _favoured_ the pretensions of the Cherokees, and that Dr. Walker and Colonel Lewis (the commissioners sent from that colony to the congress at Fort Stanwix) had returned from thence, the late Lord Bottetourt sent these gentlemen to Charles-town, South-Carolina, to endeavour to convince Mr. Stuart, the Southern superintendent of Indian affairs, of the necessity of enlarging the boundary line, which he had settled with the Cherokees;--and to run it from the _Great Kenhawa_ to Holston's river.--These gentlemen were appointed commissioners by his Lordship, as they had been long conversant in Indian affairs, and were well acquainted with the actual extent of the Cherokee country.--Whilst these commissioners were in South Carolina, they wrote a letter to Mr. Stuart, as he had been but a very few years in the Indian service, (and could not, from the nature of his former employment, be supposed to be properly informed about the Cherokee territory), respecting the claims of the Cherokees to the lands _Southward_ of the Great Kenhawa, and therein they expressed themselves as follows: "Charles-town, South Carolina, February 2, 1769. "The country _Southward_ of _the Big Kenhawa was never claimed by the Cherokees_, and now is the property of the Crown, as Sir William Johnson purchased it of the Six Nations at a very considerable expence, and took a deed of cession from them at Fort Stanwix." In 1769, the house of burgesses of the colony of Virginia represented to Lord Bottetourt, "That they have the greatest reason to fear the said line," (meaning the boundary line, which the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations have referred to, in the map annexed to their Lordships report) "if confirmed, would constantly open to the Indians, and others _enemies_ to his Majesty, a free and easy ingress to the heart of the country on the Ohio, Holston's river, and the Great Kenhawa; whereby the settlements which may be attempted in these quarters will, in all probability, be utterly destroyed, and _that great extent of country_ [at least 800 miles in length] _from the mouth of the Kenhawa_ to the _mouth of the Cherokee river_ extending Eastward as far as the Laurell Hill, _so lately ceded to his Majesty, to which no tribe of Indians at present set up any pretensions, will be entirely abandoned to the Cherokees_; in consequence of which, claims, _totally destructive_ of the true interest of his Majesty, may at some future time arise, _and acquisitions justly ranked among the most valuable of the late war be altogether lost_." From the foregoing detail of facts, it is obvious, 1st. That the country _Southward_ of the _Great Kenhawa_, at least as far as the Cherokee river, originally belonged to the Shawanesse. 2d. That the Six Nations, in virtue of their conquest of the Shawanesse, became the lawful proprietors of that country. 3d. That the King, in consequence of the grant from the Six Nations, made to his Majesty at Fort Stanwix in 1768, is _now_ vested with the undoubted right and property thereof. 4th. That the Cherokees _never_ resided, nor hunted in that country, and have _not_ any kind of right to it. 5th. That the House of Burgesses of the colony of Virginia have, upon good grounds, asserted, [such as properly arise from the nature of their stations, and proximity to the Cherokee country], that the Cherokees had not any just pretensions to the territory _Southward_ of the Great Kenhawa. And lastly, That neither the Six Nations, the Shawanesse nor Delawares, do _now_ reside, or hunt in that country. From these considerations, it is evident no possible injury can arise to his Majesty's Service,--to the Six Nations and their confederacy,--or to the Cherokees, by permitting us to settle the _whole_ of the lands comprehended within our contract with the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury:--If, however, there has been any treaty held with the Six Nations, _since_ the cession made to his Majesty at Fort Stanwix, whereby the faith of the crown is pledged, both to the Six Nations and the Cherokees, that no settlements should be made beyond the line, marked on their Lordships report; we say, if such agreement has been made by the orders of government with these tribes, (not withstanding, as the Lords Commissioners have acknowledged, "_the Six Nations had ceded the property in the lands to his Majesty_)"--We flatter ourselves, that the objection of their Lordships in the second paragraph of their Report, will be entirely obviated, by a specific clause being inserted in the King's grant to us, _expressly prohibiting us from settling any part of the same_, until such time as we shall have _first_ obtained his Majesty's allowance, and the full consent of the Cherokees, and the Six Nations and their confederates, for that purpose. III. In regard to the third paragraph of their Lordships Report, that it was the _principle_ of the board of trade, _after_ the treaty of Paris, "to _confine_ the western extent of settlements to such a distance from the sea-coast, as that these settlements should lie within the _reach_ of the trade and commerce of this kingdom," _&c._ we shall not presume to controvert;--but it may be observed, that the settlement of the country _over_ the Allegany mountains, and on the Ohio, was _not_ understood, either _before_ the treaty of Paris, nor intended to be so considered by his Majesty's proclamation of October 1763, "as _without the reach of the trade and commerce of this kingdom_," &c.;--for, in the year 1748, Mr. John Hanbury, and a number of other gentlemen, petitioned the King for a grant of 500,000 acres of land _over_ the Allegany mountains, and on the river Ohio and its branches; and the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations were _then_ pleased to _report_ to the Lords committee of his Majesty's most honourable privy council, "_That the settlement of the country, lying to the westward of the great mountains_, as it was the center of the British dominions, _would be for his Majesty's interest, and the advantage and security of Virginia and the neighbouring colonies_." And on the 23d of February 1748-9, the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations _again reported_ to the Lords of the committee of the privy council, that they had "fully _set forth the great utility and advantage of extending our settlements beyond the great mountains_ ("which _Report has been approved of by your Lordships_").--And as, by these _new_ proposals, there is _a great probability of having a much larger tract of the said country settled than under the former, we are of opinion, that it will be greatly for his Majesty's service_, and the _welfare and security of Virginia, to comply with the prayer of the petition_." And on the 16th of March 1748-9, an _instruction_ was sent to the Governor of Virginia to grant 500,000 acres of land _over the Allegany mountains_ to the aforesaid Mr. Hanbury and his partners (who are now _part_ of the company of Mr. Walpole and his associates); and that instruction sets forth, That "_such settlements will be for our interest_, and the _advantage and security of our said colony, as well as the advantage of the neighbouring ones_;--inasmuch as our loving subjects _will be thereby enabled to cultivate a friendship, and carry on a more extensive commerce_ with the nations of Indians inhabiting those parts; _and such examples may likewise induce the neighbouring colonies to turn their thoughts towards designs of the same nature_."--Hence we apprehend, it is evident, that a former board of trade, at which Lord Halifax presided, was of opinion, that settlements _over_ the Allegany mountains were not against the King's interest, _nor_ at such a distance from the sea-coast, as to _be without_ "the _reach_ of the trade and commerce of this kingdom," nor _where_ its authority or jurisdiction could not be exercised.--But the _Report_ under consideration suggests, that two capital objects of the proclamation of 1763 were, _to confine_ future settlements to the "sources of the rivers which fall into the sea from the West and North-West," (or, in other Words, to the _Eastern side of the Allegany mountains_) and to the three new governments of Canada, East Florida, and West Florida;--and to establish this fact, the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations recite a part of that proclamation. But if the _whole_ of this proclamation is considered, it will be found to contain the nine following heads; viz.[1] [1] Vide the Proclamation in the Appendix, No. 1. 1st, To declare to his Majesty's subjects, that he had erected four distinct and separate governments in America; viz. Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada. 2d, To ascertain the respective boundaries of these four new governments. 3d, To testify the royal sense and approbation of the conduct and bravery, both of the officers and soldiers of the King's army, and of the reduced officers of the navy, who had served in North America, and to reward them, by grants of lands in Quebec, and in East and West Florida, without fee or reward. 4th, To hinder the governors of Quebec, East Florida and West Florida, from granting warrants of survey, or passing patents for lands, _beyond_ the bounds of their respective governments. 5th, To forbid the governors of any other colonies or plantations in America, from granting warrants or passing patents for lands, _beyond_ the heads or sources of any of the rivers, which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or north-west, or upon any lands whatever, "_which, not having been_ CEDED _to or purchased by the King_, are reserved to the said Indians, or any of them." 6th, To reserve, "_for the present_," under the King's sovereignty, protection, and dominion, _for the use of the said Indians_, all the lands _not_ included within the limits of the said three new governments, or within the limits of the Hudson's Bay company; as also, all the lands lying to the westward of the sources of the rivers, which fall into the sea from the west and north-west, and forbidding the King's subjects, from making any purchases of settlements whatever, or taking possession of the lands _so reserved_, without his Majesty's leave and licence first obtained. 7th, To require all persons, who had made settlements on lands, _not_ purchased by the King from the Indians, to remove from such settlements. 8th, To regulate the future purchases of lands from the Indians, within such parts as his Majesty, by that proclamation, permitted settlements to be made. 9th, To declare, that the trade with the Indians should be free and open to all his Majesty's subjects, and to prescribe the manner how it shall be carried on. And lastly, To require all military officers, and the superintendants of Indian affairs, to seize and apprehend all persons who stood charged with treasons, murders, &c. and who had fled from justice, and taken refuge in the reserved lands of the Indians, to send such persons to the colony, _where_ they stood accused. From this proclamation, therefore, it is obvious, that the sole design of it, independent of the establishment of the three new governments, ascertaining their respective boundaries, rewarding the officers and soldiers, and regulating the Indian trade, and apprehending felons, was to _convince_ the Indians "of his Majesty's justice and determined resolution to remove all reasonable cause of discontent," by interdicting all settlements on land, not _ceded to or purchased by his Majesty_; and declaring it to be, as we have already mentioned, his royal will and pleasure, "for _the present, to reserve_, under his sovereignty, protection, and dominion, _for the use of the Indians_, all the lands and territories lying to the westward of the sources of the rivers which fall into the sea from the west and north-west."--Can any words express more decisively the royal intention?--Do they not explicitly mention, That the territory is, _at present_, reserved under his Majesty's protection, _for the use of the Indians_?--And as the Indians had _no use_ for those lands, which are bounded _westerly_ by the _south-east side_ of the river Ohio, either for residence or hunting, they were willing to sell them; and accordingly did sell them to the King in November 1768, (the occasion of which sale will be fully explained in our observations on the succeeding paragraphs of the _Report_).--Of course, the proclamation, so far as it regarded the settlement of the lands included within that purchase, has absolutely and undoubtedly ceased.--The late Mr. Grenville, who was, at the time of issuing this proclamation, the minister of this kingdom, always admitted, that the design of it was totally accomplished, _so soon as the country was purchased of the natives_. IV. In this paragraph, the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations mention two reasons for his Majesty's entering into engagements with the Indians, for fixing a _more precise and determinate boundary line_, than was settled by the proclamation of October 1763, viz. 1st, Partly for want of _precision_ in the one intended to be marked by the proclamation of 1763. 2d, And partly from a consideration of justice in regard to _legal titles to lands_. We have, we presume, fully proved, in our observations on the third paragraph,--That the design of the proclamation, so far as it related to lands _westward_ of the Allegany mountains, was for no other purpose than to _reserve_ them, under his Majesty's protection, for _the present, for the use of the Indians_; to which we shall only add, That the line established by the proclamation, so far as it concerned the lands in question, could _not_ possibly be fixed and described with more _precision_, than the proclamation itself describes it; for it declares,--That "all the lands and territories lying to the westward of the sources of the rivers, _which fall into the sea from the west and north-west_," should be reserved under his Majesty's protection. Neither, in our opinion, was his Majesty induced to enter into engagements with the Indians for fixing a more _precise_ and determinate boundary "_partly from a consideration of justice, in regard to legal titles to lands_,"--for there were _none_ such (as we shall prove) comprehended within the tract _now_ under consideration. But for a full comprehension of ALL the reasons for his Majesty's "entering into engagements with the Indians, for fixing a more precise and determinate boundary line," than was settled by the royal proclamation of Oct. 1763, we shall take the liberty of stating the following facts:--In the year 1764, the King's ministers had it _then_ in contemplation, to obtain an act of parliament for the proper regulation of the Indian commerce; and providing a fund, (by laying a duty on the trade) for the support of superintendants, commissaries, interpreters, &c. at particular forts in the Indian country, _where_ the trade was to be carried on:--And as a part of this system, it was thought proper, in order to avoid future complaints from the Indians, on account of encroachments on their hunting grounds, to purchase a large tract of territory from them, and establish, with their consent, a respectable _boundary line_, beyond which his Majesty's subjects should _not_ be permitted to settle. In consequence of this system, orders were transmitted to Sir William Johnson, in the year 1764, to call together the Six Nations,--lay this proposition of the _boundary_ before them, and take their opinion upon it.--This, we apprehend, will appear evident from the following speech, made by Sir William to the Six Nations, at a conference which he held with them, at Johnson Hall, May the 2d, 1765. BRETHREN, "The last but the most important affair I have at this time to mention, is with regard to the _settling a boundary between you and the English_. I sent a message to some of your nations some time ago, to acquaint you, that I should confer with you at this meeting upon it. The King, whose generosity and forgiveness you have already experienced, _being very desirous to put a final end to disputes between his people and_ YOU CONCERNING LANDS, and to do you strict justice, has fallen upon the plan of a boundary between our provinces and the Indians (which no white man shall dare to invade) as the best and surest method of ending such like disputes, and _securing your property_ to you, beyond a possibility of disturbance. This will, I hope, appear to you so reasonable, so just on the part of the King, and so advantageous to you and your posterity, that I can have no doubt of your chearfully joining with me in settling such a division-line, as will be best for the advantage of both white men and Indians, _and as shall best agree with the extent and increase of each province_, and the governors, whom I shall consult upon that occasion, so soon as I am fully empowered; but in the mean time I am desirous to know in what manner you would choose to extend it, and what you will heartily agree to, and abide by, in general terms. At the same time I am to acquaint you, that whenever the whole is settled, and that it shall appear you have _so far consulted the increasing state of our people, as to make any convenient cessions of ground_ where it is most wanted, that then you will receive a considerable present in return for your friendship." To this speech the Sachems and Warriors of the Six Nations, after conferring some time among themselves, gave an answer to Sir William Johnson, and agreed to the proposition of the boundary line;--which answer, and the other transactions of this conference, Sir William transmitted to the office of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations.-- From a change of the administration, which formed the above system of obtaining an act of parliament for regulating the Indian trade, and establishing the _boundary line_, or from some other public cause, unknown to us,--no measures were adopted, until the latter end of the year 1767, for _completing_ the negotiation about this boundary line.--But in the mean time, viz. between the years 1765 and 1768,--the King's subjects removed in _great_ numbers from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, and settled _over_ the mountains,--upon which account, the Six Nations became so irritated, that in the year 1766 they killed several persons, and denounced a general war against the middle colonies; and to appease them, and to avoid such a public calamity, a detachment of the 42d regiment of root was _that year_ sent from the garrison of Fort Pitt, to remove such settlers as were seated at _Red Stone Creek_, &c.--but the endeavours and threats of that detachment proved ineffectual, and they returned to the garrison, without being able to execute their orders.--The complaints of the Six Nations however continuing and _increasing_, on account of the settling of their lands _over_ the mountains, General Gage wrote to the Governor of Pennsylvania on the 7th of December 1767, and after mentioning these complaints, he observed, "_You are a witness how little attention has been paid to the several proclamations that have been published; and that even the removing those people from the lands in question_, which _was attempted this summer by the garrison at Fort Pitt_, has _been only a temporary expedient_. We learn they are _returned again_ to the same _encroachments_ on Red Stone Creek and Cheat River in _greater numbers than ever_."[2] [2] Vide p. 47. On the 5th of January 1768, the governor of Pennsylvania sent a message to the general assembly of the province with the foregoing letter from General Gage,--and on the 13th the assembly in the conclusion of a message to the governor on the subject of Indian complaints, observed, "To obviate which cause of their discontent, and effectually to establish between them and his Majesty's subjects a durable peace, we are of opinion, that a speedy _confirmation_ of the _boundary_, and a just satisfaction made to them for their lands on this side of it, are absolutely necessary. By this means all their present complaints of encroachments will be removed, and the people on our frontiers will have a sufficient country _to settle or hunt in, without interfering with them_." On the 19th of January 1768, Mr. Galloway, the speaker of the assembly in Pennsylvania, and the committee of correspondence, wrote on the subject of the Indians disquietude, by order of the house, to their agents Richard Jackson and Benjamin Franklin, Esquires, in London, and therein they said, "That the delay of the confirmation of the _boundary_, the natives have warmly complained of, _and that although they have received no consideration_ for the _lands agreed to be ceded to the crown on our_ side of the boundary, _yet that its subjects are daily settling and occupying those very lands_." In April 1768, the legislature of Pennsylvania finding that the expectations of an Indian war were hourly increasing, _occasioned by the settlement of the lands over the mountains_, not sold by the natives; and flattering themselves, that orders would soon arrive from England for the perfection of the boundary line, they voted the sum of one thousand pounds, to be given as a present, in blankets, strouds, &c. to the Indians upon the Ohio, with a view of moderating their resentment, until these orders should arrive:--and the governor of Pennsylvania being informed, that a treaty was soon to be held at Fort Pitt by George Croghan, Esq; deputy agent of Indian affairs, by order of General Gage and Sir William Johnson, he sent his secretary and another gentleman, as commissioners from the Province, to deliver the above present to the Indians at Fort Pitt. On the 2d of May 1768, the Six Nations made the following speech at that conference: "BROTHER, "It is not without grief that we see our country _settled by you_, without our knowledge or consent; and it is a long time since we complained to you of this grievance, which we find has not yet been redressed; but _settlements_ are still _extending further into our country_: some of them are made directly on our war-path, leading to our enemies' country, and we do not like it. Brother, you have _laws among you_ to govern your people by; and it will be the strongest proof of the sincerity of your friendship, to let us see that you remove the people from our lands; as we look upon it, _they will have time enough to settle them, when you have purchased them, and the country becomes yours_." The Pennsylvania commissioners, in answer to this speech, informed the Six Nations, that the governor of that province had sent four gentlemen with his proclamation and the act of assembly (making it _felony of death_ without benefit of clergy, to continue on Indian lands) to such settlers _over_ the mountains as were seated, within the limits of Pennsylvania, requiring them to vacate their settlements, but all to no avail:--That the governor of Virginia had likewise, to as little purpose, issued his proclamations and orders, and that General Gage had twice _ineffectually_ sent parties of soldiers to remove the settlers from Red Stone Creek and Monongehela. As soon as Mr. Jackson and Dr. Franklin received the foregoing instructions from the general assembly of Pennsylvania, they waited upon the American minister, and urged the expediency and necessity of the boundary line being speedily concluded; and in consequence thereof, additional orders were immediately transmitted to Sir William Johnson for that purpose. It is plain therefore, that the proclamation of October 1763 was _not_ designed, as the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations have suggested, to signify the policy of this kingdom, _against_ settlements _over_ the Allegany mountains, _after_ the King had actually purchased the territory; and that the _true_ reasons for purchasing the lands comprized within that boundary, were to avoid an Indian rupture, and give an opportunity to the King's subjects, quietly and lawfully to settle thereon. V. Whether the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations are well founded in their declarations, That the lands under consideration "_are out of all advantageous intercourse with this kingdom_," shall be fully considered in our observations on the sixth paragraph;--and as to "the various propositions for erecting new colonies in the _interior parts_, which their Lordships say, have been, in consequence of the extension of the boundary line, submitted to the consideration of government, particularly in _that part of the country_, wherein are situated the lands now prayed for, and the danger of complying with such proposals have been so obvious, as to _defeat_ every attempt for carrying them into execution,"--we shall only observe on this paragraph, that as we do not know what these propositions were, or upon what principle the proposers have been _defeated_, it is impossible for us to judge, whether they are any ways applicable to our case.--Consistent however with our knowledge, no more than one proposition, for the settlement of a _part_ of the lands in question, has been presented to government, and that was from Dr. Lee, 32 other Americans, and two Londoners, in the year 1768, praying that his Majesty would _grant_ to them, without _any purchase-money_, 2,500,000 acres of land _in one or more surveys_, to be located between the 38th and 42d degrees of latitude, _over the Allegany mountains_, and on condition of their possessing these lands 12 _years_ WITHOUT _the payment of any quit-rent_, (the same _not_ to begin until the whole 2,500,000 acres were surveyed) and that they should be obliged to settle only 200 _families in_ 12 _years_.--Surely, the Lords Commissioners did not mean this proposition as one that was similar, and would _apply_ to the case now _reported_ upon;--and especially as Dr. Lee and his associates did not propose, as we do, either to purchase the lands, or pay the quit-rents to his Majesty, _neat and clear of all deductions_, or be at the _whole_ expence of establishing and maintaining the civil government of the country. VI. In the sixth paragraph the Lords Commissioners observe, That "_every argument on the subject_, respecting the settlement of the lands in that part of the country now prayed for, _is collected together with great force and precision in a representation made to his Majesty_ by the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, in March 1768." That it may be clearly understood, what was the occasion of this _representation_, we shall take the liberty of mentioning, that on the first of October 1767, and during the time that the Earl of Shelburne was Secretary of State for the southern department, an idea was entertained of forming, "_at the expence of the crown_," three _new governments_ in North America, _viz._ one at _Detroit_ [on the waters between Lake Huron and Lake Erie]; one in the _Illinois Country_, and one on the _lower_ part of the River Ohio; and in consequence such idea, a _reference_ was made by his lordship to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, for their opinion upon these proposed _new_ governments. Having plainly explained the cause of the _representation_, which is so very strongly and earnestly insisted upon by the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, as containing "_every argument on the subject_ of the lands which is at present before your lordships;" we shall now give our reasons for apprehending, _that it_ is so far from applying against our case, that it actually declares a permission would be given to settle the very lands in question. Three principal reasons are assigned in the _representation_, "as conducive to the great object of colonizing upon the continent of North America, _viz._" 1st. "Promoting the advantageous fishery carried on upon the _northern coast_." 2dly. "Encouraging the growth and culture of naval stores, and of _raw materials_, to be transported hither, in exchange for perfect manufactures and other merchandize." 3dly. "Securing a supply of lumber, provisions, and other necessaries, for the support of our establishments in the American islands." On the first of these reasons, we apprehend, it is not necessary for us to make many observations; as the provinces of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, and the colonies _southward_ of them, have _not_, and from the nature of their situation and commerce will _not_, promote the _fishery_, more, it is conceived, than the proposed Ohio colony.--These provinces are, however, beneficial to this kingdom, in the culture and exportation of different articles;--as it is humbly presumed the Ohio colony _will_ likewise be, if the production of _staple commodities_ is allowed to be within that description. On the 2d and 3d general reasons of the _Representation_ we shall observe, that no part of his Majesty's dominions in North America, will require less _encouragement_ "for the growth and culture of naval stores and raw materials; and for the supplying the islands with lumber, provisions," &c. than the solicited colony on the Ohio;--and for the following reasons: First, The lands in question are excellent, the climate temperate, the native grapes, silk-worms, and mulberry trees, are every where; hemp grows spontaneously in the valleys and low lands; iron-ore is plenty in the hills; and no soil is better adapted for the culture of tobacco, flax, and cotton, than that of the Ohio. Second, The country is well watered by several navigable rivers, communicating with each other; and by which, and a short land-carriage of _only 40 miles_, the produce of the lands of the Ohio can, even _now_, be sent _cheaper_ to the sea-port town of Alexandria, on the river Potomack (where General Braddoc's transports landed his troops) than any kind of merchandise is at this time sent _from Northampton to London_. Third, The river Ohio is, at _all_ seasons of the year, navigable for large boats, like the West Country barges, rowed only by four or five men; and from the month of January to the month of April, large ships may be built on the Ohio, and sent laden with _hemp_, _iron_, _flax_, _silk_, &c. to this kingdom. Fourth, Flour, corn, beef, ship-plank, and other necessaries, can be sent down the stream of Ohio to West Florida, and from thence to the islands, much cheaper, and in better order, than from New York or Philadelphia. Fifth, Hemp, tobacco, iron, and such bulky articles, can also be sent _down_ the _stream_ of the Ohio to the sea, at least 50 per centum cheaper than these articles were ever carried by a land carriage, of only 60 miles, in Pennsylvania;--where _waggonage_ is cheaper than in any other part of North America. Sixth, The expence of transporting British manufactories from the sea to the Ohio colony, will _not_ be so much, as is now paid and must ever be paid, to a great part of the counties of _Pennsylvania_, _Virginia_, and _Maryland_. From this state of facts, we apprehend, it is clear, that the lands in question are altogether capable, and will advantageously admit, from their fertility, situation, and the small expence attending the exporting the produce of them to this kingdom,--"of _conducing_ to the great object of colonizing upon the continent of North America:"--But that we may more particularly elucidate this important point, we shall take the freedom of observing,--That it is _not_ disputed, but even acknowledged, by the very _Report_ now under consideration,--that the climate and soil of the Ohio are as favourable, as we have described them;--and as to the native silk worms,--it is a truth, that _above_ 10,000 weight of cocoons was, in August 1771, sold at the public filature in Philadelphia;--and that the silk produced from the _native_ worm is of a good quality, and has been much approved of in this city.--As to _hemp_, we are ready to make it appear, that it grows, as we have represented, spontaneously, and of a good texture on the Ohio,--When, therefore, the _increasing_ dependance of this kingdom upon _Russia_, for this very article, is considered, and that none has been exported from the _sea coast American colonies_, as their soil will not easily produce it,--this dependance must surely be admitted as a subject of great national consequence, and worthy of the serious attention of government. Nature has pointed out to us, _where_ any quantity of hemp can be soon and easily raised, and by that means, not only a large amount of specie may be retained _yearly_ in this kingdom, but our own subjects can be employed most advantageously, and paid in the _manufactures_ of this kingdom. The state of the Russian trade is briefly thus: From the year 1722 to 1731,--250 ships were, on a medium, sent each year to St. Petersburgh, Narva, Riga, and Archangel, for _hemp_, 250 Ships. And from the year 1762 to 1771,--500 ships were also sent for that purpose, 500 ---------- _Increase_ in ten years, 250 Ships. Here then, it is obvious that in the last _ten_ years there was, on a medium, an increase of 250 ships in the Russian trade. Can it be consistent with the wisdom and policy of the greatest naval and commercial nation in the world, to depend wholly on _foreigners_ for the supply of an article, in which is included the very existence of her navy and commerce? Surely not; and especially when God has blessed us with a country yielding _naturally_ the very commodity, which draws our money from us, and renders us _dependent_ on Russia for it[3].-- [3] "It is in settlements on the Mississippi and Ohio that we must look for _hemp_ and _flax_, which may in those fertile tracts be cultivated in such abundance, as to enable us to _undersell_ all the world, as well as supply our own consumption. It is on those _high_, _dry_, and _healthy_ lands, that vineyards would be cultivated to the best advantage, as many of those hills contain quarries of stone, and not in the _low, unhealthy sea coasts_ of our present colonies. Of such infinite consequence to Britain is the _production of staples_ in her colonies, that were all the people of the _Northern_ settlements, and all of the _tobacco_ ones (except those actually employed in raising tobacco) now spread over those parts of our territories to the Southward and _Westward_, and consequently employed in the same manner as the few are who do reside therein, Britain, in such a case, would _export_ to the amount of above _nine millions more_ in manufactures, &c. than she does at present, without reckoning the infinite _increase in public revenue, freight, and seamen_, which would accrue. To enlarge upon all the advantages of such a change, would be _impertinence_ itself." _Political Essays concerning the British Empire._ As we have only hitherto _generally_ stated the _small_ expence of carriage between the waters of Potomack and those of the Ohio, we shall now endeavour to shew how very ill founded the Lords for Trade and Plantations are, in the fifth paragraph of their _report_, viz. That the lands in question "_are out of all advantageous intercourse with this kingdom_." In order however, that a proper opinion may be formed on this important article, we shall take the liberty of stating the particular expence of carriage, _even during_ the last _French war_ (when there was no _back_ carriage from the Ohio to Alexandria) as it will be found, it was even _then_ only about a _halfpenny per_ pound, as will appear from the following account, the truth of which we shall fully ascertain, _viz._ From Alexandria to Fort _l._ _s._ _d._ Cumberland, by water. 0 1 7 _per cwt._ From Fort Cumberland to Redstone Creek, at 14 dollars _per_ waggon load; each waggon carrying 15 cwt. 0 4 2 ------------------------- 0 5 9 Note, The distance was _then_ 70 miles, but by a _new_ waggon road, _lately_ made, it is _now_ but forty miles--a saving of course, of above one half the 5_s._ 9_d._ is _at present_ experienced. If it is considered that this rate of carriage was _in time of war_, and _when_ there were no inhabitants on the Ohio, we cannot doubt but every intelligent mind will be satisfied, that it is now much _less_ than is daily paid in London for the carriage of _coarse woollens_, _cutlery_, _iron ware_, &c. from several counties in England. The following is the cost of carriage from Birmingham, &c. _viz._ From Birmingham to London, is 4_s. per_ cwt. From Walsall in Staffordshire 5_s._ From Sheffield 8_s._ From Warrington 7_s._ If the lands which are at present under consideration are, as the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations _say, "out of all advantageous intercourse with this kingdom_," we are at a loss to conceive by what standard that Board calculates the rate of "advantageous intercourse."--If the King's subjects, settled over the Allegany mountains, and on the Ohio, within the _new_-erected county of Bedford, in the province of Pennsylvania, are altogether cloathed with British manufacture, as is the case, is that country "out of all advantageous intercourse with this kingdom?"--If merchants in London are _now_ actually shipping British manufactures for the use _of the very settlers_ on the lands in question, does that exportation come within the Lords Commissioners description of what is "out of all advantageous intercourse with this kingdom?" In short, the Lords Commissioners admit, upon their own principles, that it is a political and advantageous intercourse with this kingdom, _when_ the settlements and settlers are confined to the _Eastern_ side of the Allegany mountains. Shall then the expence of carriage, even of the very coarsest and heaviest cloths, or other articles, from the _mountains_ to the Ohio, only about 70 miles, and which will not, at most, _encrease_ the price of carriage _above a halfpenny a yard_, convert the trade and connexion with the settlers on the Ohio, into a predicament "that shall be, as the Lords Commissioners have said, _out_ of all advantageous intercourse with this kingdom?"--On the whole, "if the poor Indians in the remote parts of North America are _now_ able to pay for the linens, woollens, and iron ware, they are furnished with by English traders, though Indians have nothing but what they get by hunting, and the goods are loaded with all the impositions fraud and knavery can contrive, to _inhance_ their value; will not industrious English farmers," employed in the culture of hemp, flax, silk, &c. "be able to pay for what shall be brought to them in the fair way of commerce;" and especially when it is remembered, that there is _no_ other _allowable_ market for the sale of these articles than in this kingdom?--And if "the growths of _the_ country find their way out of it, will not the manufactures of this kingdom, _where_ the hemp, &c. must be sent to, find their way into it?" Whether Nova Scotia, and East and West Florida have yielded advantages and returns equal to the enormous sums expended in founding and supporting them, or even advantages, such as the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, in their _representation_ of 1768, seemed to expect, it is not our business to investigate:--it is, we presume, sufficient for us to mention, that those "many principal persons in Pennsylvania," as is observed in the _representation_, "whose names and association lie before your Majesty in Council, for the purpose of making settlements in Nova Scotia," have, several years since, been convinced of the impracticability of exciting settlers to move from the _middle colonies_, and settle in that province; and even of those who were prevailed on to go to Nova Scotia, the greater part of them returned with great complaints against the severity and length of the Winters. As to East and West Florida, it is, we are persuaded, morally impossible to _force_ the people of the _middle_ provinces, between 37 and 40 degrees North latitude (where there is plenty of vacant land in their own temperate climate) to remove to the scorching, unwholesome heats of these provinces[4]. The inhabitants of Montpelier might as soon and as easily be persuaded to remove to the Northern parts of Russia, or to Senegal.--In short, it is contending with Nature, and the experience of all ages, to attempt to compel a people, _born_ and _living in a temperate climate_, and in the neighbourhood of a rich, healthful, and uncultivated country, to travel several hundred miles to a _sea port_ in order to make a _voyage to sea_; and settle either in extreme hot or cold latitudes. If the county of York was vacant and uncultivated, and the more _Southern_ inhabitants of this island were in want of land, would they suffer themselves to be driven to the _North of Scotland_?--Would they not, in spite of all opposition, _first_ possess themselves of that fertile country?--Thus much we have thought necessary to remark, in respect to the general principles laid down in the _representation_ of 1768; and we hope we have shewn, that the arguments _therein_ made use of, do _not_ in any degree militate against the subject in question; but that they were intended, and do solely apply to "new colonies proposed to be established," as the _representation_ says, "_at an expence to this kingdom_," at the distance of "above 1500 miles from the sea, which from their inability to find returns, _wherewith_ to pay for the manufactures of Great Britain, will be probably led to manufacture for themselves, _as they would_," continues the _representation_, "be separated from the _old_ colonies by immense tracts of unpeopled desart."-- [4] "We think of nothing but extending our settlements still further on these _pestiferous sea coasts_, even to the sunken lagunes of _East Florida_, and the barren sands of _Mobile_ and _Pensacola_. The only use of _new settlements in North America_, is for the people in the _Northern_ and other colonies, who want lands _to make staple commodities_ for _Britain_, to _remove to them: but none will ever go to Florida, or thrive in it, more than_ they have done in _Carolina_ and _Georgia_. The climate of _Florida_ is _more_ intemperate, the lands _more_ barren, and the situation _much worse_ in every respect." _State of Great Britain and America, by Dr._ Mitchel. It now only remains for us to enquire, whether it was the intention of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations in 1768, that the territory, which would be included within the _boundary line_, then negociating with the Indians (and which was the _one_ that was _that year_ perfected) should continue a useless wilderness, or be settled and occupied by his Majesty's subjects.--The very _representation_ itself, which the present Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations say, contains "_every argument on the subject_," furnishes us an ample and satisfactory solution to this important question.--The Lord Commissioners in 1768, after pronouncing their opinion _against_ the _proposed three new governments_, as above stated, declare, "They ought to be carefully guarded against, by encouraging the settlement of that extensive tract of sea coast hitherto unoccupied; which, say their Lordships, _together with the liberty, that the inhabitants_ OF THE _middle colonies_ WILL HAVE (in consequence of the proposed _boundary line_ with the Indians) _of gradually extending themselves backwards_, will _more effectually_ and _beneficially answer_ the object of _encouraging population_ and _consumption_, than the erection of new governments; such gradual extension might, through the medium of a continual population, upon even the same extent of territory, _preserve_ a communication of mutual commercial benefits between its extremest parts and Great Britain, _impossible to exist in colonies separated by immense tracts of unpeopled desart_."--Can any opinion be more clear and conclusive, in _favour_ of the proposition which we have humbly submitted to his Majesty?--for their Lordships positively say, that the inhabitants of the middle colonies _will have liberty of gradually extending themselves backwards_;--but is it not very extraordinary, that after near _two years_ deliberation, the present Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations should make a _report_ to the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council, and therein expressly refer to that opinion of 1768, in which, they say, "_every argument on the subject is collected together with great force and precision_," and yet that, almost in the same breath, their Lordships "should contravene that very opinion, and advise his Majesty _to check the progress of their settlements_?"--And that "settlements in _that distant part_ of the country ought to be _discouraged_ as much as possible, and another proclamation should be issued declaratory of his Majesty's resolution, _not_ to allow, _for the present_, any new settlement beyond the line;"--to wit, beyond the Allegany mountains?--How strange and contradictory is this conduct?--But we forbear any strictures upon it;--and shall conclude our remarks on this head, by stating the opinion, at different times, of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, on this subject. In 1748, their Lordships expressed the strongest desire to promote settlements _over_ the mountains and on the Ohio.-- In 1768--The then Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations declared, (in consequence of the boundary line at that time negociating)--That the inhabitants of the _middle colonies_ would _have liberty of gradually extending themselves backwards_. In 1770--The Earl of Hillsborough actually _recommended_ the purchase of a tract of land _over_ the mountains, sufficient for a new colony, and then went down to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, to know, whether their Lordships would treat with Mr. Walpole and his associates, for such purchase. In 1772--The Earl of Hillsborough, and the other Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, made a _report_ on the petition of Mr. Walpole and his associates, and referred to the _representation_ of the Board of Trade in 1768, "as containing _every argument_ on the _subject, collected together with force and precision_;"--which _representation_ declared, as we have shewn, "_That the inhabitants of the middle colonies_ WILL _have liberty to extend backwards_," on the identical lands in question; and yet, notwithstanding such _reference_, so strongly made from the present Board of Trade to the opinion of that Board,--the Earl of Hillsborough, and the other Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, have _now_, in direct terms, _reported against_ the absolute engagement and opinion of the Board in 1768. It may be asked, What was intended by the expressions in the _representation_ of 1768, of _gradually extending themselves backwards_? It is answered, They were only in contradistinction to the proposal of erecting at that time _three new governments at Detroit_, &c. and thereby exciting, as the _representation_ says, the stream of population to _various_ distant places.--In short, it was, we think, beyond all doubt, the "_precise_" opinion of the Lords Commissioners in 1768, That the territory, within the boundary line, then negociating, and since completed, would be sufficient at that time--to answer the object of population and consumption; and that, until that territory was fully occupied,--it was not necessary to erect the proposed _three new governments_ "_at an expence to this kingdom_," in places, as their Lordships observed, "separated by immense tracts of unpeopled desart."-- To conclude our observations on the 6th paragraph, we would just remark,--That we presume we have demonstrated, that the inhabitants of the Middle Colonies _cannot_ be compelled to _exchange_ the soil and climate of these colonies, either for the severe colds of Nova Scotia and Canada, or the unwholesome heats of East and West Florida. Let us next enquire, what would be the effect of _confining_ these inhabitants (if it was practicable) within narrow bounds, and thereby preventing them from exercising their natural inclination of cultivating lands?--and whether such restriction would not force them into _manufactures_, to rival the Mother Country?--To these questions, the Lords Commissioners have, with much candour, replied in their representation of 1768,--We "admit," said their Lordships, "as an undeniable principle of _true policy_, that, with a view to _prevent manufactures_, it is necessary and proper _to open_ an extent of territory for colonization, _proportioned_ to an _increase_ of people, as a large number of inhabitants cooped up in narrow limits, without a sufficiency of land _for produce_, would be compelled to _convert_ their attention and industry to _manufactures_."--But their Lordships at the same time observed,--"That the _encouragement_ given to the settlement of the Colonies upon the sea coast, and the effect which such encouragement has had, has already _effectually_ provided for this object."--In what parts of North America this _encouragement_ has thus _provided_ for _population_, their Lordships have not mentioned. If the establishment of the governments of Quebeck, Nova Scotia, and the Island of St. John's, or East and West Florida, was intended by their Lordships as that effectual provision,--we shall presume to deny the proposition, by asserting, as an undoubted truth,--that although there is at least a _million_ of subjects in the Middle Colonies, none have emigrated from thence, and settled in these _new_ provinces;--and for that reason, and from the very nature of colonization itself, we affirm that none _will ever_ be induced _to exchange_ the healthy, temperate climate of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, for the extreme colds or heats of Canada and Nova Scotia, or East and West Florida:--In short, it is not in the power of Government to give any encouragement, that can compensate for a desertion of friends and neighbours,--dissolution of family connexions, and abandoning a soil and climate infinitely superior to those of Canada, Nova Scotia, or the Floridas.--Will not therefore the inhabitants of the middle provinces, whose population is great beyond example[5], and who have already made some advances in manufactures, "by confining them to their present narrow limits," be necessarily compelled to convert their whole attention to that object? How then shall this, in the nature of things, be prevented, except, as the Lords Commissioners have justly remarked, "by opening an extent of territory proportioned _to their increase_?"--But _where_ shall a territory be found proper for "the _colonization_ of the inhabitants of the Middle Colonies?" We answer,--in the very country, which the Lords Commissioners have aid that the inhabitants of these colonies would have liberty to settle in;--a country which his Majesty has purchased from the Six Nations;--one, _where_ several thousands of his subjects are already settled;--and one, _where_ the Lords Commissioners have acknowledged, "a gradual extension might through the medium of a continued population, upon even the same extent of territory, _preserve a communication_ of mutual commercial benefits _between_ its _extremest parts_ and Great Britain."[6] [5] "Besides _staple_ commodities, there is another more material point to be considered in the colonies, which is their great and daily _increase_; and for which, unless we make provision in time, they can never subsist by a _dependance on Britain_. There are at present (in the year 1770) nigh _three_ millions of people in them, who may, in twenty or thirty years, _increase_ to _six_ millions, as many as there are in England." _Wynne's History of the British Empire in America, vol. ii. page 398._ [6] Thus the use the nation has for new settlements and acquisitions in North America is for the great increase of the people who are already there, and to enable them to subsist _by a dependance upon her_; which they can never do, _unless they extend their settlements_. _Wynne's History, vol. ii. p. 399._ "Unprejudiced men well know, that all the penal and prohibitory laws that ever were thought of, will not be sufficient to _prevent manufactures_ in a country whose inhabitants surpass the number that can subsist by the by the husbandry of it; and this will be the case _soon_, if our people remain confined within the mountains," _&c._ _The Interest of Great Britain considered with regard to the Colonies, page 17. Published in 1767._ VII. This paragraph is introduced, by referring to the extract of a letter from the Commander in chief of his Majesty's forces in North America, laid by the Earl of Hillsborough before the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations;--but as their Lordships have _not_ mentioned either the general's name, or the time _when_ the letter was written, or what occasioned his delivering his opinion upon the subject of _colonization in general_, in the "_remote countries_"--we can only conjecture, that General Gage was the writer of the letter, and that it was wrote about the year 1768,--_when_, the plan of the _three new governments_ was under the consideration of the then Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, and _before_ the lands on the Ohio were bought from, and the boundary line established with the Six Nations.--Indeed, we think it clear, That the General had _no_ other lands, at that time, under his consideration, than what he calls "_remote countries_," such as the _Detroit_, _Illinois_, and the _lower_ parts of the Ohio;--for he speaks of "_foreign countries_," from which it "would be _too far_ to transport some kind of naval stores," and for the same reason could _not_, he says, supply the sugar islands "_with_ lumber and provisions." He mentions also, planting colonies at _so vast a distance_, that the _very long transportation_ [of silk, wine, &c.] must probably make them too dear for any market," and _where_ "the inhabitants could _not_ have _any commodities_ to barter for manufactures, except _skins and furs_." And what, in our opinion, fully evinces that the general was giving his sentiments upon settlements at _Detroit_, &c. and _not_ on the territory in question, is, that he says "it will be a question likewise, whether colonization of this kind, _could be effected without an Indian war, and fighting for every inch of the ground_." Why the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations should encumber their _report_ with the opinion of General Gage, on what he calls the settlement of a "_foreign country_" that could not be effected without "_fighting for every inch of ground_," and how their Lordships could apply that case, to the settlement of a territory, purchased by his Majesty near four years ago, and _now_ inhabited by several thousand British subjects, whom the Indians themselves, living on the Northern side of the Ohio [as shall be fully shewn in the course of these observations] have earnestly requested may be immediately governed, we confess we are wholly at a loss to comprehend. VIII. The eighth paragraph highly extols, not only the _accuracy and precision_ of the foregoing representation of the Lords of Trade in 1768, [which, as has been before observed, expressed, that the inhabitants of the middle colonies _would have liberty to settle over_ the mountains, and on the Ohio], but also the above mentioned letter from the commander in chief in America; and at the same time introduces the sentiments of Mr. Wright, Governor of Georgia, "on the subject of large grants in the interior parts of America." When this letter was written, what was the occasion of the Governor's writing it,--whether he was _then_, from his own knowledge, acquainted with the situation of the country _over_ the mountains,--with the disposition of the inhabitants of the middle colonies,--with the capability of the Ohio country, from its soil, climate, or communication with the river Powtomack, &c. to supply this kingdom with _silk_, _flax_, _hemp_, &c.--and whether the principal part of Mr. Wright's estate is on the _sea-coast_ in _Georgia_,--are facts which we wish had been stated, that it might be known whether Governor Wright's "knowledge and experience in the affairs of colonies ought, as the Lords of Trade mention, to give great weight to his opinion" on the present occasion. The doctrine insisted on by Governor Wright appears to us reducible to the following propositions: 1st, That if a _vast_ territory be granted to any set of Gentlemen, who really mean to people it,--and actually do so, _it must_ draw and carry out a great number of people from _Great Britain_. 2d. That they will soon become a kind of separate and independant people; who will set up for themselves,--will _soon_ have manufactures of their own,--will _neither_ take supplies from the mother country, nor the provinces at _the back_ of which they are settled:--That being at such a distance from the seat of _government_, from _courts_, _magistrates_, &c. and _out_ of the control of law and government, they will become a receptacle for offenders, &c. 3d. That the sea-coast should be _thick_ settled with inhabitants, and be well cultivated and improved, &c. 4th. That his ideas are _not_ chimerical; that he knows _something_ of the situation and state of things in America; and, from some _little_ occurrences that have happened, he can very easily _figure_ to himself _what may_, and, in short, _what will_ certainly happen, if not prevented in time. On these propositions we shall take the liberty of making a few observations. To the _first_ we answer,--We shall, we are persuaded, satisfactorily prove, that in the middle colonies, _viz._ New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, there is hardly any _vacant land_, except such as is monopolized by great landholders, for the purpose of selling _at high prices_;--that the poor people of these colonies, with large families of children, _cannot_ pay these prices;--and that several thousand families, for that reason, have _already_ settled upon the Ohio;--that we do not wish for, and shall not encourage one single family of his Majesty's _European subjects_ to _settle_ there [and this we have no objection to be prevented from doing], but shall _wholly_ rely on the voluntary super-flux of the inhabitants of the middle provinces for settling and cultivating the lands in question. On the _second_,--It is not, we presume, necessary for us to say more, than that all the conjectures and suppositions "of being a kind of separate and independant people," &c. entirely lose their force, on the proposition of a government being established on the grant applied for, as the Lords of Trade have themselves acknowledged. On the _third_,--We would only briefly remark, that we have fully answered this objection in the latter part of our answer to the sixth paragraph. And as the _fourth_ proposition is merely the Governor's declaration of his _knowledge_ of _something_ of the situation and state of things in America, and what, from some _little_ occurrences, that have already really happened, he can very easily _figure_ to himself what may and _will_ certainly happen, if not prevented in time:--We say, that as the Governor has not mentioned what these _little_ occurrences are,--we cannot pretend to judge, whether what he _figures_ to himself, is any ways relative to the object under consideration, or, indeed, what else it is relative to. But as the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations have thought proper to insert in their _Report_ the above-mentioned letters from General Gage and Governor Wright, it may not be improper for us to give the opinion of his Majesty's house of burgesses of the dominion of Virginia, on the _very point_ in question, as conveyed to his Majesty in their address of the 4th of August 1767, and delivered the latter end of that year, to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, by Mr. Montague, agent for the colony.--The house of burgesses say,--"We humbly hope, that we shall obtain your royal indulgence, _when we give it as our opinions_, that it will be _for your Majesty's service, and the interest of your American dominions in general, to continue the encouragements_" (which were a _total exemption from any consideration-money whatsoever, and a remission of quit-rent for ten years, and of all kinds of taxes for fifteen years_) "for _settling those frontier lands_." By this means the house observed, "_New_ settlements will be made _by people of property, obedient subjects to government_; but if the present restriction should continue, we have the strongest reason to believe, _that country will become the resort of fugitives and vagabonds, defiers of law and order, and who in time may form a body dangerous to the peace and civil government of this colony_." We come now to the consideration of the 9th, 10th, and 11th paragraphs. In the 9th, the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations observe, "That admitting the settlers over the mountains, and on the Ohio, to be as numerous as _report_ states them to be," [and which we shall from undoubted testimony, prove to be not less than five thousand families, of at least six persons to a family, independent of some thousand families, which are also settled _over_ the mountains, within the limits of the province of Pennsylvania] yet their Lordships say, "It operates strongly in point of argument _against_ what is proposed." And their Lordships add, "if the foregoing reasoning has any weight, it ought certainly to induce the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council, to _advise_ his Majesty to take every method _to_ CHECK the progress of these settlements; and _not_ to make such grants of the land, as will have an immediate tendency to encourage them." Having, we presume, clearly shewn, that the country _southward_ of the Great Kenhawa, quite to the Cherokee river, belonged to the Six Nations, and _not_ to the Cherokees;--that _now_ it belongs to the king, in virtue of his Majesty's purchase from the Six Nations;--that neither these tribes, _nor_ the Cherokees, do hunt between the Great Kenhawa and the land opposite the Sioto River;--that, by the present boundary line, the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations would sacrifice to the _Cherokees_ an extent of Country of at least 800 miles in length--which his Majesty has bought and paid for; that the real limits of Virginia do _not_ extend westward, beyond the Allegany mountains;--that since the purchase of the country from the Six Nations, his Majesty has not annexed it, or any part of it, to the colony of Virginia;--that there are no settlements made under _legal titles_, on any part of the lands we have agreed for, with the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury;--that in the year 1748, the strongest marks of royal encouragement were given to settle the country _over_ the mountains; that the _suspension_ of this encouragement, by the proclamation of October 1763, was merely _temporary_, untill the lands were purchased from the natives;--that the avidity to settle these lands was so great, that large settlements were made thereon, _before they were purchased_;--that although the settlers were daily exposed to the cruelties of the savages, neither a military force, nor repeated proclamations could induce them to vacate these lands;--that the soil of the country _over_ the mountains is excellent, and capable of easily producing _hemp_, _flax_, _silk_, _tobacco_, _iron_, _wine_, &c.;--that these articles can be cheaply conveyed to a seaport for exportation;--that the charge of carriage is so very small, it cannot possibly operate to the prevention of the use of British manufactures; that the king's purchasing the lands from the Indians, and fixing a _boundary line_ with them, was for the very purpose of his subjects settling them; and that the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations in 1768,--declared, That the _inhabitants of the middle colonies_ would have liberty for that purpose.-- And to this train of facts,--let us add,--that the congress, held with the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix in 1768,--_when_ his Majesty purchased the territory on the Ohio, Messrs. Penn also bought from these nations a very extensive tract of country _over_ the Allegany mountains and on that river (_joining_ the very lands in question).--That in the spring 1769, Messrs. Penn opened their _land-office_ in Pennsylvania, for the _settling the country_ which they had so bought at Fort Stanwix: and all such settlers as had seated themselves _over the mountains_, within the limits of Pennsylvania, _before_ the lands were purchased from the natives, have _since_ obtained titles for their plantations:--That in 1771, a petition was presented to the assembly of the province of Pennsylvania, praying that a _new_ county may be made _over_ these mountains:--That the legislature of that province, in consideration of the great number of families settled _there_, within the limits of that province, did that year enact a law, for the _erection_ of the lands _over the mountains into a_ new county, by the name of _Bedford County_: That in consequence of such law, William Thompson, Esq. was chosen to represent it in the General Assembly: That a sheriff, coroner, justices of the peace, constables, and other civil officers are appointed and do reside _over_ the mountains: That all the king's subjects, who are not less than five thousand families, who have made locations and settlements on the lands, _southward_ of, and adjoining to the _southern_ line of Pennsylvania, live _there_, without any degree of order, law, or government: That being in this lawless situation, continual quarrels prevail among them: That they have already infringed the _boundary line_, killed several Indians, and encroached on the lands, on the opposite side of the Ohio; and that disorders of the most dangerous nature, with respect to the Indians, the _boundary-line_ and the _old colonies_, will soon take place among these settlers, if law and subordination are not immediately established among them.--Can these facts be possibly perverted so as to operate, either in point of argument or policy, _against_ the proposition of governing the king's subjects on the lands in question? It ought to be considered also, that we have agreed to pay as much for a small _part_ of the cession made at Fort Stanwix, as the _whole_ cession cost the crown, and at the same time be at the entire expence of establishing and supporting the proposed new colony[7]. [7] The parliamentary grants for the civil establishment of the provinces of Nova Scotia, Georgia, and East and West Florida, amount to _one million twelve thousand eight hundred and thirty-one pounds two shillings and eight-pence half-penny_, as the following account shews;--and notwithstanding this vast expence, the king has _not_ received any quit-rents from these provinces. How different is the present proposition, for the establishment of the Ohio colony?--In this case, the crown is to be paid for the lands, (and which is the first instance of _any_ being sold in North America). Government is to be _exempted_ from the _expence_ of supporting the colony, and the king will receive his quit-rents, _neat and clear_ of all deductions, (which deductions in the _old_ colonies are at least 20 per centum) as will more particularly appear by a _state_ of the king's quit-rents annexed hereto. The parliamentary grants above-mentioned are as follow: To Nova Scotia £. 707,320 19 7-1/4 To Georgia 214,610 3 1-1/4 To East Florida 45,400 0 0 To West Florida 45,400 0 0 The truth is, the inhabitants settled on this tract of country are in so ungoverned and lawless a situation, that the very Indians themselves complain of it; so that, if they are _not_ soon governed, an Indian war will be the inevitable consequence. This, we presume, is evident both from the correspondence of general Gage with the Earl of Hillsborough;--and a speech of the chiefs of the _Delawares_, _Munsies_, and _Mohickons_, living on the Ohio, to the governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia; lately transmitted by the general to his lordship. In this speech these nations observe, that since the sale of the lands to the king on the Ohio,--"_Great numbers more of your people_ have come _over_ the great mountains and settled throughout this country, and we are sorry to tell you, that several quarrels have happened between your people and ours, _in which people have been killed on both sides_, and that we now see the nations round us and your people _ready to embroil in a quarrel_, which gives our nations great concern, as we, on _our_ parts, want to live in friendship with you. As you have always told us, _you have laws_ to govern your people by,--but we do not see that you have; therefore, brethren, _unless you can fall upon some method of governing your people, who live between the great mountains and the Ohio river, and who are very numerous_, it will be out of the Indians' power _to govern_ their young men; for we assure you, the black clouds begin to gather fast in this country, and _if something is not soon done_, these clouds will deprive us of seeing the sun. We desire you to _give the greatest attention_ to what we now tell you; _as it comes from our hearts_, and a desire we have to live in peace and friendship with our brethren the English, and therefore it grieves us to see some of the nations about us and your people _ready to strike each other_. We find your people are very fond of our rich land;--we see them quarrelling with each other every day about land, and burning one another's houses, so that we do not know how soon _they may come over the river Ohio_, and drive us from our villages; _nor do we see you, brothers, take any care to stop them_." This speech, from tribes of such great influence and weight upon the Ohio, conveys much useful information--It establishes the fact of the settlers _over_ the mountains being _very numerous_--It shews the entire approbation of the Indians, in respect to a colony being established on the Ohio--It pathetically complains of the King's subjects _not_ being governed, and it confirms the assertion mentioned by the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations in the eighth paragraph of their report, "That if the settlers are suffered to continue in the lawless state of anarchy and confusion, they will commit such abuses as cannot fail of involving us in quarrels and disputes with the Indians, _and thereby endanger the security of his majesty's colonies_." The Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations however pay no regard to all these circumstances, but content themselves with observing, "We see nothing to hinder the government of Virginia from extending the laws and constitution of that colony to _such persons as may have already settled there under legal titles_." To this we _repeat_, that there are _no such_ persons, as have settled _under legal titles_, and even admitting there were, as their Lordships say in the 10th paragraph, "it _appears to them_, there are _some possessions_ derived from grants made by the Governor and Council of Virginia;" and allowing that the laws and constitution of Virginia _did_, as they unquestionably _do not_,--_extend_ to this territory, have the Lords Commissioners proposed any expedient for governing those many thousand families, who have _not_ settled _under legal titles_, but only agreeably to the ancient _usage of location_?--Certainly not.--But, on the contrary, their Lordships have recommended, that his Majesty should be advised to take every method _to check_ the progress of their settlements;--and thereby leave them in their present lawless situation, at the risk of involving the Middle Colonies in a war with the natives, pregnant with a loss of commerce, and depopulation of their frontier counties. Having made these observations, it may next be proper to consider _how_ the laws and constitution of Virginia can possibly be _extended_, so as effectually to operate on the territory in question? Is not Williamsburgh, the capital of Virginia, at leaft 400 miles from the settlements on the Ohio?--Do _not_ the laws of Virginia require, that all persons guilty of capital crimes _shall_ be tried _only_ in Williamsburgh?--Is not the General Assembly held there?--Is not the Court of King's-Bench, or the superior Court of the dominion, kept there?--Has Virginia provided any fund for the support of the officers of these _distant_ settlements, or for the transporting offenders, and paying the expence of witnesses travelling 800 miles (_viz._ going and returning), and during their stay at Williamsburgh?--And will not these settlers be exactly (for the reasons assigned) in the situation, described by Governor Wright in the very letter which the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations have so warmly recommended, viz. "such persons as are settled at the _back_ of the provinces, being at a _distance_ from the _seat_ of _Government_, Courts, Magistrates, &c. they will be _out_ of the _reach_ and controul of law and government, and their settlement will become a receptacle, and kind of asylum for offenders?" On the 11th paragraph we apprehend it is not necessary to say much.--The reservatory clause proposed in our Memorial is what is usual in royal grants; and in the present case, the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council, we hope, will be of opinion, it is quite sufficient, more especially as we are able to prove to their Lordships, that there are no "possessions," within the boundaries of the lands under consideration, which are held "_under legal titles_." To conclude: As it has been demonstrated, that neither royal nor provincial proclamations,--nor the dread and horrors of a savage war,--were sufficient (even _before_ the country was purchased from the Indians) to prevent the settlement of the lands _over_ the mountains--can it be conceived, that, _now_ the country is purchased, and the people have seen the proprietors of Pennsylvania, who are the hereditary supporters of _British policy_ in their own province, give every degree of encouragement to _settle_ the lands _Westward_ of the mountains,--the legislature of the province, at the same time, effectually corroborate the measure, and several thousand families, in consequence thereof, settle in the _new county_ of Bedford,--that the inhabitants of the Middle Colonies will _be restrained_ from cultivating the luxuriant country of the Ohio, joining to the _Southern_ line of Pennsylvania? But, even admitting that it might formerly have been a question of some propriety, whether the country should be permitted to be settled,--that cannot surely become a subject of enquiry now, when it is an obvious and certain truth, that _at least thirty thousand British subjects are already settled there_.--Is it fit to leave such a body of people _lawless and ungoverned_?--will sound policy recommend this manner of colonizing and encreasing the wealth, strength, and commerce of the empire? or will it not point out, that it is the indispensible duty of government to render _bad_ subjects _useful_ subjects; and for that purpose _immediately_ to establish law and subordination among them, and thereby _early_ confirm _their_ native attachment to the laws, traffic, and customs of this kingdom? On the whole, we presume that we have, both by facts and sound argument, shewn, that the opinion of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the object in question, is _not_ well founded, and that, if their Lordships opinion should be adopted, it would be attended with the most mischievous and dangerous consequences to the commerce, peace, and safety of his Majesty's colonies in America: We therefore hope, the expediency and utility of erecting the lands agreed for into a separate colony, without delay, will be considered as a measure of the soundest policy, highly conducive to the peace and security of the old colonies, to the preservation of the _boundary line_, and to the commercial interests of the Mother Country. APPENDIX, No. I. By the KING. A PROCLAMATION. GEORGE R. Whereas we have taken into our royal consideration the extensive and valuable acquisitions in America, secured to our crown by the late definitive treaty of peace concluded at Paris the 10th day of February last; and being desirous that all our loving subjects, as well of our kingdoms as of our colonies in America, may avail themselves, with all convenient speed, of the great benefits and advantages which must accrue therefrom to their commerce, manufactures, and navigation; we have thought fit, with the advice of our privy council, to issue this our royal proclamation, hereby to publish and declare to all our loving subjects, that we have, with the advice of our said privy council, granted our letters patent under our great seal of Great Britain, to erect within the countries and islands, ceded and confirmed to us by the said treaty, four distinct and separate governments, stiled and called by the names of Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada, and limited and bounded as follows, viz. First, The government of Quebec, bounded on the Labrador coast by the river St. John, and from thence by a line drawn from the head of that river, through the lake St. John, to the South end of the lake Nipissim; from whence the said line, crossing the river St. Lawrence and the lake Champlain in 45 degrees of North latitude, passes along the High Lands, which divide the rivers that empty themselves into the said river St. Lawrence, from those which fall into the sea; and also along the North coast of the Baye des Chaleurs, and the coast of the Gulph of St. Lawrence to Cape Rosieres, and from thence crossing the mouth of the river St. Lawrence by the West end of the island of Anticosti, terminates at the aforesaid river St. John. Secondly, The government of East Florida, bounded to the Westward by the Gulph of Mexico and the Apalachicola river; to the Northward, by a line drawn from that part of the said river where the Catahouchee and Flint rivers meet, to the source of St. Mary's river, and by the course of the said river to the Atlantic Ocean; and to the East and South by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulph of Florida, including all islands within six leagues of the sea coast. Thirdly, The government of West Florida, bounded to the Southward by the Gulph of Mexico, including all islands within six leagues of the coast from the river Apalachicola to lake Pontchartrain; to the Westward by the said lake, the lake Maurepas, and the river Mississippi; to the Northward, by a line drawn due East from that part of the Mississippi which lies in thirty-one degrees North latitude, to the river Apalachicola, or Catahouchee; and to the Eastward by the said river. Fourthly, The government of Grenada, comprehending the island of that name, together with the Grenadines, and the islands of Dominico, St. Vincent, and Tobago. And to the end that the open and free fishery of our subjects may be extended to, and carried on upon the coast of Labrador and the adjacent islands, we have thought fit, with the advice of our said privy council, to put all that coast, from the river St. John's to Hudson's Streights, together with the islands of Anticosti and Madelaine, and all other smaller islands lying upon the said coast, under the care and inspection of our governor of Newfoundland. We have also, with the advice of our privy council, thought fit to annex the islands of St. John and Cape Breton, or Isle Royale, with the lesser islands adjacent thereto, to our government of Nova Scotia. We have also, with the advice of our privy council aforesaid, annexed to our province of Georgia, all the lands lying between the rivers Attamaha and St. Mary's. And whereas it will greatly contribute to the speedy settling our said new governments, that our loving subjects should be informed of our paternal care for the security of the liberty and properties of those who are, and shall become inhabitants thereof; we have thought fit to publish and declare, by this our proclamation, that we have, in the letters patent under our great seal of Great Britain, by which the said governments are constituted, given express power and direction to our governors of our said colonies respectively, that so soon as the state and circumstances of the said colonies will admit thereof, they shall, with the advice and consent of the members of our council, summon and call general assemblies within the said governments respectively, in such manner and form as is used and directed in those colonies and provinces in America, which are under our immediate government; and we have also given power to the said governors, with the consent of our said councils, and the representatives of the people, so to be summoned as aforesaid, to make, constitute, and ordain laws, statutes, and ordinances for the public peace, welfare, and good government of our said colonies, and of the people and inhabitants thereof, as near as may be, agreeable to the laws of England, and under such regulations and restrictions as are used in other colonies; and in the mean time, and until such assemblies can be called as aforesaid, all persons inhabiting in, or resorting to, our said colonies, may confide in our royal protection for the enjoyment of the benefit of the laws of our realm of England: for which purpose we have given power under our great seal to the governors of our said colonies respectively, to erect and constitute, with the advice of our said councils respectively, courts of judicature and public justice within our said colonies, for the hearing and determining all causes, as well criminal as civil, according to law and equity, and, as near as may be, agreeable to the laws of England, with liberty to all persons who may think themselves aggrieved by the sentence of such courts, in all civil cases, to appeal, under the usual limitations and restrictions, to us, in our privy council. We have also thought fit, with the advice of our privy council as aforesaid, to give unto the governors and councils of our said three new colonies upon the continent, full power and authority to settle and agree with the inhabitants of our said new colonies, or to any other person who shall resort thereto, for such lands, tenements, and hereditaments, as are now, or hereafter shall be, in our power to dispose of, and them to grant to any such person or persons, upon such terms, and under such moderate quit-rents, services, and acknowledgments, as have been appointed and settled in other colonies, and under such other conditions as shall appear to us to be necessary and expedient for the advantage of the grantees, and the improvement and settlement of our said colonies. And whereas we are desirous, upon all occasions, to testify our royal sense and approbation of the conduct and bravery of the officers and soldiers of our armies, and to reward the same, we do hereby command and impower our governors of our said three new colonies, and other our governors of our several provinces on the continent of North America, to grant, without fee or reward, to such reduced officers as have served in North America during the late war, and are actually residing there, and shall personally apply for the same, the following quantities of land, subject, at the expiration of ten years, to the same quit-rents as other lands are subject to in the province within which they are granted, as also subject to the same conditions of cultivation and improvement, viz. To every person having the rank of a field officer, 5000 acres. To every captain, 3000 acres. To every subaltern or staff officer, 2000 acres. To every non-commission officer, 200 acres. To every private man, 50 acres. We do likewise authorise and require the governors and commanders in chief of all our said colonies upon the continent of North America to grant the like quantities of land, and upon the same conditions, to such reduced officers of our navy of like rank, as served on board our ships of war in North America at the times of the reduction of Louisbourg and Quebec in the late war, and who shall personally apply to our respective governors for such grants. And whereas it is _just_ and _reasonable_, and _essential to our interest_, and the security of our colonies, that the several nations or tribes of Indians, with whom we are connected, and who live under our protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the possession of such parts of our dominions _as, not having been ceded to, or purchased by us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their hunting grounds_; we do therefore, with the advice of our privy council, declare it to be our royal will and pleasure, that no governor, or commander in chief, in any of our colonies of Quebec, East Florida, or West Florida, do presume, upon any pretence whatever, to grant warrants of survey, or pass any patents for lands beyond the bounds of their respective governments, as described in their commissions; _as also_ that no governor or commander in chief of our other colonies or plantations in America, do presume for the present, and until our further pleasure be known, to grant warrant of survey, or pass patents for any lands _beyond the heads or sources of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic ocean from the west or north-west_; or upon any lands whatever, _which not having been ceded to, or purchased by us, as aforesaid, are reserved to the said Indians, or any of them_. And we do further declare it to be our royal will and pleasure, _for the present_, as aforesaid, to reserve under our sovereignty, protection, and dominion, _for the use of the said Indians, all the land and territories not_ included within the limits of our said three new governments, or within the limits of the territory granted to the Hudson's Bay company; _as also, all the land and territories lying to the westward of the sources of the rivers which fall into the sea from the west and north-west as aforesaid_; and we do hereby strictly forbid, on pain of our displeasure, all our loving subjects from making any purchases or settlements whatever, or taking possession of any of the lands above reserved, without our especial leave and licence for that purpose first obtained. And we do further strictly enjoin and require all persons whatever, who have either wilfully or inadvertently seated themselves upon any lands within the countries above described, or upon any other lands, _which not having being ceded to, or purchased by us_, are still reserved to the Indians as aforesaid, forthwith to remove themselves from such settlements. And whereas great frauds and abuses have been committed in the purchasing land of the Indians, to the great prejudice of our interests, and to the great dissatisfaction of the said Indians; in order therefore to prevent such irregularities for the future, and to the end that the Indians may be convinced of our justice and determined resolution to remove all reasonable cause of discontent, we do, with the advice of our privy council, strictly enjoin and require, that no private person do presume to make any purchase from the said Indians of any lands reserved to the said Indians within those parts of our colonies where we have thought proper to allow settlement; but that if at any time any of the said Indians should be inclined to dispose of the said lands, the same shall be purchased only for us, in our name, at some public meeting or assembly of the said Indians, to be held for that purpose by the governor or commander in chief of our colony respectively within which they shall lie: and in case they shall lie within the limits of any proprietaries, conformable to such directions and instructions as we or they shall think proper to give for that purpose: and we do, by the advice of our privy council, declare and enjoin, that the trade with the said Indians shall be free and open to all our subjects whatever, provided that every person who may incline to trade with the said Indians, do take out a licence for carrying on such trade, from the governor or commander in chief of any of our colonies respectively, where such person shall reside, and also the security to observe such regulations as we shall at any time think fit, by ourselves or commissaries, to be appointed for this purpose, to direct and appoint for the benefit of the said trade: and we do hereby authorise, enjoin, and require the governors and commanders in chief of all our colonies respectively, as well those under our immediate government, as those under the government and direction of proprietaries, to grant such licences without fee or reward, taking especial care to insert therein a condition that such licence shall be void, and the security forfeited, in case the person to whom the same is granted, shall refuse or neglect to observe such regulations as we shall think proper to prescribe as aforesaid. And we do further expressly enjoin and require all officers whatever, as well military as those employed in the management and direction of Indian affairs within the territories reserved, as aforesaid, for the use of the said Indians, to seize and apprehend all persons whatever, who standing charged with treasons, misprisions of treasons, murders, or other felonies or misdemeanours, shall fly from justice and take refuge in the said territory, and to send them under a proper guard to the colony where the crime was committed of which they shall stand accused, in order to take their trial for the same. Given at our court at St. James's, the 7th of October 1763, in the third year of our reign. GOD save the KING. APPENDIX, No. II. STATE of the KING's QUIT-RENTS in NORTH AMERICA. Consideration The time the Quit-rents Expence to the money paid lands are received. country for the to King exempted from support of the for the quit-rent. civil government lands. of the colonies. Isl. of None 20 years. None ---- St. John Nova Scotia {And yet no } _£_ _s._ _d._ None -- 10 years. {quit-rents } 707,320 19 7-1/4 {have been } {received, } {tho' the } {colony was } {established} {22 _years } {ago_. } Canada None ---- ---- Massachussets } None -- {Wholly exempt } Connecticut } {from quit-rents } None None Rhode Island } {and all payments} {to the crown. } N. Hampshire None ---- None None New York None {This colony was } ---- None {restored to the } -- {crown in the } {year 1693-4, } {and yet from } {that time } {very little } {quit-rents have } {been received. } New Jersey } None {Wholly exemp } None None Pensylvania } {from quit-rents } Maryland } {and all } {payments to the } {crown. } Virginia None {This colony was } ---- ---- {re-assumed by } {the crown in } {the year 1626; } {and yet for a } {great number of } {years, the } {quit-rents were } {not paid at } {all;--never } {with any } {regularity till } {within a very } {few years; and } {now from what } {is paid there } {is a deduction } {of at least } {20 per cent. } N. & S. } None ---- ---- --- Carolina. } Georgia None {This colony was } None 214,610 3 1-1/2 {settled in the } {year 1735, } {and yet no } {quit-rents have } {been received. } E. & W. Florida None 10 years. None 90,900 0 0 But it is {_£_10,460 } {The quit-rents } {All the } proposed to {7_s._ } {to commence in } {expenses } pay for the {3_d._ } {twenty years } {of the civil} colony on the {which is } {from the time } {government } Ohio. {_all_ the } {of the survey } {of the } {money the } {of each lot } {colony, to } {_whole_ } {or plantation, } {be borne } {country } {and to be } {and paid } {(of which } {paid into the } {by the } {this is } {hands of such } {propriators.} {only a } {person as } {small } {his Majesty } {part) cost} {shall appoint } {government} {to receive } {for the } {the same, _net } {cession } {and clear_ of } {from the } {all deductions } {Six } {whatsoever, } {Nations. } {for collections } {or otherwise. } 
48291	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 48291-h.htm or 48291-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48291/48291-h/48291-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48291/48291-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). A carat character is used to denote superscription. A single character following the carat is superscripted (licens^d). STRANGE STORIES OF THE GREAT VALLEY [Illustration: (See page 12 "GOOD LUCK! GOOD LUCK!" SHOUTED DOBY. "I'VE FOUND THE THING I MOST NEED")] STRANGE STORIES OF THE GREAT VALLEY The Adventures of a Boy Pioneer by JOHNSTON GROSVENOR Illustrated [Illustration: logo] Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London STRANGE STORIES OF THE GREAT VALLEY Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD ix CHAPTER I. LONG, LONG AGO 1 Digging for treasure-trove with Parson Cutler among the Mound-Builders' work at Marietta. CHAPTER II. TAMING THE WILD 15 Helping Johnny Appleseed to teach a red deer near the seat of Burr's Conspiracy at the Fairy Isle of Belpre. CHAPTER III. GOBBLE! GOBBLE! 28 Bagging a wild turkey to feast Ol' Pap Soisson after his story of the French Grant at Gallipolis. CHAPTER IV. MAKING A SCOUT 41 Saving Simon Kenton's foxhound from the dangers of the new city of Cincinnati. CHAPTER V. BLUE-JAY FEATHERS 55 Riding with Colonel Johnson's Long Hunters down the Clark War Road to the rescue of Boonesboro. CHAPTER VI. LEFT HIND FOOT 77 Henry Clay's home at Ashland and a runaway slave from Cumberland Gap. CHAPTER VII. THE DROWSY VILLAGE 96 A man-hunt in the vineyards of the Dufours' Swiss colony at Vevay. CHAPTER VIII. GOIN' TO MEETIN' 109 Wrestling with Lorenzo Dow and the rowdies in camp-meeting time at the Big Falls. CHAPTER IX. UNDER THE ELM 123 A boy's trial by Judge Jonathan Jennings during a recess of the Constitutional Convention at Corydon. CHAPTER X. THE SPELLING-MATCH 139 Reciting and writing by moonlight to please a little stranger in an early school of Spencer County. CHAPTER XI. A PIONEER PUPPY 154 Struggling with wolves on the way to Old Vincennes over the bottom-land of the Wabash. CHAPTER XII. ONE PERCUSSION CAP 166 How a bear disturbed Father Rapp's model communistic village at Harmony. CHAPTER XIII. THE VOYAGEUR 178 A type of the early inhabitants. CHAPTER XIV. THE BEAVERS' DAM 190 Creatures of the wild help to save a town. AFTERWORD 221 ILLUSTRATIONS "GOOD LUCK! GOOD LUCK!" SHOUTED DOBY. "I'VE FOUND THE THING I MOST NEED" _Frontispiece_ THE BIRD JUMPED AT THE BOY. THE BOY STABBED AT THE BIRD _Facing p._ 38 EACH SAVAGE GIBED AT THE BOY'S PAINTED TALISMAN, BUT EACH OBEYED ITS MESSAGE " 74 DOBY WHIPPED OUT HIS KNIFE AND CUT THE THONGS " 116 FOREWORD IN the very heart of our United States is a vast and wonderful valley. Through the primeval hardwood forests of its hillsides, long ago, ran the naked, rollicking boys of the Stone Age, choosing the best paths as they hurried out to play, each one with his pet wolf puppy. Afterward, in the rich alluvial soil of the bottom-lands, fur-clouted lads of the Mound-Builders laid out good trails whereon every one could drive tandem his team of captured fawns. Later still, Indian striplings found the streams that might best bear, with least portage, the birch-bark canoe in which, with his doeskin blanket aflutter and his trained hawk on prow, many a one has shot the rapids. Then came the white men. They discovered these routes and followed them. Over the waterways, in the native canoes which he borrowed, sailed the Jesuit missionary explorer with standard and altar; then the French trading "voyageur" with bundles of skins and bead trinkets. Through the old forest paths marched the scarlet-coated British soldier and the ragged Continental volunteer who defied him. By the trails advanced the best of all scouts, the backwoodsman. His suit of fringed buckskin, with his 'coonskin cap and his moccasins, made up the most artistic, the most serviceable, and the most characteristic garb the New World has yet evolved. His vigorous body, his keen intelligence, and his warm heart bespoke the true American--the father of a mighty race. Following fast upon the heels of these trooped the home-seekers, the builders of a nation. For picturesque effect and political significance, the groups who floated down the Ohio River in home-made flatboats, and the families who crossed overland through the romantic Cumberland Gap in their wagon-trains, have never been excelled. The saboted French, the wide-breeched Germans, the straw-crowned Swiss, the beshawled Irish, the shad-coated New-Englander, the gray-frocked Quaker, the sandy Scotch, all mingled in the brotherhood of citizenship, while laughing black slaves looked on. The wings of the air--geese, ducks, and songbirds; the hoofs of the fields--deer, buffalo, and boar; the fins of the rivers--bass, trout, and pickerel--all added to the zest of this new life, as did also the luscious growth of plants and the odor of flowers. One hundred years ago, this Middle West of ours had reached a most interesting period. Never before and never since could there have been more curious happenings than in those stirring times. One boy, coming down the river then to seek his fortune, heard tales of the past and hopes for the future from the people whom he met. Strong Parson Cutler, quaint Johnny Appleseed, brave Simon Kenton, Colonel Johnson's Long Hunters, pious Lorenzo Dow, the reformer Rapp, the statesman Henry Clay, the legislator Jennings, and the boy Abraham Lincoln were all his friends. The strange stories about them in this book are _almost_ true! For that boy told them to a person who told them to another person who told them to me. In substance they are a faithful picture of the sort of adventures that helped pioneer lads of the Great Valley to grow into the full measure of men. J. G. INDIANA, 1917 STRANGE STORIES OF THE GREAT VALLEY STRANGE STORIES OF THE GREAT VALLEY I LONG, LONG AGO _A Mound-Builder's Treasure-trove_ "O--YI--O! O--yi--o!" sang fifteen-year-old Obadiah Holman--called Doby for short--as he tried to skip a flat stone across the big river. "O--yi--o! O--yi--o!" Dark clouds were tumbling up from the southwest, but March sunshine still dimpled and danced and sparkled with the current. "It _is_ pretty water. That's what the Indian name means, O--yi--o, beautiful. A river beautiful," and he hopped about joyously, kicking out another hatchet-shaped stone or two on the stream's edge of one of the choice town lots of the O--hi--o river-port of Marietta in the new farthest northwest State of Ohio, beyond whose small beginnings of civilization lay the wilderness of the great Northwest Territory in this year of 1816. A flatboat made of green-oak planks, which held a family's household goods and farming tools, was anchored 'longshore in a bayou that promised safety from the coming storm. The boxes and bales on it, made shipshape against wind and water, were stacked in the form of a hollow square. They stood as walls to this tiny floating fort. They protected the people and animals traveling on it. The walls, in turn, were covered with branches of trees. The boy's father was one of many pioneers, some from stony New England, some from sandy eastern coasts, who had joined the crowds of emigrants floating westward down the Ohio. Like most of the others, he was searching for a place where he could afford to buy rich land on which to build a homestead. "I couldn't see our boat, 'though I was looking straight at it," the boy said, proudly. "It is exactly like a piece of the river-bank." "If the Indians cannot see it, or if they fail to shoot through the barriers if they _do_ notice us as we drift down-stream, I, too, Doby, will be pleased with our work on it," answered his father, as they hurried up a hill before the wind toward Marietta's great stockade of Campus Martius. This fort was a hundred and eighty feet square and twenty feet high. It was made of logs, each one flattened at the sides to fit snugly to the next one, planted in the earth at the lower end and sharpened to a point at the upper, like a huge picket fence without a crack in it, big enough for a giant's dooryard. There were boxes for lookouts atop the wall, blockhouses on its corners, and cabins inside its strong defenses. Parson Cutler, at the head of the Ohio land company's New England shareholders, had ceremoniously blessed this fort when it was completed and ready to stand guard over the million and a half of their fertile acres. As he neared it Doby said, "Ma has already gone inside to the schoolma'am's house." "She means to get a book so she can give you a lesson every day as we move. This town isn't quite thirty years old, yet it has had an academy for twenty. 'Tis probably your ma's last chance to talk with scholars." "I'll study the book," promised Doby. "I don't want to be a dunce like the boys who can't spell their own names. Some cannot even cut their initials on trees in the towns where we stop." And Doby sniffed with scorn. "If I had a really good knife--a strong one--I could carve better than I do now," he sighed, as he thought of his one great need. "Piff! Puff!" the wind echoed his sigh. "Piff! Puff! Puff!" Rain was close on their heels. Mr. Holman pulled his 'coonskin cap down tight over his long hair, girded up his fringed buckskin breeches, and ran for the fort, his heavy boots clumping out a path through last year's weed-stalks. Doby tucked his cap under his arm and let his tow thatch take the breeze and, light as a ball in his moccasins, bounded along behind his father. They were not swift enough to gain the fort. As the downpour overtook them they ducked underneath the branches of a gnarled and broken oak and found good shelter. "Much obliged, old tree," laughed Doby. "You've saved us a drenching." He tried to girdle it with his arms. "I can't reach half-way. It's the _biggest_ trunk!" "This _is_ an old fellow. His crown has been twisted off by some hurricane. There are lightning marks upon him. He feels his age. The storm makes him shiver." And Mr. Holman placed an uneasy foot upon the quaking roots. "It's a big tree for such a little hill," was Doby's comment. "I never did see so many funny little hills as are in this valley. Wasn't it lucky there happened to be one over where the Muskingum River comes into the Ohio? It is at the very best spot for Parson Cutler's settlers to build their stockade." Mr. Holman shook his head as they looked from their own small oak-capped hill to the big one on which stood the fort defying the lightning and wind of the storm quite as boldly as it had often done the burning arrows and the wild rushes of Indian foes. "That knoll did not _happen_ to be at the point of vantage," he said. "It was built on purpose ages ago as a fort of earthwork to defend this valley." "Who did it?" asked Doby. "I don't know. The folks who threw up that earthwork and the one over there--and there--and there," and his father pointed out through the broken curtain of the rain and sleet to a long rampart of earth, then to another circle of low-lying, grass-grown walls, and afterward to several small knobs, some with trees, some without. "The race who did it could not have been white people, for they were all dead and gone centuries before white men came to this continent." "Maybe they were Indians," ventured Doby. "Not like any Indians we know. For Indians roam over the country and live by hunting and fishing. Indians never get to be as numerous as these builders of mounds must have been. Only a great nation, somewhat civilized, could put up the immense defenses they did. Each Indian needs more acres than you can imagine to live on--" "Savages don't work together. They quarrel and kill one another and keep their numbers small," interrupted Doby. "There may not be as many Indians in the State of Ohio now as there are white people in the town of Pittsburg where we started our boat down the river," his father continued. Doby considered. "Wigwams and canoes are all that Indians build. These people raised regular forts. Look at that plain! Even a storm like this can't break those heavy banks. See the hail slide down them! It must have taken lots of men with muscle to pile such heaps of dirt." Doby spoke as one who knew what spading meant. "Back from the river wherever settlers go they find these strange earthworks in the valleys; huge masses for forts, fancy curves for altars, and small piles for tombs. Walls surround what must have been good-sized hamlets." As his father raised his voice to be heard against the swish of the sleet Doby stared out over the plain with round eyes. "Those walls where the trees are swaying so are as high as Cutler's stockade. There is some timber-work, but no masonry in any of them. They inclose half a hundred acres." "What are those long ditches?" queried Doby, catching sleet on his eyebrows as he leaned forward to look. "They must have been canals full of water leading from one walled town to another. 'Tis trade and commerce on short cuts that made it possible to keep up such thickly populated villages as the Mound-Builders must have had." Gusts of wind were fanning his words away, but Mr. Holman was determined to tell Doby all he could, so he added: "Rivers are big highways. Canals are smaller ones. A country thrives when its citizens can trade with one another by easy routes. The new towns that settlers are building in Ohio need just such waterways to make the bartering good." Here he became emphatic. "If these old canals are mended or new ones built--as the State is planning to do--then the countryside will again be full of rich towns." Suddenly they both had to hang on to the tree for safety. "Whew! What a blast!" cried Doby. "See the trees go down!" "Watch out!" yelled his father. Leaping to one side, he caught Doby's hand and fled down the hill with the boy like a living kite on short tether waving behind him. There was roaring--grinding--snapping--crashing. Then came showers of branches--leaves--bark--clods. Doby had done a series of flipflaps. He was dizzy and confused, but he lent a hand to his father, who was flat on the ground. The uproar deepened. Then it shrilled away. In another moment the sleet was gone, the sun was bright, the storm had passed. The oak was standing on its head, kicking its heels in the air. The mound was a lopsided dirt-pile. Already dozens of excited men were pouring out of the stockade. They ran with shovels and rakes and sticks to poke about in the cavity which the capsized oak's roots had torn through the mound. The genial parson came with them and looked on laughingly, to see fair play at the digging. This Dr. Mannassah Cutler was one of the big men of his time. He held the standard of his town so high that each of the other Ohio settlements had to set its best foot forward to keep up with Marietta's march of progress. He had a scholar's interest in mounds. He ordered them preserved. He had an explorer's interest in their treasures. He examined them scientifically. He had a leader's interest in his people. He made them play fair. He was their court of last resort. In spite of the desperate curiosity driving him, Doby had not the weight to hold his own at the front of this line of human gophers. He was forced back to a spot where he could use nothing but his ears. For two or three hours all he got out of the hole was some scraps of conversation like this: "Any gold?" "Never _is_ any gold." "Any money?" "Never _is_ any money." "Any jewelry?" "Copper bracelets. Who wants copper bracelets?" "Pearl beads, gone dull." "Fine cloth wrappings--coarse cloth--all rotted through." "Clay pots, every one broken." "Bones, bones, bones. Ashes, ashes, ashes." "The oak must be five or six, perhaps seven or eight hundred years old." "Stuff buried when it was an acorn isn't much account now." Not until after dark did the greedy crowd give up searching or cease to hope for hidden treasure where so much else was buried. "No luck in this mound. Nothing but boys buried here." Curled in his sleeping-blanket within the fort walls, Doby gave himself up to thoughts of the boys whose bones were once clothed with plumpness like his own. "I wonder if those boys started the fires in the earthwork watch-towers on the highest hills, where deep ashes show that countless fires have flashed in signal warning to other far-away towers." In his dreams, he found himself running with the horde of young barbarians into a walled town. With them slamming shut great gates, heaving the bars in place, racing across the moat, hoisting aloft the drawbridge, barricading the second set of gates, covering stores of corn, herding women and children in huts of sod, catching blazing arrows. In scant fur garments, wild of hair, jingling his copper anklets, armed with spears and shouting an uncouth language, he pranced along the top of mountain mounds and defied a besieging enemy. After such activity further sleep was impossible. Doby sat up, tied a knot in the corner of his blanket, and just before dawn mounted the sentry's ladder, wedged the knot in the slot between pickets, and lowered himself to the outside world. Still under the spell of his fancies, he declared to himself, "Those boys would not vanish without leaving me something. They liked me first rate, even if they did all have to turn to bones. I'll go back where they are and do some digging." He ran to the mound, seized one of the abandoned shovels, and dug and dug. The spectral light o' day gave him a chill sensation. The six or eight hundred years of weird memories grinning at him from the skulls in this desecrated tomb filled him with awe. But he was more inquisitive than he was nervous, so he made the shovel fly. In the loosened dirt, he used his fingers as a rake and dragged out funny old tobacco-pipes well worth the trouble of burrowing. As the light grew stronger his fingers struck something different--the promise of a big find. He could not pull it out. He dared not use the clumsy shovel. He went through his pockets and found one of the hatchet-shaped stones he had picked up at the river's brink. He used it as a lever and gently pried out a knife. It was long and sharp and just the right weight for his hand. Here was treasure indeed. Beautifully shaped, double-edged, an ancient poniard, a knife of flint! "Good luck! Good luck!" shouted Doby, not at all surprised to see that his father and the parson had followed him and were now near enough to ask, "What are you up to?" "I've found the thing I most need--a really good knife. Bring on a pie! I can cut it. Or I can skin a rabbit. I can whittle anything." He looked at the parson. "Do you suppose that it will be right for me to keep this knife?" The parson reassured him. "Although the laws of treasure-trove are complicated, I am glad to be able to tell you that in this case--in most cases like yours--finding is keeping." "I suppose that is because there are no Mound-Builders left," reasoned Doby, trying the edge of his knife on his thumb. "What became of them?" Doctor Cutler answered: "Perhaps some powerful enemy came along and killed them all. Perhaps some dreadful disease overtook them and they perished. Perhaps they were akin to the southern people--Aztecs and others--whom the Spaniards discovered in the tropics. They may have heard about their own kin far away. And then they may in time have gathered their goods together and floated down the river." "Ha!" cried Doby, "that was sensible. If they were clever enough to build all those fine mounds, I know they were adventurous and emigrated down the river beautiful. I hope that is what they did. I'm glad they left this knife for me." Then he turned over his digging-stone. "This little hatchet they might have made also." The parson shook his head. "No; you must have pried that out of the river mouth. Those stone hatchets were made by prehistoric men who lived ages before the Mound-Builders' time." "O--oh!" gasped Doby, "o--oh! the stone-hatchet men lived a long, long time before the Mound-Builders came. The Mound-Builders lived a long, long time before the Indians came. The Indians were here a long, long time before we came. Everything is so old--old--old--that I can't think _how_ old. If this country is so old--old--old, why do we call it the new West?" "Because it is new to us. The West is new in the same way that this day is new. It is full of fresh promise for you and for me and for our race. Some day this will be the very heart of America!" II TAMING THE WILD _The Fairy Isle in Burr's Conspiracy_ "LET'S pretend, Doby, that I'm an Indian," whispered Obadiah Holman to himself, as he slipped along, pigeon-toed and silent, in his moccasins, "and I'll sneak up on that buck and give it a scare." The white flag of the buck's tail had caught Doby's eye. His keen sight made out the dun form under the antlers. He advanced slowly through the undergrowth, knowing that the wind blew toward him--that the buck could not catch his scent. He hoped to have a good view of it. Then he meant to give a great shout to startle it, just for the fun of seeing it flee, crashing through the forest. His father's flatboat was tied to a tree on the lee shore of an island which was sometimes called the Fairy Isle and sometimes the Haunted Isle. Near by, across the Ohio River, was the settlement of Belpre. Mr. Holman, on trading bent, had taken his scow to Belpre, while his wife watched the flatboat and Doby went hunting for fresh meat in the safety of the Haunted Isle. It was secure from the ordinary dangers of the river, for Indians and renegades alike avoided this place. They feared the ghost of a beautiful scarlet-cloaked lady, the ghost of a magnificent velvet-clad gentleman, and the ghosts of liveried servants wandering there. Once upon a time the common people of Belpre and the soldiery of her army post would scull across the river to catch envious glimpses of the island's house of brick and stone, so different from their own wooden cabins, and to stare open-mouthed at fine folk arrayed in satins and laces, living so elegantly just beyond the frontier's workaday world. Then on an evil day the gallant family on the island had been arrested and marched away and exiled as criminals. The house had been burned to warn other offenders against the Republic. And ever since, on chill and foggy days, when the mists hung over the river, ghosts walked in the ruins of the splendid mansion hidden among the flowering trees of the Fairy Isle. They drifted through the desolation where once sweet gardens bloomed. They danced with the wind in weird couples on the forsaken lawns. And when the broken moonlight came it showed them huddled in gray, fantastic groups along the shore. The shuddering boatmen hugged the opposite bank and turned away their faces that they might not see too plainly the beckoning fingers of vapor, the foggy hair, and the trailing robes of cloud, so unreal, so full of romance, and so disquieting to all who knew the story of this place. Doby was not to be startled by ghosts; at least he said he wasn't. Though ghosts and goblins were merely names to him, he liked the idea of a Fairy Isle. Few boys could carry the heavy guns of that day for any distance. Doby did not try to do so. His plan was to get what game he could with snare and knife. He was bidden to keep within running distance of the boat, and he set rabbit-traps in the brier patches. From the briers he had sighted the buck. It was all aquiver, snorting and twitching its ears. Doby hid behind a buckeye and softly shinned into the first crotch lest the restless beast should turn and charge in his direction. "I'd like to know what is the matter with the buck," thought Doby. "It is watching something that makes it half curious and half afraid." The boy stared into the glen before him until his eyes became accustomed to the shadows--until he saw what the buck saw. When he did see he almost fell out of the tree with astonishment. He looked again. He shut his eyes; he opened them; stared some more; he blinked; then he gazed fixedly. "No wonder the buck is nervous," gasped Doby. "I'm s'prised myself," and still he looked and could not believe that he saw what he really did see. For there on a log, in the shade of an elm, sat a gnome--a big gnome. Doby was perfectly willing to be entertained by ghosts and fairies in the gossip of the river towns. He liked such stories. But he knew, of course, that there are no such things as wraiths and sprites. Even on a fairy isle there could not possibly be a gnome. "I feel dreadfully queer to be looking at him when I know he isn't there," and something inside of Doby began to turn round and round. The gnome, all of a faded bark color like the earth he grubbed in, sat with his feet crossed, his thin arms akimbo, his beard hanging in a point down his breast, and his hair tied in a wad on his head so that it had a shape something of a peaked-cap style. He was motionless. He was not a crooked stump. He was not a gnarled branch. He was alive! Laughter was running out of his mouth like cider gurgling from a jug. Between chuckles, his soft, clear voice was scolding the buck. "Now, Mr. Red Deer," he was saying, "this is the third time I have caught you trying to break down the brush barricade and nipping at my seedling apple-trees. Don't you know that seedlings can never grow up to be trees and bear fruit if you tear the fence and reach over and bite their heads off?" The deer was so inquisitive about the quaint, still figure with the soothing voice, that it advanced and retreated as if in fascination, while the voice flowed on: "How can you be so greedy, Mr. Deer? I'm ashamed of you. I'll have to carry away the seedlings so you can't get them. I'll plant them in neat orchard rows for a farmer I know." Doby craned forward, his mouth agape. He must watch this thing through, no matter what happened. "If I were you," continued the gnome, "I'd be a good stag and run along home, before some boy with a stone knife speared at me." Here the unbelievable gnome stared straight across the glade into Doby's face and winked. Winked! This was too much! With a thump Doby tumbled from the tree. With a leap the deer vanished from the glen. Doby thought, "This is the queerest dream I've ever had. I know I'll be all right as soon as I wake up." He did not wake up. He was picked up--by the gnome! Gentle hands helped him. A friendly face looked into his. A musical voice said, "I reckon you're not hurt a mite. That was no bump for a boy. I was wishing I had some one to help me; so you are in time to give Johnny a boost with his apple seedlings." Johnny! Apple seedlings! "O--o--h!" Doby regarded the gnome with a different interest. "O--o--h! Are you Johnny Appleseed? The man who is traveling over this countryside, gathering up apple seeds from the cider presses, cleaning and sprouting and transplanting them for the farmers who don't know how to do it for themselves? Starting orchards for settlers? Teaching 'em how to make trees grow?" "Yes, I'm Jonathan Chapman, the nurseryman." "Coming down the river, we talked about you. I heard about these secret seedling-pens where you hid people while the War of 1812 was going on. Those folks must have been much obliged to you for saving their scalps from the British Indians." Modest Johnny nodded. Then, "Take your knife, son," he said. "It looks like a good flint. I'll show you how to prune these little trees as we handle and move them. Now is your chance to learn spring planting." Doby rolled up his sleeves, spat on his hands, dug his soft-shod toes into the ground, and went at it. His teacher was the wisest grower in the Ohio Valley. This eerie companion told him: "Our native fruits, cherries, plums, haws, crabapples, pawpaws, huckleberries, gooseberries, and grapes, all reached perfection in the magic gardens of this isle, where once the owners of this fine estate helped me with my experiments in raising plants. I find that they need only a little cultivation to make them hang heavy with harvest around every barren frontier home." Doby licked his lips. "I suppose you know how to gather sugar from maple-tree sap and when to pick honey from bee-trees!" He was sure that, "Fruit does make corn bread and bacon taste better." "Wild roses, honeysuckle, goldenrod, and clematis would nod a glad 'Good morning' at the door of every lonesome cabin if we welcomed them with care," continued Johnny, hoping to interest the boy. The idea of spreading healthfulness through a fruit diet and joy by way of flower-gardens was part of Johnny's self-sacrificing religion. He preached it with ardor to every listener. For more than a hundred years his words and his plants have borne fruit through these valleys. Doby stopped work from time to time to ramble and root about the wreckage of the fine house. He asked, "Wasn't that grand Irish gentleman, Mr. Blennerhasset, who bought this island home, a friend of Aaron Burr's when Burr was Vice-President of the United States?" "He was a friend and a welcome guest here," Johnny answered. "If Mr. Blennerhasset and other friends of Aaron Burr wanted to give him ships from the boat-builders in Marietta and hire him men from the idlers in the West, why shouldn't they be allowed to do so? Why shouldn't they man a fleet for him? If Aaron Burr wished to help free Mexico from the Spanish, why wasn't it right for him to try it? Mexico is always out of luck." Johnny's face grew sad. "Many good people, like the Blennerhassets, thought it right to help free Mexico. But our Government learned that Burr had plans to take a piece of our Western country, to organize it into a separate state, to join it to Mexico and perhaps to rule it all himself." "To split off a part of his own country and make himself a king! Gold crowns and scepters--oh--fine!" cried Doby, sarcastically. "That's why they call him a traitor, and no wonder. The people who helped him to break up our independent nation ought to be punished, even if they were innocent of his motive. No good comes of treason." Johnny brightened up. "Perhaps great good may, after all, grow out of the sad mistake of Burr's conspiracy. It has made the Government think that if the East and West had been better acquainted, if the people of both sections had been able to travel back and forth and had come to think of themselves as all belonging to the same United States, the idea of separating under Burr would never have occurred to them. So now, to guard against any more such treason, it is going to build a fine road straight 'cross country, from East to West, so that the two sections will be tied together with a bond which all can understand." Doby studied over the idea. "'Twill stir up commerce and patriotism and loyalty. All travelers, all farmers, all dealers, even you and I will be glad to have a great highway--a big national pike." He picked up an arm-load of trees to lug them toward the shore. Johnny told him to look back. "The buck may follow us," he said. Doby was sure that its antlers showed among the brush. "I'll have pa shoot it when he comes back. If I don't get a rabbit we will need venison." "Don't," begged Johnny. "I can't bear to see anything shot. I want to be a brother to dumb animals as well as to men and to plants." "What if the buck chews these trees?" asked the boy. "What if it gets dangerous?" The gentle answer was: "Be more careful of the trees. Take heed for yourself. Never hurt any living thing. Let that pretty creature be. Some day I may be able to domesticate the deer and the buffalo as I am doing now with our wild plants." Quite to himself, hungry Doby gave an impatient sniff. He was thinking, "I don't intend to abuse anything; likewise I don't intend to let anything abuse me--not an old bobtailed thief of a buck, anyway." His mother climbed a stool and peeped over the high wall of baggage on the flatboat to smile at him and his new friend, as he took his spade and tried to keep pace with Johnny in digging a series of deep holes. The nurseryman said, "I intend to plant mulberry-trees in this sunny spot." "I know," cried Doby. "This hole grows to grow a tree to grow a leaf to grow a worm to grow a silk frock to grow a fine lady," and he returned his mother's smile. Behind them the silent buck had ventured up to take a browse at the seedlings. Doby foolishly ran toward it to drive it off. Angrily it rose on its hind legs to strike him. Horrified Johnny felt that death was coming in that brutal downward cut of hoof. Instantly, desperately, he flung his spade at the deer. The metal clanged on its antlers. The deer turned aside. Doby vaulted to the top of the boat's barricade, yelling for Johnny to follow him. Johnny had seized the other spade and had thrown it in his own defense. It hit the deer on the flank. Doby and his mother shrieked like mad. Startled and confused by the attack and the noise, the buck took flight. Whirling about wildly, it chose the one dangerous direction--straight away, over the sunny open space where the digging had been done. Its forelegs went down in one hole, its head seemed to light in another, and the flying brute turned a complete somersault. Leaves and grass and dirt filled the air. Doby's screams redoubled. Johnny gained the boat's wall. He knew they were out of danger's reach, should the buck turn back to rend them, for the baggage stockade would protect them. But he was shaken by their peril. While getting his breath and calming Doby and his mother, he watched uneasily for the next movement of the irate beast. After many minutes of waiting he knew that it would never move again. Its neck was broken. Then Johnny Appleseed leaned his bark-colored form back against the woodsy setting of the leaf-covered boat wall, crossed his feet, set his arms akimbo--the kindest gnome who ever lived, the good spirit of the Fairy Isle, the best-known and most-beloved character on the frontier--and murmured to Doby: "Now that the deer has done the killing himself, you might as well have some fresh venison to eat before we go on with our work." III GOBBLE! GOBBLE! _Hard Times on the French Grant_ "IT is, 'Doby, do this,' and, 'Doby, do that,' from morning to night. I've worked and worked and wor-r-rked," groaned Obadiah Holman, "'til both of my heels are stone-bruised and I have a rag on every toe." The expression of his face showed that he held strong feelings on the subject of child labor and that those feelings were all against it. Chore-boys did not get together and organize themselves in the olden days. Protests against overtime jobs received so little attention that Doby grumbled: "No use to sputter. S'pose I'll have to keep right on quarryin'." He had dropped his task to glance about the town of Gallipolis. It was a lean and wizened, yet quaint and romantic settlement of Old World Frenchmen. The log cabins were the same cubes of houses that pioneers were everywhere building. But the town had a different air from bustling Pittsburg or dignified Marietta. He examined one home after another. In the tiny holes of windows hung beribboned curtains of white. Never before had he seen frilled curtains; never before a curtain in a cabin window where there was neither sash nor glass. Under the windows were crocuses and daffodils and leaf points of the lilies-of-France showing gaily. Beside each door were sociable little benches inviting the passer-by to stop and chat. Under the eaves hung tambourines ready for a moment's playtime. Doby wondered over these attempts at refinement of living in a land where as yet the bare living itself was not quite certain. "This is a brave little town," he decided. Half a dozen years later there was born near here, at Point Pleasant, that Ulysses S. Grant, whose soldierly courage under difficulties, and whose steadfast purpose to make the best of national disaster, should forever remain a watchword for those struggling to win success. His achievements were brilliant and worldwide. Those of his neighbors were smaller but happily complete; for in a few years more they, too, overcame their handicaps. Warned by rumors of Indians down the river, Doby's father had tied up his flatboat at this hamlet and had brought his wife and son ashore until the waterway became safe again. To return the rather meager hospitality of Ol' Pap Soisson, a French bachelor, who had offered them half of his cabin, Mr. Holman was taking some round stones from the wash of the creek and was building for his host a safe cobblestone chimney. Most of the settlers had chimneys woven like birds' nests, of sticks plastered together with mud, inside and out. When they dried out they became dangerous. A stone one was fire-proof. It could hold the heat, could reflect it into the room, and could cook food better than the plastered one. In the business of piling up masonry for the chimney Doby was first assistant. Ol' Pap Soisson was a poor second. Doby was an unwilling worker, but the bachelor useless. He was too small, too weak, too old. As he himself explained to Doby, "It is of a certainty that I have never yet had enough of the food to make a growth or a strength." His bright eyes measured the boy as if to guess how stocky he himself might become if fed aright. "Greed possesses me when I sit at the savory meals prepared by that so accomplished madam, your mother." He chuckled comfortably as he recalled the breakfasts, the dinners, and the suppers which she had given him. The thought of them helped him to roll up a big stone. Exhausted, but triumphant, he sat upon it and became sociable. "Once I lived in Paris. To me, at my trade of wigmaker, comes the man Duer, of the Scioto Company, dealers in land American. I am then of the restlessness of youth. To work at a living is a matter uninteresting. That horror of all horrors--the Reign of Terror--approaches." He glared fiercely and made a gesture of cutting his throat. "To escape its mad mob of hungry-driven guillotinists I seek a land where successful revolutionists like the Americans enjoy liberty restrained." His whole quivering body expressed utter fear resulting from the "freedom" of the French Revolution. "When the Scioto Company's agent offers us land in this saner Republic so prosperous, scores of us small tradesmen give him our savings in exchange for paper titles to New World estates. Gladly we leave that disturbed kingdom. Gladly we come to this." Here the little man danced a few steps of derision, jeered at his own cabin, and snapped his fingers at the landscape. "Land is a good thing," declared practical Doby. "You got land, didn't you?" "By the truth, no! Our titles, you understand, are of a badness unbelievable. We are ruined. Swindle is the name of it. Voyaging through discomforts numerous and cuisine scant, by ocean, by forest, by mountain, by stream, in that long ago, we have arrived." He raised his eyebrows in a grimace. "The land is not ours, but that of another. Like lambs we are shorn by that Duer American. We cannot pluck sugar from the trees of maple as is promised us. We cannot light the candles of the barberry-bush as is also promised. To live we must have agriculture. Agriculture is an art. We know it not. For me, I am a wigmaker. That is my art. Behold!" He threw out ten fingers to cover the case. "In ignorance of agriculture we starve; we freeze. Some die. Some wander away." Doby sat down beside him to express sympathy. Mr. Holman gave his whole attention to the tale. "Seeing us about to perish, the United States, in pity, gives us this land. It is the French Grant, in that year of the famine which is worse than all other bad times, of the date 1790." "How many acres?" asked Doby, who every day talked about land values with all sorts of emigrants. "Of the number of forty thousand." "Forty thousand acres make a big grant," cried Doby, much relieved by his country's bit of justice toward these men. "A large colony can live well on that much land." "Ha!" shrugged Ol' Pap Soisson. "With that we take courage. By day we learn the so necessary agriculture. By night we fiddle, step to measure, sing the 'Marseillaise.' On Sunday, to preserve respect to ourselves and to honor the Virgin, we say a mass and make a toilette of fashionable attire." Doby stared. "Do you mean to tell me that you dressed up in your city wigs and furbelows? In the wilderness?" he demanded. "Of a certainty, yes! We love the good appearance. We want the laughter and the social life. Arrayed, I promenade the street for pleasure. A wild red heathen with a hatchet comes from behind and scalps me of my holiday wig, my best one!" "No!" cried Doby. "No!" "Yes! Yes!" bobbing his head a dozen times, the Frenchman insisted. "Yes! Yes!" He added: "The land is full of game. To pursue it is to live well. But see! for a quarter of a century I run from bear, from deer, from charging buffalo. Never do I pursue. Ever I am the pursued one. Of meat I taste little; of game nothing." He shook his head. "Now--have the young men of our kind learned the pioneering. We old mastered it not." Doby was shocked. Such robbery and disappointment worried him. He looked to his father to say something cheery to the plucky little man. Mr. Holman, big and brawny, equal to any demand of frontier life, gazed kindly at Ol' Pap Soisson, who had found its trials almost too much for him. "We will give you a taste of game to-day. Go, Doby, and shoot that gobbler we have been hearing." "But, pa," protested Doby, "wild turkey isn't good in the spring. Nobody eats it." "It _will_ be good if your ma cooks it. I know some one who can eat it," and he smiled at the Frenchman. Ol' Pap Soisson flashed thirty-two white teeth in assent. Stone-bruised heels were forgotten. Rags were torn from Doby's toes. They did not hurt--much. He slipped on his moccasins, not because his bare feet minded the March rime of frost, but just because all hunters did wear moccasins. He carried bow and arrows. Pioneer boys were clever with these, for they were easy to pack about. Early guns were heavy. "Wild turkeys are hard to shoot," he remembered as he trotted along the edge of the wood. "If I can't get that gobbler, I'll bring home something to cook in the new oven. Ol' Pap Soisson deserves a square meal." His father had pointed out the probable turkey-run. Doby had expected to discover tracks at once, but he had to keep on and on, still in sight of the cabin, until, when at last he did find fresh traces, he must have been all of four miles away. But what are four miles to a hunter? Mere detail! He hid himself in the heart of a sycamore and waited for game to pass. Sitting astride a limb in a rough old tree is much easier than lugging stone for an oven, especially if it is one of those big outdoor affairs fastened to the chimney. His father would build a vent to make the draught strong. Then a fire would have to burn for hours in the oven until the stones were scorching. The coals would then be raked out and the turkey--_if Doby got it_--would be shut in the hot empty oven to let the reflected, heat roast it. "If I were to tell that bony bachelor about the apple turnovers and rabbit pie, the gingerbread and quail dumplings, the baked beans and mince tarts, the succotash and blackberry short-cake, the whole shoats and cinnamon buns, the halved squash pudding and caraway cookies that ma can bake in such an oven, the poor fellow would lick his chops and fall sick from in-di-ges-tion of the im-ag-i-na-tion!" From some source Doby had learned that, in the Old World, every plant and animal which is good to eat had been discovered and used by men centuries before people had begun to write down any sort of history. In the New World of the Americas, the natives had long ago found out what was good to eat on their continent, and could show the immigrating white man delicious foods which he had never before tasted--the golden maize, the bison, and the turkey. Doby felt that a personal experience of some of these dainties would make Ol' Pap Soisson joyous. So he kept his eye out for the turkey. He was hidden where he could not be seen by any man. He fancied that he could not be noticed by any wild creature and that he himself could see everything about him. Deluded hunter! If he had been clever enough to peer more closely into the weeds below him, what trouble he might have saved! Soon, along the run far to the north, there was a stir. He could not make it out. To the south was other movement. "Doby, 'tend to business," he cautioned himself. From the north came a turkey--a gobbler--_the_ gobbler. This _was_ luck. Doby fitted an arrow. From the south came a boy--a big boy--an Indian. This was not so lucky. Doby slackened his bowstring. The savage had already seen the turkey. Silent and shadowy, he crept from tree to tree toward the stately bird. His stalk was a model of woodcraft. What chance had Doby against such skill--against any grown boy? Very little. Against a wild Indian he had none at all. The dismayed Holman sat so still that he could hear his own ribs creak. This was no longer his game. The hunter Doby was in danger of becoming the hunted Doby. He lost all appetite for turkey. The wise gobbler--he was neither young nor tender--kept a sharp outlook on the shadows, an alert regard for his own giblets. He was watching the Indian quite as closely as the Indian was watching him, and with as much anxiety as Doby was watching them both. Then with a strategic side-step he scuttled into the weeds near the foot of Doby's tree and was off at a tangent. Instantly the Indian let fly one arrow, then a second one. Both whizzed in the same direction and at the same mark. There followed a great squawk and flutter. A turkey with an arrow through its neck flopped into sight and went scurrying north over the run. The Indian was in hot pursuit. When the quarry and the chase were out of sight Doby noticed--oh, dull-eyed white man!--what he should have observed at first, that a turkey hen must have been waiting all this time in the weeds for that gobbler to come along. The Indian's first arrow had pinned the gobbler to the ground. There he still was, lying flat. By accident, the second arrow had struck the hidden hen. Perhaps because the gobbler had fallen out of his sight, perhaps because the flight of the hen deceived and confused him, the Indian had followed the wounded turkey and Doby was left behind with the dead one. [Illustration: THE BIRD JUMPED AT THE BOY. THE BOY STABBED AT THE BIRD] All this action had been so quick that Doby could do nothing. Now he slung his bow and arrows out of the way, got down, and drew his precious stone knife to cut the gobbler loose. He meant to hasten away south toward home with the prize. He pulled the arrow from the ground, then out through the bird's thigh and wing. Ignorant Doby! Foolish boy! Not to know what playing 'possum is! The gobbler sprang to life. Did he run? Not he! A turkey cock is a fighting cock. He whetted his spurs. His crest rose in menace. His wattles blazed scarlet. He flew at Doby in a fury. Taken by surprise, the boy covered his face with his hand and began blindly to lunge and to fend with his knife every time the gobbler struck at him. The bird jumped at the boy. The boy stabbed at the bird. The battle grew. The gobbler would not run. Doby could not. He never knew how long he fought. But he did fight and fight hard. The gobbler fought and fought harder. Doby was knocked down. After a while, a long while, he opened his eyes and sat up. He feebly gazed around him. He stared at his foe. They had fought to a finish. The boy was almost finished. The gobbler lying beside him was quite finished. Hours and hours later, Ol' Pap Soisson, keeping an excited lookout, went running to meet Doby. The boy's feet were a mass of blisters. His clothes were a tattered ruin from the spurs of the vanquished. His arms were numb with lugging the fifteen-pound turkey over those four long miles. His hands were swollen. His head was tied up. The astonishment and delight of the little Frenchman pleased Doby. His compliments, so spattered with exclamation points, were praises most agreeable to the hunter. What are a few scratches and bumps? What are bruises and cuts? Taken in a good cause, they are nothing. Simply nothing! Any boy would have agreed with Doby when he said, sincerely, as he at last sat down to watch the first fire crackle in the new oven, "A fellow feels all good and rested when he can quit work and take a little time off for some lively sport which will fill the larder and feed the hungry." IV MAKING A SCOUT _Cincinnati's Early Days_ "THIS rise of land is a hill. Why do they call it a 'knob,' I wonder? While I am in Cincinnati I want to act as much like city folks as I can, so I'll try to remember to say 'knob' whenever I mean hill," and Obadiah Holman sat down on the knob and looked at the city. His far-sighted blue eyes were trained for the open, not for roofs and walls, so they passed over brick and stone architecture, well worth noting in this new land of log and plank buildings, to watch a bit of greensward near the edge of the knob where some form of animal life was stirring. He was instantly ready for lively observation. "I believe that's a dog. Two dogs! They must be having a race. The yellow pup is the faster." Leaping up, Doby put his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly, hoping to change the direction of the run. He would like to see two dogs at play, even if they were strange dogs. They did not hear him. They were far away and they disappeared from his sight in a flash. He sat down again. He was disappointed. Their passing had given him a singularly deserted feeling. "I wish they had come up here to be company for me. A whole cityful," thought Doby, remembering the three thousand inhabitants of Cincinnati, "is such a crowd of people that a boy emigrant doesn't know any person and he feels left out of everything and--anyway--no boy can have a really good time without a dog." Doby had another reason for being forlorn. He had been rejected by a group of men whom he wanted to join on an expedition into Kentucky. No one likes to be snubbed. He was trying to forget the uncomfortable experience by visiting all the points of interest in the city and then by climbing to the top of the knob where he could get a high and impersonal glimpse of things. Opposite him was the mouth of the Licking River as it flowed north into the Ohio. Half a dozen miles east was the Little Miami. A score or so to the west was the Big Miami. All low grounds about these river mouths were flooded in spring by what the astonished emigrants called "amazing high freshets," and the towns which the promoters began on them had to be abandoned by "the respectable public" whom their advertisements had drawn there. But the knob was above the reach of backwater and higher than any rising ague fog. Three wise men thought it the best place for a city. One, Denman, who was rich, paid two hundred and fifty dollars for the eight hundred acres on the knob. Another, Colonel Patterson, who was influential, had an army post for protection built here. And the third, Filson, who was clever, surveyed the lands and made most valuable maps of the regions round about. The irate Indians scalped Filson for his pains, but the other two waxed prosperous with the growth of their city. Doby had seen some of Filson's drawings of the surrounding trails. Particularly was he entranced by the map of Kentucky. "Every time I look at that dotted line of the great Clark War Road stretching alongside the Kentucky River away into the wilderness, I want to go down it." His thoughts kept coming back to his grievance like a cat to an empty house. "There is no good reason why a boy shouldn't travel that road any more than there is an excuse for a boy not having a dog." He felt dreadfully sorry for himself. "Perhaps if I had a dog--a fine tracking-hound or a fierce watch-dog--the scouts might need the dog and take me along with it. But I haven't one thing that they want and I can't go." Up the road of Doby's desire, while it was yet a trail, had come the Indians to the broad plateau of the knob. Long before Filson's time these savages had seen the value of such a lookout. They made it a stopping-place because it could so well be guarded against surprise. Their signal-fires upon it could be seen by all surrounding tribes. Even a smoke message could warn three valleys. "'Twas such a safe place," thought Doby, whimsically, "that the Miamis had to fight all the time to keep it from other Indians who also wanted to be secure upon it. Constant battles here have given it the name of the 'Miami slaughter-house.'" George Rogers Clark, the Virginian, a Revolutionary hero, who came across Kentucky hot on the track of the Miamis, used the savage trail to such quick and victorious service against the British, making it part of his route to his renowned conquest of the Northwest, that it had taken his name. He built a sturdy little blockhouse for a fort and supply station on the knob in 1780 as a half-way station between his Kentucky outposts and the forts on the Wabash and the Great Lakes. And there it still stood, like one of Clark's chunky soldiers who was said to sink deeper into the ground every time the enemy charged him and who had no intention of giving up, no matter how many times he was licked. Cincinnati was founded by Revolutionary soldiers who were paid for their services by grants of land in this neighborhood. Two companies of regular troops in Fort Washington guarded them as they returned to the plow and used their trusty swords to make their little pigs into famous Queen City sausages. Doby munched on a sweet, lumpy souvenir of his visit to the sugar-factory as he gazed at the glass factory, the furniture-factory, the cotton and hemp spinning and weaving mills, the flour-mills, the tanneries, all the big city buildings where the newly invented steam-engine was beginning to make for the pioneers all the things that they had been obliged to do for themselves by hand. "Ma will be glad to hear of the machine that can make cloth as fast as I wear it out," and the boy examined the inside of his much-used knife-pocket at a patch which needed a patch itself, although it was already a patch upon another patch. But all this machinery made his head tired. So did the smoke and the smells and the confusion of streets. Some rural path--preferably in Kentucky--was the only thing he could think of that would rest him and entertain him when he had no person to talk to and no pet to play with. So he sat upon the knob and kicked his heels to cool his restless feet. His eyes turned from the city's buildings to its fringe of green. They wandered again to the spot where he had seen the most satisfactory thing of the whole day--those passing dogs. There was a bunch of tawny leaves blowing along the hillside. He stared at it idly. No, it was not leaves, that patch of uncertain color. It was something living, something leaping. How uncertainly it moved! How wabbly it was! Doby sat up sharply and peered. He stood up and leaned forward. He shut his eyes for a better long-distance focus and squinted. "It is the yellow dog again. Dog? No! Fox? It can't be a fox! It surely is a fox." Behind the fox a dog was running. A long chase had tired them both. Their pace was dragging. "It is the same dog, I do believe, and the same fox that I saw before. What a big circle they must be running!" All alert now, Doby measured their speed. If he ran forward in quick time at right angles to it, their course would pass quite close to him. Away he flew. He was thinking, "That fox is exhausted. It can hardly get along. The hunt has been an all-day one. The dog--ah, the poor brave doggie!--is worse off than the fox. He will never catch it. What a fine dog! What a game dog, not to give up when he is outrun! He is my kind of a dog. I'll help him." Doby rushed down the hill to head off the fox. At most times it would have been a silly and a useless thing to do. But now the spent fox was not equal to any of its sly dodges. It saw the man creature--that cruel enemy of all wild life--and for one second it paused. On the instant the persistent dog also saw the man creature--that kind friend of all tame brutes--and, reinforced by his presence, leaped with a last bit of strength for the quarry. Doby was in at the death. He cut the brush. It was a splendid trophy. Then he gave his whole attention to the dog, who had fallen over on one side and lay prone. "Poor doggie, he looks as though he were going to die!" quavered Doby. "Poor doggie! Come, doggie! I'll carry you to our flatboat and tend you." So over the hillside and down the terraces and through the unheeding city streets he lugged the limp dog to the landing at the water's edge and into the flatboat and on to a cushion. "That dog seems to have a little of every kind of breed, so we will call him a foxhound, for short," was Mr. Holman's comment, as Doby bent anxiously over his find with water and milk and bread and meat. "But if you want to do so, you may keep him for your own," he promised, as he always did on every one of those numerous occasions when Doby adopted some hapless stray and wistfully begged to be allowed to take care of it and train it. Thus, by chance, Doby had within an hour acquired a dog at a time when he fancied that he needed it most. What a good thing a reliable dog would be to a party of scouts, if the boy who had him could go along to make him do his doggie best! These were Doby's reflections as he watched the fagged one, bit by bit, grow strong and lively. He proved to be a grateful brute and an affectionate one. He answered Doby's endearments most ardently. But, alas! as he recovered he grew restless. He wanted to be off again. Now around this dog's neck was a band of leather, the only kind of collar that pioneer puppies knew. Mr. Holman had glanced at this collar. He knew what it meant, but he did not say a word about it. Doby also knew what it meant, but he did not speak of it, either. He sat and stared at it by the hour together. The collar had been made and fastened on the dog by some other boy. The dog was some other boy's dog. He was a pet dog. If he was set free he might return to some far-away home--to that other boy. At this moment he was looking at Doby with adoring eyes, as that uncomfortable boy thought, "If I keep him a long time, keep him shut up and well fed, he will finally like me best and be my pet, for I saved his life." The dog wagged a hearty assent to this; and to all Doby's claims to loyalty he pounded his tail thankfully on the resounding floor of the flatboat. "The scouts would listen to me and take me along, almost surely take me along, if I could show them a good tracking-hound," he argued. "It is my one chance to get in with them." He was more miserable now with the dog than he had ever been without it--well--because he kept thinking. The dog licked Doby's hands and reached for his face with a moist and loving tongue. "I believe they would take me if he went, too." The dog begged for a joyous tussle. He was the greatest fun to play with. "You want to stay with me, don't you?" Doby asked of the completely restored and lively hound, flushed and happy as they paused in a romp. But the dog was already beginning to pace back and forth inside the barricaded boat. He whined at every crack. He brought pleading sniffs to Doby's feet. The boy stood and thought. He must decide what to do about another man's property. The more he thought, the deeper he frowned. His face was a tangled hard knot of lines when, after a long inner struggle, he finally got out his knife to cut a strip of bark from a slippery-elm tree, stopping frequently to sigh over the hard task he had given himself. On the plain white inner side of the bark his stone knife carved plainly, THE FOX TAIL IS ON HOLMAN'S FLATBOAT IN CINCINNATI HE IS A FINE DOG WE HELPED HIM OBADIAH HOLMAN. Carefully rolling and tying it, he fastened it inside the dog's collar as messages were sometimes sent. He carried the dog ashore and released him. He was sure that all his hopes for going with the scouts vanished with the dog. A strange feeling of being grown up came over him. "After this when I ought to do a thing, I'll just go ahead and do it, and not hesitate so long about the deed I know is right." Acting on this decision, he was silent and showed no childish regrets, when the scouts, gathering on the dock the next afternoon, made ready for their start. They never noticed him. Their thoughts were on Simon Kenton, who was to direct them. He was the pioneer's ideal. He had once saved the life of Daniel Boone, that most famous of all the patriotic Kentucky rangers, and had become his fast friend in consequence. Kenton's services as an Indian-fighter had given him a name that filled the Middle West. He was brave beyond belief. The number of times that he had been captured and the great difficulties of his escapes never prevented him from offering his help wherever his woodcraft could lead soldiers to victory through savage-infested country. Half a dozen times and more he had run the gauntlet. Three times he is said to have been tied to the stake for torture and burning. During several periods of captivity he was most brutally treated. Yet in every important battle with the redskins in his own State and out of it he was one of the directing powers. Between-times he was a matchless spy and a fearless ranger. Even now, although he was past middle age, he had a splendid body, a tireless mind, and a dauntless courage. "If any one can rescue the besieged wagon-train from the Indians, this is the scout who will do it," said Mr. Holman. And they all rose respectfully as the gray-eyed giant came among them. They knew him to be fond of animals and kind to pets, so there was no surprise that a dog should be hanging on his heels. The wonder was that this should chance to be Doby's dog--the so-called foxhound. In noisy recognition the happy pup leaped upon the boy, licked his face, knocked him over backward, and tried to eat him up. "Oh, you bad bow-bow," laughed Doby, returning the embrace. "Wow-wow," answered the hound, rolling over on his back in an ecstasy of delight at the meeting. Simon Kenton's speech was as old-fashioned as his big brave heart. He asked the boy, "Be ye Obadiah Holman?" Doby nodded with something like a bow. "Well, then, I'm huntin' for ye. I want a boy to go with us into Kentucky. Git ready to start instanter." On Kenton's arm was hanging a small suit of fringed buckskin. "Put these duds on. They'll fit well enough. When I found the note in the collar I reckoned on ye bein' young," and the tall scout smiled down on the boy. "I fetched a leetle rifle for ye." The other men objected in chorus: "He's nothing but a boy. He can't go. We can't take a boy and we can't take a dog." "Don't want to take the dog; never do take the dog," was the easy answer. "The boy is too small," was the second chorus. The bright gray eyes ran over Doby from his eager face to his moccasined toes. Then Simon Kenton said "He is big enough for me. I can use him on this ventur'. I've taken chances afore on folks that befriended my dog. Nary chance did I ever lose." Without more ado he took command of the expedition. He showed each man his duty. Then he said to Doby: "I'll trust ye. Climb into yer new suit, son, and scoot along. Show us yer ready for business. I reckon ye'll never be anybody's small boy again. When ye made up yer mind to give a man the things that belonged to him--the minute ye wrote that note--w'y, just that minute ye growed into a first-class scout!" V BLUE-JAY FEATHERS _An Indian Talisman on Clark's Kentucky War Road_ "I LOOK so grand that I want to say, 'Sir,' every time I speak to myself," and Obadiah Holman swaggered a little as he donned his equipment. His coonskin cap was set atilt. Its short ringed tail was a tassel bobbing over his left ear. He wore a man's suit of fringed buckskin. He had shortened his "galluses" and hitched up his breeches to a very comfortable fit. Leggings added a picturesque touch to them. His shirt, which was worn outside like a coat, had a belt to hold in the fullness. Cut off a little at the bottom and fringed anew, and treated the same way at the cuffs, it had become exactly his size. Best of all, it was _not_ new. When he appeared among the other scouts, his clothes had the same worn effect of a serviceable uniform that theirs did. Doby glowed with pride when he considered the company he kept. What patriotic duties had not these scouts been in? What good work had not these uniforms seen? He resolved with all the best that was in him to be worthy of the place Simon Kenton had given him with Johnson's Long Hunters--the Kentucky cavalrymen. The War of 1812 was now all over. But who could forget the services of these men through that trying time? For the grizzled veterans all about him were Col. Richard Johnson's troopers, the bravest and boldest men in the West. When William Henry Harrison, the governor of the Northwest Territory, the man who had won the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, against the Indians, and so saved the Northwest to civilization, had later, in 1813, become so hard pressed in his struggle against Tecumseh's forces allied with that Indian's British friends, farther east near Detroit, it was the Kentucky regiment of Johnson's men whose furious valor broke the stout line of British regulars on the Thames River and who kept the Middle West from the clutches of old England. A grateful country afterward made Colonel Johnson Vice-President of the United States. Boys and men cheered the doughty Kentuckians wherever they appeared. Said one of them to Doby: "That Indian chief Tecumseh was a smart man. He had more sense than most white men. He was a king, if ever a man was. When the natives in his absence ceded to the whites so much of the land around Fort Wayne, he was angry. He organized all the Western Indians into a confederacy whose plan was to drive the Americans out of the country. For he understood very soon the thing that it took the other Indians a long time to learn. That was, the English and American way of buying land." "You see, the French, who came here first, met the Indians on terms of friendly equality. The Indians responded to this by offering hospitality. The French accepted it gratefully. The Indians passed the peace pipes and said: 'Our Great Spirit tells us to welcome our pale-face brothers. Our hunting-grounds are his.' And the happy-go-lucky Frenchmen made their best society bows and said, 'After you, kind friends, we will use them.' And they got along together first rate." "Our folks don't want to share and share alike with savages," declared Doby. "We want to buy the land outright." "That's what makes the trouble," answered the old Indian-fighter, "savages do not know what buying land means. They never get our point of view. When we give an Indian 'fire-water' and a disgracefully small piece of money for his land, he thinks it is a present because we thank him for the chance to hunt on that land. He fully expects us to buy it again the next day and the next and the next. He thinks it is still his after all this so-called buying." "He gives us a deed to it," said Doby. "Anybody can understand what a land title is." "An Indian cannot. One day a white man, all smiles, comes to an Indian's land, gives him a tawdry present, juggles a piece of parchment, and shows the Indian how to make his mark among printed words which he cannot read. Next day, the white man, all frowns, says to the Indian, 'What d'you mean, making yourself to hum on my ground? Git out!' and he kicks him off. It makes the Indian mad." The veteran wagged his beard and his sweeping curly hair like an old lion shaking his mane. "That's the real cause of the Indian uprisings. General Harrison, who is a just and far-seeing ruler, has done his best to compel fair play on both sides. Between the greed of the whites and the treachery of the savages he hasn't had much luck." "You fought with the other Long Hunters at New Orleans, didn't you?" asked Doby. "At that battle we licked the British again. The treaty of peace had been signed, but word hadn't reached the South and we went at it and hammered the beef-eaters fair and hard. Ah, those were the good old times. Nothin' like it nowadays. Nothin' but a few odd jobs of rescue-work like this one we are on. No real fightin'." Doby looked in true respect at his friends of many scars. His hand went up to his cap. He took it off in the presence of these patriots. The Kentucky settlers called these men "Long Hunters" because they could stay out more weeks on hunting-trips than less stalwart backwoodsmen. "Long Knives" was the name the Indians gave them on account of the ferocious dirks they carried. Even Doby sported his stone knife in a formidable sheath. Soft-hearted Simon Kenton had taken Doby along for a "lucky penny" or "pocket-piece" as a later time would have taken some entertaining child for a "mascot." Like the other two dozen men in the group, Doby boasted a tomahawk swung on his hip. "A tomahawk is wild and savage-looking," laughed one of the men, seeing how gingerly Doby handled the murderous thing, "but this one has been tamed. It will be used to chop kindling-wood and to cut brush, unless we get into a brash with redskins and you want to try its edge on a scalp." Also Doby had a powder-horn swung over his shoulder. In the hollow of his left arm was as light a flintlock as that day afforded. It was possible for him to carry the weight of this weapon because, oh, joy of joys! between his knees was a Kentucky thoroughbred! "No old nag to bring up the cows"--Doby was almost bursting with pride--"will do for a fellow who is going West to fight Indians. He needs a fast horse. This is one of the blue-grass best." Every scout's saddle-bags carried rations for several days. They would not use their rifles for game, nor would they build a fire except at some station. They were traveling as light as possible, as fast as their mounts would allow, and with as little noise as they could. "Boonesboro'll keep the wagon-train as long as the grub holds out. The pesky redskins 'ain't got a thing to do but to lay round an' besiege the stockade 'til the buffaler come. When the herds git here the redskins will follow the game north and the wagon-train can move again. Trouble is that folks in stockades can't git along without eatin', and these are plumb out o' vittles." And Simon Kenton, who had often gone hungry in the Indian country, gave a little sigh of sympathy. "It ain't likely that we will have a brash with Injuns hereabouts." Yet these sagacious scouts slept in their clothes, had no fires, and took turns, two at a time, doing sentinel duty. They rode, always, with guns primed and loaded and ready under their trigger fingers. Their plan was to add their force to the small number of men in the train at Boonesboro and with a little food to bring them out to within reach of game and to escort them north to Cincinnati. The Indians generally fell back from any "Long Knives" train. The scouts had crossed the Ohio River at Cincinnati, coming down, gathering a few more fighters as they went. Doby's father, a seasoned frontiersman, had gone with them because he was anxious to learn the prospects for buying farming land in this richest soil of all the States. Now they were whirling down toward the Salt Lick Springs on the old Clark War Road of Indian raids. At first the famous path led them to the southwest. Doby had ridden bareback from babyhood. He could "break" a colt or subdue a "fractious" mare, but never had he gone down any pike at the pace these Kentuckians set him as they tore away on their errand of mercy. His legs clung to the saddle, his moccasins stuck to the stirrups, his hands grasped the bridle-rein as they flew. The scrambling up-hill over rough ground, the breakneck sliding down into valleys, were his delight. But when he saw the swollen Kentucky River that he must plunge into for the first of several times on its winding course, he could have screamed with hysterical excitement. He had no choice whether to go or to stay. His horse carried him with the others on a rush into the turbulent stream. The shock of the water and the sensation of leaving solid earth for this swirling danger shook his chest with heavy sobs. There is a contagion of courage as well as of fear. He caught the spirit of his companions. By imitating them he was able to hold his horse's head at an acute angle to the bank, so that the constant up-stream effort kept the swimming animal from being swept down. He stayed abreast of the others and landed with them at the road on the opposite shore. Then magnificent forests and open glades spun by them. They entered canebrakes, those bottom-land stretches of succulent sugar-bearing canes where wild turkeys scuttled in flocks before the sound of hoofs. Simon Kenton smiled at Doby: "There ye be! Cane! Turkey! Kain tu'key! There's where we git our name." One night when they stopped to rest, Doby discovered on a flat-faced boulder some crude outline pictures like the childish cartoons of first-reader pupils. There were round turtles, square horses, spindle-legged boys, moon faces, pigs with curly tails; just such things as he had drawn on his slate many a time. All had been cut or scraped in with a sharp point of stone or metal. What boy could resist such a challenge? "Must be some sort of a wilderness school near here," Doby thought as he whipped out his too ready knife. Using the tip of the hilt, for he dare not risk the precious point, he scratched a bird, to face another bird, something like a blue jay which was already drawn to perch in this menagerie. "I'll have to do something to tell what my bird and the other fellow's bird are called," and he picked up a couple of fallen blue-jay feathers. With a paste of mud he added them, one to each bird, for a flaunting tail, grinning to think how surprised the children would be when they noticed this addition to their art-gallery. Simon Kenton, coming up, seemed to regard this as a serious matter. "That pictur' is Injun writin'; lots of it hereabouts; every line and dot means somethin'; can't tell what the varmints'll think of your sign," and he shook his head dubiously; but he would not let the boy try to erase it. "Better quit foolin' with it." Doby was rather dismayed by this bit of indiscretion on his part. But in the rapid going of the next few hours and in the flurry of the wild-pig hunt which they allowed themselves when they came within hail of the station, he forgot his regrets. At this station they gave themselves a hot pork supper and a good rest. A Kentucky station was from the first settlement of that coveted State a spot full of romance, of danger, and of delight. So fair was Kentucky, so rich, so promising, that native red men and immigrating white men were ever ready to fight for a piece of her fertile soil. Never was she more beautiful than in those days when numerous battles caused her to be named the "dark and bloody ground." Her stations, far apart, were built of log houses set in a hollow square to form a solid wall toward the open country. Tiny loopholes for rifles were the only windows on the outside walls. At each corner was a two-story blockhouse, or "flanker," set up in such a way with loopholes that the men inside could see and could cover with guns the outside fort walls without themselves being seen by the Indians. There were huge gates to these forts. They could defy and they did defy many a savage attack. They were snug places for emigrants to stop. Doby employed his idle hour making a "shrieker." First he cut a willow whistle. On it he fastened the bladder of the slaughtered pig. Then he took an immense breath, blew into the whistle, and filled the bladder with air. When he could blow no longer he jerked it out of his mouth. The air from the bladder rushed back through the whistle with a hair-raising squeal. Doby hopped in glee. But he dared not use it when they started again on the dangerous War Road. There was always the chance of attracting some foe. "When we get inside the next station I'm going to give it one good blow, Injuns or no Injuns," he declared. So far had they now come by the road southwest, south, southeast, and south again, that they were in the heart of Kentucky and approaching Harrod's station not far distant from Boonesboro. At Harrod's they had meant to eat hot game and save their full saddle-bags for the wagon-train. But the sight of an Indian trading at the post made them pause and go into a consultation with the storekeeper. A general store was kept in each of these stations. It dealt in every article a settler could want. Here a trapper, red or white, who never had any money could "swap" his furs for powder and coffee with a storekeeper who never had any money, either. Though powder and coffee were each a dollar a pound, neither the buyer nor the seller ever saw that dollar. Trading was the rule. Doby paid little heed to anything except the Indian, who stood motionless beside a pile of 'coonskins which he had laid on a tobacco bale. Any boy would have known that Indian for a warrior. He wore a plain blanket. There were no feathers and no paint to be seen upon him, yet he looked the wild fighting-man. He was tall and straight, haughty of bearing, cruelly beautiful. He ignored the hunters with royal indifference while he waited for his goods to be packed. As Doby eyed the savage he thought: "How handsome he is and how powerful! Perhaps Tecumseh had the same appearance." Under the boy's admiring stare the Indian stood absolutely and perfectly still, minute after minute, minute after minute, until Doby became possessed of an impulse to test that stolidity, to shock that dignity. So he impishly blew into the pig's-bladder whistle. Its blast rent the air. With snake-like quickness the Indian's hand shot out. He grabbed the whistle and hid it in his blanket. He offered a blue-jay feather in exchange. Doby felt indignant at this sort of trading and showed that he did, whereupon the Indian, who certainly had seemed to have neither paint nor feathers upon him, stuck the first feather and then a second one in the front of Doby's cap. In so doing he left a streak of paint on the boy's forehead. It was of the same shape and color as the feather. The boy's face flamed with anger, but when the watching Kenton said, "Make your manners, bub," Doby thrust his hand into the Indian's palm and said, "How?" The Indian answered, "How?" These two words were considered to be a complete conversation of the friendliest sort between any two members of the white and red races. Calmly and instantly Kenton pushed the boy from the store into the midst of the hunters, who were hurriedly up and away. Night was closing in, but they increased their pace. Kenton told Doby: "Under his blanket that chief is rigged up for battle. He is buying guns and ammunition." "A storekeeper will sell any Indian any amount of bullets to shoot any number of settlers, if the savage merely says he wants 'em for buffalo," thought Doby, in bitter contempt of that thing we call commercialism, which allows one man to sacrifice others for his own mercenary profit. "To git through the varmints' stampin'-ground, we must use this dark night for to cover us," and Kenton glanced at the black clouds and at the occasional flashes of lightning. He listened to the wind in the trees. He stopped to consult the others and laid his ear to the ground, "for buffaler," he said. For here the War Road, the Indian trail, and the Buffalo trace all coincided to run through a very long, narrow ravine. They decided to risk the trip through the ravine. The byways were long and difficult. In the ravine there was danger of Indians in ambush, danger of a cloudburst, and danger of meeting the buffalo herds almost due on their annual migration north. But where was there not danger? To these hardy soldiers danger was their bread and meat and they rejoiced in it. So when they felt no quake of earth from moving hoofs, they took the ravine at a run. They knew it was the sort of night when the war of fire and water in the air might frighten buffalo into a stampede; and Doby, blinking in the lightning, listened between thunderclaps for other noises. They were nearing the southern end of the ravine, too far from the northern entrance to turn back, when they caught the far-away rumble of myriad pounding hoofs. They spurred ahead. If they could reach the plain and turn aside before the oncoming herds entered the ravine they were safe. Kenton put his hand on Doby's bridle and they ran for their lives straight toward the buffalo, which they could not see, but which they could hear plainer and plainer with every hurrying second. The rangers ahead yelled triumphantly as one by one they gained the open and swerved in safety around to the east. Their shouts were drowned in a vast bellowing that grew so near it roared in their ears like heavy surf. Kenton and Doby were bringing up the rear. Kenton's horse stepped into a hole and went down heavily. Doby's leaped ahead. After a few jumps he was able to check it. He wheeled and came back. Kenton had gained his feet, but his mount was doomed--a broken leg. There was no help for the poor brute but a merciful bullet. To this sad use unhappy Doby put his proud flintlock. To Kenton, who was badly jarred, he reached a firm hand and took him up behind. Too late now to gain the plain, impossible to face the flying, panic-stricken hordes, there was nothing for it but to flee straight back over the course they had come. To be overtaken was to be trampled down to earth, ground into fragments and totally destroyed. Oh, the irony of traveling for days and days through a country where the buffalo would have been harmless and then to meet them in the one hour and the one place where they meant death to man! Kenton, recovering himself under the prick of their danger, watched by the lightning flashes for an opening in the sides of the ravine. He soon saw a tiny brook trickling from a cleft. They bolted from the trace and stopped in it. Although it was only a tiny pocket set back and up from the sides of the bluff, it was enough to shelter them and their horse. In less than two minutes the herd came sweeping past below them. All night long, under a stormy sky, they huddled in their covert and saw and heard and smelled the buffalo as they galloped past. All day long, through the clearing weather, they watched more buffalo and more buffalo--walking now. All night long again, under clear skies and brilliant stars, they listened to the stragglers sedately following behind. The man and boy had food in their saddle-bags and water at their feet. The horse drank and helped himself to green stuff. Kenton said: "Give the Injuns followin' the herds time to vamoose. Then we go on. Our folks won't hunt for us, 'cause they think we're wiped out." "If we trail alone, do you suppose the Indians will scalp us--you and me?" quavered Doby. His bright dreams had been to win glory by defeating Indians in open battle. Never at any time had he planned to have them destroy _him_ on the sly. "Think likely--yes," drawled Kenton. "Ye must git used to close calls. I've had 'em many and many a time. Don't wash yer face. That's yer big chance." "Don't wash my face?" repeated Doby. "Don't wash my face!" "The chief marked that paint daub an' set the feathers on ye for some reason. He liked that noisy whistle. 'Tis Injun nature to return a favor. Likely he stalked us when ye drew that pictur'. Blue jays may be his totem." "O-oh!" breathed Doby. "O-oh! Will this mark save me? Will it save you?" "Perhaps. Two guns won't amount to much if there 're Injuns in the ravine or the canebrake. We are in plain sight here; no use to try to hide." They could not stay longer where they were in the cramped little hollow. They must follow the trace. There was no other way out. The doubly loaded horse stepped into the road; but he was uneasy. He snorted and backed about. "Hold your face so the light will strike it. Turn from side to side so the blue in your cap will show," commanded Kenton. Crows on a dead tree above the ravine shrieked something at them. Doby clutched the rein, for the bushes on the opposite bank had parted ever so little. Red of nostril, white of eye, the horse stood still and twitched his sensitive ears. The crows called again. They circled widely. They returned to chatter a warning. Kenton, who never was known to lose his self-control, said, calmly: "Go on. My gray curls will make a purtier scalp than your hank o' tow; 'f I don't fret, you needn't." Doby went on. The horse needed constant petting and coaxing. The crows flapped and cawed, following a hiding something--an evil something moving near the trail. The horse quivered and shied at the unseen peril stalking him. They reached the end of the ravine and descended into the canebrake of the bottom-land which led to the Kentucky River. Far away on the other side of the river they could see the stockade of Boonesboro. "Could we signal the stockade?" faltered Doby. "We'll be made into broth if we do," was the quiet reply. Some Indians were cannibals. At this reminder, Doby's spine turned to water and he slumped into a heap. But Kenton caught him up and shook him forcibly with the words: "I once felt that-a-way myself. Ye can git used to 't. Keep right on. The cane's full of the pesky redskins." "I don't see any," gasped Doby, in forlorn hope. "Nary glimpse. Watch the crows. Show yer passport. They're there," declared Kenton. When the horse found that he could not hang back, he bolted. Wilder and wilder his pace grew. Fear had seized him past all control. Ever the canes, before, beside, behind their mad flight wavered for a wicked pursuing foe who peeped and ran. Ever the crows in dread curiosity beat the air and croaked in apprehension. Ever the boy, with his blue-jay feathers upright, clung to the saddle and lifted his white face so plainly marked, with an attempt at bravado. As the ford came in sight and the trampled clearing at its edge showed an open space of ground they knew that the crisis was near. [Illustration: EACH SAVAGE GIBED AT THE BOY'S PAINTED TALISMAN, BUT EACH OBEYED ITS MESSAGE] What was that sound? Shrill and weird, cutting their ears, they caught the note of the pig's-bladder "shrieker"--Doby's whistle! "Don't shoot," said Kenton. "Whatever happens--don't shoot--mind that--don't shoot!" Then--from the canebrake on three sides of the clearing sprang the nimble-footed savages who had teased and outrun their horse. The painted bodies closed across the entrance to the ford. Paralyzed with fear, the sweating horse crouched. The ears of Kenton and Doby were deafened with war-whoops, their nostrils sickened by dangling scalps. A horrid threatening dance swung round them. Tomahawks hurled past them. Color and noise, stench and motion, caught them in a hideous vortex. Each savage gibed at the boy's painted talisman, but each obeyed its message. They did not touch him. Doby did not scream--he could not. Kenton never moved, resistance was futile. In a great swoop the Indians bore down upon them. They were covered with a shower of blue-jay feathers thrown by murderous fingers as with wild gestures and wilder laughter the Indians vanished into the canebrake to follow the buffalo north for more profitable hunting. Surprised Boonesboro did not know what to make of the flurry. The sentries halloed from the "flankers," and the Long Hunters, who had never thought to see them again, swung wide the gates, and Kenton and Doby swam across to Boonesboro--the end of their trail. VI LEFT HIND FOOT _A First Survey for the Underground Railway_ AS though bell metal had been softly touched, a note of clear low mirth came to the ear. Irresistible chuckles, one after another, in purest glee followed. Gurgle upon gurgle of laughter was added to it. And Obadiah Holman, who never in his life had heard anything quite so musical or so funny, burst into sympathetic giggles before he was really awake or knew what it was all about. He was curled up on a bundle in an emigrant wagon. He raised his head and peeped out of the round hole in the back of its canvas cover. A hard day's ride had tired him. He had climbed into this wagon for a short snooze and had taken instead a heavy sleep of several hours. During that time his company of emigrants had been joined by another wagon-train which they were expecting from a detour to the east, and all had gone into camp together for the night. The boy looked out on such a curious scene that he asked of himself, "Where am I, Doby?" to be sure that he was not still in dreamland. Against a purple sky, star-spangled, stood a solid bank of black-green forest. In front of this woodsy background were the white tops of the wagons. Silhouetted upon their canvases were the horses and the cows, picketed for the night inside the protecting wall of the wagon-beds. In the center, under the red glow of after-supper fires, a few belated emigrants were finishing their tasks. Among them Doby saw, what he had never seen before, what he had been expecting to see with this coming wagon-train, and what he was hoping for a glimpse of--black men! Close to the tail-gate of the wagon, on a saddle which he was supposed to be cleaning, sat a youth who was the color of a "tar baby." There was a gourd in his hand. Out of his round throat came those sounds which had so delighted the boy. And every time he laughed he waved the gourd, threw back his kinky head, opened a tremendous mouth, and showed a double set of teeth perfect enough for a dentist's sign. A mocking-bird might have envied the trill in his laugh. He rolled up his eyes until only the whites showed. Doby clutched the canvas in alarm. What if they should not come down again? "So that is a darky," he thought as he stared. "I can guess how he got the name." Many a boy has seen a darky, but few have ever watched one with a gourd fiddle, the primitive African violin. New England Doby did not approve of slavery. He had been taught that it was a dreadful thing. So it gave him something of a surprise to see what he had supposed would be a miserable, downtrodden captive having such a very good time. Tuning his fiddle and swinging his bow, the negro began to play and to dance and to sing, drawing round him a dozen or so of other black boys who joined the dance and the song, giving themselves up to such utter enjoyment as Doby had never seen among any white people. At first his Northern ears could not make out the words of the song. When he had guessed at them, he listened with his attention so divided between the syllables and the melody and the negroes' appearance and actions, that their full meaning did not come to him until long afterward. Night wind in the trees, peeper frogs in the sedges, bare feet thumping on the turf, and the sweet obligato of the gourd strings accompanied the lyric tenor, who sang: "Dar am a b'ar, A big, la'ge b'ar, He wave hes tail so high, He wave hes tail, Hes big, la'ge tail At no'th star in de sky. "Dar am a b'ar, A sma', wee b'ar, He wave hes tail so high, He wave hes tail, Hes sma', wee tail At no'th star in de sky. "All night he wave, Big b'ar he wave, And show de nig' what dar. He wave hes tail, Hes big, la'ge tail, 'Til nigger see dat star. "All night he wave, Sma' b'ar he wave, And show de nig' what dar. He wave hes tail, Hes sma', wee tail, 'Til nigger see dat star." Several melodious baritones took up the air and a superb bass joined in. To this happy narcotic the boy gave himself up and went to sleep again. Doby's place in the train was with Simon Kenton's group of mounted scouts. Many of them had belonged to Col. Richard Johnson's Kentucky regiment of rangers. From Boonesboro, they had accompanied this wagon party of Quaker emigrants northward on the road to Lexington. The Quakers were a religious sect who did not believe in slavery. They had left the Carolinas, where it was practised, and were going north across the Ohio, where it was not allowed. They were opposed to war in any form and continually preached the gospel of peace. Through the dangerous State of Kentucky, which was ever the battle-ground between the southern Creek and Cherokee, and the northern Shawnee and Delaware Indians, the rangers traveled with the Quakers to so intimidate the Indians that no fighting would be necessary. The other wagon-train was from Virginia. It was made up of groups who had the greatest pride in family honor, worldly estates, and ceremonial government. They expected to found in the center of this fertile Kentucky new farms, and homes, where lavish hospitality and dignified elegance should imitate the easy life of the Old Dominion. They were bringing their household goods, their slaves, and their domestic animals with them. All were armed and ready to defend their possessions and their views with vigor. The Quakers, in serene self-denial, stood for the moral doctrine of freedom in body and mind and spirit. They wore plain clothes and used plain speech and practised plain living. The common cause of keeping their scalps intact had linked these different peoples together for protection on the trip, just as the prospect of making a better living had driven them both northward through Cumberland Gap. Oh, Cumberland Gap! That "high-swung gateway of the mountains!" What boy has not in fancy joined Daniel Boone when he held in his hand the key to this wondrous portal? When that famous frontiersman opened the gates and started on its course the most tremendous tide of emigration this continent had ever seen, and when as scout he went before his countrymen, he had more adventures than ever before fell to the lot of any one pioneer as he blazed for them the trail through the Middle West. The spunky little settlements around the fort at Watauga, on the eastern side of the mountains, continually fought the Indians to keep them from extending their tribal lines north. By this bravery the Gap was kept open for travel. Henderson's land company secured home acres. Boone pointed out the acres and by the force of his splendid personality kept the scattered settlers loyal to the United States and to one another during the trying days of the Revolution. Nothing could be better than the view from Cumberland Gap. Nothing much worse than the path through it. Rough, miry, stony, over-flowed, washed out, precipitous--all this and more! Every fault that a road could have this one displayed. Yet because it was the only road nature had cut through the mountains, Watauga guarded it and Boone's followers trod it as never road was traveled before. Between 1775 and 1790 seventy thousand people sweated in the jagged up-hill climb to its sixteen hundred feet of height, paused for a moment to look at the sides of the mountains towering another thousand feet above the Gap, and then slid and scrambled down on the Kentucky side. In 1816 they were still coming over this wilderness road. Doby was tired of the twice-told tales of its hardships. He wanted to make his rest-times as pleasant as possible, so on the second night he left the wagging gray-beards and in sheer exuberance he tried to run down a rabbit in the glade where they were encamped. All work and talk broke off to see him do it. The younger the rabbit the easier to catch. With every day's growth of its hopping-muscles it waxes more enduring. Doby, having picked an older rabbit than he thought, was hard pressed to tire the lively creature out. He called for help. The older men instantly forbade the younger ones to join the hunt. The boy who began it must finish it to prove his right to the game. He shouted to the darkies. They huddled in an excited bunch, but they did not come. Then as a matter of honor Doby was obliged to catch that rabbit. So of course he did! But he was over-tired, out of breath, and a little indignant as he said to the lyric tenor, "Next time, come and help." And he tried the grand manner of a Virginia slave-owner. Such a bow and a scrape and a grin as he got! "Yas, sir, nex' time, Mars'er Dob', yas, sir." "Well, then, why didn't you come this time?" "'Cause you is red-headed, Mars'er Dob'!" with a polite and complimentary flourish. In anger too great for words, Doby stalked away. If he had had one of the Virginia whips he would have laid it on that darky then and there. Red-headed! He had pummeled many a chum for that one word. "I am _not_ red-headed. It is the firelight that makes my hair look coppery. I don't so much mind being called tow-headed, because I _am_ a little bit tow-headed," he conceded, "but red-headed, never!" "Don't bother to dress the rabbit," said Simon Kenton to Doby. "Why not?" asked the boy, putting back his stone knife as quickly as he had pulled it out, for Kenton's slightest wish was law to him. "The niggers'll steal it 'fore sun-up." "Why?" "Red-head for luck! That coon with a high voice needs a left hind foot, or I miss my guess." "Why?" "Watch and see," was the puzzling answer. So Doby slept on top of his rabbit to save it. But in the morning it was gone. He spied around. About a freshly built knob of kinks on the tenor's head, the taint of over-warm rabbit fur was climbing above all other odors, as the tuneful one hummed, "Dar am a b'ar," with flagrant unconsciousness. As an article of diet, Doby lost his interest in rabbit, but as a charm it might prove exciting, so he decided to keep still and "watch and see." It is one of the results of slavery that the superstitions of the "quarters" creep into the "big house" where the master lives. Thus it happened that when they came to Ashland, one of those splendid estates which slave labor made possible, in the neighborhood of Lexington, the lucky boy, Doby, who looked red-headed but was not, became one of the important persons invited with the Virginia "gentlemen," the scout "officers," and the Quaker "preachers," by the statesman, Henry Clay, to be his guest at dinner and to view his model house and grounds. Some of the Virginians had known Henry Clay when, as the barefooted "mill boy" of the "Slashes"--a newly cleared region--he had ridden back and forth in the Old Dominion with grist for his widowed mother, and they now rejoiced in his self-made prosperity. Several of the scouts had worked with him in political changes and they were proud of his positions of trust. Many of the preachers of the "Society of Friends," as the Quakers called themselves, had discussed with the great leader the evils and injustice of slavery; no one knew better than they how hard Henry Clay worked to influence the laws which were intended to help the blacks' condition and which tended toward final emancipation for them. In the evening, by torch-light on the lawn, darkies played the banjo and danced and sang for the company. Not one of them equaled the lyric tenor of the wagon-train, so Doby wandered away from the lawn and in curiosity strolled out through the quarters where the slaves lived. All the little whitewashed houses were deserted, for the servants were allowed to look on at all festivities and "minstrel shows." He was turning back when from one of the cabins there came a tiny sound. Again he heard that never-to-be-forgotten chime of distant silver bells, that low gurgle of exquisite music. He would have known that voice any place. How did the Virginia slave happen to be here and not with the wagons? Why should that note of sadness creep into his sigh? Why was he weeping? His sobbing rose, so touched with grief, so poignant with despair, that Doby's heart-strings tightened. He could hardly bear to hear it. Then some motherly creature began to croon, "Da, chil' honey, poo' chil' honey, don' you cry--" The lyric tenor wailed in broken syllables: "My daddy--he whipped--he die--my mammy--she whipped--she run away. I want my mammy--" "Da, chil' honey, poo' chil' honey, don' you cry--" "I want my mammy--I don' want ole Virginny--I don' want this yere--I want my mammy--" The chant was torn with sorrow. Then came the comforting, "Don' cry, honey," over and over again. Poor Doby, listening in distressed sympathy, could not in the least make out this black thief of the rabbit foot, whose lilting laughter had turned to such bitter tears. The boy who had heard both, stole away to hide in one of the wagons and to cry himself to sleep over a trouble he could not understand. He was ashamed to worry his father or Simon Kenton with further questions about the slaves, who left them next day when the Virginians stopped at their prospective settlement north of Lexington. With the picturesque and merry blacks went much of the zest of life in the wagon-train, and Doby was glad when the Ohio River came in sight and the journey was at an end. Busying himself with the luggage behind some hogsheads on the wharf while the wagon-train was loading the ferryboat to cross the river, Doby heard a strange Kentuckian hiss to another in a stage whisper, "How many Quaker women in this company?" He could not catch the mumbled reply, but the decision of the first Kentuckian, "We will speak to each one of those women and find out," held such menace in its tone that it made the boy uncomfortable. These women of the Society of Friends, whom Doby had never thought of counting in all the time that he had been with them, had already gone aboard the ferry. Through the long hard trip they had managed to keep their calm appearance of perfect neatness and order in dress and possessions. Their full gray skirts almost touched the ground. Their clean white kerchiefs were crossed surplice-wise on their gray waists. Snowy inner caps showed at the edges of their gray scoop bonnets. Long gray shawls were folded over their hands clasped primly in front of them. They looked as much alike as doves in a cote. It was an adventure for Doby to peer down into the tunnel of one of these bonnets. He never could tell whether he would find a kindly grandmother, an earnest matron, or a blushing maid, in the other end of its cavernous depths. Why, then, since they were all so much alike outwardly, should these two rough men, who had sprung from the wharf, have reason to speak to any one of them? What difference did it make how many there were of them? As he went aboard, they all looked as usual to him. Seated on the boxes and bales, they had as much serene dignity as though the noisy boat had been a bench in a silent "meeting-house." It was plain, as the boat left shore, that the two Kentuckians meant to carry out their plan. Doby, close on their heels, heard them ask the same question of each in turn, "Are you going to Cincinnati?" If she lifted her head as she gently answered, one man glanced sharply into her bonnet. If she did not look up, the other man stooped and stared into the bonnet. Between them they made sure of a view of every concealed face. Mr. Holman whispered to Doby, "Sheriff and deputy," and Doby was more confused than ever. What were they hunting for? He was so curious that he stood closer and closer to them, until one turned upon him with a harsh scowl and bade him "git!" Baffled, he retreated to the bow, and was about to seat himself on a coil of rope on the up-stream side when he noticed another Quakeress standing behind some tall piles of boxes. She was without a shawl. Her bonnet strings were untied. Her arms were folded and her hands shoved out of sight in her surplice. She was shaking as with a chill; her whole figure, in spite of its immaculate dress, had a hunched-up and miserable appearance. Doby started toward her to offer help in case she was ill. She was peeping round the corner of the pile of boxes and she drew back suddenly as the two officers came toward the bow. Although they had not yet seen her, they were sure to do so. But why should she be afraid of them? They stepped forward briskly. She started violently and fell headlong into the river. With a shriek for "Help!" Doby jumped to the rail. In the wild glance that he gave to locate the Quakeress before he dived to her assistance he saw the white soles of two bare feet, two long black legs in frog stroke, a bonnet sinking, a kinky head atop black arms, which came out freely from gray flowing sleeves. With an expert movement, to make a turn and a neat dive, the figure went under the ferryboat. It was the lyric tenor! Sucked under by the current! All this Doby noted in one flash, as, too late to check his own impetuous jump to the rescue, he also went into the river. He swam upward against the current. That much of common sense was left in him, for all the surprise and horror of the darky's dreadful disappearance under the boat where the doomed creature could not rise, and where no one could rescue him. There was a cry of, "Man overboard!" Every person on the boat rushed to starboard. In Doby's ears there was great confusion and roaring. On the boat was the same thing. But one tidy Quakeress, without rumpling her surplice, made fast one end of the rope coil to the rail and threw the other end to Doby. April is not a good month for swimming even in the friendly Ohio. Shirt and breeches of buckskin were very heavy; the chill of the water was unnerving. The current was stronger than he thought, and the nearing shore seemed much farther than it had looked from the deck of the ferry. So he was not too proud of his swimming skill to allow himself to be hauled on board. He was deeply grateful for the line. There was too much help, Doby thought. His clothes were peeled off, he was rubbed dry, and dressed anew, with some dozen or so men, women, and children taking part in his toilet and the eyes of everybody on him and his unlucky ducking. With the chill and the shock, his teeth chattered so that he could not tell them about the poor darky, try as he would. So the two Kentucky officers went ashore, each grumbling to the other about some "miscount." And Doby was hurried to his own flatboat home, standing at the wharf, where a warm welcome and a cozy supper were given to them and their guest, Simon Kenton, by Doby's waiting mother. Then, and not till then, did Doby's father indulge in laughter long and loud. But Kenton, with a merry twinkle, merely asked, "Tell us, son, how much was on purpose and how much just happened so." His father added, "You managed to get all the attention of the boat at the time the runaway did not want it for himself." Doby was still shuddering with horror at the fate of the black, and he was ready to faint as he gasped, "The darky is drownded!" "Don't think it," cried Mr. Holman. "He swam underwater with the current, came up clear, took a big breath, dived toward the shore, and swam away perfectly safe. I saw him climb into the bushes on shore. He will roll in somebody's hay until his dress is dry; then travel north to-night, watching for the Quakers to pick him up." "The Society of Friends is working out a regular plan for helpin' runaways that is liable to grow into a big thing one of these days," was Simon Kenton's prophecy. When the first Quaker who felt a throb of pity for the wretched runaway cowering for mercy at his feet, resolved to be a true Friend to the unfortunate, by defying man's law of property and obeying God's law of mercy, he surveyed in his mind the earliest routes for the underground railway, as he considered to which Friend farther north he should send this fugitive. The underground railway was never built of wooden cross-ties nor of steel rails. Its right of way was in the hearts of those who guarded the secret paths and the hidden shelters through which the slaves passed to the land of their hopes. Past the perils of the auction-block, the lash, and the bloodhounds, a vast emigration of blacks were smuggled through Cincinnati--the Cumberland Gap of their race--and, guided by that celestial scout, the north star, won their way to Canada and to freedom. Doby was vastly relieved about his lyric tenor. Still, he asked, "How will he know which way to go?" Simon Kenton sang softly, "He wave hes tail, Hes sma', wee tail, At no'th star in de sky." Then Doby smiled happily, "And he won't mind cold and hunger and he can't be captured while he has such faith in the luck that a boy--almost red-headed--gave him; and he wears in his kinks the left hind foot of a stolen rabbit!" VII THE DROWSY VILLAGE _Edward Eggleston's Favorite Spring at Vevay_ A STEAMBOAT'S paddles churned the Ohio backwater as she strove to make a landing at Vevay, coming down. Everybody on ships and on shore rushed for places to get a view of her. Plainly her name showed on her sides, the _New Orleans_. A queer little vessel was she. Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steam-engine, had himself designed and built her. She was the second steam craft in the whole wide world, and the first on Western waters. Several others had been set afloat in the four years since she had made her initial trip, but she was still certain to have a crowd of cheering admirers whenever she chose to show off her great accomplishment of going up-stream against the current. For two months he had been a river-traveler, and, therefore, Obadiah Holman knew that she could puff away as soon as she cared to do so, no matter if the landlubbers did use hot arguments to prove that, "It stands to reason that she cain't never go ag'in natur'." The boy hung over the side of his father's flatboat and watched the people who were watching the steamer. "I've seen a lot of towns," thought he, "but never any as quiet as this." There was something in the changing sky above the misty blue hills, something in the deep water which reflected the sky and the hills, something in the long vistas and the fragrant air, that may have reminded a little band of Swiss colonists of their native mountain-land. They loved this place as soon as they saw it and settled here. Log cabins were built somewhat like the cottages which the herdsmen of Switzerland set up among the Alps. Tiny chalets they were, and they were perched on the prettiest heights above the river and the valley so that the beauty-loving Swiss might have the finest views. "Oh, sleepy little town! how enchanting you are!" The boy inhaled the breeze. "It smells delicious." He scanned the acres of good bottom-land between Indian and Plum creeks and took in the terraced hillsides. Everywhere were stakes and trellises. "Ha! Grapes are in bloom. That's what I smell. They are raising grapes." He eagerly studied out the plan of the vineyards and the fields. It interested him, this art which the Swiss had brought with them to the banks of the Ohio. It would have been even more interesting could he have foreseen that the grape culture begun by John Francis Dufour and his brother John James Dufour in this valley was to spread up and down the river and along the Great Lakes and become one of the sources of the wealth of the Middle West. His thirsty senses soon discovered a spring on the hillside. Reaching down to the deck, he picked up a light-weight wooden bucket by its woven-willow bail, resolving as soon as the boat docked to run up the hill and get a drink from the spring. The taste of river water was becoming tiresome to him. "The landing looks like a hay-field," he laughed as the people bobbed about. Every woman and child and nearly every man wore a straw hat, the first ones he had ever seen. Skill in weaving straw was another art introduced by the clever Swiss. In the May sunshine this entirely new style of head-covering suggested comfort. "Take off your 'coonskin, Doby," said the boy to himself. "Its season is over. The Swiss are weaving the left-over straw-stacks into a millinery show." He examined the faces under the hats. It was easy to pick out the Swiss from among the New England emigrants and the roustabouts of the river. They were more graceful and shorter of stature. Indeed, the Swiss were so compact in physique that the master of the wagon-train who freighted them from their port at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1801, across the Alleghany Mountains to the flatboats at Pittsburg, complained that six and one-quarter cents a hundredweight was not enough money for the women and children who rode, since it took more than one person to make a hundredweight and little people were as much trouble as big ones. The Swiss used French words. And because the French were always friendly to Indians, the squaws of the region seemed to feel sure of the hospitality of this village. They hung about the Swiss like bees about the grape blooms. "Beggars, beggars, beggars!" sneered Doby. "They beg for themselves and beg for the pappooses slung up behind them. They beg for their families and beg for the dogs at their heels." He scowled at our native red race as it filed along below him on the wharf. "They can't be made to work and the Swiss will have to feed 'em or the braves will threaten war." Some idea of ultimate justice stirred in Doby's mind, for he shook his head at a fat pappoose as he reflected: "We have taken their hunting-ground without their leave. They are making us pay for it without our leave." Moving about with the crowd was one figure more uncouth than the squaws. It was a ragged, blanketed, straw-hatted creature. Doby noticed it. On its feet were mismatched gear, a torn moccasin for the right foot, a broken leather boot for the left. No scarecrow could have worn worse clothes. As Doby leaned over the edge of the boat and stared, the shapeless thing raised its head and returned the gaze. Then he saw that it was a man, a white man, whose face was sodden with gin and lined with evil; a degraded outcast deported from some Old World prison. Numbers of such wretches were dumped on Eastern coasts. Few wandered so far inland as Vevay. Doby recoiled from the threatening leer the drunkard threw at him. Instinctively he laid his right hand on the hilt of his stone knife, for he had the same sense of danger approaching that the man has who claps his hand to his sword. The steamboat was already loading with produce for the up-river trip. Piles of new straw hats were tossed aboard. Skins of grape-juice, protected by straw cratings, were stacked on deck. Firkins of marmalade were handled carefully. Straw boxes of raisins were properly stowed. A few bottles of delicate home-made wine were handed as compliments to the officers of the boat. Bottles always aroused the thirst of Indians. A bulky squaw threw herself between an officer and the giver of the wine. She demanded "firewater." "Go along," cried the indignant officer. "This is not firewater. You can't get drunk on this," and he retreated with his present. The squaw imagined that one long orgy gurgled in that bottle. She snatched it from him and rushed through the groups near by. As she ran she slipped the bottle into the cloth wrappings which held the pappoose on her back. Ducking down among her friends, she came up in another place and stood with her hands folded, looking as innocent as any squaw could. No one could tell her from the others except the scarecrow whom Doby was watching. With his eyes on Doby's face, he slipped a ready hand about the pappoose and lifted the bottle out. The squaw, whose heart and mind and nerves were all entwined about that one thing, felt it go. She gave a grunt and lunged at the man. Away he scampered. She pounded after him. There was the cry, "Stop thief!" And the crowd, who had only a vague idea of what it was all about, galloped through the town in his wake. Still clinging to his bucket, Doby leaped the gap between his boat and the shore and caught up with the others just as the people, now grown angry, had made the man a prisoner. The squaw was also taken in custody. The marshal held the bottle. A dignified gentleman, the only unruffled person in town, was saying in a quiet voice, "Bring them into my house." Although this gentleman's house was only fourteen feet by twenty, it had, since the beginning of the settlement, been used as a county clerk's office, a post-office, and a court-house. Its owner, John Francis Dufour, had been given most of the town's positions of trust. The house filled with the principal actors in the play. The mob, who could not see or hear what was happening, stood outside and yelled: "Put 'em in jail! Give 'em the whipping-post!" The Indians stood in sullen rage. Doby had never seen a mob before. It made him think of Pontius Pilate, and he was filled with worry. The whipping-post was an old affair. The town was tired of it. It had never done any business. But the jail was new. A court-house--a brick one--and a jail--a log one--had been building through the year. The court-house was not yet finished, but the jail was. One offender had already been sentenced to the jail. No sooner had he been put in at night than he began to whittle, and in the morning he was gone. Now that they had another captive, civic pride demanded that justice be satisfied in some way. His colonists looked to Dufour to do this for them. This man was famous for his sturdy common sense and that quality which the early Hoosiers dubbed "gumption." He immediately sent the harmful bottle of harmless wine back to the unlucky officer, so that the boat might leave port at once. Part of the mob followed the bottle. He turned the squaw over to three other squaws with directions to take her home. Of course the whole tribe trailed along to see this feat accomplished. Thus away went a second dangerous group in quite another direction. Then Judge Dufour said to the prisoner: "I will bind you over for trial. In default of bail, you must be temporarily incarcerated." Between two citizens sworn in for the purpose the prisoner shuffled past Doby on his way to the jail. He was locked and double locked up. He was a very satisfactory picture of a villain as he glowered through the bars. This dramatic glimpse of a truly bad man satisfied the remnant of the mob. The excitement died down. But Doby himself was restless. He went to the spring and filled his bucket. It was a good spring and most attractive to boys. For the two famous Vevay brothers, Edward and George Cary Eggleston, who years later wrote delightful stories of this part of Indiana and other histories of their country, found as much fascination and beauty around the hillside springs as Doby did. Several times during the day he wandered back to the spring. At each one he found himself taking a round-about way past the jail to get another peep at the outlaw. He shuddered till his bucket rattled when he recalled how this criminal had suddenly turned the friendly villagers into a vindictive mob. After supper he tried to explain his nervousness by saying: "This moonlight gives me fidgets. I guess I'll run up to the spring again and get us all a fresh drink before we go to bed. I'm not a bit sleepy." "It's rather late for boys to be out," objected his mother. "It is," agreed his father. "But 'tis such a bright night that I'll sit here and watch you climb. I do not feel sleepy myself." The open hillside had seemed inviting as Doby viewed it from the boat. As he mounted higher and higher the perspective changed. The sheltering home boat sank in lonesome distance. The shadows of the trellises twisted grotesquely at his feet as if to twine about them. Calls of "whip-poor-will" came mournfully from afar. The May night was turning chill. The solitary path had lost its accustomed look. He began to shiver. "This isn't as pleasant as I thought 'twould be. I'll get the water and hurry home," he resolved as he knelt at the spring. In the damp loam where the spring dribbled in front of him were the prints of the feet of one who had been there before him. They were fresh and distinct. Born and bred near the frontier and raised to read its signs, he understood the prints at a glance. But he bent nearer in the moonlight to be sure he was not mistaken. One was of a broken boot sole. The other was a moccasin impression. There was nothing else. He did some thinking. "This is odd. A white man wouldn't hop up on one foot to drink. Neither would an Indian. And no one man would wear a moccasin on his right foot and a boot on his left." Oh, wouldn't he? Doby's memory jumped. The scarecrow on the wharf, the prisoner in the jail, had just such feet. He retreated from the spot as though the culprit himself stood in the tracks. He was not thirsty any more. He told himself in quaking thoughts: "Even if I didn't notice the prints this afternoon, they must have been there. They can't be fresh, 'though they _do_ look so. The man has been in jail for hours." Perhaps so; but the boy could not drive himself back to the spring. The moonlight only served to make the shadows blacker. They threatened him. He seemed paralyzed where he stood. Nothing was real but the dread that filled him. Even the earth and sky were changing hideously. From the town came the cry of, "Fire! fire! fire!" Bells clanged. Women screamed. Dogs howled. Men yelled for "help! help! help!" A red glare filled the valley. Smoke hid the moon. "The jail is on fire! The prisoner will burn!" The whole village was violently astir. Yet Doby could not move. He was frozen. A series of malicious chuckles, a burst of derisive laughter, wild shouts of defiance echoed along the hillside. And the escaped prisoner--the fire-bug--glad to find some one to vent his fury upon, came plunging toward the boy. The red eyes, the jagged teeth, the outstretched claws, in movement, broke the spell upon him. He leaped aside to save himself. There was no time to draw his knife. He flipped the empty bucket wrong side up, over the drunkard's head. Surprised and blinded, the man clutched and tore at the bail under his chin. He had trouble in freeing himself. In that moment of respite Doby flew down-hill like blowing tumbleweed. He sprang into the flatboat and flung up the barricade. But there was no danger. The prisoner--a prisoner no longer--did not follow. He fled into the wilderness never to return. John Francis Dufour directed the men in putting out the fire. He promised them another jail in case another bad man came to town. He reassured the women. He cuddled the frightened children. For a second time that day he quieted his village. Doby, still wide awake, stuck close to the boat and to his father. No more running around at night! He thought these matters over. If one small bottle of mildest wine had set a thousand folks into a turmoil twice within twelve hours, what might not a big jug of genuine "firewater" have done? "I have decided," he murmured, when at last he became as quiet and as drowsy as the village of Vevay, "that I'll take my stand with the men who say, 'Down with the demon, RUM!'" VIII GOIN' TO MEETIN' _Circuit-riding over the "Buffalo Trace"_ ON the flat top of the stump by the log-cabin door was a trencher of soft soap. By its side stood a big gourd dipper of spring water. A wash-trough, made from a five-foot section of oak-tree trunk which had been burnt and scraped through the center to hollow it out like a tub, was closer to the door, almost on its threshold. This home-made tub was steaming with ten gallons or so of hot water. A hand-woven towel hung over its edge. Obadiah Holman sat on the rail fence and viewed these articles with disfavor. He did not like the look of things. It was not his cabin nor his stump. His family were visitors here. They had floated down the Ohio River from Pittsburg to the settlements where the Big Falls stretched across the stream. The rainbow mist above the tumbled beauty of the rapids marked the end of the water road. Boats could go no farther. So all were being unloaded, and a strong party of emigrants were making up a wagon-train to take the trail across Indiana to the fort at Vincennes. Settlers in and around the Big Falls were eager to open their cabins to these travelers. New Albany was built below the Falls on the rich alluvial bottom-land, and, alas! also within reach of the river freshets. "She reminds me," Doby had thought at first sight of her, "of a pretty girl shaking in her shoes for fear the water will come up and wet her feet. About every other year she gets a soaking. When the river goes down she keeps on shaking with chills 'n' fever from the ague vapors that the floods leave behind. It is the price she has to pay for the big crops the bottom-land gives her." If Doby ever came to be seized with the dreaded chills 'n' fever--the great scourge of all new countries--the one malady the pioneers were sure to catch from the miasma of newly opened ground, he would never again speak lightly of it. When two settlers met, the most important greeting was, "Ketched the agur yit?" The dismal head-shaking which the one who had had it gave, struck such apprehension into the heart of the one who had not had it, that he really could not enjoy the perfect health of the moment for the dread of that future hour when "the shakes would git 'im sure." The circuit-riding preachers who ministered to the souls of these river people carried ample saddle-bags. In those saddle-bags was an endless collection of "yarbs" and powders and bottles, which the preachers carried to comfort the bodies of their hearers. The pioneer doctor of divinity was "called" to preach, not by the financial head of his congregation, but by the voice of the Lord. He would not accept worldly money for spiritual service. But for the herbs he gathered and brewed and the bitter concoctions he made, he expected to be paid. On the sale of them he lived. Some emigrants avoided the river. In the beautiful hills above the falls, higher still than Jeffersonville, were tiny hamlets of Old World folk, Irish, Swiss, German, and French, still wearing their native peasant costumes. All these places gave shelter and staple foods to the emigrants. In return they accepted salt, tobacco, sugar, steel tools, and the small luxuries of the river like packets of mail and newspapers and almanacs. Doby liked the people. "But whenever we come to a town, then ma begins to wash me," he sighed. "I don't see why. My hands are hardly dirty at all. Brooks are good enough tubs for me. I do not need so much soap. That towel is ma's. I know that towel whatever town I see it in. 'Tis so scratchy that it skins the curlicues in my ears." He eyed the instruments of torture askance. He had to draw on his stock of courage to prepare himself for the ordeal by thinking, "I do want to go to meeting and I can't go unless I'm washed according to ma's ideas." So when the call came, "Dob-ee! Dob-ee! Time for a scrub!" he went meekly to the operation. Red and shining, his hair slicked down stylishly with bear's grease, his best homespun suit on, Doby mounted a borrowed horse to sit behind his mother, and formed one of a company who fared away to the grove where the meeting was held. His shoes were tied round his waist by a thong. They were ready to put on when he came in sight of the meeting-place. Cobbled shoes of leather were the most expensive luxury a pioneer boy could own. Neither Doby nor any other backwoods fellow would think of wearing them if he could possibly go barefoot or use his moccasins. He and his mother were following a little procession of neighbors over the very best thoroughfare in all that region, the "Buffalo Trace." In the spring when the buffalo came up from the South to graze through the summer on Northern plains, the great herds crossed the Ohio River below the Big Falls. There were thousands and thousands of buffalo. It took days and days for the long parade of them to pass the settlements. Their countless hoofs beat out a path wide enough for the largest wagons and hard enough to make a perfect road. Riding the "Buffalo Trace" was the best of going. "Although it is a new country and a strange horse, I feel safe on the road to-day," said his mother, "for there is plenty of company. The preacher rides around such a big circle of settlements that he cannot get to any one place very often." "When he does come," Doby observed, "it is the big event. Everybody goes to hear him. But _I_ don't think there are many folks near us just now. Some have dropped out of sight around the bend and there isn't any one ahead of us." For a moment the mother was uneasy. The "Trace" between the grim lines of dark forests seemed suddenly a dreary lane. The distant murmur of the Big Falls always trembling in the air was very like a growling beast. She gave the nag a hasty whack and jounced along at livelier gait. "Now I can see horses ahead of us," began Doby in a loud tone. "But"--and his voice sank to a whisper--"the men are not on them. How odd their motions are! What _are_ they doing?" The mother stopped their horse as suddenly as she had started it. She backed into some elders and, peeping through the blossoms, she studied the scene so far before them. She decided: "Those four men are up to mischief. I know it--I am perfectly sure of it by the way they act. They are sneaking away from something." "They haven't seen us, but they are ready to make tracks. See 'em go!" cried Doby, as the men sprang to saddle and fled at a gallop along the "Trace" to the meeting-grounds. The mother considered a moment. "Such young rowdies like to play pranks on the preacher. They must have been doing something of that kind when we first saw them at the forest edge of bushes. Perhaps they have hidden his Bible. That is one of the things such jokers do. We will follow their tracks into the undergrowth and get his Book back for him." Doby did not fancy entering that unknown forest where more miscreants might be lurking. But as his mother expected him to hold the flintlock ready for any danger they might meet, there was nothing for him to do but to swallow his doubts and to turn the horse in when they came to the trampled spot. More boldly than he felt, he peered about as they followed the line of disturbed branches into the heart of the forest. After a few rods, "O-o-oh!" murmured his mother, "o-o-oh!" with pity and indignation in her tone. Here was a jest! The best of all frontier tricks! The funniest thing a practical joker could imagine! In front of them, tied to a tree, was not the preacher's Bible, but the preacher himself, bound and gagged and left alone. The hour for his sermon was close at hand, yet here he was, silent and helpless, a mile from the meeting. Young huskies of the border considered it a fair game to bait the circuit-riders and to make it as difficult as possible for them to reach their hearers. If one baffled them and arrived at the appointed place on his circuit, they tried to keep him from preaching by all sorts of traps. Why not? they argued. He was a grown man. Let him take his chances in work and play, just as they did themselves. Doby leaped from the horse, whipped out his knife, and cut the thongs. The preacher, as he found himself released, rolled his eyes in a frenzy of excitement and exclaimed: "Behold! I prayed for help, and, lo! an angel of the Lord with his shining sword hath freed me from the bondage of sinners." The boy blushed awkwardly at the idea of acting the part of an angel. But privately he thought it not too much praise for his cherished knife. "No big, long sword could have done as good a job of snipping loose as this sharp stone knife did," he bragged to himself. To the mother's words of sympathy and further offers of help the preacher gave no heed. He cared nothing for his bodily hurts, nothing for his humiliation, nothing for himself. "I am a shepherd in the service of my Master. I must go to feed my lambs." [Illustration: DOBY WHIPPED OUT HIS KNIFE AND CUT THE THONGS] With immense nervous energy, even while they stood staring, he retrieved his horse, which had been stampeded farther into the wood. Then he fixed his rummaged saddle-bags, mounted, and galloped off, singing a hymn so loudly and triumphantly that it echoed in their ears like a battle-call. "His name is Lorenzo Dow. He is not afraid of man or devil," said the mother, half in praise, half in criticism of this great Methodist preacher. "His manner is strange beyond belief; yet he sways all hearts toward righteousness." "He is a lively one. They must have sneaked up on him, four to one, to get him," Doby guessed. Mother and son hurried after him and came to the top of the next hill in time to see him, at a mad run and yelling lustily, charge down upon his late captors as they crossed the valley. The huskies were taken all aback. There was something of witchcraft in the way their prisoner appeared before them. Their minds were too slow to form a plan to stop him. He whirled past them like a storm, went over the next hill, and straightway was in the grove. Doby and his mother were among the many to see the spare figure of the circuit-riding preacher mount a stump in the grove and in ringing tones proclaim the Church militant. It was that perfect thing which comes in the easy times after corn-planting, a May day of sunshine and balmy airs. Boards for seats had been carried from a barn close by and people sat under the new leaves within scent of the wild honeysuckle. Later in the dry summer season these outdoor meetings would become camp-meetings of a sort which lasted for a week at a time. Whole families would bring enough household gear and food and shelter to enable them to live on the spot for that length of time. Church and prayer meetings would be going day and night under pressure of religious revival. To-day was to be a foretaste of the form of worship the summer-time was sure to bring. Madcap young pioneers had ridden miles for the sake of a little excitement. They meant to make the preacher furnish them with a wrestling-match as well as a sermon. Older citizens tried to prevent what seemed to them a sacrilegious brawl. They were outnumbered by the mischief-makers. Women hid in the barn and peeped through the cracks. "No place for females 'til the tussle is over," quoth the men. Doby hastily put on his almost forgotten shoes. If there was a fight he wanted to see it. Nobody knew better than he did what a poor place for bare toes a crowd of booted men can be. The rowdy leader pulled off his 'coonskin cap and grinned at the Methodist. "I learned one lesson from ye in the woods and on the road to-day; in wits ye are smarter than I be. In muscle I kin down ye. Right here on the buffaler waller I kin force ye to a fall." Lorenzo Dow threw off his shad-bellied coat and his stock, girded up his breeches, stepped into the smooth, hard ring of earth made by wallowing buffaloes, and stood grimly ready for the attack. Perhaps he was glad to fight. If he won, the news would fly as though the bees had carried it. His cause would then win honor from a successful bout and men would flock to the standard of a Church unafraid. If he lost, he became a sufferer with the martyrs. And for whom do more friends rise up than for the persecuted? So he welcomed action. He would do anything and bear anything which brought him and his message before the stripling who so much needed the life of the Spirit. He seemed a gallant figure struggling against huge odds. But he was not so much to be pitied as Doby thought. For he was only forty--not nearly so old as his adventurous life on two continents had made him look. And from constant hard riding over bad roads every muscle in him had taken on the spring of oak. To wrestle in prayer for his people, to wrestle in set-to for his Church, both were part of his day's work. He went at both with all his might. Amid wild cheers and wilder cries from the folks about them the wrestler and the preacher clinched. They strained--slipped--pulled--stamped--puffed--tore--in a cruel embrace. Once the preacher's shoulders touched the dusty mat of the wallow. How the huskies yelled! How the hidden women wailed! Another struggle followed, more terrific and of longer duration. Doby clapped for the preacher and shrieked and jumped about and enjoyed himself disgracefully. Then before the gaping crowd the sweating, desperate preacher tried a new grapple which he had learned in England. Under the strain of this unexpected hold the confident youth could not use all of his brawn to save himself. He went down--once --twice--three times. There he was; so pinned that he could not rise. "'Nough?" shouted the onlookers. "'Nough," groaned the rowdy. Then the victor, all tousled, stood again upon the stump, his hand on the shoulder of the vanquished. In the silence which followed their discovery of his prowess he began a funny story. At its quips the audience burst into gales of laughter. He told another funny one, and then another, with uproarious results. Doby listened to every word, yet he could not tell how it happened that presently the voice of Dow, rich and magnetic, held them all entranced. He went from merriment to pathos. The men drew nearer. The women stole out from the barn and joined his audience. Soon under his kind and searching words the throng grew still. These simple folks were touched to the heart. The preacher, now sure of their attention, rose to inspired heights of oratory. He called and held them at his will. He denounced their sins. They wept over their misdoings. They gave way to hysterical wailings. They cowered on the ground in their remorse and shook with the excitement in spasms called "jerks." He promised forgiveness to those who truly repented. Over his pictures of a better life they shouted aloud with joy. He gathered them into his Father's fold like hungry lambs and fed them with His Word. This was Doby's first plunge into the great wave of religious frenzy which was sweeping over the whole country, leaving some extravagances, but much lasting good behind it. As the borrowed horse plodded on the homeward "Trace" and the Big Falls resounded like a blessing in their ears, Doby, whose face now shone with something brighter than soft soap and water, said to his mother in a tone of high resolve: "I'm a-goin' to mind that preacher. I'm a-goin' to keep the soul inside of me just as clean as clean can be!" IX UNDER THE ELM _The Building of a Mid-Western State_ A MAN sat on a horse. A boy hung on behind the man. And the horse jounced along the trail toward the stone State House at Corydon. Corydon was near the center of population in Indiana, and for that reason had been made the capital. Two months before this, in April, 1816, James Madison, President of the United States, had signed an Enabling Act which allowed the people of Indiana Territory to vote for delegates to represent them in writing out a State constitution and in arranging a form of State government. The delegates had been selected at a popular election. And now, every morning in this fine June weather, they were meeting at the very new State House--that proud stone house--in constitutional convention for the yet newer State, at the sound of the newest possible bell. Obadiah Holman settled himself on the sharp bones of the old nag's back and said to his father: "Don't you suppose, pa, that it would be a good plan for us to settle in this new State? We are helping with the constitution all we can, and it makes me feel just as though I wanted to be a Hoosier!" The emigrant-train which was bearing the Holmans' fortunes had left the "river beautiful" far behind and was following a trail "blazed" through a land even more charming than the water path had been. A big canvas-covered wagon had taken the place of the flatboat. Two oxen tugged the wagon. A horse and a cow ambled behind it. Buckets and tools swung rattling under the bed, clothing dangled at the sides. On the tailgate was spread, three times a day, the jolly good meals that pioneer mothers knew how to cook. The wagons of the train, all very much alike, kept close together, one behind the other, through the shadowy, sweet-smelling forest. The men walked beside the animals, viewing the land with the inquiring eyes of prospective settlers in this happy Hoosier State where even the Indians and wild beasts were less dangerous than elsewhere. The train had stopped short at Corydon and gone into camp by the wayside, because the men who formed it wanted to stay through the convention and see what happened. As builders of the new West, they wanted to take lessons from these sturdy Hoosiers who were so seriously bent on making Indiana a good State. "You see, Doby," explained Mr. Holman, "the reason they discuss questions day after day is because they want to find the very best legal provisions that will give the new State civil and religious liberty, protect the rights of every class, help free education, forbid slavery, take care of the poor, keep down rum, and punish lawbreakers." At the word "lawbreakers" Doby thought of his own troubles in connection with Corydon and the convention, and he began to snuffle audibly. "Don't cry," said his father, kindly; "this business of an arrest and a trial is not your fault." The son dried his eyes by rubbing them across the ringed tail which dangled in front of him from the 'coonskin cap on his father's head, as the horse tried to trot. Doby did not own a handkerchief. Few pioneer boys did. When he wanted a rag to clean a gun, or to scrub a rabbit-trap, or to bind a wounded knee, or to do any of the things a boy needs a handkerchief for, he had to tear a piece from his homespun shirt or use some other substitute. At this moment the 'coon's tail was the handy thing. "I'm not cry--cry--cry--ing," he choked. "I'm just thinking how sor--sor--sor--ry I am because it is my knife that makes the trial--be--cause--cause the cobbler's son is such a bad boy that he had to be arrested." Now the cobbler was a hunched-back dwarf who went from one settler's homestead to another, making shoes for each family. He was a useful guest in the cabins. Everybody liked him. He was as honest as honest could be. But the cobbler's son--a hulking fellow--"took after" his "ma's folks" and was "light-fingered." The homely treasures of the wagon-train had tempted him. While following his father around he had looted it of small trinkets. For his father's sake, Corydon had already forgiven him much petty thieving among his townspeople; but when he robbed the town's guests under the assembled eyes of the greatest lawyers in the whole region it seemed like a defiance of the new State, and of the convention and of the constitution as well. So it was resolved to make an example of this unruly citizen; to arrest, try, and punish him by a due process of law during a recess of the convention. And Doby, because his knife was the most important thing stolen, was the chief witness against him. To change the unhappy current of the boy's thoughts, his father said: "It will be hot in the State House to-day. I hope they will move the session out of doors under that big elm close by. They have talked of doing that as a matter of comfort," and Mr. Holman fanned himself with his fur cap. "To-day they are doing it," Doby declared as they came in sight of the giant elm with its spread of some hundred and fifty feet of grateful shade. There the delegates were sitting on chairs, boxes, boards, and stumps, and going on most comfortably with the work in hand. And there Doby, pressed into service for the refreshment of the convention, bore a bucket of spring water and a gourd, from one distinguished politician to another, serving the ones who wanted a drink, and looking into their strong faces, listening to their debates, and watching for the important decisions. These delegates had come together from all parts of the new State. And since there were no turnpikes nor plank roads nor canals any place in the State, some were splattered with the mire of swampy valleys, some were dusty from the windy hilltops, some were in worn hunting garb, and some had on their farming clothes of homespun. Others had been able to pick their way over better trails and by a process of seeming magic were able to bloom out all "dressed up" for the occasion. Such lucky ones wore blue-cloth coats with brass buttons and long tails, buff "small clothes" which were something like a boy's "short pants," fine white ruffled linen shirts with "stocks," hand-knitted silk stockings, low shoes, huge beaver hats, and although it was beginning to go out of fashion, those who had "fine heads of hair" wore a queue much beribboned. Also they carried immense canes. They flourished gold watches almost as large and nearly as noisy as alarm-clocks. Each expected to be addressed as "squire." And every one of them was so called; and with the greatest respect, too, since nearly every one of them had earned this title. But then, the plainly clothed delegates were also called "squire," and for the same reason--they had earned it; and the Hoosiers were quick to give honestly deserved honors. Yet the men in "smart" attire were exactly like the ones in every-day garments in this one thing--they were bent on doing their work on the constitution the way it ought to be done. It was a sacred trust to them. For this constitution of the State had to lay down the principles which all future laws were to follow. It outlined the different departments and decided upon the duties of each one. In a system of representative government there must be a legislative department composed of men elected to make the laws, an executive department having control of troops and police officers whose business it is to enforce the laws, and a judicial department made up of courts which are meant to secure justice for all persons under the laws. Then there must be State officers. Doby counted them on his fingers to be sure that he remembered them, for he was in a hurry to grow up and vote. And after he had watched these delegates take such pains with the constitution, he made up his mind that he should always vote for the best man and keep an eye on him to see that he carried out his oath of office. On his right hand were, after the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor: Thumb--Secretary of State, who puts the big seal on papers; forefinger--Auditor of State, who keeps the accounts; middle finger--Treasurer of State, who takes care of the money; ring finger--Attorney-General, who is lawyer for the Commonwealth; little finger--Geologist, who knows where the good farm-lands are. On his left hand were: Superintendent of State Schools; Librarian of State Books; clerk of Supreme Court, who keeps records; clerk of decisions, who publishes them; and a statistician whose official name Doby could not pronounce, but whom he regarded as the wisest man of all since his head was full of figures on every possible subject and he could tell any number, from millions down to one-seventeenth of one-nineteenth per cent. of any articles that could be counted. Besides these, there were enough boards and committees and various minor offices to have numbered all his toes. Late in the afternoon the convention adjourned. Court sat. The case of the cobbler's son was called. A stump was spread with the tools of the law. There was a big family Bible for taking the oath, a gourd of home-made poke-berry ink, goose-quills for pens, and a rare sheet or two of paper. At one side was a magpie nest of small, shining articles--silver spoons and thimbles, gold beads and pewter cups, some pipes and a snuffer. Brave among them was a knife in a "Long Hunter's" sheath--Doby's knife. How the boy did gloat over that knife! But he had to let it lie and go to take his place on a log with the other witnesses. "'Tis far and away the best thing there," thought he as the clerk of the court picked up the leather sheath, took out the curious stone knife, examined it with interest, tried its edge, and then began to sharpen a goose-quill pen-point with it. "I'll keep an eye on it," the nervous owner decided. A bailiff drummed on the log with a stone until Doby had to shake his ears as though he had been in swimming. This stone gavel called the court to order. A curious crowd of country people, of townspeople, and of delegates gathered under the elm. Jonathan Jennings, president of the constitutional convention, afterward first Governor of Indiana, and a member of Congress, acting as local or associate judge, sat upon the bench, which in this case was a sturdy, literal bench, it having been borrowed from under the tubs in a neighbor's wash-house. William Hendricks, afterward third Governor of Indiana and later Senator from Indiana, who was secretary of the convention, became clerk of this local court, by appointment, _pro tem_. Both of these empire-builders gave to the case of Doby's old knife the same formal attention that the cause of justice should always command even in the smallest courts. Jonathan Jennings was young, not much over thirty, and as rosy and blond as Doby himself. His manner was grave and kind as he said: "The court is ready to try the case of the State of Indiana versus Jerry Cobbler. Is the State ready?" Answer: "It is." "Is the defendant ready?" Answer: "He is." "Then let the case proceed." The genial clerk, Hendricks, for many years probably the most popular man in Indiana, began, "If it please your Honor, I shall read the information." And then went on to do so, rolling off big words in a sonorous voice, declaring that "'the aforesaid Jerry Cobbler, in the State of Indiana, on the twenty-fifth day of June, 1816, at the town of Corydon, did then and there take and carry away a certain stone knife, said stone knife being then and there the personal goods of one Obadiah Holman, with the felonious intent then and there to deprive the said Obadiah Holman thereof, against the peace and dignity of the State of Indiana.'" "Guilty or not guilty?" "Not guilty." Thereupon the witnesses were sworn to testify to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. All eyes turned on Doby. He was seized by bashfulness and by the bailiff. Between the two he went through his examination with small credit to himself. He was glad to get back to his seat. He listened to the other witnesses, then to the counsel for the defense, and then to the prosecutor again. It was hard for him to follow the arraignment and the defendant's plea. "I can see the tracks of a badger better than I can the steps of the law. What's the use of all this talk?" he thought. "Everybody knows that Jerry stole the stuff even if he did say 'Not guilty.' They ought to take it from him, hand it to the owners, give him a lickin' and get back home to supper." The written law of a State requires that a trial by judge shall go through a certain legal form; the unwritten law of the people of a State demands that a trial shall be dramatic and entertaining. Only thus can the people's power and the force of their justice be shown to them as upon a stage. So this trial had followed the usual course. The clerk had read the information. The prosecutor had made his accusation. Counsel for defense stood with the prisoner. Witnesses had testified against and for him. Upon the evidence, the judge decided the case in accordance with the law in the matter. The verdict was against the cobbler's son. He was the thief beyond doubt and he was pronounced "Guilty!" Then came the sentence. "You must pay a fine of twelve and one-half cents," decided the judge. "'Ain't got 'n' money," answered the prisoner. "Perhaps your friends can pay it for you," suggested his attorney. "'Ain't got 'n' friends," said the prisoner, with perfect truth. "The cobbler has friends," murmured the crowd. Alas! Most of the cobbler's friends were as poor as himself. Those who were well-to-do did not like to part with real money for so undeserving a cause. In those days when most debts were paid by produce and business was done by barter, twelve and a half cents was no small sum. No one offered to pay the fine. Then Judge Jennings said, "According to the law, if you cannot pay the fine, you must go to jail." Whereupon the guilty one drawled, "'Ain't got 'n' jail." This also was true. The one building in town which had a few times been officially dubbed a jail, was now, in the stress of the emergency of a crowded convention time, turned into a temporary boardinghouse. In other words, the jail was full of statesmen! There was no room in it for Jerry. The crowd stirred. Some showed pride in this state of affairs; some were plainly disgusted; others amused. Doby didn't know what to think. Then said the judge to Jerry, "I may release you on your own cognizance." "'Ain't got 'n' cone-ans," objected the stupid Jerry. The judge explained: "That means the sentence is suspended. You may be a free man as long as you do not steal any more." Then the judge gave to his audience a short lecture on honest citizenship and loyalty to the new State. It was so simple that Doby understood its every word, and so earnest that it brought the ready tears to his eyes as he stood close beside the judge, looking up at him. The court adjourned. Day was closing. Victims of the robberies hastened to prove their properties. They must get back to the wagons by milking-time. The trial was over. Every one was satisfied--except Doby. "Don't cry," said his father, impatiently this time, to the boy behind him on the homeward-bound horse. "I want my knife!" wailed Doby. His father pulled up short. "We have taken up hours of valuable time! We have stopped the making of a State to get it for you! What more do you want?" "I--want--my--knife!" "Hav'n't you got your knife?" "No!" "Who has it?" demanded his father. "_He_ has," stuttered Doby. "_He_ has. He will come past this cross-trail in a few minutes. He said he was going home this way. Can't we wait and ask him for it?" "Who?" cried his father. "Ask whom?" "Him," gulped Doby. "Him. I don't want anybody to arrest him. I love him." Bewildered, Mr. Holman stared. "What do you mean?" Doby swallowed hard. He began again: "The clerk picked up my knife and sharpened a goose-quill into a pen-point. Then he gave the knife to the judge. The judge cut a pen for himself. Then he put the knife in his pocket while he was talking to the clerk. My knife is--in--the judge's--pocket--this--minute!" Mr. Holman protested: "But, Doby, you went to the judge and asked him for it. I saw you do that." "Yes, I told him to please give me what he had in his pocket. And he put his hand in his pocket to get it for me as he was telling me not to feel so sorry about the trial. He said I must not cry about it. Then he pulled his handkerchief instead of my knife from his pocket, and he wiped my eyes and he gave me the handkerchief, and he patted me on the head and went away--" Here poor Doby broke down completely and used the Jennings linen freely. Mr. Holman was greatly amused to find that the absent-minded judge had given the boy the handkerchief which was needed in place of the knife which was wanted. How heartily the people's idol--the adored Jonathan Jennings--the great man of the convention--would laugh at his own mistake! How quickly he would "trade back" the knife for the handkerchief, and how happily Doby's tears over the loss of his property would be changed to smiles over its recovery! The chuckling father and the weeping son reined up beside the trail. Mr. Holman said to Doby: "I can see the judge coming now. We will stop him. You must speak to him yourself. It will please his sense of justice to have you demand reparation because you feel sure of his kindness. When he gives you the knife he will give you his affection with it. He will be your friend for life." X THE SPELLING-MATCH _The Carving of a Great Name_ "I WONDER who that other boy is," and Obadiah Holman stared at a slim little fellow, dark and serious-looking, who was having hard work to keep step with his long-legged father. A group of men and boys were trudging through the big woods in Spencer County, Indiana. Several movers from Kentucky had fallen in with the wagon-train of emigrants to which the Holman boy's father belonged, and together the men of both companies were looking over a section of land. "Out of breath, Doby?" asked Mr. Holman. Doby _was_ out of breath, so he nodded. His father suggested: "You boys had better sit down on a log and wait 'til we go to the crown of the hill and back. It is more than a mile and the walking is rough." Most of the home-seekers were pleased with this place. It offered them the finest of soil. The hardwood trees were splendid. The springs were pure. Every tumbling brook suggested water-power to turn their mills. There were few dangerous beasts and no unfriendly Indians. Wild fruits and berries and nuts, something delicious to eat for almost every month in the year, were growing on the hillsides. Game was plentiful. The climate was mild. The soil was fertile and very deep. The father of the little boy said: "The titles to the lands in this State are made out by honest officials. That is a very important matter." All the men wagged their heads over the misfortunes of settlers who were careless about securing the proper officers to record their farms. Hundreds of early homes were lost through legal mistakes. "If a settler once takes up his land and pays for it, Indiana protects his right to the homestead he has earned," Mr. Holman agreed. But he made this strong objection to the site. "I'm not over-fond of chopping down whole forests of stout oaks, nor of burning them. I'd rather get a section where Nature has done some of the clearing." The father of the little boy, who was also dark and serious-looking, considered the spot an ideal one. He said: "I do not mind the work of felling trees. My wife loves the woods. She would be safe and happy here. I want to get her away from the Indian war-paths and the panther region. I could build a half-face cabin here and bring my family this fall. We could be comfortable all winter in a snug camp. By spring I'd have a clearing made." "Land can be bought for about two dollars and a half an acre; one third down, one third next year, and the last third the next," Mr. Holman told him. He answered, "Another fine thing about this State is the provision for school land in every township." He smiled. "I like that plan. Schools bring the better class of folks. They make a neighborhood intelligent. Until a schoolhouse can be built in this township, lessons are being taught in one of the cabins, I've heard. We are invited to a spelling-match there to-night. Everybody is," and he looked whimsically at his small son and smiled. The little boy returned the smile with a sudden lightening of his serious childish face, and watched his father with happy eyes as the tall figure strode away with the other men. Then the two boys on the log edged nearer and nearer to each other. Doby was thinking of the stranger: "He is tall, but I don't believe he is more than eight years old. I'd just as soon play with a nice small chap if there are no big fellows around." So he grinned cheerfully at his companion. Shyly the little boy moved closer yet. "It will be easy to like him," Doby decided. "He is so friendly." Doby could not think of anything to say. He pulled out his stone knife and fell to carving his initials on the beech log. The little boy gazed at Doby's queer knife. (Boys always noticed that knife. It was the owner's letter of introduction to all chance acquaintances.) Then he opened his own shabby pocket-knife and neatly cut the date--1816--below the bold O H. Then Doby promptly cut all the figures 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0 below the date. The little boy valiantly accepted the challenge and started to make the whole alphabet in capitals. This was a big task, but he slashed away at it and finally the letters stood in proper order. He had not missed one. He glowed with interest in his work. "Just like he had a lighted candle inside of him," thought Doby, full of admiration for the youthful student. "I'll have to take the dare." So he followed, rather laboriously, with the curlicued small letters. This took a long time. They, too, were correct. Upon this, both boys broke into satisfied laughter and began to talk. "Do you know how to spell?" asked Doby. "Every word in my book," answered the little boy, "beginning at the front or beginning at the back, I can spell 'em all." Then he added, honestly: "I can't always remember the order the big words come in. Page twelve is the hard page. My mother drills me on that page every day." Now they _were_ friends! Doby knew in a flash how the little boy lived and how he thought. He exclaimed, "That is the way _my_ mother does!" And the two boys, one from New England, one from Kentucky, because their mothers were alike, could look into each other's heart with perfect understanding. Doby said: "The last page in my speller is the hard one. Every day ma teaches me those words and every night I forget 'em." The little boy pursed his mouth and shook his head as one who had also gone through this troublesome forgetting. "I can read �sop's fables," he said. "I have a New England primer," began Doby, painstakingly quoting from its title-page: "The New England Primer Improved For the more easy attaining the true Reading of English To which is added, The Assembly of Divines, and Mr. Cotton's Catechism Boston: Printed and Sold by S. Adams, in Queen-street. 1762. Have you got one?" The little boy shook his head. "You ought to have," was Doby's dogmatic decision, "because for ever so many years it has been _the_ most important lesson-book for schools and families. A million boys have studied it and another million grown folks have bought it, and there have been another million besides those." The little boy was much impressed by these large numbers which Doby knew were true. "It says: "Thy life to mend This Book attend; and An idle Fool Is whipt at school; and My Book and Heart Shall never part. "If I had a fresh-cut pine slab, I could show you how some of it is printed. A slab is a nice slate to scratch verses on--" The little boy interrupted with this discovery of his own: "Our big wooden shovel is thick. I write on it with a burnt stick. When it is all covered with words, I whittle the writing off in thin shavings. Then I write on the clean wood again." "That's a bright idea," praised Doby. "I'll try it some time." He carved on the beech: Zaccheus he did climb the Tree, his Lord to see. The little boy examined it, doubtfully. "Is that poetry?" he asked. "Yes, indeed," affirmed Doby, pointing out the rhymes. "And that bunch of wavy lines at the bottom are the sycamore-tree that he climbed--in the Bible story, you know." The little boy _did_ know the Bible story. He showed plainly that he was a friend and acquaintance of the famous Zaccheus. But his eyes traveled from Doby's copy of the primer's illustration to a living sycamore down by the brook and the doubt in them deepened. Doby hastened to explain: "That's what they call art. I have noticed that poetry and art are sometimes different from the way we might expect them to be. We can't always understand them." Oh, boys of long ago! Oh, queer old rhymes and drawings! If Doby could have rolled over giggling on the log and tried to sing Riley's song of the "Raggedy Man and 'Lisabuth Ann," or if the little Kentuckian could have stuck up his hair in pretended fright, made his eyes round and scary, and begun to recite, An' gobble'uns'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out-- how easily they might have understood such poetry and what fun they might have had! Or if they could have seen the art of Adams, or Stark, or Steele, or Bundy, whose canvases hold sycamores with mottled bark glistening in the sunshine, broad leaves rustling in the breeze, white roots wading in the creek, the very buttons a-dance with joy, they would have wanted, as every boy does nowadays, to straightway try to climb them! "Spelling--well--spelling has to be exactly right or it won't do at all," announced Doby, returning to a safe subject. At this the little boy brightened. He could understand spelling. As the men returned and the group began to separate, the little boy said to Doby, "I hav'n't any candle to bring to help light the cabin for the spelling-match to-night." "Come anyway," urged Doby. "Ma and pa and I are going. We hav'n't any candles to take. Plenty of other people will bring them." But strangely enough, not one of those who gathered at the friendly settler's cabin after chore-time had remembered to bring the promised candles. The settler's wife was the schoolma'am. Besides teaching lessons to other people's boys and girls, and mothering her own eight children, and helping her husband, she was a gardener, a florist, a beekeeper, and a chicken-fancier. She was a spinner, a weaver, a seamstress, a milliner, a tanner, a laundress, a dairy-maid, a cook, and a general "handy man." In attending to the demands of these various trades she had temporarily left out candle-making. She had trusted to her neighbors to help, and they had failed her. The first ordinance for the rule of the Northwest Territory had said that, "religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to a good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." The laws of the new State of Indiana said the same thing. When a county was surveyed by the government's orders, it was divided into townships, each containing six square miles, or "sections," numbered from one up to thirty-six. Lot 16 in each township was reserved for school purposes. Until the near-by settlers could build a schoolhouse on this land, the children of that neighborhood had to be taught in their own homes, or the homes of some one of them. If money couldn't be raised to pay a teacher, the pioneer youngsters had to memorize their letters, had to learn to spell and to read the story of Noah and his ark, from fathers, mothers, and circuit-riding preachers. The hearth of the settler's cabin became the altar where parents struggled to keep alive the flame of desire for better things, until the schoolhouse could be built. To them the little log temple on Lot 16 meant the hope of progress. Such women as this teacher-mother were not to be dismayed by a small failure like the absence of candles to light her way. How could she "give out" words with nothing but moonlight to show her the printed page? Doby was watching her. He was fond of sociability, and any party, 'specially a spelling-party, is better if it can be seen. Was there any way in which a boy could help her? He grasped his new friend, the little boy from Kentucky. He whispered excitedly to him. The little boy, timid at first, soon entered into Doby's plan. Together they sidled up to her and secretly got her ear. She was interested and pleased. She praised their scheme. "Bright as a button," she considered it. In the settler's dooryard, with the full July moon shining down upon them, the guests formed two opposing lines of a dozen or so of people on each "side," and made ready for the spelling-match. 'Twas "light as day" they all declared; an idle hour for a bit of fun after a hard day's work. In the deep shadow of the door-jamb, where no one could see him, stood the little boy from Kentucky. When it was time to begin he shut his eyes and, forgetting everything else, he looked into the book of his trained memory. Beginning at top of the left-hand column on page one, he pronounced aloud, in a firm childish treble, all the words, one after another, in that column. The two lines, or "sides," of guests, as they had been "chosen up" by their leaders, "took turns," one person at a time, in spelling the words as the little boy gave them out. The schoolma'am acted as judge. She decided, "C'rect," if the speller got his word right. "Next," she called, if the wrong letters were used. Beginning at the second column, the little boy pronounced its words in the same way; then he took the third column; then the fourth. The ones who missed the words he gave were "spelled down" and had to take their seats. Slowly the stools and stumps in the yard filled with faulty scholars. The little boy's thoughts turned the leaf with as much certainty as though he held a printed book in his hand. He began again on page two at the upper left-hand column and went down it; began on column two and finished that; began on column three--how easy it was! How often and often and often had he and his mother gone over and over these same old words, laughing because he could spell them with the book upside down or with the book shut! Wouldn't she be happy when he told her how useful a thing her teachings had proved to be! Her love and her pride inspired him to do his best. And wasn't he glad that his father was sitting on the door-step, ready to encourage him if he got scared! He kept on pronouncing. Page three went blithely for him and so did page four. Then came five--six--seven; word after word column after column. The boy stood to it bravely, but the spellers were giving out. Three went down on "phthis-icky" and four on "Ticdouloureux." Those who remained sharpened their wits and went at the words as though they were splitting rails. Page after page they conquered. But "asafoetida" was too much for them. Even the schoolma'am wanted two _f's_ in it. She found it hard to give one of them up at the command of a little boy. But he was positive on the subject of one _f_ and the crowd stood with him through perfect faith in his ultimatum. She took her seat. At this the match was over. Every one was spelled down. The sole survivor was the little boy from Kentucky, who stole away with Doby. He did not stay for the praise the spellers wanted to give him. Doby thought, "I s'pose he will be all puffed up about himself." But it was a humble little boy who confessed to Doby: "When I got to page twelve, I couldn't remember--just could _not_ remember what comes after 'potentialities' and 'incomprehensibility' except 'asafoetida.' If they had spelled that word--that 'asafoetida'--I could not have told them the next word. _I did not know what it was._" Doby was appalled, as well he might be, by this narrow escape. What if they had failed? That their plan had ended fortunately moved him to say, earnestly: "I like you. I am going to give you my New England primer to remember me by. It's got pictures in it. I don't need it any more. I'll put my name on the back cover, then you can always see who gave it to you. The schoolma'am loaned me this lead on purpose so we can do good printing." And he set down primly the letters, OBADIAH HOLMAN. "Now," he continued, passing over the lead, "you can have your name in the front to show that it is your book." Smiling happily at the giver and the gift, the little boy from Kentucky, who was soon to become a Hoosier, carefully wrote his name. Doby, straining his eyes in the moonlight, looked over his shoulder and read the words, ABRAHAM LINCOLN. XI A PIONEER PUPPY _A Wagon-train Besieged by Fire and Wolves_ "SMOKE!" cried Obadiah Holman. "Smoke!" The men of the wagon-train drew together anxiously. They, too, had smelled smoke. But no one of them had wanted to say so. Now they all agreed, "Yes, Doby," and nodded. Their eyes were on the horizon. It was near the end of a hot day in July and quite time to go into camp for the night. The marsh-grass bottoms of a network of creeks had so withered in a long "dry spell," that their green plants had become like tinder. The emigrants were afraid to stop or to make supper fires in such a dangerous spot. One spark might set the whole wide bottom ablaze. No wonder then that they moved along as rapidly as they could and gazed at one another in quick alarm at the coming of an acrid current of air. While they debated what to do the breeze increased. Smoke-clouds tumbled in the northwest. A droning like the hum of distant bees came to their ears. "Doby, help the men to start fires to the south of us in the path of the wind," cried his father, as part of the folks of the train ran forward to light the grass. The only defense they could muster was their plan to fight fire with fire. It flamed up. The wicked little tongues noisily licked the ground brown and bare as the now strong wind blew the flames away from the wagons. Other men were violently busy trying to hurry on to this barren ground the oxen who pulled the wagons, and the horses and cows which followed them. The ashes were hot to their feet, stifling to their nostrils. The utmost urging was necessary to force them over the burned acres. Women and children ran along, screaming with fear and constantly stopping to beat one another's garments where the embers had ignited them. The wagons and their utensils rattled and banged. Cattle lowed. Horses neighed. Men struggled to keep up a semblance of order and to control the animals. "Whenever there is a panic I must try to keep sensible," thought Doby as he helped steadily at the teams where he was most needed. From the north they could now see the awful wall of red and black rushing after them as they fled. In the bedlam of the burned district, between the two great blazing waves, they hung to their animals, covering them and their own bodies with woolen blankets and skirts and coats. They endured with fortitude what they could not remedy. Doby sat on the yoke between his oxen, for his moccasined feet could not bear the smoldering ground. He tried to quiet the beasts as he listened to the cries of birds above him and the plaints of small, scurrying creatures of the thickets. Deer and wild pigs galloped past without noticing the wagon-train, so wildly were they driven by fear of the coming fire. The emigrants had managed to get many rods into their charred oasis. In the midst of their suspense the fire which was coming toward them met the district that had already burned, and died down suddenly for lack of fuel. The blaze running from them had leaped into a triangle between two flowing creeks and quenched itself. The woods on the bluffs had not caught. The danger had passed as quickly as it had come. In the sooty, half-strangled train no serious harm was done. After a scrambled supper where they stood, most of the emigrants sank to exhausted sleep under doubled sentries. But wakeful Doby sat on a tail-gate and viewed the smoking, blackened landscape with misery in his heart. He shut his eyes and tried to dream of his future home in Vincennes, to cheer himself with pictures of his favorite heroes. There was the gallant Spaniard, Francis Vigo, in doublet and high boots, in plumed hat and sword, with his following of half-wild "voyageurs" and traders at his heels. There was Father Gibault, the French Jesuit, in black cassock and cap, rallying his willing parishioners to their country's defense. Best of all, there was George Rogers Clark, the frontiersman, in buckskin, whose trained army of fighting patriots inspired both of the other leaders to the conquest of Vincennes and the saving of the Northwest Territory to the Union of States. These pictures of his imagination would not stay with him. There was too much smoke in his eyes and too many blisters on his feet, so he gave himself up to woe and sighed aloud. He did not know that the sons of the early settlers must always be a bold and fearless lot. Such facts about himself had never reached him. His conscience--that little candle of his soul--was burning low. He tried to resolve to forget his troubles and to show a cheerful face to the wagon-train, but his better thoughts ended in another groan. The dismal sound was echoed from the wagon-wheels beneath him. He could not believe his ears, for this was not an echoing place. He was silenced by surprise, but the echo continued. It crept toward the tail-gate--a sobbing breath--and a clumsy little animal fell at his feet. "Oh!" cried Doby. "Oh, you poor puppy! Where did you come from?" He picked up the mangled and bony brute. At first it fought him off as though whatever perils had brought it to this wretched plight had made it afraid of both foes and friends. On the instant Doby forgot his own grievances. He snuggled the wanderer against his wampus and crawled into the wagon with him, eager to apply first aid to the case. He rubbed the cinders out of its hair. He washed the sores and greased the cuts. With his handy knife he shaped bandages and tied up the wounds. He gave it milk. It moaned with pain and feebly snapped at the fingers which tended it. But, after a while, warm and dry and fed, it cowered in a shawl on his lap and whimpered itself to sleep. "May I have it for mine?" was the world-old demand of the boy to his parents. "I think you will be obliged to keep it for a time," answered his father, full of pity for the tiny stray. His mother smiled and set out another cup of milk. "I would like to know where it came from," mused the boy. "It must have been lost in the fire." His father and mother looked at each other, but did not speak. Why should they suggest to him that some other wagon-train might have been overtaken by the fire and this little creature be one of the victims of a terrible disaster? It kept him busy. Although it could not have been more than six weeks old, its unlucky adventures had already rather spoiled its disposition. In return for kindness it often gave bites and snarls. "It doesn't love back the way I thought a pup would do," said Doby next day, sucking some ugly nips on his thumb as they trailed along. "When it gets old enough to stand solid on its legs, I guess it will be about the fiercest dog of its size in the State." With this pet to care for and to teach, in addition to his chores for the wagon, Doby could bustle about with some appearance of forgetting their precarious life. For until the drought should be broken and the sky drop rain to renew the springs and cool the bottoms, each hour became more fraught with danger from the wild. From the black edges of the moonless nights green eyes glared at the fires of the emigrants. Panthers wailed from the bluff in long shrieks, like frightened children--a sound that chilled the blood of every one in the train. Wolves howled in the daytime--there is no sound more menacing--and dread hung over the travelers. So the queer little puppy, who took itself so seriously in spite of the ridiculous look of its wabbly legs and mangled ears, was a source of interest and diversion to the whole company. When it heard a wolf howl it quickly got to its feet, raised what bristles it had, and answered shrilly, pacing back and forth under the canvas top of the wagon where the boy kept it fastened. "It wants to get out and fight 'em," cried Doby, proudly. "It wants to eat 'em up. See how eager it looks!" On the second night of its stay in their wagon-bed it won their gratitude. By its yelping and its scratching at the canvas it sounded the alarm, "Wolf at the door!" Even after Mr. Holman had caught up his rifle to drive at the wolf, which was by that time quite out of range, the adopted puppy rushed about the wagon-floor in an ecstasy of usefulness and slept no more that night. Through the depressing, unfriendly land which the flames had desolated, women and children huddled timidly in the wagons, men doubly armed walked close to their domestic animals for fear of a stampede, scouts forged ahead and sentries brought up the rear. Dust, heat, distant puffs of smoke, dried-out or muddy watercourses, all told of a region suffering in an untoward season and of beasts uncomfortable and dangerous. Their train was followed, not by a pack as they sometimes feared it might be, but by one of those lone gray timber wolves, whose age or ferocity--or something--finds satisfaction in nothing but the silent stalk and the solitary kill. At last things came to such a pass, at last the lone wolf--it was a gaunt she-wolf--lurked so near, that panic seized the hearts of the emigrants. For no rifle could hit her. Like the horrid werewolf, in whom some of the superstitious travelers still believed, no bullet touched her, so uncanny was her cleverness in getting beyond range after every depredation. "I'm glad that pa put ma in another wagon, for the wolf picks our stuff every time, probably because we are the last in the train," worried Doby, who was frankly afraid of the gleaming eyes which had twice slipped past the sentries in the darkness and appeared below him during his turn at watching at the tiny round window in the middle of the back of the wagon-top. He was not ashamed to swing his lighted pine-knot torch vigorously most of the time. "Those teeth looked as sharp as knives." To the excited puppy he promised, "When you are a little bigger I'll let you out to do battle." But the frantic puppy did not want to wait to grow bigger. It was ready at once. Its new master was full of applause for its vigilance. On the third night an awful moment came. The ready sentries patrolling near, and his father at the oxen's head, seemed far, far away when Doby turned from a moment's soothing of his growling pet to find himself face to face with the blazing eyes in a great, slavering head thrust through the little round window. He shrieked and called as he beat at the hideous, threatening thing with his burning pine knot. Men came running to help him. But in the half-light of flickering torches no one dared to fire into the group who had been surprised into a hand-to-hand fight with the wolf. From that medley of human screams and bestial growls, the flash of knives, the thump of clubbing guns, she escaped as strangely as she had done before. The puppy, licking at Doby's bitten hand, begged ferociously to be allowed to get out and get at her. His father gave his animals to the care of another and took the boy's watch at the wagon's end in the last of the train. Doby, who could not sleep on account of his pet's restlessness, sat beside his father through the long hours of that fearsome night. In the darkest time, just before the dawn, when deep sleep had finally settled upon the train, the puppy leaped up and slipped its leash and called in sharp glad barks. Without, under the doubly guarded wagon, the she-wolf crooned. The puppy capered with joy. Softly the coaxing whine was repeated. The puppy answered in baby staccato. And then they knew! Even Doby knew! Knew whence the puppy came, why it was so fierce, and why the lone wolf stalked the train! A dozen rifles cracked, but the "unerring" pioneer marksmen could not hit that sly wolf in the darkness. She was out of range again. The father and son looked at each other in consternation. There was only one thing to do. Poor Doby did it. He spoke a word to the guards. Then with his heart-strings quite torn apart he took the beloved and unloving wolf whelp from the wagon, set it upon the ground, and watched it lope away into the waiting dark. Because a wolf never returns to an uncovered trap, the siege was raised. When affairs are at their worst a brave spirit struggles hardest. So daylight found Doby cheerfully holding a court of speculating emigrants, who were bent on discussing their late guest, the wolf whelp. His bandaged hand held his busy knife and he carved on a wide, thick strap of leather as he said: "Oh, never mind about the puppy! I don't care--much. There are other dogs. As soon as a friend of mine, who always keeps his word, gets back to his farm at Urbana, he is going to send me a foxhound by the next wagon-train to our new home at Vincennes." And he showed them the leather collar. Near the fastening he had cut OHIO * KENTUCKY * INDIANA. On one side were the words SIMON KENTON. On the opposite side it said, OBEDIAH HOLMAN. Between the two was the comforting legend, THEIR DOG. XII ONE PERCUSSION CAP _The "Pennsylvania Dutch" Colony on the Wabash_ SLEEPY Obadiah Holman shivered and pulled the covers over his head, for gusts of wind were fanning his cheek. "Sniff, snuff," said the wind. "Grunt--g-r-o-w-l!" The boy jumped from his bed to the middle of the cabin's puncheon floor. Wide awake now, he listened. What was that sound? A bear was smelling at his pillow through a crack between the logs of the wall. Slowly his feet grew cold. Slowly his scalp began to itch. Only that morning, Father George Rapp, the chief man of the town of Harmony, had said to his boy guest, "Better mix up wet clay with grass, Doby, and chink the hole by your bed, or some wild creature will come along and nip your nose while you are asleep." At the moment of Father Rapp's command, Doby had been busy. Everybody in Harmony always was busy. The industry of the settlement was epidemic. Even growing boys caught it. The Harmonists worked early and late. Their clean, blue, homespun-covered figures moved sedately through their gardens, fields and dairies, through their cocoonery and silk-factory, through their brickyard and woolen and oil mills. They toiled without hurry and without useless motions to the time of their own singing or to the music of their little German band. Even the dogs climbed into the treadmills to do a daily task of turning the smaller machines. Nothing was bought which they could possibly make themselves. All their surplus goods were sold to outside settlers. Thus, by never taking anything out of their treasury and by always putting something into it, they became so very rich that in 1825, ten years from the time they founded their settlement, Robert Dale Owen, a social experimenter, was glad to buy the town because it seemed to offer such a promise of prosperity to the communistic colony which he himself wanted to establish there. After a few hours with the strong-willed Father Rapp, who kept the colony going so successfully, Doby had found himself as busy as the other Harmonists. As soon as it was suggested to him, he went to work driving half a dozen pegs into the wall between the logs, and on them laying a board which he had helped split from an oak-tree. He had been obliged to pick up his shavings and his scraps. No carpenter's litter was allowed to mar the perfect neatness and order of the spotless town. In trying to live up to this high standard of tidiness, Doby had forgotten to daub the fresh clay over the place where his pounding had jarred the chinking out. He had been proud of his work, for that board on its pegs formed his bed. It was such a comfortable bed with its homespun tick filled with leaves and its patchwork quilt on top. Now on this very first night he was driven from it by a bear. "But I'm not scared," said Doby to himself. "I just know I can't be scared. It's nothing but a she bear taking a walk." While the bear strolled round the cabin and came back to try another sniff, strolled round the other way and came back for yet more sniffs, Doby stood in his linsey-woolsey bed-gown, wondering why he felt so chilly on an August night, and saying over and over in his mind: "I'm trusted to take care of myself. I'm trusted to look after this place. What ought I to do now?" Doby and his father had been given the cabin to use while they were staying in this Posey County Eden, fifty miles up from the mouth of the Wabash. As change was the only unchanging thing in Doby's moving life, he was not surprised to find himself alone at night in an outlying cabin of this quaint "Pennsylvania Dutch" colony, while his father, who had brought an important message from Vincennes to George Rapp and Frederick Rapp, his son, was still closeted in the house of those great men. It had seemed easier in the bright sunset to say to his father, "I'll take care of this place while you are with the Rapps," than it did now all by himself in the dim cabin with that big brute pacing near. He tried to think, "She can't get me." Indeed she couldn't. The cabin was as stout as stout could be. The door was four inches thick. Its inside bar was of double strength. The windows were tiny. The wide chimney-top was withed across; nothing could drop down it. "She can't get the stock." Cows and oxen were secured in a log barn as snug as the cabin. Pigs were in a lean-to quite as strong. Chickens roosted in tall saplings no bear could climb. Oh, the men who usually stayed in this cabin knew how to look after stock in the safest way! No one person owned the stock. Each man and woman in the community owned an equal share in every house and in every beast and every tool in the whole property. But no person owned any one thing, not even the clothes he wore. It was all a partnership affair. "As long as I stay here I must act like one of the community family and do my share. I wonder if they have any partnership rules about bears? What harm can she do? "She might trample the garden. She might steal the corn." Another chill shook the small visitor. "She has sneaked round the bear-traps. She has chosen the farthest-away field." He began to hope, "P'r'aps she won't go in the corn." There were sounds outside which told him that she was doing the very thing he feared. Doby silently crept up the ladder to the loft. He peered from its gable window. The bear was walking along in the moonlight, standing up straight on her hind legs like a person in a fur overcoat. Over the rail fence, which almost touched the corner of the cabin, she climbed exactly as his mother might have done. She went down one corn row and up the next, pulling open the husks with her forepaws and examining each ear of the green corn. If it were well filled out and milky, she picked it and piled it, one ear after another, on her arm as his mother might have held firewood. When she had a dozen she walked to the fence and started to climb out of the field. She was not forty feet from Doby. "Good," he thought. "Now she is going home." In getting over the fence, she dropped an ear of corn. This provoked her and she threw the whole armload on to the ground. Then she turned back for more. She could not have noticed Doby nor have suspected any harm, for she selected as much more corn. In the ear it is not easy to carry and she had the same luck with the second batch. As an ear slid out, she spitefully threw the rest away and turned into the field again. "Oh, the wicked, wasteful thing!" raged Doby. "If she does that many times there won't be half a crop left in this garden." He slipped down the ladder and stared at a gun hanging on forked sticks over the door. It was a queer gun; the latest-style rifle with cap and ball, which was destined to replace the ordinary flintlock then used by most frontiersmen. Traders on the river had explained the mechanism of this kind of gun to every passing emigrant. Doby thought: "I can remember every thing I've heard about that newfangled cap gun. Now is my chance to try it." It was loaded. Every pioneer kept firearms ready for instant use. Without a sound, Doby moved the table, put a stool on top of it and mounted to the rack. He could not lift the gun from its place. It was a huge weapon. Even his fifteen-year-old shoulders and his stocky legs were not equal to the task of getting it down. He began to sweat as he glanced round the room. "What shall I do?" His eyes caught a dark blotch of clothes hanging on the wall. "There are my best breeches. I know I look big in them. I reckon if I had them on I could handle the gun." In desperate haste he tore off his bed-gown. He girded himself in the manlier garments. He made a final trial--a supreme test of his muscle--and--b-o-o-s-t-e-d the rifle over the hooks! Remembering to keep the barrel pointed from him and to guard the trigger, he toiled at white heat and dragged the thing up the ladder, "'Cause there may be trouble, and if there _is_ trouble a high spot is the place for me." He took a peep. The thief had already thrown away another armload, at the same place in the fence, almost under the window. She was in the field. When she came back again she would be very close to him. He knew he could hit her. He meant to swing the rifle to his shoulder and to take careful aim. He braced his feet. He made the start. But he could not--he could _not_--positively _could not_ raise that gun to his shoulder. It was more than five feet long and weighed a dozen pounds. But nothing could stop him now. "I'll have to set it on a rest." He pulled an old spinning-wheel close to the window. The bar held the gun at an angle, sloping downward. The distaff kept the butt from slipping. He sighted along the barrel's shining steel, training it on the length of fence where the bear was sure to come. There was a queer thumping under his galluses. "I can't point it at her. But--if--she--gets--in--range--" He held his eye on the sight and waited. He waited and waited and waited and waited. He grew numb with crouching and goose-fleshed with suspense. "Suppose she went out the other way! Suppose she climbed some other part of the fence. Suppose-- "Ha! Here she is." Doby pulled the trigger. The gun roared. The bear roared. Flames sparkled round him. The gun's recoil kicked him end over end. Banged and battered, and rubbing his shoulder, he lay and blinked. If the safe end of the gun had done this to him, what might not its full cannon force have done to the bear? He was quite prepared for the scene which was before him as he crawled shakily to the window and ventured a look below. The bear lay stretched out on a huddle of rails and corn. "Of course she's dead." Doby breathed deep. "I know she must be. But--I guess I'll stay up here 'til pa comes. It won't be long before the folks who heard that gun will get here in a flock." He took another peep and another breath. "That is a big bear. Her pelt is almost prime now in the last of August." He got out his knife and examined its edge. A knife must be in perfect trim to skin a bear. Then an entirely new suspicion dismayed the boy. "The pelt of a community bear can't belong to any one person. Nearly a thousand people will each have a small share in it. Father George Rapp, the church and state, will direct Frederick Rapp, the business manager, to sell the pelt. Then we will all have an equal interest in the money after it is in the bank." In the midst of its successes, the Rapp colony finally failed, as did Owen's socialistic colony after it. Both dwindled away after the strong leaders were gone. Both were forsaken, as all others like them have been, and always for much the same reason as Doby gave, when all by himself in the darkness the honest human nature in his soul said to the listening walls in a burst of indignation: "_I_ am the person who killed the bear. _I_ am the one who ought to have the pelt to do with as I please. _I want my own things!_ Be sensible and sell the fur for money? Put the money in the bank? Own one and nine one hundred and seventy-eighth part of the proceeds? No! I'd like to have the pelt to sit on and to look at and to tell hunters about!" Still another disagreeable thought came to him. It was so appalling that it turned him pale. "If we came here to live, my stone knife would be everybody's knife. I would have to bring my new dog here to be everybody's dog." He took another peep at the bear. Then he gazed at the ideal town, perfect in its beauty of flower-hung artistic houses, perfect in its thrifty business arrangement, perfect in the justice of its laws. He thought of happy-go-lucky old Vincennes, struggling to maintain herself under all sorts of faults and difficulties, of that promised foxhound who was already waiting for him, of the house that his father and mother had planned, and he tightened his galluses, jerked on his shoes, donned his cap, like a knight buckling on his armor, as he proclaimed aloud: "I shall let the town keep the pelt, because it is the polite thing to do. But I am glad that pa chose the other town to live in. I'm going to take my knife and get back home to old Vincennes!" And so it happened, on account of this decision of the boy's and the more practical investigations of his father, that the stone knife found itself established on the farm which the Holmans bought near the old capital of the Northwest Territory. There the flint entered upon an age of wood. Out of the forest on the banks of the Wabash came the farm--by clearing. Out of the forest rose a house and barn of logs. Out of the forest were made the tools for the farm and the furniture for the house. From the trees about them all the pioneers who settled in the Ohio Valley took most of their necessities and many of their luxuries. The ax, the cross-cut saw, and the draw-knife cut the material for the heavy building. The father's Barlow knife and the son's stone one fashioned all the finer work upon it. When the big fireplace was finished, Doby could sit in the glow of the back log with his foxhound at his knee in the long autumn evenings, and set his knife to the interesting task of making the utensils which the household needed. After that came the joy of whittling animal-traps, fiddles, darts, drums, bows and arrows, snow-shoes, sleds--anything--everything--the happiest boy in the world could want! XIII THE VOYAGEUR _The French Who Followed the Explorers_ THERE was a glint of sun on metal. It came through the branches of the willows at the edge of the homestead clearing. A bit of red cloth wavered beside it. Again the metal shone with a twinkling flash, again the scarlet patch nodded in the light. Beneath the willows the prow of a canoe pushed silently from the Wabash River into the mouth of a little creek that wandered through the farm. Obadiah Holman crouched motionless like a rabbit when he caught that flash. At the canoe's movement forward he bounded toward home, as a frightened rabbit leaps from danger. "Indians!" he signaled to his father. "Indians!" The father, who was unhitching his horses, hastily got them into the log barn. With the flintlock on his arm as it had been all through the fall plowing in this natural open glade of his section of land, he, too, leaped for the cabin, which was already being barricaded by the boy and his mother. Through peepholes the family watched. Soon a solitary figure appeared. "That can't be an Indian," breathed the mother; "but it may be some kind of an Indian decoy." "We will hold our aim on him and keep under cover," the father decided. They could see that the new-comer had a mobile, laughing face. His clothes were of fur, picked out with bright cloth, somewhat ragged. A bandana tied back his grizzled curls to show the gold hoops in his ears. A strap across his forehead bore the weight of a pack which hung down his back. He was playing a lively tune upon an elder flute, stepping to its measures with his moccasined feet. While eying the man to be sure that he was not a treacherous disguised Indian, and to decide what sort of a chance comer he might be, the father's brow wrinkled with thoughts of this big Northwest and the men it had known and the origin of this wayfarer. "Whom have we here, Doby?" he asked. But Doby could not answer. Neither could his mother. Both were on the verge of panic. For it is a nerve-racking thing to stand still and wait for the next movement of a doubtful visitor, who may be going to send a burning arrow into the barn loft or to call a band of warriors to attack the house. To give his wife and son a chance to collect their wits, the father queried: "Who were the first white folks to come to this part of the country? Perhaps we can guess who this man is." "The French came earliest," answered the mother. "When?" "About a hundred years ago," she said. "What did they do?" "They built a fort and trading post at Miamis where Fort Wayne now is. Then they set up another at Ouiatanon and still another one here." As she stared at the motley figure coming nearer, the mother smiled, for she began to understand that she was now to meet quite a different sort of habitant from any of the varied peoples she had seen in the long journey to this old French settlement of Vincennes. "Ha!" cried Doby, trying to keep one eye on the loophole and the other on his father's face. "When the Spanish discovered America, they claimed the whole continent. If they had known about this place, they would have set up a flag here. But the French explorers really did find it and their flag is the one that covered it." Here he caught a hint from his father's questions and his mother's recovered calm. "'Twas a race of traders who followed the explorers." He now became eager to examine the stranger. "A half-breed trader! That's what he is!" "He is so queer-looking," was the mother's objection to him. Doby was quick with his surmises. "If these French traders made friends with the Indians and sometimes lived with them in their wigwams, and copied all the clever things the Indians knew about living in the open, they would become half Indians themselves. This odd old man is a voyageur. I know he is!" "But," faltered the mother, "if he is friendly to the Indians, he may not be safe for us to know." Mr. Holman was sure of his harmless character. "The French never incited the Indians to cruelty. Their influence was all for peaceful barter. He wants to buy any pelts we have for sale and to trade with us." The mother's New England habits made her long for any kind of a trader to dicker with. No matter how outlandish his garb nor how strange his manner, a peddler was a peddler, and as such she was glad to see him. So they opened wide the door and called a welcome. As Doby examined the voyageur at close range, he thought, "I never did see such a wild-looking man," yet the stranger's joyous face, his quick gestures, and his lilting music drew the boy to him irresistibly. For Doby's pleasure, after the greetings were over, the guest sang the words of his song and then he piped it, as a plover might have done. He whistled the tune and then he trotted it. He changed to calls of feathered songsters and to other measures and to different steps. Whatever the melody or whatever the dance; whether he sang or whistled or piped, he was a constant swirl of music and laughter and motion. Into Doby's sober life he came as a figure of purest joy, never to be forgotten--a faun of the forest--a creature of fantasy. To live out of doors and to follow the seasons, to be away from all care, and free to take up the next trading path that beckoned him in the strange new country--that was a voyageur's happy life. No wonder that these bold spirits of the Old World crowded into the white-winged caravals that could bear them to the great valley of romance and adventure! No other country has ever seen the like of these voyageurs. No other country ever will. Even in the far north, they are vanishing with the forests and the fur-bearing animals. They can never come again. There were no bounds to Doby's delight in the grotesque appearance, the bird music, and the elfin dancing of this one. The contents of his pack were small assortments of hardware. He spread them upon the stump by the log-cabin door. In a mixture of French and English, as musical as any verse, he told them that ammunition was lying in his canoe. He went and fetched it, and also brought with it his own rifle. These things, even the gun, he would trade for skins. "All these of the best, the finest, n'est ce pas?" he asked, throwing out his hands and showing his beautiful teeth. "Voilà, m'sieu!" Doby's father was in need of powder and shot. They fell to business whilst the mother busied herself with supper. She wanted pins, needles, and a candle-snuffer. She hoped after he had eaten home-made dainties, the trader might offer her bargains. Doby stood enthralled beside the collection of nails, hooks, gimlets, and plow-points. Here were the convenient odds and ends needed to make the work on their new home complete. First of all--above and beyond everything else in a boy's sight--was the voyageur's percussion-cap rifle. It was the most improved and best firearm of that day. It was not as heavy as most of them. It had seen service. And what was a curious, but entirely sensible thing, someone had cut off a couple of feet from the end of the barrel! "I believe I could handle that gun," said the boy. "Everybody thinks I am growing fast." The trader took the hint and nodded for him to try it. Doby's greedy fingers closed over the trigger. It was rather heavy, of course, but he could lift and he could carry it. "Fifteen going on sixteen is an age when every boy should have his own rifle," said his father. "But I'm sure our whole fall collection of skins would not pay for it." The trader gave one appraising glance at the really fine stock they had spread for his examination and shook his head until his ear-rings danced. Doby's heart sank like lead. Why was he always so foolish as to set his hopes on the one thing that was beyond reach? Why were guns so expensive? The crafty voyageur was not anxious to part with it. "I think to sell it at much gain to one very rich youth--a hunter great and successful. He is newly a citizen of Vincennes. To him I bear a letter and a present of elegance supreme." "We back out from the trade," laughed Mr. Holman. "We cannot overbid the rich and great." Doby's mind shrank into a sordid little ball of envy. It was not fair for a rich boy to have a "present of elegance supreme" and the rifle both! As he opened his mouth to utter his selfish disappointment, a glance at his mother's sympathetic face, and at his father's resigned one, moved him to shut it again. If he could not own a gun, he could at least be decently quiet about his fate. But to be forever borrowing a gun was so humiliating to a big boy! "Who is this wonderful hunter?" asked the mother, in neighborly curiosity. "Of the family there are two; it is m'sieu the father, and m'sieu the son. For that son is the letter. I go to the town yonder. I inquire. I present myself to him." "But what is his name?" insisted Doby's mother. The voyageur smiled at her vaguely. Then she knew that he could not read the message which he carried. His instructions were to find a hunter and show the letter. Now he pawed around in his nondescript garment and brought out a soiled paper. The letter had been written on a large sheet of white paper. Then the paper had been folded in such a way that the writing was concealed and the corners turned over to look like a modern envelope. Envelopes themselves had not then been invented. It was sealed with a big red daub of wax. "Two bits" had been paid to the messenger, who now pointed to the plain script of the address, which he held carefully wrong side up. Mrs. Holman twisted her head. Then she gasped, and hastily reversing the letter in his polite and willing hand, she looked at her family with startled eyes. Letters were so much of a rarity in those good old days of long distances and slow transportation that it was perfectly correct to show interest in any man's correspondence. Indeed, every inhabitant of Vincennes had been known to handle at least twice any letter which came to town, and to register several guesses as to its probable contents, before the person to whom it was addressed felt that he had a social right to claim and open it. So Doby and his father would not have been considered in the least rude as they sprang to look over the voyageur's shoulder as the mother was already doing. They read in concert: "Obadiah Holman, Esquire Vincennes Indiana" The voyageur, who could not spell out an address, was quick enough at reading faces. He said to Mr. Holman, "I make my respects to that hunter so rich and great." And he presented the letter with formality. "No, no!" cried the father. He handed the legal-looking document to "m'sieu, the son." Now Doby had never before had a letter in his own name. His fingers were shaking and clumsy as he broke the seal, unfolded the sheet, and read in a strained and unnatural voice: "HARMONY, INDIANA, August 31, 1816 "OBADIAH HOLMAN, ESQ. "Honored Sir: "For value received in the matter of garden truck, field corn, hived honey, et cetera, saved in the shooting of a she bear by your respected self, the community of Harmony voted to pay the pelt of the bear aforesaid; likewise the pelt of the he bear belonging to the same. Said pelts herewith attached and forwarded. "Your very obedient servant, FREDERICK RAPP." The voyageur, plainly interested, hastened to get the pelts, to spread them out, and to indicate, now that his best moment had come, that these two bearskins plus two big beaverskins--the finest of their collection--were the price of the rifle. Privately, Mr. Holman thought this rather a hard bargain, even more than the "much gain" which the trader was entitled to have. Beaver had been scarce and high in value for two years. A good beaver, taken in October, outpriced an August bear whose winter coat was coming well but was not yet in its prime. One glance at Doby's face brought to the father's mind the day when he had acquired his own flintlock; so he nodded indulgently to close the deal. The voyageur's words, "It is that you become owner, m'sieu," were the sweetest of sounds in Doby's ears. Then followed a blissful hour of target-shooting, to learn the ways of the new gun, and then followed, as a matter of course, the over-confident moment when the excited boy let the trigger down upon a clumsy thumb. As his father patiently dressed his wound, Doby's conscience--that New England torch always flickering before his mind--threw its light on a point of conduct he had not noticed until this moment. He saw that he ought to do something that he did not want to do. The voyageur, chuckling cozily by the hearth, with his picturesque head abob, never knew that the half-grown Doby, who sat staring at his bandaged thumb, was struggling with spiritual forces that nearly tore his heart asunder. No stranger could guess how great a victory over his own selfish desires the boy had won when he raised his face to his father's and said, "I think, pa, that you should take this new rifle for your own gun and give me the old flintlock." Doby's father was of upright stuff himself; and he now saw that his son, also, had the making of a just man in him. So he looked at Doby kindly, and the two understood each other perfectly. But all the father said was: "I've had my old flintlock ever since I was your age. I use it every day. I couldn't learn the tricks of one of these newfangled rifles. No, Doby, you can't swap firearms with your pa!" XIV THE BEAVERS' DAM _A Patriot's Sacrifice_ He stood upon a bluff overlooking the Wabash. Outlined against an autumn sunset, his noble figure dominated the landscape. A velvet cap with a jaunty plume rested lightly upon his short, snow-white, curling hair. Velvet also were his coat and breeches and the sweeping cavalier cape that clasped on his shoulder. Silken hose and fine linen added to the magnificence of his costume. It was of a style long gone by, even then, but its sumptuous fashion became him and set off his sturdy old age to its best advantage. His dress was a habit. He wore it unconsciously. But the sword on his hip--that was another matter! His lean and practised hand, a bit shaky with his seventy-six years, grew steady and as firm as youth when it swung to position and clasped that hilt. His faithful blade was his best companion. The deep red of oak, the scarlet of sumac, the yellow of maple, the brown of beech, every color of frost-kissed October mingled in the background and was reflected on the borders of the opal river whose shining length formed the waterway to the outside world. The little town was all astir. It was a gala day. Banners fluttered at the door of each cozy cabin, and from the tall pole of the old wooden fort of St. Vincent swung the American flag, almost ready for the sunset gun. On the river, rafts and flatboats, rowboats and small sail moved about and fell into position to make way for a procession of canoes coming down the stream. The folk of the town, big and little, hurried to the water's edge, waving their arms in welcome and shouting until they were hoarse. But the man on the bluff kept his high position and his attitude of martial waiting. Under his heavy white brows, his sharp black eyes grew large and tender, for in the distant canoes were his children--his careless, happy children--coming home to him, as they had done twice every year since the old days when he had begun to buy their furs of them. Younger business men now held the fur trade in their own hands, but the voyageurs continued their practice of holiday regatta to greet this white-haired man. Obadiah Holman, hastening into town, far ahead of his father and mother, was decked in his buckskin. With rifle on shoulder and knife in belt and hound at heel, he walked on air. For he looked like a man, he felt like a man, and he was a man--almost! More than satisfied with himself, he whistled as he strode, until he came to the person in velvet. Then his vanity dropped to his feet and was whisked away. Here was one more elegantly attired than he had ever beheld a mortal. "Doby, make your manners," he commanded himself. Off came his cap and he accomplished a bow. The gentleman turned square upon him. The bold, dark eyes read him through and through. The boy's face lit up with admiration at the sight of the noble countenance and at the sound of the kind voice saying, "I give you greeting, stranger." Impulsive Doby had small knowledge of etiquette. Quite carried away by his good luck in meeting this man, he burst out, impetuously, "I do hope that you are Francis Vigo!" The dark face--haughty and stern--flashed into a quick foreign smile, but the bare right hand gave Doby a good American grip. "From what my first arriving voyageur tells me, I suspect that you are M'sieu Holman, the son," he said. They gazed at each other as men will who are destined to become friends. Further words were stopped by the sound of a distant chantey, clear and merry. Forgetting all else, Francis Vigo answered the call of his children by turning his eyes toward the canoes. Doby slipped unnoticed to a great rock halfway down the bluff. From this vantage he could watch the fleet of voyageurs. Furbished for their entrance to the town, each wore a turban of scarlet bandana and sash of parti-colors. Ear-rings, thumb-rings, metal compasses, were all adangle. The paddles feathered as they dipped and the jeweled drops sparkled in the light. Purple martins awheel flipped into the eddies of their wake, great bass leaped athwart their bows, and tiny rainbows sprang anew from every disturbance of the water. Voices rippled from chantey to roundelay and back to chantey again. The river carried the tune afar and the hills echoed and re-echoed it. From the forward canoe an excited arm pointed to Francis Vigo on the height. A full-throated, "Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!" rose to him. He gave them a military salute. They answered with cheers and burst into their best melody as they raced into port. In the confusion of the shadowed landing torches began to glimmer. On the darker places of the river's brink lanterns bobbed. But a nimbus of golden light still shone around the gallant Vigo. And one by one, as they stepped ashore, the voyageurs ran up the slope to greet him--the hero of their hearts! Doby gazed in amazement at the volatile Frenchmen surrounding him. "Judging by their enthusiasm, every one of these men might have followed him in battle. But they are most of them too young to have fought in 1779, as he did at the capture of Vincennes. They are honoring him for other things which he has done for them." Truly they loved him for himself and the many brave deeds through which he had carried their kind. Francis Vigo was a soldier of fortune--a man out of Spain. With one of his mother country's regiments he had come to the West Indies and to New Orleans; afterward on his own account he had traveled up the Mississippi to Fort St. Louis, where he joined a company of traders and was known as the "Merchant of St. Louis." In his warehouse among his bundles of valuable skins he was the merchant prince who gave thirty thousand dollars--thirty thousand dollars in big Spanish doubloons--round golden doubloons--which he had bartered for and scared out of many a wicked Portuguese pirate who sneaked up the Mississippi to cheat him or to rob him--gave them to feed and equip the army of George Rogers Clark at a time when the Government had no money to finance anything. Without the help which Vigo gave to Clark, the little American army could not have lived. Without the army the great Northwest could not have been won. In pursuit of his business and in his joy of the wild, Vigo had often gone up and down the forest paths. He knew the country, was friendly with each trader, and could call every pirogue by its owner's name. Doby's rather cool blood began to run faster and his heart to pound with sympathetic interest as, scrambling for turns, the voyageurs fell upon Francis Vigo's neck, kissed his hands, and laughed aloud or wept outright in their delight at the meeting. One old fellow, in an abandonment of affection, threw himself upon the ground and laid his forehead against the Spaniard's shoe, bathing it with his tears. "O-o-h," cried Doby. "O-o-h! That is my voyageur! The one who brought my rifle! He was servant to Francis Vigo when they were both taken as spies at Vincennes, by the British Governor Hamilton. He told me so himself." Here the contagion of the old voyageur's devotion caught Doby and he had to swallow a sob or two. "It's perfectly right for him to be upset by memories. For when the Jesuit Father Gibault persuaded Hamilton to release Francis Vigo, this voyageur and that other old one went back with the Merchant of St. Louis to Colonel Clark at Kaskaskia and helped plan the attack which captured Vincennes." And Doby took off his cap and waved it and shouted with the best of them: "Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!" By the next morning's light, at call of reveille, these voyageurs, who had gathered from all points of the compass, made ready to set off for their various stations to begin their winter's work of trapping or of gathering skins from Indians and settlers. In one of the canoes, in plain attire, sat Francis Vigo and the oldest voyageur--his one-time servant. In another canoe sat the second voyageur of Vigo's historic spying expedition and--looking very conscious of himself and of his newly acquired servant--Doby! bound on a secret errand in the service of his country! "We need young blood for our nation's future growth," Francis Vigo had said overnight to Mr. Holman. "Give me your son for my assistant on this voyage for the Government. I will train him--make a patriot of him." Now Mr. Holman knew that Francis Vigo was the one man in the great valley whom Gen. William Henry Harrison had trusted to influence the Indians and the voyageurs in the troubled times before the War of 1812; the one who could go back and forth with negotiations to the Indians' Prophetstown on the Tippecanoe. Both races put their faith and their national confidence in this man. He was their ideal of justice. So Mr. Holman, whose entire stock of cash in hand was three Spanish dollars--those storied "pieces of eight"--did not hesitate, during his conversation with Francis Vigo, to lay these silver coins on the town blacksmith's anvil as an answer to the request for the boy's services. The blacksmith had cut each one up into eight sections, like a pie. Two of these "bits" made a "quarter," and six of them equaled seventy-five cents. This was the currency of the time. So unsettled had the War of 1812 made the nation's credit, so doubtful was the value of federal money, and so unsafe all banks, that a "bit" in the hand was worth, in actual purchasing power, many times its value of paper in the pocket. One of his dollars Mr. Holman had presented to Francis Vigo with the formal request, "I beg you will accept my contribution to my country's cause in the matter of this voyage." The second dollar he had given to Doby. "This is a stake for your future fortune," he said. The third he had put in his own pocket. Afterward, Doby had asked of his father: "Why did you give Francis Vigo money in such a way that he had to take it? He is the richest man in town. Everybody says so, because the Government owes him thirty thousand dollars. Nobody else in town has that much money." Doby felt of the "bits" in his pocket and imagined them thirty thousand times as heavy. Rich indeed! Mr. Holman had a gloomy expression. "I know we will continue to owe him." Then he quoted something about the "law's delay--the insolence of justice," but added, practically, "I don't suppose we ever have that much in our treasury that we want to pay debts with. Our money affairs are in disorder." Scandalized Doby almost whispered, "Do you mean that he probably hasn't any money except what you gave him?" Mr. Holman nodded, and glowered at fate. Doby knew that the mission to Fort Wayne on which they were this morning starting was a financial one. As he sat in his canoe and gripped his paddle for the start, it gave him a curious sensation to reflect that the vigorous old man who was in the next one, ready to steer through the silver water out into the sunrise, was the Spaniard who had used his inherited fortune for the cause of exploration in the New World; was the colonist who had given the fortune he had earned to the cause of the Northwest conquest; was the true American now ready to risk his sole capital of eight bits toward securing financial liberty for an embarrassed government. Silver and rose, the sky hung over the river. Silver and rose, the water reflected it. The forest, mysterious and vague, surrounded the town. The embarked voyageurs, now in working clothes, looked toward Francis Vigo. They rested on their paddles. He rose in his prow. Baring his head, he threw out his arms in the form of a cross. With the simplicity of little children, the voyageurs folded their hands and said their prayers; they crossed themselves; then lifted up their voices in such a hymn that the valley resounded with their praise. "It is that we separate for the half-year," explained Doby's voyageur, as with every few miles of going up-stream some canoe turned in at a tributary and disappeared for its trading-grounds. After that morning burst of song they all moved silently. The paddles made no sound. The dull colors of the boats themselves--some birch-bark canoes, some hollowed-out log pirogues--mingled like foliage with the shore line. The men in butternut brown or fur were mere shadows on the river. The woodland and its streams were swallowing up its wild men. By and by the two canoes with Francis Vigo and Doby in them were alone upon the river. "Look!" signaled Francis Vigo's eyes to Doby. A red deer was drinking on the brink. "Look!" A bear was at his bath. "Look!" A blue heron was fishing in the shallows. And a saucy kingfisher helped himself to a bite of the red haws stuck in Doby's cap, so much a part of the primeval vastness had they already become. Once, as they stopped for dinner on the shore, the odor of frying bacon was so delicious to some of the forest creatures that they had a glimpse of a mother wolf bringing her whole whelp family to take a peep at those men creatures who sometimes left such savory scraps behind, and who were, upon a pinch, not such bad eating themselves. "They like bacon cooked, but they would take me raw," and Doby was glad that he had a rifle of his very own. In the silence of their forest night camp, whilst the two voyageurs slept with their feet to the fire and the harvest moon looked down upon them through the Indian-summer haze, Francis Vigo explained to the boy the nature of his errand. "I am getting old," he said. "Time is too precious to waste in making money for myself. I must teach the Northwest the value of an honest currency, else all business will be ruined and our country fall into poverty." He showed Doby a package wrapped in oilskin. "This priceless paper did not go to Corydon with the documents of Indiana State. It is Government property and must be secretly delivered to the proper agent at Fort Wayne, to go on to Washington. We should have safe banks and vaults for such moneys and papers. They should not be exposed to the mercy of fire and water and chance journeys as this one is. I must use this as an argument to those in authority for the need of national banks. I shall also prove to them the demand for a tariff to protect our industries. These are our present necessities." "The tariff is to make us money and the banks are to guard it," said Doby, who knew that these two vital measures were expected to influence the fate of the great valley as much as any war had ever done. "So you want to get there before election. And you want them to vote for James Monroe for President, don't you?" "Yes; because as Secretary of State and as Secretary of War he carried us through the war, we now need him to take us over the financial crisis which always follows a war." All Saints' Day came in glorious October sunshine. On that day they entered Fort Wayne. Again in velvet, with gleaming sword, Francis Vigo made ready for an audience. An enthusiastic bugler of the fort was so impressed by the appearance of the dignitaries in the approaching canoes that he went through his entire repertoire of calls without waiting for official permission, and brought all the people of the town to give welcome to the visitors. So Doby had the feeling of walking up-stage as he entered the village. That sensation stayed with him during the few days that they spent at the fort; and it rose high in the hour of their departure when the entire populace showered blessings after them as the velvet cap of the smiling leader waved, "Farewell." Their going was a spectacle. Yet when they made a landing down the river for the night's camp, all the glory faded. The beautiful country turned cruel and sordid. "That is a threatening sky," commented Francis Vigo, as he put away his velvet and began to prepare for rough weather. "Bad wind," from one dejected voyageur. "More cold," from the other. "Here comes the rain!" cried Doby. Dark November filled their camp with melancholy discomfort. In place of the gallant soldier there hovered over the damp and sickly fire an old, old man, blue with chill, and tired and dispirited. Doby said to himself: "In the matter of delivering the precious papers and of teaching the district the value of tariff and sound banks, the errand for the Northwest was successful. But in the business of collecting some interest to live on he has failed. That means that he has no way to feed himself this winter. Red tape makes poor clothes and worse meals." Dismayed and pitiful, the boy longed to comfort that good man who had fallen into the habit of sacrificing himself for his country. "S-w-i-s-h! S-w-i-s-h!" poured the rain; "W-h-e-w! W-h-e-w!" howled the wind, as the swollen current of the Wabash bore them homeward next day. "H-o-n-k! H-o-n-k!" cried the wild geese overhead. "Q-u-a-c-k! Q-u-a-c-k!" complained the migrating ducks as, wearied by the buffeting, they dropped to the water for a little respite and surrounded the canoes with the querulous wails. A heartless loon laughed long and discordantly over their wretched plight. The river which had beckoned them with sunlight and with song, now with fickle change of face grabbed them by the prows and hurtled them along at terrific flood speed. To a voyageur his canoe was as a second skin. He would never think of abandoning it. He took whatever the weather sent. But as they came to a bend in the river, "Yi! Yi!" shrieked one voyageur in panic. "Yi! Yi!" for danger seemed about to overwhelm them. A giant sycamore, undermined by the flood, swayed toward them and came over into the river with a crash and spatter that deafened and almost swamped them. In one moment its mighty top had divided a portion of the river, as a child's hand might turn a rill from a spring, and the new current, seeking an outlet, leaped into a bayou and went sweeping down it, to make a new channel. With instant turn of paddles to escape the tree the voyageurs spun the canoes into the midst of this new current and were borne by its irresistible force through the bayou, over a bar, and into a stream that ran parallel with the river and finally emptied into it. Like the débris on its surface, the canoes bobbed and tossed with the runaway stream, in constant danger of being crushed by rocks and snagged by thickets. They were part of chaos. With all their might they backed water. The clever voyageurs steered between trees and around stones as the truant flood bore them headlong to almost certain destruction. But louder than the storm in the trees, stronger than the rush of wind in their ears as they tore along, came the ominous roar of water over a tremendous dam. To shoot such rapids as he knew was one thing to a voyageur, as part of his day's work. To go over an unknown dam at freshet pace, as the result of an accident, was quite another. Huge, muddy boulders rose suddenly on all sides of them. "Fend!" yelled the voyageurs as they gripped the paddles to steady the last rush. Dozens of smaller black stones looked like streaks as they miraculously flashed through this strange, rocky gully without hitting a stone. "The dam is broken!" howled Doby, although he knew he could not be heard. They all saw the broken center and they whirled through it at the speed of an express train, one close behind the other. Below the dam were dozens more of the small black stones, which to their straining eyes seemed to shift and move as fast as they were going themselves. The almost unendurable strain on their arms and backs suddenly gave way. The new stream emptied itself into a wide bottom and spread out harmlessly in a tame and shallow lake which looked toward the Wabash. They edged out of the current into quiet backwater. All was as tame as a mill-pond. Doby, thoroughly shaken, exhausted, and amazed, cried out: "That was about the luckiest escape any one could have! Big stones and little stones! I never saw such a rocky gully! How _did_ we miss them!" Francis Vigo crossed himself and looked at the boy in grave reproof. He did not believe in luck. The voyageurs clapped their hands and laughed aloud. To Doby's astonishment, all three of his wet, tired, and discouraged companions glowed with warmth and some new interest. Their escape--their danger--was already forgotten. They were keen for some plan which had formed in their minds as they came to safe water. Doby could not follow their thoughts. He turned round eyes from one to the other. "Big stones were beaver houses," smiled one trader. "Little black stones were beaver heads," explained the other. And Francis Vigo added: "The dangerous way of our duty has brought us to the beavers in a year when their fur is of double value. Since towns and people and money have failed us, the wood and stream will give us our living for the year." Doby's economical Anglo-Saxon mind suddenly flowered into Latin courtesy. He took off his cap to the Spaniard and said so fervently that he knew his gift would be accepted, "Because of the education this voyage has been to me and as a thank-offering that my life is preserved, I present my share in this beaver find to my creditor, Francis Vigo!" Francis Vigo's face beamed kindly on the ardent boy. Doby was proud of his dramatic success in this elaborate speech of politeness. He thrilled pleasantly and made a little flourish with his cap. Alas and alack! Erratic movement above the point of balance is not the thing for a canoe's safety. Doby's gesture was an unsportsman-like thing and he might have paid for his vanity by a fatal capsize had not the alert voyageur, always suspicious of his impulsive passenger, bent his own body quickly and restored the balance. The canoe was still upright, but the action of the paddle, the surging of the craft and the other canoe's violent action to avoid being caught in disaster brought them so close to the main stream, that the current had seized them again. Before Doby could realize his fault they were whirling down the Wabash as before. Whether they would or no, they were on their way home. Some other day in quiet water they would come back to the town of beavers. Later and later grew the hour. Slowly and more slowly flowed the river. The channel had widened. The pent waters were finding space. The harassed travelers looked about for a landing-spot to spend the night. At last, the top of a fallen tree at the bottom of a gradual hill seemed to promise a practical buffer. "Merci!" cried Doby's voyageur. "Fend!" He backed water, and as the other canoe came alongside he raised a shaggy eyebrow in question to Vigo, who assented with a nod. Together they eased their frail craft from the sweep of the river into the resilient branches of the tree. They edged inshore, found the ground solid, and pulled up the boats. Other people had picked the tree as a safe harbor. When Doby straightened himself to ease his tired back his eyes met the baleful gleam of an Indian's glance. Before he could gasp a warning to the others strong fingers closed upon his windpipe. He was lifted by his hair and borne to the top of the hill. All thought and feeling left him. There was no sound but the r-r-i-i-p-p-p of leaves as heavy bodies were dragged through them; no light but the uncertain moon through ragged clouds. He had no sense of up or down, of earth or sky. He hurtled along through space with his feet dangling. He struck a tree, freed himself from the strangler, and collapsed in a heap. Dimly some sort of light reddened around him. People were feeding a fire. The hollow glade in which he lay swam like a mirage before him. About the fire circled a dozen or so of very old Indians. They were so absorbed in the ritual of their dance that they ignored the presence of the other group of younger Indians who had brought in the prisoners. Prisoners were a minor thing and of no importance compared with this ceremony, which must not be interrupted. The old Indians went round and round and round and round, without words, without music, without sound of any kind. Their hands were weaponless, their gestures were as one. Dizzied and dumfounded by this circular marching, Doby closed his eyes and waited for death by violence. Vigo and the two voyageurs were in the same plight. Yet none of them was gagged or bound or weaponless. Their captors did not rush forward in triumph with their prey, nor give the conqueror's war-whoop. They stayed half hidden in the background. Their one desire seemed to be to keep the silence unbroken. The voyageurs, rough adventurers, soon recovered from the surprise of their capture, and stood lightly poised either to fight or to run. Escape was the first thought in their minds. Their expression soon changed from shock to curiosity; from curiosity to wide-eyed incredulity. Even Doby's shattered wits found an uncanny aspect of things. Abject fear was swallowed up by a thrill at the weirdness which breathed from the glade. The whites looked from the young savages, unarmed, guarding them, to the old ones, unarmed, gyrating monotonously, and using their hands rhythmically. One of the hardy voyageurs turned green and ghastly under his tan and his knees doubled under him. Francis Vigo, following his glance, went white to the lips. But the poniard up his sleeve shot out and he pricked the fainting voyageur cruelly. The pain revived the man. His companion received the same treatment. Even then they were plainly weak with horror. And Francis Vigo, the intrepid soldier, closed his eyes, as though the dancing men were the most dreadful sight of his life--a vision sickening beyond endurance. While his captors stood rigid in shadow, while the voyageurs shook with nervous chill, while Vigo glanced wildly here and there, Doby stared at this curious feast which could so undo strong men. For despite its dull and lugubrious setting, feast of some kind it certainly must be. This place was not a village. There were no wigwams, no women, no children, no ponies, no dogs. All the interest centered on a great flat stone in the center of the glade. It held a bed of glowing coals. Savory meat was roasting there. The old men, swooping slowly back and forth, were gorging themselves in a strange and barbarous ceremony of united forms of handling--biting--chewing. Solemnly, in an ancient, long-forbidden and almost-forgotten rite, they were invoking some spirit of evil. From one detail of the medicine-men's costumes to another, from one mesmeric swing of arm and body to the next went Doby's glance in vague alarm. Last of all, he viewed the sizzling rock. A sacrificial cannibal rock! Not all the poniards of the realm could have helped Doby to self-control. He swooned upon the turf. Bending to raise the boy, Francis Vigo brought his own face into a patch of moonlight. His captor recognized him. For what Indian did not know Francis Vigo? Vigo caught the expression of friendliness, and with an imperious gesture signified that they must be taken from this spot. It was daytime when Doby again opened his eyes. He was between the voyageurs under the fallen tree near the canoes. On the river bank sat the old Indians. Francis Vigo, jaunty in velvet, cap, plume, and sword, was smoking the calumet. One voyageur whispered to Doby, "Indians want to burn Vincennes." The other murmured, "Père François tries to prevent that." The first again: "They mean to join with renegades and capture the fort. Renegades get Government money. Indians get fire-water." Doby whispered back, "Has he told them that he took the money and the papers worth money to Fort Wayne?" Both nodded. "Do they know he has had the fire-water moved away?" They nodded again. "Will they believe what he tells them?" Emphatic bobs of both heads. With the point of his sword Francis Vigo was drawing a map on the alluvial mud of the inlet. The Indians bent over it. The voyageurs exchanged dismayed glances. Even before he saw the map it was not hard to guess, that the "merchant of Saint Louis," knowing how to turn greed into profit, had bought the lives of his three followers and had purchased the safety of his home town with the one thing he had to sell--the newly found fur tract. "They agree to take the beaver dam," was the meaning of one voyageur's sigh. "They go to it instead of to Vincennes," was the translation of the other's shrug. Doby thought, "To their old bones, the certainty of furs to bring fire-water is better than the risk of a clash with the whites, who always defeat them." So the hunched, misshapen, and degraded old savages, each with his attendant youth, embarked upon the now quiet river and paddled out of sight of the alien race who loathed them. The dominant Vigo, who had lazily watched them depart, now dropped his assumed calm as suddenly as he did the velvet coat. "Home!" he commanded. "To warn the fort!" As they hurried along, he declared: "The renegades must be captured and defeated. They are wicked men." "The Indians are dreadfully wicked," shuddered Doby. "They know nothing better than their own customs; I pity them," said the great friend of Indians. "Some day over that sacrificial stone shall be hung a bell--I vow it now. I put it in my will. I promise it to my country. A deep-toned bell! It shall call all children to a school to learn the laws of civilization, and all men to a court of justice to keep those laws in force. Old Vigo's tongue can live in a bell and go on preaching something better than greed, something higher than money!" (For many, many years gone by, and for to-day and for to-morrow, the deep-toned bell above the forgotten stone is calling melodiously. Hundreds of boys have listened to "Old Vigo," the bell, talking to them.) Although he planned for the better defense of the fort, Vigo was no longer the commandant of militia, as he had been some seasons before this. But he knew that both citizens and soldiers would respond to his warning as to nothing else, so he outlined his strategy as he paddled toward Vincennes. "The renegades will come across the river by my private ferry--they think I will be far from home--and they expect to meet the savages by appointment at midnight." His face glowed with the spirit which could not be subdued. "They will meet soldiers instead. I can fight bad men of my own race with good appetite," he declared. It was long past dark when they came to their own town. The dock was deserted. So Doby set off at a run to rouse the early-to-bed militiamen and to summon them to the post. He had a vast sense of his own importance when he stuck his head in the unlatched doors of the unsuspicious sleeping citizens and yelled: "Arm! Arm! Come to the fort!" For such clamor followed as few boys may ever be able to stir up. Nightcaps and flintlocks were poked from the windows. But he was beyond the reach of questions or shot ere they got their eyes open. A stream of men, first awakened, were running toward the fort before the last ones could find their boots. Light-headed from hunger, lack of sleep, and excitement, Doby could not follow all the plans for defense. Friendly Indians and boys disguised as Indians were to take the place of the ones whom Colonel Vigo had bought off up-river. These decoys were to follow the renegades, and in the attack upon the fort were to fight them from the rear. Doby, with his loaded rifle in his hands for the first attack, and his knife on hip for hand-to-hand work, was given a man's place at a loop-hole of the stockade. He waited in the dark for the signal to the impromptu garrison to surprise the surprisers. There was a muffled stirring of many feet. First a scuffle--then a run. Shadowy forms advanced upon the seemingly unguarded fort. Thieving hands fumbled at the gates. In the breathless silence, Colonel Vigo's voice sounded like a pistol-shot. "Fire!" he snapped. Two dozen rifles spat. The cracking took the invaders completely off their guard. They fell back in astonishment. But they rallied quickly and returned the fusillade. Boys within the fort lighted torches and waved them to show the defenders how the battle lay. The attacking renegades were made up of numbers of outlaws, of deserters from the army, and of unlucky or incompetent settlers. Every post in the Northwest had more or less of this human riffraff and many towns had the same unlucky experiences with them. These robbers did not trust their Indian allies. Treacherous themselves, they suspected the old Indians' motives in joining them. So they had purposely given their own number as much smaller than it was, lest the Indians should turn upon them. Doby's heart was not the only one which thumped with dismay as the flare of the torches lit up the goodly number of the besiegers. Even Francis Vigo's strategy of replacing their allied Indians with friends of the town could not assure Vincennes of victory. She would have to fight for her life. How curious if the far-away beaver dam should be the thing that bought her safety! It had lessened her foes and given her a fighting chance. Madly the renegades charged the stockade. Staunchly the citizens helped the handful of soldiers to hold it. Again the rabble advanced. Fell back! Advanced! Fell back! Mercy and justice had no place in Doby's mind. His duty was to hold his section of the fort. He banged away with the best of the volunteers and howled like an Indian as the renegades ran from his fire into the volleys of the disguised men behind them. During a lull in the battle he was proud to be obliged to tie up his head where a bullet had grazed it, and to swagger like an old war-dog as he moved across a barrier to help Colonel Vigo tie up a flesh wound in his sword arm. Then--on came the renegades! "Hi! Hi! Hi!" was their rallying call. "Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" answered the flintlocks. Over the walls piled the enemy. Through the gates came the disguised Indians, fighting for the fort, and against their supposed allies. Hand to hand--without command--without system--without mercy. One of those free-for-all defenses in which frontiersmen had to become victorious if they hoped to survive. The renegades were beaten down, overcome, captured, and imprisoned. The town was saved, as many a settlement in the Great Valley was held for the white race--by the determined spirit of its founders. Little blood was shed; less talk was heard; least record was made. One item in a dusty old book is all that is printed about that lively night. To wit: This da. novem. 12. 1816. by Col. F. Vigo licens^d ferry freebooters attack^d stockade. 9 wound^d. loss 1 pk. horse. Attack repuls^d. This document marked the final touch to Doby's education for that important year. He was on his way toward becoming a man and a citizen--for he was at last a soldier--a volunteer soldier--a victorious soldier--in defense of the Great Valley. AFTERWORD THE glory of the Great Valley is in the deeds of her heroes whose conquests are blazoned on the tablets of the nation's memory. Her prosperity is in the genius of her inventors and the hands of her artisans--those renowned creators of her colossal fortunes. But her safety lies deep in the hearts of her common people whose names are seldom heard. On their integrity depends the fate of this land. They are the very life of the United States. How can we better understand the stuff whereof our people are made, the labor they have done, the ideals they have created, the institutions they have reared in the two centuries since they first set foot in this valley, than by studying their present by the light of their past? How can we thank them more appropriately for the treasures they give us, than by imitating the sincerity of their lives? One of them, a boy pioneer, who lived in the times half-way between the lads of to-day and the young men who built the fort at Ouiatanon, has told us his story. It is the plain tale of his hardships and successes in the struggle for a home, where his small daily tasks might help to keep alive, upon the altar of its hearth, the sacred flame of love. Through his adventures runs the plea for honest citizenship. His acts declare: Not in war, but in work uplifted by service for others, in peace fraught with neighborly good-will, in self-sacrifice for our country's sake, is the spirit of patriotism that will keep afloat forever over the Great Valley the flag of the Stars and Stripes! THE END BOOKS BY KATE DICKINSON SWEETSER _TEN BOYS FROM DICKENS_ _TEN GIRLS FROM DICKENS_ _TEN BOYS FROM HISTORY_ _TEN GIRLS FROM HISTORY_ _BOYS AND GIRLS FROM GEORGE ELIOT_ _BOYS AND GIRLS FROM THACKERAY_ _BOOK OF INDIAN BRAVES_ _TEN GREAT ADVENTURERS_ "Particularly spirited is Miss Sweetser's biographical work. Accuracy of historic fact has been the author's commendable aim in all her books. Luckily she has likewise treated her characters as human beings, something which cannot be said of most writers of biography for children."--_The Nation._ Octavo, Pictorial Covers, numerous full-page illustrations, many in color HARPER'S PRACTICAL BOOKS _HARPER'S BOOK FOR YOUNG GARDENERS_ _HARPER'S INDOOR BOOKS FOR BOYS_ _HARPER'S OUTDOOR BOOK FOR BOYS_ _HARPER'S CAMPING AND SCOUTING_ _HARPER'S BOATING BOOK FOR BOYS_ _HARPER'S ELECTRICITY BOOK FOR BOYS_ _HARPER'S BOOK FOR YOUNG NATURALISTS_ _HARPER'S HOW TO UNDERSTAND ELECTRICAL WORK_ _HARPER'S MACHINERY BOOK FOR BOYS_ _HARPER'S HANDY-BOOK FOR GIRLS_ _THE STORY OF OUR GREAT INVENTIONS_ _MOTOR-BOATING FOR BOYS_ Each Volume Fully Illustrated. Crown 8vo FAMOUS BOOKS ILLUSTRATED BY LOUIS RHEAD _THE ARABIAN NIGHTS_ _TREASURE ISLAND_ _GULLIVER'S TRAVELS_ _TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS_ _HANS ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES_ _SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON_ _ROBIN HOOD_ _ROBINSON CRUSOE_ All these volumes are fully illustrated with numerous full-page drawings and many decorations. Crown 8vo, bound in Red Cloth HARPER'S CAMP LIFE SERIES _CAMPING ON THE GREAT RIVER_ BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS _A farmer's son ventures out into the great world to make a man of himself and succeeds. He embarks in a shanty-boat and sails down the Ohio and Mississippi, where he has all kinds of adventures which will make the boy-reader long to imitate him._ _CAMPING ON THE GREAT LAKES_ BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS _A story of self-reliance and independence as well as adventure. Will Sayne and Miles Breton take a voyage of discovery from Ontario and Erie, through Huron to the vast stretch of Lake Superior. They become involved innocently in smugglers' plots._ _CAMPING IN THE WINTER WOODS_ BY ELMER RUSSELL GREGOR _The story of two boys who are granted the privilege of a winter of hunting and trapping in the Maine woods under the tuition of their father's famous guide, Old Ben. It is not only a fine story but is filled with the information about wild animals and woodcraft that boys love._ _CAMPING ON WESTERN TRAILS_ BY ELMER RUSSELL GREGOR _The same two boys spend a summer in the Rocky Mountains, shoot mountain-lions and wolves, secure photographs of mountain-sheep and bears, pan gold in cañon streams, and are nearly suffocated in a forest fire._ _Illustrated. Post 8vo_ HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK ESTABLISHED 1817 LONDON * * * * * * Transcriber's note: page 51, removed comma between tying and it (rolling and tying it, he fastened it) page 62, space inserted between legs and clung (His legs clung to the saddle) page 184, some one changed to someone (someone had cut off a couple of feet) page 200, pirouges changed to pirogues (some hollowed-out log pirogues) page 219, capitalized staunchly (Staunchly the citizens helped the handful of soldiers to hold it.) page 220, Vigos changed to Vigo (Col. F. Vigo) 
9932	----	ZANE GREY The Last Trail MCMIX CHAPTER I Twilight of a certain summer day, many years ago, shaded softly down over the wild Ohio valley bringing keen anxiety to a traveler on the lonely river trail. He had expected to reach Fort Henry with his party on this night, thus putting a welcome end to the long, rough, hazardous journey through the wilderness; but the swift, on-coming dusk made it imperative to halt. The narrow, forest-skirted trail, difficult to follow in broad daylight, apparently led into gloomy aisles in the woods. His guide had abandoned him that morning, making excuse that his services were no longer needed; his teamster was new to the frontier, and, altogether, the situation caused him much uneasiness. "I wouldn't so much mind another night in camp, if the guide had not left us," he said in a low tone to the teamster. That worthy shook his shaggy head, and growled while he began unhitching the horses. "Uncle," said a young man, who had clambered out from the wagon, "we must be within a few miles of Fort Henry." "How d'ye know we're near the fort?" interrupted the teamster, "or safe, either, fer thet matter? I don't know this country." "The guide assured me we could easily make Fort Henry by sundown." "Thet guide! I tell ye, Mr. Sheppard----" "Not so loud. Do not alarm my daughter," cautioned the man who had been called Sheppard. "Did ye notice anythin' queer about thet guide?" asked the teamster, lowering his voice. "Did ye see how oneasy he was last night? Did it strike ye he left us in a hurry, kind of excited like, in spite of his offhand manner?" "Yes, he acted odd, or so it seemed to me," replied Sheppard. "How about you, Will?" "Now that I think of it, I believe he was queer. He behaved like a man who expected somebody, or feared something might happen. I fancied, however, that it was simply the manner of a woodsman." "Wal, I hev my opinion," said the teamster, in a gruff whisper. "Ye was in a hurry to be a-goin', an' wouldn't take no advice. The fur-trader at Fort Pitt didn't give this guide Jenks no good send off. Said he wasn't well-known round Pitt, 'cept he could handle a knife some." "What is your opinion?" asked Sheppard, as the teamster paused. "Wal, the valley below Pitt is full of renegades, outlaws an' hoss-thieves. The redskins ain't so bad as they used to be, but these white fellers are wusser'n ever. This guide Jenks might be in with them, that's all. Mebbe I'm wrong. I hope so. The way he left us looks bad." "We won't borrow trouble. If we have come all this way without seeing either Indian or outlaw--in fact, without incident--I feel certain we can perform the remainder of the journey in safety." Then Mr. Sheppard raised his voice. "Here, Helen, you lazy girl, come out of that wagon. We want some supper. Will, you gather some firewood, and we'll soon give this gloomy little glen a more cheerful aspect." As Mr. Sheppard turned toward the canvas-covered wagon a girl leaped lightly down beside him. She was nearly as tall as he. "Is this Fort Henry?" she asked, cheerily, beginning to dance around him. "Where's the inn? I'm _so_ hungry. How glad I am to get out of that wagon! I'd like to run. Isn't this a lonesome, lovely spot?" A camp-fire soon crackled with hiss and sputter, and fragrant wood-smoke filled the air. Steaming kettle, and savory steaks of venison cheered the hungry travelers, making them forget for the time the desertion of their guide and the fact that they might be lost. The last glow faded entirely out of the western sky. Night enveloped the forest, and the little glade was a bright spot in the gloom. The flickering light showed Mr. Sheppard to be a well-preserved old man with gray hair and ruddy, kindly face. The nephew had a boyish, frank expression. The girl was a splendid specimen of womanhood. Her large, laughing eyes were as dark as the shadows beneath the trees. Suddenly a quick start on Helen's part interrupted the merry flow of conversation. She sat bolt upright with half-averted face. "Cousin, what is the matter?" asked Will, quickly. Helen remained motionless. "My dear," said Mr. Sheppard sharply. "I heard a footstep," she whispered, pointing with trembling finger toward the impenetrable blackness beyond the camp-fire. All could hear a soft patter on the leaves. Then distinct footfalls broke the silence. The tired teamster raised his shaggy head and glanced fearfully around the glade. Mr. Sheppard and Will gazed doubtfully toward the foliage; but Helen did not change her position. The travelers appeared stricken by the silence and solitude of the place. The faint hum of insects, and the low moan of the night wind, seemed accentuated by the almost painful stillness. "A panther, most likely," suggested Sheppard, in a voice which he intended should be reassuring. "I saw one to-day slinking along the trail." "I'd better get my gun from the wagon," said Will. "How dark and wild it is here!" exclaimed Helen nervously. "I believe I was frightened. Perhaps I fancied it--there! Again--listen. Ah!" Two tall figures emerged from the darkness into the circle of light, and with swift, supple steps gained the camp-fire before any of the travelers had time to move. They were Indians, and the brandishing of their tomahawks proclaimed that they were hostile. "Ugh!" grunted the taller savage, as he looked down upon the defenseless, frightened group. As the menacing figures stood in the glare of the fire gazing at the party with shifty eyes, they presented a frightful appearance. Fierce lineaments, all the more so because of bars of paint, the hideous, shaven heads adorned with tufts of hair holding a single feather, sinewy, copper-colored limbs suggestive of action and endurance, the general aspect of untamed ferocity, appalled the travelers and chilled their blood. Grunts and chuckles manifested the satisfaction with which the Indians fell upon the half-finished supper. They caused it to vanish with astonishing celerity, and resembled wolves rather than human beings in their greediness. Helen looked timidly around as if hoping to see those who would aid, and the savages regarded her with ill humor. A movement on the part of any member of the group caused muscular hands to steal toward the tomahawks. Suddenly the larger savage clutched his companion's knee. Then lifting his hatchet, shook it with a significant gesture in Sheppard's face, at the same time putting a finger on his lips to enjoin silence. Both Indians became statuesque in their immobility. They crouched in an attitude of listening, with heads bent on one side, nostrils dilated, and mouths open. One, two, three moments passed. The silence of the forest appeared to be unbroken; but ears as keen as those of a deer had detected some sound. The larger savage dropped noiselessly to the ground, where he lay stretched out with his ear to the ground. The other remained immovable; only his beady eyes gave signs of life, and these covered every point. Finally the big savage rose silently, pointed down the dark trail, and strode out of the circle of light. His companion followed close at his heels. The two disappeared in the black shadows like specters, as silently as they had come. "Well!" breathed Helen. "I am immensely relieved!" exclaimed Will. "What do you make of such strange behavior?" Sheppard asked of the teamster. "I'spect they got wind of somebody; most likely thet guide, an'll be back again. If they ain't, it's because they got switched off by some signs or tokens, skeered, perhaps, by the scent of the wind." Hardly had he ceased speaking when again the circle of light was invaded by stalking forms. "I thought so! Here comes the skulkin' varmints," whispered the teamster. But he was wrong. A deep, calm voice spoke the single word: "Friends." Two men in the brown garb of woodsmen approached. One approached the travelers; the other remained in the background, leaning upon a long, black rifle. Thus exposed to the glare of the flames, the foremost woodsman presented a singularly picturesque figure. His costume was the fringed buckskins of the border. Fully six feet tall, this lithe-limbed young giant had something of the wild, free grace of the Indian in his posture. He surveyed the wondering travelers with dark, grave eyes. "Did the reddys do any mischief?" he asked. "No, they didn't harm us," replied Sheppard. "They ate our supper, and slipped off into the woods without so much as touching one of us. But, indeed, sir, we are mighty glad to see you." Will echoed this sentiment, and Helen's big eyes were fastened upon the stranger in welcome and wonder. "We saw your fire blazin' through the twilight, an' came up just in time to see the Injuns make off." "Might they not hide in the bushes and shoot us?" asked Will, who had listened to many a border story at Fort Pitt. "It seems as if we'd make good targets in this light." The gravity of the woodsman's face relaxed. "You will pursue them?" asked Helen. "They've melted into the night-shadows long ago," he replied. "Who was your guide?" "I hired him at Fort Pitt. He left us suddenly this morning. A big man, with black beard and bushy eyebrows. A bit of his ear had been shot or cut out," Sheppard replied. "Jenks, one of Bing Legget's border-hawks." "You have his name right. And who may Bing Legget be?" "He's an outlaw. Jenks has been tryin' to lead you into a trap. Likely he expected those Injuns to show up a day or two ago. Somethin' went wrong with the plan, I reckon. Mebbe he was waitin' for five Shawnees, an' mebbe he'll never see three of 'em again." Something suggestive, cold, and grim, in the last words did not escape the listeners. "How far are we from Fort Henry?" asked Sheppard. "Eighteen miles as a crow flies; longer by trail." "Treachery!" exclaimed the old man. "We were no more than that this morning. It is indeed fortunate that you found us. I take it you are from Fort Henry, and will guide us there? I am an old friend of Colonel Zane's. He will appreciate any kindness you may show us. Of course you know him?" "I am Jonathan Zane." Sheppard suddenly realized that he was facing the most celebrated scout on the border. In Revolutionary times Zane's fame had extended even to the far Atlantic Colonies. "And your companion?" asked Sheppard with keen interest. He guessed what might be told. Border lore coupled Jonathan Zane with a strange and terrible character, a border Nemesis, a mysterious, shadowy, elusive man, whom few pioneers ever saw, but of whom all knew. "Wetzel," answered Zane. With one accord the travelers gazed curiously at Zane's silent companion. In the dim background of the glow cast by the fire, he stood a gigantic figure, dark, quiet, and yet with something intangible in his shadowy outline. Suddenly he appeared to merge into the gloom as if he really were a phantom. A warning, "Hist!" came from the bushes. With one swift kick Zane scattered the camp-fire. The travelers waited with bated breaths. They could hear nothing save the beating of their own hearts; they could not even see each other. "Better go to sleep," came in Zane's calm voice. What a relief it was! "We'll keep watch, an' at daybreak guide you to Fort Henry." CHAPTER II Colonel Zane, a rugged, stalwart pioneer, with a strong, dark face, sat listening to his old friend's dramatic story. At its close a genial smile twinkled in his fine dark eyes. "Well, well, Sheppard, no doubt it was a thrilling adventure to you," he said. "It might have been a little more interesting, and doubtless would, had I not sent Wetzel and Jonathan to look you up." "You did? How on earth did you know I was on the border? I counted much on the surprise I should give you." "My Indian runners leave Fort Pitt ahead of any travelers, and acquaint me with particulars." "I remembered a fleet-looking Indian who seemed to be asking for information about us, when we arrived at Fort Pitt. I am sorry I did not take the fur-trader's advice in regard to the guide. But I was in such a hurry to come, and didn't feel able to bear the expense of a raft or boat that we might come by river. My nephew brought considerable gold, and I all my earthly possessions." "All's well that ends well," replied Colonel Zane cheerily. "But we must thank Providence that Wetzel and Jonathan came up in the nick of time." "Indeed, yes. I'm not likely to forget those fierce savages. How they slipped off into the darkness! I wonder if Wetzel pursued them? He disappeared last night, and we did not see him again. In fact we hardly had a fair look at him. I question if I should recognize him now, unless by his great stature." "He was ahead of Jonathan on the trail. That is Wetzel's way. In times of danger he is seldom seen, yet is always near. But come, let us go out and look around. I am running up a log cabin which will come in handy for you." They passed out into the shade of pine and maples. A winding path led down a gentle slope. On the hillside under a spreading tree a throng of bearded pioneers, clad in faded buckskins and wearing white-ringed coonskin caps, were erecting a log cabin. "Life here on the border is keen, hard, invigorating," said Colonel Zane. "I tell you, George Sheppard, in spite of your gray hair and your pretty daughter, you have come out West because you want to live among men who do things." "Colonel, I won't gainsay I've still got hot blood," replied Sheppard; "but I came to Fort Henry for land. My old home in Williamsburg has fallen into ruin together with the fortunes of my family. I brought my daughter and my nephew because I wanted them to take root in new soil." "Well, George, right glad we are to have you. Where are your sons? I remember them, though 'tis sixteen long years since I left old Williamsburg." "Gone. The Revolution took my sons. Helen is the last of the family." "Well, well, indeed that's hard. Independence has cost you colonists as big a price as border-freedom has us pioneers. Come, old friend, forget the past. A new life begins for you here, and it will be one which gives you much. See, up goes a cabin; that will soon be your home." Sheppard's eye marked the sturdy pioneers and a fast diminishing pile of white-oak logs. "Ho-heave!" cried a brawny foreman. A dozen stout shoulders sagged beneath a well-trimmed log. "Ho-heave!" yelled the foreman. "See, up she goes," cried the colonel, "and to-morrow night she'll shed rain." They walked down a sandy lane bounded on the right by a wide, green clearing, and on the left by a line of chestnuts and maples, outposts of the thick forests beyond. "Yours is a fine site for a house," observed Sheppard, taking in the clean-trimmed field that extended up the hillside, a brook that splashed clear and noisy over the stones to tarry in a little grass-bound lake which forced water through half-hollowed logs into a spring house. "I think so; this is the fourth time I've put up a' cabin on this land," replied the colonel. "How's that?" "The redskins are keen to burn things." Sheppard laughed at the pioneer's reply. "It's not difficult, Colonel Zane, to understand why Fort Henry has stood all these years, with you as its leader. Certainly the location for your cabin is the finest in the settlement. What a view!" High upon a bluff overhanging the majestic, slow-winding Ohio, the colonel's cabin afforded a commanding position from which to view the picturesque valley. Sheppard's eye first caught the outline of the huge, bold, time-blackened fort which frowned protectingly over surrounding log-cabins; then he saw the wide-sweeping river with its verdant islands, golden, sandy bars, and willow-bordered shores, while beyond, rolling pastures of wavy grass merging into green forests that swept upward with slow swell until lost in the dim purple of distant mountains. "Sixteen years ago I came out of the thicket upon yonder bluff, and saw this valley. I was deeply impressed by its beauty, but more by its wonderful promise." "Were you alone?" "I and my dog. There had been a few white men before me on the river; but I was the first to see this glorious valley from the bluff. Now, George, I'll let you have a hundred acres of well-cleared land. The soil is so rich you can raise two crops in one season. With some stock, and a few good hands, you'll soon be a busy man." "I didn't expect so much land; I can't well afford to pay for it." "Talk to me of payment when the farm yields an income. Is this young nephew of yours strong and willing?" "He is, and has gold enough to buy a big farm." "Let him keep his money, and make a comfortable home for some good lass. We marry our young people early out here. And your daughter, George, is she fitted for this hard border life?" "Never fear for Helen." "The brunt of this pioneer work falls on our women. God bless them, how heroic they've been! The life here is rough for a man, let alone a woman. But it is a man's game. We need girls, girls who will bear strong men. Yet I am always saddened when I see one come out on the border." "I think I knew what I was bringing Helen to, and she didn't flinch," said Sheppard, somewhat surprised at the tone in which the colonel spoke. "No one knows until he has lived on the border. Well, well, all this is discouraging to you. Ah! here is Miss Helen with my sister." The colonel's fine, dark face lost its sternness, and brightened with a smile. "I hope you rested well after your long ride." "I am seldom tired, and I have been made most comfortable. I thank you and your sister," replied the girl, giving Colonel Zane her hand, and including both him and his sister in her grateful glance. The colonel's sister was a slender, handsome young woman, whose dark beauty showed to most effective advantage by the contrast with her companion's fair skin, golden hair, and blue eyes. Beautiful as was Helen Sheppard, it was her eyes that held Colonel Zane irresistibly. They were unusually large, of a dark purple-blue that changed, shaded, shadowed with her every thought. "Come, let us walk," Colonel Zane said abruptly, and, with Mr. Sheppard, followed the girls down the path. He escorted them to the fort, showed a long room with little squares cut in the rough-hewn logs, many bullet holes, fire-charred timbers, and dark stains, terribly suggestive of the pain and heroism which the defense of that rude structure had cost. Under Helen's eager questioning Colonel Zane yielded to his weakness for story-telling, and recited the history of the last siege of Fort Henry; how the renegade Girty swooped down upon the settlement with hundreds of Indians and British soldiers; how for three days of whistling bullets, flaming arrows, screeching demons, fire, smoke, and attack following attack, the brave defenders stood at their posts, there to die before yielding. "Grand!" breathed Helen, and her eyes glowed. "It was then Betty Zane ran with the powder? Oh! I've heard the story." "Let my sister tell you of that," said the colonel, smiling. "You! Was it you?" And Helen's eyes glowed brighter with the light of youth's glory in great deeds. "My sister has been wedded and widowed since then," said Colonel Zane, reading in Helen's earnest scrutiny of his sister's calm, sad face a wonder if this quiet woman could be the fearless and famed Elizabeth Zane. Impulsively Helen's hand closed softly over her companion's. Out of the girlish sympathetic action a warm friendship was born. "I imagine things do happen here," said Mr. Sheppard, hoping to hear more from Colonel Zane. The colonel smiled grimly. "Every summer during fifteen years has been a bloody one on the border. The sieges of Fort Henry, and Crawford's defeat, the biggest things we ever knew out here, are matters of history; of course you are familiar with them. But the numberless Indian forays and attacks, the women who have been carried into captivity by renegades, the murdered farmers, in fact, ceaseless war never long directed at any point, but carried on the entire length of the river, are matters known only to the pioneers. Within five miles of Fort Henry I can show you where the laurel bushes grow three feet high over the ashes of two settlements, and many a clearing where some unfortunate pioneer had staked his claim and thrown up a log cabin, only to die fighting for his wife and children. Between here and Fort Pitt there is only one settlement, Yellow Creek, and most of its inhabitants are survivors of abandoned villages farther up the river. Last summer we had the Moravian Massacre, the blackest, most inhuman deed ever committed. Since then Simon Girty and his bloody redskins have lain low." "You must always have had a big force," said Sheppard. "We've managed always to be strong enough, though there never were a large number of men here. During the last siege I had only forty in the fort, counting men, women and boys. But I had pioneers and women who could handle a rifle, and the best bordermen on the frontier." "Do you make a distinction between pioneers and bordermen?" asked Sheppard. "Indeed, yes. I am a pioneer; a borderman is an Indian hunter, or scout. For years my cabins housed Andrew Zane, Sam and John McCollock, Bill Metzar, and John and Martin Wetzel, all of whom are dead. Not one saved his scalp. Fort Henry is growing; it has pioneers, rivermen, soldiers, but only two bordermen. Wetzel and Jonathan are the only ones we have left of those great men." "They must be old," mused Helen, with a dreamy glow still in her eyes. "Well, Miss Helen, not in years, as you mean. Life here is old in experience; few pioneers, and no bordermen, live to a great age. Wetzel is about forty, and my brother Jonathan still a young man; but both are old in border lore." Earnestly, as a man who loves his subject, Colonel Zane told his listeners of these two most prominent characters of the border. Sixteen years previously, when but boys in years, they had cast in their lot with his, and journeyed over the Virginian Mountains, Wetzel to devote his life to the vengeful calling he had chosen, and Jonathan to give rein to an adventurous spirit and love of the wilds. By some wonderful chance, by cunning, woodcraft, or daring, both men had lived through the years of border warfare which had brought to a close the careers of all their contemporaries. For many years Wetzel preferred solitude to companionship; he roamed the wilderness in pursuit of Indians, his life-long foes, and seldom appeared at the settlement except to bring news of an intended raid of the savages. Jonathan also spent much time alone in the woods, or scouting along the river. But of late years a friendship had ripened between the two bordermen. Mutual interest had brought them together on the trail of a noted renegade, and when, after many long days of patient watching and persistent tracking, the outlaw paid an awful penalty for his bloody deeds, these lone and silent men were friends. Powerful in build, fleet as deer, fearless and tireless, Wetzel's peculiar bloodhound sagacity, ferocity, and implacability, balanced by Jonathan's keen intelligence and judgment caused these bordermen to become the bane of redmen and renegades. Their fame increased with each succeeding summer, until now the people of the settlement looked upon wonderful deeds of strength and of woodcraft as a matter of course, rejoicing in the power and skill with which these men were endowed. By common consent the pioneers attributed any mysterious deed, from the finding of a fat turkey on a cabin doorstep, to the discovery of a savage scalped and pulled from his ambush near a settler's spring, to Wetzel and Jonathan. All the more did they feel sure of this conclusion because the bordermen never spoke of their deeds. Sometimes a pioneer living on the outskirts of the settlement would be awakened in the morning by a single rifle shot, and on peering out would see a dead Indian lying almost across his doorstep, while beyond, in the dim, gray mist, a tall figure stealing away. Often in the twilight on a summer evening, while fondling his children and enjoying his smoke after a hard day's labor in the fields, this same settler would see the tall, dark figure of Jonathan Zane step noiselessly out of a thicket, and learn that he must take his family and flee at once to the fort for safety. When a settler was murdered, his children carried into captivity by Indians, and the wife given over to the power of some brutal renegade, tragedies wofully frequent on the border, Wetzel and Jonathan took the trail alone. Many a white woman was returned alive and, sometimes, unharmed to her relatives; more than one maiden lived to be captured, rescued, and returned to her lover, while almost numberless were the bones of brutal redmen lying in the deep and gloomy woods, or bleaching on the plains, silent, ghastly reminders of the stern justice meted out by these two heroes. "Such are my two bordermen, Miss Sheppard. The fort there, and all these cabins, would be only black ashes, save for them, and as for us, our wives and children--God only knows." "Haven't they wives and children, too?" asked Helen. "No," answered Colonel Zane, with his genial smile. "Such joys are not for bordermen." "Why not? Fine men like them deserve happiness," declared Helen. "It is necessary we have such," said the colonel simply, "and they cannot be bordermen unless free as the air blows. Wetzel and Jonathan have never had sweethearts. I believe Wetzel loved a lass once; but he was an Indian-killer whose hands were red with blood. He silenced his heart, and kept to his chosen, lonely life. Jonathan does not seem to realize that women exist to charm, to please, to be loved and married. Once we twitted him about his brothers doing their duty by the border, whereupon he flashed out: 'My life is the border's: my sweetheart is the North Star!'" Helen dreamily watched the dancing, dimpling waves that broke on the stones of the river shore. All unconscious of the powerful impression the colonel's recital had made upon her, she was feeling the greatness of the lives of these bordermen, and the glory it would now be for her to share with others the pride in their protection. "Say, Sheppard, look here," said Colonel Zane, on the return to his cabin, "that girl of yours has a pair of eyes. I can't forget the way they flashed! They'll cause more trouble here among my garrison than would a swarm of redskins." "No! You don't mean it! Out here in this wilderness?" queried Sheppard doubtfully. "Well, I do." "O Lord! What a time I've had with that girl! There was one man especially, back home, who made our lives miserable. He was rich and well born; but Helen would have none of him. He got around me, old fool that I am! Practically stole what was left of my estate, and gambled it away when Helen said she'd die before giving herself to him. It was partly on his account that I brought her away. Then there were a lot of moon-eyed beggars after her all the time, and she's young and full of fire. I hoped I'd marry her to some farmer out here, and end my days in peace." "Peace? With eyes like those? Never on this green earth," and Colonel Zane laughed as he slapped his friend on the shoulder. "Don't worry, old fellow. You can't help her having those changing dark-blue eyes any more than you can help being proud of them. They have won me, already, susceptible old backwoodsman! I'll help you with this spirited young lady. I've had experience, Sheppard, and don't you forget it. First, my sister, a Zane all through, which is saying enough. Then as sweet and fiery a little Indian princess as ever stepped in a beaded moccasin, and since, more than one beautiful, impulsive creature. Being in authority, I suppose it's natural that all the work, from keeping the garrison ready against an attack, to straightening out love affairs, should fall upon me. I'll take the care off your shoulders; I'll keep these young dare-devils from killing each other over Miss Helen's favors. I certainly--Hello! There are strangers at the gate. Something's up." Half a dozen rough-looking men had appeared from round the corner of the cabin, and halted at the gate. "Bill Elsing, and some of his men from Yellow Creek," said Colonel Zane, as he went toward the group. "Hullo, Kurnel," was the greeting of the foremost, evidently the leader. "We've lost six head of hosses over our way, an' are out lookin' 'em up." "The deuce you have! Say, this horse-stealing business is getting interesting. What did you come in for?" "Wal, we meets Jonathan on the ridge about sunup, an' he sent us back lickety-cut. Said he had two of the hosses corralled, an' mebbe Wetzel could git the others." "That's strange," replied Colonel Zane thoughtfully. "'Pears to me Jack and Wetzel hev some redskins treed, an' didn't want us to spile the fun. Mebbe there wasn't scalps enough to go round. Anyway, we come in, an' we'll hang up here to-day." "Bill, who's doing this horse-stealing?" "Damn if I know. It's a mighty pert piece of work. I've a mind it's some slick white fellar, with Injuns backin' him." Helen noted, when she was once more indoors, that Colonel Zane's wife appeared worried. Her usual placid expression was gone. She put off the playful overtures of her two bright boys with unusual indifference, and turned to her husband with anxious questioning as to whether the strangers brought news of Indians. Upon being assured that such was not the case, she looked relieved, and explained to Helen that she had seen armed men come so often to consult the colonel regarding dangerous missions and expeditions, that the sight of a stranger caused her unspeakable dread. "I am accustomed to danger, yet I can never control my fears for my husband and children," said Mrs. Zane. "The older I grow the more of a coward I am. Oh! this border life is sad for women. Only a little while ago my brother Samuel McColloch was shot and scalped right here on the river bank. He was going to the spring for a bucket of water. I lost another brother in almost the same way. Every day during the summer a husband and a father fall victim to some murderous Indian. My husband will go in the same way some day. The border claims them all." "Bessie, you must not show your fears to our new friend. And, Miss Helen, don't believe she's the coward she would make out," said the colonel's sister smilingly. "Betty is right, Bess, don't frighten her," said Colonel Zane. "I'm afraid I talked too much to-day. But, Miss Helen, you were so interested, and are such a good listener, that I couldn't refrain. Once for all let me say that you will no doubt see stirring life here; but there is little danger of its affecting you. To be sure I think you'll have troubles; but not with Indians or outlaws." He winked at his wife and sister. At first Helen did not understand his sally, but then she blushed red all over her fair face. Some time after that, while unpacking her belongings, she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs on the rocky road, accompanied by loud voices. Running to the window, she saw a group of men at the gate. "Miss Sheppard, will you come out?" called Colonel Zane's sister from the door. "My brother Jonathan has returned." Helen joined Betty at the door, and looked over her shoulder. "Wal, Jack, ye got two on 'em, anyways," drawled a voice which she recognized as that of Elsing's. A man, lithe and supple, slipped from the back of one of the horses, and, giving the halter to Elsing with a single word, turned and entered the gate. Colonel Zane met him there. "Well, Jonathan, what's up?" "There's hell to pay," was the reply, and the speaker's voice rang clear and sharp. Colonel Zane laid his hand on his brother's shoulder, and thus they stood for a moment, singularly alike, and yet the sturdy pioneer was, somehow, far different from the dark-haired borderman. "I thought we'd trouble in store from the look on your face," said the colonel calmly. "I hope you haven't very bad news on the first day, for our old friends from Virginia." "Jonathan," cried Betty when he did not answer the colonel. At her call he half turned, and his dark eyes, steady, strained like those of a watching deer, sought his sister's face. "Betty, old Jake Lane was murdered by horse thieves yesterday, and Mabel Lane is gone." "Oh!" gasped Betty; but she said nothing more. Colonel Zane cursed inaudibly. "You know, Eb, I tried to keep Lane in the settlement for Mabel's sake. But he wanted to work that farm. I believe horse-stealing wasn't as much of an object as the girl. Pretty women are bad for the border, or any other place, I guess. Wetzel has taken the trail, and I came in because I've serious suspicions--I'll explain to you alone." The borderman bowed gravely to Helen, with a natural grace, and yet a manner that sat awkwardly upon him. The girl, slightly flushed, and somewhat confused by this meeting with the man around whom her romantic imagination had already woven a story, stood in the doorway after giving him a fleeting glance, the fairest, sweetest picture of girlish beauty ever seen. The men went into the house; but their voices came distinctly through the door. "Eb, if Bing Legget or Girty ever see that big-eyed lass, they'll have her even if Fort Henry has to be burned, an' in case they do get her, Wetzel an' I'll have taken our last trail." CHAPTER III Supper over, Colonel Zane led his guests to a side porch, where they were soon joined by Mrs. Zane and Betty. The host's two boys, Noah and Sammy, who had preceded them, were now astride the porch-rail and, to judge by their antics, were riding wild Indian mustangs. "It's quite cool," said Colonel Zane; "but I want you to see the sunset in the valley. A good many of your future neighbors may come over to-night for a word of welcome. It's the border custom." He was about to seat himself by the side of Mr. Sheppard, on a rustic bench, when a Negro maid appeared in the doorway carrying a smiling, black-eyed baby. Colonel Zane took the child and, holding it aloft, said with fatherly pride: "This is Rebecca Zane, the first girl baby born to the Zanes, and destined to be the belle of the border." "May I have her?" asked Helen softly, holding out her arms. She took the child, and placed it upon her knee where its look of solemnity soon changed to one of infantile delight. "Here come Nell and Jim," said Mrs. Zane, pointing toward the fort. "Yes, and there comes my brother Silas with his wife, too," added Colonel Zane. "The first couple are James Douns, our young minister, and Nell, his wife. They came out here a year or so ago. James had a brother Joe, the finest young fellow who ever caught the border fever. He was killed by one of the Girtys. His was a wonderful story, and some day you shall hear about the parson and his wife." "What's the border fever?" asked Mr. Sheppard. "It's what brought you out here," replied Colonel Zane with a hearty laugh. Helen gazed with interest at the couple now coming into the yard, and when they gained the porch she saw that the man was big and tall, with a frank, manly bearing, while his wife was a slender little woman with bright, sunny hair, and a sweet, smiling face. They greeted Helen and her father cordially. Next came Silas Zane, a typical bronzed and bearded pioneer, with his buxom wife. Presently a little group of villagers joined the party. They were rugged men, clad in faded buckskins, and sober-faced women who wore dresses of plain gray linsey. They welcomed the newcomers with simple, homely courtesy. Then six young frontiersmen appeared from around a corner of the cabin, advancing hesitatingly. To Helen they all looked alike, tall, awkward, with brown faces and big hands. When Colonel Zane cheerily cried out to them, they stumbled forward with evident embarrassment, each literally crushing Helen's hand in his horny palm. Afterward they leaned on the rail and stole glances at her. Soon a large number of villagers were on the porch or in the yard. After paying their respects to Helen and her father they took part in a general conversation. Two or three girls, the latest callers, were surrounded by half a dozen young fellows, and their laughter sounded high above the hum of voices. Helen gazed upon this company with mingled feelings of relief and pleasure. She had been more concerned regarding the young people with whom her lot might be cast, than the dangers of which others had told. She knew that on the border there was no distinction of rank. Though she came of an old family, and, during her girlhood, had been surrounded by refinement, even luxury, she had accepted cheerfully the reverses of fortune, and was determined to curb the pride which had been hers. It was necessary she should have friends. Warm-hearted, impulsive and loving, she needed to have around her those in whom she could confide. Therefore it was with sincere pleasure she understood how groundless were her fears and knew that if she did not find good, true friends the fault would be her own. She saw at a glance that the colonel's widowed sister was her equal, perhaps her superior, in education and breeding, while Nellie Douns was as well-bred and gracious a little lady as she had ever met. Then, the other girls, too, were charming, with frank wholesomeness and freedom. Concerning the young men, of whom there were about a dozen, Helen had hardly arrived at a conclusion. She liked the ruggedness, the signs of honest worth which clung to them. Despite her youth, she had been much sought after because of her personal attractions, and had thus added experience to the natural keen intuition all women possess. The glances of several of the men, particularly the bold regard of one Roger Brandt, whom Colonel Zane introduced, she had seen before, and learned to dislike. On the whole, however, she was delighted with the prospect of new friends and future prosperity, and she felt even greater pleasure in the certainty that her father shared her gratification. Suddenly she became aware that the conversation had ceased. She looked up to see the tall, lithe form of Jonathan Zane as he strode across the porch. She could see that a certain constraint had momentarily fallen upon the company. It was an involuntary acknowledgment of the borderman's presence, of a presence that worked on all alike with a subtle, strong magnetism. "Ah, Jonathan, come out to see the sunset? It's unusually fine to-night," said Colonel Zane. With hardly more than a perceptible bow to those present, the borderman took a seat near the rail, and, leaning upon it, directed his gaze westward. Helen sat so near she could have touched him. She was conscious of the same strange feeling, and impelling sense of power, which had come upon her so strongly at first sight of him. More than that, a lively interest had been aroused in her. This borderman was to her a new and novel character. She was amused at learning that here was a young man absolutely indifferent to the charms of the opposite sex, and although hardly admitting such a thing, she believed it would be possible to win him from his indifference. On raising her eyelids, it was with the unconcern which a woman feigns when suspecting she is being regarded with admiring eyes. But Jonathan Zane might not have known of her presence, for all the attention he paid her. Therefore, having a good opportunity to gaze at this borderman of daring deeds, Helen regarded him closely. He was clad from head to foot in smooth, soft buckskin which fitted well his powerful frame. Beaded moccasins, leggings bound high above the knees, hunting coat laced and fringed, all had the neat, tidy appearance due to good care. He wore no weapons. His hair fell in a raven mass over his shoulders. His profile was regular, with a long, straight nose, strong chin, and eyes black as night. They were now fixed intently on the valley. The whole face gave an impression of serenity, of calmness. Helen was wondering if the sad, almost stern, tranquility of that face ever changed, when the baby cooed and held out its chubby little hands. Jonathan's smile, which came quickly, accompanied by a warm light in the eyes, relieved Helen of an unaccountable repugnance she had begun to feel toward the borderman. That smile, brief as a flash, showed his gentle kindness and told that he was not a creature who had set himself apart from human life and love. As he took little Rebecca, one of his hands touched Helen's. If he had taken heed of the contact, as any ordinary man might well have, she would, perhaps, have thought nothing about it, but because he did not appear to realize that her hand had been almost inclosed in his, she could not help again feeling his singular personality. She saw that this man had absolutely no thought of her. At the moment this did not awaken resentment, for with all her fire and pride she was not vain; but amusement gave place to a respect which came involuntarily. Little Rebecca presently manifested the faithlessness peculiar to her sex, and had no sooner been taken upon Jonathan's knee than she cried out to go back to Helen. "Girls are uncommon coy critters," said he, with a grave smile in his eyes. He handed back the child, and once more was absorbed in the setting sun. Helen looked down the valley to behold the most beautiful spectacle she had ever seen. Between the hills far to the west, the sky flamed with a red and gold light. The sun was poised above the river, and the shimmering waters merged into a ruddy horizon. Long rays of crimson fire crossed the smooth waters. A few purple clouds above caught the refulgence, until aided by the delicate rose and blue space beyond, they became many hued ships sailing on a rainbow sea. Each second saw a gorgeous transformation. Slowly the sun dipped into the golden flood; one by one the clouds changed from crimson to gold, from gold to rose, and then to gray; slowly all the tints faded until, as the sun slipped out of sight, the brilliance gave way to the soft afterglow of warm lights. These in turn slowly toned down into gray twilight. Helen retired to her room soon afterward, and, being unusually thoughtful, sat down by the window. She reviewed the events of this first day of her new life on the border. Her impressions had been so many, so varied, that she wanted to distinguish them. First she felt glad, with a sweet, warm thankfulness, that her father seemed so happy, so encouraged by the outlook. Breaking old ties had been, she knew, no child's play for him. She realized also that it had been done solely because there had been nothing left to offer her in the old home, and in a new one were hope and possibilities. Then she was relieved at getting away from the attentions of a man whose persistence had been most annoying to her. From thoughts of her father, and the old life, she came to her new friends of the present. She was so grateful for their kindness. She certainly would do all in her power to win and keep their esteem. Somewhat of a surprise was it to her, that she reserved for Jonathan Zane the last and most prominent place in her meditations. She suddenly asked herself how she regarded this fighting borderman. She recalled her unbounded enthusiasm for the man as Colonel Zane had told of him; then her first glimpse, and her surprise and admiration at the lithe-limbed young giant; then incredulity, amusement, and respect followed in swift order, after which an unaccountable coldness that was almost resentment. Helen was forced to admit that she did not know how to regard him, but surely he was a man, throughout every inch of his superb frame, and one who took life seriously, with neither thought nor time for the opposite sex. And this last brought a blush to her cheek, for she distinctly remembered she had expected, if not admiration, more than passing notice from this hero of the border. Presently she took a little mirror from a table near where she sat. Holding it to catch the fast-fading light, she studied her face seriously. "Helen Sheppard, I think on the occasion of your arrival in a new country a little plain talk will be wholesome. Somehow or other, perhaps because of a crowd of idle men back there in the colonies, possibly from your own misguided fancy, you imagined you were fair to look at. It is well to be undeceived." Scorn spoke in Helen's voice. She was angry because of having been interested in a man, and allowed that interest to betray her into a girlish expectation that he would treat her as all other men had. The mirror, even in the dim light, spoke more truly than she, for it caught the golden tints of her luxuriant hair, the thousand beautiful shadows in her great, dark eyes, the white glory of a face fair as a star, and the swelling outline of neck and shoulders. With a sudden fiery impetuosity she flung the glass to the floor, where it was broken into several pieces. "How foolish of me! What a temper I have!" she exclaimed repentantly. "I'm glad I have another glass. Wouldn't Mr. Jonathan Zane, borderman, Indian fighter, hero of a hundred battles and never a sweetheart, be flattered? No, most decidedly he wouldn't. He never looked at me. I don't think I expected that; I'm sure I didn't want it; but still he might have--Oh! what am I thinking, and he a stranger?" Before Helen lost herself in slumber on that eventful evening, she vowed to ignore the borderman; assured herself that she did not want to see him again, and, rather inconsistently, that she would cure him of his indifference. * * * * * When Colonel Zane's guests had retired, and the villagers were gone to their homes, he was free to consult with Jonathan. "Well, Jack," he said, "I'm ready to hear about the horse thieves." "Wetzel makes it out the man who's runnin' this hoss-stealin' is located right here in Fort Henry," answered the borderman. The colonel had lived too long on the frontier to show surprise; he hummed a tune while the genial expression faded slowly from his face. "Last count there were one hundred and ten men at the fort," he replied thoughtfully. "I know over a hundred, and can trust them. There are some new fellows on the boats, and several strangers hanging round Metzar's." "'Pears to Lew an' me that this fellar is a slick customer, an' one who's been here long enough to know our hosses an' where we keep them." "I see. Like Miller, who fooled us all, even Betty, when he stole our powder and then sold us to Girty," rejoined Colonel Zane grimly. "Exactly, only this fellar is slicker an' more desperate than Miller." "Right you are, Jack, for the man who is trusted and betrays us, must be desperate. Does he realize what he'll get if we ever find out, or is he underrating us?" "He knows all right, an' is matchin' his cunnin' against our'n." "Tell me what you and Wetzel learned." The borderman proceeded to relate the events that had occurred during a recent tramp in the forest with Wetzel. While returning from a hunt in a swamp several miles over the ridge, back of Fort Henry, they ran across the trail of three Indians. They followed this until darkness set in, when both laid down to rest and wait for the early dawn, that time most propitious for taking the savage by surprise. On resuming the trail they found that other Indians had joined the party they were tracking. To the bordermen this was significant of some unusual activity directed toward the settlement. Unable to learn anything definite from the moccasin traces, they hurried up on the trail to find that the Indians had halted. Wetzel and Jonathan saw from their covert that the savages had a woman prisoner. A singular feature about it all was that the Indians remained in the same place all day, did not light a camp-fire, and kept a sharp lookout. The bordermen crept up as close as safe, and remained on watch during the day and night. Early next morning, when the air was fading from black to gray, the silence was broken by the snapping of twigs and a tremor of the ground. The bordermen believed another company of Indians was approaching; but they soon saw it was a single white man leading a number of horses. He departed before daybreak. Wetzel and Jonathan could not get a clear view of him owing to the dim light; but they heard his voice, and afterwards found the imprint of his moccasins. They did, however, recognize the six horses as belonging to settlers in Yellow Creek. While Jonathan and Wetzel were consulting as to what it was best to do, the party of Indians divided, four going directly west, and the others north. Wetzel immediately took the trail of the larger party with the prisoner and four of the horses. Jonathan caught two of the animals which the Indians had turned loose, and tied them in the forest. He then started after the three Indians who had gone northward. "Well?" Colonel Zane said impatiently, when Jonathan hesitated in his story. "One got away," he said reluctantly. "I barked him as he was runnin' like a streak through the bushes, an' judged that he was hard hit. I got the hosses, an' turned back on the trail of the white man." "Where did it end?" "In that hard-packed path near the blacksmith shop. An' the fellar steps as light as an Injun." "He's here, then, sure as you're born. We've lost no horses yet, but last week old Sam heard a noise in the barn, and on going there found Betty's mare out of her stall." "Some one as knows the lay of the land had been after her," suggested Jonathan. "You can bet on that. We've got to find him before we lose all the fine horse-flesh we own. Where do these stolen animals go? Indians would steal any kind; but this thief takes only the best." "I'm to meet Wetzel on the ridge soon, an' then we'll know, for he's goin' to find out where the hosses are taken." "That'll help some. On the way back you found where the white girl had been taken from. Murdered father, burned cabin, the usual deviltry." "Exactly." "Poor Mabel! Do you think this white thief had anything to do with carrying her away?" "No. Wetzel says that's Bing Legget's work. The Shawnees were members of his gang." "Well, Jack, what'll I do?" "Keep quiet an' wait," was the borderman's answer. Colonel Zane, old pioneer and frontiersman though he was, shuddered as he went to his room. His brother's dark look, and his deadly calmness, were significant. CHAPTER IV To those few who saw Jonathan Zane in the village, it seemed as if he was in his usual quiet and dreamy state. The people were accustomed to his silence, and long since learned that what little time he spent in the settlement was not given to sociability. In the morning he sometimes lay with Colonel Zane's dog, Chief, by the side of a spring under an elm tree, and in the afternoon strolled aimlessly along the river bluff, or on the hillside. At night he sat on his brother's porch smoking a long Indian pipe. Since that day, now a week past, when he had returned with the stolen horses, his movements and habits were precisely what would have been expected of an unsuspicious borderman. In reality, however, Jonathan was not what he seemed. He knew all that was going on in the settlement. Hardly a bird could have entered the clearing unobserved. At night, after all the villagers were in bed, he stole cautiously about the stockade, silencing with familiar word the bristling watch-hounds, and went from barn to barn, ending his stealthy tramp at the corral where Colonel Zane kept his thoroughbreds. But all this scouting by night availed nothing. No unusual event occurred, not even the barking of a dog, a suspicious rustling among the thickets, or whistling of a night-hawk had been heard. Vainly the borderman strained ears to catch some low night-signal given by waiting Indians to the white traitor within the settlement. By day there was even less to attract the sharp-eyed watcher. The clumsy river boats, half raft, half sawn lumber, drifted down the Ohio on their first and last voyage, discharged their cargoes of grain, liquor, or merchandise, and were broken up. Their crews came back on the long overland journey to Fort Pitt, there to man another craft. The garrison at the fort performed their customary duties; the pioneers tilled the fields; the blacksmith scattered sparks, the wheelwright worked industriously at his bench, and the housewives attended to their many cares. No strangers arrived at Fort Henry. The quiet life of the village was uninterrupted. Near sunset of a long day Jonathan strolled down the sandy, well-trodden path toward Metzar's inn. He did not drink, and consequently seldom visited the rude, dark, ill-smelling bar-room. When occasion demanded his presence there, he was evidently not welcome. The original owner, a sturdy soldier and pioneer, came to Fort Henry when Colonel Zane founded the settlement, and had been killed during Girty's last attack. His successor, another Metzar, was, according to Jonathan's belief, as bad as the whiskey he dispensed. More than one murder had been committed at the inn; countless fatal knife and tomahawk fights had stained red the hard clay floor; and more than one desperate character had been harbored there. Once Colonel Zane sent Wetzel there to invite a thief and outlaw to quit the settlement, with the not unexpected result that it became necessary the robber be carried out. Jonathan thought of the bad name the place bore all over the frontier, and wondered if Metzar could tell anything about the horse-thieves. When the borderman bent his tall frame to enter the low-studded door he fancied he saw a dark figure disappear into a room just behind the bar. A roughly-clad, heavily-bearded man turned hastily at the same moment. "Hullo," he said gruffly. "H' are you, Metzar. I just dropped in to see if I could make a trade for your sorrel mare," replied Jonathan. Being well aware that the innkeeper would not part with his horse, the borderman had made this announcement as his reason for entering the bar-room. "Nope, I'll allow you can't," replied Metzar. As he turned to go, Jonathan's eyes roamed around the bar-room. Several strangers of shiftless aspect bleared at him. "They wouldn't steal a pumpkin," muttered Jonathan to himself as he left the inn. Then he added suspiciously, "Metzar was talkin' to some one, an' 'peared uneasy. I never liked Metzar. He'll bear watchin'." The borderman passed on down the path thinking of what he had heard against Metzar. The colonel had said that the man was prosperous for an innkeeper who took pelts, grain or meat in exchange for rum. The village gossips disliked him because he was unmarried, taciturn, and did not care for their company. Jonathan reflected also on the fact that Indians were frequently coming to the inn, and this made him distrustful of the proprietor. It was true that Colonel Zane had red-skinned visitors, but there was always good reason for their coming. Jonathan had seen, during the Revolution, more than one trusted man proven to be a traitor, and the conviction settled upon him that some quiet scouting would show up the innkeeper as aiding the horse-thieves if not actually in league with them. "Good evening, Jonathan Zane." This greeting in a woman's clear voice brought Jonathan out from his reveries. He glanced up to see Helen Sheppard standing in the doorway of her father's cabin. "Evenin', miss," he said with a bow, and would have passed on. "Wait," she cried, and stepped out of the door. He waited by the gate with a manner which showed that such a summons was novel to him. Helen, piqued at his curt greeting, had asked him to wait without any idea of what she would say. Coming slowly down the path she felt again a subtle awe of this borderman. Regretting her impulsiveness, she lost confidence. Gaining the gate she looked up intending to speak; but was unable to do so as she saw how cold and grave was his face, and how piercing were his eyes. She flushed slightly, and then, conscious of an embarrassment new and strange to her, blushed rosy red, making, as it seemed to her, a stupid remark about the sunset. When he took her words literally, and said the sunset was fine, she felt guilty of deceitfulness. Whatever Helen's faults, and they were many, she was honest, and because of not having looked at the sunset, but only wanting him to see her as did other men, the innocent ruse suddenly appeared mean and trifling. Then, with a woman's quick intuition, she understood that coquetries were lost on this borderman, and, with a smile, got the better of her embarrassment and humiliation by telling the truth. "I wanted to ask a favor of you, and I'm a little afraid." She spoke with girlish shyness, which increased as he stared at her. "Why--why do you look at me so?" "There's a lake over yonder which the Shawnees say is haunted by a woman they killed," he replied quietly. "You'd do for her spirit, so white an' beautiful in the silver moonlight." "So my white dress makes me look ghostly," she answered lightly, though deeply conscious of surprise and pleasure at such an unexpected reply from him. This borderman might be full of surprises. "Such a time as I had bringing my dresses out here! I don't know when I can wear them. This is the simplest one." "An' it's mighty new an' bewilderin' for the border," he replied with a smile in his eyes. "When these are gone I'll get no more except linsey ones," she said brightly, yet her eyes shone with a wistful uncertainty of the future. "Will you be happy here?" "I am happy. I have always wanted to be of some use in the world. I assure you, Master Zane, I am not the butterfly I seem. I have worked hard all day, that is, until your sister Betty came over. All the girls have helped me fix up the cabin until it's more comfortable than I ever dreamed one could be on the frontier. Father is well content here, and that makes me happy. I haven't had time for forebodings. The young men of Fort Henry have been--well, attentive; in fact, they've been here all the time." She laughed a little at this last remark, and looked demurely at him. "It's a frontier custom," he said. "Oh, indeed? Do all the young men call often and stay late?" "They do." "You didn't," she retorted. "You're the only one who hasn't been to see me." "I do not wait on the girls," he replied with a grave smile. "Oh, you don't? Do you expect them to wait on you?" she asked, feeling, now she had made this silent man talk, once more at her ease. "I am a borderman," replied Jonathan. There was a certain dignity or sadness in his answer which reminded Helen of Colonel Zane's portrayal of a borderman's life. It struck her keenly. Here was this young giant standing erect and handsome before her, as rugged as one of the ash trees of his beloved forest. Who could tell when his strong life might be ended by an Indian's hatchet? "For you, then, is there no such thing as friendship?" she asked. "On the border men are serious." This recalled his sister's conversation regarding the attentions of the young men, that they would follow her, fight for her, and give her absolutely no peace until one of them had carried her to his cabin a bride. She could not carry on the usual conventional conversation with this borderman, but remained silent for a time. She realized more keenly than ever before how different he was from other men, and watched closely as he stood gazing out over the river. Perhaps something she had said caused him to think of the many pleasures and joys he missed. But she could not be certain what was in his mind. She was not accustomed to impassive faces and cold eyes with unlit fires in their dark depths. More likely he was thinking of matters nearer to his wild, free life; of his companion Wetzel somewhere out beyond those frowning hills. Then she remembered that the colonel had told her of his brother's love for nature in all its forms; how he watched the shades of evening fall; lost himself in contemplation of the last copper glow flushing the western sky, or became absorbed in the bright stars. Possibly he had forgotten her presence. Darkness was rapidly stealing down upon them. The evening, tranquil and gray, crept over them with all its mystery. He was a part of it. She could not hope to understand him; but saw clearly that his was no common personality. She wanted to speak, to voice a sympathy strong within her; but she did not know what to say to this borderman. "If what your sister tells me of the border is true, I may soon need a friend," she said, after weighing well her words. She faced him modestly yet bravely, and looked him straight in the eyes. Because he did not reply she spoke again. "I mean such a friend as you or Wetzel." "You may count on both," he replied. "Thank you," she said softly, giving him her hand. "I shall not forget. One more thing. Will you break a borderman's custom, for my sake?" "How?" "Come to see me when you are in the settlement?" Helen said this in a low voice with just a sob in her breath; but she met his gaze fairly. Her big eyes were all aglow, alight with girlish appeal, and yet proud with a woman's honest demand for fair exchange. Promise was there, too, could he but read it, of wonderful possibilities. "No," he answered gently. Helen was not prepared for such a rebuff. She was interested in him, and not ashamed to show it. She feared only that he might misunderstand her; but to refuse her proffered friendship, that was indeed unexpected. Rude she thought it was, while from brow to curving throat her fair skin crimsoned. Then her face grew pale as the moonlight. Hard on her resentment had surged the swell of some new emotion strong and sweet. He refused her friendship because he did not dare accept it; because his life was not his own; because he was a borderman. While they stood thus, Jonathan looking perplexed and troubled, feeling he had hurt her, but knowing not what to say, and Helen with a warm softness in her eyes, the stalwart figure of a man loomed out of the gathering darkness. "Ah, Miss Helen! Good evening," he said. "Is it you, Mr. Brandt?" asked Helen. "Of course you know Mr. Zane." Brandt acknowledged Jonathan's bow with an awkwardness which had certainly been absent in his greeting to Helen. He started slightly when she spoke the borderman's name. A brief pause ensued. "Good night," said Jonathan, and left them. He had noticed Brandt's gesture of surprise, slight though it was, and was thinking about it as he walked away. Brandt may have been astonished at finding a borderman talking to a girl, and certainly, as far as Jonathan was concerned, the incident was without precedent. But, on the other hand, Brandt may have had another reason, and Jonathan tried to study out what it might be. He gave but little thought to Helen. That she might like him exceedingly well, did not come into his mind. He remembered his sister Betty's gossip regarding Helen and her admirers, and particularly Roger Brandt; but felt no great concern; he had no curiosity to know more of her. He admired Helen because she was beautiful, yet the feeling was much the same he might have experienced for a graceful deer, a full-foliaged tree, or a dark mossy-stoned bend in a murmuring brook. The girl's face and figure, perfect and alluring as they were, had not awakened him from his indifference. On arriving at his brother's home, he found the colonel and Betty sitting on the porch. "Eb, who is this Brandt?" he asked. "Roger Brandt? He's a French-Canadian; came here from Detroit a year ago. Why do you ask?" "I want to know more about him." Colonel Zane reflected a moment, first as to this unusual request from Jonathan, and secondly in regard to what little he really did know of Roger Brandt. "Well, Jack, I can't tell you much; nothing of him before he showed up here. He says he has been a pioneer, hunter, scout, soldier, trader--everything. When he came to the fort we needed men. It was just after Girty's siege, and all the cabins had been burned. Brandt seemed honest, and was a good fellow. Besides, he had gold. He started the river barges, which came from Fort Pitt. He has surely done the settlement good service, and has prospered. I never talked a dozen times to him, and even then, not for long. He appears to like the young people, which is only natural. That's all I know; Betty might tell you more, for he tried to be attentive to her." "Did he, Betty?" Jonathan asked. "He followed me until I showed him I didn't care for company," answered Betty. "What kind of a man is he?" "Jack, I know nothing against him, although I never fancied him. He's better educated than the majority of frontiersmen; he's good-natured and agreeable, and the people like him." "Why don't you?" Betty looked surprised at his blunt question, and then said with a laugh: "I never tried to reason why; but since you have spoken I believe my dislike was instinctive." After Betty had retired to her room the brothers remained on the porch smoking. "Betty's pretty keen, Jack. I never knew her to misjudge a man. Why this sudden interest in Roger Brandt?" The borderman puffed his pipe in silence. "Say, Jack," Colonel Zane said suddenly, "do you connect Brandt in any way with this horse-stealing?" "No more than some, an' less than others," replied Jonathan curtly. Nothing more was said for a time. To the brothers this hour of early dusk brought the same fullness of peace. From gray twilight to gloomy dusk quiet reigned. The insects of night chirped and chorused with low, incessant hum. From out the darkness came the peeping of frogs. Suddenly the borderman straightened up, and, removing the pipe from his mouth, turned his ear to the faint breeze, while at the same time one hand closed on the colonel's knee with a warning clutch. Colonel Zane knew what that clutch signified. Some faint noise, too low for ordinary ears, had roused the borderman. The colonel listened, but heard nothing save the familiar evening sounds. "Jack, what'd you hear?" he whispered. "Somethin' back of the barn," replied Jonathan, slipping noiselessly off the steps, lying at full length with his ear close to the ground. "Where's the dog?" he asked. "Chief must have gone with Sam. The old nigger sometimes goes at this hour to see his daughter." Jonathan lay on the grass several moments; then suddenly he arose much as a bent sapling springs to place. "I hear footsteps. Get the rifles," he said in a fierce whisper. "Damn! There is some one in the barn." "No; they're outside. Hurry, but softly." Colonel Zane had but just risen to his feet, when Mrs. Zane came to the door and called him by name. Instantly from somewhere in the darkness overhanging the road, came a low, warning whistle. "A signal!" exclaimed Colonel Zane. "Quick, Eb! Look toward Metzar's light. One, two, three, shadows--Injuns!" "By the Lord Harry! Now they're gone; but I couldn't mistake those round heads and bristling feathers." "Shawnees!" said the borderman, and his teeth shut hard like steel on flint. "Jack, they were after the horses, and some one was on the lookout! By God! right under our noses!" "Hurry," cried Jonathan, pulling his brother off the porch. Colonel Zane followed the borderman out of the yard, into the road, and across the grassy square. "We might find the one who gave the signal," said the colonel. "He was near at hand, and couldn't have passed the house." Colonel Zane was correct, for whoever had whistled would be forced to take one of two ways of escape; either down the straight road ahead, or over the high stockade fence of the fort. "There he goes," whispered Jonathan. "Where? I can't see a blamed thing." "Go across the square, run around the fort, an' head him off on the road. Don't try to stop him for he'll have weapons, just find out who he is." "I see him now," replied Colonel Zane, as he hurried off into the darkness. During a few moments Jonathan kept in view the shadow he had seen first come out of the gloom by the stockade, and thence pass swiftly down the road. He followed swiftly, silently. Presently a light beyond threw a glare across the road. He thought he was approaching a yard where there was a fire, and the flames proved to be from pine cones burning in the yard of Helen Sheppard. He remembered then that she was entertaining some of the young people. The figure he was pursuing did not pass the glare. Jonathan made certain it disappeared before reaching the light, and he knew his eyesight too well not to trust to it absolutely. Advancing nearer the yard, he heard the murmur of voices in gay conversation, and soon saw figures moving about under the trees. No doubt was in his mind but that the man who gave the signal to warn the Indians, was one of Helen Sheppard's guests. Jonathan had walked across the street then down the path, before he saw the colonel coming from the opposite direction. Halting under a maple he waited for his brother to approach. "I didn't meet any one. Did you lose him?" whispered Colonel Zane breathlessly. "No; he's in there." "That's Sheppard's place. Do you mean he's hiding there?" "No!" Colonel Zane swore, as was his habit when exasperated. Kind and generous man that he was, it went hard with him to believe in the guilt of any of the young men he had trusted. But Jonathan had said there was a traitor among them, and Colonel Zane did not question this assertion. He knew the borderman. During years full of strife, and war, and blood had he lived beside this silent man who said little, but that little was the truth. Therefore Colonel Zane gave way to anger. "Well, I'm not so damned surprised! What's to be done?" "Find out what men are there?" "That's easy. I'll go to see George and soon have the truth." "Won't do," said the borderman decisively. "Go back to the barn, an' look after the hosses." When Colonel Zane had obeyed Jonathan dropped to his hands and knees, and swiftly, with the agile movements of an Indian, gained a corner of the Sheppard yard. He crouched in the shade of a big plum tree. Then, at a favorable opportunity, vaulted the fence and disappeared under a clump of lilac bushes. The evening wore away no more tediously to the borderman, than to those young frontiersmen who were whispering tender or playful words to their partners. Time and patience were the same to Jonathan Zane. He lay hidden under the fragrant lilacs, his eyes, accustomed to the dark from long practice, losing no movement of the guests. Finally it became evident that the party was at an end. One couple took the initiative, and said good night to their hostess. "Tom Bennet, I hope it's not you," whispered the borderman to himself, as he recognized the young fellow. A general movement followed, until the merry party were assembled about Helen near the front gate. "Jim Morrison, I'll bet it's not you," was Jonathan's comment. "That soldier Williams is doubtful; Hart an' Johnson being strangers, are unknown quantities around here, an' then comes Brandt." All departed except Brandt, who remained talking to Helen in low, earnest tones. Jonathan lay very quietly, trying to decide what should be his next move in the unraveling of the mystery. He paid little attention to the young couple, but could not help overhearing their conversation. "Indeed, Mr. Brandt, you frontiersmen are not backward," Helen was saying in her clear voice. "I am surprised to learn that you love me upon such short acquaintance, and am sorry, too, for I hardly know whether I even so much as like you." "I love you. We men of the border do things rapidly," he replied earnestly. "So it seems," she said with a soft laugh. "Won't you care for me?" he pleaded. "Nothing is surer than that I never know what I am going to do," Helen replied lightly. "All these fellows are in love with you. They can't help it any more than I. You are the most glorious creature. Please give me hope." "Mr. Brandt, let go my hand. I'm afraid I don't like such impulsive men." "Please let me hold your hand." "Certainly not." "But I will hold it, and if you look at me like that again I'll do more," he said. "What, bold sir frontiersman?" she returned, lightly still, but in a voice which rang with a deeper note. "I'll kiss you," he cried desperately. "You wouldn't dare." "Wouldn't I though? You don't know us border fellows yet. You come here with your wonderful beauty, and smile at us with that light in your eyes which makes men mad. Oh, you'll pay for it." The borderman listened to all this love-making half disgusted, until he began to grow interested. Brandt's back was turned to him, and Helen stood so that the light from the pine cones shone on her face. Her eyes were brilliant, otherwise she seemed a woman perfectly self-possessed. Brandt held her hand despite the repeated efforts she made to free it. But she did not struggle violently, or make an outcry. Suddenly Brandt grasped her other hand, pulling her toward him. "These other fellows will kiss you, and I'm going to be the first!" he declared passionately. Helen drew back, now thoroughly alarmed by the man's fierce energy. She had been warned against this very boldness in frontiersmen; but had felt secure in her own pride and dignity. Her blood boiled at the thought that she must exert strength to escape insult. She struggled violently when Brandt bent his head. Almost sick with fear, she had determined to call for help, when a violent wrench almost toppled her over. At the same instant her wrists were freed; she heard a fierce cry, a resounding blow, and then the sodden thud of a heavy body falling. Recovering her balance, she saw a tall figure beside her, and a man in the act of rising from the ground. "You?" whispered Helen, recognizing the tall figure as Jonathan's. The borderman did not answer. He stepped forward, slipping his hand inside his hunting frock. Brandt sprang nimbly to his feet, and with a face which, even in the dim light, could be seen distorted with fury, bent forward to look at the stranger. He, too, had his hand within his coat, as if grasping a weapon; but he did not draw it. "Zane, a lighter blow would have been easier to forget," he cried, his voice clear and cutting. Then he turned to the girl. "Miss Helen, I got what I deserved. I crave your forgiveness, and ask you to understand a man who was once a gentleman. If I am one no longer, the frontier is to blame. I was mad to treat you as I did." Thus speaking, he bowed low with the grace of a man sometimes used to the society of ladies, and then went out of the gate. "Where did you come from?" asked Helen, looking up at Jonathan. He pointed under the lilac bushes. "Were you there?" she asked wonderingly. "Did you hear all?" "I couldn't help hearin'." "It was fortunate for me; but why--why were you there?" Helen came a step nearer, and regarded him curiously with her great eyes now black with excitement. The borderman was silent. Helen's softened mood changed instantly. There was nothing in his cold face which might have betrayed in him a sentiment similar to that of her admirers. "Did you spy on me?" she asked quickly, after a moment's thought. "No," replied Jonathan calmly. Helen gazed in perplexity at this strange man. She did not know how to explain it; she was irritated, but did her best to conceal it. He had no interest in her, yet had hidden under the lilacs in her yard. She was grateful because he had saved her from annoyance, yet could not fathom his reason for being so near. "Did you come here to see me?" she asked, forgetting her vexation. "No." "What for, then?" "I reckon I won't say," was the quiet, deliberate refusal. Helen stamped her foot in exasperation. "Be careful that I do not put a wrong construction on your strange action," said she coldly. "If you have reasons, you might trust me. If you are only----" "Sh-s-sh!" he breathed, grasping her wrist, and holding it firmly in his powerful hand. The whole attitude of the man had altered swiftly, subtly. The listlessness was gone. His lithe body became rigid as he leaned forward, his head toward the ground, and turned slightly in a manner that betokened intent listening. Helen trembled as she felt his powerful frame quiver. Whatever had thus changed him, gave her another glimpse of his complex personality. It seemed to her incredible that with one whispered exclamation this man could change from cold indifference to a fire and force so strong as to dominate her. Statue-like she remained listening; but hearing no sound, and thrillingly conscious of the hand on her arm. Far up on the hillside an owl hooted dismally, and an instant later, faint and far away, came an answer so low as to be almost indistinct. The borderman raised himself erect as he released her. "It's only an owl," she said in relief. His eyes gleamed like stars. "It's Wetzel, an' it means Injuns!" Then he was gone into the darkness. CHAPTER V In the misty morning twilight Colonel Zane, fully armed, paced to and fro before his cabin, on guard. All night he had maintained a watch. He had not considered it necessary to send his family into the fort, to which they had often been compelled to flee. On the previous night Jonathan had come swiftly back to the cabin, and, speaking but two words, seized his weapons and vanished into the black night. The words were "Injuns! Wetzel!" and there were none others with more power to affect hearers on the border. The colonel believed that Wetzel had signaled to Jonathan. On the west a deep gully with precipitous sides separated the settlement from a high, wooded bluff. Wetzel often returned from his journeying by this difficult route. He had no doubt seen Indian signs, and had communicated the intelligence to Jonathan by their system of night-bird calls. The nearness of the mighty hunter reassured Colonel Zane. When the colonel returned from his chase of the previous night, he went directly to the stable, there to find that the Indians had made off with a thoroughbred, and Betty's pony. Colonel Zane was furious, not on account of the value of the horses, but because Bess was his favorite bay, and Betty loved nothing more than her pony Madcap. To have such a march stolen on him after he had heard and seen the thieves was indeed hard. High time it was that these horse thieves be run to earth. No Indian had planned these marauding expeditions. An intelligent white man was at the bottom of the thieving, and he should pay for his treachery. The colonel's temper, however, soon cooled. He realized after thinking over the matter, that he was fortunate it passed off without bloodshed. Very likely the intent had been to get all his horses, perhaps his neighbor's as well, and it had been partly frustrated by Jonathan's keen sagacity. These Shawnees, white leader or not, would never again run such risks. "It's like a skulking Shawnee," muttered Colonel Zane, "to slip down here under cover of early dusk, when no one but an Indian hunter could detect him. I didn't look for trouble, especially so soon after the lesson we gave Girty and his damned English and redskins. It's lucky Jonathan was here. I'll go back to the old plan of stationing scouts at the outposts until snow flies." While Colonel Zane talked to himself and paced the path he had selected to patrol, the white mists cleared, and a rosy hue followed the brightening in the east. The birds ceased twittering to break into gay songs, and the cock in the barnyard gave one final clarion-voiced salute to the dawn. The rose in the east deepened into rich red, and then the sun peeped over the eastern hilltops to drench the valley with glad golden light. A blue smoke curling lazily from the stone chimney of his cabin, showed that Sam had made the kitchen fire, and a little later a rich, savory odor gave pleasing evidence that his wife was cooking breakfast. "Any sign of Jack?" a voice called from the open door, and Betty appeared. "Nary sign." "Of the Indians, then?" "Well, Betts, they left you a token of their regard," and Colonel Zane smiled as he took a broken halter from the fence. "Madcap?" cried Betty. "Yes, they've taken Madcap and Bess." "Oh, the villains! Poor pony," exclaimed Betty indignantly. "Eb, I'll coax Wetzel to fetch the pony home if he has to kill every Shawnee in the valley." "Now you're talking, Betts," Colonel Zane replied. "If you could get Lew to do that much, you'd be blessed from one end of the border to the other." He walked up the road; then back, keeping a sharp lookout on all sides, and bestowing a particularly keen glance at the hillside across the ravine, but could see no sign of the bordermen. As it was now broad daylight he felt convinced that further watch was unnecessary, and went in to breakfast. When he came out again the villagers were astir. The sharp strokes of axes rang out on the clear morning air, and a mellow anvil-clang pealed up from the blacksmith shop. Colonel Zane found his brother Silas and Jim Douns near the gate. "Morning, boys," he cried cheerily. "Any glimpse of Jack or Lew?" asked Silas. "No; but I'm expecting one of 'em any moment." "How about the Indians?" asked Douns. "Silas roused me out last night; but didn't stay long enough to say more than 'Indians.'" "I don't know much more than Silas. I saw several of the red devils who stole the horses; but how many, where they've gone, or what we're to expect, I can't say. We've got to wait for Jack or Lew. Silas, keep the garrison in readiness at the fort, and don't allow a man, soldier or farmer, to leave the clearing until further orders. Perhaps there were only three of those Shawnees, and then again the woods might have been full of them. I take it something's amiss, or Jack and Lew would be in by now." "Here come Sheppard and his girl," said Silas, pointing down the lane. "'Pears George is some excited." Colonel Zane had much the same idea as he saw Sheppard and his daughter. The old man appeared in a hurry, which was sufficient reason to believe him anxious or alarmed, and Helen looked pale. "Ebenezer, what's this I hear about Indians?" Sheppard asked excitedly. "What with Helen's story about the fort being besieged, and this brother of yours routing honest people from their beds, I haven't had a wink of sleep. What's up? Where are the redskins?" "Now, George, be easy," said Colonel Zane calmly. "And you, Helen, mustn't be frightened. There's no danger. We did have a visit from Indians last night; but they hurt no one, and got only two horses." "Oh, I'm so relieved that it's not worse," said Helen. "It's bad enough, Helen," Betty cried, her black eyes flashing, "my pony Madcap is gone." "Colonel Zane, come here quick!" cried Douns, who stood near the gate. With one leap Colonel Zane was at the gate, and, following with his eyes the direction indicated by Douns' trembling finger, he saw two tall, brown figures striding down the lane. One carried two rifles, and the other a long bundle wrapped in a blanket. "It's Jack and Wetzel," whispered Colonel Zane to Jim. "They've got the girl, and by God! from the way that bundle hangs, I think she's dead. Here," he added, speaking loudly, "you women get into the house." Mrs. Zane, Betty and Helen stared. "Go into the house!" he cried authoritatively. Without a protest the three women obeyed. At that moment Nellie Douns came across the lane; Sam shuffled out from the backyard, and Sheppard arose from his seat on the steps. They joined Colonel Zane, Silas and Jim at the gate. "I wondered what kept you so late," Colonel Zane said to Jonathan, as he and his companion came up. "You've fetched Mabel, and she's----". The good man could say no more. If he should live an hundred years on the border amid savage murderers, he would still be tender-hearted. Just now he believed the giant borderman by the side of Jonathan held a dead girl, one whom he had danced, when a child, upon his knee. "Mabel, an' jest alive," replied Jonathan. "By God! I'm glad!" exclaimed Colonel Zane. "Here, Lew, give her to me." Wetzel relinquished his burden to the colonel. "Lew, any bad Indian sign?" asked Colonel Zane as he turned to go into the house. The borderman shook his head. "Wait for me," added the colonel. He carried the girl to that apartment in the cabin which served the purpose of a sitting-room, and laid her on a couch. He gently removed the folds of the blanket, disclosing to view a fragile, white-faced girl. "Bess, hurry, hurry!" he screamed to his wife, and as she came running in, followed no less hurriedly by Betty, Helen and Nellie, he continued, "Here's Mabel Lane, alive, poor child; but in sore need of help. First see whether she has any bodily injury. If a bullet must be cut out, or a knife-wound sewed up, it's better she remained unconscious. Betty, run for Bess's instruments, and bring brandy and water. Lively now!" Then he gave vent to an oath and left the room. Helen, her heart throbbing wildly, went to the side of Mrs. Zane, who was kneeling by the couch. She saw a delicate girl, not over eighteen years old, with a face that would have been beautiful but for the set lips, the closed eyelids, and an expression of intense pain. "Oh! Oh!" breathed Helen. "Nell, hand me the scissors," said Mrs. Zane, "and help me take off this dress. Why, it's wet, but, thank goodness! 'tis not with blood. I know that slippery touch too well. There, that's right. Betty, give me a spoonful of brandy. Now heat a blanket, and get one of your linsey gowns for this poor child." Helen watched Mrs. Zane as if fascinated. The colonel's wife continued to talk while with deft fingers she forced a few drops of brandy between the girl's closed teeth. Then with the adroitness of a skilled surgeon, she made the examination. Helen had heard of this pioneer woman's skill in setting broken bones and treating injuries, and when she looked from the calm face to the steady fingers, she had no doubt as to the truth of what had been told. "Neither bullet wound, cut, bruise, nor broken bone," said Mrs. Zane. "It's fear, starvation, and the terrible shock." She rubbed Mabel's hands while gazing at her pale face. Then she forced more brandy between the tightly-closed lips. She was rewarded by ever so faint a color tinging the wan cheeks, to be followed by a fluttering of the eyelids. Then the eyes opened wide. They were large, soft, dark and humid with agony. Helen could not bear their gaze. She saw the shadow of death, and of worse than death. She looked away, while in her heart rose a storm of passionate fury at the brutes who had made of this tender girl a wreck. The room was full of women now, sober-faced matrons and grave-eyed girls, yet all wore the same expression, not alone of anger, nor fear, nor pity, but of all combined. Helen instinctively felt that this was one of the trials of border endurance, and she knew from the sterner faces of the maturer women that such a trial was familiar. Despite all she had been told, the shock and pain were too great, and she went out of the room sobbing. She almost fell over the broad back of Jonathan Zane who was sitting on the steps. Near him stood Colonel Zane talking with a tall man clad in faded buckskin. "Lass, you shouldn't have stayed," said Colonel Zane kindly. "It's--hurt--me--here," said Helen, placing her hand over her heart. "Yes, I know, I know; of course it has," he replied, taking her hand. "But be brave, Helen, bear up, bear up. Oh! this border is a stern place! Do not think of that poor girl. Come, let me introduce Jonathan's friend, Wetzel!" Helen looked up and held out her hand. She saw a very tall man with extremely broad shoulders, a mass of raven-black hair, and a white face. He stepped forward, and took her hand in his huge, horny palm, pressing it, he stepped back without speaking. Colonel Zane talked to her in a soothing voice; but she failed to hear what he said. This Wetzel, this Indian-hunter whom she had heard called "Deathwind of the Border," this companion, guide, teacher of Jonathan Zane, this borderman of wonderful deeds, stood before her. Helen saw a cold face, deathly in its pallor, lighted by eyes sloe-black but like glinting steel. Striking as were these features, they failed to fascinate as did the strange tracings which apparently showed through the white, drawn skin. This first repelled, then drew her with wonderful force. Suffering, of fire, and frost, and iron was written there, and, stronger than all, so potent as to cause fear, could be read the terrible purpose of this man's tragic life. "You avenged her! Oh! I know you did!" cried Helen, her whole heart leaping with a blaze to her eyes. She was answered by a smile, but such a smile! Kindly it broke over the stern face, giving a glimpse of a heart still warm beneath that steely cold. Behind it, too, there was something fateful, something deadly. Helen knew, though the borderman spoke not, that somewhere among the grasses of the broad plains, or on the moss of the wooded hills, lay dead the perpetrators of this outrage, their still faces bearing the ghastly stamp of Deathwind. CHAPTER VI Happier days than she had hoped for, dawned upon Helen after the first touch of border sorrow. Mabel Lane did not die. Helen and Betty nursed the stricken girl tenderly, weeping for very joy when signs of improvement appeared. She had remained silent for several days, always with that haunting fear in her eyes, and then gradually came a change. Tender care and nursing had due effect in banishing the dark shadow. One morning after a long sleep she awakened with a bright smile, and from that time her improvement was rapid. Helen wanted Mabel to live with her. The girl's position was pitiable. Homeless, fatherless, with not a relative on the border, yet so brave, so patient that she aroused all the sympathy in Helen's breast. Village gossip was in substance, that Mabel had given her love to a young frontiersman, by name Alex Bennet, who had an affection for her, so it was said, but as yet had made no choice between her and the other lasses of the settlement. What effect Mabel's terrible experience might have on this lukewarm lover, Helen could not even guess; but she was not hopeful as to the future. Colonel Zane and Betty approved of Helen's plan to persuade Mabel to live with her, and the latter's faint protestations they silenced by claiming she could be of great assistance in the management of the house, therefore it was settled. Finally the day came when Mabel was ready to go with Helen. Betty had given her a generous supply of clothing, for all her belongings had been destroyed when the cabin was burned. With Helen's strong young arm around her she voiced her gratitude to Betty and Mrs. Zane and started toward the Sheppard home. From the green square, where the ground was highest, an unobstructed view could be had of the valley. Mabel gazed down the river to where her home formerly stood. Only a faint, dark spot, like a blur on the green landscape, could be seen. Her soft eyes filled with tears; but she spoke no word. "She's game and that's why she didn't go under," Colonel Zane said to himself as he mused on the strength and spirit of borderwomen. To their heroism, more than any other thing, he attributed the establishing of homes in this wilderness. In the days that ensued, as Mabel grew stronger, the girls became very fond of each other. Helen would have been happy at any time with such a sweet companion, but just then, when the poor girl's mind was so sorely disturbed she was doubly glad. For several days, after Mabel was out of danger, Helen's thoughts had dwelt on a subject which caused extreme vexation. She had begun to suspect that she encouraged too many admirers for whom she did not care, and thought too much of a man who did not reciprocate. She was gay and moody in turn. During the moody hours she suspected herself, and in her gay ones, scorned the idea that she might ever care for a man who was indifferent. But that thought once admitted, had a trick of returning at odd moments, clouding her cheerful moods. One sunshiny morning while the May flowers smiled under the hedge, when dew sparkled on the leaves, and the locust-blossoms shone creamy-white amid the soft green of the trees, the girls set about their much-planned flower gardening. Helen was passionately fond of plants, and had brought a jar of seeds of her favorites all the way from her eastern home. "We'll plant the morning-glories so they'll run up the porch, and the dahlias in this long row and the nasturtiums in this round bed," Helen said. "You have some trailing arbutus," added Mabel, "and must have clematis, wild honeysuckle and golden-glow, for they are all sweet flowers." "This arbutus is so fresh, so dewy, so fragrant," said Helen, bending aside a lilac bush to see the pale, creeping flowers. "I never saw anything so beautiful. I grow more and more in love with my new home and friends. I have such a pretty garden to look into, and I never tire of the view beyond." Helen gazed with pleasure and pride at the garden with its fresh green and lavender-crested lilacs, at the white-blossomed trees, and the vine-covered log cabins with blue smoke curling from their stone chimneys. Beyond, the great bulk of the fort stood guard above the willow-skirted river, and far away over the winding stream the dark hills, defiant, kept their secrets. "If it weren't for that threatening fort one could imagine this little hamlet, nestling under the great bluff, as quiet and secure as it is beautiful," said Helen. "But that charred stockade fence with its scarred bastions and these lowering port-holes, always keep me alive to the reality." "It wasn't very quiet when Girty was here," Mabel replied thoughtfully. "Were you in the fort then?" asked Helen breathlessly. "Oh, yes, I cooled the rifles for the men," replied Mabel calmly. "Tell me all about it." Helen listened again to a story she had heard many times; but told by new lips it always gained in vivid interest. She never tired of hearing how the notorious renegade, Girty, rode around the fort on his white horse, giving the defenders an hour in which to surrender; she learned again of the attack, when the British soldiers remained silent on an adjoining hillside, while the Indians yelled exultantly and ran about in fiendish glee, when Wetzel began the battle by shooting an Indian chieftain who had ventured within range of his ever fatal rifle. And when it came to the heroic deeds of that memorable siege Helen could not contain her enthusiasm. She shed tears over little Harry Bennet's death at the south bastion where, though riddled with bullets, he stuck to his post until relieved. Clark's race, across the roof of the fort to extinguish a burning arrow, she applauded with clapping hands. Her great eyes glowed and burned, but she was silent, when hearing how Wetzel ran alone to a break in the stockade, and there, with an ax, the terrible borderman held at bay the whole infuriated Indian mob until the breach was closed. Lastly Betty Zane's never-to-be-forgotten run with the powder to the relief of the garrison and the saving of the fort was something not to cry over or applaud; but to dream of and to glorify. "Down that slope from Colonel Zane's cabin is where Betty ran with the powder," said Mabel, pointing. "Did you see her?" asked Helen. "Yes, I looked out of a port-hole. The Indians stopped firing at the fort in their eagerness to shoot Betty. Oh, the banging of guns and yelling of savages was one fearful, dreadful roar! Through all that hail of bullets Betty ran swift as the wind." "I almost wish Girty would come again," said Helen. "Don't; he might." "How long has Betty's husband, Mr. Clarke, been dead?" inquired Helen. "I don't remember exactly. He didn't live long after the siege. Some say he inhaled the flames while fighting fire inside the stockade." "How sad!" "Yes, it was. It nearly killed Betty. But we border girls do not give up easily; we must not," replied Mabel, an unquenchable spirit showing through the sadness of her eyes. Merry voices interrupted them, and they turned to see Betty and Nell entering the gate. With Nell's bright chatter and Betty's wit, the conversation became indeed vivacious, running from gossip to gowns, and then to that old and ever new theme, love. Shortly afterward the colonel entered the gate, with swinging step and genial smile. "Well, now, if here aren't four handsome lasses," he said with an admiring glance. "Eb, I believe if you were single any girl might well suspect you of being a flirt," said Betty. "No girl ever did. I tell you I was a lady-killer in my day," replied Colonel Zane, straightening his fine form. He was indeed handsome, with his stalwart frame, dark, bronzed face and rugged, manly bearing. "Bess said you were; but that it didn't last long after you saw her," cried Betty, mischief gleaming in her dark eye. "Well, that's so," replied the colonel, looking a trifle crest-fallen; "but you know every dog has his day." Then advancing to the porch, he looked at Mabel with a more serious gaze as he asked, "How are you to-day?" "Thank you, Colonel Zane, I am getting quite strong." "Look up the valley. There's a raft coming down the river," said he softly. Far up the broad Ohio a square patch showed dark against the green water. Colonel Zane saw Mabel start, and a dark red flush came over her pale face. For an instant she gazed with an expression of appeal, almost fear. He knew the reason. Alex Bennet was on that raft. "I came over to ask if I can be of any service?" "Tell him," she answered simply. "I say, Betts," Colonel Zane cried, "has Helen's cousin cast any more such sheep eyes at you?" "Oh, Eb, what nonsense!" exclaimed Betty, blushing furiously. "Well, if he didn't look sweet at you I'm an old fool." "You're one anyway, and you're horrid," said Betty, tears of anger glistening in her eyes. Colonel Zane whistled softly as he walked down the lane. He went into the wheelwright's shop to see about some repairs he was having made on a wagon, and then strolled on down to the river. Two Indians were sitting on the rude log wharf, together with several frontiersmen and rivermen, all waiting for the raft. He conversed with the Indians, who were friendly Chippewas, until the raft was tied up. The first person to leap on shore was a sturdy young fellow with a shock of yellow hair, and a warm, ruddy skin. "Hello, Alex, did you have a good trip?" asked Colonel Zane of the youth. "H'are ye, Colonel Zane. Yes, first-rate trip," replied young Bennet. "Say, I've a word for you. Come aside," and drawing Colonel Zane out of earshot of the others, he continued, "I heard this by accident, not that I didn't spy a bit when I got interested, for I did; but the way it came about was all chance. Briefly, there's a man, evidently an Englishman, at Fort Pitt whom I overheard say he was out on the border after a Sheppard girl. I happened to hear from one of Brandt's men, who rode into Pitt just before we left, that you had new friends here by that name. This fellow was a handsome chap, no common sort, but lordly, dissipated and reckless as the devil. He had a servant traveling with him, a sailor, by his gab, who was about the toughest customer I've met in many a day. He cut a fellow in bad shape at Pitt. These two will be on the next boat, due here in a day or so, according to river and weather conditions, an' I thought, considerin' how unusual the thing was, I'd better tell ye." "Well, well," said Colonel Zane reflectively. He recalled Sheppard's talk about an Englishman. "Alex, you did well to tell me. Was the man drunk when he said he came west after a woman?" "Sure he was," replied Alex. "But not when he spoke the name. Ye see I got suspicious, an' asked about him. It's this way: Jake Wentz, the trader, told me the fellow asked for the Sheppards when he got off the wagon-train. When I first seen him he was drunk, and I heard Jeff Lynn say as how the border was a bad place to come after a woman. That's what made me prick up my ears. Then the Englishman said: 'It is, eh? By God! I'd go to hell after a woman I wanted.' An' Colonel, he looked it, too." Colonel Zane remained thoughtful while Alex made up a bundle and forced the haft of an ax under the string; but as the young man started away the colonel suddenly remembered his errand down to the wharf. "Alex, come back here," he said, and wondered if the lad had good stuff in him. The boatman's face was plain, but not evil, and a close scrutiny of it rather prepossessed the colonel. "Alex, I've some bad news for you," and then bluntly, with his keen gaze fastened on the young man's face, he told of old Lane's murder, of Mabel's abduction, and of her rescue by Wetzel. Alex began to curse and swear vengeance. "Stow all that," said the colonel sharply. "Wetzel followed four Indians who had Mabel and some stolen horses. The redskins quarreled over the girl, and two took the horses, leaving Mabel to the others. Wetzel went after these last, tomahawked them, and brought Mabel home. She was in a bad way, but is now getting over the shock." "Say, what'd we do here without Wetzel?" Alex said huskily, unmindful of the tears that streamed from his eyes and ran over his brown cheeks. "Poor old Jake! Poor Mabel! Damn me! it's my fault. If I'd 'a done right an' married her as I should, as I wanted to, she wouldn't have had to suffer. But I'll marry her yet, if she'll have me. It was only because I had no farm, no stock, an' only that little cabin as is full now, that I waited." "Alex, you know me," said Colonel Zane in kindly tones. "Look there, down the clearing half a mile. See that green strip of land along the river, with the big chestnut in the middle and a cabin beyond. There's as fine farming land as can be found on the border, eighty acres, well watered. The day you marry Mabel that farm is yours." Alex grew red, stammered, and vainly tried to express his gratitude. "Come along, the sooner you tell Mabel the better," said the colonel with glowing face. He was a good matchmaker. He derived more pleasure from a little charity bestowed upon a deserving person, than from a season's crops. When they arrived at the Sheppard house the girls were still on the porch. Mabel rose when she saw Alex, standing white and still. He, poor fellow, was embarrassed by the others, who regarded him with steady eyes. Colonel Zane pushed Alex up on the porch, and said in a low voice: "Mabel, I've just arranged something you're to give Alex. It's a nice little farm, and it'll be a wedding present." Mabel looked in a bewildered manner from Colonel Zane's happy face to the girls, and then at the red, joyous features of her lover. Only then did she understand, and uttering a strange little cry, put her trembling hands to her bosom as she swayed to and fro. But she did not fall, for Alex, quick at the last, leaped forward and caught her in his arms. * * * * * That evening Helen denied herself to Mr. Brandt and several other callers. She sat on the porch with her father while he smoked his pipe. "Where's Will?" she asked. "Gone after snipe, so he said," replied her father. "Snipe? How funny! Imagine Will hunting! He's surely catching the wild fever Colonel Zane told us about." "He surely is." Then came a time of silence. Mr. Sheppard, accustomed to Helen's gladsome spirit and propensity to gay chatter, noted how quiet she was, and wondered. "Why are you so still?" "I'm a little homesick," Helen replied reluctantly. "No? Well, I declare! This is a glorious country; but not for such as you, dear, who love music and gaiety. I often fear you'll not be happy here, and then I long for the old home, which reminds me of your mother." "Dearest, forget what I said," cried Helen earnestly. "I'm only a little blue to-day; perhaps not at all homesick." "Indeed, you always seemed happy." "Father, I am happy. It's only--only a girl's foolish sentiment." "I've got something to tell you, Helen, and it has bothered me since Colonel Zane spoke of it to-night. Mordaunt is coming to Fort Henry." "Mordaunt? Oh, impossible! Who said so? How did you learn?" "I fear 'tis true, my dear. Colonel Zane told me he had heard of an Englishman at Fort Pitt who asked after us. Moreover, the fellow answers the description of Mordaunt. I am afraid it is he, and come after you." "Suppose he has--who cares? We owe him nothing. He cannot hurt us." "But, Helen, he's a desperate man. Aren't you afraid of him?" "Not I," cried Helen, laughing in scorn. "He'd better have a care. He can't run things with a high hand out here on the border. I told him I would have none of him, and that ended it." "I'm much relieved. I didn't want to tell you; but it seemed necessary. Well, child, good night, I'll go to bed." Long after Mr. Sheppard had retired Helen sat thinking. Memories of the past, and of the unwelcome suitor, Mordaunt, thronged upon her thick and fast. She could see him now with his pale, handsome face, and distinguished bearing. She had liked him, as she had other men, until he involved her father, with himself, in financial ruin, and had made his attention to her unpleasantly persistent. Then he had followed the fall of fortune with wild dissipation, and became a gambler and a drunkard. But he did not desist in his mad wooing. He became like her shadow, and life grew to be unendurable, until her father planned to emigrate west, when she hailed the news with joy. And now Mordaunt had tracked her to her new home. She was sick with disgust. Then her spirit, always strong, and now freer for this new, wild life of the frontier, rose within her, and she dismissed all thoughts of this man and his passion. The old life was dead and buried. She was going to be happy here. As for the present, it was enough to think of the little border village, now her home; of her girl friends; of the quiet borderman: and, for the moment, that the twilight was somber and beautiful. High up on the wooded bluff rising so gloomily over the village, she saw among the trees something silver-bright. She watched it rise slowly from behind the trees, now hidden, now white through rifts in the foliage, until it soared lovely and grand above the black horizon. The ebony shadows of night seemed to lift, as might a sable mantle moved by invisible hands. But dark shadows, safe from the moon-rays, lay under the trees, and a pale, misty vapor hung below the brow of the bluff. Mysterious as had grown the night before darkness yielded to the moon, this pale, white light flooding the still valley, was even more soft and strange. To one of Helen's temperament no thought was needed; to see was enough. Yet her mind was active. She felt with haunting power the beauty of all before her; in fancy transporting herself far to those silver-tipped clouds, and peopling the dells and shady nooks under the hills with spirits and fairies, maidens and valiant knights. To her the day was as a far-off dream. The great watch stars grew wan before the radiant moon; it reigned alone. The immensity of the world with its glimmering rivers, pensive valleys and deep, gloomy forests lay revealed under the glory of the clear light. Absorbed in this contemplation Helen remained a long time gazing with dreamy ecstasy at the moonlit valley until a slight chill disturbed her happy thoughts. She knew she was not alone. Trembling, she stood up to see, easily recognizable in the moonlight, the tall buckskin-garbed figure of Jonathan Zane. "Well, sir," she called, sharply, yet with a tremor in her voice. The borderman came forward and stood in front of her. Somehow he appeared changed. The long, black rifle, the dull, glinting weapons made her shudder. Wilder and more untamable he looked than ever. The very silence of the forest clung to him; the fragrance of the grassy plains came faintly from his buckskin garments. "Evenin', lass," he said in his slow, cool manner. "How did you get here?" asked Helen presently, because he made no effort to explain his presence at such a late hour. "I was able to walk." Helen observed, with a vaulting spirit, one ever ready to rise in arms, that Master Zane was disposed to add humor to his penetrating mysteriousness. She flushed hot and then paled. This borderman certainly possessed the power to vex her, and, reluctantly she admitted, to chill her soul and rouse her fear. She strove to keep back sharp words, because she had learned that this singular individual always gave good reason for his odd actions. "I think in kindness to me," she said, choosing her words carefully, "you might tell me why you appear so suddenly, as if you had sprung out of the ground." "Are you alone?" "Yes. Father is in bed; so is Mabel, and Will has not yet come home. Why?" "Has no one else been here?" "Mr. Brandt came, as did some others; but wishing to be alone, I did not see them," replied Helen in perplexity. "Have you seen Brandt since?" "Since when?" "The night I watched by the lilac bush." "Yes, several times," replied Helen. Something in his tone made her ashamed. "I couldn't very well escape when he called. Are you surprised because after he insulted me I'd see him?" "Yes." Helen felt more ashamed. "You don't love him?" he continued. Helen was so surprised she could only look into the dark face above her. Then she dropped her gaze, abashed by his searching eyes. But, thinking of his question, she subdued the vague stirrings of pleasure in her breast, and answered coldly: "No, I do not; but for the service you rendered me I should never have answered such a question." "I'm glad, an' hope you care as little for the other five men who were here that night." "I declare, Master Zane, you seem exceedingly interested in the affairs of a young woman whom you won't visit, except as you have come to-night." He looked at her with his piercing eyes. "You spied upon my guests," she said, in no wise abashed now that her temper was high. "Did you care so very much?" "Care?" he asked slowly. "Yes; you were interested to know how many of my admirers were here, what they did, and what they said. You even hint disparagingly of them." "True, I wanted to know," he replied; "but I don't hint about any man." "You are so interested you wouldn't call on me when I invited you," said Helen, with poorly veiled sarcasm. It was this that made her bitter; she could never forget that she had asked this man to come to see her, and he had refused. "I reckon you've mistook me," he said calmly. "Why did you come? Why do you shadow my friends? This is twice you have done it. Goodness knows how many times you've been here! Tell me." The borderman remained silent. "Answer me," commanded Helen, her eyes blazing. She actually stamped her foot. "Borderman or not, you have no right to pry into my affairs. If you are a gentleman, tell me why you came here?" The eyes Jonathan turned on Helen stilled all the angry throbbing of her blood. "I come here to learn which of your lovers is the dastard who plotted the abduction of Mabel Lane, an' the thief who stole our hosses. When I find the villain I reckon Wetzel an' I'll swing him to some tree." The borderman's voice rang sharp and cold, and when he ceased speaking she sank back upon the step, shocked, speechless, to gaze up at him with staring eyes. "Don't look so, lass; don't be frightened," he said, his voice gentle and kind as it had been hard. He took her hand in his. "You nettled me into replyin'. You have a sharp tongue, lass, and when I spoke I was thinkin' of him. I'm sorry." "A horse-thief and worse than murderer among my friends!" murmured Helen, shuddering, yet she never thought to doubt his word. "I followed him here the night of your company." "Do you know which one?" "No." He still held her hand, unconsciously, but Helen knew it well. A sense of his strength came with the warm pressure, and comforted her. She would need that powerful hand, surely, in the evil days which seemed to darken the horizon. "What shall I do?" she whispered, shuddering again. "Keep this secret between you an' me." "How can I? How can I?" "You must," his voice was deep and low. "If you tell your father, or any one, I might lose the chance to find this man, for, lass, he's desperate cunnin'. Then he'd go free to rob others, an' mebbe help make off with other poor girls. Lass, keep my secret." "But he might try to carry me away," said Helen in fearful perplexity. "Most likely he might," replied the borderman with the smile that came so rarely. "Oh! Knowing all this, how can I meet any of these men again? I'd betray myself." "No; you've got too much pluck. It so happens you are the one to help me an' Wetzel rid the border of these hell-hounds, an' you won't fail. I know a woman when it comes to that." "I--I help you and Wetzel?" "Exactly." "Gracious!" cried Helen, half-laughing, half-crying. "And poor me with more trouble coming on the next boat." "Lass, the colonel told me about the Englishman. It'll be bad for him to annoy you." Helen thrilled with the depth of meaning in the low voice. Fate surely was weaving a bond between her and this borderman. She felt it in his steady, piercing gaze; in her own tingling blood. Then as her natural courage dispelled all girlish fears, she faced him, white, resolute, with a look in her eyes that matched his own. "I will do what I can," she said. CHAPTER VII Westward from Fort Henry, far above the eddying river, Jonathan Zane slowly climbed a narrow, hazel-bordered, mountain trail. From time to time he stopped in an open patch among the thickets and breathed deep of the fresh, wood-scented air, while his keen gaze swept over the glades near by, along the wooded hillsides, and above at the timber-strewn woodland. This June morning in the wild forest was significant of nature's brightness and joy. Broad-leaved poplars, dense foliaged oaks, and vine-covered maples shaded cool, mossy banks, while between the trees the sunshine streamed in bright spots. It shone silver on the glancing silver-leaf, and gold on the colored leaves of the butternut tree. Dewdrops glistened on the ferns; ripples sparkled in the brooks; spider-webs glowed with wondrous rainbow hues, and the flower of the forest, the sweet, pale-faced daisy, rose above the green like a white star. Yellow birds flitted among the hazel bushes caroling joyously, and cat-birds sang gaily. Robins called; bluejays screeched in the tall, white oaks; wood-peckers hammered in the dead hard-woods, and crows cawed overhead. Squirrels chattered everywhere. Ruffed grouse rose with great bustle and a whirr, flitting like brown flakes through the leaves. From far above came the shrill cry of a hawk, followed by the wilder scream of an eagle. Wilderness music such as all this fell harmoniously on the borderman's ear. It betokened the gladsome spirit of his wild friends, happy in the warm sunshine above, or in the cool depths beneath the fluttering leaves, and everywhere in those lonely haunts unalarmed and free. Familiar to Jonathan, almost as the footpath near his home, was this winding trail. On the height above was a safe rendezvous, much frequented by him and Wetzel. Every lichen-covered stone, mossy bank, noisy brook and giant oak on the way up this mountain-side, could have told, had they spoken their secrets, stories of the bordermen. The fragile ferns and slender-bladed grasses peeping from the gray and amber mosses, and the flowers that hung from craggy ledges, had wisdom to impart. A borderman lived under the green tree-tops, and, therefore, all the nodding branches of sassafras and laurel, the grassy slopes and rocky cliffs, the stately ash trees, kingly oaks and dark, mystic pines, together with the creatures that dwelt among them, save his deadly red-skinned foes, he loved. Other affection as close and true as this, he had not known. Hearkening thus with single heart to nature's teachings, he learned her secrets. Certain it was, therefore, that the many hours he passed in the woods apart from savage pursuits, were happy and fruitful. Slowly he pressed on up the ascent, at length coming into open light upon a small plateau marked by huge, rugged, weather-chipped stones. On the eastern side was a rocky promontory, and close to the edge of this cliff, an hundred feet in sheer descent, rose a gnarled, time and tempest-twisted chestnut tree. Here the borderman laid down his rifle and knapsack, and, half-reclining against the tree, settled himself to rest and wait. This craggy point was the lonely watch-tower of eagles. Here on the highest headland for miles around where the bordermen were wont to meet, the outlook was far-reaching and grand. Below the gray, splintered cliffs sheered down to meet the waving tree-tops, and then hill after hill, slope after slope, waved and rolled far, far down to the green river. Open grassy patches, bright little islands in that ocean of dark green, shone on the hillsides. The rounded ridges ran straight, curved, or zigzag, but shaped their graceful lines in the descent to make the valley. Long, purple-hued, shadowy depressions in the wide expanse of foliage marked deep clefts between ridges where dark, cool streams bounded on to meet the river. Lower, where the land was level, in open spaces could be seen a broad trail, yellow in the sunlight, winding along with the curves of the water-course. On a swampy meadow, blue in the distance, a herd of buffalo browsed. Beyond the river, high over the green island, Fort Henry lay peaceful and solitary, the only token of the works of man in all that vast panorama. Jonathan Zane was as much alone as if one thousand miles, instead of five, intervened between him and the settlement. Loneliness was to him a passion. Other men loved home, the light of woman's eyes, the rattle of dice or the lust of hoarding; but to him this wild, remote promontory, with its limitless view, stretching away to the dim hazy horizon, was more than all the aching joys of civilization. Hours here, or in the shady valley, recompensed him for the loss of home comforts, the soft touch of woman's hands, the kiss of baby lips, and also for all he suffered in his pitiless pursuits, the hard fare, the steel and blood of a borderman's life. Soon the sun shone straight overhead, dwarfing the shadow of the chestnut on the rock. During such a time it was rare that any connected thought came into the borderman's mind. His dark eyes, now strangely luminous, strayed lingeringly over those purple, undulating slopes. This intense watchfulness had no object, neither had his listening. He watched nothing; he hearkened to the silence. Undoubtedly in this state of rapt absorption his perceptions were acutely alert; but without thought, as were those of the savage in the valley below, or the eagle in the sky above. Yet so perfectly trained were these perceptions that the least unnatural sound or sight brought him wary and watchful from his dreamy trance. The slight snapping of a twig in the thicket caused him to sit erect, and reach out toward his rifle. His eyes moved among the dark openings in the thicket. In another moment a tall figure pressed the bushes apart. Jonathan let fall his rifle, and sank back against the tree once more. Wetzel stepped over the rocks toward him. "Come from Blue Pond?" asked Jonathan as the newcomer took a seat beside him. Wetzel nodded as he carefully laid aside his long, black rifle. "Any Injun sign?" continued Jonathan, pushing toward his companion the knapsack of eatables he had brought from the settlement. "Nary Shawnee track west of this divide," answered Wetzel, helping himself to bread and cheese. "Lew, we must go eastward, over Bing Legget's way, to find the trail of the stolen horses." "Likely, an' it'll be a long, hard tramp." "Who's in Legget's gang now beside Old Horse, the Chippewa, an' his Shawnee pard, Wildfire? I don't know Bing; but I've seen some of his Injuns an' they remember me." "Never seen Legget but onct," replied Wetzel, "an' that time I shot half his face off. I've been told by them as have seen him since, that he's got a nasty scar on his temple an' cheek. He's a big man an' knows the woods. I don't know who all's in his gang, nor does anybody. He works in the dark, an' for cunnin' he's got some on Jim Girty, Deerin', an' several more renegades we know of lyin' quiet back here in the woods. We never tackled as bad a gang as his'n; they're all experienced woodsmen, old fighters, an' desperate, outlawed as they be by Injuns an' whites. It wouldn't surprise me to find that it's him an' his gang who are runnin' this hoss-thievin'; but bad or no, we're goin' after 'em." Jonathan told of his movements since he had last seen his companion. "An' the lass Helen is goin' to help us," said Wetzel, much interested. "It's a good move. Women are keen. Betty put Miller's schemin' in my eye long 'afore I noticed it. But girls have chances we men'd never get." "Yes, an' she's like Betts, quicker'n lightnin'. She'll find out this hoss-thief in Fort Henry; but Lew, when we do get him we won't be much better off. Where do them hosses go? Who's disposin' of 'em for this fellar?" "Where's Brandt from?" asked Wetzel. "Detroit; he's a French-Canadian." Wetzel swung sharply around, his eyes glowing like wakening furnaces. "Bing Legget's a French-Canadian, an' from Detroit. Metzar was once thick with him down Fort Pitt way 'afore he murdered a man an' became an outlaw. We're on the trail, Jack." "Brandt an' Metzar, with Legget backin' them, an' the horses go overland to Detroit?" "I calkilate you've hit the mark." "What'll we do?" asked Jonathan. "Wait; that's best. We've no call to hurry. We must know the truth before makin' a move, an' as yet we're only suspicious. This lass'll find out more in a week than we could in a year. But Jack, have a care she don't fall into any snare. Brandt ain't any too honest a lookin' chap, an' them renegades is hell for women. The scars you wear prove that well enough. She's a rare, sweet, bloomin' lass, too. I never seen her equal. I remember how her eyes flashed when she said she knew I'd avenged Mabel. Jack, they're wonderful eyes; an' that girl, however sweet an' good as she must be, is chain-lightnin' wrapped up in a beautiful form. Aren't the boys at the fort runnin' arter her?" "Like mad; it'd make you laugh to see 'em," replied Jonathan calmly. "There'll be some fights before she's settled for, an' mebbe arter thet. Have a care for her, Jack, an' see that she don't ketch you." "No more danger than for you." "I was ketched onct," replied Wetzel. Jonathan Zane looked up at his companion. Wetzel's head was bowed; but there was no merriment in the serious face exposed to the borderman's scrutiny. "Lew, you're jokin'." "Not me. Some day, when you're ketched good, an' I have to go back to the lonely trail, as I did afore you an' me become friends, mebbe then, when I'm the last borderman, I'll tell you." "Lew, 'cordin' to the way settlers are comin', in a few more years there won't be any need for a borderman. When the Injuns are all gone where'll be our work?" "'Tain't likely either of us'll ever see them times," said Wetzel, "an' I don't want to. Wal, Jack, I'm off now, an' I'll meet you here every other day." Wetzel shouldered his long rifle, and soon passed out of sight down the mountain-side. Jonathan arose, shook himself as a big dog might have done, and went down into the valley. Only once did he pause in his descent, and that was when a crackling twig warned him some heavy body was moving near. Silently he sank into the bushes bordering the trail. He listened with his ear close to the ground. Presently he heard a noise as of two hard substances striking together. He resumed his walk, having recognized the grating noise of a deer-hoof striking a rock. Farther down he espied a pair grazing. The buck ran into the thicket; but the doe eyed him curiously. Less than an hour's rapid walking brought him to the river. Here he plunged into a thicket of willows, and emerged on a sandy strip of shore. He carefully surveyed the river bank, and then pulled a small birch-bark canoe from among the foliage. He launched the frail craft, paddled across the river and beached it under a reedy, over-hanging bank. The distance from this point in a straight line to his destination was only a mile; but a rocky bluff and a ravine necessitated his making a wide detour. While lightly leaping over a brook his keen eye fell on an imprint in the sandy loam. Instantly he was on his knees. The footprint was small, evidently a woman's, and, what was more unusual, instead of the flat, round moccasin-track, it was pointed, with a sharp, square heel. Such shoes were not worn by border girls. True Betty and Nell had them; but they never went into the woods without moccasins. Jonathan's experienced eye saw that this imprint was not an hour old. He gazed up at the light. The day was growing short. Already shadows lay in the glens. He would not long have light enough to follow the trail; but he hurried on hoping to find the person who made it before darkness came. He had not traveled many paces before learning that the one who made it was lost. The uncertainty in those hasty steps was as plain to the borderman's eyes, as if it had been written in words on the sand. The course led along the brook, avoiding the rough places; and leading into the open glades and glens; but it drew no nearer to the settlement. A quarter of an hour of rapid trailing enabled Jonathan to discern a dark figure moving among the trees. Abandoning the trail, he cut across a ridge to head off the lost woman. Stepping out of a sassafras thicket, he came face to face with Helen Sheppard. "Oh!" she cried in alarm, and then the expression of terror gave place to one of extreme relief and gladness. "Oh! Thank goodness! You've found me. I'm lost!" "I reckon," answered Jonathan grimly. "The settlement's only five hundred yards over that hill." "I was going the wrong way. Oh! suppose you hadn't come!" exclaimed Helen, sinking on a log and looking up at him with warm, glad eyes. "How did you lose your way?" Jonathan asked. He saw neither the warmth in her eyes nor the gladness. "I went up the hillside, only a little way, after flowers, keeping the fort in sight all the time. Then I saw some lovely violets down a little hill, and thought I might venture. I found such loads of them I forgot everything else, and I must have walked on a little way. On turning to go back I couldn't find the little hill. I have hunted in vain for the clearing. It seems as if I have been wandering about for hours. I'm so glad you've found me!" "Weren't you told to stay in the settlement, inside the clearing?" demanded Jonathan. "Yes," replied Helen, with her head up. "Why didn't you?" "Because I didn't choose." "You ought to have better sense." "It seems I hadn't," Helen said quietly, but her eyes belied that calm voice. "You're a headstrong child," Jonathan added curtly. "Mr. Zane!" cried Helen with pale face. "I suppose you've always had your own sweet will; but out here on the border you ought to think a little of others, if not of yourself." Helen maintained a proud silence. "You might have run right into prowlin' Shawnees." "That dreadful disaster would not have caused you any sorrow," she flashed out. "Of course it would. I might have lost my scalp tryin' to get you back home," said Jonathan, beginning to hesitate. Plainly he did not know what to make of this remarkable young woman. "Such a pity to have lost all your fine hair," she answered with a touch of scorn. Jonathan flushed, perhaps for the first time in his life. If there was anything he was proud of, it was his long, glossy hair. "Miss Helen, I'm a poor hand at words," he said, with a pale, grave face. "I was only speakin' for your own good." "You are exceedingly kind; but need not trouble yourself." "Say," Jonathan hesitated, looking half-vexed at the lovely, angry face. Then an idea occurred to him. "Well, I won't trouble. Find your way home yourself." Abruptly he turned and walked slowly away. He had no idea of allowing her to go home alone; but believed it might be well for her to think so. If she did not call him back he would remain near at hand, and when she showed signs of anxiety or fear he could go to her. Helen determined she would die in the woods, or be captured by Shawnees, before calling him back. But she watched him. Slowly the tall, strong figure, with its graceful, springy stride, went down the glade. He would be lost to view in a moment, and then she would be alone. How dark it had suddenly become! The gray cloak of twilight was spread over the forest, and in the hollows night already had settled down. A breathless silence pervaded the woods. How lonely! thought Helen, with a shiver. Surely it would be dark before she could find the settlement. What hill hid the settlement from view? She did not know, could not remember which he had pointed out. Suddenly she began to tremble. She had been so frightened before he had found her, and so relieved afterward; and now he was going away. "Mr. Zane," she cried with a great effort. "Come back." Jonathan kept slowly on. "Come back, Jonathan, please." The borderman retraced his steps. "Please take me home," she said, lifting a fair face all flushed, tear-stained, and marked with traces of storm. "I was foolish, and silly to come into the woods, and so glad to see you! But you spoke to me--in--in a way no one ever used before. I'm sure I deserved it. Please take me home. Papa will be worried." Softer eyes and voice than hers never entreated man. "Come," he said gently, and, taking her by the hand, he led her up the ridge. Thus they passed through the darkening forest, hand in hand, like a dusky redman and his bride. He helped her over stones and logs, but still held her hand when there was no need of it. She looked up to see him walking, so dark and calm beside her, his eyes ever roving among the trees. Deepest remorse came upon her because of what she had said. There was no sentiment for him in this walk under the dark canopy of the leaves. He realized the responsibility. Any tree might hide a treacherous foe. She would atone for her sarcasm, she promised herself, while walking, ever conscious of her hand in his, her bosom heaving with the sweet, undeniable emotion which came knocking at her heart. Soon they were out of the thicket, and on the dusty lane. A few moments of rapid walking brought them within sight of the twinkling lights of the village, and a moment later they were at the lane leading to Helen's home. Releasing her hand, she stopped him with a light touch and said: "Please don't tell papa or Colonel Zane." "Child, I ought. Some one should make you stay at home." "I'll stay. Please don't tell. It will worry papa." Jonathan Zane looked down into her great, dark, wonderful eyes with an unaccountable feeling. He really did not hear what she asked. Something about that upturned face brought to his mind a rare and perfect flower which grew in far-off rocky fastnesses. The feeling he had was intangible, like no more than a breath of fragrant western wind, faint with tidings of some beautiful field. "Promise me you won't tell." "Well, lass, have it your own way," replied Jonathan, wonderingly conscious that it was the first pledge ever asked of him by a woman. "Thank you. Now we have two secrets, haven't we?" she laughed, with eyes like stars. "Run home now, lass. Be careful hereafter. I do fear for you with such spirit an' temper. I'd rather be scalped by Shawnees than have Bing Legget so much as set eyes on you." "You would? Why?" Her voice was like low, soft music. "Why?" he mused. "It'd seem like a buzzard about to light on a doe." "Good-night," said Helen abruptly, and, wheeling, she hurried down the lane. CHAPTER VIII "Jack," said Colonel Zane to his brother next morning, "to-day is Saturday and all the men will be in. There was high jinks over at Metzar's place yesterday, and I'm looking for more to-day. The two fellows Alex Bennet told me about, came on day-before-yesterday's boat. Sure enough, one's a lordly Englishman, and the other, the cussedest-looking little chap I ever saw. They started trouble immediately. The Englishman, his name is Mordaunt, hunted up the Sheppards and as near as I can make out from George's story, Helen spoke her mind very plainly. Mordaunt and Case, that's his servant, the little cuss, got drunk and raised hell down at Metzar's where they're staying. Brandt and Williams are drinking hard, too, which is something unusual for Brandt. They got chummy at once with the Englishman, who seems to have plenty of gold and is fond of gambling. This Mordaunt is a gentleman, or I never saw one. I feel sorry for him. He appears to be a ruined man. If he lasts a week out here I'll be surprised. Case looks ugly, as if he were spoiling to cut somebody. I want you to keep your eye peeled. The day may pass off as many other days of drinking bouts have, without anything serious, and on the other hand there's liable to be trouble." Jonathan's preparations were characteristic of the borderman. He laid aside his rifle, and, removing his short coat, buckled on a second belt containing a heavier tomahawk and knife than those he had been wearing. Then he put on his hunting frock, or shirt, and wore it loose with the belts underneath, instead of on the outside. Unfastened, the frock was rather full, and gave him the appearance of a man unarmed and careless. Jonathan Zane was not so reckless as to court danger, nor, like many frontiersmen, fond of fighting for its own sake. Colonel Zane was commandant of the fort, and, in a land where there was no law, tried to maintain a semblance of it. For years he had kept thieves, renegades and outlaws away from his little settlement by dealing out stern justice. His word was law, and his bordermen executed it as such. Therefore Jonathan and Wetzel made it their duty to have a keen eye on all that was happening. They kept the colonel posted, and never interfered in any case without orders. The morning passed quietly. Jonathan strolled here or loitered there; but saw none of the roisterers. He believed they were sleeping off the effects of their orgy on the previous evening. After dinner he smoked his pipe. Betty and Helen passed, and Helen smiled. It struck him suddenly that she had never looked at him in such a way before. There was meaning in that warm, radiant flash. A little sense of vexation, the source of which he did not understand, stirred in him against this girl; but with it came the realization that her white face and big, dark eyes had risen before him often since the night before. He wished, for the first time, that he could understand women better. "Everything quiet?" asked Colonel Zane, coming out on the steps. "All quiet," answered Jonathan. "They'll open up later, I suspect. I'm going over to Sheppard's for a while, and, later, will drop into Metzar's. I'll make him haul in a yard or two. I don't like things I hear about his selling the youngsters rum. I'd like you to be within call." The borderman strolled down the bluff and along the path which overhung the river. He disliked Metzar more than his brother suspected, and with more weighty reason than that of selling rum to minors. Jonathan threw himself at length on the ground and mused over the situation. "We never had any peace in this settlement, an' never will in our day. Eb is hopeful an' looks at the bright side, always expectin' to-morrow will be different. What have the past sixteen years been? One long bloody fight, an' the next sixteen won't be any better. I make out that we'll have a mix-up soon. Metzar an' Brandt with their allies, whoever they are, will be in it, an' if Bing Legget's in the gang, we've got, as Wetzel said, a long, hard trail, which may be our last. More'n that, there'll be trouble about this chain-lightnin' girl, as Wetzel predicted. Women make trouble anyways; an' when they're winsome an' pretty they cause more; but if they're beautiful an' fiery, bent on havin' their way, as this new lass is, all hell couldn't hold a candle to them. We don't need the Shawnees an' Girtys, an' hoss thieves round this here settlement to stir up excitin' times, now we've got this dark-eyed lass. An' yet any fool could see she's sweet, an' good, an' true as gold." Toward the middle of the afternoon Jonathan sauntered in the direction of Metzar's inn. It lay on the front of the bluff, with its main doors looking into the road. A long, one-story log structure with two doors, answered as a bar-room. The inn proper was a building more pretentious, and joined the smaller one at its western end. Several horses were hitched outside, and two great oxen yoked to a cumbersome mud-crusted wagon stood patiently by. Jonathan bent his tall head as he entered the noisy bar-room. The dingy place reeked with tobacco smoke and the fumes of vile liquor. It was crowded with men. The lawlessness of the time and place was evident. Gaunt, red-faced frontiersmen reeled to and fro across the sawdust floor; hunters and fur-traders, raftsmen and farmers, swelled the motley crowd; young men, honest-faced, but flushed and wild with drink, hung over the bar; a group of sullen-visaged, serpent-eyed Indians held one corner. The black-bearded proprietor dealt out the rum. From beyond the bar-room, through a door entering upon the back porch, came the rattling of dice. Jonathan crossed the bar-room apparently oblivious to the keen glance Metzar shot at him, and went out upon the porch. This also was crowded, but there was more room because of greater space. At one table sat some pioneers drinking and laughing; at another were three men playing with dice. Colonel Zane, Silas, and Sheppard were among the lookers-on at the game. Jonathan joined them, and gazed at the gamesters. Brandt he knew well enough; he had seen that set, wolfish expression in the riverman's face before. He observed, however, that the man had flushed cheeks and trembling hands, indications of hard drinking. The player sitting next to Brandt was Williams, one of the garrison, and a good-natured fellow, but garrulous and wickedly disposed when drunk. The remaining player Jonathan at once saw was the Englishman, Mordaunt. He was a handsome man, with fair skin, and long, silken, blond mustache. Heavy lines, and purple shades under his blue eyes, were die unmistakable stamp of dissipation. Reckless, dissolute, bad as he looked, there yet clung something favorable about the man. Perhaps it was his cool, devil-may-care way as he pushed over gold piece after gold piece from the fast diminishing pile before him. His velvet frock and silken doublet had once been elegant; but were now sadly the worse for border roughing. Behind the Englishman's chair Jonathan saw a short man with a face resembling that of a jackal. The grizzled, stubbly beard, the protruding, vicious mouth, the broad, flat nose, and deep-set, small, glittering eyes made a bad impression on the observer. This man, Jonathan concluded, was the servant, Case, who was so eager with his knife. The borderman made the reflection, that if knife-play was the little man's pastime, he was not likely to go short of sport in that vicinity. Colonel Zane attracted Jonathan's attention at this moment. The pioneers had vacated the other table, and Silas and Sheppard now sat by it. The colonel wanted his brother to join them. "Here, Johnny, bring drinks," he said to the serving boy. "Tell Metzar who they're for." Then turning to Sheppard he continued: "He keeps good whiskey; but few of these poor devils ever see it." At the same time Colonel Zane pressed his foot upon that of Jonathan's. The borderman understood that the signal was intended to call attention to Brandt. The latter had leaned forward, as Jonathan passed by to take a seat with his brother, and said something in a low tone to Mordaunt and Case. Jonathan knew by the way the Englishman and his man quickly glanced up at him, that he had been the subject of the remark. Suddenly Williams jumped to his feet with an oath. "I'm cleaned out," he cried. "Shall we play alone?" asked Brandt of Mordaunt. "As you like," replied the Englishman, in a tone which showed he cared not a whit whether he played or not. "I've got work to do. Let's have some more drinks, and play another time," said Brandt. The liquor was served and drank. Brandt pocketed his pile of Spanish and English gold, and rose to his feet. He was a trifle unsteady; but not drunk. "Will you gentlemen have a glass with me?" Mordaunt asked of Colonel Zane's party. "Thank you, some other time, with pleasure. We have our drink now," Colonel Zane said courteously. Meantime Brandt had been whispering in Case's ear. The little man laughed at something the riverman said. Then he shuffled from behind the table. He was short, his compact build gave promise of unusual strength and agility. "What are you going to do now?" asked Mordaunt, rising also. He looked hard at Case. "Shiver my sides, cap'n, if I don't need another drink," replied the sailor. "You have had enough. Come upstairs with me," said Mordaunt. "Easy with your hatch, cap'n," grinned Case. "I want to drink with that ther' Injun killer. I've had drinks with buccaneers, and bad men all over the world, and I'm not going to miss this chance." "Come on; you will get into trouble. You must not annoy these gentlemen," said Mordaunt. "Trouble is the name of my ship, and she's a trim, fast craft," replied the man. His loud voice had put an end to the convention. Men began to crowd in from the bar-room. Metzar himself came to see what had caused the excitement. The little man threw up his cap, whooped, and addressed himself to Jonathan: "Injun-killer, bad man of the border, will you drink with a jolly old tar from England?" Suddenly a silence reigned, like that in the depths of the forest. To those who knew the borderman, and few did not know him, the invitation was nothing less than an insult. But it did not appear to them, as to him, like a pre-arranged plot to provoke a fight. "Will you drink, redskin-hunter?" bawled the sailor. "No," said Jonathan in his quiet voice. "Maybe you mean that against old England?" demanded Case fiercely. The borderman eyed him steadily, inscrutable as to feeling or intent, and was silent. "Go out there and I'll see the color of your insides quicker than I'd take a drink," hissed the sailor, with his brick-red face distorted and hideous to look upon. He pointed with a long-bladed knife that no one had seen him draw, to the green sward beyond the porch. The borderman neither spoke, nor relaxed a muscle. "Ho! ho! my brave pirate of the plains!" cried Case, and he leered with braggart sneer into the faces of Jonathan and his companions. It so happened that Sheppard sat nearest to him, and got the full effect of the sailor's hot, rum-soaked breath. He arose with a pale face. "Colonel, I can't stand this," he said hastily. "Let's get away from that drunken ruffian." "Who's a drunken ruffian?" yelled Case, more angry than ever. "I'm not drunk; but I'm going to be, and cut some of you white-livered border mates. Here, you old masthead, drink this to my health, damn you!" The ruffian had seized a tumbler of liquor from the table, and held it toward Sheppard while he brandished his long knife. White as snow, Sheppard backed against the wall; but did not take the drink. The sailor had the floor; no one save him spoke a word. The action had been so rapid that there had hardly been time. Colonel Zane and Silas were as quiet and tense as the borderman. "Drink!" hoarsely cried the sailor, advancing his knife toward Sheppard's body. When the sharp point all but pressed against the old man, a bright object twinkled through the air. It struck Case's wrist, knocked the knife from his fingers, and, bounding against the wall, fell upon the floor. It was a tomahawk. The borderman sprang over the table like a huge catamount, and with movement equally quick, knocked Case with a crash against the wall; closed on him before he could move a hand, and flung him like a sack of meal over the bluff. The tension relieved, some of the crowd laughed, others looked over the embankment to see how Case had fared, and others remarked that for some reason he had gotten off better than they expected. The borderman remained silent. He leaned against a post, with broad breast gently heaving, but his eyes sparkled as they watched Brandt, Williams, Mordaunt and Metzar. The Englishman alone spoke. "Handily done," he said, cool and suave. "Sir, yours is an iron hand. I apologize for this unpleasant affair. My man is quarrelsome when under the influence of liquor." "Metzar, a word with you," cried Colonel Zane curtly. "Come inside, kunnel," said the innkeeper, plainly ill at ease. "No; listen here. I'll speak to the point. You've got to stop running this kind of a place. No words, now, you've got to stop. Understand? You know as well as I, perhaps better, the character of your so-called inn. You'll get but one more chance." "Wal, kunnel, this is a free country," growled Metzar. "I can't help these fellars comin' here lookin' fer blood. I runs an honest place. The men want to drink an' gamble. What's law here? What can you do?" "You know me, Metzar," Colonel Zane said grimly. "I don't waste words. 'To hell with law!' so you say. I can say that, too. Remember, the next drunken boy I see, or shady deal, or gambling spree, out you go for good." Metzar lowered his shaggy head and left the porch. Brandt and his friends, with serious faces, withdrew into the bar-room. The borderman walked around the corner of the inn, and up the lane. The colonel, with Silas and Sheppard, followed in more leisurely fashion. At a shout from some one they turned to see a dusty, bloody figure, with ragged clothes, stagger up from the bluff. "There's that blamed sailor now," said Sheppard. "He's a tough nut. My! What a knock on the head Jonathan gave him. Strikes me, too, that tomahawk came almost at the right time to save me a whole skin." "I was furious, but not at all alarmed," rejoined Colonel Zane. "I wondered what made you so quiet." "I was waiting. Jonathan never acts until the right moment, and then--well, you saw him. The little villain deserved killing. I could have shot him with pleasure. Do you know, Sheppard, Jonathan's aversion to shedding blood is a singular thing. He'd never kill the worst kind of a white man until driven to it." "That's commendable. How about Wetzel?" "Well, Lew is different," replied Colonel Zane with a shudder. "If I told him to take an ax and clean out Metzar's place--God! what a wreck he'd make of it. Maybe I'll have to tell him, and if I do, you'll see something you can never forget." CHAPTER IX On Sunday morning under the bright, warm sun, the little hamlet of Fort Henry lay peacefully quiet, as if no storms had ever rolled and thundered overhead, no roistering ever disturbed its stillness, and no Indian's yell ever horribly broke the quiet. "'Tis a fine morning," said Colonel Zane, joining his sister on the porch. "Well, how nice you look! All in white for the first time since--well, you do look charming. You're going to church, of course." "Yes, I invited Helen and her cousin to go. I've persuaded her to teach my Sunday-school class, and I'll take another of older children," replied Betty. "That's well. The youngsters don't have much chance to learn out here. But we've made one great stride. A church and a preacher means very much to young people. Next shall come the village school." "Helen and I might teach our classes an hour or two every afternoon." "It would be a grand thing if you did! Fancy these tots growing up unable to read or write. I hate to think of it; but the Lord knows I've done my best. I've had my troubles in keeping them alive." "Helen suggested the day school. She takes the greatest interest in everything and everybody. Her energy is remarkable. She simply must move, must do something. She overflows with kindness and sympathy. Yesterday she cried with happiness when Mabel told her Alex was eager to be married very soon. I tell you, Eb, Helen is a fine character." "Yes, good as she is pretty, which is saying some," mused the colonel. "I wonder who'll be the lucky fellow to win her." "It's hard to say. Not that Englishman, surely. She hates him. Jonathan might. You should see her eyes when he is mentioned." "Say, Betts, you don't mean it?" eagerly asked her brother. "Yes, I do," returned Betty, nodding her head positively. "I'm not easily deceived about those things. Helen's completely fascinated with Jack. She might be only a sixteen-year-old girl for the way she betrays herself to me." "Betty, I have a beautiful plan." "No doubt; you're full of them." "We can do it, Betty, we can, you and I," he said, as he squeezed her arm. "My dear old matchmaking brother," returned Betty, laughing, "it takes two to make a bargain. Jack must be considered." "Bosh!" exclaimed the colonel, snapping his fingers. "You needn't tell me any young man--any man, could resist that glorious girl." "Perhaps not; I couldn't if I were a man. But Jack's not like other people. He'd never realize that she cared for him. Besides, he's a borderman." "I know, and that's the only serious obstacle. But he could scout around the fort, even if he was married. These long, lonely, terrible journeys taken by him and Wetzel are mostly unnecessary. A sweet wife could soon make him see that. The border will be civilized in a few years, and because of that he'd better give over hunting for Indians. I'd like to see him married and settled down, like all the rest of us, even Isaac. You know Jack's the last of the Zanes, that is, the old Zanes. The difficulty arising from his extreme modesty and bashfulness can easily be overcome." "How, most wonderful brother?" "Easy as pie. Tell Jack that Helen is dying of love for him, and tell her that Jack loves----" "But, dear Eb, that latter part is not true," interposed Betty. "True, of course it's true, or would be in any man who wasn't as blind as a bat. We'll tell her Jack cares for her; but he is a borderman with stern ideas of duty, and so slow and backward he'd never tell his love even if he had overcome his tricks of ranging. That would settle it with any girl worth her salt, and this one will fetch Jack in ten days, or less." "Eb, you're a devil," said Betty gaily, and then she added in a more sober vein, "I understand, Eb. Your idea is prompted by love of Jack, and it's all right. I never see him go out of the clearing but I think it may be for the last time, even as on that day so long ago when brother Andrew waved his cap to us, and never came back. Jack is the best man in the world, and I, too, want to see him happy, with a wife, and babies, and a settled occupation in life. I think we might weave a pretty little romance. Shall we try?" "Try? We'll do it! Now, Betts, you explain it to both. You can do it smoother than I, and telling them is really the finest point of our little plot. I'll help the good work along afterwards. He'll be out presently. Nail him at once." Jonathan, all unconscious of the deep-laid scheme to make him happy, soon came out on the porch, and stretched his long arms as he breathed freely of the morning air. "Hello, Jack, where are you bound?" asked Betty, clasping one of his powerful, buckskin-clad knees with her arm. "I reckon I'll go over to the spring," he replied, patting her dark, glossy head. "Do you know I want to tell you something, Jack, and it's quite serious," she said, blushing a little at her guilt; but resolute to carry out her part of the plot. "Well, dear?" he asked as she hesitated. "Do you like Helen?" "That is a question," Jonathan replied after a moment. "Never mind; tell me," she persisted. He made no answer. "Well, Jack, she's--she's wildly in love with you." The borderman stood very still for several moments. Then, with one step he gained the lawn, and turned to confront her. "What's that you say?" Betty trembled a little. He spoke so sharply, his eyes were bent on her so keenly, and he looked so strong, so forceful that she was almost afraid. But remembering that she had said only what, to her mind, was absolutely true, she raised her eyes and repeated the words: "Helen is wildly'in love with you." "Betty, you wouldn't joke about such a thing; you wouldn't lie to me, I know you wouldn't." "No, Jack dear." She saw his powerful frame tremble, even as she had seen more than one man tremble, during the siege, under the impact of a bullet. Without speaking, he walked rapidly down the path toward the spring. Colonel Zane came out of his hiding-place behind the porch and, with a face positively electrifying in its glowing pleasure, beamed upon his sister. "Gee! Didn't he stalk off like an Indian chief!" he said, chuckling with satisfaction. "By George! Betts, you must have got in a great piece of work. I never in my life saw Jack look like that." Colonel Zane sat down by Betty's side and laughed softly but heartily. "We'll fix him all right, the lonely hill-climber! Why, he hasn't a ghost of a chance. Wait until she sees him after hearing your story! I tell you, Betty--why--damme! you're crying!" He had turned to find her head lowered, while she shaded her face with her hand. "Now, Betty, just a little innocent deceit like that--what harm?" he said, taking her hand. He was as tender as a woman. "Oh, Eb, it wasn't that. I didn't mind telling him. Only the flash in his eyes reminded me of--of Alfred." "Surely it did. Why not? Almost everything brings up a tender memory for some one we've loved and lost. But don't cry, Betty." She laughed a little, and raised a face with its dark cheeks flushed and tear-stained. "I'm silly, I suppose; but I can't help it. I cry at least once every day." "Brace up. Here come Helen and Will. Don't let them see you grieved. My! Helen in pure white, too! This is a conspiracy to ruin the peace of the masculine portion of Fort Henry." Betty went forward to meet her friends while Colonel Zane continued talking, but now to himself. "What a fatal beauty she has!" His eyes swept over Helen with the pleasure of an artist. The fair richness of her skin, the perfect lips, the wavy, shiny hair, the wondrous dark-blue, changing eyes, the tall figure, slender, but strong and swelling with gracious womanhood, made a picture he delighted in and loved to have near him. The girl did not possess for him any of that magnetism, so commonly felt by most of her admirers; but he did feel how subtly full she was of something, which for want of a better term he described in Wetzel's characteristic expression, as "chain-lightning." He reflected that as he was so much older, that she, although always winsome and earnest, showed nothing of the tormenting, bewildering coquetry of her nature. Colonel Zane prided himself on his discernment, and he had already observed that Helen had different sides of character for different persons. To Betty, Mabel, Nell, and the children, she was frank, girlish, full of fun and always lovable; to her elders quiet and earnestly solicitous to please; to the young men cold; but with a penetrating, mocking promise haunting that coldness, and sometimes sweetly agreeable, often wilful, and changeable as April winds. At last the colonel concluded that she needed, as did all other spirited young women, the taming influence of a man whom she loved, a home to care for, and children to soften and temper her spirit. "Well, young friends, I see you count on keeping the Sabbath," he said cheerily. "For my part, Will, I don't see how Jim Douns can preach this morning, before this laurel blossom and that damask rose." "How poetical! Which is which?" asked Betty. "Flatterer!" laughed Helen, shaking her finger. "And a married man, too!" continued Betty. "Well, being married has not affected my poetical sentiment, nor impaired my eyesight." "But it has seriously inconvenienced your old propensity of making love to the girls. Not that you wouldn't if you dared," replied Betty with mischief in her eye. "Now, Will, what do you think of that? Isn't it real sisterly regard? Come, we'll go and look at my thoroughbreds," said Colonel Zane. "Where is Jonathan?" Helen asked presently. "Something happened at Metzar's yesterday. Papa wouldn't tell me, and I want to ask Jonathan." "Jack is down by the spring. He spends a great deal of his time there. It's shady and cool, and the water babbles over the stones." "How much alone he is," said Helen. Betty took her former position on the steps, but did not raise her eyes while she continued speaking. "Yes, he's more alone than ever lately, and quieter, too. He hardly ever speaks now. There must be something on his mind more serious than horse-thieves." "What?" Helen asked quickly. "I'd better not tell--you." A long moment passed before Helen spoke. "Please tell me!" "Well, Helen, we think, Eb and I, that Jack is in love for the first time in his life, and with you, you adorable creature. But Jack's a borderman; he is stern in his principles, thinks he is wedded to his border life, and he knows that he has both red and white blood on his hands. He'd die before he'd speak of his love, because he cannot understand that would do any good, even if you loved him, which is, of course, preposterous." "Loves me!" breathed Helen softly. She sat down rather beside Betty, and turned her face away. She still held the young woman's hand which she squeezed so tightly as to make its owner wince. Betty stole a look at her, and saw the rich red blood mantling her cheeks, and her full bosom heave. Helen turned presently, with no trace of emotion except a singular brilliance of the eyes. She was so slow to speak again that Colonel Zane and Will returned from the corral before she found her voice. "Colonel Zane, please tell me about last night. When papa came home to supper he was pale and very nervous. I knew something had happened. But he would not explain, which made me all the more anxious. Won't you please tell me?" Colonel Zane glanced again at her, and knew what had happened. Despite her self-possession those tell-tale eyes told her secret. Ever-changing and shadowing with a bounding, rapturous light, they were indeed the windows of her soul. All the emotion of a woman's heart shone there, fear, beauty, wondering appeal, trembling joy, and timid hope. "Tell you? Indeed I will," replied Colonel Zane, softened and a little remorseful under those wonderful eyes. No one liked to tell a story better than Colonel Zane. Briefly and graphically he related the circumstances of the affair leading to the attack on Helen's father, and, as the tale progressed, he became quite excited, speaking with animated face and forceful gestures. "Just as the knife-point touched your father, a swiftly-flying object knocked the weapon to the floor. It was Jonathan's tomahawk. What followed was so sudden I hardly saw it. Like lightning, and flexible as steel, Jonathan jumped over the table, smashed Case against the wall, pulled him up and threw him over the bank. I tell you, Helen, it was a beautiful piece of action; but not, of course, for a woman's eyes. Now that's all. Your father was not even hurt." "He saved papa's life," murmured Helen, standing like a statue. She wheeled suddenly with that swift bird-like motion habitual to her, and went quickly down the path leading to the spring. * * * * * Jonathan Zane, solitary dreamer of dreams as he was, had never been in as strange and beautiful a reverie as that which possessed him on this Sabbath morning. Deep into his heart had sunk Betty's words. The wonder of it, the sweetness, that alone was all he felt. The glory of this girl had begun, days past, to spread its glamour round him. Swept irresistibly away now, he soared aloft in a dream-castle of fancy with its painted windows and golden walls. For the first time in his life on the border he had entered the little glade and had no eye for the crystal water flowing over the pebbles and mossy stones, or the plot of grassy ground inclosed by tall, dark trees and shaded by a canopy of fresh green and azure blue. Nor did he hear the music of the soft rushing water, the warbling birds, or the gentle sighing breeze moving the leaves. Gone, vanished, lost to-day was that sweet companionship of nature. That indefinable and unutterable spirit which flowed so peacefully to him from his beloved woods; that something more than merely affecting his senses, which existed for him in the stony cliffs, and breathed with life through the lonely aisles of the forest, had fled before the fateful power of a woman's love and beauty. A long time that seemed only a moment passed while he leaned against a stone. A light step sounded on the path. A vision in pure white entered the glade; two little hands pressed his, and two dark-blue eyes of misty beauty shed their light on him. "Jonathan, I am come to thank you." Sweet and tremulous, the voice sounded far away. "Thank me? For what?" "You saved papa's life. Oh! how can I thank you?" No voice answered for him. "I have nothing to give but this." A flower-like face was held up to him; hands light as thistledown touched his shoulders; dark-blue eyes glowed upon him with all tenderness. "May I thank you--so?" Soft lips met his full and lingeringly. Then came a rush as of wind, a flash of white, and the patter of flying feet. He was alone in the glade. CHAPTER X June passed; July opened with unusually warm weather, and Fort Henry had no visits from Indians or horse-thieves, nor any inconvenience except the hot sun. It was the warmest weather for many years, and seriously dwarfed the settlers' growing corn. Nearly all the springs were dry, and a drouth menaced the farmers. The weather gave Helen an excuse which she was not slow to adopt. Her pale face and languid air perplexed and worried her father and her friends. She explained to them that the heat affected her disagreeably. Long days had passed since that Sunday morning when she kissed the borderman. What transports of sweet hope and fear were hers then! How shame had scorched her happiness! Yet still she gloried in the act. By that kiss had she awakened to a full consciousness of her love. With insidious stealth and ever-increasing power this flood had increased to full tide, and, bursting its bonds, surged over her with irresistible strength. During the first days after the dawning of her passion, she lived in its sweetness, hearing only melodious sounds chiming in her soul. The hours following that Sunday were like long dreams. But as all things reach fruition, so this girlish period passed, leaving her a thoughtful woman. She began to gather up the threads of her life where love had broken them, to plan nobly, and to hope and wait. Weeks passed, however, and her lover did not come. Betty told her that Jonathan made flying trips at break of day to hold council with Colonel Zane; that he and Wetzel were on the trail of Shawnees with stolen horses, and both bordermen were in their dark, vengeful, terrible moods. In these later days Helen passed through many stages of feeling. After the exalting mood of hot, young love, came reaction. She fell into the depths of despair. Sorrow paled her face, thinned her cheeks and lent another shadow, a mournful one, to her great eyes. The constant repression of emotion, the strain of trying to seem cheerful when she was miserable, threatened even her magnificent health. She answered the solicitude of her friends by evasion, and then by that innocent falsehood in which a sensitive soul hides its secrets. Shame was only natural, because since the borderman came not, nor sent her a word, pride whispered that she had wooed him, forgetting modesty. Pride, anger, shame, despair, however, finally fled before affection. She loved this wild borderman, and knew he loved her in return although he might not understand it himself. His simplicity, his lack of experience with women, his hazardous life and stern duty regarding it, pleaded for him and for her love. For the lack of a little understanding she would never live unhappy and alone while she was loved. Better give a thousand times more than she had sacrificed. He would return to the village some day, when the Indians and the thieves were run down, and would be his own calm, gentle self. Then she would win him, break down his allegiance to this fearful border life, and make him happy in her love. While Helen was going through one of the fires of life to come out sweeter and purer, if a little pensive and sad, time, which waits not for love, nor life, nor death, was hastening onward, and soon the golden fields of grain were stored. September came with its fruitful promise fulfilled. Helen entered once more into the quiet, social life of the little settlement, taught her class on Sundays, did all her own work, and even found time to bring a ray of sunshine to more than one sick child's bed. Yet she did not forget her compact with Jonathan, and bent all her intelligence to find some clew that might aid in the capture of the horse-thief. She was still groping in the darkness. She could not, however, banish the belief that the traitor was Brandt. She blamed herself for this, because of having no good reasons for suspicion; but the conviction was there, fixed by intuition. Because a man's eyes were steely gray, sharp like those of a cat's, and capable of the same contraction and enlargement, there was no reason to believe their owner was a criminal. But that, Helen acknowledged with a smile, was the only argument she had. To be sure Brandt had looked capable of anything, the night Jonathan knocked him down; she knew he had incited Case to begin the trouble at Metzar's, and had seemed worried since that time. He had not left the settlement on short journeys, as had been his custom before the affair in the bar-room. And not a horse had disappeared from Fort Henry since that time. Brandt had not discontinued his attentions to her; if they were less ardent it was because she had given him absolutely to understand that she could be his friend only. And she would not have allowed even so much except for Jonathan's plan. She fancied it was possible to see behind Brandt's courtesy, the real subtle, threatening man. Stripped of his kindliness, an assumed virtue, the iron man stood revealed, cold, calculating, cruel. Mordaunt she never saw but once and then, shocking and pitiful, he lay dead drunk in the grass by the side of the road, his pale, weary, handsome face exposed to the pitiless rays of the sun. She ran home weeping over this wreck of what had once been so fine a gentleman. Ah! the curse of rum! He had learned his soft speech and courtly bearing in the refinement of a home where a proud mother adored, and gentle sisters loved him. And now, far from the kindred he had disgraced, he lay in the road like a log. How it hurt her! She almost wished she could have loved him, if love might have redeemed. She was more kind to her other admirers, more tolerant of Brandt, and could forgive the Englishman, because the pangs she had suffered through love had softened her spirit. During this long period the growing friendship of her cousin for Betty had been a source of infinite pleasure to Helen. She hoped and believed a romance would develop between the young widow and Will, and did all in her power, slyly abetted by the matchmaking colonel, to bring the two together. One afternoon when the sky was clear with that intense blue peculiar to bright days in early autumn, Helen started out toward Betty's, intending to remind that young lady she had promised to hunt for clematis and other fall flowers. About half-way to Betty's home she met Brandt. He came swinging round a corner with his quick, firm step. She had not seen him for several days, and somehow he seemed different. A brightness, a flash, as of daring expectation, was in his face. The poise, too, of the man had changed. "Well, I am fortunate. I was just going to your home," he said cheerily. "Won't you come for a walk with me?" "You may walk with me to Betty's," Helen answered. "No, not that. Come up the hillside. We'll get some goldenrod. I'd like to have a chat with you. I may go away--I mean I'm thinking of making a short trip," he added hurriedly. "Please come." "I promised to go to Betty's." "You won't come?" His voice trembled with mingled disappointment and resentment. "No," Helen replied in slight surprise. "You have gone with the other fellows. Why not with me?" He was white now, and evidently laboring under powerful feelings that must have had their origin in some thought or plan which hinged on the acceptance of his invitation. "Because I choose not to," Helen replied coldly, meeting his glance fully. A dark red flush swelled Brandt's face and neck; his gray eyes gleamed balefully with wolfish glare; his teeth were clenched. He breathed hard and trembled with anger. Then, by a powerful effort, he conquered himself; the villainous expression left his face; the storm of rage subsided. Great incentive there must have been for him thus to repress his emotions so quickly. He looked long at her with sinister, intent regard; then, with the laugh of a desperado, a laugh which might have indicated contempt for the failure of his suit, and which was fraught with a world of meaning, of menace, he left her without so much as a salute. Helen pondered over this sudden change, and felt relieved because she need make no further pretense of friendship. He had shown himself to be what she had instinctively believed. She hurried on toward Betty's, hoping to find Colonel Zane at home, and with Jonathan, for Brandt's hint of leaving Fort Henry, and his evident chagrin at such a slip of speech, had made her suspicious. She was informed by Mrs. Zane that the colonel had gone to a log-raising; Jonathan had not been in for several days, and Betty went away with Will. "Where did they go?" asked Helen. "I'm not sure; I think down to the spring." Helen followed the familiar path through the grove of oaks into the glade. It was quite deserted. Sitting on the stone against which Jonathan had leaned the day she kissed him, she gave way to tender reflection. Suddenly she was disturbed by the sound of rapid footsteps, and looking up, saw the hulking form of Metzar, the innkeeper, coming down the path. He carried a bucket, and meant evidently to get water. Helen did not desire to be seen, and, thinking he would stay only a moment, slipped into a thicket of willows behind the stone. She could see plainly through the foliage. Metzar came into the glade, peered around in the manner of a man expecting to see some one, and then, filling his bucket at the spring, sat down on the stone. Not a minute elapsed before soft, rapid footsteps sounded in the distance. The bushes parted, disclosing the white, set face and gray eyes of Roger Brandt. With a light spring he cleared the brook and approached Metzar. Before speaking he glanced around the glade with the fugitive, distrustful glance of a man who suspects even the trees. Then, satisfied by the scrutiny he opened his hunting frock, taking forth a long object which he thrust toward Metzar. It was an Indian arrow. Metzar's dull gaze traveled from this to the ominous face of Brandt. "See there, you! Look at this arrow! Shot by the best Indian on the border into the window of my room. I hadn't been there a minute when it came from the island. God! but it was a great shot!" "Hell!" gasped Metzar, his dull face quickening with some awful thought. "I guess it is hell," replied Brandt, his face growing whiter and wilder. "Our game's up?" questioned Metzar with haggard cheek. "Up? Man! We haven't a day, maybe less, to shake Fort Henry." "What does it mean?" asked Metzar. He was the calmer of the two. "It's a signal. The Shawnees, who were in hiding with the horses over by Blueberry swamp, have been flushed by those bordermen. Some of them have escaped; at least one, for no one but Ashbow could shoot that arrow across the river." "Suppose he hadn't come?" whispered Metzar hoarsely. Brandt answered him with a dark, shuddering gaze. A twig snapped in the thicket. Like foxes at the click of a trap, these men whirled with fearsome glances. "Ugh!" came a low, guttural voice from the bushes, and an Indian of magnificent proportions and somber, swarthy features, entered the glade. CHAPTER XI The savage had just emerged from the river, for his graceful, copper-colored body and scanty clothing were dripping with water. He carried a long bow and a quiver of arrows. Brandt uttered an exclamation of surprise, and Metzar a curse, as the lithe Indian leaped the brook. He was not young. His swarthy face was lined, seamed, and terrible with a dark impassiveness. "Paleface-brother-get-arrow," he said in halting English, as his eyes flashed upon Brandt. "Chief-want-make-sure." The white man leaned forward, grasped the Indian's arm, and addressed him in an Indian language. This questioning was evidently in regard to his signal, the whereabouts of others of the party, and why he took such fearful risks almost in the village. The Indian answered with one English word. "Deathwind!" Brandt drew back with drawn, white face, while a whistling breath escaped him. "I knew it, Metz. Wetzel!" he exclaimed in a husky voice. The blood slowly receded from Metzar's evil, murky face, leaving it haggard. "Deathwind-on-Chief's-trail-up-Eagle Rock," continued the Indian. "Deathwind-fooled-not-for-long. Chief-wait-paleface-brothers at Two Islands." The Indian stepped into the brook, parted the willows, and was gone as he had come, silently. "We know what to expect," said Brandt in calmer tone as the daring cast of countenance returned to him. "There's an Indian for you! He got away, doubled like an old fox on his trail, and ran in here to give us a chance at escape. Now you know why Bing Legget can't be caught." "Let's dig at once," replied Metzar, with no show of returning courage such as characterized his companion. Brandt walked to and fro with bent brows, like one in deep thought. Suddenly he turned upon Metzar eyes which were brightly hard, and reckless with resolve. "By Heaven! I'll do it! Listen. Wetzel has gone to the top of Eagle Mountain, where he and Zane have a rendezvous. Even he won't suspect the cunning of this Indian; anyway it'll be after daylight to-morrow before he strikes the trail. I've got twenty-four hours, and more, to get this girl, and I'll do it!" "Bad move to have weight like her on a march," said Metzar. "Bah! The thing's easy. As for you, go on, push ahead after we're started. All I ask is that you stay by me until the time to cut loose." "I ain't agoin' to crawfish now," growled Metzar. "Strikes me, too, I'm losin' more'n you." "You won't be a loser if you can get back to Detroit with your scalp. I'll pay you in horses and gold. Once we reach Legget's place we're safe." "What's yer plan about gittin' the gal?" asked Metzar. Brandt leaned forward and spoke eagerly, but in a low tone. "Git away on hoss-back?" questioned Metzar, visibly brightening. "Wal, that's some sense. Kin ye trust ther other party?" "I'm sure I can," rejoined Brandt. "It'll be a good job, a good job an' all done in daylight, too. Bing Legget couldn't plan better," Metzar said, rubbing his hands, "We've fooled these Zanes and their fruit-raising farmers for a year, and our time is about up," Brandt muttered. "One more job and we've done. Once with Legget we're safe, and then we'll work slowly back towards Detroit. Let's get out of here now, for some one may come at any moment." The plotters separated, Brandt going through the grove, and Metzar down the path by which he had come. * * * * * Helen, trembling with horror of what she had heard, raised herself cautiously from the willows where she had lain, and watched the innkeeper's retreating figure. When it had disappeared she gave a little gasp of relief. Free now to run home, there to plan what course must be pursued, she conquered her fear and weakness, and hurried from the glade. Luckily, so far as she was able to tell, no one saw her return. She resolved that she would be cool, deliberate, clever, worthy of the borderman's confidence. First she tried to determine the purport of this interview between Brandt and Metzar. She recalled to mind all that was said, and supplied what she thought had been suggested. Brandt and Metzar were horse-thieves, aids of Bing Legget. They had repaired to the glade to plan. The Indian had been a surprise. Wetzel had routed the Shawnees, and was now on the trail of this chieftain. The Indian warned them to leave Fort Henry and to meet him at a place called Two Islands. Brandt's plan, presumably somewhat changed by the advent of the red-man, was to steal horses, abduct a girl in broad daylight, and before tomorrow's sunset escape to join the ruffian Legget. "I am the girl," murmured Helen shudderingly, as she relapsed momentarily into girlish fears. But at once she rose above selfish feelings. Secondly, while it was easy to determine what the outlaws meant, the wisest course was difficult to conceive. She had promised the borderman to help him, and not speak of anything she learned to any but himself. She could not be true to him if she asked advice. The point was clear; either she must remain in the settlement hoping for Jonathan's return in time to frustrate Brandt's villainous scheme, or find the borderman. Suddenly she remembered Metzar's allusion to a second person whom Brandt felt certain he could trust. This meant another traitor in Fort Henry, another horse-thief, another desperado willing to make off with helpless women. Helen's spirit rose in arms. She had their secret, and could ruin them. She would find the borderman. Wetzel was on the trail at Eagle Rock. What for? Trailing an Indian who was then five miles east of that rock? Not Wetzel! He was on that track to meet Jonathan. Otherwise, with the redskins near the river, he would have been closer to them. He would meet Jonathan there at sunset to-day, Helen decided. She paced the room, trying to still her throbbing heart and trembling hands. "I must be calm," she said sternly. "Time is precious. I have not a moment to lose. I will find him. I've watched that mountain many a time, and can find the trail and the rock. I am in more danger here, than out there in the forest. With Wetzel and Jonathan on the mountain side, the Indians have fled it. But what about the savage who warned Brandt? Let me think. Yes, he'll avoid the river; he'll go round south of the settlement, and, therefore, can't see me cross. How fortunate that I have paddled a canoe many times across the river. How glad that I made Colonel Zane describe the course up the mountains!" Her resolution fixed, Helen changed her skirt for one of buckskin, putting on leggings and moccasins of the same serviceable material. She filled the pockets of a short, rain-proof jacket with biscuits, and, thus equipped, sallied forth with a spirit and exultation she could not subdue. Only one thing she feared, which was that Brandt or Metzar might see her cross the river. She launched her canoe and paddled down stream, under cover of the bluff, to a point opposite the end of the island, then straight across, keeping the island between her and the settlement. Gaining the other shore, Helen pulled the canoe into the willows, and mounted the bank. A thicket of willow and alder made progress up the steep incline difficult, but once out of it she faced a long stretch of grassy meadowland. A mile beyond began the green, billowy rise of that mountain which she intended to climb. Helen's whole soul was thrown into the adventure. She felt her strong young limbs in accord with her heart. "Now, Mr. Brandt, horse-thief and girl-snatcher, we'll see," she said with scornful lips. "If I can't beat you now I'm not fit to be Betty Zane's friend; and am unworthy of a borderman's trust." She traversed the whole length of meadowland close under the shadow of the fringed bank, and gained the forest. Here she hesitated. All was so wild and still. No definite course through the woods seemed to invite, and yet all was open. Trees, trees, dark, immovable trees everywhere. The violent trembling of poplar and aspen leaves, when all others were so calm, struck her strangely, and the fearful stillness awed her. Drawing a deep breath she started forward up the gently rising ground. As she advanced the open forest became darker, and of wilder aspect. The trees were larger and closer together. Still she made fair progress without deviating from the course she had determined upon. Before her rose a ridge, with a ravine on either side, reaching nearly to the summit of the mountain. Here the underbrush was scanty, the fallen trees had slipped down the side, and the rocks were not so numerous, all of which gave her reason to be proud, so far, of her judgment. Helen, pressing onward and upward, forgot time and danger, while she reveled in the wonder of the forestland. Birds and squirrels fled before her; whistling and wheezing of alarm, or heavy crashings in the bushes, told of frightened wild beasts. A dull, faint roar, like a distant wind, suggested tumbling waters. A single birch tree, gleaming white among the black trees, enlivened the gloomy forest. Patches of sunlight brightened the shade. Giant ferns, just tinging with autumn colors, waved tips of sculptured perfection. Most wonderful of all were the colored leaves, as they floated downward with a sad, gentle rustle. Helen was brought to a realization of her hazardous undertaking by a sudden roar of water, and the abrupt termination of the ridge in a deep gorge. Grasping a tree she leaned over to look down. It was fully an hundred feet deep, with impassable walls, green-stained and damp, at the bottom of which a brawling, brown brook rushed on its way. Fully twenty feet wide, it presented an insurmountable barrier to further progress in that direction. But Helen looked upon it merely as a difficulty to be overcome. She studied the situation, and decided to go to the left because higher ground was to be seen that way. Abandoning the ridge, she pressed on, keeping as close to the gorge as she dared, and came presently to a fallen tree lying across the dark cleft. Without a second's hesitation, for she knew such would be fatal, she stepped upon the tree and started across, looking at nothing but the log under her feet, while she tried to imagine herself walking across the water-gate, at home in Virginia. She accomplished the venture without a misstep. When safely on the ground once more she felt her knees tremble and a queer, light feeling came into her head. She laughed, however, as she rested a moment. It would take more than a gorge to discourage her, she resolved with set lips, as once again she made her way along the rising ground. Perilous, if not desperate, work was ahead of her. Broken, rocky ground, matted thicket, and seemingly impenetrable forest, rose darkly in advance. But she was not even tired, and climbed, crawled, twisted and turned on her way upward. She surmounted a rocky ledge, to face a higher ridge covered with splintered, uneven stones, and the fallen trees of many storms. Once she slipped and fell, spraining her wrist. At length this uphill labor began to weary her. To breathe caused a pain in her side and she was compelled to rest. Already the gray light of coming night shrouded the forest. She was surprised at seeing the trees become indistinct; because the shadows hovered over the thickets, and noted that the dark, dim outline of the ridges was fading into obscurity. She struggled on up the uneven slope with a tightening at her heart which was not all exhaustion. For the first time she doubted herself, but it was too late. She could not turn back. Suddenly she felt that she was on a smoother, easier course. Not to strike a stone or break a twig seemed unusual. It might be a path worn by deer going to a spring. Then into her troubled mind flashed the joyful thought, she had found a trail. Soft, wiry grass, springing from a wet soil, rose under her feet. A little rill trickled alongside the trail. Mossy, soft-cushioned stones lay imbedded here and there. Young maples and hickories grew breast-high on either side, and the way wound in and out under the lowering shade of forest monarchs. Swiftly ascending this path she came at length to a point where it was possible to see some distance ahead. The ascent became hardly noticeable. Then, as she turned a bend of the trail, the light grew brighter and brighter, until presently all was open and clear. An oval space, covered with stones, lay before her. A big, blasted chestnut stood near by. Beyond was the dim, purple haze of distance. Above, the pale, blue sky just faintly rose-tinted by the setting sun. Far to her left the scraggly trees of a low hill were tipped with orange and russet shades. She had reached the summit. Desolate and lonely was this little plateau. Helen felt immeasurably far away from home. Yet she could see in the blue distance the glancing river, the dark fort, and that cluster of cabins which marked the location of Fort Henry. Sitting upon the roots of the big chestnut tree she gazed around. There were the remains of a small camp-fire. Beyond, a hollow under a shelving rock. A bed of dry leaves lay packed in this shelter. Some one had been here, and she doubted not that it was the borderman. She was so tired and her wrist pained so severely that she lay back against the tree-trunk, closed her eyes and rested. A weariness, the apathy of utter exhaustion, came over her. She wished the bordermen would hurry and come before she went to sleep. Drowsily she was sinking into slumber when a long, low rumble aroused her. How dark it had suddenly become! A sheet of pale light flared across the overcast heavens. "A storm!" exclaimed Helen. "Alone on this mountain-top with a storm coming. Am I frightened? I don't believe it. At least I'm safe from that ruffian Brandt. Oh! if my borderman would only come!" Helen changed her position from beside the tree, to the hollow under the stone. It was high enough to permit of her sitting upright, and offered a safe retreat from the storm. The bed of leaves was soft and comfortable. She sat there peering out at the darkening heavens. All beneath her, southward and westward was gray twilight. The settlement faded from sight; the river grew wan and shadowy. The ruddy light in the west was fast succumbing to the rolling clouds. Darker and darker it became, until only one break in the overspreading vapors admitted the last crimson gleam of sunshine over hills and valley, brightening the river until it resembled a stream of fire. Then the light failed, the glow faded. The intense blackness of night prevailed. Out of the ebon west came presently another flare of light, a quick, spreading flush, like a flicker from a monster candle; it was followed by a long, low, rumbling roll. Helen felt in those intervals of unutterably vast silence, that she must shriek aloud. The thunder was a friend. She prayed for the storm to break. She had withstood danger and toilsome effort with fortitude; but could not brave this awful, boding, wilderness stillness. Flashes of lightning now revealed the rolling, pushing, turbulent clouds, and peals of thunder sounded nearer and louder. A long swelling moan, sad, low, like the uneasy sigh of the sea, breathed far in the west. It was the wind, the ominous warning of the storm. Sheets of light were now mingled with long, straggling ropes of fire, and the rumblings were often broken by louder, quicker detonations. Then a period, longer than usual, of inky blackness succeeded the sharp flaring of light. A faint breeze ruffled the leaves of the thicket, and fanned Helen's hot cheek. The moan of the wind became more distinct, then louder, and in another instant like the far-off roar of a rushing river. The storm was upon her. Helen shrank closer against the stone, and pulled her jacket tighter around her trembling form. A sudden, intense, dazzling, blinding, white light enveloped her. The rocky promontory, the weird, giant chestnut tree, the open plateau, and beyond, the stormy heavens, were all luridly clear in the flash of lightning. She fancied it was possible to see a tall, dark figure emerging from the thicket. As the thunderclap rolled and pealed overhead, she strained her eyes into the blackness waiting for the next lightning flash. It came with brilliant, dazing splendor. The whole plateau and thicket were as light as in the day. Close by the stone where she lay crept the tall, dark figure of an Indian. With starting eyes she saw the fringed clothing, the long, flying hair, and supple body peculiar to the savage. He was creeping upon her. Helen's blood ran cold; terror held her voiceless. She felt herself sinking slowly down upon the leaves. CHAPTER XII The sun had begun to cast long shadows the afternoon of Helen's hunt for Jonathan, when the borderman, accompanied by Wetzel, led a string of horses along the base of the very mountain she had ascended. "Last night's job was a good one, I ain't gainsayin'; but the redskin I wanted got away," Wetzel said gloomily. "He's safe now as a squirrel in a hole. I saw him dartin' among the trees with his white eagle feathers stickin' up like a buck's flag," replied Jonathan. "He can run. If I'd only had my rifle loaded! But I'm not sure he was that arrow-shootin' Shawnee." "It was him. I saw his bow. We ought'er taken more time an' picked him out," Wetzel replied, shaking his head gravely. "Though mebbe that'd been useless. I think he was hidin'. He's precious shy of his red skin. I've been after him these ten year, an' never ketched him nappin' yet. We'd have done much toward snuffin' out Legget an' his gang if we'd winged the Shawnee." "He left a plain trail." "One of his tricks. He's slicker on a trail than any other Injun on the border, unless mebbe it's old Wingenund, the Huron. This Shawnee'd lead us many a mile for nuthin', if we'd stick to his trail. I'm long ago used to him. He's doubled like an old fox, run harder'n a skeered fawn, an', if needs be, he'll lay low as cunnin' buck. I calkilate once over the mountain, he's made a bee-line east. We'll go on with the hosses, an' then strike across country to find his trail." "It 'pears to me, Lew, that we've taken a long time in makin' a show against these hoss-thieves," said Jonathan. "I ain't sayin' much; but I've felt it," replied Wetzel. "All summer, an' nothin' done. It was more luck than sense that we run into those Injuns with the hosses. We only got three out of four, an' let the best redskin give us the slip. Here fall is nigh on us, with winter comin' soon, an' still we don't know who's the white traitor in the settlement." "I said it's be a long, an' mebbe, our last trail." "Why?" "Because these fellars red or white, are in with a picked gang of the best woodsmen as ever outlawed the border. We'll get the Fort Henry hoss-thief. I'll back the bright-eyed lass for that." "I haven't seen her lately, an' allow she'd left me word if she learned anythin'." "Wal, mebbe it's as well you hain't seen so much of her." In silence they traveled and, arriving at the edge of the meadow, were about to mount two of the horses, when Wetzel said in a sharp tone: "Look!" He pointed to a small, well-defined moccasin track in the black earth on the margin of a rill. "Lew, it's a woman's, sure's you're born," declared Jonathan. Wetzel knelt and closely examined the footprint; "Yes, a woman's, an' no Injun." "What?" Jonathan exclaimed, as he knelt to scrutinize the imprint. "This ain't half a day old," added Wetzel. "An' not a redskin's moccasin near. What d'you reckon?" "A white girl, alone," replied Jonathan as he followed the trail a short distance along the brook. "See, she's makin' upland. Wetzel, these tracks could hardly be my sister's, an' there's only one other girl on the border whose feet will match 'em! Helen Sheppard has passed here, on her way up the mountain to find you or me." "I like your reckonin'." "She's suddenly discovered somethin', Injuns, hoss-thieves, the Fort Henry traitor, or mebbe, an' most likely, some plottin'. Bein' bound to secrecy by me, she's not told my brother. An' it must be call for hurry. She knows we frequent this mountain-top; said Eb told her about the way we get here." "I'd calkilate about the same." "What'll you do? Go with me after her?" asked Jonathan. "I'll take the hosses, an' be at the fort inside of an hour. If Helen's gone, I'll tell her father you're close on her trail. Now listen! It'll be dark soon, an' a storm's comin'. Don't waste time on her trail. Hurry up to the rock. She'll be there, if any lass could climb there. If not, come back in the mornin', hunt her trail out, an' find her. I'm thinkin', Jack, we'll find the Shawnee had somethin' to do with this. Whatever happens after I get back to the fort, I'll expect you hard on my trail." Jonathan bounded across the brook and with an easy lope began the gradual ascent. Soon he came upon a winding path. He ran along this for perhaps a quarter of an hour, until it became too steep for rapid traveling, when he settled down to a rapid walk. The forest was already dark. A slight rustling of the leaves beneath his feet was the only sound, except at long intervals the distant rumbling of thunder. The mere possibility of Helen's being alone on that mountain seeking him, made Jonathan's heart beat as it never had before. For weeks he had avoided her, almost forgot her. He had conquered the strange, yearning weakness which assailed him after that memorable Sunday, and once more the silent shaded glens, the mystery of the woods, the breath of his wild, free life had claimed him. But now as this evidence of her spirit, her recklessness, was before him, and he remembered Betty's avowal, a pain, which was almost physical, tore at his heart. How terrible it would be if she came to her death through him! He pictured the big, alluring eyes, the perfect lips, the haunting face, cold in death. And he shuddered. The dim gloom of the woods soon darkened into blackness. The flashes of lightning, momentarily streaking the foliage, or sweeping overhead in pale yellow sheets, aided Jonathan in keeping the trail. He gained the plateau just as a great flash illumined it, and distinctly saw the dark hollow where he had taken refuge in many a storm, and where he now hoped to find the girl. Picking his way carefully over the sharp, loose stones, he at last put his hand on the huge rock. Another blue-white, dazzling flash enveloped the scene. Under the rock he saw a dark form huddled, and a face as white as snow, with wide, horrified eyes. "Lass," he said, when the thunder had rumbled away. He received no answer, and called again. Kneeling, he groped about until touching Helen's dress. He spoke again; but she did not reply. Jonathan crawled under the ledge beside the quiet figure. He touched her hands; they were very cold. Bending over, he was relieved to hear her heart beating. He called her name, but still she made no reply. Dipping his hand into a little rill that ran beside the stone, he bathed her face. Soon she stirred uneasily, moaned, and suddenly sat up. "'Tis Jonathan," he said quickly; "don't be scared." Another illuminating flare of lightning brightened the plateau. "Oh! thank Heaven!" cried Helen. "I thought you were an Indian!" Helen sank trembling against the borderman, who enfolded her in his long arms. Her relief and thankfulness were so great that she could not speak. Her hands clasped and unclasped round his strong fingers. Her tears flowed freely. The storm broke with terrific fury. A seething torrent of rain and hail came with the rushing wind. Great heaven-broad sheets of lightning played across the black dome overhead. Zigzag ropes, steel-blue in color, shot downward. Crash, and crack, and boom the thunder split and rolled the clouds above. The lightning flashes showed the fall of rain in columns like white waterfalls, borne on the irresistible wind. The grandeur of the storm awed, and stilled Helen's emotion. She sat there watching the lightning, listening to the peals of thunder, and thrilling with the wonder of the situation. Gradually the roar abated, the flashes became less frequent, the thunder decreased, as the storm wore out its strength in passing. The wind and rain ceased on the mountain-top almost as quickly as they had begun, and the roar died slowly away in the distance. Far to the eastward flashes of light illumined scowling clouds, and brightened many a dark, wooded hill and valley. "Lass, how is't I find you here?" asked Jonathan gravely. With many a pause and broken phrase, Helen told the story of what she had seen and heard at the spring. "Child, why didn't you go to my brother?" asked Jonathan. "You don't know what you undertook!" "I thought of everything; but I wanted to find you myself. Besides, I was just as safe alone on this mountain as in the village." "I don't know but you're right," replied Jonathan thoughtfully. "So Brandt planned to make off with you to-morrow?" "Yes, and when I heard it I wanted to run away from the village." "You've done a wondrous clever thing, lass. This Brandt is a bad man, an' hard to match. But if he hasn't shaken Fort Henry by now, his career'll end mighty sudden, an' his bad trails stop short on the hillside among the graves, for Eb will always give outlaws or Injuns decent burial." "What will the colonel, or anyone, think has become of me?" "Wetzel knows, lass, for he found your trail below." "Then he'll tell papa you came after me? Oh! poor papa! I forgot him. Shall we stay here until daylight?" "We'd gain nothin' by startin' now. The brooks are full, an' in the dark we'd make little distance. You're dry here, an' comfortable. What's more, lass, you're safe." "I feel perfectly safe, with you," Helen said softly. "Aren't you tired, lass?" "Tired? I'm nearly dead. My feet are cut and bruised, my wrist is sprained, and I ache all over. But, Jonathan, I don't care. I am so happy to have my wild venture turn out successfully." "You can lie here an' sleep while I keep watch." Jonathan made a move to withdraw his arm, which was still between Helen and the rock but had dropped from her waist. "I am very comfortable. I'll sit here with you, watching for daybreak. My! how dark it is! I cannot see my hand before my eyes." Helen settled herself back upon the stone, leaned a very little against his shoulder, and tried to think over her adventure. But her mind refused to entertain any ideas, except those of the present. Mingled with the dreamy lassitude that grew stronger every moment, was a sense of delight in her situation. She was alone on a wild mountain, in the night, with this borderman, the one she loved. By chance and her own foolhardiness this had come about, yet she was fortunate to have it tend to some good beyond her own happiness. All she would suffer from her perilous climb would be aching bones, and, perhaps, a scolding from her father. What she might gain was more than she had dared hope. The breaking up of the horse-thief gang would be a boon to the harassed settlement. How proudly Colonel Zane would smile! Her name would go on that long roll of border honor and heroism. That was not, however, one thousandth part so pleasing, as to be alone with her borderman. With a sigh of mingled weariness and content, Helen leaned her head on Jonathan's shoulder and fell asleep. The borderman trembled. The sudden nestling of her head against him, the light caress of her fragrant hair across his cheek, revived a sweet, almost-conquered, almost-forgotten emotion. He felt an inexplicable thrill vibrate through him. No untrodden, ambushed wild, no perilous trail, no dark and bloody encounter had ever made him feel fear as had the kiss of this maiden. He had sternly silenced faint, unfamiliar, yet tender, voices whispering in his heart; and now his rigorous discipline was as if it were not, for at her touch he trembled. Still he did not move away. He knew she had succumbed to weariness, and was fast asleep. He could, gently, without awakening her, have laid her head upon the pillow of leaves; indeed, he thought of doing it, but made no effort. A woman's head softly lying against him was a thing novel, strange, wonderful. For all the power he had then, each tumbling lock of her hair might as well have been a chain linking him fast to the mountain. With the memory of his former yearning, unsatisfied moods, and the unrest and pain his awakening tenderness had caused him, came a determination to look things fairly in the face, to be just in thought toward this innocent, impulsive girl, and be honest with himself. Duty commanded that he resist all charm other than that pertaining to his life in the woods. Years ago he had accepted a borderman's destiny, well content to be recompensed by its untamed freedom from restraint; to be always under the trees he loved so well; to lend his cunning and woodcraft in the pioneer's cause; to haunt the savage trails; to live from day to day a menace to the foes of civilization. That was the life he had chosen; it was all he could ever have. In view of this, justice demanded that he allow no friendship to spring up between himself and this girl. If his sister's belief was really true, if Helen really was interested in him, it must be a romantic infatuation which, not encouraged, would wear itself out. What was he, to win the love of any girl? An unlettered borderman, who knew only the woods, whose life was hard and cruel, whose hands were red with Indian blood, whose vengeance had not spared men even of his own race. He could not believe she really loved him. Wildly impulsive as girls were at times, she had kissed him. She had been grateful, carried away by a generous feeling for him as the protector of her father. When she did not see him for a long time, as he vowed should be the case after he had carried her safely home, she would forget. Then honesty demanded that he probe his own feelings. Sternly, as if judging a renegade, he searched out in his simple way the truth. This big-eyed lass with her nameless charm would bewitch even a borderman, unless he avoided her. So much he had not admitted until now. Love he had never believed could be possible for him. When she fell asleep her hand had slipped from his arm to his fingers, and now rested there lightly as a leaf. The contact was delight. The gentle night breeze blew a tress of hair across his lips. He trembled. Her rounded shoulder pressed against him until he could feel her slow, deep breathing. He almost held his own breath lest he disturb her rest. No, he was no longer indifferent. As surely as those pale stars blinked far above, he knew the delight of a woman's presence. It moved him to study the emotion, as he studied all things, which was the habit of his borderman's life. Did it come from knowledge of her beauty, matchless as that of the mountain-laurel? He recalled the dark glance of her challenging eyes, her tall, supple figure, and the bewildering excitation and magnetism of her presence. Beauty was wonderful, but not everything. Beauty belonged to her, but she would have been irresistible without it. Was it not because she was a woman? That was the secret. She was a woman with all a woman's charm to bewitch, to twine round the strength of men as the ivy encircles the oak; with all a woman's weakness to pity and to guard; with all a woman's wilful burning love, and with all a woman's mystery. At last so much of life was intelligible to him. The renegade committed his worst crimes because even in his outlawed, homeless state, he could not exist without the companionship, if not the love, of a woman. The pioneer's toil and privation were for a woman, and the joy of loving her and living for her. The Indian brave, when not on the war-path, walked hand in hand with a dusky, soft-eyed maiden, and sang to her of moonlit lakes and western winds. Even the birds and beasts mated. The robins returned to their old nest; the eagles paired once and were constant in life and death. The buck followed the doe through the forest. All nature sang that love made life worth living. Love, then, was everything. The borderman sat out the long vigil of the night watching the stars, and trying to decide that love was not for him. If Wetzel had locked a secret within his breast, and never in all these years spoke of it to his companion, then surely that companion could as well live without love. Stern, dark, deadly work must stain and blot all tenderness from his life, else it would be unutterably barren. The joy of living, of unharassed freedom he had always known. If a fair face and dark, mournful eyes were to haunt him on every lonely trail, then it were better an Indian should end his existence. The darkest hour before dawn, as well as the darkest of doubt and longing in Jonathan's life, passed away. A gray gloom obscured the pale, winking stars; the east slowly whitened, then brightened, and at length day broke misty and fresh. The borderman rose to stretch his cramped limbs. When he turned to the little cavern the girl's eyes were wide open. All the darkness, the shadow, the beauty, and the thought of the past night, lay in their blue depths. He looked away across the valley where the sky was reddening and a pale rim of gold appeared above the hill-tops. "Well, if I haven't been asleep!" exclaimed Helen, with a low, soft laugh. "You're rested, I hope," said Jonathan, with averted eyes. He dared not look at her. "Oh, yes, indeed. I am ready to start at once. How gray, how beautiful the morning is! Shall we be long? I hope papa knows." In silence the borderman led the way across the rocky plateau, and into the winding, narrow trail. His pale, slightly drawn and stern, face did not invite conversation, therefore Helen followed silently in his footsteps. The way was steep, and at times he was forced to lend her aid. She put her hand in his and jumped lightly as a fawn. Presently a brawling brook, over-crowding its banks, impeded further progress. "I'll have to carry you across," said Jonathan. "I'm very heavy," replied Helen, with a smile in her eyes. She flushed as the borderman put his right arm around her waist. Then a clasp as of steel enclosed her; she felt herself swinging easily into the air, and over the muddy brook. Farther down the mountain this troublesome brook again crossed the trail, this time much wider and more formidable. Helen looked with some vexation and embarrassment into the borderman's face. It was always the same, stern, almost cold. "Perhaps I'd better wade," she said hesitatingly. "Why? The water's deep an' cold. You'd better not get wet." Helen flushed, but did not answer. With downcast eyes she let herself be carried on his powerful arm. The wading was difficult this time. The water foamed furiously around his knees. Once he slipped on a stone, and nearly lost his balance. Uttering a little scream Helen grasped at him wildly, and her arm encircled his neck. What was still more trying, when he put her on her feet again, it was found that her hair had become entangled in the porcupine quills on his hunting-coat. She stood before him while with clumsy fingers he endeavored to untangle the shimmering strands; but in vain. Helen unwound the snarl of wavy hair. Most alluring she was then, with a certain softness on her face, and light and laughter, and something warm in her eyes. The borderman felt that he breathed a subtle exhilaration which emanated from her glowing, gracious beauty. She radiated with the gladness of life, with an uncontainable sweetness and joy. But, giving no token of his feeling, he turned to march on down through the woods. From this point the trail broadened, descending at an easier angle. Jonathan's stride lengthened until Helen was forced to walk rapidly, and sometimes run, in order to keep close behind him. A quick journey home was expedient, and in order to accomplish this she would gladly have exerted herself to a greater extent. When they reached the end of the trail where the forest opened clear of brush, finally to merge into the broad, verdant plain, the sun had chased the mist-clouds from the eastern hill-tops, and was gloriously brightening the valley. With the touch of sentiment natural to her, Helen gazed backward for one more view of the mountain-top. The wall of rugged rock she had so often admired from her window at home, which henceforth would ever hold a tender place of remembrance in her heart, rose out of a gray-blue bank of mist. The long, swelling slope lay clear to the sunshine. With the rays of the sun gleaming and glistening upon the variegated foliage, and upon the shiny rolling haze above, a beautiful picture of autumn splendor was before her. Tall pines, here and there towered high and lonely over the surrounding trees. Their dark, green, graceful heads stood in bold relief above the gold and yellow crests beneath. Maples, tinged from faintest pink to deepest rose, added warm color to the scene, and chestnuts with their brown-white burrs lent fresher beauty to the undulating slope. The remaining distance to the settlement was short. Jonathan spoke only once to Helen, then questioning her as to where she had left her canoe. They traversed the meadow, found the boat in the thicket of willows, and were soon under the frowning bluff of Fort Henry. Ascending the steep path, they followed the road leading to Colonel Zane's cabin. A crowd of boys, men and women loitering near the bluff arrested Helen's attention. Struck by this unusual occurrence, she wondered what was the cause of such idleness among the busy pioneer people. They were standing in little groups. Some made vehement gestures, others conversed earnestly, and yet more were silent. On seeing Jonathan, a number shouted and pointed toward the inn. The borderman hurried Helen along the path, giving no heed to the throng. But Helen had seen the cause of all this excitement. At first glance she thought Metzar's inn had been burned; but a second later it could be seen that the smoke came from a smoldering heap of rubbish in the road. The inn, nevertheless, had been wrecked. Windows stared with that vacantness peculiar to deserted houses. The doors were broken from their hinges. A pile of furniture, rude tables, chairs, beds, and other articles, were heaped beside the smoking rubbish. Scattered around lay barrels and kegs all with gaping sides and broken heads. Liquor had stained the road, where it had been soaked up by the thirsty dust. Upon a shattered cellar-door lay a figure covered with a piece of rag carpet. When Helen's quick eyes took in this last, she turned away in horror. That motionless form might be Brandt's. Remorse and womanly sympathy surged over her, for bad as the man had shown himself, he had loved her. She followed the borderman, trying to compose herself. As they neared Colonel Zane's cabin she saw her father, Will, the colonel, Betty, Nell, Mrs. Zane, Silas Zane, and others whom she did not recognize. They were all looking at her. Helen's throat swelled, and her eyes filled when she got near enough to see her father's haggard, eager face. The others were grave. She wondered guiltily if she had done much wrong. In another moment she was among them. Tears fell as her father extended his trembling hands to clasp her, and as she hid her burning face on his breast, he cried: "My dear, dear child!" Then Betty gave her a great hug, and Nell flew about them like a happy bird. Colonel Zane's face was pale, and wore a clouded, stern expression. She smiled timidly at him through her tears. "Well! well! well!" he mused, while his gaze softened. That was all he said; but he took her hand and held it while he turned to Jonathan. The borderman leaned on his long rifle, regarding him with expectant eyes. "Well, Jack, you missed a little scrimmage this morning. Wetzel got in at daybreak. The storm and horses held him up on the other side of the river until daylight. He told me of your suspicions, with the additional news that he'd found a fresh Indian trail on the island just across from the inn. We went down not expecting to find any one awake; but Metzar was hurriedly packing some of his traps. Half a dozen men were there, having probably stayed all night. That little English cuss was one of them, and another, an ugly fellow, a stranger to us, but evidently a woodsman. Things looked bad. Metzar told a decidedly conflicting story. Wetzel and I went outside to talk over the situation, with the result that I ordered him to clean out the place." Here Colonel Zane paused to indulge in a grim, meaning laugh. "Well, he cleaned out the place all right. The ugly stranger got rattlesnake-mad, and yanked out a big knife. Sam is hitching up the team now to haul what's left of him up on the hillside. Metzar resisted arrest, and got badly hurt. He's in the guardhouse. Case, who has been drunk for a week, got in Wetzel's way and was kicked into the middle of next week. He's been spitting blood for the last hour, but I guess he's not much hurt. Brandt flew the coop last night. Wetzel found this hid in his room." Colonel Zane took a long, feathered arrow from where it lay on a bench, and held it out to Jonathan. "The Shawnee signal! Wetzel had it right," muttered the borderman. "Exactly. Lew found where the arrow struck in the wall of Brandt's room. It was shot from the island at the exact spot where Lew came to an end of the Indian's trail in the water." "That Shawnee got away from us." "So Lew said. Well, he's gone now. So is Brandt. We're well rid of the gang, if only we never hear of them again." The borderman shook his head. During the colonel's recital his face changed. The dark eyes had become deadly; the square jaw was shut, the lines of the cheek had grown tense, and over his usually expressive countenance had settled a chill, lowering shade. "Lew thinks Brandt's in with Bing Legget. Well, d--- his black traitor heart! He's a good man for the worst and strongest gang that ever tracked the border." The borderman was silent; but the furtive, restless shifting of his eyes over the river and island, hill and valley, spoke more plainly than words. "You're to take his trail at once," added Colonel Zane. "I had Bess put you up some bread, meat and parched corn. No doubt you'll have a long, hard tramp. Good luck." The borderman went into the cabin, presently emerging with a buckskin knapsack strapped to his shoulder. He set off eastward with a long, swinging stride. The women had taken Helen within the house where, no doubt, they could discuss with greater freedom the events of the previous day. "Sheppard," said Colonel Zane, turning with a sparkle in his eyes. "Brandt was after Helen sure as a bad weed grows fast. And certain as death Jonathan and Wetzel will see him cold and quiet back in the woods. That's a border saying, and it means a good deal. I never saw Wetzel so implacable, nor Jonathan so fatally cold but once, and that was when Miller, another traitor, much like Brandt, tried to make away with Betty. It would have chilled your blood to see Wetzel go at that fool this morning. Why did he want to pull a knife on the borderman? It was a sad sight. Well, these things are justifiable. We must protect ourselves, and above all our women. We've had bad men, and a bad man out here is something you cannot yet appreciate, come here and slip into the life of the settlement, because on the border you can never tell what a man is until he proves himself. There have been scores of criminals spread over the frontier, and some better men, like Simon Girty, who were driven to outlaw life. Simon must not be confounded with Jim Girty, absolutely the most fiendish desperado who ever lived. Why, even the Indians feared Jim so much that after his death his skeleton remained unmolested in the glade where he was killed. The place is believed to be haunted now, by all Indians and many white hunters, and I believe the bones stand there yet." "Stand?" asked Sheppard, deeply interested. "Yes, it stands where Girty stood and died, upright against a tree, pinned, pinned there by a big knife." "Heavens, man! Who did it?" Sheppard cried in horror. Again Colonel Zane's laugh, almost metallic, broke grimly from his lips. "Who? Why, Wetzel, of course. Lew hunted Jim Girty five long years. When he caught him--God! I'll tell you some other time. Jonathan saw Wetzel handle Jim and his pal, Deering, as if they were mere boys. Well, as I said, the border has had, and still has, its bad men. Simon Girty took McKee and Elliott, the Tories, from Fort Pitt, when he deserted, and ten men besides. They're all, except those who are dead, outlaws of the worst type. The other bad men drifted out here from Lord only knows where. They're scattered all over. Simon Girty, since his crowning black deed, the massacre of the Christian Indians, is in hiding. Bing Legget now has the field. He's a hard nut, a cunning woodsman, and capable leader who surrounds himself with only the most desperate Indians and renegades. Brandt is an agent of Legget's and I'll bet we'll hear from him again." CHAPTER XIII Jonathan traveled toward the east straight as a crow flies. Wetzel's trail as he pursued Brandt had been left designedly plain. Branches of young maples had been broken by the borderman; they were glaring evidences of his passage. On open ground, or through swampy meadows he had contrived to leave other means to facilitate his comrade's progress. Bits of sumach lay strewn along the way, every red, leafy branch a bright marker of the course; crimson maple leaves served their turn, and even long-bladed ferns were scattered at intervals. Ten miles east of Fort Henry, at a point where two islands lay opposite each other, Wetzel had crossed the Ohio. Jonathan removed his clothing, and tying these, together with his knapsack, to the rifle, held them above the water while he swam the three narrow channels. He took up the trail again, finding here, as he expected, where Brandt had joined the waiting Shawnee chief. The borderman pressed on harder to the eastward. About the middle of the afternoon signs betokened that Wetzel and his quarry were not far in advance. Fresh imprints in the grass; crushed asters and moss, broken branches with unwithered leaves, and plots of grassy ground where Jonathan saw that the blades of grass were yet springing back to their original position, proved to the borderman's practiced eye that he was close upon Wetzel. In time he came to a grove of yellow birch trees. The ground was nearly free from brush, beautifully carpeted with flowers and ferns, and, except where bushy windfalls obstructed the way, was singularly open to the gaze for several hundred yards ahead. Upon entering this wood Wetzel's plain, intentional markings became manifest, then wavered, and finally disappeared. Jonathan pondered a moment. He concluded that the way was so open and clear, with nothing but grass and moss to mark a trail, that Wetzel had simply considered it waste of time for, perhaps, the short length of this grove. Jonathan knew he was wrong after taking a dozen steps more. Wetzel's trail, known so well to him, as never to be mistaken, sheered abruptly off to the left, and, after a few yards, the distance between the footsteps widened perceptibly. Then came a point where they were so far apart that they could only have been made by long leaps. On the instant the borderman knew that some unforeseen peril or urgent cause had put Wetzel to flight, and he now bent piercing eyes around the grove. Retracing his steps to where he had found the break in the trail, he followed up Brandt's tracks for several rods. Not one hundred paces beyond where Wetzel had quit the pursuit, were the remains of a camp fire, the embers still smoldering, and moccasin tracks of a small band of Indians. The trail of Brandt and his Shawnee guide met the others at almost right angles. The Indian, either by accident or design, had guided Brandt to a band of his fellows, and thus led Wetzel almost into an ambush. Evidence was not clear, however, that the Indians had discovered the keen tracker who had run almost into their midst. While studying the forest ahead Jonathan's mind was running over the possibilities. How close was Wetzel? Was he still in flight? Had the savages an inkling of his pursuit? Or was he now working out one of his cunning tricks of woodcraft? The borderman had no other idea than that of following the trail to learn all this. Taking the desperate chances warranted under the circumstances, he walked boldly forward in his comrade's footsteps. Deep and gloomy was the forest adjoining the birch grove. It was a heavy growth of hardwood trees, interspersed with slender ash and maples, which with their scanty foliage resembled a labyrinth of green and yellow network, like filmy dotted lace, hung on the taller, darker oaks. Jonathan felt safer in this deep wood. He could still see several rods in advance. Following the trail, he was relieved to see that Wetzel's leaps had become shorter and shorter, until they once again were about the length of a long stride. The borderman was, moreover, swinging in a curve to the northeast. This was proof that the borderman had not been pursued, but was making a wide detour to get ahead of the enemy. Five hundred yards farther on the trail turned sharply toward the birch grove in the rear. The trail was fresh. Wetzel was possibly within signal call; surely within sound of a rifle shot. But even more stirring was the certainty that Brandt and his Indians were inside the circle Wetzel had made. Once again in sight of the more open woodland, Jonathan crawled on his hands and knees, keeping close to the cluster of ferns, until well within the eastern end of the grove. He lay for some minutes listening. A threatening silence, like the hush before a storm, permeated the wilderness. He peered out from his covert; but, owing to its location in a little hollow, he could not see far. Crawling to the nearest tree he rose to his feet slowly, cautiously. No unnatural sight or sound arrested his attention. Repeatedly, with the acute, unsatisfied gaze of the borderman who knew that every tree, every patch of ferns, every tangled brush-heap might harbor a foe, he searched the grove with his eyes; but the curly-barked birches, the clumps of colored ferns, the bushy windfalls kept their secrets. For the borderman, however, the whole aspect of the birch-grove had changed. Over the forest was a deep calm. A gentle, barely perceptible wind sighed among the leaves, like rustling silk. The far-off drowsy drum of a grouse intruded on the vast stillness. The silence of the birds betokened a message. That mysterious breathing, that beautiful life of the woods lay hushed, locked in a waiting, brooding silence. Far away among the somber trees, where the shade deepened into impenetrable gloom, lay a menace, invisible and indefinable. A wind, a breath, a chill, terribly potent, seemed to pass over the borderman. Long experience had given him intuition of danger. As he moved slightly, with lynx-eyes fixed on the grove before him, a sharp, clear, perfect bird-note broke the ominous quiet. It was like the melancholy cry of an oriole, short, deep, suggestive of lonely forest dells. By a slight variation in the short call, Jonathan recognized it as a signal from Wetzel. The borderman smiled as he realized that with all his stealth, Wetzel had heard or seen him re-enter the grove. The signal was a warning to stand still or retreat. Jonathan's gaze narrowed down to the particular point whence had come the signal. Some two hundred yards ahead in this direction were several large trees standing in a group. With one exception, they all had straight trunks. This deviated from the others in that it possessed an irregular, bulging trunk, or else half-shielded the form of Wetzel. So indistinct and immovable was this irregularity, that the watcher could not be certain. Out of line, somewhat, with this tree which he suspected screened his comrade, lay a huge windfall large enough to conceal in ambush a whole band of savages. Even as he gazed a sheet of flame flashed from this covert. _Crack!_ A loud report followed; then the whistle and zip of a bullet as it whizzed close by his head. "Shawnee lead!" muttered Jonathan. Unfortunately the tree he had selected did not hide him sufficiently. His shoulders were so wide that either one or the other was exposed, affording a fine target for a marksman. A quick glance showed him a change in the knotty tree-trunk; the seeming bulge was now the well-known figure of Wetzel. Jonathan dodged as some object glanced slantingly before his eyes. _Twang. Whizz. Thud._ Three familiar and distinct sounds caused him to press hard against the tree. A tufted arrow quivered in the bark not a foot from his head. "Close shave! Damn that arrow-shootin' Shawnee!" muttered Jonathan. "An' he ain't in that windfall either." His eyes searched to the left for the source of this new peril. Another sheet of flame, another report from the windfall. A bullet sang, close overhead, and, glancing on a branch, went harmlessly into the forest. "Injuns all around; I guess I'd better be makin' tracks," Jonathan said to himself, peering out to learn if Wetzel was still under cover. He saw the tall figure straighten up; a long, black rifle rise to a level and become rigid; a red fire belch forth, followed by a puff of white smoke. _Spang!_ An Indian's horrible, strangely-breaking death yell rent the silence. Then a chorus of plaintive howls, followed by angry shouts, rang through the forest. Naked, painted savages darted out of the windfall toward the tree that had sheltered Wetzel. Quick as thought Jonathan covered the foremost Indian, and with the crack of his rifle saw the redskin drop his gun, stop in his mad run, stagger sideways, and fall. Then the borderman looked to see what had become of his ally. The cracking of the Indian's rifle told him that Wetzel had been seen by his foes. With almost incredible fleetness a brown figure with long black hair streaming behind, darted in and out among the trees, flashed through the sunlit glade, and vanished in the dark depths of the forest. Jonathan turned to flee also, when he heard again the twanging of an Indian's bow. A wind smote his cheek, a shock blinded him, an excruciating pain seized upon his breast. A feathered arrow had pinned his shoulder to the tree. He raised his hand to pull it out; but, slippery with blood, it afforded a poor hold for his fingers. Violently exerting himself, with both hands he wrenched away the weapon. The flint-head lacerating his flesh and scraping his shoulder bones caused sharpest agony. The pain gave away to a sudden sense of giddiness; he tried to run; a dark mist veiled his sight; he stumbled and fell. Then he seemed to sink into a great darkness, and knew no more. When consciousness returned to Jonathan it was night. He lay on his back, and knew because of his cramped limbs that he had been securely bound. He saw the glimmer of a fire, but could not raise his head. A rustling of leaves in the wind told that he was yet in the woods, and the distant rumble of a waterfall sounded familiar. He felt drowsy; his wound smarted slightly, still he did not suffer any pain. Presently he fell asleep. Broad daylight had come when again he opened his eyes. The blue sky was directly above, and before him he saw a ledge covered with dwarfed pine trees. He turned his head, and saw that he was in a sort of amphitheater of about two acres in extent enclosed by low cliffs. A cleft in the stony wall let out a brawling brook, and served, no doubt, as entrance to the place. Several rude log cabins stood on that side of the enclosure. Jonathan knew he had been brought to Bing Legget's retreat. Voices attracted his attention, and, turning his head to the other side, he saw a big Indian pacing near him, and beyond, seven savages and three white men reclining in the shade. The powerful, dark-visaged savage near him he at once recognized as Ashbow, the Shawnee chief, and noted emissary of Bing Legget. Of the other Indians, three were Delawares, and four Shawnees, all veterans, with swarthy, somber faces and glistening heads on which the scalp-locks were trimmed and tufted. Their naked, muscular bodies were painted for the war-path with their strange emblems of death. A trio of white men, nearly as bronzed as their savage comrades, completed the group. One, a desperate-looking outlaw, Jonathan did not know. The blond-bearded giant in the center was Legget. Steel-blue, inhuman eyes, with the expression of a free but hunted animal; a set, mastiff-like jaw, brutal and coarse, individualized him. The last man was the haggard-faced Brandt. "I tell ye, Brandt, I ain't agoin' against this Injun," Legget was saying positively. "He's the best reddy on the border, an' has saved me scores of times. This fellar Zane belongs to him, an' while I'd much rather see the scout knifed right here an' now, I won't do nothin' to interfere with the Shawnee's plans." "Why does the redskin want to take him away to his village?" Brandt growled. "All Injun vanity and pride." "It's Injun ways, an' we can't do nothin' to change 'em." "But you're boss here. You could make him put this borderman out of the way." "Wal, I ain't agoin' ter interfere. Anyways, Brandt, the Shawnee'll make short work of the scout when he gits him among the tribe. Injuns is Injuns. It's a great honor fer him to git Zane, an' he wants his own people to figger in the finish. Quite nat'r'l, I reckon." "I understand all that; but it's not safe for us, and it's courting death for Ashbow. Why don't he keep Zane here until you can spare more than three Indians to go with him? These bordermen can't be stopped. You don't know them, because you're new in this part of the country." "I've been here as long as you, an' agoin' some, too, I reckon," replied Legget complacently. "But you've not been hunted until lately by these bordermen, and you've had little opportunity to hear of them except from Indians. What can you learn from these silent redskins? I tell you, letting this fellow get out of here alive, even for an hour is a fatal mistake. It's two full days' tramp to the Shawnee village. You don't suppose Wetzel will be afraid of four savages? Why, he sneaked right into eight of us, when we were ambushed, waiting for him. He killed one and then was gone like a streak. It was only a piece of pure luck we got Zane." "I've reason to know this Wetzel, this Deathwind, as the Delawares call him. I never seen him though, an' anyways, I reckon I can handle him if ever I get the chance." "Man, you're crazy!" cried Brandt. "He'd cut you to pieces before you'd have time to draw. He could give you a tomahawk, then take it away and split your head. I tell you I know! You remember Jake Deering? He came from up your way. Wetzel fought Deering and Jim Girty together, and killed them. You know how he left Girty." "I'll allow he must be a fighter; but I ain't afraid of him." "That's not the question. I am talking sense. You've got a chance now to put one of these bordermen out of the way. Do it quick! That's my advice." Brandt spoke so vehemently that Legget seemed impressed. He stroked his yellow beard, and puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. Presently he addressed the Shawnee chief in the native tongue. "Will Ashbow take five horses for his prisoner?" The Indian shook his head. "How many will he take?" The chief strode with dignity to and fro before his captive. His dark, impassive face gave no clew to his thoughts; but his lofty bearing, his measured, stately walk were indicative of great pride. Then he spoke in his deep bass: "The Shawnee knows the woods from the Great Lakes where the sun sets, to the Blue Hills where it rises. He has met the great paleface hunters. Only for Deathwind will Ashbow trade his captive." "See? It ain't no use," said Legget, spreading out his hands, "Let him go. He'll outwit the bordermen if any redskin's able to. The sooner he goes the quicker he'll git back, an' we can go to work. You ought'er be satisfied to git the girl----" "Shut up!" interrupted Brandt sharply. "'Pears to me, Brandt, bein' in love hes kinder worked on your nerves. You used to be game. Now you're afeerd of a bound an' tied man who ain't got long to live." "I fear no man," answered Brandt, scowling darkly. "But I know what you don't seem to have sense enough to see. If this Zane gets away, which is probable, he and Wetzel will clean up your gang." "Haw! haw! haw!" roared Legget, slapping his knees. "Then you'd hev little chanst of gittin' the lass, eh?" "All right. I've no more to say," snapped Brandt, rising and turning on his heel. As he passed Jonathan he paused. "Zane, if I could, I'd get even with you for that punch you once gave me. As it is, I'll stop at the Shawnee village on my way west----" "With the pretty lass," interposed Legget. "Where I hope to see your scalp drying in the chief's lodge." The borderman eyed him steadily; but in silence. Words could not so well have conveyed his thought as did the cold glance of dark scorn and merciless meaning. Brandt shuffled on with a curse. No coward was he. No man ever saw him flinch. But his intelligence was against him as a desperado. While such as these bordermen lived, an outlaw should never sleep, for he was a marked and doomed man. The deadly, cold-pointed flame which scintillated in the prisoner's eyes was only a gleam of what the border felt towards outlaws. While Jonathan was considering all he had heard, three more Shawnees entered the retreat, and were at once called aside in consultation by Ashbow. At the conclusion of this brief conference the chief advanced to Jonathan, cut the bonds round his feet, and motioned for him to rise. The prisoner complied to find himself weak and sore, but able to walk. He concluded that his wound, while very painful, was not of a serious nature, and that he would be taken at once on the march toward the Shawnee village. He was correct, for the chief led him, with the three Shawnees following, toward the outlet of the enclosure. Jonathan's sharp eye took in every detail of Legget's rendezvous. In a corral near the entrance, he saw a number of fine horses, and among them his sister's pony. A more inaccessible, natural refuge than Legget's, could hardly have been found in that country. The entrance was a narrow opening in the wall, and could be held by half a dozen against an army of besiegers. It opened, moreover, on the side of a barren hill, from which could be had a good survey of the surrounding forests and plains. As Jonathan went with his captors down the hill his hopes, which while ever alive, had been flagging, now rose. The long journey to the Shawnee town led through an untracked wilderness. The Delaware villages lay far to the north; the Wyandot to the west. No likelihood was there of falling in with a band of Indians hunting, because this region, stony, barren, and poorly watered, afforded sparse pasture for deer or bison. From the prisoner's point of view this enterprise of Ashbow's was reckless and vainglorious. Cunning as the chief was, he erred in one point, a great warrior's only weakness, love of show, of pride, of his achievement. In Indian nature this desire for fame was as strong as love of life. The brave risked everything to win his eagle feathers, and the matured warrior found death while keeping bright the glory of the plumes he had won. Wetzel was in the woods, fleet as a deer, fierce and fearless as a lion. Somewhere among those glades he trod, stealthily, with the ears of a doe and eyes of a hawk strained for sound or sight of his comrade's captors. When he found their trail he would stick to it as the wolf to that of a bleeding buck's. The rescue would not be attempted until the right moment, even though that came within rifle-shot of the Shawnee encampment. Wonderful as his other gifts, was the borderman's patience. CHAPTER XIV "Good morning, Colonel Zane," said Helen cheerily, coming into the yard where the colonel was at work. "Did Will come over this way?" "I reckon you'll find him if you find Betty," replied Colonel Zane dryly. "Come to think of it, that's true," Helen said, laughing. "I've a suspicion Will ran off from me this morning." "He and Betty have gone nutting." "I declare it's mean of Will," Helen said petulantly. "I have been wanting to go so much, and both he and Betty promised to take me." "Say, Helen, let me tell you something," said the colonel, resting on his spade and looking at her quizzically. "I told them we hadn't had enough frost yet to ripen hickory-nuts and chestnuts. But they went anyhow. Will did remember to say if you came along, to tell you he'd bring the colored leaves you wanted." "How extremely kind of him. I've a mind to follow them." "Now see here, Helen, it might be a right good idea for you not to," returned the colonel, with a twinkle and a meaning in his eye. "Oh, I understand. How singularly dull I've been." "It's this way. We're mighty glad to have a fine young fellow like Will come along and interest Betty. Lord knows we had a time with her after Alfred died. She's just beginning to brighten up now, and, Helen, the point is that young people on the border must get married. No, my dear, you needn't laugh, you'll have to find a husband same as the other girls. It's not here as it was back east, where a lass might have her fling, so to speak, and take her time choosing. An unmarried girl on the border is a positive menace. I saw, not many years ago, two first-rate youngsters, wild with border fire and spirit, fight and kill each other over a lass who wouldn't choose. Like as not, if she had done so, the three would have been good friends, for out here we're like one big family. Remember this, Helen, and as far as Betty and Will are concerned you will be wise to follow our example: Leave them to themselves. Nothing else will so quickly strike fire between a boy and a girl." "Betty and Will! I'm sure I'd love to see them care for each other." Then with big, bright eyes bent gravely on him she continued, "May I ask, Colonel Zane, who you have picked out for me?" "There, now you've said it, and that's the problem. I've looked over every marriageable young man in the settlement, except Jack. Of course you couldn't care for him, a borderman, a fighter and all that; but I can't find a fellow I think quite up to you." "Colonel Zane, is not a borderman such as Jonathan worthy a woman's regard?" Helen asked a little wistfully. "Bless your heart, lass, yes!" replied Colonel Zane heartily. "People out here are not as they are back east. An educated man, polished and all that, but incapable of hard labor, or shrinking from dirt and sweat on his hands, or even blood, would not help us in the winning of the West. Plain as Jonathan is, and with his lack of schooling, he is greatly superior to the majority of young men on the frontier. But, unlettered or not, he is as fine a man as ever stepped in moccasins, or any other kind of foot gear." "Then why did you say--that--what you did?" "Well, it's this way," replied Colonel Zane, stealing a glance at her pensive, downcast face. "Girls all like to be wooed. Almost every one I ever knew wanted the young man of her choice to outstrip all her other admirers, and then, for a spell, nearly die of love for her, after which she'd give in. Now, Jack, being a borderman, a man with no occupation except scouting, will never look at a girl, let alone make up to her. I imagine, my dear, it'd take some mighty tall courting to fetch home Helen Sheppard a bride. On the other hand, if some pretty and spirited lass, like, say for instance, Helen Sheppard, would come along and just make Jack forget Indians and fighting, she'd get the finest husband in the world. True, he's wild; but only in the woods. A simpler, kinder, cleaner man cannot be found." "I believe that, Colonel Zane; but where is the girl who would interest him?" Helen asked with spirit. "These bordermen are unapproachable. Imagine a girl interesting that great, cold, stern Wetzel! All her flatteries, her wiles, the little coquetries that might attract ordinary men, would not be noticed by him, or Jonathan either." "I grant it'd not be easy, but woman was made to subjugate man, and always, everlastingly, until the end of life here on this beautiful earth, she will do it." "Do you think Jonathan and Wetzel will catch Brandt?" asked Helen, changing the subject abruptly. "I'd stake my all that this year's autumn leaves will fall on Brandt's grave." Colonel Zane's calm, matter-of-fact coldness made Helen shiver. "Why, the leaves have already begun to fall. Papa told me Brandt had gone to join the most powerful outlaw band on the border. How can these two men, alone, cope with savages, as I've heard they do, and break up such an outlaw band as Legget's?" "That's a question I've heard Daniel Boone ask about Wetzel, and Boone, though not a borderman in all the name implies, was a great Indian fighter. I've heard old frontiersmen, grown grizzled on the frontier, use the same words. I've been twenty years with that man, yet I can't answer it. Jonathan, of course, is only a shadow of him; Wetzel is the type of these men who have held the frontier for us. He was the first borderman, and no doubt he'll be the last." "What have Jonathan and Wetzel that other men do not possess?" "In them is united a marvelously developed woodcraft, with wonderful physical powers. Imagine a man having a sense, almost an animal instinct, for what is going on in the woods. Take for instance the fleetness of foot. That is one of the greatest factors. It is absolutely necessary to run, to get away when to hold ground would be death. Whether at home or in the woods, the bordermen retreat every day. You wouldn't think they practiced anything of the kind, would you? Well, a man can't be great in anything without keeping at it. Jonathan says he exercises to keep his feet light. Wetzel would just as soon run as walk. Think of the magnificent condition of these men. When a dash of speed is called for, when to be fleet of foot is to elude vengeance-seeking Indians, they must travel as swiftly as the deer. The Zanes were all sprinters. I could do something of the kind; Betty was fast on her feet, as that old fort will testify until the logs rot; Isaac was fleet, too, and Jonathan can get over the ground like a scared buck. But, even so, Wetzel can beat him." "Goodness me, Helen!" exclaimed the colonel's buxom wife, from the window, "don't you ever get tired hearing Eb talk of Wetzel, and Jack, and Indians? Come in with me. I venture to say my gossip will do you more good than his stories." Therefore Helen went in to chat with Mrs. Zane, for she was always glad to listen to the colonel's wife, who was so bright and pleasant, so helpful and kindly in her womanly way. In the course of their conversation, which drifted from weaving linsey, Mrs. Zane's occupation at the tune, to the costly silks and satins of remembered days, and then to matters of more present interest, Helen spoke of Colonel Zane's hint about Will and Betty. "Isn't Eb a terror? He's the worst matchmatcher you ever saw," declared the colonel's good spouse. "There's no harm in that." "No, indeed; it's a good thing, but he makes me laugh, and Betty, he sets her furious." "The colonel said he had designs on me." "Of course he has, dear old Eb! How he'd love to see you happily married. His heart is as big as that mountain yonder. He has given this settlement his whole life." "I believe you. He has such interest, such zeal for everybody. Only the other day he was speaking to me of Mr. Mordaunt, telling how sorry he was for the Englishman, and how much he'd like to help him. It does seem a pity a man of Mordaunt's blood and attainments should sink to utter worthlessness." "Yes,'tis a pity for any man, blood or no, and the world's full of such wrecks. I always liked that man's looks. I never had a word with him, of course; but I've seen him often, and something about him appealed to me. I don't believe it was just his handsome face; still I know women are susceptible that way." "I, too, liked him once as a friend," said Helen feelingly. "Well, I'm glad he's gone." "Gone?" "Yes, he left Fort Henry yesterday. He came to say good-bye to me, and, except for his pale face and trembling hands, was much as he used to be in Virginia. Said he was going home to England, and wanted to tell me he was sorry--for--for all he'd done to make papa and me suffer. Drink had broken him, he said, and surely he looked 'a broken man. I shook hands with him, and then slipped upstairs and cried." "Poor fellow!" sighed Mrs. Zane. "Papa said he left Fort Pitt with one of Metzar's men as a guide." "Then he didn't take the 'little cuss,' as Eb calls his man Case?" "No, if I remember rightly papa said Case wouldn't go." "I wish he had. He's no addition to our village." Voices outside attracted their attention. Mrs. Zane glanced from the window and said: "There come Betty and Will." Helen went on the porch to see her cousin and Betty entering the yard, and Colonel Zane once again leaning on his spade. "Gather any hickory-nuts from birch or any other kind of trees?" asked the colonel grimly. "No," replied Will cheerily, "the shells haven't opened yet." "Too bad the frost is so backward," said Colonel Zane with a laugh. "But I can't see that it makes any difference." "Where are my leaves?" asked Helen, with a smile and a nod to Betty. "What leaves?" inquired that young woman, plainly mystified. "Why, the autumn leaves Will promised to gather with me, then changed his mind, and said he'd bring them." "I forgot," Will replied a little awkwardly. Colonel Zane coughed, and then, catching Betty's glance, which had begun to flash, he plied his spade vigorously. Betty's face had colored warmly at her brother's first question; it toned down slightly when she understood that he was not going to tease her as usual, and suddenly, as she looked over his head, it paled white as snow. "Eb, look down the lane!" she cried. Two tall men were approaching with labored tread, one half-supporting his companion. "Wetzel! Jack! and Jack's hurt!" cried Betty. "My dear, be calm," said Colonel Zane, in that quiet tone he always used during moments of excitement. He turned toward the bordermen, and helped Wetzel lead Jonathan up the walk into the yard. From Wetzel's clothing water ran, his long hair was disheveled, his aspect frightful. Jonathan's face was white and drawn. His buckskin hunting coat was covered with blood, and the hand which he held tightly against his left breast showed dark red stains. Helen shuddered. Almost fainting, she leaned against the porch, too horrified to cry out, with contracting heart and a chill stealing through her veins. "Jack! Jack!" cried Betty, in agonized appeal. "Betty, it's nothin'," said Wetzel. "Now, Betts, don't be scared of a little blood," Jonathan said with a faint smile flitting across his haggard face. "Bring water, shears an' some linsey cloth," added Wetzel, as Mrs. Zane came running out. "Come inside," cried the colonel's wife, as she disappeared again immediately. "No," replied the borderman, removing his coat, and, with the assistance of his brother, he unlaced his hunting shirt, pulling it down from a wounded shoulder. A great gory hole gaped just beneath his left collar-bone. Although stricken with fear, when Helen saw the bronzed, massive shoulder, the long, powerful arm with its cords of muscles playing under the brown skin, she felt a thrill of admiration. "Just missed the lung," said Mrs. Zane. "Eb, no bullet ever made that hole." Wetzel washed the bloody wound, and, placing on it a wad of leaves he took from his pocket, bound up the shoulder tightly. "What made that hole?" asked Colonel Zane. Wetzel lifted the quiver of arrows Jonathan had laid on the porch, and, selecting one, handed it to the colonel. The flint-head and a portion of the shaft were stained with blood. "The Shawnee!" exclaimed Colonel Zane. Then he led Wetzel aside, and began conversing in low tones while Jonathan, with Betty holding his arm, ascended the steps and went within the dwelling. Helen ran home, and, once in her room, gave vent to her emotions. She cried because of fright, nervousness, relief, and joy. Then she bathed her face, tried to rub some color into her pale cheeks, and set about getting dinner as one in a trance. She could not forget that broad shoulder with its frightful wound. What a man Jonathan must be to receive a blow like that and live! Exhausted, almost spent, had been his strength when he reached home, yet how calm and cool he was! What would she not have given for the faint smile that shone in his eyes for Betty? The afternoon was long for Helen. When at last supper was over she changed her gown, and, asking Will to accompany her, went down the lane toward Colonel Zane's cabin. At this hour the colonel almost invariably could be found sitting on his doorstep puffing a long Indian pipe, and gazing with dreamy eyes over the valley. "Well, well, how sweet you look!" he said to Helen; then with a wink of his eyelid, "Hello, Willie, you'll find Elizabeth inside with Jack." "How is he?" asked Helen eagerly, as Will with a laugh and a retort mounted the steps. "Jack's doing splendidly. He slept all day. I don't think his injury amounts to much, at least not for such as him or Wetzel. It would have finished ordinary men. Bess says if complications don't set in, blood-poison or something to start a fever, he'll be up shortly. Wetzel believes the two of 'em will be on the trail inside of a week." "Did they find Brandt?" asked Helen in a low voice. "Yes, they ran him to his hole, and, as might have been expected, it was Bing Legget's camp. The Indians took Jonathan there." "Then Jack was captured?" Colonel Zane related the events, as told briefly by Wetzel, that had taken place during the preceding three days. "The Indian I saw at the spring carried that bow Jonathan brought back. He must have shot the arrow. He was a magnificent savage." "He was indeed a great, and a bad Indian, one of the craftiest spies who ever stepped in moccasins; but he lies quiet now on the moss and the leaves. Bing Legget will never find another runner like that Shawnee. Let us go indoors." He led Helen into the large sitting-room where Jonathan lay on a couch, with Betty and Will sitting beside him. The colonel's wife and children, Silas Zane, and several neighbors, were present. "Here, Jack, is a lady inquiring after your health. Betts, this reminds me of the time Isaac came home wounded, after his escape from the Hurons. Strikes me he and his Indian bride should be about due here on a visit." Helen forgot every one except the wounded man lying so quiet and pale upon the couch. She looked down upon him with eyes strangely dilated, and darkly bright. "How are you?" she asked softly. "I'm all right, thank you, lass," answered Jonathan. Colonel Zane contrived, with inimitable skill, to get Betty, Will, Silas, Bessie and the others interested in some remarkable news he had just heard, or made up, and this left Jonathan and Helen comparatively alone for the moment. The wise old colonel thought perhaps this might be the right time. He saw Helen's face as she leaned over Jonathan, and that was enough for him. He would have taxed his ingenuity to the utmost to keep the others away from the young couple. "I was so frightened," murmured Helen. "Why?" asked Jonathan. "Oh! You looked so deathly--the blood, and that awful wound!" "It's nothin', lass." Helen smiled down upon him. Whether or not the hurt amounted to anything in the borderman's opinion, she knew from his weakness, and his white, drawn face, that the strain of the march home had been fearful. His dark eyes held now nothing of the coldness and glitter so natural to them. They were weary, almost sad. She did not feel afraid of him now. He lay there so helpless, his long, powerful frame as quiet as a sleeping child's! Hitherto an almost indefinable antagonism in him had made itself felt; now there was only gentleness, as of a man too weary to fight longer. Helen's heart swelled with pity, and tenderness, and love. His weakness affected her as had never his strength. With an involuntary gesture of sympathy she placed her hand softly on his. Jonathan looked up at her with eyes no longer blind. Pain had softened him. For the moment he felt carried out of himself, as it were, and saw things differently. The melting tenderness of her gaze, the glowing softness of her face, the beauty, bewitched him; and beyond that, a sweet, impelling gladness stirred within him and would not be denied. He thrilled as her fingers lightly, timidly touched his, and opened his broad hand to press hers closely and warmly. "Lass," he whispered, with a huskiness and unsteadiness unnatural to his deep voice. Helen bent her head closer to him; she saw his lips tremble, and his nostrils dilate; but an unutterable sadness shaded the brightness in his eyes. "I love you." The low whisper reached Helen's ears. She seemed to float dreamily away to some beautiful world, with the music of those words ringing in her ears. She looked at him again. Had she been dreaming? No; his dark eyes met hers with a love that he could no longer deny. An exquisite emotion, keen, strangely sweet and strong, yet terrible with sharp pain, pulsated through her being. The revelation had been too abrupt. It was so wonderfully different from what she had ever dared hope. She lowered her head, trembling. The next moment she felt Colonel Zane's hand on her chair, and heard him say in a cheery voice: "Well, well, see here, lass, you mustn't make Jack talk too much. See how white and tired he looks." CHAPTER XV In forty-eight hours Jonathan Zane was up and about the cabin as though he had never been wounded; the third day he walked to the spring; in a week he was waiting for Wetzel, ready to go on the trail. On the eighth day of his enforced idleness, as he sat with Betty and the colonel in the yard, Wetzel appeared on a ridge east of the fort. Soon he rounded the stockade fence, and came straight toward them. To Colonel Zane and Betty, Wetzel's expression was terrible. The stern kindliness, the calm, though cold, gravity of his countenance, as they usually saw it, had disappeared. Yet it showed no trace of his unnatural passion to pursue and slay. No doubt that terrible instinct, or lust, was at white heat; but it wore a mask of impenetrable stone-gray gloom. Wetzel spoke briefly. After telling Jonathan to meet him at sunset on the following day at a point five miles up the river, he reported to the colonel that Legget with his band had left their retreat, moving southward, apparently on a marauding expedition. Then he shook hands with Colonel Zane and turned to Betty. "Good-bye, Betty," he said, in his deep, sonorous voice. "Good-bye, Lew," answered Betty slowly, as if surprised. "God save you," she added. He shouldered his rifle, and hurried down the lane, halting before entering the thicket that bounded the clearing, to look back at the settlement. In another moment his dark figure had disappeared among the bushes. "Betts, I've seen Wetzel go like that hundreds of times, though he never shook hands before; but I feel sort of queer about it now. Wasn't he strange?" Betty did not answer until Jonathan, who had started to go within, was out of hearing. "Lew looked and acted the same the morning he struck Miller's trail," Betty replied in a low voice. "I believe, despite his indifference to danger, he realizes that the chances are greatly against him, as they were when he began the trailing of Miller, certain it would lead him into Girty's camp. Then I know Lew has an affection for us, though it is never shown in ordinary ways. I pray he and Jack will come home safe." "This is a bad trail they're taking up; the worst, perhaps, in border warfare," said Colonel Zane gloomily. "Did you notice how Jack's face darkened when his comrade came? Much of this borderman-life of his is due to Wetzel's influence." "Eb, I'll tell you one thing," returned Betty, with a flash of her old spirit. "This is Jack's last trail." "Why do you think so?" "If he doesn't return he'll be gone the way of all bordermen; but if he comes back once more he'll never get away from Helen." "Ugh!" exclaimed Zane, venting his pleasure in characteristic Indian way. "That night after Jack came home wounded," continued Betty, "I saw him, as he lay on the couch, gaze at Helen. Such a look! Eb, she has won." "I hope so, but I fear, I fear," replied her brother gloomily. "If only he returns, that's the thing! Betts, be sure he sees Helen before he goes away." "I shall try. Here he comes now," said Betty. "Hello, Jack!" cried the colonel, as his brother came out in somewhat of a hurry. "What have you got? By George! It's that blamed arrow the Shawnee shot into you. Where are you going with it? What the deuce--Say--Betts, eh?" Betty had given him a sharp little kick. The borderman looked embarrassed. He hesitated and flushed. Evidently he would have liked to avoid his brother's question; but the inquiry came direct. Dissimulation with him was impossible. "Helen wanted this, an' I reckon that's where I'm goin' with it," he said finally, and walked away. "Eb, you're a stupid!" exclaimed Betty. "Hang it! Who'd have thought he was going to give her that blamed, bloody arrow?" As Helen ushered Jonathan, for the first time, into her cosy little sitting-room, her heart began to thump so hard she could hear it. She had not seen him since the night he whispered the words which gave such happiness. She had stayed at home, thankful beyond expression to learn every day of his rapid improvement, living in the sweetness of her joy, and waiting for him. And now as he had come, so dark, so grave, so unlike a lover to woo, that she felt a chill steal over her. "I'm so glad you've brought the arrow," she faltered, "for, of course, coming so far means that you're well once more." "You asked me for it, an' I've fetched it over. To-morrow I'm off on a trail I may never return from," he answered simply, and his voice seemed cold. An immeasurable distance stretched once more between them. Helen's happiness slowly died. "I thank you," she said with a voice that was tremulous despite all her efforts. "It's not much of a keepsake." "I did not ask for it as a keepsake, but because--because I wanted it. I need nothing tangible to keep alive my memory. A few words whispered to me not many days ago will suffice for remembrance--or--or did I dream them?" Bitter disappointment almost choked Helen. This was not the gentle, soft-voiced man who had said he loved her. It was the indifferent borderman. Again he was the embodiment of his strange, quiet woods. Once more he seemed the comrade of the cold, inscrutable Wetzel. "No, lass, I reckon you didn't dream," he replied. Helen swayed from sick bitterness and a suffocating sense of pain, back to her old, sweet, joyous, tumultuous heart-throbbing. "Tell me, if I didn't dream," she said softly, her face flashing warm again. She came close to him and looked up with all her heart in her great dark eyes, and love trembling on her red lips. Calmness deserted the borderman after one glance at her. He paced the floor; twisted and clasped his hands while his eyes gleamed. "Lass, I'm only human," he cried hoarsely, facing her again. But only for a moment did he stand before her; but it was long enough for him to see her shrink a little, the gladness in her eyes giving way to uncertainty and a fugitive hope. Suddenly he began to pace the room again, and to talk incoherently. With the flow of words he gradually grew calmer, and, with something of his natural dignity, spoke more rationally. "I said I loved you, an' it's true, but I didn't mean to speak. I oughtn't have done it. Somethin' made it so easy, so natural like. I'd have died before letting you know, if any idea had come to me of what I was sayin'. I've fought this feelin' for months. I allowed myself to think of you at first, an' there's the wrong. I went on the trail with your big eyes pictured in my mind, an' before I'd dreamed of it you'd crept into my heart. Life has never been the same since--that kiss. Betty said as how you cared for me, an' that made me worse, only I never really believed. Today I came over here to say good-bye, expectin' to hold myself well in hand; but the first glance of your eyes unmans me. Nothin' can come of it, lass, nothin' but trouble. Even if you cared, an' I don't dare believe you do, nothin' can come of it! I've my own life to live, an' there's no sweetheart in it. Mebbe, as Lew says, there's one in Heaven. Oh! girl, this has been hard on me. I see you always on my lonely tramps; I see your glorious eyes in the sunny fields an' in the woods, at gray twilight, an' when the stars shine brightest. They haunt me. Ah! you're the sweetest lass as ever tormented a man, an' I love you, I love you!" He turned to the window only to hear a soft, broken cry, and a flurry of skirts. A rush of wind seemed to envelop him. Then two soft, rounded arms encircled his neck, and a golden head lay on his breast. "My borderman! My hero! My love!" Jonathan clasped the beautiful, quivering girl to his heart. "Lass, for God's sake don't say you love me," he implored, thrilling with contact of her warm arms. "Ah!" she breathed, and raised her head. Her radiant eyes darkly wonderful with unutterable love, burned into his. He had almost pressed his lips to the sweet red ones so near his, when he drew back with a start, and his frame straightened. "Am I a man, or only a coward?" he muttered. "Lass, let me think. Don't believe I'm harsh, nor cold, nor nothin' except that I want to do what's right." He leaned out of the window while Helen stood near him with a hand on his quivering shoulder. When at last he turned, his face was colorless, white as marble, and sad, and set, and stern. "Lass, it mustn't be; I'll not ruin your life." "But you will if you give me up." "No, no, lass." "I cannot live without you." "You must. My life is not mine to give." "But you love me." "I am a borderman." "I will not live without you." "Hush! lass, hush!" "I love you." Jonathan breathed hard; once more the tremor, which seemed pitiful in such a strong man, came upon him. His face was gray. "I love you," she repeated, her rich voice indescribably deep and full. She opened wide her arms and stood before him with heaving bosom, with great eyes dark with woman's sadness, passionate with woman's promise, perfect in her beauty, glorious in her abandonment. The borderman bowed and bent like a broken reed. "Listen," she whispered, coming closer to him, "go if you must leave me; but let this be your last trail. Come back to me, Jack, come back to me! You have had enough of this terrible life; you have won a name that will never be forgotten; you have done your duty to the border. The Indians and outlaws will be gone soon. Take the farm your brother wants you to have, and live for me. We will be happy. I shall learn to keep your home. Oh! my dear, I will recompense you for the loss of all this wild hunting and fighting. Let me persuade you, as much for your sake as for mine, for you are my heart, and soul, and life. Go out upon your last trail, Jack, and come back to me." "An' let Wetzel go always alone?" "He is different; he lives only for revenge. What are those poor savages to you? You have a better, nobler life opening." "Lass, I can't give him up." "You need not; but give up this useless seeking of adventure. That, you know, is half a borderman's life. Give it up, Jack, it not for your own, then for my sake." "No-no-never-I can't-I won't be a coward! After all these years I won't desert him. No-no----" "Do not say more," she pleaded, stealing closer to him until she was against his breast. She slipped her arms around his neck. For love and more than life she was fighting now. "Good-bye, my love." She kissed him, a long, lingering pressure of her soft full lips on his. "Dearest, do not shame me further. Dearest Jack, come back to me, for I love you." She released him, and ran sobbing from the room. Unsteady as a blind man, he groped for the door, found it, and went out. CHAPTER XVI The longest day in Jonathan Zane's life, the oddest, the most terrible and complex with unintelligible emotions, was that one in which he learned that the wilderness no longer sufficed for him. He wandered through the forest like a man lost, searching for, he knew not what. Rambling along the shady trails he looked for that contentment which had always been his, but found it not. He plunged into the depths of deep, gloomy ravines; into the fastnesses of heavy-timbered hollows where the trees hid the light of day; he sought the open, grassy hillsides, and roamed far over meadow and plain. Yet something always eluded him. The invisible and beautiful life of all inanimate things sang no more in his heart. The springy moss, the quivering leaf, the tell-tale bark of the trees, the limpid, misty, eddying pools under green banks, the myriads of natural objects from which he had learned so much, and the manifold joyous life around him, no longer spoke with soul-satisfying faithfulness. The environment of his boyish days, of his youth, and manhood, rendered not a sweetness as of old. His intelligence, sharpened by the pain of new experience, told him he had been vain to imagine that he, because he was a borderman, could escape the universal destiny of human life. Dimly he could feel the broadening, the awakening into a fuller existence, but he did not welcome this new light. He realized that men had always turned, at some time in their lives, to women even as the cypress leans toward the sun. This weakening of the sterner stuff in him; this softening of his heart, and especially the inquietude, and lack of joy and harmony in his old pursuits of the forest trails bewildered him, and troubled him some. Thousands of times his borderman's trail had been crossed, yet never to his sorrow until now when it had been crossed by a woman. Sick at heart, hurt in his pride, darkly savage, sad, remorseful, and thrilling with awakened passion, all in turn, he roamed the woodland unconsciously visiting the scenes where he had formerly found contentment. He paused by many a shady glen, and beautiful quiet glade; by gray cliffs and mossy banks, searching with moody eyes for the spirit which evaded him. Here in the green and golden woods rose before him a rugged, giant rock, moss-stained, and gleaming with trickling water. Tangled ferns dressed in autumn's russet hue lay at the base of the green-gray cliff, and circled a dark, deep pool dotted with yellow leaves. Half-way up, the perpendicular ascent was broken by a protruding ledge upon which waved broad-leaved plants and rusty ferns. Above, the cliff sheered out with many cracks and seams in its weather-beaten front. The forest grew to the verge of the precipice. A full foliaged oak and a luxuriant maple, the former still fresh with its dark green leaves, the latter making a vivid contrast with its pale yellow, purple-red, and orange hues, leaned far out over the bluff. A mighty chestnut grasped with gnarled roots deep into the broken cliff. Dainty plumes of goldenrod swayed on the brink; red berries, amber moss, and green trailing vines peeped over the edge, and every little niche and cranny sported fragile ferns and pale-faced asters. A second cliff, higher than the first, and more heavily wooded, loomed above, and over it sprayed a transparent film of water, thin as smoke, and iridescent in the sunshine. Far above where the glancing rill caressed the mossy cliff and shone like gleaming gold against the dark branches with their green and red and purple leaves, lay the faint blue of the sky. Jonathan pulled on down the stream with humbler heart. His favorite waterfall had denied him. The gold that had gleamed there was his sweetheart's hair; the red was of her lips; the dark pool with its lights and shades, its unfathomable mystery, was like her eyes. He came at length to another scene of milder aspect. An open glade where the dancing, dimpling brook raced under dark hemlocks, and where blood-red sumach leaves, and beech leaves like flashes of sunshine, lay against the green. Under a leaning birch he found a patch of purple asters, and a little apart from them, by a mossy stone, a lonely fringed gentian. Its deep color brought to him the dark blue eyes that haunted him, and once again, like one possessed of an evil spirit, he wandered along the merry water-course. But finally pain and unrest left him. When he surrendered to his love, peace returned. Though he said in his heart that Helen was not for him, he felt he did not need to torture himself by fighting against resistless power. He could love her without being a coward. He would take up his life where it had been changed, and live it, carrying this bitter-sweet burden always. Memory, now that he admitted himself conquered, made a toy of him, bringing the sweetness of fragrant hair, and eloquent eyes, and clinging arms, and dewy lips. A thousand-fold harder to fight than pain was the seductive thought that he had but to go back to Helen to feel again the charm of her presence, to see the grace of her person, to hear the music of her voice, to have again her lips on his. Jonathan knew then that his trial had but begun; that the pain and suffering of a borderman's broken pride and conquered spirit was nothing; that to steel his heart against the joy, the sweetness, the longing of love was everything. So a tumult raged within his heart. No bitterness, nor wretchedness stabbed him as before, but a passionate yearning, born of memory, and unquenchable as the fires of the sun, burned there. Helen's reply to his pale excuses, to his duty, to his life, was that she loved him. The wonder of it made him weak. Was not her answer enough? "I love you!" Three words only; but they changed the world. A beautiful girl loved him, she had kissed him, and his life could never again be the same. She had held out her arms to him--and he, cold, churlish, unfeeling brute, had let her shame herself, fighting for her happiness, for the joy that is a woman's divine right. He had been blind; he had not understood the significance of her gracious action; he had never realized until too late, what it must have cost her, what heartburning shame and scorn his refusal brought upon her. If she ever looked tenderly at him again with her great eyes; or leaned toward him with her beautiful arms outstretched, he would fall at her feet and throw his duty to the winds, swearing his love was hers always and his life forever. So love stormed in the borderman's heart. Slowly the melancholy Indian-summer day waned as Jonathan strode out of the woods into a plain beyond, where he was to meet Wetzel at sunset. A smoky haze like a purple cloud lay upon the gently waving grass. He could not see across the stretch of prairie-land, though at this point he knew it was hardly a mile wide. With the trilling of the grasshoppers alone disturbing the serene quiet of this autumn afternoon, all nature seemed in harmony with the declining season. He stood a while, his thoughts becoming the calmer for the silence and loneliness of this breathing meadow. When the shadows of the trees began to lengthen, and to steal far out over the yellow grass, he knew the time had come, and glided out upon the plain. He crossed it, and sat down upon a huge stone which lay with one shelving end overhanging the river. Far in the west the gold-red sun, too fiery for his direct gaze, lost the brilliance of its under circle behind the fringe of the wooded hill. Slowly the red ball sank. When the last bright gleam had vanished in the dark horizon Jonathan turned to search wood and plain. Wetzel was to meet him at sunset. Even as his first glance swept around a light step sounded behind him. He did not move, for that step was familiar. In another moment the tall form of Wetzel stood beside him. "I'm about as much behind as you was ahead of time," said Wetzel. "We'll stay here fer the night, an' be off early in the mornin'." Under the shelving side of the rock, and in the shade of the thicket, the bordermen built a little fire and roasted strips of deer-meat. Then, puffing at their long pipes they sat for a long time in silence, while twilight let fall a dark, gray cloak over river and plain. "Legget's move up the river was a blind, as I suspected," said Wetzel, presently. "He's not far back in the woods from here, an' seems to be waitin' fer somethin' or somebody. Brandt an' seven redskins are with him. We'd hev a good chance at them in the mornin'; now we've got 'em a long ways from their camp, so we'll wait, an' see what deviltry they're up to." "Mebbe he's waitin' for some Injun band," suggested Jonathan. "Thar's redskins in the valley an' close to him; but I reckon he's barkin' up another tree." "Suppose we run into some of these Injuns?" "We'll hev to take what comes," replied Wetzel, lying down on a bed of leaves. When darkness enveloped the spot Wetzel lay wrapped in deep slumber, while Jonathan sat against the rock, watching the last flickerings of the camp-fire. CHAPTER XVII Will and Helen hurried back along the river road. Beguiled by the soft beauty of the autumn morning they ventured farther from the fort than ever before, and had been suddenly brought to a realization of the fact by a crackling in the underbrush. Instantly their minds reverted to bears and panthers, such as they had heard invested the thickets round the settlement. "Oh! Will! I saw a dark form stealing along in the woods from tree to tree!" exclaimed Helen in a startled whisper. "So did I. It was an Indian, or I never saw one. Walk faster. Once round the bend in the road we'll be within sight of the fort; then we'll run," replied Will. He had turned pale, but maintained his composure. They increased their speed, and had almost come up to the curve in the road, marked by dense undergrowth on both sides, when the branches in the thicket swayed violently, a sturdy little man armed with a musket appeared from among them. "Avast! Heave to!" he commanded in a low, fierce voice, leveling his weapon. "One breeze from ye, an' I let sail this broadside." "What do you want? We have no valuables," said Will, speaking low. Helen stared at the little man. She was speechless with terror. It flashed into her mind as soon as she recognized the red, evil face of the sailor, that he was the accomplice upon whom Brandt had told Metzar he could rely. "Shut up! It's not ye I want, nor valuables, but this wench," growled Case. He pushed Will around with the muzzle of the musket, which action caused the young man to turn a sickly white and shrink involuntarily with fear. The hammer of the musket was raised, and might fall at the slightest jar. "For God's sake! Will, do as he says," cried Helen, who saw murder in Case's eyes. Capture or anything was better than sacrifice of life. "March!" ordered Case, with the musket against Will's back. Will hurriedly started forward, jostling Helen, who had preceded him. He was forced to hurry, because every few moments Case pressed the gun to his back or side. Without another word the sailor marched them swiftly along the road, which now narrowed down to a trail. His intention, no doubt, was to put as much distance between him and the fort as was possible. No more than a mile had been thus traversed when two Indians stepped into view. "My God! My God!" cried Will as the savages proceeded first to bind Helen's arms behind her, and then his in the same manner. After this the journey was continued in silence, the Indians walking beside the prisoners, and Case in the rear. Helen was so terrified that for a long time she could not think coherently. It seemed as if she had walked miles, yet did not feel tired. Always in front wound the narrow, leaf-girt trail, and to the left the broad river gleamed at intervals through open spaces in the thickets. Flocks of birds rose in the line of march. They seemed tame, and uttered plaintive notes as if in sympathy. About noon the trail led to the river bank. One of the savages disappeared in a copse of willows, and presently reappeared carrying a birch-bark canoe. Case ordered Helen and Will into the boat, got in himself, and the savages, taking stations at bow and stern, paddled out into the stream. They shot over under the lee of an island, around a rocky point, and across a strait to another island. Beyond this they gained the Ohio shore, and beached the canoe. "Ahoy! there, cap'n," cried Case, pushing Helen up the bank before him, and she, gazing upward, was more than amazed to see Mordaunt leaning against a tree. "Mordaunt, had you anything to do with this?" cried Helen breathlessly. "I had all to do with it," answered the Englishman. "What do you mean?" He did not meet her gaze, nor make reply; but turned to address a few words in a low tone to a white man sitting on a log. Helen knew she had seen this person before, and doubted not he was one of Metzar's men. She saw a rude, bark lean-to, the remains of a camp-fire, and a pack tied in blankets. Evidently Mordaunt and his men had tarried here awaiting such developments as had come to pass. "You white-faced hound!" hissed Will, beside himself with rage when he realized the situation. Bound though he was, he leaped up and tried to get at Mordaunt. Case knocked him on the head with the handle of his knife. Will fell with blood streaming from a cut over the temple. The dastardly act aroused all Helen's fiery courage. She turned to the Englishman with eyes ablaze. "So you've at last found your level. Border-outlaw! Kill me at once. I'd rather be dead than breathe the same air with such a coward!" "I swore I'd have you, if not by fair means then by foul," he answered, with dark and haggard face. "What do you intend to do with me now that I am tied?" she demanded scornfully. "Keep you a prisoner in the woods till you consent to marry me." Helen laughed in scorn. Desperate as was the plight, her natural courage had arisen at the cruel blow dealt her cousin, and she faced the Englishman with flashing eyes and undaunted mien. She saw he was again unsteady, and had the cough and catching breath habitual to certain men under the influence of liquor. She turned her attention to Will. He lay as he had fallen, with blood streaming over his pale face and fair hair. While she gazed at him Case whipped out his long knife, and looked up at Mordaunt. "Cap'n, I'd better loosen a hatch fer him," he said brutally. "He's dead cargo fer us, an' in the way." He lowered the gleaming point upon Will's chest. "Oh-h-h!" breathed Helen in horror. She tried to close her eyes but was so fascinated she could not. "Get up. I'll have no murder," ordered Mordaunt. "Leave him here." "He's not got a bad cut," said the man sitting on the log. "He'll come to arter a spell, go back to ther fort, an' give an alarm." "What's that to me?" asked Mordaunt sharply. "We shall be safe. I won't have him with us because some Indian or another will kill him. It's not my purpose to murder any one." "Ugh!" grunted one of the savages, and pointed eastward with his hand. "Hurry-long-way-go," he said in English. With the Indians in the lead the party turned from the river into the forest. Helen looked back into the sandy glade and saw Will lying as they had left him, unconscious, with his hands still bound tightly behind him, and blood running over his face. Painful as was the thought of leaving him thus, it afforded her relief. She assured herself he had not been badly hurt, would recover consciousness before long, and, even bound as he was, could make his way back to the settlement. Her own situation, now that she knew Mordaunt had instigated the abduction, did not seem hopeless. Although dreading Brandt with unspeakable horror, she did not in the least fear the Englishman. He was mad to carry her off like this into the wilderness, but would force her to do nothing. He could not keep her a prisoner long while Jonathan Zane and Wetzel were free to take his trail. What were his intentions? Where was he taking her? Such questions as these, however, troubled Helen more than a little. They brought her thoughts back to the Indians leading the way with lithe and stealthy step. How had Mordaunt associated himself with these savages? Then, suddenly, it dawned upon her that Brandt also might be in this scheme to carry her off. She scouted the idea; but it returned. Perhaps Mordaunt was only a tool; perhaps he himself was being deceived. Helen turned pale at the very thought. She had never forgotten the strange, unreadable, yet threatening, expression which Brandt had worn the day she had refused to walk with him. Meanwhile the party made rapid progress through the forest. Not a word was spoken, nor did any noise of rustling leaves or crackling twigs follow their footsteps. The savage in the lead chose the open and less difficult ground; he took advantage of glades, mossy places, and rocky ridges. This careful choosing was, evidently, to avoid noise, and make the trail as difficult to follow as possible. Once he stopped suddenly, and listened. Helen had a good look at the savage while he was in this position. His lean, athletic figure resembled, in its half-clothed condition, a bronzed statue; his powerful visage was set, changeless like iron. His dark eyes seemed to take in all points of the forest before him. Whatever had caused the halt was an enigma to all save his red-skinned companion. The silence of the wood was the silence of the desert. No bird chirped; no breath of wind sighed in the tree-tops; even the aspens remained unagitated. Pale yellow leaves sailed slowly, reluctantly down from above. But some faint sound, something unusual had jarred upon the exquisitely sensitive ears of the leader, for with a meaning shake of the head to his followers, he resumed the march in a direction at right angles with the original course. This caution, and evident distrust of the forest ahead, made Helen think again of Jonathan and Wetzel. Those great bordermen might already be on the trail of her captors. The thought thrilled her. Presently she realized, from another long, silent march through forest thickets, glades, aisles, and groves, over rock-strewn ridges, and down mossy-stoned ravines, that her strength was beginning to fail. "I can go no further with my arms tied in this way," she declared, stopping suddenly. "Ugh!" uttered the savage before her, turning sharply. He brandished a tomahawk before her eyes. Mordaunt hurriedly set free her wrists. His pale face flushed a dark, flaming red when she shrank from his touch as if he were a viper. After they had traveled what seemed to Helen many miles, the vigilance of the leaders relaxed. On the banks of the willow-skirted stream the Indian guide halted them, and proceeded on alone to disappear in a green thicket. Presently he reappeared, and motioned for them to come on. He led the way over smooth, sandy paths between clumps of willows, into a heavy growth of alder bushes and prickly thorns, at length to emerge upon a beautiful grassy plot enclosed by green and yellow shrubbery. Above the stream, which cut the edge of the glade, rose a sloping, wooded ridge, with huge rocks projecting here and there out of the brown forest. Several birch-bark huts could be seen; then two rough bearded men lolling upon the grass, and beyond them a group of painted Indians. A whoop so shrill, so savage, so exultant, that it seemingly froze her blood, rent the silence. A man, unseen before, came crashing through the willows on the side of the ridge. He leaped the stream with the spring of a wild horse. He was big and broad, with disheveled hair, keen, hard face, and wild, gray eyes. Helen's sight almost failed her; her head whirled dizzily; it was as if her heart had stopped beating and was become a cold, dead weight. She recognized in this man the one whom she feared most of all--Brandt. He cast one glance full at her, the same threatening, cool, and evil-meaning look she remembered so well, and then engaged the Indian guide in low conversation. Helen sank at the foot of a tree, leaning against it. Despite her weariness she had retained some spirit until this direful revelation broke her courage. What worse could have happened? Mordaunt had led her, for some reason that she could not divine, into the clutches of Brandt, into the power of Legget and his outlaws. But Helen was not one to remain long dispirited or hopeless. As this plot thickened, as every added misfortune weighed upon her, when just ready to give up to despair she remembered the bordermen. Then Colonel Zane's tales of their fearless, implacable pursuit when bent on rescue or revenge, recurred to her, and fortitude returned. While she had life she would hope. The advent of the party with their prisoner enlivened Legget's gang. A great giant of a man, blond-bearded, and handsome in a wild, rugged, uncouth way, a man Helen instinctively knew to be Legget, slapped Brandt on the shoulder. "Damme, Roge, if she ain't a regular little daisy! Never seed such a purty lass in my life." Brandt spoke hurriedly, and Legget laughed. All this time Case had been sitting on the grass, saying nothing, but with his little eyes watchful. Mordaunt stood near him, his head bowed, his face gloomy. "Say, cap'n, I don't like this mess," whispered Case to his master. "They ain't no crew fer us. I know men, fer I've sailed the seas, an' you're goin' to get what Metz calls the double-cross." Mordaunt seemed to arouse from his gloomy reverie. He looked at Brandt and Legget who were now in earnest council. Then his eyes wandered toward Helen. She beckoned him to come to her. "Why did you bring me here?" she asked. "Brandt understood my case. He planned this thing, and seemed to be a good friend of mine. He said if I once got you out of the settlement, he would give me protection until I crossed the border into Canada. There we could be married," replied Mordaunt unsteadily. "Then you meant marriage by me, if I could be made to consent?" "Of course. I'm not utterly vile," he replied, with face lowered in shame. "Have you any idea what you've done?" "Done? I don't understand." "You have ruined yourself, lost your manhood, become an outlaw, a fugitive, made yourself the worst thing on the border--a girl-thief, and all for nothing." "No, I have you. You are more to me than all." "But can't you see? You've brought me out here for Brandt!" "My God!" exclaimed Mordaunt. He rose slowly to his feet and gazed around like a man suddenly wakened from a dream. "I see it all now! Miserable, drunken wretch that I am!" Helen saw his face change and lighten as if a cloud of darkness had passed away from it. She understood that love of liquor had made him a party to this plot. Brandt had cunningly worked upon his weakness, proposed a daring scheme; and filled his befogged mind with hopes that, in a moment of clear-sightedness, he would have seen to be vain and impossible. And Helen understood also that the sudden shock of surprise, pain, possible fury, had sobered Mordaunt, probably for the first time in weeks. The Englishman's face became exceedingly pale. Seating himself on a stone near Case, he bowed his head, remaining silent and motionless. The conference between Legget and Brandt lasted for some time. When it ended the latter strode toward the motionless figure on the rock. "Mordaunt, you and Case will do well to follow this Indian at once to the river, where you can strike the Fort Pitt trail," said Brandt. He spoke arrogantly and authoritatively. His keen, hard face, his steely eyes, bespoke the iron will and purpose of the man. Mordaunt rose with cold dignity. If he had been a dupe, he was one no longer, as could be plainly read on his calm, pale face. The old listlessness, the unsteadiness had vanished. He wore a manner of extreme quietude; but his eyes were like balls of blazing blue steel. "Mr. Brandt, I seem to have done you a service, and am no longer required," he said in a courteous tone. Brandt eyed his man; but judged him wrongly. An English gentleman was new to the border-outlaw. "I swore the girl should be mine," he hissed. "Doomed men cannot be choosers!" cried Helen, who had heard him. Her dark eyes burned with scorn and hatred. All the party heard her passionate outburst. Case arose as if unconcernedly, and stood by the side of his master. Legget and the other two outlaws came up. The Indians turned their swarthy faces. "Hah! ain't she sassy?" cried Legget. Brandt looked at Helen, understood the meaning of her words, and laughed. But his face paled, and involuntarily his shifty glance sought the rocks and trees upon the ridge. "You played me from the first?" asked Mordaunt quietly. "I did," replied Brandt. "You meant nothing of your promise to help me across the border?" "No." "You intended to let me shift for myself out here in this wilderness?" "Yes, after this Indian guides you to the river-trail," said Brandt, indicating with his finger the nearest savage. "I get what you frontier men call the double-cross'?" "That's it," replied Brandt with a hard laugh, in which Legget joined. A short pause ensued. "What will you do with the girl?" "That's my affair." "Marry her?" Mordaunt's voice was low and quiet. "No!" cried Brandt. "She flaunted my love in my face, scorned me! She saw that borderman strike me, and by God! I'll get even. I'll keep her here in the woods until I'm tired of her, and when her beauty fades I'll turn her over to Legget." Scarcely had the words dropped from his vile lips when Mordaunt moved with tigerish agility. He seized a knife from the belt of one of the Indians. "Die!" he screamed. Brandt grasped his tomahawk. At the same instant the man who had acted as Mordaunt's guide grasped the Englishman from behind. Brandt struck ineffectually at the struggling man. "Fair play!" roared Case, leaping at Mordaunt's second assailant. His long knife sheathed its glittering length in the man's breast. Without even a groan he dropped. "Clear the decks!" Case yelled, sweeping round in a circle. All fell back before that whirling knife. Several of the Indians started as if to raise their rifles; but Legget's stern command caused them to desist. The Englishman and the outlaw now engaged in a fearful encounter. The practiced, rugged, frontier desperado apparently had found his match in this pale-faced, slender man. His border skill with the hatchet seemed offset by Mordaunt's terrible rage. Brandt whirled and swung the weapon as he leaped around his antagonist. With his left arm the Englishman sought only to protect his head, while with his right he brandished the knife. Whirling here and there they struggled across the cleared space, plunging out of sight among the willows. During a moment there was a sound as of breaking branches; then a dull blow, horrible to hear, followed by a low moan, and then deep silence. CHAPTER XVIII A black weight was seemingly lifted from Helen's weary eyelids. The sun shone; the golden forest surrounded her; the brook babbled merrily; but where were the struggling, panting men? She noticed presently, when her vision had grown more clear, that the scene differed entirely from the willow-glade where she had closed her eyes upon the fight. Then came the knowledge that she had fainted, and, during the time of unconsciousness, been moved. She lay upon a mossy mound a few feet higher than a swiftly running brook. A magnificent chestnut tree spread its leafy branches above her. Directly opposite, about an hundred feet away, loomed a gray, ragged, moss-stained cliff. She noted this particularly because the dense forest encroaching to its very edge excited her admiration. Such wonderful coloring seemed unreal. Dead gold and bright red foliage flamed everywhere. Two Indians stood near by silent, immovable. No other of Legget's band was visible. Helen watched the red men. Sinewy, muscular warriors they were, with bodies partially painted, and long, straight hair, black as burnt wood, interwoven with bits of white bone, and plaited around waving eagle plumes. At first glance their dark faces and dark eyes were expressive of craft, cunning, cruelty, courage, all attributes of the savage. Yet wild as these savages appeared, Helen did not fear them as she did the outlaws. Brandt's eyes, and Legget's, too, when turned on her, emitted a flame that seemed to scorch and shrivel her soul. When the savages met her gaze, which was but seldom, she imagined she saw intelligence, even pity, in their dusky eyes. Certain it was she did not shrink from them as from Brandt. Suddenly, with a sensation of relief and joy, she remembered Mordaunt's terrible onslaught upon Brandt. Although she could not recollect the termination of that furious struggle, she did recall Brandt's scream of mortal agony, and the death of the other at Case's hands. This meant, whether Brandt was dead or not, that the fighting strength of her captors had been diminished. Surely as the sun had risen that morning, Helen believed Jonathan and Wetzel lurked on the trail of these renegades. She prayed that her courage, hope, strength, might be continued. "Ugh!" exclaimed one of the savages, pointing across the open space. A slight swaying of the bushes told that some living thing was moving among them, and an instant later the huge frame of the leader came into view. The other outlaw, and Case, followed closely. Farther down the margin of the thicket the Indians appeared; but without the slightest noise or disturbance of the shrubbery. It required but a glance to show Helen that Case was in high spirits. His repulsive face glowed with satisfaction. He carried a bundle, which Helen saw, with a sickening sense of horror, was made up of Mordaunt's clothing. Brandt had killed the Englishman. Legget also had a package under his arm, which he threw down when he reached the chestnut tree, to draw from his pocket a long, leather belt, such as travelers use for the carrying of valuables. It was evidently heavy, and the musical clink which accompanied his motion proclaimed the contents to be gold. Brandt appeared next; he was white and held his hand to his breast. There were dark stains on his hunting coat, which he removed to expose a shirt blotched with red. "You ain't much hurt, I reckon?" inquired Legget solicitously. "No; but I'm bleeding bad," replied Brandt coolly. He then called an Indian and went among the willows skirting the stream. "So I'm to be in this border crew?" asked Case, looking up at Legget. "Sure," replied the big outlaw. "You're a handy fellar, Case, an' after I break you into border ways you will fit in here tip-top. Now you'd better stick by me. When Eb Zane, his brother Jack, an' Wetzel find out this here day's work, hell will be a cool place compared with their whereabouts. You'll be safe with me, an' this is the only place on the border, I reckon, where you can say your life is your own." "I'm yer mate, cap'n. I've sailed with soldiers, pirates, sailors, an' I guess I can navigate this borderland. Do we mess here? You didn't come far." "Wal, I ain't pertikuler, but I don't like eatin' with buzzards," said Legget, with a grin. "Thet's why we moved a bit." "What's buzzards?" "Ho! ho! Mebbe you'll hev 'em closer'n you'd like, some day, if you'd only know it. Buzzards are fine birds, most particular birds, as won't eat nothin' but flesh, an' white man or Injun is pie fer 'em." "Cap'n, I've seed birds as wouldn't wait till a man was dead," said Case. "Haw! haw! you can't come no sailor yarns on this fellar. Wal, now, we've got ther Englishman's gold. One or t'other of us might jest as well hev it all." "Right yer are, cap'n. Dice, cards, anyways, so long as I knows the game." "Here, Jenks, hand over yer clickers, an' bring us a flat stone," said Legget, sitting on the moss and emptying the belt in front of him. Case took a small bag from the dark blue jacket that had so lately covered Mordaunt's shoulders, and poured out its bright contents. "This coat ain't worth keepin'," he said, holding it up. The garment was rent and slashed, and under the left sleeve was a small, blood-stained hole where one of Brandt's blows had fallen. "Hullo, what's this?" muttered the sailor, feeling in the pocket of the jacket. "Blast my timbers, hooray!" He held up a small, silver-mounted whiskey flask, unscrewed the lid, and lifted the vessel to his mouth. "I'm kinder thirsty myself," suggested Legget. "Cap'n, a nip an' no more," Case replied, holding the flask to Legget's lips. The outlaw called Jenks now returned with a flat stone which he placed between the two men. The Indians gathered around. With greedy eyes they bent their heads over the gamblers, and watched every movement with breathless interest. At each click of the dice, or clink of gold, they uttered deep exclamations. "Luck's again' ye, cap'n," said Case, skilfully shaking the ivory cubes. "Hain't I got eyes?" growled the outlaw. Steadily his pile of gold diminished, and darker grew his face. "Cap'n, I'm a bad wind to draw," Case rejoined, drinking again from the flask. His naturally red face had become livid, his skin moist, and his eyes wild with excitement. "Hullo! If them dice wasn't Jenks's, an' I hadn't played afore with him, I'd swear they's loaded." "You ain't insinuatin' nothin', cap'n?" inquired Case softly, hesitating with the dice in his hands, his evil eyes glinting at Legget. "No, you're fair enough," growled the leader. "It's my tough luck." The game progressed with infrequent runs of fortune for the outlaw, and presently every piece of gold lay in a shining heap before the sailor. "Clean busted!" exclaimed Legget in disgust. "Can't you find nothin' more?" asked Case. The outlaw's bold eyes wandered here and there until they rested upon the prisoner. "I'll play ther lass against yer pile of gold," he growled. "Best two throws out 'en three. See here, she's as much mine as Brandt's." "Make it half my pile an' I'll go you." "Nary time. Bet, or give me back what yer win," replied Legget gruffly. "She's a trim little craft, no mistake," said Case, critically surveying Helen. "All right, cap'n, I've sportin' blood, an' I'll bet. Yer throw first." Legget won the first cast, and Case the second. With deliberation the outlaw shook the dice in his huge fist, and rattled them out upon the stone. "Hah!" he cried in delight. He had come within one of the highest score possible. Case nonchalantly flipped the little white blocks. The Indians crowded forward, their dusky eyes shining. Legget swore in a terrible voice which re-echoed from the stony cliff. The sailor was victorious. The outlaw got up, kicked the stone and dice in the brook, and walked away from the group. He strode to and fro under one of the trees. Gruffly he gave an order to the Indians. Several of them began at once to kindle a fire. Presently he called Jenks, who was fishing the dice out of the brook, and began to converse earnestly with him, making fierce gestures and casting lowering glances at the sailor. Case was too drunk now to see that he had incurred the enmity of the outlaw leader. He drank the last of the rum, and tossed the silver flask to an Indian, who received the present with every show of delight. Case then, with the slow, uncertain movements of a man whose mind is befogged, began to count his gold; but only to gather up a few pieces when they slipped out of his trembling hands to roll on the moss. Laboriously, seriously, he kept at it with the doggedness of a drunken man. Apparently he had forgotten the others. Failing to learn the value of the coins by taking up each in turn, he arranged them in several piles, and began to estimate his wealth in sections. In the meanwhile Helen, who had not failed to take in the slightest detail of what was going on, saw that a plot was hatching which boded ill to the sailor. Moreover, she heard Legget and Jenks whispering. "I kin take him from right here 'atwixt his eyes," said Jenks softly, and tapped his rifle significantly. "Wal, go ahead, only I ruther hev it done quieter," answered Legget. "We're yet a long ways, near thirty miles, from my camp, an' there's no tellin' who's in ther woods. But we've got ter git rid of ther fresh sailor, an' there's no surer way." Cautiously cocking his rifle, Jenks deliberately raised it to his shoulder. One of the Indian sentinels who stood near at hand, sprang forward and struck up the weapon. He spoke a single word to Legget, pointed to the woods above the cliff, and then resumed his statue-like attitude. "I told yer, Jenks, that it wouldn't do. The redskin scents somethin' in the woods, an' ther's an Injun I never seed fooled. We mustn't make a noise. Take yer knife an' tomahawk, crawl down below the edge o' the bank an' slip up on him. I'll give half ther gold fer ther job." Jenks buckled his belt more tightly, gave one threatening glance at the sailor, and slipped over the bank. The bed of the brook lay about six feet below the level of the ground. This afforded an opportunity for the outlaw to get behind Case without being observed. A moment passed. Jenks disappeared round a bend of the stream. Presently his grizzled head appeared above the bank. He was immediately behind the sailor; but still some thirty feet away. This ground must be covered quickly and noiselessly. The outlaw began to crawl. In his right hand he grasped a tomahawk, and between his teeth was a long knife. He looked like a huge, yellow bear. The savages, with the exception of the sentinel who seemed absorbed in the dense thicket on the cliff, sat with their knees between their hands, watching the impending tragedy. Nothing but the merest chance, or some extraordinary intervention, could avert Case's doom. He was gloating over his gold. The creeping outlaw made no more noise than a snake. Nearer and nearer he came; his sweaty face shining in the sun; his eyes tigerish; his long body slipping silently over the grass. At length he was within five feet of the sailor. His knotty hands were dug into the sward as he gathered energy for a sudden spring. At that very moment Case, with his hand on his knife, rose quickly and turned round. The outlaw, discovered in the act of leaping, had no alternative, and spring he did, like a panther. The little sailor stepped out of line with remarkable quickness, and as the yellow body whirled past him, his knife flashed blue-bright in the sunshine. Jenks fell forward, his knife buried in the grass beneath him, and his outstretched hand still holding the tomahawk. "Tryin' ter double-cross me fer my gold," muttered the sailor, sheathing his weapon. He never looked to see whether or no his blow had been fatal. "These border fellars might think a man as sails the seas can't handle a knife." He calmly began gathering up his gold, evidently indifferent to further attack. Helen saw Legget raise his own rifle, but only to have it struck aside as had Jenks's. This time the savage whispered earnestly to Legget, who called the other Indians around him. The sentinel's low throaty tones mingled with the soft babbling of the stream. No sooner had he ceased speaking than the effect of his words showed how serious had been the information, warning or advice. The Indians cast furtive glances toward the woods. Two of them melted like shadows into the red and gold thicket. Another stealthily slipped from tree to tree until he reached the open ground, then dropped into the grass, and was seen no more until his dark body rose under the cliff. He stole along the green-stained wall, climbed a rugged corner, and vanished amid the dense foliage. Helen felt that she was almost past discernment or thought. The events of the day succeeding one another so swiftly, and fraught with panic, had, despite her hope and fortitude, reduced her to a helpless condition of piteous fear. She understood that the savages scented danger, or had, in their mysterious way, received intelligence such as rendered them wary and watchful. "Come on, now, an' make no noise," said Legget to Case. "Bring the girl, an' see that she steps light." "Ay, ay, cap'n," replied the sailor. "Where's Brandt?" "He'll be comin' soon's his cut stops bleedin'. I reckon he's weak yet." Case gathered up his goods, and, tucking it under his arm, grasped Helen's arm. She was leaning against the tree, and when he pulled her, she wrenched herself free, rising with difficulty. His disgusting touch and revolting face had revived her sensibilities. "Yer kin begin duty by carryin' thet," said Case, thrusting the package into Helen's arms. She let it drop without moving a hand. "I'm runnin' this ship. Yer belong to me," hissed Case, and then he struck her on the head. Helen uttered a low cry of distress, and half staggered against the tree. The sailor picked up the package. This time she took it, trembling with horror. "Thet's right. Now, give ther cap'n a kiss," he leered, and jostled against her. Helen pushed him violently. With agonized eyes she appealed to the Indians. They were engaged tying up their packs. Legget looked on with a lazy grin. "Oh! oh!" breathed Helen as Case seized her again. She tried to scream, but could not make a sound. The evil eyes, the beastly face, transfixed her with terror. Case struck her twice, then roughly pulled her toward him. Half-fainting, unable to move, Helen gazed at the heated, bloated face approaching hers. When his coarse lips were within a few inches of her lips something hot hissed across her brow. Following so closely as to be an accompaniment, rang out with singular clearness the sharp crack of a rifle. Case's face changed. The hot, surging flush faded; the expression became shaded, dulled into vacant emptiness; his eyes rolled wildly, then remained fixed, with a look of dark surprise. He stood upright an instant, swayed with the regular poise of a falling oak, and then plunged backward to the ground. His face, ghastly and livid, took on the awful calm of death. A very small hole, reddish-blue round the edges, dotted the center of his temple. Legget stared aghast at the dead sailor; then he possessed himself of the bag of gold. "Saved me ther trouble," he muttered, giving Case a kick. The Indians glanced at the little figure, then out into the flaming thickets. Each savage sprang behind a tree with incredible quickness. Legget saw this, and grasping Helen, he quickly led her within cover of the chestnut. Brandt appeared with his Indian companion, and both leaped to shelter behind a clump of birches near where Legget stood. Brandt's hawk eyes flashed upon the dead Jenks and Case. Without asking a question he seemed to take in the situation. He stepped over and grasped Helen by the arm. "Who killed Case?" he asked in a whisper, staring at the little blue hole in the sailor's temple. No one answered. The two Indians who had gone into the woods to the right of the stream, now returned. Hardly were they under the trees with their party, when the savage who had gone off alone arose out of the grass in the left of the brook, took it with a flying leap, and darted into their midst. He was the sentinel who had knocked up the weapons, thereby saving Case's life twice. He was lithe and supple, but not young. His grave, shadowy-lined, iron visage showed the traces of time and experience. All gazed at him as at one whose wisdom was greater than theirs. "Old Horse," said Brandt in English. "Haven't I seen bullet holes like this?" The Chippewa bent over Case, and then slowly straightened his tall form. "_Deathwind!_" he replied, answering in the white man's language. His Indian companions uttered low, plaintive murmurs, not signifying fear so much as respect. Brandt turned as pale as the clean birch-bark on the tree near him. The gray flare of his eyes gave out a terrible light of certainty and terror. "Legget, you needn't try to hide your trail," he hissed, and it seemed as if there was a bitter, reckless pleasure in these words. Then the Chippewa glided into the low bushes bordering the creek. Legget followed him, with Brandt leading Helen, and the other Indians brought up the rear, each one sending wild, savage glances into the dark, surrounding forest. CHAPTER XIX A dense white fog rose from the river, obscuring all objects, when the bordermen rolled out of their snug bed of leaves. The air was cool and bracing, faintly fragrant with dying foliage and the damp, dewy luxuriance of the ripened season. Wetzel pulled from under the protecting ledge a bundle of bark and sticks he had put there to keep dry, and built a fire, while Jonathan fashioned a cup from a green fruit resembling a gourd, filling it at a spring near by. "Lew, there's a frosty nip in the water this mornin'," said Jonathan. "I reckon. It's gettin' along into fall now. Any clear, still night'll fetch all the leaves, an' strip the trees bare as burned timber," answered Wetzel, brushing the ashes off the strip of meat he had roasted. "Get a stick, an' help me cook the rest of this chunk of bison. The sun'll be an hour breakin' up thet mist, an' we can't clear out till then. Mebbe we won't have no chance to light another fire soon." With these bordermen everything pertaining to their lonely lives, from the lighting of a fire to the trailing of a redskin, was singularly serious. No gladsome song ever came from their lips; there was no jollity around their camp-fire. Hunters had their moments of rapturous delight; bordermen knew the peace, the content of the wilderness, but their pursuits racked nerve and heart. Wetzel had his moments of frenzied joy, but they passed with the echo of his vengeful yell. Jonathan's happiness, such as it was, had been to roam the forests. That, before a woman's eyes had dispelled it, had been enough, and compensated him for the gloomy, bloody phantoms which haunted him. The bordermen, having partaken of the frugal breakfast, stowed in their spacious pockets all the meat that was left, and were ready for the day's march. They sat silent for a time waiting for the mist to lift. It broke in places, rolled in huge billows, sailed aloft like great white clouds, and again hung tenaciously to the river and the plain. Away in the west blue patches of sky shone through the rifts, and eastward banks of misty vapor reddened beneath the rising sun. Suddenly from beneath the silver edge of the rising pall the sun burst gleaming gold, disclosing the winding valley with its steaming river. "We'll make up stream fer Two Islands, an' cross there if so be we've reason," Wetzel had said. Through the dewy dells, avoiding the wet grass and bushes, along the dark, damp glades with their yellow carpets, under the thinning arches of the trees, down the gentle slopes of the ridges, rich with green moss, the bordermen glided like gray shadows. The forest was yet asleep. A squirrel frisked up an oak and barked quarrelsomely at these strange, noiseless visitors. A crow cawed from somewhere overhead. These were the only sounds disturbing the quiet early hour. As the bordermen advanced the woods lightened and awoke to life and joy. Birds sang, trilled, warbled, or whistled their plaintive songs, peculiar to the dying season, and in harmony with the glory of the earth. Birds that in earlier seasons would have screeched and fought, now sang and fluttered side by side, in fraternal parade on their slow pilgrimage to the far south. "Bad time fer us, when the birds are so tame, an' chipper. We can't put faith in them these days," said Wetzel. "Seems like they never was wild. I can tell, 'cept at this season, by the way they whistle an' act in the woods, if there's been any Injuns along the trails." The greater part of the morning passed thus with the bordermen steadily traversing the forest; here, through a spare and gloomy wood, blasted by fire, worn by age, with many a dethroned monarch of bygone times rotting to punk and duff under the ferns, with many a dark, seamed and ragged king still standing, but gray and bald of head and almost ready to take his place in the forest of the past; there, through a maze of young saplings where each ash, maple, hickory and oak added some new and beautiful hue to the riot of color. "I just had a glimpse of the lower island, as we passed an opening in the thicket," said Jonathan. "We ain't far away," replied Wetzel. The bordermen walked less rapidly in order to proceed with more watchfulness. Every rod or two they stopped to listen. "You think Legget's across the river?" asked Jonathan. "He was two days back, an' had his gang with him. He's up to some bad work, but I can't make out what. One thing, I never seen his trail so near Fort Henry." They emerged at length into a more open forest which skirted the river. At a point still some distance ahead, but plainly in sight, two small islands rose out of the water. "Hist! What's that?" whispered Wetzel, slipping his hand in Jonathan's arm. A hundred yards beyond lay a long, dark figure stretched at full length under one of the trees close to the bank. "Looks like a man," said Jonathan. "You've hit the mark. Take a good peep roun' now, Jack, fer we're comin' somewhere near the trail we want." Minutes passed while the patient bordermen searched the forest with their eyes, seeking out every tree within rifle range, or surveyed the level glades, scrutinized the hollows, and bent piercing eyes upon the patches of ferns. "If there's a redskin around he ain't big enough to hold a gun," said Wetzel, moving forward again, yet still with that same stealthy step and keen caution. Finally they were gazing down upon the object which had attracted Wetzel's attention. "Will Sheppard!" cried Jonathan. "Is he dead? What's this mean?" Wetzel leaned over the prostrate lad, and then quickly turned to his companion. "Get some water. Take his cap. No, he ain't even hurt bad, unless he's got some wound as don't show." Jonathan returned with the water, and Wetzel bathed the bloody face. When the gash on Will's forehead was clean, it told the bordermen much. "Not an hour old, that blow," muttered Wetzel. "He's comin' to," said Jonathan as Will stirred uneasily and moaned. Presently the lad opened his eyes and sat bolt upright. He looked bewildered for a moment, and felt of his head while gazing vaguely at the bordermen. Suddenly he cried: "I remember! We were captured, brought here, and I was struck down by that villain Case." "We? Who was with you?" asked Jonathan slowly. "Helen. We came after flowers and leaves. While in full sight of the fort I saw an Indian. We hurried back," he cried, and proceeded with broken, panting voice to tell his story. Jonathan Zane leaped to his feet with face deathly white and eyes blue-black, like burning stars. "Jack, study the trail while I get the lad acrost the river, an' steered fer home," said Wetzel, and then he asked Will if he could swim. "Yes; but you will find a canoe there in those willows." "Come, lad, we've no time to spare," added Wetzel, sliding down the bank and entering the willows. He came out almost immediately with the canoe which he launched. Will turned that he might make a parting appeal to Jonathan to save Helen; but could not speak. The expression on the borderman's face frightened him. Motionless and erect Jonathan stood, his arms folded and his white, stern face distorted with the agony of remorse, fear, and anguish, which, even as Will gazed, froze into an awful, deadly look of fateful purpose. Wetzel pushed the canoe off, and paddled with powerful strokes; he left Will on the opposite bank, and returned as swiftly as he could propel the light craft. The bordermen met each other's glance, and had little need of words. Wetzel's great shoulders began to sag slightly, and his head lowered as his eyes sought the grass; a dark and gloomy shade overcast his features. Thus he passed from borderman to Deathwind. The sough of the wind overhead among the almost naked branches might well have warned Indians and renegades that Deathwind was on the trail! "Brandt's had a hand in this, an' the Englishman's a fool!" said Wetzel. "An hour ahead; can we come up with them before they join Brandt an' Legget?" "We can try, but like as not we'll fail. Legget's gang is thirteen strong by now. I said it! Somethin' told me--a hard trail, a long trail, an' our last trail." "It's over thirty miles to Legget's camp. We know the woods, an' every stream, an' every cover," hissed Jonathan Zane. With no further words Wetzel took the trail on the run, and so plain was it to his keen eyes that he did not relax his steady lope except to stop and listen at regular intervals. Jonathan followed with easy swing. Through forest and meadow, over hill and valley, they ran, fleet and tireless. Once, with unerring instinct, they abruptly left the broad trail and cut far across a wide and rugged ridge to come again upon the tracks of the marching band. Then, in open country they reduced their speed to a walk. Ahead, in a narrow valley, rose a thicket of willows, yellow in the sunlight, and impenetrable to human vision. Like huge snakes the bordermen crept into this copse, over the sand, under the low branches, hard on the trail. Finally, in a light, open space, where the sun shone through a network of yellow branches and foliage, Wetzel's hand was laid upon Jonathan's shoulder. "Listen! Hear that!" he whispered. Jonathan heard the flapping of wings, and a low, hissing sound, not unlike that made by a goose. "Buzzards!" he said, with a dark, grim smile. "Mebbe Brandt has begun our work. Come." Out into the open they crawled to put to flight a flock of huge black birds with grisly, naked necks, hooked beaks, and long, yellow claws. Upon the green grass lay three half-naked men, ghastly, bloody, in terribly limp and lifeless positions. "Metzar's man Smith, Jenks, the outlaw, and Mordaunt!" Jonathan Zane gazed darkly into the steely, sightless eyes of the traitor. Death's awful calm had set the expression; but the man's whole life was there, its better part sadly shining forth among the cruel shadows. His body was mutilated in a frightful manner. Cuts, stabs, and slashes told the tale of a long encounter, brought to an end by one clean stroke. "Come here, Lew. You've seen men chopped up; but look at this dead Englishman," called Zane. Mordaunt lay weltering in a crimson tide. Strangely though, his face was uninjured. A black bruise showed under his fair hair. The ghost of a smile seemed to hover around his set lips, yet almost intangible though it was, it showed that at last he had died a man. His left shoulder, side and arm showed where the brunt of Brandt's attack had fallen. "How'd he ever fight so?" mused Jonathan. "You never can tell," replied Wetzel. "Mebbe he killed this other fellar, too; but I reckon not. Come, we must go slow now, fer Legget is near at hand." Jonathan brought huge, flat stones from the brook, and laid them over Mordaunt; then, cautiously he left the glade on Wetzel's trail. Five hundred yards farther on Wetzel had ceased following the outlaw's tracks to cross the creek and climb a ridge. He was beginning his favorite trick of making a wide detour. Jonathan hurried forward, feeling he was safe from observation. Soon he distinguished the tall, brown figure of his comrade gliding ahead from tree to tree, from bush to bush. "See them maples an' chestnuts down thar," said Wetzel when Jonathan had come up, pointing through an opening in the foliage. "They've stopped fer some reason." On through the forest the bordermen glided. They kept near the summit of the ridge, under the best cover they could find, and passed swiftly over this half-circle. When beginning once more to draw toward the open grove in the valley, they saw a long, irregular cliff, densely wooded. They swerved a little, and made for this excellent covert. They crawled the last hundred yards and never shook a fern, moved a leaf, or broke a twig. Having reached the brink of the low precipice, they saw the grassy meadow below, the straggling trees, the brook, the group of Indians crowding round the white men. "See that point of rock thar? It's better cover," whispered Wetzel. Patiently, with no hurry or excitement, they slowly made their difficult way among the rocks and ferns to the vantage point desired. Taking a position like this was one the bordermen strongly favored. They could see everywhere in front, and had the thick woods at their backs. "What are they up to?" whispered Jonathan, as he and Wetzel lay close together under a mass of grapevine still tenacious of its broad leaves. "Dicin'," answered Wetzel. "I can see 'em throw; anyways, nothin' but bettin' ever makes redskins act like that." "Who's playin'? Where's Brandt?" "I can make out Legget; see his shaggy head. The other must be Case. Brandt ain't in sight. Nursin' a hurt perhaps. Ah! See thar! Over under the big tree as stands dark-like agin the thicket. Thet's an Injun, an' he looks too quiet an' keen to suit me. We'll have a care of him." "Must be playin' fer Mordaunt's gold." "Like as not, for where'd them ruffians get any 'cept they stole it." "Aha! They're gettin' up! See Legget walk away shakin' his big head. He's mad. Mebbe he'll be madder presently," growled Jonathan. "Case's left alone. He's countin' his winnin's. Jack, look out fer more work took off our hands." "By gum! See that Injun knock up a leveled rifle." "I told you, an' thet redskin has his suspicions. He's seen us down along ther ridge. There's Helen, sittin' behind the biggest tree. Thet Injun guard, 'afore he moved, kept us from seein' her." Jonathan made no answer to this; but his breath literally hissed through his clenched teeth. "Thar goes the other outlaw," whispered Wetzel, as if his comrade could not see. "It's all up with Case. See the sneak bendin' down the bank. Now, thet's a poor way. It'd better be done from the front, walkin' up natural-like, instead of tryin' to cover thet wide stretch. Case'll see him or hear him sure. Thar, he's up now, an' crawlin'. He's too slow, too slow. Aha! I knew it--Case turns. Look at the outlaw spring! Well, did you see thet little cuss whip his knife? One more less fer us to quiet. Thet makes four, Jack, an' mebbe, soon, it'll be five." "They're holdin' a council," said Jonathan. "I see two Injuns sneakin' off into the woods, an' here comes thet guard. He's a keen redskin, Jack, fer we did come light through the brush. Mebbe it'd be well to stop his scoutin'." "Lew, that villain Case is bullyin' Helen!" cried Jonathan. "Sh-sh-h," whispered Wetzel. "See! He's pulled her to her feet. Oh! He struck her! Oh!" Jonathan leveled his rifle and would have fired, but for the iron grasp on his wrist. "Hev you lost yer senses? It's full two hundred paces, an' too far fer your piece," said Wetzel in a whisper. "An' it ain't sense to try from here." "Lend me your gun! Lend me your gun!" Silently Wetzel handed him the long, black rifle. Jonathan raised it, but trembled so violently that the barrel wavered like a leaf in the breeze. "Take it, I can't cover him," groaned Jonathan. "This is new to me. I ain't myself. God! Lew, he struck her again! _Again!_ He's tryin' to kiss her! Wetzel, if you're my friend, kill him!" "Jack, it'd be better to wait, an'----" "I love her," breathed Jonathan. The long, black barrel swept up to a level and stopped. White smoke belched from among the green leaves; the report rang throughout the forest. "Ah! I saw him stop an' pause," hissed Jonathan. "He stands, he sways, he falls! Death for yours, you sailor-beast!" CHAPTER XX The bordermen watched Legget and his band disappear into the thicket adjoining the grove. When the last dark, lithe form glided out of sight among the yellowing copse, Jonathan leaped from the low cliff, and had hardly reached the ground before Wetzel dashed down to the grassy turf. Again they followed the outlaw's trail darker-faced, fiercer-visaged than ever, with cocked, tightly-gripped rifles thrust well before them, and light feet that scarcely brushed the leaves. Wetzel halted after a long tramp up and down the ridges, and surveyed with keen intent the lay of the land ahead. "Sooner or later we'll hear from that redskin as discovered us a ways back," whispered he. "I wish we might get a crack at him afore he hinders us bad. I ain't seen many keener Injuns. It's lucky we fixed ther arrow-shootin' Shawnee. We'd never hev beat thet combination. An' fer all of thet I'm worrin' some about the goin' ahead." "Ambush?" Jonathan asked. "Like as not. Legget'll send thet Injun back, an' mebbe more'n him. Jack, see them little footprints? They're Helen's. Look how she's draggin' along. Almost tuckered out. Legget can't travel many more miles to-day. He'll make a stand somewheres, an' lose all his redskins afore he gives up the lass." "I'll never live through to-night with her in that gang. She'll be saved, or dead, before the stars pale in the light of the moon." "I reckon we're nigh the end for some of us. It'll be moonlight an hour arter dusk, an' now it's only the middle of the arternoon; we've time enough fer anythin'. Now, Jack, let's not tackle the trail straight. We'll split, an' go round to head 'em off. See thet dead white oak standin' high over thar?" Jonathan looked out between the spreading branches of a beech, and saw, far over a low meadow, luxuriant with grasses and rushes and bright with sparkling ponds and streams, a dense wood out of which towered a bare, bleached tree-top. "You slip around along the right side of this meader, an' I'll take the left side. Go slow, an' hev yer eyes open. We'll meet under thet big dead tree. I allow we can see it from anywhere around. We'll leave the trail here, an' take it up farther on. Legget's goin' straight for his camp; he ain't losin' an inch. He wants to get in that rocky hole of his'n." Wetzel stepped off the trail, glided into the woods, and vanished. Jonathan turned to the right, traversed the summit of the ridge, softly traveled down its slope, and, after crossing a slow, eddying, quiet stream, gained the edge of the forest on that side of the swamp. A fringe of briars and prickly thorns bordered this wood affording an excellent cover. On the right the land rose rather abruptly. He saw that by walking up a few paces he could command a view of the entire swamp, as well as the ridge beyond, which contained Wetzel, and, probably, the outlaw and his band. Remembering his comrade's admonition, Jonathan curbed his unusual impatience and moved slowly. The wind swayed the tree-tops, and rustled the fallen leaves. Birds sang as if thinking the warm, soft weather was summer come again. Squirrels dropped heavy nuts that cracked on the limbs, or fell with a thud to the ground, and they scampered over the dry earth, scratching up the leaves as they barked and scolded. Crows cawed clamorously after a hawk that had darted under the tree-tops to escape them; deer loped swiftly up the hill, and a lordly elk rose from a wallow in the grassy swamp, crashing into the thicket. When two-thirds around this oval plain, which was a mile long and perhaps one-fourth as wide, Jonathan ascended the hill to make a survey. The grass waved bright brown and golden in the sunshine, swished in the wind, and swept like a choppy sea to the opposite ridge. The hill was not densely wooded. In many places the red-brown foliage opened upon irregular patches, some black, as if having been burned over, others showing the yellow and purple colors of the low thickets and the gray, barren stones. Suddenly Jonathan saw something darken one of these sunlit plots. It might have been a deer. He studied the rolling, rounded tree-tops, the narrow strips between the black trunks, and the open places that were clear in the sunshine. He had nearly come to believe he had seen a small animal or bird flit across the white of the sky far in the background, when he distinctly saw dark figures stealing along past a green-gray rock, only to disappear under colored banks of foliage. Presently, lower down, they reappeared and crossed an open patch of yellow fern. Jonathan counted them. Two were rather yellow in color, the hue of buckskin; another, slight of stature as compared with the first, and light gray by contrast. Then six black, slender, gliding forms crossed the space. Jonathan then lost sight of them, and did not get another glimpse. He knew them to be Legget and his band. The slight figure was Helen. Jonathan broke into a run, completed the circle around the swamp, and slowed into a walk when approaching the big dead tree where he was to wait for Wetzel. Several rods beyond the lowland he came to a wood of white oaks, all giants rugged and old, with scarcely a sapling intermingled with them. Although he could not see the objective point, he knew from his accurate sense of distance that he was near it. As he entered the wood he swept its whole length and width with his eyes, he darted forward twenty paces to halt suddenly behind a tree. He knew full well that a sharply moving object was more difficult to see in the woods, than one stationary. Again he ran, fleet and light, a few paces ahead to take up a position as before behind a tree. Thus he traversed the forest. On the other side he found the dead oak of which Wetzel had spoken. Its trunk was hollow. Jonathan squeezed himself into the blackened space, with his head in a favorable position behind a projecting knot, where he could see what might occur near at hand. He waited for what seemed to him a long while, during which he neither saw nor heard anything, and then, suddenly, the report of a rifle rang out. A single, piercing scream followed. Hardly had the echo ceased when three hollow reports, distinctly different in tone from the first, could be heard from the same direction. In quick succession short, fierce yells attended rather than succeeded, the reports. Jonathan stepped out of the hiding-place, cocked his rifle, and fixed a sharp eye on the ridge before him whence those startling cries had come. The first rifle-shot, unlike any other in its short, spiteful, stinging quality, was unmistakably Wetzel's. Zane had heard it, followed many times, as now, by the wild death-cry of a savage. The other reports were of Indian guns, and the yells were the clamoring, exultant cries of Indians in pursuit. Far down where the open forest met the gloom of the thickets, a brown figure flashed across the yellow ground. Darting among the trees, across the glades, it moved so swiftly that Jonathan knew it was Wetzel. In another instant a chorus of yelps resounded from the foliage, and three savages burst through the thicket almost at right angles with the fleeing borderman, running to intercept him. The borderman did not swerve from his course; but came on straight toward the dead tree, with the wonderful fleetness that so often had served him well. Even in that moment Jonathan thought of what desperate chances his comrade had taken. The trick was plain. Wetzel had, most likely, shot the dangerous scout, and, taking to his heels, raced past the others, trusting to his speed and their poor marksmanship to escape with a whole skin. When within a hundred yards of the oak Wetzel's strength apparently gave out. His speed deserted him; he ran awkwardly, and limped. The savages burst out into full cry like a pack of hungry wolves. They had already emptied their rifles at him, and now, supposing one of the shots had taken effect, redoubled their efforts, making the forest ring with their short, savage yells. One gaunt, dark-bodied Indian with a long, powerful, springy stride easily distanced his companions, and, evidently sure of gaining the coveted scalp of the borderman, rapidly closed the gap between them as he swung aloft his tomahawk, yelling the war-cry. The sight on Jonathan's rifle had several times covered this savage's dark face; but when he was about to press the trigger Wetzel's fleeting form, also in line with the savage, made it extremely hazardous to take a shot. Jonathan stepped from his place of concealment, and let out a yell that pealed high over the cries of the savages. Wetzel suddenly dropped flat on the ground. With a whipping crack of Jonathan's rifle, the big Indian plunged forward on his face. The other Indians, not fifty yards away, stopped aghast at the fate of their comrade, and were about to seek the shelter of trees when, with his terrible yell, Wetzel sprang up and charged upon them. He had left his rifle where he fell; but his tomahawk glittered as he ran. The lameness had been a trick, for now he covered ground with a swiftness which caused his former progress to seem slow. The Indians, matured and seasoned warriors though they were, gave but one glance at this huge, brown figure bearing down upon them like a fiend, and, uttering the Indian name of _Deathwind_, wavered, broke and ran. One, not so fleet as his companion, Wetzel overtook and cut down with a single stroke. The other gained an hundred-yard start in the slight interval of Wetzel's attack, and, spurred on by a pealing, awful cry in the rear, sped swiftly in and out among the trees until he was lost to view. Wetzel scalped the two dead savages, and, after returning to regain his rifle, joined Jonathan at the dead oak. "Jack, you can never tell how things is comin' out. Thet redskin I allowed might worry us a bit, fooled me as slick as you ever saw, an' I hed to shoot him. Knowin' it was a case of runnin', I just cut fer this oak, drew the redskins' fire, an' hed 'em arter me quicker 'n you'd say Jack Robinson. I was hopin' you'd be here; but wasn't sure till I'd seen your rifle. Then I kinder got a kink in my leg jest to coax the brutes on." "Three more quiet," said Jonathan Zane. "What now?" "We've headed Legget, an' we'll keep nosin' him off his course. Already he's lookin' fer a safe campin' place for the night." "There is none in these woods, fer him." "We didn't plan this gettin' between him an' his camp; but couldn't be better fixed. A mile farther along the ridge, is a campin' place, with a spring in a little dell close under a big stone, an' well wooded. Legget's headin' straight fer it. With a couple of Injuns guardin' thet spot, he'll think he's safe. But I know the place, an' can crawl to thet rock the darkest night thet ever was an' never crack a stick." * * * * * In the gray of the deepening twilight Jonathan Zane sat alone. An owl hooted dismally in the dark woods beyond the thicket where the borderman crouched waiting for Wetzel. His listening ear detected a soft, rustling sound like the play of a mole under the leaves. A branch trembled and swung back; a soft footstep followed and Wetzel came into the retreat. "Well?" asked Jonathan impatiently, as Wetzel deliberately sat down and laid his rifle across his knees. "Easy, Jack, easy. We've an hour to wait." "The time I've already waited has been long for me." "They're thar," said Wetzel grimly. "How far from here?" "A half-hour's slow crawl." "Close by?" hissed Jonathan. "Too near fer you to get excited." "Let us go; it's as light now as in the gray of mornin'." "Mornin' would be best. Injuns get sleepy along towards day. I've ever found thet time the best. But we'll be lucky if we ketch these redskins asleep." "Lew, I can't wait here all night. I won't leave her longer with that renegade. I've got to free or kill her." "Most likely it'll be the last," said Wetzel simply. "Well, so be it then," and the borderman hung his head. "You needn't worry none, 'bout Helen. I jest had a good look at her, not half an hour back. She's fagged out; but full of spunk yet. I seen thet when Brandt went near her. Legget's got his hands full jest now with the redskins. He's hevin' trouble keepin' them on this slow trail. I ain't sayin' they're skeered; but they're mighty restless." "Will you take the chance now?" "I reckon you needn't hev asked thet." "Tell me the lay of the land." "Wai, if we get to this rock I spoke 'bout, we'll be right over 'em. It's ten feet high, an' we can jump straight amongst 'em. Most likely two or three'll be guardin' the openin' which is a little ways to the right. Ther's a big tree, the only one, low down by the spring. Helen's under it, half-sittin', half-leanin' against the roots. When I first looked, her hands were free; but I saw Brandt bind her feet. An' he had to get an Injun to help him, fer she kicked like a spirited little filly. There's moss under the tree an' there's where the redskins'll lay down to rest." "I've got that; now out with your plan." "Wal, I calkilate it's this. The moon'll be up in about an hour. We'll crawl as we've never crawled afore, because Helen's life depends as much on our not makin' a noise, as it does on fightin' when the time comes. If they hear us afore we're ready to shoot, the lass'll be tomahawked quicker'n lightnin'. If they don't suspicion us, when the right moment comes you shoot Brandt, yell louder'n you ever did afore, leap amongst 'em, an' cut down the first Injun thet's near you on your way to Helen. Swing her over your arm, an' dig into the woods." "Well?" asked Jonathan when Wetzel finished. "That's all," the borderman replied grimly. "An' leave you all alone to fight Legget an' the rest of 'em?" "I reckon." "Not to be thought of." "Ther's no other way." "There must be! Let me think; I can't, I'm not myself." "No other way," repeated Wetzel curtly. Jonathan's broad hand fastened on Wetzel's shoulder and wheeled him around. "Have I ever left you alone?" "This's different," and Wetzel turned away again. His voice was cold and hard. "How is it different? We've had the same thing to do, almost, more than once." "We've never had as bad a bunch to handle as Legget's. They're lookin' fer us, an' will be hard to beat." "That's no reason." "We never had to save a girl one of us loved." Jonathan was silent. "I said this'd be my last trail," continued Wetzel. "I felt it, an' I know it'll be yours." "Why?" "If you get away with the girl she'll keep you at home, an' it'll be well. If you don't succeed, you'll die tryin', so it's sure your last trail." Wetzel's deep, cold voice rang with truth. "Lew, I can't run away an' leave you to fight those devils alone, after all these years we've been together, I can't." "No other chance to save the lass." Jonathan quivered with the force of his emotion. His black eyes glittered; his hands grasped at nothing. Once more he was between love and duty. Again he fought over the old battle, but this time it left him weak. "You love the big-eyed lass, don't you?" asked Wetzel, turning with softened face and voice. "I have gone mad!" cried Jonathan, tortured by the simple question of his friend. Those big, dear, wonderful eyes he loved so well, looked at him now from the gloom of the thicket. The old, beautiful, soft glow, the tender light, was there, and more, a beseeching prayer to save her. Jonathan bowed his head, ashamed to let his friend see the tears that dimmed his eyes. "Jack, we've follered the trail fer years together. Always you've been true an' staunch. This is our last, but whatever bides we'll break up Legget's band to-night, an' the border'll be cleared, mebbe, for always. At least his race is run. Let thet content you. Our time'd have to come, sooner or later, so why not now? I know how it is, that you want to stick by me; but the lass draws you to her. I understand, an' want you to save her. Mebbe you never dreamed it; but I can tell jest how you feel. All the tremblin', an' softness, an' sweetness, an' delight you've got for thet girl, is no mystery to Lew Wetzel." "You loved a lass?" Wetzel bowed his head, as perhaps he had never before in all his life. "Betty--always," he answered softly. "My sister!" exclaimed Jonathan, and then his hand closed hard on his comrade's, his mind going back to many things, strange in the past, but now explained. Wetzel had revealed his secret. "An' it's been all my life, since she wasn't higher 'n my knee. There was a time when I might hev been closer to you than I am now. But I was a mad an' bloody Injun hater, so I never let her know till I seen it was too late. Wal, wal, no more of me. I only told it fer you." Jonathan was silent. "An' now to come back where we left off," continued Wetzel. "Let's take a more hopeful look at this comin' fight. Sure I said it was my last trail, but mebbe it's not. You can never tell. Feelin' as we do, I imagine they've no odds on us. Never in my life did I say to you, least of all to any one else, what I was goin' to do; but I'll tell it now. If I land uninjured amongst thet bunch, I'll kill them all." The giant borderman's low voice hissed, and stung. His eyes glittered with unearthly fire. His face was cold and gray. He spread out his brawny arms and clenched his huge fists, making the muscles of his broad shoulders roll and bulge. "I hate the thought, Lew, I hate the thought. Ain't there no other way?" "No other way." "I'll do it, Lew, because I'd do the same for you; because I have to, because I love her; but God! it hurts." "Thet's right," answered Wetzel, his deep voice softening until it was singularly low and rich. "I'm glad you've come to it. An' sure it hurts. I want you to feel so at leavin' me to go it alone. If we both get out alive, I'll come many times to see you an' Helen. If you live an' I don't, think of me sometimes, think of the trails we've crossed together. When the fall comes with its soft, cool air, an' smoky mornin's an' starry nights, when the wind's sad among the bare branches, an' the leaves drop down, remember they're fallin' on my grave." Twilight darkened into gloom; the red tinge in the west changed to opal light; through the trees over a dark ridge a rim of silver glinted and moved. The moon had risen; the hour was come. The bordermen tightened their belts, replaced their leggings, tied their hunting coats, loosened their hatchets, looked to the priming of their rifles, and were ready. Wetzel walked twenty paces and turned. His face was white in the moonlight; his dark eyes softened into a look of love as he gripped his comrade's outstretched hand. Then he dropped flat on the ground, carefully saw to the position of his rifle, and began to creep. Jonathan kept close at his heels. Slowly but steadily they crawled, minute after minute. The hazel-nut bushes above them had not yet shed their leaves; the ground was clean and hard, and the course fatefully perfect for their deadly purpose. A slight rustling of their buckskin garments sounded like the rustling of leaves in a faint breeze. The moon came out above the trees and still Wetzel advanced softly, steadily, surely. The owl, lonely sentinel of that wood, hooted dismally. Even his night eyes, which made the darkness seem clear as day, missed those gliding figures. Even he, sure guardian of the wilderness, failed the savages. Jonathan felt soft moss beneath him; he was now in the woods under the trees. The thicket had been passed. Wetzel's moccasin pressed softly against Jonathan's head. The first signal! Jonathan crawled forward, and slightly raised himself. He was on a rock. The trees were thick and gloomy. Below, the little hollow was almost in the wan moonbeams. Dark figures lay close together. Two savages paced noiselessly to and fro. A slight form rolled in a blanket lay against a tree. Jonathan felt his arm gently squeezed. The second signal! Slowly he thrust forward his rifle, and raised it in unison with Wetzel's. Slowly he rose to his feet as if the same muscles guided them both. Over his head a twig snapped. In the darkness he had not seen a low branch. The Indian guards stopped suddenly, and became motionless as stone. They had heard; but too late. With the blended roar of the rifles both dropped, lifeless. Almost under the spouting flame and white cloud of smoke, Jonathan leaped behind Wetzel, over the bank. His yells were mingled with Wetzel's vengeful cry. Like leaping shadows the bordermen were upon their foes. An Indian sprang up, raised a weapon, and fell beneath Jonathan's savage blow, to rise no more. Over his prostrate body the borderman bounded. A dark, nimble form darted upon the captive. He swung high a blade that shone like silver in the moonlight. His shrill war-cry of death rang out with Helen's scream of despair. Even as he swung back her head with one hand in her long hair, his arm descended; but it fell upon the borderman's body. Jonathan and the Indian rolled upon the moss. There was a terrific struggle, a whirling blade, a dull blow which silenced the yell, and the borderman rose alone. He lifted Helen as if she were a child, leaped the brook, and plunged into the thicket. The noise of the fearful conflict he left behind, swelled high and hideously on the night air. Above the shrill cries of the Indians, and the furious yells of Legget, rose the mad, booming roar of Wetzel. No rifle cracked; but sodden blows, the clash of steel, the threshing of struggling men, told of the dreadful strife. Jonathan gained the woods, sped through the moonlit glades, and far on under light and shadow. The shrill cries ceased; only the hoarse yells and the mad roar could be heard. Gradually these also died away, and the forest was still. CHAPTER XXI Next morning, when the mist was breaking and rolling away under the warm rays of the Indian-summer sun, Jonathan Zane beached his canoe on the steep bank before Fort Henry. A pioneer, attracted by the borderman's halloo, ran to the bluff and sounded the alarm with shrill whoops. Among the hurrying, brown-clad figures that answered this summons, was Colonel Zane. "It's Jack, kurnel, an' he's got her!" cried one. The doughty colonel gained the bluff to see his brother climbing the bank with a white-faced girl in his arms. "Well?" he asked, looking darkly at Jonathan. Nothing kindly or genial was visible in his manner now; rather grim and forbidding he seemed, thus showing he had the same blood in his veins as the borderman. "Lend a hand," said Jonathan. "As far as I know she's not hurt." They carried Helen toward Colonel Zane's cabin. Many women of the settlement saw them as they passed, and looked gravely at one another, but none spoke. This return of an abducted girl was by no means a strange event. "Somebody run for Sheppard," ordered Colonel Zane, as they entered his cabin. Betty, who was in the sitting-room, sprang up and cried: "Oh! Eb! Eb! Don't say she's----" "No, no, Betts, she's all right. Where's my wife? Ah! Bess, here, get to work." The colonel left Helen in the tender, skilful hands of his wife and sister, and followed Jonathan into the kitchen. "I was just ready for breakfast when I heard some one yell," said he. "Come, Jack, eat something." They ate in silence. From the sitting-room came excited whispers, a joyous cry from Betty, and a faint voice. Then heavy, hurrying footsteps, followed by Sheppard's words of thanks-giving. "Where's Wetzel?" began Colonel Zane. The borderman shook his head gloomily. "Where did you leave him?" "We jumped Legget's bunch last night, when the moon was about an hour high. I reckon about fifteen miles northeast. I got away with the lass." "Ah! Left Lew fighting?" The borderman answered the question with bowed head. "You got off well. Not a hurt that I can see, and more than lucky to save Helen. Well, Jack, what do you think about Lew?" "I'm goin' back," replied Jonathan. "No! no!" The door opened to admit Mrs. Zane. She looked bright and cheerful, "Hello, Jack; glad you're home. Helen's all right, only faint from hunger and over-exertion. I want something for her to eat--well! you men didn't leave much." Colonel Zane went into the sitting-room. Sheppard sat beside the couch where Helen lay, white and wan. Betty and Nell were looking on with their hearts in their eyes. Silas Zane was there, and his wife, with several women neighbors. "Betty, go fetch Jack in here," whispered the colonel in his sister's ear. "Drag him, if you have to," he added fiercely. The young woman left the room, to reappear directly with her brother. He came in reluctantly. As the stern-faced borderman crossed the threshold a smile, beautiful to see, dawned in Helen's eyes. "I'm glad to see you're comin' round," said Jonathan, but he spoke dully as if his mind was on other things. "She's a little flighty; but a night's sleep will cure that," cried Mrs. Zane from the kitchen. "What do you think?" interrupted the colonel. "Jack's not satisfied to get back with Helen unharmed, and a whole skin himself; but he's going on the trail again." "No, Jack, no, no!" cried Betty. "What's that I hear?" asked Mrs. Zane as she came in. "Jack's going out again? Well, all I want to say is that he's as mad as a March hare." "Jonathan, look here," said Silas seriously. "Can't you stay home now?" "Jack, listen," whispered Betty, going close to him. "Not one of us ever expected to see either you or Helen again, and oh! we are so happy. Do not go away again. You are a man; you do not know, you cannot understand all a woman feels. She must sit and wait, and hope, and pray for the safe return of husband or brother or sweetheart. The long days! Oh, the long sleepless nights, with the wail of the wind in the pines, and the rain on the roof! It is maddening. Do not leave us! Do not leave me! Do not leave Helen! Say you will not, Jack." To these entreaties the borderman remained silent. He stood leaning on his rifle, a tall, dark, strangely sad and stern man. "Helen, beg him to stay!" implored Betty. Colonel Zane took Helen's hand, and stroked it. "Yes," he said, "you ask him, lass. I'm sure you can persuade him to stay." Helen raised her head. "Is Brandt dead?" she whispered faintly. Still the borderman failed to speak, but his silence was not an affirmative. "You said you loved me," she cried wildly. "You said you loved me, yet you didn't kill that monster!" The borderman, moving quickly like a startled Indian, went out of the door. * * * * * Once more Jonathan Zane entered the gloomy, quiet aisles of the forest with his soft, tireless tread hardly stirring the leaves. It was late in the afternoon when he had long left Two Islands behind, and arrived at the scene of Mordaunt's death. Satisfied with the distance he had traversed, he crawled into a thicket to rest. Daybreak found him again on the trail. He made a short cut over the ridges and by the time the mist had lifted from the valley he was within stalking distance of the glade. He approached this in the familiar, slow, cautious manner, and halted behind the big rock from which he and Wetzel had leaped. The wood was solemnly quiet. No twittering of birds could be heard. The only sign of life was a gaunt timber-wolf slinking away amid the foliage. Under the big tree the savage who had been killed as he would have murdered Helen, lay a crumpled mass where he had fallen. Two dead Indians were in the center of the glade, and on the other side were three more bloody, lifeless forms. Wetzel was not there, nor Legget, nor Brandt. "I reckoned so," muttered Jonathan as he studied the scene. The grass had been trampled, the trees barked, the bushes crushed aside. Jonathan went out of the glade a short distance, and, circling it, began to look for Wetzel's trail. He found it, and near the light footprints of his comrade were the great, broad moccasin tracks of the outlaw. Further searching disclosed the fact that Brandt must have traveled in line with the others. With the certainty that Wetzel had killed three of the Indians, and, in some wonderful manner characteristic of him, routed the outlaws of whom he was now in pursuit, Jonathan's smoldering emotion burst forth into full flame. Love for his old comrade, deadly hatred of the outlaws, and passionate thirst for their blood, rioted in his heart. Like a lynx scenting its quarry, the borderman started on the trail, tireless and unswervable. The traces left by the fleeing outlaws and their pursuer were plain to Jonathan. It was not necessary for him to stop. Legget and Brandt, seeking to escape the implacable Nemesis, were traveling with all possible speed, regardless of the broad trail such hurried movements left behind. They knew full well it would be difficult to throw this wolf off the scent; understood that if any attempt was made to ambush the trail, they must cope with woodcraft keener than an Indian's. Flying in desperation, they hoped to reach the rocky retreat, where, like foxes in their burrows, they believed themselves safe. When the sun sloped low toward the western horizon, lengthening Jonathan's shadow, he slackened pace. He was entering the rocky, rugged country which marked the approach to the distant Alleghenies. From the top of a ridge he took his bearings, deciding that he was within a few miles of Legget's hiding-place. At the foot of this ridge, where a murmuring brook sped softly over its bed, he halted. Here a number of horses had forded the brook. They were iron-shod, which indicated almost to a certainty, that they were stolen horses, and in the hands of Indians. Jonathan saw where the trail of the steeds was merged into that of the outlaws. He suspected that the Indians and Legget had held a short council. As he advanced the borderman found only the faintest impression of Wetzel's trail. Legget and Brandt no longer left any token of their course. They were riding the horses. All the borderman cared to know was if Wetzel still pursued. He passed on swiftly up a hill, through a wood of birches where the trail showed on a line of broken ferns, then out upon a low ridge where patches of grass grew sparsely. Here he saw in this last ground no indication of his comrade's trail; nothing was to be seen save the imprints of the horses' hoofs. Jonathan halted behind the nearest underbrush. This sudden move on the part of Wetzel was token that, suspecting an ambush, he had made a detour somewhere, probably in the grove of birches. All the while his eyes searched the long, barren reach ahead. No thicket, fallen tree, or splintered rocks, such as Indians utilized for an ambush, could be seen. Indians always sought the densely matted underbrush, a windfall, or rocky retreat and there awaited a pursuer. It was one of the borderman's tricks of woodcraft that he could recognize such places. Far beyond the sandy ridge Jonathan came to a sloping, wooded hillside, upon which were scattered big rocks, some mossy and lichen-covered, and one, a giant boulder, with a crown of ferns and laurel gracing its flat surface. It was such a place as the savages would select for ambush. He knew, however, that if an Indian had hidden himself there Wetzel would have discovered him. When opposite the rock Jonathan saw a broken fern hanging over the edge. The heavy trail of the horses ran close beside it. Then with that thoroughness of search which made the borderman what he was, Jonathan leaped upon the rock. There, lying in the midst of the ferns, lay an Indian with sullen, somber face set in the repose of death. In his side was a small bullet hole. Jonathan examined the savage's rifle. It had been discharged. The rock, the broken fern, the dead Indian, the discharged rifle, told the story of that woodland tragedy. Wetzel had discovered the ambush. Leaving the trail, he had tricked the redskin into firing, then getting a glimpse of the Indian's red body through the sights of his fatal weapon, the deed was done. With greater caution Jonathan advanced once more. Not far beyond the rock he found Wetzel's trail. The afternoon was drawing to a close. He could not travel much farther, yet he kept on, hoping to overtake his comrade before darkness set in. From time to time he whistled; but got no answering signal. When the tracks of the horses were nearly hidden by the gathering dusk, Jonathan decided to halt for the night. He whistled one more note, louder and clearer, and awaited the result with strained ears. The deep silence of the wilderness prevailed, suddenly to be broken by a faint, far-away, melancholy call of the hermit-thrush. It was the answering signal the borderman had hoped to hear. Not many moments elapsed before he heard another call, low, and near at hand, to which he replied. The bushes parted noiselessly on his left, and the tall form of Wetzel appeared silently out of the gloom. The two gripped hands in silence. "Hev you any meat?" Wetzel asked, and as Jonathan handed him his knapsack, he continued, "I was kinder lookin' fer you. Did you get out all right with the lass?" "Nary a scratch." The giant borderman grunted his satisfaction. "How'd Legget and Brandt get away?" asked Jonathan. "Cut an' run like scared bucks. Never got a hand on either of 'em." "How many redskins did they meet back here a spell?" "They was seven; but now there are only six, an' all snug in Legget's place by this time." "I reckon we're near his den." "We're not far off." Night soon closing down upon the bordermen found them wrapped in slumber, as if no deadly foes were near at hand. The soft night wind sighed dismally among the bare trees. A few bright stars twinkled overhead. In the darkness of the forest the bordermen were at home. CHAPTER XXII In Legget's rude log cabin a fire burned low, lightening the forms of the two border outlaws, and showing in the background the dark forms of Indians sitting motionless on the floor. Their dusky eyes emitted a baleful glint, seemingly a reflection of their savage souls caught by the firelight. Legget wore a look of ferocity and sullen fear strangely blended. Brandt's face was hard and haggard, his lips set, his gray eyes smoldering. "Safe?" he hissed. "Safe you say? You'll see that it's the same now as on the other night, when those border-tigers jumped us and we ran like cowards. I'd have fought it out here, but for you." "Thet man Wetzel is ravin' mad, I tell you," growled Legget. "I reckon I've stood my ground enough to know I ain't no coward. But this fellar's crazy. He hed the Injuns slashin' each other like a pack of wolves round a buck." "He's no more mad than you or I," declared Brandt. "I know all about him. His moaning in the woods, and wild yells are only tricks. He knows the Indian nature, and he makes their very superstition and religion aid him in his fighting. I told you what he'd do. Didn't I beg you to kill Zane when we had a chance? Wetzel would never have taken our trail alone. Now they've beat me out of the girl, and as sure as death will round us up here." "You don't believe they'll rush us here?" asked Legget. "They're too keen to take foolish chances, but something will be done we don't expect. Zane was a prisoner here; he had a good look at this place, and you can gamble he'll remember." "Zane must hev gone back to Fort Henry with the girl." "Mark what I say, he'll come back!" "Wal, we kin hold this place against all the men Eb Zane may put out." "He won't send a man," snapped Brandt passionately. "Remember this, Legget, we're not to fight against soldiers, settlers, or hunters; but bordermen--understand--bordermen! Such as have been developed right here on this bloody frontier, and nowhere else on earth. They haven't fear in them. Both are fleet as deer in the woods. They can't be seen or trailed. They can snuff a candle with a rifle ball in the dark. I've seen Zane do it three times at a hundred yards. And Wetzel! He wouldn't waste powder on practicing. They can't be ambushed, or shaken off a track; they take the scent like buzzards, and have eyes like eagles." "We kin slip out of here under cover of night," suggested Legget. "Well, what then? That's all they want. They'd be on us again by sunset. No! we've got to stand our ground and fight. We'll stay as long as we can; but they'll rout us out somehow, be sure of that. And if one of us pokes his nose out to the daylight, it will be shot off." "You're sore, an' you've lost your nerve," said Legget harshly. "Sore at me 'cause I got sweet on the girl. Ho! ho!" Brandt shot a glance at Legget which boded no good. His strong hands clenched in an action betraying the reckless rage in his heart. Then he carefully removed his hunting coat, and examined his wound. He retied the bandage, muttering gloomily, "I'm so weak as to be light-headed. If this cut opens again, it's all day for me." After that the inmates of the hut were quiet. The huge outlaw bowed his shaggy head for a while, and then threw himself on a pile of hemlock boughs. Brandt was not long in seeking rest. Soon both were fast asleep. Two of the savages passed out with cat-like step, leaving the door open. The fire had burned low, leaving a bed of dead coals. Outside in the dark a waterfall splashed softly. The darkest hour came, and passed, and paled slowly to gray. Birds began to twitter. Through the door of the cabin the light of day streamed in. The two Indian sentinels were building a fire on the stone hearth. One by one the other savages got up, stretched and yawned, and began the business of the day by cooking their breakfast. It was, apparently, every one for himself. Legget arose, shook himself like a shaggy dog, and was starting for the door when one of the sentinels stopped him. Brandt, who was now awake, saw the action, and smiled. In a few moments Indians and outlaws were eating for breakfast roasted strips of venison, with corn meal baked brown, which served as bread. It was a somber, silent group. Presently the shrill neigh of a horse startled them. Following it, the whip-like crack of a rifle stung and split the morning air. Hard on this came an Indian's long, wailing death-cry. "Hah!" exclaimed Brandt. Legget remained immovable. One of the savages peered out through a little port-hole at the rear of the hut. The others continued their meal. "Whistler'll come in presently to tell us who's doin' thet shootin'," said Legget. "He's a keen Injun." "He's not very keen now," replied Brandt, with bitter certainty. "He's what the settlers call a good Indian, which is to say, dead!" Legget scowled at his lieutenant. "I'll go an' see," he replied and seized his rifle. He opened the door, when another rifle-shot rang out. A bullet whistled in the air, grazing the outlaw's shoulder, and imbedded itself in the heavy door-frame. Legget leaped back with a curse. "Close shave!" said Brandt coolly. "That bullet came, probably, straight down from the top of the cliff. Jack Zane's there. Wetzel is lower down watching the outlet. We're trapped." "Trapped," shouted Legget with an angry leer. "We kin live here longer'n the bordermen kin. We've meat on hand, an' a good spring in the back of the hut. How'er we trapped?" "We won't live twenty-four hours," declared Brandt. "Why?" "Because we'll be routed out. They'll find some way to do it, and we'll never have another chance to fight in the open, as we had the other night when they came after the girl. From now on there'll be no sleep, no time to eat, the nameless fear of an unseen foe who can't be shaken off, marching by night, hiding and starving by day, until----! I'd rather be back in Fort Henry at Colonel Zane's mercy." Legget turned a ghastly face toward Brandt. "Look a here. You're takin' a lot of glee in sayin' these things. I believe you've lost your nerve, or the lettin' out of a little blood hes made you wobbly. We've Injuns here, an' ought to be a match fer two men." Brandt gazed at him with a derisive smile. "We kin go out an' fight these fellars," continued Legget. "We might try their own game, hidin' an' crawlin' through the woods." "We two would have to go it alone. If you still had your trusty, trained band of experienced Indians, I'd say that would be just the thing. But Ashbow and the Chippewa are dead; so are the others. This bunch of redskins here may do to steal a few horses; but they don't amount to much against Zane and Wetzel. Besides, they'll cut and run presently, for they're scared and suspicious. Look at the chief; ask him." The savage Brandt indicated was a big Indian just coming into manhood. His swarthy face still retained some of the frankness and simplicity of youth. "Chief," said Legget in the Indian tongue. "The great paleface hunter, Deathwind, lies hid in the woods." "Last night the Shawnee heard the wind of death mourn through the trees," replied the chief gloomily. "See! What did I say?" cried Brandt. "The superstitious fool! He would begin his death-chant almost without a fight. We can't count on the redskins. What's to be done?" The outlaw threw himself upon the bed of boughs, and Legget sat down with his rifle across his knees. The Indians maintained the same stoical composure. The moments dragged by into hours. "Ugh!" suddenly exclaimed the Indian at the end of the hut. Legget ran to him, and acting upon a motion of the Indian's hand, looked out through the little port-hole. The sun was high. He saw four of the horses grazing by the brook; then gazed scrutinizingly from the steep waterfall, along the green-stained cliff to the dark narrow cleft in the rocks. Here was the only outlet from the inclosure. He failed to discover anything unusual. The Indian grunted again, and pointed upward. "Smoke! There's smoke risin' above the trees," cried Legget. "Brandt, come here. What's thet mean?" Brandt hurried, looked out. His face paled, his lower jaw protruded, quivered, and then was shut hard. He walked away, put his foot on a bench and began to lace his leggings. "Wal?" demanded Legget. "The game's up! Get ready to run and be shot at," cried Brandt with a hiss of passion. Almost as he spoke the roof of the hut shook under a heavy blow. "What's thet?" No one replied. Legget glanced from Brandt's cold, determined face to the uneasy savages. They were restless, and handling their weapons. The chief strode across the floor with stealthy steps. "Thud!" A repetition of the first blow caused the Indians to jump, and drew a fierce imprecation from their outlaw leader. Brandt eyed him narrowly. "It's coming to you, Legget. They are shooting arrows of fire into the roof from the cliff. Zane is doin' that. He can make a bow and draw one, too. We're to be burned out. Now, damn you! take your medicine! I wanted you to kill him when you had the chance. If you had done so we'd never have come to this. Burned out, do you get that? Burned out!" "Fire!" exclaimed Legget. He sat down as if the strength had left his legs. The Indians circled around the room like caged tigers. "Ugh!" The chief suddenly reached up and touched the birch-bark roof of the hut. His action brought the attention of all to a faint crackling of burning wood. "It's caught all right," cried Brandt in a voice which cut the air like a blow from a knife. "I'll not be smoked like a ham, fer all these tricky bordermen," roared Legget. Drawing his knife he hacked at the heavy buckskin hinges of the rude door. When it dropped free he measured it against the open space. Sheathing the blade, he grasped his rifle in his right hand and swung the door on his left arm. Heavy though it was he carried it easily. The roughly hewn planks afforded a capital shield for all except the lower portion of his legs and feet. He went out of the hut with the screen of wood between himself and the cliff, calling for the Indians to follow. They gathered behind him, breathing hard, clutching their weapons, and seemingly almost crazed by excitement. Brandt, with no thought of joining this foolhardy attempt to escape from the inclosure, ran to the little port-hole that he might see the outcome. Legget and his five redskins were running toward the narrow outlet in the gorge. The awkward and futile efforts of the Indians to remain behind the shield were almost pitiful. They crowded each other for favorable positions, but, struggle as they might, one or two were always exposed to the cliff. Suddenly one, pushed to the rear, stopped simultaneously with the crack of a rifle, threw up his arms and fell. Another report, differing from the first, rang out. A savage staggered from behind the speeding group with his hand at his side. Then he dropped into the brook. Evidently Legget grasped this as a golden opportunity, for he threw aside the heavy shield and sprang forward, closely followed by his red-skinned allies. Immediately they came near the cliff, where the trail ran into the gorge, a violent shaking of the dry ferns overhead made manifest the activity of some heavy body. Next instant a huge yellow figure, not unlike a leaping catamount, plunged down with a roar so terrible as to sound inhuman. Legget, Indians, and newcomer rolled along the declivity toward the brook in an indistinguishable mass. Two of the savages shook themselves free, and bounded to their feet nimbly as cats, but Legget and the other redskin became engaged in a terrific combat. It was a wrestling whirl, so fierce and rapid as to render blows ineffectual. The leaves scattered as if in a whirlwind. Legget's fury must have been awful, to judge from his hoarse screams; the Indians' fear maddening, as could be told by their shrieks. The two savages ran wildly about the combatants, one trying to level a rifle, the other to get in a blow with a tomahawk. But the movements of the trio, locked in deadly embrace, were too swift. Above all the noise of the contest rose that strange, thrilling roar. "Wetzel!" muttered Brandt, with a chill, creeping shudder as he gazed upon the strife with fascinated eyes. "Bang!" Again from the cliff came that heavy bellow. The savage with the rifle shrunk back as if stung, and without a cry fell limply in a heap. His companion, uttering a frightened cry, fled from the glen. The struggle seemed too deadly, too terrible, to last long. The Indian and the outlaw were at a disadvantage. They could not strike freely. The whirling conflict grew more fearful. During one second the huge, brown, bearish figure of Legget appeared on top; then the dark-bodied, half-naked savage, spotted like a hyena, and finally the lithe, powerful, tiger-shape of the borderman. Finally Legget wrenched himself free at the same instant that the bloody-stained Indian rolled, writhing in convulsions, away from Wetzel. The outlaw dashed with desperate speed up the trail, and disappeared in the gorge. The borderman sped toward the cliff, leaped on a projecting ledge, grasped an overhanging branch, and pulled himself up. He was out of sight almost as quickly as Legget. "After his rifle," Brandt muttered, and then realized that he had watched the encounter without any idea of aiding his comrade. He consoled himself with the knowledge that such an attempt would have been useless. From the moment the borderman sprang upon Legget, until he scaled the cliff, his movements had been incredibly swift. It would have been hardly possible to cover him with a rifle, and the outlaw grimly understood that he needed to be careful of that charge in his weapon. "By Heavens, Wetzel's a wonder!" cried Brandt in unwilling admiration. "Now he'll go after Legget and the redskin, while Zane stays here to get me. Well, he'll succeed, most likely, but I'll never quit. What's this?" He felt something slippery and warm on his hand. It was blood running from the inside of his sleeve. A slight pain made itself felt in his side. Upon examination he found, to his dismay, that his wound had reopened. With a desperate curse he pulled a linsey jacket off a peg, tore it into strips, and bound up the injury as tightly as possible. Then he grasped his rifle, and watched the cliff and the gorge with flaring eyes. Suddenly he found it difficult to breathe; his throat was parched, his eyes smarted. Then the odor of wood-smoke brought him to a realization that the cabin was burning. It was only now he understood that the room was full of blue clouds. He sank into the corner, a wolf at bay. Not many moments passed before the outlaw understood that he could not withstand the increasing heat and stifling vapor of the room. Pieces of burning birch dropped from the roof. The crackling above grew into a steady roar. "I've got to run for it," he gasped. Death awaited him outside the door, but that was more acceptable than death by fire. Yet to face the final moment when he desired with all his soul to live, required almost super-human courage. Sweating, panting, he glared around. "God! Is there no other way?" he cried in agony. At this moment he saw an ax on the floor. Seizing it he attacked the wall of the cabin. Beyond this partition was a hut which had been used for a stable. Half a dozen strokes of the ax opened a hole large enough for him to pass through. With his rifle, and a piece of venison which hung near, he literally fell through the hole, where he lay choking, almost fainting. After a time he crawled across the floor to a door. Outside was a dense laurel thicket, into which he crawled. The crackling and roaring of the fire grew louder. He could see the column of yellow and black smoke. Once fairly under way, the flames rapidly consumed the pitch-pine logs. In an hour Legget's cabins were a heap of ashes. The afternoon waned. Brandt lay watchful, slowly recovering his strength. He felt secure under this cover, and only prayed for night to come. As the shadows began to creep down the sides of the cliffs, he indulged in hope. If he could slip out in the dark he had a good chance to elude the borderman. In the passionate desire to escape, he had forgotten his fatalistic words to Legget. He reasoned that he could not be trailed until daylight; that a long night's march would put him far in the lead, and there was just a possibility of Zane's having gone away with Wetzel. When darkness had set in he slipped out of the covert and began his journey for life. Within a few yards he reached the brook. He had only to follow its course in order to find the outlet to the glen. Moreover, its rush and gurgle over the stones would drown any slight noise he might make. Slowly, patiently he crawled, stopping every moment to listen. What a long time he was in coming to the mossy stones over which the brook dashed through the gorge! But he reached them at last. Here if anywhere Zane would wait for him. With teeth clenched desperately, and an inward tightening of his chest, for at any moment he expected to see the red flame of a rifle, he slipped cautiously over the mossy stones. Finally his hands touched the dewy grass, and a breath of cool wind fanned his hot cheek. He had succeeded in reaching the open. Crawling some rods farther on, he lay still a while and listened. The solemn wilderness calm was unbroken. Rising, he peered about. Behind loomed the black hill with its narrow cleft just discernible. Facing the north star, he went silently out into the darkness. CHAPTER XXIII At daylight Jonathan Zane rolled from his snug bed of leaves under the side of a log, and with the flint, steel and punk he always carried, began building a fire. His actions were far from being hurried. They were deliberate, and seemed strange on the part of a man whose stern face suggested some dark business to be done. When his little fire had been made, he warmed some slices of venison which had already been cooked, and thus satisfied his hunger. Carefully extinguishing the fire and looking to the priming of his rifle, he was ready for the trail. He stood near the edge of the cliff from which he could command a view of the glen. The black, smoldering ruins of the burned cabins defaced a picturesque scene. "Brandt must have lit out last night, for I could have seen even a rabbit hidin' in that laurel patch. He's gone, an' it's what I wanted," thought the borderman. He made his way slowly around the edge of the inclosure and clambered down on the splintered cliff at the end of the gorge. A wide, well-trodden trail extended into the forest below. Jonathan gave scarcely a glance to the beaten path before him; but bent keen eyes to the north, and carefully scrutinized the mossy stones along the brook. Upon a little sand bar running out from the bank he found the light imprint of a hand. "It was a black night. He'd have to travel by the stars, an' north's the only safe direction for him," muttered the borderman. On the bank above he found oblong indentations in the grass, barely perceptible, but owing to the peculiar position of the blades of grass, easy for him to follow. "He'd better have learned to walk light as an Injun before he took to outlawin'," said the borderman in disdain. Then he returned to the gorge and entered the inclosure. At the foot of the little rise of ground where Wetzel had leaped upon his quarry, was one of the dead Indians. Another lay partly submerged in the brown water. Jonathan carried the weapons of the savages to a dry place under a projecting ledge in the cliff. Passing on down the glen, he stopped a moment where the cabins had stood. Not a log remained. The horses, with the exception of two, were tethered in the copse of laurel. He recognized Colonel Zane's thoroughbred, and Betty's pony. He cut them loose, positive they would not stray from the glen, and might easily be secured at another time. He set out upon the trail of Brandt with a long, swinging stride. To him the outcome of that pursuit was but a question of time. The consciousness of superior endurance, speed, and craft, spoke in his every movement. The consciousness of being in right, a factor so powerfully potent for victory, spoke in the intrepid front with which he faced the north. It was a gloomy November day. Gray, steely clouds drifted overhead. The wind wailed through the bare trees, sending dead leaves scurrying and rustling over the brown earth. The borderman advanced with a step that covered glade and glen, forest and field, with astonishing swiftness. Long since he had seen that Brandt was holding to the lowland. This did not strike him as singular until for the third time he found the trail lead a short distance up the side of a ridge, then descend, seeking a level. With this discovery came the certainty that Brandt's pace was lessening. He had set out with a hunter's stride, but it had begun to shorten. The outlaw had shirked the hills, and shifted from his northern course. Why? The man was weakening; he could not climb; he was favoring a wound. What seemed more serious for the outlaw, was the fact that he had left a good trail, and entered the low, wild land north of the Ohio. Even the Indians seldom penetrated this tangled belt of laurel and thorn. Owing to the dry season the swamps were shallow, which was another factor against Brandt. No doubt he had hoped to hide his trail by wading, and here it showed up like the track of a bison. Jonathan kept steadily on, knowing the farther Brandt penetrated into this wilderness the worse off he would be. The outlaw dared not take to the river until below Fort Henry, which was distant many a weary mile. The trail grew more ragged as the afternoon wore away. When twilight rendered further tracking impossible, the borderman built a fire in a sheltered place, ate his supper, and went to sleep. In the dim, gray morning light he awoke, fancying he had been startled by a distant rifle shot. He roasted his strips of venison carefully, and ate with a hungry hunter's appreciation, yet sparingly, as befitted a borderman who knew how to keep up his strength upon a long trail. Hardly had he traveled a mile when Brandt's footprints covered another's. Nothing surprised the borderman; but he had expected this least of all. A hasty examination convinced him that Legget and his Indian ally had fled this way with Wetzel in pursuit. The morning passed slowly. The borderman kept to the trail like a hound. The afternoon wore on. Over sandy reaches thick with willows, and through long, matted, dried-out cranberry marshes and copses of prickly thorn, the borderman hung to his purpose. His legs seemed never to lose their spring, but his chest began to heave, his head bent, and his face shone with sweat. At dusk he tired. Crawling into a dry thicket, he ate his scanty meal and fell asleep. When he awoke it was gray daylight. He was wet and chilled. Again he kindled a fire, and sat over it while cooking breakfast. Suddenly he was brought to his feet by the sound of a rifle shot; then two others followed in rapid succession. Though they were faint, and far away to the west, Jonathan recognized the first, which could have come only from Wetzel's weapon, and he felt reasonably certain of the third, which was Brandt's. There might have been, he reflected grimly, a good reason for Legget's not shooting. However, he knew that Wetzel had rounded up the fugitives, and again he set out. It was another dismal day, such a one as would be fitting for a dark deed of border justice. A cold, drizzly rain blew from the northwest. Jonathan wrapped a piece of oil-skin around his rifle-breech, and faced the downfall. Soon he was wet to the skin. He kept on, but his free stride had shortened. Even upon his iron muscles this soggy, sticky ground had begun to tell. The morning passed but the storm did not; the air grew colder and darker. The short afternoon would afford him little time, especially as the rain and running rills of water were obliterating the trail. In the midst of a dense forest of great cottonwoods and sycamores he came upon a little pond, hidden among the bushes, and shrouded in a windy, wet gloom. Jonathan recognized the place. He had been there in winter hunting bears when all the swampland was locked by ice. The borderman searched along the banks for a time, then went back to the trail, patiently following it. Around the pond it led to the side of a great, shelving rock. He saw an Indian leaning against this, and was about to throw forward his rifle when the strange, fixed, position of the savage told of the tragedy. A wound extended from his shoulder to his waist. Near by on the ground lay Legget. He, too, was dead. His gigantic frame weltered in blood. His big feet were wide apart; his arms spread, and from the middle of his chest protruded the haft of a knife. The level space surrounding the bodies showed evidence of a desperate struggle. A bush had been rolled upon and crushed by heavy bodies. On the ground was blood as on the stones and leaves. The blade Legget still clutched was red, and the wrist of the hand which held it showed a dark, discolored band, where it had felt the relentless grasp of Wetzel's steel grip. The dead man's buckskin coat was cut into ribbons. On his broad face a demoniacal expression had set in eternal rigidity; the animal terror of death was frozen in his wide staring eyes. The outlaw chief had died as he had lived, desperately. Jonathan found Wetzel's trail leading directly toward the river, and soon understood that the borderman was on the track of Brandt. The borderman had surprised the worn, starved, sleepy fugitives in the gray, misty dawn. The Indian, doubtless, was the sentinel, and had fallen asleep at his post never to awaken. Legget and Brandt must have discharged their weapons ineffectually. Zane could not understand why his comrade had missed Brandt at a few rods' distance. Perhaps he had wounded the younger outlaw; but certainly he had escaped while Wetzel had closed in on Legget to meet the hardest battle of his career. While going over his version of the attack, Jonathan followed Brandt's trail, as had Wetzel, to where it ended in the river. The old borderman had continued on down stream along the sandy shore. The outlaw remained in the water to hide his trail. At one point Wetzel turned north. This move puzzled Jonathan, as did also the peculiar tracks. It was more perplexing because not far below Zane discovered where the fugitive had left the water to get around a ledge of rock. The trail was approaching Fort Henry. Jonathan kept on down the river until arriving at the head of the island which lay opposite the settlement. Still no traces of Wetzel! Here Zane lost Brandt's trail completely. He waded the first channel, which was shallow and narrow, and hurried across the island. Walking out upon a sand-bar he signaled with his well-known Indian cry. Almost immediately came an answering shout. While waiting he glanced at the sand, and there, pointing straight toward the fort, he found Brandt's straggling trail! CHAPTER XXIV Colonel Zane paced to and fro on the porch. His genial smile had not returned; he was grave and somber. Information had just reached him that Jonathan had hailed from the island, and that one of the settlers had started across the river in a boat. Betty came out accompanied by Mrs. Zane. "What's this I hear?" asked Betty, flashing an anxious glance toward the river. "Has Jack really come in?" "Yes," replied the colonel, pointing to a throng of men on the river bank. "Now there'll be trouble," said Mrs. Zane nervously. "I wish with all my heart Brandt had not thrown himself, as he called it, on your mercy." "So do I," declared Colonel Zane. "What will be done?" she asked. "There! that's Jack! Silas has hold of his arm." "He's lame. He has been hurt," replied her husband. A little procession of men and boys followed the borderman from the river, and from the cabins appeared the settlers and their wives. But there was no excitement except among the children. The crowd filed into the colonel's yard behind Jonathan and Silas. Colonel Zane silently greeted his brother with an iron grip of the hand which was more expressive than words. No unusual sight was it to see the borderman wet, ragged, bloody, worn with long marches, hollow-eyed and gloomy; yet he had never before presented such an appearance at Fort Henry. Betty ran forward, and, though she clasped his arm, shrank back. There was that in the borderman's presence to cause fear. "Wetzel?" Jonathan cried sharply. The colonel raised both hands, palms open, and returned his brother's keen glance. Then he spoke. "Lew hasn't come in. He chased Brandt across the river. That's all I know." "Brandt's here, then?" hissed the borderman. The colonel nodded gloomily. "Where?" "In the long room over the fort. I locked him in there." "Why did he come here?" Colonel Zane shrugged his shoulders. "It's beyond me. He said he'd rather place himself in my hands than be run down by Wetzel or you. He didn't crawl; I'll say that for him. He just said, 'I'm your prisoner.' He's in pretty bad shape; barked over the temple, lame in one foot, cut under the arm, starved and worn out." "Take me to him," said the borderman, and he threw his rifle on a bench. "Very well. Come along," replied the colonel. He frowned at those following them. "Here, you women, clear out!" But they did not obey him. It was a sober-faced group that marched in through the big stockade gate, under the huge, bulging front of the fort, and up the rough stairway. Colonel Zane removed a heavy bar from before a door, and thrust it open with his foot. The long guardroom brilliantly lighted by sunshine coming through the portholes, was empty save for a ragged man lying on a bench. The noise aroused him; he sat up, and then slowly labored to his feet. It was the same flaring, wild-eyed Brandt, only fiercer and more haggard. He wore a bloody bandage round his head. When he saw the borderman he backed, with involuntary, instinctive action, against the wall, yet showed no fear. In the dark glance Jonathan shot at Brandt shone a pitiless implacability; no scorn, nor hate, nor passion, but something which, had it not been so terrible, might have been justice. "I think Wetzel was hurt in the fight with Legget," said Jonathan deliberately, "an' ask if you know?" "I believe he was," replied Brandt readily. "I was asleep when he jumped us, and was awakened by the Indian's yell. Wetzel must have taken a snap shot at me as I was getting up, which accounts, probably, for my being alive. I fell, but did not lose consciousness. I heard Wetzel and Legget fighting, and at last struggled to my feet. Although dizzy and bewildered, I could see to shoot; but missed. For a long time, it seemed to me, I watched that terrible fight, and then ran, finally reaching the river, where I recovered somewhat." "Did you see Wetzel again?" "Once, about a quarter of a mile behind me. He was staggering along on my trail." At this juncture there was a commotion among the settlers crowding behind Colonel Zane and Jonathan, and Helen Sheppard appeared, white, with her big eyes strangely dilated. "Oh!" she cried breathlessly, clasping both hands around Jonathan's arm. "I'm not too late? You're not going to----" "Helen, this is no place for you," said Colonel Zane sternly. "This is business for men. You must not interfere." Helen gazed at him, at Brandt, and then up at the borderman. She did not loose his arm. "Outside some one told me you intended to shoot him. Is it true?" Colonel Zane evaded the searching gaze of those strained, brilliant eyes. Nor did he answer. As Helen stepped slowly back a hush fell upon the crowd. The whispering, the nervous coughing, and shuffling of feet, ceased. In those around her Helen saw the spirit of the border. Colonel Zane and Silas wore the same look, cold, hard, almost brutal. The women were strangely grave. Nellie Douns' sweet face seemed changed; there was pity, even suffering on it, but no relenting. Even Betty's face, always so warm, piquant, and wholesome, had taken on a shade of doubt, of gloom, of something almost sullen, which blighted its dark beauty. What hurt Helen most cruelly was the borderman's glittering eyes. She fought against a shuddering weakness which threatened to overcome her. "Whose prisoner is Brandt?" she asked of Colonel Zane. "He gave himself up to me, naturally, as I am in authority here," replied the colonel. "But that signifies little. I can do no less than abide by Jonathan's decree, which, after all, is the decree of the border." "And that is?" "Death to outlaws and renegades." "But cannot you spare him?" implored Helen. "I know he is a bad man; but he might become a better one. It seems like murder to me. To kill him in cold blood, wounded, suffering as he is, when he claimed your mercy. Oh! it is dreadful!" The usually kind-hearted colonel, soft as wax in the hands of a girl, was now colder and harder than flint. "It is useless," he replied curtly. "I am sorry for you. We all understand your feelings, that yours are not the principles of the border. If you had lived long here you could appreciate what these outlaws and renegades have done to us. This man is a hardened criminal; he is a thief, a murderer." "He did not kill Mordaunt," replied Helen quickly. "I saw him draw first and attack Brandt." "No matter. Come, Helen, cease. No more of this," Colonel Zane cried with impatience. "But I will not!" exclaimed Helen, with ringing voice and flashing eye. She turned to her girl friends and besought them to intercede for the outlaw. But Nell only looked sorrowfully on, while Betty met her appealing glance with a fire in her eyes that was no dim reflection of her brother's. "Then I must make my appeal to you," said Helen, facing the borderman. There could be no mistaking how she regarded him. Respect, honor and love breathed from every line of her beautiful face. "Why do you want him to go free?" demanded Jonathan. "You told me to kill him." "Oh, I know. But I was not in my right mind. Listen to me, please. He must have been very different once; perhaps had sisters. For their sake give him another chance. I know he has a better nature. I feared him, hated him, scorned him, as if he were a snake, yet he saved me from that monster Legget!" "For himself!" "Well, yes, I can't deny that. But he could have ruined me, wrecked me, yet he did not. At least, he meant marriage by me. He said if I would marry him he would flee over the border and be an honest man." "Have you no other reason?" "Yes." Helen's bosom swelled and a glory shone in her splendid eyes. "The other reason is, my own happiness!" Plain to all, if not through her words, from the light in her eyes, that she could not love a man who was a party to what she considered injustice. The borderman's white face became flaming red. It was difficult to refuse this glorious girl any sacrifice she demanded for the sake of the love so openly avowed. Sweetly and pityingly she turned to Brandt: "Will not you help me?" "Lass, if it were for me you were asking my life I'd swear it yours for always, and I'd be a man," he replied with bitterness; "but not to save my soul would I ask anything of him." The giant passions, hate and jealousy, flamed in his gray eyes. "If I persuade them to release you, will you go away, leave this country, and never come back?" "I'll promise that, lass, and honestly," he replied. She wheeled toward Jonathan, and now the rosy color chased the pallor from her cheeks. "Jack, do you remember when we parted at my home; when you left on this terrible trail, now ended, thank God! Do you remember what an ordeal that was for me? Must I go through it again?" Bewitchingly sweet she was then, with the girlish charm of coquetry almost lost in the deeper, stranger power of the woman. The borderman drew his breath sharply; then he wrapped his long arms closely round her. She, understanding that victory was hers, sank weeping upon his breast. For a moment he bowed his face over her, and when he lifted it the dark and terrible gloom had gone. "Eb, let him go, an' at once," ordered Jonathan. "Give him a rifle, some meat, an' a canoe, for he can't travel, an' turn him loose. Only be quick about it, because if Wetzel comes in, God himself couldn't save the outlaw." It was an indescribable glance that Brandt cast upon the tearful face of the girl who had saved his life. But without a word he followed Colonel Zane from the room. The crowd slowly filed down the steps. Betty and Nell lingered behind, their eyes beaming through happy tears. Jonathan, long so cold, showed evidence of becoming as quick and passionate a lover as he had been a borderman. At least, Helen had to release herself from his embrace, and it was a blushing, tear-stained face she turned to her friends. When they reached the stockade gate Colonel Zane was hurrying toward the river with a bag in one hand, and a rifle and a paddle in the other. Brandt limped along after him, the two disappearing over the river bank. Betty, Nell, and the lovers went to the edge of the bluff. They saw Colonel Zane choose a canoe from among a number on the beach. He launched it, deposited the bag in the bottom, handed the rifle and paddle to Brandt, and wheeled about. The outlaw stepped aboard, and, pushing off slowly, drifted down and out toward mid-stream. When about fifty yards from shore he gave a quick glance around, and ceased paddling. His face gleamed white, and his eyes glinted like bits of steel in the sun. Suddenly he grasped the rifle, and, leveling it with the swiftness of thought, fired at Jonathan. The borderman saw the act, even from the beginning, and must have read the outlaw's motive, for as the weapon flashed he dropped flat on the bank. The bullet sang harmlessly over him, imbedding itself in the stockade fence with a distinct thud. The girls were so numb with horror that they could not even scream. Colonel Zane swore lustily. "Where's my gun? Get me a gun. Oh! What did I tell you?" "Look!" cried Jonathan as he rose to his feet. Upon the sand-bar opposite stood a tall, dark, familiar figure. "By all that's holy, Wetzel!" exclaimed Colonel Zane. They saw the giant borderman raise a long, black rifle, which wavered and fell, and rose again. A little puff of white smoke leaped out, accompanied by a clear, stinging report. Brandt dropped the paddle he had hurriedly begun plying after his traitor's act. His white face was turned toward the shore as it sank forward to rest at last upon the gunwale of the canoe. Then his body slowly settled, as if seeking repose. His hand trailed outside in the water, drooping inert and lifeless. The little craft drifted down stream. "You see, Helen, it had to be," said Colonel Zane gently. "What a dastard! A long shot, Jack! Fate itself must have glanced down the sights of Wetzel's rifle." CHAPTER XXV A year rolled round; once again Indian summer veiled the golden fields and forests in a soft, smoky haze. Once more from the opal-blue sky of autumn nights, shone the great white stars, and nature seemed wrapped in a melancholy hush. November the third was the anniversary of a memorable event on the frontier--the marriage of the younger borderman. Colonel Zane gave it the name of "Independence Day," and arranged a holiday, a feast and dance where all the settlement might meet in joyful thankfulness for the first year of freedom on the border. With the wiping out of Legget's fierce band, the yoke of the renegades and outlaws was thrown off forever. Simon Girty migrated to Canada and lived with a few Indians who remained true to him. His confederates slowly sank into oblivion. The Shawnee tribe sullenly retreated westward, far into the interior of Ohio; the Delawares buried the war hatchet, and smoked the pipe of peace they had ever before refused. For them the dark, mysterious, fatal wind had ceased to moan along the trails, or sigh through tree-tops over lonely Indian camp-fires. The beautiful Ohio valley had been wrested from the savages and from those parasites who for years had hung around the necks of the red men. This day was the happiest of Colonel Zane's life. The task he had set himself, and which he had hardly ever hoped to see completed, was ended. The West had been won. What Boone achieved in Kentucky he had accomplished in Ohio and West Virginia. The feast was spread on the colonel's lawn. Every man, woman and child in the settlement was there. Isaac Zane, with his Indian wife and child, had come from the far-off Huron town. Pioneers from Yellow Creek and eastward to Fort Pitt attended. The spirit of the occasion manifested itself in such joyousness as had never before been experienced in Fort Henry. The great feast was equal to the event. Choice cuts of beef and venison, savory viands, wonderful loaves of bread and great plump pies, sweet cider and old wine, delighted the merry party. "Friends, neighbors, dear ones," said Colonel Zane, "my heart is almost too full for speech. This occasion, commemorating the day of our freedom on the border, is the beginning of the reward for stern labor, hardship, silenced hearths of long, relentless years. I did not think I'd live to see it. The seed we have sown has taken root; in years to come, perhaps, a great people will grow up on these farms we call our homes. And as we hope those coming afterward will remember us, we should stop a moment to think of the heroes who have gone before. Many there are whose names will never be written on the roll of fame, whose graves will be unmarked in history. But we who worked, fought, bled beside them, who saw them die for those they left behind, will render them all justice, honor and love. To them we give the victory. They were true; then let us, who begin to enjoy the freedom, happiness and prosperity they won with their lives, likewise be true in memory of them, in deed to ourselves, and in grace to God." By no means the least of the pleasant features of this pleasant day was the fact that three couples blushingly presented themselves before the colonel, and confided to him their sudden conclusions in regard to the felicitousness of the moment. The happy colonel raced around until he discovered Jim Douns, the minister, and there amid the merry throng he gave the brides away, being the first to kiss them. It was late in the afternoon when the villagers dispersed to their homes and left the colonel to his own circle. With his strong, dark face beaming, he mounted the old porch step. "Where are my Zane babies?" he asked. "Ah! here you are! Did anybody ever see anything to beat that? Four wonderful babies! Mother, here's your Daniel--if you'd only named him Eb! Silas, come for Silas junior, bad boy that he is. Isaac, take your Indian princess; ah! little Myeerah with the dusky face. Woe be to him who looks into those eyes when you come to age. Jack, here's little Jonathan, the last of the bordermen; he, too, has beautiful eyes, big like his mother's. Ah! well, I don't believe I have left a wish, unless----" "Unless?" suggested Betty with her sweet smile. "It might be----" he said and looked at her. Betty's warm cheek was close to his as she whispered: "Dear Eb!" The rest only the colonel heard. "Well! By all that's glorious!" he exclaimed, and attempted to seize her; but with burning face Betty fled. * * * * * "Jack, dear, how the leaves are falling!" exclaimed Helen. "See them floating and whirling. It reminds me of the day I lay a prisoner in the forest glade praying, waiting for you." The borderman was silent. They passed down the sandy lane under the colored maple trees, to a new cottage on the hillside. "I am perfectly happy to-day," continued Helen. "Everybody seems to be content, except you. For the first time in weeks I see that shade on your face, that look in your eyes. Jack, you do not regret the new life?" "My love, no, a thousand times no," he answered, smiling down into her eyes. They were changing, shadowing with thought; bright as in other days, and with an added beauty. The wilful spirit had been softened by love. "Ah, I know, you miss the old friend." The yellow thicket on the slope opened to let out a tall, dark man who came down with lithe and springy stride. "Jack, it's Wetzel!" said Helen softly. No words were spoken as the comrades gripped hands. "Let me see the boy?" asked Wetzel, turning to Helen. Little Jonathan blinked up at the grave borderman with great round eyes, and pulled with friendly, chubby fingers at the fringed buckskin coat. "When you're a man the forest trails will be corn fields," muttered Wetzel. The bordermen strolled together up the brown hillside, and wandered along the river bluff. The air was cool; in the west the ruddy light darkened behind bold hills; a blue mist streaming in the valley shaded into gray as twilight fell. 
1239	----	THE SPIRIT OF THE BORDER A ROMANCE OF THE EARLY SETTLERS IN THE OHIO VALLEY BY ZANE GREY 1906 To my brother With many fond recollections of days spent in the solitude of the forests where only can be satisfied that wild fever of freedom of which this book tells; where to hear the whirr of a wild duck in his rapid flight is joy; where the quiet of an autumn afternoon swells the heart, and where one may watch the fragrant wood-smoke curl from the campfire, and see the stars peep over dark, wooded hills as twilight deepens, and know a happiness that dwells in the wilderness alone. Introduction The author does not intend to apologize for what many readers may call the "brutality" of the story; but rather to explain that its wild spirit is true to the life of the Western border as it was known only a little more than one hundred years ago. The writer is the fortunate possessor of historical material of undoubted truth and interest. It is the long-lost journal of Colonel Ebenezer Zane, one of the most prominent of the hunter-pioneer, who labored in the settlement of the Western country. The story of that tragic period deserves a higher place in historical literature than it has thus far been given, and this unquestionably because of a lack of authentic data regarding the conquering of the wilderness. Considering how many years the pioneers struggled on the border of this country, the history of their efforts is meager and obscure. If the years at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century were full of stirring adventure on the part of the colonists along the Atlantic coast, how crowded must they have been for the almost forgotten pioneers who daringly invaded the trackless wilds! None there was to chronicle the fight of these sturdy, travelers toward the setting sun. The story of their stormy lives, of their heroism, and of their sacrifice for the benefit of future generations is too little known. It is to a better understanding of those days that the author has labored to draw from his ancestor's notes a new and striking portrayal of the frontier; one which shall paint the fever of freedom, that powerful impulse which lured so many to unmarked graves; one which shall show his work, his love, the effect of the causes which rendered his life so hard, and surely one which does not forget the wronged Indian. The frontier in 1777 produced white men so savage as to be men in name only. These outcasts and renegades lived among the savages, and during thirty years harassed the border, perpetrating all manner of fiendish cruelties upon the settlers. They were no less cruel to the redmen whom they ruled, and at the height of their bloody careers made futile the Moravian missionaries' long labors, and destroyed the beautiful hamlet of the Christian Indians, called Gnaddenhutten, or Village of Peace. And while the border produced such outlaws so did it produce hunters Eke Boone, the Zanes, the McCollochs, and Wetzel, that strange, silent man whose deeds are still whispered in the country where he once roamed in his insatiate pursuit of savages and renegades, and who was purely a product of the times. Civilization could not have brought forth a man like Wetzel. Great revolutions, great crises, great moments come, and produce the men to deal with them. The border needed Wetzel. The settlers would have needed many more years in which to make permanent homes had it not been for him. He was never a pioneer; but always a hunter after Indians. When not on the track of the savage foe, he was in the settlement, with his keen eye and ear ever alert for signs of the enemy. To the superstitious Indians he was a shadow; a spirit of the border, which breathed menace from the dark forests. To the settlers he was the right arm of defense, a fitting leader for those few implacable and unerring frontiersmen who made the settlement of the West a possibility. And if this story of one of his relentless pursuits shows the man as he truly was, loved by pioneers, respected and feared by redmen, and hated by renegades; if it softens a little the ruthless name history accords him, the writer will have been well repaid. Z. G. The Spirit of the Border Chapter I. "Nell, I'm growing powerful fond of you." "So you must be, Master Joe, if often telling makes it true." The girl spoke simply, and with an absence of that roguishness which was characteristic of her. Playful words, arch smiles, and a touch of coquetry had seemed natural to Nell; but now her grave tone and her almost wistful glance disconcerted Joe. During all the long journey over the mountains she had been gay and bright, while now, when they were about to part, perhaps never to meet again, she showed him the deeper and more earnest side of her character. It checked his boldness as nothing else had done. Suddenly there came to him the real meaning of a woman's love when she bestows it without reservation. Silenced by the thought that he had not understood her at all, and the knowledge that he had been half in sport, he gazed out over the wild country before them. The scene impressed its quietness upon the young couple and brought more forcibly to their minds the fact that they were at the gateway of the unknown West; that somewhere beyond this rude frontier settlement, out there in those unbroken forests stretching dark and silent before them, was to be their future home. From the high bank where they stood the land sloped and narrowed gradually until it ended in a sharp point which marked the last bit of land between the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. Here these swift streams merged and formed the broad Ohio. The new-born river, even here at its beginning proud and swelling as if already certain of its far-away grandeur, swept majestically round a wide curve and apparently lost itself in the forest foliage. On the narrow point of land commanding a view of the rivers stood a long, low structure enclosed by a stockade fence, on the four corners of which were little box-shaped houses that bulged out as if trying to see what was going on beneath. The massive timbers used in the construction of this fort, the square, compact form, and the small, dark holes cut into the walls, gave the structure a threatening, impregnable aspect. Below Nell and Joe, on the bank, were many log cabins. The yellow clay which filled the chinks between the logs gave these a peculiar striped appearance. There was life and bustle in the vicinity of these dwellings, in sharp contrast with the still grandeur of the neighboring forests. There were canvas-covered wagons around which curly-headed youngsters were playing. Several horses were grazing on the short grass, and six red and white oxen munched at the hay that had been thrown to them. The smoke of many fires curled upward, and near the blaze hovered ruddy-faced women who stirred the contents of steaming kettles. One man swung an axe with a vigorous sweep, and the clean, sharp strokes rang on the air; another hammered stakes into the ground on which to hang a kettle. Before a large cabin a fur-trader was exhibiting his wares to three Indians. A second redskin was carrying a pack of pelts from a canoe drawn up on the river bank. A small group of persons stood near; some were indifferent, and others gazed curiously at the savages. Two children peeped from behind their mother's skirts as if half-curious, half-frightened. From this scene, the significance of which had just dawned on him, Joe turned his eyes again to his companion. It was a sweet face he saw; one that was sedate, but had a promise of innumerable smiles. The blue eyes could not long hide flashes of merriment. The girl turned, and the two young people looked at each other. Her eyes softened with a woman's gentleness as they rested upon him, for, broad of shoulder, and lithe and strong as a deer stalker, he was good to look at. "Listen," she said. "We have known each other only three weeks. Since you joined our wagon-train, and have been so kind to me and so helpful to make that long, rough ride endurable, you have won my regard. I--I cannot say more, even if I would. You told me you ran away from your Virginian home to seek adventure on the frontier, and that you knew no one in all this wild country. You even said you could not, or would not, work at farming. Perhaps my sister and I are as unfitted as you for this life; but we must cling to our uncle because he is the only relative we have. He has come out here to join the Moravians, and to preach the gospel to these Indians. We shall share his life, and help him all we can. You have been telling me you--you cared for me, and now that we are about to part I--I don't know what to say to you--unless it is: Give up this intention of yours to seek adventure, and come with us. It seems to me you need not hunt for excitement here; it will come unsought." "I wish I were Jim," said he, suddenly. "Who is Jim?" "My brother." "Tell me of him." "There's nothing much to tell. He and I are all that are left of our people, as are you and Kate of yours. Jim's a preacher, and the best fellow--oh! I cared a lot for Jim." "Then, why did you leave him?" "I was tired of Williamsburg--I quarreled with a fellow, and hurt him. Besides, I wanted to see the West; I'd like to hunt deer and bear and fight Indians. Oh, I'm not much good." "Was Jim the only one you cared for?" asked Nell, smiling. She was surprised to find him grave. "Yes, except my horse and dog, and I had to leave them behind," answered Joe, bowing his head a little. "You'd like to be Jim because he's a preacher, and could help uncle convert the Indians?" "Yes, partly that, but mostly because--somehow--something you've said or done has made me care for you in a different way, and I'd like to be worthy of you." "I don't think I can believe it, when you say you are 'no good,'" she replied. "Nell," he cried, and suddenly grasped her hand. She wrenched herself free, and leaped away from him. Her face was bright now, and the promise of smiles was made good. "Behave yourself, sir." She tossed her head with a familiar backward motion to throw the chestnut hair from her face, and looked at him with eyes veiled slightly under their lashes. "You will go with Kate and me?" Before he could answer, a cry from some one on the plain below attracted their attention. They turned and saw another wagon-train pulling into the settlement. The children were shooting and running alongside the weary oxen; men and women went forward expectantly. "That must be the train uncle expected. Let us go down," said Nell. Joe did not answer; but followed her down the path. When they gained a clump of willows near the cabins he bent forward and took her hand. She saw the reckless gleam in his eyes. "Don't. They'll see," she whispered. "If that's the only reason you have, I reckon I don't care," said Joe. "What do you mean? I didn't say--I didn't tell--oh! let me go!" implored Nell. She tried to release the hand Joe had grasped in his broad palm, but in vain; the more she struggled the firmer was his hold. A frown wrinkled her brow and her eyes sparkled with spirit. She saw the fur-trader's wife looking out of the window, and remembered laughing and telling the good woman she did not like this young man; it was, perhaps, because she feared those sharp eyes that she resented his audacity. She opened her mouth to rebuke him; but no words came. Joe had bent his head and softly closed her lips with his own. For the single instant during which Nell stood transfixed, as if with surprise, and looking up at Joe, she was dumb. Usually the girl was ready with sharp or saucy words and impulsive in her movements; but now the bewilderment of being kissed, particularly within view of the trader's wife, confused her. Then she heard voices, and as Joe turned away with a smile on his face, the unusual warmth in her heart was followed by an angry throbbing. Joe's tall figure stood out distinctly as he leisurely strolled toward the incoming wagon-train without looking backward. Flashing after him a glance that boded wordy trouble in the future, she ran into the cabin. As she entered the door it seemed certain the grizzled frontiersman sitting on the bench outside had grinned knowingly at her, and winked as if to say he would keep her secret. Mrs. Wentz, the fur-trader's wife, was seated by the open window which faced the fort; she was a large woman, strong of feature, and with that calm placidity of expression common to people who have lived long in sparsely populated districts. Nell glanced furtively at her and thought she detected the shadow of a smile in the gray eyes. "I saw you and your sweetheart makin' love behind the willow," Mrs. Wentz said in a matter-of-fact voice. "I don't see why you need hide to do it. We folks out here like to see the young people sparkin'. Your young man is a fine-appearin' chap. I felt certain you was sweethearts, for all you allowed you'd known him only a few days. Lize Davis said she saw he was sweet on you. I like his face. Jake, my man, says as how he'll make a good husband for you, and he'll take to the frontier like a duck does to water. I'm sorry you'll not tarry here awhile. We don't see many lasses, especially any as pretty as you, and you'll find it more quiet and lonesome the farther West you get. Jake knows all about Fort Henry, and Jeff Lynn, the hunter outside, he knows Eb and Jack Zane, and Wetzel, and all those Fort Henry men. You'll be gettin' married out there, won't you?" "You are--quite wrong," said Nell, who all the while Mrs. Wentz was speaking grew rosier and rosier. "We're not anything---" Then Nell hesitated and finally ceased speaking. She saw that denials or explanations were futile; the simple woman had seen the kiss, and formed her own conclusions. During the few days Nell had spent at Fort Pitt, she had come to understand that the dwellers on the frontier took everything as a matter of course. She had seen them manifest a certain pleasure; but neither surprise, concern, nor any of the quick impulses so common among other people. And this was another lesson Nell took to heart. She realized that she was entering upon a life absolutely different from her former one, and the thought caused her to shrink from the ordeal. Yet all the suggestions regarding her future home; the stories told about Indians, renegades, and of the wild border-life, fascinated her. These people who had settled in this wild region were simple, honest and brave; they accepted what came as facts not to be questioned, and believed what looked true. Evidently the fur-trader's wife and her female neighbors had settled in their minds the relation in which the girl stood to Joe. This latter reflection heightened Nell's resentment toward her lover. She stood with her face turned away from Mrs. Wentz; the little frown deepened, and she nervously tapped her foot on the floor. "Where is my sister?" she presently asked. "She went to see the wagon-train come in. Everybody's out there." Nell deliberated a moment and then went into the open air. She saw a number of canvas-covered wagons drawn up in front of the cabins; the vehicles were dusty and the wheels encrusted with yellow mud. The grizzled frontiersman who had smiled at Nell stood leaning on his gun, talking to three men, whose travel-stained and worn homespun clothes suggested a long and toilsome journey. There was the bustle of excitement incident to the arrival of strangers; to the quick exchange of greetings, the unloading of wagons and unharnessing of horses and oxen. Nell looked here and there for her sister. Finally she saw her standing near her uncle while he conversed with one of the teamsters. The girl did not approach them; but glanced quickly around in search of some one else. At length she saw Joe unloading goods from one of the wagons; his back was turned toward her, but she at once recognized the challenge conveyed by the broad shoulders. She saw no other person; gave heed to nothing save what was to her, righteous indignation. Hearing her footsteps, the young man turned, glancing at her admiringly, said: "Good evening, Miss." Nell had not expected such a matter-of-fact greeting from Joe. There was not the slightest trace of repentance in his calm face, and he placidly continued his labor. "Aren't you sorry you--you treated me so?" burst out Nell. His coolness was exasperating. Instead of the contrition and apology she had expected, and which was her due, he evidently intended to tease her, as he had done so often. The young man dropped a blanket and stared. "I don't understand," he said, gravely. "I never saw you before." This was too much for quick-tempered Nell. She had had some vague idea of forgiving him, after he had sued sufficiently for pardon; but now, forgetting her good intentions in the belief that he was making sport of her when he should have pleaded for forgiveness, she swiftly raised her hand and slapped him smartly. The red blood flamed to the young man's face; as he staggered backward with his hand to his cheek, she heard a smothered exclamation behind her, and then the quick, joyous barking of a dog. When Nell turned she was amazed to see Joe standing beside the wagon, while a big white dog was leaping upon him. Suddenly she felt faint. Bewildered, she looked from Joe to the man she had just struck; but could not say which was the man who professed to love her. "Jim! So you followed me!" cried Joe, starting forward and flinging his arms around the other. "Yes, Joe, and right glad I am to find you," answered the young man, while a peculiar expression of pleasure came over his face. "It's good to see you again! And here's my old dog Mose! But how on earth did you know? Where did you strike my trail? What are you going to do out here on the frontier? Tell me all. What happened after I left---" Then Joe saw Nell standing nearby, pale and distressed, and he felt something was amiss. He glanced quickly from her to his brother; she seemed to be dazed, and Jim looked grave. "What the deuce--? Nell, this is my brother Jim, the one I told you about. Jim, this is my friend, Miss Wells." "I am happy to meet Miss Wells," said Jim, with a smile, "even though she did slap my face for nothing." "Slapped you? What for?" Then the truth dawned on Joe, and he laughed until the tears came into his eyes. "She took you for me! Ha, ha, ha! Oh, this is great!" Nell's face was now rosy red and moisture glistened in her eyes; but she tried bravely to stand her ground. Humiliation had taken the place of anger. "I--I--am sorry, Mr. Downs. I did take you for him. He--he has insulted me." Then she turned and ran into the cabin. Chapter II. Joe and Jim were singularly alike. They were nearly the same size, very tall, but so heavily built as to appear of medium height, while their grey eyes and, indeed, every feature of their clean-cut faces corresponded so exactly as to proclaim them brothers. "Already up to your old tricks?" asked Jim, with his hand on Joe's shoulder, as they both watched Nell's flight. "I'm really fond of her, Jim, and didn't mean to hurt her feelings. But tell me about yourself; what made you come West?" "To teach the Indians, and I was, no doubt, strongly influenced by your being here." "You're going to do as you ever have--make some sacrifice. You are always devoting yourself; if not to me, to some other. Now it's your life you're giving up. To try to convert the redskins and influence me for good is in both cases impossible. How often have I said there wasn't any good in me! My desire is to kill Indians, not preach to them, Jim. I'm glad to see you; but I wish you hadn't come. This wild frontier is no place for a preacher." "I think it is," said Jim, quietly. "What of Rose--the girl you were to marry?" Joe glanced quickly at his brother. Jim's face paled slightly as he turned away. "I'll speak once more of her, and then, never again," he answered. "You knew Rose better than I did. Once you tried to tell me she was too fond of admiration, and I rebuked you; but now I see that your wider experience of women had taught you things I could not then understand. She was untrue. When you left Williamsburg, apparently because you had gambled with Jewett and afterward fought him, I was not misled. You made the game of cards a pretense; you sought it simply as an opportunity to wreak your vengeance on him for his villainy toward me. Well, it's all over now. Though you cruelly beat and left him disfigured for life, he will live, and you are saved from murder, thank God! When I learned of your departure I yearned to follow. Then I met a preacher who spoke of having intended to go West with a Mr. Wells, of the Moravian Mission. I immediately said I would go in his place, and here I am. I'm fortunate in that I have found both him and you." "I'm sorry I didn't kill Jewett; I certainly meant to. Anyway, there's some comfort in knowing I left my mark on him. He was a sneaking, cold-blooded fellow, with his white hair and pale face, and always fawning round the girls. I hated him, and gave it to him good." Joe spoke musingly and complacently as though it was a trivial thing to compass the killing of a man. "Well, Jim, you're here now, and there's no help for it. We'll go along with this Moravian preacher and his nieces. If you haven't any great regrets for the past, why, all may be well yet. I can see that the border is the place for me. But now, Jim, for once in your life take a word of advice from me. We're out on the frontier, where every man looks after himself. Your being a minister won't protect you here where every man wears a knife and a tomahawk, and where most of them are desperadoes. Cut out that soft voice and most of your gentle ways, and be a little more like your brother. Be as kind as you like, and preach all you want to; but when some of these buckskin-legged frontiermen try to walk all over you, as they will, take your own part in a way you have never taken it before. I had my lesson the first few days out with that wagon-train. It was a case of four fights; but I'm all right now." "Joe, I won't run, if that's what you mean," answered Jim, with a laugh. "Yes, I understand that a new life begins here, and I am content. If I can find my work in it, and remain with you, I shall be happy." "Ah! old Mose! I'm glad to see you," Joe cried to the big dog who came nosing round him. "You've brought this old fellow; did you bring the horses?" "Look behind the wagon." With the dog bounding before him, Joe did as he was directed, and there found two horses tethered side by side. Little wonder that his eyes gleamed with delight. One was jet-black; the other iron-gray and in every line the clean-limbed animals showed the thoroughbred. The black threw up his slim head and whinnied, with affection clearly shining in his soft, dark eyes as he recognized his master. "Lance, old fellow, how did I ever leave you!" murmured Joe, as he threw his arm over the arched neck. Mose stood by looking up, and wagging his tail in token of happiness at the reunion of the three old friends. There were tears in Joe's eyes when, with a last affectionate caress, he turned away from his pet. "Come, Jim, I'll take you to Mr. Wells." They stated across the little square, while Mose went back under the wagon; but at a word from Joe he bounded after them, trotting contentedly at their heels. Half way to the cabins a big, raw-boned teamster, singing in a drunken voice, came staggering toward them. Evidently he had just left the group of people who had gathered near the Indians. "I didn't expect to see drunkenness out here," said Jim, in a low tone. "There's lots of it. I saw that fellow yesterday when he couldn't walk. Wentz told me he was a bad customer." The teamster, his red face bathed in perspiration, and his sleeves rolled up, showing brown, knotty arms, lurched toward them. As they met he aimed a kick at the dog; but Mose leaped nimbly aside, avoiding the heavy boot. He did not growl, nor show his teeth; but the great white head sank forward a little, and the lithe body crouched for a spring. "Don't touch that dog; he'll tear your leg off!" Joe cried sharply. "Say, pard, cum an' hev' a drink," replied the teamster, with a friendly leer. "I don't drink," answered Joe, curtly, and moved on. The teamster growled something of which only the word "parson" was intelligible to the brothers. Joe stopped and looked back. His gray eyes seemed to contract; they did not flash, but shaded and lost their warmth. Jim saw the change, and, knowing what it signified, took Joe's arm as he gently urged him away. The teamster's shrill voice could be heard until they entered the fur-trader's cabin. An old man with long, white hair flowing from beneath his wide-brimmed hat, sat near the door holding one of Mrs. Wentz's children on his knee. His face was deep-lined and serious; but kindness shone from his mild blue eyes. "Mr. Wells, this is my brother James. He is a preacher, and has come in place of the man you expected from Williamsburg." The old minister arose, and extended his hand, gazing earnestly at the new-comer meanwhile. Evidently he approved of what he saw in his quick scrutiny of the other's face, for his lips were wreathed with a smile of welcome. "Mr. Downs, I am glad to meet you, and to know you will go with me. I thank God I shall take into the wilderness one who is young enough to carry on the work when my days are done." "I will make it my duty to help you in whatsoever way lies in my power," answered Jim, earnestly. "We have a great work before us. I have heard many scoffers who claim that it is worse than folly to try to teach these fierce savages Christianity; but I know it can be done, and my heart is in the work. I have no fear; yet I would not conceal from you, young man, that the danger of going among these hostile Indians must be great." "I will not hesitate because of that. My sympathy is with the redman. I have had an opportunity of studying Indian nature and believe the race inherently noble. He has been driven to make war, and I want to help him into other paths." Joe left the two ministers talking earnestly and turned toward Mrs. Wentz. The fur-trader's wife was glowing with pleasure. She held in her hand several rude trinkets, and was explaining to her listener, a young woman, that the toys were for the children, having been brought all the way from Williamsburg. "Kate, where's Nell?" Joe asked of the girl. "She went on an errand for Mrs. Wentz." Kate Wells was the opposite of her sister. Her motions were slow, easy and consistent with her large, full, form. Her brown eyes and hair contrasted sharply with Nell's. The greatest difference in the sisters lay in that Nell's face was sparkling and full of the fire of her eager young life, while Kate's was calm, like the unruffled surface of a deep lake. "That's Jim, my brother. We're going with you," said Joe. "Are you? I'm glad," answered the girl, looking at the handsome earnest face of the young minister. "Your brother's like you for all the world," whispered Mrs. Wentz. "He does look like you," said Kate, with her slow smile. "Which means you think, or hope, that that is all," retorted Joe laughingly. "Well, Kate, there the resemblance ends, thank God for Jim!" He spoke in a sad, bitter tone which caused both women to look at him wonderingly. Joe had to them ever been full of surprises; never until then had they seen evidences of sadness in his face. A moment's silence ensued. Mrs. Wentz gazed lovingly at the children who were playing with the trinkets; while Kate mused over the young man's remark, and began studying his, half-averted face. She felt warmly drawn to him by the strange expression in the glance he had given his brother. The tenderness in his eyes did not harmonize with much of this wild and reckless boy's behavior. To Kate he had always seemed so bold, so cold, so different from other men, and yet here was proof that Master Joe loved his brother. The murmured conversation of the two ministers was interrupted by a low cry from outside the cabin. A loud, coarse laugh followed, and then a husky voice: "Hol' on, my purty lass."' Joe took two long strides, and was on the door-step. He saw Nell struggling violently in the grasp of the half-drunken teamster. "I'll jes' hev' to kiss this lassie fer luck," he said in a tone of good humor. At the same instant Joe saw three loungers laughing, and a fourth, the grizzled frontiersman, starting forward with a yell. "Let me go!" cried Nell. Just when the teamster had pulled her close to him, and was bending his red, moist face to hers, two brown, sinewy hands grasped his neck with an angry clutch. Deprived thus of breath, his mouth opened, his tongue protruded; his eyes seemed starting from their sockets, and his arms beat the air. Then he was lifted and flung with a crash against the cabin wall. Falling, he lay in a heap on the grass, while the blood flowed from a cut on his temple. "What's this?" cried a man, authoritatively. He had come swiftly up, and arrived at the scene where stood the grizzled frontiersman. "It was purty handy, Wentz. I couldn't hev' did better myself, and I was comin' for that purpose," said the frontiersman. "Leffler was tryin' to kiss the lass. He's been drunk fer two days. That little girl's sweetheart kin handle himself some, now you take my word on it." "I'll agree Leff's bad when he's drinkin'," answered the fur-trader, and to Joe he added, "He's liable to look you up when he comes around." "Tell him if I am here when he gets sober, I'll kill him," Joe cried in a sharp voice. His gaze rested once more on the fallen teamster, and again an odd contraction of his eyes was noticeable. The glance was cutting, as if with the flash of cold gray steel. "Nell, I'm sorry I wasn't round sooner," he said, apologetically, as if it was owing to his neglect the affair had happened. As they entered the cabin Nell stole a glance at him. This was the third time he had injured a man because of her. She had on several occasions seen that cold, steely glare in his eyes, and it had always frightened her. It was gone, however, before they were inside the building. He said something which she did not hear distinctly, and his calm voice allayed her excitement. She had been angry with him; but now she realized that her resentment had disappeared. He had spoken so kindly after the outburst. Had he not shown that he considered himself her protector and lover? A strange emotion, sweet and subtle as the taste of wine, thrilled her, while a sense of fear because of his strength was mingled with her pride in it. Any other girl would have been only too glad to have such a champion; she would, too, hereafter, for he was a man of whom to be proud. "Look here, Nell, you haven't spoken to me," Joe cried suddenly, seeming to understand that she had not even heard what he said, so engrossed had she been with her reflections. "Are you mad with me yet?" he continued. "Why, Nell, I'm in--I love you!" Evidently Joe thought such fact a sufficient reason for any act on his part. His tender tone conquered Nell, and she turned to him with flushed cheeks and glad eyes. "I wasn't angry at all," she whispered, and then, eluding the arm he extended, she ran into the other room. Chapter III. Joe lounged in the doorway of the cabin, thoughtfully contemplating two quiet figures that were lying in the shade of a maple tree. One he recognized as the Indian with whom Jim had spent an earnest hour that morning; the red son of the woods was wrapped in slumber. He had placed under his head a many-hued homespun shirt which the young preacher had given him; but while asleep his head had rolled off this improvised pillow, and the bright garment lay free, attracting the eye. Certainly it had led to the train of thought which had found lodgment in Joe's fertile brain. The other sleeper was a short, stout man whom Joe had seen several times before. This last fellow did not appear to be well-balanced in his mind, and was the butt of the settlers' jokes, while the children called him "Loorey." He, like the Indian, was sleeping off the effects of the previous night's dissipation. During a few moments Joe regarded the recumbent figures with an expression on his face which told that he thought in them were great possibilities for sport. With one quick glance around he disappeared within the cabin, and when he showed himself at the door, surveying the village square with mirthful eyes, he held in his hand a small basket of Indian design. It was made of twisted grass, and simply contained several bits of soft, chalky stone such as the Indians used for painting, which collection Joe had discovered among the fur-trader's wares. He glanced around once more, and saw that all those in sight were busy with their work. He gave the short man a push, and chuckled when there was no response other than a lazy grunt. Joe took the Indians' gaudy shirt, and, lifting Loorey, slipped it around him, shoved the latter's arms through the sleeves, and buttoned it in front. He streaked the round face with red and white paint, and then, dexterously extracting the eagle plume from the Indian's head-dress, stuck it in Loorey's thick shock of hair. It was all done in a moment, after which Joe replaced the basket, and went down to the river. Several times that morning he had visited the rude wharf where Jeff Lynn, the grizzled old frontiersman, busied himself with preparations for the raft-journey down the Ohio. Lynn had been employed to guide the missionary's party to Fort Henry, and, as the brothers had acquainted him with their intention of accompanying the travelers, he had constructed a raft for them and their horses. Joe laughed when he saw the dozen two-foot logs fastened together, upon which a rude shack had been erected for shelter. This slight protection from sun and storm was all the brothers would have on their long journey. Joe noted, however, that the larger raft had been prepared with some thought for the comfort of the girls. The floor of the little hut was raised so that the waves which broke over the logs could not reach it. Taking a peep into the structure, Joe was pleased to see that Nell and Kate would be comfortable, even during a storm. A buffalo robe and two red blankets gave to the interior a cozy, warm look. He observed that some of the girls' luggage was already on board. "When'll we be off?" he inquired. "Sun-up," answered Lynn, briefly. "I'm glad of that. I like to be on the go in the early morning," said Joe, cheerfully. "Most folks from over Eastways ain't in a hurry to tackle the river," replied Lynn, eyeing Joe sharply. "It's a beautiful river, and I'd like to sail on it from here to where it ends, and then come back to go again," Joe replied, warmly. "In a hurry to be a-goin'? I'll allow you'll see some slim red devils, with feathers in their hair, slipping among the trees along the bank, and mebbe you'll hear the ping which's made when whistlin' lead hits. Perhaps you'll want to be back here by termorrer sundown." "Not I," said Joe, with his short, cool laugh. The old frontiersman slowly finished his task of coiling up a rope of wet cowhide, and then, producing a dirty pipe, he took a live ember from the fire and placed it on the bowl. He sucked slowly at the pipe-stem, and soon puffed out a great cloud of smoke. Sitting on a log, he deliberately surveyed the robust shoulders and long, heavy limbs of the young man, with a keen appreciation of their symmetry and strength. Agility, endurance and courage were more to a borderman than all else; a new-comer on the frontier was always "sized-up" with reference to these "points," and respected in proportion to the measure in which he possessed them. Old Jeff Lynn, riverman, hunter, frontiersman, puffed slowly at his pipe while he mused thus to himself: "Mebbe I'm wrong in takin' a likin' to this youngster so sudden. Mebbe it's because I'm fond of his sunny-haired lass, an' ag'in mebbe it's because I'm gettin' old an' likes young folks better'n I onct did. Anyway, I'm kinder thinkin, if this young feller gits worked out, say fer about twenty pounds less, he'll lick a whole raft-load of wild-cats." Joe walked to and fro on the logs, ascertained how the raft was put together, and took a pull on the long, clumsy steering-oar. At length he seated himself beside Lynn. He was eager to ask questions; to know about the rafts, the river, the forest, the Indians--everything in connection with this wild life; but already he had learned that questioning these frontiersmen is a sure means of closing their lips. "Ever handle the long rifle?" asked Lynn, after a silence. "Yes," answered Joe, simply. "Ever shoot anythin'?" the frontiersman questioned, when he had taken four or five puffs at his pipe. "Squirrels." "Good practice, shootin' squirrels," observed Jeff, after another silence, long enough to allow Joe to talk if he was so inclined. "Kin ye hit one--say, a hundred yards?" "Yes, but not every time in the head," returned Joe. There was an apologetic tone in his answer. Another interval followed in which neither spoke. Jeff was slowly pursuing his line of thought. After Joe's last remark he returned his pipe to his pocket and brought out a tobacco-pouch. He tore off a large portion of the weed and thrust it into his mouth. Then he held out the little buckskin sack to Joe. "Hev' a chaw," he said. To offer tobacco to anyone was absolutely a borderman's guarantee of friendliness toward that person. Jeff expectorated half a dozen times, each time coming a little nearer the stone he was aiming at, some five yards distant. Possibly this was the borderman's way of oiling up his conversational machinery. At all events, he commenced to talk. "Yer brother's goin' to preach out here, ain't he? Preachin' is all right, I'll allow; but I'm kinder doubtful about preachin' to redskins. Howsumever, I've knowed Injuns who are good fellows, and there's no tellin'. What are ye goin' in fer--farmin'?" "No, I wouldn't make a good farmer." "Jest cum out kinder wild like, eh?" rejoined Jeff, knowingly. "I wanted to come West because I was tired of tame life. I love the forest; I want to fish and hunt; and I think I'd like to--to see Indians." "I kinder thought so," said the old frontiersman, nodding his head as though he perfectly understood Joe's case. "Well, lad, where you're goin' seein' Injuns ain't a matter of choice. You has to see 'em, and fight 'em, too. We've had bad times for years out here on the border, and I'm thinkin' wuss is comin'. Did ye ever hear the name Girty?" "Yes; he's a renegade." "He's a traitor, and Jim and George Girty, his brothers, are p'isin rattlesnake Injuns. Simon Girty's bad enough; but Jim's the wust. He's now wusser'n a full-blooded Delaware. He's all the time on the lookout to capture white wimen to take to his Injun teepee. Simon Girty and his pals, McKee and Elliott, deserted from that thar fort right afore yer eyes. They're now livin' among the redskins down Fort Henry way, raisin' as much hell fer the settlers as they kin." "Is Fort Henry near the Indian towns?" asked Joe. "There's Delawares, Shawnees and Hurons all along the Ohio below Fort Henry." "Where is the Moravian Mission located?" "Why, lad, the Village of Peace, as the Injuns call it, is right in the midst of that Injun country. I 'spect it's a matter of a hundred miles below and cross-country a little from Fort Henry." "The fort must be an important point, is it not?" "Wal, I guess so. It's the last place on the river," answered Lynn, with a grim smile. "There's only a stockade there, an' a handful of men. The Injuns hev swarmed down on it time and ag'in, but they hev never burned it. Only such men as Colonel Zane, his brother Jack, and Wetzel could hev kept that fort standin' all these bloody years. Eb Zane's got but a few men, yet he kin handle 'em some, an' with such scouts as Jack Zane and Wetzel, he allus knows what's goin' on among the Injuns." "I've heard of Colonel Zane. He was an officer under Lord Dunmore. The hunters here speak often of Jack Zane and Wetzel. What are they?" "Jack Zane is a hunter an' guide. I knowed him well a few years back. He's a quiet, mild chap; but a streak of chain-lightnin' when he's riled. Wetzel is an Injun-killer. Some people say as how he's crazy over scalp-huntin'; but I reckon that's not so. I've seen him a few times. He don't hang round the settlement 'cept when the Injuns are up, an' nobody sees him much. At home he sets round silent-like, an' then mebbe next mornin' he'll be gone, an' won't show up fer days or weeks. But all the frontier knows of his deeds. Fer instance, I've hearn of settlers gettin' up in the mornin' an' findin' a couple of dead and scalped Injuns right in front of their cabins. No one knowed who killed 'em, but everybody says 'Wetzel.' He's allus warnin' the settlers when they need to flee to the fort, and sure he's right every time, because when these men go back to their cabins they find nothin' but ashes. There couldn't be any farmin' done out there but fer Wetzel." "What does he look like?" questioned Joe, much interested. "Wetzel stands straight as the oak over thar. He'd hev' to go sideways to git his shoulders in that door, but he's as light of foot an' fast as a deer. An' his eyes--why, lad, ye kin hardly look into 'em. If you ever see Wetzel you'll know him to onct." "I want to see him," Joe spoke quickly, his eyes lighting with an eager flash. "He must be a great fighter." "Is he? Lew Wetzel is the heftiest of 'em all, an' we hev some as kin fight out here. I was down the river a few years ago and joined a party to go out an' hunt up some redskins as had been reported. Wetzel was with us. We soon struck Injun sign, and then come on to a lot of the pesky varmints. We was all fer goin' home, because we had a small force. When we started to go we finds Wetzel sittin' calm-like on a log. We said: 'Ain't ye goin' home?' and he replied, 'I cum out to find redskins, an' now as we've found 'em, I'm not goin' to run away.' An' we left him settin' thar. Oh, Wetzel is a fighter!" "I hope I shall see him," said Joe once more, the warm light, which made him look so boyish, still glowing in his face. "Mebbe ye'll git to; and sure ye'll see redskins, an' not tame ones, nuther." At this moment the sound of excited voices near the cabins broke in on the conversation. Joe saw several persons run toward the large cabin and disappear behind it. He smiled as he thought perhaps the commotion had been caused by the awakening of the Indian brave. Rising to his feet, Joe went toward the cabin, and soon saw the cause of the excitement. A small crowd of men and women, all laughing and talking, surrounded the Indian brave and the little stout fellow. Joe heard some one groan, and then a deep, guttural voice: "Paleface--big steal--ugh! Injun mad--heap mad--kill paleface." After elbowing his way into the group, Joe saw the Indian holding Loorey with one hand, while he poked him on the ribs with the other. The captive's face was the picture of dismay; even the streaks of paint did not hide his look of fear and bewilderment. The poor half-witted fellow was so badly frightened that he could only groan. "Silvertip scalp paleface. Ugh!" growled the savage, giving Loorey another blow on the side. This time he bent over in pain. The bystanders were divided in feeling; the men laughed, while the women murmured sympathetically. "This's not a bit funny," muttered Joe, as he pushed his way nearly to the middle of the crowd. Then he stretched out a long arm that, bare and brawny, looked as though it might have been a blacksmith's, and grasped the Indian's sinewy wrist with a force that made him loosen his hold on Loorey instantly. "I stole the shirt--fun--joke," said Joe. "Scalp me if you want to scalp anyone." The Indian looked quickly at the powerful form before him. With a twist he slipped his arm from Joe's grasp. "Big paleface heap fun--all squaw play," he said, scornfully. There was a menace in his somber eyes as he turned abruptly and left the group. "I'm afraid you've made an enemy," said Jake Wentz to Joe. "An Indian never forgets an insult, and that's how he regarded your joke. Silvertip has been friendly here because he sells us his pelts. He's a Shawnee chief. There he goes through the willows!" By this time Jim and Mr. Wells, Mrs. Wentz and the girls had joined the group. They all watched Silvertip get into his canoe and paddle away. "A bad sign," said Wentz, and then, turning to Jeff Lynn, who joined the party at that moment, he briefly explained the circumstances. "Never did like Silver. He's a crafty redskin, an' not to be trusted," replied Jeff. "He has turned round and is looking back," Nell said quickly. "So he has," observed the fur-trader. The Indian was now several hundred yards down the swift river, and for an instant had ceased paddling. The sun shone brightly on his eagle plumes. He remained motionless for a moment, and even at such a distance the dark, changeless face could be discerned. He lifted his hand and shook it menacingly. "If ye don't hear from that redskin ag'in Jeff Lynn don't know nothin'," calmly said the old frontiersman. Chapter IV. As the rafts drifted with the current the voyagers saw the settlers on the landing-place diminish until they had faded from indistinct figures to mere black specks against the green background. Then came the last wave of a white scarf, faintly in the distance, and at length the dark outline of the fort was all that remained to their regretful gaze. Quickly that, too, disappeared behind the green hill, which, with its bold front, forces the river to take a wide turn. The Ohio, winding in its course between high, wooded bluffs, rolled on and on into the wilderness. Beautiful as was the ever-changing scenery, rugged gray-faced cliffs on one side contrasting with green-clad hills on the other, there hovered over land and water something more striking than beauty. Above all hung a still atmosphere of calmness--of loneliness. And this penetrating solitude marred somewhat the pleasure which might have been found in the picturesque scenery, and caused the voyagers, to whom this country was new, to take less interest in the gaily-feathered birds and stealthy animals that were to be seen on the way. By the forms of wild life along the banks of the river, this strange intruder on their peace was regarded with attention. The birds and beasts evinced little fear of the floating rafts. The sandhill crane, stalking along the shore, lifted his long neck as the unfamiliar thing came floating by, and then stood still and silent as a statue until the rafts disappeared from view. Blue-herons feeding along the bars, saw the unusual spectacle, and, uttering surprised "booms," they spread wide wings and lumbered away along the shore. The crows circled above the voyagers, cawing in not unfriendly excitement. Smaller birds alighted on the raised poles, and several--a robin, a catbird and a little brown wren--ventured with hesitating boldness to peck at the crumbs the girls threw to them. Deer waded knee-deep in the shallow water, and, lifting their heads, instantly became motionless and absorbed. Occasionally a buffalo appeared on a level stretch of bank, and, tossing his huge head, seemed inclined to resent the coming of this stranger into his domain. All day the rafts drifted steadily and swiftly down the river, presenting to the little party ever-varying pictures of densely wooded hills, of jutting, broken cliffs with scant evergreen growth; of long reaches of sandy bar that glistened golden in the sunlight, and over all the flight and call of wildfowl, the flitting of woodland songsters, and now and then the whistle and bellow of the horned watchers in the forest. The intense blue of the vault above began to pale, and low down in the west a few fleecy clouds, gorgeously golden for a fleeting instant, then crimson-crowned for another, shaded and darkened as the setting sun sank behind the hills. Presently the red rays disappeared, a pink glow suffused the heavens, and at last, as gray twilight stole down over the hill-tops, the crescent moon peeped above the wooded fringe of the western bluffs. "Hard an' fast she is," sang out Jeff Lynn, as he fastened the rope to a tree at the head of a small island. "All off now, and' we'll hev' supper. Thar's a fine spring under yon curly birch, an' I fetched along a leg of deer-meat. Hungry, little 'un?" He had worked hard all day steering the rafts, yet Nell had seen him smiling at her many times during the journey, and he had found time before the early start to arrange for her a comfortable seat. There was now a solicitude in the frontiersman's voice that touched her. "I am famished," she replied, with her bright smile. "I am afraid I could eat a whole deer." They all climbed the sandy slope, and found themselves on the summit of an oval island, with a pretty glade in the middle surrounded by birches. Bill, the second raftsman, a stolid, silent man, at once swung his axe upon a log of driftwood. Mr. Wells and Jim walked to and fro under the birches, and Kate and Nell sat on the grass watching with great interest the old helmsman as he came up from the river, his brown hands and face shining from the scrubbing he had given them. Soon he had a fire cheerfully blazing, and after laying out the few utensils, he addressed himself to Joe: "I'll tell ye right here, lad, good venison kin be spoiled by bad cuttin' and cookin'. You're slicin' it too thick. See--thar! Now salt good, an' keep outen the flame; on the red coals is best." With a sharpened stick Jeff held the thin slices over the fire for a few moments. Then he laid them aside on some clean white-oak chips Bill's axe had provided. The simple meal of meat, bread, and afterward a drink of the cold spring water, was keenly relished by the hungry voyagers. When it had been eaten, Jeff threw a log on the fire and remarked: "Seein' as how we won't be in redskin territory fer awhile yit, we kin hev a fire. I'll allow ye'll all be chilly and damp from river-mist afore long, so toast yerselves good." "How far have we come to-day?" inquired Mr. Wells, his mind always intent on reaching the scene of his cherished undertaking. "'Bout thirty-odd mile, I reckon. Not much on a trip, thet's sartin, but we'll pick up termorrer. We've some quicker water, an' the rafts hev to go separate." "How quiet!" exclaimed Kate, suddenly breaking the silence that followed the frontiersman's answer. "Beautiful!" impetuously said Nell, looking up at Joe. A quick flash from his gray eyes answered her; he did not speak; indeed he had said little to her since the start, but his glance showed her how glad he was that she felt the sweetness and content of this wild land. "I was never in a wilderness before," broke in the earnest voice of the young minister. "I feel an almost overpowering sense of loneliness. I want to get near to you all; I feel lost. Yet it is grand, sublime!" "Here is the promised land--the fruitful life--Nature as it was created by God," replied the old minister, impressively. "Tell us a story," said Nell to the old frontiersman, as he once more joined the circle round the fire. "So, little 'un, ye want a story?" queried Jeff, taking up a live coal and placing it in the bowl of his pipe. He took off his coon-skin cap and carefully laid it aside. His weather-beaten face beamed in answer to the girl's request. He drew a long and audible pull at his black pipe, and send forth slowly a cloud of white smoke. Deliberately poking the fire with a stick, as if stirring into life dead embers of the past, he sucked again at his pipe, and emitted a great puff of smoke that completely enveloped the grizzled head. From out that white cloud came his drawling voice. "Ye've seen thet big curly birch over thar--thet 'un as bends kind of sorrowful like. Wal, it used to stand straight an' proud. I've knowed thet tree all the years I've navigated this river, an' it seems natural like to me thet it now droops dyin', fer it shades the grave of as young, an' sweet, an' purty a lass as yerself, Miss Nell. Rivermen called this island George's Island, 'cause Washington onct camped here; but of late years the name's got changed, an' the men say suthin' like this: 'We'll try an' make Milly's birch afore sundown,' jest as Bill and me hev done to-day. Some years agone I was comin' up from Fort Henry, an' had on board my slow old scow a lass named Milly--we never learned her other name. She come to me at the fort, an' tells as how her folks hed been killed by Injuns, an' she wanted to git back to Pitt to meet her sweetheart. I was ag'in her comin' all along, an' fust off I said 'No.' But when I seen tears in her blue eyes, an' she puts her little hand on mine, I jest wilted, an' says to Jim Blair, 'She goes.' Wal, jest as might hev been expected--an' fact is I looked fer it--we wus tackled by redskins. Somehow, Jim Girty got wind of us hevin' a lass aboard, an' he ketched up with us jest below here. It's a bad place, called Shawnee Rock, an' I'll show it to ye termorrer. The renegade, with his red devils, attacked us thar, an' we had a time gittin' away. Milly wus shot. She lived fer awhile, a couple of days, an' all the time wus so patient, an' sweet, an' brave with thet renegade's bullet in her--fer he shot her when he seen he couldn't capture her--thet thar wusn't a blame man of us who wouldn't hev died to grant her prayer, which wus that she could live to onct more see her lover." There was a long silence, during which the old frontiersman sat gazing into the fire with sad eyes. "We couldn't do nuthin', an' we buried her thar under thet birch, where she smiled her last sad, sweet smile, an' died. Ever since then the river has been eatn' away at this island. It's only half as big as it wus onct, an' another flood will take away this sand-bar, these few birches--an' Milly's grave." The old frontiersman's story affected all his listeners. The elder minister bowed his head and prayed that no such fate might overtake his nieces. The young minister looked again, as he had many times that day, at Nell's winsome face. The girls cast grave glances at the drooping birch, and their bright tears glistened in the fire-glow. Once more Joe's eyes glinted with that steely flash, and as he gazed out over the wide, darkening expanse of water his face grew cold and rigid. "I'll allow I might hev told a more cheerful story, an' I'll do so next time; but I wanted ye all, particular the lasses, to know somethin' of the kind of country ye're goin' into. The frontier needs women; but jist yit it deals hard with them. An' Jim Girty, with more of his kind, ain't dead yit." "Why don't some one kill him?" was Joe's sharp question. "Easier said than done, lad. Jim Girty is a white traitor, but he's a cunnin' an' fierce redskin in his ways an' life. He knows the woods as a crow does, an' keeps outer sight 'cept when he's least expected. Then ag'in, he's got Simon Girty, his brother, an' almost the whole redskin tribe behind him. Injuns stick close to a white man that has turned ag'inst his own people, an' Jim Girty hain't ever been ketched. Howsumever, I heard last trip thet he'd been tryin' some of his tricks round Fort Henry, an' thet Wetzel is on his trail. Wal, if it's so thet Lew Wetzel is arter him, I wouldn't give a pinch o' powder fer the white-redskin's chances of a long life." No one spoke, and Jeff, after knocking the ashes from his pipe, went down to the raft, returning shortly afterward with his blanket. This he laid down and rolled himself in it. Presently from under his coon-skin cap came the words: "Wal, I've turned in, an' I advise ye all to do the same." All save Joe and Nell acted on Jeff's suggestion. For a long time the young couple sat close together on the bank, gazing at the moonlight on the river. The night was perfect. A cool wind fanned the dying embers of the fire and softly stirred the leaves. Earlier in the evening a single frog had voiced his protest against the loneliness; but now his dismal croak was no longer heard. A snipe, belated in his feeding, ran along the sandy shore uttering his tweet-tweet, and his little cry, breaking in so softly on the silence, seemed only to make more deeply felt the great vast stillness of the night. Joe's arm was around Nell. She had demurred at first, but he gave no heed to her slight resistance, and finally her head rested against his shoulder. There was no need of words. Joe had a pleasurable sense of her nearness, and there was a delight in the fragrance of her hair as it waved against his cheek; but just then love was not uppermost in his mind. All day he had been silent under the force of an emotion which he could not analyze. Some power, some feeling in which the thought of Nell had no share, was drawing him with irresistible strength. Nell had just begun to surrender to him in the sweetness of her passion; and yet even with that knowledge knocking reproachfully at his heart, he could not help being absorbed in the shimmering water, in the dark reflection of the trees, the gloom and shadow of the forest. Presently he felt her form relax in his arms; then her soft regular breathing told him she had fallen asleep and he laughed low to himself. How she would pout on the morrow when he teased her about it! Then, realizing that she was tired with her long day's journey, he reproached himself for keeping her from the needed rest, and instantly decided to carry her to the raft. Yet such was the novelty of the situation that he yielded to its charm, and did not go at once. The moonlight found bright threads in her wavy hair; it shone caressingly on her quiet face, and tried to steal under the downcast lashes. Joe made a movement to rise with her, when she muttered indistinctly as if speaking to some one. He remembered then she had once told him that she talked in her sleep, and how greatly it annoyed her. He might hear something more with which to tease her; so he listened. "Yes--uncle--I will go--Kate, we must--go. . ." Another interval of silence, then more murmurings. He distinguished his own name, and presently she called clearly, as if answering some inward questioner. "I--love him--yes--I love Joe--he has mastered me. Yet I wish he were--like Jim--Jim who looked at me--so--with his deep eyes--and I. . . ." Joe lifted her as if she were a baby, and carrying her down to the raft, gently laid her by her sleeping sister. The innocent words which he should not have heard were like a blow. What she would never have acknowledged in her waking hours had been revealed in her dreams. He recalled the glance of Jim's eyes as it had rested on Nell many times that day, and now these things were most significant. He found at the end of the island a great, mossy stone. On this he climbed, and sat where the moonlight streamed upon him. Gradually that cold bitterness died out from his face, as it passed from his heart, and once more he became engrossed in the silver sheen on the water, the lapping of the waves on the pebbly beach, and in that speaking, mysterious silence of the woods. * * * When the first faint rays of red streaked over the eastern hill-tops, and the river mist arose from the water in a vapory cloud, Jeff Lynn rolled out of his blanket, stretched his long limbs, and gave a hearty call to the morning. His cheerful welcome awakened all the voyagers except Joe, who had spent the night in watching and the early morning in fishing. "Wal, I'll be darned," ejaculated Jeff as he saw Joe. "Up afore me, an' ketched a string of fish." "What are they?" asked Joe, holding up several bronze-backed fish. "Bass--black bass, an' thet big feller is a lammin' hefty 'un. How'd ye ketch 'em?" "I fished for them." "Wal, so it 'pears," growled Jeff, once more reluctantly yielding to his admiration for the lad. "How'd ye wake up so early?" "I stayed up all night. I saw three deer swim from the mainland, but nothing else came around." "Try yer hand at cleanin' 'em fer breakfast," continued Jeff, beginning to busy himself with preparations for that meal. "Wal, wal, if he ain't surprisin'! He'll do somethin' out here on the frontier, sure as I'm a born sinner," he muttered to himself, wagging his head in his quaint manner. Breakfast over, Jeff transferred the horses to the smaller raft, which he had cut loose from his own, and, giving a few directions to Bill, started down-stream with Mr. Wells and the girls. The rafts remained close together for a while, but as the current quickened and was more skillfully taken advantage of by Jeff, the larger raft gained considerable headway, gradually widening the gap between the two. All day they drifted. From time to time Joe and Jim waved their hands to the girls; but the greater portion of their attention was given to quieting the horses. Mose, Joe's big white dog, retired in disgust to the hut, where he watched and dozed by turns. He did not fancy this kind of voyaging. Bill strained his sturdy arms all day on the steering-oar. About the middle of the afternoon Joe observed that the hills grew more rugged and precipitous, and the river ran faster. He kept a constant lookout for the wall of rock which marked the point of danger. When the sun had disappeared behind the hills, he saw ahead a gray rock protruding from the green foliage. It was ponderous, overhanging, and seemed to frown down on the river. This was Shawnee Rock. Joe looked long at the cliff, and wondered if there was now an Indian scout hidden behind the pines that skirted the edge. Prominent on the top of the bluff a large, dead tree projected its hoary, twisted branches. Bill evidently saw the landmark, for he stopped in his monotonous walk to and fro across the raft, and pushing his oar amidships he looked ahead for the other raft. The figure of the tall frontiersman could be plainly seen as he labored at the helm. The raft disappeared round a bend, and as it did so Joe saw a white scarf waved by Nell. Bill worked the clumsy craft over toward the right shore where the current was more rapid. He pushed with all his strength, and when the oar had reached its widest sweep, he lifted it and ran back across the raft for another push. Joe scanned the river ahead. He saw no rapids; only rougher water whirling over some rocks. They were where the channel narrowed and ran close to the right-hand bank. Under a willow-flanked ledge was a sand-bar. To Joe there seemed nothing hazardous in drifting through this pass. "Bad place ahead," said Bill, observing Joe's survey of the river. "It doesn't look so," replied Joe. "A raft ain't a boat. We could pole a boat. You has to hev water to float logs, an' the river's run out considerable. I'm only afeerd fer the horses. If we hit or drag, they might plunge around a bit." When the raft passed into the head of the bend it struck the rocks several times, but finally gained the channel safely, and everything seemed propitious for an easy passage. But, greatly to Bill's surprise, the wide craft was caught directly in the channel, and swung round so that the steering-oar pointed toward the opposite shore. The water roared a foot deep over the logs. "Hold hard on the horses!" yelled Bill. "Somethin's wrong. I never seen a snag here." The straining mass of logs, insecurely fastened together, rolled and then pitched loose again, but the short delay had been fatal to the steering apparatus. Joe would have found keen enjoyment in the situation, had it not been for his horse, Lance. The thoroughbred was difficult to hold. As Bill was making strenuous efforts to get in a lucky stroke of the oar, he failed to see a long length of grapevine floating like a brown snake of the water below. In the excitement they heeded not the barking of Mose. Nor did they see the grapevine straighten and become taut just as they drifted upon it; but they felt the raft strike and hold on some submerged object. It creaked and groaned and the foamy water surged, gurgling, between the logs. Jim's mare snorted with terror, and rearing high, pulled her halter loose and plunged into the river. But Jim still held her, at risk of being drawn overboard. "Let go! She'll drag you in!" yelled Joe, grasping him with his free hand. Lance trembled violently and strained at the rope, which his master held with a strong grip. CRACK! The stinging report of a rifle rang out above the splashing of the water. Without a cry, Bill's grasp on the oar loosened; he fell over it limply, his head striking the almost submerged log. A dark-red fluid colored the water; then his body slipped over the oar and into the river, where it sank. "My God! Shot!" cried Jim, in horrified tones. He saw a puff of white smoke rising above the willows. Then the branches parted, revealing the dark forms of several Indian warriors. From the rifle in the foremost savage's hand a slight veil of smoke rose. With the leap of a panther the redskin sprang from the strip of sand to the raft. "Hold, Jim! Drop that ax! We're caught!" cried Joe. "It's that Indian from the fort!" gasped Jim. The stalwart warrior was indeed Silvertip. But how changed! Stripped of the blanket he had worn at the settlement, now standing naked but for his buckskin breech-cloth, with his perfectly proportioned form disclosed in all its sinewy beauty, and on his swarthy, evil face an expression of savage scorn, he surely looked a warrior and a chief. He drew his tomahawk and flashed a dark glance at Joe. For a moment he steadily regarded the young man; but if he expected to see fear in the latter's face he was mistaken, for the look was returned coolly. "Paleface steal shirt," he said in his deep voice. "Fool paleface play--Silvertip no forget." Chapter V. Silvertip turned to his braves, and giving a brief command, sprang from the raft. The warriors closed in around the brothers; two grasping each by the arms, and the remaining Indian taking care of the horse. The captives were then led ashore, where Silvertip awaited them. When the horse was clear of the raft, which task necessitated considerable labor on the part of the Indians, the chief seized the grapevine, that was now plainly in sight, and severed it with one blow of his tomahawk. The raft dashed forward with a lurch and drifted downstream. In the clear water Joe could see the cunning trap which had caused the death of Bill, and insured the captivity of himself and his brother. The crafty savages had trimmed a six-inch sapling and anchored it under the water. They weighted the heavy end, leaving the other pointing upstream. To this last had been tied the grapevine. When the drifting raft reached the sapling, the Indians concealed in the willows pulled hard on the improvised rope; the end of the sapling stuck up like a hook, and the aft was caught and held. The killing of the helmsman showed the Indians' foresight; even had the raft drifted on downstream the brothers would have been helpless on a craft they could not manage. After all, Joe thought, he had not been so far wrong when he half fancied that an Indian lay behind Shawnee Rock, and he marveled at this clever trick which had so easily effected their capture. But he had little time to look around at the scene of action. There was a moment only in which to study the river to learn if the unfortunate raftsman's body had appeared. It was not to be seen. The river ran swiftly and hid all evidence of the tragedy under its smooth surface. When the brave who had gone back to the raft for the goods joined his companion the two hurried Joe up the bank after the others. Once upon level ground Joe saw before him an open forest. On the border of this the Indians stopped long enough to bind the prisoners' wrists with thongs of deerhide. While two of the braves performed this office, Silvertip leaned against a tree and took no notice of the brothers. When they were thus securely tied one of their captors addressed the chief, who at once led the way westward through the forest. The savages followed in single file, with Joe and Jim in the middle of the line. The last Indian tried to mount Lance; but the thoroughbred would have none of him, and after several efforts the savage was compelled to desist. Mose trotted reluctantly along behind the horse. Although the chief preserved a dignified mien, his braves were disposed to be gay. They were in high glee over their feat of capturing the palefaces, and kept up an incessant jabbering. One Indian, who walked directly behind Joe, continually prodded him with the stock of a rifle; and whenever Joe turned, the brawny redskin grinned as he grunted, "Ugh!" Joe observed that this huge savage had a broad face of rather a lighter shade of red than his companions. Perhaps he intended those rifle-prods in friendliness, for although they certainly amused him, he would allow no one else to touch Joe; but it would have been more pleasing had he shown his friendship in a gentle manner. This Indian carried Joe's pack, much to his own delight, especially as his companions evinced an envious curiosity. The big fellow would not, however, allow them to touch it. "He's a cheerful brute," remarked Joe to Jim. "Ugh!" grunted the big Indian, jamming Joe with his rifle-stock. Joe took heed to the warning and spoke no more. He gave all his attention to the course over which he was being taken. Here was his first opportunity to learn something of Indians and their woodcraft. It occurred to him that his captors would not have been so gay and careless had they not believed themselves safe from pursuit, and he concluded they were leisurely conducting him to one of the Indian towns. He watched the supple figure before him, wondering at the quick step, light as the fall of a leaf, and tried to walk as softly. He found, however, that where the Indian readily avoided the sticks and brush, he was unable to move without snapping twigs. Now and then he would look up and study the lay of the land ahead; and as he came nearer to certain rocks and trees he scrutinized them closely, in order to remember their shape and general appearance. He believed he was blazing out in his mind this woodland trail, so that should fortune favor him and he contrive to escape, he would be able to find his way back to the river. Also, he was enjoying the wild scenery. This forest would have appeared beautiful, even to one indifferent to such charms, and Joe was far from that. Every moment he felt steal stronger over him a subtle influence which he could not define. Half unconsciously he tried to analyze it, but it baffled him. He could no more explain what fascinated him than he could understand what caused the melancholy quiet which hung over the glades and hollows. He had pictured a real forest so differently from this. Here was a long lane paved with springy moss and fenced by bright-green sassafras; there a secluded dale, dotted with pale-blue blossoms, over which the giant cottonwoods leaned their heads, jealously guarding the delicate flowers from the sun. Beech trees, growing close in clanny groups, spread their straight limbs gracefully; the white birches gleamed like silver wherever a stray sunbeam stole through the foliage, and the oaks, monarchs of the forest, rose over all, dark, rugged, and kingly. Joe soon understood why the party traveled through such open forest. The chief, seeming hardly to deviate from his direct course, kept clear of broken ground, matted thickets and tangled windfalls. Joe got a glimpse of dark ravines and heard the music of tumbling waters; he saw gray cliffs grown over with vines, and full of holes and crevices; steep ridges, covered with dense patches of briar and hazel, rising in the way. Yet the Shawnee always found an easy path. The sun went down behind the foliage in the west, and shadows appeared low in the glens; then the trees faded into an indistinct mass; a purple shade settled down over the forest, and night brought the party to a halt. The Indians selected a sheltered spot under the lee of a knoll, at the base of which ran a little brook. Here in this inclosed space were the remains of a camp-fire. Evidently the Indians had halted there that same day, for the logs still smouldered. While one brave fanned the embers, another took from a neighboring branch a haunch of deer meat. A blaze was soon coaxed from the dull coals, more fuel was added, and presently a cheerful fire shone on the circle of dusky forms. It was a picture which Joe had seen in many a boyish dream; now that he was a part of it he did not dwell on the hopelessness of the situation, nor of the hostile chief whose enmity he had incurred. Almost, it seemed, he was glad of this chance to watch the Indians and listen to them. He had been kept apart from Jim, and it appeared to Joe that their captors treated his brother with a contempt which they did not show him. Silvertip had, no doubt, informed them that Jim had been on his way to teach the Indians of the white man's God. Jim sat with drooping head; his face was sad, and evidently he took the most disheartening view of his capture. When he had eaten the slice of venison given him he lay down with his back to the fire. Silvertip, in these surroundings, showed his real character. He had appeared friendly in the settlement; but now he was the relentless savage, a son of the wilds, free as an eagle. His dignity as a chief kept him aloof from his braves. He had taken no notice of the prisoners since the capture. He remained silent, steadily regarding the fire with his somber eyes. At length, glancing at the big Indian, he motioned toward the prisoners and with a single word stretched himself on the leaves. Joe noted the same changelessness of expression in the other dark faces as he had seen in Silvertip's. It struck him forcibly. When they spoke in their soft, guttural tones, or burst into a low, not unmusical laughter, or sat gazing stolidly into the fire, their faces seemed always the same, inscrutable, like the depths of the forest now hidden in night. One thing Joe felt rather than saw--these savages were fierce and untamable. He was sorry for Jim, because, as he believed, it would be as easy to teach the panther gentleness toward his prey as to instill into one of these wild creatures a belief in Christ. The braves manifested keen pleasure in anticipation as to what they would get out of the pack, which the Indian now opened. Time and again the big brave placed his broad hand on the shoulder of a comrade Indian and pushed him backward. Finally the pack was opened. It contained a few articles of wearing apparel, a pair of boots, and a pipe and pouch of tobacco. The big Indian kept the latter articles, grunting with satisfaction, and threw the boots and clothes to the others. Immediately there was a scramble. One brave, after a struggle with another, got possession of both boots. He at once slipped off his moccasins and drew on the white man's foot-coverings. He strutted around in them a few moments, but his proud manner soon changed to disgust. Cowhide had none of the soft, yielding qualities of buckskin, and hurt the Indian's feet. Sitting down, he pulled one off, not without difficulty, for the boots were wet; but he could not remove the other. He hesitated a moment, being aware of the subdued merriment of his comrades, and then held up his foot to the nearest one. This chanced to be the big Indian, who evidently had a keen sense of humor. Taking hold of the boot with both hands, he dragged the luckless brave entirely around the camp-fire. The fun, however, was not to be all one-sided. The big Indian gave a more strenuous pull, and the boot came off suddenly. Unprepared for this, he lost his balance and fell down the bank almost into the creek. He held on to the boot, nevertheless, and getting up, threw it into the fire. The braves quieted down after that, and soon lapsed into slumber, leaving the big fellow, to whom the chief had addressed his brief command, acting, as guard. Observing Joe watching him as he puffed on his new pipe, he grinned, and spoke in broken English that was intelligible, and much of a surprise to the young man. "Paleface--tobac'--heap good." Then, seeing that Joe made no effort to follow his brother's initiative, for Jim was fast asleep, he pointed to the recumbent figures and spoke again. "Ugh! Paleface sleep--Injun wigwams--near setting sun." On the following morning Joe was awakened by the pain in his legs, which had been bound all night. He was glad when the bonds were cut and the party took up its westward march. The Indians, though somewhat quieter, displayed the same carelessness: they did not hurry, nor use particular caution, but selected the most open paths through the forest. They even halted while one of their number crept up on a herd of browsing deer. About noon the leader stopped to drink from a spring; his braves followed suit and permitted the white prisoners to quench their thirst. When they were about to start again the single note of a bird far away in the woods sounded clearly on the quiet air. Joe would not have given heed to it had he been less attentive. He instantly associated this peculiar bird-note with the sudden stiffening of Silvertip's body and his attitude of intense listening. Low exclamations came from the braves as they bent to catch the lightest sound. Presently, above the murmur of the gentle fall of water over the stones, rose that musical note once more. It was made by a bird, Joe thought, and yet, judged by the actions of the Indians, how potent with meaning beyond that of the simple melody of the woodland songster! He turned, half expecting to see somewhere in the tree-tops the bird which had wrought so sudden a change in his captors. As he did so from close at hand came the same call, now louder, but identical with the one that had deceived him. It was an answering signal, and had been given by Silvertip. It flashed into Joe's mind that other savages were in the forest; they had run across the Shawnees' trail, and were thus communicating with them. Soon dark figures could be discerned against the patches of green thicket; they came nearer and nearer, and now entered the open glade where Silvertip stood with his warriors. Joe counted twelve, and noted that they differed from his captors. He had only time to see that this difference consisted in the head-dress, and in the color and quantity of paint on their bodies, when his gaze was attracted and riveted to the foremost figures. The first was that of a very tall and stately chief, toward whom Silvertip now advanced with every show of respect. In this Indian's commanding stature, in his reddish-bronze face, stern and powerful, there were readable the characteristics of a king. In his deep-set eyes, gleaming from under a ponderous brow; in his mastiff-like jaw; in every feature of his haughty face were visible all the high intelligence, the consciousness of past valor, and the power and authority that denote a great chieftain. The second figure was equally striking for the remarkable contrast it afforded to the chief's. Despite the gaudy garments, the paint, the fringed and beaded buckskin leggins--all the Indian accouterments and garments which bedecked this person, he would have been known anywhere as a white man. His skin was burned to a dark bronze, but it had not the red tinge which characterizes the Indian. This white man had, indeed, a strange physiognomy. The forehead was narrow and sloped backward from the brow, denoting animal instincts. The eyes were close together, yellowish-brown in color, and had a peculiar vibrating movement, as though they were hung on a pivot, like a compass-needle. The nose was long and hooked, and the mouth set in a thin, cruel line. There was in the man's aspect an extraordinary combination of ignorance, vanity, cunning and ferocity. While the two chiefs held a short consultation, this savage-appearing white man addressed the brothers. "Who're you, an' where you goin'?" he asked gruffly, confronting Jim. "My name is Downs. I am a preacher, and was on my way to the Moravian Mission to preach to the Indians. You are a white man; will you help us?" If Jim expected the information would please his interrogator, he was mistaken. "So you're one of 'em? Yes, I'll do suthin' fer you when I git back from this hunt. I'll cut your heart out, chop it up, an' feed it to the buzzards," he said fiercely, concluding his threat by striking Jim a cruel blow on the head. Joe paled deathly white at this cowardly action, and his eyes, as they met the gaze of the ruffian, contracted with their characteristic steely glow, as if some powerful force within the depths of his being were at white heat and only this pale flash came to the surface. "You ain't a preacher?" questioned the man, meeting something in Joe's glance that had been absent from Jim's. Joe made no answer, and regarded questioner steadily. "Ever see me afore? Ever hear of Jim Girty?" he asked boastfully. "Before you spoke I knew you were Girty," answered Joe quietly. "How d'you know? Ain't you afeared?" "Of what?" "Me--me?" Joe laughed in the renegades face. "How'd you knew me?" growled Girty. "I'll see thet you hev cause to remember me after this." "I figured there was only one so-called white man in these woods who is coward enough to strike a man whose hands are tied." "Boy, ye're too free with your tongue. I'll shet off your wind." Girty's hand was raised, but it never reached Joe's neck. The big Indian had an hour or more previous cut Joe's bonds, but he still retained the thong which was left attached to Joe's left wrist. This allowed the young man free use of his right arm, which, badly swollen or not, he brought into quick action. When the renegade reached toward him Joe knocked up the hand, and, instead of striking, he grasped the hooked nose with all the powerful grip of his fingers. Girty uttered a frightful curse; he writhed with pain, but could not free himself from the vise-like clutch. He drew his tomahawk and with a scream aimed a vicious blow at Joe. He missed his aim, however, for Silvertip had intervened and turned the course of the keen hatchet. But the weapon struck Joe a glancing blow, inflicting a painful, though not dangerous wound. The renegade's nose was skinned and bleeding profusely. He was frantic with fury, and tried to get at Joe; but Silvertip remained in front of his captive until some of the braves led Girty into the forest, where the tall chief had already disappeared. The nose-pulling incident added to the gayety of the Shawnees, who evidently were pleased with Girty's discomfiture. They jabbered among themselves and nodded approvingly at Joe, until a few words spoken by Silvertip produced a sudden change. What the words were Joe could not understand, but to him they sounded like French. He smiled at the absurdity of imagining he had heard a savage speak a foreign language. At any rate, whatever had been said was trenchant with meaning. The Indians changed from gay to grave; they picked up their weapons and looked keenly on every side; the big Indian at once retied Joe, and then all crowded round the chief. "Did you hear what Silvertip said, and did you notice the effect it had?" whispered Jim, taking advantage of the moment. "It sounded like French, but of course it wasn't," replied Joe. "It was French. 'Le Vent de la Mort.'" "By Jove, that's it. What does it mean?" asked Joe, who was not a scholar. "The Wind of Death." "That's English, but I can't apply it here. Can you?" "No doubt it is some Indian omen." The hurried consultation over, Silvertip tied Joe's horse and dog to the trees, and once more led the way; this time he avoided the open forest and kept on low ground. For a long time he traveled in the bed of the brook, wading when the water was shallow, and always stepping where there was the least possibility of leaving a footprint. Not a word was spoken. If either of the brothers made the lightest splash in the water, or tumbled a stone into the brook, the Indian behind rapped him on the head with a tomahawk handle. At certain places, indicated by the care which Silvertip exercised in walking, the Indian in front of the captives turned and pointed where they were to step. They were hiding the trail. Silvertip hurried them over the stony places; went more slowly through the water, and picked his way carefully over the soft ground it became necessary to cross. At times he stopped, remaining motionless many seconds. This vigilance continued all the afternoon. The sun sank; twilight spread its gray mantle, and soon black night enveloped the forest. The Indians halted, but made no fire; they sat close together on a stony ridge, silent and watchful. Joe pondered deeply over this behavior. Did the Shawnees fear pursuit? What had that Indian chief told Silvertip? To Joe it seemed that they acted as if believing foes were on all sides. Though they hid their tracks, it was, apparently, not the fear of pursuit alone which made them cautious. Joe reviewed the afternoon's march and dwelt upon the possible meaning of the cat-like steps, the careful brushing aside of branches, the roving eyes, suspicious and gloomy, the eager watchfulness of the advance as well as to the rear, and always the strained effort to listen, all of which gave him the impression of some grave, unseen danger. And now as he lay on the hard ground, nearly exhausted by the long march and suffering from the throbbing wound, his courage lessened somewhat, and he shivered with dread. The quiet and gloom of the forest; these fierce, wild creatures, free in the heart of their own wilderness yet menaced by a foe, and that strange French phrase which kept recurring in his mind--all had the effect of conjuring up giant shadows in Joe's fanciful mind. During all his life, until this moment, he had never feared anything; now he was afraid of the darkness. The spectral trees spread long arms overhead, and phantom forms stalked abroad; somewhere out in that dense gloom stirred this mysterious foe--the "Wind of Death." Nevertheless, he finally slept. In the dull-gray light of early morning the Indians once more took up the line of march toward the west. They marched all that day, and at dark halted to eat and rest. Silvertip and another Indian stood watch. Some time before morning Joe suddenly awoke. The night was dark, yet it was lighter than when he had fallen asleep. A pale, crescent moon shown dimly through the murky clouds. There was neither movement of the air nor the chirp of an insect. Absolute silence prevailed. Joe saw the Indian guard leaning against a tree, asleep. Silvertip was gone. The captive raised his head and looked around for the chief. There were only four Indians left, three on the ground and one against the tree. He saw something shining near him. He looked more closely, and made out the object to be an eagle plume Silvertip had worn, in his head-dress. It lay on the ground near the tree. Joe made some slight noise which awakened the guard. The Indian never moved a muscle; but his eyes roved everywhere. He, too, noticed the absence of the chief. At this moment from out of the depths of the woods came a swelling sigh, like the moan of the night wind. It rose and died away, leaving the silence apparently all the deeper. A shudder ran over Joe's frame. Fascinated, he watched the guard. The Indian uttered a low gasp; his eyes started and glared wildly; he rose very slowly to his full height and stood waiting, listening. The dark hand which held the tomahawk trembled so that little glints of moonlight glanced from the bright steel. From far back in the forest-deeps came that same low moaning: "Um-m-mm-woo-o-o-o!" It rose from a faint murmur and swelled to a deep moan, soft but clear, and ended in a wail like that of a lost soul. The break it made in that dead silence was awful. Joe's blood seemed to have curdled and frozen; a cold sweat oozed from his skin, and it was as if a clammy hand clutched at his heart. He tried to persuade himself that the fear displayed by the savage was only superstition, and that that moan was but the sigh of the night wind. The Indian sentinel stood as if paralyzed an instant after that weird cry, and then, swift as a flash, and as noiseless, he was gone into the gloomy forest. He had fled without awakening his companions. Once more the moaning cry arose and swelled mournfully on the still night air. It was close at hand! "The Wind of Death," whispered Joe. He was shaken and unnerved by the events of the past two days, and dazed from his wound. His strength deserted him, and he lost consciousness. Chapter VI. One evening, several day previous to the capture of the brothers, a solitary hunter stopped before a deserted log cabin which stood on the bank of a stream fifty miles or more inland from the Ohio River. It was rapidly growing dark; a fine, drizzling rain had set in, and a rising wind gave promise of a stormy night. Although the hunter seemed familiar with his surroundings, he moved cautiously, and hesitated as if debating whether he should seek the protection of this lonely hut, or remain all night under dripping trees. Feeling of his hunting frock, he found that it was damp and slippery. This fact evidently decided him in favor of the cabin, for he stooped his tall figure and went in. It was pitch dark inside; but having been there before, the absence of a light did not trouble him. He readily found the ladder leading to the loft, ascended it, and lay down to sleep. During the night a noise awakened him. For a moment he heard nothing except the fall of the rain. Then came the hum of voices, followed by the soft tread of moccasined feet. He knew there was an Indian town ten miles across the country, and believed some warriors, belated on a hunting trip, had sought the cabin for shelter. The hunter lay perfectly quiet, awaiting developments. If the Indians had flint and steel, and struck a light, he was almost certain to be discovered. He listened to their low conversation, and understood from the language that they were Delawares. A moment later he heard the rustling of leaves and twigs, accompanied by the metallic click of steel against some hard substance. The noise was repeated, and then followed by a hissing sound, which he knew to be the burning of a powder on a piece of dry wood, after which rays of light filtered through cracks of the unstable floor of the loft. The man placed his eye to one of these crevices, and counted eleven Indians, all young braves, with the exception of the chief. The Indians had been hunting; they had haunches of deer and buffalo tongues, together with several packs of hides. Some of them busied themselves drying their weapons; others sat down listlessly, plainly showing their weariness, and two worked over the smouldering fire. The damp leaves and twigs burned faintly, yet there was enough to cause the hunter fear that he might be discovered. He believed he had not much to worry about from the young braves, but the hawk-eyed chief was dangerous. And he was right. Presently the stalwart chief heard, or saw, a drop of water fall from the loft. It came from the hunter's wet coat. Almost any one save an Indian scout would have fancied this came from the roof. As the chief's gaze roamed everywhere over the interior of the cabin his expression was plainly distrustful. His eye searched the wet clay floor, but hardly could have discovered anything there, because the hunter's moccasined tracks had been obliterated by the footprints of the Indians. The chief's suspicions seemed to be allayed. But in truth this chief, with the wonderful sagacity natural to Indians, had observed matters which totally escaped the young braves, and, like a wily old fox, he waited to see which cub would prove the keenest. Not one of them, however, noted anything unusual. They sat around the fire, ate their meat and parched corn, and chatted volubly. The chief arose and, walking to the ladder, ran his hand along one of the rungs. "Ugh!" he exclaimed. Instantly he was surrounded by ten eager, bright-eyed braves. He extended his open palm; it was smeared with wet clay like that under his feet. Simultaneously with their muttered exclamations the braves grasped their weapons. They knew there was a foe above them. It was a paleface, for an Indian would have revealed himself. The hunter, seeing he was discovered, acted with the unerring judgment and lightning-like rapidity of one long accustomed to perilous situations. Drawing his tomahawk and noiselessly stepping to the hole in the loft, he leaped into the midst of the astounded Indians. Rising from the floor like the rebound of a rubber ball, his long arm with the glittering hatchet made a wide sweep, and the young braves scattered like frightened sheep. He made a dash for the door and, incredible as it may seem, his movements were so quick he would have escaped from their very midst without a scratch but for one unforeseen circumstance. The clay floor was wet and slippery; his feet were hardly in motion before they slipped from under him and he fell headlong. With loud yells of triumph the band jumped upon him. There was a convulsive, heaving motion of the struggling mass, one frightful cry of agony, and then hoarse commands. Three of the braves ran to their packs, from which they took cords of buckskin. So exceedingly powerful was the hunter that six Indians were required to hold him while the others tied his hands and feet. Then, with grunts and chuckles of satisfaction, they threw him into a corner of the cabin. Two of the braves had been hurt in the brief struggle, one having a badly wrenched shoulder and the other a broken arm. So much for the hunter's power in that single moment of action. The loft was searched, and found to be empty. Then the excitement died away, and the braves settled themselves down for the night. The injured ones bore their hurts with characteristic stoicism; if they did not sleep, both remained quiet and not a sigh escaped them. The wind changed during the night, the storm abated, and when daylight came the sky was cloudless. The first rays of the sun shone in the open door, lighting up the interior of the cabin. A sleepy Indian who had acted as guard stretched his limbs and yawned. He looked for the prisoner, and saw him sitting up in the corner. One arm was free, and the other nearly so. He had almost untied the thongs which bound him; a few moments more and he would have been free. "Ugh!" exclaimed the young brave, awakening his chief and pointing to the hunter. The chief glanced at his prisoner; then looked more closely, and with one spring was on his feet, a drawn tomahawk in his hand. A short, shrill yell issued from his lips. Roused by that clarion call, the young braves jumped up, trembling in eager excitement. The chief's summons had been the sharp war-cry of the Delawares. He manifested as intense emotion as could possibly have been betrayed by a matured, experienced chieftain, and pointing to the hunter, he spoke a single word. * * * At noonday the Indians entered the fields of corn which marked the outskirts of the Delaware encampment. "Kol-loo--kol-loo--kol-loo." The long signal, heralding the return of the party with important news, pealed throughout the quiet valley; and scarcely had the echoes died away when from the village came answering shouts. Once beyond the aisles of waving corn the hunter saw over the shoulders of his captors the home of the redmen. A grassy plain, sloping gradually from the woody hill to a winding stream, was brightly beautiful with chestnut trees and long, well-formed lines of lodges. Many-hued blankets hung fluttering in the sun, and rising lazily were curling columns of blue smoke. The scene was picturesque and reposeful; the vivid hues suggesting the Indians love of color and ornament; the absence of life and stir, his languorous habit of sleeping away the hot noonday hours. The loud whoops, however, changed the quiet encampment into a scene of animation. Children ran from the wigwams, maidens and braves dashed here and there, squaws awakened from their slumber, and many a doughty warrior rose from his rest in the shade. French fur traders came curiously from their lodges, and renegades hurriedly left their blankets, roused to instant action by the well-known summons. The hunter, led down the lane toward the approaching crowd, presented a calm and fearless demeanor. When the Indians surrounded him one prolonged, furious yell rent the air, and then followed an extraordinary demonstration of fierce delight. The young brave's staccato yell, the maiden's scream, the old squaw's screech, and the deep war-cry of the warriors intermingled in a fearful discordance. Often had this hunter heard the name which the Indian called him; he had been there before, a prisoner; he had run the gauntlet down the lane; he had been bound to a stake in front of the lodge where his captors were now leading him. He knew the chief, Wingenund, sachem of the Delawares. Since that time, now five years ago, when Wingenund had tortured him, they had been bitterest foes. If the hunter heard the hoarse cries, or the words hissed into his ears; if he saw the fiery glances of hatred, and sudden giving way to ungovernable rage, unusual to the Indian nature; if he felt in their fierce exultation the hopelessness of succor or mercy, he gave not the slightest sign. "Atelang! Atelang! Atelang!" rang out the strange Indian name. The French traders, like real savages, ran along with the procession, their feathers waving, their paint shining, their faces expressive of as much excitement as the Indians' as they cried aloud in their native tongue: "Le Vent de la Mort! Le Vent de la Mort! La Vent de la Mort!" The hunter, while yet some paces distant, saw the lofty figure of the chieftain standing in front of his principal men. Well he knew them all. There were the crafty Pipe, and his savage comrade, the Half King; there was Shingiss, who wore on his forehead a scar--the mark of the hunter's bullet; there were Kotoxen, the Lynx, and Misseppa, the Source, and Winstonah, the War-cloud, chiefs of sagacity and renown. Three renegades completed the circle; and these three traitors represented a power which had for ten years left an awful, bloody trail over the country. Simon Girty, the so-called White Indian, with his keen, authoritative face turned expectantly; Elliott, the Tory deserter, from Fort Pitt, a wiry, spider-like little man; and last, the gaunt and gaudily arrayed form of the demon of the frontier--Jim Girty. The procession halted before this group, and two brawny braves pushed the hunter forward. Simon Girty's face betrayed satisfaction; Elliott's shifty eyes snapped, and the dark, repulsive face of the other Girty exhibited an exultant joy. These desperadoes had feared this hunter. Wingenund, with a majestic wave of his arm, silenced the yelling horde of frenzied savages and stepped before the captive. The deadly foes were once again face to face. The chieftain's lofty figure and dark, sleek head, now bare of plumes, towered over the other Indians, but he was not obliged to lower his gaze in order to look straight into the hunter's eyes. Verily this hunter merited the respect which shone in the great chieftain's glance. Like a mountain-ash he stood, straight and strong, his magnificent frame tapering wedge-like from his broad shoulders. The bulging line of his thick neck, the deep chest, the knotty contour of his bared forearm, and the full curves of his legs--all denoted a wonderful muscular development. The power expressed in this man's body seemed intensified in his features. His face was white and cold, his jaw square and set; his coal-black eyes glittered with almost a superhuman fire. And his hair, darker than the wing of a crow, fell far below his shoulders; matted and tangled as it was, still it hung to his waist, and had it been combed out, must have reached his knees. One long moment Wingenund stood facing his foe, and then over the multitude and through the valley rolled his sonorous voice: "Deathwind dies at dawn!" The hunter was tied to a tree and left in view of the Indian populace. The children ran fearfully by; the braves gazed long at the great foe of their race; the warriors passed in gloomy silence. The savages' tricks of torture, all their diabolical ingenuity of inflicting pain was suppressed, awaiting the hour of sunrise when this hated Long Knife was to die. Only one person offered an insult to the prisoner; he was a man of his own color. Jim Girty stopped before him, his yellowish eyes lighted by a tigerish glare, his lips curled in a snarl, and from between them issuing the odor of the fir traders' vile rum. "You'll soon be feed fer the buzzards," he croaked, in his hoarse voice. He had so often strewed the plains with human flesh for the carrion birds that the thought had a deep fascination for him. "D'ye hear, scalp-hunter? Feed for buzzards!" He deliberately spat in the hunter's face. "D'ye hear?" he repeated. There was no answer save that which glittered in the hunter's eye. But the renegade could not read it because he did not meet that flaming glance. Wild horses could not have dragged him to face this man had he been free. Even now a chill crept over Girty. For a moment he was enthralled by a mysterious fear, half paralyzed by a foreshadowing of what would be this hunter's vengeance. Then he shook off his craven fear. He was free; the hunter's doom was sure. His sharp face was again wreathed in a savage leer, and he spat once more on the prisoner. His fierce impetuosity took him a step too far. The hunter's arms and waist were fastened, but his feet were free. His powerful leg was raised suddenly; his foot struck Girty in the pit of the stomach. The renegade dropped limp and gasping. The braves carried him away, his gaudy feathers trailing, his long arms hanging inertly, and his face distorted with agony. The maidens of the tribe, however, showed for the prisoner an interest that had in it something of veiled sympathy. Indian girls were always fascinated by white men. Many records of Indian maidens' kindness, of love, of heroism for white prisoners brighten the dark pages of frontier history. These girls walked past the hunter, averting their eyes when within his range of vision, but stealing many a sidelong glance at his impressive face and noble proportions. One of them, particularly, attracted the hunter's eye. This was because, as she came by with her companions, while they all turned away, she looked at him with her soft, dark eyes. She was a young girl, whose delicate beauty bloomed fresh and sweet as that of a wild rose. Her costume, fringed, beaded, and exquisitely wrought with fanciful design, betrayed her rank, she was Wingenund's daughter. The hunter had seen her when she was a child, and he recognized her now. He knew that the beauty of Aola, of Whispering Winds Among the Leaves, had been sung from the Ohio to the Great Lakes. Often she passed him that afternoon. At sunset, as the braves untied him and led him away, he once more caught the full, intense gaze of her lovely eyes. That night as he lay securely bound in the corner of a lodge, and the long hours wore slowly away, he strained at his stout bonds, and in his mind revolved different plans of escape. It was not in this man's nature to despair; while he had life he would fight. From time to time he expanded his muscles, striving to loosen the wet buckskin thongs. The dark hours slowly passed, no sound coming to him save the distant bark of a dog and the monotonous tread of his guard; a dim grayness pervaded the lodge. Dawn was close at hand--his hour was nearly come. Suddenly his hearing, trained to a most acute sensibility, caught a faint sound, almost inaudible. It came from without on the other side of the lodge. There it was again, a slight tearing sound, such as is caused by a knife when it cuts through soft material. Some one was slitting the wall of the lodge. The hunter rolled noiselessly over and over until he lay against the skins. In the dim grayness he saw a bright blade moving carefully upward through the deer-hide. Then a long knife was pushed into the opening; a small, brown hand grasped the hilt. Another little hand followed and felt of the wall and floor, reaching out with groping fingers. The, hunter rolled again so that his back was against the wall and his wrists in front of the opening. He felt the little hand on his arm; then it slipped down to his wrists. The contact of cold steel set a tremor of joy through his heart. The pressure of his bonds relaxed, ceased; his arms were free. He turned to find the long-bladed knife on the ground. The little hands were gone. In a tinkling he rose unbound, armed, desperate. In another second an Indian warrior lay upon the ground in his death-throes, while a fleeing form vanished in the gray morning mist. Chapter VII. Joe felt the heavy lethargy rise from him like the removal of a blanket; his eyes became clear, and he saw the trees and the forest gloom; slowly he realized his actual position. He was a prisoner, lying helpless among his sleeping captors. Silvertip and the guard had fled into the woods, frightened by the appalling moan which they believed sounded their death-knell. And Joe believed he might have fled himself had he been free. What could have caused that sound? He fought off the numbing chill that once again began to creep over him. He was wide-awake now; his head was clear, and he resolved to retain his senses. He told himself there could be nothing supernatural in that wind, or wail, or whatever it was, which had risen murmuring from out the forest-depths. Yet, despite his reasoning, Joe could not allay his fears. That thrilling cry haunted him. The frantic flight of an Indian brave--nay, of a cunning, experienced chief--was not to be lightly considered. The savages were at home in these untracked wilds. Trained from infancy to scent danger and to fight when they had an equal chance they surely would not run without good cause. Joe knew that something moved under those dark trees. He had no idea what. It might be the fretting night wind, or a stealthy, prowling, soft-footed beast, or a savage alien to these wild Indians, and wilder than they by far. The chirp of a bird awoke the stillness. Night had given way to morning. Welcoming the light that was chasing away the gloom, Joe raised his head with a deep sigh of relief. As he did so he saw a bush move; then a shadow seemed to sink into the ground. He had seen an object lighter than the trees, darker than the gray background. Again, that strange sense of the nearness of something thrilled him. Moments, passed--to him long as hours. He saw a tall fern waver and tremble. A rabbit, or perhaps a snake, had brushed it. Other ferns moved, their tops agitated, perhaps, by a faint breeze. No; that wavering line came straight toward him; it could not be the wind; it marked the course of a creeping, noiseless thing. It must be a panther crawling nearer and nearer. Joe opened his lips to awaken his captors, but could not speak; it was as if his heart had stopped beating. Twenty feet away the ferns were parted to disclose a white, gleaming face, with eyes that seemingly glittered. Brawny shoulders were upraised, and then a tall, powerful man stood revealed. Lightly he stepped over the leaves into the little glade. He bent over the sleeping Indians. Once, twice, three times a long blade swung high. One brave shuddered another gave a sobbing gasp, and the third moved two fingers--thus they passed from life to death. "Wetzel!" cried Joe. "I reckon so," said the deliverer, his deep, calm voice contrasting strangely with what might have been expected from his aspect. Then, seeing Joe's head covered with blood, he continued: "Able to get up?" "I'm not hurt," answered Joe, rising when his bonds had been cut. "Brothers, I reckon?" Wetzel said, bending over Jim. "Yes, we're brothers. Wake up, Jim, wake up! We're saved!" "What? Who's that?" cried Jim, sitting up and staring at Wetzel. "This man has saved our lives! See, Jim, the Indians are dead! And, Jim, it's Wetzel, the hunter. You remember, Jeff Lynn said I'd know him if I ever saw him and---" "What happened to Jeff?" inquired Wetzel, interrupting. He had turned from Jim's grateful face. "Jeff was on the first raft, and for all we know he is now safe at Fort Henry. Our steersman was shot, and we were captured." "Has the Shawnee anythin' ag'inst you boys?" "Why, yes, I guess so. I played a joke on him--took his shirt and put it on another fellow." "Might jes' as well kick an' Injun. What has he ag'in you?" "I don't know. Perhaps he did not like my talk to him," answered Jim. "I am a preacher, and have come west to teach the gospel to the Indians." "They're good Injuns now," said Wetzel, pointing to the prostrate figures. "How did you find us?" eagerly asked Joe. "Run acrost yer trail two days back." "And you've been following us?" The hunter nodded. "Did you see anything of another band of Indians? A tall chief and Jim Girty were among them." "They've been arter me fer two days. I was followin' you when Silvertip got wind of Girty an' his Delawares. The big chief was Wingenund. I seen you pull Girty's nose. Arter the Delawares went I turned loose yer dog an' horse an' lit out on yer trail.'' "Where are the Delawares now?" "I reckon there nosin' my back trail. We must be gittin'. Silvertip'll soon hev a lot of Injuns here." Joe intended to ask the hunter about what had frightened the Indians, but despite his eager desire for information, he refrained from doing so. "Girty nigh did fer you," remarked Wetzel, examining Joe's wound. "He's in a bad humor. He got kicked a few days back, and then hed the skin pulled offen his nose. Somebody'll hev to suffer. Wal, you fellers grab yer rifles, an' we'll be startin' fer the fort." Joe shuddered as he leaned over one of the dusky forms to detach powder and bullet horn. He had never seen a dead Indian, and the tense face, the sightless, vacant eyes made him shrink. He shuddered again when he saw the hunter scalp his victims. He shuddered the third time when he saw Wetzel pick up Silvertip's beautiful white eagle plume, dabble it in a pool of blood, and stick it in the bark of a tree. Bereft of its graceful beauty, drooping with its gory burden, the long leather was a deadly message. It had been Silvertip's pride; it was now a challenge, a menace to the Shawnee chief. "Come," said Wetzel, leading the way into the forest. * * * Shortly after daylight on the second day following the release of the Downs brothers the hunter brushed through a thicket of alder and said: "Thar's Fort Henry." The boys were on the summit of a mountain from which the land sloped in a long incline of rolling ridges and gentle valleys like a green, billowy sea, until it rose again abruptly into a peak higher still than the one upon which they stood. The broad Ohio, glistening in the sun, lay at the base of the mountain. Upon the bluff overlooking the river, and under the brow of the mountain, lay the frontier fort. In the clear atmosphere it stood out in bold relief. A small, low structure surrounded by a high stockade fence was all, and yet it did not seem unworthy of its fame. Those watchful, forbidding loopholes, the blackened walls and timbers, told the history of ten long, bloody years. The whole effect was one of menace, as if the fort sent out a defiance to the wilderness, and meant to protect the few dozen log cabins clustered on the hillside. "How will we ever get across that big river?" asked Jim, practically. "Wade--swim," answered the hunter, laconically, and began the descent of the ridge. An hour's rapid walking brought the three to the river. Depositing his rifle in a clump of willows, and directing the boys to do the same with their guns, the hunter splashed into the water. His companions followed him into the shallow water, and waded a hundred yards, which brought them near the island that they now perceived hid the fort. The hunter swam the remaining distance, and, climbing the bank, looked back for the boys. They were close behind him. Then he strode across the island, perhaps a quarter of a mile wide. "We've a long swim here," said Wetzel, waving his hand toward the main channel of the river. "Good fer it?" he inquired of Joe, since Jim had not received any injuries during the short captivity and consequently showed more endurance. "Good for anything," answered Joe, with that coolness Wetzel had been quick to observe in him. The hunter cast a sharp glance at the lad's haggard face, his bruised temple, and his hair matted with blood. In that look he read Joe thoroughly. Had the young man known the result of that scrutiny, he would have been pleased as well as puzzled, for the hunter had said to himself: "A brave lad, an' the border fever's on him." "Swim close to me," said Wetzel, and he plunged into the river. The task was accomplished without accident. "See the big cabin, thar, on the hillside? Thar's Colonel Zane in the door," said Wetzel. As they neared the building several men joined the one who had been pointed out as the colonel. It was evident the boys were the subject of their conversation. Presently Zane left the group and came toward them. The brothers saw a handsome, stalwart man, in the prime of life. "Well, Lew, what luck?" he said to Wetzel. "Not much. I treed five Injuns, an' two got away," answered the hunter as he walked toward the fort. "Lads, welcome to Fort Henry," said Colonel Zane, a smile lighting his dark face. "The others of your party arrived safely. They certainly will be overjoyed to see you." "Colonel Zane, I had a letter from my uncle to you," replied Jim; "but the Indians took that and everything else we had with us." "Never mind the letter. I knew your uncle, and your father, too. Come into the house and change those wet clothes. And you, my lad, have got an ugly knock on the head. Who gave you that?" "Jim Girty." "What?" exclaimed the colonel. "Jim Girty did that. He was with a party of Delawares who ran across us. They were searching for Wetzel." "Girty with the Delawares! The devil's to pay now. And you say hunting Wetzel? I must learn more about this. It looks bad. But tell me, how did Girty come to strike you?" "I pulled his nose." "You did? Good! Good!" cried Colonel Zane, heartily. "By George, that's great! Tell me--but wait until you are more comfortable. Your packs came safely on Jeff's raft, and you will find them inside." As Joe followed the colonel he heard one of the other men say: "Like as two peas in a pod." Farther on he saw an Indian standing a little apart from the others. Hearing Joe's slight exclamation of surprise, he turned, disclosing a fine, manly countenance, characterized by calm dignity. The Indian read the boy's thought. "Ugh! Me friend," he said in English. "That's my Shawnee guide, Tomepomehala. He's a good fellow, although Jonathan and Wetzel declare the only good Indian is a dead one. Come right in here. There are your packs, and you'll find water outside the door." Thus saying, Colonel Zane led the brothers into a small room, brought out their packs, and left them. He came back presently with a couple of soft towels. "Now you lads fix up a bit; then come out and meet my family and tell us all about your adventure. By that time dinner will be ready." "Geminy! Don't that towel remind you of home?" said Joe, when the colonel had gone. "From the looks of things, Colonel Zane means to have comfort here in the wilderness. He struck me as being a fine man." The boys were indeed glad to change the few articles of clothing the Indians had left them, and when they were shaved and dressed they presented an entirely different appearance. Once more they were twin brothers, in costume and feature. Joe contrived, by brushing his hair down on his forehead, to conceal the discolored bump. "I think I saw a charming girl," observed Joe. "Suppose you did--what then?" asked Jim, severely. "Why--nothing--see here, mayn't I admire a pretty girl if I want?" "No, you may not. Joe, will nothing ever cure you? I should think the thought of Miss Wells---" "Look here, Jim; she don't care--at least, it's very little she cares. And I'm--I'm not worthy of her." "Turn around here and face me," said the young minister sharply. Joe turned and looked in his brother's eyes. "Have you trifled with her, as you have with so many others? Tell me. I know you don't lie." "No." "Then what do you mean?" "Nothing much, Jim, except I'm really not worthy of her. I'm no good, you know, and she ought to get a fellow like--like you." "Absurd! You ought to be ashamed of yourself." "Never mind me. See here; don't you admire her?" "Why--why, yes," stammered Jim, flushing a dark, guilty red at the direct question. "Who could help admiring her?" "That's what I thought. And I know she admires you for qualities which I lack. Nell's like a tender vine just beginning to creep around and cling to something strong. She cares for me; but her love is like the vine. It may hurt her a little to tear that love away, but it won't kill her; and in the end it will be best for her. You need a good wife. What could I do with a woman? Go in and win her, Jim." "Joe, you're sacrificing yourself again for me," cried Jim, white to the lips. "It's wrong to yourself and wrong to her. I tell you---" "Enough!" Joe's voice cut in cold and sharp. "Usually you influence me; but sometimes you can't; I say this: Nell will drift into your arms as surely as the leaf falls. It will not hurt her--will be best for her. Remember, she is yours for the winning." "You do not say whether that will hurt you," whispered Jim. "Come--we'll find Colonel Zane," said Joe, opening the door. They went out in the hallway which opened into the yard as well as the larger room through which the colonel had first conducted them. As Jim, who was in advance, passed into this apartment a trim figure entered from the yard. It was Nell, and she ran directly against him. Her face was flushed, her eyes were beaming with gladness, and she seemed the incarnation of girlish joy. "Oh, Joe," was all she whispered. But the happiness and welcome in that whisper could never have been better expressed in longer speech. Then slightly, ever so slightly, she tilted her sweet face up to his. It all happened with the quickness of thought. In a single instant Jim saw the radiant face, the outstretched hands, and heard the glad whisper. He knew that she had a again mistaken him for Joe; but for his life he could not draw back his head. He had kissed her, and even as his lips thrilled with her tremulous caress he flushed with the shame of his deceit. "You're mistaken again--I'm Jim," he whispered. For a moment they stood staring into each other's eyes, slowly awakening to what had really happened, slowly conscious of a sweet, alluring power. Then Colonel Zane's cheery voice rang in their ears. "Ah, here's Nellie and your brother! Now, lads, tell me which is which?' "That's Jim, and I'm Joe," answered the latter. He appeared not to notice his brother, and his greeting to Nell was natural and hearty. For the moment she drew the attention of the others from them. Joe found himself listening to the congratulations of a number of people. Among the many names he remembered were those of Mrs. Zane, Silas Zane, and Major McColloch. Then he found himself gazing at the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life. "My only sister, Mrs. Alfred Clarke--once Betty Zane, and the heroine of Fort Henry," said Colonel Zane proudly, with his arm around the slender, dark-eyed girl. "I would brave the Indians and the wilderness again for this pleasure," replied Joe gallantly, as he bowed low over the little hand she cordially extended. "Bess, is dinner ready?" inquired Colonel Zane of his comely wife. She nodded her head, and the colonel led the way into the adjoining room. "I know you boys must be hungry as bears." During the meal Colonel Zane questioned his guests about their journey, and as to the treatment they had received at the hands of the Indians. He smiled at the young minister's earnestness in regard to the conversion of the redmen, and he laughed outright when Joe said "he guessed he came to the frontier because it was too slow at home." "I am sure your desire for excitement will soon be satisfied, if indeed it be not so already," remarked the colonel. "But as to the realization of your brother's hopes I am not so sanguine. Undoubtedly the Moravian missionaries have accomplished wonders with the Indians. Not long ago I visited the Village of Peace--the Indian name for the mission--and was struck by the friendliness and industry which prevailed there. Truly it was a village of peace. Yet it is almost to early to be certain of permanent success of this work. The Indian's nature is one hard to understand. He is naturally roving and restless, which, however, may be owing to his habit of moving from place to place in search of good hunting grounds. I believe--though I must confess I haven't seen any pioneers who share my belief--that the savage has a beautiful side to his character. I know of many noble deeds done by them, and I believe, if they are honestly dealt with, they will return good for good. There are bad ones, of course; but the French traders, and men like the Girtys, have caused most of this long war. Jonathan and Wetzel tell me the Shawnees and Chippewas have taken the warpath again. Then the fact that the Girtys are with the Delawares is reason for alarm. We have been comparatively quiet here of late. Did you boys learn to what tribe your captors belong? Did Wetzel say?" "He did not; he spoke little, but I will say he was exceedingly active," answered Joe, with a smile. "To have seen Wetzel fight Indians is something you are not likely to forget," said Colonel Zane grimly. "Now, tell me, how did those Indians wear their scalp-lock?" "Their heads were shaved closely, with the exception of a little place on top. The remaining hair was twisted into a tuft, tied tightly, and into this had been thrust a couple of painted pins. When Wetzel scalped the Indians the pins fell out. I picked one up, and found it to be bone." "You will make a woodsman, that's certain," replied Colonel Zane. "The Indians were Shawnee on the warpath. Well, we will not borrow trouble, for when it comes in the shape of redskins it usually comes quickly. Mr. Wells seemed anxious to resume the journey down the river; but I shall try to persuade him to remain with us awhile. Indeed, I am sorry I cannot keep you all here at Fort Henry, and more especially the girls. On the border we need young people, and, while I do not want to frighten the women, I fear there will be more than Indians fighting for them." "I hope not; but we have come prepared for anything," said Kate, with a quiet smile. "Our home was with uncle, and when he announced his intention of going west we decided our duty was to go with him." "You were right, and I hope you will find a happy home," rejoined Colonel Zane. "If life among the Indians, proves to be too hard, we shall welcome you here. Betty, show the girls your pets and Indian trinkets. I am going to take the boys to Silas' cabin to see Mr. Wells, and then show them over the fort." As they went out Joe saw the Indian guide standing in exactly the same position as when they entered the building. "Can't that Indian move?" he asked curiously. "He can cover one hundred miles in a day, when he wants to," replied Colonel Zane. "He is resting now. An Indian will often stand or sit in one position for many hours." "He's a fine-looking chap," remarked Joe, and then to himself: "but I don't like him. I guess I'm prejudiced." "You'll learn to like Tome, as we call him." "Colonel Zane, I want a light for my pipe. I haven't had a smoke since the day we were captured. That blamed redskin took my tobacco. It's lucky I had some in my other pack. I'd like to meet him again; also Silvertip and that brute Girty." "My lad, don't make such wishes," said Colonel Zane, earnestly. "You were indeed fortunate to escape, and I can well understand your feelings. There is nothing I should like better than to see Girty over the sights of my rifle; but I never hunt after danger, and to look for Girty is to court death." "But Wetzel---" "Ah, my lad, I know Wetzel goes alone in the woods; but then, he is different from other men. Before you leave I will tell you all about him." Colonel Zane went around the corner of the cabin and returned with a live coal on a chip of wood, which Joe placed in the bowl of his pipe, and because of the strong breeze stepped close to the cabin wall. Being a keen observer, he noticed many small, round holes in the logs. They were so near together that the timbers had an odd, speckled appearance, and there was hardly a place where he could have put his thumb without covering a hole. At first he thought they were made by a worm or bird peculiar to that region; but finally lie concluded that they were bullet-holes. He thrust his knife blade into one, and out rolled a leaden ball. "I'd like to have been here when these were made," he said. "Well, at the time I wished I was back on the Potomac," replied Colonel Zane. They found the old missionary on the doorstep of the adjacent cabin. He appeared discouraged when Colonel Zane interrogated him, and said that he was impatient because of the delay. "Mr. Wells, is it not possible that you underrate the danger of your enterprise?" "I fear naught but the Lord," answered the old man. "Do you not fear for those with you?" went on the colonel earnestly. "I am heart and soul with you in your work, but want to impress upon you that the time is not propitious. It is a long journey to the village, and the way is beset with dangers of which you have no idea. Will you not remain here with me for a few weeks, or, at least, until my scouts report?" "I thank you; but go I will." "Then let me entreat you to remain here a few days, so that I may send my brother Jonathan and Wetzel with you. If any can guide you safely to the Village of Peace it will be they." At this moment Joe saw two men approaching from the fort, and recognized one of them as Wetzel. He doubted not that the other was Lord Dunmore's famous guide and hunter, Jonathan Zane. In features he resembled the colonel, and was as tall as Wetzel, although not so muscular or wide of chest. Joe felt the same thrill he had experienced while watching the frontiersmen at Fort Pitt. Wetzel and Jonathan spoke a word to Colonel Zane and then stepped aside. The hunters stood lithe and erect, with the easy, graceful poise of Indians. "We'll take two canoes, day after to-morrow," said Jonathan, decisively, to Colonel Zane. "Have you a rifle for Wetzel? The Delawares got his." Colonel Zane pondered over the question; rifles were not scarce at the fort, but a weapon that Wetzel would use was hard to find. "The hunter may have my rifle," said the old missionary. "I have no use for a weapon with which to destroy God's creatures. My brother was a frontiersman; he left this rifle to me. I remember hearing him say once that if a man knew exactly the weight of lead and powder needed, it would shoot absolutely true." He went into the cabin, and presently came out with a long object wrapped in linsey cloths. Unwinding the coverings, he brought to view a rifle, the proportions of which caused Jonathan's eyes to glisten, and brought an exclamation from Colonel Zane. Wetzel balanced the gun in his hands. It was fully six feet long; the barrel was large, and the dark steel finely polished; the stock was black walnut, ornamented with silver trimmings. Using Jonathan's powder-flask and bullet-pouch, Wetzel proceeded to load the weapon. He poured out a quantity of powder into the palm of his hand, performing the action quickly and dexterously, but was so slow while measuring it that Joe wondered if he were counting the grains. Next he selected a bullet out of a dozen which Jonathan held toward him. He examined it carefully and tried it in the muzzle of the rifle. Evidently it did not please him, for he took another. Finally he scraped a bullet with his knife, and placing it in the center of a small linsey rag, deftly forced it down. He adjusted the flint, dropped a few grains of powder in the pan, and then looked around for a mark at which to shoot. Joe observed that the hunters and Colonel Zane were as serious regarding the work as if at that moment some important issue depended upon the accuracy of the rifle. "There, Lew; there's a good shot. It's pretty far, even for you, when you don't know the gun," said Colonel Zane, pointing toward the river. Joe saw the end of a log, about the size of a man's head, sticking out of the water, perhaps an hundred and fifty yards distant. He thought to hit it would be a fine shot; but was amazed when he heard Colonel Zane say to several men who had joined the group that Wetzel intended to shoot at a turtle on the log. By straining his eyes Joe succeeded in distinguishing a small lump, which he concluded was the turtle. Wetzel took a step forward; the long, black rifle was raised with a stately sweep. The instant it reached a level a thread of flame burst forth, followed by a peculiarly clear, ringing report. "Did he hit?" asked Colonel Zane, eagerly as a boy. "I allow he did," answered Jonathan. "I'll go and see," said Joe. He ran down the bank, along the beach, and stepped on the log. He saw a turtle about the size of an ordinary saucer. Picking it up, he saw a bullet-hole in the shell near the middle. The bullet had gone through the turtle, and it was quite dead. Joe carried it to the waiting group. "I allowed so," declared Jonathan. Wetzel examined the turtle, and turning to the old missionary, said: "Your brother spoke the truth, an' I thank you fer the rifle." Chapter VIII. "So you want to know all about Wetzel?" inquired Colonel Zane of Joe, when, having left Jim and Mr. Wells, they returned to the cabin. "I am immensely interested in him," replied Joe. "Well, I don't think there's anything singular in that. I know Wetzel better, perhaps, than any man living; but have seldom talked about him. He doesn't like it. He is by birth a Virginian; I should say, forty years old. We were boys together, and and I am a little beyond that age. He was like any of the lads, except that he excelled us all in strength and agility. When he was nearly eighteen years old a band if Indians--Delawares, I think--crossed the border on a marauding expedition far into Virginia. They burned the old Wetzel homestead and murdered the father, mother, two sisters, and a baby brother. The terrible shock nearly killed Lewis, who for a time was very ill. When he recovered he went in search of his brothers, Martin and John Wetzel, who were hunting, and brought them back to their desolated home. Over the ashes of the home and the graves of the loved ones the brothers swore sleepless and eternal vengeance. The elder brothers have been devoted all these twenty years and more to the killing of Indians; but Lewis has been the great foe of the redman. You have already seen an example of his deeds, and will hear of more. His name is a household word on the border. Scores of times he has saved, actually saved, this fort and settlement. His knowledge of savage ways surpasses by far Boone's, Major McColloch's, Jonathan's, or any of the hunters'." "Then hunting Indians is his sole occupation?" "He lives for that purpose alone. He is very seldom in the settlement. Sometimes he stays here a few days, especially if he is needed; but usually he roams the forests." "What did Jeff Lynn mean when he said that some people think Wetzel is crazy?" "There are many who think the man mad; but I do not. When the passion for Indian hunting comes upon him he is fierce, almost frenzied, yet perfectly sane. While here he is quiet, seldom speaks except when spoken to, and is taciturn with strangers. He often comes to my cabin and sits beside the fire for hours. I think he finds pleasure in the conversation and laughter of friends. He is fond of the children, and would do anything for my sister Betty." "His life must be lonely and sad," remarked Joe. "The life of any borderman is that; but Wetzel's is particularly so." "What is he called by the Indians?" "They call him Atelang, or, in English, Deathwind." "By George! That's what Silvertip said in French--'Le Vent de la Mort.'" "Yes; you have it right. A French fur trader gave Wetzel that name years ago, and it has clung to him. The Indians say the Deathwind blows through the forest whenever Wetzel stalks on their trail." "Colonel Zane, don't you think me superstitious," whispered Joe, leaning toward the colonel, "but I heard that wind blow through the forest." "What!" ejaculated Colonel Zane. He saw that Joe was in earnest, for the remembrance of the moan had more than once paled his cheek and caused beads of perspiration to collect on his brow. Joe related the circumstances of that night, and at the end of his narrative Colonel Zane sat silent and thoughtful. "You don't really think it was Wetzel who moaned?" he asked, at length. "No, I don't," replied Joe quickly; "but, Colonel Zane, I heard that moan as plainly as I can hear your voice. I heard it twice. Now, what was it?" "Jonathan said the same thing to me once. He had been out hunting with Wetzel; they separated, and during the night Jonathan heard the wind. The next day he ran across a dead Indian. He believes Wetzel makes the noise, and so do the hunters; but I think it is simply the moan of the night wind through the trees. I have heard it at times, when my very blood seemingly ran cold." "I tried to think it was the wind soughing through the pines, but am afraid I didn't succeed very well. Anyhow, I knew Wetzel instantly, just as Jeff Lynn said I would. He killed those Indians in an instant, and he must have an iron arm." "Wetzel excels in strength and speed any man, red or white, on the frontier. He can run away from Jonathan, who is as swift as an Indian. He's stronger than any of the other men. I remember one day old Hugh Bennet's wagon wheels stuck in a bog down by the creek. Hugh tried, as several others did, to move the wheels; but they couldn't be made to budge. Along came Wetzel, pushed away the men, and lifted the wagon unaided. It would take hours to tell you about him. In brief, among all the border scouts and hunters Wetzel stands alone. No wonder the Indians fear him. He is as swift as an eagle, strong as mountain-ash, keen as a fox, and absolutely tireless and implacable." "How long have you been here, Colonel Zane?" "More than twelve years, and it has been one long fight." "I'm afraid I'm too late for the fun," said Joe, with his quiet laugh. "Not by about twelve more years," answered Colonel Zane, studying the expression on Joe's face. "When I came out here years ago I had the same adventurous spirit which I see in you. It has been considerably quelled, however. I have seen many a daring young fellow get the border fever, and with it his death. Let me advise you to learn the ways of the hunters; to watch some one skilled in woodcraft. Perhaps Wetzel himself will take you in hand. I don't mind saying that he spoke of you to me in a tone I never heard Lew use before." "He did?" questioned Joe, eagerly, flushing with pleasure. "Do you think he'd take me out? Dare I ask him?" "Don't be impatient. Perhaps I can arrange it. Come over here now to Metzar's place. I want to make you acquainted with him. These boys have all been cutting timber; they've just come in for dinner. Be easy and quiet with them; then you'll get on." Colonel Zane introduced Joe to five sturdy boys and left him in their company. Joe sat down on a log outside a cabin and leisurely surveyed the young men. They all looked about the same: strong without being heavy, light-haired and bronze-faced. In their turn they carefully judged Joe. A newcomer from the East was always regarded with some doubt. If they expected to hear Joe talk much they were mistaken. He appeared good-natured, but not too friendly. "Fine weather we're havin'," said Dick Metzar. "Fine," agreed Joe, laconically. "Like frontier life?" "Sure." A silence ensued after this breaking of the ice. The boys were awaiting their turn at a little wooden bench upon which stood a bucket of water and a basin. "Hear ye got ketched by some Shawnees?" remarked another youth, as he rolled up his shirt-sleeves. They all looked at Joe now. It was not improbably their estimate of him would be greatly influenced by the way he answered this question. "Yes; was captive for three days." "Did ye knock any redskins over?" This question was artfully put to draw Joe out. Above all things, the bordermen detested boastfulness; tried on Joe the ruse failed signally. "I was scared speechless most of the time," answered Joe, with his pleasant smile. "By gosh, I don't blame ye!" burst out Will Metzar. "I hed that experience onct, an' onct's enough." The boys laughed and looked in a more friendly manner at Joe. Though he said he had been frightened, his cool and careless manner belied his words. In Joe's low voice and clear, gray eye there was something potent and magnetic, which subtly influenced those with whom he came in contact. While his new friends were at dinner Joe strolled over to where Colonel Zane sat on the doorstep of his home. "How did you get on with the boys?" inquired the colonel. "All right, I hope. Say, Colonel Zane, I'd like to talk to your Indian guide." Colonel Zane spoke a few words in the Indian language to the guide, who left his post and came over to them. The colonel then had a short conversation with him, at the conclusion of which he pointed toward Joe. "How do--shake," said Tome, extending his hand. Joe smiled, and returned the friendly hand-pressure. "Shawnee--ketch'um?" asked the Indian, in his fairly intelligible English. Joe nodded his head, while Colonel Zane spoke once more in Shawnee, explaining the cause of Silvertip's emnity. "Shawnee--chief--one--bad--Injun," replied Tome, seriously. "Silvertip--mad--thunder-mad. Ketch'um paleface--scalp'um sure." After giving this warning the chief returned to his former position near the corner of the cabin. "He can talk in English fairly well, much better than the Shawnee brave who talked with me the other day," observed Joe. "Some of the Indians speak the language almost fluently," said Colonel Zane. "You could hardly have distinguished Logan's speech from a white man's. Corn-planter uses good English, as also does my brother's wife, a Wyandot girl." "Did your brother marry an Indian?" and Joe plainly showed his surprise. "Indeed he did, and a most beautiful girl she is. I'll tell you Isaac's story some time. He was a captive among the Wyandots for ten years. The chief's daughter, Myeerah, loved him, kept him from being tortured, and finally saved him from the stake." "Well, that floors me," said Joe; "yet I don't see why it should. I'm just surprised. Where is your brother now?" "He lives with the tribe. He and Myeerah are working hard for peace. We are now on more friendly terms with the great Wyandots, or Hurons, as we call them, than ever before." "Who is this big man coming from the the fort?" asked Joe, suddenly observing a stalwart frontiersman approaching. "Major Sam McColloch. You have met him. He's the man who jumped his horse from yonder bluff." "Jonathan and he have the same look, the same swing," observed Joe, as he ran his eye over the major. His faded buckskin costume, beaded, fringed, and laced, was similar to that of the colonel's brother. Powder-flask and bullet-pouch were made from cow-horns and slung around his neck on deerhide strings. The hunting coat was unlaced, exposing, under the long, fringed borders, a tunic of the same well-tanned, but finer and softer, material. As he walked, the flaps of his coat fell back, showing a belt containing two knives, sheathed in heavy buckskin, and a bright tomahawk. He carried a long rifle in the hollow of his arm. "These hunters have the same kind of buckskin suits," continued Joe; "still, it doesn't seem to me the clothes make the resemblance to each other. The way these men stand, walk and act is what strikes me particularly, as in the case of Wetzel." "I know what you mean. The flashing eye, the erect poise of expectation, and the springy step--those, my lad, come from a life spent in the woods. Well, it's a grand way to live." "Colonel, my horse is laid up," said Major McColloch, coming to the steps. He bowed pleasantly to Joe. "So you are going to Short Creek? You can have one of my horses; but first come inside and we'll talk over you expedition." The afternoon passed uneventfully for Joe. His brother and Mr. Wells were absorbed in plans for their future work, and Nell and Kate were resting; therefore he was forced to find such amusement or occupation as was possible in or near the stockade. Chapter IX. Joe went to bed that night with a promise to himself to rise early next morning, for he had been invited to take part in a "raising," which term meant that a new cabin was to be erected, and such task was ever an event in the lives of the settlers. The following morning Joe rose early, dressing himself in a complete buckskin suit, for which he had exchanged his good garments of cloth. Never before had he felt so comfortable. He wanted to hop, skip and jump. The soft, undressed buckskin was as warm and smooth as silk-plush; the weight so light, the moccasins so well-fitting and springy, that he had to put himself under considerable restraint to keep from capering about like a frolicsome colt. The possession of this buckskin outfit, and the rifle and accouterments which went with the bargain, marked the last stage in Joe's surrender to the border fever. The silent, shaded glens, the mystery of the woods, the breath of this wild, free life claimed him from this moment entirely and forever. He met the others, however, with a serene face, showing no trace of the emotion which welled up strongly from his heart. Nell glanced shyly at him; Kate playfully voiced her admiration; Jim met him with a brotherly ridicule which bespoke his affection as well as his amusement; but Colonel Zane, having once yielded to the same burning, riotous craving for freedom which now stirred in the boy's heart, understood, and felt warmly drawn toward the lad. He said nothing, though as he watched Joe his eyes were grave and kind. In his long frontier life, where many a day measured the life and fire of ordinary years, he had seen lad after lad go down before this forest fever. It was well, he thought, because the freedom of the soil depended on these wild, light-footed boys; yet it always made him sad. How many youths, his brother among them, lay under the fragrant pine-needle carpet of the forest, in their last earthly sleep! The "raising" brought out all the settlement--the women to look on and gossip, while the children played; the men to bend their backs in the moving of the heavy timbers. They celebrated the erection of a new cabin as a noteworthy event. As a social function it had a prominent place in the settlers' short list of pleasures. Joe watched the proceeding with the same pleasure and surprise he had felt in everything pertaining to border life. To him this log-raising appeared the hardest kind of labor. Yet it was plain these hardy men, these low-voiced women, and merry children regarded the work as something far more significant than the mere building of a cabin. After a while he understood the meaning of the scene. A kindred spirit, the spirit of the pioneer, drew them all into one large family. This was another cabin; another home; another advance toward the conquering of the wilderness, for which these brave men and women were giving their lives. In the bright-eyed children's glee, when they clapped their little hands at the mounting logs, Joe saw the progress, the march of civilization. "Well, I'm sorry you're to leave us to-night," remarked Colonel Zane to Joe, as the young man came over to where he, his wife, and sister watched the work. "Jonathan said all was ready for your departure at sundown." "Do we travel by night?" "Indeed, yes, my lad. There are Indians everywhere on the river. I think, however, with Jack and Lew handling the paddles, you will slip by safely. The plan is to keep along the south shore all night; then cross over at a place called Girty's Point, where you are to remain in hiding during daylight. From there you paddle up Yellow Creek; then portage across country to the head of the Tuscarwawas. Another night's journey will then bring you to the Village of Peace." Jim and Mr. Wells, with his nieces, joined the party now, and all stood watching as the last logs were put in place. "Colonel Zane, my first log-raising is an education to me," said the young minister, in his earnest manner. "This scene is so full of life. I never saw such goodwill among laboring men. Look at that brawny-armed giant standing on the topmost log. How he whistles as he swings his ax! Mr. Wells, does it not impress you?" "The pioneers must be brothers because of their isolation and peril; to be brothers means to love one another; to love one another is to love God. What you see in this fraternity is God. And I want to see this same beautiful feeling among the Indians." "I have seen it," said Colonel Zane, to the old missionary. "When I came out here alone twelve years ago the Indians were peaceable. If the pioneers had paid for land, as I paid Cornplanter, there would never have been a border war. But no; the settlers must grasp every acre they could. Then the Indians rebelled; then the Girtys and their allies spread discontent, and now the border is a bloody warpath." "Have the Jesuit missionaries accomplished anything with these war tribes?" inquired Jim. "No; their work has been chiefly among the Indians near Detroit and northward. The Hurons, Delawares, Shawnees and other western tribes have been demoralized by the French traders' rum, and incited to fierce hatred by Girty and his renegades. Your work at Gnaddenhutten must be among these hostile tribes, and it is surely a hazardous undertaking." "My life is God's," murmured the old minister. No fear could assail his steadfast faith. "Jim, it strikes me you'd be more likely to impress these Indians Colonel Zane spoke of if you'd get a suit like mine and wear a knife and tomahawk," interposed Joe, cheerfully. "Then, if you couldn't convert, you could scalp them." "Well, well, let us hope for the best," said Colonel Zane, when the laughter had subsided. "We'll go over to dinner now. Come, all of you. Jonathan, bring Wetzel. Betty, make him come, if you can." As the party slowly wended its way toward the colonel's cabin Jim and Nell found themselves side by side. They had not exchanged a word since the evening previous, when Jim had kissed her. Unable to look at each other now, and finding speech difficult, they walked in embarrassed silence. "Doesn't Joe look splendid in his hunting suit?" asked Jim, presently. "I hadn't noticed. Yes; he looks well," replied Nell, carelessly. She was too indifferent to be natural. "Are you angry with him?" "Certainly not." Jim was always simple and frank in his relations with women. He had none of his brother's fluency of speech, with neither confidence, boldness nor understanding of the intricate mazes of a woman's moods. "But--you are angry with--me?" he whispered. Nell flushed to her temples, yet she did not raise her eyes nor reply. "It was a terrible thing for me to do," went on Jim, hesitatingly. "I don't know why I took advantage--of--of your mistaking me for Joe. If you only hadn't held up your mouth. No--I don't mean that--of course you didn't. But--well, I couldn't help it. I'm guilty. I have thought of little else. Some wonderful feeling has possessed me ever since--since---" "What has Joe been saying about me?" demanded Nell, her eyes burning like opals. "Why, hardly anything," answered Jim, haltingly. "I took him to task about--about what I considered might be wrong to you. Joe has never been very careful of young ladies' feelings, and I thought--well, it was none of my business. He said he honestly cared for you, that you had taught him how unworthy he was of a good woman. But he's wrong there. Joe is wild and reckless, yet his heart is a well of gold. He is a diamond in the rough. Just now he is possessed by wild notions of hunting Indians and roaming through the forests; but he'll come round all right. I wish I could tell you how much he has done for me, how much I love him, how I know him! He can be made worthy of any woman. He will outgrow this fiery, daring spirit, and then--won't you help him?" "I will, if he will let me," softly whispered Nell, irresistibly drawn by the strong, earnest love thrilling in his voice. Chapter X. Once more out under the blue-black vault of heaven, with its myriads of twinkling stars, the voyagers resumed their westward journey. Whispered farewells of new but sincere friends lingered in their ears. Now the great looming bulk of the fort above them faded into the obscure darkness, leaving a feeling as if a protector had gone--perhaps forever. Admonished to absolute silence by the stern guides, who seemed indeed to have embarked upon a dark and deadly mission, the voyagers lay back in the canoes and thought and listened. The water eddied with soft gurgles in the wake of the racing canoes; but that musical sound was all they heard. The paddles might have been shadows, for all the splash they made; they cut the water swiftly and noiselessly. Onward the frail barks glided into black space, side by side, close under the overhanging willows. Long moments passed into long hours, as the guides paddled tirelessly as if their sinews were cords of steel. With gray dawn came the careful landing of the canoes, a cold breakfast eaten under cover of a willow thicket, and the beginning of a long day while they were lying hidden from the keen eyes of Indian scouts, waiting for the friendly mantle of night. The hours dragged until once more the canoes were launched, this time not on the broad Ohio, but on a stream that mirrored no shining stars as it flowed still and somber under the dense foliage. The voyagers spoke not, nor whispered, nor scarcely moved, so menacing had become the slow, listening caution of Wetzel and Zane. Snapping of twigs somewhere in the inscrutable darkness delayed them for long moments. Any movement the air might resound with the horrible Indian war-whoop. Every second was heavy with fear. How marvelous that these scouts, penetrating the wilderness of gloom, glided on surely, silently, safely! Instinct, or the eyes of the lynx, guide their course. But another dark night wore on to the tardy dawn, and each of its fearful hours numbered miles past and gone. The sun was rising in ruddy glory when Wetzel ran his canoe into the bank just ahead of a sharp bend in the stream. "Do we get out here?" asked Jim, seeing Jonathan turn his canoe toward Wetzel's. "The village lies yonder, around the bend," answered the guide. "Wetzel cannot go there, so I'll take you all in my canoe." "There's no room; I'll wait," replied Joe, quietly. Jim noted his look--a strange, steady glance it was--and then saw him fix his eyes upon Nell, watching her until the canoe passed around the green-bordered bend in the stream. Unmistakable signs of an Indian town were now evident. Dozens of graceful birchen canoes lay upon the well-cleared banks; a log bridge spanned the stream; above the slight ridge of rising ground could be seen the poles of Indian teepees. As the canoe grated upon the sandy beach a little Indian boy, who was playing in the shallow water, raised his head and smiled. "That's an Indian boy," whispered Kate. "The dear little fellow!" exclaimed Nell. The boy came running up to them, when they were landed, with pleasure and confidence shining in his dusky eyes. Save for tiny buckskin breeches, he was naked, and his shiny skin gleamed gold-bronze in the sunlight. He was a singularly handsome child. "Me--Benny," he lisped in English, holding up his little hand to Nell. The action was as loving and trusting as any that could have been manifested by a white child. Jonathan Zane stared with a curious light in his dark eyes; Mr. Wells and Jim looked as though they doubted the evidence of their own sight. Here, even in an Indian boy, was incontestable proof that the savage nature could be tamed and civilized. With a tender exclamation Nell bent over the child and kissed him. Jonathan Zane swung his canoe up-stream for the purpose of bringing Joe. The trim little bark slipped out of sight round the bend. Presently its gray, curved nose peeped from behind the willows; then the canoe swept into view again. There was only one person in it, and that the guide. "Where is my brother?" asked Jim, in amazement. "Gone," answered Zane, quietly. "Gone! What do you mean? Gone? Perhaps you have missed the spot where you left him." "They're both gone." Nell and Jim gazed at each other with slowly whitening faces. "Come, I'll take you up to the village," said Zane, getting out of his canoe. All noticed that he was careful to take his weapons with him. "Can't you tell us what it means--this disappearance?" asked Jim, his voice low and anxious. "They're gone, canoe and all. I knew Wetzel was going, but I didn't calkilate on the lad. Mebbe he followed Wetzel, mebbe he didn't," answered the taciturn guide, and he spoke no more. In his keen expectation and wonder as to what the village would be like, Jim momentarily forgot his brother's disappearance, and when he arrived at the top of the bank he surveyed the scene with eagerness. What he saw was more imposing than the Village of Peace which he had conjured up in his imagination. Confronting him was a level plain, in the center of which stood a wide, low structure surrounded by log cabins, and these in turn encircled by Indian teepees. A number of large trees, mostly full-foliaged maples, shaded the clearing. The settlement swarmed with Indians. A few shrill halloes uttered by the first observers of the newcomers brought braves, maidens and children trooping toward the party with friendly curiosity. Jonathan Zane stepped before a cabin adjoining the large structure, and called in at the open door. A short, stoop-shouldered white man, clad in faded linsey, appeared on the threshold. His serious, lined face had the unmistakable benevolent aspect peculiar to most teachers of the gospel. "Mr. Zeisberger, I've fetched a party from Fort Henry," said Zane, indicating those he had guided. Then, without another word, never turning his dark face to the right or left, he hurried down the lane through the throng of Indians. Jim remembered, as he saw the guide vanish over the bank of the creek, that he had heard Colonel Zane say that Jonathan, as well as Wetzel, hated the sight of an Indian. No doubt long years of war and bloodshed had rendered these two great hunters callous. To them there could be no discrimination--an Indian was an Indian. "Mr. Wells, welcome to the Village of Peace!" exclaimed Mr. Zeisberger, wringing the old missionary's hand. "The years have not been so long but that I remember you." "Happy, indeed, am I to get here, after all these dark, dangerous journeys," returned Mr. Wells. "I have brought my nieces, Nell and Kate, who were children when you left Williamsburg, and this young man, James Downs, a minister of God, and earnest in his hope for our work." "A glorious work it is! Welcome, young ladies, to our peaceful village. And, young man, I greet you with heartfelt thankfulness. We need young men. Come in, all of your, and share my cabin. I'll have your luggage brought up. I have lived in this hut alone. With some little labor, and the magic touch women bring to the making of a home, we can be most comfortable here." Mr. Zeisberger gave his own room to the girls, assuring them with a smile that it was the most luxurious in the village. The apartment contained a chair, a table, and a bed of Indian blankets and buffalo robes. A few pegs driven in the chinks between the logs completed the furnishings. Sparse as were the comforts, they appealed warmly to the girls, who, weary from their voyage, lay down to rest. "I am not fatigued," said Mr. Wells, to his old friend. "I want to hear all about your work, what you have done, and what you hope to do." "We have met with wonderful success, far beyond our wildest dreams," responded Mr. Zeisberger. "Certainly we have been blessed of God." Then the missionary began a long, detailed account of the Moravian Mission's efforts among the western tribes. The work lay chiefly among the Delawares, a noble nation of redmen, intelligent, and wonderfully susceptible to the teaching of the gospel. Among the eastern Delawares, living on the other side of the Allegheny Mountains, the missionaries had succeeded in converting many; and it was chiefly through the western explorations of Frederick Post that his Church decided the Indians of the west could as well be taught to lead Christian lives. The first attempt to convert the western redmen took place upon the upper Allegheny, where many Indians, including Allemewi, a blind Delaware chief, accepted the faith. The mission decided, however, it would be best to move farther west, where the Delawares had migrated and were more numerous. In April, 1770, more than ten years before, sixteen canoes, filled with converted Indians and missionaries, drifted down the Allegheny to Fort Pitt; thence down the Ohio to the Big Beaver; up that stream and far into the Ohio wilderness. Upon a tributary of the Muskingong, called the Tuscarwawas, a settlement was founded. Near and far the news was circulated. Redmen from all tribes came flocking to the new colony. Chiefs and warriors, squaws and maidens, were attracted by the new doctrine of the converted Indians. They were astonished at the missionaries' teachings. Many doubted, some were converted, all listened. Great excitement prevailed when old Glickhican, one of the wisest chiefs of the Turtle tribe of the Delawares, became a convert to the palefaces' religion. The interest widened, and in a few years a beautiful, prosperous town arose, which was called Village of Peace. The Indians of the warlike tribes bestowed the appropriate name. The vast forests were rich in every variety of game; the deep, swift streams were teeming with fish. Meat and grain in abundance, buckskin for clothing, and soft furs for winter garments were to be had for little labor. At first only a few wigwams were erected. Soon a large log structure was thrown up and used as a church. Then followed a school, a mill, and a workshop. The verdant fields were cultivated and surrounded by rail fences. Horses and cattle grazed with the timid deer on the grassy plains. The Village of Peace blossomed as a rose. The reports of the love and happiness existing in this converted community spread from mouth to mouth, from town to town, with the result that inquisitive savages journeyed from all points to see this haven. Peaceful and hostile Indians were alike amazed at the change in their brethren. The good-fellowship and industry of the converts had a widespread and wonderful influence. More, perhaps, than any other thing, the great fields of waving corn, the hills covered with horses and cattle, those evidences of abundance, impressed the visitors with the well-being of the Christians. Bands of traveling Indians, whether friendly or otherwise, were treated with hospitality, and never sent away empty-handed. They were asked to partake of the abundance and solicited to come again. A feature by no means insignificant in the popularity of the village was the church bell. The Indians loved music, and this bell charmed them. On still nights the savages in distant towns could hear at dusk the deep-toned, mellow notes of the bell summoning the worshipers to the evening service. Its ringing clang, so strange, so sweet, so solemn, breaking the vast dead wilderness quiet, haunted the savage ear as though it were a call from a woodland god. "You have arrived most opportunely," continued Mr. Zeisberger. "Mr. Edwards and Mr. Young are working to establish other missionary posts. Heckewelder is here now in the interest of this branching out." "How long will it take me to learn the Delaware language?" inquired Jim. "Not long. You do not, however, need to speak the Indian tongue, for we have excellent interpreters." "We heard much at Fort Pitt and Fort Henry about the danger, as well as uselessness, of our venture," Jim continued. "The frontiersmen declared that every rod of the way was beset with savage foes, and that, even in the unlikely event of our arriving safely at the Village of Peace, we would then be hemmed in by fierce, vengeful tribes." "Hostile savages abound here, of course; but we do not fear them. We invite them. Our work is to convert the wicked, to teach them to lead good, useful lives. We will succeed." Jim could not help warming to the minister for his unswervable faith, his earnest belief that the work of God could not fail; nevertheless, while he felt no fear and intended to put all his heart in the work, he remembered with disquietude Colonel Zane's warnings. He thought of the wonderful precaution and eternal vigilance of Jonathan and Wetzel--men of all men who most understood Indian craft and cunning. It might well be possible that these good missionaries, wrapped up in saving the souls of these children of the forest, so full of God's teachings as to have little mind for aught else, had no knowledge of the Indian nature beyond what the narrow scope of their work invited. If what these frontiersmen asserted was true, then the ministers' zeal had struck them blind. Jim had a growing idea of the way in which the savages could be best taught. He resolved to go slowly; to study the redmen's natures; not to preach one word of the gospel to them until he had mastered their language and could convey to their simple minds the real truth. He would make Christianity as clear to them as were the deer-trails on the moss and leaves of the forest. "Ah, here you are. I hope you have rested well," said Mr. Zeisberger, when at the conclusion of this long recital Nell and Kate came into the room. "Thank you, we feel much better," answered Kate. The girls certainly looked refreshed. The substitution of clean gowns for their former travel-stained garments made a change that called forth the minister's surprise and admiration. "My! My! Won't Edwards and Young beg me to keep them here now!" he exclaimed, his pleased eyes resting on Nell's piquant beauty and Kate's noble proportions and rich coloring. "Come; I will show you over the Village of Peace." "Are all these Indians Christians?" asked Jim. "No, indeed. These Indians you see here, and out yonder under the shade, though they are friendly, are not Christians. Our converts employ themselves in the fields or shops. Come; take a peep in here. This is where we preach in the evenings and during inclement weather. On pleasant days we use the maple grove yonder." Jim and the others looked in at the door of the large log structure. They saw an immense room, the floor covered with benches, and a raised platform at one end. A few windows let in the light. Spacious and barn-like was this apartment; but undoubtedly, seen through the beaming eyes of the missionary, it was a grand amphitheater for worship. The hard-packed clay floor was velvet carpet; the rude seats soft as eiderdown; the platform with its white-oak cross, an altar of marble and gold. "This is one of our shops," said Mr. Zeisberger, leading them to a cabin. "Here we make brooms, harness for the horses, farming implements--everything useful that we can. We have a forge here. Behold an Indian blacksmith!" The interior of the large cabin presented a scene of bustling activity. Twenty or more Indians bent their backs in earnest employment. In one corner a savage stood holding a piece of red-hot iron on an anvil, while a brawny brave wielded a sledge-hammer. The sparks flew; the anvil rang. In another corner a circle of braves sat around a pile of dried grass and flags. They were twisting and fashioning these materials into baskets. At a bench three Indian carpenters were pounding and sawing. Young braves ran back and forth, carrying pails, rough-hewn boards and blocks of wood. Instantly struck by two things, Jim voiced his curiosity: "Why do these Indians all wear long hair, smooth and shiny, without adornment?" "They are Christians. They wear neither headdress, war-bonnet, nor scalp-lock," replied Mr. Zeisberger, with unconscious pride. "I did not expect to see a blacksmith's anvil out here in the wilderness. Where did you procure these tools?" "We have been years getting them here. Some came by way of the Ohio River; others overland from Detroit. That anvil has a history. It was lost once, and lay for years in the woods, until some Indians found it again. It is called the Ringing Stone, and Indians come from miles around to see and hear it." The missionary pointed out wide fields of corn, now growing yellow, and hillsides doted with browsing cattle, droves of sturdy-limbed horses, and pens of fat, grunting pigs--all of which attested to the growing prosperity of the Village of Peace. On the way back to the cabin, while the others listened to and questioned Mr. Zeisberger, Jim was silent and thoughtful, for his thoughts reverted to his brother. Later, as he walked with Nell by the golden-fringed stream, he spoke of Joe. "Joe wanted so much to hunt with Wetzel. He will come back; surely he will return to us when he has satisfied his wild craving for adventure. Do you not think so?" There was an eagerness that was almost pleading in Jim's voice. What he so much hoped for--that no harm had befallen Joe, and that he would return--he doubted. He needed the encouragement of his hope. "Never," answered Nell, solemnly. "Oh, why--why do you say that?" "I saw him look at you--a strange, intent glance. He gazed long at me as we separated. Oh! I can feel his eyes. No; he will never come back." "Nell, Nell, you do not mean he went away deliberately--because, oh! I cannot say it." "For no reason, except that the wilderness called him more than love for you or--me." "No, no," returned Jim, his face white. "You do not understand. He really loved you--I know it. He loved me, too. Ah, how well! He has gone because--I can't tell you." "Oh, Jim, I hope--he loved--me," sobbed Nell, bursting into tears. "His coldness--his neglect those--last few days--hurt me--so. If he cared--as you say--I won't be--so--miserable." "We are both right--you when you say he will never return, and I when I say he loved us both," said Jim sadly, as the bitter certainty forced itself into his mind. As she sobbed softly, and he gazed with set, stern face into the darkening forest, the deep, mellow notes of the church bell pealed out. So thrilled, so startled were they by this melody wondrously breaking the twilight stillness, that they gazed mutely at each other. Then they remembered. It was the missionary's bell summoning the Christian Indians to the evening service. Chapter XI. The, sultry, drowsy, summer days passed with no untoward event to mar their slumbering tranquillity. Life for the newcomers to the Village of Peace brought a content, the like of which they had never dreamed of. Mr. Wells at once began active work among the Indians, preaching to them through an interpreter; Nell and Kate, in hours apart from household duties, busied themselves brightening their new abode, and Jim entered upon the task of acquainting himself with the modes and habits of the redmen. Truly, the young people might have found perfect happiness in this new and novel life, if only Joe had returned. His disappearance and subsequent absence furnished a theme for many talks and many a quiet hour of dreamy sadness. The fascination of his personality had been so impelling that long after it was withdrawn a charm lingered around everything which reminded them of him; a subtle and sweet memory, with perverse and half bitter persistence, returned hauntingly. No trace of Joe had been seen by any of the friendly Indian runners. He was gone into the mazes of deep-shadowed forests, where to hunt for him would be like striving to trail the flight of a swallow. Two of those he had left behind always remembered him, and in their thoughts followed him in his wanderings. Jim settled down to his study of Indians with single-heartedness of purpose. He spent part of every morning with the interpreters, with whose assistance he rapidly acquired the Delaware language. He went freely among the Indians, endeavoring to win their good-will. There were always fifty to an hundred visiting Indians at the village; sometimes, when the missionaries had advertised a special meeting, there were assembled in the shady maple grove as many as five hundred savages. Jim had, therefore, opportunities to practice his offices of friendliness. Fortunately for him, he at once succeeded in establishing himself in the good graces of Glickhican, the converted Delaware chief. The wise old Indian was of inestimable value to Jim. Early in their acquaintance he evinced an earnest regard for the young minister, and talked with him for hours. From Glickhican Jim learned the real nature of the redmen. The Indian's love of freedom and honor, his hatred of subjection and deceit, as explained by the good old man, recalled to Jim Colonel Zane's estimate of the savage character. Surely, as the colonel had said, the Indians had reason for their hatred of the pioneers. Truly, they were a blighted race. Seldom had the rights of the redmen been thought of. The settler pushed onward, plodding, as it were, behind his plow with a rifle. He regarded the Indian as little better than a beast; he was easier to kill than to tame. How little the settler knew the proud independence, the wisdom, the stainless chastity of honor, which belonged so truly to many Indian chiefs! The redmen were driven like hounded deer into the untrodden wilds. From freemen of the forests, from owners of the great boundless plains, they passed to stern, enduring fugitives on their own lands. Small wonder that they became cruel where once they had been gentle! Stratagem and cunning, the night assault, the daylight ambush took the place of their one-time open warfare. Their chivalrous courage, that sublime inheritance from ancestors who had never known the paleface foe, degenerated into a savage ferocity. Interesting as was this history to Jim, he cared more for Glickhican's rich portrayal of the redmen's domestic life, for the beautiful poetry of his tradition and legends. He heard with delight the exquisite fanciful Indian lore. From these romantic legends, beautiful poems, and marvelous myths he hoped to get ideas of the Indian's religion. Sweet and simple as childless dreams were these quaint tales--tales of how the woodland fairies dwelt in fern-carpeted dells; how at sunrise they came out to kiss open the flowers; how the forest walks were spirit-haunted paths; how the leaves whispered poetry to the winds; how the rocks harbored Indian gods and masters who watched over their chosen ones. Glickhican wound up his long discourses by declaring he had never lied in the whole course of his seventy years, had never stolen, never betrayed, never murdered, never killed, save in self-defence. Gazing at the chief's fine features, now calm, yet showing traces of past storms, Jim believed he spoke the truth. When the young minister came, however, to study the hostile Indians that flocked to the village, any conclusive delineation of character, or any satisfactory analysis of their mental state in regard to the paleface religion, eluded him. Their passive, silent, sphinx-like secretiveness was baffling. Glickhican had taught him how to propitiate the friendly braves, and with these he was successful. Little he learned, however, from the unfriendly ones. When making gifts to these redmen he could never be certain that his offerings were appreciated. The jewels and gold he had brought west with him went to the French traders, who in exchange gave him trinkets, baubles, bracelets and weapons. Jim made hundreds of presents. Boldly going up to befeathered and befringed chieftains, he offered them knives, hatchets, or strings of silvery beads. Sometimes his kindly offerings were repelled with a haughty stare; at other times they would be accepted coldly, suspiciously, as if the gifts brought some unknown obligation. For a white man it was a never-to-be-forgotten experience to see eight or ten of these grim, slowly stepping forest kings, arrayed in all the rich splendor of their costume, stalking among the teepees of the Village of Peace. Somehow, such a procession always made Jim shiver. The singing, praying and preaching they heard unmoved. No emotion was visible on their bronzed faces; nothing changed their unalterable mien. Had they not moved, or gazed with burning eyes, they would have been statues. When these chieftains looked at the converted Indians, some of whom were braves of their nations, the contempt in their glances betrayed that they now regarded these Christian Indians as belonging to an alien race. Among the chiefs Glickhican pointed out to Jim were Wingenund, the Delaware; Tellane, the Half-King; Shingiss and Kotoxen--all of the Wolf tribe of the Delawares. Glickhican was careful to explain that the Delaware nation had been divided into the Wolf and Turtle tribes, the former warlike people, and the latter peaceable. Few of the Wolf tribe had gone over to the new faith, and those who had were scorned. Wingenund, the great power of the Delawares--indeed, the greatest of all the western tribes--maintained a neutral attitude toward the Village of Peace. But it was well known that his right-hand war-chiefs, Pipe and Wishtonah, remained coldly opposed. Jim turned all he had learned over and over in his mind, trying to construct part of it to fit into a sermon that would be different from any the Indians had ever heard. He did not want to preach far over their heads. If possible, he desired to keep to their ideals--for he deemed them more beautiful than his own--and to conduct his teaching along the simple lines of their belief, so that when he stimulated and developed their minds he could pass from what they knew to the unknown Christianity of the white man. His first address to the Indians was made one day during the indisposition of Mr. Wells--who had been over-working himself--and the absence of the other missionaries. He did not consider himself at all ready for preaching, and confined his efforts to simple, earnest talk, a recital of the thoughts he had assimilated while living here among the Indians. Amazement would not have described the state of his feelings when he learned that he had made a powerful impression. The converts were loud in his praise; the unbelievers silent and thoughtful. In spite of himself, long before he had been prepared, he was launched on his teaching. Every day he was called upon to speak; every day one savage, at least, was convinced; every day the throng of interested Indians was augmented. The elder missionaries were quite overcome with joy; they pressed him day after day to speak, until at length he alone preached during the afternoon service. The news flew apace; the Village of Peace entertained more redmen than ever before. Day by day the faith gained a stronger foothold. A kind of religious trance affected some of the converted Indians, and this greatly influenced the doubting ones. Many of them half believed the Great Manitou had come. Heckewelder, the acknowledged leader of the western Moravian Mission, visited the village at this time, and, struck by the young missionary's success, arranged a three days' religious festival. Indian runners were employed to carry invitations to all the tribes. The Wyandots in the west, the Shawnees in the south, and the Delawares in the north were especially requested to come. No deception was practiced to lure the distant savages to the Village of Peace. They were asked to come, partake of the feasts, and listen to the white man's teaching. Chapter XII. "The Groves Were God's First Temples." From dawn until noon on Sunday bands of Indians arrived at the Village of Peace. Hundreds of canoes glided down the swift stream and bumped their prows into the pebbly beach. Groups of mounted warriors rode out of the forests into the clearing; squaws with papooses, maidens carrying wicker baskets, and children playing with rude toys, came trooping along the bridle-paths. Gifts were presented during the morning, after which the visitors were feasted. In the afternoon all assembled in the grove to hear the preaching. The maple grove wherein the service was to be conducted might have been intended by Nature for just such a purpose as it now fulfilled. These trees were large, spreading, and situated far apart. Mossy stones and the thick carpet of grass afforded seats for the congregation. Heckewelder--a tall, spare, and kindly appearing man--directed the arranging of the congregation. He placed the converted Indians just behind the knoll upon which the presiding minister was to stand. In a half circle facing the knoll he seated the chieftains and important personages of the various tribes. He then made a short address in the Indian language, speaking of the work of the mission, what wonders it had accomplished, what more good work it hoped to do, and concluded by introducing the young missionary. While Heckewelder spoke, Jim, who stood just behind, employed the few moments in running his eye over the multitude. The sight which met his gaze was one he thought he would never forget. An involuntary word escaped him. "Magnificent!" he exclaimed. The shady glade had been transformed into a theater, from which gazed a thousand dark, still faces. A thousand eagle plumes waved, and ten thousand bright-hued feathers quivered in the soft breeze. The fantastically dressed scalps presented a contrast to the smooth, unadorned heads of the converted redmen. These proud plumes and defiant feathers told the difference between savage and Christian. In front of the knoll sat fifty chiefs, attentive and dignified. Representatives of every tribe as far west as the Scioto River were numbered in that circle. There were chiefs renowned for war, for cunning, for valor, for wisdom. Their stately presence gave the meeting tenfold importance. Could these chiefs be interested, moved, the whole western world of Indians might be civilized. Hepote, a Maumee chief, of whom it was said he had never listened to words of the paleface, had the central position in this circle. On his right and left, respectively, sat Shaushoto and Pipe, implacable foes of all white men. The latter's aspect did not belie his reputation. His copper-colored, repulsive visage compelled fear; it breathed vindictiveness and malignity. A singular action of his was that he always, in what must have been his arrogant vanity, turned his profile to those who watched him, and it was a remarkable one; it sloped in an oblique line from the top of his forehead to his protruding chin, resembling somewhat the carved bowl of his pipe, which was of flint and a famed inheritance from his ancestors. From it he took his name. One solitary eagle plume, its tip stained vermilion, stuck from his scalp-lock. It slated backward on a line with his profile. Among all these chiefs, striking as they were, the figure of Wingenund, the Delaware, stood out alone. His position was at the extreme left of the circle, where he leaned against a maple. A long, black mantle, trimmed with spotless white, enveloped him. One bronzed arm, circled by a heavy bracelet of gold, held the mantle close about his lofty form. His headdress, which trailed to the ground, was exceedingly beautiful. The eagle plumes were of uniform length and pure white, except the black-pointed tips. At his feet sat his daughter, Whispering Winds. Her maidens were gathered round her. She raised her soft, black eyes, shining with a wondrous light of surprise and expectation, to the young missionary's face. Beyond the circle the Indians were massed together, even beyond the limits of the glade. Under the trees on every side sat warriors astride their steeds; some lounged on the green turf; many reclined in the branches of low-spreading maples. As Jim looked out over the sea of faces he started in surprise. The sudden glance of fiery eyes had impelled his gaze. He recognized Silvertip, the Shawnee chief. The Indian sat motionless on a powerful black horse. Jim started again, for the horse was Joe's thoroughbred, Lance. But Jim had no further time to think of Joe's enemy, for Heckewelder stepped back. Jim took the vacated seat, and, with a far-reaching, resonant voice began his discourse to the Indians. "Chieftains, warriors, maidens, children of the forest, listen, and your ears shall hear no lie. I am come from where the sun rises to tell you of the Great Spirit of the white man. "Many, many moons ago, as many as blades of grass grow on yonder plain, the Great Spirit of whom I shall speak created the world. He made the sparkling lakes and swift rivers, the boundless plains and tangled forests, over which He caused the sun to shine and the rain to fall. He gave life to the kingly elk, the graceful deer, the rolling bison, the bear, the fox--all the beasts and birds and fishes. But He was not content; for nothing He made was perfect in His sight. He created the white man in His own image, and from this first man's rib He created his mate--a woman. He turned them free in a beautiful forest. "Life was fair in the beautiful forest. The sun shone always, the birds sang, the waters flowed with music, the flowers cast sweet fragrance on the air. In this forest, where fruit bloomed always, was one tree, the Tree of Life, the apple of which they must not eat. In all this beautiful forest of abundance this apple alone was forbidden them. "Now evil was born with woman. A serpent tempted her to eat of the apple of Life, and she tempted the man to eat. For their sin the Great Spirit commanded the serpent to crawl forever on his belly, and He drove them from the beautiful forest. The punishment for their sin was to be visited on their children's children, always, until the end of time. The two went afar into the dark forest, to learn to live as best they might. From them all tribes descended. The world is wide. A warrior might run all his days and not reach the setting sun, where tribes of yellow-skins live. He might travel half his days toward the south-wind, where tribes of black-skins abound. People of all colors inhabited the world. They lived in hatred toward one another. They shed each other's blood; they stole each other's lands, gold, and women. They sinned. "Many moons ago the Great Spirit sorrowed to see His chosen tribe, the palefaces, living in ignorance and sin. He sent His only Son to redeem them, and said if they would listen and believe, and teach the other tribes, He would forgive their sin and welcome them to the beautiful forest. "That was moons and moons ago, when the paleface killed his brother for gold and lands, and beat his women slaves to make them plant his corn. The Son of the Great Spirit lifted the cloud from the palefaces' eyes, and they saw and learned. So pleased was the Great Spirit that He made the palefaces wiser and wiser, and master of the world. He bid them go afar to teach the ignorant tribes. "To teach you is why the young paleface journeyed from the rising sun. He wants no lands or power. He has given all that he had. He walks among you without gun or knife. He can gain nothing but the happiness of opening the redmen's eyes. "The Great Spirit of whom I teach and the Great Manitou, your idol, are the same; the happy hunting ground of the Indian and the beautiful forest of the paleface are the same; the paleface and the redman are the same. There is but one Great Spirit, that is God; but one eternal home, that is heaven; but one human being, that is man. "The Indian knows the habits of the beaver; he can follow the paths of the forests; he can guide his canoe through the foaming rapids; he is honest, he is brave, he is great; but he is not wise. His wisdom is clouded with the original sin. He lives in idleness; he paints his face; he makes his squaw labor for him, instead of laboring for her; he kills his brothers. He worships the trees and rocks. If he were wise he would not make gods of the swift arrow and bounding canoe; of the flowering ash and the flaming flint. For these things have not life. In his dreams he sees his arrow speed to the reeling deer; in his dreams he sees his canoe shoot over the crest of shining waves; and in his mind he gives them life. When his eyes are opened he will see they have no spirit. The spirit is in his own heart. It guides the arrow to the running deer, and steers the canoe over the swirling current. The spirit makes him find the untrodden paths, and do brave deeds, and love his children and his honor. It makes him meet his foe face to face, and if he is to die it gives him strength to die--a man. The spirit is what makes him different from the arrow, the canoe, the mountain, and all the birds and beasts. For it is born of the Great Spirit, the creator of all. Him you must worship. "Redmen, this worship is understanding your spirit and teaching it to do good deeds. It is called Christianity. Christianity is love. If you will love the Great Spirit you will love your wives, your children, your brothers, your friends, your foes--you will love the palefaces. No more will you idle in winter and wage wars in summer. You will wear your knife and tomahawk only when you hunt for meat. You will be kind, gentle, loving, virtuous--you will have grown wise. When your days are done you will meet all your loved ones in the beautiful forest. There, where the flowers bloom, the fruits ripen always, where the pleasant water glides and the summer winds whisper sweetly, there peace will dwell forever. "Comrades, be wise, think earnestly. Forget the wicked paleface; for there are many wicked palefaces. They sell the serpent firewater; they lie and steal and kill. These palefaces' eyes are still clouded. If they do not open they will never see the beautiful forest. You have much to forgive, but those who forgive please the Great Spirit; you must give yourselves to love, but those who love are loved; you must work, but those who work are happy. "Behold the Village of Peace! Once it contained few; now there are many. Where once the dark forest shaded the land, see the cabins, the farms, the horses, the cattle! Field on field of waving, golden grain shine there under your eyes. The earth has blossomed abundance. Idling and fighting made not these rich harvests. Belief made love; love made wise eyes; wise eyes saw, and lo! there came plenty. "The proof of love is happiness. These Christian Indians are happy. They are at peace with the redman and the paleface. They till the fields and work in the shops. In days to come cabins and farms and fields of corn will be theirs. They will bring up their children, not to hide in the forest to slay, but to walk hand in hand with the palefaces as equals. "Oh, open your ears! God speaks to you; peace awaits you! Cast the bitterness from your hearts; it is the serpent-poison. While you hate, God shuts His eyes. You are great on the trail, in the council, in war; now be great in forgiveness. Forgive the palefaces who have robbed you of your lands. Then will come peace. If you do not forgive, the war will go on; you will lose lands and homes, to find unmarked graves under the forest leaves. Revenge is sweet; but it is not wise. The price of revenge is blood and life. Root it out of your hearts. Love these Christian Indians; love the missionaries as they love you; love all living creatures. Your days are but few; therefore, cease the the strife. Let us say, 'Brothers, that is God's word, His law; that is love; that is Christianity!' If you will say from your heart, brother, you are a Christian. "Brothers, the paleface teacher beseeches you. Think not of this long, bloody war, of your dishonored dead, of your silenced wigwams, of your nameless graves, of your homeless children. Think of the future. One word from you will make peace over all this broad land. The paleface must honor a Christian. He can steal no Christian's land. All the palefaces, as many as the stars of the great white path, dare not invade the Village of Peace. For God smiles here. Listen to His words: 'Come unto me all that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'" Over the multitude brooded an impressive, solemn silence. Then an aged Delaware chief rose, with a mien of profound thought, and slowly paced before the circle of chiefs. Presently he stopped, turned to the awaiting Indians, and spoke: "Netawatwees is almost persuaded to be a Christian." He resumed his seat. Another interval of penetrating quiet ensued. At length a venerable-looking chieftain got up: "White Eyes hears the rumbling thunder in his ears. The smoke blows from his eyes. White Eyes is the oldest chief of the Lenni-Lenape. His days are many; they are full; they draw near the evening of his life; he rejoices that wisdom is come before his sun is set. "White Eyes believes the young White Father. The ways of the Great Spirit are many as the fluttering leaves; they are strange and secret as the flight of a loon; White Eyes believes the redman's happy hunting grounds need not be forgotten to love the palefaces' God. As a young brave pants and puzzles over his first trail, so the grown warrior feels in his understanding of his God. He gropes blindly through dark ravines. "White Eyes speaks few words to-day, for he is learning wisdom; he bids his people hearken to the voice of the White Father. War is wrong; peace is best. Love is the way to peace. The paleface advances one step nearer his God. He labors for his home; he keeps the peace; he asks but little; he frees his women. That is well. White Eyes has spoken." The old chief slowly advanced toward the Christian Indians. He laid aside his knife and tomahawk, and then his eagle plumes and war-bonnet. Bareheaded, he seated himself among the converted redmen. They began chanting in low, murmuring tones. Amid the breathless silence that followed this act of such great significance, Wingenund advanced toward the knoll with slow, stately step. His dark eye swept the glade with lightning scorn; his glance alone revealed the passion that swayed him. "Wingenund's ears are keen; they have heard a feather fall in the storm; now they hear a soft-voiced thrush. Wingenund thunders to his people, to his friends, to the chiefs of other tribes: 'Do not bury the hatchet!' The young White Father's tongue runs smooth like the gliding brook; it sings as the thrush calls its mate. Listen; but wait, wait! Let time prove his beautiful tale; let the moons go by over the Village of Peace. "Wingenund does not flaunt his wisdom. He has grown old among his warriors; he loves them; he fears for them. The dream of the palefaces' beautiful forest glimmers as the rainbow glows over the laughing falls of the river. The dream of the paleface is too beautiful to come true. In the days of long ago, when Wingenund's forefathers heard not the paleface's ax, they lived in love and happiness such as the young White Father dreams may come again. They waged no wars. A white dove sat in every wigwam. The lands were theirs and they were rich. The paleface came with his leaden death, his burning firewater, his ringing ax, and the glory of the redmen faded forever. "Wingenund seeks not to inflame his braves to anger. He is sick of blood-spilling--not from fear; for Wingenund cannot feel fear. But he asks his people to wait. Remember, the gifts of the paleface ever contained a poisoned arrow. Wingenund's heart is sore. The day of the redman is gone. His sun is setting. Wingenund feels already the gray shades of evening." He stopped one long moment as if to gather breath for his final charge to his listeners. Then with a magnificent gesture he thundered: "Is the Delaware a fool? When Wingenund can cross unarmed to the Big Water he shall change his mind. When Deathwind ceases to blow his bloody trail over the fallen leaves Wingenund will believe." Chapter XIII. As the summer waned, each succeeding day, with its melancholy calm, its changing lights and shades, its cool, damp evening winds, growing more and more suggestive of autumn, the little colony of white people in the Village of Peace led busy, eventful lives. Upwards of fifty Indians, several of them important chiefs, had become converted since the young missionary began preaching. Heckewelder declared that this was a wonderful showing, and if it could be kept up would result in gaining a hold on the Indian tribes which might not be shaken. Heckewelder had succeeded in interesting the savages west of the Village of Peace to the extent of permitting him to establish missionary posts in two other localities--one near Goshhocking, a Delaware town; and one on the Muskingong, the principal river running through central Ohio. He had, with his helpers, Young and Edwards, journeyed from time to time to these points, preaching, making gifts, and soliciting help from chiefs. The most interesting feature, perhaps, of the varied life of the missionary party was a rivalry between Young and Edwards for the elder Miss Wells. Usually Nell's attractiveness appealed more to men than Kate's; however, in this instance, although the sober teachers of the gospel admired Nell's winsome beauty, they fell in love with Kate. The missionaries were both under forty, and good, honest men, devoted to the work which had engrossed them for years. Although they were ardent lovers, certainly they were not picturesque. Two homelier men could hardly have been found. Moreover, the sacrifice of their lives to missionary work had taken them far from the companionship of women of their own race, so that they lacked the ease of manner which women like to see in men. Young and Edwards were awkward, almost uncouth. Embarrassment would not have done justice to their state of feeling while basking in the shine of Kate's quiet smile. They were happy, foolish, and speechless. If Kate shared in the merriment of the others--Heckewelder could not conceal his, and Nell did not try very hard to hide hers--she never allowed a suspicion of it to escape. She kept the easy, even tenor of her life, always kind and gracious in her quaint way, and precisely the same to both her lovers. No doubt she well knew that each possessed, under all his rough exterior, a heart of gold. One day the genial Heckewelder lost, or pretended to lose, his patience. "Say, you worthy gentlemen are becoming ornamental instead of useful. All this changing of coats, trimming of mustaches, and eloquent sighing doesn't seem to have affected the young lady. I've a notion to send you both to Maumee town, one hundred miles away. This young lady is charming, I admit, but if she is to keep on seriously hindering the work of the Moravian Mission I must object. As for that matter, I might try conclusions myself. I'm as young as either of you, and, I flatter myself, much handsomer. You'll have a dangerous rival presently. Settle it! You can't both have her; settle it!" This outburst from their usually kind leader placed the earnest but awkward gentlemen in a terrible plight. On the afternoon following the crisis Heckewelder took Mr. Wells to one of the Indian shops, and Jim and Nell went canoeing. Young and Edwards, after conferring for one long, trying hour, determined on settling the question. Young was a pale, slight man, very homely except when he smiled. His smile not only broke up the plainness of his face, but seemed to chase away a serious shadow, allowing his kindly, gentle spirit to shine through. He was nervous, and had a timid manner. Edwards was his opposite, being a man of robust frame, with a heavy face, and a manner that would have suggested self-confidence in another man. They were true and tried friends. "Dave, I couldn't ask her," said Young, trembling at the very thought. "Besides, there's no hope for me. I know it. That's why I'm afraid, why I don't want to ask her. What'd such a glorious creature see in a poor, puny little thing like me?" "George, you're not over-handsome," admitted Dave, shaking his head. "But you can never tell about women. Sometimes they like even little, insignificant fellows. Don't be too scared about asking her. Besides, it will make it easier for me. You might tell her about me--you know, sort of feel her out, so I'd---" Dave's voice failed him here; but he had said enough, and that was most discouraging to poor George. Dave was so busy screwing up his courage that he forgot all about his friend. "No; I couldn't," gasped George, falling into a chair. He was ghastly pale. "I couldn't ask her to accept me, let alone do another man's wooing. She thinks more of you. She'll accept you." "You really think so?" whispered Dave, nervously. "I know she will. You're such a fine, big figure of a man. She'll take you, and I'll be glad. This fever and fretting has about finished me. When she's yours I'll not be so bad. I'll be happy in your happiness. But, Dave, you'll let me see her occasionally, won't you? Go! Hurry--get it over!" "Yes; we must have it over," replied Dave, getting up with a brave, effort. Truly, if he carried that determined front to his lady-love he would look like a masterful lover. But when he got to the door he did not at all resemble a conqueror. "You're sure she--cares for me?" asked Dave, for the hundredth time. This time, as always, his friend was faithful and convincing. "I know she does. Go--hurry. I tell you I can't stand this any longer," cried George, pushing Dave out of the door. "You won't go--first?" whispered Dave, clinging to the door. "I won't go at all. I couldn't ask her--I don't want her--go! Get out!" Dave started reluctantly toward the adjoining cabin, from the open window of which came the song of the young woman who was responsible for all this trouble. George flung himself on his bed. What a relief to feel it was all over! He lay there with eves shut for hours, as it seemed. After a time Dave came in. George leaped to his feet and saw his friend stumbling over a chair. Somehow, Dave did not look as usual. He seemed changed, or shrunken, and his face wore a discomfited, miserable expression. "Well?" cried George, sharply. Even to his highly excited imagination this did not seem the proper condition for a victorious lover. "She refused--refused me," faltered Dave. "She was very sweet and kind; said something about being my sister--I don't remember just what--but she wouldn't have me." "What did you say to her?" whispered George, a paralyzing hope almost rendering him speechless. "I--I told her everything I could think of," replied Dave, despondently; "even what you said." "What I said? Dave, what did you tell her I said?" "Why, you know--about she cared for me--that you were sure of it, and that you didn't want her---" "Jackass!" roared George, rising out of his meekness like a lion roused from slumber. "Didn't you--say so?" inquired Dave, weakly. "No! No! No! Idiot!" As one possessed, George rushed out of the cabin, and a moment later stood disheveled and frantic before Kate. "Did that fool say I didn't love you?" he demanded. Kate looked up, startled; but as an understanding of George's wild aspect and wilder words dawned upon her, she resumed her usual calm demeanor. Looking again to see if this passionate young man was indeed George, she turned her face as she said: "If you mean Mr. Edwards, yes; I believe he did say as much. Indeed, from his manner, he seemed to have monopolized all the love near the Village of Peace." "But it's not true. I do love you. I love you to distraction. I have loved you ever since I first saw you. I told Dave that. Heckewelder knows it; even the Indians know it," cried George, protesting vehemently against the disparaging allusion to his affections. He did not realize he was making a most impassioned declaration of love. When he was quite out of breath he sat down and wiped his moist brow. A pink bloom tinged Kate's cheeks, and her eyes glowed with a happy light; but George never saw these womanly evidences of pleasure. "Of course I know you don't care for me---" "Did Mr. Edwards tell you so?" asked Kate, glancing up quickly. "Why, yes, he has often said he thought that. Indeed, he always seemed to regard himself as the fortunate object of your affections. I always believed he was." "But it wasn't true." "What?" "It's not true." "What's not true?" "Oh--about my--not caring." "Kate!" cried George, quite overcome with rapture. He fell over two chairs getting to her; but he succeeded, and fell on his knees to kiss her hand. "Foolish boy! It has been you all the time," whispered Kate, with her quiet smile. * * * "Look here, Downs; come to the door. See there," said Heckewelder to Jim. Somewhat surprised at Heckewelder's grave tone, Jim got up from the supper-table and looked out of the door. He saw two tall Indians pacing to and fro under the maples. It was still early twilight and light enough to see clearly. One Indian was almost naked; the lithe, graceful symmetry of his dark figure standing out in sharp contrast to the gaunt, gaudily-costumed form of the other. "Silvertip! Girty!" exclaimed Jim, in a low voice. "Girty I knew, of course; but I was not sure the other was the Shawnee who captured you and your brother," replied Heckewelder, drawing Jim into another room. "What do they mean by loitering around the village? Inquired Jim, apprehensively. Whenever he heard Girty's name mentioned, or even thought of him, he remembered with a shudder the renegade's allusion to the buzzards. Jim never saw one of these carrion birds soaring overhead but his thoughts instantly reverted to the frontier ruffian and his horrible craving. "I don't know," answered Heckewelder. "Girty has been here several times of late. I saw him conferring with Pipe at Goshhocking. I hope there's no deviltry afoot. Pipe is a relentless enemy of all Christians, and Girty is a fiend, a hyena. I think, perhaps, it will be well for you and the girls to stay indoors while Girty and Silvertip are in the village." That evening the entire missionary party were gathered in Mr. Wells' room. Heckewelder told stories of Indian life; Nell sang several songs, and Kate told many amusing things said and done by the little Indian boys in her class at the school. Thus the evening passed pleasantly for all. "So next Wednesday I am to perform the great ceremony," remarked Heckewelder, laying his hand kindly on Young's knee. "We'll celebrate the first white wedding in the Village of Peace." Young looked shyly down at his boots; Edwards crossed one leg over the other, and coughed loudly to hide his embarrassment. Kate wore, as usual, her pensive smile; Nell's eyes twinkled, and she was about to speak, when Heckewelder's quizzical glance in her direction made her lips mute. "I hope I'll have another wedding on my hands soon," he said placidly. This ordinary remark had an extraordinary effect. Nell turned with burning cheeks and looked out of the window. Jim frowned fiercely and bit his lips. Edwards began to laugh, and even Mr. Wells' serious face lapsed into a smile. "I mean I've picked out a nice little Delaware squaw for Dave," said Heckewelder, seeing his badinage had somehow gone amiss. "Oh-h!" suddenly cried Nell, in shuddering tones. They all gazed at her in amazement. Every vestige of color had receded from her face, leaving it marblelike. Her eves were fixed in startled horror. Suddenly she relaxed her grasp on the windowsill and fell back limp and senseless. Heckewelder ran to the door to look out, while the others bent over the unconscious girl, endeavoring to revive her. Presently a fluttering breath and a quivering of her dark lashes noted a return of suspended life. Then her beautiful eyes opened wide to gaze with wonder and fear into the grave faces bent so anxiously over her. "Nell, dearest, you are safe. What was it? What frightened you so?" said Kate, tenderly. "Oh, it was fearful!" gasped Nell, sitting up. She clung to her sister with one hand, while the other grasped Jim's sleeve. "I was looking out into the dark, when suddenly I beheld a face, a terrible face!" cried Nell. Those who watched her marveled at the shrinking, awful fear in her eyes. "It was right by the window. I could have touched it. Such a greedy, wolfish face, with a long, hooked nose! The eyes, oh! the eyes! I'll never forget them. They made me sick; they paralyzed me. It wasn't an Indian's face. It belonged to that white man, that awful white man! I never saw him before; but I knew him." "Girty!" said Heckewelder, who had come in with his quiet step. "He looked in at the window. Calm yourself, Nellie. The renegade has gone." The incident worried them all at the time, and made Nell nervous for several days; but as Girty had disappeared, and nothing more was heard of him, gradually they forgot. Kate's wedding day dawned with all the little party well and happy. Early in the afternoon Jim and Nell, accompanied by Kate and her lover, started out into the woods just beyond the clearing for the purpose of gathering wild flowers to decorate the cabin. "We are both thinking of--him," Jim said, after he and Nell had walked some little way in silence. "Yes," answered Nell, simply. "I hope--I pray Joe comes back, but if he doesn't--Nell--won't you care a little for me?" He received no answer. But Nell turned her face away. "We both loved him. If he's gone forever our very love for him should bring us together. I know--I know he would have wished that." "Jim, don't speak of love to me now," she whispered. Then she turned to the others. "Come quickly; here are great clusters of wild clematis and goldenrod. How lovely! Let us gather a quantity." The young men had almost buried the girls under huge masses of the beautiful flowers, when the soft tread of moccasined feet caused them all to turn in surprise. Six savages stood waist-deep in the bushes, where they had lain concealed. Fierce, painted visages scowled from behind leveled rifles. "Don't yell!" cried a hoarse voice in English. Following the voice came a snapping of twigs, and then two other figures came into view. They were Girty and Silvertip. "Don't yell, er I'll leave you layin' here fer the buzzards," said the renegade. He stepped forward and grasped Young, at the same time speaking in the Indian language and pointing to a nearby tree. Strange to relate, the renegade apparently wanted no bloodshed. While one of the savages began to tie Young to the tree, Girty turned his gaze on the girls. His little, yellow eyes glinted; he stroked his chin with a bony hand, and his dark, repulsive face was wreathed in a terrible, meaning smile. "I've been layin' fer you," he croaked, eyeing Nell. "Ye're the purtiest lass, 'ceptin' mebbe Bet Zane, I ever seed on the border. I got cheated outen her, but I've got you; arter I feed yer Injun preacher to ther buzzards mebbe ye'll larn to love me." Nell gazed one instant into the monster's face. Her terror-stricken eyes were piteous to behold. She tried to speak; but her voice failed. Then, like stricken bird, she fell on the grass. Chapter XIV. Not many miles from the Village of Peace rose an irregular chain of hills, the first faint indications of the grand Appalachian Mountain system. These ridges were thickly wooded with white oak, poplar and hickory, among which a sentinel pine reared here and there its evergreen head. There were clefts in the hills, passes lined by gray-stoned cliffs, below which ran clear brooks, tumbling over rocks in a hurry to meet their majestic father, the Ohio. One of these valleys, so narrow that the sun seldom brightened the merry brook, made a deep cut in the rocks. The head of this valley tapered until the walls nearly met; it seemed to lose itself in the shade of fern-faced cliffs, shadowed as they were by fir trees leaning over the brink, as though to search for secrets of the ravine. So deep and dark and cool was this sequestered nook that here late summer had not dislodged early spring. Everywhere was a soft, fresh, bright green. The old gray cliffs were festooned with ferns, lichens and moss. Under a great, shelving rock, damp and stained by the copper-colored water dripping down its side, was a dewy dell into which the sunshine had never peeped. Here the swift brook tarried lovingly, making a wide turn under the cliff, as though loth to leave this quiet nook, and then leaped once more to enthusiasm in its murmuring flight. Life abounded in this wild, beautiful, almost inaccessible spot. Little brown and yellow birds flitted among the trees; thrushes ran along the leaf-strewn ground; orioles sang their melancholy notes; robins and flickers darted beneath the spreading branches. Squirrels scurried over the leaves like little whirlwinds, and leaped daringly from the swinging branches or barked noisily from woody perches. Rabbits hopped inquisitively here and there while nibbling at the tender shoots of sassafras and laurel. Along this flower-skirted stream a tall young man, carrying a rifle cautiously stepped, peering into the branches overhead. A gray flash shot along a limb of a white oak; then the bushy tail of a squirrel flitted into a well-protected notch, from whence, no doubt, a keen little eye watched the hunter's every movement. The rifle was raised; then lowered. The hunter walked around the tree. Presently up in the tree top, snug under a knotty limb, he spied a little ball of gray fur. Grasping a branch of underbush, he shook it vigorously. The thrashing sound worried the gray squirrel, for he slipped from his retreat and stuck his nose over the limb. CRACK! With a scratching and tearing of bark the squirrel loosened his hold and then fell; alighting with a thump. As the hunter picked up his quarry a streak of sunshine glinting through the tree top brightened his face. The hunter was Joe. He was satisfied now, for after stowing the squirrel in the pocket of his hunting coat he shouldered his rifle and went back up the ravine. Presently a dull roar sounded above the babble of the brook. It grew louder as he threaded his way carefully over the stones. Spots of white foam flecked the brook. Passing under the gray, stained cliff, Joe turned around a rocky corner, and came to an abrupt end of the ravine. A waterfall marked the spot where the brook entered. The water was brown as it took the leap, light green when it thinned out; and below, as it dashed on the stones, it became a beautiful, sheeny white. Upon a flat rock, so near the cascade that spray flew over him, sat another hunter. The roaring falls drowned all other sounds, yet the man roused from his dreamy contemplation of the waterfall when Joe rounded the corner. "I heerd four shots," he said, as Joe came up. "Yes; I got a squirrel for every shot." Wetzel led the way along a narrow foot trail which gradually wound toward the top of the ravine. This path emerged presently, some distance above the falls, on the brink of a bluff. It ran along the edge of the precipice a few yards, then took a course back into densely wooded thickets. Just before stepping out on the open cliff Wetzel paused and peered keenly on all sides. There was no living thing to be seen; the silence was the deep, unbroken calm of the wilderness. Wetzel stepped to the bluff and looked over. The stony wall opposite was only thirty feet away, and somewhat lower. From Wetzel's action it appeared as if he intended to leap the fissure. In truth, many a band of Indians pursuing the hunter into this rocky fastness had come out on the bluff, and, marveling at what they thought Wetzel's prowess, believed he had made a wonderful leap, thus eluding them. But he had never attempted that leap, first, because he knew it was well-nigh impossible, and secondly, there had never been any necessity for such risk. Any one leaning over this cliff would have observed, perhaps ten feet below, a narrow ledge projecting from the face of the rock. He would have imagined if he were to drop on that ledge there would be no way to get off and he would be in a worse predicament. Without a moment's hesitation Wetzel swung himself over the ledge. Joe followed suit. At one end of this lower ledge grew a hardy shrub of the ironwood species, and above it a scrub pine leaned horizontally out over the ravine. Laying his rifle down, Wetzel grasped a strong root and cautiously slid over the side. When all of his body had disappeared, with the exception of his sinewy fingers, they loosened their hold on the root, grasped the rifle, and dragged it down out of sight. Quietly, with similar caution, Joe took hold of the same root, let himself down, and when at full length swung himself in under the ledge. His feet found a pocket in the cliff. Letting go of the root, he took his rifle, and in another second was safe. Of all Wetzel's retreats--for he had many--he considered this one the safest. The cavern under the ledge he had discovered by accident. One day, being hotly pursued by Shawnees, he had been headed off on this cliff, and had let himself down on the ledge, intending to drop from it to the tops of the trees below. Taking advantage of every little aid, he hung over by means of the shrub, and was in the act of leaping when he saw that the cliff shelved under the ledge, while within reach of his feet was the entrance to a cavern. He found the cave to be small with an opening at the back into a split in the rock. Evidently the place had been entered from the rear by bears, who used the hole for winter sleeping quarters. By crawling on his hands and knees, Wetzel found the rear opening. Thus he had established a hiding place where it was almost impossible to locate him. He provisioned his retreat, which he always entered by the cliff and left by the rear. An evidence of Wetzel's strange nature, and of his love for this wild home, manifested itself when he bound Joe to secrecy. It was unlikely, even if the young man ever did get safely out of the wilderness, that any stories he might relate would reveal the hunter's favorite rendezvous. But Wetzel seriously demanded this secrecy, as earnestly as if the forest were full of Indians and white men, all prowling in search of his burrow. Joe was in the seventh heaven of delight, and took to the free life as a wild gosling takes to the water. No place had ever appealed to him as did this dark, silent hole far up on the side of a steep cliff. His interest in Wetzel soon passed into a great admiration, and from that deepened to love. This afternoon, when they were satisfied that all was well within their refuge, Joe laid aside his rifle, and, whistling softly, began to prepare supper. The back part of the cave permitted him to stand erect, and was large enough for comparative comfort. There was a neat, little stone fireplace, and several cooking utensils and gourds. From time to time Wetzel had brought these things. A pile of wood and a bundle of pine cones lay in one corner. Haunches of dried beef, bear and buffalo meat hung from pegs; a bag of parched corn, another of dried apples lay on a rocky shelf. Nearby hung a powder-horn filled with salt and pepper. In the cleft back of the cave was a spring of clear, cold water. The wants of woodsmen are few and simple. Joe and Wetzel, with appetites whetted by their stirring outdoor life, relished the frugal fare as they could never have enjoyed a feast. As the shadows of evening entered the cave, they lighted their pipes to partake of the hunter's sweetest solace, a quiet smoke. Strange as it may appear, this lonely, stern Indian-hunter and the reckless, impulsive boy were admirably suited for companionship. Wetzel had taken a liking to the young man when he led the brothers to Fort Henry. Subsequent events strengthened his liking, and now, many days after, Joe having followed him into the forest, a strong attachment had been insensibly forged between them. Wetzel understood Joe's burning desire to roam the forests; but he half expected the lad would soon grow tired of this roving life, but exactly the opposite symptoms were displayed. The hunter had intended to take his comrade on a hunting trip, and to return with him, after that was over, to Fort Henry. They had now been in the woods for weeks and every day in some way had Joe showed his mettle. Wetzel finally admitted him into the secrets of his most cherished hiding place. He did not want to hurt the lad's feelings by taking him back to the settlement; he could not send him back. So the days wore on swiftly; full of heart-satisfying incident and life, with man and boy growing closer in an intimacy that was as warm as it was unusual. Two reasons might account for this: First, there is no sane human being who is not better off for companionship. An exile would find something of happiness in one who shared his misery. And, secondly, Joe was a most acceptable comrade, even for a slayer of Indians. Wedded as Wetzel was to the forest trails, to his lonely life, to the Nemesis-pursuit he had followed for eighteen long years, he was still a white man, kind and gentle in his quiet hours, and because of this, though he knew it not, still capable of affection. He had never known youth; his manhood had been one pitiless warfare against his sworn foes; but once in all those years had his sore, cold heart warmed; and that was toward a woman who was not for him. His life had held only one purpose--a bloody one. Yet the man had a heart, and he could not prevent it from responding to another. In his simple ignorance he rebelled against this affection for anything other than his forest homes. Man is weak against hate; what can he avail against love? The dark caverns of Wetzel's great heart opened, admitting to their gloomy depths this stranger. So now a new love was born in that cheerless heart, where for so long a lonely inmate, the ghost of old love, had dwelt in chill seclusion. The feeling of comradeship which Wetzel had for Joe was something altogether new in the hunter's life. True he had hunted with Jonathan Zane, and accompanied expeditions where he was forced to sleep with another scout; but a companion, not to say friend, he had never known. Joe was a boy, wilder than an eagle, yet he was a man. He was happy and enthusiastic, still his good spirits never jarred on the hunter; they were restrained. He never asked questions, as would seem the case in any eager lad; he waited until he was spoken to. He was apt; he never forgot anything; he had the eye of a born woodsman, and lastly, perhaps what went far with Wetzel, he was as strong and supple as a young lynx, and absolutely fearless. On this evening Wetzel and Joe followed their usual custom; they smoked a while before lying down to sleep. Tonight the hunter was even more silent than usual, and the lad, tired out with his day's tramp, lay down on a bed of fragrant boughs. Wetzel sat there in the gathering gloom while he pulled slowly on his pipe. The evening was very quiet; the birds had ceased their twittering; the wind had died away; it was too early for the bay of a wolf, the wail of a panther, or hoot of an owl; there was simply perfect silence. The lad's deep, even breathing caught Wetzel's ear, and he found himself meditating, as he had often of late, on this new something that had crept into his life. For Joe loved him; he could not fail to see that. The lad had preferred to roam with the lonely Indian-hunter through the forests, to encounter the perils and hardships of a wild life, rather than accept the smile of fortune and of love. Wetzel knew that Colonel Zane had taken a liking to the boy, and had offered him work and a home; and, also, the hunter remembered the warm light he had seen in Nell's hazel eyes. Musing thus, the man felt stir in his heart an emotion so long absent that it was unfamiliar. The Avenger forgot, for a moment his brooding plans. He felt strangely softened. When he laid his head on the rude pillow it was with some sense of gladness that, although he had always desired a lonely life, and wanted to pass it in the fulfillment of his vow, his loneliness was now shared by a lad who loved him. Joe was awakened by the merry chirp of a chipmunk that every morning ran along the seamy side of the opposite wall of the gorge. Getting up, he went to the back of the cave, where he found Wetzel combing out his long hair. The lad thrust his hands into the cold pool, and bathed his face. The water was icy cold, and sent an invigorating thrill through him. Then he laughed as he took a rude comb Wetzel handed to him. "My scalp is nothing to make an Indian very covetous, is it?" said he, eyeing in admiration the magnificent black hair that fell over the hunter's shoulders. "It'll grow," answered Wetzel. Joe did not wonder at the care Wetzel took of his hair, nor did he misunderstand the hunter's simple pride. Wetzel was very careful of his rifle, he was neat and clean about his person, he brushed his buckskin costume, he polished his knife and tomahawk; but his hair received more attention than all else. It required much care. When combed out it reached fully to his knees. Joe had seen him, after he returned from a long hunt, work patiently for an hour with his wooden comb, and not stop until every little burr was gone, or tangle smoothed out. Then he would comb it again in the morning--this, of course, when time permitted--and twist and tie it up so as to offer small resistance to his slipping through the underbush. Joe knew the hunter's simplicity was such, that if he cut off his hair it would seem he feared the Indians--for that streaming black hair the Indians had long coveted and sworn to take. It would make any brave a famous chief, and was the theme of many a savage war tale. After breakfast Wetzel said to Joe: "You stay here, an' I'll look round some; mebbe I'll come back soon, and we'll go out an' kill a buffalo. Injuns sometimes foller up a buffalo trail, an' I want to be sure none of the varlets are chasin' that herd we saw to-day." Wetzel left the cave by the rear. It took him fifteen minutes to crawl to the head of the tortuous, stony passage. Lifting the stone which closed up the aperture, he looked out and listened. Then, rising, he replaced the stone, and passed down the wooded hillside. It was a beautiful morning; the dew glistened on the green leaves, the sun shone bright and warm, the birds warbled in the trees. The hunter's moccasins pressed so gently on the moss and leaves that they made no more sound than the soft foot of a panther. His trained ear was alert to catch any unfamiliar noise; his keen eyes sought first the remoter open glades and glens, then bent their gaze on the mossy bluff beneath his feet. Fox squirrels dashed from before him into bushy retreats; grouse whirred away into the thickets; startled deer whistled, and loped off with their white-flags upraised. Wetzel knew from the action of these denizens of the woods that he was the only creature, not native to these haunts, who had disturbed them this morning. Otherwise the deer would not have been grazing, but lying low in some close thicket; fox squirrels seldom or never were disturbed by a hunter twice in one day, for after being frightened these little animals, wilder and shyer than gray squirrels, remained hidden for hours, and grouse that have been flushed a little while before, always get up unusually quick, and fly very far before alighting. Wetzel circled back over the hill, took a long survey from a rocky eminence, and then reconnoitered the lowland for several miles. He located the herd of buffalo, and satisfying himself there were no Indians near--for the bison were grazing quietly--he returned to the cave. A soft whistle into the back door of the rocky home told Joe that the hunter was waiting. "Coast clear?" whispered the lad, thrusting his head out of the entrance. His gray eyes gleamed brightly, showing his eager spirit. The hunter nodded, and, throwing his rifle in the hollow of his arm, proceeded down the hill. Joe followed closely, endeavoring, as Wetzel had trained him, to make each step precisely in the hunter's footprints. The lad had soon learned to step nimbly and softly as a cat. When half way down the bill Wetzel paused. "See anythin'?" he whispered. Joe glanced on all sides. Many mistakes had taught him to be cautious. He had learned from experience that for every woodland creature he saw, there were ten watching his every move. Just now he could not see even a little red squirrel. Everywhere were sturdy hickory and oak trees, thickets and hazelnuts, slender ash saplings, and, in the open glades, patches of sumach. Rotting trees lay on the ground, while ferns nodded long, slender heads over the fallen monarchs. Joe could make out nothing but the colors of the woods, the gray of the tree trunks, and, in the openings through the forest-green, the dead purple haze of forests farther on. He smiled, and, shaking his head at the hunter, by his action admitted failure. "Try again. Dead ahead," whispered Wetzel. Joe bent a direct gaze on the clump of sassafras one hundred feet ahead. He searched the open places, the shadows--even the branches. Then he turned his eyes slowly to the right. Whatever was discernible to human vision he studied intently. Suddenly his eye became fixed on a small object protruding from behind a beech tree. It was pointed, and in color darker than the gray bark of the beech. It had been a very easy matter to pass over this little thing; but now that the lad saw it, he knew to what it belonged. "That's a buck's ear," he replied. Hardly had he finished speaking when Wetzel intentionally snapped a twig. There was a crash and commotion in the thicket; branches moved and small saplings waved; then out into the open glade bounded a large buck with a whistle of alarm. Throwing his rifle to a level, Joe was trying to cover the bounding deer, when the hunter struck up his piece. "Lad, don't kill fer the sake of killin," he said, quietly. "We have plenty of venison. We'll go arter a buffalo. I hev a hankerin' fer a good rump steak." Half an hour later, the hunters emerged from the forest into a wide plain of waving grass. It was a kind of oval valley, encircled by hills, and had been at one time, perhaps, covered with water. Joe saw a herd of large animals browsing, like cattle, in a meadow. His heart beat high, for until that moment the only buffalo he had seen were the few which stood on the river banks as the raft passed down the Ohio. He would surely get a shot at one of these huge fellows. Wetzel bade Joe do exactly as he did, whereupon he dropped on his hands and knees and began to crawl through the long grass. This was easy for the hunter, but very hard for the lad to accomplish. Still, he managed to keep his comrade in sight, which was a matter for congratulation, because the man crawled as fast as he walked. At length, after what to Joe seemed a very long time, the hunter paused. "Are we near enough?" whispered Joe, breathlessly. "Nope. We're just circlin' on 'em. The wind's not right, an' I'm afeered they'll get our scent." Wetzel rose carefully and peeped over the top of the grass; then, dropping on all fours, he resumed the advance. He paused again, presently and waited for Joe to come up. "See here, young fellar, remember, never hurry unless the bizness calls fer speed, an' then act like lightnin'." Thus admonishing the eager lad, Wetzel continued to crawl. It was easy for him. Joe wondered how those wide shoulders got between the weeds and grasses without breaking, or, at least, shaking them. But so it was. "Flat now," whispered Wetzel, putting his broad hand on Joe's back and pressing him down. "Now's yer time fer good practice. Trail yer rifle over yer back--if yer careful it won't slide off--an' reach out far with one arm an' dig yer fingers in deep. Then pull yerself forrard." Wetzel slipped through the grass like a huge buckskin snake. His long, lithe body wormed its way among the reeds. But for Joe, even with the advantage of having the hunter's trail to follow, it was difficult work. The dry reeds broke under him, and the stalks of saw-grass shook. He worked persistently at it, learning all the while, and improving with every rod. He was surprised to hear a swish, followed by a dull blow on the ground. Raising his head, he looked forward. He saw the hunter wipe his tomahawk on the grass. "Snake," whispered Wetzel. Joe saw a huge blacksnake squirming in the grass. Its head had been severed. He caught glimpses of other snakes gliding away, and glossy round moles darting into their holes. A gray rabbit started off with a leap. "We're near enough," whispered Wetzel, stopping behind a bush. He rose and surveyed the plain; then motioned Joe to look. Joe raised himself on his knees. As his gaze reached the level of the grassy plain his heart leaped. Not fifty yards away was a great, shaggy, black buffalo. He was the king of the herd; but ill at ease, for he pawed the grass and shook his huge head. Near him were several cows and a half-grown calf. Beyond was the main herd, extending as far as Joe could see--a great sea of black humps! The lad breathed hard as he took in the grand sight. "Pick out the little fellar--the reddish-brown one--an' plug him behind the shoulder. Shoot close now, fer if we miss, mebbe I can't hit one, because I'm not used to shootin' at sich small marks." Wetzel's rare smile lighted up his dark face. Probably he could have shot a fly off the horn of the bull, if one of the big flies or bees, plainly visible as they swirled around the huge head, had alighted there. Joe slowly raised his rifle. He had covered the calf, and was about to pull the trigger, when, with a sagacity far beyond his experience as hunter, he whispered to Wetzel: "If I fire they may run toward us." "Nope; they'll run away," answered Wetzel, thinking the lad was as keen as an Indian. Joe quickly covered the calf again, and pulled the trigger. Bellowing loud the big bull dashed off. The herd swung around toward the west, and soon were galloping off with a lumbering roar. The shaggy humps bobbed up and down like hot, angry waves on a storm-blackened sea. Upon going forward, Wetzel and Joe found the calf lying dead in the grass. "You might hev did better'n that," remarked the hunter, as he saw where the bullet had struck. "You went a little too fer back, but mebbe thet was 'cause the calf stepped as you shot." Chapter XV. So the days passed swiftly, dreamily, each one bringing Joe a keener delight. In a single month he was as good a woodsman as many pioneers who had passed years on the border, for he had the advantage of a teacher whose woodcraft was incomparable. Besides, he was naturally quick in learning, and with all his interest centered upon forest lore, it was no wonder he assimilated much of Wetzel's knowledge. He was ever willing to undertake anything whereby he might learn. Often when they were miles away in the dense forest, far from their cave, he asked Wetzel to let him try to lead the way back to camp. And he never failed once, though many times he got off a straight course, thereby missing the easy travelling. Joe did wonderfully well, but he lacked, as nearly all white men do, the subtler, intuitive forest-instinct, which makes the Indian as much at home in the woods as in his teepee. Wetzel had this developed to a high degree. It was born in him. Years of training, years of passionate, unrelenting search for Indians, had given him a knowledge of the wilds that was incomprehensible to white men, and appalling to his red foes. Joe saw how Wetzel used this ability, but what it really was baffled him. He realized that words were not adequate to explain fully this great art. Its possession required a marvelously keen vision, an eye perfectly familiar with every creature, tree, rock, shrub and thing belonging in the forest; an eye so quick in flight as to detect instantly the slightest change in nature, or anything unnatural to that environment. The hearing must be delicate, like that of a deer, and the finer it is, the keener will be the woodsman. Lastly, there is the feeling that prompts the old hunter to say: "No game to-day." It is something in him that speaks when, as he sees a night-hawk circling low near the ground, he says: "A storm to-morrow." It is what makes an Indian at home in any wilderness. The clouds may hide the guiding star; the northing may be lost; there may be no moss on the trees, or difference in their bark; the ridges may be flat or lost altogether, and there may be no water-courses; yet the Indian brave always goes for his teepee, straight as a crow flies. It was this voice which rightly bade Wetzel, when he was baffled by an Indian's trail fading among the rocks, to cross, or circle, or advance in the direction taken by his wily foe. Joe had practiced trailing deer and other hoofed game, until he was true as a hound. Then he began to perfect himself in the art of following a human being through the forest. Except a few old Indian trails, which the rain had half obliterated, he had no tracks to discover save Wetzel's, and these were as hard to find as the airy course of a grosbeak. On soft ground or marshy grass, which Wetzel avoided where he could, he left a faint trail, but on a hard surface, for all the traces he left, he might as well not have gone over the ground at all. Joe's persistence stood him in good stead; he hung on, and the more he failed, the harder he tried. Often he would slip out of the cave after Wetzel had gone, and try to find which way he had taken. In brief, the lad became a fine marksman, a good hunter, and a close, persevering student of the wilderness. He loved the woods, and all they contained. He learned the habits of the wild creatures. Each deer, each squirrel, each grouse that he killed, taught him some lesson. He was always up with the lark to watch the sun rise red and grand over the eastern hills, and chase away the white mist from the valleys. Even if he was not hunting, or roaming the woods, if it was necessary for him to lie low in camp awaiting Wetzel's return, he was always content. Many hours he idled away lying on his back, with the west wind blowing softly over him, his eye on the distant hills, where the cloud shadows swept across with slow, majestic movement, like huge ships at sea. If Wetzel and Joe were far distant from the cave, as was often the case, they made camp in the open woods, and it was here that Joe's contentment was fullest. Twilight shades stealing down over the camp-fire; the cheery glow of red embers; the crackling of dry stocks; the sweet smell of wood smoke, all had for the lad a subtle, potent charm. The hunter would broil a venison steak, or a partridge, on the coals. Then they would light their pipes and smoke while twilight deepened. The oppressive stillness of the early evening hour always brought to the younger man a sensation of awe. At first he attributed this to the fact that he was new to this life; however, as the days passed and the emotion remained, nay, grew stronger, he concluded it was imparted by this close communion with nature. Deep solemn, tranquil, the gloaming hour brought him no ordinary fullness of joy and clearness of perception. "Do you ever feel this stillness?" he asked Wetzel one evening, as they sat near their flickering fire. The hunter puffed his pipe, and, like an Indian, seemed to let the question take deep root. "I've scalped redskins every hour in the day, 'ceptin' twilight," he replied. Joe wondered no longer whether the hunter was too hardened to feel this beautiful tranquillity. That hour which wooed Wetzel from his implacable pursuit was indeed a bewitching one. There was never a time, when Joe lay alone in camp waiting for Wetzel, that he did not hope the hunter would return with information of Indians. The man never talked about the savages, and if he spoke at all it was to tell of some incident of his day's travel. One evening he came back with a large black fox that he had killed. "What beautiful, glossy fur!" said Joe. "I never saw a black fox before." "I've been layin' fer this fellar some time," replied Wetzel, as he began his first evening task, that of combing his hair. "Jest back here in a clump of cottonwoods there's a holler log full of leaves. Happenin' to see a blacksnake sneakin' round, I thought mebbe he was up to somethin', so I investigated, an' found a nest full of young rabbits. I killed the snake, an' arter that took an interest in 'em. Every time I passed I'd look in at the bunnies, an' each time I seen signs that some tarnal varmint had been prowlin' round. One day I missed a bunny, an' next day another; so on until only one was left, a peart white and gray little scamp. Somethin' was stealin' of 'em, an' it made me mad. So yistidday an' to-day I watched, an' finally I plugged this black thief. Yes, he's got a glossy coat; but he's a bad un fer all his fine looks. These black foxes are bigger, stronger an' cunniner than red ones. In every litter you'll find a dark one, the black sheep of the family. Because he grows so much faster, an' steals all the food from the others, the mother jest takes him by the nape of the neck an' chucks him out in the world to shift fer hisself. An' it's a good thing." The next day Wetzel told Joe they would go across country to seek new game fields. Accordingly the two set out, and tramped industriously until evening. They came upon a country no less beautiful than the one they had left, though the picturesque cliffs and rugged hills had given way to a rolling land, the luxuriance of which was explained by the abundant springs and streams. Forests and fields were thickly interspersed with bubbling springs, narrow and deep streams, and here and there a small lake with a running outlet. Wetzel had said little concerning this region, but that little was enough to rouse all Joe's eagerness, for it was to the effect that they were now in a country much traversed by Indians, especially runners and hunting parties travelling from north to south. The hunter explained that through the center of this tract ran a buffalo road; that the buffalo always picked out the straightest, lowest and dryest path from one range to another, and the Indians followed these first pathfinders. Joe and Wetzel made camp on the bank of a stream that night, and as the lad watched the hunter build a hidden camp-fire, he peered furtively around half expecting to see dark forms scurrying through the forest. Wetzel was extremely cautious. He stripped pieces of bark from fallen trees and built a little hut over his firewood. He rubbed some powder on a piece of punk, and then with flint and steel dropped two or three sparks on the inflammable substance. Soon he had a blaze. He arranged the covering so that not a ray of light escaped. When the flames had subsided, and the wood had burned down to a glowing bed of red, he threw aside the bark, and broiled the strips of venison they had brought with them. They rested on a bed of boughs which they had cut and arranged alongside a huge log. For hours Joe lay awake, he could not sleep. He listened to the breeze rustling the leaves, and shivered at the thought of the sighing wind he had once heard moan through the forest. Presently he turned over. The slight noise instantly awakened Wetzel who lifted his dark face while he listened intently. He spoke one word: "Sleep," and lay back again on the leaves. Joe forced himself to be quiet, relaxed all his muscles and soon slumbered. On the morrow Wetzel went out to look over the hunting prospects. About noon he returned. Joe was surprised to find some slight change in the hunter. He could not tell what it was. "I seen Injun sign," said Wetzel. "There's no tellin' how soon we may run agin the sneaks. We can't hunt here. Like as not there's Hurons and Delawares skulkin' round. I think I'd better take you back to the village." "It's all on my account you say that," said Joe. "Sure," Wetzel replied. "If you were alone what would you do?" "I calkilate I'd hunt fer some red-skinned game." The supreme moment had come. Joe's heart beat hard. He could not miss this opportunity; he must stay with the hunter. He looked closely at Wetzel. "I won't go back to the village," he said. The hunter stood in his favorite position, leaning on his long rifle, and made no response. "I won't go," continued Joe, earnestly. "Let me stay with you. If at any time I hamper you, or can not keep the pace, then leave me to shift for myself; but don't make me go until I weaken. Let me stay." Fire and fearlessness spoke in Joe's every word, and his gray eyes contracted with their peculiar steely flash. Plain it was that, while he might fail to keep pace with Wetzel, he did not fear this dangerous country, and, if it must be, would face it alone. Wetzel extended his broad hand and gave his comrade's a viselike squeeze. To allow the lad to remain with him was more than he would have done for any other person in the world. Far better to keep the lad under his protection while it was possible, for Joe was taking that war-trail which had for every hunter, somewhere along its bloody course, a bullet, a knife, or a tomahawk. Wetzel knew that Joe was conscious of this inevitable conclusion, for it showed in his white face, and in the resolve in his big, gray eyes. So there, in the shade of a towering oak, the Indian-killer admitted the boy into his friendship, and into a life which would no longer be play, but eventful, stirring, hazardous. "Wal, lad, stay," he said, with that rare smile which brightened his dark face like a ray of stray sunshine. "We'll hang round these diggins a few days. First off, we'll take in the lay of the land. You go down stream a ways an' scout round some, while I go up, an' then circle down. Move slow, now, an' don't miss nothin'." Joe followed the stream a mile or more. He kept close in the shade of willows, and never walked across an open glade without first waiting and watching. He listened to all sounds; but none were unfamiliar. He closely examined the sand along the stream, and the moss and leaves under the trees. When he had been separated from Wetzel several hours, and concluded he would slowly return to camp, he ran across a well-beaten path winding through the forest. This was, perhaps, one of the bridle-trails Wetzel had referred to. He bent over the worn grass with keen scrutiny. CRACK! The loud report of a heavily charged rifle rang out. Joe felt the zip of a bullet as it fanned his cheek. With an agile leap he gained the shelter of a tree, from behind which he peeped to see who had shot at him. He was just in time to detect the dark form of an Indian dart behind the foliage an hundred yards down the path. Joe expected to see other Indians, and to hear more shots, but he was mistaken. Evidently the savage was alone, for the tree Joe had taken refuge behind was scarcely large enough to screen his body, which disadvantage the other Indians would have been quick to note. Joe closely watched the place where his assailant had disappeared, and presently saw a dark hand, then a naked elbow, and finally the ramrod of a rifle. The savage was reloading. Soon a rifle-barrel protruded from behind the tree. With his heart beating like a trip-hammer, and the skin tightening on his face, Joe screened his body as best he might. The tree was small, but it served as a partial protection. Rapidly he revolved in his mind plans to outwit the enemy. The Indian was behind a large oak with a low limb over which he could fire without exposing his own person to danger. "Bang!" The Indian's rifle bellowed; the bullet crumbled the bark close to Joe's face. The lad yelled loudly, staggered to his knees, and then fell into the path, where he lay quiet. The redskin gave an exultant shout. Seeing that the fallen figure remained quite motionless he stepped forward, drawing his knife as he came. He was a young brave, quick and eager in his movements, and came nimbly up the path to gain his coveted trophy, the paleface's scalp. Suddenly Joe sat up, raised his rifle quickly as thought, and fired point-blank at the Indian. But he missed. The redskin stopped aghast when he saw the lad thus seemingly come back to life. Then, realizing that Joe's aim had been futile, he bounded forward, brandishing his knife, and uttering infuriated yells. Joe rose to his feet with rifle swung high above his head. When the savage was within twenty feet, so near that his dark face, swollen with fierce passion, could be plainly discerned, a peculiar whistling noise sounded over Joe's shoulder. It was accompanied, rather than followed, by a clear, ringing rifleshot. The Indian stopped as if he had encountered a heavy shock from a tree or stone barring his way. Clutching at his breast, he uttered a weird cry, and sank slowly on the grass. Joe ran forward to bend over the prostrate figure. The Indian, a slender, handsome young brave, had been shot through the breast. He held his hand tightly over the wound, while bright red blood trickled between his fingers, flowed down his side, and stained the grass. The brave looked steadily up at Joe. Shot as he was, dying as he knew himself to be, there was no yielding in the dark eye--only an unquenchable hatred. Then the eyes glazed; the fingers ceased twitching. Joe was bending over a dead Indian. It flashed into his mind, of course, that Wetzel had come up in time to save his life, but he did not dwell on the thought; he shrank from this violent death of a human being. But it was from the aspect of the dead, not from remorse for the deed. His heart beat fast, his fingers trembled, yet he felt only a strange coldness in all his being. The savage had tried to kill him, perhaps, even now, had it not been for the hunter's unerring aim, would have been gloating over a bloody scalp. Joe felt, rather than heard, the approach of some one, and he turned to see Wetzel coming down the path. "He's a lone Shawnee runner," said the hunter, gazing down at the dead Indian. "He was tryin' to win his eagle plumes. I seen you both from the hillside." "You did!" exclaimed Joe. Then he laughed. "It was lucky for me. I tried the dodge you taught me, but in my eagerness I missed." "Wal, you hadn't no call fer hurry. You worked the trick clever, but you missed him when there was plenty of time. I had to shoot over your shoulder, or I'd hev plugged him sooner." "Where were you?" asked Joe. "Up there by that bit of sumach!" and Wetzel pointed to an open ridge on a hillside not less than one hundred and fifty yards distant. Joe wondered which of the two bullets, the death-seeking one fired by the savage, or the life-saving missile from Wetzel's fatal weapon, had passed nearest to him. "Come," said the hunter, after he had scalped the Indian. "What's to be done with this savage?" inquired Joe, as Wetzel started up the path. "Let him lay." They returned to camp without further incident. While the hunter busied himself reinforcing their temporary shelter--for the clouds looked threatening--Joe cut up some buffalo meat, and then went down to the brook for a gourd of water. He came hurriedly back to where Wetzel was working, and spoke in a voice which he vainly endeavors to hold steady: "Come quickly. I have seen something which may mean a good deal." He led the way down to the brookside. "Look!" Joe said, pointing at the water. Here the steam was about two feet deep, perhaps twenty wide, and had just a noticeable current. Shortly before, it had been as clear as a bright summer sky; it was now tinged with yellow clouds that slowly floated downstream, each one enlarging and becoming fainter as the clear water permeated and stained. Grains of sand glided along with the current, little pieces of bark floated on the surface, and minnows darted to and fro nibbling at these drifting particles. "Deer wouldn't roil the water like that. What does it mean?" asked Joe. "Injuns, an' not fer away." Wetzel returned to the shelter and tore it down. Then he bent the branch of a beech tree low over the place. He pulled down another branch over the remains of the camp-fire. These precautions made the spot less striking. Wetzel knew that an Indian scout never glances casually; his roving eyes survey the forest, perhaps quickly, but thoroughly. An unnatural position of bush or log always leads to an examination. This done, the hunter grasped Joe's hand and led him up the knoll. Making his way behind a well-screened tree, which had been uprooted, he selected a position where, hidden themselves, they could see the creek. Hardly had Wetzel, admonished Joe to lie perfectly still, when from a short distance up the stream came the sound of splashing water; but nothing could be seen above the open glade, as in that direction willows lined the creek in dense thickets. The noise grew more audible. Suddenly Joe felt a muscular contraction pass over the powerful frame lying close beside him. It was a convulsive thrill such as passes through a tiger when he is about to spring upon his quarry. So subtle and strong was its meaning, so clearly did it convey to the lad what was coming, that he felt it himself; save that in his case it was a cold, chill shudder. Breathless suspense followed. Then into the open space along the creek glided a tall Indian warrior. He was knee-deep in the water, where he waded with low, cautious steps. His garish, befrilled costume seemed familiar to Joe. He carried a rifle at a low trail, and passed slowly ahead with evident distrust. The lad believed he recognized that head, with its tangled black hair, and when he saw the swarthy, villainous countenance turned full toward him, he exclaimed: "Girty! by---" Wetzel's powerful arm forced him so hard against the log that he could not complete the exclamation; but he could still see. Girty had not heard that stifled cry, for he continued his slow wading, and presently his tall, gaudily decorated form passed out of sight. Another savage appeared in the open space, and then another. Close between them walked a white man, with hands bound behind him. The prisoner and guards disappeared down stream among the willows. The splashing continued--grew even louder than before. A warrior came into view, then another, and another. They walked close together. Two more followed. They were wading by the side of a raft made of several logs, upon which were two prostrate figures that closely resembled human beings. Joe was so intent upon the lithe forms of the Indians that he barely got a glimpse of their floating prize, whatever it might have been. Bringing up the rear was an athletic warrior, whose broad shoulders, sinewy arms, and shaved, polished head Joe remembered well. It was the Shawnee chief, Silvertip. When he, too, passed out of sight in the curve of willows, Joe found himself trembling. He turned eagerly to Wetzel; but instantly recoiled. Terrible, indeed, had been the hunter's transformation. All calmness of facial expression was gone; he was now stern, somber. An intense emotion was visible in his white face; his eyes seemed reduced to two dark shining points, and they emitted so fierce, so piercing a flash, so deadly a light, that Joe could not bear their glittering gaze. "Three white captives, two of 'em women," uttered the hunter, as if weighing in his mind the importance of this fact. "Were those women on the raft?" questioned Joe, and as Wetzel only nodded, he continued, "A white man and two women, six warriors, Silvertip, and that renegade, Jim Girty!" Wetzel deigned not to answer Joe's passionate outburst, but maintained silence and his rigid posture. Joe glanced once more at the stern face. "Considering we'd go after Girty and his redskins if they were alone, we're pretty likely to go quicker now that they've got white women prisoners, eh?" and Joe laughed fiercely between his teeth. The lad's heart expanded, while along every nerve tingled an exquisite thrill of excitement. He had yearned for wild, border life. Here he was in it, with the hunter whose name alone was to the savages a symbol for all that was terrible. Wetzel evidently decided quickly on what was to be done, for in few words he directed Joe to cut up so much of the buffalo meat as they could stow in their pockets. Then, bidding the lad to follow, he turned into the woods, walking rapidly, and stopping now and then for a brief instant. Soon they emerged from the forest into more open country. They faced a wide plain skirted on the right by a long, winding strip of bright green willows which marked the course of the stream. On the edge of this plain Wetzel broke into a run. He kept this pace for a distance of an hundred yards, then stopped to listen intently as he glanced sharply on all sides, after which he was off again. Half way across this plain Joe's wind began to fail, and his breathing became labored; but he kept close to the hunter's heels. Once he looked back to see a great wide expanse of waving grass. They had covered perhaps four miles at a rapid pace, and were nearing the other side of the plain. The lad felt as if his head was about to burst; a sharp pain seized upon his side; a blood-red film obscured his sight. He kept doggedly on, and when utterly exhausted fell to the ground. When, a few minutes later, having recovered his breath, he got up, they had crossed the plain and were in a grove of beeches. Directly in front of him ran a swift stream, which was divided at the rocky head of what appeared to be a wooded island. There was only a slight ripple and fall of the water, and, after a second glance, it was evident that the point of land was not an island, but a portion of the mainland which divided the stream. The branches took almost opposite courses. Joe wondered if they had headed off the Indians. Certainly they had run fast enough. He was wet with perspiration. He glanced at Wetzel, who was standing near. The man's broad breast rose and fell a little faster; that was the only evidence of exertion. The lad had a painful feeling that he could never keep pace with the hunter, if this five-mile run was a sample of the speed he would be forced to maintain. "They've got ahead of us, but which crick did they take?" queried Wetzel, as though debating the question with himself. "How do you know they've passed?" "We circled," answered Wetzel, as he shook his head and pointed into the bushes. Joe stepped over and looked into the thicket. He found a quantity of dead leaves, sticks, and litter thrown aside, exposing to light a long, hollowed place on the ground. It was what would be seen after rolling over a log that had lain for a long time. Little furrows in the ground, holes, mounds, and curious winding passages showed where grubs and crickets had made their homes. The frightened insects were now running round wildly. "What was here? A log?" "A twenty-foot canoe was hid under thet stuff. The Injuns has taken one of these streams." "How can we tell which one?" "Mebbe we can't; but we'll try. Grab up a few of them bugs, go below thet rocky point, an' crawl close to the bank so you can jest peep over. Be keerful not to show the tip of your head, an' don't knock nothin' off'en the bank into the water. Watch fer trout. Look everywheres, an' drop in a bug now and then. I'll do the same fer the other stream. Then we'll come back here an' talk over what the fish has to say about the Injuns." Joe walked down stream a few paces, and, dropping on his knees, crawled carefully to the edge of the bank. He slightly parted the grass so he could peep through, and found himself directly over a pool with a narrow shoal running out from the opposite bank. The water was so clear he could see the pebbly bottom in all parts, except a dark hole near a bend in the shore close by. He did not see a living thing in the water, not a crawfish, turtle, nor even a frog. He peered round closely, then flipped in one of the bugs he had brought along. A shiny yellow fish flared up from the depths of the deep hole and disappeared with the cricket; but it was a bass or a pike, not a trout. Wetzel had said there were a few trout living near the cool springs of these streams. The lad tried again to coax one to the surface. This time the more fortunate cricket swam and hopped across the stream to safety. When Joe's eyes were thoroughly accustomed to the clear water, with its deceiving lights and shades, he saw a fish lying snug under the side of a stone. The lad thought he recognized the snub-nose, the hooked, wolfish jaw, but he could not get sufficient of a view to classify him. He crawled to a more advantageous position farther down stream, and then he peered again through the woods. Yes, sure enough, he had espied a trout. He well knew those spotted silver sides, that broad, square tail. Such a monster! In his admiration for the fellow, and his wish for a hook and line to try conclusions with him, Joe momentarily forgot his object. Remembering, he tossed out a big, fat cricket, which alighted on the water just above the fish. The trout never moved, nor even blinked. The lad tried again, with no better success. The fish would not rise. Thereupon Joe returned to the point where he had left Wetzel. "I couldn't see nothin' over there," said the hunter, who was waiting. "Did you see any?' "One, and a big fellow." "Did he see you?" "No." "Did he rise to a bug?" "No, he didn't; but then maybe he wasn't hungry" answered Joe, who could not understand what Wetzel was driving at. "Tell me exactly what he did." "That's just the trouble; he didn't do anything," replied Joe, thoughtfully. "He just lay low, stifflike, under a stone. He never batted an eye. But his side-fins quivered like an aspen leaf." "Them side-fins tell us the story. Girty, an' his redskins hev took this branch," said Wetzel, positively. "The other leads to the Huron towns. Girty's got a place near the Delaware camp somewheres. I've tried to find it a good many times. He's took more'n one white lass there, an' nobody ever seen her agin." "Fiend! To think of a white woman, maybe a girl like Nell Wells, at the mercy of those red devils!" "Young fellar, don't go wrong. I'll allow Injuns is bad enough; but I never hearn tell of one abusin' a white woman, as mayhap you mean. Injuns marry white women sometimes; kill an' scalp 'em often, but that's all. It's men of our own color, renegades like this Girty, as do worse'n murder." Here was the amazing circumstance of Lewis Wetzel, the acknowledged unsatiable foe of all redmen, speaking a good word for his enemies. Joe was so astonished he did not attempt to answer. "Here's where they got in the canoe. One more look, an' then we're off," said Wetzel. He strode up and down the sandy beach; examined the willows, and scrutinized the sand. Suddenly he bent over and picked up an object from the water. His sharp eyes had caught the glint of something white, which, upon being examined, proved to be a small ivory or bone buckle with a piece broken out. He showed it to Joe. "By heavens! Wetzel, that's a buckle off Nell Well's shoe. I've seen it too many times to mistake it." "I was afeared Girty hed your friends, the sisters, an' mebbe your brother, too. Jack Zane said the renegade was hangin' round the village, an' that couldn't be fer no good." "Come on. Let's kill the fiend!" cried Joe, white to the lips. "I calkilate they're about a mile down stream, makin' camp fer the night. I know the place. There's a fine spring, an, look! D'ye see them crows flyin' round thet big oak with the bleached top? Hear them cawin'? You might think they was chasin' a hawk, or king-birds were arter 'em, but thet fuss they're makin' is because they see Injuns." "Well?" asked Joe, impatiently. "It'll be moonlight a while arter midnight. We'll lay low an' wait, an' then---" The sharp click of his teeth, like the snap of a steel trap, completed the sentence. Joe said no more, but followed the hunter into the woods. Stopping near a fallen tree, Wetzel raked up a bundle of leaves and spread them on the ground. Then he cut a few spreading branches from a beech, and leaned them against a log. Bidding the lad crawl in before he took one last look around and then made his way under the shelter. It was yet daylight, which seemed a strange time to creep into this little nook; but, Joe thought, it was not to sleep, only to wait, wait, wait for the long hours to pass. He was amazed once more, because, by the time twilight had given place to darkness, Wetzel was asleep. The lad said then to himself that he would never again be surprised at the hunter. He assumed once and for all that Wetzel was capable of anything. Yet how could he lose himself in slumber? Feeling, as he must, over the capture of the girls; eager to draw a bead on the black-hearted renegade; hating Indians with all his soul and strength, and lying there but a few hours before what he knew would be a bloody battle, Wetzel calmly went to sleep. Knowing the hunter to be as bloodthirsty as a tiger, Joe had expected he would rush to a combat with his foes; but, no, this man, with his keen sagacity, knew when to creep upon his enemy; he bided that time, and, while he waited, slept. Joe could not close his eyes in slumber. Through the interstices in the branches he saw the stars come out one by one, the darkness deepened, and the dim outline of tall trees over the dark hill came out sharply. The moments dragged, each one an hour. He heard a whippoorwill call, lonely and dismal; then an owl hoot monotonously. A stealthy footed animal ran along the log, sniffed at the boughs, and then scurried away over the dry leaves. By and by the dead silence of night fell over all. Still Joe lay there wide awake, listening--his heart on fire. He was about to rescue Nell; to kill that hawk-nosed renegade; to fight Silvertip to the death. The hours passed, but not Joe's passionate eagerness. When at last he saw the crescent moon gleam silver-white over the black hilltop he knew the time was nigh, and over him ran thrill on thrill. Chapter XVI. When the waning moon rose high enough to shed a pale light over forest and field, two dark figures, moving silently from the shade of the trees, crossed the moonlit patches of ground, out to the open plain where low on the grass hung silver mists. A timber wolf, gray and gaunt, came loping along with lowered nose. A new scent brought the animal to a standstill. His nose went up, his fiery eyes scanned the plain. Two men had invaded his domain, and, with a short, dismal bark, he dashed away. Like spectres, gliding swiftly with noiseless tread, the two vanished. The long grass had swallowed them. Deserted once again seemed the plain. It became unutterably lonely. No stir, no sound, no life; nothing but a wide expanse bathed in sad, gray light. The moon shone steadily; the silver radiance mellowed; the stars paled before this brighter glory. Slowly the night hours wore away. On the other side of the plain, near where the adjoining forest loomed darkling, the tall grass parted to disclose a black form. Was it only a deceiving shade cast by a leafy branch--only a shadow? Slowly it sank, and was lost. Once more the gray, unwavering line of silver-crested grass tufts was unbroken. Only the night breeze, wandering caressingly over the grass, might have told of two dark forms gliding, gliding, gliding so softly, so surely, so surely toward the forest. Only the moon and the pale stars had eyes to see these creeping figures. Like avengers they moved, on a mission to slay and to save! On over the dark line where plain merged into forest they crawled. No whispering, no hesitating; but a silent, slow, certain progress showed their purpose. In single file they slipped over the moss, the leader clearing the path. Inch by inch they advanced. Tedious was this slow movement, difficult and painful this journey which must end in lightninglike speed. They rustled no leaf, nor snapped a twig, nor shook a fern, but passed onward slowly, like the approach of Death. The seconds passed as minutes; minutes as hours; an entire hour was spent in advancing twenty feet! At last the top of the knoll was reached. The Avenger placed his hand on his follower's shoulder. The strong pressure was meant to remind, to warn, to reassure. Then, like a huge snake, the first glided away. He who was left behind raised his head to look into the open place called the glade of the Beautiful Spring. An oval space lay before him, exceedingly lovely in the moonlight; a spring, as if a pearl, gemmed the center. An Indian guard stood statuelike against a stone. Other savages lay in a row, their polished heads shining. One slumbering form was bedecked with feathers and frills. Near him lay an Indian blanket, from the border of which peered two faces, gleaming white and sad in the pitying moonlight. The watcher quivered at the sight of those pale faces; but he must wait while long moments passed. He must wait for the Avenger to creep up, silently kill the guard, and release the prisoners without awakening the savages. If that plan failed, he was to rush into the glade, and in the excitement make off with one of the captives. He lay there waiting, listening, wrought up to the intensest pitch of fierce passion. Every nerve was alert, every tendon strung, and every muscle strained ready for the leap. Only the faint rustling of leaves, the low swish of swaying branches, the soft murmur of falling water, and over all the sigh of the night wind, proved to him that this picture was not an evil dream. His gaze sought the quiet figures, lingered hopefully on the captives, menacingly on the sleeping savages, and glowered over the gaudily arrayed form. His glance sought the upright guard, as he stood a dark blot against the gray stone. He saw the Indian's plume, a single feather waving silver-white. Then it became riveted on the bubbling, refulgent spring. The pool was round, perhaps five feet across, and shone like a burnished shield. It mirrored the moon, the twinkling stars, the spectre trees. An unaccountable horror suddenly swept over the watching man. His hair stood straight up; a sensation as of cold stole chillingly over him. Whether it was the climax of this long night's excitement, or anticipation of the bloody struggle soon to come, he knew not. Did this boiling spring, shimmering in the sliver moon-rays, hold in its murky depths a secret? Did these lonesome, shadowing trees, with their sad drooping branches, harbor a mystery? If a future tragedy was to be enacted here in this quiet glade, could the murmuring water or leaves whisper its portent? No; they were only silent, only unintelligible with nature's mystery. The waiting man cursed himself for a craven coward; he fought back the benumbing sense; he steeled his heart. Was this his vaunted willingness to share the Avenger's danger? His strong spirit rose up in arms; once more he was brave and fierce. He fastened a piercing gaze on the plumed guard. The Indian's lounging posture against the rock was the same as it had been before, yet now it seemed to have a kind of strained attention. The savage's head was poised, like that of a listening deer. The wary Indian scented danger. A faint moan breathed low above the sound of gently splashing water somewhere beyond the glade. "Woo-o-oo." The guard's figure stiffened, and became rigidly erect; his blanket slowly slid to his feet. "Ah-oo-o," sighed the soft breeze in the tree tops. Louder then, with a deep wail, a moan arose out of the dark gray shadows, swelled thrilling on the still air, and died away mournfully. "Um-m-mmwoo-o-o-o!" The sentinel's form melted into the shade. He was gone like a phantom. Another Indian rose quickly, and glanced furtively around the glade. He bent over a comrade and shook him. Instantly the second Indian was on his feet. Scarcely had he gained a standing posture when an object, bounding like a dark ball, shot out of the thicket and hurled both warriors to the earth. A moonbeam glinted upon something bright. It flashed again on a swift, sweeping circle. A short, choking yell aroused the other savages. Up they sprang, alarmed, confused. The shadow-form darted among them. It moved with inconceivable rapidity; it became a monster. Terrible was the convulsive conflict. Dull blows, the click of steel, angry shouts, agonized yells, and thrashing, wrestling sounds mingled together and half drowned by an awful roar like that of a mad bull. The strife ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Warriors lay still on the grass; others writhed in agony. For an instant a fleeting shadow crossed the open lane leading out of the glade; then it vanished. Three savages had sprung toward their rifles. A blinding flash, a loud report burst from the thicket overhead. The foremost savage sank lifelessly. The others were intercepted by a giant shadow with brandished rifle. The watcher on the knoll had entered the glade. He stood before the stacked rifles and swung his heavy gun. Crash! An Indian went down before that sweep, but rose again. The savages backed away from this threatening figure, and circled around it. The noise of the other conflict ceased. More savages joined the three who glided to and fro before their desperate foe. They closed in upon him, only to be beaten back. One savage threw a glittering knife, another hurled a stone, a third flung his tomahawk, which struck fire from the swinging rifle. He held them at bay. While they had no firearms he was master of the situation. With every sweep of his arms he brought the long rifle down and knocked a flint from the firelock of an enemy's weapon. Soon the Indians' guns were useless. Slowly then he began to edge away from the stone, toward the opening where he had seen the fleeting form vanish. His intention was to make a dash for life, for he had heard a noise behind the rock, and remembered the guard. He saw the savages glance behind him, and anticipated danger from that direction, but he must not turn. A second there might be fatal. He backed defiantly along the rock until he gained its outer edge. But too late! The Indians glided before him, now behind him; he was surrounded. He turned around and around, with the ever-circling rifle whirling in the faces of the baffled foe. Once opposite the lane leading from the glade he changed his tactics, and plunged with fierce impetuosity into the midst of the painted throng. Then began a fearful conflict. The Indians fell before the sweep of his powerful arms; but grappled with him from the ground. He literally plowed his way through the struggling mass, warding off an hundred vicious blows. Savage after savage he flung off, until at last he had a clear path before him. Freedom lay beyond that shiny path. Into it he bounded. As he left the glade the plumed guard stepped from behind a tree near the entrance of the path, and cast his tomahawk. A white, glittering flash, it flew after the fleeing runner; its aim was true. Suddenly the moonlight path darkened in the runner's sight; he saw a million flashing stars; a terrible pain assailed him; he sank slowly, slowly down; then all was darkness. Chapter XVII. Joe awoke as from a fearsome nightmare. Returning consciousness brought a vague idea that he had been dreaming of clashing weapons, of yelling savages, of a conflict in which he had been clutched by sinewy fingers. An acute pain pulsed through his temples; a bloody mist glazed his eyes; a sore pressure cramped his arms and legs. Surely he dreamed this distress, as well as the fight. The red film cleared from his eyes. His wandering gaze showed the stern reality. The bright sun, making the dewdrops glisten on the leaves, lighted up a tragedy. Near him lay an Indian whose vacant, sightless eyes were fixed in death. Beyond lay four more savages, the peculiar, inert position of whose limbs, the formlessness, as it were, as if they had been thrown from a great height and never moved again, attested that here, too, life had been extinguished. Joe took in only one detail--the cloven skull of the nearest--when he turned away sickened. He remembered it all now. The advance, the rush, the fight--all returned. He saw again Wetzel's shadowy form darting like a demon into the whirl of conflict; he heard again that hoarse, booming roar with which the Avenger accompanied his blows. Joe's gaze swept the glade, but found no trace of the hunter. He saw Silvertip and another Indian bathing a wound on Girty's head. The renegade groaned and writhed in pain. Near him lay Kate, with white face and closed eyes. She was unconscious, or dead. Jim sat crouched under a tree to which he was tied. "Joe, are you badly hurt?" asked the latter, in deep solicitude. "No, I guess not; I don't know," answered Joe. "Is poor Kate dead?" "No, she has fainted." "Where's Nell?" "Gone," replied Jim, lowering his voice, and glancing at the Indians. They were too busy trying to bandage Girty's head to pay any attention to their prisoners. "That whirlwind was Wetzel, wasn't it?" "Yes; how'd you know?" "I was awake last night. I had an oppressive feeling, perhaps a presentiment. Anyway, I couldn't sleep. I heard that wind blow through the forest, and thought my blood would freeze. The moan is the same as the night wind, the same soft sigh, only louder and somehow pregnant with superhuman power. To speak of it in broad daylight one seems superstitious, but to hear it in the darkness of this lonely forest, it is fearful! I hope I am not a coward; I certainly know I was deathly frightened. No wonder I was scared! Look at these dead Indians, all killed in a moment. I heard the moan; I saw Silvertip disappear, and the other two savages rise. Then something huge dropped from the rock; a bright object seemed to circle round the savages; they uttered one short yell, and sank to rise no more. Somehow at once I suspected that this shadowy form, with its lightninglike movements, its glittering hatchet, was Wetzel. When he plunged into the midst of the other savages I distinctly recognized him, and saw that he had a bundle, possibly his coat, wrapped round his left arm, and his right hand held the glittering tomahawk. I saw him strike that big Indian there, the one lying with split skull. His wonderful daring and quickness seemed to make the savages turn at random. He broke through the circle, swung Nell under his arm, slashed at my bonds as he passed by, and then was gone as he had come. Not until after you were struck, and Silvertip came up to me, was I aware my bonds were cut. Wetzel's hatchet had severed them; it even cut my side, which was bleeding. I was free to help, to fight, and I did not know it. Fool that I am!" "I made an awful mess of my part of the rescue," groaned Joe. "I wonder if the savages know it was Wetzel." "Do they? Well, I rather think so. Did you not hear them scream that French name? As far as I am able to judge, only two Indians were killed instantly. The others died during the night. I had to sit here, tied and helpless, listening as they groaned and called the name of their slayer, even in their death-throes. Deathwind! They have named him well." "I guess he nearly killed Girty." "Evidently, but surely the evil one protects the renegade." "Jim Girty's doomed," whispered Joe, earnestly. "He's as good as dead already. I've lived with Wetzel, and know him. He told me Girty had murdered a settler, a feeble old man, who lived near Fort Henry with his son. The hunter has sworn to kill the renegade; but, mind you, he did not tell me that. I saw it in his eyes. It wouldn't surprise me to see him jump out of these bushes at any moment. I'm looking for it. If he knows there are only three left, he'll be after them like a hound on a trail. Girty must hurry. Where's he taking you?" "To the Delaware town." "I don't suppose the chiefs will let any harm befall you; but Kate and I would be better off dead. If we can only delay the march, Wetzel will surely return." "Hush! Girty's up." The renegade staggered to an upright position, and leaned on the Shawnee's arm. Evidently he had not been seriously injured, only stunned. Covered with blood from a swollen, gashed lump on his temple, he certainly presented a savage appearance. "Where's the yellow-haired lass?" he demanded, pushing away Silvertip's friendly arm. He glared around the glade. The Shawnee addressed him briefly, whereupon he raged to and fro under the tree, cursing with foam-flecked lips, and actually howling with baffled rage. His fury was so great that he became suddenly weak, and was compelled to sit down. "She's safe, you villainous renegade!" cried Joe. "Hush, Joe! Do not anger him. It can do no good," interposed Jim. "Why not? We couldn't be worse off," answered Joe. "I'll git her, I'll git her agin," panted Girty. "I'll keep her, an' she'll love me." The spectacle of this perverted wretch speaking as if he had been cheated out of love was so remarkable, so pitiful, so monstrous, that for a moment Joe was dumbfounded. "Bah! You white-livered murderer!" Joe hissed. He well knew it was not wise to give way to his passion; but he could not help it. This beast in human guise, whining for love, maddened him. "Any white woman on earth would die a thousand deaths and burn for a million years afterward rather than love you!" "I'll see you killed at the stake, beggin' fer mercy, an' be feed fer buzzards," croaked the renegade. "Then kill me now, or you may slip up on one of your cherished buzzard-feasts," cried Joe, with glinting eye and taunting voice. "Then go sneaking back to your hole like a hyena, and stay there. Wetzel is on your trail! He missed you last night; but it was because of the girl. He's after you, Girty; he'll get you one of these days, and when he does--My God!---" Nothing could be more revolting than that swarthy, evil face turned pale with fear. Girty's visage was a ghastly, livid white. So earnest, so intense was Joe's voice, that it seemed to all as if Wetzel was about to dart into the glade, with his avenging tomahawk uplifted to wreak an awful vengeance on the abductor. The renegade's white, craven heart contained no such thing as courage. If he ever fought it was like a wolf, backed by numbers. The resemblance ceased here, for even a cornered wolf will show his teeth, and Girty, driven to bay, would have cringed and cowered. Even now at the mention of Wetzel's enmity he trembled. "I'll shet yer wind," he cried, catching up his tomahawk and making for Joe. Silvertip intervened, and prevented the assault. He led Girty back to his seat and spoke low, evidently trying to soothe the renegade's feelings. "Silvertip, give me a tomahawk, and let me fight him," implored Joe. "Paleface brave--like Injun chief. Paleface Shawnee's prisoner--no speak more," answered Silvertip, with respect in his voice. "Oh, where's Nellie?" A grief-stricken whisper caught Jim's ear. He turned to see Kate's wide, questioning eyes fixed upon him. "Nell was rescued." "Thank God!" murmured the girl. "Come along," shouted Girty, in his harsh voice, as, grasping Kate's arm, he pulled the girl violently to her feet. Then, picking up his rifle, he led her into the forest. Silvertip followed with Joe, while the remaining Indian guarded Jim. * * * The great council-lodge of the Delawares rang with savage and fiery eloquence. Wingenund paced slowly before the orators. Wise as he was, he wanted advice before deciding what was to be done with the missionary. The brothers had been taken to the chief, who immediately called a council. The Indians sat in a half circle around the lodge. The prisoners, with hands bound, guarded by two brawny braves, stood in one corner gazing with curiosity and apprehension at this formidable array. Jim knew some of the braves, but the majority of those who spoke bitterly against the palefaces had never frequented the Village of Peace. Nearly all were of the Wolf tribe of Delawares. Jim whispered to Joe, interpreting that part of the speeches bearing upon the disposal to be made of them. Two white men, dressed in Indian garb, held prominent positions before Wingenund. The boys saw a resemblance between one of these men and Jim Girty, and accordingly concluded he was the famous renegade, or so-called white Indian, Simon Girty. The other man was probably Elliott, the Tory, with whom Girty had deserted from Fort Pitt. Jim Girty was not present. Upon nearing the encampment he had taken his captive and disappeared in a ravine. Shingiss, seldom in favor of drastic measures with prisoners, eloquently urged initiating the brothers into the tribe. Several other chiefs were favorably inclined, though not so positive as Shingiss. Kotoxen was for the death penalty; the implacable Pipe for nothing less than burning at the stake. Not one was for returning the missionary to his Christian Indians. Girty and Elliott, though requested to speak, maintained an ominous silence. Wingenund strode with thoughtful mien before his council. He had heard all his wise chiefs and his fiery warriors. Supreme was his power. Freedom or death for the captives awaited the wave of his hand. His impassive face gave not the slightest inkling of what to expect. Therefore the prisoners were forced to stand there with throbbing hearts while the chieftain waited the customary dignified interval before addressing the council. "Wingenund has heard the Delaware wise men and warriors. The white Indian opens not his lips; his silence broods evil for the palefaces. Pipe wants the blood of the white men; the Shawnee chief demands the stake. Wingenund says free the white father who harms no Indian. Wingenund hears no evil in the music of his voice. The white father's brother should die. Kill the companion of Deathwind!" A plaintive murmur, remarkable when coming from an assembly of stern-browed chiefs, ran round the circle at the mention of the dread appellation. "The white father is free," continued Wingenund. "Let one of my runners conduct him to the Village of Peace." A brave entered and touched Jim on the shoulder. Jim shook his head and pointed to Joe. The runner touched Joe. "No, no. I am not the missionary," cried Joe, staring aghast at his brother. "Jim, have you lost your senses?" Jim sadly shook his head, and turning to Wingenund made known in a broken Indian dialect that his brother was the missionary, and would sacrifice himself, taking this opportunity to practice the Christianity he had taught. "The white father is brave, but he is known," broke in Wingenund's deep voice, while he pointed to the door of the lodge. "Let him go back to his Christian Indians." The Indian runner cut Joe's bonds, and once more attempted to lead him from the lodge. Rage and misery shown in the lad's face. He pushed the runner aside. He exhausted himself trying to explain, to think of Indian words enough to show he was not the missionary. He even implored Girty to speak for him. When the renegade sat there stolidly silent Joe's rage burst out. "Curse you all for a lot of ignorant redskins. I am not a missionary. I am Deathwind's friend. I killed a Delaware. I was the companion of Le Vent de la Mort!" Joe's passionate vehemence, and the truth that spoke from his flashing eyes compelled the respect, if not the absolute belief of the Indians. The savages slowly shook their heads. They beheld the spectacle of two brothers, one a friend, the other an enemy of all Indians, each willing to go to the stake, to suffer an awful agony, for love of the other. Chivalrous deeds always stir an Indian's heart. It was like a redman to die for his brother. The indifference, the contempt for death, won their admiration. "Let the white father stand forth," sternly called Wingenund. A hundred somber eyes turned on the prisoners. Except that one wore a buckskin coat, the other a linsey one, there was no difference. The strong figures were the same, the white faces alike, the stern resolve in the gray eyes identical--they were twin brothers. Wingenund once more paced before his silent chiefs. To deal rightly with this situation perplexed him. To kill both palefaces did not suit him. Suddenly he thought of a way to decide. "Let Wingenund's daughter come," he ordered. A slight, girlish figure entered. It was Whispering Winds. Her beautiful face glowed while she listened to her father. "Wingenund's daughter has her mother's eyes, that were beautiful as a doe's, keen as a hawk's, far-seeing as an eagle's. Let the Delaware maiden show her blood. Let her point out the white father." Shyly but unhesitatingly Whispering Winds laid her hand Jim's arm. "Missionary, begone!" came the chieftain's command. "Thank Wingenund's daughter for your life, not the God of your Christians!" He waved his hand to the runner. The brave grasped Jim's arm. "Good-by, Joe," brokenly said Jim. "Old fellow, good-by," came the answer. They took one last, long look into each others' eyes. Jim's glance betrayed his fear--he would never see his brother again. The light in Joe's eyes was the old steely flash, the indomitable spirit--while there was life there was hope. "Let the Shawnee chief paint his prisoner black," commanded Wingenund. When the missionary left the lodge with the runner, Whispering Winds had smiled, for she had saved him whom she loved to hear speak; but the dread command that followed paled her cheek. Black paint meant hideous death. She saw this man so like the white father. Her piteous gaze tried to turn from that white face; but the cold, steely eyes fascinated her. She had saved one only to be the other's doom! She had always been drawn toward white men. Many prisoners had she rescued. She had even befriended her nation's bitter foe, Deathwind. She had listened to the young missionary with rapture; she had been his savior. And now when she looked into the eyes of this young giant, whose fate had rested on her all unwitting words, she resolved to save him. She had been a shy, shrinking creature, fearing to lift her eyes to a paleface's, but now they were raised clear and steadfast. As she stepped toward the captive and took his hand, her whole person radiated with conscious pride in her power. It was the knowledge that she could save. When she kissed his hand, and knelt before him, she expressed a tender humility. She had claimed questionable right of an Indian maiden; she asked what no Indian dared refuse a chief's daughter; she took the paleface for her husband. Her action was followed by an impressive silence. She remained kneeling. Wingenund resumed his slow march to and fro. Silvertip retired to his corner with gloomy face. The others bowed their heads as if the maiden's decree was irrevocable. Once more the chieftain's sonorous command rang out. An old Indian, wrinkled and worn, weird of aspect, fanciful of attire, entered the lodge and waved his wampum wand. He mumbled strange words, and departed chanting a long song. Whispering Winds arose, a soft, radiant smile playing over her face, and, still holding Joe's hand, she led him out of the lodge, through long rows of silent Indians, down a land bordered by teepees, he following like one in a dream. He expected to awaken at any minute to see the stars shining through the leaves. Yet he felt the warm, soft pressure of a little hand. Surely this slender, graceful figure was real. She bade him enter a lodge of imposing proportions. Still silent, in amazement and gratitude, he obeyed. The maiden turned to Joe. Though traces of pride still lingered, all her fire had vanished. Her bosom rose with each quick-panting breath; her lips quivered, she trembled like a trapped doe. But at last the fluttering lashes rose. Joe saw two velvety eyes dark with timid fear, yet veiling in their lustrous depths an unuttered hope and love. "Whispering Winds--save--paleface," she said, in a voice low and tremulous. "Fear--father. Fear--tell--Wingenund--she--Christian." * * * Indian summer, that enchanted time, unfolded its golden, dreamy haze over the Delaware village. The forests blazed with autumn fire, the meadows boomed in rich luxuriance. All day low down in the valleys hung a purple smoke which changed, as the cool evening shades crept out of the woodland, into a cloud of white mist. All day the asters along the brooks lifted golden-brown faces to the sun as if to catch the warning warmth of his smile. All day the plains and forests lay in melancholy repose. The sad swish of the west wind over the tall grass told that he was slowly dying away before his enemy, the north wind. The sound of dropping nuts was heard under the motionless trees. For Joe the days were days of enchantment. His wild heart had found its mate. A willing captive he was now. All his fancy for other women, all his memories faded into love for his Indian bride. Whispering Winds charmed the eye, mind, and heart. Every day her beauty seemed renewed. She was as apt to learn as she was quick to turn her black-crowned head, but her supreme beauty was her loving, innocent soul. Untainted as the clearest spring, it mirrored the purity and simplicity of her life. Indian she might be, one of a race whose morals and manners were alien to the man she loved, yet she would have added honor to the proudest name. When Whispering Winds raised her dark eyes they showed radiant as a lone star; when she spoke low her voice made music. "Beloved," she whispered one day to him, "teach the Indian maiden more love for you, and truth, and God. Whispering Winds yearns to go to the Christians, but she fears her stern father. Wingenund would burn the Village of Peace. The Indian tribes tremble before the thunder of his wrath. Be patient, my chief. Time changes the leaves, so it will the anger of the warriors. Whispering Winds will set you free, and be free herself to go far with you toward the rising sun, where dwell your people. She will love, and be constant, as the northern star. Her love will be an eternal spring where blossoms bloom ever anew, and fresh, and sweet. She will love your people, and raise Christian children, and sit ever in the door of your home praying for the west wind to blow. Or, if my chief wills, we shall live the Indian life, free as two eagles on their lonely crag." Although Joe gave himself up completely to his love for his bride, he did not forget that Kate was in the power of the renegade, and that he must rescue her. Knowing Girty had the unfortunate girls somewhere near the Delaware encampment, he resolved to find the place. Plans of all kinds he resolved in his mind. The best one he believed lay through Whispering Winds. First to find the whereabouts of Girty; kill him if possible, or at least free Kate, and then get away with her and his Indian bride. Sanguine as he invariably was, he could not but realize the peril of this undertaking. If Whispering Winds betrayed her people, it meant death to her as well as to him. He would far rather spend the remaining days of his life in the Indian village, than doom the maiden whose love had saved him. Yet he thought he might succeed in getting away with her, and planned to that end. His natural spirit, daring, reckless, had gained while he was associated with Wetzel. Meanwhile he mingled freely with the Indians, and here, as elsewhere, his winning personality, combined with his athletic prowess, soon made him well liked. He was even on friendly terms with Pipe. The swarthy war chief liked Joe because, despite the animosity he had aroused in some former lovers of Whispering Winds, he actually played jokes on them. In fact, Joe's pranks raised many a storm; but the young braves who had been suitors for Wingenund's lovely daughter, feared the muscular paleface, and the tribe's ridicule more; so he continued his trickery unmolested. Joe's idea was to lead the savages to believe he was thoroughly happy in his new life, and so he was, but it suited him better to be free. He succeeded in misleading the savages. At first he was closely watched, the the vigilance relaxed, and finally ceased. This last circumstance was owing, no doubt, to a ferment of excitement that had suddenly possessed the Delawares. Council after council was held in the big lodge. The encampment was visited by runner after runner. Some important crisis was pending. Joe could not learn what it all meant, and the fact that Whispering Winds suddenly lost her gladsome spirit and became sad caused him further anxiety. When he asked her the reason for her unhappiness, she was silent. Moreover, he was surprised to learn, when he questioned her upon the subject of their fleeing together, that she was eager to go immediately. While all this mystery puzzled Joe, it did not make any difference to him or in his plans. It rather favored the latter. He understood that the presence of Simon Girty and Elliott, with several other renegades unknown to him, was significant of unrest among the Indians. These presagers of evil were accustomed to go from village to village, exciting the savages to acts of war. Peace meant the downfall and death of these men. They were busy all day and far into the night. Often Joe heard Girty's hoarse voice lifted in the council lodge. Pipe thundered incessantly for war. But Joe could not learn against whom. Elliott's suave, oily oratory exhorted the Indians to vengeance. But Joe could not guess upon whom. He was, however, destined to learn. The third day of the councils a horseman stopped before Whispering Winds' lodge, and called out. Stepping to the door, Joe saw a white man, whose dark, keen, handsome face seemed familiar. Yet Joe knew he had never seen this stalwart man. "A word with you," said the stranger. His tone was curt, authoritative, as that of a man used to power. "As many as you like. Who are you?" "I am Isaac Zane. Are you Wetzel's companion, or the renegade Deering?" "I am not a renegade any more than you are. I was rescued by the Indian girl, who took me as her husband," said Joe coldly. He was surprised, and did not know what to make of Zane's manner. "Good! I'm glad to meet you," instantly replied Zane, his tone and expression changing. He extended his hand to Joe. "I wanted to be sure. I never saw the renegade Deering. He is here now. I am on my way to the Wyandot town. I have been to Fort Henry, where my brother told me of you and the missionaries. When I arrived here I heard your story from Simon Girty. If you can, you must get away from here. If I dared I'd take you to the Huron village, but it's impossible. Go, while you have a chance." "Zane, I thank you. I've suspected something was wrong. What is it?" "Couldn't be worse," whispered Zane, glancing round to see if they were overheard. "Girty and Elliott, backed by this Deering, are growing jealous of the influence of Christianity on the Indians. They are plotting against the Village of Peace. Tarhe, the Huron chief, has been approached, and asked to join in a concerted movement against religion. Seemingly it is not so much the missionaries as the converted Indians, that the renegades are fuming over. They know if the Christian savages are killed, the strength of the missionaries' hold will be forever broken. Pipe is wild for blood. These renegades are slowly poisoning the minds of the few chiefs who are favorably disposed. The outlook is bad! bad!" "What can I do?" "Cut out for yourself. Get away, if you can, with a gun. Take the creek below, follow the current down to the Ohio, and then make east for Fort Henry. "But I want to rescue the white girl Jim Girty has concealed here somewhere." "Impossible! Don't attempt it unless you want to throw your life away. Buzzard Jim, as we call Girty, is a butcher; he has probably murdered the girl." "I won't leave without trying. And there's my wife, the Indian girl who saved me. Zane, she's a Christian. She wants to go with me. I can't leave her." "I am warning you, that's all. If I were you I'd never leave without a try to find the white girl, and I'd never forsake my Indian bride. I've been through the same thing. You must be a good woodsman, or Wetzel wouldn't have let you stay with him. Pick out a favorable time and make the attempt. I suggest you make your Indian girl show you where Girty is. She knows, but is afraid to tell you, for she fears Girty. Get your dog and horse from the Shawnee. That's a fine horse. He can carry you both to safety. Take him away from Silvertip." "How?" "Go right up and demand your horse and dog. Most of these Delawares are honest, for all their blood-shedding and cruelty. With them might is right. The Delawares won't try to get your horse for you; but they'll stick to you when you assert your rights. They don't like the Shawnee, anyhow. If Silvertip refuses to give you the horse, grab him before he can draw a weapon, and beat him good. You're big enough to do it. The Delawares will be tickled to see you pound him. He's thick with Girty; that's why he lays round here. Take my word, it's the best way. Do it openly, and no one will interfere." "By Heavens, Zane, I'll give him a drubbing. I owe him one, and am itching to get hold of him." "I must go now. I shall send a Wyandot runner to your brother at the village. They shall be warned. Good-by. Good luck. May we meet again." Joe watched Zane ride swiftly down the land and disappear in the shrubbery. Whispering Winds came to the door of the lodge. She looked anxiously at him. He went within, drawing her along with him, and quickly informed her that he had learned the cause of the council, that he had resolved to get away, and she must find out Girty's hiding place. Whispering Winds threw herself into his arms, declaring with an energy and passion unusual to her, that she would risk anything for him. She informed Joe that she knew the direction from which Girty always returned to the village. No doubt she could find his retreat. With a cunning that showed her Indian nature, she suggested a plan which Joe at once saw was excellent. After Joe got his horse, she would ride around the village, then off into the woods, where she could leave the horse and return to say he had run away from her. As was their custom during afternoons, they would walk leisurely along the brook, and, trusting to the excitement created by the councils, get away unobserved. Find the horse, if possible rescue the prisoner, and then travel east with all speed. Joe left the lodge at once to begin the working out of the plan. Luck favored him at the outset, for he met Silvertip before the council lodge. The Shawnee was leading Lance, and the dog followed at his heels. The spirit of Mose had been broken. Poor dog, Joe thought, he had been beaten until he was afraid to wag his tail at his old master. Joe's resentment blazed into fury, but he kept cool outwardly. Right before a crowd of Indians waiting for the council to begin, Joe planted himself in front of the Shawnee, barring his way. "Silvertip has the paleface's horse and dog," said Joe, in a loud voice. The chief stared haughtily while the other Indians sauntered nearer. They all knew how the Shawnee had got the animals, and now awaited the outcome of the white man's challenge. "Paleface--heap--liar," growled the Indian. His dark eyes glowed craftily, while his hand dropped, apparently in careless habit, to the haft of his tomahawk. Joe swung his long arm; his big fist caught the Shawnee on the jaw, sending him to the ground. Uttering a frightful yell, Silvertip drew his weapon and attempted to rise, but the moment's delay in seizing the hatchet, was fatal to his design. Joe was upon him with tigerlike suddenness. One kick sent the tomahawk spinning, another landed the Shawnee again on the ground. Blind with rage, Silvertip leaped up, and without a weapon rushed at his antagonist; but the Indian was not a boxer, and he failed to get his hands on Joe. Shifty and elusive, the lad dodged around the struggling savage. One, two, three hard blows staggered Silvertip, and a fourth, delivered with the force of Joe's powerful arm, caught the Indian when he was off his balance, and felled him, battered and bloody, on the grass. The surrounding Indians looked down at the vanquished Shawnee, expressing their approval in characteristic grunts. With Lance prancing proudly, and Mose leaping lovingly beside him, Joe walked back to his lodge. Whispering Winds sprang to meet him with joyful face. She had feared the outcome of trouble with the Shawnee, but no queen ever bestowed upon returning victorious lord a loftier look of pride, a sweeter glance of love, than the Indian maiden bent upon her lover. Whispering Winds informed Joe that an important council was to be held that afternoon. It would be wise for them to make the attempt to get away immediately after the convening of the chiefs. Accordingly she got upon Lance and rode him up and down the village lane, much to the pleasure of the watching Indians. She scattered the idle crowds on the grass plots, she dashed through the side streets, and let every one in the encampment see her clinging to the black stallion. Then she rode him out along the creek. Accustomed to her imperious will, the Indians thought nothing unusual. When she returned an hour later, with flying hair and disheveled costume, no one paid particular attention to her. That afternoon Joe and his bride were the favored of fortune. With Mose running before them, they got clear of the encampment and into the woods. Once in the forest Whispering Winds rapidly led the way east. When they climbed to the top of a rocky ridge she pointed down into a thicket before her, saying that somewhere in this dense hollow was Girty's hut. Joe hesitated about taking Mose. He wanted the dog, but in case he had to run it was necessary Whispering Winds should find his trail, and for this he left the dog with her. He started down the ridge, and had not gone a hundred paces when over some gray boulders he saw the thatched roof of a hut. So wild and secluded was the spot, that he would never have discovered the cabin from any other point than this, which he had been so fortunate as to find. His study and practice under Wetzel now stood him in good stead. He picked out the best path over the rough stones and through the brambles, always keeping under cover. He stepped as carefully as if the hunter was behind him. Soon he reached level ground. A dense laurel thicket hid the cabin, but he knew the direction in which it lay. Throwing himself flat on the ground, he wormed his way through the thicket, carefully, yet swiftly, because he knew there was no time to lose. Finally the rear of the cabin stood in front of him. It was made of logs, rudely hewn, and as rudely thrown together. In several places clay had fallen from chinks between the timbers, leaving small holes. Like a snake Joe slipped close to the hut. Raising his head he looked through one of the cracks. Instantly he shrank back into the grass, shivering with horror. He almost choked in his attempt to prevent an outcry. Chapter XVIII. The sight which Joe had seen horrified him, for several moments, into helpless inaction. He lay breathing heavily, impotent, in an awful rage. As he remained there stunned by the shock, he gazed up through the open space in the leaves, trying to still his fury, to realize the situation, to make no hasty move. The soft blue of the sky, the fleecy clouds drifting eastward, the fluttering leaves and the twittering birds--all assured him he was wide awake. He had found Girty's den where so many white women had been hidden, to see friends and home no more. He had seen the renegade sleeping, calmly sleeping like any other man. How could the wretch sleep! He had seen Kate. It had been the sight of her that had paralyzed him. To make a certainty of his fears, he again raised himself to peep into the hole. As he did so a faint cry came from within. Girty lay on a buffalo robe near a barred door. Beyond him sat Kate, huddled in one corner of the cabin. A long buckskin thong was knotted round her waist, and tied to a log. Her hair was matted and tangled, and on her face and arms were many discolored bruises. Worse still, in her plaintive moaning, in the meaningless movement of her head, in her vacant expression, was proof that her mind had gone. She was mad. Even as an agonizing pity came over Joe, to be followed by the surging fire of rage, blazing up in his breast, he could not but thank God that she was mad! It was merciful that Kate was no longer conscious of her suffering. Like leaves in a storm wavered Joe's hands as he clenched them until the nails brought blood. "Be calm, be cool," whispered his monitor, Wetzel, ever with him in spirit. But God! Could he be cool? Bounding with lion-spring he hurled his heavy frame against the door. Crash! The door was burst from its fastenings. Girty leaped up with startled yell, drawing his knife as he rose. It had not time to descend before Joe's second spring, more fierce even than the other, carried him directly on top of the renegade. As the two went down Joe caught the villain's wrist with a grip that literally cracked the bones. The knife fell and rolled away from the struggling men. For an instant they tumbled about on the floor, clasped in a crushing embrace. The renegade was strong, supple, slippery as an eel. Twice he wriggled from his foe. Gnashing his teeth, he fought like a hyena. He was fighting for life--life, which is never so dear as to a coward and a murderer. Doom glared from Joe's big eyes, and scream after scream issued from the renegade's white lips. Terrible was this struggle, but brief. Joe seemingly had the strength of ten men. Twice he pulled Girty down as a wolf drags a deer. He dashed him against the wall, throwing him nearing and nearer the knife. Once within reach of the blade Joe struck the renegade a severe blow on the temple and the villain's wrestling became weaker. Planting his heavy knee on Girty's breast, Joe reached for the knife, and swung it high. Exultantly he cried, mad with lust for the brute's blood. But the slight delay saved Girty's life. The knife was knocked from Joe's hand and he leaped erect to find himself confronted by Silvertip. The chief held a tomahawk with which he had struck the weapon from the young man's grasp, and, to judge from his burning eyes and malignant smile, he meant to brain the now defenseless paleface. In a single fleeting instant Joe saw that Girty was helpless for the moment, that Silvertip was confident of his revenge, and that the situation called for Wetzel's characteristic advice, "act like lightnin'." Swifter than the thought was the leap he made past Silvertip. It carried him to a wooden bar which lay on the floor. Escape was easy, for the door was before him and the Shawnee behind, but Joe did not flee! He seized the bar and rushed at the Indian. Then began a duel in which the savage's quickness and cunning matched the white man's strength and fury. Silvertip dodged the vicious swings Joe aimed at him; he parried many blows, any one of which would have crushed his skull. Nimble as a cat, he avoided every rush, while his dark eyes watched for an opening. He fought wholly on the defensive, craftily reserving his strength until his opponent should tire. At last, catching the bar on his hatchet, he broke the force of the blow, and then, with agile movement, dropped to the ground and grappled Joe's legs. Long before this he had drawn his knife, and now he used it, plunging the blade into the young man's side. Cunning and successful as was the savage's ruse, it failed signally, for to get hold of the Shawnee was all Joe wanted. Feeling the sharp pain as they fell together, he reached his hand behind him and caught Silvertip's wrist. Exerting all his power, he wrenched the Indian's arm so that it was not only dislocated, but the bones cracked. Silvertip saw his fatal mistake, but he uttered no sound. Crippled, though he was, he yet made a supreme effort, but it was as if he had been in the hands of a giant. The lad handled him with remorseless and resistless fury. Suddenly he grasped the knife, which Silvertip had been unable to hold with his crippled hand, and thrust it deeply into the Indian's side. All Silvertip's muscles relaxed as if a strong tension had been removed. Slowly his legs straightened, his arms dropped, and from his side gushed a dark flood. A shadow crept over his face, not dark nor white, but just a shadow. His eyes lost their hate; they no longer saw the foe, they looked beyond with gloomy question, and then were fixed cold in death. Silvertip died as he had lived--a chief. Joe glared round for Girty. He was gone, having slipped away during the fight. The lad turned to release the poor prisoner, when he started back with a cry of fear. Kate lay bathed in a pool of blood--dead. The renegade, fearing she might be rescued, had murdered her, and then fled from the cabin. Almost blinded by horror, and staggering with weakness, Joe turned to leave the cabin. Realizing that he was seriously, perhaps dangerously, wounded he wisely thought he must not leave the place without weapons. He had marked the pegs where the renegade's rifle hung, and had been careful to keep between that and his enemies. He took down the gun and horns, which were attached to it, and, with one last shuddering glance at poor Kate, left the place. He was conscious of a queer lightness in his head, but he suffered no pain. His garments were dripping with blood. He did not know how much of it was his, or the Indian's. Instinct rather than sight was his guide. He grew weaker and weaker; his head began to whirl, yet he kept on, knowing that life and freedom were his if he found Whispering Winds. He gained the top of the ridge; his eyes were blurred, his strength gone. He called aloud, and then plunged forward on his face. He heard dimly, as though the sound were afar off, the whine of a dog. He felt something soft and wet on his face. Then consciousness left him. When he regained his senses he was lying on a bed of ferns under a projecting rock. He heard the gurgle of running water mingling with the song of birds. Near him lay Mose, and beyond rose a wall of green thicket. Neither Whispering Winds nor his horse was visible. He felt a dreamy lassitude. He was tired, but had no pain. Finding he could move without difficulty, he concluded his weakness was more from loss of blood than a dangerous wound. He put his hand on the place where he had been stabbed, and felt a soft, warm compress such as might have been made by a bunch of wet leaves. Some one had unlaced his hunting-shirt--for he saw the strings were not as he usually tied them--and had dressed the wound. Joe decided, after some deliberation, that Whispering Winds had found him, made him as comfortable as possible, and, leaving Mose on guard, had gone out to hunt for food, or perhaps back to the Indian encampment. The rifle and horns he had taken from Girty's hut, together with Silvertip's knife, lay beside him. As Joe lay there hoping for Whispering Winds' return, his reflections were not pleasant. Fortunate, indeed, he was to be alive; but he had no hope he could continue to be favored by fortune. Odds were now against his escape. Girty would have the Delawares on his trail like a pack of hungry wolves. He could not understand the absence of Whispering Winds. She would have died sooner than desert him. Girty had, perhaps, captured her, and was now scouring the woods for him. "I'll get him next time, or he'll get me," muttered Joe, in bitter wrath. He could never forgive himself for his failure to kill the renegade. The recollection of how nearly he had forever ended Girty's brutal career brought before Joe's mind the scene of the fight. He saw again Buzzard Jim's face, revolting, unlike anything human. There stretched Silvertip's dark figure, lying still and stark, and there was Kate's white form in its winding, crimson wreath of blood. Hauntingly her face returned, sad, stern in its cold rigidity. "Poor girl, better for her to be dead," he murmured. "Not long will she be unavenged!" His thoughts drifted to the future. He had no fear of starvation, for Mose could catch a rabbit or woodchuck at any time. When the strips of meat he had hidden in his coat were gone, he could start a fire and roast more. What concerned him most was pursuit. His trail from the cabin had been a bloody one, which would render it easily followed. He dared not risk exertion until he had given his wound time to heal. Then, if he did escape from Girty and the Delawares, his future was not bright. His experiences of the last few days had not only sobered, but brought home to him this real border life. With all his fire and daring he new he was no fool. He had eagerly embraced a career which, at the present stage of his training, was beyond his scope--not that he did not know how to act in sudden crises, but because he had not had the necessary practice to quickly and surely use his knowledge. Bitter, indeed, was his self-scorn when he recalled that of the several critical positions he had been in since his acquaintance with Wetzel, he had failed in all but one. The exception was the killing of Silvertip. Here his fury had made him fight as Wetzel fought with only his every day incentive. He realized that the border was no place for any save the boldest and most experienced hunters--men who had become inured to hardship, callous as to death, keen as Indians. Fear was not in Joe nor lack of confidence; but he had good sense, and realized he would have done a wiser thing had he stayed at Fort Henry. Colonel Zane was right. The Indians were tigers, the renegades vultures, the vast untrammeled forests and plains their covert. Ten years of war had rendered this wilderness a place where those few white men who had survived were hardened to the spilling of blood, stern even in those few quiet hours which peril allowed them, strong in their sacrifice of all for future generations. A low growl from Mose broke into Joe's reflections. The dog had raised his nose from his paws and sniffed suspiciously at the air. The lad heard a slight rustling outside, and in another moment was overjoyed at seeing Whispering Winds. She came swiftly, with a lithe, graceful motion, and flying to him like a rush of wind, knelt beside him. She kissed him and murmured words of endearment. "Winds, where have you been?" he asked her, in the mixed English and Indian dialect in which they conversed. She told him the dog had led her to him two evenings before. He was insensible. She had bathed and bandaged his wound, and remained with him all that night. The next day, finding he was ill and delirious, she decided to risk returning to the village. If any questions arose, she could say he had left her. Then she would find a way to get back to him, bringing healing herbs for his wound and a soothing drink. As it turned out Girty had returned to the camp. He was battered and bruised, and in a white heat of passion. Going at once to Wingenund, the renegade openly accused Whispering Winds of aiding her paleface lover to escape. Wingenund called his daughter before him, and questioned her. She confessed all to her father. "Why is the daughter of Wingenund a traitor to her race?" demanded the chief. "Whispering Winds is a Christian." Wingenund received this intelligence as a blow. He dismissed Girty and sent his braves from his lodge, facing his daughter alone. Gloomy and stern, he paced before her. "Wingenund's blood might change, but would never betray. Wingenund is the Delaware chief," he said. "Go. Darken no more the door of Wingenund's wigwam. Let the flower of the Delawares fade in alien pastures. Go. Whispering Winds is free!" Tears shone brightly in the Indian girl's eyes while she told Joe her story. She loved her father, and she would see him no more. "Winds is free," she whispered. "When strength returns to her master she can follow him to the white villages. Winds will live her life for him." "Then we have no one to fear?" asked Joe. "No redman, now that the Shawnee chief is dead." "Will Girty follow us? He is a coward; he will fear to come alone." "The white savage is a snake in the grass." Two long days followed, during which the lovers lay quietly in hiding. On the morning of the third day Joe felt that he might risk the start for the Village of Peace. Whispering Winds led the horse below a stone upon which the invalid stood, thus enabling him to mount. Then she got on behind him. The sun was just gilding the horizon when they rode out of the woods into a wide plain. No living thing could be seen. Along the edge of the forest the ground was level, and the horse traveled easily. Several times during the morning Joe dismounted beside a pile of stones or a fallen tree. The miles were traversed without serious inconvenience to the invalid, except that he grew tired. Toward the middle of the afternoon, when they had ridden perhaps twenty-five miles, they crossed a swift, narrow brook. The water was a beautiful clear brown. Joe made note of this, as it was an unusual circumstance. Nearly all the streams, when not flooded, were green in color. He remembered that during his wanderings with Wetzel they had found one stream of this brown, copper-colored water. The lad knew he must take a roundabout way to the village so that he might avoid Indian runners or scouts, and he hoped this stream would prove to be the one he had once camped upon. As they were riding toward a gentle swell or knoll covered with trees and shrubbery, Whispering Winds felt something warm on her hand, and, looking, was horrified to find it covered with blood. Joe's wound had opened. She told him they must dismount here, and remain until he was stronger. The invalid himself thought this conclusion was wise. They would be practically safe now, since they must be out of the Indian path, and many miles from the encampment. Accordingly he got off the horse, and sat down on a log, while Whispering Winds searched for a suitable place in which to erect a temporary shelter. Joe's wandering gaze was arrested by a tree with a huge knotty formation near the ground. It was like many trees, but this peculiarity was not what struck Joe. He had seen it before. He never forgot anything in the woods that once attracted his attention. He looked around on all sides. Just behind him was an opening in the clump of trees. Within this was a perpendicular stone covered with moss and lichens; above it a beech tree spread long, graceful branches. He thrilled with the remembrance these familiar marks brought. This was Beautiful Spring, the place where Wetzel rescued Nell, where he had killed the Indians in that night attack he would never forget. Chapter XIX. One evening a week or more after the disappearance of Jim and the girls, George Young and David Edwards, the missionaries, sat on the cabin steps, gazing disconsolately upon the forest scenery. Hard as had been the ten years of their labor among the Indians, nothing had shaken them as the loss of their young friends. "Dave, I tell you your theory about seeing them again is absurd," asserted George. "I'll never forget that wretch, Girty, as he spoke to Nell. Why, she just wilted like a flower blasted by fire. I can't understand why he let me go, and kept Jim, unless the Shawnee had something to do with it. I never wished until now that I was a hunter. I'd go after Girty. You've heard as well as I of his many atrocities. I'd rather have seen Kate and Nell dead than have them fall into his power. I'd rather have killed them myself!" Young had aged perceptibly in these last few days. The blue veins showed at his temples; his face had become thinner and paler, his eyes had a look of pain. The former expression of patience, which had sat so well on him, was gone. "George, I can't account for my fancies or feelings, else, perhaps, I'd be easier in mind," answered Dave. His face, too, showed the ravages of grief. "I've had queer thoughts lately, and dreams such as I never had before. Perhaps it's this trouble which has made me so nervous. I don't seem able to pull myself together. I can neither preach nor work." "Neither can I! This trouble has hit you as hard as it has me. But, Dave, we've still our duty. To endure, to endure--that is our life. Because a beam of sunshine brightened, for a brief time, the gray of our lives, and then faded away, we must not shirk nor grow sour and discontented." "But how cruel is this border life!" "Nature itself is brutal." "Yes, I know, and we have elected to spend our lives here in the midst of this ceaseless strife, to fare poorly, to have no pleasure, never to feel the comfort of a woman's smiles, nor the joy of a child's caress, all because out in the woods are ten or twenty or a hundred savages we may convert." "That is why, and it is enough. It is hard to give up the women you love to a black-souled renegade, but that is not for my thought. What kills me is the horror for her--for her." "I, too, suffer with that thought; more than that, I am morbid and depressed. I feel as if some calamity awaited us here. I have never been superstitious, nor have I had presentiments, but of late there are strange fears in my mind." At this juncture Mr. Wells and Heckewelder came out of the adjoining cabin. "I had word from a trustworthy runner to-day. Girty and his captives have not been seen in the Delaware towns," said Heckewelder. "It is most unlikely that he will take them to the towns," replied Edwards. "What do you make of his capturing Jim?" "For Pipe, perhaps. The Delaware Wolf is snapping his teeth. Pipe is particularly opposed to Christianity, and--what's that?" A low whistle from the bushes near the creek bank attracted the attention of all. The younger men got up to investigate, but Heckewelder detained them. "Wait," he added. "There is no telling what that signal may mean." They waited with breathless interest. Presently the whistle was repeated, and an instant later the tall figure of a man stepped from behind a thicket. He was a white man, but not recognizable at that distance, even if a friend. The stranger waved his hand as if asking them to be cautious, and come to him. They went toward the thicket, and when within a few paces of the man Mr. Wells exclaimed: "It's the man who guided my party to the village. It is Wetzel!" The other missionaries had never seen the hunter though, of course, they were familiar with his name, and looked at him with great curiosity. The hunter's buckskin garments were wet, torn, and covered with burrs. Dark spots, evidently blood stains, showed on his hunting-shirt. "Wetzel?" interrogated Heckewelder. The hunter nodded, and took a step behind the bush. Bending over he lifted something from the ground. It was a girl. It was Nell! She was very white--but alive. A faint, glad smile lighted up her features. Not a word was spoken. With an expression of tender compassion Mr. Wells received her into his arms. The four missionaries turned fearful, questioning eyes upon the hunter, but they could not speak. "She's well, an' unharmed," said Wetzel, reading their thoughts, "only worn out. I've carried her these ten miles." "God bless you, Wetzel!" exclaimed the old missionary. "Nellie, Nellie, can you speak?" "Uncle dear--I'm--all right," came the faint answer. "Kate? What--of her?" whispered George Young with lips as dry as corn husks. "I did my best," said the hunter with a simple dignity. Nothing but the agonized appeal in the young man's eyes could have made Wetzel speak of his achievement. "Tell us," broke in Heckewelder, seeing that fear had stricken George dumb. "We trailed 'em an' got away with the golden-haired lass. The last I saw of Joe he was braced up agin a rock fightin' like a wildcat. I tried to cut Jim loose as I was goin' by. I s'pect the wust fer the brothers an' the other lass." "Can we do nothing?" asked Mr. Wells. "Nothin'!" "Wetzel, has the capturing of James Downs any significance to you?" inquired Heckewelder. "I reckon so." "What?" "Pipe an' his white-redskin allies are agin Christianity." "Do you think we are in danger?" "I reckon so." "What do you advise?" "Pack up a few of your traps, take the lass, an' come with me. I'll see you back in Fort Henry." Heckewelder nervously walked up to the tree and back again. Young and Edwards looked blankly at one another. They both remembered Edward's presentiment. Mr. Wells uttered an angry exclamation. "You ask us to fail in our duty? No, never! To go back to the white settlements and acknowledge we were afraid to continue teaching the Gospel to the Indians! You can not understand Christianity if you advise that. You have no religion. You are a killer of Indians." A shadow that might have been one of pain flitted over the hunter's face. "No, I ain't a Christian, an' I am a killer of Injuns," said Wetzel, and his deep voice had a strange tremor. "I don't know nothin' much 'cept the woods an' fields, an' if there's a God fer me He's out thar under the trees an' grass. Mr. Wells, you're the first man as ever called me a coward, an' I overlook it because of your callin'. I advise you to go back to Fort Henry, because if you don't go now the chances are aginst your ever goin'. Christianity or no Christianity, such men as you hev no bisness in these woods." "I thank you for your advice, and bless you for your rescue of this child; but I can not leave my work, nor can I understand why all this good work we have done should be called useless. We have converted Indians, saved their souls. Is that not being of some use, of some good here?" "It's accordin' to how you look at it. Now I know the bark of an oak is different accordin' to the side we see from. I'll allow, hatin' Injuns as I do, is no reason you oughtn't to try an' convert 'em. But you're bringin' on a war. These Injuns won't allow this Village of Peace here with its big fields of corn, an' shops an' workin' redskins. It's agin their nature. You're only sacrificin' your Christian Injuns." "What do you mean?" asked Mr. Wells, startled by Wetzel's words. "Enough. I'm ready to guide you to Fort Henry." "I'll never go." Wetzel looked at the other men. No one would have doubted him. No one could have failed to see he knew that some terrible anger hovered over the Village of Peace. "I believe you, Wetzel, but I can not go," said Heckewelder, with white face. "I will stay," said George, steadily. "And I," said Dave. Wetzel nodded, and turned to depart when George grasped his arm. The young missionary's face was drawn and haggard; he fixed an intense gaze upon the hunter. "Wetzel, listen;" his voice was low and shaken with deep feeling. "I am a teacher of God's word, and I am as earnest in that purpose as you are in your life-work. I shall die here; I shall fill an unmarked grave; but I shall have done the best I could. This is the life destiny has marked out for me, and I will live it as best I may; but in this moment, preacher as I am, I would give all I have or hope to have, all the little good I may have done, all my life, to be such a man as you. For I would avenge the woman I loved. To torture, to kill Girty! I am only a poor, weak fellow who would be lost a mile from this village, and if not, would fall before the youngest brave. But you with your glorious strength, your incomparable woodcraft, you are the man to kill Girty. Rid the frontier of this fiend. Kill him! Wetzel, kill him! I beseech you for the sake of some sweet girl who even now may be on her way to this terrible country, and who may fall into Girty's power--for her sake, Wetzel, kill him. Trail him like a bloodhound, and when you find him remember my broken heart, remember Nell, remember, oh, God! remember poor Kate!" Young's voice broke into dry sobs. He had completely exhausted himself, so that he was forced to lean against the tree for support. Wetzel spoke never a word. He stretched out his long, brawny arm and gripped the young missionary's shoulder. His fingers clasped hard. Simple, without words as the action was, it could not have been more potent. And then, as he stood, the softer look faded slowly from his face. A ripple seemed to run over his features, which froze, as it subsided, into a cold, stone rigidity. His arm dropped; he stepped past the tree, and, bounding lightly as a deer, cleared the creek and disappeared in the bushes. Mr. Wells carried Nell to his cabin where she lay for hours with wan face and listless languor. She swallowed the nourishing drink an old Indian nurse forced between her teeth; she even smiled weakly when the missionaries spoke to her; but she said nothing nor seemed to rally from her terrible shock. A dark shadow lay always before her, conscious of nothing present, living over again her frightful experience. Again she seemed sunk in dull apathy. "Dave, we're going to loose Nell. She's fading slowly," said George, one evening, several days after the girl's return. "Wetzel said she was unharmed, yet she seems to have received a hurt more fatal than a physical one. It's her mind--her mind. If we cannot brighten her up to make her forget, she'll die." "We've done all within our power. If she could only be brought out of this trance! She lies there all day long with those staring eyes. I can't look into them. They are the eyes of a child who has seen murder." "We must try in some way to get her out of this stupor, and I have an idea. Have you noticed that Mr. Wells has failed very much in the last few weeks?" "Indeed I have, and I'm afraid he's breaking down. He has grown so thin, eats very little, and doesn't sleep. He is old, you know, and, despite his zeal, this border life is telling on him." "Dave, I believe he knows it. Poor, earnest old man! He never says a word about himself, yet he must know he is going down hill. Well, we all begin, sooner or later, that descent which ends in the grave. I believe we might stir Nellie by telling her Mr. Wells' health is breaking." "Let us try." A hurried knock on the door interrupted their conversation. "Come in," said Edwards. The door opened to admit a man, who entered eagerly. "Jim! Jim!" exclaimed both missionaries, throwing themselves upon the newcomer. It was, indeed, Jim, but no answering smile lighted his worn, distressed face while he wrung his friends' hands. "You're not hurt?" asked Dave. "No, I'm uninjured." "Tell us all. Did you escape? Did you see your brother? Did you know Wetzel rescued Nell?" "Wingenund set me free in spite of many demands for my death. He kept Joe a prisoner, and intends to kill him, for the lad was Wetzel's companion. I saw the hunter come into the glade where we camped, break through the line of fighting Indians and carry Nell off." "Kate?" faltered Young, with ashen face. "George, I wish to God I could tell you she is dead," answered Jim, nervously pacing the room. "But she was well when I last saw her. She endured the hard journey better than either Nell or I. Girty did not carry her into the encampment, as Silvertip did Joe and me, but the renegade left us on the outskirts of the Delaware town. There was a rocky ravine with dense undergrowth where he disappeared with his captive. I suppose he has his den somewhere in that ravine." George sank down and buried his face in his arms; neither movement nor sound betokened consciousness. "Has Wetzel come in with Nell? Joe said he had a cave where he might have taken her in case of illness or accident." "Yes, he brought her back," answered Edwards, slowly. "I want to see her," said Jim, his haggard face expressing a keen anxiety. "She's not wounded? hurt? ill?" "No, nothing like that. It's a shock which she can't get over, can't forget." "I must see her," cried Jim, moving toward the door. "Don't go," replied Dave, detaining him. "Wait. We must see what's best to be done. Wait till Heckewelder comes. He'll be here soon. Nell thinks you're dead, and the surprise might be bad for her." Heckewelder came in at that moment, and shook hands warmly with Jim. "The Delaware runner told me you were here. I am overjoyed that Wingenund freed you," said the missionary. "It is a most favorable sign. I have heard rumors from Goshocking and Sandusky that have worried me. This good news more than offsets the bad. I am sorry about your brother. Are you well?" "Well, but miserable. I want to see Nell. Dave tells me she is not exactly ill, but something is wrong with her. Perhaps I ought not to see her just yet." "It'll be exactly the tonic for her," replied Heckewelder. "She'll be surprised out of herself. She is morbid, apathetic, and, try as we may, we can't interest her. Come at once." Heckewelder had taken Jim's arm and started for the door when he caught sight of Young, sitting bowed and motionless. Turning to Jim he whispered: "Kate?" "Girty did not take her into the encampment," answered Jim, in a low voice. "I hoped he would, because the Indians are kind, but he didn't. He took her to his den." Just then Young raised his face. The despair in it would have melted a heart of stone. It had become the face of an old man. "If only you'd told me she had died," he said to Jim, "I'd have been man enough to stand it, but--this--this kills me--I can't breathe!" He staggered into the adjoining room, where he flung himself upon a bed. "It's hard, and he won't be able to stand up under it, for he's not strong," whispered Jim. Heckewelder was a mild, pious man, in whom no one would ever expect strong passion; but now depths were stirred within his heart that had ever been tranquil. He became livid, and his face was distorted with rage. "It's bad enough to have these renegades plotting and working against our religion; to have them sow discontent, spread lies, make the Indians think we have axes to grind, to plant the only obstacle in our path--all this is bad; but to doom an innocent white woman to worse than death! What can I call it!" "What can we do?" asked Jim. "Do? That's the worst of it. We can do nothing, nothing. We dare not move." "Is there no hope of getting Kate back?" "Hope? None. That villain is surrounded by his savages. He'll lie low now for a while. I've heard of such deeds many a time, but it never before came so close home. Kate Wells was a pure, loving Christian woman. She'll live an hour, a day, a week, perhaps, in that snake's clutches, and then she'll die. Thank God!" "Wetzel has gone on Girty's trail. I know that from his manner when he left us," said Edwards. "Wetzel may avenge her, but he can never save her. It's too late. Hello---" The exclamation was called forth by the appearance of Young, who entered with a rifle in his hands. "George, where are you going with that gun?" asked Edwards, grasping his friend by the arm. "I'm going after her," answered George wildly. He tottered as he spoke, but wrenched himself free from Dave. "Come, George, listen, listen to reason," interposed Heckewelder, laying hold of Young. "You are frantic with grief now. So are all of us. But calm yourself. Why, man, you're a preacher, not a hunter. You'd be lost, you'd starve in the woods before getting half way to the Indian town. This is terrible enough; don't make it worse by throwing your life away. Think of us, your friends; think of your Indian pupils who rely so much on you. Think of the Village of Peace. We can pray, but we can't prevent these border crimes. With civilization, with the spread of Christianity, they will pass away. Bear up under this blow for the sake of your work. Remember we alone can check such barbarity. But we must not fight. We must sacrifice all that men hold dear, for the sake of the future." He took the rifle away from George, and led him back into the little, dark room. Closing the door he turned to Jim and Dave. "He is in a bad way, and we must carefully watch him for a few days." "Think of George starting out to kill Girty!" exclaimed Dave. "I never fired a gun, but yet I'd go too." "So would we all, if we did as our hearts dictate," retorted Heckewelder, turning fiercely upon Dave as if stung. "Man! we have a village full of Christians to look after. What would become of them? I tell you we've all we can do here to outwit these border ruffians. Simon Girty is plotting our ruin. I heard it to-day from the Delaware runner who is my friend. He is jealous of our influence, when all we desire is to save these poor Indians. And, Jim, Girty has killed our happiness. Can we ever recover from the misery brought upon us by poor Kate's fate?" The missionary raised his hand as if to exhort some power above. "Curse the Girty's!" he exclaimed in a sudden burst of uncontrollable passion. "Having conquered all other obstacles, must we fail because of wicked men of our own race? Oh, curse them!" "Come," he said, presently, in a voice which trembled with the effort he made to be calm. "We'll go in to Nellie." The three men entered Mr. Wells' cabin. The old missionary, with bowed head and hands clasped behind his back, was pacing to and fro. He greeted Jim with glad surprise. "We want Nellie to see him," whispered Heckewelder. "We think the surprise will do her good." "I trust it may," said Mr. Wells. "Leave it to me." They followed Heckewelder into an adjoining room. A torch flickered over the rude mantle-shelf, lighting up the room with fitful flare. It was a warm night, and the soft breeze coming in the window alternately paled and brightened the flame. Jim saw Nell lying on the bed. Her eyes were closed, and her long, dark lashes seemed black against the marble paleness of her skin. "Stand behind me," whispered Heckewelder to Jim. "Nellie," he called softly, but only a faint flickering of her lashes answered him. "Nellie, Nellie," repeated Heckewelder, his deep, strong voice thrilling. Her eyes opened. They gazed at Mr. Wells on one side, at Edwards standing at the foot of the bed, at Heckewelder leaning over her, but there was no recognition or interest in her look. "Nellie, can you understand me?" asked Heckewelder, putting into his voice all the power and intensity of feeling of which he was capable. An almost imperceptible shadow of understanding shone in her eyes. "Listen. You have had a terrible shock, and it has affected your mind. You are mistaken in what you think, what you dream of all the time. Do you understand? You are wrong!" Nell's eyes quickened with a puzzled, questioning doubt. The minister's magnetic, penetrating voice had pierced her dulled brain. "See, I have brought you Jim!" Heckewelder stepped aside as Jim fell on his knees by the bed. He took her cold hands in his and bent over her. For the moment his voice failed. The doubt in Nell's eyes changed to a wondrous gladness. It was like the rekindling of a smoldering fire. "Jim?" she whispered. "Yes, Nellie, it's Jim alive and well. It's Jim come back to you." A soft flush stained her white face. She slipped her arm tenderly around his neck, and held her cheek close to his. "Jim," she murmured. "Nellie, don't you know me?" asked Mr. Wells, trembling, excited. This was the first word she had spoken in four days. "Uncle!" she exclaimed, suddenly loosening her hold on Jim, and sitting up in bed, then she gazed wildly at the others. "Was it all a horrible dream?" Mr. Wells took her hand soothingly, but he did not attempt to answer her question. He looked helplessly at Heckewelder, but that missionary was intently studying the expression on Nell's face. "Part of it was a dream," he answered,impressively. "Then that horrible man did take us away?" "Yes." "Oh-h! but we're free now? This is my room. Oh, tell me?" "Yes, Nellie, you're safe at home now." "Tell--tell me," she cried, shudderingly, as she leaned close to Jim and raised a white, imploring face to his. "Where is Kate?--Oh! Jim--say, say she wasn't left with Girty?" "Kate is dead," answered Jim, quickly. He could not endure the horror in her eyes. He deliberately intended to lie, as had Heckewelder. It was as if the tension of Nell's nerves was suddenly relaxed. The relief from her worst fear was so great that her mind took in only the one impression. Then, presently, a choking cry escaped her, to be followed by a paroxysm of sobs. Chapter XX. Early on the following day Heckewelder, astride his horse, appeared at the door of Edwards' cabin. "How is George?" he inquired of Dave, when the latter had opened the door. "He had a bad night, but is sleeping now. I think he'll be all right after a time," answered Dave. "That's well. Nevertheless keep a watch on him for a few days." "I'll do so." "Dave, I leave matters here to your good judgment. I'm off to Goshocking to join Zeisberger. Affairs there demand our immediate attention, and we must make haste." "How long do you intend to be absent?" "A few days; possibly a week. In case of any unusual disturbance among the Indians, the appearance of Pipe and his tribe, or any of the opposing factions, send a fleet runner at once to warn me. Most of my fears have been allayed by Wingenund's attitude toward us. His freeing Jim in face of the opposition of his chiefs is a sure sign of friendliness. More than once I have suspected that he was interested in Christianity. His daughter, Whispering Winds, exhibited the same intense fervor in religion as has been manifested by all our converts. It may be that we have not appealed in vain to Wingenund and his daughter; but their high position in the Delaware tribe makes it impolitic for them to reveal a change of heart. If we could win over those two we'd have every chance to convert the whole tribe. Well, as it is we must be thankful for Wingenund's friendship. We have two powerful allies now. Tarhe, the Wyandot chieftain, remains neutral, to be sure, but that's almost as helpful as his friendship." "I, too, take a hopeful view of the situation," replied Edwards. "We'll trust in Providence, and do our best," said Heckewelder, as he turned his horse. "Good-by." "Godspeed!" called Edwards, as his chief rode away. The missionary resumed his work of getting breakfast. He remained in doors all that day, except for the few moments when he ran over to Mr. Wells' cabin to inquire regarding Nell's condition. He was relieved to learn she was so much better that she had declared her intention of moving about the house. Dave kept a close watch on Young. He, himself, was suffering from the same blow which had prostrated his friend, but his physical strength and fortitude were such that he did not weaken. He was overjoyed to see that George rallied, and showed no further indications of breaking down. True it was, perhaps, that Heckewelder's earnest prayer on behalf of the converted Indians had sunk deeply into George's heart and thus kept it from breaking. No stronger plea could have been made than the allusion to those gentle, dependent Christians. No one but a missionary could realize the sweetness, the simplicity, the faith, the eager hope for a good, true life which had been implanted in the hearts of these Indians. To bear it in mind, to think of what he, as a missionary and teacher, was to them, relieved him of half his burden, and for strength to bear the remainder he went to God. For all worry there is a sovereign cure, for all suffering there is a healing balm; it is religious faith. Happiness had suddenly flashed with a meteor-like radiance into Young's life only to be snuffed out like a candle in a windy gloom, but his work, his duty remained. So in his trial he learned the necessity of resignation. He chaffed no more at the mysterious, seemingly brutal methods of nature; he questioned no more. He wondered no more at the apparent indifference of Providence. He had one hope, which was to be true to his faith, and teach it to the end. Nell mastered her grief by an astonishing reserve of strength. Undoubtedly it was that marvelously merciful power which enables a person, for the love of others, to bear up under a cross, or even to fight death himself. As Young had his bright-eyed Indian boys and girls, who had learned Christianity from him, and whose future depended on him, so Nell had her aged and weakening uncle to care for and cherish. Jim's attentions to her before the deep affliction had not been slight, but now they were so marked as to be unmistakable. In some way Jim seemed changed since he had returned from the Delaware encampment. Although he went back to the work with his old aggressiveness, he was not nearly so successful as he had been before. Whether or not this was his fault, he took his failure deeply to heart. There was that in his tenderness which caused Nell to regard him, in one sense, as she did her uncle. Jim, too, leaned upon her, and she accepted his devotion where once she had repelled it. She had unconsciously betrayed a great deal when she had turned so tenderly to him in the first moments after her recognition, and he remembered it. He did not speak of love to her; he let a thousand little acts of kindness, a constant thoughtfulness of her plead his cause. The days succeeding Heckewelder's departure were remarkable for several reasons. Although the weather was enticing, the number of visiting Indians gradually decreased. Not a runner from any tribe came into the village, and finally the day dawned when not a single Indian from the outlying towns was present to hear the preaching. Jim spoke, as usual. After several days had passed and none but converted Indians made up the congregation, the young man began to be uneasy in mind. Young and Edwards were unable to account for the unusual absence from worship, yet they did not see in it anything to cause especial concern. Often there had been days without visitation to the Village of Peace. Finally Jim went to consult Glickhican. He found the Delaware at work in the potato patch. The old Indian dropped his hoe and bowed to the missionary. A reverential and stately courtesy always characterized the attitude of the Indians toward the young white father. "Glickhican, can you tell me why no Indians have come here lately?" The old chief shook his head. "Does their absence signify ill to the Village of Peace?" "Glickhican saw a blackbird flitting in the shadow of the moon. The bird hovered above the Village of Peace, but sang no song." The old Delaware vouchsafed no other than this strange reply. Jim returned to his cabin decidedly worried. He did not at all like Glickhican's answer. The purport of it seemed to be that a cloud was rising on the bright horizon of the Christian village. He confided his fears to Young and Edwards. After discussing the situation, the three missionaries decided to send for Heckewelder. He was the leader of the Mission; he knew more of Indian craft than any of them, and how to meet it. If this calm in the heretofore busy life of the Mission was the lull before a storm, Heckewelder should be there with his experience and influence. "For nearly ten years Heckewelder has anticipated trouble from hostile savages," said Edwards, "but so far he has always averted it. As you know, he has confined himself mostly to propitiating the Indians, and persuading them to be friendly, and listen to us. We'll send for him." Accordingly they dispatched a runner to Goshocking. In due time the Indian returned with the startling news that Heckewelder had left the Indian village days before, as had, in fact, all the savages except the few converted ones. The same held true in the case of Sandusky, the adjoining town. Moreover, it had been impossible to obtain any news in regard to Zeisberger. The missionaries were now thoroughly alarmed, and knew not what to do. They concealed the real state of affairs from Nell and her uncle, desiring to keep them from anxiety as long as possible. That night the three teachers went to bed with heavy hearts. The following morning at daybreak, Jim was awakened from a sound sleep by some one calling at his window. He got up to learn who it was, and, in the gray light, saw Edwards standing outside. "What's the matter?" questioned Jim, hurriedly. "Matter enough. Hurry. Get into your clothes," replied Edwards. "As soon as you are dressed, quietly awaken Mr. Wells and Nellie, but do not frighten them." "But what's the trouble?" queried Jim, as he began to dress. "The Indians are pouring into the village as thickly as flying leaves in autumn." Edwards' exaggerated assertion proved to be almost literally true. No sooner had the rising sun dispelled the mist, than it shone on long lines of marching braves, mounted warriors, hundreds of packhorses approaching from the forests. The orderly procession was proof of a concerted plan on the part of the invaders. From their windows the missionaries watched with bated breath; with wonder and fear they saw the long lines of dusky forms. When they were in the clearing the savages busied themselves with their packs. Long rows of teepees sprung up as if by magic. The savages had come to stay! The number of incoming visitors did not lessen until noon, when a few straggling groups marked the end of the invading host. Most significant of all was the fact that neither child, maiden, nor squaw accompanied this army. Jim appraised the number at six or seven hundred, more than had ever before visited the village at one time. They were mostly Delawares, with many Shawnees, and a few Hurons among them. It was soon evident, however, that for the present, at least, the Indians did not intend any hostile demonstration. They were quiet in manner, and busy about their teepees and camp-fires, but there was an absence of the curiosity that had characterized the former sojourns of Indians at the peaceful village. After a brief consultation with his brother missionaries, who all were opposed to his preaching that afternoon, Jim decided he would not deviate from his usual custom. He held the afternoon service, and spoke to the largest congregation that had ever sat before him. He was surprised to find that the sermon, which heretofore so strongly impressed the savages, did not now arouse the slightest enthusiasm. It was followed by a brooding silence of a boding, ominous import. Four white men, dressed in Indian garb, had been the most attentive listeners to Jim's sermon. He recognized three as Simon Girty, Elliott and Deering, the renegades, and he learned from Edwards that the other was the notorious McKee. These men went through the village, stalking into the shops and cabins, and acting as do men who are on a tour of inspection. So intrusive was their curiosity that Jim hurried back to Mr. Well's cabin and remained there in seclusion. Of course, by this time Nell and her uncle knew of the presence of the hostile savages. They were frightened, and barely regained their composure when the young man assured them he was certain they had no real cause for fear. Jim was sitting at the doorstep with Mr. Wells and Edwards when Girty, with his comrades, came toward them. The renegade leader was a tall, athletic man, with a dark, strong face. There was in it none of the brutality and ferocity which marked his brother's visage. Simon Girty appeared keen, forceful, authoritative, as, indeed, he must have been to have attained the power he held in the confederated tribes. His companions presented wide contrasts. Elliott was a small, spare man of cunning, vindictive aspect; McKee looked, as might have been supposed from his reputation, and Deering was a fit mate for the absent Girty. Simon appeared to be a man of some intelligence, who had used all his power to make that position a great one. The other renegades were desperadoes. "Where's Heckewelder?" asked Girty, curtly, as he stopped before the missionaries. "He started out for the Indian towns on the Muskingong," answered Edwards. "But we have had no word from either him or Zeisberger." "When d'ye expect him?" "I can't say. Perhaps to-morrow, and then, again, maybe not for a week." "He is in authority here, ain't he?" "Yes; but he left me in charge of the Mission. Can I serve you in any way?" "I reckon not," said the renegade, turning to his companions. They conversed in low tones for a moment. Presently McKee, Elliott and Deering went toward the newly erected teepees. "Girty, do you mean us any ill will?" earnestly asked Edwards. He had met the man on more than one occasion, and had no hesitation about questioning him. "I can't say as I do," answered the renegade, and those who heard him believed him. "But I'm agin this redskin preachin', an' hev been all along. The injuns are mad clear through, an' I ain't sayin' I've tried to quiet 'em any. This missionary work has got to be stopped, one way or another. Now what I waited here to say is this: I ain't quite forgot I was white once, an' believe you fellars are honest. I'm willin' to go outer my way to help you git away from here." "Go away?" echoed Edwards. "That's it," answered Girty, shouldering his rifle. "But why? We are perfectly harmless; we are only doing good and hurt no one. Why should we go?" "'Cause there's liable to be trouble," said the renegade, significantly. Edwards turned slowly to Mr. Wells and Jim. The old missionary was trembling visibly. Jim was pale; but more with anger than fear. "Thank you, Girty, but we'll stay," and Jim's voice rang clear. Chapter XXI. "Jim, come out here," called Edwards at the window of Mr. Wells' cabin. The young man arose from the breakfast table, and when outside found Edwards standing by the door with an Indian brave. He was a Wyandot lightly built, lithe and wiry, easily recognizable as an Indian runner. When Jim appeared the man handed him a small packet. He unwound a few folds of some oily skin to find a square piece of birch bark, upon which were scratched the following words: "Rev. J. Downs. Greeting. "Your brother is alive and safe. Whispering Winds rescued him by taking him as her husband. Leave the Village of Peace. Pipe and Half King have been influenced by Girty. "Zane." "Now, what do you think of that?" exclaimed Jim, handing the message to Edwards. "Thank Heaven, Joe was saved!" "Zane? That must be the Zane who married Tarhe's daughter," answered Edwards, when he had read the note. "I'm rejoiced to hear of your brother." "Joe married to that beautiful Indian maiden! Well, of all wonderful things," mused Jim. "What will Nell say?" "We're getting warnings enough. Do you appreciate that?" asked Edwards. "'Pipe and Half King have been influenced by Girty.' Evidently the writer deemed that brief sentence of sufficient meaning." "Edwards, we're preachers. We can't understand such things. I am learning, at least something every day. Colonel Zane advised us not to come here. Wetzel said, 'Go back to Fort Henry.' Girty warned us, and now comes this peremptory order from Isaac Zane." "Well?" "It means that these border men see what we will not admit. We ministers have such hope and trust in God that we can not realize the dangers of this life. I fear that our work has been in vain." "Never. We have already saved many souls. Do not be discouraged." All this time the runner had stood near at hand straight as an arrow. Presently Edwards suggested that the Wyandot was waiting to be questioned, and accordingly he asked the Indian if he had anything further to communicate. "Huron--go by--paleface." Here he held up both hands and shut his fists several times, evidently enumerating how many white men he had seen. "Here--when--high--sun." With that he bounded lightly past them, and loped off with an even, swinging stride. "What did he mean?" asked Jim, almost sure he had not heard the runner aright. "He meant that a party of white men are approaching, and will be here by noon. I never knew an Indian runner to carry unreliable information. We have joyful news, both in regard to your brother, and the Village of Peace. Let us go in to tell the others." The Huron runner's report proved to be correct. Shortly before noon signals from Indian scouts proclaimed the approach of a band of white men. Evidently Girty's forces had knowledge beforehand of the proximity of this band, for the signals created no excitement. The Indians expressed only a lazy curiosity. Soon several Delaware scouts appeared, escorting a large party of frontiersmen. These men turned out to be Captain Williamson's force, which had been out on an expedition after a marauding tribe of Chippewas. This last named tribe had recently harried the remote settlers, and committed depredations on the outskirts of the white settlements eastward. The company was composed of men who had served in the garrison at Fort Pitt, and hunters and backwoodsmen from Yellow Creek and Fort Henry. The captain himself was a typical borderman, rough and bluff, hardened by long years of border life, and, like most pioneers, having no more use for an Indian than for a snake. He had led his party after the marauders, and surprised and slaughtered nearly all of them. Returning eastward he had passed through Goshocking, where he learned of the muttering storm rising over the Village of Peace, and had come more out of curiosity than hope to avert misfortune. The advent of so many frontiersmen seemed a godsend to the perplexed and worried missionaries. They welcomed the newcomers most heartily. Beds were made in several of the newly erected cabins; the village was given over for the comfort of the frontiersmen. Edwards conducted Captain Williamson through the shops and schools, and the old borderman's weather-beaten face expressed a comical surprise. "Wal, I'll be durned if I ever expected to see a redskin work," was his only comment on the industries. "We are greatly alarmed by the presence of Girty and his followers," said Edwards. "We have been warned to leave, but have not been actually threatened. What do you infer from the appearance here of these hostile savages?" "It hardly 'pears to me they'll bother you preachers. They're agin the Christian redskins, that's plain." "Why have we been warned to go?" "That's natural, seein' they're agin the preachin'." "What will they do with the converted Indians?" "Mighty onsartin. They might let them go back to the tribes, but 'pears to me these good Injuns won't go. Another thing, Girty is afeered of the spread of Christianity." "Then you think our Christians will be made prisoners?" "'Pears likely." "And you, also, think we'd do well to leave here." "I do, sartin. We're startin' for Fort Henry soon. You'd better come along with us." "Captain Williamson, we're going to stick it out, Girty or no Girty." "You can't do no good stayin' here. Pipe and Half King won't stand for the singin', prayin' redskins, especially when they've got all these cattle and fields of grain." "Wetzel said the same." "Hev you seen Wetzel?" "Yes; he rescued a girl from Jim Girty, and returned her to us." "That so? I met Wetzel and Jack Zane back a few miles in the woods. They're layin' for somebody, because when I asked them to come along they refused, sayin' they had work as must be done. They looked like it, too. I never hern tell of Wetzel advisin' any one before; but I'll say if he told me to do a thing, by Gosh! I'd do it." "As men, we might very well take the advice given us, but as preachers we must stay here to do all we can for these Christian Indians. One thing more: will you help us?" "I reckon I'll stay here to see the thing out," answered Williamson. Edwards made a mental note of the frontiersman's evasive answer. Jim had, meanwhile, made the acquaintance of a young minister, John Christy by name, who had lost his sweetheart in one of the Chippewa raids, and had accompanied the Williamson expedition in the hope he might rescue her. "How long have you been out?" asked Jim. "About four weeks now," answered Christy. "My betrothed was captured five weeks ago yesterday. I joined Williamson's band, which made up at Short Creek to take the trail of the flying Chippewas, in the hope I might find her. But not a trace! The expedition fell upon a band of redskins over on the Walhonding, and killed nearly all of them. I learned from a wounded Indian that a renegade had made off with a white girl about a week previous. Perhaps it was poor Lucy." Jim related the circumstances of his own capture by Jim Girty, the rescue of Nell, and Kate's sad fate. "Could Jim Girty have gotten your girl?" inquired Jim, in conclusion. "It's fairly probable. The description doesn't tally with Girty's. This renegade was short and heavy, and noted especially for his strength. Of course, an Indian would first speak of some such distinguishing feature. There are, however, ten or twelve renegades on the border, and, excepting Jim Girty, one's as bad as another." "Then it's a common occurrence, this abducting girls from the settlements?" "Yes, and the strange thing is that one never hears of such doings until he gets out on the frontier." "For that matter, you don't hear much of anything, except of the wonderful richness and promise of the western country." "You're right. Rumors of fat, fertile lands induce the colonist to become a pioneer. He comes west with his family; two out of every ten lose their scalps, and in some places the average is much greater. The wives, daughters and children are carried off into captivity. I have been on the border two years, and know that the rescue of any captive, as Wetzel rescued your friend, is a remarkable exception." "If you have so little hope of recovering your sweetheart, what then is your motive for accompanying this band of hunters?" "Revenge!" "And you are a preacher?" Jim's voice did not disguise his astonishment. "I was a preacher, and now I am thirsting for vengeance," answered Christy, his face clouding darkly. "Wait until you learn what frontier life means. You are young here yet; you are flushed with the success of your teaching; you have lived a short time in this quiet village, where, until the last few days, all has been serene. You know nothing of the strife, of the necessity of fighting, of the cruelty which makes up this border existence. Only two years have hardened me so that I actually pant for the blood of the renegade who has robbed me. A frontiersman must take his choice of succumbing or cutting his way through flesh and bone. Blood will be spilled; if not yours, then your foe's. The pioneers run from the plow to the fight; they halt in the cutting of corn to defend themselves, and in winter must battle against cold and hardship, which would be less cruel if there was time in summer to prepare for winter, for the savages leave them hardly an opportunity to plant crops. How many pioneers have given up, and gone back east? Find me any who would not return home to-morrow, if they could. All that brings them out here is the chance for a home, and all that keeps them out here is the poor hope of finally attaining their object. Always there is a possibility of future prosperity. But this generation, if it survives, will never see prosperity and happiness. What does this border life engender in a pioneer who holds his own in it? Of all things, not Christianity. He becomes a fighter, keen as the redskin who steals through the coverts." * * * The serene days of the Village of Peace had passed into history. Soon that depraved vagabond, the French trader, with cheap trinkets and vile whisky, made his appearance. This was all that was needed to inflame the visitors. Where they had been only bold and impudent, they became insulting and abusive. They execrated the Christian Indians for their neutrality; scorned them for worshiping this unknown God, and denounced a religion which made women of strong men. The slaughtering of cattle commenced; the despoiling of maize fields, and robbing of corn-cribs began with the drunkenness. All this time it was seen that Girty and Elliott consulted often with Pipe and Half King. The latter was the only Huron chief opposed to neutrality toward the Village of Peace, and he was, if possible, more fierce in his hatred than Pipe. The future of the Christian settlement rested with these two chiefs. Girty and Elliott, evidently, were the designing schemers, and they worked diligently on the passions of these simple-minded, but fierce, warlike chiefs. Greatly to the relief of the distracted missionaries, Heckewelder returned to the village. Jaded and haggard, he presented a travel-worn appearance. He made the astonishing assertions that he had been thrice waylaid and assaulted on his way to Goshocking; then detained by a roving band of Chippewas, and soon after his arrival at their camping ground a renegade had run off with a white woman captive, while the Indians west of the village were in an uproar. Zeisberger, however, was safe in the Moravian town of Salem, some miles west of Goshocking. Heckewelder had expected to find the same condition of affairs as existed in the Village of Peace; but he was bewildered by the great array of hostile Indians. Chiefs who had once extended friendly hands to him, now drew back coldly, as they said: "Washington is dead. The American armies are cut to pieces. The few thousands who had escaped the British are collecting at Fort Pitt to steal the Indian's land." Heckewelder vigorously denied all these assertions, knowing they had been invented by Girty and Elliott. He exhausted all his skill and patience in the vain endeavor to show Pipe where he was wrong. Half King had been so well coached by the renegades that he refused to listen. The other chiefs maintained a cold reserve that was baffling and exasperating. Wingenund took no active part in the councils; but his presence apparently denoted that he had sided with the others. The outlook was altogether discouraging. "I'm completely fagged out," declared Heckewelder, that night when he returned to Edwards' cabin. He dropped into a chair as one whose strength is entirely spent, whose indomitable spirit has at last been broken. "Lie down to rest," said Edwards. "Oh, I can't. Matters look so black." "You're tired out and discouraged. You'll feel better to-morrow. The situation is not, perhaps, so hopeless. The presence of these frontiersmen should encourage us." "What will they do? What can they do?" cried Heckewelder, bitterly. "I tell you never before have I encountered such gloomy, stony Indians. It seems to me that they are in no vacillating state. They act like men whose course is already decided upon, and who are only waiting." "For what?" asked Jim, after a long silence. "God only knows! Perhaps for a time; possibly for a final decision, and, it may be, for a reason, the very thought of which makes me faint." "Tell us," said Edwards, speaking quietly, for he had ever been the calmest of the missionaries. "Never mind. Perhaps it's only my nerves. I'm all unstrung, and could suspect anything to-night." "Heckewelder, tell us?" Jim asked, earnestly. "My friends, I pray I am wrong. God help us if my fears are correct. I believe the Indians are waiting for Jim Girty." Chapter XXII. Simon Girty lolled on a blanket in Half King's teepee. He was alone, awaiting his allies. Rings of white smoke curled lazily from his lips as he puffed on a long Indian pipe, and gazed out over the clearing that contained the Village of Peace. Still water has something in its placid surface significant of deep channels, of hidden depths; the dim outline of the forest is dark with meaning, suggestive of its wild internal character. So Simon Girty's hard, bronzed face betrayed the man. His degenerate brother's features were revolting; but his own were striking, and fell short of being handsome only because of their craggy hardness. Years of revolt, of bitterness, of consciousness of wasted life, had graven their stern lines on that copper, masklike face. Yet despite the cruelty there, the forbidding shade on it, as if a reflection from a dark soul, it was not wholly a bad countenance. Traces still lingered, faintly, of a man in whom kindlier feelings had once predominated. In a moment of pique Girty had deserted his military post at Fort Pitt, and become an outlaw of his own volition. Previous to that time he had been an able soldier, and a good fellow. When he realized that his step was irrevocable, that even his best friends condemned him, he plunged, with anger and despair in his heart, into a war upon his own race. Both of his brothers had long been border ruffians, whose only protection from the outraged pioneers lay in the faraway camps of hostile tribes. George Girty had so sunk his individuality into the savage's that he was no longer a white man. Jim Girty stalked over the borderland with a bloody tomahawk, his long arm outstretched to clutch some unfortunate white woman, and with his hideous smile of death. Both of these men were far lower than the worst savages, and it was almost wholly to their deeds of darkness that Simon Girty owed his infamous name. To-day White Chief, as Girty was called, awaited his men. A slight tremor of the ground caused him to turn his gaze. The Huron chief, Half King, resplendent in his magnificent array, had entered the teepee. He squatted in a corner, rested the bowl of his great pipe on his knee, and smoked in silence. The habitual frown of his black brow, like a shaded, overhanging cliff; the fire flashing from his eyes, as a shining light is reflected from a dark pool; his closely-shut, bulging jaw, all bespoke a nature, lofty in its Indian pride and arrogance, but more cruel than death. Another chief stalked into the teepee and seated himself. It was Pipe. His countenance denoted none of the intelligence that made Wingenund's face so noble; it was even coarser than Half King's, and his eyes, resembling live coals in the dark; the long, cruel lines of his jaw; the thin, tightly-closed lips, which looked as if they could relax only to utter a savage command, expressed fierce cunning and brutality. "White Chief is idle to-day," said Half King, speaking in the Indian tongue. "King, I am waiting. Girty is slow, but sure," answered the renegade. "The eagle sails slowly round and round, up and up," replied Half King, with majestic gestures, "until his eye sees all, until he knows his time; then he folds his wings and swoops down from the blue sky like the forked fire. So does White Chief. But Half King is impatient." "To-day decides the fate of the Village of Peace," answered Girty, imperturbably. "Ugh!" grunted Pipe. Half King vented his approval in the same meaning exclamation. An hour passed; the renegade smoked in silence; the chiefs did likewise. A horseman rode up to the door of the teepee, dismounted, and came in. It was Elliott. He had been absent twenty hours. His buckskin suit showed the effect of hard riding through the thickets. "Hullo, Bill, any sign of Jim?" was Girty's greeting to his lieutenant. "Nary. He's not been seen near the Delaware camp. He's after that chap who married Winds." "I thought so. Jim's roundin' up a tenderfoot who will be a bad man to handle if he has half a chance. I saw as much the day he took his horse away from Silver. He finally did fer the Shawnee, an' almost put Jim out. My brother oughtn't to give rein to personal revenge at a time like this." Girty's face did not change, but his tone was one of annoyance. "Jim said he'd be here to-day, didn't he?" "To-day is as long as we allowed to wait." "He'll come. Where's Jake and Mac?" "They're here somewhere, drinkin' like fish, an' raisin' hell." Two more renegades appeared at the door, and, entering the teepee, squatted down in Indian fashion. The little wiry man with the wizened face was McKee; the other was the latest acquisition to the renegade force, Jake Deering, deserter, thief, murderer--everything that is bad. In appearance he was of medium height, but very heavily, compactly built, and evidently as strong as an ox. He had a tangled shock of red hair, a broad, bloated face; big, dull eyes, like the openings of empty furnaces, and an expression of beastliness. Deering and McKee were intoxicated. "Bad time fer drinkin'," said Girty, with disapproval in his glance. "What's that ter you?" growled Deering. "I'm here ter do your work, an' I reckon it'll be done better if I'm drunk." "Don't git careless," replied Girty, with that cool tone and dark look such as dangerous men use. "I'm only sayin' it's a bad time fer you, because if this bunch of frontiersmen happen to git onto you bein' the renegade that was with the Chippewas an' got thet young feller's girl, there's liable to be trouble." "They ain't agoin' ter find out." "Where is she?" "Back there in the woods." "Mebbe it's as well. Now, don't git so drunk you'll blab all you know. We've lots of work to do without havin' to clean up Williamson's bunch," rejoined Girty. "Bill, tie up the tent flaps an' we'll git to council." Elliott arose to carry out the order, and had pulled in the deer-hide flaps, when one of them was jerked outward to disclose the befrilled person of Jim Girty. Except for a discoloration over his eye, he appeared as usual. "Ugh!" grunted Pipe, who was glad to see his renegade friend. Half King evinced the same feeling. "Hullo," was Simon Girty's greeting. "'Pears I'm on time fer the picnic," said Jim Girty, with his ghastly leer. Bill Elliott closed the flaps, after giving orders to the guard to prevent any Indians from loitering near the teepee. "Listen," said Simon Girty, speaking low in the Delaware language. "The time is ripe. We have come here to break forever the influence of the white man's religion. Our councils have been held; we shall drive away the missionaries, and burn the Village of Peace." He paused, leaning forward in his exceeding earnestness, with his bronzed face lined by swelling veins, his whole person made rigid by the murderous thought. Then he hissed between his teeth: "What shall we do with these Christian Indians?" Pipe raised his war-club, struck it upon the ground; then handed it to Half King. Half King took the club and repeated the action. Both chiefs favored the death penalty. "Feed 'em to ther buzzards," croaked Jim Girty. Simon Girty knitted his brow in thought. The question of what to do with the converted Indians had long perplexed him. "No," said he; "let us drive away the missionaries, burn the village, and take the Indians back to camp. We'll keep them there; they'll soon forget." "Pipe does not want them," declared the Delaware. "Christian Indians shall never sit round Half King's fire," cried the Huron. Simon Girty knew the crisis had come; that but few moments were left him to decide as to the disposition of the Christians; and he thought seriously. Certainly he did not want the Christians murdered. However cruel his life, and great his misdeeds, he was still a man. If possible, he desired to burn the village and ruin the religious influence, but without shedding blood. Yet, with all his power, he was handicapped, and that by the very chiefs most nearly under his control. He could not subdue this growing Christian influence without the help of Pipe and Half King. To these savages a thing was either right or wrong. He had sown the seed of unrest and jealousy in the savage breasts, and the fruit was the decree of death. As far as these Indians were concerned, this decision was unalterable. On the other hand, if he did not spread ruin over the Village of Peace, the missionaries would soon get such a grasp on the tribes that their hold would never be broken. He could not allow that, even if he was forced to sacrifice the missionaries along with their converts, for he saw in the growth of this religion his own downfall. The border must be hostile to the whites, or it could no longer be his home. To be sure, he had aided the British in the Revolution, and could find a refuge among them; but this did not suit him. He became an outcast because of failure to win the military promotion which he had so much coveted. He had failed among his own people. He had won a great position in an alien race, and he loved his power. To sway men--Indians, if not others--to his will; to avenge himself for the fancied wrong done him; to be great, had been his unrelenting purpose. He knew he must sacrifice the Christians, or eventually lose his own power. He had no false ideas about the converted Indians. He knew they were innocent; that they were a thousand times better off than the pagan Indians; that they had never harmed him, nor would they ever do so; but if he allowed them to spread their religion there was an end of Simon Girty. His decision was characteristic of the man. He would sacrifice any one, or all, to retain his supremacy. He knew the fulfillment of the decree as laid down by Pipe and Half King would be known as his work. His name, infamous now, would have an additional horror, and ever be remembered by posterity in unspeakable loathing, in unsoftening wrath. He knew this, and deep down in his heart awoke a numbed chord of humanity that twinged with strange pain. What awful work he must sanction to keep his vaunted power! More bitter than all was the knowledge that to retain this hold over the Indians he must commit a deed which, so far as the whites were concerned, would take away his great name, and brand him a coward. He briefly reviewed his stirring life. Singularly fitted for a leader, in a few years he had risen to the most powerful position on the border. He wielded more influence than any chief. He had been opposed to the invasion of the pioneers, and this alone, without his sagacity or his generalship, would have given him control of many tribes. But hatred for his own people, coupled with unerring judgment, a remarkable ability to lead expeditions, and his invariable success, had raised him higher and higher until he stood alone. He was the most powerful man west of the Alleghenies. His fame was such that the British had importuned him to help them, and had actually, in more than one instance, given him command over British subjects. All of which meant that he had a great, even though an infamous name. No matter what he was blamed for; no matter how many dastardly deeds had been committed by his depraved brothers and laid to his door, he knew he had never done a cowardly act. That which he had committed while he was drunk he considered as having been done by the liquor, and not by the man. He loved his power, and he loved his name. In all Girty's eventful, ignoble life, neither the alienation from his people, the horror they ascribed to his power, nor the sacrifice of his life to stand high among the savage races, nor any of the cruel deeds committed while at war, hurt him a tithe as much as did this sanctioning the massacre of the Christians. Although he was a vengeful, unscrupulous, evil man, he had never acted the coward. Half King waited long for Girty to speak; since he remained silent, the wily Huron suggested they take a vote on the question. "Let us burn the Village of Peace, drive away the missionaries, and take the Christians back to the Delaware towns--all without spilling blood," said Girty, determined to carry his point, if possible. "I say the same," added Elliott, refusing the war-club held out to him by Half King. "Me, too," voted McKee, not so drunk but that he understood the lightninglike glance Girty shot at him. "Kill 'em all; kill everybody," cried Deering in drunken glee. He took the club and pounded with it on the ground. Pipe repeated his former performance, as also did Half King, after which he handed the black, knotted symbol of death to Jim Girty. Three had declared for saving the Christians, and three for the death penalty. Six pairs of burning eyes were fastened on the Deaths-head. Pipe and Half King were coldly relentless; Deering awoke to a brutal earnestness; McKee and Elliott watched with bated breath. These men had formed themselves into a tribunal to decide on the life or death of many, and the situation, if not the greatest in their lives, certainly was one of vital importance. Simon Girty cursed all the fates. He dared not openly oppose the voting, and he could not, before those cruel but just chiefs, try to influence his brother's vote. As Jim Girty took the war-club, Simon read in his brother's face the doom of the converted Indians and he muttered to himself: "Now tremble an' shrink, all you Christians!" Jim was not in a hurry. Slowly he poised the war-club. He was playing as a cat plays with a mouse; he was glorying in his power. The silence was that of death. It signified the silence of death. The war-club descended with violence. "Feed the Christians to ther buzzards!" Chapter XXIII. "I have been here before," said Joe to Whispering Winds. "I remember that vine-covered stone. We crawled over it to get at Girty and Silvertip. There's the little knoll; here's the very spot where I was hit by a flying tomahawk. Yes, and there's the spring. Let me see, what did Wetzel call this spot?" "Beautiful Spring," answered the Indian girl. "That's it, and it's well named. What a lovely place!" Nature had been lavish in the beautifying of this inclosed dell. It was about fifty yards wide, and nestled among little, wooded knolls and walls of gray, lichen-covered stone. Though the sun shone brightly into the opening, and the rain had free access to the mossy ground, no stormy winds ever entered this well protected glade. Joe reveled in the beauty of the scene, even while he was too weak to stand erect. He suffered no pain from his wound, although he had gradually grown dizzy, and felt as if the ground was rising before him. He was glad to lie upon the mossy ground in the little cavern under the cliff. Upon examination his wound was found to have opened, and was bleeding. His hunting coat was saturated with blood. Whispering Winds washed the cut, and dressed it with cooling leaves. Then she rebandaged it tightly with Joe's linsey handkerchiefs, and while he rested comfortable she gathered bundles of ferns, carrying them to the little cavern. When she had a large quantity of these she sat down near Joe, and began to weave the long stems into a kind of screen. The fern stalks were four feet long and half a foot wide; these she deftly laced together, making broad screens which would serve to ward off the night dews. This done, she next built a fireplace with flat stones. She found wild apples, plums and turnips on the knoll above the glade. Then she cooked strips of meat which had been brought with them. Lance grazed on the long grass just without the glade, and Mose caught two rabbits. When darkness settled down Whispering Winds called the dog within the cavern, and hung the screens before the opening. Several days passed. Joe rested quietly, and began to recover strength. Besides the work of preparing their meals, Whispering Winds had nothing to do save sit near the invalid and amuse or interest him so that he would not fret or grow impatient, while his wound was healing. They talked about their future prospects. After visiting the Village of Peace, they would go to Fort Henry, where Joe could find employment. They dwelt upon the cabin they would build, and passed many happy moments planning a new home. Joe's love of the wilderness had in no wise diminished; but a blow on his head from a heavy tomahawk, and a vicious stab in the back, had lessened his zeal so far that he understood it was not wise to sacrifice life for the pleasures of the pathless woods. He could have the last without the danger of being shot at from behind every tree. He reasoned that it would be best for him to take his wife to Fort Henry, there find employment, and devote his leisure time to roaming in the forest. "Will the palefaces be kind to an Indian who has learned to love them?" Whispering Winds asked wistfully of Joe. "Indeed they will," answered Joe, and he told her the story of Isaac Zane; how he took his Indian bride home; how her beauty and sweetness soon won all the white people's love. "It will be so with you, my wife." "Whispering Winds knows so little," she murmured. "Why, you are learning every day, and even if such was not the case, you know enough for me." "Whispering Winds will be afraid; she fears a little to go." "I'll be glad when we can be on the move," said Joe, with his old impatient desire for action. "How soon, Winds, can we set off?" "As many days," answered the Indian girl, holding up five fingers. "So long? I want to leave this place." "Leave Beautiful Spring?" "Yes, even this sweet place. It has a horror for me. I'll never forget the night I first saw that spring shining in the moonlight. It was right above the rock that I looked into the glade. The moon was reflected in the dark pool, and as I gazed into the shadowy depths of the dark water I suddenly felt an unaccountable terror; but I oughtn't to have the same feeling now. We are safe, are we not?" "We are safe," murmured Whispering Winds. "Yet I have the same chill of fear whenever I look at the beautiful spring, and at night as I awake to hear the soft babble of running water, I freeze until my heart feels like cold lead. Winds, I'm not a coward; but I can't help this feeling. Perhaps, it's only the memory of that awful night with Wetzel." "An Indian feels so when he passes to his unmarked grave," answered Winds, gazing solemnly at him. "Whispering Winds does not like this fancy of yours. Let us leave Beautiful Spring. You are almost well. Ah! if Whispering Winds should lose you! I love you!" "And I love you, my beautiful wild flower," answered Joe, stroking the dark head so near his own. A tender smile shone on his face. He heard a slight noise without the cave, and, looking up, saw that which caused the smile to fade quickly. "Mose!" he called, sharply. The dog was away chasing rabbits. Whispering Winds glanced over her shoulder with a startled cry, which ended in a scream. Not two yards behind her stood Jim Girty. Hideous was his face in its triumphant ferocity. He held a long knife in his hand, and, snarling like a mad wolf, he made a forward lunge. Joe raised himself quickly; but almost before he could lift his hand in defense, the long blade was sheathed in his breast. Slowly he sank back, his gray eyes contracting with the old steely flash. The will to do was there, but the power was gone forever. "Remember, Girty, murderer! I am Wetzel's friend," he cried, gazing at his slayer with unutterable scorn. Then the gray eyes softened, and sought the blanched face of the stricken maiden. "Winds," he whispered faintly. She was as one frozen with horror. The gray eyes gazed into hers with lingering tenderness; then the film of death came upon them. The renegade raised his bloody knife, and bent over the prostrate form. Whispering Winds threw herself upon Girty with the blind fury of a maddened lioness. Cursing fiercely, he stabbed her once, twice, three times. She fell across the body of her lover, and clasped it convulsively. Girty gave one glance at his victims; deliberately wiped the gory knife on Wind's leggins, and, with another glance, hurried and fearful, around the glade, he plunged into the thicket. An hour passed. A dark stream crept from the quiet figures toward the spring. It dyed the moss and the green violet leaves. Slowly it wound its way to the clear water, dripping between the pale blue flowers. The little fall below the spring was no longer snowy white; blood had tinged it red. A dog came bounding into the glade. He leaped the brook, hesitated on the bank, and lowered his nose to sniff at the water. He bounded up the bank to the cavern. A long, mournful howl broke the wilderness's quiet. Another hour passed. The birds were silent; the insects still. The sun sank behind the trees, and the shades of evening gathered. The ferns on the other side of the glade trembled. A slight rustle of dead leaves disturbed the stillness. The dog whined, then barked. The tall form of a hunter rose out of the thicket, and stepped into the glade with his eyes bent upon moccasin tracks in the soft moss. The trail he had been following led him to this bloody spring. "I might hev knowed it," he muttered. Wetzel, for it was he, leaned upon his long rifle while his keen eyes took in the details of the tragedy. The whining dog, the bloody water, the motionless figures lying in a last embrace, told the sad story. "Joe an' Winds," he muttered. Only a moment did he remain lost in sad reflection. A familiar moccasin-print in the sand on the bank pointed westward. He examined it carefully. "Two hours gone," he muttered. "I might overtake him." Then his motions became swift. With two blows of his tomahawk he secured a long piece of grapevine. He took a heavy stone from the bed of the brook. He carried Joe to the spring, and, returning for Winds, placed her beside her lover. This done, he tied one end of the grapevine around the stone, and wound the other about the dead bodies. He pushed them off the bank into the spring. As the lovers sank into the deep pool they turned, exposing first Winds' sad face, and then Joe's. Then they sank out of sight. Little waves splashed on the shore of the pool; the ripple disappeared, and the surface of the spring became tranquil. Wetzel stood one moment over the watery grave of the maiden who had saved him, and the boy who had loved him. In the gathering gloom his stalwart form assumed gigantic proportions, and when he raised his long arm and shook his clenched fist toward the west, he resembled a magnificent statue of dark menace. With a single bound he cleared the pool, and then sped out of the glade. He urged the dog on Girty's trail, and followed the eager beast toward the west. As he disappeared, a long, low sound like the sigh of the night wind swelled and moaned through the gloom. Chapter XXIV. When the first ruddy rays of the rising sun crimsoned the eastern sky, Wetzel slowly wound his way down a rugged hill far west of Beautiful Spring. A white dog, weary and footsore, limped by his side. Both man and beast showed evidence of severe exertion. The hunter stopped in a little cave under a projecting stone, and, laying aside his rifle, began to gather twigs and sticks. He was particular about selecting the wood, and threw aside many pieces which would have burned well; but when he did kindle a flame it blazed hotly, yet made no smoke. He sharpened a green stick, and, taking some strips of meat from his pocket, roasted them over the hot flame. He fed the dog first. Mose had crouched close on the ground with his head on his paws, and his brown eyes fastened upon the hunter. "He had too big a start fer us," said Wetzel, speaking as if the dog were human. It seemed that Wetzel's words were a protest against the meaning in those large, sad eyes. Then the hunter put out the fire, and, searching for a more secluded spot, finally found one on top of the ledge, where he commanded a good view of his surroundings. The weary dog was asleep. Wetzel settled himself to rest, and was soon wrapped in slumber. About noon he awoke. He arose, stretched his limbs, and then took an easy position on the front of the ledge, where he could look below. Evidently the hunter was waiting for something. The dog slept on. It was the noonday hour, when the stillness of the forest almost matched that of midnight. The birds were more quiet than at any other time during daylight. Wetzel reclined there with his head against the stone, and his rifle resting across his knees. He listened now to the sounds of the forest. The soft breeze fluttering among the leaves, the rain-call of the tree frog, the caw of crows from distant hilltops, the sweet songs of the thrush and oriole, were blended together naturally, harmoniously. But suddenly the hunter raised his head. A note, deeper than the others, a little too strong, came from far down the shaded hollow. To Wetzel's trained ear it was a discord. He manifested no more than this attention, for the birdcall was the signal he had been awaiting. He whistled a note in answer that was as deep and clear as the one which had roused him. Moments passed. There was no repetition of the sound. The songs of the other birds had ceased. Besides Wetzel there was another intruder in the woods. Mose lifted his shaggy head and growled. The hunter patted the dog. In a few minutes the figure of a tall man appeared among the laurels down the slope. He stopped while gazing up at the ledge. Then, with noiseless step, he ascended the ridge, climbed the rocky ledge, and turned the corner of the stone to face Wetzel. The newcomer was Jonathan Zane. "Jack, I expected you afore this," was Wetzel's greeting. "I couldn't make it sooner," answered Zane. "After we left Williamson and separated, I got turned around by a band of several hundred redskins makin' for the Village of Peace. I went back again, but couldn't find any sign of the trail we're huntin'. Then I makes for this meetin' place. I've been goin' for some ten hours, and am hungry." "I've got some bar ready cooked," said Wetzel, handing Zane several strips of meat. "What luck did you have?" "I found Girty's trail, an old one, over here some eighteen or twenty miles, an' follered it until I went almost into the Delaware town. It led to a hut in a deep ravine. I ain't often surprised, but I wus then. I found the dead body of that girl, Kate Wells, we fetched over from Fort Henry. Thet's sad, but it ain't the surprisin' part. I also found Silvertip, the Shawnee I've been lookin' fer. He was all knocked an' cut up, deader'n a stone. There'd been somethin' of a scrap in the hut. I calkilate Girty murdered Kate, but I couldn't think then who did fer Silver, though I allowed the renegade might hev done thet, too. I watched round an' seen Girty come back to the hut. He had ten Injuns with him, an' presently they all made fer the west. I trailed them, but didn't calkilate it'd be wise to tackle the bunch single-handed, so laid back. A mile or so from the hut I came across hoss tracks minglin' with the moccasin-prints. About fifteen mile or from the Delaware town, Girty left his buckskins, an' they went west, while he stuck to the hoss tracks. I was onto his game in a minute. I cut across country fer Beautiful Spring, but I got there too late. I found the warm bodies of Joe and thet Injun girl, Winds. The snake hed murdered them." "I allow Joe won over Winds, got away from the Delaware town with her, tried to rescue Kate, and killed Silver in the fight. Girty probably was surprised, an' run after he had knifed the girl." "'Pears so to me. Joe had two knife cuts, an' one was an old wound." "You say it was a bad fight?" "Must hev been. The hut was all knocked in, an' stuff scattered about. Wal, Joe could go some if he onct got started." "I'll bet he could. He was the likeliest lad I've seen for many a day." "If he'd lasted, he'd been somethin' of a hunter an' fighter." "Too bad. But Lord! you couldn't keep him down, no more than you can lots of these wild young chaps that drift out here." "I'll allow he had the fever bad." "Did you hev time to bury them?" "I hedn't time fer much. I sunk them in the spring." "It's a pretty deep hole," said Zane, reflectively. "Then, you and the dog took Girty's trail, but couldn't catch up with him. He's now with the renegade cutthroats and hundreds of riled Indians over there in the Village of Peace." "I reckon you're right." A long silence ensued. Jonathan finished his simple repast, drank from the little spring that trickled under the stone, and, sitting down by the dog, smoothed out his long silken hair. "Lew, we're pretty good friends, ain't we?" he asked, thoughtfully. "Jack, you an' the colonel are all the friends I ever hed, 'ceptin' that boy lyin' quiet back there in the woods." "I know you pretty well, and ain't sayin' a word about your runnin' off from me on many a hunt, but I want to speak plain about this fellow Girty." "Wal?" said Wetzel, as Zane hesitated. "Twice in the last few years you and I have had it in for the same men, both white-livered traitors. You remember? First it was Miller, who tried to ruin my sister Betty, and next it was Jim Girty, who murdered our old friend, as good an old man as ever wore moccasins. Wal, after Miller ran off from the fort, we trailed him down to the river, and I points across and says, 'You or me?' and you says, 'Me.' You was Betty's friend, and I knew she'd be avenged. Miller is lyin' quiet in the woods, and violets have blossomed twice over his grave, though you never said a word; but I know it's true because I know you." Zane looked eagerly into the dark face of his friend, hoping perhaps to get some verbal assurance there that his belief was true. But Wetzel did not speak, and he continued: "Another day not so long ago we both looked down at an old friend, and saw his white hair matted with blood. He'd been murdered for nothin'. Again you and me trailed a coward and found him to be Jim Girty. I knew you'd been huntin' him for years, and so I says, 'Lew, you or me?' and you says, 'Me.' I give in to you, for I knew you're a better man than me, and because I wanted you to have the satisfaction. Wal, the months have gone by, and Jim Girty's still livin' and carryin' on. Now he's over there after them poor preachers. I ain't sayin', Lew, that you haven't more agin him than me, but I do say, let me in on it with you. He always has a gang of redskins with him; he's afraid to travel alone, else you'd had him long ago. Two of us'll have more chance to get him. Let me go with you. When it comes to a finish, I'll stand aside while you give it to him. I'd enjoy seein' you cut him from shoulder to hip. After he leaves the Village of Peace we'll hit his trail, camp on it, and stick to it until it ends in his grave." The earnest voice of the backwoodsman ceased. Both men rose and stood facing each other. Zane's bronzed face was hard and tense, expressive of an indomitable will; Wetzel's was coldly dark, with fateful resolve, as if his decree of vengeance, once given, was as immutable as destiny. The big, horny hands gripped in a viselike clasp born of fierce passion, but no word was spoken. Far to the west somewhere, a befrilled and bedizened renegade pursued the wild tenor of his ways; perhaps, even now steeping his soul in more crime, or staining his hands a deeper red, but sleeping or waking, he dreamed not of this deadly compact that meant his doom. The two hunters turned their stern faces toward the west, and passed silently down the ridge into the depths of the forest. Darkness found them within rifle-shot of the Village of Peace. With the dog creeping between them, they crawled to a position which would, in daylight, command a view of the clearing. Then, while one stood guard, the other slept. When morning dawned they shifted their position to the top of a low, fern-covered cliff, from which they could see every movement in the village. All the morning they watched with that wonderful patience of men who knew how to wait. The visiting savages were quiet, the missionaries moved about in and out of the shops and cabins; the Christian Indians worked industriously in the fields, while the renegades lolled before a prominent teepee. "This quiet looks bad," whispered Jonathan to Wetzel. No shouts were heard; not a hostile Indian was seen to move. "They've come to a decision," whispered Jonathan, and Wetzel answered him: "If they hev, the Christians don't know it." An hour later the deep pealing of the church bell broke the silence. The entire band of Christian Indians gathered near the large log structure, and then marched in orderly form toward the maple grove where the service was always held in pleasant weather. This movement brought the Indians within several hundred yards of the cliff where Zane and Wetzel lay concealed. "There's Heckewelder walking with old man Wells," whispered Jonathan. "There's Young and Edwards, and, yes, there's the young missionary, brother of Joe. 'Pears to me they're foolish to hold service in the face of all those riled Injuns." "Wuss'n foolish," answered Wetzel. "Look! By gum! As I'm a livin' sinner there comes the whole crowd of hostile redskins. They've got their guns, and--by Gum! they're painted. Looks bad, bad! Not much friendliness about that bunch!" "They ain't intendin' to be peaceable." "By gum! You're right. There ain't one of them settin' down. 'Pears to me I know some of them redskins. There's Pipe, sure enough, and Kotoxen. By gum! If there ain't Shingiss; he was friendly once." "None of them's friendly." "Look! Lew, look! Right behind Pipe. See that long war-bonnet. As I'm a born sinner, that's your old friend, Wingenund. 'Pears to me we've rounded up all our acquaintances." The two bordermen lay close under the tall ferns and watched the proceedings with sharp eyes. They saw the converted Indians seat themselves before the platform. The crowd of hostile Indians surrounded the glade on all sides, except on, which, singularly enough, was next to the woods. "Look thar!" exclaimed Wetzel, under his breath. He pointed off to the right of the maple glade. Jonathan gazed in the direction indicated, and saw two savages stealthily slipping through the bushes, and behind trees. Presently these suspicious acting spies, or scouts, stopped on a little knoll perhaps an hundred yards from the glade. Wetzel groaned. "This ain't comfortable," growled Zane, in a low whisper. "Them red devils are up to somethin' bad. They'd better not move round over here." The hunters, satisfied that the two isolated savages meant mischief, turned their gaze once more toward the maple grove. "Ah! Simon you white traitor! See him, Lew, comin' with his precious gang," said Jonathan. "He's got the whole thing fixed, you can plainly see that. Bill Elliott, McKee; and who's that renegade with Jim Girty? I'll allow he must be the fellar we heard was with the Chippewas. Tough lookin' customer; a good mate fer Jim Girty! A fine lot of border-hawks!" "Somethin' comin' off," whispered Wetzel, as Zane's low growl grew unintelligible. Jonathan felt, rather than saw, Wetzel tremble. "The missionaries are consultin'. Ah! there comes one! Which? I guess it's Edwards. By gum! who's that Injun stalkin' over from the hostile bunch. Big chief, whoever he is. Blest if it ain't Half King!" The watchers saw the chief wave his arm and speak with evident arrogance to Edwards, who, however, advanced to the platform and raised his hand to address the Christians. "Crack!" A shot rang out from the thicket. Clutching wildly at his breast, the missionary reeled back, staggered, and fell. "One of those skulkin' redskins has killed Edwards," said Zane. "But, no; he's not dead! He's gettin' up. Mebbe he ain't hurt bad. By gum! there's Young comin' forward. Of all the fools!" It was indeed true that Young had faced the Indians. Half King addressed him as he had the other; but Young raised his hand and began speaking. "Crack!" Another shot rang out. Young threw up his hands and fell heavily. The missionaries rushed toward him. Mr. Wells ran round the group, wringing his hands as if distracted. "He's hard hit," hissed Zane, between his teeth. "You can tell that by the way he fell." Wetzel did not answer. He lay silent and motionless, his long body rigid, and his face like marble. "There comes the other young fellar--Joe's brother. He'll get plugged, too," continued Zane, whispering rather to himself than to his companion. "Oh, I hoped they'd show some sense! It's noble for them to die for Christianity, but it won't do no good. By gum! Heckewelder has pulled him back. Now, that's good judgment!" Half King stepped before the Christians and addressed them. He held in his hand a black war-club, which he wielded as he spoke. Jonathan's attention was now directed from the maple grove to the hunter beside him. He had heard a slight metallic click, as Wetzel cocked his rifle. Then he saw the black barrel slowly rise. "Listen, Lew. Mebbe it ain't good sense. We're after Girty, you remember; and it's a long shot from here--full three hundred yards." "You're right, Jack, you're right," answered Wetzel, breathing hard. "Let's wait, and see what comes off." "Jack, I can't do it. It'll make our job harder; but I can't help it. I can put a bullet just over the Huron's left eye, an' I'm goin' to do it." "You can't do it, Lew; you can't! It's too far for any gun. Wait! Wait!" whispered Jonathan, laying his hand on Wetzel's shoulder. "Wait? Man, can't you see what the unnamable villain is doin'?" "What?" asked Zane, turning his eyes again to the glade. The converted Indians sat with bowed heads. Half King raised his war-club, and threw it on the ground in front of them. "He's announcin' the death decree!" hissed Wetzel. "Well! if he ain't!" Jonathan looked at Wetzel's face. Then he rose to his knees, as had Wetzel, and tightened his belt. He knew that in another instant they would be speeding away through the forest. "Lew, my rifle's no good fer that distance. But mebbe yours is. You ought to know. It's not sense, because there's Simon Girty, and there's Jim, the men we're after. If you can hit one, you can another. But go ahead, Lew. Plug that cowardly redskin!" Wetzel knelt on one knee, and thrust the black rifle forward through the fern leaves. Slowly the fatal barrel rose to a level, and became as motionless as the immovable stones. Jonathan fixed his keen gaze on the haughty countenance of Half King as he stood with folded arms and scornful mien in front of the Christians he had just condemned. Even as the short, stinging crack of Wetzel's rifle broke the silence, Jonathan saw the fierce expression of Half King's dark face change to one of vacant wildness. His arms never relaxed from their folded position. He fell, as falls a monarch of the forest trees, a dead weight. Chapter XXV. "Please do not preach to-day," said Nell, raising her eyes imploringly to Jim's face. "Nellie, I must conduct the services as usual. I can not shirk my duty, nor let these renegades see I fear to face them." "I have such a queer feeling. I am afraid. I don't want to be left alone. Please do not leave me." Jim strode nervously up and down the length of the room. Nell's worn face, her beseeching eyes and trembling hands touched his heart. Rather than almost anything else, he desired to please her, to strengthen her; yet how could he shirk his duty? "Nellie, what is it you fear?" he asked, holding her hands tightly. "Oh, I don't know what--everything. Uncle is growing weaker every day. Look at Mr. Young; he is only a shadow of his former self, and this anxiety is wearing Mr. Heckewelder out. He is more concerned than he dares admit. You needn't shake your head, for I know it. Then those Indians who are waiting, waiting--for God only knows what! Worse than all to me, I saw that renegade, that fearful beast who made way with poor dear Kate!" Nell burst into tears, and leaned sobbing on Jim's shoulder. "Nell, I've kept my courage only because of you," replied Jim, his voice trembling slightly. She looked up quickly. Something in the pale face which was bent over her told that now, if ever, was the time for a woman to forget herself, and to cheer, to inspire those around her. "I am a silly baby, and selfish!" she cried, freeing herself from his hold. "Always thinking of myself." She turned away and wiped the tears from her eyes. "Go, Jim, do you duty; I'll stand by and help you all a woman can." * * * The missionaries were consulting in Heckewelder's cabin. Zeisberger had returned that morning, and his aggressive, dominating spirit was just what they needed in an hour like this. He raised the downcast spirits of the ministers. "Hold the service? I should say we will," he declared, waving his hands. "What have we to be afraid of?" "I do not know," answered Heckewelder, shaking his head doubtfully. "I do not know what to fear. Girty himself told me he bore us no ill will; but I hardly believe him. All this silence, this ominous waiting perplexes, bewilders me." "Gentlemen, our duty at least is plain," said Jim, impressively. "The faith of these Christian Indians in us is so absolute that they have no fear. They believe in God, and in us. These threatening savages have failed signally to impress our Christians. If we do not hold the service they will think we fear Girty, and that might have a bad influence." "I am in favor of postponing the preaching for a few days. I tell you I am afraid of Girty's Indians, not for myself, but for these Christians whom we love so well. I am afraid." Heckewelder's face bore testimony to his anxious dread. "You are our leader; we have but to obey," said Edwards. "Yet I think we owe it to our converts to stick to our work until we are forced by violence to desist." "Ah! What form will that violence take?" cried Heckewelder, his face white. "You cannot tell what these savages mean. I fear! I fear!" "Listen, Heckewelder, you must remember we had this to go through once before," put in Zeisberger earnestly. "In '78 Girty came down on us like a wolf on the fold. He had not so many Indians at his beck and call as now; but he harangued for days, trying to scare us and our handful of Christians. He set his drunken fiends to frighten us, and he failed. We stuck it out and won. He's trying the same game. Let us stand against him, and hold our services as usual. We should trust in God!" "Never give up!" cried Jim. "Gentlemen, you are right; you shame me, even though I feel that I understand the situation and its dread possibilities better than any one of you. Whatever befalls we'll stick to our post. I thank you for reviving the spirit in my cowardly heart. We will hold the service to-day as usual and to make it more impressive, each shall address the congregation in turn." "And, if need be, we will give our lives for our Christians," said Young, raising his pale face. * * * The deep mellow peals of the church bell awoke the slumbering echoes. Scarcely had its melody died away in the forest when a line of Indians issued from the church and marched toward the maple grove. Men, women, youths, maidens and children. Glickhican, the old Delaware chief, headed the line. His step was firm, his head erect, his face calm in its noble austerity. His followers likewise expressed in their countenances the steadfastness of their belief. The maidens' heads were bowed, but with shyness, not fear. The children were happy, their bright faces expressive of the joy they felt in the anticipation of listening to their beloved teachers. This procession passed between rows of painted savages, standing immovable, with folded arms, and somber eyes. No sooner had the Christians reached the maple grove, when from all over the clearing appeared hostile Indians, who took positions near the knoll where the missionaries stood. Heckewelder's faithful little band awaited him on the platform. The converted Indians seated themselves as usual at the foot of the knoll. The other savages crowded closely on both sides. They carried their weapons, and maintained the same silence that had so singularly marked their mood of the last twenty-four hours. No human skill could have divined their intention. This coldness might be only habitual reserve, and it might be anything else. Heckewelder approached at the same time that Simon Girty and his band of renegades appeared. With the renegades were Pipe and Half King. These two came slowly across the clearing, passed through the opening in the crowd, and stopped close to the platform. Heckewelder went hurriedly up to his missionaries. He seemed beside himself with excitement, and spoke with difficulty. "Do not preach to-day. I have been warned again," he said, in a low voice. "Do you forbid it?" inquired Edwards. "No, no. I have not that authority, but I implore it. Wait, wait until the Indians are in a better mood." Edwards left the group, and, stepping upon the platform, faced the Christians. At the same moment Half King stalked majestically from before his party. He carried no weapon save a black, knotted war-club. A surging forward of the crowd of savages behind him showed the intense interest which his action had aroused. He walked forward until he stood half way between the platform and the converts. He ran his evil glance slowly over the Christians, and then rested it upon Edwards. "Half King's orders are to be obeyed. Let the paleface keep his mouth closed," he cried in the Indian tongue. The imperious command came as a thunderbolt from a clear sky. The missionaries behind Edwards stood bewildered, awaiting the outcome. But Edwards, without a moment's hesitation, calmly lifted his hand and spoke. "Beloved Christians, we meet to-day as we have met before, as we hope to meet in---" "Spang!" The whistling of a bullet over the heads of the Christians accompanied the loud report of a rifle. All presently plainly heard the leaden missile strike. Edwards wheeled, clutching his side, breathed hard, and then fell heavily without uttering a cry. He had been shot by an Indian concealed in the thicket. For a moment no one moved, nor spoke. The missionaries were stricken with horror; the converts seemed turned to stone, and the hostile throng waited silently, as they had for hours. "He's shot! He's shot! Oh, I feared this!" cried Heckewelder, running forward. The missionaries followed him. Edwards was lying on his back, with a bloody hand pressed to his side. "Dave, Dave, how is it with you?" asked Heckewelder, in a voice low with fear. "Not bad. It's too far out to be bad, but it knocked me over," answered Edwards, weakly. "Give me--water." They carried him from the platform, and laid him on the grass under a tree. Young pressed Edwards' hand; he murmured something that sounded like a prayer, and then walked straight upon the platform, as he raised his face, which was sublime with a white light. "Paleface! Back!" roared Half King, as he waved his war-club. "You Indian dog! Be silent!" Young's clear voice rolled out on the quiet air so imperiously, so powerful in its wonderful scorn and passion, that the hostile savages were overcome by awe, and the Christians thrilled anew with reverential love. Young spoke again in a voice which had lost its passion, and was singularly sweet in its richness. "Beloved Christians, if it is God's will that we must die to prove our faith, then as we have taught you how to live, so we can show you how to die---" "Spang!" Again a whistling sound came with the bellow of an overcharged rifle; again the sickening thud of a bullet striking flesh. Young fell backwards from the platform. The missionaries laid him beside Edwards, and then stood in shuddering silence. A smile shone on Young's pale face; a stream of dark blood welled from his breast. His lips moved; he whispered: "I ask no more--God's will." Jim looked down once at his brother missionaries; then with blanched face, but resolute and stern, he marched toward the platform. Heckewelder ran after him, and dragged him back. "No! no! no! My God! Would you be killed? Oh! I tried to prevent this!" cried Heckewelder, wringing his hands. One long, fierce, exultant yell pealed throughout the grove. It came from those silent breasts in which was pent up hatred; it greeted this action which proclaimed victory over the missionaries. All eyes turned on Half King. With measured stride he paced to and fro before the Christian Indians. Neither cowering nor shrinking marked their manner; to a man, to a child, they rose with proud mien, heads erect and eyes flashing. This mighty chief with his blood-thirsty crew could burn the Village of Peace, could annihilate the Christians, but he could never change their hope and trust in God. "Blinded fools!" cried Half King. "The Huron is wise; he tells no lies. Many moons ago he told the Christians they were sitting half way between two angry gods, who stood with mouths open wide and looking ferociously at each other. If they did not move back out of the road they would be ground to powder by the teeth of one or the other, or both. Half King urged them to leave the peaceful village, to forget the paleface God; to take their horses, and flocks, and return to their homes. The Christians scorned the Huron King's counsel. The sun has set for the Village of Peace. The time has come. Pipe and the Huron are powerful. They will not listen to the paleface God. They will burn the Village of Peace. Death to the Christians!" Half King threw the black war-club with a passionate energy on the grass before the Indians. They heard this decree of death with unflinching front. Even the children were quiet. Not a face paled, not an eye was lowered. Half King cast their doom in their teeth. The Christians eyed him with unspoken scorn. "My God! My God! It is worse than I thought!" moaned Heckewelder. "Utter ruin! Murder! Murder!" In the momentary silence which followed his outburst, a tiny cloud of blue-white smoke came from the ferns overhanging a cliff. Crack! All heard the shot of a rifle; all noticed the difference between its clear, ringing intonation and the loud reports of the other two. All distinctly heard the zip of a bullet as it whistled over their heads. All? No, not all. One did not hear that speeding bullet. He who was the central figure in this tragic scene, he who had doomed the Christians might have seen that tiny puff of smoke which heralded his own doom, but before the ringing report could reach his ears a small blue hole appeared, as if by magic, over his left eye, and pulse, and sense, and life had fled forever. Half King, great, cruel chieftain, stood still for an instant as if he had been an image of stone; his haughty head lost its erect poise, the fierceness seemed to fade from his dark face, his proud plume waved gracefully as he swayed to and fro, and then fell before the Christians, inert and lifeless. No one moved; it was as if no one breathed. The superstitious savages awaited fearfully another rifle shot; another lightning stroke, another visitation from the paleface's God. But Jim Girty, with a cunning born of his terrible fear, had recognized the ring of that rifle. He had felt the zip of a bullet which could just as readily have found his brain as Half King's. He had stood there as fair a mark as the cruel Huron, yet the Avenger had not chosen him. Was he reserved for a different fate? Was not such a death too merciful for the frontier Deathshead? He yelled in his craven fear: "Le vent de la Mort!" The well known, dreaded appellation aroused the savages from a fearful stupor into a fierce manifestation of hatred. A tremendous yell rent the air. Instantly the scene changed. Chapter XXVI. In the confusion the missionaries carried Young and Edwards into Mr. Wells' cabin. Nell's calm, white face showed that she had expected some such catastrophe as this, but she of all was the least excited. Heckewelder left them at the cabin and hurried away to consult Captain Williamson. While Zeisberger, who was skilled in surgery, attended to the wounded men, Jim barred the heavy door, shut the rude, swinging windows, and made the cabin temporarily a refuge from prowling savages. Outside the clamor increased. Shrill yells rent the air, long, rolling war-cries sounded above all the din. The measured stamp of moccasined feet, the rush of Indians past the cabin, the dull thud of hatchets struck hard into the trees--all attested to the excitement of the savages, and the imminence of terrible danger. In the front room of Mr. Wells' cabin Edwards lay on a bed, his face turned to the wall, and his side exposed. There was a bloody hole in his white skin. Zeisberger was probing for the bullet. He had no instruments, save those of his own manufacture, and they were darning needles with bent points, and a long knife-blade ground thin. "There, I have it," said Zeisberger. "Hold still, Dave. There!" As Edwards moaned Zeisberger drew forth the bloody bullet. "Jim, wash and dress this wound. It isn't bad. Dave will be all right in a couple of days. Now I'll look at George." Zeisberger hurried into the other room. Young lay with quiet face and closed eyes, breathing faintly. Zeisberger opened the wounded man's shirt and exposed the wound, which was on the right side, rather high up. Nell, who had followed Zeisberger that she might be of some assistance if needed, saw him look at the wound and then turn a pale face away for a second. That hurried, shuddering movement of the sober, practical missionary was most significant. Then he bent over Young and inserted on of the probes into the wound. He pushed the steel an inch, two, three, four inches into Young's breast, but the latter neither moved nor moaned. Zeisberger shook his head, and finally removed the instrument. He raised the sufferer's shoulder to find the bed saturated with blood. The bullet wound extended completely through the missionary's body, and was bleeding from the back. Zeisberger folded strips of linsey cloth into small pads and bound them tightly over both apertures of the wound. "How is he?" asked Jim, when the amateur surgeon returned to the other room, and proceeded to wash the blood from his hands. Zeisberger shook his head gloomily. "How is George?" whispered Edwards, who had heard Jim's question. "Shot through the right lung. Human skill can not aid him! Only God can save." "Didn't I hear a third shot?" whispered Dave, gazing round with sad, questioning eyes. "Heckewelder?" "Is safe. He has gone to see Williamson. You did hear a third shot. Half King fell dead with a bullet over his left eye. He had just folded his arms in a grand pose after his death decree to the Christians." "A judgment of God!" "It does seem so, but it came in the form of leaden death from Wetzel's unerring rifle. Do you hear all that yelling? Half King's death has set the Indians wild." There was a gentle knock at the door, and then the word, "Open," in Heckewelder's voice. Jim unbarred the door. Heckewelder came in carrying over his shoulder what apparently was a sack of meal. He was accompanied by young Christy. Heckewelder put the bag down, opened it, and lifted out a little Indian boy. The child gazed round with fearful eyes. "Save Benny! Save Benny!" he cried, running to Nell, and she clasped him closely in her arms. Heckewelder's face was like marble as he asked concerning Edwards' condition. "I'm not badly off," said the missionary with a smile. "How's George?" whispered Heckewelder. No one answered him. Zeisberger raised his hands. All followed Heckewelder into the other room, where Young lay in the same position as when first brought in. Heckewelder stood gazing down into the wan face with its terribly significant smile. "I brought him out here. I persuaded him to come!" whispered Heckewelder. "Oh, Almighty God!" he cried. His voice broke, and his prayer ended with the mute eloquence of clasped hands and uplifted, appealing face. "Come out," said Zeisberger, leading him into the larger room. The others followed, and Jim closed the door. "What's to be done?" said Zeisberger, with his practical common sense. "What did Williamson say? Tell us what you learned?" "Wait--directly," answered Heckewelder, sitting down and covering his face with his hands. There was a long silence. At length he raised his white face and spoke calmly: "Gentlemen, the Village of Peace is doomed. I entreated Captain Williamson to help us, but he refused. Said he dared not interfere. I prayed that he would speak at least a word to Girty, but he denied my request." "Where are the converts?" "Imprisoned in the church, every one of them except Benny. Mr. Christy and I hid the child in the meal sack and were thus able to get him here. We must save him." "Save him?" asked Nell, looking from Heckewelder to the trembling Indian boy. "Nellie, the savages have driven all our Christians into the church, and shut them up there, until Girty and his men shall give the word to complete their fiendish design. The converts asked but one favor--an hour in which to pray. It was granted. The savages intend to murder them all." "Oh! Horrible! Monstrous!" cried Nell. "How can they be so inhuman?" She lifted Benny up in her arms. "They'll never get you, my boy. We'll save you--I'll save you!" The child moaned and clung to her neck. "They are scouring the clearing now for Christians, and will search all the cabins. I'm positive." "Will they come here?" asked Nell, turning her blazing eyes on Heckewelder. "Undoubtedly. We must try to hide Benny. Let me think; where would be a good place? We'll try a dark corner of the loft." "No, no," cried Nell. "Put Benny in Young's bed," suggested Jim. "No, no," cried Nell. "Put him in a bucket and let him down in the well," whispered Edwards, who had listened intently to the conversation. "That's a capital place," said Heckewelder. "But might he not fall out and drown?" "Tie him in the bucket," said Jim. "No, no, no," cried Nell. "But Nellie, we must decide upon a hiding place, and in a hurry." "I'll save Benny." "You? Will you stay here to face those men? Jim Girty and Deering are searching the cabins. Could you bear it to see them? You couldn't." "Oh! No, I believe it would kill me! That man! that beast! will he come here?" Nell grew ghastly pale, and looked as if about to faint. She shrunk in horror at the thought of again facing Girty. "For God's sake, Heckewelder, don't let him see me! Don't let him come in! Don't!" Even as the imploring voice ceased a heavy thump sounded on the door. "Who's there?" demanded Heckewelder. Thump! Thump! The heavy blows shook the cabin. The pans rattled on the shelves. No answer came from without. "Quick! Hide Benny! It's as much as our lives are worth to have him found here," cried Heckewelder in a fierce whisper, as he darted toward the door. "All right, all right, in a moment," he called out, fumbling over the bar. He opened the door a moment later and when Jim Girty and Deering entered he turned to his friends with a dread uncertainty in his haggard face. Edwards lay on the bed with wide-open eyes staring at the intruders. Mr. Wells sat with bowed head. Zeisberger calmly whittled a stick, and Jim stood bolt upright, with a hard light in his eyes. Nell leaned against the side of a heavy table. Wonderful was the change that had transformed her from a timid, appealing, fear-agonized girl to a woman whose only evidence of unusual excitement were the flame in her eyes and the peculiar whiteness of her face. Benny was gone! Heckewelder's glance returned to the visitors. He thought he had never seen such brutal, hideous men. "Wal, I reckon a preacher ain't agoin' to lie. Hev you seen any Injun Christians round here?" asked Girty, waving a heavy sledge-hammer. "Girty, we have hidden no Indians here," answered Heckewelder, calmly. "Wal, we'll hev a look, anyway," answered the renegade. Girty surveyed the room with wolfish eyes. Deering was so drunk that he staggered. Both men, in fact, reeked with the vile fumes of rum. Without another word they proceeded to examine the room, by looking into every box, behind a stone oven, and in the cupboard. They drew the bedclothes from the bed, and with a kick demolished a pile of stove wood. Then the ruffians passed into the other apartments, where they could be heard making thorough search. At length both returned to the large room, when Girty directed Deering to climb a ladder leading to the loft, but because Deering was too much under the influence of liquor to do so, he had to go himself. He rummaged around up there for a few minutes, and then came down. "Wal, I reckon you wasn't lyin' about it," said Girty, with his ghastly leer. He and his companion started to go out. Deering had stood with bloodshot eyes fixed on Nell while Girty searched the loft, and as they passed the girl on their way to the open air, the renegade looked at Girty as he motioned with his head toward her. His besotted face expressed some terrible meaning. Girty had looked at Nell when he first entered, but had not glanced twice at her. As he turned now, before going out of the door, he fixed on her his baleful glance. His aspect was more full of meaning than could have been any words. A horrible power, of which he was boastfully conscious, shone from his little, pointed eyes. His mere presence was deadly. Plainly as if he had spoken was the significance of his long gaze. Any one could have translated that look. Once before Nell had faced it, and fainted when its dread meaning grew clear to her. But now she returned his gaze with one in which flashed lightning scorn, and repulsion, in which glowed a wonderful defiance. The cruel face of this man, the boastful barbarity of his manner, the long, dark, bloody history which his presence recalled, was, indeed, terrifying without the added horror of his intent toward her, but now the self-forgetfulness of a true woman sustained her. Girty and Deering backed out of the door. Heckewelder closed it, and dropped the bar in place. Nell fell over the table with a long, low gasp. Then with one hand she lifted her skirt. Benny walked from under it. His big eyes were bright. The young woman clasped him again in her arms. Then she released him, and, laboring under intense excitement, ran to the window. "There he goes! Oh, the horrible beast! If I only had a gun and could shoot! Oh, if only I were a man! I'd kill him. To think of poor Kate! Ah! he intends the same for me!" Suddenly she fell upon the floor in a faint. Mr. Wells and Jim lifted her on the bed beside Edwards, where they endeavored to revive her. It was some moments before she opened her eyes. Jim sat holding Nell's hand. Mr. Wells again bowed his head. Zeisberger continued to whittle a stick, and Heckewelder paced the floor. Christy stood by with every evidence of sympathy for this distracted group. Outside the clamor increased. "Just listen!" cried Heckewelder. "Did you ever hear the like? All drunk, crazy, fiendish! They drank every drop of liquor the French traders had. Curses on the vagabond dealers! Rum has made these renegades and savages wild. Oh! my poor, innocent Christians!" Heckewelder leaned his head against the mantle-shelf. He had broken down at last. Racking sobs shook his frame. "Are you all right again?" asked Jim of Nell. "Yes." "I am going out, first to see Williamson, and then the Christians," he said, rising very pale, but calm. "Don't go!" cried Heckewelder. "I have tried everything. It was all of no use." "I will go," answered Jim. "Yes, Jim, go," whispered Nell, looking up into his eyes. It was an earnest gaze in which a faint hope shone. Jim unbarred the door and went out. "Wait, I'll go along," cried Zeisberger, suddenly dropping his knife and stick. As the two men went out a fearful spectacle met their eyes. The clearing was alive with Indians. But such Indians! They were painted demons, maddened by rum. Yesterday they had been silent; if they moved at all it had been with deliberation and dignity. To-day they were a yelling, running, blood-seeking mob. "Awful! Did you ever see human beings like these?" asked Zeisberger. "No, no!" "I saw such a frenzy once before, but, of course, only in a small band of savages. Many times have I seen Indians preparing for the war-path, in search of both white men and redskins. They were fierce then, but nothing like this. Every one of these frenzied fiends is honest. Think of that! Every man feels it his duty to murder these Christians. Girty has led up to this by cunning, and now the time is come to let them loose." "It means death for all." "I have given up any thought of escaping," said Zeisberger, with the calmness that had characterized his manner since he returned to the village. "I shall try to get into the church." "I'll join you there as soon as I see Williamson." Jim walked rapidly across the clearing to the cabin where Captain Williamson had quarters. The frontiersmen stood in groups, watching the savages with an interest which showed little or no concern. "I want to see Captain Williamson," said Jim to a frontiersman on guard at the cabin door. "Wal, he's inside," drawled the man. Jim thought the voice familiar, and he turned sharply to see the sun-burnt features of Jeff Lynn, the old riverman who had taken Mr. Wells' party to Fort Henry. "Why, Lynn! I'm glad to see you," exclaimed Jim. "Purty fair to middlin'," answered Jeff, extending his big hand. "Say, how's the other one, your brother as wus called Joe?" "I don't know. He ran off with Wetzel, was captured by Indians, and when I last heard of him he had married Wingenund's daughter." "Wal, I'll be dog-goned!" Jeff shook his grizzled head and slapped his leg. "I jest knowed he'd raise somethin'." "I'm in a hurry. Do you think Captain Williamson will stand still and let all this go on?" "I'm afeerd so." Evidently the captain heard the conversation, for he appeared at the cabin door, smoking a long pipe. "Captain Williamson, I have come to entreat you to save the Christians from this impending massacre." "I can't do nuthin'," answered Williamson, removing his pipe to puff forth a great cloud of smoke. "You have eighty men here!" "If we interfered Pipe would eat us alive in three minutes. You preacher fellows don't understand this thing. You've got Pipe and Girty to deal with. If you don't know them, you'll be better acquainted by sundown." "I don't care who they are. Drunken ruffians and savages! That's enough. Will you help us? We are men of your own race, and we come to you for help. Can you withhold it?" "I won't hev nuthin' to do with this bizness. The chiefs hev condemned the village, an' it'll hev to go. If you fellars hed been careful, no white blood would hev been spilled. I advise you all to lay low till it's over." "Will you let me speak to your men, to try and get them to follow me?" "Heckewelder asked that same thing. He was persistent, and I took a vote fer him just to show how my men stood. Eighteen of them said they'd follow him; the rest wouldn't interfere." "Eighteen! My God!" cried Jim, voicing the passion which consumed him. "You are white men, yet you will stand by and see these innocent people murdered! Man, where's your humanity? Your manhood? These converted Indians are savages no longer, they are Christians. Their children are as good, pure, innocent as your own. Can you remain idle and see these little ones murdered?" Williamson made no answer, the men who had crowded round were equally silent. Not one lowered his head. Many looked at the impassioned missionary; others gazed at the savages who were circling around the trees brandishing their weapons. If any pitied the unfortunate Christians, none showed it. They were indifferent, with the indifference of men hardened to cruel scenes. Jim understood, at last, as he turned from face to face to find everywhere that same imperturbability. These bordermen were like Wetzel and Jonathan Zane. The only good Indian was a dead Indian. Years of war and bloodshed, of merciless cruelty at the hands of redmen, of the hard, border life had rendered these frontiersmen incapable of compassion for any savage. Jim no longer restrained himself. "Bordermen you may be, but from my standpoint, from any man's, from God's, you are a lot of coldly indifferent cowards!" exclaimed Jim, with white, quivering lips. "I understand now. Few of you will risk anything for Indians. You will not believe a savage can be a Christian. You don't care if they are all murdered. Any man among you--any man, I say--would step out before those howling fiends and boldly demand that there be no bloodshed. A courageous leader with a band of determined followers could avert this tragedy. You might readily intimidate yonder horde of drunken demons. Captain Williamson, I am only a minister, far removed from a man of war and leader, as you claim to be, but, sir, I curse you as a miserable coward. If I ever get back to civilization I'll brand this inhuman coldness of yours, as the most infamous and dastardly cowardice that ever disgraced a white man. You are worse than Girty!" Williamson turned a sickly yellow; he fumbled a second with the handle of his tomahawk, but made no answer. The other bordermen maintained the same careless composure. What to them was the raving of a mad preacher? Jim saw it and turned baffled, fiercely angry, and hopeless. As he walked away Jeff Lynn took his arm, and after they were clear of the crowd of frontiersmen he said: "Young feller, you give him pepper, an' no mistake. An' mebbe you're right from your side the fence. But you can't see the Injuns from our side. We hunters hevn't much humanity--I reckon that's what you called it--but we've lost so many friends an' relatives, an' hearn of so many murders by the reddys that we look on all of 'em as wild varmints that should be killed on sight. Now, mebbe it'll interest you to know I was the feller who took the vote Williamson told you about, an' I did it 'cause I had an interest in you. I wus watchin' you when Edwards and the other missionary got shot. I like grit in a man, an' I seen you had it clear through. So when Heckewelder comes over I talked to the fellers, an' all I could git interested was eighteen, but they wanted to fight simply fer fightin' sake. Now, ole Jeff Lynn is your friend. You just lay low until this is over." Jim thanked the old riverman and left him. He hardly knew which way to turn. He would make one more effort. He crossed the clearing to where the renegades' teepee stood. McKee and Elliott were sitting on a log. Simon Girty stood beside them, his hard, keen, roving eyes on the scene. The missionary was impressed by the white leader. There was a difference in his aspect, a wilder look than the others wore, as if the man had suddenly awakened to the fury of his Indians. Nevertheless the young man went straight toward him. "Girty, I come---" "Git out! You meddlin' preacher!" yelled the renegade, shaking his fist at Jim. Simon Girty was drunk. Jim turned from the white fiends. He knew his life to them was not worth a pinch of powder. "Lost! Lost! All lost!" he exclaimed in despair. As he went toward the church he saw hundreds of savages bounding over the grass, brandishing weapons and whooping fiendishly. They were concentrating around Girty's teepee, where already a great throng had congregated. Of all the Indians to be seen not one walked. They leaped by Jim, and ran over the grass nimble as deer. He saw the eager, fire in their dusky eyes, and the cruelly clenched teeth like those of wolves when they snarl. He felt the hissing breath of many savages as they raced by him. More than one whirled a tomahawk close to Jim's head, and uttered horrible yells in his ear. They were like tigers lusting for blood. Jim hurried to the church. Not an Indian was visible near the log structure. Even the savage guards had gone. He entered the open door to be instantly struck with reverence and awe. The Christians were singing. Miserable and full of sickening dread though Jim was, he could not but realize that the scene before him was one of extraordinary beauty and pathos. The doomed Indians lifted up their voices in song. Never had they sung so feelingly, so harmoniously. When the song ended Zeisberger, who stood upon a platform, opened his Bible and read: "In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord, thy Redeemer." In a voice low and tremulous the venerable missionary began his sermon. The shadow of death hovered over these Christian martyrs; it was reflected in their somber eyes, yet not one was sullen or sad. The children who were too young to understand, but instinctively feeling the tragedy soon to be enacted there, cowered close to their mothers. Zeisberger preached a touching and impressive, though short, sermon. At its conclusion the whole congregation rose and surrounded the missionary. The men shook his hands, the women kissed them, the children clung to his legs. It was a wonderful manifestation of affection. Suddenly Glickhican, the old Delaware chief, stepped on the platform, raised his hand and shouted one Indian word. A long, low wail went up from the children and youths; the women slowly, meekly bowed their heads. The men, due to the stoicism of their nature and the Christianity they had learned, stood proudly erect awaiting the death that had been decreed. Glickhican pulled the bell rope. A deep, mellow tone pealed out. The sound transfixed all the Christians. No one moved. Glickhican had given the signal which told the murderers the Christians were ready. "Come, man, my God! We can't stay here!" cried Jim to Zeisberger. As they went out both men turned to look their last on the martyrs. The death knell which had rung in the ears of the Christians, was to them the voice of God. Stern, dark visages of men and the sweet, submissive faces of women were uplifted with rapt attention. A light seemed to shine from these faces as if the contemplation of God had illumined them. As Zeisberger and Jim left the church and hurried toward the cabins, they saw the crowd of savages in a black mass round Girty's teepee. The yelling and leaping had ceased. Heckewelder opened the door. Evidently he had watched for them. "Jim! Jim!" cried Nell, when he entered the cabin. "Oh-h! I was afraid. Oh! I am glad you're back safe. See, this noble Indian has come to help us." Wingenund stood calm and erect by the door. "Chief, what will you do?" "Wingenund will show you the way to the big river," answered the chieftain, in his deep bass. "Run away? No, never! That would be cowardly. Heckewelder, you would not go? Nor you, Zeisberger? We may yet be of use, we may yet save some of the Christians." "Save the yellow-hair," sternly said Wingenund. "Oh, Jim, you don't understand. The chief has come to warn me of Girty. He intends to take me as he has others, as he did poor Kate. did you not see the meaning in his eyes to-day? How they scorched me! Ho! Jim, take me away! Save me! Do not leave me here to that horrible fate? Oh! Jim, take me away!" "Nell, I will take you," cried Jim, grasping her hands. "Hurry! There's a blanket full of things I packed for you," said Heckewelder. "Lose no time. Ah! hear that! My Heavens! what a yell!" Heckewelder rushed to the door and looked out. "There they go, a black mob of imps; a pack of hungry wolves! Jim Girty is in the lead. How he leaps! How he waves his sledge! He leads the savages toward the church. Oh! it's the end!" "Benny? Where's Benny?" cried Jim, hurriedly lacing the hunting coat he had flung about him. "Benny's safe. I've hidden him. I'll get him away from here," answered young Christy. "Go! Now's your time. Godspeed you!" "I'm ready," declared Mr. Wells. "I--have--finished!" "There goes Wingenund! He's running. Follow him, quick! Good-by! Good-by! God be with you!" cried Heckewelder. "Good-by! Good-by!" Jim hurried Nell toward the bushes where Wingenund's tall form could dimly be seen. Mr. Wells followed them. On the edge of the clearing Jim and Nell turned to look back. They saw a black mass of yelling, struggling, fighting savages crowding around the church. "Oh! Jim, look back! Look back!" cried Nell, holding hard to his hand. "Look back! See if Girty is coming!" Chapter XXVII. At last the fugitives breathed free under the gold and red cover of the woods. Never speaking, never looking back, the guide hurried eastward with long strides. His followers were almost forced to run in order to keep him in sight. He had waited at the edge of the clearing for them, and, relieving Jim of the heavy pack, which he swung slightly over his shoulder, he set a pace that was most difficult to maintain. The young missionary half led, half carried Nell over the stones and rough places. Mr. Wells labored in the rear. "Oh! Jim! Look back! Look back! See if we are pursued!" cried Nell frequently, with many a earful glance into the dense thickets. The Indian took a straight course through the woods. He leaped the brooks, climbed the rough ridges, and swiftly trod the glades that were free of windfalls. His hurry and utter disregard for the plain trail left behind, proved his belief in the necessity of placing many miles between the fugitives and the Village of Peace. Evidently they would be followed, and it would be a waste of valuable time to try to conceal their trail. Gradually the ground began to rise, the way become more difficult, but Wingenund never slackened his pace. Nell was strong, supple, and light of foot. She held her own with Jim, but time and time again they were obliged to wait for her uncle. Once he was far behind. Wingenund halted for them at the height of a ridge where the forest was open. "Ugh!" exclaimed the chieftain, as they finished the ascent. He stretched a long arm toward the sun; his falcon eye gleamed. Far in the west a great black and yellow cloud of smoke rolled heavenward. It seemed to rise from out the forest, and to hang low over the trees; then it soared aloft and grew thinner until it lost its distinct line far in the clouds. The setting sun stood yet an hour high over a distant hill, and burned dark red through the great pall of smoke. "Is it a forest fire?" asked Nell, fearfully. "Fire, of course, but---" Jim did not voice his fear; he looked closely at Wingenund. The chieftain stood silent a moment as was his wont when addressed. The dull glow of the sun was reflected in the dark eyes that gazed far away over forest and field. "Fire," said Wingenund, and it seemed that as he spoke a sterner shadow flitted across his bronzed face. "The sun sets to-night over the ashes of the Village of Peace." He resumed his rapid march eastward. With never a backward glance the saddened party followed. Nell kept close beside Jim, and the old man tramped after them with bowed head. The sun set, but Wingenund never slackened his stride. Twilight deepened, yet he kept on. "Indian, we can go no further to-night, we must rest," cried Jim, as Nell stumbled against him, and Mr. Wells panted wearily in the rear. "Rest soon," replied the chief, and kept on. Darkness had settled down when Wingenund at last halted. The fugitives could see little in the gloom, but they heard the music of running water, and felt soft moss beneath their feet. They sank wearily down upon a projecting stone. The moss was restful to their tired limbs. Opening the pack they found food with which to satisfy the demands of hunger. Then, close under the stone, the fugitives sank into slumber while the watchful Indian stood silent and motionless. Jim thought he had but just closed his eyes when he felt a gentle pressure on his arm. "Day is here," said the Indian. Jim opened his eyes to see the bright red sun crimsoning the eastern hills, and streaming gloriously over the colored forests. He raised himself on his elbow to look around. Nell was still asleep. The blanket was tucked close to her chin. Her chestnut hair was tumbled like a schoolgirl's; she looked as fresh and sweet as the morning. "Nell, Nell, wake up," said Jim, thinking the while how he would love to kiss those white eyelids. Nell's eyes opened wide; a smile lay deep in their hazel shadows. "Where a I? Oh, I remember," she cried, sitting up. "Oh, Jim, I had such a sweet dream. I was at home with mother and Kate. Oh, to wake and find it all a dream! I am fleeing for life. But, Jim, we are safe, are we not?" "Another day, and we'll be safe." "Let us fly," she cried, leaping up and shaking out her crumpled skirt. "Uncle, come!" Mr. Wells lay quietly with his mild blue eyes smiling up at her. He neither moved nor spoke. "Eat, drink," said the chief, opening the pack. "What a beautiful place," exclaimed Nell, taking the bread and meat handed to her. "This is a lovely little glade. Look at those golden flowers, the red and purple leaves, the brown shining moss, and those lichen-covered stones. Why! Some one has camped here. See the little cave, the screens of plaited ferns, and the stone fireplace." "It seems to me this dark spring and those gracefully spreading branches are familiar," said Jim. "Beautiful Spring," interposed Wingenund. "Yes, I know this place," cried Nell excitedly. "I remember this glade though it was moonlight when I saw it. Here Wetzel rescued me from Girty." "Nell, you're right," replied Jim. "How strange we should run across this place again." Strange fate, indeed, which had brought them again to Beautiful Spring! It was destined that the great scenes of their lives were to be enacted in this mossy glade. "Come, uncle, you are lazy," cried Nell, a touch of her old roguishness making playful her voice. Mr. Wells lay still, and smiled up at them. "You are not ill?" cried Nell, seeing for the first time how pallid was his face. "Dear Nellie, I am not ill. I do not suffer, but I am dying," he answered, again with that strange, sweet smile. "Oh-h-h!" breathed Nell, falling on her knees. "No, no, Mr. Wells, you are only weak; you will be all right again soon," cried Jim. "Jim, Nellie, I have known all night. I have lain here wakeful. My heart never was strong. It gave out yesterday, and now it is slowly growing weaker. Put your hand on my breast. Feel. Ah! you see! My life is flickering. God's will be done. I am content. My work is finished. My only regret is that I brought you out to this terrible borderland. But I did not know. If only I could see you safe from the peril of this wilderness, at home, happy, married." Nell bent over him blinded by her tears, unable to see or speak, crushed by this last overwhelming blow. Jim sat on the other side of the old missionary, holding his hand. For many moments neither spoke. They glanced at the pale face, watching with eager, wistful eyes for a smile, or listening for a word. "Come," said the Indian. Nell silently pointed toward her uncle. "He is dying," whispered Jim to the Indian. "Go, leave me," murmured Mr. Wells. "You are still in danger." "We'll not leave you," cried Jim. "No, no, no," sobbed Nell, bending over to kiss him. "Nellie, may I marry you to Jim?" whispered Mr. Wells into her ear. "He has told me how it is with him. He loves you, Nellie. I'd die happier knowing I'd left you with him." Even at that moment, with her heart almost breaking, Nell's fair face flushed. "Nell, will you marry me?" asked Jim, softly. Low though it was, he had heard Mr. Wells' whisper. Nell stretched a little trembling hand over her uncle to Jim, who inclosed it in his own. Her eyes met his. Through her tears shone faintly a light, which, but for the agony that made it dim, would have beamed radiant. "Find the place," said Mr. Wells, handing Jim a Bible. It was the one he always carried in his pocket. With trembling hand Jim turned the leaves. At last he found the lines, and handed the book back to the old man. Simple, sweet and sad was that marriage service. Nell and Jim knelt with hands clasped over Mr. Wells. The old missionary's voice was faint; Nell's responses were low, and Jim answered with deep and tender feeling. Beside them stood Wingenund, a dark, magnificent figure. "There! May God bless you!" murmured Mr. Wells, with a happy smile, closing the Bible. "Nell, my wife!" whispered Jim, kissing her hand. "Come!" broke in Wingenund's voice, deep, strong, like that of a bell. Not one of them had observed the chief as he stood erect, motionless, poised like a stag scenting the air. His dark eyes seemed to pierce the purple-golden forest, his keen ear seemed to drink in the singing of the birds and the gentle rustling of leaves. Native to these haunts as were the wild creatures, they were no quicker than the Indian to feel the approach of foes. The breeze had borne faint, suspicious sounds. "Keep--the--Bible," said Mr. Wells, "remember--its--word." His hand closely clasped Nell's, and then suddenly loosened. His pallid face was lighted by a meaning, tender smile which slowly faded--faded, and was gone. The venerable head fell back. The old missionary was dead. Nell kissed the pale, cold brow, and then rose, half dazed and shuddering. Jim was vainly trying to close the dead man's eyes. She could no longer look. On rising she found herself near the Indian chief. He took her fingers in his great hand, and held them with a strong, warm pressure. Strangely thrilled, she looked up at Wingenund. His somber eyes, fixed piercingly on the forest, and his dark stern face, were, as always, inscrutable. No compassion shone there; no emotion unbefitting a chieftain would ever find expression in that cold face, but Nell felt a certain tenderness in this Indian, a response in his great heart. Felt it so surely, so powerfully that she leaned her head against him. She knew he was her friend. "Come," said the chief once more. He gently put Nell aside before Jim arose from his sad task. "We can not leave him unburied," expostulated Jim. Wingenund dragged aside a large stone which formed one wall of the cavern. Then he grasped a log which was half covered by dirt, and, exerting his great strength, pulled it from its place. There was a crash, a rumble, the jar of a heavy weight striking the earth, then the rattling of gravel, and, before Nell and Jim realized what had happened, the great rock forming the roof of the cavern slipped down the bank followed by a small avalanche. The cavern was completely covered. Mr. Wells was buried. A mossy stone marked the old missionary's grave. Nell and Jim were lost in wonder and awe. "Ugh!" cried the chief, looking toward the opening in the glade. Fearfully Nell and Jim turned, to be appalled by four naked, painted savages standing with leveled rifles. Behind them stood Deering and Jim Girty. "Oh, God! We are lost! Lost! Lost!" exclaimed Jim, unable to command himself. Hope died in his heart. No cry issued from Nell's white lips. She was dazed by this final blow. Having endured so much, this last misfortune, apparently the ruin of her life, brought no added suffering, only a strange, numb feeling. "Ah-huh! Thought you'd give me the slip, eh?" croaked Girty, striding forward, and as he looked at Wingenund his little, yellow eyes flared like flint. "Does a wolf befriend Girty's captives? Chief you hev led me a hard chase." Wingenund deigned no reply. He stood as he did so often, still and silent, with folded arms, and a look that was haughty, unresponsive. The Indians came forward into the glade, and one of them quickly bound Jim's hands behind his back. The savages wore a wild, brutish look. A feverish ferocity, very near akin to insanity, possessed them. They were not quiet a moment, but ran here and there, for no apparent reason, except, possibly, to keep in action with the raging fire in their hearts. The cleanliness which characterized the normal Indian was absent in them; their scant buckskin dress was bedraggled and stained. They were still drunk with rum and the lust for blood. Murder gleamed from the glance of their eyes. "Jake, come over here," said Girty to his renegade friend. "Ain't she a prize?" Girty and Deering stood before the poor, stricken girl, and gloated over her fair beauty. She stood as when first transfixed by the horror from which she had been fleeing. Her pale face was lowered, her hands clenched tightly in the folds of her skirt. Never before had two such coarse, cruel fiends as Deering and Girty encumbered the earth. Even on the border, where the best men were bad, they were the worst. Deering was yet drunk, but Girty had recovered somewhat from the effects of the rum he had absorbed. The former rolled his big eyes and nodded his shaggy head. He was passing judgment, from his point of view, on the fine points of the girl. "She cer'aintly is," he declared with a grin. "She's a little beauty. Beats any I ever seen!" Jim Girty stroked his sharp chin with dirty fingers. His yellow eyes, his burnt saffron skin, his hooked nose, his thin lips--all his evil face seemed to shine with an evil triumph. To look at him was painful. To have him gaze at her was enough to drive any woman mad. Dark stains spotted the bright frills of his gaudy dress, his buckskin coat and leggins, and dotted his white eagle plumes. Dark stains, horribly suggestive, covered him from head to foot. Blood stains! The innocent blood of Christians crimsoned his renegade's body, and every dark red blotch cried murder. "Girl, I burned the Village of Peace to git you," growled Girty. "Come here!" With a rude grasp that tore open her dress, exposing her beautiful white shoulder and bosom, the ruffian pulled her toward him. His face was transfixed with a fierce joy, a brutal passion. Deering looked on with a drunken grin, while his renegade friend hugged the almost dying girl. The Indians paced the glade with short strides like leashed tigers. The young missionary lay on the moss with closed eyes. He could not endure the sight of Nell in Girty's arms. No one noticed Wingenund. He stood back a little, half screened by drooping branches. Once again the chief's dark eyes gleamed, his head turned a trifle aside, and, standing in the statuesque position habitual with him when resting, he listened, as one who hears mysterious sounds. Suddenly his keen glance was riveted on the ferns above the low cliff. He had seen their graceful heads quivering. Then two blinding sheets of flame burst from the ferns. Spang! Spang! The two rifle reports thundered through the glade. Two Indians staggered and fell in their tracks--dead without a cry. A huge yellow body, spread out like a panther in his spring, descended with a crash upon Deering and Girty. The girl fell away from the renegade as he went down with a shrill screech, dragging Deering with him. Instantly began a terrific, whirling, wrestling struggle. A few feet farther down the cliff another yellow body came crashing down to alight with a thud, to bound erect, to rush forward swift as a leaping deer. The two remaining Indians had only time to draw their weapons before this lithe, threatening form whirled upon them. Shrill cries, hoarse yells, the clash of steel and dull blows mingled together. One savage went down, twisted over, writhed and lay still. The other staggered, warded off lightninglike blows until one passed under his guard, and crashed dully on his head. Then he reeled, rose again, but only to have his skull cloven by a bloody tomahawk. The victor darted toward the whirling mass. "Lew, shake him loose! Let him go!" yelled Jonathan Zane, swinging his bloody weapon. High above Zane's cry, Deering's shouts and curses, Girty's shrieks of fear and fury, above the noise of wrestling bodies and dull blows, rose a deep booming roar. It was Wetzel's awful cry of vengeance. "Shake him loose," yelled Jonathan. Baffled, he ran wildly around the wrestlers. Time and time again his gory tomahawk was raised only to be lowered. He found no opportunity to strike. Girty's ghastly countenance gleamed at him from the whirl of legs, and arms and bodies. Then Wetzel's dark face, lighted by merciless eyes, took its place, and that gave way to Deering's broad features. The men being clad alike in buckskin, and their motions so rapid, prevented Zane from lending a helping hand. Suddenly Deering was propelled from the mass as if by a catapult. His body straightened as it came down with a heavy thud. Zane pounced upon it with catlike quickness. Once more he swung aloft the bloody hatchet; then once more he lowered it, for there was no need to strike. The renegade's side was torn open from shoulder to hip. A deluge of blood poured out upon the moss. Deering choked, a bloody froth formed on his lips. His fingers clutched at nothing. His eyes rolled violently and then were fixed in an awful stare. The girl lying so quiet in the woods near the old hut was avenged! Jonathan turned again to Wetzel and Girty, not with any intention to aid the hunter, but simply to witness the end of the struggle. Without the help of the powerful Deering, how pitifully weak was the Deathshead of the frontier in the hands of the Avenger! Jim Girty's tomahawk was thrown in one direction and his knife in another. He struggled vainly in the iron grip that held him. Wetzel rose to his feet clutching the renegade. With his left arm, which had been bared in the fight, he held Girty by the front of his buckskin shirt, and dragged him to that tree which stood alone in the glade. He pushed him against it, and held him there. The white dog leaped and snarled around the prisoner. Girty's hands pulled and tore at the powerful arm which forced him hard against the beech. It was a brown arm, and huge with its bulging, knotted, rigid muscles. A mighty arm, strong as the justice which ruled it. "Girty, thy race is run!" Wetzel's voice cut the silence like a steel whip. The terrible, ruthless smile, the glittering eyes of doom seemed literally to petrify the renegade. The hunter's right arm rose slowly. The knife in his hand quivered as if with eagerness. The long blade, dripping with Deering's blood, pointed toward the hilltop. "Look thar! See 'em! Thar's yer friends!" cried Wetzel. On the dead branches of trees standing far above the hilltop, were many great, dark birds. They sat motionless as if waiting. "Buzzards! Buzzards!" hissed Wetzel. Girty's ghastly face became an awful thing to look upon. No living countenance ever before expressed such fear, such horror, such agony. He foamed at the mouth, he struggled, he writhed. With a terrible fascination he watched that quivering, dripping blade, now poised high. Wetzel's arm swung with the speed of a shooting star. He drove the blade into Girty's groin, through flesh and bone, hard and fast into the tree. He nailed the renegade to the beech, there to await his lingering doom. "Ah-h! Ah-h! Ah-h!" shrieked Girty, in cries of agony. He fumbled and pulled at the haft of the knife, but could not loosen it. He beat his breast, he tore his hair. His screams were echoed from the hilltop as if in mockery. The white dog stood near, his hair bristling, his teeth snapping. The dark birds sat on the dead branches above the hilltop, as if waiting for their feast. Chapter XXVIII. Zane turned and cut the young missionary's bonds. Jim ran to where Nell was lying on the ground, and tenderly raised her head, calling to her that they were saved. Zane bathed the girl's pale face. Presently she sighed and opened her eyes. Then Zane looked from the statuelike form of Wingenund to the motionless figure of Wetzel. The chief stood erect with his eyes on the distant hills. Wetzel remained with folded arms, his cold eyes fixed upon the writhing, moaning renegade. "Lew, look here," said Zane, unhesitatingly, and pointed toward the chief. Wetzel quivered as if sharply stung; the cold glitter in his eyes changed to lurid fire. With upraised tomahawk he bounded across the brook. "Lew, wait a minute!" yelled Zane. "Wetzel! wait, wait!" cried Jim, grasping the hunter's arm; but the latter flung him off, as the wind tosses a straw. "Wetzel, wait, for God's sake, wait!" screamed Nell. She had risen at Zane's call, and now saw the deadly resolve in the hunter's eyes. Fearlessly she flung herself in front of him; bravely she risked her life before his mad rush; frantically she threw her arms around him and clung to his hands desperately. Wetzel halted; frenzied as he was at the sight of his foe, he could not hurt a woman. "Girl, let go!" he panted, and his broad breast heaved. "No, no, no! Listen, Wetzel, you must not kill the chief. He is a friend." "He is my great foe!" "Listen, oh! please listen!" pleaded Nell. "He warned me to flee from Girty; he offered to guide us to Fort Henry. He has saved my life. For my sake, Wetzel, do not kill him! Don't let me be the cause of his murder! Wetzel, Wetzel, lower your arm, drop your hatchet. For pity's sake do not spill more blood. Wingenund is a Christian!" Wetzel stepped back breathing heavily. His white face resembled chiseled marble. With those little hands at his breast he hesitated in front of the chief he had hunted for so many long years. "Would you kill a Christian?" pleaded Nell, her voice sweet and earnest. "I reckon not, but this Injun ain't one," replied Wetzel slowly. "Put away your hatchet. Let me have it. Listen, and I will tell you, after thanking you for this rescue. Do you know of my marriage? Come, please listen! Forget for a moment your enmity. Oh! you must be merciful! Brave men are always merciful!" "Injun, are you a Christian?" hissed Wetzel. "Oh! I know he is! I know he is!" cried Nell, still standing between Wetzel and the chief. Wingenund spoke no word. He did not move. His falcon eyes gazed tranquilly at his white foe. Christian or pagan, he would not speak one word to save his life. "Oh! tell him you are a Christian," cried Nell, running to the chief. "Yellow-hair, the Delaware is true to his race." As he spoke gently to Nell a noble dignity shone upon his dark face. "Injun, my back bears the scars of your braves' whips," hissed Wetzel, once more advancing. "Deathwind, your scars are deep, but the Delaware's are deeper," came the calm reply. "Wingenund's heart bears two scars. His son lies under the moss and ferns; Deathwind killed him; Deathwind alone knows his grave. Wingenund's daughter, the delight of his waning years, freed the Delaware's great foe, and betrayed her father. Can the Christian God tell Wingenund of his child?" Wetzel shook like a tree in a storm. Justice cried out in the Indian's deep voice. Wetzel fought for mastery of himself. "Delaware, your daughter lays there, with her lover," said Wetzel firmly, and pointed into the spring. "Ugh!" exclaimed the Indian, bending over the dark pool. He looked long into its murky depths. Then he thrust his arm down into the brown water. "Deathwind tells no lie," said the chief, calmly, and pointed toward Girty. The renegade had ceased struggling, his head was bowed upon his breast. "The white serpent has stung the Delaware." "What does it mean?" cried Jim. "Your brother Joe and Whispering Winds lie in the spring," answered Jonathan Zane. "Girty murdered them, and Wetzel buried the two there." "Oh, is it true?" cried Nell. "True, lass," whispered Jim, brokenly, holding out his arms to her. Indeed, he needed her strength as much as she needed his. The girl gave one shuddering glance at the spring, and then hid her face on her husband's shoulder. "Delaware, we are sworn foes," cried Wetzel. "Wingenund asks no mercy." "Are you a Christian?" "Wingenund is true to his race." "Delaware, begone! Take these weapons an' go. When your shadow falls shortest on the ground, Deathwind starts on your trail." "Deathwind is the great white chief; he is the great Indian foe; he is as sure as the panther in his leap; as swift as the wild goose in his northern flight. Wingenund never felt fear." The chieftain's sonorous reply rolled through the quiet glade. "If Deathwind thirsts for Wingenund's blood, let him spill it now, for when the Delaware goes into the forest his trail will fade." "Begone!" roared Wetzel. The fever for blood was once more rising within him. The chief picked up some weapons of the dead Indians, and with haughty stride stalked from the glade. "Oh, Wetzel, thank you, I knew---" Nell's voice broke as she faced the hunter. She recoiled from this changed man. "Come, we'll go," said Jonathan Zane. "I'll guide you to Fort Henry." He lifted the pack, and led Nell and Jim out of the glade. They looked back once to picture forever in their minds the lovely spot with its ghastly quiet bodies, the dark, haunting spring, the renegade nailed to the tree, and the tall figure of Wetzel as he watched his shadow on the ground. * * * When Wetzel also had gone, only two living creatures remained in the glade--the doomed renegade, and the white dog. The gaunt beast watched the man with hungry, mad eyes. A long moan wailed through the forest. It swelled mournfully on the air, and died away. The doomed man heard it. He raised his ghastly face; his dulled senses seemed to revive. He gazed at the stiffening bodies of the Indians, at the gory corpse of Deering, at the savage eyes of the dog. Suddenly life seemed to surge strong within him. "Hell's fire! I'm not done fer yet," he gasped. "This damned knife can't kill me; I'll pull it out." He worked at the heavy knife hilt. Awful curses passed his lips, but the blade did not move. Retribution had spoken his doom. Suddenly he saw a dark shadow moving along the sunlit ground. It swept past him. He looked up to see a great bird with wide wings sailing far above. He saw another still higher, and then a third. He looked at the hilltop. The quiet, black birds had taken wing. They were floating slowly, majestically upward. He watched their graceful flight. How easily they swooped in wide circles. He remembered that they had fascinated him when a boy, long, long ago, when he had a home. Where was that home? He had one once. Ah! the long, cruel years have rolled back. A youth blotted out by evil returned. He saw a little cottage, he saw the old Virginia homestead, he saw his brothers and his mother. "Ah-h!" A cruel agony tore his heart. He leaned hard against the knife. With the pain the present returned, but the past remained. All his youth, all his manhood flashed before him. The long, bloody, merciless years faced him, and his crimes crushed upon him with awful might. Suddenly a rushing sound startled him. He saw a great bird swoop down and graze the tree tops. Another followed, and another, and then a flock of them. He saw their gray, spotted breasts and hooked beaks. "Buzzards," he muttered, darkly eyeing the dead savages. The carrion birds were swooping to their feast. "By God! He's nailed me fast for buzzards!" he screamed in sudden, awful frenzy. "Nailed fast! Ah-h! Ah-h! Ah-h! Eaten alive by buzzards! Ah-h! Ah-h! Ah-h!" He shrieked until his voice failed, and then he gasped. Again the buzzards swooped overhead, this time brushing the leaves. One, a great grizzled bird, settled upon a limb of the giant oak, and stretched its long neck. Another alighted beside him. Others sailed round and round the dead tree top. The leader arched his wings, and with a dive swooped into the glade. He alighted near Deering's dead body. He was a dark, uncanny bird, with long, scraggy, bare neck, a wreath of white, grizzled feathers, a cruel, hooked beak, and cold eyes. The carrion bird looked around the glade, and put a great claw on the dead man's breast. "Ah-h! Ah-h!" shrieked Girty. His agonized yell of terror and horror echoed mockingly from the wooded bluff. The huge buzzard flapped his wings and flew away, but soon returned to his gruesome feast. His followers, made bold by their leader, floated down into the glade. Their black feathers shone in the sun. They hopped over the moss; they stretched their grizzled necks, and turned their heads sideways. Girty was sweating blood. It trickled from his ghastly face. All the suffering and horror he had caused in all his long career was as nothing to that which then rended him. He, the renegade, the white Indian, the Deathshead of the frontier, panted and prayed for a merciful breath. He was exquisitely alive. He was human. Presently the huge buzzard, the leader, raised his hoary head. He saw the man nailed to the tree. The bird bent his head wisely to one side, and then lightly lifted himself into the air. He sailed round the glade, over the fighting buzzards, over the spring, and over the doomed renegade. He flew out of the glade, and in again. He swooped close to Girty. His broad wings scarcely moved as he sailed along. Girty tried to strike the buzzard as he sailed close by, but his arm fell useless. He tried to scream, but his voice failed. Slowly the buzzard king sailed by and returned. Every time he swooped a little nearer, and bent his long, scraggy neck. Suddenly he swooped down, light and swift as a hawk; his wide wings fanned the air; he poised under the tree, and then fastened sharp talons in the doomed man's breast. Chapter XXIX. The fleeting human instinct of Wetzel had given way to the habit of years. His merciless quest for many days had been to kill the frontier fiend. Now that it had been accomplished, he turned his vengeance into its accustomed channel, and once more became the ruthless Indian-slayer. A fierce, tingling joy surged through him as he struck the Delaware's trail. Wingenund had made little or no effort to conceal his tracks; he had gone northwest, straight as a crow flies, toward the Indian encampment. He had a start of sixty minutes, and it would require six hours of rapid traveling to gain the Delaware town. "Reckon he'll make fer home," muttered Wetzel, following the trail with all possible speed. The hunter's method of trailing an Indian was singular. Intuition played as great a part as sight. He seemed always to divine his victim's intention. Once on the trail he was as hard to shake off as a bloodhound. Yet he did not, by any means, always stick to the Indian's footsteps. With Wetzel the direction was of the greatest importance. For half a mile he closely followed the Delaware's plainly marked trail. Then he stopped to take a quick survey of the forest before him. He abruptly left the trail, and, breaking into a run, went through the woods as fleetly and noiselessly as a deer, running for a quarter of a mile, when he stopped to listen. All seemed well, for he lowered his head, and walked slowly along, examining the moss and leaves. Presently he came upon a little open space where the soil was a sandy loam. He bent over, then rose quickly. He had come upon the Indian's trail. Cautiously he moved forward, stopping every moment to listen. In all the close pursuits of his maturer years he had never been a victim of that most cunning of Indian tricks, an ambush. He relied solely on his ear to learn if foes were close by. The wild creatures of the forest were his informants. As soon as he heard any change in their twittering, humming or playing--whichever way they manifested their joy or fear of life--he became as hard to see, as difficult to hear as a creeping snake. The Delaware's trail led to a rocky ridge and there disappeared. Wetzel made no effort to find the chief's footprints on the flinty ground, but halted a moment and studied the ridge, the lay of the land around, a ravine on one side, and a dark impenetrable forest on the other. He was calculating his chances of finding the Delaware's trail far on the other side. Indian woodcraft, subtle, wonderful as it may be, is limited to each Indian's ability. Savages, as well as other men, were born unequal. One might leave a faint trail through the forest, while another could be readily traced, and a third, more cunning and skillful than his fellows, have flown under the shady trees, for all the trail he left. But redmen followed the same methods of woodcraft from tradition, as Wetzel had learned after long years of study and experience. And now, satisfied that he had divined the Delaware's intention, he slipped down the bank of the ravine, and once more broke into a run. He leaped lightly, sure-footed as a goat, from stone to stone, over fallen logs, and the brawling brook. At every turn of the ravine, at every open place, he stopped to listen. Arriving on the other side of the ridge, he left the ravine and passed along the edge of the rising ground. He listened to the birds, and searched the grass and leaves. He found not the slightest indication of a trail where he had expected to find one. He retraced his steps patiently, carefully, scrutinizing every inch of the ground. But it was all in vain. Wingenund had begun to show his savage cunning. In his warrior days for long years no chief could rival him. His boast had always been that, when Wingenund sought to elude his pursuers, his trail faded among the moss and the ferns. Wetzel, calm, patient, resourceful, deliberated a moment. The Delaware had not crossed this rocky ridge. He had been cunning enough to make his pursuer think such was his intention. The hunter hurried to the eastern end of the ridge for no other reason than apparently that course was the one the savage had the least reason to take. He advanced hurriedly because every moment was precious. Not a crushed blade of grass, a brushed leaf, an overturned pebble nor a snapped twig did he find. He saw that he was getting near to the side of the ridge where the Delaware's trail had abruptly ended. Ah! what was there? A twisted bit of fern, with the drops of dew brushed off. Bending beside the fern, Wetzel examined the grass; it was not crushed. A small plant with triangular leaves of dark green, lay under the fern. Breaking off one of these leaves, he exposed its lower side to the light. The fine, silvery hair of fuzz that grew upon the leaf had been crushed. Wetzel knew that an Indian could tread so softly as not to break the springy grass blades, but the under side of one of these leaves, if a man steps on it, always betrays his passage through the woods. To keen eyes this leaf showed that it had been bruised by a soft moccasin. Wetzel had located the trail, but was still ignorant of its direction. Slowly he traced the shaken ferns and bruised leaves down over the side of the ridge, and at last, near a stone, he found a moccasin-print in the moss. It pointed east. The Delaware was traveling in exactly the opposite direction to that which he should be going. He was, moreover, exercising wonderful sagacity in hiding his trail. This, however, did not trouble Wetzel, for if it took him a long time to find the trail, certainly the Delaware had expended as much, or more, in choosing hard ground, logs or rocks on which to tread. Wetzel soon realized that his own cunning was matched. He trusted no more to his intuitive knowledge, but stuck close to the trail, as a hungry wolf holds to the scent of his quarry. The Delaware trail led over logs, stones and hard-baked ground, up stony ravines and over cliffs. The wily chief used all of his old skill; he walked backward over moss and sand where his footprints showed plainly; he leaped wide fissures in stony ravines, and then jumped back again; he let himself down over ledges by branches; he crossed creeks and gorges by swinging himself into trees and climbing from one to another; he waded brooks where he found hard bottom, and avoided swampy, soft ground. With dogged persistence and tenacity of purpose Wetzel stuck to this gradually fading trail. Every additional rod he was forced to go more slowly, and take more time in order to find any sign of his enemy's passage through the forests. One thing struck him forcibly. Wingenund was gradually circling to the southwest, a course that took him farther and farther from the Delaware encampment. Slowly it dawned upon Wetzel that the chief could hardly have any reason for taking this circling course save that of pride and savage joy in misleading, in fooling the foe of the Delawares, in deliberately showing Deathwind that there was one Indian who could laugh at and loose him in the forests. To Wetzel this was bitter as gall. To be led a wild goose chase! His fierce heart boiled with fury. His dark, keen eyes sought the grass and moss with terrible earnestness. Yet in spite of the anger that increased to the white heat of passion, he became aware of some strange sensation creeping upon him. He remembered that the Delawares had offered his life. Slowly, like a shadow, Wetzel passed up and down the ridges, through the brown and yellow aisles of the forest, over the babbling brooks, out upon the golden-flecked fields--always close on the trail. At last in an open part of the forest, where a fire had once swept away the brush and smaller timber, Wetzel came upon the spot where the Delaware's trail ended. There in the soft, black ground was a moccasin-print. The forest was not dense; there was plenty of light; no logs, stones or trees were near, and yet over all that glade no further evidence of the Indian's trail was visible. It faded there as the great chief had boasted it would. Wetzel searched the burnt ground; he crawled on his hands and knees; again and again he went over the surroundings. The fact that one moccasin-print pointed west and the other east, showed that the Delaware had turned in his tracks, was the most baffling thing that had ever crossed the hunter in all his wild wanderings. For the first time in many years he had failed. He took his defeat hard, because he had been successful for so long he thought himself almost infallible, and because the failure lost him the opportunity to kill his great foe. In his passion he cursed himself for being so weak as to let the prayer of a woman turn him from his life's purpose. With bowed head and slow, dragging steps he made his way westward. The land was strange to him, but he knew he was going toward familiar ground. For a time he walked quietly, all the time the fierce fever in his veins slowly abating. Calm he always was, except when that unnatural lust for Indians' blood overcame him. On the summit of a high ridge he looked around to ascertain his bearings. He was surprised to find he had traveled in a circle. A mile or so below him arose the great oak tree which he recognized as the landmark of Beautiful Spring. He found himself standing on the hill, under the very dead tree to which he had directed Girty's attention a few hours previous. With the idea that he would return to the spring to scalp the dead Indians, he went directly toward the big oak tree. Once out of the forest a wide plain lay between him and the wooded knoll which marked the glade of Beautiful Spring. He crossed this stretch of verdant meadow-land, and entered the copse. Suddenly he halted. His keen sense of the usual harmony of the forest, with its innumerable quiet sounds, had received a severe shock. He sank into the tall weeds and listened. Then he crawled a little farther. Doubt became certainty. A single note of an oriole warned him, and it needed not the quick notes of a catbird to tell him that near at hand, somewhere, was human life. Once more Wetzel became a tiger. The hot blood leaped from his heart, firing all his veins and nerves. But calmly noiseless, certain, cold, deadly as a snake he began the familiar crawling method of stalking his game. On, on under the briars and thickets, across the hollows full of yellow leaves, up over stony patches of ground to the fern-covered cliff overhanging the glade he glided--lithe, sinuous, a tiger in movement and in heart. He parted the long, graceful ferns and gazed with glittering eyes down into the beautiful glade. He saw not the shining spring nor the purple moss, nor the ghastly white bones--all that the buzzards had left of the dead--nor anything, save a solitary Indian standing erect in the glade. There, within range of his rifle, was his great Indian foe, Wingenund. Wetzel sank back into the ferns to still the furious exultations which almost consumed him during the moment when he marked his victim. He lay there breathing hard, gripping tightly his rifle, slowly mastering the passion that alone of all things might render his aim futile. For him it was the third great moment of his life, the last of three moments in which the Indian's life had belonged to him. Once before he had seen that dark, powerful face over the sights of his rifle, and he could not shoot because his one shot must be for another. Again had that lofty, haughty figure stood before him, calm, disdainful, arrogant, and he yielded to a woman's prayer. The Delaware's life was his to take, and he swore he would have it! He trembled in the ecstasy of his triumphant passion; his great muscles rippled and quivered, for the moment was entirely beyond his control. Then his passion calmed. Such power for vengeance had he that he could almost still the very beats of his heart to make sure and deadly his fatal aim. Slowly he raised himself; his eyes of cold fire glittered; slowly he raised the black rifle. Wingenund stood erect in his old, grand pose, with folded arms, but his eyes, instead of being fixed on the distant hills, were lowered to the ground. An Indian girl, cold as marble, lay at his feet. Her garments were wet, and clung to her slender form. Her sad face was frozen into an eternal rigidity. By her side was a newly dug grave. The bead on the front sight of the rifle had hardly covered the chief's dark face when Wetzel's eye took in these other details. He had been so absorbed in his purpose that he did not dream of the Delaware's reason for returning to the Beautiful Spring. Slowly Wetzel's forefinger stiffened; slowly he lowered the black rifle. Wingenund had returned to bury Whispering Winds. Wetzel's teethe clenched, an awful struggle tore his heart. Slowly the rifle rose, wavered and fell. It rose again, wavered and fell. Something terrible was wrong with him; something awful was awakening in his soul. Wingenund had not made a fool of him. The Delaware had led him a long chase, had given him the slip in the forest, not to boast of it, but to hurry back to give his daughter Christian burial. Wingenund was a Christian! Had he not been, once having cast his daughter from him, he would never have looked upon her face again. Wingenund was true to his race, but he was a Christian. Suddenly Wetzel's terrible temptation, his heart-racking struggle ceased. He lowered the long, black rifle. He took one last look at the chieftain's dark, powerful face. Then the Avenger fled like a shadow through the forest. Chapter XXX. It was late afternoon at Fort Henry. The ruddy sun had already sunk behind the wooded hill, and the long shadows of the trees lengthened on the green square in front of the fort. Colonel Zane stood in his doorway watching the river with eager eyes. A few minutes before a man had appeared on the bank of the island and hailed. The colonel had sent his brother Jonathan to learn what was wanted. The latter had already reached the other shore in his flatboat, and presently the little boat put out again with the stranger seated at the stern. "I thought, perhaps, it might be Wetzel," mused the colonel, "though I never knew of Lew's wanting a boat." Jonathan brought the man across the river, and up the winding path to where Colonel Zane was waiting. "Hello! It's young Christy!" exclaimed the colonel, jumping off the steps, and cordially extending his hand. "Glad to see you! Where's Williamson. How did you happen over here?" "Captain Williamson and his men will make the river eight or ten miles above," answered Christy. "I came across to inquire about the young people who left the Village of Peace. Was glad to learn from Jonathan they got out all right." "Yes, indeed, we're all glad. Come and sit down. Of course you'll stay over night. You look tired and worn. Well, no wonder, when you saw that Moravian massacre. You must tell me about it. I saw Sam Brady yesterday, and he spoke of seeing you over there. Sam told me a good deal. Ah! here's Jim now." The young missionary came out of the open door, and the two young men greeted each other warmly. "How is she?" asked Christy, when the first greetings had been exchanged. "Nell's just beginning to get over the shock. She'll be glad to see you." "Jonathan tells me you got married just before Girty came up with you at Beautiful Spring." "Yes; it is true. In fact, the whole wonderful story is true, yet I cannot believe as yet. You look thin and haggard. When we last met you were well." "That awful time pulled me down. I was an unwilling spectator of all that horrible massacre, and shall never get over it. I can still see the fiendish savages running about with the reeking scalps of their own people. I actually counted the bodies of forty-nine grown Christians and twenty-seven children. An hour after you left us the church was in ashes, and the next day I saw the burned bodies. Oh! the sickening horror of the scene! It haunts me! That monster Jim Girty killed fourteen Christians with his sledge-hammer." "Did you hear of his death?" asked Colonel Zane. "Yes, and a fitting end it was to the frontier 'Skull and Cross-bones'." "It was like Wetzel to think of such a vengeance." "Has Wetzel come in since?" "No. Jonathan says he went after Wingenund, and there's no telling when he'll return." "I hoped he would spare the Delaware." "Wetzel spare an Indian!" "But the chief was a friend. He surely saved the girl." "I am sorry, too, because Wingenund was a fine Indian. But Wetzel is implacable." "Here's Nell, and Mrs. Clarke too. Come out, both of you," cried Jim. Nell appeared in the doorway with Colonel Zane's sister. The two girls came down the steps and greeted the young man. The bride's sweet face was white and thin, and there was a shadow in her eyes. "I am so glad you got safely away from--from there," said Christy, earnestly. "Tell me of Benny?" asked Nell, speaking softly. "Oh, yes, I forgot. Why, Benny is safe and well. He was the only Christian Indian to escape the Christian massacre. Heckewelder hid him until it was all over. He is going to have the lad educated." "Thank Heaven!" murmured Nell. "And the missionaries?" inquired Jim, earnestly. "Were all well when I left, except, of course, Young. He was dying. The others will remain out there, and try to get another hold, but I fear it's impossible." "It is impossible, not because the Indian does not want Christianity, but because such white men as the Girty's rule. The beautiful Village of Peace owes its ruin to the renegades," said Colonel Zane impressively. "Captain Williamson could have prevented the massacre," remarked Jim. "Possibly. It was a bad place for him, and I think he was wrong not to try," declared the colonel. "Hullo!" cried Jonathan Zane, getting up from the steps where he sat listening to the conversation. A familiar soft-moccasined footfall sounded on the path. All turned to see Wetzel come slowly toward them. His buckskin hunting costume was ragged and worn. He looked tired and weary, but the dark eyes were calm. It was the Wetzel whom they all loved. They greeted him warmly. Nell gave him her hands, and smiled up at him. "I'm so glad you've come home safe," she said. "Safe an' sound, lass, an' glad to find you well," answered the hunter, as he leaned on his long rifle, looking from Nell to Colonel Zane's sister. "Betty, I allus gave you first place among border lasses, but here's one as could run you most any kind of a race," he said, with the rare smile which so warmly lighted his dark, stern face. "Lew Wetzel making compliments! Well, of all things!" exclaimed the colonel's sister. Jonathan Zane stood closely scanning Wetzel's features. Colonel Zane, observing his brother's close scrutiny of the hunter, guessed the cause, and said: "Lew, tell us, did you see Wingenund over the sights of your rifle?" "Yes," answered the hunter simply. A chill seemed to strike the hearts of the listeners. That simple answer, coming from Wetzel, meant so much. Nell bowed her head sadly. Jim turned away biting his lip. Christy looked across the valley. Colonel Zane bent over and picked up some pebbles which he threw hard at the cabin wall. Jonathan Zane abruptly left the group, and went into the house. But the colonel's sister fixed her large, black eyes on Wetzel's face. "Well?" she asked, and her voice rang. Wetzel was silent for a moment. He met her eyes with that old, inscrutable smile in his own. A slight shade flitted across his face. "Betty, I missed him," he said, calmly, and, shouldering his long rifle, he strode away. * * * Nell and Jim walked along the bluff above the river. Twilight was deepening. The red glow in the west was slowly darkening behind the boldly defined hills. "So it's all settled, Jim, that we stay here," said Nell. "Yes, dear. Colonel Zane has offered me work, and a church besides. We are very fortunate, and should be contented. I am happy because you're my wife, and yet I am sad when I think of--him. Poor Joe!" "Don't you ever think we--we wronged him?" whispered Nell. "No, he wished it. I think he knew how he would end. No, we did not wrong him; we loved him." "Yes, I loved him--I loved you both," said Nell softly. "Then let us always think of him as he would have wished." "Think of him? Think of Joe? I shall never forget. In winter, spring and summer I shall remember him, but always most in autumn. For I shall see that beautiful glade with its gorgeous color and the dark, shaded spring where he lies asleep." * * * The years rolled by with their changing seasons; every autumn the golden flowers bloomed richly, and the colored leaves fell softly upon the amber moss in the glade of Beautiful Spring. The Indians camped there no more; they shunned the glade and called it the Haunted Spring. They said the spirit of a white dog ran there at night, and the Wind-of-Death mourned over the lonely spot. At long intervals an Indian chief of lofty frame and dark, powerful face stalked into the glade to stand for many moments silent and motionless. And sometimes at twilight when the red glow of the sun had faded to gray, a stalwart hunter slipped like a shadow out of the thicket, and leaned upon a long, black rifle while he gazed sadly into the dark spring, and listened to the sad murmur of the waterfall. The twilight deepened while he stood motionless. The leaves fell into the water with a soft splash, a whippoorwill caroled his melancholy song. From the gloom of the forest came a low sigh which swelled thrillingly upon the quiet air, and then died away like the wailing of the night wind. Quiet reigned once more over the dark, murky grave of the boy who gave his love and his life to the wilderness. 
41030	----	HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA VOLUME 12 HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF AMERICA VOLUME 12 Pioneer Roads and Experiences of Travelers (Volume II) BY ARCHER BUTLER HULBERT _With Maps_ [Illustration] THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY CLEVELAND, OHIO 1904 COPYRIGHT, 1904 BY THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE 9 I. THE OLD NORTHWESTERN TURNPIKE 13 II. A JOURNEY IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA 43 III. A PILGRIM ON BRADDOCK'S ROAD 64 IV. THE GENESEE ROAD 95 V. A TRAVELER ON THE GENESEE ROAD 117 VI. THE CATSKILL TURNPIKE 143 VII. WITH DICKENS ALONG PIONEER ROADS 164 ILLUSTRATIONS I. PART OF A "MAP OF THE ROUTE BETWEEN ALBANY AND OSWEGO" (drawn about 1756; from original in British Museum) 97 II. PART OF A "MAP OF THE GRAND PASS FROM NEW YORK TO MONTREAL ... BY THOMAS POWNALL" (drawn about 1756; from original in the British Museum) 113 III. WESTERN NEW YORK IN 1809 123 PREFACE This volume is devoted to two great lines of pioneer movement, one through northern Virginia and the other through central New York. In the former case the Old Northwestern Turnpike is the key to the situation, and in the latter the famous Genesee Road, running westward from Utica, was of momentous importance. A chapter is given to the Northwestern Turnpike, showing the movement which demanded a highway, and the legislative history which created it. Then follow two chapters of travelers' experiences in the region covered. One of these is given to the _Journal of Thomas Wallcutt_ (1790) through northern Virginia and central Pennsylvania. Another chapter presents no less vivid descriptions from quite unknown travelers on the Virginian roads. The Genesee Road is presented in chapter four as a legislative creation; the whole history of this famous avenue would be practically a history of central New York. To give the more vivid impression of personal experience a chapter is devoted to a portion of Thomas Bigelow's _Tour to Niagara Falls 1805_ over the Genesee Road in its earliest years, when the beautiful cities which now lie like a string of precious gems across this route were just springing into existence. For a chapter on the important "Catskill Turnpike," which gives much information of road-building in central New York, we are indebted to Francis Whiting Halsey's _The Old New York Frontier_. The final chapter of the volume includes a number of selections from the spicy, brilliant descriptions of pioneer traveling in America which Dickens left in his _American Notes_, and a few pages describing an early journey on Indian trails in Missouri from Charles Augustus Murray's _Travels in North America_. A. B. H. MARIETTA, OHIO, January 26, 1904. Pioneer Roads and Experiences of Travelers (Volume II) CHAPTER I THE OLD NORTHWESTERN TURNPIKE We have treated of three historic highways in this series of monographs which found a way through the Appalachian uplift into the Mississippi Basin--Braddock's, Forbes's, and Boone's roads and their successors. There were other means of access into that region. One, of which particular mention is to be made in this volume, dodged the mountains and ran around to the lakes by way of the Mohawk River and the Genesee country. Various minor routes passed westward from the heads of the Susquehanna--one of them becoming famous as a railway route, but none becoming celebrated as roadways. From central and southern Virginia, routes, likewise to be followed by trunk railway lines, led onward toward the Mississippi Basin, but none, save only Boone's track, became of prime importance. But while scanning carefully this mountain barrier, which for so long a period held back civilization on the Atlantic seaboard, there is found another route that was historic and deserves mention as influencing the westward movement of America. It was that roadway so well known three-fourths of a century ago as the Old Northwestern Turnpike, leading from Winchester, Virginia, to the Ohio River at Parkersburg, Virginia, now West Virginia, at the mouth of the Little Kanawha. The earliest history of this route is of far more interest than importance, for the subject takes us back once more to Washington's early exploits and we feel again the fever of his wide dreams of internal communications which should make the Virginia waterways the inlet and outlet of all the trade of the rising West. It has been elsewhere outlined how the Cumberland Road was the actual resultant of Washington's hopes and plans. But it is in place in a sketch of the Old Northwestern Turnpike to state that Washington's actual plan of making the Potomac River all that the Erie Canal and the Cumberland Road became was never even faintly realized. His great object was attained--but not by means of his partisan plans. It is very difficult to catch the exact old-time spirit of rivalry which existed among the American colonies and which always meant jealousy and sometimes bloodshed. In the fight between Virginia officers in Forbes's army in 1758 over the building of a new road through Pennsylvania to Fort Duquesne, instead of following Braddock's old road, is an historic example of this intense rivalry. A noted example, more easily explained, was the conflict and perennial quarrel between the Connecticut and Pennsylvania pioneers within the western extremity of the former colony's technical boundaries. That Washington was a Virginian is made very plain in a thousand instances in his life; and many times it is emphasized in such a way as must seem odd to all modern Americans. At a stroke of a pen he shows himself to be the broadest of Americans in his classic Letter to Benjamin Harrison, 1784; in the next sentence he is urging Virginia to look well to her laurels lest New York, through the Hudson and Mohawk, and Pennsylvania, through the Susquehanna and Juniata, do what Virginia ought to do through her Potomac. The powerful appeal made in this letter was the result of a journey of Washington's in the West which has not received all the attention from historians it perhaps deserves. This was a tour made in 1784 in the tangled mountainous region between the heads of the branches of the Potomac and those of the Monongahela.[1] Starting on his journey September 1, Washington intended visiting his western lands and returning home by way of the Great Kanawha and New Rivers, in order to view the connection which could be made there between the James and Great Kanawha Valleys. Indian hostilities, however, made it unwise for him to proceed even to the Great Kanawha, and the month was spent in northwestern Virginia. On the second, Washington reached Leesburg, and on the third, Berkeley; here, at his brother's (Colonel Charles Washington's) he met a number of persons including General Morgan. "... one object of my journey being," his _Journal_ reads, "to obtain information of the nearest and best communication between the Eastern & Western Waters; & to facilitate as much as in me lay the Inland Navigation of the Potomack; I conversed a good deal with Gen^l. Morgan on this subject, who said, a plan was in contemplation to extend a Road from Winchester to the Western Waters, to avoid if possible an interference with any other State." It is to be observed that this was a polite way of saying that the road in contemplation must be wholly in Virginia, which was the only state to be "interfered" with or be benefited. "But I could not discover," Washington adds, "that Either himself, or others, were able to point it out with precision. He [Morgan] seemed to have no doubt but that the Counties of Freder^k., Berkeley & Hampshire would contribute freely towards the extension of the Navigation of Potomack; as well as towards opening a Road from East to West." It should be observed that the only route across the mountains from northwestern Virginia to the Ohio River was Braddock's Road; for this road Washington was a champion in 1758, as against the central route Forbes built straight west from Bedford to Fort Duquesne.[2] Then, however, Braddock's Road, and even Fort Duquesne, was supposed to lie in Virginia. But when the Pennsylvania boundaries were fully outlined it was found that Braddock's Road lay in Pennsylvania. Washington now was seeking a new route to the West which would lie wholly in Virginia. The problem, historically, presents several interesting points which cannot be expanded here. Suffice it to say that Washington was the valiant champion of Braddock's Road until he found it lay wholly in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Gaining no satisfaction from his friends at Berkeley, Washington pushed on to one Captain Stroad's, out fourteen odd miles on the road to Bath. "I held much conversation with him," the traveler records of his visit at Stroad's, "the result ... was,--that there are two Glades which go under the denomination of the Great glades--one, on the Waters of Yohiogany, the other on those of Cheat River; & distinguished by the name of the Sandy Creek Glades.--that the Road to the first goes by the head of Patterson's Creek[3]--that from the acc^{ts}. he has had of it, it is rough; the distance he knows not.--that there is a way to the Sandy Creek Glades from the great crossing of Yohiogany (or Braddocks Road) [Smithfield, Pennsylvania] & a very good one; ..." At the town of Bath Washington met one Colonel Bruce who had traversed the country between the North Branch (as that tributary of the Potomac was widely known) and the Monongahela. "From Col^o. Bruce ... I was informed that he had travelled from the North Branch of Potomack to the Waters of Yaughiogany, and Monongahela--that the Potom^k. where it may be made Navigable--for instance where McCulloughs path crosses it, 40 Miles above the old fort [Cumberland], is but about 6 Miles to a pretty large branch of the Yohiogany ...--that the Waters of Sandy Creek which is a branch of cheat River, which is a branch of Monongahela, interlocks with these; and the Country between, flat--that he thinks (in order to ev^d. [evade] passing through the State of Pennsylvania) this would be an eligible Road using the ten Miles C^k. with a portage to the Navigable Waters of the little Kanhawa; ..." This was the basis of Washington's plan of internal communication from Potomac; he now pressed forward to find if it were possible to connect the Youghiogheny and North Branch of the Potomac, the Youghiogheny and Monongahela, and the Monongahela and Little Kanawha. Of course the plan was impossible, but the patient man floundered on through the foothills and mountains over what was approximately the course mentioned, the "McCullough's Path" and Sandy Creek route from the Potomac to the Monongahela. In his explorations he found and traversed one of the earliest routes westward through this broken country immediately south of the well known resorts, Oakland and Deer Park, on the Baltimore and Ohio Railway. This was the "McCullough's" Path already mentioned. Having ascended the Monongahela River from near Brownsville, Pennsylvania, Washington, on September 24, arrived at a surveyor's office (the home of one Pierpoint) eight miles southward along the dividing ridge between the Monongahela and Cheat Rivers.[4] On the twenty-fifth--after a meeting with various inhabitants of the vicinity--he went plunging eastward toward the North Branch of the Potomac "along the New Road [which intersected Braddock's Road east of Winding Ridge] to Sandy Creek; & thence by McCullochs path to Logstons [on the North Branch of the Potomac] and accordingly set of [off] before Sunrise. Within 3 Miles I came to the river Cheat ab^t. 7 Miles from its Mouth--.... The Road from Morgan Town or Monongahela C^t. House, is said to be good to this ferry [Ice's]--distance ab^{t}. 6 Miles[5] ... from the ferry the Laurel Hill[6] is assended ... along the top of it the Road continues.... After crossing this hill the road is very good to the ford of Sandy Creek at one James Spurgeons,[7] ... ab^t. 15 Miles from Ice's ferry. At the crossing of this Creek McCullocks path, which owes its origen to Buffaloes, being no other than their tracks from one lick to another & consequently crooked & not well chosen, strikes off from the New Road.... From Spurgeon's to one Lemons, which is a little to the right of McCullochs path, is reckoned 9 Miles, and the way not bad; but from Lemons to the entrance of the Yohiogany glades[8] which is estimated 9 Miles more thro' a deep rich Soil ... and what is called the briery Mountain.[9] ... At the entrance of the above glades I lodged this night, with no other shelter or cover than my cloak. & was unlucky enough to have a heavy shower of Rain.... 26^{th}.... passing along a small path ... loaded with Water ... we had an uncomfortable travel to one Charles friends[10] about 10 Miles.... A Mile before I came to Friends, I crossed the great Branch of Yohiogany.... Friend ... is a great Hunter.... From Friends I passed by a spring (distant 3 Miles) called Archy's from a Man of that name--crossed the backbone[11] & descended into Ryans glade.[12]--Thence by Tho^s. Logston's ... to the foot of the backbone, about 5 Miles ... across the Ridge to Ryans glade one mile and half ...--to Joseph Logstons 1-1/2 Miles ...--to the N^o. Branch at McCullochs path 2 Miles[13]--infamous road--and to Tho^s. Logstons 4 more.... 27th. I left M^r. Logston's ...--at ten Miles I had ... gained the summit of the Alligany Mountain[14] and began to desend it where it is very steep and bad to the Waters of Pattersons Creek ... along the heads of these [tributaries], & crossing the Main [Patterson's] Creek & Mountain bearing the same name[15] (on the top of which at one Snails I dined) I came to Col^o. Abrah^m. Hites at Fort pleasant on the South Branch[16] about 35 Miles from Logstons a little before the Suns setting. My intention, when I set out from Logstons, was to take the Road to Rumney [Romney] by one Parkers but learning from my guide (Joseph Logston) when I came to the parting paths at the foot of the Alligany[17] (ab^t. 12 Miles) that it was very little further to go by Fort pleasant, I resolved to take that Rout ... to get information...." This extract from Washington's journal gives us the most complete information obtainable of a region of country concerning which it is difficult to secure even present-day information. The drift of the pioneer tide had been on north and south lines here; the first-comers into these mountains wandered up the Monongahela and Youghiogheny Rivers and their tributaries. Even as early as the Old French War a few bold companies of men had sifted into the dark valleys of the Cheat and Youghiogheny.[18] That it was a difficult country to reach is proved by the fact that certain early adventurers in this region were deserters from Fort Pitt. They were safe here! A similar movement up the two branches of the Potomac had created a number of settlements there--far up where the waters ran clear and swift amid the mountain fogs. But there had been less communication on east and west lines. It is easy to assume that McCulloch's path was the most important route across the ragged ridges, from one glade and valley to another. It is entirely probable that the New Road, to which Washington refers, was built for some distance on the buffalo trace which (though the earlier route) branched from the New Road. An old path ran eastward from Dunkard's Bottom of which Washington says: "... being ... discouraged ... from attempting to return [to the Potomac] by the way of Dunkars Bottom, as the path it is said is very blind & exceedingly grown up with briers, I resolved to try the other Rout, along the New Road ..." as quoted on page 21. The growth of such towns as Cumberland and Morgantown had made a demand for more northerly routes. The whole road-building idea in these parts in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was to connect the towns that were then springing into existence, especially Morgantown and Clarksburg with Cumberland. Washington's dream of a connected waterway was, of course, hopelessly chimerical, and after him no one pushed the subject of a highway of any kind between the East and the West through Virginia. Washington's own plans materialized in the Potomac Navigation Company, and his highway, that should be a strong link in the chain of Federal Union between the improved Potomac and the Ohio, became the Cumberland Road; and it ran just where he did not care to see it--through Maryland and Pennsylvania. Yet it accomplished his first high purpose of welding the Union together, and was a fruit of that patriotic letter to Governor Harrison written a few days after Washington pushed his way through the wet paths of the Cheat and Youghiogheny Valleys in 1784. These first routes across the mountains south of the Cumberland Road--in Virginia--were, as noted, largely those of wild beasts. "It has been observed before," wrote Washington in recapitulation, "to what fortuitous circumstances the paths of this Country owe their being, & how much the ways may be better chosen by a proper investigation of it; ..." In many instances the new roads built hereabouts in later days were shorter than the earlier courses; however it remains true here, as elsewhere, that the strategic geographical positions were found by the buffalo and Indian, and white men have followed them there unwaveringly with turnpike and railway. When Washington crossed the North Branch of the Potomac on the 26th of October, 1784 at "McCullochs crossing," he was on the track of what should be, a generation later, the Virginian highway across the Appalachian system into the Ohio Basin. Oddly enough Virginia had done everything, it may truthfully be said, toward building Braddock's Road to the Ohio in 1755, and, in 1758, had done as much as any colony toward building Forbes's Road. All told, Virginia had accomplished more in the way of road-building into the old Central West by 1760 than all other colonies put together. Yet, as it turned out, not one inch of either of these great thoroughfares lay in Virginia territory when independence was secured and the individual states began their struggle for existence in those "critical" after-hours. These buffalo paths through her western mountains were her only routes; they coursed through what was largely an uninhabited region, and which remains such today. Yet it was inevitable that a way should be hewn here through Virginia to the Ohio; the call from the West, the hosts of pioneers, the need of a state way of communication, all these and more, made it sure that a Virginia Turnpike should cross the mountains. Before that day arrived the Cumberland Road was proposed, built, and completed, not only to the Ohio River, but almost to the western boundary of the state of Ohio; its famous successor of another generation, the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, was undertaken in 1825. These movements stirred northern Virginians to action and on the twenty-seventh of February, 1827, the General Assembly passed an act "to incorporate the North-western Road Company." Sections 1, 3, 4, and 5 of this Act are as follows: "1. _Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia_, That books shall be opened at the town of Winchester, in Frederick county, under the direction of Josiah Lockhart, William Wood, George S. Lane, Abraham Miller, and Charles Brent, or any two of them; at Romney, in Hampshire county, under the direction of William Naylor, William Donaldson, John M'Dowell, Robert Sherrard, and Thomas Slane, or any two of them; at Moorfield, in Hardy county, under the direction of Isaac Van Meter, Daniel M'Neil, Benjamin Fawcett, Samuel M'Machen, and John G. Harness, or any two of them; at Beverly, in Randolph county, under the direction of Eli Butcher, Squire Bosworth, Jonas Crane, Andrew Crawford, and William Cooper, or any two of them; at Kingwood, in Preston county, under the direction of William Sigler, William Johnson, William Price, Charles Byrne, and Thomas Brown, or any two of them; at Pruntytown, in Harrison county, under the direction of Abraham Smith, Frederick Burdett, Thomas Gethrop, Cornelius Reynolds, and Stephen Neill, or any two of them; at Clarksburg, in Harrison county, under the direction of John L. Sehon, John Sommerville, John Webster, Jacob Stealy, and Phineas Chapin, or any two of them; and at Parkersburg, in Wood county, under the direction of Jonas Beason, Joseph Tomlinson, Tillinghast Cook, James H. Neal, and Abraham Samuels, or any two of them, for purpose of receiving subscriptions to a capital stock of seventy-five thousand dollars, in shares of twenty dollars, to be appropriated to the making of a road from Winchester to some proper place on the Ohio river, between the mouths of Muskingum, and Little Kanawha rivers, according to the provisions of this act.... "3. The proceedings of the first general meeting of the stockholders, shall be preserved with subsequent proceedings of the company, all of which shall be entered of record in well bound books to be kept for that purpose: And from and after the first appointment of directors, the said responsible subscribers, their heirs and assigns, shall be, and they are hereby declared to be, a body politic and corporate, by the name of 'The North western Road Company;' ... "4. It shall be the duty of the Principal Engineer of the State, as soon as existing engagements will permit, to prescribe such plans or schemes for making the whole road, or the several parts or sections thereof, as he shall think best calculated to further its most proper and speedy completion, and to locate and graduate the same, or part or parts thereof, from time to time, make estimates of the probable cost of making each five miles, (or any shorter sections,) so located and graduated, and to make report thereof to the Board of Public Works at such time or times as shall be convenient. "5. The said president and directors shall, from time to time, make all contracts necessary for the completion of the said road, and shall require from subscribers equal advances and payments on their shares, and they shall have power to compel payments by the sale of delinquent shares, in such a manner as shall be prescribed by their by-laws, and transfer the same to purchasers: _Provided_, That if any subscriber shall at any time be a contractor for making any part of the said road, or in any other manner become a creditor of the company, he shall be entitled to a proper set-off in the payment of his stock, or any requisition made thereon...."[19] A mistake which doomed these plans to failure was in arbitrarily outlining a road by way of the important towns without due consideration of the nature of the country between them. The mountains were not to be thus mocked; even the buffalo had not found an east and west path here easily. As noted, the towns where subscriptions were opened were Winchester, Romney, Moorefield, Beverly, Kingwood, Pruntytown, Clarksburg, and Parkersburg. When the engineers got through Hampshire County by way of Mill Creek Gap in Mill Creek Mountain and on into Preston County, insurmountable obstacles were encountered and it was reported that the road would never reach Kingwood. From that moment the North-western Road Company stock began to languish; only the intervention of the state saved the enterprise. However, in 1831, a new and very remarkable act was passed by the Virginia Assembly organizing a road company that stands unique in a road-building age. This was "An act to provide for the construction of a turnpike road from Winchester to some point on the Ohio river." The governor was made president of the company and he with the treasurer, attorney-general, and second auditor constituted the board of directors. The 1st, 2d, and 4th sections of this interesting law are as follows: "1. _Be it enacted by the general assembly_, That the governor, treasurer, attorney general, and second auditor of the commonwealth for the time being, and their successors, are hereby constituted a body politic and corporate, under the denomination of 'The President and Directors of the North-Western Turnpike Road,' with power to sue and be sued, plead and be impleaded, and to hold lands and tenements, goods and chattels, and the same to sell, dispose of, or improve, in trust for the commonwealth, for the purposes hereinafter mentioned. And three of the said commissioners shall constitute a board for the transaction of such business as is hereby entrusted to them; of which board, when present, the governor shall be president: And they shall have power to appoint a clerk from without their own body, and make such distribution of their duties among themselves respectively, and such rules and regulations ... as to them may seem necessary.... "2. _Be it further enacted_, That the said president and directors of the North-Western turnpike road be, and they are hereby empowered as soon as may be necessary for the purposes herein declared, to borrow on the credit of the state, a sum or sums of money not exceeding one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, and at a rate of interest not exceeding six per centum per annum.... "4. _Be it further enacted_, That the said president and directors, out of the money hereby authorized to be borrowed, shall cause to be constructed a road from the town of Winchester, in the county of Frederick, to some point on the Ohio river, to be selected by the principal engineer. And for the purpose aforesaid, the principal engineer, as soon as may be after the passage of this act, shall proceed to lay out and locate the said road from the points above designated. He shall graduate the said road in such manner that the acclivity or declivity thereof shall in no case exceed five degrees. The width of the said road may be varied, so that it shall not exceed eighteen feet, nor be less than twelve feet. Through level ground it shall be raised in the middle one-twenty-fourth part of its breadth, but in passing along declivities it may be flat. Bridges, side ditches, gutters, and an artificial bed of stone or gravel, shall be dispensed with, except in such instances as the said principal engineer may deem them necessary...."[20] Other sections stipulated that the state had the right to survey any and all routes the engineers desired to examine, and that persons suffering by loss of land or otherwise could, if proper application was made within one year, secure justice in the superior or county courts; that the company appoint a superintendent who should have in charge the letting of contracts after such were approved by the company; that, as each stretch of twenty miles was completed, toll gates could be erected thereon, where usual tolls could be collected by the company's agents, the total sum collected to be paid into the state treasury; that the company had the right to erect bridges, or in case a ferry was in operation, to make the ferryman keep his banks and boats in good condition; that the company make annual reports to the State Board of Public Works; and that the road be forever a public highway. The roadway was now soon built. Not dependent upon the stock that might be taken in the larger towns, the road made peace with the mountains and was built through the southern part of Preston County in 1832, leaving Kingwood some miles to the north. Evansville was located in 1833, and owes its rise to the great road. The route of the road is through Hampshire, Mineral, Grant, Garrett, Preston, Taylor, Harrison, Doddridge, Ritchie, and Wood Counties, all West Virginia save Garrett which is in Maryland. Important as the route became to the rough, beautiful country which it crossed, it never became of national importance. Being started so late in the century, the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, which was completed to Cumberland in 1845, stopped in large part the busy scenes of the Old Northwestern Turnpike. Yet to the historic inquirer the old turnpike, so long forgotten by the outside world, lies where it was built; and can fairly be said to be a monument of the last of those stirring days when Virginia planned to hold the West in fee. Hundreds of residents along this road recall the old days with intense delight. True, the vast amount of money spent on the Cumberland Road was not spent on its less renowned rival to the south, but the Cumberland Road was given over to the states through which it ran; and, in many instances, was so neglected that it was as poor a road as some of its less pretentious rivals. A great deal of business of a national character was done on the Northwestern Turnpike. Parkersburg became one of the important entrepôts in the Ohio Valley; as early as 1796, we shall soon see, a pioneer traversing the country through which the Northwestern Turnpike's predecessor coursed, speaks of an awakening in the Monongahela Valley that cannot be considered less than marvelous. Taking it through the years, few roads have remained of such constant benefit to the territory into which they ran, and today you will be told that no railway has benefited that mountainous district so much as this great thoroughfare. But in a larger sense than any merely local one, Virginia counted on the Northwestern Turnpike to bind the state and connect its eastern metropolis with the great Ohio Valley. Virginia had given up, on demand, her great county of Kentucky when the wisdom of that movement was plain; at the call of the Nation, she had surrendered the title her soldiers had given her to Illinois and the beautifully fertile Scioto Valley in Ohio. But after these great cessions she did not lose the rich Monongahela country. It had been explored by her adventurers, settled by her pioneers--and Virginia held dear to her heart her possessions along the upper Ohio. In the days when the Northwestern Turnpike was created by legislative act, canals were not an assured success, and railways were only being dreamed of. And the promoters of canals and railways were considered insane when they hinted that the mountains could be conquered by these means of transportation. With all the vast need for improvements, the genius of mankind had never created anything better than the road and the cart; what hope was there that now suddenly America should surprise the world by overthrowing the axioms of the centuries past? And so, in the correct historical analysis, the Northwestern Turnpike must be considered Virginia's attempt to compete successfully with Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York, in securing for herself a commanding portion of the trade of the West. In all the legislative history of the origin of the Northwestern Turnpike, it is continually clear that its origin was of more than local character. It was actually the last roadway built from the seaboard to the West in the hope of securing commercial superiority; and its decline and decay marks the end of pioneer road-building across the first great American "divide." In a moment the completion of the Erie Canal assured the nation that freight could be transported for long distances at one-tenth the cost that had prevailed on the old land highways. Soon after, the completion of the Pennsylvania Canal proved that the canal could successfully mount great heights--and Virginia forgot her roads in her interest in canals. CHAPTER II A JOURNEY IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA Thomas Wallcutt of Massachusetts served through the Revolutionary War as hospital steward and received in payment therefor one share in the Ohio Company.[21] He went out to Marietta in 1790, and returned eastward by the half-known Virginia route. His _Journal_[22] forms an interesting chapter of travel on American pioneer roads: "Monday, 8 March, 1790.[23] Pleasant, clear, cold, and high winds. We were up before sunrise, and got some hot breakfast, coffee and toast; and Captain Prince, Mr. Moody, Mr. Skinner, Captain Mills and brother, Mr. Bent, &c., accompanied us over the river[24] to Sargent's or Williams's, and took leave of us about nine o'clock, and we proceeded on our journey. We had gone but a little way when we found the path[25] so blind that we could not proceed with certainty, and I was obliged to go back and get a young man to come and show us the way. When we had got back to our companions again, they had found the road, and we walked twenty miles this day. Weather raw, chilly, and a little snow. The country after about five or six miles from the Ohio is very broken and uneven, with high and sharp hills. "Tuesday, 9 March, 1790. The weather for the most part of the day pleasant, but cold winds, northerly. The country very rough, the hills high and sharp.[26] One third of the road must go over and on the ridges, and another third through the valleys. We walked this day about twenty-three or twenty-four miles, and slept near the forty-fourth or forty-fifth mile tree. "Wednesday, 10 March, 1790. Weather raw and moist. To-day we crossed several of the large creeks and waters that fall into the Ohio. This occasioned a loss of much time, waiting for the horse to come over for each one, which he did as regularly as a man would. The country much the same, but rather better to-day, except that a great deal of the road runs along through the streams, and down the streams such a length with the many bridges that will be wanted, that it will be a vast expense, besides the risk and damage of being carried away every year by the floods. We had so much trouble in crossing these streams that at last we forded on foot. One of the largest in particular, after we had rode it several times, we waded it four or five times almost knee-deep, and after that a number of times on logs, or otherwise, without going in water. Two of the streams, I doubt not, we crossed as often as twenty times each. We walked this day about fifteen miles. "Thursday, 11 March, 1790. With much fatigue and pain in my left leg, we walked about fifteen miles to-day. They all walked better than I, and had got to Carpenter's and had done their dinner about two o'clock when I arrived. They appear to be good farmers and good livers, have a good house, and seem very clever people. Mr. C. is gone down the country. They have been a frontier here for fifteen years, and have several times been obliged to move away. I got a dish of coffee and meat for dinner, and paid ninepence each, for the doctor and me. We set off, and crossed the west branch of the Monongahela over to Clarksburgh. The doctor paid his own ferriage. We went to Major Robinson's, and had tea and meat, &c., for supper. I paid ninepence each, for the doctor and me. Weather dull and unpleasant, as yesterday. "Friday, 12 March, 1790. Weather good and pleasant to-day. We set off before sunrise and got a little out of our road into the Morgantown road, but soon got right again. We breakfasted at Webb's mill, a good house and clever folks. Had coffee, meat, &c.; paid sixpence each, for me and the doctor. Lodged at Wickware's, who says he is a Yankee, but is a very disagreeable man for any country, rough and ugly, and he is very dear. I paid one shilling apiece for the doctor's and my supper, upon some tea made of mountain birch, perhaps black birch, stewed pumpkin, and sodden meat. Appetite supplies all deficiencies. "Saturday, 13 March, 1790. Beautiful weather all day. Set off not so early this morning as yesterday. The doctor paid his ferriage himself. Mr. Moore, a traveller toward his home in Dunker's Bottom, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, [?] set out with us. He seems a very mild, good-natured, obliging old gentleman, and lent me his horse to ride about two miles, while he drove his pair of steers on foot. The doctor and I being both excessively fatigued, he with a pain in his knee, and mine in my left leg, but shifting about, were unable to keep up with our company, and fell much behind them. Met Mr. Carpenter on his return home. He appears to be a very clever man. When we had come to Field's, I found Mr. Dodge had left his horse for us to ride, and to help us along, which we could not have done without. We got a dish of tea without milk, some dried smoked meat and hominy for dinner; and from about three o'clock to nine at night, got to Ramsay's. Seven miles of our way were through a new blazed path where they propose to cut a new road. We got out of this in good season, at sundown or before dark, into the wagon road, and forded Cheat River on our horses. Tea, meat, &c., for supper. Old Simpson and Horton, a constable, had a terrible scuffle here this evening. "Lord's Day, 14 March, 1790. Mr. Dodge is hurrying to go away again. I tell him I must rest to-day. I have not written anything worth mention in my journal since I set out, until to-day, and so must do it from memory. I want to shave a beard seven days old, and change a shirt about a fortnight dirty; and my fatigue makes rest absolutely necessary. So take my rest this day, whether he has a mind to go or stay with us. Eat very hearty of hominy or boiled corn with milk for breakfast, and boiled smoked beef and pork for dinner, with turnips. After dinner shaved and shirted me, which took till near night, it being a dark house, without a bit of window, as indeed there is scarce a house on this road that has any. "Monday, 15 March, 1790. Waited and got some tea for breakfast, before we set out. Settled with Ramsay, and paid him 9_d._ per meal, for five meals, and half-pint whiskey 6_d._ The whole came to eight shillings. Weather very pleasant most of the day. We walked to Brien's about half-past six o'clock, which they call twenty-four miles. We eat a little fried salt pork and bit of venison at Friends',[27] and then crossed the great Youghiogeny. About two miles further on, we crossed the little _ditto_ at Boyles's.... We walked about or near an hour after dark, and were very agreeably surprised to find ourselves at Brien's instead of Stackpole's, which is four miles further than we expected. Eat a bit of Indian bread, and the woman gave us each about half a pint of milk to drink, which was all our supper. "Tuesday, 16 March, 1790. We were up this morning, and away about or before sunrise, and ascended the backbone of the Alleghany, and got breakfast at Williams's. I cannot keep up with my company. It took me till dark to get to Davis's. Messers. Dodge and Proctor had gone on before us about three miles to Dawson's. We got some bread and butter and milk for supper, and drank a quart of cider. Mr. Davis was originally from Ashford, county of Windham, Connecticut; has been many years settled in this country; has married twice, and got many children. His cider in a brown mug seemed more like home than any thing I have met with. "Wednesday, 17 March. We were up this morning before day, and were set off before it was cleverly light. Got to Dawson's, three miles, where Messers. D. & P. lodged, and got some tea for breakfast, and set off in good season, the doctor and I falling behind. As it is very miry, fatiguing walking, and rainy, which makes extremely painful walking in the clay and mud, we could not keep up with D. We stopped about a mile and a half from the Methodist meeting near the cross roads at Cressops, and four from Cumberland, and got some fried meat and eggs, milk, butter, &c., for dinner, which was a half pistareen each. After dinner the doctor and I walked into Cumberland village about three o'clock, and put up at Herman Stitcher's or Stidger's. We called for two mugs of cider, and got tea, bread and butter, and a boiled leg of fresh young pork for supper. The upper part of the county of Washington has lately been made a separate county, and called Alleghany, as it extends over part of that mountain, and reaches to the extreme boundary of Maryland. The courts, it is expected, will be fixed and held at this place, Cumberland, which will probably increase its growth, as it thrives pretty fast already. We supped and breakfasted here; paid 2_s._ for each, the doctor and me. Pleasant fine weather this day. My feet exceedingly sore, aching, throbbing, and beating. I cannot walk up with my company. "Thursday, 18 March. Paid Mr. Dodge 6_s._ advance. A very fine day. We stayed and got breakfast at Stitcher's, and walked from about eight o'clock to twelve, to Old Town, and dined at Jacob's, and then walked to Dakins's to lodge, where we got a dish of Indian or some other home coffee, with a fry of chicken and other meat for supper. This is the first meal I have paid a shilling L. M. for. The country very much broken and hilly, sharp high ridges, and a great deal of pine. About ... miles from Old Town, the north and south branches of the Potomac join. We walked twenty-five miles to-day. "Friday, 19 March, 1790. Very fine weather again to-day. We walked twenty-four miles to McFarren's in Hancock, and arrived there, sun about half an hour high. McFarren says this town has been settled about ten or twelve years, and is called for the man who laid it out or owned it, and not after Governor Hancock. It is a small but growing place of about twenty or thirty houses, near the bank of the Potomac, thirty-five miles below Old Town, and five below Fort Cumberland; twenty-four above Williamsport, and ninety-five above Georgetown. We slept at McFarren's, a so-so house. He insisted on our sleeping in beds, and would not permit sleeping on the floors. We all put our feet in soak in warm water this evening. It was recommended to us by somebody on the road, and I think they feel the better for it. "Saturday, 20 March. A very fine day again. We have had remarkably fine weather on this journey hitherto. But two days we had any rain, and then but little. We stayed and got breakfast at McFarren's, and set out about eight o'clock, and walked about twenty-one miles this day to Thompson's, about half a mile from Buchanan's in the Cove Gap in the North Mountain. My feet do not feel quite so bad this day, as they have some days. I expect they are growing stronger and fitter for walking every day, though it has cost me a great deal of pain, throbbing, beating, and aching to bring them to it. It seems the warm water last night did me some good. "Lord's Day, 21 March, 1790. Up and away before sunrise, and walked to breakfast to McCracken's. He has been an officer in the continental army. I find it will not do for me to try any longer to keep up with my company, and as they propose going through Reading, and we through Philadelphia, we must part to-night or to-morrow. I conclude to try another seven miles, and if I cannot keep up, we part at Semple's, the next stage. They got to Semple's before me, and waited for me. I conclude to stay and dine here, and part with Messrs. Proctor and Dodge. I am so dirty; my beard the ninth day old, and my shirt the time worn, that I cannot with any decency or comfort put off the cleaning any longer. I again overhauled the letters, as I had for security and care taken all into my saddle-bags. I sorted them and gave Mr. Dodge his, with what lay more direct in his way to deliver, and took some from him for Boston and my route. "I paid Mr. Dodge three shillings more in addition to six shillings I had paid him before at the Widow Carrel's, according to our agreement at twelve shillings to Philadelphia; and as we had gone together and he had carried our packs three hundred miles (wanting two), it was near the matter. He supposed I should do right to give him a shilling more. I told him as I had agreed with him at the rate of fifty pounds, when they did not weigh above thirty-five, and at the rate of going up to Pitt instead of returning, which is but half price, I thought it was a generous price, and paid him accordingly as by agreement. We wished each other a good journey, and Mr. Proctor, the doctor, and I drank a cup of cider together. When we had got cleaned, a wagoner came along very luckily, and dined with us, and going our way, we put our packs in his wagon, and rode some to help. We gave him a quarter of a dollar for this half day and tomorrow. We got to Carlisle in the evening and put up with Adam at Lutz's. "This Carlisle is said to be extremely bad in wet weather. It probably is nearly & quite as bad as Pittsburg, Marietta, Albany. I went to Lutz's because Adam puts up there, he being of his nation, but it is a miserable house, and Adam says he is sorry he carried us there. The victuals are good, but they are dirty, rough, impolite. We supped on bread and milk, and Lutz would insist on our sleeping in a bed and not on the floor; so we did so. "Tuesday, 23 March, 1790. A pleasant day and the roads very much dried, so that the travelling is now comfortable. We dined at Callender's in more fashion than since I left home. Adam stopped at Simpson's so long that it was dark when we got over the river to Chambers's, where we stopped another half hour. Set off about seven o'clock, and got to Foot's about eleven. All abed, but Adam got us a bit of bread and butter, and made us a fire in the stove, and we lay on the floor. "Wednesday, 24 March, 1790. Old Foot is a crabbed.... He has been scolding and swearing at Adam all this morning about something that I cannot understand. It has rained last night, and the roads are again intolerable. Adam says he cannot go again until his father says the word, and that may not be this two or three days. But we cannot go and carry our packs on our backs now, the roads are so bad, and we should gain nothing to walk, but spend our strength to little or no purpose. We must wait for a wagon to go along our way, and join it, or wait for the roads to grow better. "Carried our dirty things to wash; two shirts, two pairs stockings, and one handkerchief for me; two shirts, two pair stockings, and one pair trowsers for the doctor. Went to several places to look for shoes for the doctor. He could not fit himself at the shoemakers, and bought a pair in a store for 8_s._ 4_d._ Pennsylvania, or 6_s._ 8_d._ our currency. He went to Henry Moore's, the sign of the two Highlanders. I drank a quart of beer and dined. Old Foot is a supervisor, and is gone to Harrisburg to-day, to settle some of his business. "Thursday, 25 March, 1790. The sun rises and shines out so bright to-day that I am in hopes the roads will be better, at least, when we go. Old Foot could not finish his business yesterday, and is gone again to-day. He is uncertain when he shall send Adam forward to Philadelphia, perhaps not until Monday. It will not do for us to stay, if we can somehow get along sooner. Time hangs heavy on our hands, but we do what we can to kill it. The doctor and I went down to Moore's and dined together, which was a shilling L. M. apiece. We then came back to Foot's and drank a pint of cider-royal together. The house is for the most part of the day filled with Germans, who talk much, but we cannot understand them. We have coffee and toast, or meat for breakfast, and mush and milk for supper. Our time is spent in the most irksome manner possible; eating and drinking, and sleeping and yawning, and attending to the conversation of these Dutch. In the evening the house is crowded with the neighbors, &c., and for the ... Old Foot says, and Adam too, that he will not go till Monday. This is very discouraging. "Friday, 26 March, 1790. A very dull prospect to-day. It rained very hard in the night, and continues to rain this morning. No wagons are passing, and none coming that we can hear of. We have no prospect now but to stay and go with Adam on Monday. We stay at home to-day and murder our time. We read McFingal, or Ballads, or whatever we can pick up. We had coffee and toast and fresh fried veal for breakfast, and ate heartily, and so we eat no dinner. The doctor goes out and buys us 8_d._ worth of cakes, and we get a half-pint of whiskey, which makes us a little less sad. In comes a man to inquire news, &c., of two men from Muskingum. He had heard Thompson's report, which had made so much noise and disquiet all through the country. He had three Harrisburg papers with him, which give us a little relief in our dull and unwelcome situation. At dark there come in two men with a wagon and want lodging, &c. They stay this night, and with them we find an opportunity of going forward as far as Lancaster, which we are determined to embrace. "Saturday, 27 March, 1790. We stay and get a good breakfast before we set out, and agree to give Mr. Bailey 2_s._ L. M. for carrying our baggage. This is higher than anything it has cost us on the road in proportion, but we cannot help it. It is better than to waste so much time in a tavern. It rains steadily, and the road is all mush and water. Before I get on a hundred rods I am half-leg deep in mire. Set off about eight o'clock, and overtook the wagon about two miles ahead. However, it clears off before night, and the sun shines warm, and the roads mend fast. We made a stay in Elizabethtown about two hours to feed and rest. The doctor and I had two quarts of beer and some gingerbread and buckwheat cakes for dinner. We got to Colonel Pedens to lodge, which is eighteen miles through an intolerable bad road, to-day. (Elizabethtown, about fifty houses; Middletown, about an hundred houses.) We paid our landlady this evening, as we are to start so early in the morning it would not do to wait till the usual time of getting up to pay then, and we have got nine miles to go to reach Lancaster. "Lord's Day, 28 March, 1790. We started this morning at day dawn, and got to ---- at the Black Horse, four and a half miles to breakfast. The wagon went by us, and fed at Shoop's. I left the doctor with them and to take care of the things, and walked into the town before them. Stopped at Gross's, the Spread Eagle, and left word for the doctor, which they never told him. I heard the bell ring for church just as I got here, which made me go into town after waiting some time for them. Took leave of Mr. Bailey, &c. I went to the English Episcopal Church, and then went back to look for the doctor, and he looking for me; we were some time in chase, and missed each other. Found we could not get served at the Angel, so took our baggage and walked down to Doersh's, who keeps the stage. Got dinner here. Shaved, shirted, put on my boots, and went out into town. Stopped at the court-house and heard a Methodist. Walked further about; stopped and looked into the Catholic chapel, and talked with the priest. Looked into the churches, such as I could, and returned to tea at sundown. Spent the remainder of the time till bed reading newspapers. Washed my feet and went to bed just before ten. "Monday, 29 March, 1790. After breakfast the doctor and I took a ramble about the town, to look at it and to inquire if we could find any wagon going to Philadelphia, that we can get our baggage carried. The most likely place we can hear of is to go to the Creek, about a mile from town. Immediately after our walk we settled and paid, and set out at just eleven o'clock. Paid toll over Conestoga bridge, and stopped at Locher's, at the Indian King, two miles from Lancaster, and drank a quart of beer. It was not good. Dined at Blesser's, on a cold meal, which was 8_d._ L. M. apiece. Got to Hamilton's at Salsbury, a very good house; nineteen miles. This is more than I expected when I set out at eleven o'clock. A very good supper; rye mush and milk, cold corn beef, and apple pie on the table. But 8_d._ L. M. for supper and lodging apiece. We have had very good weather for travelling, and the roads are drying fast. In hopes that we shall find some wagon going on the Philadelphia road, that we may get our packs carried part of the way. "Tuesday, 30 March, 1790. We walked twenty-four miles this day, that is, from Hamilton's to Fahnstock's. Very pleasant weather, suitable for travelling; not too warm nor too cold. My feet very tender and sore, but we keep along steady. Got to Fahnstock's, Admiral Warren, about eight o'clock. Got some bread and milk for supper. The doctor had nothing but a pint of cider for his supper. We slept well, considering my being excessively fatigued. The post overtook us. "Wednesday, 31 March. Stayed to breakfast this morning, which was very good, but I do not like the practice, at least I do not seem to need eating meat with breakfast every morning. I sometimes eat it two or three times a day because it is set before me, and it is the fashion to have meat always on the table. We dined about seven miles from Philadelphia; crossed the Schuylkill about sunset, and walked into town about dark. Crossed the Schuylkill over the floating bridge, and paid our toll, 1_d._ Pennsylvania each." CHAPTER III A PILGRIM ON BRADDOCK'S ROAD A yellow letter, almost in tatters, lies before me written by one Samuel Allen to his father, Mr. Jason Allen of Montville, New London County, Connecticut, from Bellville, Virginia,[28] November 15, 1796. Bellville is in Wood County, West Virginia, eighteen miles by the Ohio River from Parkersburg. This letter, describing a journey from Alexandria and Cumberland to the Ohio by way of "broadaggs [Braddock's] old road," gives a picture of certain of the more pathetic phases of the typical emigrant's experience unequaled by any account we have met in print. Incidentally, there is included a mention of the condition of the road and, what is of more interest, a clear glimpse into the Ohio Valley when the great rush of pioneers had begun after the signing of the Treaty of Greenville, the year before, which ended the Indian War. "Bellville W. Va November the 15^{th} 1796. "Honoured Parents Six months is allmost gone since I left N. London [New London, Connecticut] & not a word have I heard from you or any of the family I have not heard wheather you are dead or alive, sick or well. When I heard that Mr. Backus had got home I was in hopes of recieving a letter by him. but his brother was here the other day and sayes that he left his trunk and left the letters that he had in the trunk, so I am still in hopes of having one yet. There is an opertunity of sending letters once every week only lodge a letter in the post-offis in N. London & in a short time it will be at Belleville. The people that came with me has most all had letters from their friends in New England Mr Avory has had two or three letters from his Brother one in fiften dayes after date all of whitch came by the waye of the male. "General Putnam of Muskingdom [Marietta on the Muskingum] takes the New London papers constantly every week "When we arrived to Allexandria [Alexandria, Virginia] Mr Avory found that taking land cariag from there to the Monongehaly would be less expence then it would be to go any farther up the Potomac & less danger so he hired wagoners to carry the goods across the mountains to Morgantown on the Monongahaly about one hundred miles above Pittsburg Mr Avorys expence in comeing was from N London to Allexndria six dollars each for the passengers and two shillings & six pence for each hundred weight. from Allexandria to Morgantown was thirty two shillings and six pence for each hundred weight of women & goods the men all walked the hole of the way. I walked the hole distance it being allmost three hundred miles and we found the rode to be pritty good untill we came to the Mountaing. crossing the blue Mountain the Monongehaly & the Lorral Mountains we found the roads to be verry bad. "You doubtless remember I rote in my last letter that Prentice was taken ill a day or two before he continued verry much so untill the 10^{th} of July when he began to gro wors the waggoner was hired by the hundred weight & could not stop unless I paid him for the time that he stoped & for the Keeping of the horses that I could not affoard to do So we were obliged to keep on We were now on the Allegany Mountain & a most horrid rode the waggon golted so that I dare not let him ride So I took him in my arms and carried him all the while except once in a while Mr Davis would take him in his armes & carry him a spell to rest me. a young man that Mr Avory hired at Allexandria a joiner whose kindness I shall not forgit he kep all the while with us & spared no panes to assist us in anything & often he would offer himself. our child at this time was verry sick & no medecal assistance could be had on this mountain on the morning of the 13^{th} as we was at breackfast at the house of one Mr Tumblestone [Tomlinson?] the child was taken in a fit our company had gone to the next house to take breakfast which was one mile on our way we were alone in the room & went & asked Mrs Tumblestone to come into the room she said she did not love to see a person in a fitt but she came into the room Polly ask her if she new what was good for a child in a fitt she said no & immediately left the room & shut the door after her & came no more into the room when that fitt left him there came on another no person in the room but Mr Tumblestone who took but little notis of the child tho it was in great distress Polly said she was afraid the child would die in one of them fitts Mr Tumblestone spoke in a verry lite manner and sayes with a smile it will save you the trouble of carrying it any farther if it does die We then bundled up the child and walked to the next house ware we come up with our company I had just seated myself down when the child was taken in a fitt again when that had left it it was immediately taken in another & as that went off we saw another coming on the Man of the house gave it some drops that stoped the fitt he handed me a vial of the dropps--gave directions how to use them the child had no more fitts but seemed to be stuped all day he cried none at all but he kept a whining & scouling all the while with his eyes stared wide open his face and his eyes appeared not to come in shape as before When we took dinner it was six mile to the next house the waggoners said they could not git through thro that night we did not love to stay out for fear our child would die in the woods so we set off & left the waggons I took the child in my arms and we traveled on Mr Davis set off with us & carried the child above half of the time here we traveled up & down the most tedious hills as I ever saw & by nine oclock in the evening we came to the house the child continued stayed all the night the next morning at break of day I heard it make a strange noise I percieved it grew worse I got up and called up the women [who] ware with us the woman of the house got up & in two hours the child dyed Polly was obliged to go rite off as soon as his eyes was closed for the waggoners would not stop I stayed to see the child burried I then went on two of the men that was with me were joiners & had their tools with them they stayed with me & made the coffin Mr Simkins [Simpkins] the man of the house sent his Negroes out & dug the grave whare he had burried several strangers that dyed a crossing the mountain his family all followed the corps to the grave black & white & appeared much affected. "When we returned to the house I asked Mr Simkins to give me his name & the name of the place he asked me the name of the child I told him he took his pen & ink & rote the following lines Alligany County Marriland July the 14^{th} 1796 died John P Allen at the house of John Simkins at atherwayes bear camplain broadaggs old road half way between fort Cumberland & Uniontown.[29] I thanked him for the kindness I had received from him he said I was verry welcome & he was verry sorry for my loss "We then proceeded on our journey & we soon overtook the waggons & that nite we got to the foot of the mountain We came to this mountain on the 11^{th} of the month and got over it the 19^{th} at night We left the city of Allexandria on the Potomac the 30^{th} day of June & arrived at Morgantown on the Monongahely the 18^{th} day of July "Thus my dear pearents you see we are deprived of the child we brought with us & we no not whather the one we left is dead or alive. I beg you to rite & let me no Polly cant bear her name mentioned without shedding tears if she is alive I hope you will spare no panes to give her learning. "When we arrived at Morgantown the river was so lo that boats could not go down but it began to rain the same day that I got ther I was about one mile from there when it began to rain & from the 22^d at night to the 23^d in the morning it raised 16 feet the logs came down the river so that it was dangerous for boats to go & on Sunday the 22^d in the evening the boats set off three waggons had not arrived but the river was loreing so fast that we dare not wate the goods was left with a Merchant in that town to be sent when the river rises they have not come on yet one of my barrels & the brass Cittle is yet behind "Mr Avory said while he was at Morgantown that Cattle were verry high down the river & them that wanted to by he thought had better by then he purchased some & I bought two cows and three calvs for myself & three cows for Mrs Hemsted & calves & a yoke of three year old stears. The next morning after the Boats sailed I set off by land with the cattle & horses with John Turner & Jonathan Prentice & arrived at Bellvill the 9^{th} of August & found it to be a verry rich & pleasant country We came to the Ohio at Wheeling crick one hundred miles belo Pittsburg & about the same from Morgantown We found the country settled the hole of the way from Morgantown to Wheeling & a verry pleasant road we saw some verry large & beautiful plantations here I saw richer land than I ever saw before large fields of corn & grane of a stout groath From Wheeling to Bellville it is a wilderness for the most of the way except the banks of the river this side----which is one hundred miles we found it verry difficult to get victules to eat. I drove fifty miles with one meal of victules through the wilderness & only a foot path & that was so blind that we was pestered to keep it we could drive but a little wayes in a day whenever night overtook us we would take our blankets & wrap around us & ly down on the ground We found some inhabitance along the river but they came on last spring & had no provisions only what they brought with them "The country is as good as it was represented to be & is seteling verry fast families are continually moveing from other parts into this beautiful country if you would give me all your intrest to go back there to live again it would be no temtation if you should sell your intrest there & lay your money out here in a short time I think you would be worth three or four times so much as you now are. it is incredible to tell the number of boats that goes down this river with familys a man that lives at Redstone Old fort on the Monongehaly says that he saw last spring seventy Boats go past in one day with familys moveing down the Ohio. There is now at this place a number of familys that came since we did from Sesquehanah There is now at this place eighty inhabitance. Corn is going at 2.^s pr bushel by the quantity 2.^s 6-^d by the single bushel. There has been between two & three thousand bushels raised in Bellville this season & all the settlements along the river as raised corn in proportion but the vast number of people that are moveing into this country & depending upon bying makes it scerce & much higher than it would be "There is three double the people that passes by here then there is by your house there is Packets that passes from Pittsburg to Kentucky one from Pittsburg to Wheeling 90 miles one from that to Muskingdom 90 miles One from that to Gallipolees 90 miles the french settlement opisite the big Canawa [Kanawha] & from that there is another to Kentucky----of which goes & returns every week &----loaded with passengers & they carry the male Mammy offered me some cloath for a Jacket & if you would send it by Mr Woodward it would be very exceptible for cloaths is verry high here Common flanel is 6^s per yard & tow cloth is 3^s 9^d the woolves are so thick that sheep cannot be kept without a shephard they often catch our calvs they have got one of mine & one of Mrs Hemstid the latter they caught in the field near the houses I have often ben awoak out of my sleep by the howling of the wolves. "This is a fine place for Eunice they ask 1^s per yard for weaving tow cloth give my respects to Betsey & Eunice & tell them that I hope one of them will come with Mr Woodward when he comes on Horses are very high in this country & if you have not sold mine I should be [glad] if you would try to send him on by Mr. Woodward. I dont think Mr Avory will be there this year or two & anything you would wish to send you nead not be affraid to trust to Mr. Woodwards hands for he is a verry careful & a verry honest man & what he says you may depend upon. "Land is rising verry fast Mr Avory is selling his lots at 36 dollars apeace he has sold three since we came here at that price we was so long a comeing & provisions so verry high that I had not any money left when I got here except what I paid for the cattle I bought I have worked for Mr Avory since I came here to the amount of sixteen dollars I paid him 80 dollars before we left N London I am not in debt to him at preasent or any one else I have sot me up a small house and have lived in it upwards of a fortnight we can sell all our milk and butter milk at 2^d per quart Mr Avory will give me three shillings per day for work all winter & find [furnish] me with victules or 4^s & find myself I need not want for business I think I am worth more then I was when I came We have ben in verry good health ever since we left home. "General St Clair who is now govener of the western teritoryes & General Wilkinson with their Adicongs [Aid-de-camps] attended by a band of soldiers in uniform lodged at Bellvill a few nights ago on their way from headquarters to Philadelphia with Amaracan coulours a flying "Please to give my respects to George & James & tell them that if they want an interest this is the country for them to go to make it Please to except of my kind love to yourselves & respects to all friends who may enquire do give my love to Mr Rogers & family & all my brothers and sisters & our only child Lydia Polly sends her love to you & all her old friends & neighbors Your affectionate son Samuel Allen" The following is a translation of a letter written twelve years after Washington's journey of 1784, by Eric Bollman, a traveler through Dunkard's Bottom, to his brother Lewis Bollman, father of H. L. Bollman of Pittsburg: "From Cumberland we have journeyed over the Alleghany Mountains in company with General Irwin, of Baltimore, who owns some 50,000 acres in this vicinity. The mountains are not so high and not so unproductive as I had imagined them to be. Several points are rocky and barren, such as the Laurel Ridge, but even this with proper attention and ... European cultivation could be made productive. There are proportionately few such ranges as this, and for the greater part, the mountains are covered with fine timber. "We spent the first night at West Port. Up to this point, at the proper seasons, the Potomac is navigable and could be made so quite a distance further. But even in the present state the land journey to the Monongahela, which is navigable and flows into the Ohio, is but a distance of 60 miles.... "The road is not in a bad condition and could be made most excellent. This will, without doubt, be accomplished just as soon as the country is sufficiently inhabited, since there is no nearer way to reach the Western waters. "The next day we dined with Mr. M. McCartin, still higher up in the mountains. There are many settlements in this vicinity. We were entertained in a beautiful, cool, roomy house, surrounded by oat fields and rich meadows, where the sound of the bells told that cattle were pasturing near by. We dined from delicate china, had good knives, good forks, spoons, and other utensils. Our hostess, a bright, handsome, healthy woman, waited upon us. After dinner, a charming feminine guest arrived on horseback; a young girl from the neighboring farm, of perhaps 15 years of age, with such bashful eyes and such rosy cheeks, so lovely and attractive in manner that even Coopley, our good mathematician, could not restrain his admiration. "This is the 'backwoods' of America, which the Philadelphian is pleased to describe as a rough wilderness--while in many parts of Europe, in Westphalia, in the whole of Hungary and Poland, nowhere, is there a cottage to be found, which, taking all things together in consideration of the inhabitant, can be compared with the one of which I have just written. "Four miles from this we reached the Glades, one of the most remarkable features of these mountains and this land. These are broad stretches of land of many thousand acres, covered with dense forests; beyond this there is not a tree to be found, but the ground is covered knee-deep with grass and herbs, where both the botanist and the cattle find delicious food. Many hundred head of cattle are driven yearly, from the South Branch and other surrounding places, and entrusted to the care of the people who live here. What can be the cause of this strange phenomenon! One can only suppose that at one time these glades were covered with timber, which, overthrown by a mighty hurricane, gradually dried and fell into decay. But it would take too long to give the many reasons and arguments both for and against this supposition. "Only lately have the Indians ceased roving in this vicinity; which has done much to delay its cultivation, but now it is being cleared quite rapidly, and in a short time will, without doubt, become a fine place for pasturage. We spent the second night with one named Boyle, an old Hollander. Early the next morning we could hear the howling of a wolf in the forest. "We breakfasted with Tim Friend, a hunter, who lived six miles further on. If ever Adam existed he must have looked as this Tim Friend. I never saw such an illustration of perfect manhood. Large, strong and brawny; every limb in magnificent proportion, energy in every movement and strength in every muscle, his appearance was the expression of manly independence, contentment and intelligence. His conversation satisfied the expectations which it awakened. With gray head, 60 years old, 40 of which he had lived in the mountains, and of an observing mind, he could not find it difficult to agreeably entertain people who wished for information. He is a hunter by profession. We had choice venison for breakfast, and there were around the house and near by a great number of deers, bears, panthers, etc. I cannot abstain from believing that the manly effort which must be put forth in the hunt, the boldness which it requires, the keen observation which it encourages, the dexterity and activity which are necessary to its success, act together more forcibly for the development of the physical and mental strength than any other occupation. "Agriculture and cattle-raising, in their beginning produce careless customs and indolence; the mental faculties remain weak, the ideas limited, and the imagination, without counterpoise, extravagant. Therefore we admire the wisdom and penetration of the North American Indian, his sublime eloquence and heroic spirit in contrast to the Asiatic shepherd, from whom we receive only simple Arabic fables. The man, of whatever color he may be, is always that which the irresistible influence of his surroundings has formed him. We left our noble hunter and his large, attractive family unwillingly and followed a roadway to Duncard's Bottom, on Cheat river. "We had ridden along uneventfully for about two hours. I was in advance, when Joseph, who rode behind me, cried: 'Take care, sir. Take care. There is a rattlesnake.' It lay upon the road and my horse had almost stepped upon it, which would have proved a disastrous thing. Joseph, a good active fellow, sprang instantly from his horse in order to kill it. The snake disappeared in the bushes and rattled. It sounded so exactly like the noise of a grasshopper that I did not think it could be anything else. Joseph armed himself with a stout stick and heavy stone, followed the snake, found it, and killed it, but then jumped quickly back, for he saw close by another rattlesnake, which had coiled itself and was ready to spring at him. He hurried back again and killed the second. They were 3-1/2 feet long and nine inches in circumference, in the thickest part of the body; one had nine rattles and the other five. We examined the poisonous fangs, took the rattles with us and hung the bodies on a tree. I had thought until now that the principle of life was as stubborn in a snake as in an eel, but found to my astonishment that a slight blow was sufficient to destroy it in this dangerous specimen. Other observations touching upon natural history I must keep for future discussion. "We dined at Duncard's Bottom, crossed the Cheat river in the afternoon, reached the Monongahela Valley, spent the night in a very comfortable blockhouse with Mr. Zinn, and arrived the next day at Morgantown, on the Monongahela. We spent a day and a half here and were pleasantly entertained by Mr. Reeder and William M. Clary, and received much information, especially concerning sugar, maple trees and sugar making. From Morgantown we went to the mouth of George creek, Fayette county, Pennsylvania. As it was afternoon when we reached here we were overtaken by night and compelled to spend the night in a small blockhouse with Mr. McFarlain. We found Mr. McFarlain a respectable, intelligent farmer, surrounded as usual, by a large and happy family. "Directly after our arrival the table was set, around which the entire family assembled. This appears to be the usual custom in the United States with all people who are in some measure in good circumstances. One of the women, usually the prettiest, has the honor of presiding at table. There were good table appointments, fine china, and the simple feast was served with the same ceremony as in the most fashionable society of Philadelphia. Never, I believe, was there in any place more equality than in this. Strangers who come at this time of day at once enter the family circle. This was the case with us. Mr. McFarlain told us much about his farm and the misfortunes with which he struggled when he first cultivated the place upon which he now lives. He has lived here 30 years, a circumstance which is here very unusual, because the adventure loving nature, together with the wish to better their condition and the opportunity, has led many people to wander from place to place. "'But,' said Mr. McFarlain, when we made this observation, 'I have always believed there was truth in the saying, "A rolling stone gathers no moss." With labor and industry I have at last succeeded, and can still work as well as my sons.' "'Oh,' said his wife, a jolly woman, 'he does not do much. The most he does is to go around and look at the work.' "'Let him, let him,' interrupted the daughter, an energetic, pretty girl of perhaps 17 years, who was serving the coffee. 'He worked hard when he was young.' And no girl of finer education could have said it with more charming naivete or with the appearance of more unaffected love. "After the evening meal the eldest son showed us to our bed-room. 'Shall I close the window?' said he. 'I usually sleep here and always leave it open; it does not harm me, and Dr. Franklin advises it.' "The next morning when we came down we found the old farmer sitting on the porch reading a paper. Upon the table lay 'Morse's Geography,' 'The Beauty of the Stars,' 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and other good books. I have entered into particulars in my description of this family, because we were then only five miles from the home of Gallatin, where the people are too often represented as rough, uncultured, good-for-nothings. It is not necessary to mention that all families here are not as this, yet it is something to find a family such as this, living on this side of the mountains, 300 miles from the sea coast. We called upon Mr. Gallatin, but did not find him at home. Geneva is a little place, but lately settled, at the junction of George creek and the Monongahela. "From here we went to Uniontown, the capital of Fayette county, where we saw excellent land and Redstone creek. We dined the following day in Redstone or Brownsville; journeyed to Washington, the capital of the county of the same name, and arrived the following day in Pittsburg. "Of this city and its magnificent situation between two mighty rivers, the Monongahela and the Allegheny, I shall write you another time. From the window where I now sit, I have a view of the first named river, a half mile long. It is as broad as the Thames in London. The bank on this side is high, but horizontal and level, covered with short grass, such as the sheep love, which reminds me of the rock at Brighthelmstein. It is bordered with a row of locust trees. The bank on the other side is a chain of hills, thickly shaded with oak and walnut trees. The river flows quietly and evenly. Boats are going back and forth; even now one is coming, laden with hides from Illinois. The people on board are wearing clothes made of woolen bed blankets. They are laughing and singing after the manner of the French, yet as red as Indians, and almost the antipodes of their fatherland. "From here to the mouth of the Ohio it is 1,200 miles and 3,000 to the mouth of the Mississippi. How enormous! How beautiful it is to see the dominion of freedom and common sense established. To see in these grand surroundings the development of good principle and the struggle toward a more perfect life; to admire the spirit of enterprise as it works toward a great plan, which seems to be in relation to the great plan which nature itself has followed, and at last to anticipate by a secret feeling, the future greatness and prosperity which lies before this growing country." Two years later Felix Renick passed this way and includes in his account a vivid picture of the earliest sort of taverns in the West: "Some of our neighbors who had served in Dunmore's campaign in 1774, gave accounts of the great beauty and fertility of the western country, and particularly the Scioto valley, which inspired me with a desire to explore it as early as I could make it convenient. I accordingly set out from the south branch of Potomac for that purpose, I think about the first of October, 1798, in company with two friends, Joseph Harness and Leonard Stump, both of whom have long since gone hence. We took with us what provisions we could conveniently carry, and a good rifle to procure more when necessary, and further prepared ourselves to camp wherever night overtook us. Having a long journey before us, we traveled slow, and reached Clarksburgh the third night, which was then near the verge of the western settlements in Virginia, except along the Ohio river. Among our first inquiries of our apparently good, honest, illiterate landlord, was whether he could tell us how far it was to Marietta [Ohio], and what kind of trace we should have? His reply was, 'O yes, I can do that very thing exactly, as I have been recently appointed one of the viewers to lay out and mark a road from here to Marietta, and have just returned from the performance of that duty. The distance on a _straight line_ which we first run was seventy-five miles, but on our return we found and marked another line that was much _nearer_.' This theory to Mr. Harness and myself, each of us having spent several years in the study and practice of surveying, was entirely new: we however let it pass without comment, and our old host, to his great delight, entertained us till late in the evening, with a detailed account of the fine sport he and his associates had in their bear chases, deer chases, &c., while locating the road. We pursued our journey next morning, taking what our host called the nearest, and which he also said was much the best route. The marks on both routes being fresh and plain, the crooked and nearest route, as our host called it, frequently crossing the other, we took particular notice of the ground the straight line had to pass over, and after getting through we were disposed to believe that our worthy host was not so far wrong as might be supposed. The straight line crossing such high peaks of mountains, some of which were so much in the sugar-loaf form, that it would be quite as near to go round as over them. "The first night after leaving the settlement at Clarksburgh, we camped in the woods; the next morning while our horses were grazing, we drew on our wallets and saddlebags for a snack, that we intended should pass for our breakfast, and set out. We had not traveled far before we unexpectedly came to a new improvement. A man had gone there in the spring, cleared a small field and raised a patch of corn, &c., staying in a camp through the summer to watch it to prevent its being destroyed by the wild animals. He had, a few days before we came along, called on some of his near neighbors on the Ohio, not much more perhaps than thirty miles off, who had kindly came forth and assisted him in putting up a cabin of pretty ample size, into which he had moved bag and baggage. He had also fixed up a rock and trough, and exposed a clapboard to view, with some black marks on it made with a coal, indicating that he was ready and willing to accommodate those who pleased to favor him with a call. Seeing these things, and although we did not in reality need any thing in his way, Mr. Harness insisted on our giving him a call, observing that any man that would settle down in such a wilderness to accommodate travelers ought to be encouraged. We accordingly rode up and called for breakfast, horse feed, &c. Then let me say that as our host had just 'put the ball in motion,' was destitute of any helpmate whatever, (except a dog or two,) he had of course to officiate in all the various departments appertaining to a hotel, from the landlord down to the shoe-black on the one side, and from the landlady down to the dishwash on the other. The first department in which he had to officiate was that of the hostler, next that of the bar keeper, as it was then customary, whether called for or not, to set out a half pint of something to drink. The next, which he fell at with much alacrity, was that of the cook, by commencing with rolled up sleeves and unwashed hands and arms, that looked about as black and dirty as the bears' paws which lay at the cabin door, part of whose flesh was the most considerable item in our breakfast fare. The first operation was the mixing up some pounded corn meal dough in a little black dirty trough, to which the cleaner, and perhaps as he appeared to think him, the better half of himself, his dog, had free access before he was fairly done with it, and that I presume was the only kind of cleaning it ever got. While the dodgers were baking, the bear meat was frying, and what he called coffee was also making, which was composed of an article that grew some hundred or one thousand miles north of where the coffee tree ever did grow. You now have the bill of fare that we sat down to, and the manner in which it was prepared; but you must guess how much of it we ate, and how long we were at it. As soon as we were done we called for our bill, and here follows the items: breakfast fifty cents each, horses twenty-five each, half pint of whisky fifty cents. Mr. Harness, who had prevailed on us to stop, often heard of the wilderness hotel, and whenever mentioned, he always had some term of reproach ready to apply to the host and the dirty breakfast, though we often afterwards met with fare somewhat similar in all respects. "We camped two nights in the woods, and next day got to Marietta where the land office was then kept by general Putnam, and from his office we obtained maps of the different sections of country we wished to explore."[30] CHAPTER IV THE GENESEE ROAD The military importance of the Mohawk Valley and strategic portage at Rome, New York, was emphasized in our study of Portage Paths.[31] Throughout the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary struggle the water route to the Hudson from Lake Ontario, by way of the Onondaga, Lake Oneida, Wood Creek, and the Mohawk, was of great moment. But only because it was a route--a thoroughfare; not because the territory through which it coursed was largely occupied or of tremendous value. The French held the lakes and the English were constantly striving for foothold there. When Fort Oswego was built on the present site of Oswego, the first step by the English was taken; the route had been the river route with a portage at Fort Williams (Rome). When Fort Niagara was captured in 1759 by Sir William Johnson, the French were driven from the Lakes; Johnson's route to Niagara was by Lake Ontario from Oswego. It has been suggested that a volume of this series of monographs should be given to the campaigns of the English against Fort Niagara. These campaigns were made largely on waterways; they left no roads which became of any real importance in our national development. Certain campaigns of the Old French War left highways which have become of utmost significance; only of these routes and their story should this series be expected to treat. Despite the two wars which had created busy scenes in the Mohawk Valley, no landward route connected it with Niagara River and Lake Erie except the Iroquois Trail.[32] No military road was built through the "Long House of the Iroquois." To gain the key of the western situation--Niagara--the common route was to Oswego. There were local roads along the lake shore, and these were used more or less by the troops. In the Revolution no American general could get beyond Fort Stanwix by land. Leger himself came up the Oswego River to join Burgoyne. [Illustration: PART OF A "MAP OF THE ROUTE BETWEEN ALBANY AND OSWEGO" (_Parts AA' and BB' belong opposite_) [_Drawn about 1756; from original in British Museum_]] As a consequence, the interior of New York was an almost unexplored wilderness at the end of the Revolution in 1783. With the opening of the Genesee country by the various companies which operated there, a tide of immigration began to surge westward from the upper Mohawk along the general alignment of the old-time Iroquois Trail. Utica sprang up on the site of old Fort Schuyler, and marked the point of divergence of the new land route of civilization from the water route.[33] This was about 1786. In 1789 Asa Danworth erected his salt works at Bogardus Corners, now the city of Syracuse. Geneva, Batavia, and Buffalo mark the general line of the great overland route from Utica and Syracuse across New York. It followed very closely the forty-third meridian, dropping somewhat to reach Buffalo. The Great Genesee Road, as it was early known, began at old Fort Schuyler, as a western extremity of the Mohawk Valley road and later turnpike, and was built to the Genesee River by a law passed March 22, 1794. In 1798 a law was passed extending it to the western boundary of the state. It was legally known as the Great Genesee Road and the Main Genesee Road until 1800. In that year the road passed into the hands of a turnpike company the legal name of which was "The President and Directors of the Seneca Road Company." The old name clung to the road however, and on the map here reproduced we find it called the "Ontario and Genesee Turnpike Road." It forms the main street of both the large cities through which it passes, Syracuse and Utica, and in both it is called "Genesee Street." The first act of legislation which created a Genesee Road from an Indian trail read as follows: "_Be it enacted by the People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly_ That Israel Chapin, Michael Myer, and Othniel Taylor shall be and hereby are appointed commissioners for the purpose of laying out and improving a public road or highway to begin at Old Fort Schuyler on the Mohawk river and to run from thence in a line as nearly straight as the situation of the country will admit to the Cayuga Ferry in the county of Onondaga or to the outlet of the Cayuga lake at the discretion of the said commissioners and from the said outlet of the Cayuga lake or from the said Cayuga Ferry as the same may be determined on by the said commissioners in a line as nearly straight as the situation of the country will admit to the town of Canadaquai and from thence in a line as nearly straight as possible to the settlement of Canawagas on the Genesee river. "_And be it further enacted_ That the said road shall be laid out six rods wide, but it shall not be necessary for the said commissioners to open and improve the same above four rods wide in any place thereof. And the whole of the said road when laid out, shall be considered as a public highway and shall not be altered by the commissioners of any town or country [county?] through which the same shall run. "_And be it further enacted_ That the treasurer of this State shall pay to the said commissioners or any two of them a sum or sums of money not exceeding in the whole the sum of six hundred pounds out of the monies in the treasury which have arisen or may arise from the sale of military lotts to be laid out and expended towards the opening and improving that part of the said road passing through the military lands. "_And be it further enacted_ That for the purpose of laying out opening and improving the remainder of the said road, the said treasurer shall pay unto the said commissioners or any two of them out of any monies in the treasury not otherwise appropriated at the end of the present session of the legislature a sum not exceeding fifteen hundred pounds which said sum shall be by them laid out and expended in making or improving the remainder of the said road as aforesaid. _Provided_ that no larger proportion of the said sum of fifteen hundred pounds shall be appropriated towards the opening and improving of the said road in the county of Ontario then in the county of Herkemer. "_And be it further enacted_ That it shall and may be lawful to and for the said commissioners or any two of them to improve the said road by contract or otherwise as to them may appear the most proper. "_And be it further enacted_ That where any part of the said road shall be laid out through any inclosed or improved lands the owner or owners thereof shall be paid the value of the said lands so laid out into an highway with such damages as he, she or they may sustain by reason thereof which value and damages shall be settled and agreed upon by the said commissioners or any two of them and the parties interested therein, and if they cannot agree, then the value of the lands and damages shall be appraised by two justices of the peace, on the oaths of twelve freeholders not interested in paying or receiving any part of such appraisement, otherwise than in paying their proportion of the taxes for the contingent charges of the county which freeholders shall be summoned by any constable not otherwise interested than as aforesaid, by virtue of a warrant to be issued by the said two justices of the peace for that purpose, and the whole value of the said lands so laid out into an highway, and damages together with the costs of ascertaining the value of the said damages of the county in which the said lands shall be situated are levied collected and paid. "_And be it further enacted_ That each of the said commissioners shall be entitled to receive for their services the sum of sixteen shillings for every day they shall be respectively employed in the said business to be paid by the respective counties in which they shall so be employed which sums shall be raised levied and paid together with and in the same manner as the necessary and contingent charges of such county are raised levied and paid and that the said commissioners shall account with the auditor of this State for the monies they shall respectively receive from the treasurer of this State by virtue of this act on or before the first day of January one thousand seven hundred and ninety six."[34] A law entitled "An act appropriating monies for roads in the county of Onondaga and for other purposes therein mentioned," passed April 11, 1796, contained the following concerning the Genesee Road: "_And be it further enacted_ That the said commissioners shall and they are hereby strictly enjoined to expend two thousand dollars of the said monies in repairing the highway and bridges thereon heretofore directed to be laid out by law and now commonly called the Great Genesee road from the eastern to the western bounds of the said county of Onondaga and the residue of the money aforesaid to expend in the repair of such highways and the bridges thereon in the said county as will tend most extensively to benefit and accommodate the inhabitants thereof. "_And be it further enacted_ That it shall be the duty of the said commissioners and they are hereby strictly enjoined to cause all and every bridge which shall be constructed under their direction over any stream to be raised at least three feet above the water at its usual greatest height in the wettest season of the year and to construct every such bridge of the most durable and largest timber which can be obtained in its vicinity, and that wherever it can conveniently be done the road shall be raised in the middle so as to enable the water falling thereon freely to discharge therefrom and shall pursue every other measure which in their opinion will best benefit the public in the expenditure of the money committed to them."[35] In an act, passed April 1, 1796, supplementary to an "Act for the better support of Oneida, Onondaga and Cuyuga Indians ...", it was ordered that from the proceeds of all sales of lands bought of the Indians the surveyor-general should pay £500 to the treasurer of Herkimer County and a like amount to the treasurer of Onondaga County; this money was ordered to be applied to "mending the highway commonly called the Great Genesee Road and the bridges thereon."[36] A law of the year following, 1797, affords one of the interesting uses of the lottery in the development of American highways. It reads: "Whereas it is highly necessary, that direct communications be opened and improved between the western, northern and southern parts of this State. Therefore "_Be it enacted by the People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly_, That for the purpose of opening and improving the said communications, the managers herein after named shall cause to be raised by three successive lotteries of equal value, the sum of forty-five thousand dollars. That out of the neat [net?] proceeds of the first lottery the sum of eleven thousand seven hundred dollars, and out of the neat proceeds of the third lottery, the further sum of two thousand two hundred dollars shall be and hereby is appropriated for opening and improving the road commonly called the Great Genesee road, in all its extent from Old Fort Schuyler in the county of Herkimer to Geneva in the county of Ontario...."[37] The western movement to Lake Erie became pronounced at this time; the founders of Connecticut's Western Reserve under General Moses Cleaveland emigrated in 1796. The promoters of the Genesee country were advertising their holdings widely. The general feeling that there was a further West which was fertile, if not better than even the Mohawk and Hudson Valleys, is suggested in a law passed March 2, 1798, which contained a clause concerning the extension of the Genesee Road: "_And be it further enacted_ That the commissioner appointed in pursuance of the act aforesaid, to open and improve the main Genessee road, shall and he is hereby authorized and empowered to lay out and continue the main Genessee road, from the Genessee river westward to the extremity of the State. _Provided nevertheless_, that none of the monies appropriated by the said act shall be laid out on the part of the road so to be continued; _and provided also_ that the said road shall be made at the expense of those who may make donations therefor."[38] The mania which swept over the United States between 1790 and 1840 of investing money in turnpike and canal companies was felt early in New York. The success of the Lancaster Turnpike in Pennsylvania was the means of foisting hundreds of turnpike-road companies on public attention and private pocket-books. By 1811, New York State had at least one hundred and thirty-seven chartered roads, with a total mileage of four thousand five hundred miles, and capitalized at seven and a half millions. It is nothing less than remarkable that this thoroughfare from the Mohawk to Lake Erie should have been incorporated as a turnpike earlier in point of time than any of the routes leading to it (by way either of the Mohawk Valley or Cherry Valley) from Albany and the East. The Seneca Road Company was incorporated April 1, 1800. The Mohawk Turnpike and Bridge Company was incorporated three days later. The Cherry Valley routes came in much later. The Genesee Road was incorporated by the following act, April 1, 1800: "An act to establish a turnpike road company for improving the State road from the house of John House in the village of Utica, in the county of Oneida, to the village of Cayuga in the county of Cayuga, and from thence to Canadarque in the county of Ontario. "_Be it enacted by the People of the State of New York represented in Senate and Assembly_ That Benjamin Walker, Charles Williamson, Jedediah Sanger and Israel Chapin and all such persons as shall associate for the purpose of making a good and sufficient road in the form and manner herein after described from the house of John House ... observing as nearly the line of the present State [Genesee] road as the nature of the ground will allow, shall be and are hereby made a corporation and body politic in fact and in name, by the name of 'The President and Directors of the Seneca Road Company'...."[39] The road was to be under the management of nine directors and the capital stock was to be two thousand two hundred shares worth fifty dollars each. The directors were empowered to enter upon any lands necessary in building the road, specifications being made for appraisal of damages. The road was to "be six rods in width ... cleared of all timber excepting trees of ornament, and to be improved in the manner following, to wit, in the middle of the said road there shall be formed a space not less than twenty four feet in breadth, the center of which shall be raised fifteen inches above the sides, rising towards the middle by gradual arch, twenty feet of which shall be covered with gravel or broken stone fifteen inches deep in the center and nine inches deep on the sides so as to form a firm and even surface." Tollgates were to be established when the road was in proper condition every ten miles; the rates of toll designated in this law will be of interest for comparative purposes: _Tolls in 1800 on Seneca Turnpike, New York_ Wagon, and two horses .12-1/2 Each horse additional .03 Cart, one horse .06 Coach, or four wheeled carriage, two horses .25 Each horse additional .03 Carriage, one horse .12-1/2 Each horse additional .06 Cart, two oxen .08 Each yoke additional .03 Saddle or led horse .04 Sled, between December 15 and March 15 .12-1/2 Score of cattle .06 Score of sheep or hogs .03 The old Genesee Road passed through as romantic and beautiful a land as heart could wish to see or know; but the road itself was a creation of comparatively modern days, in which Seneca and Mohawk were eliminated factors in the problem. Here, near this road, a great experiment was made a few years after its building, when a canal was proposed and dug, amid fears and doubts on the part of many, from Albany to Buffalo. One of the first persons to advocate a water highway which would eclipse the land route, sent a number of articles on the subject to a local paper, whose editor was compelled to refuse to print more of them, because of the ridicule to which they exposed the paper! Poor as the old road was in bad weather, people could not conceive of any better substitute. [Illustration: PART OF A "MAP OF THE GRAND PASS FROM NEW YORK TO MONTREAL ... BY THOS. POWNALL" [_Drawn about 1756; from original in British Museum_]] When the Erie Canal was being built, so poor were the roads leading into the region traversed by the canal, that contractors were compelled to do most of their hauling in winter, when the ground was frozen and sleds could be used on the snow. Among the reasons given--as we shall see in a later monograph of this series--for delays in completing portions of the canal, was that of bad roads and the impossibility of sending heavy freight into the interior except in winter; and a lack of snow, during at least one winter, seriously handicapped the contractors. But when the Erie Canal was built, the prophecies of its advocates were fulfilled, as the rate per hundred-weight by canal was only one-tenth the rate charged by teamsters on the Genesee Road. The old "waggoners" who, for a generation, had successfully competed with the Inland Lock Navigation Company, could not compete with the Erie Canal, and it was indeed very significant that, when Governor Clinton and party made that first triumphal journey by canal-boat from Buffalo to Albany and New York--carrying a keg of Lake Erie water to be emptied into the Atlantic Ocean--they were not joyously received at certain points, such as Schenectady, where the old methods of transportation were the principal means of livelihood for a large body of citizens. How delighted were the old tavern-keepers in central New York with the opening of the Erie Canal, on whose boats immigrants ate and slept? About as happy, we may say, as were the canal operators when a railway was built, hurrying travelers on at such a rapid pace that their destinations could be reached, in many cases, between meals! Yet until the railway came, the fast mail-stages rolled along over the Genesee Road, keeping alive the old traditions and the old breed of horses. Local business was vastly increased by the dawning of the new era; society adapted itself to new and altered conditions, and the old days when the Genesee Road was a highway of national import became the heritage of those who could look backward and take hope for the future, because they recognized better the advances that each new year had made. CHAPTER V A TRAVELER ON THE GENESEE ROAD Among the many records of travelers on the famous Genesee Road, that of Timothy Bigelow, as given in his _Journal of a Tour to Niagara Falls in the Year 1805_,[40] approaches perhaps most nearly to the character of a description of the old highway which should be presented here: "July 14th. We proceeded [from Albany] to Schenectady to breakfast, fifteen miles, Beale's tavern; a good house. A new turnpike is making from Albany to this place; it is constructed in a very durable manner, with a pavement covered with hard gravel. That part which is completed is now an excellent road; the remainder will soon be equally good. It was not disagreeable to us to be informed that this road, and indeed all the other turnpikes, and most other recent works which we met with, which required uncommon ingenuity or labor, were constructed by Yankees. "Schenectady seems not to be a word fitted to common organs of speech. We heard it pronounced Snacketady, Snackedy, Ksnackidy, Ksnactady, Snackendy, and Snackady, which last is much the most common. To Ballston, Bromeling's, sixteen miles; a most excellent house. We found here about forty guests, but understood there were upwards of two hundred at Aldrich's, McMasters's, and the other boarding-houses near. Bromeling himself has accommodations in the first style for one hundred and thirty persons. "We met with but few people here from Massachusetts. Mr. Henry Higginson and his wife, Mr. Bingham, the bookseller, and his family, were all we knew. The mineral water was not agreeable to us all upon the first experiment; but with others, and myself in particular, it was otherwise. It is remarkably clear and transparent; the fixed air, which is continually escaping from it, gives it a sparkling appearance, and a lively and full taste, not unlike to that of brisk porter or champagne wine, while one is actually drinking.... We slept at Beals's. July 17th, we took the western stage in company with a Mr. Row, a gentleman from Virginia, who was about to engage in trade at Geneva, on the Seneca Lake. We crossed over to the north side of the Mohawk soon after setting out, to Schwartz's (still in Schenectady), a poor house, seven miles; thence to Pride's in Amsterdam, nine miles. Pride's is a handsome limestone house, built about fifty years since, as we were informed, by Sir William Johnson, for his son-in-law, Guy Johnson.... To Abel's in Amsterdam, situated on Trapp's Hill, opposite to the mouth of Schoharie River and the old Fort Hunter, to dine. The prospect to the south-west is extensive and romantic, exhibits an agreeable mixture of hills and plains, diversified with extensive forests almost in a state of nature, and cultivated fields scarce less extensive, now covered with a rich harvest of ripening wheat. The prospect was the principal thing which we found in this place to recommend it. The tavern is a poor one, and our dinner of course was miserable. Four miles to Shepard's, in Canajoharie, to sleep.... The Mohawk in many places was shoal, and interrupted with so many islands and sand-banks that we were often at a loss to conceive how loaded boats could pass, and yet we saw several going up-stream with heavy loads.... July 18th. To Carr's at Little Falls, to breakfast, twenty miles; a very good house. In this stage, we passed the East Canada Creek. Observed for the very first time the cypress-tree. The gloomy, melancholy air of this tree, and the deep shade which it casts, resulting from the downward direction of its branches, as well as the form and color of its leaves, have very properly marked it out as emblematical of mourning. "On approaching the Little Falls, we observed undoubted marks of the operation of the water on rocks, now far out of their reach, particularly the round holes worn out [by] pebbles kept in a rotatory motion by the current, so common at all falls. It is certain that heretofore the falls must have been some ways further down stream, and have been much greater than they now are, and that the German flats, and other low grounds near the river above, must have been the bed of a lake. The falls occupy about half a mile. In some spots, the river is so crowded between rocks, that one might almost pass across it; in most places, however, it is broken into a number of streams by irregular masses of limestone rock. There is here a commodious canal for the passage of boats cut round these falls. The whole fall is fifty-four feet; and there are five locks, in each of which the fall is ten feet, besides the guard-lock, where it is four. The locks are constructed of hewn stone, and are of excellent workmanship; they are almost exactly upon the construction of those at the head of Middlesex canal. Most of the buildings in the neighborhood, as well as two beautiful bridges over the canal here, are also of limestone. Carr and his wife are from Albany, and are agreeable and genteel people. "To Trowbridge's Hotel, in Utica, to dine. The house is of brick, large, commodious, and well attended. We found good fare here; in particular, excellent wine. From Little Falls to this is twenty-two miles. In this stage, we passed the German flats, an extensive and well-cultivated tract of internal land on both sides the Mohawk. The town of German Flats is on the south of the town of Herkimer, opposite thereto, on the north side of the river. Notwithstanding the celebrity of this spot for the excellence of its soil, we thought it not equal to that on Connecticut River. Having passed the West Canada Creek, the hills on both sides the river seem to subside, and open to the view an extensive and almost unbounded tract of level and fertile country, though of a much newer aspect than any we had seen before. [Illustration: WESTERN NEW YORK IN 1809] "At Utica, we passed over to the southern side of the Mohawk. The river here is about the size of the Nashua, and from this place bends off to the north-west. We happened to pass the bridge as a batteau was coming up to a store at the end of it, to discharge its cargo. The water was so shoal that the batteau grounded before it could be brought to its proper place. A pair of horses were attached to its bows, and it was not without the assistance of several men, added to the strength of the horses, that it was got up to the landing-place at last. "Morality and religion do not seem to have much hold of the minds of people in this region. Instances of rudeness and profanity are to be met with in almost every place, but the people engaged in unloading the batteau were much more extravagantly and unnecessarily profane than is common. Several persons also, whom I saw at Little Falls this morning, told me that they knew full well that Adam could not have been the first man, or that he must have lived much longer ago than the Scriptures declare, because they said it must be more than five thousand years for the Mohawk to have broken through the rocks, as it has done at those falls. "Utica was begun to be settled sixteen years ago, and is now a little city, and contains several elegant dwelling-houses, some of which are of brick, and a few of stone, together with a great number of stores and manufactories of different kinds. The Lombardy poplar-tree is cultivated here in great abundance. The facility of transportation by means of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers on one side, and Wood Creek, Oneida, and Ontario Lakes on the other, together with the extraordinary fertility of the adjacent country, must at no great distance of time make Utica a place of great business and resort, and of course its population must rapidly increase. Moses Johnson, a broken trader, late of Keene, now of Manlius, a little above this place, whom we saw at Trowbridge's, spoke of this country as not favorable for traders, and that a very few stores of goods would overstock the market. It is natural, however, for people in his situation to ascribe their misfortunes to anything rather than their own imprudence or misconduct, which others would probably consider as the true cause of them. Mr. Charles Taylor and his father, whom we had overtaken at Shepard's, we left at Utica. "July 19th. To Laird's in Westmoreland, to breakfast, eleven miles; a very good house. Our breakfast here was garnished with a dish of excellent honey. Every thing in and about the house was neat, and we were particularly struck with the genteel and comely appearance of two young ladies, daughters of our landlord, one of whom, we were told, had attended a ball in the neighborhood, I think at Paris, the evening before. This stage was over a tract of very fertile country, nearly level, but a little ascending; the growth was mostly of rock-maple and lime-tree. We passed a creek in New Hartford, called Sawguet, or Sogwet, or Sacada [Sauquoit], and another in a corner of Paris called Kerry, or Riscana, say Oriskany. The whole country from Utica to this place is thickly settled. The houses are mostly well built, and many of them handsome; very few log houses to be seen. Young orchards are numerous and thrifty, and Lombardy poplars line the road a great part of the way; and yet we saw not a single field which had not the stumps of the original forest trees yet remaining in it. Honey is sent from hence to Lake Ontario, in barrels. "To Shethar's in Sullivan, eighteen miles, to dine; a good tavern. The face of the country is not so level here as about Utica, though it cannot be called hilly, even here. In addition to the forest trees which we had before seen, we here found the shag-bark nut tree in abundance. In this stage, we passed through the Oneida Indian village.... In this stage, we also passed the Skanandoa Creek, the first water we met with which discharges itself into the ocean by the St. Lawrence, as the Oriskany was the last which pays tribute to the Hudson. "We next passed the Oneida Creek, which unites with the Skanandoa. The earth in some places here is of the same color with that on Connecticut River, where the red freestone is found. In the Oneida village, the fields are free from stumps, the first to be met that are so from Utica to this place.... To Tyler's in Onondaga Hollow, to sleep, twenty-one miles. The last sixteen miles are over a very hilly country; the Canaseraga Mountain, in particular, is four or five miles over, and very steep.... "The country, as we approached Onondaga Hollow, we found had been longer settled than nearer the Oneida village, because the last cession of the Oneidas on the west, and immediately contiguous to their present reservation, was made but six or eight years ago, whereas the country to the westward of that had begun to be settled some time before. The town of Manlius, in particular, has the appearance of a flourishing settlement. This town is the first in the _Military Tract_, which is the lands given by the State of New York as a gratuity to the officers and soldiers of their line in the Revolutionary Army. As we were descending into the Onondaga Hollow, we saw to the north-westward the Salina or Onondaga Lake.... "The Onondaga Creek, which is of a convenient size for a mill-stream, runs along the Hollow from south to north, as do all the other streams in this country. This creek passes near the celebrated Onondaga salt springs, which are situated about five or six miles northward from Tyler's.... July 20th. Rose at half past two o'clock, and proceeded to Andrew's, at Skaneateles, to breakfast, sixteen miles; a good tavern. The country is still hilly, but very fertile. The soil is deep,--a mixture of loam and clay. The roads here must be very bad in wet weather. It rained last night for the first time since we commenced our journey; and the horses' feet, in consequence thereof, slipped as if they were travelling on snow or ice. "Rising out of Onondaga Hollow is a long and very steep hill. The road is constructed on the southern side of a precipice, in such a manner that, as you approach the top of the hill, you have a tremendous gulf on your left hand, at the bottom of which you hear the murmur of a brook fretting among the rocks, as it is passing on toward the Onondaga Creek, which it joins in the Hollow. There is a kind of railing or fence, composed of logs secured with stakes or trees, which is all that prevents the passenger, and even the road itself, from falling to the bottom of the gulf. On the hill we found the embryo of a village. A court-house is already built, and the frame of a hotel is raised. The hotel, we were told, is to be kept by one Brunson. It is an accommodation much needed by travellers on this road. "To Harris's in Cayuga, fifteen miles, to dine. We here had an excellent dinner of beefsteaks. Mr. Harris told us that they could keep beef fresh four or five days, in hot weather, by hanging it upon the trees--wrapping it in flannel--as high as was convenient. Flannel is better to wrap it in than linen. "The village of Cayuga is small, but pleasant and lively. It is in the township of Marcellus, on the eastern bank of the Cayuga Lake, within one or two miles of its northern extremity. This lake is about two miles wide in general, and almost forty miles long. Nearly north and south from the village, there are about fifteen miles of the lake in sight. The shores are mostly of hard land, except at the northern extremity, where there is a great deal of marsh, which is an unfavorable circumstance for the village, as it is not only disagreeable to the sight, but, I think, also to the smell. There is a wooden bridge across the lake, leading from Cayuga village towards Geneva, one mile long, wanting three roods. It suffered so much by shocks of the ice last winter, that in some places it is hardly safe to pass it. This forenoon we had passed the outlet of the Owasco Lake, but did not see the lake itself, which we were told was about a mile south of the road. The country hitherto is somewhat uneven, though by no means so much so as near the Onondaga Hollow. The soil, however, is excellent in many places, and is of a reddish color. "To Powell's Hotel in Geneva, to sleep, sixteen miles; excellent accommodations. At Harris's we had met with a Mr. Rees, a gentleman in trade at Geneva, who took passage in the stage with us for that place. From this gentleman, whom we found very intelligent and communicative, we learned many particulars concerning the salt springs, discovered about five years since upon the Cayuga outlet. These springs are about twelve miles below the Cayuga bridge, and are on both sides the outlet: that on the western side is in the township of Galen, and belongs to Mr. Rees and his partner in trade. These springs had long been known to the Indians, but they had always been reserved in communicating their knowledge of the state of the country to the white settlers. It was not till most or all of those who lived near this outlet had died or moved away, except one, that he mentioned the existence of these springs; and for a reward he conducted some persons to the place where they are situated. The persons to whom he communicated this information endeavored to purchase the favored spot before the owner should be apprised of its inestimable value; but he accidentally obtained a knowledge of his good fortune, and of course refused to sell.... The road from Cayuga to Geneva is for a few miles along the southern or south-eastern side, and the rest along the northern or north-eastern side of the Seneca outlet. The face of the country near the road is more level; but the soil is more sandy and uninviting than we had lately seen, till we approached near to Geneva. The land there is excellent, as we were told it was, through all the tract which extends between the Cayuga and Seneca Lakes. This tract rises in a kind of regular glacis from each lake, so that from the middle of it one can see both. It wants nothing but inhabitants and cultivation to make it an elysium. The Seneca outlet flows into the lower end of the Cayuga Lake. Towards its mouth there is a considerable fall, or rather rapid, which it is contemplated to lock, whereby a water communication will be opened between the two lakes. The stream is about half the size of the Winnipiseogee, and has a bluish-white appearance. "We were within half a mile of Geneva before we came in sight of the Seneca Lake. This charming sheet of water extends southerly from this place to Catharine Town, forty miles, being from two to four miles wide. There is not a foot of swamp or marsh on its borders, from one extremity to the other; but it is everywhere lined by a clear, gravelly beach, and the land rises from it with a very gentle and graceful ascent in every direction.... "Not far from Geneva are some of the Indian orchards, which were cut down by General Sullivan in his famous expedition, scarce less barbarous than those of the savages themselves. The trees now growing in these orchards sprouted from the roots of those which were cut down, and therefore grow in clusters, six or seven rising from one root. We saw Indian fields here free from stumps, the only ones which are to the westward of Utica, except those belonging to the Oneidas. We were told that, at this season of the year, the wind at Geneva blows constantly from the south in the forenoon, and from the north in the afternoon. We here quitted the stage, which runs no further than Canandaigua, and hired an open Dutch wagon and driver, and a single horse, to carry us to Niagara.... The turnpike road ends at this place [Canandaigua]. The whole length from Albany is two hundred and six or seven miles: it may properly be called two turnpikes, which join each other at Utica. A project is on foot for still extending the turnpike even to Niagara, a direct course to which would not probably exceed one hundred miles. "Mr. Rees told us yesterday that he was engaged to proceed to-morrow with certain commissioners to mark out the course of the road, and that the proprietors will begin to work upon it next year. The road may not be very good property at first, but will probably soon become so, judging from the astonishing rapidity with which this country is settled. It is ascertained that one thousand families migrated hither during the last year, two thirds of whom were from New England. "To Hall's in Bloomfield, to sleep, twelve miles; very good house. We had an excellent supper and clean beds. The town of Bloomfield has been settled about fifteen years, and is now in a flourishing state. Here is a handsome new meeting-house with a tasty steeple. The vane on the steeple is rather whimsical. It is a flying angel, blowing a trumpet against the wind.... To Hosmer's in Hartford, to breakfast, twelve and a half miles. Between Bloomfield and this, we passed through Charleston, which has but recently been reclaimed from the wilderness. It is perfectly flat, the soil is pretty good, though better, and more settled at some distance from the road than near it. The reason of cutting the road where it goes was because the country in that direction was open, when it was first explored, between this place and Lake Ontario, which is but twenty-eight miles distant, or to Gerundegut [now Toronto] Bay, but twenty-two miles.... "Hitherto we have found better roads since we left the turnpike than before, except that the bridges and causeways are mostly constructed with poles. Hosmer, our landlord, is an intelligent man and keeps a good tavern. We had for breakfast good coffee, excellent tea, loaf sugar, mutton chop, waffles, berry pie, preserved berries, excellent bread, butter, and a salad of young onions. I mention the particulars, because some of the articles, or such a collection, were hardly to be expected in such a depth of wilderness. "To Gansen's in Southampton, twelve and a half miles, to dine. Within about a mile of Hosmer's, we passed the Genesee River. The outlet of the Conesus Lake joins this river about a mile above, or to the south. Where we crossed, there is a new bridge, apparently strong and well built; and yet the water last spring undermined one end of it, so that it has sunk considerably.... "Gansen's is a miserable log house. We made out to obtain an ordinary dinner. Our landlord was drunk, the house was crowded with a dozen workmen, reeking with rain and sweat, and we were, withal, constantly annoyed with the plaintive and frightful cries and screams of a crazy woman, in the next room. We hastened our departure, therefore, even before the rain had ceased. "To Russell's in Batavia, twelve miles, to sleep. One mile from Gansen's, we crossed Allen's Creek, at Buttermilk Falls, where there are mills, and five miles further the Chookawoonga Creek, near the eastern transit line of the Holland purchase. This line extends from the bounds of Pennsylvania to Lake Ontario, a distance of near ninety-four miles. So far, the road was the worst of any we had seen; and none can be much worse and be passable for wheels. Within six miles of Batavia, the road is much better, and the land of a good quality, heavily timbered all the way, but especially near the settlement. It is but three years since this spot was first cleared, and it is now a considerable village. Here is a large building, nearly finished, intended for a court-house, jail, and hotel, under the same roof. The street is perfectly level, and is already a good and smooth road. Here is also an excellent mill, on a large and commodious scale, situated on the Tonawanda Creek, which is the first water we saw which passes over Niagara Falls. Russell's is a poor tavern. We were told that our sheets were clean, for they had been slept in but a _few_ times since they were washed. "July 23d. To Luke's in Batavia, to breakfast, five miles. We intended to have stopped at McCracken's, one mile short of this, but we were told that we could not be accommodated. The exterior appearance of both houses was very much alike; they are log huts, about twelve feet square. Luke's consisted of a single room, with a small lean-to behind, which served for a kitchen. It contained scarce any furniture, not even utensils enough to serve us comfortably for breakfast.... "It was but eighteen months since Luke began a settlement here, and he was the first who made the attempt between Batavia and Vandevener's, a distance of eighteen miles, though in that distance now there are several huts. Taverns like Luke's are not uncommon in this vicinity; almost every hut we saw had a sign hung out on a pole or stump, announcing that it was an inn. Perhaps such complete poverty did not exist in them all as we found at Luke's, yet, judging from external appearances, the difference could not be great. "We passed the Tonawanda near Batavia court-house, and then kept along its southern bank to this place. The woods are full of new settlers. Axes were resounding, and the trees literally falling about us as we passed. In one instance, we were obliged to pass in a field through the smoke and flame of the trees which had lately been felled and were just fired. "To Vandevener's in Willink, thirteen miles. We had intended only to dine here; but by reason of a thunder shower, and the temptation of comfortable accommodations, we concluded not to proceed till next day. Our last stage was through the Batavia woods, famed for their horrors, which were not abated by our having been informed at Russell's, that not far from here a white man had lately been killed by the Indians. We found the road much better than we had anticipated; the last four miles were the worst. A little labor would make the road all very good, at least in dry weather. There is another way to come from Batavia here; but it is six miles further, and probably little or no better than this. "It was but three years since Vandevener began here. He at first built a log house, but he has now a two-story framed house, adjoining that. His whole territory is five hundred acres, one hundred of which he has already got under improvement.... "July 23d. To Ransom's in Erie, to breakfast, fourteen miles. Ransom came from Great Barrington in Massachusetts, and settled here last September.... The last three miles from Ellicott's Creek to Ransom's is a new road cut through a thick wood, and is as bad as any part of the road through the Batavia woods. "To Crow's at Buffalo Creek, eight miles. In this stage, we passed the Four Mile Creek. Half the distance from Ransom's was over open country, ... in which many young chestnut-trees are just sprouting from the ground. The rest of our way was through a thick wood, where the growth is the same kind as in the interior of Massachusetts.... "From Buffalo we passed along the beach of Lake Erie, to the ferry across its outlet on the Niagara River, at Black Rock, so called, three miles...." CHAPTER VI THE CATSKILL TURNPIKE So few writers have paid any attention to the influence of roads in the development of our country that it is a great pleasure to find in Francis Whiting Halsey's _The Old New York Frontier_,[41] a chapter on the old Catskill Turnpike; through the kindness of the author it is possible to present here this story of that strategic highway of old New York: "Before the Revolutionary War something of a road had been cut through the woods from Otsego Lake southward along the Susquehanna, and other primitive roads led to and from the lake; but these highways had almost disappeared during the later years of the war, when Nature had done her effective work of reclamation. The one leading from the lake southward was improved in 1786 as far as Hartwick, and others were speedily taken in hand. Further down the river efforts were made to establish convenient communication with the Hudson, and out of this grew a road which eventually became the great highway for a large territory. It was called the Catskill Turnpike, and had its terminus on the Susquehanna at Wattles's Ferry.[41a] "This road, as a turnpike, properly dates from 1802, but the road itself is much older. Its eastern end had been opened long before the Revolution with a terminus in the Charlotte Valley. It seems then to have been hardly more than a narrow clearing through the forest, what farmers call a 'wood road,' or frontiersman a 'tote road.' It served as a convenient route to the Susquehanna, because much shorter than the older route by the Mohawk Valley. Over this road on horseback in 1769, came Colonel Staats Long Morris and his wife, the Duchess of Gordon. "After the war demands rose for a better road, and one was soon undertaken with its terminus at Wattles's Ferry. This terminus appears to have been chosen because the river here was deep enough to permit the use of 'battoes' during the low water that prevailed in summer. By the summer of 1788 the road was in passable condition. Alexander Harper and Edward Paine in February, 1789, declared that they had been to 'a very great expense in opening the roads from Catskill and the Hudson to the Susquehanna River.' In the same year a petition was filed for a road 'from the Ouleout to Kyuga Lake.' The road to Cayuga Lake (Ithaca) made slow progress, and in 1791 General Jacob Morris addressed to Governor Clinton a letter which shows that it was then still to be undertaken. Early in 1790 the State had taken the road to Catskill in charge. In August, G. Gelston made up from surveys a map from Catskill 'running westerly to the junction of the Ouleout Creek with the Susquehanna River.' The country had been previously explored for the purpose by James Barker and David Laurence.[42] "In 1791 Sluman Wattles charged his cousin, Nathaniel Wattles, £4, 6_s._ for 'carting three barrells from your house to Catskill,' £1 for 'five days work on the road,' and 15 shillings for 'inspecting road.' Besides Nathaniel Wattles, Menad Hunt was interested in the work, and in 1792 the two men appealed to the state to be reimbursed for money paid out above the contract price.[43] During this year the father of the late Dr. Samuel H. Case, of Oneonta, emigrated to the upper Ouleout from Colchester, Conn., with his seven brothers. They drove cattle and sheep ahead of them, and consumed eight days in making the journey from the Hudson River. Solomon Martin went over the road in the same year, using Sluman Wattles's oxen, for which he was charged £1, 17_s._ He went to Catskill, and was gone fifteen days. This road was only twenty-five feet wide. In 1792 a regular weekly mail-route was established over it. "These are among the many roads which were opened in the neighborhood before the century closed--before the Catskill Turnpike, as a turnpike, came into existence. Nearly every part of the town of Unadilla, then embracing one-third of Otsego County, had been made accessible before the year 1800. The pioneers had taken up lands all through the hill country. But the needs of the settlers had not been fully met. All over the State prevailed similar conditions. The demands that poured in upon State and town authorities for road improvements became far in excess of what could be satisfied. Everywhere fertile lands had been cleared and sown to grain, but the crops were so enormous that they could neither be consumed at home nor transported to market elsewhere. Professor McMaster says that 'the heaviest taxes that could have been laid would not have sufficed to cut out half the roads or build half the bridges that commerce required. "Out of this condition grew the policy of granting charters to turnpike companies, formed by well-to-do land-owners, who undertook to build roads and maintain them in proper condition for the privilege of imposing tolls. Men owning land and possessed of ready money, were everywhere eager to invest in these enterprises. They not only saw the promise of dividends, but ready sales for their lands. At one time an amount of capital almost equal to the domestic debt of the nation when the Revolution closed was thus employed throughout the country. By the year 1811, no fewer than 137 roads had been chartered in New York State alone, with a total length of 4,500 miles and a total capital of $7,500,000. About one-third of this mileage was eventually completed. "Eight turnpikes went out from Albany, and five others joined Catskill, Kingston, and Newburg with the Susquehanna and Delaware rivers. The earliest of these five, and one of the earliest in the State, was the Catskill and Susquehanna turnpike, that supplanted the primitive State road to Wattles's Ferry. The old course was changed in several localities, the charter permitting the stockholders to choose their route. Among the names in the charter were John Livingston, Caleb Benton (a brother of Stephen Benton), John Kortright, Sluman Wattles, and Solomon Martin. The stock was limited to $12,000 in shares of $20 each. "The road ran through lands owned by the stockholders. Little regard was had for grades, as travellers well know. The main purpose was to make the land accessible and marketable. The road was completed in 1802, and soon became a famous highway to Central New York, and the navigable Susquehanna, and so remained for more than a quarter of a century. It was in operation four years earlier than the Great Western Turnpike, connecting Albany with Buffalo and running through Cherry Valley. Spafford in 1813 described it as 'the Appian Way turnpike,' in which it seems the pride felt in it, likened as it thus was to one of the best roads ever built by man--that Roman highway which still does service after the lapse of more than 2,000 years. In one sense this turnpike was like a Roman road: it followed straight lines from point to point regardless of hills, obstacles being squarely faced and defied by these modern men as by the old Romans. "Ten toll-gates were set up along the line, with the rates as follows: for twenty sheep and hogs, eight cents; for twenty horses and cattle, twenty cents; for a horse and rider, five cents; for a horse and chaise, twelve and one-half cents; for a coach or chariot, twenty-five cents; for a stage or wagon, twelve and one-half cents. In 1804, Caleb Benton, who lived in Catskill, was president of the corporation, and in 1805 the stage business of the road was granted as a monopoly to David Bostwick, Stephen Benton, Lemuel Hotchkiss, and Terence Donnelly. Two stages were to be kept regularly on the road, the fare to be five cents per mile. A stage that left Catskill Wednesday morning reached Unadilla Friday night, and one that left Unadilla Sunday reached Catskill Tuesday. The most prosperous period for the road was the ten years from 1820 to 1830. "Two years after the road was built, Dr. Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College, during one of his regular vacation journeys, passed over it and stopped at Unadilla. He has left a full record of the journey. Dr. Dwight, accustomed long to the comforts of life in New England, had no sooner crossed the State line from Massachusetts to New York than he observed a change. The houses became ordinary and ill repaired, and very many of them were taverns of wretched appearance. "For sixteen or eighteen miles, he saw neither church nor school-house. Catskill contained about 100 houses, and much of the business was done by barter. The turnpike to the Susquehanna he described as a 'branch of the Greenwood turnpike from Hartford to Albany, commencing from Canaan in Connecticut and passing to Wattles's Ferry on the Susquehanna. Thence it is proposed to extend it to the county of Trumbull on the southern shore of Lake Erie.' The road he thought 'well made.' "Connecticut families were found settled along the line. Now he came upon 'a few lonely plantations recently begun upon the road,' and then 'occasionally passed a cottage, and heard the distant sound of an axe and of a human voice. All else was grandeur, gloom and solitude.' At last after many miles of riding he reached a settlement 'for some miles a thinly built village, composed of neat, tidy houses,' in which everything 'indicated prosperity.' This was Franklin. Coming down the Ouleout, the country, he said, 'wore a forbidding aspect, the houses being thinly scattered and many of them denoted great poverty.' "When Dr. Dwight reached Wattles's Ferry, the more serious trials of his journey began. All the privations of life in a new country which he had met on the road from Catskill at last had overtaxed his patience, and he poured forth his perturbed spirit upon this infant settlement. When he made a second visit a few years later he liked the place much better. His first impressions are chronicled at some length. He says: "'When we arrived at the Susquehanna we found the only inn-keeper, at the eastern side of the river, unable to furnish us a dinner. To obtain this indispensable article we were obliged therefore to cross the river. The ferry-boat was gone. The inhabitants had been some time employed in building a bridge, but it was unfinished and impassable. There was nothing left us, therefore, but to cross a deep and rapid ford. Happily the bottom was free from rocks and stones.' "Dr. Dwight appears to have found no satisfactory stopping-place in Unadilla, and proceeds to say: "'About four miles from the ferry we came to an inn kept by a Scotchman named Hanna. Within this distance we called at several others, none of which could furnish us a dinner. I call them inns because this name is given them by the laws of the State, and because each of them hangs out a sign challenging this title. But the law has nicknamed them, and the signs are liars. "'It is said, and I suppose truly, that in this State any man who will pay for an inn-keeper's license obtains one of course. In consequence of this practice the number of houses which bear the appellation is enormous. Too many of them are mere dramshops of no other use than to deceive, disappoint and vex travellers and to spread little circles of drunkenness throughout the State. A traveller after passing from inn to inn in a tedious succession finds that he can get nothing for his horse and nothing for himself.' "The remedy he prescribed for this was to license 'only one inn where there are five or six.' The evil was general. In 1810 the people of Meredith made a formal and vigorous protest against the growth of intemperance and crime as caused by public houses. There were ten hotels in that town alone, besides a number of distilleries. Many citizens banded themselves in behalf of order and decency, and their protest abounded in an energy of language that would have delighted the soul of Dr. Dwight. Of his further experience at Mr. Hanna's hotel, he says: "'We at length procured a dinner and finding no house at a proper distance where we could be lodged concluded to stay where we were. Our fare was indeed bad enough, but we were sheltered from the weather. Our inn-keeper besides furnishing us with such other accommodations as his home afforded, added to it the pleasures of his company and plainly considered himself as doing us no small favor. In that peculiar situation in which the tongue vibrates with its utmost ease and celerity, he repeated to us a series of anecdotes dull and vulgar in the extreme. Yet they all contained a seasoning which was exquisite, for himself was in every case the hero of the tale. To add to our amusement, he called for the poems of Allan Ramsay and read several of them to us in what he declared to be the true Scottish pronunciation, laughing incessantly and with great self-complacency as he proceeded.' "Dr. Dwight remarks that 'a new turnpike road is begun from the ferry and intended to join the Great Western road either at Cayuga bridge or Canandaigua. This route will furnish a nearer journey to Niagara than that which is used at present.' We see from this what were the plans of that day, as to the future central highway of New York State. Of Unadilla Dr. Dwight says: "'That township in which we now were is named Unadilla and lies in the county of Otsego. It is composed of rough hills and valleys with a handsome collection of intervales along the Susquehanna. On a remarkably ragged eminence immediately north-west of the river, we saw the first oaks and chestnuts after leaving the neighborhood of Catskill. The intervening forests were beach, maple, etc. The houses in Unadilla were scattered along the road which runs parallel with the river. The settlement is new and appears like most others of a similar date. Rafts containing each from twenty to twenty-five thousand feet of boards are from this township floated down the Susquehanna to Baltimore. Unadilla contained in 1800 eight hundred and twenty-three inhabitants.'[44] "On September 27, 1804, Dr. Dwight left Mr. Hanna's inn and rode through to Oxford. The first two miles of the way along the Susquehanna were 'tolerably good and with a little labor capable of being excellent.' He continues: "'We then crossed the Unadilla, a river somewhat smaller but considerable longer (sic) than the Susquehanna proper, quite as deep and as difficult to be forded. Our course to the river was south-west. We then turned directly north along the banks of the Unadilla, and travelling over a rugged hill, passed through a noble cluster of white pines, some of which though not more than three feet in diameter, were, as I judged, not less than 200 feet in height. No object in the vegetable world can be compared with this.' "Eleven years later, Dr. Dwight again passed over the turnpike on his way to Utica. 'The road from Catskill to Oxford,' he said, 'I find generally bad, as having been long neglected. The first twenty miles were tolerable, the last twenty absolutely intolerable.' After noting that in Franklin 'religion had extensively prevailed,' he wrote: "'Unadilla is becoming a very pretty village. It is built on a delightful ground along the Susquehanna and the number of houses, particularly of good ones, has much increased. A part of the country between this and Oxford is cultivated; a considerable part of it is still a wilderness. The country is rough and of a high elevation.' "In some reminiscences[45] which my father wrote in 1890, he described the scenes along this road that were familiar to him in boyhood at Kortright--1825 to 1835. The road was then in its most prosperous period. It was not uncommon for one of the hotels, which marked every few miles of the route, to entertain thirty or forty guests at a time. The freight wagons were huge in size, drawn by six and eight horses, and had wheels with wide tires. Stages drawn by four and six horses were continually in use. Not infrequently came families bound for Ohio, where they expected to settle--some of these Connecticut people, who helped to plant the Western Reserve settlements. This vast traffic brought easy prosperity to the people along the turnpike and built up towns and villages. My father records the success of the Rev. Mr. McAuley's church at Kortright--a place that has now retrograded so that it is only a small hamlet, just capable of retaining a post office. But Mr. McAuley's church at one time, more than sixty years ago, had five hundred members, and was said to be the largest church society west of the Hudson valley. "A change occurred with the digging of the Erie Canal and the building of the Erie Railway. Morever, in 1834 was built a turnpike from North Kortright through the Charlotte Valley to Oneonta. The white man having tried a route of his own over the hills, reverted to the route which the red man had marked out for him ages before. Much easier was the grade by this river road, and this fact exercised a marked influence on the fortunes of the settlements along the olden line. Freight wagons were drawn off and sent by the easier way. Stages followed the new turnpike and the country between Wattles's Ferry and Kortright retrograded as rapidly as it had formerly improved.[46] "The building of the Catskill Turnpike really led to the founding of Unadilla village on its present site. It had confined to this point a growth which otherwise would probably have been distributed among other points along the valley. Here was a stopping-place, with a river to be crossed, horses to be changed, and new stages taken, and here had been established the important market for country produce of Noble & Hayes. Unadilla became what might be called a small but thriving inland river port. Here lumber was sawed and here it came from mills elsewhere for shipment along with farm products to Baltimore. Here grain was ground, and here were three prosperous distilleries. "The building of the turnpike along the Charlotte was not the only blow that came to the western portion of the Catskill Road. Another and permanent one came to the whole length of the turnpike when the Erie Canal was built, followed later by the Erie Railroad. Otsego County, in 1832, had reached a population of 52,370, but with the Erie Canal in operation it ceased to grow. At the present time the showing is considerably less than it was in 1832, and yet several villages have made large increases, the increase in Oneonta being probably tenfold. "Contemporary with the Erie Canal was an attempt to provide the Susquehanna with a canal. It became a subject of vast local interest from Cooperstown to the interior of Pennsylvania. The scheme included a railway, or some other method of reaching the Erie Canal from the head of Otsego Lake. Colonel De Witt Clinton, Jr., son of the governor, made a survey as far as Milford, and found that in nine miles there was a fall of thirty feet, and that at Unadilla the fall from the lake was 150 feet, while in 110 miles from the lake it was 350 feet. In 1830 a new survey showed that 144 miles out of 153 were already navigable, the remaining distance requiring a canal. Some seventy locks would be needed and sixty-five dams. Judge Page, while a member of Congress, introduced a bill to aid slack-water navigation from Cooperstown to tide-water. It was his opinion that the failure of the bill was due to the spread of railroads. "With the ushering in of the great railroad era, the Susquehanna Valley saw started as early as 1830 many railroad projects which could save it from threatened danger. Their aim was to connect the upper Susquehanna with the Hudson at Catskill, and the Mohawk at Canajoharie. None ever got beyond the charter stage. Strenuous efforts were afterward made to bring the Erie from the ancient Cookoze (Deposit) to the Susquehanna at a point above Oghwaga, but this also failed. "Indeed it was not until after the Civil War that any railroad reached the headwaters of the Susquehanna; but it was an agreeable sign of the enterprise which attended the men of 1830 and following years that at the period when the earliest railroad in this State, and one of the earliest on this continent, had just been built from Albany to Schenectady, serious projects existed for opening this valley to the outer world. Even the great Erie project languished long in consequence of business depression. It was not until 1845 that it was completed as far as Middletown, and not until 1851 that it reached Dunkirk. "Not even to the Erie was final supremacy on this frontier assured, but the upper Susquehanna lands, more than those through which the Erie ran, were doomed to a condition of isolation. Nature itself had decreed that the great route of transportation in New York State was to run where the great trail of the Iroquois for centuries had run--through the Mohawk Valley. Along that central trail from Albany, 'the Eastern Door,' to Buffalo, 'the Western door of the Long House,' the course of empire westward was to take its way." CHAPTER VII WITH DICKENS ALONG PIONEER ROADS Some of the most interesting descriptions of pioneer traveling are from the racy pages of Charles Dickens's _American Notes_, a volume well known to every reader. No description of early traveling in America would be complete, however, without including a number of these extremely witty, and, in some instances, extremely pathetic descriptions of conditions that obtained in Virginia and Ohio in Dickens's day. The following description of a negro driver's manipulation of reins, horses, and passengers may be slightly exaggerated, but undoubtedly presents a typical picture of southern stage driving: "Soon after nine o'clock we come to Potomac Creek, where we are to land; and then comes the oddest part of the journey. Seven stage-coaches are preparing to carry us on. Some of them are ready, some of them are not ready. Some of the drivers are blacks, some whites. There are four horses to each coach, and all the horses, harnessed or unharnessed, are there. The passengers are getting out of the steamboat, and into the coaches, the luggage is being transferred in noisy wheel-barrows; the horses are frightened, and impatient to start; the black drivers are chattering to them like so many monkeys; and the white ones whooping like so many drovers: for the main thing to be done in all kinds of hostlering here, is to make as much noise as possible. The coaches are something like the French coaches, but not nearly so good. In lieu of springs, they are hung on bands of the strongest leather. There is very little choice or difference between them; and they may be likened to the car portion of the swings at an English fair, roofed, put upon axle-trees and wheels, and curtained with painted canvas. They are covered with mud from the roof to the wheel-tire, and have never been cleaned since they were first built. "The tickets we have received on board the steamboat are marked No. 1, so we belong to coach No. 1. I throw my coat on the box, and hoist my wife and her maid into the inside. It has only one step, and that being about a yard from the ground, is usually approached by a chair: when there is no chair, ladies trust in Providence. The coach holds nine inside, having a seat across from door to door, where we in England put our legs: so that there is only one feat more difficult in the performance than getting in, and that is getting out again. There is only one outside passenger, and he sits upon the box. As I am that one, I climb up; and while they are strapping the luggage on the roof, and heaping it into a kind of tray behind, have a good opportunity of looking at the driver. "He is a negro--very black indeed. He is dressed in a coarse pepper-and-salt suit excessively patched and darned (particularly at the knees), grey stockings, enormous unblacked high-low shoes, and very short trousers. He has two odd gloves: one of parti-coloured worsted, and one of leather. He has a very short whip, broken in the middle and bandaged up with string. And yet he wears a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, block hat: faintly shadowing forth a kind of insane imitation of an English coachman! But somebody in authority cries 'Go ahead!' as I am making these observations. The mail takes the lead in a four-horse wagon, and all the coaches follow in procession: headed by No. 1. "By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry 'All right!' an American cries 'Go ahead!' which is somewhat expressive of the national character of the two countries. "The first half mile of the road is over bridges made of loose planks laid across two parallel poles, which tilt up as the wheels roll over them: and IN the river. The river has a clayey bottom and is full of holes, so that half a horse is constantly disappearing unexpectedly, and can't be found again for some time. "But we get past even this, and come to the road itself, which is a series of alternate swamps and gravel-pits. A tremendous place is close before us, the black driver rolls his eyes, screws his mouth up very round, and looks straight between the two leaders, as if he were saying to himself, 'We have done this often before, but _now_ I think we shall have a crash.' He takes a rein in each hand; jerks and pulls at both; and dances on the splashing board with both feet (keeping his seat, of course) like the late lamented Ducrow on two of his fiery coursers. We come to the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to the coach windows, tilt on one side at an angle of forty-five degrees, and stick there. The insides scream dismally; the coach stops; the horses flounder; all the other six coaches stop; and their four-and-twenty horses flounder likewise: but merely for company, and in sympathy with ours. Then the following circumstances occur. "BLACK DRIVER (to the horses). 'Hi!' Nothing happens. Insides scream again. BLACK DRIVER (to the horses). 'Ho!' Horses plunge, and splash the black driver. GENTLEMAN INSIDE (looking out). 'Why, what on airth--' Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and draws his head in again, without finishing his question or waiting for an answer. BLACK DRIVER (still to the horses). 'Jiddy! Jiddy!' Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of the hole, and draw it up a bank; so steep, that the black driver's legs fly up into the air, and he goes back among the luggage on the roof. But he immediately recovers himself, and cries (still to the horses), 'Pill!' No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins to roll back upon No. 2, which rolls back upon No. 3, which rolls back upon No. 4, and so on, until No. 7 is heard to curse and swear, nearly a quarter of a mile behind. BLACK DRIVER (louder than before). 'Pill!' Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and again the coach rolls backward. BLACK DRIVER (louder than before). 'Pe-e-e-ill!' Horses make a desperate struggle. BLACK DRIVER (recovering spirits). 'Hi! Jiddy, Jiddy, Pill!' Horses make another effort. BLACK DRIVER (with great vigour). 'Ally Loo! Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo!' Horses almost do it. BLACK DRIVER (with his eyes starting out of his head). 'Lee, dere. Lee, dere. Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo. Lee-e-e-e-e!' "They run up the bank, and go down again on the other side at a fearful pace. It is impossible to stop them, and at the bottom there is a deep hollow, full of water. The coach rolls frightfully. The insides scream. The mud and water fly about us. The black driver dances like a madman. Suddenly we are all right by some extraordinary means, and stop to breathe. "A black friend of the black driver is sitting on a fence. The black driver recognizes him by twirling his head round and round like a harlequin, rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoulders, and grinning from ear to ear. He stops short, turns to me, and says: "'We shall get you through sa, like a fiddle, and hope a please you when we get you through sa. Old 'ooman at home sir:' chuckling very much. 'Outside gentleman sa, he often remember old 'ooman at home sa,' grinning again. "'Aye aye, we'll take care of the old woman. Don't be afraid.' "The black driver grins again, but there is another hole, and beyond that, another bank, close before us. So he stops short: cries (to the horses again) 'Easy. Easy den. Ease. Steady. Hi. Jiddy. Pill. Ally. Loo!' but never 'Lee!' until we are reduced to the very last extremity, and are in the midst of difficulties, extrication from which appears to be all but impossible. "And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts in two hours and a half; breaking no bones though bruising a great many; and in short getting through the distance, 'like a fiddle.' "This singular kind of coaching terminates at Fredericksburgh, whence there is a railway to Richmond...." Dickens, the student of human nature, surely found vast material for inspection and observation in our American coaches. The drivers particularly attracted his attention as we have seen; their philosophical indifference to those under their charge as well as their anxieties on certain occasions caused him to marvel. The stage-drivers of Dickens's day were marvels and offer character studies as unique as they were interesting. For the general air of conscienceless indifference on the part of drivers, and exasperated verbosity of passengers, perhaps no sketch of Dickens is more to the point than the following which describes, with lasting flavor, a ride from York, Pennsylvania, to Harrisburg: "We left Baltimore by another railway at half-past eight in the morning, and reached the town of York, some sixty miles off, by the early dinner-time of the Hotel which was the starting-place of the four-horse coach, wherein we were to proceed to Harrisburg. "This conveyance, the box of which I was fortunate enough to secure, had come down to meet us at the railroad station, and was as muddy and cumbersome as usual. As more passengers were waiting for us at the inn-door, the coachman observed under his breath, in the usual self-communicative voice, looking the while at his mouldy harness, as if it were to that he was addressing himself: "'I expect we shall want _the big_ coach.' "I could not help wondering within myself what the size of this big coach might be, and how many persons it might be designed to hold; for the vehicle which was too small for our purpose was something larger than two English heavy night coaches, and might have been the twin-brother of a French diligence. My speculations were speedily set at rest, however, for as soon as we had dined, there came rumbling up the street, shaking its sides like a corpulent giant, a kind of barge on wheels. After much blundering and backing, it stopped at the door: rolling heavily from side to side when its other motion had ceased, as if it had taken cold in its damp stable, and between that, and the having been required in its dropsical old age to move at any faster pace than a walk, were distressed by shortness of wind. "'If here ain't the Harrisburg mail at last, and dreadful bright and smart to look at too,' cried an elderly gentleman in some excitement, 'darn my mother!' "I don't know what the sensation of being darned may be, or whether a man's mother has a keener relish or disrelish of the process than anybody else; but if the endurance of this mysterious ceremony by the old lady in question had depended on the accuracy of her son's vision in respect to the abstract brightness and smartness of the Harrisburg mail, she would certainly have undergone its infliction. However, they booked twelve people inside; and the luggage (including such trifles as a large rocking-chair, and a good-sized dining-table), being at length made fast upon the roof, we started off in great state. "At the door of another hotel, there was another passenger to be taken up. "'Any room, sir?' cries the new passenger to the coachman. "'Well there's room enough,' replies the coachman, without getting down, or even looking at him. "'There an't no room at all, sir,' bawls a gentleman inside. Which another gentleman (also inside) confirms, by predicting that the attempt to introduce any more passengers 'won't fit nohow.' "The new passenger, without any expression of anxiety, looks into the coach, and then looks up at the coachman: 'Now, how do you mean to fix it?' says he, after a pause: 'for I _must_ go.' "The coachman employs himself in twisting the lash of his whip into a knot, and takes no more notice of the question: clearly signifying that it is anybody's business but his, and that the passengers would do well to fix it, among themselves. In this state of things, matters seem to be approximating to a fix of another kind, when another inside passenger in a corner, who is nearly suffocated, cries faintly, "'I'll get out.' "This is no matter of relief or self-congratulation to the driver, for his immoveable philosophy is perfectly undisturbed by anything that happens in the coach. Of all things in the world, the coach would seem to be the very last upon his mind. The exchange is made, however, and then the passenger who has given up his seat makes a third upon the box, seating himself in what he calls the middle: that is, with half his person on my legs, and the other half on the driver's. "'Go a-head cap'en,' cries the colonel, who directs. "'Go-lang!' cries the cap'en to his company, the horses, and away we go. "We took up at a rural bar-room, after we had gone a few miles, an intoxicated gentleman who climbed upon the roof among the luggage, and subsequently slipping off without hurting himself, was seen in the distant perspective reeling back to the grog-shop where we had found him. We also parted with more of our freight at different times, so that when we came to change horses, I was again alone outside. "The coachmen always change with the horses, and are usually as dirty as the coach. The first was dressed like a very shabby English baker; the second like a Russian peasant; for he wore a loose purple camlet robe with a fur collar, tied round his waist with a parti-coloured worsted sash; grey trousers; light blue gloves; and a cap of bearskin. It had by this time come on to rain very heavily, and there was a cold damp mist besides, which penetrated to the skin. I was very glad to take advantage of a stoppage and get down to stretch my legs, shake the water off my great-coat, and swallow the usual anti-temperance recipe for keeping out the cold.... "We crossed this river [Susquehanna] by a wooden bridge, roofed and covered in on all sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was profoundly dark; perplexed, with great beams, crossing and recrossing it at every possible angle; and through the broad chinks and crevices in the floor, the rapid river gleamed, far down below, like a legion of eyes. We had no lamps; and as the horses stumbled and floundered through this place, towards the distant speck of dying light, it seemed interminable. I really could not at first persuade myself as we rumbled heavily on, filling the bridge with hollow noises, and I held down my head to save it from the rafters above, but that I was in a painful dream; for I have often dreamed of toiling through such places, and as often argued, even at the time, 'this cannot be reality.' "At length, however, we emerged upon the streets of Harrisburg...." Coachmen are further described by Dickens during his stagecoach trip from Cincinnati to Columbus in Ohio: "We often stop to water at a roadside inn, which is always dull and silent. The coachman dismounts and fills his bucket, and holds it to the horses' heads. There is scarcely any one to help him; there are seldom any loungers standing round; and never any stable-company with jokes to crack. Sometimes, when we have changed our team, there is a difficulty in starting again, arising out of the prevalent mode of breaking a young horse; which is to catch him, harness him against his will, and put him in a stage-coach without further notice: but we get on somehow or other, after a great many kicks and a violent struggle; and jog on as before again. "Occasionally, when we stop to change, some two or three half-drunken loafers will come loitering out with their hands in their pockets, or will be seen kicking their heels in rocking-chairs, or lounging on the window sill, or sitting on a rail within the colonnade: they have not often anything to say though, either to us or to each other, but sit there idly staring at the coach and horses. The landlord of the inn is usually among them, and seems, of all the party, to be the least connected with the business of the house. Indeed he is with reference to the tavern, what the driver is in relation to the coach and passengers: whatever happens in his sphere of action, he is quite indifferent, and perfectly easy in his mind. "The frequent change of coachmen works no change or variety in the coachman's character. He is always dirty, sullen, and taciturn. If he be capable of smartness of any kind, moral or physical, he has a faculty of concealing it which is truly marvellous. He never speaks to you as you sit beside him on the box, and if you speak to him, he answers (if at all) in monosyllables. He points out nothing on the road, and seldom looks at anything: being, to all appearance, thoroughly weary of it, and of existence generally. As to doing the honours of his coach, his business, as I have said, is with the horses. The coach follows because it is attached to them and goes on wheels: not because you are in it. Sometimes, towards the end of a long stage, he suddenly breaks out into a discordant fragment of an election song, but his face never sings along with him: it is only his voice, and not often that. "He always chews and always spits, and never encumbers himself with a pocket-handkerchief. The consequences to the box passenger, especially when the wind blows toward him, are not agreeable." Hiring a special express coach at Columbus, Dickens and his party went on to Sandusky on Lake Erie alone. His description of the rough, narrow corduroy road is unequaled and no one but Dickens could have penned such a thrilling picture of the half-conquered woodland and its spectral inhabitants: "There being no stage-coach next day, upon the road we wished to take, I hired 'an extra,' at a reasonable charge, to carry us to Tiffin, a small town from whence there is a railroad to Sandusky. This extra was an ordinary four-horse stage-coach, such as I have described, changing horses and drivers, as the stage-coach would, but was exclusively our own for the journey. To ensure our having horses at the proper stations, and being incommoded by no strangers, the proprietors sent an agent on the box, who was to accompany us all the way through; and thus attended, and bearing with us, besides, a hamper full of savoury cold meats, and fruit, and wine; we started off again, in high spirits, at half-past six o'clock next morning, very much delighted to be by ourselves, and disposed to enjoy even the roughest journey. "It was well for us, that we were in this humour, for the road we went over that day, was certainly enough to have shaken tempers that were not resolutely at Set Fair, down to some inches below Stormy. At one time we were all flung together in a heap at the bottom of the coach, and at another we were crushing our heads against the roof. Now, one side was down deep in the mire, and we were holding on to the other. Now, the coach was lying on the tails of the two wheelers; and now it was rearing up in the air, in a frantic state, with all four horses standing on the top of an insurmountable eminence, looking coolly back at it, as though they would say 'Unharness us. It can't be done.' The drivers on these roads, who certainly get over the ground in a manner which is quite miraculous, so twist and turn the team about in forcing a passage, corkscrew fashion, through the bogs and swamps, that it was quite a common circumstance on looking out of the window, to see the coachman with the ends of a pair of reins in his hands, apparently driving nothing, or playing at horses, and the leaders staring at one unexpectedly from the back of the coach, as if they had some idea of getting up behind. A great portion of the way was over what is called a corduroy road, which is made by throwing trunks of trees into a marsh, and leaving them to settle there. The very slightest of the jolts with which the ponderous carriage fell from log to log, was enough, it seemed, to have dislocated all the bones in the human body. It would be impossible to experience a similar set of sensations, in any other circumstances, unless perhaps in attempting to go up to the top of St. Paul's in an omnibus. Never, never once, that day, was the coach in any position, attitude, or kind of motion to which we are accustomed in coaches. Never did it make the smallest approach to one's experience of the proceedings of any sort of vehicle that goes on wheels. "Still, it was a fine day, and the temperature was delicious, and though we had left Summer behind us in the west, and were fast leaving Spring, we were moving towards Niagara and home. We alighted in a pleasant wood towards the middle of the day, dined on a fallen tree, and leaving our best fragments with a cottager, and our worst with the pigs (who swarm in this part of the country like grains of sand on the sea-shore, to the great comfort of our commissariat in Canada), we went forward again, gaily. "As night came on, the track grew narrower and narrower, until at last it so lost itself among the trees, that the driver seemed to find his way by instinct. We had the comfort of knowing, at least, that there was no danger of his falling asleep, for every now and then a wheel would strike against an unseen stump with such a jerk, that he was fain to hold on pretty tight and pretty quick to keep himself upon the box. Nor was there any reason to dread the least danger from furious driving, inasmuch as over that broken ground the horses had enough to do to walk; as to shying, there was no room for that; and a herd of wild elephants could not have run away in such a wood, with such a coach at their heels. So we stumbled along, quite satisfied. "These stumps of trees are a curious feature in American travelling. The varying illusions they present to the unaccustomed eye as it grows dark, are quite astonishing in their number and reality. Now, there is a Grecian urn erected in the centre of a lonely field; now there is a woman weeping at a tomb; now a very comonplace old gentleman in a white waist-coat, with a thumb thrust into each arm-hole of his coat; now a student poring on a book; now a crouching negro; now, a horse, a dog, a cannon, an armed man; a hunch-back throwing off his cloak and stepping forth into the light. They were often as entertaining to me as so many glasses in a magic lantern, and never took their shapes at my bidding, but seemed to force themselves upon me, whether I would or no; and strange to say, I sometimes recognized in them counterparts of figures once familiar to me in pictures attached to childish books, forgotten long ago. "It soon became too dark, however, even for this amusement, and the trees were so close together that their dry branches rattled against the coach on either side, and obliged us all to keep our heads within. It lightened too, for three whole hours; each flash being very bright, and blue, and long; and as the vivid streaks came darting in among the crowded branches, and the thunder rolled gloomily above the tree tops, one could scarcely help thinking that there were better neighbourhoods at such a time than thick woods afforded. "At length, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, a few feeble lights appeared in the distance, and Upper Sandusky, an Indian village, where we were to stay till morning, lay before us." Dickens's description of his visit to "Looking-Glass Prairie" from St. Louis is full of amusement, and contains many vivid pictures of pioneer roads and taverns in the Mississippi Valley: "As I had a great desire to see a Prairie before turning back from the furthest point of my wanderings; and as some gentlemen of the town had, in their hospitable consideration, an equal desire to gratify me; a day was fixed, before my departure, for an expedition to the Looking-Glass Prairie, which is within thirty miles of the town. Deeming it possible that my readers may not object to know what kind of thing such a gipsy party may be at that distance from home, and among what sort of objects it moves, I will describe the jaunt.... "I may premise that the word Prairie is variously pronounced _paraaer_, _parearer_, and _paroarer_. The latter mode of pronunciation is perhaps the most in favour. We were fourteen in all, and all young men: indeed it is a singular though very natural feature in the society of these distant settlements, that it is mainly composed of adventurous persons in the prime of life, and has very few grey heads among it. There were no ladies: the trip being a fatiguing one: and we were to start at five o'clock in the morning punctually.... "At seven o'clock ... the party had assembled, and were gathered round one light carriage, with a very stout axletree; one something on wheels like an amateur carrier's cart; one double phaeton of great antiquity and unearthly construction; one gig with a great hole in its back and a broken head; and one rider on horseback who was to go on before. I got into the first coach with three companions; the rest bestowed themselves in the other vehicles; two large baskets were made fast to the lightest; two large stone jars in wicker cases, technically known as demi-johns, were consigned to the 'least rowdy' of the party for safe keeping; and the procession moved off to the ferry-boat, in which it was to cross the river bodily, men, horses, carriages, and all as the manner in these parts is. "We got over the river in due course, and mustered again before a little wooden box on wheels, hove down all aslant in a morass, with 'MERCHANT TAILOR' painted in very large letters over the door. Having settled the order of proceeding, and the road to be taken, we started off once more and began to make our way through an ill-favoured Black Hollow, called, less expressively, the American Bottom.... "We had a pair of very strong horses, but travelled at the rate of little more than a couple of miles an hour, through one unbroken slough of black mud and water. It had no variety but in depth. Now it was only half over the wheels, now it hid the axletree, and now the coach sank down in it almost to the windows. The air resounded in all directions with the loud chirping of the frogs, who, with the pigs (a coarse, ugly breed, as unwholesome-looking as though they were the spontaneous growth of the country), had the whole scene to themselves. Here and there we passed a log hut; but the wretched cabins were wide apart and thinly scattered, for though the soil is very rich in this place, few people can exist in such a deadly atmosphere. On either side of the track, if it deserve the name, was the thick 'bush;' and everywhere was stagnant, slimy, rotten, filthy water. "As it is the custom in these parts to give a horse a gallon or so of cold water whenever he is in a foam with heat, we halted for that purpose, at a log inn in the wood, far removed from any other residence. It consisted of one room, bare-roofed and bare-walled of course, with a loft above. The ministering priest was a swarthy young savage, in a shirt of cotton print like bed-furniture, and a pair of ragged trousers. There were a couple of young boys, too, nearly naked, lying idly by the well; and they, and he, and _the_ traveller at the inn, turned out to look at us.... "When the horses were swollen out to about twice their natural dimensions (there seems to be an idea here, that this kind of inflation improves their going), we went forward again, through mud and mire, and damp, and festering heat, and brake and bush, attended always by the music of the frogs and pigs, until nearly noon, when we halted at a place called Belleville. "Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses, huddled together in the very heart of the bush and swamp.... The criminal court was sitting, and was at that moment trying some criminals for horse-stealing; with whom it would most likely go hard: for live stock of all kinds being necessarily very much exposed in the woods, is held by the community in rather higher value than human life; and for this reason, juries generally make a point of finding all men indicted for cattle-stealing, guilty, whether or no. The horses belonging to the bar, the judge, and witnesses, were tied to temporary racks set up roughly in the road; by which is to be understood, a forest path, nearly knee-deep in mud and slime. "There was an hotel in this place which, like all hotels in America, had its large dining-room for the public table. It was an odd, shambling, low-roofed out-house, half cowshed and half kitchen, with a coarse brown canvas table-cloth, and tin sconces stuck against the walls, to hold candles at supper-time. The horseman had gone forward to have coffee and some eatables prepared, and they were by this time nearly ready. He had ordered 'wheat-bread and chicken fixings,' in preference to 'corn-bread and common doings.'[47] The latter kind of refection includes only pork and bacon. The former comprehends broiled ham, sausages, veal cutlets, steaks, and such other viands of that nature as may be supposed, by a tolerably wide poetical construction, 'to fix' a chicken comfortably in the digestive organs of any lady or gentleman.... "From Belleville, we went on, through the same desolate kind of waste, and constantly attended, without the interval of a moment, by the same music; until, at three o'clock in the afternoon, we halted once more at a village called Lebanon to inflate the horses again, and give them some corn besides: of which they stood much in need. Pending this ceremony, I walked into the village, where I met a full sized dwelling-house coming down-hill at a round trot, drawn by a score or more of oxen. The public-house was so very clean and good a one, that the managers of the jaunt resolved to return to it and put up there for the night, if possible. This course decided on, and the horses being well refreshed, we again pushed forward, and came upon the Prairie at sunset. "It would be difficult to say why, or how--though it was possibly from having heard and read so much about it--but the effect on me was disappointment. Looking towards the setting sun, there lay, stretched out before my view, a vast expanse of level ground; unbroken, save by one thin line of trees, which scarcely amounted to a scratch upon the great blank; until it met the glowing sky, wherein it seemed to dip: mingling with its rich colours, and mellowing in its distant blue. There it lay, a tranquil sea or lake without water, if such a simile be admissible, with the day going down upon it; a few birds wheeling here and there; and solitude and silence reigning paramount around. But the grass was not yet high; there were bare black patches on the ground; and the few wild flowers that the eye could see, were poor and scanty. Great as the picture was, its very flatness and extent, which left nothing to the imagination, tamed it down and cramped its interest. I felt little of that sense of freedom and exhilaration which a Scottish heath inspires, or even our English downs awaken. It was lonely and wild, but oppressive in its barren monotony. I felt that in traversing the Prairies, I could never abandon myself to the scene, forgetful of all else; as I should do instinctively, were the heather underneath my feet, or an iron-bound coast beyond; but should often glance towards the distant and frequently-receding line of the horizon, and wish it gained and passed. It is not a scene to be forgotten, but it is scarcely one, I think (at all events, as I saw it), to remember with much pleasure, or to covet the looking-on again, in after life. "We encamped near a solitary log-house, for the sake of its water, and dined upon the plain. The baskets contained roast fowls, buffalo's tongue (an exquisite dainty, by the way), ham, bread, cheese, and butter; biscuits, champagne, sherry; lemons and sugar for punch; and abundance of rough ice. The meal was delicious, and the entertainers were the soul of kindness and good humour. I have often recalled that cheerful party to my pleasant recollection since, and shall not easily forget, in junketings nearer home with friends of older date, my boon companions on the Prairie. Returning to Lebanon that night, we lay at the little inn at which we had halted in the afternoon. In point of cleanliness and comfort it would have suffered by no comparison with any village ale-house, of a homely kind, in England.... "After breakfast, we started to return by a different way from that which we had taken yesterday, and coming up at ten o'clock with an encampment of German emigrants carrying their goods in carts, who had made a rousing fire which they were just quitting, we stopped there to refresh. And very pleasant the fire was; for, hot though it had been yesterday, it was quite cold to-day, and the wind blew keenly. Looming in the distance, as we rode along, was another of the ancient Indian burial-places, called The Monks' Mound; in memory of a body of fanatics of the order of La Trappe, who founded a desolate convent there, many years ago, when there were no settlers within a thousand miles, and were all swept off by the pernicious climate: in which lamentable fatality, few rational people will suppose, perhaps, that society experienced any very severe deprivation. "The track of to-day had the same features as the track of yesterday. There was the swamp, the bush, the perpetual chorus of frogs, the rank unseemly growth, the unwholesome steaming earth. Here and there, and frequently too, we encountered a solitary broken-down waggon, full of some new settler's goods. It was a pitiful sight to see one of these vehicles deep in the mire; the axletree broken; the wheel lying idly by its side; the man gone miles away, to look for assistance; the woman seated among their wandering household gods with a baby at her breast, a picture of forlorn, dejected patience; the team of oxen crouching down mournfully in the mud, and breathing forth such clouds of vapour from their mouths and nostrils, that all the damp mist and fog around seemed to have come direct from them. "In due time we mustered once again before the merchant tailor's, and having done so, crossed over to the city in the ferry-boat: passing, on the way, a spot called Bloody Island, the duelling-ground of St. Louis, and so designated in honour of the last fatal combat fought there, which was with pistols, breast to breast. Both combatants fell dead upon the ground; and possibly some rational people may think of them, as of the gloomy madmen on the Monks' Mound, that they were no great loss to the community." For purposes of comparison, the following description of experiences in later times with Indian trails of the West will be of interest. Much that has been deduced from a study of our pioneer history and embodied in the preceding pages finds strong confirmation here; in earlier days, with forests covering the country, the trails were more like roads than in the open prairies of the West; but, as will be seen, many laws governed the earlier and the later Indian thoroughfares, alike. I quote from the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray's memoirs, written three-quarters of a century ago, of a tour in Missouri: "On the 18th we pursued our course, north by east: this was not exactly the direction in which I wished to travel, but two considerations induced me to adopt it at this part of the journey. In the first place, it enabled me to keep along the dividing ridge; an advantage so great, and so well understood by all prairie travellers, that it is worth making a circuit of several miles a day to keep it; and the Indian trails which we have crossed since our residence in the wilderness, convince me that the savages pay the greatest attention to this matter. In a wide extent of country composed of a succession of hills and ridges, it is evident there must be a great number of steep banks, which offer to an inexperienced traveller numerous obstacles, rendering his own progress most toilsome, and that of loaded packhorses almost impossible. If these ridges all ran in parallel lines, and were regular in their formation, nothing would be more simple than to get upon the summit of one, and keep it for the whole day's journey: but such is not the case; they constantly meet other ridges running in a transverse direction; and, of course, large dips and ravines are consequent upon that meeting. The 'dividing ridge' of a district is that which, while it is, as it were, the back-bone of the range of which it forms a part, heads at the same time all the transverse ravines, whether on the right or on the left hand, and thereby spares to the traveller an infinity of toilsome ascent and descent. "I have sometimes observed that an Indian trail wound through a country in a course perfectly serpentine, and appeared to me to travel three miles when only one was necessary. It was not till my own practical experience had made me attend more closely to this matter, that I learnt to appreciate its importance. I think that the first quality in a guide through an unknown range of rolling prairie, is having a good and a quick eye for hitting off the 'dividing ridge;' the second, perhaps, in a western wilderness, is a ready and almost intuitive perception (so often found in an Indian) of the general character of a country, so as to be able to bring his party to water when it is very scarce.... A few miles farther we crossed an old Indian trail I think it was of a Pawnee party, for it bore north by west ... it had not been a war-party, as was evident from the character of the trail. A war-party leaves only the trail of the horses, or, of course, if it be a foot party, the still slighter tracks of their own feet; but when they are on their summer hunt, or migrating from one region to another, they take their squaws and children with them, and this trail can always be distinguished from the former, by two parallel tracks about three and a half feet apart, not unlike those of a light pair of wheels: these are made by the points of the long curved poles on which their lodges are stretched, the thickest or butt ends of which are fastened to each side of the pack-saddle, while the points trail behind the horse; in crossing rough or boggy places, this is often found the most inconvenient part of an Indian camp equipage.... I was fortunate enough to find an Indian trail bearing north by east, which was as near to our destined course as these odious creeks would permit us to go. We struck into it, and it brought us safely, though not without difficulty, through the tangled and muddy bottom in which we had been involved: sometimes a horse floundered, and more than once a pack came off; but upon the whole we had great reason to congratulate ourselves upon having found this trail, by which we escaped in two hours from a place which would, without its assistance, probably have detained us two days. I was by no means anxious to part with so good a friend, and proceeded some miles upon this same trail; it was very old and indistinct, especially in the high and dry parts of the prairie. I left my horse with the rest of the party and went on foot, in order that I might more easily follow the trail, which became almost imperceptible as we reached an elevated district of table-land, which had been burned so close that I very often lost the track altogether for fifty yards. If a fire takes place on a prairie where there is already a distinct trail, it is as easy to follow it, if not more so than before; because the short and beaten grass offering no food to the fire, partly escapes its fury, and remains a green line upon a sea of black; but if the party making the trail pass over a prairie which is already burnt, in the succeeding season when the new grass has grown, it can scarcely be traced by any eye but that of an Indian.... After we had travelled five hours ... I found that the trail which we had been following, merged in another and a larger one, which appeared to run a point to the west of north. This was so far out of our course that I hesitated whether I should not leave it altogether; but, upon reflection, I determined not to do so ... if I attempted to cross the country farther to the eastward, without any trail, I should meet with serious difficulties and delays.... I therefore struck into it, and ere long the result justified my conjecture; for we came to a wooded bottom or valley, which was such a complete jungle, and so extensive, that I am sure, if we had not been guided by the trail, we could not have made our way through it in a week. As it was, the task was no easy one; for the trail, though originally large, was not very fresh, and the weeds and branches had in many places so overgrown it, that I was obliged to dismount and trace it out on foot. It wound about with a hundred serpentine evolutions to avoid the heavy swamps and marshes around us; and I repeatedly thought that, if we lost it, we never should extricate our baggage: even with its assistance, we were obliged frequently to halt and replace the packs, which were violently forced off by the branches with which they constantly came in contact ... 'where on earth is he taking us now?--why we are going back in the same direction as we came!' I turned round and asked the speaker (a comrade) ... to point with his finger to the quarter which he would make for if he were guiding the party to Fort Leavenworth. He did so; and I took out my compass and showed him that he was pointing south-west, _i.e._ to Santa Fé and the Gulf of California: so completely had the poor fellow's head become puzzled by the winding circuit we had made in the swamp."[48] FOOTNOTES: [1] Washington's _Journal_ Sept. 2nd to Oct. 4th, 1784. [2] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. v, ch. 3. [3] This creek rises in Hardy County, Virginia, and flows northeastward through Hampshire County, entering the North Branch of the Potomac River about eight miles southeast of Cumberland, Maryland. [4] Union Township, Monongalia County, West Virginia. [5] Oliphant's Iron Furnace, Union Township? [6] The mountainous boundary line between Monongalia and Preston Counties. [7] Bruceton's Mills, Grant Township, Preston County, West Virginia? [8] Southwestern corner of Maryland, some twenty miles north of Oakland. [9] Briery Mountain runs northeast through the eastern edge of Preston County, bounding Dunkard Bottom on the east as Cheat River bounds it on the west. [10] The Friends were the earliest pioneers of Garrett County, John Friend coming in 1760 bringing six sons among whom was this Charles. The sons scattered about through the valley of the Youghiogheny, Charles settling near the mouth of Sang Run, which cuts through Winding Ridge Mountain and joins the Youghiogheny about fifteen miles due north from Oakland. Washington, moving eastward on McCulloch's Path probably passed through this gap in Winding Ridge. A present-day road runs parallel with Winding Ridge from Friendsville (named from this pioneer family) southward to near Altamont, which route seems to have been that pursued by McCulloch's Path. See Scharf's _History of Western Maryland_, vol. ii, p. 1518; _Atlas of Maryland_ (Baltimore, 1873), pp. 47-48; War Atlas 1861-65, _House Miscellaneous Documents_, vol. iv, part 2, No. 261, 52d Cong. 1st Sess. 1891-92, Plate cxxxvi. [11] Great Back Bone Mountain, Garrett County, Maryland, on which, at Altamont, the Baltimore and Ohio Railway reaches its highest altitude. It was about here that Washington now crossed it, probably on the watershed between Youghiogheny and Potomac waters west of Altamont. [12] Ryan's Glade No. 10, Garrett County. [13] This point is pretty definitely determined in the Journal. We are told that the mouth of Stony River (now Stony Creek) was four miles below McCulloch's crossing. This would locate the latter near the present site of Fort Pendleton, Garrett County, Maryland, the point where the old Northwestern Turnpike crossed the North Branch. [14] Greeland Gap, Grant County, West Virginia. [15] Knobby Mountain. [16] Near Moorefield, Hardy County, West Virginia. [17] Mt. Storm, Grant County. The Old Northwestern Turnpike bears northeast from here to Claysville, Burlington and Romney. Washington's route was southwest along the line of the present road to Moorefield. Evidently the buffalo trace bore southwest on the watershed between Stony River and Abraham's Creek--White's _West Virginia Atlas_ (1873), p. 26. Bradley's _Map of United States_ (1804) shows a road from Morgantown to Romney; also a "Western Fort" at the crossing-place of the Youghiogheny. [18] Dunkard's Bottom, in Portland Township, Preston County, West Virginia, was settled about 1755 by Dr. Thomas Eckarly and brothers who traversed the old path to Fort Pleasant on South Branch.--Thwaites's edition of Withers's _Chronicles of Border Warfare_ (1895), pp. 75-76. [19] _Laws of Virginia_ (1826-1827), pp. 85-87. [20] _Laws of Virginia_ (1831), pp. 153-158; _Journal of the Senate ... of Virginia_ (1830-31), p. 165. [21] See _Historic Highways of America_, vol. ix, pp. 60-64. [22] _Journal of Thomas Wallcutt in 1790_, edited by George Dexter (_Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society_, October, 1879). [23] The Journal begins at the Ohio Company's settlement at Marietta, Ohio. [24] They crossed the Ohio River to the present site of Williamstown, West Virginia, named from the brave and good pioneer Isaac Williams. [25] The Monongahela Trail; see _Historic Highways of America_, vol. ii, pp. 122-124. [26] For an early (1826) map of this region that is reasonably correct, see Herman Böye's _Map of Virginia_ in Massachusetts Historical Society Library. [27] Near Friendsville, Maryland--named in honor of the old pioneer family; see note 10, _ante_; cf. Corey's map of Virginia in his _American Atlas_ (1805), 3d edition; also Samuel Lewis's _Map of Virginia_ (1794). [28] Bellville was the earlier Flinn's Station, Virginia.--S. P. Hildreth's _Pioneer History_, p. 148. [29] The author has, for several years, been looking for an explanation of this interesting obituary; "broadaggs" is, clearly, a corruption of "Braddock's." Of "atherwayes" no information is at hand; it was probably the name of a woodsman who settled here--for "bear camplain" undoubtedly means a "bare _campagne_," or clearing. The word _campagne_ was a common one among American pioneers. Cf. Harris's _Tour_, p. 60. A spot halfway between Cumberland and Uniontown would be very near the point where the road crossed the Pennsylvania state-line. [30] A reminiscent letter written in 1842 for the _American Pioneer_ (vol. i, pp. 73-75). [31] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. vii, pp. 139-148. [32] _Historic Highways of America_, vol. ii, pp. 76-85. [33] The Iroquois Trail likewise left the river valley at this spot. [34] _Laws of New York_, 1794, ch. XXIX. [35] _Laws of New York_, 1796, ch. XXVI. [36] _Id._, ch. XXXIX. [37] _Laws of New York_, 1797, ch. LX. [38] _Laws of New York_, 1798, ch. XXVI. [39] _Laws of New York_, 1797-1800, ch. LXXVIII. [40] Boston, 1876, pp. 11-53. [41] Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901. [41a] This name long since was abandoned. On the opposite side of the river, however, a new settlement grew up under the name of Unadilla, the beginnings of which date about 1790. See the same author's "The Pioneers of Unadilla Village" (Unadilla, 1902).--HALSEY. [42] State Land Papers.--HALSEY. [43] Sluman Wattles's Account Book.--HALSEY. [44] Dr. Dwight's figures are for the township, not for the village, which was then a mere frontier hamlet, of perhaps one hundred souls.--HALSEY. [45] "Reminiscences of Village Life and of Panama and California from 1840 to 1850," by Gains Leonard Halsey, M. D. Published at Unadilla.--HALSEY. [46] A stage line, however, for long years afterward supplied these settlements with a means of communication with Unadilla, and it is within the memory of many persons still calling themselves young that for a considerable series of years, trips twice a week were regularly made by Henry S. Woodruff. After Mr. Woodruff's death a large and interesting collection of coaches, sleighs, and other stage relics remained upon his premises--the last survival of coaching times on the Catskill Turnpike, embracing a period of three-quarters of a century.--HALSEY. [47] See _Historic Highways of America_, vol. xi, p. 199, _note_. [48] _Travels in North America_ (London, 1839), vol. ii, pp. 29-48. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: 1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. 2. Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been corrected. 3. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the main text body. 4. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break. 5. Carat character (^) followed by a single letter or a set of letters in curly brackets is indicative of subscript in the original book. 
27394	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) A NEW GUIDE FOR EMIGRANTS TO THE WEST, CONTAINING SKETCHES OF OHIO, INDIANA, ILLINOIS, MISSOURI, MICHIGAN, WITH THE TERRITORIES OF WISCONSIN AND ARKANSAS, AND THE ADJACENT PARTS. BY J. M. PECK, A. M. OF ROCK SPRING, ILL BOSTON: GOULD, KENDALL & LINCOLN. FOR SALE BY THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED STATES. 1836. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1836, By GOULD, KENDALL & LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. INDEX. CHAP. I. GENERAL VIEW OF THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. Extent--Subdivisions--Population--Physical Features--Animal, Vegetable and Mineral Productions--History--Prospective Increase of Population, 11 CHAP. II. GENERAL VIEW, &C., CONTINUED. Productions, 32 CHAP. III. CLIMATE. Comparative View of the Climate with the Atlantic States--Diseases--Means of Preserving Health, 37 CHAP. IV. CHARACTER, MANNERS AND PURSUITS OF THE PEOPLE. Cotton and Sugar Planters--Farmers--Population of the large Towns and Cities--Frontier Class--Hunters and Trappers--Boatmen, 102 CHAP. V. PUBLIC LANDS. System of Surveys--Meridian and Base Lines--Townships--Diagram of a Township surveyed into Sections--Land Districts and Offices--Pre-emption Rights--Military and Bounty Lands--Taxes--Valuable Tracts of Country unsettled, 130 CHAP. VI. ABORIGINES. Conjecture respecting their former Numbers and Condition-- Present Number and State--Indian Territory appropriated as their Permanent Residence--Plan and Operations of the U. S. Government--Missionary Efforts and Stations--Monuments and Antiquities, 144 CHAP. VII. WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA. Face of the Country--Soil, Agriculture and Internal Improvements--Chief Towns--Pittsburg--Coal--Sulphur and Hot Springs--Wheeling, 163 CHAP. VIII. MICHIGAN. Extent--Situation--Boundaries--Face of the Country--Rivers--Lakes, &c.--Soil and Productions--Subdivisions--Counties--Towns-- Detroit--Education--Internal Improvements projected--Boundary Dispute--Outline of the Constitution, 179 CHAP. IX. OHIO. Boundaries--Divisions--Face of the Country--Soil and Productions--Animals--Minerals--Financial Statistics--Canal Fund--Expenditures--Land Taxes--School Fund--Statistics-- Canal Revenues--Population at different Periods--Internal Improvements--Manufactures--Cities and Towns--Cincinnati-- Columbus--Education--Form of Government--History, 193 CHAP. X. INDIANA. Boundaries and Extent--Counties--Population--Face of the Country, &c.--Sketch of each County--Form of Government-- Finances--Internal Improvements--Manufactures--Education-- History--General Remarks, 222 CHAP. XI. ILLINOIS. Boundaries and Extent--Face of the Country and Qualities of Soil--Inundated Land--River Bottoms, or Alluvion--Prairies-- Barrens--Forest, or timbered Land--Knobs, Bluffs, Ravines and Sink Holes--Rivers, &c.--Productions--Minerals--Lead, Coal, Salt, &c.--Vegetables--Animals--Manufactures--Civil Divisions--Tabular View of the Counties--Sketches of each County--Towns--Alton--Projected Improvements--Education-- Government--General Remarks, 251 CHAP. XII. MISSOURI. Extent and Boundaries--Civil Divisions--Population--Surface, Soil and Productions--Towns--St. Louis, 315 CHAP. XIII. ARKANSAS AND TERRITORIAL DISTRICTS. ARKANSAS.--Situation and Extent--Civil Divisions-- Rivers--Face of the Country--Soil--Water--Productions-- Climate--Minerals--State of Society. WISCONSIN. Boundaries and Extent--Rivers--Soil--Productions--Towns, &c., 323 CHAP. XIV. LITERARY AND RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS FOR THE WEST. Colleges--Statistical Sketch of each Religious Denomination --Roman Catholics--Field for Effort, and Progress made-- Theological Institutions--Deaf and Dumb Asylums--Medical Institutions--Law Schools--Benevolent and Religious Societies--Periodical Press, 334 CHAP. XV. SUGGESTIONS TO EMIGRANTS. Modes of Travel--Canal, Steamboat and Stage Routes--Other Modes of Travel--Expenses--Roads, Distances, &c., 364 INTRODUCTION. Much has been published already about the WEST,--the GREAT WEST,--the VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.--But no portion of this immense and interesting region, is so much the subject of inquiry, and so particularly excites the attention of the emigrant, as the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Michigan, with the adjacent territorial regions. All these States have come into existence as such, with the exception of Ohio, within the last twenty years; and much of the territory, now adorned by the hand of civilization, and spread over with an enterprising, industrious and intelligent people,--the field of public improvements in Canals and Railways,--of Colleges, Churches, and other institutions, was the hunting ground of the aborigines, and the scene of border warfare. These States have been unparalleled in their growth, both in the increase of population and property, and in the advance of intellectual and moral improvement. Such an extent of forest was never before cleared,--such a vast field of prairie was never before subdued and cultivated by the hand of man, in the same short period of time. Cities, and towns, and villages, and counties, and States never before rushed into existence, and made such giant strides, as upon this field. "_Who hath heard such a thing? Who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once?_" Isaiah, LXVI. 8. The rapid increase of population will be exhibited in a tabular form in the following pages, and other parts showing that the general improvement of the country, and the development of its physical, intellectual and moral resources have kept pace with the extension of settlements. And such are its admirable facilities for commerce by its numerous navigable rivers, and its lines of canals, some of which are finished, and many others commenced or projected,--such the richness of its soil, and the variety of its productions,--such the genial nature of its climate,--the enterprise of its population,--and the influence it must soon wield in directing the destinies of the whole United States, as to render the GREAT WEST an object of the deepest interest to the American patriot. To the philanthropist and christian, the character and manners,--the institutions, literature and religion of so wide a portion of our country, whose mighty energies are soon to exert a controlling influence over the character of the whole nation, and in some measure, of the world, are not less matters of momentous concern. "The West is a young empire of mind, and power, and wealth, and free institutions, rushing up to a giant manhood, with a rapidity and power never before witnessed below the sun. And if she carries with her the elements of her preservation, the experiment will be glorious,--the joy of the nation,--the joy of the whole earth, as she rises in the majesty of her intelligence and benevolence, and enterprise, for the emancipation of the world."--_Beecher._ Amongst the causes that have awakened the attention of the community in the Atlantic States, to this Great Valley, and excited the desires of multitudes to remove hither, may be reckoned the efforts of the liberal and benevolent to aid the West in the immediate supply of her population with the Bible, with Sunday Schools, with religious tracts, with the gospel ministry, and to lay the foundation for Colleges and other literary institutions. Hundreds of families, who might otherwise have remained in the crowded cities and densely populated neighborhoods of their ancestors, have had their attention directed to these States as a permanent home. And thousands more of virtuous and industrious families would follow, and fix their future residence on our prairies, and in our western forests, cultivate our wild lands,--aid in building up our towns and cities, and diffuse a healthful moral and intellectual influence through the mass of our present population, could they feel assured that they can reach some portion of the Western Valley without great risk and expense,--provide for their families comfortably, and not be swept off by sickness, or overwhelmed by suffering, beyond what is incident to any new country. The author's first book, "A GUIDE FOR EMIGRANTS," &c. was written in the winter and spring of 1831, to answer the pressing call then made for information of these western states, but more especially that of Illinois;--but many of its particulars, as to the character and usages of the people, manners and customs, modes of erecting buildings, general characteristics and qualities of soil, productions, &c. were applicable to the West generally. Since that period, brief as it has been, wide and rapid changes have been made, population has rapidly augmented, beyond that of any former period of the same extent;--millions of acres of the public domain, then wild and hardly explored, have been brought into market; settlements and counties have been formed, and populous towns have sprung up where, at that time, the Indian and wild beast had possession; facilities for intercommunication have been greatly extended, and distant places have been brought comparatively near; the desire to emigrate to the west has increased, and everybody in the Atlantic states has become interested and inquires about the Great Valley. That respectable place, so much the theme of declamation and inquiry abroad, "_The Far West_," has gone from this region towards the setting sun. Its exact locality has not yet been settled, but probably it may soon be found along the gulf of California, or near Nootka Sound. And if distance is to be measured by time, and the facility of intercourse, we are now several hundred miles nearer the Atlantic coast than twenty years since. Ten years more, and the facilities of railways and improved machinery will place the Mississippi within seven day's travel of Boston,--six days of Washington city, and five days of Charleston, S. C. To give a brief, and yet correct account of a portion of this Great Valley, its resources, the manners and customs of its inhabitants, its political subdivisions, cities, commercial and other important towns, colleges and other literary institutions, religious condition, public lands, qualities of soil and general features of each state and territory named in the title page, together with such information as may form a kind of manual for the emigrant and man of business, or which may aid him on his journey hither, and enable him to surmount successfully the difficulties of a new country, is the object of this new work. In accomplishing this task the author has aimed at _correctness_ and _brevity_. To condense the particular kind of information called for by the public mind in a small space, has been no easy task. Nor has it been a small matter to collect from so wide a range as five large states, and two extensive territories, with other large districts, the facts and statistical information often found in the compass of less than a page. It is an easy task to a belles-lettre scholar, sitting at his desk, in an easy chair, and by a pleasant fire, to write "Histories," and "Geographies," and "Sketches," and "Recollections," and "Views," and "Tours" of the Western Valley,--but it is quite another concern to explore these regions, examine public documents, reconcile contradictory statements, correspond with hundreds of persons in public and private life, read all the histories, geographies, tours, sketches, and recollections that have been published, and correct their numerous errors,--then collate, arrange, digest, and condense the facts of the country. Those who have read his former "GUIDE FOR EMIGRANTS," will find upon perusal, that this is radically a _new work_--rather than a new edition. Its whole plan is changed; and though some whole pages of the former work are retained, and many of its facts and particulars given in a more condensed form, much of that work being before the public in other forms, he has been directed, both by his own judgment, and the solicitude of the public mind in the Atlantic states, to give to the work its present form and features. There are three classes of persons in particular who may derive advantage from this Guide. 1. All those who intend to remove to the states and territories described. Such persons, whether citizens of the Atlantic states, or natives of Europe, will find in this small volume, much of that species of information for which they are solicitous. It has been a primary object of the author throughout this work, to furnish the outline of facts necessary for this class. He is aware also that much in detail will be desired and eagerly sought after, which the portable and limited size of this little work could not contain; but such information may be found in the larger works, by Hall, Flint, Darby, Schoolcraft, Long, and other authors and travellers. Those who desire more specific and detailed descriptions of Illinois, will be satisfied probably with the author's GAZETTEER of that State, published in 1834, and which can be had by application to the author, or to the publishers of this work. 2. This Guide is also designed for those, who, for either pleasure, health or business, intend to travel through the western States. Such are now the facilities of intercommunication between the eastern and western States, and to most points in the Valley of the Mississippi, that thousands are visiting some portions of this interesting region every month. Some knowledge of the routes that lead to different parts of this Valley, the lines of steamboats and stages, cities, towns, public institutions, manners and customs of the people, &c., is certainly desirable to all who travel. Such persons may expect a correct, and it is hoped, a pleasant Guide in this book. 3. There is a numerous class of persons in the Atlantic States, who desire to know more about the Great West and to have a book for reference, who do not expect to emigrate here. Many are deeply interested in its moral welfare. They have cheerfully contributed to establish and build up its literary and religious institutions, and yet from want of access to those facts which exist amongst us, their information is but partial and limited. The author in his travels in the Atlantic states has met with many persons, who, though well informed on other subjects, are surprisingly ignorant of the actual condition, resources, society, manners of the people, and even the geography of these states and territories. The author is aware of the difficulty of conveying entirely correct ideas of this region to a person who has never travelled beyond the borders of his native state. The laws and habits of associating ideas in the human mind forbid it. The chief source of information for those states that lie on the Mississippi, has been the personal observation of the author,--having explored most of the settlements in Missouri and Illinois, and a portion of Indiana and Ohio,--having spent more than eighteen years here, and seen the two former states, from an incipient territorial form of government, and a few scattered and detached settlements, arise to their present state of improvement, population, wealth and national importance. His next source of information has been from personal acquaintance and correspondence with many intelligent citizens of the states and territories he describes. Reference has also been had to the works of Hall, Flint, Darby, Breckenridge, Beck, Long, Schoolcraft, Lewis and Clarke, Mitchell's and Tanner's maps, Farmer's map of Michigan, Turnbull's map of Ohio, The Ohio Gazetteer, The Indiana Gazetteer, Dr. Drake's writings, Mr. Coy's Annual Register of Indian affairs, Ellicott's surveys, and several periodicals. J. M. P. _Rock Spring, Illinois, January, 1836._ CHAPTER I. GENERAL VIEW OF THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. Its extent,--Subdivisions,--Population,--Physical features,--Animal, Vegetable and Mineral productions,--History,--Prospective increase of Population. The Valley of the Mississippi, in its proper geographical extent, embraces all that portion of the United States, lying between the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains, the waters of which are discharged into the gulf of Mexico, through the mouths of the Mississippi. I have embraced, however, under that general term, a portion of the country bordering on the northern lakes, including the north part of Ohio, the north-eastern portions of Indiana and Illinois, the whole of Michigan, with a considerable territorial district on the west side of lake Michigan, and around lake Superior. _Extent._ This great Valley is one of the largest divisions of the globe, the waters of which pass one estuary. To suppose the United States and its territory to be divided into three portions, the arrangement would be, the Atlantic slope--the Mississippi basin, or valley--and the Pacific slope. A glance on any map of North America, will show that this Valley includes about two thirds of the territory of the United States. The Atlantic slope contains about 390,000; the Pacific slope, about 300,000; which, combined, are 690,000 square miles: while the Valley of the Mississippi contains at least 1,300,000 square miles, or 833,000,000 acres. This Valley extends from the 29° to the 49° of N. latitude, or about 1400 miles from south to north; and from the 3° to the 35° of longitude west from Washington, or about 1470 miles from east to west. From the source of the Alleghany river to the sources of the Missouri, following the meanderings of the streams, is not less than 5000 miles. _Subdivisions._ The states and territories included, are a small section of New York watered by the heads of the Alleghany river, western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Territory of Arkansas, Indian Territory, the vast unsettled regions lying to the west and north of this Territory, the Wisconsin Territory including an extensive country west of the Mississippi and north of the state of Missouri, with the vast regions that lie towards the heads of the Mississippi, and around lake Superior.[1] _Population._ The following table, gives a comparative view of the population of the Valley of the Mississippi, and shows the proportional increase of the several States, parts of States, and Territories, from 1790 to the close of 1835, a period of 45 years. The column for 1835 is made up partly from the census taken in several states and territories, and partly by estimation. It is sufficiently accurate for general purposes. States, parts of | 1790 | 1800 | 1810 | 1820 | 1830 | 1835 States and | | | | | | Territories. | | | | | | ====================+=======+=======+=========+=========+=========+========== Western Pennsylvania| 75,000|130,000| 240,000 | 290,000| 380,000| 490,000 and a fraction of | | | | | | New York.} | | | | | | Western Virginia | 45,000| 75,000| 100,000| 147,178| 204,175| 230,000 Ohio | [_a_]45,000| 230,760| 581,434| 937,679|1,375,000 Indiana | | | 24,520| 147,178| 341,582| 600,000 Illinois | | | 12,282| 55,211| 157,575| 272,427 Missouri | | [_b_]20,845| 66,586| 140,074| 210,000 Michigan | | | 4,762| 8,896| 31,000| 83,000 Kentucky | 73,677|220,959| 406,511| 564,317| 688,844| 748,844 Tennessee | 35,691|105,602| 261,727| 422,813| 684,822| 735,000 Mississippi | [_c_]8,850| 40,352| 75,448| 136,806| 300,000 Louisiana | | | 76,556| 153,407| 214,693| 270,000 Arkansas Territory | | | | 14,273| 30,608| 51,809 [_e_]Wisconsin Ter. | | | | | | and New purchase | | | | [_d_]3,608| 15,000 --------------------+-------+-------+---------+---------+---------+--------- Total |229,368|585,411|1,418,315|2,526,741|3,951,466|5,381,080 ====================+=======+=======+=========+=========+=========+========= _a_ Including Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. _b_ Including Arkansas. _c_ Including Alabama. _d_ Included with Michigan in the census of 1830. _e_: The country west of the Mississippi, and north of the State of Missouri, was ceded by the Sauk Indians, Sept. 1832. It now contains about 6000 inhabitants. Probably there is no portion of the globe, of equal extent, that contains as much of soil fit for cultivation, and which is capable of sustaining and supplying with all the necessaries and conveniences, and most of the luxuries of life, so dense a population as this great Valley. Deducting one third of its surface for water and desert, which is a very liberal allowance, and there remains 866,667 square miles, or 554,666,880 acres of arable land. Let it become as populous as Massachusetts, which contains 610,014 inhabitants on an area of 7,800 square miles, or seventy-eight to every 640 acres, and the population of this immense region will amount to 67,600,000. The child is now born which will live to see this result. Suppose its population to become equally dense with England, including Wales, which contains 207 to the square mile, and its numbers will amount to 179,400,000. But let it become equal to the Netherlands, the most populous country on the globe, containing 230 to the square mile, and the Valley of the Mississippi teems with a population of 200 millions, a result which may be had in the same time that New England has been gathering its two millions. What reflections ought this view to present to the patriot, the philanthropist, and the christian. _Physical Features._ The physical features of this Valley are peculiar. 1. It includes two great inclined planes, one on its eastern, and the other on its western border, terminating with the Mississippi. 2. This river receives all the waters produced on these slopes, which are discharged by its mouths into the gulf of Mexico. 3. Every part of this vast region can be penetrated by steamboats, or other water craft; nor is there a spot in all this wide region, excepting a small district in the vast plains of Upper Missouri, that is more than one hundred miles from some navigable water. A boat may take in its lading on the banks of the Chatauque lake, in the State of New York; another may receive its cargo in the interior of Virginia; a third may start from the rice lakes at the head of the Mississippi; and a fourth may come laden with furs from the Chippewan mountains, 2,800 miles up the Missouri, and all meet at the mouth of the Ohio, and proceed in company to the ocean. 4. With the exception of its eastern and western borders, there are no mountains. Some portions are level, a large part is gently undulating, or what in the west is called "rolling," and the remainder is made up of abrupt hills, flint and limestone ridges, bluffs, and ravines. 5. It is divided into two great portions, the UPPER, and LOWER VALLEY, according to its general features, climate, staple productions, and habits of its population. The parallel of latitude that cuts the mouth of the Ohio river, will designate these portions with sufficient accuracy. North of this line the seasons are regularly divided into spring, summer, autumn, and winter. In the winter there is usually more or less snow, ice forms and frequently blocks up the rivers, navigation is obstructed, and cotton is not produced in sufficient quantity or quality to make it a staple for exportation. It is the region of furs, minerals, tobacco, hemp, live stock, and every description of grain and fruit that grows in New England. Its white population are mostly accustomed to labor. South of this line, cotton, tobacco, indigo, and sugar are staples. It has little winter, snow seldom covers the earth, ice never obstructs the rivers, and most of the labor is done by slaves. _Rivers._ The rivers are, the Mississippi and its tributaries, or more correctly, the Missouri and its tributaries. If we except the Amazon, no river can compare with this for length of its course, the number and extent of its tributaries, the vast country they drain, and their capabilities for navigation. Its tributaries generally issue either from the eastern or western mountains, and flow over this immense region, diffusing not only fertility to the soil, but affording facilities for commerce a great part of the year. The Missouri is unquestionably the main stream, for it is not only longer and discharges a larger volume of water than the Mississippi above its mouth, but it has branches, which, for the extent of country they drain, their length, and the volume of water they discharge, far exceed the upper Mississippi. The characteristics of these two rivers are each distinctly marked. The Missouri is turbid, violent in its motions, changing its currents; its navigation is interrupted or made difficult by snags, sawyers and planters, and it has many islands and sand-bars. Such is the character of the Mississippi below the mouth of the Missouri. But above its mouth, its waters are clear, its current gentle, while it is comparatively free from snags and sand-bars. The Missouri, which we have shown to be the principal stream, rises in the Chippewan, or Rocky mountains in latitude 44° north, and longitude about 35° west from Washington city. It runs a northeast course till after it receives the Yellow Stone, when it reaches past the 48° of latitude, thence an east, then a south, and finally a southeastern course, until it meets the current of the Mississippi, 20 miles above St. Louis, and in latitude 38° 45' north. Besides numerous smaller streams, the Missouri receives the Yellow Stone and Platte, which of themselves, in any other part of the world, would be called large rivers, together with the Sioux, Kansau, Grand, Chariton, Osage, and Gasconade, all large and navigable rivers. Its length, upon an entire comparative course, is 1870 miles, and upon a particular course, about 3000 miles. Lewis and Clark make the distance from the Mississippi to the great falls, 2580 miles. There are several things in some respects peculiar to this river, which deserve notice. 1. Its current is very rapid, usually at the rate of four or five miles an hour, when at its height; and it requires a strong wind to propel a boat with a sail against it. Steam overcomes its force, for boats ply regularly from St. Louis to the towns and landings on its banks within the borders of the state, and return with the produce of the country. Small steamboats have gone to the Yellow Stone for furs. Owing to the shifting of its current, and its snags and sand-bars, its navigation is less safe and pleasant than any other western river, but these difficulties are every year lessened by genius and enterprise. 2. Its water is always turbid, being of a muddy, ash color, though more so at its periodical rise than at other times. This is caused by extremely fine sand, received from the neighborhood of the Yellow Stone. During the summer flood, a tumbler of water taken from the Missouri, and precipitated, will produce about one fourth of its bulk in sediment. This sediment does not prevent its habitual use by hundreds who live on its banks, or move in boats over its surface. Some filtrate it, but many more drink it, and use it for culinary purposes, in its natural state. When entirely filtrated, it is the most limpid and agreeable river water I ever saw. Its specific gravity then, is about equal to rain water; but in its turbid state, it is much heavier than ordinary river water, for a boat will draw three or four inches less in it than in other rivers, with the same lading, and the human body will swim in it with but very little effort. It possesses some medicinal properties. Placed in an open vessel and exposed to the summer's sun, it remains pure for weeks. Eruptions on the skin and ulcerous sores are cured by wading or frequent bathings, and commonly it produces slight cathartic effects upon strangers upon its first use. The width of the Missouri river at St. Charles, is 550 yards. Its alluvial banks however are insecure, and are not unfrequently washed away for many yards at its annual floods. The bed of its channel is also precarious, and is elevated or depressed by the deposition or removal of its sandy foundation. Hence the elevation or depression of the surface of this river, affords no criterion of its depth, or of the volume of water it discharges at any one period. Undulatory motions, like the boiling of a pot, are frequently seen on its surface, caused by the shifting of the sand that forms its bed. The volume of water it ordinarily discharges into the Mississippi is vastly disproportionate to its length, or the number and size of its tributaries. I have seen less than six feet depth of water at St. Charles at a low stage, and it was once forded by a soldier, at Bellefontaine, four miles above its junction with the Mississippi. Evaporation takes up large quantities, but absorption throughout the porous soil of its wide bottoms consumes much more. In all the wells dug in the bottom lands of the Missouri, water is always found at the depth of the surface of the river, and invariably rises or sinks with the floods and ebbings of the stream. Volumes of sand frequently enter these wells as the river rises. Its periodical floods deserve notice. Ordinarily this river has three periods of rising and falling each year. The first rise is caused by the breaking up of winter on the Gasconade, Osage, Kansau, Chariton, Grand, and other branches of the lower Missouri, and occurs the latter part of February, or early in March. Its second rise is usually in April, when the Platte, Yellow Stone, and other streams pour into it their spring floods. But the flood that more usually attracts attention takes place from the 10th to the 25th of June, when the melting snows on the Chippewan mountains pour their contents into the Missouri. This flood is scarcely ever less than five, nor more than 20 feet at St. Louis, above the ordinary height of the river. On two occasions, however, since the country was known to the French, it has arisen to that height in the Mississippi as to flow over the American Bottom in Illinois, and drive the inhabitants of Cahokia and Kaskaskia from their villages to the bluffs. Rain in greater or less quantities usually falls during the rise of the river, and ceases when the waters subside. So uniform is this the case in Upper Missouri, the region beyond the boundary of the State, that the seasons are divided into wet and dry. Pumice stones and other volcanic productions occasionally float down its waters. _Mississippi River._ The extreme head of the longest branch of the Mississippi river, has been found in lake Itaska, or Lac la Biche, by Mr. Schoolcraft, who states it to be elevated 1500 feet above the Atlantic ocean, and distant 3,160 miles from the extreme outlet of the river at the gulf of Mexico. The outlet of Itaska lake, which is connected with a string of small lakes, is ten or twelve feet broad, and twelve or fifteen inches deep. This is in latitude about 48° north. From this it passes Cedar and several smaller lakes, and runs a winding course, 700 miles, to the falls of St. Anthony, where its waters are precipitated over a cataract of 16 or 17 feet perpendicular. It then continues a southeastern course to the Missouri, in N. lat, 38° 38', receiving the St. Croix, Chippewa, Wisconsin, Rock and Illinois rivers, with many smaller streams from the east, and the St. Peter's, Iowa, Des Moines, and Salt rivers, besides a number of smaller ones from the west. The current of the Missouri strikes that of the Mississippi at right angles, and throws it upon the eastern shore. When at a low stage, the waters of the two rivers are distinct till they pass St. Louis. The principal branch of the Upper Mississippi, is the St. Peter's, which rises in the great prairies in the northwest, and enters the parent stream ten miles below the falls of St. Anthony. Towards the sources of this river the quarries exist from which are made the red stone pipes of the Indians. This is sacred ground. Hostile tribes meet here, and part unmolested. Rock river drains the waters from the northern part of Illinois and Wisconsin, and enters the parent stream at 41° 30' north latitude. In latitude 39° comes in the Illinois, signifying the "River of Men;" and eighteen miles below this, it unites with, and is lost in the Missouri. Custom has fixed unalterably, the name _Mississippi_, to this united body of waters, that rolls its turbid waves towards the Mexican gulf; though, as has been intimated, it is but a continuation of the Missouri. Sixty miles below St. Louis, the Kaskaskia joins it, after a devious course of 400 miles. In 37° north latitude, the Ohio pours in its tribute, called by the early French explorers, "La Belle Rivière," the beautiful river. A little below 34°, the White river enters after a course of more than 1,000 miles. Thirty miles below that, the Arkansas, bringing its tribute from the confines of Mexico, pours in its waters. Above Natchez, the Yazoo from the east, and eighty miles below, the Red river from the west, unite their waters with the Mississippi. Red River takes its rise in the Mexican dominions, and runs a course of more than 2,000 miles. Hitherto, the waters in the wide regions of the west have been congregating to one point. The "Father of Waters," is now upwards of a mile in width, and several fathoms deep. During its annual floods, it overflows its banks below the mouth of the Ohio, and penetrates the numerous bayous, lakes, and swamps, and especially on its western side. In many places these floods extend thirty or forty miles into the interior. But after it receives the Red river, it begins to throw off its surplus waters, which flow in separate channels to the gulf, and never again unite with the parent stream. Several of these communications are held with the ocean at different and distant points. _Ohio River._ The Ohio river is formed by the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela, at Pittsburg. The Alleghany river rises not far from the head of the western branch of the Susquehannah, in the highlands of McKean county, Pennsylvania. It runs north till it penetrates Cataraugus county, New York, then turns west, then southwest, and finally takes a southern course to Pittsburg. It receives a branch from the Chatauque lake, Chatauque county, New York. The Monongahela rises near the sources of the Kenhawa, in western Virginia, and runs north till it meets the Alleghany. The general course of the Ohio is southwest. Its current is gentle, and it receives a number of tributaries, which are noticed in the States where they run. The Valley of the Mississippi has been arranged by Mr. Darby, into four great subdivisions. 1. The _Ohio Valley_, length 750 miles, and mean width 261; containing 196,000 square miles. 2. _Mississippi Valley_, above Ohio, including the minor valley of Illinois, but exclusive of Missouri, 650 miles long, and 277 mean width, and containing 180,000 square miles. 3. _Lower Valley of the Mississippi_, including White, Arkansas, and Red river vallies, 1,000 miles long, and 200 wide, containing 200,000 square miles. 4. _Missouri proper_, including Osage, Kansau, Platte rivers, &c. 1,200 miles long, and 437 wide, containing 523,000 square miles. "The _Valley of the Ohio_ is better known than any of the others; has much fertile land, and much that is sterile, or unfit for cultivation, on account of its unevenness. It is divided into two unequal portions, by the Ohio river; leaving on the right or northwest side 80,000, and on the left or southeast side, 116,000 square miles. The eastern part of this valley is hilly, and rapidly acclivous towards the Appalachian mountains. Indeed its high hills, as you approach these mountains, are of a strongly marked mountainous character. Of course the rivers which flow into the Ohio--the Monongahela, Kenhawa, Licking, Sandy, Kentucky, Green, Cumberland, and Tennessee--are rapid, and abounding in cataracts and falls, which, towards their sources, greatly impede navigation. The western side of this Valley is, also, hilly for a considerable distance from the Ohio, but towards its western limit, it subsides to a remarkably level region. So that whilst the eastern line of this Valley lies along the high table land, on which the Appalachian mountains rest, and where the rivers of the eastern section of this Valley rise, which is at least 2,000 miles generally above the ocean level; the western line has not an elevation of much more than half of that amount on the north, and which greatly subsides towards the Kaskaskia. The rivers of the western section are Beaver, Muskingum, Hockhocking, Scioto, Miami, and Wabash. Along the Ohio, on each side, are high hills, often intersected with deep ravines, and sometimes openings of considerable extent, and well known by the appellation of "Ohio hills." Towards the mouth of the Ohio, these hills almost wholly disappear, and extensive level bottoms, covered with heavy forests of oak, sycamore, elm, poplar, and cotton wood, stretch along each side of the river. On the lower section of the river, the water, at the time of the spring floods, often overflows these bottoms to a great extent. This fine Valley embraces considerably more than one half of the whole population of the entire Valley of the West. The western parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia, the entire states of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, the larger part of Tennessee, and a smaller part of Illinois, are in the Valley of the Ohio." _The Upper Valley of the Mississippi_ possesses a surface far less diversified than the Valley of the Ohio. The country where its most northern branches take their rise, is elevated table land, abounding with marshes and lakes, that are filled with a graniferous vegetable called wild rice. It is a slim, shrivelled grain of a brownish hue, and gathered by the Indians in large quantities for food. There are tracts of arable land covered with elm, linden, pine, hemlock, cherry, maple, birch and other timber common to a northern climate. From the same plateau flow the numerous branches of Red river, and other streams that flow into lake Winnipeck, and thence into Hudson's bay. Here, too, are found some of the head branches of the waters of St. Lawrence, that enter the Lake of the Woods, and Superior. In the whole country of which we are speaking, there is nothing that deserves the name of mountain. Below the falls of St. Anthony the river bluffs are often abrupt, wild and romantic, and at their base and along the streams are thousands of quartz crystals, carnelians and other precious stones. But a short distance in the rear, you enter upon table land of extensive prairies, with clumps of trees, and groves along the streams. Further down, abrupt cliffs and overhanging precipices are frequently seen at the termination of the river alluvion. The whole country northwest of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, as far north as the falls of St. Anthony, exhibits striking marks of a diluvial formation, by a gradual retiring of the waters. From the summit level that divides the waters of the lakes from those of the Mississippi, through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, which is scarcely a perceptible ridge, to the south point of Illinois at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi, appears to have once been a plane with an inclination equal to 12 or 15 inches per mile. The ravines and vallies appear to have been gradually scooped out by the abrasion of the waters. "The _Lower Mississippi Valley_, has a length of 1,200 miles, from northwest to southeast, considering the source of the Arkansas, and the mouth of the Mississippi river as extreme points; reaching from north latitude 29° to 42°, and without estimating mountains, ridges, or peaks, differs in relative elevation at least 500 feet. "The _Arkansas river_ rises near north latitude 42°, and longitude 32° west from Washington, and falls into the Mississippi at 33° 56', passing over eight degrees of latitude. "_Red River_ rises in the mountainous country of Mexico, north of Texas, in north latitude 34°; and west longitude 28° from Washington, and falls into the Mississippi in latitude 31°. They are both remarkable rivers for their extent, the number of their branches, the volume of their waters, the quantity of alluvion they carry down to the parent stream, and the color of their waters. Impregnated by saline particles, and colored with ocherous earth, the waters of these two rivers are at once brackish and nauseous to the taste, particularly near their mouths; that of Red river is so much so at Natchitoches at low water that it cannot be used for culinary purposes. "At a short distance below the mouth of the Red river, a large bayou, (as it is called,) or outlet, breaks from the Mississippi on the west; by which, it is believed, that as large a volume of water as the Red river brings to the parent river, is drained off, and runs to the gulf of Mexico, fifty miles from the mouth of the Mississippi. The name of this bayou is Atchafalaya, or as it is commonly called, _Chaffalio_. Below this bayou, another of large dimensions breaks forth on the same side, and finally falls into the Atchafalaya. This is the Placquemine. Still lower, at Donaldsonville, ninety miles above New Orleans, on the same side, the Lafourche bayou breaks out, and pursues a course parallel to the Mississippi, fifty miles west of the mouth of that river. On the east side, the Ibberville bayou drains off a portion of the waters of the Mississippi, into lakes Maurepas, Ponchartrain, Borgnes, and the gulf of Mexico, and thus forms the long and narrow island of Orleans. "In the lower Valley of the Mississippi there is a great extent of land of the very richest kind. There is also much that is almost always overflown with waters, and is a perpetual swamp. There are extensive prairies in this Valley; and towards the Rocky mountains; on the upper waters of the Arkansas and Red rivers, there are vast barren steppes or plains of sand, dreary and barren, like the central steppes of Asia. On the east of the Mississippi, are extensive regions of the densest forests, which form a striking contrast with the prairies which stretch on the west of that great river. "_The Valley of the Missouri_ extends 1200 miles in length, and 700 in width, and embraces 253,000 square miles. The Missouri river rises in the Chippewan mountains, through eight degrees, or nearly 600 miles. The Yellow Stone is its longest branch. The course of the Missouri, after leaving the Rocky mountains, is generally southeast, until it unites with the Mississippi. The principal branches flow from the southwest. They are the Osage, Kansas, Platte, &c. The three most striking features of this Valley are, 1st. The turbid character of its waters. 2d. The very unequal volumes of the right and left confluences. 3d. The immense predominance of the open prairies, over the forests which line the rivers. The western part of this Valley rises to an elevation towards the Chippewan mountains, equal to ten degrees of temperature. Ascending from the lower verge of this widely extended plain, wood becomes more and more scarce, until one naked surface spreads on all sides. Even the ridges and chains of the Chippewan, partake of these traits of desolation. The traveller, who has read the descriptions of central Asia, by Tooke or Pallas, will feel on the higher branches of the Missouri, a resemblance, at once striking and appalling; and he will acknowledge, if near to the Chippewan mountains in winter, that the utmost intensity of frost over Siberia and Mongolia, has its full counterpart in North America, on similar, if not on lower latitudes. There is much fertile land in the Valley of the Missouri, though much of it must be forever the abode of the buffalo and the elk, the wolf and the deer.[2] FOOTNOTES: [1] Why the names Huron, Mandan, Sioux, Osage, and _Ozark_ have been applied by Darby and other authors, to the extensive regions on the Upper Mississippi, the Upper Missouri, and the Arkansas rivers, I am not able to solve. _Osage_ is a French corruption of _Wos-sosh-ee_, and _Ozark_ is an awkward, illiterate corruption of Osage. _Sioux_ is another French corruption, the origin of which is not now easily ascertained. Carver and other travellers, call this nation of Indiana Nau-do-wes-sees. Chiefs of this nation have repeatedly disclaimed the name of Sioux, (pronounced Soos.) They sometimes call themselves Da-co-tah. [2] Darby. CHAPTER II. GENERAL VIEW OF THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. (CONTINUED.) Productions. _Minerals._--But few mines exist in the Lower Valley of the Mississippi. _Louisiana_, being chiefly alluvion, furnishes only two specimens, sulphuret of antimony, and meteoric iron ore. It is supposed that the pine barrens towards Texas, if explored, would add to the number. The only minerals in _Mississippi_, are amethyst, of which one crystal has been found; potter's clay, at the Chickasaw Bluffs, and near Natchez; sulphuret of lead in small quantities, about Port Gibson; and sulphate of iron. Petrified trunks of trees are found in the bed of the Mississippi, opposite Natchez. In Arkansas Territory are various species. Here may be found the native magnet, or magnetic oxide of iron, possessing strong magnetic power. Iron ores are very abundant. Sulphate of copper, sulphuret of zinc, alum, and aluminous slate are found about the cove of Washitau, and the Hot Springs. Buhr stone of a superior quality exists in the surrounding hills. The hot springs are interesting on account of the minerals around them, the heat of their waters, and as furnishing a retreat to valetudinarians from the sickly regions of the south. They are situated on the Washitau, a large stream that empties itself into Red river. The _lead mines_ of Missouri have been worked for more than a century. They are distributed through the country from thirty to one hundred miles southwest from St. Louis, and probably extend through the Gasconade country. Immense quantities of iron ore exist in this region. Lead is found in vast quantities in the northern part of Illinois, the south part of the Wisconsin Territory, and the country on the opposite side of the Mississippi. These mines are worked extensively. Native copper in large quantities is found in the same region. Large quantities of iron ore is found in the mountainous parts of Tennessee and Kentucky, where furnaces and forges have been erected. Also, in the hilly parts of Ohio, particularly at the falls of Licking four miles west of Zanesville, and in Adams and Lawrence counties near the Ohio river. With _iron ore_ the West is profusely supplied. _Bituminous coal_ exists in great profusion in various parts of the Western Valley. The hills around Pittsburg are inexhaustible. It extends through many portions of Ohio and Indiana. Nearly every county in Illinois is supplied with this valuable article. Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee have their share. Immense quantities are found in the mountains along the Kenhawa, in Western Virginia, and it is now employed in the manufacture of salt. The Cumberland mountains in Tennessee contain immense deposits. _Muriate of Soda_ or common salt, exists in most of the states and territories of this Valley. Near the sources of the Arkansas incrustations are formed by evaporation during the dry season, in the depressed portions of the immense prairies of that region. The celebrated salt rock is on the red fork of the Canadian, a branch of the Arkansas river. Jefferson lake has its water strongly impregnated with salt, and is of a bright red color. Beds of rock salt are in the mountains of this region. Several counties of Missouri have abundant salt springs. Considerable quantities of salt are manufactured in Jackson, Gallatin and Vermillion counties, Illinois. Saline springs, and "licks" as they are called, abound through Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, and Western Virginia. Salt is manufactured in great abundance at the Kenhawa salines, 16 miles above Charlestown, Va., and brought down the Kenhawa river and carried to all the Western States. Much salt is made also on the Kiskiminitas, a branch of the Alleghany river, at the Yellow creek above Steubenville, and in the Scioto country in Ohio. The water is frequently obtained by boring through rock of different strata, several hundred feet deep. Copper, antimony, manganese, and several other minerals are found in different parts of the West, but are not yet worked. _Nitrate of potash_ is found in great abundance in the caverns of Kentucky and Tennessee, also in Missouri, from which large quantities of Saltpetre are manufactured. _Sulphate of Magnesia_ is found in Kentucky, Indiana, and perhaps other states. Sulphur and other mineral springs are very common in the western states. _Vegetable Productions._--_Trees, &c._ Almost every species of timber and shrub common to the Atlantic states is found in some part of the Western Valley. The cotton wood and sycamore are found along all the rivers below the 41° of N. latitude. The cypress begins near the mouth of the Ohio and spreads through the alluvion portions of the Lower Valley. The magnolia, with its large, beautiful flower, grows in Louisiana, and the long leaf pine flourishes in the uplands of the same region. The sugar maple abounds in the northern and middle portions. The chestnut is found in the eastern portion of the Valley as far as Indiana, but not a tree is known to exist in a natural state west of the Wabash river. Yellow or pitch pine, grows in several counties of Missouri, especially on the Gasconade, from whence large quantities of lumber are brought to St. Louis. White pine from the Alleghany river is annually sent to all the towns on the Ohio, and further down. Considerable quantities of white pine grow on the upper Mississippi, along the western shore of Michigan, about Green bay, and along the shores of lake Superior. The yellow poplar, (Liriodendron tulipifera) is a majestic tree, valuable for light boards, and may be found in some parts of most of the western states. The beech tree is frequently found in company. The live oak, so valuable in ship building, is found south of the 31°, and along the Louisiana coast. The orange, fig, olive, pine apple, &c. find a genial climate about New Orleans. High in the north we have the birch, hemlock, fir, and other trees peculiar to a cold region. Amongst our fruit bearing trees we may enumerate the walnut, hickory or shag bark, persimmon, pecan, mulberry, crab apple, pawpaw, wild plum, and wild cherry. The vine grows everywhere. Of the various species of oak, elm, ash, linden, hackberry, &c. it is unnecessary to speak. Where forests abound, the trees are tall and majestic. In the prairie country, the timber is usually found on the streams, or in detached groves. In the early settlement of Kentucky there were found, south of Green river, large tracts, with stunted scattering trees intermixed with hazel and brushwood. From this appearance it was inferred that the soil was of inferior quality, and these tracts were denominated "barrens." Subsequently, it was found that this land was of prime quality. The term "barrens" is now applied extensively in the West to the same description of country. It distinguishes an intermediate grade from forest and prairie. A common error has prevailed abroad that our prairie land is wet. _Prairie_ is a French word signifying _meadow_, and is applied to any description of surface, that is destitute of timber and brushwood, and clothed with grass. Wet, dry, level, and undulating, are terms of description merely, and apply to prairies in the same sense as they do to forests. The prairies in summer are clothed with grass, herbage and flowers, exhibit a delightful prospect, and furnish most abundant and luxuriant pasturage for stock. Much of the forest land in the Western Valley produces a fine range for domestic animals and swine. Thousands are raised, and the emigrant grows wealthy, from the bounties of nature, with but little labor. Of _animals_, _birds_ and _reptiles_, little need be said. The buffalo was in Illinois the beginning of the present century. They are not found now within three hundred miles of Missouri and Arkansas, and they are fast receding. Deer are found still in all frontier settlements. Wolves, foxes, wild cats, raccoons, opossums, and squirrels are plenty. The brown bear is still hunted in some parts of the western states. Col. Crockett was a famous bear hunter in Western Tennessee, The white bear, mountain sheep, antelope and beaver, are found in the defiles of the Rocky mountains. The elk is still found by the hunter contiguous to newly formed settlements. All the domestic animals of the United States flourish here. Nearly all the feathered tribe of the Atlantic slope are to be found in the Valley. Pelicans, wild geese, swans, cranes, ducks, paroquets, wild turkeys, prairie hens, &c. are found in different states, especially on the Mississippi. _Reptiles._ The rattlesnake, copperhead snake, moccasin snake, bull snake, and the various snakes usually found in the Atlantic states are here. Of the venomous kinds, multitudes are destroyed by the deer and swine. Chameleons and scorpions exist in the Lower Valley, and lizards everywhere. The alligator, an unwieldy and bulky animal, is found in the rivers and lakes south of 34° north latitude. He sometimes destroys calves and pigs, and very rarely, even young children. _History._--The honor of the discovery of this country is disputed by the Spanish, English, and French. It is probable that Sebastian Cabot sailed along the shores of what was afterwards called Florida, but a few years after Columbus discovered America. Spanish authors claim that Juan Ponce de Leon discovered and named Florida, in 1512. Narvaez, another Spanish commander, having obtained a grant of Florida in 1528, landed four or five hundred men, but was lost by shipwreck near the mouth of the Mississippi. Ferdinand de Soto was probably the first white man who saw the Mississippi river. He is said to have marched 1000 men from Florida, through the Chickasaw country, to the Mississippi, near the mouth of Red river, where he took sick and died. His men returned. Some writers suppose De Soto travelled as far north as Kentucky, or the Ohio river. This is not probable. The French were the first to explore and settle the West, and they held jurisdiction over the country of Illinois for 80 years, when it fell into the hands of the British upon the conquest of Canada. In 1564, Florida was settled by a colony of Huguenots, under Admiral Coligny, who were afterwards massacred by the Spaniards, because they were Protestant _heretics_. In 1608, Admiral Champlaine founded Quebec, from which French settlements spread through the Canadas. About 1670, the notion prevailed amongst the French that visited Canada, that a western passage to the Pacific ocean existed. They learned from the Indians that far in the west there was a great river; but of its course or termination they could learn nothing. They supposed that this river communicated with the western ocean. To investigate this question, P. Marquette, a Jesuit, and Joliet, were appointed by M. Talon, the Intendant of New France. Marquette was well acquainted with the Canadas, and had great influence with the Indian tribes. They conducted an expedition through the lakes, up Green bay and Fox river, to the Portage, where it approaches the Wisconsin, to which they passed, and descended that river to the Mississippi, which they reached the 17th of June, 1673. They found a river much larger and deeper than it had been represented by the Indians. Their regular journal was lost on their return to Canada; but from the account, afterwards given by Joliet, they found the natives friendly, and that a tradition existed amongst them of the residence of a "Mon-e-to," or spirit, near the mouth of the Missouri, which they could not pass. They turned their course up the Illinois, and were highly delighted with the placid stream, and the woodlands and prairies through which it flowed. They were hospitably received and kindly treated by the Illinois, a numerous nation of Indians who were destitute of the cruelty of savages. The word "Illinois," or "Illini," is said by Hennepin, to signify a "_full grown man_." This nation appears to have originally possessed the Illinois country, and also a portion west of the Mississippi. The nation was made up of eight tribes:--the Miamies, Michigamies, Mascotins, Kaskaskias, Kahokias, Peorias, Piankeshaws, and Tau-mar-waus. Marquette continued among these Indians with a view to christianize them; but Joliet returned to Canada and reported the discoveries he had made. Several years elapsed before any one attempted to follow up the discoveries of Marquette and Joliet. M. de La Salle, a native of Normandy, but who had resided many years in Canada, was the first to extend these early discoveries. He was a man of intelligence, talents, enterprise, and perseverance. After obtaining the sanction of the king of France, he set out on his projected expedition, in 1678, from Frontenac, with Chevalier Tonti, his lieutenant, and Father Hennepin, a Jesuit missionary, and thirty or forty men. He spent about one year in exploring the country bordering on the lakes, and in selecting positions for forts and trading posts, to secure the Indian trade to the French. After he had built a fort at Niagara, and fitted out a small vessel, he sailed through the lakes to Green bay, then called the "Bay of Puants." From thence he proceeded with his men in canoes towards the south end of lake Michigan, and arrived at the mouth of the "river of the Miamis" in November, 1679. This is thought to be the Milwaukee in Wisconsin Territory. Here he built a fort, left eight or ten men, and passed with the rest of his company across the country to the waters of the Illinois river, and descended that river a considerable distance, when he was stopped for want of supplies. This was occasioned by the loss of a boat which had been sent from his post on Green bay. He was now compelled by necessity to build a fort, which, on account of the anxiety of mind he experienced, was called _Creve-coeur_, or broken heart. The position of this fort cannot now be ascertained; but from some appearances, it is thought to have been near Spring bay, in the northeast part of Tazewell county. At this period the Illinois were engaged in a war with the Iroquois, a numerous, warlike, and cruel nation, with whom La Salle had traded, while on the borders of Canada. The former, according to Indian notions of friendship, expected assistance from the French; but the interests and safety of La Salle depended upon terminating this warfare, and to this object he directed his strenuous efforts. The suspicious Illinois construed this into treachery, which was strengthened by the malicious and perfidious conduct of some of his own men, and pronounced upon him the sentence of death. Immediately he formed and executed the bold and hazardous project of going alone and unarmed to the camp of the Illinois, and vindicating his conduct. He declared his innocence of the charges, and demanded the author. He urged that the war should be terminated, and that the hostile nations should live in peace. The coolness, bravery, and eloquence of La Salle filled the Indians with astonishment, and entirely changed their purposes. The calumet was smoked, presents mutually exchanged, and a treaty of amity concluded. The original project of discovery was now pursued. Father Hennepin started on the 28th of February, 1680, and having passed down the Illinois, ascended the Mississippi to the falls of St. Anthony. Here he was taken prisoner, robbed, and carried to the Indian villages, from which he made his escape, returned to Canada by the way of the Wisconsin, and from thence to France, where he published an account of his travels. La Salle visited Canada to obtain supplies, returned to Creve-coeur, and shortly after descended the Illinois, and then the Mississippi, where he built one or two forts on its banks, and took possession of the country in the name of the king of France, and in honor of him called it _Louisiana_. One of these forts is thought to have been built on the west side of the river, between St. Louis and Carondalet. After descending the Mississippi to its mouth, he returned to the Illinois, and on his way back left some of his companions to occupy the country. This is supposed to have been the commencement of the villages of Kaskaskia and Cahokia, in 1683. La Salle went to France, fitted out an expedition to form a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, sailed to the gulf of Mexico, but not being able to find the mouths of that river, he commenced an overland journey to his fort on the Illinois. On this journey he was basely assassinated by two of his own men.[3] After the death of La Salle, no attempts to discover the mouth of the Mississippi were made till about 1699, but the settlements in the Illinois country were gradually increased by emigrants from Canada. In 1712, the king of France, by letters patent, gave the whole country of Louisiana to M. Crosat, with the commerce of the country, with the profits of all the mines, reserving for his own use one fifth of the gold and silver. After expending large sums in digging and exploring for the precious metals without success, Crosat gave up his privilege to the king, in 1717. Soon after, the colony was granted to the Mississippi company, projected by Mr. Law, which took possession of Louisiana, and appointed M. Bienville governor. In 1719, La Harpe commanded a fort with French troops, not far from the mouth of the Missouri river. Shortly after, several forts were built within the present limits of Illinois, of which fort Chartres was the most considerable. By these means a chain of communication was formed from Canada to the mouth of the Mississippi. In 1699, M. Ibberville arrived in the gulf of Mexico with two frigates, and in March ascended the river in a felucca one hundred leagues, and returned by the bayou or outlet that bears his name, through lake Ponchartrain to the gulf. He planted his colony at Biloxi, a healthy but sterile spot between the Mobile and Mississippi rivers, and built a fortification. During several succeeding years much exploring was done, and considerable trade carried on with the Indians for peltries, yet these expeditions were a source of much expense to France. In January, 1702, the colony at Mobile was planted; several other settlements were soon after formed. The Catholics also commenced several missions amongst the Indians. Difficulties frequently occurred with their Spanish neighbors in Florida and Mexico. M. Ibberville died in 1706, and M. Bienville succeeded him in the government of Louisiana for many years. The city of New Orleans was founded, during his administration, in 1719. It is situated on the east bank of the Mississippi, one hundred and five miles from its mouth. From 1723 to 1730, the French had exterminating wars with the Natchez, a powerful nation of Indians. They had killed 700 French in 1723, and about 1730 the French exterminated the nation. Various wars took place subsequently with the Spanish and English. But over most of the Indians along the Mississippi, these French colonists gained extraordinary influence.--During this period emigrants continued to arrive from France, so that the colonists rapidly increased in numbers. The Mississippi land scheme, or "bubble" as it was called, originated with the celebrated John Law in 1717, which soon burst and spread ruin throughout the monied interests of France. The amount of stock created, was said to equal 310,000,000 of dollars. The whole proved an entire failure, but it served to increase greatly the population of Louisiana, so that from 1736, the colonies in the Lower Valley prospered. In 1754, the war commenced between France and England relative to the boundaries of the Canadas. At that period France claimed all the countries west of the Alleghany mountains, while England on the other hand had granted to Virginia, Connecticut and other colonies, charters which extended across the continent to the "South Sea," as the Pacific ocean was then called. A grant also was made by Virginia, and the crown of Great Britain, of 600,000 acres to a company called "The Ohio Company." The governor of New France, as Canada and Louisiana was then called, protested, erected forts on lake Erie, and at the present site of Pittsburg, and enlisted the Indians against the English and Americans. Pittsburg was then called Fort du Quesne. Then followed Braddock's war, as this contest is called in the west,--the mission of Major (afterward General) Washington,--the defeat of Braddock; and finally by the memorable victory of Wolfe at Quebec, and the lesser ones at Niagara and Ticonderoga, and by victories of the English fleet on the ocean, the French were humbled, and at the treaty of Paris, in 1763, surrendered all their claims to the country east of the Mississippi. Towards the close of the war, however, France, by a secret treaty, ceded all the country west of the Mississippi, and including New Orleans, to Spain, who held possession till 1803, when it was delivered to the French government under Napoleon, and by him ceded to the United States for 15,000,000 of dollars. The English held possession of the military posts, and exercised jurisdiction over the country of Illinois, and the adjacent regions, till 1778, during the revolutionary war; when by a secret expedition, without direct legislative sanction, but by a most enterprising, skilful, and hazardous military manoeuvre, the posts of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Fort Chartres and Vincennes were captured by Gen. GEORGE ROGERS CLARK, with a small force of volunteer Americans, and that portion of the Valley fell under the jurisdiction of Virginia. The legislature of Virginia sanctioned the expedition of Clark, which the Executive, Patrick Henry and his council, with Thomas Jefferson, George Wythe, and George Mason, by written instructions, had agreed should be done, and a county called "Illinois" was organized the same year. In 1784, Virginia, in conjunction with other states, ceded all claims to the Great West, to the United States, reserving certain tracts for the payment of revolutionary claims. This cession laid the foundation for five new states northwest of Ohio, when each district should have 60,000 inhabitants, and even a less number, by consent of Congress. Two restrictions were peremptorily enjoined,--that each state should adopt a constitution with a republican form of government, and that slavery or involuntary servitude, should be forever prohibited. It is unnecessary here to enter into details of the settlement of each particular state,--the incessant attacks from the Indians,--the border wars that ensued,--the adventures of Boone and his associates in settling Kentucky,--the unfortunate campaigns of Harmar and St. Clair,--the victorious one of Wayne,--or the reminiscences and events of the war of 1812, and its termination in 1815. Some historical notices of each state may be found in their proper place. _Prospective increase of Population._ For a long period, in the states of the west, the increase of population was slow, and retarded by several causes. Difficulties of a formidable character had to be surmounted. The footsteps of the American emigrants were everywhere drenched in blood, shed by infuriated savage foes, and before 1790 more than 5,000 persons had been murdered, or taken captive and lost to the settlements. "It has been estimated, that in the short space of seven years, from 1783 to 1790, more than fifteen hundred of the inhabitants of Kentucky were either massacred or carried away into a captivity worse than death, by the Indians; and an equal number from Western Pennsylvania and Virginia, in the same period, met with a similar fate. The settlers on the frontiers were almost constantly, for a period of forty years, harassed either by actual attacks of the savages, or the daily expectation of them. The tomahawk and the scalping knife, were the objects of their fears by day and by night."[4] Hence, in suggesting reasons showing why the population of this Valley must increase in future in a far greater ratio than in the past, it will appear: 1. That the most perfect security is now enjoyed by all emigrants, both for their families and property. By the wise and beneficent arrangement of government, the Indian tribes have nearly all removed to the Territory specially allotted for their occupancy west of Missouri and Arkansas. The grand error committed in past times in relation to the Indians, and which has been the source of incalculable evils to both races, has been the want of definite, fixed and permanent lines of demarcation betwixt them. It will be seen under the proper head, that a system of measures is now in operation that will not only preserve peace between the frontier settlements and the Indian tribes, but that to a great extent, they are becoming initiated into the habits of civilized life. There is now no more danger to the population of these states and territories from _Indian_ depredations, than to the people of the Atlantic states. 2. The increased facilities of emigration, and the advantage of sure and certain markets for every species of production, furnishes a second reason why population will increase in the western Valley beyond any former period. Before the purchase of Louisiana, the western people had no outlet for their produce, and the chief mode of obtaining every description of merchandize,--even salt and iron,--was by the slow and expensive method of transportation by wagons and pack-horses, across almost impassible mountains and extremely difficult roads. Now, every convenience and luxury of life is carried with comparative ease, to every town and settlement throughout the Valley, and every species of produce is sent off in various directions, to every port on earth if necessary. And these facilities are multiplying and increasing every hour: Turnpike roads, rail roads, canals, and steamboat navigation have already provided such facilities for removing from the Atlantic to the Western States, that no family desirous of removing, need hesitate or make a single inquiry as to facilities of getting to this country. 3. The facilities of trade and intercourse between the different sections of the Valley, are now superior to most countries on earth, and are increasing every year. And no country on earth admits of such indefinite improvement either by land or water. More than twenty thousand miles of actual steamboat navigation, with several hundred miles of canal navigation, constructed or commenced, attest the truth of this statement. The first steamboat on the western waters was built at Pittsburg in 1811, and not more than seven or eight had been built, when the writer emigrated to this country in 1817. At this period, (January 1836,) there are several hundred boats on the western waters, and some of the largest size. In 1817, about twenty barges, averaging about one hundred tons each, performed the whole commercial business of transporting merchandize from New Orleans to Louisville and Cincinnati. Each performed one trip, going and returning within the year. About 150 keel boats performed the business on the Upper Ohio to Pittsburg. These averaged about 30 tons each, and were employed one month in making the voyage from Louisville to Pittsburg. Three days, or three days and a half is now the usual time occupied by the steam packets between the two places, and from seven to twelve days between Louisville and New Orleans. Four days is the time of passing from the former place to St. Louis. 4. A fourth reason why population will increase in future in a greater ratio than the past is derived from the increase of population in the Atlantic states, and the greater desire for removal to the west. At the close of the revolutionary war the population of the whole Union but little exceeded two millions. Vast tracts of wilderness then existed in the old states, which have since been subdued, and from whence thousands of enterprising citizens are pressing their way into the Great Valley. Two thirds of the territory of New York, large portions of New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, an extensive district in middle Pennsylvania, to say nothing of wide regions in the southern states, were comprised in this wilderness. These extensive regions have become populous, and are sending out vast numbers of emigrants to the west. Europe is in commotion, and the emigration to North America, in 1832, reached 200,000, a due proportion of which settle in the Western Valley. 5. A fifth reason will be founded upon the immense amount of land for the occupancy of an indefinite number of emigrants, much of which will not cost the purchaser over _one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre_. Without giving the extravagant estimates that have been made by many writers of the wide and uninhabitable desert between the Indian Territory west of Missouri and Arkansas, and the Rocky mountains, nor swampy and frozen regions at the heads of the Mississippi river, and around lake Superior, I will merely exhibit the amount of lands admitting of _immediate_ settlement and cultivation, within the boundaries of the new States and organized Territories. According to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury up to the 30th day of September, 1831, the estimated amount of unsold lands, on which the foreign and Indian titles had been extinguished, within the limits of the new States and Territories, was 227,293,884 acres;--and that the Indian title remained on 113,577,869 acres within the same limits.[5] The Commissioner of the General Land Office in December, 1827, estimated the public domain, beyond the boundaries of the new States and Territories, to be 750 millions of acres. Much of this however, is uninhabitable. According to the Report of 1831, there had been granted to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Alabama for internal Improvements, 2,187,665 acres;--for Colleges, Academies and Universities in the new States and Territories, 508,009;--for education, being the thirty-sixth part of the public lands appropriated to common schools, 7,952,538 acres;--and for seats of government to some of the new States and Territories, 21,589 acres. Up to January, 1826, there had been sold, from the commencement of the land system, only 19,239,412 acres. Since that period to the close of 1835, there have been sold, about 33 millions of acres, making in all sold, a little more than 52 millions. This statement includes Alabama and Florida, which we have not considered as strictly within the Valley. After a hasty and somewhat imperfect estimate of the public lands that are now in market, or will be brought into market within a few years, within the limits of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Michigan, and the Territory of Wisconsin, the amount may be put at 130 millions of acres. This amount admits of immediate settlement and cultivation, and much of it may be put under cultivation without the immense labor of clearing and subduing forest lands. The comparison between the amount of sales of public lands within the last ten years, and the preceding forty years, shows that emigration to the West is increasing at a ratio beyond what is ordinarily supposed, and that the next ten years will find a majority of the population of the United States within this Great Valley. Sales of land from 1786 to 1826, (40 years) 19,239,412 acres. " " from 1826 to 1835, (10 years) 33,000,000 acres. Three millions of families may find farms in the West. The extensive prairie lands of Illinois and Missouri present no obstacle to the settlement of the country. Already, prairies for many miles in extent have been turned into farms. 6. A sixth reason why the increase of the future population of the Valley will greatly exceed the past, is derived from the increased confidence of the community in the general health of the country. The most unreasonable notions have prevailed abroad relative to the health of the western states. All new settlements are more or less unfavorable to health, which, when cultivated and settled become healthy. As a separate chapter will be devoted to this subject, I only advert to the fact now of the increased confidence of the people in the Atlantic States, in the salubrity of our western climate, which already has tended to increase emigration; but which, from facts becoming more generally known, will operate to a much greater extent in future. 7. I will only add that there is already a great amount of intelligence, and of excellent society in all the settled portions of the Western Valley. "The idea is no longer entertained by Eastern people, that going to the West, or the 'Backwoods,' as it was formerly called, is to remove to a heathen land, to a land of ignorance and barbarism, where the people do nothing but rob, and fight, and gouge! Some parts of the West have obtained this character, but most undeservedly, from the _Fearons_, the [Basil] _Halls_, the _Trollopes_, and other ignorant and insolent travellers from England, who, because they were not allowed to insult and outrage as they pleased, with Parthian spirit, hurled back upon us their poisoned javelins and darts as they left us. There is indeed much destitution of moral influence and means of instruction in many, very many, neighborhoods of the West. But there is in all the principal towns a state of society, with which the most refined, I was going to say the most fastidious, of the eastern cities need not be ashamed to mingle."--_Baird._ The eastern emigrant will find, that wholesome legislation, and much of the influence of religion are enjoyed in the Valley of the Mississippi, extending to him all he can ask in the enjoyment of his rights, and the protection of his property. Common School systems have been commenced in some of the states,--others are following their example, and the subject of general education is receiving increasing attention every year. Colleges and other literary institutions are planted, and religious institutions and means of religious instruction are rapidly increasing. Noble and successful efforts are making by the Bible, Missionary, Tract, Sabbath School, Temperance, and other Societies in the West. Great and rapid changes are taking place, if not to the extent we desire, yet corresponding in a degree with the gigantic march of emigration and population. Many other reasons might be urged to show that its prospective increase of population will vastly exceed the ratio of its retrospective increase, but these are sufficient. FOOTNOTES: [3] La Salle appears to have discovered the Bay of St. Bernard, and formed a settlement on the western side of the Colorado, in 1685.--_See J. Q. Adams's Correspondence with Don Onis. Pub. Doc. first session 15th Congress, 1818._ [4] Baird. [5] See Mr. Clay's Report on the Public Lands, April 26, 1832, U. S. Papers. CHAPTER III. CLIMATE. Comparative view of the Climate with the Atlantic States. Diseases.--Means of preserving health. _Climate, &c._ In a country of such vast extent, through 15° of latitude, the climate must necessarily be various. Louisiana, Mississippi and the lower half of Arkansas, lie between the latitudes of 30° and 35°, and correspond with Georgia and South Carolina. Their difference of climate is not material. The northern half of Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky, lie west from North Carolina and the southern portion of Virginia. The climate varies from those states only as they are less elevated than the mountainous parts of Virginia and Carolina. Hence, the emigrant from the southern Atlantic states, unless he comes from a mountainous region, will experience no great change of climate, by emigrating to the Lower Mississippi Valley. Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, lie parallel with the northern half of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and so much of New York and New England as lies south of the 42° of north latitude. But several circumstances combine to produce variations in the climate. 1. Much of those Atlantic states are hilly, and in many parts mountainous, some of which are 2 and 3000 feet above the level of the ocean. The parallel western states have no mountains, and are not proportionably hilly. 2. The Atlantic states border on the ocean on the east, and feel the influence of the cold, damp winds from the northeast and east. Their rains are more copious and their snows deeper. The northern portions of the West, equally with New York and Vermont, are affected with the influence of the lakes, though not to the same extent. 5. "The courses of rivers, by changing in some degree the direction of the winds, exert an influence on the climate. In the Atlantic states, from New England to North Carolina, the rivers run more or less to the southeast, and increase the winds which blow from the northwest, while the great bed of the Mississippi exerts an equal influence in augmenting the number and steadiness of the winds which blow over it from the southwest; and there is another cause of difference in climate, chiefly perceptible, first, in the temperature, which, if no counteracting cause existed, they would raise in the west considerably above that of corresponding latitudes in the east; and, secondly, in the moisture of the two regions, which is generally greater west than east of the mountains, when the southwest wind prevails; as, much of the water with which it comes charged from the Gulf of Mexico, is deposited before it reaches the country east of the Alleghanies."--_Dr. Drake._ It is an error that our climate is more variable, or the summers materially hotter, than in a correspondent latitude in the Atlantic states. "The New Englander and New Yorker north of the mountains of West Point, should bear in mind that his migration is not to the _West_ but _South West_; and as necessarily brings him into a warmer climate, as when he seeks the shores of the Delaware, Potomac, or James' River." The settlers from Virginia to Kentucky, or those from Maryland and Pennsylvania to Ohio, or further west, have never complained of hotter summers than they had found in the land from whence they came. To institute a comparative estimate of temperature between the east and the west, we must observe: first, the thermometer; and, secondly, the flowering of trees, the putting forth of vegetation, and the ripening of fruits and grain in _correspondent latitudes_. This has not usually been done. Philadelphia and Cincinnati approach nearer to the same parallel, than any other places where such observations have been made. Cincinnati, however, is about 50' south of Philadelphia. The following remarks are from Dr. Daniel Drake of Cincinnati, to whose pen the west is much indebted. "From a series of daily observations in Cincinnati or its vicinity, for eight consecutive years, the mean annual temperature has been ascertained to be 54 degrees and a quarter. Dr. Rush states the mean temperature of Philadelphia at 52 degrees and a half; Dr. Coxe, from six years' observations, at 54° and a sixth; and Mr. Legaux, from seventeen years' observations, at Spring Mill, a few miles out of the city, at 53° and a third; the mean term of which results, 53° and a third, is but the fraction of a degree lower than the mean heat of Cincinnati, and actually less than should be afforded by the difference of latitude. "A reference to the temperatures of summer and winter, will give nearly the same results. From nine years' observations, (three at Spring Mill, by Mr. Legaux, and six in Philadelphia, by Dr. Coxe,) the mean summer heat of that part of Pennsylvania, appears to be 76 degrees and six-tenths. The mean summer heat at Cincinnati, for an equal number of years, was 74 degrees and four-tenths. The average number of days in which the thermometer rose to 90 degrees or upwards, during the same period, was fourteen each summer; and the greatest elevation observed was 98 degrees: all of which would bear an almost exact comparison with similar observations in Pennsylvania. Mr. Legaux states the most intense cold, at Spring Mill, from 1787 to 1806, to have been 17 and five-tenths degrees below cipher,--while within the same period it was 18° at Cincinnati. The average of extreme cold for several years, as observed by Mr. Legaux, was one and eight-tenths of a degree below cipher:--the same average at Cincinnati, was two degrees below. From all which we may conclude, that the banks of the Delaware and Ohio, in the same latitudes, have nearly the same temperature." The state of Illinois, extending as it does through five and a half degrees of latitude, has considerable variation in its climate. It has no mountains, and though undulating, it cannot be called hilly. Its extensive prairies, and level surface, give greater scope to the winds, especially in winter. In the southern part of the State, during the three winter months, snow frequently falls, but seldom lies long. In the northern part, the winters are as cold, but not so much snow falls, as in the same latitudes in the Atlantic States. The Mississippi at St. Louis is frequently frozen over, and is crossed on the ice, and occasionally for several weeks. The hot season is longer, though not more intense, than occasionally for a day or two in New England. During the years 1817-18-19, the Rev. Mr. Giddings, at St. Louis, made a series of observations upon Fahrenheit's thermometer. Deg. Hund. Mean temperature for 1817 55 52 Do. do. from the beginning of May, 1818, to the end of April, 1819 56 98 Mean temperature for 1820 56 18 The mean of these results is about fifty-six degrees and a quarter. The mean temperature of each month during the above years, is as follows: Deg. Hund. January 30 62 February 38 65 March 43 13 April 58 47 May 62 66 June 74 47 July 78 66 August 72 88 September 70 10 October 59 00 November 53 13 December 34 33 The mean temperature of the different seasons is as follows: Winter, 34.53--Spring, 54.74--Summer, 74.34--Autumn, 60.77. The greatest extremes of heat and cold during my residence of eighteen years, in the vicinity of St. Louis, is as follows: Greatest heat in July 1820, and July 1833, 100 degrees. Greatest cold January 3d, 1834, 18 degrees below zero,--February 8th, 1835, 22 degrees below zero. The foregoing facts will doubtless apply to about one half of Illinois. This climate also is subject to sudden changes from heat to cold; from wet to dry, especially from November to May. The heat of the summer below the 40° of latitude is more enervating, and the system becomes more easily debilitated than in the bracing atmosphere of a more northerly region. At Marietta, Ohio, in lat. 39° 25' N. and at the junction of the Muskingum river with the Ohio, the mean temperature for 1834, was 52 degrees, four-tenths; highest in August, 95 degrees,--lowest, January, at zero. Fair days 225,--cloudy days 110. At Nashville, Tenn. 1834, the mean temperature was 59 degrees and seventy-six-hundredths; maximum 97, minimum 4 above zero. The summer temperature of this place never reaches 100°. On January 26th, 1832, 18 degrees below zero. February 8th, 1835, 10° below zero. The putting forth of vegetation in the spring furnishes some evidence of the character of the climate of any country, though by no means entirely accurate. Other causes combine to advance or retard vegetation. A wet or dry season, or a few days of heat or cold at a particular crisis, will produce material changes. The following table is constructed from memoranda made at the various dates given, near the latitude of St. Louis, which is computed at 38° 30'. The observations of 1819 were made at St. Charles and vicinity, in the state of Missouri. Those of 1820, in St. Louis county, 17 miles N. W. from the city of St. Louis. The remainder at Rock Spring, Illinois, 18 miles east from St. Louis. It will be perceived, the years are not consecutive. In 1826, the writer was absent to the eastern states, and for 1828, his notes were too imperfect to answer the purpose. In the columns showing the times of the first snows, and the first and last frosts in the season, a little explanation may be necessary. A "light" snow means merely enough to whiten the earth, and which usually disappears in a few hours. Many of the frosts recorded "light" were not severe enough to kill ordinary vegetation. |Peach & |Strawberries|Blackberries|Apple |Apple | |Red bud |in |in |leaves |trees in | Year.|in blossom|blossom. |blossom. |begin to |blossom. | | | | |put forth| | | | | | | | =====+==========+============+============+=========+=========+ | | | | | | 1819 |April 4. |Not noted. |May 19. |April 15.|April 20.| | | | | | | -----+----------+------------+------------+---------+---------+ |April 14. | |May 10. | | | 1820 |No peach |April 2. |fall off |Mar. 25 |April 15.| |B. | |17. | | | -----+----------+------------+------------+---------+---------+ |April 26. | | | | | 1821 |No peach |April 30. |May 21. |April 24.|May 3. | |B. | | | | | -----+----------+------------+------------+---------+---------+ | | | | | | 1822 |April 5. |April 25. |May 10. |April 18.|April 22.| | | | | | | -----+----------+------------+------------+---------+---------+ | | | | | | 1823 |April 19. |April 26. |May 20. |April 15.|April 28.| | | | | | | -----+----------+------------+------------+---------+---------+ | | | | | | 1824 |April 20. |April 28. |May 18. |April 20.|April 29.| | | | | | | -----+----------+------------+------------+---------+---------+ | |April 3. | | | | 1825 |Mar. 25. |Ripe |May 8. |Mar. 30. |April 5. | | |May 17. | | | | -----+----------+------------+------------+---------+---------+ | | | | | | 1827 |April 4. |April 10. |May 15. |April 4. |April 13.| | | | | | | -----+----------+------------+------------+---------+---------+ | | | | | | 1829 |April 20. |April 24. |May 20. |April 20.|April 26.| | | | | | | -----+----------+------------+------------+---------+---------+ | | | | | | 1830 |April 1. |April 5. |May 9. |April 1. |April 9. | | | | | | | continued |Grass |Oaks and |First |Last |First |green in |other forest|snow on |frost in |frost in Year.|prairies.|trees |approach |Spring. |Autumn. | |put forth |of winter. | | | |leaves. | | | =====+=========+============+============+============+========== | | | | | 1819 |April 18.|Half size |Oct. 8. few |May 18, |Sept. 23. | |May 19. |flakes. |very light. | -----+---------+------------+------------+------------+---------- | |April 22. |Oct. 24. few|June 1, |Sept. 20. 1820 |April 10.|full size |flakes. Nov.|very light. |Oct. 8, | |May 7. |11 3 inches.| |ice. -----+---------+------------+------------+------------+---------- | |Ap. 26 to |Nov. 8. |April 18, | 1821 |April 26.|May 3. f. |2-½ in. |severe. |Oct. 8 | |grown 22 | |May 9, light| -----+---------+------------+------------+------------+---------- | |April 29. |Nov. 16, |April 16, | 1822 |April 10.|full size |light. |severe, ice.|Oct. 13. | |May 14. | | | -----+---------+------------+------------+------------+---------- | | | | | 1823 |April 10.|April 23. |Nov. 1, |April 24. |Sp. 21-2. | | |light. | |Ice 23. -----+---------+------------+------------+------------+---------- | | | | |Oct. 21. 1824 |April 14.|April 30. |Nov. 7. |May 5. |hard | | | | |freeze. -----+---------+------------+------------+------------+---------- | | |Dec. 11, |Feb. 22. |Oct. 2-3. 1825 |Mar. 16. |April 3. |3 inches. |Next. |27th, ice. | | | |Ap. 20, ice.| -----+---------+------------+------------+------------+---------- | |April 10. |Nov. 25, |May 7, |Sept. 23, 1827 |Mar. 25. |full size |light. |light. |light. | |April 30. | | | -----+---------+------------+------------+------------+---------- | | |Nov. 12, | | 1829 |April 24.|April 27. |4 inches. |Not noted. |Sept. 17. | | |sleet. | | -----+---------+------------+------------+------------+---------- | |begin Ap. | | | 1830 |April 1. |5. f. size | | | | |May 1. | | | These observations, upon a comparison with the same parallels of latitude in the eastern states, show that there is no material difference of climate between the two sections of our country, except that produced by local causes, as mountainous districts, contiguity to the ocean, &c. A similar error has existed in relation to sudden and extreme changes of weather in the West. People who emigrate to a new country have their curiosity awakened, and perhaps for the first time in their lives become quite observing of such changes. From habitually observing the weather the impression is produced on their minds that there is a marked difference in this climate. Dr. Rush declares that there is but _one_ steady trait in the character of the climate of Pennsylvania--and that is, _it is uniformly variable_, and he asserts that he has known the thermometer fall 20° in one hour and a half. March 26-27, 1818, the thermometer in St. Louis, fell 41° in 30 hours--from 83° to 42°. I have no record or recollection of a more sudden change in 18 years. Mr. Legaux saw it fall in the vicinity of Philadelphia, 47° in 24 hours, and Dr. Drake states that this is five degrees more than any impression ever observed in Cincinnati, in the same length of time. Emigrants from New England and the northern part of New York state, must not expect to find the same climate in the West, at 38 or 40 degrees; but let them remove to the same parallel of latitude in the West, to Wisconsin, or the northern part of Illinois, and they will probably find a climate far more uniform than the land of their birth. Prevailing winds modify and affect the climate of every country. Southwestwardly winds prevail along the Mississippi Valley. The following tabular view of observations made at Cincinnati, by Dr. D. Drake, for six succeeding years, with so few omissions, that they amount to 4200, will give further illustrations of this subject. They have been brought from eight points of the compass. OBSERVATIONS. MONTHS | S.E. | S. | S.W. | N.E. | N. | N.W. | E. | W. | CALM. ===========+======+====+======+======+====+======+====+====+======= January | 6 | 2 | 13 | 8 | 1 | 21 | 3 | 6 | 6 February | 5 | 1 | 13 | 8 | 1 | 14 | 0 | 5 | 8 March | 10 | 1 | 16 | 11 | 1 | 10 | 0 | 5 | 4 April | 7 | 0 | 24 | 10 | 1 | 8 | 1 | 3 | 5 May | 7 | 1 | 19 | 10 | 0 | 10 | 1 | 4 | 6 June | 9 | 1 | 23 | 12 | 5 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 3 July | 6 | 1 | 19 | 11 | 2 | 11 | 1 | 4 | 4 August | 6 | 1 | 23 | 10 | 1 | 12 | 1 | 1 | 6 September | 6 | 1 | 23 | 9 | 0 | 8 | 2 | 3 | 3 October | 9 | 1 | 24 | 6 | 1 | 10 | 2 | 4 | 3 November | 9 | 3 | 13 | 6 | 1 | 10 | 2 | 7 | 5 December | 7 | 1 | 11 | 5 | 0 | 15 | 2 | 6 | 9 -----------+------+----+------+------+----+------+----+----+------- Total | 87 | 14 | 221 | 106 | 14 | 136 | 16 | 50 | 62 The results of my own observations, made for twelve years, with the exception of 1826, and with some irregularity, from travelling in different parts of Missouri and Illinois during the time, do not vary in any material degree from the above table, excepting fewer east and northeast winds. Dr. Drake has given a table, setting forth the results of 4268 observations on the state of the weather at Cincinnati, from which it will be perceived that of the 365 days in a year, about 176 will be fair, 105 cloudy, and 84 variable. Dr. L. C. Beck made similar observations at St. Louis during the year 1820, which produced the result of 245 clear days, and cloudy, including variable days, 110. Years. |Clear days.|Cloudy days.|Variable days. ==============+===========+============+============== 1 | 180 | 107 | 68 2 | 158 | 112 | 91 3 | 187 | 78 | 85 4 | 152 | 106 | 107 5 | 185 | 111 | 68 6 | 172 | 112 | 74 --------------+-----------+------------+-------------- Total 6 years.| 1,034 | 626 | 493 --------------+-----------+------------+-------------- Mean terms. | 172.33 | 104.33 | 82.16 The following table shows the condition of the weather in each month of a mean year, for the above period. MONTHS. | Clear days. | Cloudy days. | Variable days. ==========+=============+==============+================ January | 9.8 | 13.1 | 7.8 February | 10.3 | 12.0 | 6.5 March | 13.5 | 9.1 | 8.3 April | 13.1 | 10.8 | 7.6 May | 15.0 | 8.5 | 7.5 June | 15.5 | 5.0 | 9.6 July | 19.0 | 5.5 | 6.0 August | 19.6 | 4.6 | 6.5 September | 19.5 | 5.3 | 6.1 October | 16.1 | 6.0 | 8.1 November | 9.5 | 13.5 | 5.5 December | 9.6 | 14.1 | 5.8 There would be some variations from the foregoing table in a series of observations in the country bordering upon the Upper Mississippi and Missouri. The weather in the states of Ohio and Kentucky, is doubtless more or less affected in autumn by the rains that fall on the Alleghany mountains, and the rise of the Ohio and its tributaries. So the weather in the months of April, May and June in Missouri, is affected by the spring floods of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. The following table is constructed from a series of observations made at the Military posts in the West, by the Surgeons of the U. S. Army, for four years:--1822, 1823, 1824, and 1825. [See American Almanac for 1834, p. 81.] ------------------+--------------------------+---------+---------+---------- | | | | | | | | | | | | | |N. |Elevation|Mean Temp. Posts. | Situations. |Latitude.|above the|for four | |deg. m. |ocean. |years. ------------------+--------------------------+---------+---------+---------- Fort Brady, |Sault de St. Mary, outlet | 46 22 | 5 95 | 41 37 | of Lake Superior, | | | Fort Snelling, |Mouth of St. Peters, 10 m.| 46 39 | 7 80 | 45 00 | below Falls St. Anthony,| | | Fort Howard, |Green bay, Wisconsin T. | 45 00 | 6 00 | 44 50 Fort Crawford, |Prairie du Chien, W. Ter. | 43 25 | 5 80 | 45 52 Council Bluffs, |Upper Missouri, | 41 31 | 8 00 | 50 82 Cantonment Jessup,|On Red river, La. | | | 68 31 Baton Rouge, |Louisiana, | 30 32 | | 68 07 continued ------------------+--------+--------+------------+------------------------- | | | | Weather. | | | +------------------------- | | | | MONTHLY AVERAGE. | | | +-----+------+-----+------ Posts. | | |Range of |Fair |Cloudy|Rainy|Snow |Maximum.|Minimum.|Thermometer.|days.|d's |days.|days. ------------------+--------+--------+------------+-----+------+-----+------ Fort Brady, | 90 | -33 | 1 23 |13 30| 2 27 |7 83 |6 02 | | | | | | | Fort Snelling, | 96 | -29 | 1 25 |16 94| 5 50 |5 77 |2 22 | | | | | | | Fort Howard, | 1 00 | -38 | 1 38 |15 47| 7 98 |4 56 |2 42 Fort Crawford, | 96 | -28 | 1 24 |16 80| 6 29 |3 87 |1 32 Council Bluffs, | 1 08 | -21 | 1 29 |19 68| 6 54 |2 95 |1 25 Cantonment Jessup,| 97 | 7 | 90 |18 63| 4 49 |7 25 | 05 Baton Rouge, | 99 | 18 | 81 |20 16| 4 08 |6 16 | - _signifies below zero._ The times of observation at the above posts were 7 A. M., and 2 and 9, P. M. The mean of each month was deduced from 90 observations, and of each year from 1095 observations. The reader, who is desirous of following up this comparative view of the climate between the Atlantic states and the Valley of the Mississippi, can compare the observations recorded in these tables, with similar observations made in the same parallels of latitude. He will find the climate of the West quite as uniform, and the weather as little variable as in the Atlantic states. _Diseases_,--_Means of preserving health, &c._ Of the Lower Valley, I shall say but very little on this subject. Dr. Drake observes, "The diseases of this portion of the Great Valley are few, and prevail chiefly in summer and autumn. They are the offspring of the combined action of intense heat and marsh exhalation." They are generally remittent and intermittent bilious fevers. Emigrants most generally undergo a seasoning, or become acclimated. Many persons, however, from the northern and middle states, and from Europe, enjoy health. In sickly situations these fevers are apt to return, and often prove fatal. They frequently enfeeble the constitution, and produce chronic inflammation of the liver, enlargement of the spleen, or terminate in jaundice or dropsy, and disorder the digestive organs. When persons find themselves subject to repeated attacks, the only safe resource is an annual migration to a more northern climate during the summer. Many families from New Orleans, and other exposed situations, retire to the pine barrens of Louisiana, in the hot and sickly season, where limpid streams, flowing over a pebbly bed, and a terebinthine atmosphere are enjoyed. Eight months of the year, are pleasant and healthy in the Lower Mississippi Valley. The advice of Dr. Drake is, that "Those who migrate from a colder climate to the southern Mississippi states, should observe the following directions: First--To arrive there in autumn, instead of spring or summer. Second--If practicable, to spend the hottest part of the first two or three years, in a higher latitude. Third--To select the healthiest situations. Fourth--To live temperately. Fifth--To preserve a regular habit. Lastly--To avoid the heat of the sun from 10 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon, and above all the night air. By a strict attention to these rules, many would escape the diseases of the climate, who annually sink under its baleful influence." Those states and territories to which this work is intended more immediately as a GUIDE, do not differ very materially in salubrity. The same general features are found in each. There is but little diversity in climate,--their geological and physical structure coincide, and the experience of years shows that there is no great difference. Where autumnal fevers are common they are usually of similar character. The same causes for disease exist in Ohio as in Missouri, in Michigan as in Illinois, in Kentucky and Tennessee as in Indiana. All these states are much more infested with the maladies which depend on variations of temperature, than the states farther south. All have localities where intermittents and agues are found, and all possess extensive districts of country where health is enjoyed by a very large proportion of emigrants. There is some difference between a heavily timbered and a prairie country, in favor of the latter; other circumstances being equal. Changes favorable to continued health are produced by the settlement and cultivation of any particular portion of country. Of one fact I have long since satisfied my mind, that ordinary fevers are not caused by the use of the water of the West. Exceptions may be made in some few cases, where a vein of water is impregnated with some deleterious mineral substance. The use of a well, dug in the vicinity of a coal bed in Illinois, was supposed to have caused sickness in a family for two seasons. Any offensive property in water is readily detected by the taste. Cool, refreshing water is a great preservative of health. It is common for families, (who are too indifferent to their comfort to dig a well,) to use the tepid, muddy water of the small streams in the frontier states, during the summer, or to dig a shallow well and wall it with timber, which soon imparts an offensive taste to the water. Water of excellent quality may be found in springs, or by digging from 20 to 30 feet, throughout the western states. Most of the water thus obtained is hard water, from its limestone qualities, but it is most unquestionably healthy. Those persons who emigrate from a region of sandstone, or primitive rock, where water is soft, will find our limestone water to produce a slight affection of the bowels, which will prove more advantageous to health than otherwise, and which will last but a few weeks. Whenever disease prevails in the western states, it may generally be attributed to one or more of the following causes. 1st. _Variations of the temperature._ This cause, we have already shown, exists to as great extent in the same latitude east of the mountains. 2nd. _The rapid decomposition of vegetable matter._ In all our rich lands, there are vast quantities of vegetable matter mixed with the soil, or spread over the surface. Extreme hot weather, following especially a season of much rain, before the middle of July, will produce sickness. If the early part of summer be tolerably dry, although a hot season follows, sickness does not generally prevail. The year 1820 was an exception to this rule. It was throughout, a very dry, hot, sickly year through the West; indeed, throughout the world. A wet season, with a moderately cool atmosphere, has proved healthy. 3d. _Marsh exhalations._ These, combined with heat, will always generate fevers. Indeed, there is probably very little difference in the miasm thrown off from decomposed vegetable matter, and that produced from sluggish streams, standing waters and marshes. These, in the great Valley, abound with decayed vegetable matter. Hence, along the streams which have alluvial _bottoms_ (as low lands upon streams are called in the West,) some of which are annually overflowed, and where the timber and luxuriant vegetable growth are but partially subdued, the inhabitants are liable to fevers, dysenteries and agues. Situations directly under the bluffs adjacent to the bottom lands, that lie upon our large rivers, especially when the vegetation is unsubdued, have proved unhealthy. So have situations at the heads or in the slope of the ravines that put down from the bluffs towards the rivers. The principal diseases that prevail may be stated as follows. In the winter, and early in the spring, severe colds, inflammation of the lungs and pleurisies are most common. The genuine hereditary consumption of New-England is rare, and families and individuals predisposed to that disease might often be preserved by migration to this Valley. Acute inflammation of the brain, and inflammatory rheumatism are not unusual at that season. During the summer and autumn, cholera infantum with children in large towns, diarrhoea, cholera morbus, dysentery, intermittent and remittent bilious fevers prevail. The intermittent assumes various forms, and has acquired several names amongst the country people, where it prevails more generally than in large towns. It is called the "chill and fever,"--"ague,"--"dumb ague," &c., according to its form of attack. The remittent fever is the most formidable of our autumnal diseases, especially when of a highly bilious type. In most seasons, these diseases are easily managed, and yield to a dose or two of medicine. Sore eyes, especially in autumn, is a common complaint in the frontier settlements, and when neglected or improperly managed, have terminated in total blindness. The "milk sickness," as it is called, occasionally prevails in some localities, some particulars of which will be found in another place. There is a disease that afflicts many frontier people, called by some "sick stomach," by others, "water brash," from its symptoms of sudden nausea, with vomiting, especially after meals. In 1832, the cholera made its appearance in the West. In many places, its first approach was attended with great mortality, but its second visit to a place has been in a milder and more manageable form. It has visited various parts of the West on each returning season since, especially along the great rivers and about the steamboats. It appears to have changed somewhat the characteristics of our western diseases, and will probably become a modified and manageable disease. Since its visit, our fevers are more congestive, less bile is secreted, and the stomach more affected. The subject will doubtless be noticed by our physicians, and observations made, how far this new disease will become assimilated to the ordinary diseases of the country. We are satisfied, after a long course of observations, much travelling, and conversing with many hundreds of families with the view of arriving at correct conclusions on these subjects, _that there is no such operation as that of emigrants undergoing a seasoning, or becoming acclimated_, in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan, or the Wisconsin Territory. _Nor does it make the least difference from what part of the United States, or Europe, they come, nor whether they arrive here in the spring or autumn._ There is an erroneous notion prevailing in some of the Atlantic states on this subject, that should be corrected. When sickness prevails, there is just as much, and it is equally severe, amongst the old settlers, those born in the country, or who migrate from the Carolinas or Georgia, as those who come from the northern states. Families are just as liable to sickness, and are as often attacked for the first time, after residing several years in the country, as at any other time. A large proportion of the families and individuals, who remove from New England to the various parts of the Valley, north of the 37th degree of latitude have no sickness the first year. The impression has formerly existed abroad, that Illinois is less healthy than other western states. This is entirely erroneous. As in all countries, there are some localities, where the causes that produce sickness exist more than in others. This is not the fact with Illinois in general. That this state is as healthy as any other western state, can be abundantly supported by facts. Let a candid observer compare the health of the early settlers of New England, with that of the early settlers of the West, and he will find the scale to preponderate in favor of the latter. Unless there is some strange fatality attending Illinois, its population must be more healthy than the early settlers of a timbered region. But in no period of its history have sickness and death triumphed, in any respect equal to what they did two or three years since, in the lake country of New York. The year 1811, is recorded in the memoirs of the early settlers, as a season of unusual sickness near the banks of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The latter river rose to an unusual height in June, the waters of the small creeks were backed up, and a large surface of luxuriant vegetation was covered and deadened. This was succeeded by hot and dry weather. Bilious and intermittent fevers prevailed extensively. The seasons of 1819, '20, and '21 were usually sickly in Illinois and Missouri. Emigrants, in shoals, had spread over a wide range of country within a year or two preceding. Multitudes were placed under circumstances the most unfavorable to the preservation of health, in new and open cabins of green timber, often using the stagnant water of creeks and ponds, with a luxuriant vegetation around them undergoing decomposition, and all the other evils attendant on the settlement of a new and unbroken country. Under such circumstances, can it be surprising that many were sick, and that many died? The summer of 1820 was the hottest and driest ever known in this country. For weeks in succession, the thermometer, in the shade at St. Louis, was up to 96° for hours in the day. Not a cloud came over the sun, to afford a partial relief from its burning influence. The fevers of that season were unusually rapid, malignant, and unmanageable. Almost every mark of the yellow fever, as laid down in the books, was exhibited in many cases, both in town and country. The bilious fever put on its most malignant type. Black, foetid matter was discharged from the stomach, and by stools. The writer and all his family suffered severely that season. He lived seventeen miles from St. Louis, on the road to St. Charles in Missouri, on a farm. The settlement had been called healthy. The Missouri bottom was one mile distant. Three miles west southwest, was the Creve-coeur lake, a body of water several miles in length and half a mile in width, connected by an outlet with the Missouri river. The water of this lake was entirely stagnant, covered with a thick scum, and sent forth a noisome smell. Fish in it died. My oldest son, a robust youth of ten years of age, and my brother-in-law, a hale and stout young man, sickened and died the first week in October. I was attacked the 5th day of July, came as near dying as a person could and recover. All my children were sick. While convalescent, in September, I took a long journey to Cape Girardeau country, 120 miles south, and back through the lead mine country to the Missouri river, 60 miles west of St. Louis, and in all the route found that sickness had prevailed to the same extent. At Vincennes and other parts of Indiana, disease triumphed. The country around Vincennes, on the east side of the Wabash, is a sandy plain. A gentleman who escaped the ravages of fever in that place, and who was much engaged in nursing the sick and consoling the dying, stated to me that nothing was so disheartening as the cloudless sky and burning sun that continued unchanged for weeks in succession. Mortality prevailed to a great extent along the banks of the Wabash. Hindostan, a town on the east fork of White river, 38 miles from Vincennes on the road to Louisville, was begun the preceding year. Seventy or eighty families had crowded in at the commencement of the year 1820. The heavy timber of poplar, (whitewood) oak and beech, had been cut down, the brush burned, and the logs left on the ground. By June the bark was loosened, an intolerable stench proceeded from the timber,--sickness followed, and about two thirds of the population died! And yet, to look about the place, there is no local cause that would indicate sickness. In the summer of 1821, sickness prevailed very extensively, but in a much milder form. Its type was intermittent, and usually yielded to ordinary remedies. During that year the number of deaths in St. Louis was 136--the population 5000. At least one third of that number were strangers and transient persons, who either arrived sick, or were taken sick within two or three days after arrival. St. Louis had then no _police_ regulations--the streets were filthy in the extreme--and the population were crowded into every hole and corner. This was the most sickly and dying season St. Louis ever knew, except when the cholera prevailed in October, 1832. The same years (1820-21) were noted for unusual sickness throughout the United States, and indeed the whole world. The bilious fever prevailed in the hilly and mountainous districts of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and even among the Green Mountains of Vermont. Very little general sickness (except cholera in 1832-'33) prevailed in 1830, '31, '32, or '33. In 1834, congestive fever, and dysentery, with some of the symptoms of cholera, existed in many places in the West, though not extensively fatal. In the month of June, were frequent sudden showers in Illinois and Missouri, with intervals of extreme heat. July and August very hot and dry. The disease began early in July and continued till September. The year 1835, was the most sickly year, for common intermittents, _which prevailed more amongst the old settlers, than the newly arrived emigrants_. In Illinois, and generally throughout the West, below the fortieth degree of latitude, it was sickly, though not fatal. Early in the spring, till the month of May, it was unusually dry, and vegetation was two weeks later than usual. May and a part of June were very wet, followed by a few days of extremely hot weather. Vegetation grew with great luxuriance. Newly ploughed ground sent forth a noxious effluvium, with a most offensive odour, and after a few days would be covered with a greenish coat, like the scum on stagnant water. Town situations, even along the banks of river, were comparatively healthy. In case of sickness, physicians are to be found in almost every county, and every season adds to their number. Charges are somewhat higher than in the northern states. Many families keep a few simple articles of medicine, and administer for themselves. Calomel is a specific; and is taken by multitudes without hesitation, or fear of danger. From fifteen to twenty grains are an ordinary dose for a cathartic. Whenever nausea of the stomach, pains in the limbs, and yawning, or a chill, indicate the approach of disease, a dose of calomel is taken at night, in a little apple honey, or other suitable substance, and followed up in the morning with a dose of castor oil, or salts, to produce a brisk purge. Sometimes an emetic is preferred. Either a cathartic or an emetic will leave the system under some debility. The mistake frequently made is, in not following up the evacuating medicine with tonics. This should be done invariably, unless the paroxysm of fever has commenced. A few doses of sulphate of quinine or Peruvian bark in its crude state, will restore the system to its natural tone. To prevent an attack of fever, medicine should be taken on the very first symptoms of a diseased stomach; it should not be tampered with, but taken in sufficient doses to relieve the system from morbid effects, and then followed up by tonics, to restore its vigor and prevent relapse. New comers will find it advantageous for protecting themselves from the damp atmosphere at night, to provide close dwellings; yet when the air is clear, to leave open doors and windows at night for free circulation, but not to sleep directly in the current of air; and invariably to wear thin clothing in the heat of the day, and put on thicker garments at night, and in wet and cloudy weather. I have observed that those families are seldom sick who live in comfortable houses, with tight floors, and well ventilated rooms; and who, upon change of weather, and especially in time of rains, make a little fire in the chimney, although the thermometer might not indicate the necessity. In fine, I am prepared to give my opinion, decidedly, in favor of the general health of this country and climate. I would not certainly be answerable for all the bad locations, the imprudences, and whims of all classes of emigrants, which may operate unfavorably to health. I only speak for myself and family. I decidedly prefer this climate, with all its miasm, to New-England, with its northeast winds, and damp, "raw" and pulmonary atmosphere. We very seldom have fogs in Illinois and Missouri. My memoranda, kept with considerable accuracy, for twelve years, give not more than half a dozen foggy mornings in a year. The following comparisons between St. Louis and several eastern cities, will afford some evidence of the opinions expressed above. I have remarked already, that 1821, was more sickly in St. Louis, than any preceding year, and deaths were more numerous in proportion to the population. Some cases of fever were more malignant in 1820, in that place, but deaths were more frequent the following season. I solemnized the marriage of a young lady of my acquaintance, who was under the age of fourteen years. In eight days she was a widow. At the funeral of a gentleman the same season, who left a widow under twenty years, there were present thirteen widows, all under twenty-four years of age, and all had lost their companions that season. Young men were victims more than any other age or condition. And yet I am prepared to show, that St. Louis, that summer, was not more sickly than several eastern cities were in 1820 and 1823. The population of St. Louis in 1821, varied but little from 5,000; the number of deaths during that year was one hundred and thirty-six. This account was taken by the Rev. Salmon Giddings, who was particular in collecting the facts. The proportion of the deaths to the population was one to thirty-five. In 1820, Boston contained a population of 43,893,--number of deaths 1,103; proportion one to thirty-nine and three fourths. New-York the same year contained a population of 123,000,--deaths 3,515; being a proportion of one to a fraction less than thirty-five. In Philadelphia, the population then was 108,000,--deaths 3,374; being a proportion of one to thirty-two. Baltimore had a population of 62,000,--deaths 1,625; being a proportion of one to thirty-eight. The aggregate population of these four cities in 1820, was 336,893; the aggregate number of deaths, 9,617; the proportion of one to thirty-five, the same as that of St. Louis. IN 1823. _Boston._ Population estimated at 45,000; number of deaths by official returns, 1,154; the proportion of one to thirty-nine. _New-York._ Population about 130,000,--deaths 3,444; proportion of one to thirty-seven and two thirds. _Philadelphia._ Population about 120,000,--deaths 4,600, proportion of one to twenty-six. [This was an uncommonly sickly season in Philadelphia.] _Baltimore._ Population estimated at 65,000; deaths were 2,108; proportion of one to thirty and two thirds. I have thus selected the mortality of St. Louis during the most sickly season since my residence in this country, and compared it with the bills of mortality of four eastern cities for two years, those of 1820 and 1823, and the result is favorable to the health of St. Louis, and by consequence, to the adjoining States. For ten years past, there has been no general sickness in St. Louis, during the summer and autumnal months, excepting the cholera in 1832. Some parts of Indiana and Ohio are unquestionably more subject to bilious attacks than Illinois. The reason is obvious. Much of that region is heavily timbered, and, upon cutting it away in spots, and letting in the rays of the sun upon vegetable matter undergoing decomposition, miasmata are generated. These regions will become comparatively healthy, when put under general cultivation. The story is told, that the late emperor of France lay encamped with one of his armies near a place reputed unhealthy, when one of his officers requested a furlough. The reason being asked, and given, that the place was unhealthy, and the applicant feared to die an inglorious death from fever: Napoleon replied, in his accustomed laconic style, "Go to your post; men die everywhere." If a family emigrate to a new and distant country, and any of the number sicken and die, we are apt to indulge in unavailing regret at the removal; whereas had the same afflictive event happened before removal, it would have been regarded in quite a different light. Let then, none come to Illinois who do not expect to be sick and to die, whenever Divine Providence shall see fit so to order events. The _milk sickness_ is a disease of a singular character, which prevails in certain places. It first affects animals, especially cows, and from them is communicated to the human system by eating the milk, or flesh. The symptoms of the disease indicate poison; and the patient is affected nearly in the same way, as when poisonous ingredients have been received into the system. Cattle, when attacked by it, usually die. In many instances it proves mortal in the human system; in others, if yields to the skill of the physician. Much speculation has been had upon its cause, which is still unknown. The prevailing idea is, that it is caused by some poisonous substance eaten by the cattle, but whether vegetable or mineral, remains undetermined. Physicians and others have attempted to ascertain the cause of this disease, but hitherto without success. It infests only particular spots, or small districts, and these are soon found out. There are places in Ohio, Indiana, and the southern states, where it exists. Its effects are more frequent in autumn than any other season; and to guard against it, the people either keep their cows in a pasture, or refuse to use their milk. Some have supposed this disease to be produced by the cattle feeding on the _cicuta virosa_, or water hemlock; as a similar disease once infested the cattle in the north of Europe, the cause of which was traced out by the great naturalist Linnæus; but it is not known that this species of plant exists amongst the botanical productions of Missouri and Illinois. Anxious to furnish all the information, on this very important subject, to persons desirous of emigrating to the West, I will prolong this chapter by inserting the following: "ADVICE TO EMIGRANTS, RECENT SETTLERS, AND TO THOSE VISITING THE SOUTHERN COUNTRY. "The outlines which have already been given will afford some information to emigrants from other sections of the Union, or from Europe. We will now offer a few cautionary remarks, particularly intended for such as are about to settle, or have recently settled in this section of the United States. "Of new comers, there are two tolerably distinct classes: the one comprising farmers, mechanics, and indeed all those who calculate on obtaining a subsistence by manual industry; the other is composed of professional men, tradesmen, and adventurers of every description. Towards the first class our attention is now directed, premising that throughout a great portion of the western country, except in large towns, almost every mechanic is almost necessarily a farmer; the population being in but few places sufficiently dense to support that designation of mechanical employments which is common in the eastern and middle states. "For the industrious and temperate of this class, our country holds forth inducements which are not generally known or understood. "The language of indiscriminate panegyric, which has been bestowed on its climate and soil, has conveyed little information, and is the source of many fears and suspicions in the minds of people at a distance. Other accounts have described the western country as uniformly sickly; but the habit of exaggeration in its favor has been most prevalent; neither need we wonder, when much of the information communicated, has been afforded by interested landholders, or speculators, and by travellers, whose views have been superficial, and whose journeys have been performed generally, either on the rivers or by post roads. "The first inquiry of a substantial farmer, from one of the old settled states, is mostly, for good land in the vicinity of a market; and afterwards, whether the situation be healthy. It is true that there are many places in the western country, affording the qualities expressed in this description, but they are perhaps all occupied; and it would be, in several respects, more advisable for a farmer, possessing even a considerable sum of money in hand, to inquire first for a healthy situation, and then good land. "The spirit of improvement throughout the United States, especially evidenced in canalling, and rail-roads, will, it is hoped, in a few years, open modes of communication, which as yet are wanting, with the markets. "The same remarks will apply to the poorer class of emigrants. If they value their own health, and that of their families, the main object of their attention will be to secure, if possible, a situation remote from the fogs that hover over the channels of large rivers, which become partly dry in summer, and from the neighborhood of swamps, marshes, ponds, and small lakes. "Every person, on coming from beyond the mountains, and especially from the eastern States, or Europe, will have to undergo some degree of change in his constitution, before it becomes naturalized to the climate; and all who move from a cold to a considerably warmer part of the western country will experience the same alteration; it will, therefore, be wisdom for the individual brought up in a more rigorous climate, that he seek a situation where the circulation of the air is unimpeded and free, and that he avoid those flat and marshy districts, which have been already described. "Those who settle in new countries are almost universally exposed to inconveniences which have an unfavorable influence on health. They are seldom able for a length of time to erect comfortable places of residence; and indeed, many postpone this important object of attention, even after their circumstances will permit them to build comfortable dwelling houses. "Wool is mostly a scarce article in new settlements, so that cotton and linen garments are too frequently worn in winter. There is another circumstance, which no doubt has an unfavorable influence on health, especially among the poorer class: it is the want, during the summer season particularly, of substantial food. This is sometimes owing to indolence or improvidence; but perhaps oftener, to the circumstances in which a few families are placed, at a distance from any established or opulent settlement. "Erroneous views are too generally entertained in relation to hardening the human system; and the analogies drawn from savage life, are altogether inconclusive. The manners of the North American Indians are essentially different from those of the whites. It is true, there is a portion of the latter, especially in Illinois and Missouri, who from infancy are educated almost in the habits of the aborigines. "We have frequently heard the example of savages referred to, as an argument in favor of attempting to strengthen the constitution by exposure.[6] There is plausibility in this; but might not the example of the negroes in the lower parts of South Carolina and Georgia, be also quoted as evidencing the propriety of living on corn meal and sweet potatoes, and working every day in the water of a rice field during the sickly season? They are generally more healthy than the whites who own them, and who reside on the plantations in the summer. The civilized man may turn to savage life perhaps with safety, as regards health; but then he must plunge with the Indian into the depths of the forest, and observe consistency in all his habits. These pages are not written, however, for such as are disposed to consider themselves beyond the pale of civilized society; but for the reflecting part of the community, who can estimate the advantages to be derived from a prudent care of health. "Much disease, especially in the more recently settled parts of this country, is consequent to neglecting simple and comfortable precautionary means; sometimes this neglect is owing to misdirected industry, and at others to laziness or evil habits. "To have a dry house, if it be a log one, with the openings between the logs well filled up, so that it may be kept warm in winter; to fill up all the holes in its vicinity which may contain stagnant water; to have a good clean spring or well, sufficient clothing, and a reasonable supply of provisions, should be the first object of a settler's attention: but frequently a little, wet, smoky cabin or hovel is erected, with the floor scarcely separated from the ground, and admitting the damp and unwholesome air. All hands that can work, are impelled, by the father's example, to labor beyond their strength, and more land is cleared and planted with corn than is well tended; for over-exertion, change in the manner of living, and the influence of other debilitating causes, which have been mentioned, bring sickness on at least a part of the family, before the summer is half over. "It is unnecessary for even the poorest emigrant to encounter these causes of distress, unless seduced by the misrepresentations of some interested landholder, or by the fantasies of his own brain, to an unhealthy and desolate situation, where he can neither help himself, nor be assisted by others. "Many persons on moving into the _back woods_, who have been accustomed to the decencies of life, think it little matter how they live, because _no one sees them_. Thus we have known a family of some opulence to reside for years in a cabin unfit for the abode of any human being, because they could not find time to build a house; and whenever it rained hard, the females were necessarily engaged in rolling the beds from one corner of the room to another, in order to save them from the water that poured in through the roof. This cabin was intended at first as only a very temporary residence, and was erected on the edge of a swamp, for the convenience of being near to a spring. How unreasonable must such people be, if they expect health! "Clothing for winter should be prepared in summer. It is a common, but very incorrect practice among many farmers, both west and east of the Alleghany mountains, to postpone wearing winter clothing until the weather has become extremely cold: this is a fruitful source of pulmonary diseases, of rheumatisms, and of fevers. "With regard to providing a sufficiency of nourishing food, no specific directions can be given, further than to recommend, what is much neglected--particular attention to a good garden spot; and to remark, that those who devote undivided attention to cultivating the soil, receive more uniform supplies of suitable nourishment than the more indolent, who spend a considerable portion of their time in hunting. "New settlers are not unfrequently troubled with diseases of the skin, which are often supposed to be the itch: for these eruptions they generally use repellant external applications; this plan of treatment is prejudicial. "The most proper time for the removal of families to this country from the Atlantic states, is early in the spring, while the rivers are full; or if the journey be made by land, as soon as the roads are sufficiently settled, and the waters abated. "Persons unaccustomed to the climate of the lower Mississippi country, are necessarily exposed, whilst there in the summer season, to many causes of disease. It will be advisable for such to have a prudent care of their health, and yet, a care distinct from that finical timidity which renders them liable to early attacks of sickness. "There is one important consideration, which perhaps has been somewhat overlooked by medical men, who have written on this subject. Natives of colder and healthier regions, when exposed in southern and sickly climates, experience, if they remain any length of time without evident and violent disease, an alteration in the condition of the liver, and of the secreted bile itself; when it passes through the bowels, its color being much darker than usual. Sometimes, indeed, it appears to be "locked up in the liver," the stools having an ashen appearance. This state of the biliary secretion is frequently accompanied, although the patient is otherwise apparently in tolerable health, by a pain over the eye-balls, particularly when the eyes are rolled upward. "The proper mode of treatment for such symptoms is, to take without delay, not less than twenty grains of calomel, and in eight hours a wine glass full of castor oil. The tone of the stomach should not be suffered to sink too much after the operation of the medicine, which, if necessary, may be repeated in twenty-four hours. Sulphate of quinine, or other tonics, with nutritive food, which is easy of digestion, should also be taken in moderate portions at a time. "Where diseases are rapid in their progress, and dangerous, no time is to be lost. The practice of taking salts and other aperients, when in exposed situations, and for the purpose of preventing disease, is injurious. It is sufficient, that the bowels be kept in a natural and healthy state; for all cathartics, even the mildest, have a tendency to nauseate the stomach, create debility, and weaken the digestive faculty. A reduction of tone in the system, which is always advantageous, will be more safely effected by using somewhat less than usual of animal food, and of spirituous, strong vinous, or fermented liquors. The robust will derive benefit from losing a little blood. "It ought to be well understood, that as we approximate tropical climates, the doses of medicine, when taken, should be increased in quantity, and repeated with less delay than is admissible in colder countries. Exposure to the night air is certainly prejudicial; so also is the intense heat of the sun, in the middle of the day. Violent exercise should also be avoided. Bathing daily in water of a comfortable temperature, is a very commendable practice; and cotton worn next the skin is preferable to linen. "It is impossible to prevent the influence of an atmosphere pregnant with the causes of disease; but the operation of those causes may generally be counteracted by attention to the rules laid down; and it is no small consolation to be aware, that on recovery from the first attack, the system is better adapted to meet and sustain a second of a similar nature. The reader will understand that we do not allude to relapses, occurring while the system is enfeebled by the consequences of disease." To the foregoing remarks, I add the following, from an address of Judge Hall to the "Antiquarian and Historical Society of Illinois," December 10, 1827. "The climate, particularly in reference to its influence on the human system, presents another subject of investigation. The western country has been considered unhealthy; and there have been writers, whose disturbed imaginations have misled them into a belief that the whole land was continually exposed to the most awful visitations of Providence, among which have been numbered the hurricane, the pestilence, and the earthquake. If we have been content to smile at such exaggerations, while few had leisure to attempt a serious refutation, and while the facts upon which any deliberate opinion must have been based, had not been sufficiently tested by experience, the time has now arrived when it is no longer excusable to submit in silence to the reproaches of ignorance or malice. It is proper, however, to remark, as well in extenuation of those who have assailed our country, as in the support of the confidential denial, which I feel authorized to make to their assertions, that a vast improvement in the article of health has taken place within a few years. Diseases are now mild which were once malignant, and their occurrence is annually becoming less frequent. This happy change affords strong authority for the belief, that although the maladies which have heretofore afflicted us, were partly imputable to the climate, other, and more powerful causes of disease must have existed, which have vanished. We who came to the frontier, while the axe was still busy in the forest, and when thousands of the acres which now yield abundance to the farmer, were unreclaimed and tenantless, have seen the existence of our fellow citizens assailed by other than the ordinary ministers of death. Toil, privation and exposure, have hurried many to the grave; imprudence and carelessness of life, have sent crowds of victims prematurely to the tomb. It is not to be denied that the margins of our great streams in general, and many spots in the vicinity of extensive marshes, are subject to bilious diseases; but it may be as confidently asserted, that the interior country is healthy. Yet the first settlers invariably selected the rich alluvion lands upon the navigable rivers, in preference to the scarcely less fertile soil of the prairies, lying in situations less accessible, and more remote from market. They came to a wilderness in which houses were not prepared for their reception, nor food, other than that supplied by nature, provided for their sustenance. They often encamped on the margin of the river exposed to its chilly atmosphere, without a tent to shelter, with scarcely a blanket to protect them. Their first habitations were rude cabins, affording scarcely a shelter from the rain, and too frail to afford protection from the burning heat of the noonday sun, or the chilling effects of the midnight blast. As their families increased, another and another cabin was added, as crazy and as cheerless as the first, until, admonished of the increase of their own substance, the influx of wealthier neighbors, and the general improvement of the country around them, they were allured by pride to do that to which they never would have been impelled by suffering. The gratuitous exposure to the climate, which the backwoodsman seems rather to court than avoid, is a subject of common remark. No extremity of weather confines him to the shelter of his own roof. Whether the object be business or pleasure, it is pursued with the same composure amid the shadows of the night, or the howling of the tempest, as in the most genial season. Nor is this trait of character confined to woodsmen or to farmers; examples of hardihood are contagious, and in this country all ranks of people neglect, or despise the ordinary precautions with respect to health. Judges and lawyers, merchants, physicians and ministers of the gospel, set the seasons at defiance in the pursuit of their respective callings. They prosecute their journeys regardless of weather; and learn at last to feel little inconvenience from the exposure, which is silently undermining their constitutions. Is it extraordinary that people thus exposed should be attacked by violent maladies? Would it not be more wonderful that such a careless prodigality of life could pass with impunity? These remarks might be extended; the food of the first settler, consisting chiefly of fresh meat without vegetables and often without salt; the common use of ardent spirits, the want of medical aid, by which diseases, at first simple, being neglected become dangerous; and other evils peculiar to a new country, might be noticed as fruitful sources of disease; but I have already dwelt sufficiently on this subject. That this country is decidedly healthy, I feel no hesitation in declaring; but neither argument nor naked assertions will convince the world. Let us collect such facts as amount to evidence, and establish the truth by undeniable demonstration." FOOTNOTES: [6] Uniform exposure to the weather is favorable to health. I can affirm this from long experience and observation. Our hunters, and surveyors, who uniformly spend their time for weeks in the woods and prairies, who wade in the water, swim creeks, are drenched in the rains and dews, and sleep in the open air or a camp at night, very rarely are attacked with fevers. I have known repeated instances of young men, brought up delicately in the eastern cities, accustomed, as clerks, to a sedentary life, with feeble constitutions,--I have known such repeatedly to enter upon the business of surveying the public lands, or in the hunting and trapping business, be absent for months, and return with robust health. It is a common thing for a frontier man, whose health is on the decline, and especially when indications of pulmonary affection appear, to engage in a hunting expedition to renovate his health. I state these facts, and leave it to the medical faculty to explain the _why and wherefore_. One circumstance may deserve attention. All these men, as do the Indians, _sleep with their feet towards the fire at night_. And it is a common notion with this class, that if the feet are kept hot through the night, however cold the atmosphere, or however much exposed the rest of the body, no evil consequences will ensue. I have passed many a night in this position, after fatiguing rides of thirty or forty miles in the day on our extreme frontiers, and through rains, and never experienced any inconvenience to health, if I could get a pallet on the cabin floor, and my feet to the fire. Those who are exposed to these hardships but occasionally, when compelled by necessity, and who endeavor to protect themselves at all other times, usually suffer after such exposure. I have observed that children, when left to run in the open air and weather, who go barefoot, and oftentimes with a single light garment around them, who sleep on the floor at night, are more healthy than those who are protected. CHAPTER IV. CHARACTER, MANNERS, AND PURSUITS OF THE PEOPLE. Cotton and Sugar Planters;--Farmers;--Population of the large towns and cities;--Frontier class;--Hunters and Trappers;--Boatmen. There is great diversity in the character and habits of the population of the Valley of the Mississippi. Those who have emigrated from the Atlantic states, as have a very large proportion of those persons who were not born in the Valley, of course do not differ essentially from the remaining population of those states. Some slight shades of difference are perceptible in such persons as have lived long enough in the country to become assimilated to the habits, and partake of the feelings, of western people. Emigrants from Europe have brought the peculiarities of the nations and countries from whence they have originated, but are fast losing their national manners, and feelings, and, to use a provincial term, will soon become "westernized." The march of emigration from the Atlantic border has been nearly in a line due west. Tennessee was settled by Carolinians, and Kentucky by Virginians. Ohio received the basis of its population from the states in the same parallel, and hence partakes of all the varieties from Maryland to New England. Michigan is substantially a child of New York. The planters of the south have gone to Mississippi, Louisiana, and the southern part of Arkansas. Kentucky and Tennessee have spread their sons and daughters over Indiana, Illinois and Missouri; but the two former states are now receiving great numbers of emigrants from all the northern states, including Ohio, and multitudes from the south, who desire to remove beyond the boundaries and influence of a slave population. Slavery in the west, keeps nearly in the same parallels as it holds in the east, and is receding south, as it does on the Atlantic coast. Many descendants of the Scotch, Irish and Germans, have come into the frontier states from Western Pennsylvania. We have European emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland. Those of the latter are more generally found about our large towns and cities, and along the lines of canalling. The French were the explorers and early settlers of the Valley immediately bordering on the Mississippi, 150 years since. They formed the basis of population of Louisiana a few years since, but are relatively diminishing before the emigration from other states of the Union. Their descendants show many of the peculiar and distinctive traits of that people in all countries. They possess mild vivacity, and gaiety, and are distinguished for their quiet, inoffensive, domestic, frugal, and unenterprising spirit and manners. The poorer class of French are rather peculiar and unique. Their ancestors were isolated from the rest of the world, had no object of excitement or ambition, cared little for wealth, or the accumulation of property, and were accustomed to hunt, make voyages in their canoes, smoke and traffic with the Indians. But few of them knew how to read and write. Accustomed from infancy to the life of huntsmen, trappers and boatmen, they make but indifferent farmers. They are contented to live in the same rude, but neatly whitewashed cabin, cultivate the same cornfields in the same mode, and drive the same rudely constructed horse cart their fathers did. In the neatness of their gardens, which are usually cultivated by the females, they excel the Americans. They are the _coureurs du bois_ of the West. The European Germans are now coming into the Valley by thousands, and, for a time, will retain their manners and language. _Cotton and Sugar Planters._--These people, found chiefly in Mississippi, Louisiana, and the southern part of Arkansas, have a great degree of similarity. They are noted for their high-mindedness, generosity, liberality, hospitality, sociability, quick sense of honor, resentment of injuries, indolence, and, in too many cases, dissipation. They are much addicted to the sports of the turf and the vices of the gaming table. Still there are many planters of strictly moral, and even religious habits. They are excessively jealous of their political rights, yet frank and open hearted in their dispositions, and carry the duties of hospitality to a great extent. Having overseers on most of their plantations, the labor being performed by slaves, they have much leisure, and are averse to much personal attention to business. They dislike care, profound thinking and deep impressions. The young men are volatile, gay, dashing and reckless spirits, fond of excitement and high life. There is a fatal propensity amongst the southern planters to decide quarrels, and even trivial disputes by duels. But there are also many amiable and noble traits of character amongst this class; and if the principles of the Bible and religion could be brought to exert a controlling influence, there would be a noble spirited race of people in the southwestern states. It cannot be expected that I should pass in entire silence the system of slaveholding in the lower Valley, or its influence on the manners and habits of the people. This state of society seems unavoidable at present, though I have no idea or expectation it will be perpetual. Opposite sentiments and feelings are spreading over the whole earth, and a person must have been a very inattentive observer of the tendencies and effects of the diffusion of liberal principles not to perceive that hereditary, domestic servitude must have an end. This is a subject, however, that from our civil compact, belongs exclusively to the citizens of the states concerned; and if not unreasonably annoyed, the farming slaveholding states, as Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, will soon provide for its eventual termination. Doubtless, in the cotton and sugar growing states it will retain its hold with more tenacity, but the influence of free principles will roll onward until the evil is annihilated. The barbarous and unwise regulations in some of the planting states, _which prohibit the slaves from being taught to read_, are a serious impediment to the moral and religious instruction of that numerous and unfortunate class. Such laws display on the part of the law makers, little knowledge of human nature and the real tendency of things. To keep _slaves_ entirely ignorant of the rights of man, in this spirit-stirring age, is utterly impossible. Seek out the remotest and darkest corner of Louisiana, and plant every guard that is possible around the negro quarters, and the light of truth will penetrate. Slaves will find out, for they already know it, that they possess rights as men. And here is the fatal mistake now committed in the southern slaveholding states--legislating against the instruction of their slaves--to keep them from knowing their rights. They will obtain some loose, vague, and undefined notion of the doctrine of human rights, and the unrighteousness of oppression in this republican country. Being kept from all the moral and religious instruction which Sabbath schools, the Bible, and other good books are calculated to impart, and with those undefined notions of liberty, and without any moral principle, they are prepared to enter into the first insurrectionary movement proposed by some artful and talented leader. The same notion prevailed in the West Indies half a century since, and many of the planters resisted and persecuted the benevolent Moravians, who went there to instruct the blacks in the principles and duties of religion. A few of the planters reasoned justly. They invited these benevolent men on their plantations, and gave them full liberty on the Sabbath, and at other suitable seasons, to instruct their slaves. The happiest effects followed. On these plantations, where riot, misrule, and threatened insurrections, had once spread a panic through the colony, order, quietness and submission followed. Such would be the effects if the southern planter would invite the minister of the gospel and the Sunday school teacher to visit his plantation, allow his slaves to be instructed to read, and each to be furnished with a copy of the Scriptures. The southern planter hourly lives under the most terrific apprehensions. It is in vain to disguise the fact. As Mr. Randolph once significantly said in Congress, "_when the night bell rings, the mother hugs her infant closer to her breast_." Slavery, under any circumstances, is a bitter draught--equally bitter to him who tenders the cup, and to him who drinks it. But in all the northern slaveholding states, it is comparatively mild. Its condition would be much alleviated, and the planter might sleep securely if he would abolish his barbarous laws, more congenial with Asiatic despotism than American republicanism, and provide for his slaves the benefits of wholesome instruction. Philanthropy and interest unite in their demands upon every southern planter to provide Sunday school instruction for his slaves. The planting region of the lower Valley furnishes an immense market for the productions and manufactures of the upper Valley. Indirectly, the Louisiana sugar business is a source of profit to the farmer of Illinois and Missouri. Pork, beef, corn, corn-meal, flour, potatoes, butter, hay, &c. in vast quantities, go to supply these plantations. In laying in their stores, the sugar planters usually purchase one barrel of second or third quality of beef or pork per annum, for each laborer. Large drafts for sugar mills, engines and boilers, are made upon the Cincinnati and Pittsburg iron foundries. Mules and horses are driven from the upper country, or from the Mexican dominions, to keep up the supply. The commerce of the upper country that concentrates at New Orleans is amazing, and every year is rapidly increasing. Sixteen hundred arrivals of steamboats took place in 1832, and the estimated number in 1835 is 2,300. _Farmers._--In the northern half of the Valley the productions, and the modes of cultivation and living are such as to characterize a large proportion of the population as farmers. No country on earth has such facilities for agriculture. The soil is abundantly fertile, the seasons ordinarily favorable to the growth and maturity of crops, and every farmer in a few years, with reasonable industry, becomes comparatively independent. Tobacco and hemp are among the staple productions of Kentucky. Neat cattle, horses, mules and swine are its stock. Some stock growers have monopolized the smaller farms till they are surrounded with several thousand acres. Blue grass pastures furnish summer feed, and extensive fields of corn, cut up near the ground, and stacked in the fields, furnish stores for fattening stock in the winter. In some counties, raising of stock has taken place of all other business. The Scioto Valley, and other districts in Ohio, are famous for fine, well fed beef. Thousands of young cattle are purchased by the Ohio graziers, at the close of winter, of the farmers of Illinois and Missouri. The Miami and Whitewater sections of Ohio and Indiana, abound with swine. Cincinnati has been the great pork mart of the world. 150,000 head of hogs have been frequently slaughtered there in a season. About 75,000 is estimated to be the number slaughtered at that place the present season. This apparent falling off in the pork business, at Cincinnati, is accounted for by the vast increase of business at other places. Since the opening of the canals in Ohio, many provision establishments have been made along their line. Much business of the kind is now done at Terre Haute and other towns on the Wabash,--at Madison, Louisville, and other towns on the Ohio,--at Alton and other places in Illinois. The farmers of the West are independent in feeling, plain in dress, simple in manners, frank and hospitable in their dwellings, and soon acquire a competency by moderate labor. Those from Kentucky, Tennessee, or other states south of the Ohio river, have large fields, well cultivated, and enclosed with strong built rail or worm fences, but they often neglect to provide spacious barns and other outhouses for their grain, hay and stock. The influence of habit, is powerful. A Kentuckian would look with contempt upon the low fences of a New-Englander as indicating thriftless habits, while the latter would point at the unsheltered stacks of wheat, and dirty threshing floor of the former, as proof direct of bad economy and wastefulness. _Population of the Cities and large Towns._ The population of western towns does not differ essentially from the same class in the Atlantic states, excepting there is much less division into grades and ranks, less ignorance, low depravity and squalid poverty amongst the poor, and less aristocratic feeling amongst the rich. As there is never any lack of employment for laborers of every description, there is comparatively no suffering from that cause. And the hospitable habits of the people provide for the sick, infirm and helpless. Doubtless, our _circumstances_ more than any thing else, cause these shades of difference. The common mechanic is on a social equality with the merchant, the lawyer, the physician, and the minister. They have shared in the same fatigues and privations, partook of the same homely fare, in many instances have fought side by side in defence of their homes against the inroads of savages,--are frequently elected to the same posts of honor, and have accumulated property simultaneously. Many mechanics in the western cities and towns, are the owners of their own dwellings, and of other buildings, which they rent. I have known many a wealthy merchant, or professional gentleman occupy on rent, a building worth several thousand dollars, the property of some industrious mechanic, who, but a few years previous, was an apprentice lad, or worked at his trade as a journeyman. Any sober, industrious mechanic can place himself in affluent circumstances, and place his children on an equality with the children of the commercial and professional community, by migrating to any of our new and rising western towns. They will find no occasion here for combinations to sustain their interests, nor meet with annoyance from gangs of unprincipled foreigners, under the imposing names of "Trades Unions." Manufactures of various kinds are carried on in our western cities. Pittsburg has been characterized as the "Birmingham of America." The manufactures of iron, machinery and glass, and the building of steamboats, are carried on to a great extent. Iron and salt, are made in great quantities in Western Pennsylvania, and Western Virginia. Steamboats are built to a considerable extent at Fulton, two miles above Cincinnati, and occasionally at many other places on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Alton offers great facilities for this business. Cotton bagging, bale ropes, and cordage, are manufactured in Tennessee and Kentucky. The following article from the Covington Enquirer, gives a few items of the industry and enterprise of Kentucky,--of the manufacture of Newport and Covington. Both of these thriving towns lie at the mouth of the Licking river, the one on the right bank, and the other on the left, and both in direct view of Cincinnati. MANUFACTURES IN COVINGTON AND NEWPORT. "Founding the calculation upon the actual manufactures of October, and the known power of their machinery, the Company will the ensuing year, give employment to more than four hundred operatives, and manufacture, 60,000 lbs. of Cotton Bagging, 84,000 do Cotton Yarns, 274,268 lbs. Bale Rope, 448,000 do Cordage, 44,592 yards Linseys, 63,588 do Cotton Plains, 97,344 do Kentucky Jeans, 548,530 do Cotton Bagging and Hemp. Estimating Bale Rope and Cotton Bagging at 33 per cent under the price at which the Company have sold these articles for the last six months, the manufactures of this Company during the ensuing year will amount to $358,548.44. Almost all the manufactures at Covington and Newport being exported to foreign markets, it will result that the annual exports from these points will, in round numbers, be from the Interior $750,000 Campbell County 150,000 Boone County 234,000 Covington 548,500 Newport 358,500 ---------- $2,041,000 The Newport Manufacturing Company has depended principally for its supply of Hemp, on the production of Mason county, of which Maysville is the market;--this season they have not been able to get a supply at Maysville, and it is a remarkable fact in the history of the Hemp manufactories in Kentucky, that this company, owing to the scarcity and high prices of Hemp in Kentucky, _has imported this season_ 354,201 lbs. _Russia Hemp_. Various manufactures are springing up in all the new states, which will be noticed under their proper heads. The number of merchants and traders is very great in the Valley of the Mississippi, yet mercantile business is rapidly increasing.--Thousands of the farmers of the West, are partial traders. They take their own produce, in their own flat boats, down the rivers to the market of the lower country. _Frontier class of Population._ The rough, sturdy habits of the backwoodsmen, living in that plenty which depends on God and nature, have laid the foundation of independent thought and feeling deep in the minds of western people. Generally, in all the western settlements, three classes, like the waves of the ocean, have rolled one after the other. First comes the Pioneer, who depends for the subsistence of his family chiefly upon the natural growth of vegetation, called the "range," and the proceeds of hunting. His implements of agriculture are rude, chiefly of his own make, and his efforts directed mainly to a crop of corn, and a "truck patch." The last is a rude garden for growing cabbage, beans, corn for roasting ears, cucumbers and potatoes. A log cabin, and occasionally a stable and corn crib, and a field of a dozen acres, the timber girdled or "deadened," and fenced, are enough for his occupancy. It is quite immaterial whether he ever becomes the owner of the soil. He is the occupant for the time being, pays no rent, and feels as independent as the "lord of the manor." With a horse, cow, and one or two breeders of swine, he strikes into the woods with his family, and becomes the founder of a new county, or perhaps state. He builds his cabin, gathers around him a few other families of similar taste and habits, and occupies till the range is somewhat subdued, and hunting a little precarious, or, which is more frequently the case, till neighbors crowd around, roads, bridges and fields annoy him, and he lacks elbow-room. The pre-emption law enables him to dispose of his cabin and cornfield, to the next class of emigrants, and, to employ his own figures, he "breaks for the high timber,"--"clears out for the New Purchase," or migrates to Arkansas or Texas, to work the same process over. The next class of emigrants purchase the lands, add "field to field," clear out the roads, throw rough bridges over the streams, put up hewn log houses, with glass windows, and brick or stone chimneys, occasionally plant orchards, build mills, school houses, court houses, &c., and exhibit the picture and forms of plain, frugal, civilized life. Another wave rolls on. The men of capital and enterprise come. The "settler" is ready to sell out, and take the advantage of the rise of property,--push farther into the interior, and become himself, a man of capital and enterprise in time. The small village rises to a spacious town or city,--substantial edifices of brick, extensive fields, orchards, gardens--colleges and churches are seen. Broadcloths, silks, leghorns, crapes, and all the refinements, luxuries, elegancies, frivolities and fashions, are in vogue. Thus wave after wave is rolling westward--the real _el dorado_ is still farther on. A portion of the two first classes remain stationary amidst the general movement, improve their habits and condition, and rise in the scale of society. The writer has travelled much amongst the first class--the real pioneers. He has lived many years in connexion with the second grade, and now the third wave is sweeping over large districts of Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. Migration has become almost a habit in the west. Hundreds of men can be found, not fifty years of age, who have settled for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time on a new spot. To sell out and remove only a few hundred miles, makes up a portion of the variety of backwoods life and manners. But to return to the Frontier class. 1. _Dress._--The hunting shirt is universally worn. This is a kind of loose, open frock, reaching halfway down the thighs, with large sleeves, the body open in front, lapped over, and belted with a leathern girdle, held together with a buckle. The cape is large, and usually fringed with different colored cloth from that of the body. The bosom of this dress sometimes serves as a wallet for a "chunk" of bread, jerk or smoke-dried venison, and other articles. It is made either of dressed deer skins, linsey, coarse linen, or cotton. The shirt, waistcoat and pantaloons are of similar articles and of the customary form. Wrappers of cloth or dressed skins, called "leggins" are tied round the legs when travelling. Moccasins of deer skins, shoe packs, and rough shoes, the leather tanned and cobbled by the owner, are worn on the feet. The females' dress in a coarse gown of cotton, a bonnet of the same stuff, and denominated in the eastern states a "sun-bonnet." The latter is constantly worn through the day, especially when company is present. The clothing for both sexes is made at home. The wheel and loom are common articles of furniture in every cabin. 2. _Dwellings._--"Cabin" is the name for a plain, rough log-house, throughout the west. The spot being selected, usually in the timbered land, and near some spring, the first operation of the newly arrived emigrant is to cut about 40 logs of the proper size and length for a single cabin, or twice that number for a double one, and haul them to the spot. A large oak or other suitable timber, of straight grain, and free from limbs, is selected for clapboards for the roof. These are four feet in length, split with a froe six or eight inches wide, and half an inch thick. _Puncheons_ are used for the floor. These are made by splitting trees about eighteen inches in diameter into slabs, two or three inches in thickness, and hewn on the upper surface. The door way is made by cutting out the logs after raising, of a suitable width, and putting upright pieces of timber at the sides. The shutter is made of clapboards, pinned on cross pieces, hung by wooden hinges, and fastened by a wooden latch. A similar aperture, but is wider made at one end for the chimney. The men of the settlement, when notified, collect and raise the building. Four stout men with axes are placed on the corners to notch the logs together, while the rest of the company lift them up. After the roof is on the body of the building, it is slightly hewed down both out and inside. The roof is formed by shortening each end log in succession till one log forms the comb of the roof. The clapboards are put on so as to cover all cracks, and held down by poles or small logs. The chimney is built of sticks of wood, the largest at the bottom, and the smallest at the top, and laid up with a supply of mud or clay mortar. The interstices between the logs are chinked with strips of wood and daubed with mortar both outside and in. A double cabin consists of two such buildings with a space of 10 or 12 feet between, over which the roof extends. A _log house_, in western parlance, differs from a cabin in the logs being hewn on two sides to an equal thickness before raising,--in having a framed and shingled roof, a brick or stone chimney, windows, tight floors, and are frequently clapboarded on the outside and plastered within. A log house thus finished, costs more than a framed one. Cabins are often the temporary dwellings of opulent and highly respectable families. The axe, auger, froe, drawing knife, broad-axe, and crosscut saw are the only tools required in constructing these rude edifices;--sometimes the axe and auger only are employed. Not a nail or pane of glass is needed. Cabins are by no means as wretched for residences as their name imports. They are often roomy, comfortable and neat. If one is not sufficient to accommodate the family, another is added, and another until sufficient room is obtained. 3. _Furniture and mode of living._--The genuine backwoodsman makes himself and family comfortable and contented where those, unaccustomed to his mode of life, would live in unavailing regret, or make a thousand awkward apologies on the visit of a neighbor or traveller. A table is made of a split slab and supported by four round legs. Clapboards supported by pins stuck in the logs answer for shelves for table furniture. The bedstead is often made in the corner of the room by sticks placed in the logs, supported at the outward corner by a post, on which clapboards are laid, the ends of which enter the wall between the logs, and which support the bedding. On the arrival of travellers or visiters, the bed clothing is shared with them, being spread on the puncheon floor that the feet may project towards the fire. Many a night has the writer passed in this manner, after a fatiguing day's ride, and reposed more comfortably than on a bed of down in a spacious mansion. All the family of both sexes, with all the strangers who arrive, often lodge in the same room. In that case the under garments are never taken off, and no consciousness of impropriety or indelicacy of feeling is manifested. A few pins stuck in the wall of the cabin display the dresses of the women and the hunting shirts of the men. Two small forks or bucks-horns fastened to a joist are indispensable articles for the support of the rifle. A loose floor of clapboards, and supported by round poles, is thrown over head for a loft which furnishes a place to throw any articles not immediately wanted, and is frequently used for a lodging place for the younger branches of the family. A ladder planted in the corner behind the door answers the purpose of stairs. The necessary table and kitchen furniture are a few pewter dishes and spoons, knives and forks, (for which however, the common hunting knife is often a substitute,) tin cups for coffee or milk, a water pail and a small gourd or calabash for water, with a pot and iron Dutch oven, constitute the chief articles. Add to these a tray for wetting up meal for corn bread, a coffee pot and set of cups and saucers, a set of common plates, and the cabin is furnished. The hominy mortar and hand mill are in use in all frontier settlements. The first consists of a block of wood with an excavation burned at one end and scraped out with an iron tool, wide at top and narrow at the bottom that the action of the pestle may operate to the best advantage. Sometimes a stump of a large tree is excavated while in its natural position. An elastic pole, 20 or 30 feet in length, with the large end fastened under the ground log of the cabin, and the other elevated 10 or 15 feet and supported by two forks, to which a pestle 5 or 6 inches in diameter and 8 or 10 feet long is fixed on the elevated end by a large mortice, and a pin put through its lower end so that two persons can work it in conjunction. This is much used for pounding corn. A very simple instrument to answer the same purpose, is a circular piece of tin, perforated, and attached to a piece of wood like a grater, on which the ears of corn are rubbed for meal. The hand mill is in the same form as that used in Judea in the time of our Savior. Two circular stones, about 18 inches in diameter constructed like ordinary mill stones, with a staff let into the runner or upper stone near its outer edge, with the upper end inserted in a joist or board over head, and turned by the hands of two persons while one feeds it with corn. Horse mills follow the mortar and hand mill in the scale of improvement. They are constructed variously. A _hand_ mill is the most simple. A large upright post is placed on a gudgeon, with shafts extending horizontally 15 or 20 feet. Around the ends of these is a band of raw hide twisted, which passes around the trundle head and turns the spindle and communicates motion to the stone. A _cog_ mill is formed by constructing a rim with cogs upon the shafts, and a trundle head to correspond. Each person furnishes his own horses to turn the mill, performs his own grinding, and pays toll to the owner for use of the mill. Mills with the wheel on an inclined plane, and carried by oxen standing on the wheel, are much in use in those sections where water power is not convenient, but these indicate an advance to the second grade of society. Instead of bolting cloths, the frontier people use a sieve or as called here, a "search." This is made from a deer skin prepared to resemble parchment, stretched on a hoop and perforated full of holes with a hot wire. Every backwoodsman carries on all occasions, the means of furnishing his meat. The rifle, bullet pouch and horn, hunting knife, horse and dog are his constant companions when from home, and woe be to the wolf, bear, deer or turkey that comes within one hundred and fifty yards of his trail. With the first emigration there are few mechanics; hence every settler becomes expert in supplying his own necessaries. Besides clearing land, building cabins, and making fences, he stocks his own plough, repairs his wagon and his harness, tans his own leather, makes his shoes, tables, bedsteads, stools or seats, trays and a hundred other articles. These may be rudely constructed, but they answer his purpose very well. The following extracts from the graphic "SKETCHES OF THE WEST," by James Hall, Esq. completes this extended picture of backwoods manners. "The traveller, accustomed to different modes of life, is struck with the rude and uncomfortable appearance of every thing about this people,--the rudeness of their habitations, the carelessness of their agriculture, the unsightly coarseness of all their implements and furniture, the unambitious homeliness of all their goods and chattels, except the axe, the rifle, and the horse--these being invariably the best and handsomest which their means enable them to procure. But he is mistaken in supposing them indolent or improvident; and is little aware how much ingenuity and toil have been exerted in procuring the few comforts which they possess, in a country without arts, mechanics, money, or commercial intercourse. "The backwoodsman has many substantial enjoyments. After the fatigue of his journey, and a short season of privation and danger, he finds himself surrounded with plenty. His cattle, hogs, and poultry, supply his table with meat; the forest abounds in game; the fertile soil yields abundant crops; he has, of course, bread, milk, and butter; the rivers furnish fish, and the woods honey. For these various articles, there is, at first, no market, and the farmer acquires the generous habit of spreading them profusely on his table, and giving them freely to a hungry traveller and an indigent neighbor. "Hospitality and kindness are among the virtues of the first settlers. Exposed to common dangers and toils, they become united by the closest ties of social intercourse. Accustomed to arm in each other's defence, to aid in each other's labor, to assist in the affectionate duty of nursing the sick, and the mournful office of burying the dead, the best affections of the heart are kept in constant exercise; and there is, perhaps, no class of men in our country, who obey the calls of benevolence, with such cheerful promptness, or with so liberal a sacrifice of personal convenience. "We read marvellous stories of the ferocity of western men. The name of Kentuckian is constantly associated with the idea of fighting, dirking, and gouging. The people of whom we are now writing do not deserve this character. They live together in great harmony, with little contention and less litigation. The backwoodsmen are a generous and placable race. They are bold and impetuous; and when differences do arise among them, they are more apt to give vent to their resentment at once, than to brood over their wrongs, or to seek legal redress. But this conduct is productive of harmony; for men are always more guarded in their deportment to each other, and more cautious of giving offence, when they know that the insult will be quickly felt, and instantly resented, than when the consequences of an offensive action are doubtful, and the retaliation distant. We have no evidence that the pioneers of Kentucky were quarrelsome or cruel; and an intimate acquaintance with the same race, at a later period, has led the writer to the conclusion, that they are a humane people; bold and daring, when opposed to an enemy, but amiable in their intercourse with each other and with strangers, and habitually inclined to peace." In morals and the essential principles of religion, this class of people are by no means so defective as many imagine. The writer has repeatedly been in settlements and districts beyond the pale of civil and criminal law, where the people are a "law unto themselves," where courts, lawyers, sheriffs, and constables existed not, and yet has seen as much quiet and order, and more honesty in paying just debts, than where legal restraints operated in all their force. The turpitude of vice and the majesty of virtue, were as apparent as in older settlements. Industry, in laboring or hunting, bravery in war, candor, honesty, and hospitality were rewarded with the confidence and honor of the people. Regulating parties would exist, and thieves, rogues and counterfeiters were sure to receive a striped Jacket "worked nineteen to the dozen," and by this mode of operation, induced to "clear out;" but truth, uprightness, honesty and sincerity are always respected. Many of the frontier class are _illiterate_, but they are by no means _ignorant_. They are a shrewd, observing, thinking people. They may not have learned the black marks in books, but they have studied _men and things_, and have a quick insight into human nature. They are not inattentive to religion, though their opportunities of religious instruction are few, compared with old countries. They have prejudices and fears about many of the organized benevolent societies of the present age, yet there are no people more readily disposed to attend religious meetings, and whose hearts are more readily affected with the gospel than the backwoods people; and as large a proportion are orderly professors of religion as in any part of the Union. Ministers of the gospel and Missionaries, who can suit themselves to the circumstances and habits of frontier people,--who like Paul, can "become all things to all men,"--find pleasant and interesting fields of labor on all our frontiers. But let such persons show fastidiousness, affect superior intelligence and virtue, catechise the people for their plainness and simplicity of manners, and draw invidious comparisons, and they are sure to be "used up," or left without hearers, to deplore the "dark clouds" of ignorance and prejudice in the west. _Hunters and Trappers._ Entirely beyond the boundaries of civilization are many hundreds of a unique class, distinguished by the terms Hunters and Trappers. They are engaged in hunting buffalo and other wild game, and trapping for beaver. They are found upon the vast prairies of the West and Northwest,--in all the defiles and along the streams of the Rocky mountains, and in various parts of the Oregon Territory, to the peninsula of California. They are an enterprising and erratic race from almost every state, and are usually in the employ of persons of capital and enterprise, and who are concerned in the fur and peltry business. Expeditions for one, two, or three years, are fitted out from St. Louis, or some commercial point, consisting of companies, who ascend the rivers to the regions of fur. The hunters and trappers, receive a proportion of the profits of the expedition. Some become so enamored with this wandering and exposed life as to lose all desire of returning to the abodes of civilization, and remain for the rest of their lives in the American deserts. There are individuals, who are graduates of colleges, and who once stood high in the circles of refinement and taste, that have passed more than twenty years amongst the roaming tribes of the Rocky mountains, or on the western slope, till they have apparently lost all feelings towards civilized life. They have afforded an interesting but melancholy example of the tendencies of human nature towards the degraded state of savages. The improvement of the species is a slow and laborious process,--the deterioration is rapid, and requires only to be divested of restraint, and left to its own unaided tendencies. Many others have returned to the habits of civilization, and some with fortunes made from the woods and prairies. _Boatmen._ These are the fresh water sailors of the West, with much of the light hearted, reckless character of the sons of the Ocean, including peculiar shades of their own. Before the introduction of Steamboats on the western waters, its immense commerce was carried on by means of _keel boats_, and _barges_. The former is much in the shape of a canal boat, long, slim-built, sharp at each end, and propelled by setting poles and the cordelle or long rope. The barge is longer, and has a bow and stern. Both are calculated to ascend streams but by a very slow process. Each boat would require from ten to thirty hands, according to its size. A number of these boats frequently sailed in company. The boatmen were proverbially lawless at every town and landing, and indulged without restraint in every species of dissipation, debauchery and excess. But this race has become reformed, or nearly extinct;--yes, reformed by the mighty power of steam. A steamboat, with half the crew of a barge or keel, will carry ten times the burden, and perform six or eight trips in the time it took a keel boat to make one voyage. Thousands of flat boats, or "broad horns," as they are called, pass _down_ the rivers with the produce of the country, which are managed by the farmers of the West, but never return up stream. They are sold for lumber, and the owners, after disposing of the cargo, return by steam. The number of boatmen on the western waters is not only greatly reduced, but those that remain are fast losing their original character. CHAPTER V. PUBLIC LANDS. System of Surveys.--Meridian and Base Lines.--Townships.--Diagram of a township surveyed into Sections.--Land Districts and Offices. --Pre-emption rights.--Military Bounty Lands.--Taxes.--Valuable Tracts of country unsettled. In all the new states and territories, the lands which are owned by the general government, are surveyed and sold under one general system. Several offices, each under the direction of a surveyor general, have been established by acts of Congress, and districts, embracing one or more states, assigned them. The office for the surveys of all public lands in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and the Wisconsin country is located at Cincinnati. The one including the states of Illinois and Missouri, and the territory of Arkansas is at St. Louis. Deputy surveyors are employed to do the work at a stipulated rate per mile, generally from three to four dollars, who employ chain bearers, an axe, and flag man, and a camp-keeper. They are exposed to great fatigue and hardship, spending two or three months at a time in the woods and prairies, with slight, moveable camps for shelter. In the surveys, "_meridian_" lines are first established, running north from the mouth of some noted river. These are intersected with "_base_" lines. There are five principal meridians in the land surveys in the west. The "_First Principal Meridian_" is a line due north from the mouth of the Miami. The "_Second Principal Meridian_" is a line due north from the mouth of Little Blue river, in Indiana. The "_Third Principal Meridian_" is a line due north from the mouth of the Ohio. The "_Fourth Principal Meridian_" is a line due north from the mouth of the Illinois. The "_Fifth Principal Meridian_" is a line due north from the mouth of the Arkansas. Another Meridian is used for Michigan, which passes through the central part of the state. Its base line extends from about the middle of lake St. Clair, across the state west to lake Michigan. Each of these meridians has its own base line. The surveys connected with the third and fourth meridians, and a small portion of the second, embrace the state of Illinois. The base line for both the second and third principal meridians commences at Diamond Island, in Ohio, opposite Indiana, and runs due west till it strikes the Mississippi, a few miles below St. Louis. All the _townships_ in Illinois, south and east of the Illinois river, are numbered from this base line either north or south. The third principal meridian terminates with the northern boundary of the state. The fourth principal meridian commences in in the centre of the channel, and at the mouth of the Illinois river, but immediately crosses to the _east_ shore, and passes up on that side, (and at one place nearly fourteen miles distant) to a point in the channel of the river, seventy-two miles from its mouth. Here its base line commences and extends across the peninsula to the Mississippi, a short distance above Quincy. The fourth principal meridian is continued northward through the military tract, and across Rock river, to a curve in the Mississippi at the upper rapids, in township eighteen north, and about twelve or fifteen miles above Rock Island. It here crosses and passes up the _west_ side of the Mississippi river fifty-three miles, and recrosses into Illinois, and passes through the town of Galena to the northern boundary of the state. It is thence continued to the Wisconsin river and made the principal meridian for the surveys of the territory, while the northern boundary line of the state is constituted its base line for that region. Having formed a principal meridian with its corresponding base line, for a district of country, the next operation of the surveyor is to divide this into tracts of six miles square, called "_townships_." In numbering the townships _east_ or _west_ from a principal meridian, they are called "_ranges_," meaning a range of townships; but in numbering _north_ or _south_ from a base line, they are called "_townships_." Thus a tract of land is said to be situated in township four north in range three east, from the third principal meridian; or as the case may be. Townships are subdivided into square miles, or tracts of 640 acres each, called "_sections_." If near timber, trees are marked and numbered with the section, township, and range, near each sectional corner. If in a large prairie, a mound is raised to designate the corner, and a billet of charred wood buried, if no rock is near. Sections are divided into halves by a line north and south, and into quarters by a transverse line. In sales under certain conditions, quarters are sold in equal subdivisions of forty acres each, at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. Any person, whether a native born citizen, or a foreigner, may purchase forty acres of the richest soil, and receive an indisputable title, for fifty dollars. _Ranges_ are townships counted either east or west from meridians. _Townships_ are counted either north or south from their respective base lines. _Fractions_, are parts of quarter sections intersected by streams or confirmed claims. The parts of townships, sections, quarters, &c. made at the lines of either townships or meridians are called _excesses_ or _deficiencies_. _Sections_, or miles square are numbered, beginning in the northeast corner of the township, progressively west to the range line, and then progressively east to the range line, alternately, terminating at the southeast corner of the township, from one to thirty-six, as in the following diagram: +------+------+------+------+------+------+ | | | | | | | | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | | | | | | | | +------+------+------+------+------+------+ | | | | | | | | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | | | | | | | | +------+------+------+------+------+------+ | | | | | | | | 18 | 17 | 16[A]| 15 | 14 | 13 | | | | | | | | +------+------+------+------+------+------+ | | | | | | | | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | | | | | | | | +------+------+------+------+------+------+ | | | | | | | | 30 | 29 | 28 | 27 | 26 | 25 | | | | | | | | +------+------+------+------+------+------+ | | | | | | | | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | | | | | | | | +------+------+------+------+------+------+ [A] Appropriated for schools in the township. I have been thus particular in this account of the surveys of public lands, to exhibit the simplicity of a system, that to strangers, unacquainted with the method of numbering the sections, and the various subdivisions, appears perplexing and confused. All the lands of Congress owned in Ohio have been surveyed, and with the exceptions of some Indian reservations, have been brought into market. In Indiana, all the lands purchased of the Indians have been surveyed, and with the exception of about ninety townships and fractional townships, have been offered for sale. These, amounting to about two millions of acres, will be offered for sale the present year. In Michigan, nearly all the ceded lands have been surveyed and brought into market. The unsurveyed portion is situated in the neighborhood of Saginaw bay; a part of which may be ready for market within the current year. In the Wisconsin Territory, west of lake Michigan, all the lands in the Wisconsin district, which lies between the state of Illinois and the Wisconsin river, have been surveyed; and in addition to the lands already offered for sale in the Green Bay district, about 65 townships, and fractional townships, have been surveyed and are ready for market. The surveys of the whole country west of lake Michigan and south of the Wisconsin river, in Illinois and Wisconsin territory, will soon be surveyed and in market. Here are many millions of the finest lands on earth, lying along the Des Pleines, Fox, and Rock rivers, and their tributaries, well watered, rich soil, a healthy atmosphere, and facilities to market. A temporary scarcity of timber in some parts of this region will retard settlements, for a time; but this difficulty will be obviated, by the rapidity with which prairie land turns to a timbered region, wherever, by contiguous settlements, the wild grass becomes subdued, and by the discovery of coal beds. Much of it is a mineral region. In Illinois, the surveys are now completed in the Danville district, and in the southern part of the Chicago district. They are nearly completed along Rock river and the Mississippi. The unsurveyed portion is along Fox river, Des Pleines and the shore of lake Michigan, in the north-eastern part of the state. Emigrants, however, do not wait for surveys and sales. They are settling over this fine portion of the state, in anticipation of purchases. In Missouri, besides the former surveys, the exterior lines of 138 townships, and the subdivision into sections and quarters, 30 townships in the northern part of the state, and contracts for running the exterior lines of 189 townships on the waters of the Osage and Grand rivers have been made. A large portion of this state is now surveyed and in market. Surveys are progressing in Arkansas, and large bodies of land are proclaimed for sale in that district. I have no data before me that will enable me definitely to show the amount of public lands now remaining unsold, in each land office district. In another place I have already given an estimate of the amount of public lands, within the organized states and territories, remaining unsold, compared with the amount sold in past years. The following table exhibits the number of acres sold in the districts embraced more immediately within the range of this Guide, for 1834, and the three first quarters of 1835, with the names of each district in each state. It is constructed from the Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office to the Treasury Department, December 5th, 1835. The sales of the last quarter of 1835, in Illinois, and probably in the other states, greatly exceeded either the other quarters, and which will be exhibited in the annual report of the Commissioner in December, 1836. _Statement of the amount of Public Lands, sold at the several Land Offices in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Arkansas, in 1834._ =====================+============== | _Acres and LAND OFFICES. | hundredths_ ---------------------+-------------- OHIO. Marietta district, 11,999.52 Zanesville do 33,877.23 Steubenville, do 4,349.19 Chillicothe, do 21,309.32 Cincinnati, do 27,369.52 Wooster, do 9,448.77 Wapaghkonetta do 125,417.13 Bucyrus do 245,078.56 ---------- Total for the State, 478,847.24 INDIANA. Jeffersonville district. 67,826.11 Vincennes do 56,765.80 Indianopolis do 204,526.63 Crawfordsville do 161,477.87 Fort Wayne do 96,350.30 La Porte do 86,709.73 ---------- Total for the State, 673,656.44 ILLINOIS. Shawneetown district. 6,904.24 Kaskaskia do 15,196.52 Edwardsville do 124,302.19 Vandalia do 20,207.61 Palestine do 22,135.69 Springfield do 66,804.25 Danville do 62,331.38 Quincy do 36,131.59 ---------- Total for the State, 354,013.47 MICHIGAN TERRITORY Detroit district. 136,410.69 Monroe do 233,768.30 White Pigeon Prairie } Bronson do } 128,244.47 ---------- Total for the Territory 498,423.46 WISCONSIN TERRITORY. Mineral Point dist. 14,336.67 MISSOURI. St. Louis district. 43,634.68 Fayette do 71,049.74 Palmyra do 76,241.35 Jackson do 18,882.11 Lexington do 43,983.80 ---------- Total for the State, 253,791.70 ARKANSAS TERRITORY. Batesville district. 8,051.31 Little Rock do 25,799.74 Washington do 65,145.88 Fayetteville do 24,514.94 Helena do 26,244.59 ---------- Total for the Territory 149,756.46 _Statement of the amount of Public Lands, sold at the several Land Offices in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Arkansas, from January 1st, to September 30th, 1835, including nine months._ =====================+============= | _Acres and LAND OFFICES. | hundredths_ ---------------------+------------- OHIO. Marietta Dist. 11,012.98 Zanesville do 42,978.36 Steubenville do 3,649.29 Chillicothe do 12,586.87 Cincinnati do 20,105.76 Wooster do 5,157.68 Wapaghkonetta} and Lima, } do 103,020.23 Bucyrus do 154,706.63 ---------- Total for the State, 353,217.80 INDIANA. Jeffersonville Dist. 44,634.81 Vincennes do 70,903.62 Indianapolis do 158,786.68 Crawfordsville do 108,055.22 Fort Wayne do 148,864.28 La Porte do 227,702.35 ---------- Total for the State, 758,946.96 ILLINOIS. Shawneetown Dist. 5,754.08 Kaskaskia do 13,814.38 Edwardsville do 123,638.07 Vandalia do 16,253.46 Palestine do 14,088.01 Springfield do 316,966.70 Danville do 94,491.35 Quincy do [A]40,274.58 Galena do [B]262,152.73 Chicago do 333,405.73 ------------ Total for the State, 1,220,838.76 MICHIGAN. Detroit Dist. 213,763.57 Brownson do 400,722.48 Monroe do 446,631.61 ------------ Total for Michigan} proper, } 1,061,127.66 WISCONSIN. Mineral Point Dist. 67,052.55 Green Bay do 68,365.53 ---------- Total for Wisconsin} Territory, } 135,418.08 MISSOURI. St. Louis Dist. 32,914.57 Fayette do 55,839.58 Palmyra do 101,018.00 Jackson do 28,995.19 Lexington do 42,801.45 Springfield do 320.00 ---------- Total for the State, 261,888.79 ARKANSAS. Batesville Dist. 2,021.22 Little Rock do 22,291.92 Washington do 43,360.81 Fayetteville do 8,723.72 Helena do 312,169.09 ---------- Total for the Territory 388,566.76 [A] Returns only to May 31st. [B] Returns only to July 31st. Since those periods, sales at these Offices have been immense The reader will perceive that the sales of the three first quarters of 1835, almost doubled those of the whole year of 1834. The inquiry was often made of the writer, while travelling in the Atlantic states in the summer of 1835, whether there was still opportunity for emigrants to purchase public lands in Indiana, Illinois, &c. where land offices had been opened for sale of lands many years. He found almost everywhere, wrong notions prevailing. The people were not aware of the immense extent of the public domain now in market, and ready to be sold at _one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre_, and even in as small tracts as forty acres. Take for example, the Edwardsville district, in which the writer resides. It extends south to the base line, east to the third principal meridian, north to the line that separates townships 13 and 14 north, and west to the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, and embraces all the counties of Madison, Clinton, Bond, Montgomery, Macouper, and Greene, a tier of townships on the south side of Morgan and Sangamon, five and a half townships from Fayette, and about half of St. Clair county. The lands for a part of this district have been in market for 18 or 20 years;--it contains some of the oldest American settlements in the state, and has also a number of confined claims never offered for sale. And yet the receiver of this office informed me in November last, that he had just made returns of all the lands sold in this district, and they amounted to just _one third_ of the whole quantity. Every man, therefore, may take it for granted that there will be land enough in market in all the new states, for his use, during the present generation. These are facts that should be known to all classes. The mania of land speculation and of monopolists would soon subside, were those concerned to sit down coolly, and after ascertaining the amount of public lands now in market, with the vast additional quantity that must soon come into market, use a few figures in common arithmetic, with the probable amount of emigration, and ascertain the probable extent of the demand for this article at any future period. The following information is necessary for those who are not acquainted with our land system. In each land office there are a Register and Receiver, appointed by the President and Senate for the term of four years, and paid by the government. After being surveyed, the land, by proclamation of the President, is offered for sale at public auction by half quarter sections, or tracts of 80 acres. If no one bids for it at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, or more, it is subject to private entry at any time after, upon payment of $1.25 cents per acre at the time of entry. _No credit in any case is allowed._ In many cases, Congress, by special statute, has granted to actual settlers, pre-emption rights, where settlements and improvements have been made on public lands previous to public sale. _Pre-emption rights_ confer the privilege only of purchasing the tract containing improvements at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, by the possessor, without the risk of a public sale. In Illinois and several other western states, all lands purchased of the general government, are exempted from taxation for five years after purchase. _Military Bounty lands._--These lands were surveyed and appropriated as bounties to the soldiers in the war with Great Britain in 1812-'15, to encourage enlistments. The selections were made in Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. The Bounty lands of Illinois lie between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, in the counties of Calhoun, Pike, Adams, Schuyler, Macdonough, Warren, Mercer, Knox, Henry, Fulton, Peoria, and Putnam. Out of five millions of acres, 3,500,000 were selected, including about three-fifths of this tract. The remainder is disposed of in the manner of other public lands. The disposition of this fine country for military bounties has much retarded its settlement. It was a short-sighted and mistaken policy of government that dictated this measure. Most of the titles have long since departed from the soldiers for whose benefit the donations were made. Many thousand quarter sections have been sold for taxes by the state, have fallen into the hands of monopolists, and are now past redemption. The Bounty lands in Missouri, lie on the waters of Chariton and Grand rivers, north side of the Missouri river and in the counties of Chariton, Randolph, Carroll, and Ray, and include half a million of acres. The tract is generally fertile, undulating, a mixture of timber and prairie, but not as well watered as desirable. With the bounty lands of Arkansas I am not well acquainted. Their general character is good, and some tracts are rich cotton lands. _Taxes._--Lands bought of the U. S. government are exempted from taxation for five years after sale. All other lands owned by non-residents, equally with those of residents, are subject to taxation annually, either for state, or county purposes, or both. The mode and amount varies in each state. If not paid when due, costs are added, the lands sold, subject to redemption within a limited period;--generally two years. Every non-resident landholder should employ an agent within the state where his land lies, to look after it and pay his taxes, if he would not suffer the loss of his land. CHAPTER VI. ABORIGINES. Conjecture respecting their former numbers and condition. Present number and state.--Indian Territory appropriated as their permanent residence.--Plan and operations of the U. S. Government.--Missionary efforts and stations. Monuments and Antiquities. The idea is entertained, that the Valley of the Mississippi, was once densely populated by aborigines;--that here were extensive nations,--that the bones of many millions lie mouldering under our feet. It has become a common theory, that previous to the settlement of the country by people of European descent, there were _two_ successive races of men, quite distinct from each other;--that the first race, by some singular fatality, became exterminated, leaving no traditionary account of their existence. And the second race, the ancestors of the existing race of Indians, are supposed to have been once, far more numerous than the present white population of the Valley. Some parts of Mexico and South America, were found to be populous upon the first visits of the Spaniards; but I do not find satisfactory evidence that population was ever dense, in any part of the territory that now constitutes our Republic. Mr. Atwater supposes, from the mounds in Ohio, the Indian population far exceeded 700,000, at one time in that district. Mr. Flint says, "If we can infer nothing else from the mounds, we can clearly infer, that this country once had its millions." Hence, a principal argument assigned for the populousness of this country is, the millions buried in these tumuli, the bones of which, in a tolerable state of preservation, are supposed to be exhibited upon excavation. The writer has witnessed the opening of many of these mounds, and has seen the fragments of an occasional skeleton, found _near the surface_. Without stopping here to enter upon a disquisition on the hypothesis assumed, that these mounds, as they are termed, are as much the results of natural causes, as any other prominences on the surface of the globe: I will only remark, that it is a fact well known to frontier men, that the Indians have been in the habit of burying their dead on these ridges and hillocks, and that in our light, spongy soil, the skeleton decays surprisingly fast. This is not the place to exhibit the necessary data, that have led to the conviction, that not a human skeleton now exists in all the western Valley, (excepting in nitrous caves,) that was deposited in the earth before the discovery of the New World, by Columbus. The opinion that this Valley was once densely populous, is sustained from the supposed military works, distributed through the West. This subject, as well as that of mounds, wants re-examination. Probably, half a dozen enclosures, in a rude form, might have been used for military defence. The capabilities of the country to sustain a dense population, has been used to support the position, that it must have been once densely populated. This argues nothing without vestiges of agriculture and the arts. With the exception of a few small patches, around the Indian villages, for corn and pulse, the whole land was an unbroken wilderness. Strangers to the subject have imagined that our western prairies must once have been subdued by the hand of cultivation, because denuded of timber. Those who have long lived on them, have the evidences of observation, and their senses, to guide them. They know that the earth will not produce timber, while the surface is covered with a firm grassy sward, and that timber will spring up, as soon as this obstruction is removed. To all these theories, of the former density of the aboriginal population of the Valley, I oppose, first, the fact that but a scattered and erratic population was found here, on the arrival of the Europeans,--that the people were rude savages, subsisting chiefly by hunting, and that no savage people ever became populous,--that from time immemorial, the different tribes had been continually at war with each other,--that but a few years before the French explored it, the Iroquois, or Five nations, conquered all the country to the Mississippi, which they could not have done had it been populous, and that Kentucky, one of the finest portions of the Valley, was not inhabited by any people, but the common hunting and fighting grounds of both the northern and southern Indians, and hence called by them, _Kentuckee_, or the "Bloody ground."[7] That the Indian character has deteriorated, and the numbers of each tribe greatly lessened by contact with Europeans and their descendants, is not questioned; but many of the descriptions of the comforts and happiness of savage life and manners, before their country was possessed by the latter, are the exaggerated and glowing descriptions of poetic fancy. Evidence enough can be had to show that they were degraded and wretched, engaged in petty exterminating wars with each other, often times in a state of starvation, and leading a roving, indolent and miserable existence. Their government was anarchy.--Properly speaking, civil government had never existed amongst them. They had no executive, or judiciary power, and their legislation was the result of their councils held by aged and experienced men. It had no stronger claim upon the obedience of the people than advice. In Mexico, civilization had made progress, and there were populous towns and cities, and edifices for religious and other purposes. With the exception of some very rude structures, the ruins of which yet remain, and which upon too slight grounds, have been mistaken for military works, nothing is left as marks of the enterprise of the feeble bands of Indians of this Valley. Their implements, utensils, weapons of war, and water-craft, were of the most rude and simple construction, and yet prepared with great labor. Those who have written upon Indian manners, without personal and long acquaintance with their circumstances, have made extravagant blunders. The historian of America, Dr. Robertson, seems to suppose that the Indians cut down large trees, and dug out canoes with stone hatchets,--and that they cleared the timber from their small fields, by the same tedious process. Their stone axes or hatchets, were never used for _cutting_, but only for splitting and pounding. They burned down and hollowed out trees by fire, for canoes, and never chopped off the timber, but only deadened it, in clearing land. The condition of depraved man, unimproved by habits of civilization, and unblest with the influences and consolations of the gospel, is pitiable in the extreme. Such was the character and condition of the "Red skin," before his land was visited by the "Pale faces." I have often seen the aboriginal man in all his primeval wildness, when he first came in contact with the evils and benefits of civilization,--have admired his noble form and lofty bearing,--listened to his untutored and yet powerful eloquence, and yet have found in him the same humbling and melancholy proofs of his wretchedness and want, as is found in the remnants on our borders. The introduction of ardent spirits, and of several diseases, are the evils furnished the Indian race, by contact with the whites, while in other respects their condition has been improved. From the second number of the "_Annual Register of Indian Affairs, within the Indian (or western) Territory_," just published by the Rev. Isaac McCoy, the following particulars have been chiefly gleaned: Mr. McCoy has been devoted to the work of Indian reform for almost twenty years, first in Indiana, then in Michigan, and latterly in the Indian territory, west of Missouri and Arkansas. He is not only intimately acquainted with the peculiar circumstances of this unfortunate race, and with the country selected as their future residence by the government, but is ardently and laboriously engaged for their welfare. INDIAN TERRITORY. The Indian territory lies west and immediately adjacent to Missouri and Arkansas. It is about 600 miles long from north to south, extending from the Missouri river to the Red river, and running westwardly as far as the country is habitable, which is estimated to be about 200 miles. The almost destitution of timber, with extensive deserts, renders most of the country from this territory to the Rocky mountains uninhabitable. The dreams indulged by many, that the wave of white population is to move onward without any resisting barrier, till it reaches these mountains, and even overleap them to the Pacific ocean, will never be realized. Providence has thrown a desert of several hundred miles in extent, as an opposing barrier. As very contradictory accounts have gone abroad, prejudicial to the character of the country selected for the Indians, it becomes necessary to describe it with some particularity. The following, from Mr. McCoy (if it needed any additional support to its correctness,) is corroborated by the statements of many disinterested persons. "There is a striking similarity between all parts of this territory. In its general character, it is high and undulating, rather level than hilly; though small portions partly deserve the latter appellation. The soil is generally very fertile. It is thought that in no part of the world, so extensive a region of rich soil has been discovered as in this, of which the Indian territory is a central position. It is watered by numerous rivers, creeks and rivulets. Its waters pass through it eastwardly, none of which are favorable to navigation. There is less marshy and stagnant water in it than is usual in the western country. The atmosphere is salubrious, and the climate precisely such as is desirable, being about the same as that inhabited by the Indians on the east of the Mississippi. It contains much mineral coal and salt water, some lead, and some iron ore. Timber is too scarce, and this is a serious defect, but one which time will remedy, as has been demonstrated by the growth of timber in prairie countries which have been settled, where the grazing of stock, by diminishing the quantity of grass, renders the annual fires less destructive to the growth of wood. The prairie (i. e., land destitute of wood) is covered with grass, much of which is of suitable length for the scythe." The Chocktaws, Creeks, Cherokees, Osages, Kanzaus and Delawares, are entitled to lands westward of this territory for hunting grounds; some to the western boundary of the United States, others to the Rocky mountains. Mr. McCoy estimates the number of inhabitants of this territory at 47,733. INDIGENOUS TRIBES. Osage, about 5,510 Kanzau, " 1,684 Ottoe and Missourias, 1,600 O'Mahaus, 1,400 Pawnees, four tribes, 10,000 Puncahs, about 800 Quapaws, " 450 ------ 21,444 EMIGRANT TRIBES. Chocktaw, about 15,000 Cherokee, " 4,000 Creek, " 3,600 Seneca, Shawanoe of Neosho, 462 Wea, about 225 Piankeshau, 119 Peoria and Kaskaskias, 135 Ottawa, 81 Shawanoe of Kanzau river, 764 Delaware, 856 Kickapoo, 603 Putawatomie, 444 ------ Emigrants, 26,289 Indigenous, 21,444 ------ Total, 47,733 The estimate of the Chocktaws include about 400 negro slaves,--that of the Cherokees 500, and that of the Creeks about 450 slaves. _Chocktaws._ Their country adjoins Red river and the Province of Texas on the south, Arkansas on the east, and extends north to the Arkansas and Canadian rivers, being 150 miles from north to south, and 200 miles from east to west. Here are numerous salt springs. For civil purposes, their country is divided into three districts. _Cherokees._ The boundaries of their country commences on the Arkansas river, opposite the western boundary of Arkansas Territory;--thence northwardly along the line of Missouri, 8 miles to Seneca river;--thence west to the Neosho river;--thence up said river to the Osage lands;--thence west indefinitely, as far as habitable;--thence south to the Creek lands, and along the eastern line of the Creeks to a point 43 miles west of the Territory of Arkansas, and 25 miles north of Arkansas river;--thence to the Verdigris river, and down Arkansas river, to the mouth of the Neosho;--thence southwardly to the junction of the North Fork and Canadian rivers;--and thence down the Canadian and Arkansas rivers to the place of beginning. The treaty of 1828, secures to this tribe 7,000,000 of acres, and adds land westward for hunting grounds as far as the U. S. boundaries extend. The _Creeks_, or Muscogees, occupy the country west of Arkansas that lies between the lands of the Chocktaws and Cherokees. The _Senecas_ join the State of Missouri on the east, with the Cherokees south, the Neosho river west, and possess 127,500 acres. The _Osage_ (a French corruption of _Wos-sosh-ee_, their proper name, which has again been corrupted by Darby and others into _Ozark_) have their country north of the western portion of the Cherokee lands, commencing 25 miles west of the State of Missouri, with a width of 50 miles, and extending indefinitely west. About half the tribe are in the Cherokee country. The _Quapaws_ were originally connected with the Osages. They have migrated from the lower Arkansas, and have their lands adjoining the State of Missouri, immediately north of the Senecas. The _Putawatomies_ are on the north-eastern side of the Missouri river, but they are not satisfied, and the question of their locality is not fully settled. 444 Putawatomies are mingled with the Kickapoos, on the south-west side of the Missouri river. The Weas, Piankeshaws, Peorias and Kaskaskias are remnants of the great western confederacy, of which the Miamies were the most prominent branch. These and other tribes constituted the Illini, Oillinois, or Illinois nation, that once possessed the country now included in the great States of Indiana, Illinois, &c. Their lands lie west of the State of Missouri, and south-west of the Missouri river. The _Delawares_ occupy a portion of the country in the forks of the Kanzau river, (or, as written by the French, Kansas.) They are the remnants of another great confederacy, the _Lenni-Lenopi_, as denominated by themselves. The lands of the _Kickapoos_ lie north of the Delawares, and along the Missouri, including 768,000 acres. The _Ottoes_ occupy a tract of country between the Missouri and Platte rivers, but their land is said to extend south and below the Platte. The country of the _O'Mahaus_ has the Platte river on the south, and the Missouri north-east. The country of the _Pawnees_ lies to the westward of the Ottoes and O'Mahaus. The boundaries are not defined. The _Puncahs_ are a small tribe that originated from the Pawnees, and live in the northern extremity of the country spoken of as the Indian territory. _Present Condition._--The Chocktaws, Cherokees and Creeks are more advanced in civilized habits then any other tribes. They have organized local governments of their own, have enacted some wholesome laws, live in comfortable houses, raise horses, cattle, sheep and swine, cultivate the ground, have good fences, dress like Americans, and manufacture much of their own clothing. They have schools and religious privileges, by missionary efforts, to a limited extent. The Cherokees have a written language, perfect in its form, the invention of Mr. Guess, a full-blooded Indian. The Senecas, Delawares, and Shawanoes, also, are partially civilized, and live with considerable comfort from the produce of their fields and stock. The Putawatomies, Weas, Piankeshaws, Peorias, Kaskaskias, Ottawas, and Kickapoos, have partially adopted civilized customs. Some live in comfortable log cabins, fence and cultivate the ground, and have a supply of stock; others live in bark huts, and are wretched. The Osages or Wos-sosh-ees, Quapaws, Kanzaus, Ottoes, O'Mahaus, Pawnees and Puncahs have made much less improvement in their mode of living. A few have adopted civilized habits, and are rising in the scale of social and individual comforts, but the larger portion are yet _Indians_. Mr. McCoy estimates the whole number of aborigines in North America, including those of Mexico, at 1,800,000, of which 10,000 are so far improved as to be classed with civilized men, and amongst whom, there are as many pious Christians, as amongst the same amount of population in the United States. In addition to these, he estimates that there may be about 60,000 more, "which may have made advances toward civilization, some more and some less." For some years past, the policy of the government of the United States has been directed to the project of removing all the Indians from the country organized into States and Territories, and placing them sufficiently contiguous to be easily governed, and yet removed from direct contact and future interruption from white population. This project was recommended in the period of Mr. Monroe's administration, was further considered and some progress made under that of Mr. Adams, but has been carried into more successful execution within the last five years. It is much to be regretted that this project was not commenced earlier. The residence of small bands of Indians, with their own feeble and imperfect government, carried on within any organized state or territory, is ruinous. Those who argue that _because_ of the removal of the Indians from within the jurisdiction of the states, or an organized territory, _therefore_ they will be driven back from the country in which it is now proposed to place them, evince but a very partial and imperfect view of the subject. The present operation of government is an experiment, and it is one that ought to receive a fair and full trial. If it does not succeed, I know not of any governmental regulation that can result, with success, to the prosperity of the Indians. The project is to secure to each tribe, by patent, the lands allotted them,--to form them into a territorial government, with some features of the representative principle,--to have their whole country under the supervision of our government, as their guardian, for their benefit,--to allow no white men to pass the lines and intermix with the Indians, except those who are licensed by due authority,--to aid them in adopting civilized habits, provide for them schools and other means of improving their condition, and, through the agency of missionary societies, to instruct them in the principles of the gospel of Christ. _Missionary Efforts and Stations._--These are conducted by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,--the Baptist Board of F. Missions,--the Methodist Epis. Missionary Society,--the Western Foreign Missionary Society,--and the Cumberland Presbyterians. Stations have been formed, and schools established, with most of these tribes. About 2,500 are members of Christian churches of different denominations. The particulars of these operations are to be found in the Reports of the respective societies, and the various religious periodicals. Of other tribes within the Valley of the Mississippi, and not yet within the Indian territory, the following estimate is sufficiently near the truth for practical purposes. Indians from New York, about Green Bay 725 Wyandots in Ohio and Michigan 623 Miamies 1,200 Winnebagoes 4,591 Chippeways, or O'Jibbeways 6,793 Ottawas and Chippeways of lake Michigan 5,300 Chippeways, Ottawas and Putawatomies 8,000 Putawatomies 1,400 Menominees 4,200 They are all east of the Mississippi, and chiefly found on the reservations in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, and in the country between the Wisconsin river and lake Superior. Those tribes west of the Mississippi river, and along the region of the upper Missouri river, are as follows: Sioux 27,500 Ioways 1,200 Sauks of Missouri 500 Sauks and Foxes 6,400 Assinaboines 8,000 Crees 3,000 Gros Ventres 3,000 Aurekaras 3,000 Cheyennes 2,000 Mandans 1,500 Black Feet 30,000 Camanches 7,000 Minatarees 1,500 Crows 4,500 Arrepahas and Kiawas 1,400 Caddoes 800 Snake and other tribes within the Rocky mountains 20,000 West of the Rocky mountains 80,000 The Camanches, Arrepahas, Kiawas and Caddoes roam over the great plains towards the sources of the Arkansas and Red rivers, and through the northern parts of Texas. The Black Feet are towards the heads of the Missouri. _Monuments and Antiquities._--Before dismissing the subject of the aborigines, I shall touch very briefly on the monuments and antiquities of the west,--with strong convictions that there has been much exaggeration on this subject. I have already intimated that the mounds of the west are natural formations, but I have not room for the circumstances and facts that go to sustain this theory. The number of objects considered as antiquities is greatly exaggerated. The imaginations of men have done much. The number of mounds on the American bottom in Illinois, adjacent to Cahokia creek, is stated by Mr. Flint at 200. The writer has counted all the elevations of surface for the extent of nine miles, and they amount to 72. One of these, Monk hill, is much too large, and three fourths of the rest are quite too small for human labor. The pigmy graves on the Merrimeek, Mo., in Tennessee, and other places, upon closer inspection, have been found to contain decayed skeletons of the ordinary size, but buried with the leg and thigh bones in contact. The _giant_ skeletons sometimes found, are the bones of buffalo. It is much easier for waggish laborers to deposit old horse shoes and other iron articles where they are at work, for the special pleasure of digging them up for credulous antiquarians, than to find proofs of the existence of the horses that wore them! There may, or may not, be monuments and antiquities that belong to a race of men of prior existence to the present race of Indians. All that the writer urges is, that this subject may not be considered as settled; that due allowance may be made for the extreme credulity of some, and the want of personal observation and examination of other writers on this subject. Gross errors have been committed, and exaggerations of very trivial circumstances have been made. The antiquities belonging to the Indian race are neither numerous or interesting, unless we except the remains of rude edifices and enclosures, the walls of which are almost invariably embankments of earth. They are rude axes and knives of stone, bottles and vessels of potter's ware, arrow and spear heads, rude ornaments, &c. Roman, French, Italian, German and English coins and medals, with inscriptions, have been found,--most unquestionably brought by Europeans,--probably by the Jesuits and other orders, who were amongst the first explorers of the west, and who had their religious houses here more than a century past. Copper and silver ornaments have been discovered in the mounds that have been opened. The calumet, or large stone pipe, is often found in Indian graves. Two facts deserve to be regarded by those who examine mounds and Indian cemeteries. First, that the Indians have been accustomed to bury their dead in these mounds. Secondly, that they were accustomed to place various ornaments, utensils, weapons, and other articles of value, the property of the deceased, in these graves, especially if a chieftain, or man of note. A third fact known to our frontier people, is the custom of several Indian tribes wrapping their dead in strips of bark, or encasing them with the halves of a hollow log, and placing them in the forks of trees. This was the case specially, when their deaths occurred while on hunting or war parties. At stated seasons these relics were collected, with much solemnity, brought to the common sepulchre of the tribe, and deposited with their ancestors. This accounts for the confused manner in which the bones are often found in mounds and Indian graveyards. Human skeletons, or rather mummies, have been discovered in the nitrous caves of Kentucky. The huge bones of the mammoth and other enormous animals, have been exhumed, at the Bigbone licks in Kentucky and in other places. FOOTNOTES: [7] See Pownal's Administration of the British Colonies,--Colden's History of the Five Nations,--New York Historical Collections, vol. II.,--Charlevoix Histoire de la Nouvelle France,--Hon. De Witt Clinton's Discourse before the N. Y. Historical Society, 1811,--Discovery of the Mississippi river, by Father Lewis Hennepin,--M. Tonti's Account of M. De La Salle's Expedition,--La Harpe's Journal, &c. CHAPTER VII. WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA. The portion of Pennsylvania lying west of the Alleghany ridge, contains the counties of Washington, Greene, Fayette, Westmoreland, Alleghany, Beaver, Butler, Armstrong, Mercer, Venango, Crawford, Erie, Warren, McKean, Jefferson, Indiana, Somerset, and a part of Cambria. _Face of the Country._--Somerset, and parts of Fayette, Westmoreland, Cambria, Indiana, Jefferson, and McKean are mountainous, with intervening vallies of rich, arable land. The hilly portions of Washington, and portions of Fayette, Westmoreland, and Alleghany counties are fertile, with narrow vales of rich land intervening. The hills are of various shapes and heights, and the ridges are not uniform, but pursue various and different directions. North of Pittsburg, the country is hilly and broken, but not mountainous, and the bottom lands on the water courses are wider and more fertile. On French creek, and other branches of the Alleghany river there are extensive tracts of rich bottom, or intervale lands, covered with beech, birch, sugar maple, pine, hemlock, and other trees common to that portion of the United States. The pine forests in Pennsylvania and New York, about the heads of the Alleghany river, produce vast quantities of lumber, which are sent annually to all the towns along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. It is computed that not less than thirty million feet of lumber are annually sent down the Ohio from this source. _Soil, Agriculture, &c._--Portions of the country are excellent for farming. The _glade_ lands, as they are called, in Greene and other counties, produce oats, grass, &c., but are not so good for wheat and corn. Those counties which lie towards lake Erie are better adapted to grazing. Great numbers of cattle are raised here. Washington and other counties south of Pittsburg produce great quantities of wool. The Monongahela has been famous for its whiskey, but it is gratifying to learn that it is greatly on the decline, and that its manufacture begins to be regarded as it should be,--ruinous to society. A large proportion of the distilleries are reported to have been abandoned. Bituminous coal abounds in all the hills around Pittsburg, and over most parts of Western Pennsylvania. Iron ore is found abundantly in the counties along the Alleghany, and many furnaces and forges are employed in its manufactory. Salt springs abound on the Alleghany, and especially on the Conemaugh and Kiskiminitas, where salt, in large quantities, is manufactured. The natural advantages of Western Pennsylvania are great. Almost every knoll, hill and mountain can be turned to some good account, and its rivers, canals, rail and turnpike roads afford facilities for intercommunication, and for transportation of the productions to a foreign market. The advantages of this region for trade, agriculture, raising stock, and manufacturing, are great. The streams furnish abundant mill-seats, the air is salubrious, and the morals of the community good. Till recently, Pennsylvania has been neglectful to provide for common schools. A school system is now in successful operation, and has a strong hold on the confidence and affections of the people in this part of the State. _Internal Improvements._--Pennsylvania has undertaken an immense system of internal improvements, throughout the State. The Alleghany portage rail-road commences at Hollidaysburgh, on the Juniata river, at the termination of the eastern division of the great Pennsylvania canal, and crosses the Alleghany ridge at Blair's Gap, summit 37 miles, to Johnstown on the Conemaugh. Here it connects with the western division of the same canal. It ascends and descends the mountain by five inclined planes on each side, overcoming in ascent and descent 2570 feet, 1398 of which are on the eastern, and 1172 on the western side of the mountain. 563 feet are overcome by grading, and 2007 feet by the planes. On this line, also, are four extensive viaducts, and a tunnel 870 feet long, and 20 feet wide, through the staple bend of the Conemaugh river. The western division of the Pennsylvania canal commences at Johnstown, on the Conemaugh, pursues the course of that stream, and also that of the Kiskiminitas and Alleghany rivers, and finally terminates at Pittsburg. In its course from Johnstown it passes through the towns of Fairfield, Lockport, Blairsville, Saltzburg, Warren, Leechburg, and Freeport, most of which are small villages, but increasing in size and business. "The canal is 104 miles in length: lockage 471 feet, 64 locks, (exclusive of four on a branch canal to the Alleghany,) 10 dams, 1 tunnel, 16 aqueducts, 64 culverts, 39 waste-wiers, and 152 bridges. "The canal commissioners, in their reports to the legislature, strongly recommend the extension of this division to the town of Beaver, so as to unite with the Beaver division. By a recent survey, the distance was ascertained to be 25.065 miles, and the estimated cost of construction, $263,821. This, with a proposed canal from Newcastle to Akron, on the Ohio and Erie canal, will form a continuous inland communication between Philadelphia and New Orleans, of 2435 miles, with the exception of the passage over the Alleghany portage rail-road, of 36.69 miles in length.[8] It is 395 miles from Philadelphia to Pittsburg by this canal. The Beaver division of the Pennsylvania canal commences at the town of Beaver, on the Ohio river, at the junction of the Big Beaver river, 25-½ miles below Pittsburg, ascends the valley of that river, thence up the Chenango creek to its termination in Mercer county, a distance of 42.68 miles. This work, together with a feeder on French creek, and other works now in progress, are parts of a canal intended eventually to connect the Ohio river with lake Erie, at the town of Erie; which, when finished, will probably be about 130 miles in length. It is also proposed to construct a canal from Newcastle, on the Beaver division, 24.75 miles above the town of Beaver, along the valley of the Mahoning river, to Akron, near the portage summit of the Ohio and Erie canal, 85 miles in length, 8 miles of which are in Pennsylvania, and the residue in Ohio. Estimated cost, $764,372. The Cumberland, or National road, crosses the south-western part of Pennsylvania. It passes through Brownsville where it crosses the Monongahela river, and Washington, into a corner of Virginia to Wheeling, where it crosses the Ohio river, and from thence through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois to the Mississippi river, or perhaps to the western boundary of Missouri. _Chief Towns._--_Brownsville_, situated on the east side of the Monongahela river, is in a romantic country, surrounded with rich farms and fine orchards, and contains about 1200 inhabitants. It is at the head of steamboat navigation. _Washington_ is the county seat of Washington county, surrounded with a fertile but hilly country, contains about 2000 inhabitants, and has a respectable college. _Cannonsburgh_ is situated on the west side of Chartier's creek, 8 miles north of Washington. It also has a flourishing college, with buildings in an elevated and pleasant situation. _Uniontown_ is the county seat of Fayette, on the National road, and contains about 1500 inhabitants. _Greensburg_ is the seat of justice for Westmoreland county, on the great turnpike road from Philadelphia by Harrisburg to Pittsburg, and has about 850 inhabitants. _Beaver_ is situated at the mouth of Big Beaver, on the Ohio, with a population of 1000 or 1200, and is a place of considerable business. _Meadville_ is the seat of justice for Crawford county, situated near French creek, and has about 1200 inhabitants. Here is a college established by the Rev. Mr. Alden, some years since, to which the late Dr. Bentley of Salem, Mass., bequeathed a valuable library. It is now under the patronage of the Methodist Episcopal church. _Erie_ is a thriving town, situated on the south side of lake Erie, one hundred and twenty miles north of Pittsburg. Steamboats that pass up the lake from Buffalo, usually stop here, from whence stage routes communicate with Pittsburg, and many other towns in the interior. The portage from this place to the navigable waters of the Alleghany river is fifteen miles over a turnpike road. The population of Erie is from 1500 to 2000, and increasing. _Waterford_, the place where the Erie portage terminates, is situated on the north bank of the French creek; it is a place of considerable business. French creek is a navigable branch of the Alleghany river. _Franklin_, _Kittanning_, and _Freeport_, are respectable towns on the Alleghany river, between Pittsburg and Meadville. _Economy_ is the seat of the German colony, under the late Mr. Rapp, which emigrated from their former residence of Harmony on the Wabash river in Indiana. It is a flourishing town on the right bank of the Ohio, 18 miles below Pittsburg. It has several factories, a large church, a spacious hotel, and 800 or 900 inhabitants, living in a community form, under some singular regulations. The Economists, or Harmonists, as they were called, in Indiana, are an industrious, moral and enterprising community, with some peculiarities in their religious notions. There are many other towns and villages in Western Pennsylvania, of moral, industrious inhabitants, which the limits of this work will not permit me to notice. PITTSBURG is the emporium of Western Pennsylvania, and from its manufacturing enterprise, especially in iron wares, has been denominated the "Birmingham of the West." It stands on the land formed at the junction of the Monongahela and Alleghany rivers on a level alluvion deposit, but entirely above the highest waters, surrounded with hills. This place was selected as the site of a fort and trading depot by the French, about eighty years since, and a small stockade erected, and called Fort du Quesne, to defend the country against the occupancy of it by the English, and to monopolize the Indian trade. It came into the possession of the British upon the conquest of this country after the disastrous defeat of Gen. Braddock; and under the administration of the elder Pitt, a fort was built here under the superintendence of lord Stanwix, that cost more than $260,000, and called Fort Pitt. In 1760, a considerable town arose around the fort, surrounded with beautiful gardens and orchards, but it decayed on the breaking out of the Indian war, in 1763. The origin of the present town may be dated 1765. Its plan was enlarged and re-surveyed in 1784, and then belonged to the Penn family as a part of their hereditary manor. By them it was sold. The Indian wars in the West retarded its growth for several years after, but since, it has steadily increased, according to the following TABLE. 1800, 1,565 1810, 4,768 1820, 7,248 1830, 12,542 1835, _estimated_, 30,000 The estimate of 1835, includes the suburbs. The town is compactly built, and some streets are handsome; but the use of coal for culinary and manufacturing purposes, gives the town a most dingy and gloomy aspect. Its salubrity and admirable situation for commerce and manufactures ensure its future prosperity and increase of population. The exhaustless beds of coal in the bluffs of the Monongahela, and of iron ore, which is found in great abundance in all the mountainous regions of Western Pennsylvania, give it preëminence over other western cities for manufacturing purposes. It really stands at the head of steamboat navigation on the waters of the Ohio; for the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers are navigable only at high stages of water, and by the recent improvements in the channel of the Ohio, and the use of light draft boats, the navigation to Pittsburg is uninterrupted except in winter. The suburbs of Pittsburg are Birmingham, on the south bank of the Monongahela, Alleghany town, on the opposite side of the Alleghany river, and containing a population of about seven thousand, Lawrenceville, Northern and Eastern Liberties. MANUFACTURES. Nail Factories and Rolling Mills. Weight in lbs. Value. Union, 720,000 $43,200 Sligo, 400,000 32,000 Pittsburg, 782,887 86,544 Grant's Hill, 500,000 20,000 Juniata, 500,000 30,000 Pine Creek, 457,000 34,100 Miscellaneous factories, 360,000 28,200 The foregoing table was constructed in 1831. Doubtless this branch of business has greatly increased. The same year there were 12 foundries in and near Pittsburg, which converted 2963 tons of metal into castings, employed 132 hands, consumed 87,000 bushels of charcoal, and produced the value of $189,614. The following sketch of manufactures in Pittsburg and vicinity, is copied from Tanner's Guide, published in 1832: Steam engines 37, which employed 123 hands. Value, $180,400. Cotton factories 8, with 369 power-looms, 598 hands; value, $300,134. In the counties of Westmoreland and Alleghany, there are 5 cotton factories. In Pittsburg and the two counties just named, are 8 paper mills, valued at $165,000. In Pittsburg and vicinity are 5 steam mills, which employ 50 hands. Value of their products annually, $80,000. There are 5 brass foundries and 8 coppersmiths' shops. Value of the manufactures, $25,000. Within the limits of the city, there are 30 blacksmiths' shops, which employ 136 hands. There are also 4 gunsmiths, and 9 silversmiths and watch repairers. In Pittsburg and the counties of Westmoreland and Alleghany, there are 26 saddleries; and 41 tanneries, 64 brick yards, and 11 potteries. There are in the city 4 breweries, and 4 white lead manufactories, at which 7,400 kegs are made annually; value, $27,900. There are 6 printing-offices in Pittsburg, and 6 more in the two counties. The estimated value of the manufactures of every kind in Pittsburg, and the counties of Alleghany and Westmoreland, in 1831, was $3,978,469. Doubtless they have greatly increased since. _Coal._--The bituminous coal formations around Pittsburg are well deserving the attention of geologists. Coal Hill, on the west side of the Monongahela, and immediately opposite Pittsburg, is the great source of this species of fuel, and the miners, in some places, have perforated the hill to the distance of several hundred feet. It is found in strata from 6 inches to 10 or 12 feet in thickness, and often at the height of 300 feet above the bed of the river, in the hills around Pittsburg, and along the course of the Alleghany and Monongahela. Below this one stratum, which is of equal elevation, none is found till you reach the base of the hill below the bed of the river. Besides supplying Pittsburg, large quantities are sent down the river. There are in Pittsburg, (or _were_ two years since) three Baptist churches, or congregations, one of which is of Welch, four Presbyterian, four Methodist, one Episcopal, one Roman Catholic, (besides a cathedral on Grant's Hill,) one Covenanter, one Seceder, one German Reformed, one Unitarian, one Associate Reformed, one Lutheran, one African, and perhaps some others in the city or suburbs. Of the public buildings deserving notice, I will name the _Western University of Pennsylvania_, which stands on the Monongahela, near Grant's Hill;--the _Penitentiary_, in Alleghany town, which has cost the State an immense amount, and is conducted on the principle of solitary confinement;--the _Presbyterian Theological Seminary_ is also in Alleghany town;--the _Museum_;--the _United States Arsenal_, about two miles above the city, at Lawrenceville. It encloses four acres, and has a large depot for ordnance, arms, &c. The _City Water Works_ is a splendid monument of municipal enterprise. The water is taken from the Alleghany river, by a pipe, 15 inches in diameter, and carried 2,439 feet, and 116 feet elevation, to a reservoir on Grant's Hill, capable of receiving 1,000,000 gallons. The water is raised by a steam-engine of 84 horse power, and will raise 1,500,000 gallons in 24 hours. The aqueduct of the Pennsylvania canal, across the Alleghany river, is also deserving attention. The inhabitants of Pittsburg are a mixture of English, French, Scotch, Irish, German and Swiss artisans and mechanics, as well as of native born Americans, who live together in much harmony. Industry, sobriety, morality and good order generally prevail. Extensive revivals of religion prevailed here about a year since. The population of Western Pennsylvania is characterized for industry, frugality, economy and enterprise. Temperance principles have made considerable progress of late years. WESTERN VIRGINIA --Embraces all that part of Virginia that lies upon the western waters. The counties are Brooke, Ohio, Monongalia, Harrison, Randolph, Russell, Preston, Tyler, Wood, Greenbrier, Kenawha,[9] Mason, Lewis, Nicholas, Logan, Cabell, Monroe, Pocahontas, Giles, Montgomery, Wythe, Grayson, Tazewell, Washington, Scott and Lee:--26. Its principal river is the Kenawha and its tributaries. Of these, Gaula, New river and Greenbrier are the principal. New river is the largest, and rises in North Carolina. The Monongahela drains a large district;--the little Kenawha, Guyandotte, and Sandy are smaller streams. The latter separates Virginia from Kentucky for some distance. Much of Western Virginia is mountainous, lying in parallel ridges, which are often broken by streams. Some of the vallies are very fertile. The Kenawha Valley is narrow, but extends to a great distance. The salt manufactories extend from Charlestown up the Kenawha, the distance of 12 miles. They are 20 in number, and manufacture nearly two millions of bushels annually. The river is navigable for steamboats to this point at an ordinary depth of water. Coal is used in the manufactories, which is dug from the adjacent mountains, and brought to the works on wooden railways. Seven miles above Charlestown is the famous burning spring. Inflammable gas escapes, which, if ignited, will burn with great brilliancy for many hours, and even for several days, in a favorable state of the atmosphere. The State of Virginia has constructed a tolerably good turnpike road from the mouth of the Guyandotte, on the Ohio, to Staunton. It passes through Charlestown, and along the Kenawha river to the falls;--from thence it extends along the course of New river, and across Sewall's mountain by Louisburg to Staunton. The falls of Kenawha are in a romantic region, and merit the attention of the traveller. Marshall's pillar is a singular projecting rock that overhangs New river, 1015 feet above its bed. The stage road passes near its summit. This route is one of the great stage routes leading from the Ohio Valley to Washington city, and to all parts of old Virginia. The _White Sulphur_, _Red Sulphur_, _Hot_, _Warm_, _and Sweet Springs_, are in the mountainous parts of Virginia, and on this route. These are all celebrated as watering places, but the White Sulphur spring is the great resort of the fashionable of the Southern States. Let the reader imagine an extensive campground, a mile in circumference, the camps neat cottages, built of brick, or framed, and neatly painted. In the centre of this area are the springs, bath-houses, dining hall, and mansion of the proprietor. The cottages are intended for the accommodation of families, and contain two rooms each. This is by far the most extensive watering place in the Union. Of the effect of such establishments on _morals_ I shall say nothing. The reader will draw his own conclusions, when he understands that the card-table, roulette, wheel of fortune, and dice-box are amongst its principal amusements. Here, not unfrequently, cotton bales, negroes, and even plantations, change owners in a night. The scenery around is highly picturesque and romantic. Declivities and mountains, sprinkled over with evergreens, are scattered in wild confusion. A few miles from White Sulphur springs, you pass the dividing line--the Alleghany ridge, and pass from Western into Middle Virginia. _Chief Towns._--Wheeling is the principal commercial town, and a great thoroughfare, in Western Virginia. It has a large number of stores, and commission warehouses; and contains six or eight thousand inhabitants. It is 92 miles by water, and 55 miles by land, from Pittsburg. It has manufactures of cotton, glass, and earthenware. Boats are built here. The Cumberland or National road crosses the Ohio at this place, over which a bridge is about to be erected. The town is surrounded with bold, precipitous hills, which contain inexhaustible quantities of coal. At extreme low water, steamboats ascend no higher than Wheeling. Charlestown, Wellsburgh, Parkersburgh, Point Pleasant, Clarksburgh, Abington, Louisburg, and many others, are pleasant and thriving towns. The climate of Western Virginia is preeminently salubrious. The people, in their manners, have considerable resemblance to those of Western Pennsylvania. There are fewer slaves, less wealth, more industry and equality, than in the "Old Dominion," as Eastern Virginia is sometimes called. FOOTNOTES: [8] See "Mitchell's Compendium of the Internal Improvements in the United States," where much valuable information of the rail-roads and canals of the United States is found in a small space. [9] I have adopted the orthography of the legislature. CHAPTER VIII. MICHIGAN. Extent,--Situation,--Boundaries;----Face of the Country; Rivers, Lakes, &c., Soil and Productions;--Subdivisions, Counties;--Towns, Detroit;--Education;--Improvements projected;--Boundary Dispute;--Outline of the Constitution. Michigan is a large triangular peninsula, surrounded on the east, north and west, by lakes, and on the south by the States of Ohio and Indiana. Lake Erie, Detroit river, lake St. Clair, and St. Clair river, lie on the east for 140 miles; lake Huron on the north-east and north, the straits of Mackinaw on the extreme north-west, and lake Michigan on its western side. Its area is about 40,000 square miles. _Face of the Country._--Its general surface is level, having no mountains, and no very elevated hills. Still, much of its surface is undulating, like the swelling of the ocean. Along the shore of lake Huron, in some places, are high, precipitous bluffs, and along the eastern shore of Michigan are hills of pure sand, blown up by the winds from the lake. Much of the country bordering on lakes Erie, Huron, and St. Clair, is level,--somewhat deficient in good water, and for the most part heavily timbered. The interior is more undulating, in some places rather hilly, with much fine timber, interspersed with oak "openings," "plains," and "prairies." The "_plains_" are usually timbered, destitute of undergrowth, and are beautiful. The soil is rather gravelly. The "_openings_" contain scattering timber in groves and patches, and resemble those tracts called _barrens_ farther south. There is generally timber enough for farming purposes, if used with economy, while it costs but little labor to clear the land. For the first ploughing, a strong team of four or five yoke of oxen is required, as is the case with prairie. The _openings_ produce good wheat. The "_prairies_," will be described more particularly under the head of Illinois. In Michigan they are divided into wet and dry. The former possess a rich soil, from one to four feet deep, and produce abundantly all kinds of crops common to 42 degrees of N. latitude, especially those on St. Joseph river. The latter afford early pasturage for emigrants, hay to winter his stock, and with a little labor would be converted into excellent artificial meadows. Much of the land that now appears wet and marshy will in time be drained, and be the first rate soil for farming. A few miles back of Detroit is a flat, wet country for considerable extent, much of it heavily timbered,--the streams muddy and sluggish,--some wet prairies,--with dry, sandy ridges intervening. The timber consists of all the varieties found in the Western States; such as oaks of various species, walnut, hickory, maple, poplar, ash, beech, &c., with an intermixture of white and yellow pine. _Rivers and Lakes._--In general, the country abounds with rivers and small streams. They rise in the interior, and flow in every direction to the lakes which surround it. The northern tributaries of the Maumee rise in Michigan, though the main stream is in Ohio, and it enters the west end of lake Erie on the "debatable land." Proceeding up the lake, Raisin and then Huron occur. Both are navigable streams, and their head waters interlock with Grand river, or Washtenong, which flows into lake Michigan. River Rouge enters Detroit river, a few miles below the city of Detroit. Raisin rises in the county of Lenawee, and passes through Monroe. Huron originates amongst the lakes of Livingston, passes through Washtenaw, and a corner of Wayne, and enters lake Erie towards its north-western corner. Above Detroit is river Clinton, which heads in Oakland county, passes through Macomb, and enters lake St. Clair. Passing by several smaller streams, as Belle, Pine, and Black rivers, which fall into St. Clair river, and going over an immense tract of swampy, wet country, between lake Huron and Saginaw bay, in Sanilac county, we come to the Saginaw river. This stream is formed by the junction of the Tittibawassee, Hare, Shiawassee, Flint, and Cass rivers, all of which unite in the centre of Saginaw county, and form the Saginaw river, which runs north, and enters the bay of the same name. The Tittibawassee rises in the country west of Saginaw bay, runs first a south, and then a south-eastern course, through Midland county into Saginaw county, to its junction. Pine river is a branch of this stream, that heads in the western part of Gratiot county, and runs north-east into Midland. Hare, the original name of which is Waposebee, commences in Gratiot, and the N. W. corner of Shiawassee counties, and runs an east and north-east course. The heads of the Shiawassee, which is the main fork of the Saginaw, are found in the counties of Livingston and Oakland. Its course is northward. Flint river rises in the south part of Lapeer county, and runs a north-western course, some distance past the centre of the county, when it suddenly wheels to the south, then to the west, and enters Genesee county, through which it pursues a devious course towards its destination. Cass river rises in Sanilac county, and runs a western course. These rivers are formed of innumerable branches, and water an extensive district of country. Other smaller streams enter lake Huron, above Saginaw bay; but the whole country across to lake Michigan is yet a wilderness, and possessed by the Indians. Doubtless it will soon be purchased, surveyed and settled. On the western side of the State are Traverse, Ottawa, Betsey, Manistic, Pent, White, Maskegon, Grand, Kekalamazoo, and St. Joseph, all of which fall into lake Michigan. Those above Grand river are beyond the settled portion of the State. Grand river is the largest in Michigan, being 270 miles in length, its windings included. Its head waters interlock with the Pine, Hare, Shiawassee, Huron, Raisin, St. Joseph and Kekalamazoo. A canal project is already in agitation to connect it with the Huron, and open a water communication from lake Erie, across the peninsula, direct to lake Michigan. Grand river is now navigable for batteaux, 240 miles, and receives in its course, Portage, Red-Cedar, Looking-glass, Maple, Muscota, Flat, Thorn-Apple, and Rouge rivers, besides smaller streams. It enters lake Michigan 245 miles south-westerly from Mackinaw, and 75 north of St. Joseph;--is between 50 and 60 rods wide at its mouth, with 8 feet water over its bar. The Ottawa Indians own the country on its north side, for 60 miles up. Much of the land on Grand river and its tributaries, is excellent, consisting of six or seven thousand square miles;--and, considering its central position in the State,--the general fertility of its soil,--the good harbor at its mouth,--the numerous mill sites on its tributaries,--this region may be regarded as one of the most interesting portions of Michigan. The Kekalamazoo rises in Jackson and Eaton counties, passes through Calhoun, and the northern part of Kalamazoo, enters the south-eastern part of Allegan, and passes diagonally through it to the lake. There is much first-rate land, timber, prairie, and openings, on its waters, and is rapidly settling. The St. Joseph country is represented by some as the best country in Michigan. This stream has several heads in Branch, Hillsdale, Jackson, Calhoun, and Kalamazoo counties, which unite in St. Joseph county, through which it passes diagonally to the south-west, into Indiana,--thence through a corner of Elkhart county, into St. Joseph of that State, makes the "South Bend," and then runs north-westerly, into Michigan, through Berrian county, to the lake. The town of St. Joseph is at its mouth. It has Pigeon, Prairie, Hog, Portage, Christianna, Dowagiake, and Crooked rivers for tributaries, all of which afford good mill sites. In Cass and St. Joseph counties, are Four-mile, Beardsley, Townsend, McKenny, La Grange, Pokagon, Young, Sturges, Notta-wa-Sepee, and White Pigeon prairies, which are rich tracts of country, and fast filling up with inhabitants. Michigan abounds with small lakes and ponds. Some have marshy and unhealthy borders;--others are transparent fountains, surrounded with beautiful groves, an undulating country, pebbly and sandy shores, and teeming with excellent fish. The counties of Oakland, Livingston, Washtenaw, Jackson, Barry, and Kalamazoo, are indented with them. _Productions._--These are the same, in general, as those of Ohio and New York. Corn and wheat grow luxuriantly here. Rye, oats, barley, buckwheat, potatoes, and all the garden vegetables common to the climate, grow well. All the species of grasses are produced luxuriantly. Apples and other fruit abound in the older settlements, especially among the French about Detroit. It will be a great fruit country. _Subdivisions._--Michigan had been divided into 33 counties in 1835, some of which were attached to adjacent counties for judicial purposes. Other counties may have been formed since. The following organized counties show the population of the State, (then Territory,) at the close of 1834. =================================+================================= | _Dist. from COUNTIES. _Population._ | SEATS OF JUSTICE. Detroit._ ---------------------------------+--------------------------------- Berrian, 1,787 | Berrian, 180 Branch, 764 | Branch, 133 Calhoun, 1,714 | Eckford, 100 Cass, 3,280 | Cassopolis, 160 Jackson, 1,865 | Jacksonsburgh, 77 Kalamazoo, 3,124 | Bronson, 137 Lenawee, 7,911 | Tecumseh, 63 Macomb, 6,055 | Mount Clemens, 25 Monroe, 8,542 | Monroe, 36 Oakland, 13,844 | Pontiac, 26 St. Clair, 2,244 | St. Clair, 60 St. Joseph, 3,168 | White Pigeon, 135 Washtenaw, 14,920 | Ann Arbor, 42 Wayne, 16,638 | Detroit, ------ | _Total_, 85,856 | ---------------------------------+----------------------------- The other counties are Hillsdale, Van Buren, Allegan, Barry, Eaton, Ingham, Livingston, Lapeer, Genesee, Shiawassee, Clinton, Ionia, Kent, Ottawa, Oceana, Gratiot, Isabella, Midland, Saginaw, Sanilac, Gladwin and Arenac, the population of which are included in the counties given in the table. Doubtless, the population of Michigan now (Jan. 1836) exceeds one hundred thousand. The counties are subdivided into incorporated townships, for local purposes, the lines of which usually correspond with the land surveys. For the sales of public lands, the State is divided into three land districts, and land offices are established at Detroit, Monroe, and Bronson. _Chief Towns._--Detroit is the commercial and political metropolis. It is beautifully situated on the west side of the river Detroit, 18 miles above Malden in Canada, and 8 miles below the outlet of Lake St. Clair. A narrow street, on which the wharves are built, runs parallel with the river. After ascending the bench or bluff, is a street called Jefferson Avenue, on which the principal buildings are erected. The older dwellings are of wood, but many have been recently built of brick, with basements of stone, the latter material being brought from Cleveland, Ohio. The primitive forest approaches near the town. The table land extends 12 or 15 miles interior, when it becomes wet and marshy. Along Detroit river the ancient French settlements extend several miles, and the inhabitants exhibit all the peculiar traits of the French on the Mississippi. Their gardens and orchards are valuable. The public buildings of Detroit, are a state house, a council house, an academy, and two or three banking houses. There are five churches for as many different denominations, in which the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and Roman Catholics worship. The Catholic congregation is the largest, and they have a large cathedral. Stores and commercial warehouses are numerous, and business is rapidly increasing. Town lots, rents, and landed property in the vicinity are rising rapidly. Lots have advanced, within two or three years, in the business parts of the city, more than one thousand per cent. Mechanics of all descriptions, and particularly those in the building line, are much wanted here, and in other towns in Michigan. The population is supposed to be about 10,000, and is rapidly increasing. This place commands the trade of all the upper lake country. _Monroe_, the seat of justice for Monroe county, is situated on the right bank of the river Raisin, opposite the site of old Frenchtown. Two years since, it had about 150 houses, of which 20 or 30 were of stone, and 1600 inhabitants. There were also two flouring and several saw-mills, a woollen factory, an iron foundry, a chair factory, &c., and an abundant supply of water power. The "Bank of the River Raisin," with a capital of $100,000, is established here. The Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, and Roman Catholics have houses of worship and ministers here. It was at this place, or rather at Frenchtown in its vicinity, that a horrible massacre of American prisoners took place during the last war with Great Britain, by the Indians under Gen. Proctor. The sick and wounded were burned alive in the hospital, or shot as they ran shrieking through the flames! Of the 700 young men barbarously murdered here, many were students at law, young physicians, and merchants, the best blood of Kentucky! Mount Clemens, Brownstown, Ann Arbor, Pontiac, White Pigeon, Tecumseh, Jacksonsburgh, Niles, St. Joseph, Spring Arbor, and many others, are pleasant villages, and will soon become populous. _Education._--Congress has made the same donations of lands, as to other Western States, and will, doubtless, appropriate the same per centage on the sales of all public lands, when the State is admitted into the Union, as has been appropriated to the other new States. A respectable female academy is in operation at Detroit. The Presbyterian denomination are about establishing a college at Ann Arbor, the Methodists a seminary at Spring Arbor, the Baptists one in Kalamazoo county, and the Roman Catholics, it is said, have fixed their post at Bertrand, a town on the St. Joseph river, in the south-eastern corner of Berrian county, and near to the boundary line of Indiana. Much sentiment and feeling exists in favor of education and literary institutions, amongst the people. _Improvements projected._--A survey has been made for a rail-road across the peninsula of Detroit, through the counties of Wayne, Washtenaw, Jackson, Calhoun, Kalamazoo, Van Buren and Berrian, to the mouth of St. Joseph river. Another project is, to commence at or near Toledo on the Maumee river, and pass through the southern counties of Michigan into Indiana, and terminate at Michigan city. A third project is, to open a water communication from the navigable waters of Grand river, to Huron river, and, by locks and slack water navigation, enter lake Erie. A canal from the mouth of Maumee Bay to lake Michigan, has also been spoken of as a feasible project;--or one from the mouth of the river Raisin to the St. Joseph, would open a similar communication. It has also been suggested to improve the river Raisin by locks and slack water navigation. Doubtless not many years will elapse before some of these projects will prove realities. _Boundary Dispute._--This unpleasant dispute between Ohio and Michigan, relates to a strip of country about fifteen miles in width at its eastern, and seven miles at its western end, lying between the north-eastern part of Indiana and the Maumee Bay. A portion of the Wabash and Erie canal, now constructing by Indiana, and which is dependent for its completion on either Ohio or Michigan, passes over this territory. Michigan claims it by virtue of an ordinance of Congress, passed the 13th of July, 1787, organizing the "_North-Western Territory_," in which the boundaries of _three_ States were laid off, "Provided, that the boundaries of these three States shall be subject so far to be altered, that, if Congress shall hereafter find it expedient, they shall have authority to form one or two States in that part of the said territory _which lies north of an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of lake Michigan_;"--Ohio claims it by possession, and because, by being received into the Union with this portion in possession, Congress virtually annulled that part of the former ordinance that fixed the south bend of lake Michigan as the boundary line, and by having run the line north of this. _Outlines of the Constitution._--A convention assembled at Detroit, on the 11th of May, 1835, and framed a constitution for a state government, which was submitted to, and ratified by vote of the people on the first Monday in October. The powers of the government are divided into three distinct departments;--the legislative,--the executive,--and the judicial. The legislative power is vested in a _Senate_ and _House of Representatives_. The representatives are to be chosen annually; and their number cannot be less than 48, nor more than 100. The senators are to be chosen every two years, one half of them every year, and to consist, as nearly as may be, of one third of the number of the representatives. The census is to be taken in 1837, and 1845, and every ten years after the latter period; and also after each census taken by the United States, the number of senators and representatives is to be apportioned anew among the several counties, according to the number of white inhabitants. The _legislature_ is to meet annually, on the first Monday in January. The executive power is to be vested in a governor, who holds his office for two years. Upon a vacancy, the lieutenant governor performs executive duties. The first election was held on the first Monday in October, 1835, and the governor and lieutenant governor hold their offices till the first Monday in January, 1838. The _judicial power_ is vested in one _Supreme Court_, and in such other courts as the legislature may, from time to time, establish. The judges of the Supreme Court are to be appointed by the governor, with the advice and consent of the Senate, for the term of seven years. Judges of all county courts, associate judges of circuit courts, and judges of probate, are to be elected by the people for the term of four years. Each township is authorized to elect four justices of the peace, who are to hold their offices for four years. In all elections, every white male citizen above the age of 21 years, having resided six months next preceding any election, is entitled to vote at such election. Slavery, lotteries, and the sale of lottery tickets, are prohibited. The seat of government is to be at Detroit, or such other place or places as may be prescribed by law until the year 1847, when it is to be permanently fixed by the legislature. OHIO --Is bounded on the north by lake Erie, and the State of Michigan, east by Pennsylvania and the Ohio river, south by the Ohio river, which separates it from Virginia and Kentucky, and west by Indiana. The meanderings of the Ohio river extend along the line of this State 436 miles. It is about 222 miles in extent, both from north to south, and from east to west. After excluding a section of lake Erie, which projects into its northern borders, Ohio contains about 40,000 square miles, or 25,000,000 acres of land. _Divisions._--Nature has divided this State into four departments,--according to its principal waters. 1. The Lake country, situated on lake Erie, and embracing all its northern part. Its streams all run into the lake, and reach the Atlantic ocean through the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 2. The Muskingum country, on the eastern side, and along the river of that name. 3. The Scioto country, in the middle,--and, 4. The Miami country, along the western side. For civil purposes, the State is divided into _seventy-five_ counties, and these are again subdivided into townships. Their names, date of organization, number of square miles, number of organized townships, seats of justice, and bearing and distance from Columbus, are exhibited in the following TABLE. ------------+----------+------+----------+-----------------+-------------- | | | | | Bearing And | When |Square| No. of | |Distance from COUNTIES. |organized.|Miles.|Townships.|SEATS OF JUSTICE.| Columbus. ------------+----------+------+----------+-----------------+-------------- Adams, | 1797 | 550 | 10 |West Union, |101 _s._ Allen, | 1831 | 542 | -- |Lima, |110 _n. w._ Ashtabula, | 1811 | 700 | 27 |Jefferson, |200 _n. w._ Athens, | 1805 | 740 | 19 |Athens, | 73 _s. e._ Belmont, | 1801 | 536 | 16 |St. Clairsville, |116 _e._ Brown, | 1818 | 470 | 14 |Georgetown, |104 _s._ Butler, | 1803 | 480 | 13 |Hamilton, |101 _s. w._ Carroll, | 1833 | [A] | [A] |Carrollton, |125 _e. n. e._ Champaign, | 1805 | 417 | 12 |Urbanna, | 50 _w. n. w._ Clark, | 1818 | 412 | 10 |Springfield, | 44 _w._ Clermont, | 1800 | 515 | 12 |Batavia, | 96 _s. w._ Clinton, | 1810 | 400 | 8 |Wilmington, | 60 _s. w._ Columbiana, | 1803 | [A] | [A] |New Lisbon, |150 _e. n. e._ Coshocton, | 1811 | 562 | 21 |Coshocton, | 68 _n. e._ Crawford, | 1826 | 594 | 12 |Bucyrus, | 60 _n._ Cuyahoga, | 1810 | 475 | 19 |Cleveland, |140 _n. n. e._ Dark, | 1817 | 660 | 10 |Greenville, | 93 _w._ Delaware, | 1808 | 610 | 23 |Delaware, | 24 _n._ Fairfield, | 1800 | 540 | 14 |Lancaster, | 28 _s. e._ Fayette, | 1810 | 415 | 7 |Washington, | 38 _s. w._ Franklin, | 1803 | 520 | 18 |COLUMBUS, | Gallia, | 1803 | 500 | 15 |Gallipolis, |102 _s. s. e._ Geauga, | 1805 | 600 | 23 |Chardon, |157 _n. e._ Greene, | 1803 | 400 | 8 |Xenia, | 56 _w. s. w._ Guernsey, | 1810 | 621 | 19 |Cambridge, | 76 _e._ Hamilton, | 1790 | 400 | 14 |Cincinnati, |110 _s. w._ Hancock, | 1828 | 576 | 5 |Findlay, | 90 _n. n. w._ Hardin, | 1833 | 570 | -- |Kenton, | 70 _n. n. w._ Harrison, | 1813 |[A]-- | 13 |Cadiz, |124 _e. n. e._ Henry, | -- | 744 | 2 |Napoleon, |161 _n. w._ Highland, | 1805 | 555 | 11 |Hillsborough, | 62 _s. s. w._ Hocking, | 1818 | 432 | 9 |Logan, | 46 _s. s. e._ Holmes, | 1825 | 422 | 14 |Millersburg, | 81 _n. e._ Huron, | 1815 | 800 | 29 |Norwalk, |106 _n._ Jackson, | 1816 | 490 | 13 |Jackson, | 73 _s. s. e._ Jefferson, | 1797 | 400 | 13 |Steubenville, |147 _e. n. e._ Knox, | 1808 | 618 | 24 |Mount Vernon, | 47 _n. n. e._ Lawrence, | 1817 | 430 | 12 |Burlington, |130 _s. s. e._ Licking, | 1808 | 666 | 25 |Newark, | 33 _e. n. e._ Logan, | 1818 | 425 | 9 |Bellefontaine, | 50 _n. w._ Lorain, | 1824 | 580 | 19 |Elyria, |130 _n. n. e._ Lucas,[B] | 1835 | | -- |Toledo, |150 _n. n. w._ Madison, | 1810 | 480 | 10 |London, | 25 _w. s. w._ Marion, | 1824 | 527 | 15 |Marion, | 45 _n._ Medina, | 1818 | 475 | 14 |Medina, |110 _n. n. e._ Meigs, | 1819 | 400 | 12 |Chester, | 94 _s. s. e._ Mercer, | 1824 | 576 | 4 |St Mary's, |111 _n. w._ Miami, | 1807 | 410 | 12 |Troy, | 68 _n. of w._ Monroe, | 1815 | 563 | 18 |Woodsfield, |120 _e. s. e._ Montgomery, | 1803 | 480 | 12 |Dayton, | 68 _w._ Morgan, | 1819 | 500 | 15 |M'Connelsville, | 75 _s. e._ Muskingum, | 1804 | 665 | 23 |Zanesville, | 52 _e._ Paulding,[C]| -- | 432 | 3 | |170 _n. w._ Perry, | 1818 | 402 | 12 |Somerset, | 46 _e. s. e._ Pickaway, | 1810 | 470 | 14 |Circleville, | 26 _s._ Pike, | 1815 | 421 | 9 |Piketon, | 64 _s._ Portage, | 1807 | 750 | 30 |Ravenna, |135 _n. e._ Preble, | 1808 | 432 | 12 |Eaton, | 50 _w._ Putnam,[C] | -- | 576 | 2 | |148 _n. w._ Richland, | 1813 | 900 | 25 |Mansfield, | 74 _n. n. e_ Ross, | 1798 | 650 | 16 |Chillicothe, | 45 _s._ Sandusky, | 1820 | 600 | 10 |Lower Sandusky, |105 _n._ Scioto, | 1803 | 700 | 14 |Portsmouth, | 90 _s._ Seneca, | 1824 | 540 | 11 |Tiffin, | 87 _n._ Shelby, | 1819 | 418 | 10 |Sidney, | 70 _n. w._ Stark, | 1809 | [A] | 16 |Canton, |116 _n. e._ Trumbull, | 1800 | 875 | 34 |Warren, |160 _n. e._ Tuscarawas, | 1808 | [A] | 19 |New Philadelphia,|100 _e. n. e._ Union, | 1820 | 450 | 9 |Marysville, | 30 _n. w._ Vanwert,[C] | -- | 432 | -- | |100 _n. w._ Warren, | 1803 | 400 | 9 |Lebanon, | 80 _s. w._ Washington, | 1788 | 713 | 19 |Marietta, |106 _s. e._ Wayne, | 1812 | 660 | 20 |Wooster, | 89 _n. e._ Williams, | 1824 | 600 | 10 |Defiance, |130 _n. w._ Wood, | 1820 | 750 | 7 |Perrysburg, |135 _n. w._ [A] Carroll county has been formed from Columbiana, Harrison, Stark and Tuscarawas since the edition of the Ohio Gazetteer of 1833 was published, from which the foregoing table has been constructed. Hence the townships in each are not given. [B] Lucas county has been recently formed from parts taken from Sandusky and Wood counties, and from the disputed country claimed by Michigan. [C] Paulding, Putnam, and Vanwert counties had not been organized at the period of our information. Much of the land in Vanwert is wet. The southern portion contains much swampy prairie. There are nineteen congressional districts in Ohio, which elect as many members of Congress, and twelve circuits for Courts of Common Pleas. _Face of the Country._--The interior and northern parts of the State bordering on lake Erie, are generally level, and, in some places, wet and marshy. The eastern and south-eastern parts bordering on the Ohio river, are hilly and broken, but not mountainous. In some counties the hills are abrupt and broken,--in others they form ridges, and are cultivated to their summits. Immediately on the banks of the Ohio and other large rivers are strips of rich alluvion soil. The country along the Scioto and two Miamies, furnish more extensive bodies of rich, fertile land, than any other part of the State. The prairie land is found in small tracts near the head waters of the Muskingum and Scioto, and between the sources of the two Miami rivers, and especially in the north-western part of the State. Many of the prairies in Ohio are low and wet;--some are elevated and dry, and exhibit the features of those tracts called "barrens" in Illinois. There are extensive plains, some of which are wet, towards Sandusky. _Soil and Productions._--The soil, in at least three fourths of the State, is fertile;--and some of it very rich. The _poorest_ portion of Ohio, is along the Ohio river, from 15 to 25 miles in width, and extending from the National road opposite Wheeling, to the mouth of the Scioto river. Many of the hills in this region are rocky. Among the forest trees are oak of various species, white and black walnut, hickory, maple of different kinds, beech, poplar, ash of several kinds, birch, buckeye, cherry, chestnut, locust, elm, hackberry, sycamore, linden, with numerous others. Amongst the under growth are spice-bush, dogwood, ironwood, pawpaw, hornbeam, black-haw, thorn, wild plum, grape vines, &c. The plains and wet prairies produce wild grass. The agricultural productions are such as are common to the Eastern and Middle States. Indian corn, as in other Western States, is a staple grain, raised with much ease, and in great abundance. More than 100 bushels are produced from an acre, on the rich alluvial soils of the bottom lands, though from 40 to 50 bushels per acre ought to be considered an average crop. The State generally has a fine soil for wheat, and flour is produced for exportation in great quantities. Rye, oats, buckwheat, barley, potatoes, melons, pumpkins, and all manner of garden vegetables, are cultivated to great perfection. No markets in the United States are more profusely and cheaply supplied with meat and vegetables than those of Cincinnati and other large towns in Ohio. Hemp is produced to some extent, and the choicest kinds of tobacco is raised and cured in some of the counties east of the Muskingum river. Fruits of all kinds are raised in great plenty, especially apples, which grow to a large size, and are finely flavored. The vine and the mulberry have been introduced, and with enterprise and industry, wine and silk might easily be added to its exports. _Animals._--Bears, wolves, and deer are still found in the forests and unsettled portions of the State. The domestic animals are similar to other States. Swine is one of the staple productions, and Cincinnati has been denominated the "pork market of the world." Other towns in the west, and in Ohio, are beginning to receive a share of this trade, especially along the lines of the Miami, and the Erie canals. 150,000 hogs have been slaughtered and prepared for market in one season in Cincinnati. About 75,000 is the present estimated number, from newspaper authority. Immense droves of fat cattle are sent every autumn from the Scioto valley and other parts of the State. They are driven to all the markets of the east and south. _Minerals._--The mineral deposits of Ohio, as yet discovered, consist principally in iron, salt, and bituminous coal, and are found chiefly along the south-eastern portion of the State. Let a line be drawn from the south-eastern part of Ashtabula county, in a south-western direction, by Northampton in Portage county, Wooster, Mount Vernon, Granville, Circleville, to Hillsborough, and thence south to the Ohio river in Brown county, and it would leave most of the salt, iron and coal on the eastern and south-eastern side. _Financial Statistics._--From the Auditor's Report to the Legislature now in session, (Jan. 1836,) the following items are extracted. The general revenue is obtained from moderate taxes on landed and personal property, and collected by the county treasurers,--from insurance, bank and bridge companies, from lawyers and physicians, &c. Collected in 1835, by the several county treasurers, $150,080, (omitting fractions): paid by banks, bridges, and insurance companies, $26,060;--by lawyers, and physicians, $1,598;--other sources, $24,028,--making an aggregate of $201,766. The disbursements are,--amount of deficit for 1834, $16,622;--bills redeemed at the treasury for the year ending Nov. 1835, $182,005;--interest paid on school funds, $33,101, &c., amounting to $235,365--and showing a deficit in the revenue of $33,590. CANAL FUNDS. These appear to be separate accounts from the general receipts and disbursements. _Miami Canal._--The amount of money arising from the sales of Miami canal lands up to the 15th of Nov., 1835, is $310,178. This sum has been expended in the extension of the canal north of Dayton. _Ohio Canal._--The amount of taxes collected for canal purposes for the year 1835, including tolls, sales of canal lands, school lands, balance remaining in the treasury of last year, &c., is $509,322. Only $38,242 of the general revenue were appropriated to canal purposes, of which $35,507 went to pay interest on the school funds borrowed by the State. The foreign debt is $4,400,000;--the legal interest of which is $260,000 per annum. The domestic debt of the State, arising from investing the different school funds, is $579,287;--the interest of which amounts to $34,757,--making an aggregate annual interest paid by the State on loans, $294,757. The canal tolls for the year 1835, amount to $242,357, and the receipts from the sale of Ohio canal lands, $64,549,--making an aggregate income to the canal fund of $306,906 per annum;--a sum more than sufficient to pay the interest on all loans for canal purposes. _Items of Expenditure._--Under this head the principal items of the expenditures of the State government are given. Members, and officers of the General Assembly, per annum, $43,987 Officers of government, 20,828 Keeper of the Penitentiary, 1,909 For new Penitentiary buildings, 46,050 State printing, 12,243 Paper and Stationary for use of the State, 4,478 Certificates for wolf scalps, 2,824 Adjutant, and Quarter Master Generals, and Brigade Inspectors, 2,276 Treasurer's mileage on settlement with the Auditor of State, 1,027 Deaf and Dumb Asylum, 5,700 Periodical works, &c. 400 Postage on documents, 545 Reporter to Court in Bank, 300 Members and clerks of the Board of Equalization, and articles furnished, 1,960 Paymaster General,--Ohio Militia, 2,000 The extra session of the legislature on the boundary line, in June, 1835, was $6,823. _Land Taxes._--The amount of lands taxed, and the revenue arising therefrom, at several different periods, are herewith given, to show the progressive advance of the farming and other interests of the State. --------+------------+---------------- Years. | Acres. | Taxes paid. --------+------------+---------------- 1809 | 9,924,033 | $63,991.87 cts 1810 | 10,479,029 | 67,501.60 1811 | 12,134,777 | 170,546.74 From 1811 to 1816, the average increase of the taxes, paid by the several counties, was $59,351. From 1816 the State rose rapidly in the scale of prosperity and the value of property. In 1820, the number of acres returned as taxable, exceeded a fraction of 13 millions, while the aggregate of taxes, was $205,346. The period of depression and embarrassment that followed throughout the west, prevented property from advancing in Ohio. In 1826, '27, '28, '29, '30, a material change in the amount of property taxable took place, from a few hundred thousands, to more than fifty millions. The total value of taxable property of the State for 1835, (exclusive of three counties from which returns had not been received,) amounts to the sum of _ninety-four millions, four hundred and thirty-seven thousand, nine hundred and fifty-one dollars_. _School Funds._--The amount of school funds loaned to the State, up to Nov. 15th, 1835, is-- Virginia Military land fund, $109,937 United States Military land fund, 90,126 Common School fund, 23,179 Athens University, 1,431 School section, No. 16, 453,000 Connecticut Western Reserve, 125,758 -------- Total, $803,432 The following tabular view of the acres of land, total amount of taxable property, and total amount of taxes paid for 1833, is taken from the Ohio Gazetteer. It should be noted that in all the Western States, lands purchased of the government of the United States, are exempted from taxation for _five_ years after sale. It is supposed that such lands are not included in the table. I have also placed the population of each county for 1830, from the census of that year;--reminding the reader that great changes have since been made. -----------------+------------+-------------+--------------+--------------- | | | Total Amount | | Population | Acres of | of taxable | Total Amount Counties. | 1830. | land. | property. | of Taxes paid. -----------------+------------+-------------+--------------+--------------- Adams | 12,231 | 234,822 | $832,565 | $6,995.41 Allen | 578 | 14,159 | 51,214 | 725.28 Ashtabula | 14,584 | 449,742 | 1,347,900 | 13,524.97 Athens | 9,787 | 365,348 | 481,579 | 5,820.90 Belmont | 28,627 | 301,511 | 1,591,716 | 11,590.33 Brown | 17,867 | 267,130 | 1,358,944 | 8,179.35 Butler | 27,142 | 257,989 | 2,514,007 | 20,111.55 Carroll | ---- | 185,942 | 529,575 | 6,876.92 Champaign | 12,131 | 233,493 | 908,571 | 5,956.66 Clark | 13,114 | 247,083 | 1,114,995 | 7,744.89 Clermont | 20,466 | 280,679 | 1,542,627 | 15,645.31 Clinton | 11,436 | 239,404 | 785,770 | 6,482.14 Columbiana | 35,592 | 317,796 | 1,491,099 | 14,217.28 Coshocton | 11,161 | 246,123 | 850,708 | 9,307.28 Crawford | 4,791 | 79,582 | 217,675 | 3,630.09 Cuyahoga | 10,373 | 292,252 | 1,401,591 | 18,122.96 Dark | 6,204 | 107,730 | 260,259 | 3,312.81 Delaware | 11,504 | 338,856 | 831,093 | 8,516.66 Fairfield | 24,786 | 308,163 | 1,992,697 | 13,716.97 Fayette | 8,182 | 234,432 | 544,539 | 6,428.98 Franklin | 14,741 | 325,155 | 1,663,315 | 13,247.34 Gallia | 9,733 | 205,727 | 427,962 | 4,826.55 Geauga | 15,813 | 381,380 | 1,427,869 | 15,832.65 Greene | 14,801 | 251,512 | 1,441,907 | 12,082.36 Guernsey | 18,036 | 275,652 | 908,109 | 9,855.72 Hamilton | 52,317 | 239,122 | 7,726,091 | 97,530.42 Hancock | 813 | 9,302 | 50,929 | 421.70 Harden | 210 | 125,607 | 118,425 | 1,291.43 Harrison | 20,916 | 22,412 | 1,025,210 | 12,400.97 Highland | 16,345 | 317,079 | 1,065,863 | 8,755.29 Hocking | 4,008 | 92,332 | 215,272 | 1,919.29 Holmes | 9,135 | 182,439 | 556,060 | 6,364.03 Huron | 13,346 | 504,689 | 1,512,655 | 15,490.88 Jackson | 5,941 | 57,874 | 197,932 | 2,239.69 Jefferson | 22,489 | 230,145 | 1,855,064 | 13,149.44 Knox | 17,085 | 313,823 | 1,252,294 | 13,329.41 Lawrence | 5,367 | 56,862 | 241,782 | 2,280.80 Licking | 20,869 | 393,205 | 2,101,495 | 17,370.83 Logan | 6,440 | 203,509 | 519,622 | 3,925.65 Lorain | 5,696 | 360,863 | 889,552 | 10,539.09 Madison | 6,190 | 256,421 | 600,578 | 4,643.91 Marion | 6,551 | 168,164 | 390,602 | 5,599.78 Medina | 7,560 | 296,257 | 931,599 | 10,198.31 Meigs | 6,158 | 229,004 | 380,172 | 5,111.58 Mercer | 1,110 | 12,688 | 54,118 | 714.30 Miami | 12,807 | 240,093 | 1,000,748 | 6,423.09 Monroe | 8,768 | 95,520 | 280,572 | 3,666.61 Montgomery | 24,362 | 267,349 | 2,293,419 | 14,649.12 Morgan | 11,800 | 169,135 | 452,991 | 4,945.02 Muskingum | 29,334 | 366,609 | 2,362,616 | 18,567.75 Perry | 13,970 | 175,123 | 729,241 | 6,116.55 Pickaway | 16,001 | 300,969 | 1,798,665 | 10,924.76 Pike | 6,024 | 129,153 | 521,109 | 4,114.37 Portage | 18,826 | 472,156 | 2,019,029 | 17,787.06 Preble | 16,291 | 246,678 | 1,086,322 | 7,441.82 Richland | 24,008 | 433,620 | 1,354,169 | 15,069.92 Ross | 24,068 | 328,765 | 2,897,605 | 17,474.81 Sandusky | 2,851 | 95,822 | 275,992 | 3,354.64 Scioto | 8,740 | 105,539 | 963,882 | 7,926.93 Seneca | 6,159 | 108,758 | 302,089 | 3,916.51 Stark | 26,588 | 374,101 | 1,854,967 | 16,361.36 Shelby | 3,671 | 66,863 | 194,468 | 1,961.26 Trumbull | 26,123 | 556,011 | 1,807,792 | 16,635.58 Tuscarawas | 14,298 | 237,337 | 902,778 | 8,955.75 Union | 3,192 | 259,101 | 380,535 | 5,193.68 Warren | 21,468 | 243,517 | 2,143,065 | 16,247.33 Washington | 11,731 | 282,498 | 681,301 | 7,463.12 Wayne | 23,333 | 382,254 | 1,451,996 | 14,584.77 Williams and | } 1,089 | 17,797 | 90,066 | 1,351.02 others not incor.| } | | | Wood | 1,102 | 17,981 | 127,862 | 1,572.22 -----------------+------------+-------------+--------------+--------------- Total | 937,903 | 17,133,481 | 78,019,526 | 730,010.75 OHIO STATISTICS--1836. From the Annual Report of the Auditor of State, it appears there were returned on the General List for Taxation, 17,819,631 acres of land, under the new valuation, made under the law of 1833-4. Lands, including buildings, valued at $58,166,821 Town Lots, including houses, mills, etc. 15,762,594 269,291 Horses, valued at $40 each, 10,491,640 455,487 Cattle, valued at $8 each, 4,043,896 Merchants' capital, and money at interest, 7,262,927 2,603 Pleasure Carriages, valued at 199,518 ----------- Total amount of taxable property, $94,438,016 On the value of taxable property, the following taxes were levied: State and Canal tax, $142,854.15 County and School tax, 396,505.80 Road tax, 66,482.16 Township tax, 102,991.65 Corporation, Jail, and Bridge tax, 51,276.89 Physicians' and Lawyers' tax, 3,144.19 School-House tax, 1,482.84 Delinquencies of former years, 13,044.37 ----------- Total taxes, $777,782.07 No returns were made from the counties of Crawford, Hancock, Jefferson and Williams. CANAL REVENUES. The total amount of receipts for tolls, for the year ending on the 31st of October, 1835, was as follows: OHIO CANAL. Cleaveland, $72,718.72 | Newark, $20,487.85 Akron, 6,362.90 | Columbus, 4,605.37 Massillon, 13,585.78 | Circleville, 9,651.44 Dover, 8,096.42 | Chillicothe, 12,134.75 Roscoe, 14,555.83 | Portsmouth, 23,118.78 ---------- ---------- 115,319.45 $69,998.00 115,319.45 ----------- Total, $185,317.45 MIAMI CANAL. Dayton, 14,016.75 Middleton, 8,747.19 Hamilton, 3,664.88 Cincinnati, 25,803.77 ---------- Total, 52,232.59 ---------- Total tolls received on both canals, $237,550.04 Deduct contingent expenses on Ohio canal, $5,836.05 Do. on Miami canal, 2,954.68--8,790.73 ------------ $228,759.31 Toll received on Lancaster Lat. Canal, 1,062.56 From water rents and sale of State Lots, 3,700.07 Arrearages paid of Tolls received in October, 1834, 7,835.26 ----------- $242,357.20 POPULATION OF OHIO AT DIFFERENT PERIODS. In Population. | From Increase. 1790, about 3,000 | 1790 to 1800, 42,365 1800, " 45,365 | 1800 " 1810, 185,395 1810, " 230,760 | 1810 " 1820, 350,674 1820, " 581,434 | 1820 " 1830, 356,469 1830, " 937,903 | 1830 " 1835, 437,097 1835, _estimated_, 1,375,000 | _Rivers._--The streams which flow into the Ohio river, are the Mahoninga branch of the Beaver, Little Beaver, Muskingum, Hockhocking, Scioto, Little Miami, and Great Miami. Those which flow from the northward into lake Erie, are the Maumee, Portage, Sandusky, Huron, Cuyahoga, Grand, and Ashtabula. Hence the State is divided into two unequal inclined planes, the longest of which slopes towards the Ohio, and the shortest towards the lake. The head waters of the Muskingum, Scioto and Miami, interlock with those of the Cuyahoga, Sandusky, and Maumee, so as to render the construction of canals not only practicable, but comparatively easy. All the large streams are now navigable for boats during the spring season. _Internal Improvements._--These consist of canals, rail-roads, turnpike roads, and the National road, now under the supervision of, and owned by, the State. The canalling is managed by a Board of Commissioners. The State canals were projected about 1823, and, considering the youthful character of the State, its want of funds and other circumstances, they are, undoubtedly, the greatest works ever executed in America. The _Ohio and Erie Canal_ connects lake Erie with the Ohio river. It commences at Cleaveland, at the mouth of the Cuyahoga, passes along that river and its tributaries, to the summit level, from thence to the waters of the Muskingum, and to the border of Muskingum county; from thence it strikes across the country past Newark, in Licking county, and strikes the Scioto, down the valley of which it proceeds to its mouth, at Portsmouth. The principal places on the canal are Akron, New Portage, Massillon, Bolivar, New Philadelphia, Coshocton, Newark, Bloomfield, Circleville, Chillicothe, Piketon, and Portsmouth. It was commenced on the 4th of July, 1825, and completed in 1832; and, together with the Miami canal to Dayton, cost about $5,500,000, and has greatly enriched the State and the people. Private property along its line has risen from five to ten fold. LENGTH OF OHIO AND ERIE CANAL. Miles. Main trunk from Cleaveland to Portsmouth, 310 Navigable feeder from main trunk to Columbus, 11 Navigable feeder from main trunk to Granville, 6 Muskingum side cut, from the Muskingum river at Dresden, 3 Navigable feeder from the Tuscarawas river, 3 Navigable feeder from the Walhonding river, 1 --- Total length of Ohio canal and branches, 334 The _Miami Canal_ commences at Cincinnati, and, passing through the towns of Reading, Hamilton, Middletown, Franklin, and Miamisburg, terminates at Dayton, 65 miles. It has been navigated from Dayton to the head of Main street, Cincinnati, since the spring of 1829. An extension of the work is now in progress, to be carried along the vallies of St. Mary's and Au Glaise rivers, and unite with the Wabash and Erie canal, at Defiance; distance from Cincinnati about 190 miles. An act passed the Ohio legislature in 1834, for continuing the Wabash and Erie canal, (now constructing in Indiana, by that State,) from the western boundary of Ohio, to the Maumee bay. Operations have been suspended by the boundary dispute with Michigan. The _Mahoning and Beaver Canal_ has already been noticed, under the head of Western Pennsylvania. It is proposed to carry it from Akron, on the Portage summit, along the valley of the Mahoning river, to Newcastle, on the Beaver division of the Pennsylvania canal. Distance in Ohio, 77 miles. The work is in progress. The _Sandy Creek and Little Beaver Canal_ is in progress by a chartered company. It commences near the town of Bolivar, on the Ohio and Erie canal, in Tuscarawas county, and passes along near the line of Stark and Carroll counties to the Little Beaver in Columbiana county, and from thence to the Ohio river. The _Mad River and Sandusky Rail-Road_ will extend from Dayton, on the Miami canal, to Sandusky, through Springfield, Urbanna, Bellefontaine, Upper Sandusky, Tiffin, and down the valley of the Sandusky river to lake Erie. The route is remarkably favorable for locomotive power. Length 153 miles; estimated cost, $11,000 per mile. The work was commenced in September, 1835. The _Erie and Ohio Rail-Road_ is intended to be constructed from Ashtabula on the lake, through Warren to Wellsville, on the Ohio river, a distance of 90 miles. Other rail-roads are in contemplation in this State, the most important of which is the _Great Western Rail-Road_, from Boston, by Worcester, Springfield, and Stockbridge, through New York, by Albany, Utica and Buffalo, along the summit ridge, dividing the northern from the southern waters, through Pennsylvania, Ohio, to intersect the Wabash and Erie canal at La Fayette, in Indiana. From thence provision is already made for it to pass to the eastern boundary of Illinois, from which, a company has been recently chartered to construct it across the State of Illinois by Danville, Shelbyville, Hillsborough, to Alton on the Mississippi. It must be some untoward circumstance that shall prevent this splendid work from being completed the whole length before 1850. The project of a rail-road from Cincinnati, to Charleston in South Carolina, has been entered upon with great spirit in the South, and in all the States more directly concerned in the enterprise. It will, undoubtedly, be carried into effect. The State of Ohio has incorporated a number of turnpike companies, some of which have gone into operation. The first is near the north-eastern corner of the State, from Pierpont, through Monroe and Salem townships to the mouth of Conneant creek, 16 miles long. The second is the Trumbull and Ashtabula turnpike, leading from Warren to Ashtabula, 48 miles. The third is from the town of Wooster, through Medina, to Cleaveland, 51 miles. The fourth is from Columbus to Sandusky, 106 miles, now in the course of construction. Another from Cincinnati, through Lebanon and Columbus, to Wooster, has been commenced on the McAdamized plan, but is not completed. A McAdam turnpike from Cincinnati to Chillicothe is in progress. The National road, constructed by the general government, and transferred to the State, passes from Wheeling, through Columbus to the Indiana line. _Manufactures._--The principal factory for woollen goods is at Steubenville. A number of cotton factories are in the towns along the Ohio river. Furnaces for smelting iron ore are in operation in the counties bordering on the Ohio, near the mouth of the Scioto. Glass is manufactured in several towns. Considerable salt is made on the Muskingum below Zanesville, on the Scioto, and on Yellow creek above Steubenville. About half a million of bushels were made in the State in 1830. Cincinnati rivals Pittsburg in the number, variety and extent of its manufacturing operations. In every town and village through the State, mechanics' shops are established for the manufacture of all articles of ordinary use. _Cities and Towns._--To enter upon minute descriptions, or even name all these, would much exceed the bounds of this work. CINCINNATI is the great commercial emporium of the State. It is pleasantly situated on the right or northern bank of the Ohio river, about equidistant from Pittsburg and its mouth, in N. lat. 39° 06', and W. lon. from Washington city 7° 25'. Directly fronting the city to the south, and on the opposite side of the Ohio river, are the flourishing manufacturing towns of Newport and Covington, which are separated by the Licking river, of Kentucky, which enters the Ohio directly opposite the Cincinnati landing. The wharf arrangements are the most convenient, for lading and unlading goods at all stages of the water, to be found on our western rivers. The town site is beautifully situated on the first and second banks of the river--the former of which is above ordinary high water, and the latter gently rises sixty or seventy feet higher, and spreads out into a semicircular plain, surrounded with elevated bluffs. Cincinnati was founded in 1789, but did not grow rapidly till about 1808. The progressive increase of population will appear from the following table: 1810, 2,320 | 1826, 16,230 1813, 4,000 | 1830, 26,515 1819, 10,000 | 1835, _estimated_, 31,000 1824, 12,016 | Add the adjoining towns of Covington and Newport, whose interests are identified, and the aggregate population will equal 35,000; and, in all reasonable probability, in 1850, these towns, with Cincinnati, will number 100,000 active, educated, and enterprising citizens. In 1826, according to the Picture of Cincinnati, by B. Drake, Esq. and E. D. Mansfield, Esq., the manufacturing industry alone, according to an accurate statistical examination, amounted to 1,800,000 dollars. At that time there were not more than fifteen steam engines employed in manufactures in the city. At the close of 1835, there were more than fifty in successful operation, besides four or five in Newport and Covington. "More than 100 steam engines, about 240 cotton gins, upwards of 20 sugar-mills, and 22 steamboats--many of them of the largest size--have been built or manufactured in Cincinnati, during the year 1835."[10] Hence the productive industry of Cincinnati, Covington and Newport, for 1835, may be estimated at 5,000,000 of dollars. By a laborious investigation, at the close of 1826, by the same writer, the exports of that year were about 1,000,000 of dollars in value. A similar inquiry induced him to place the exports of 1832 at 4,000,000. The estimate for 1835, is 6,000,000. To enumerate all the public and private edifices deserving notice, would extend this article to too great a length. The court house, four market houses, banks, college, Catholic Athenæum, two medical colleges, Mechanics' Institute, two museums, hospital and Lunatics' Asylum, Woodward high school, ten or twelve large edifices for free schools, hotels, and between twenty-five and thirty houses for public worship, some of which are elegant, deserve notice. The type foundry and printing-press manufactory, is one of the most extensive in the United States. Here is machinery, lately invented, for casting printer's types, exceeding, perhaps, anything in the world. Printing, and the manufacture of books, are extensively carried on in this city. Here are six large bookstores, several binderies, twelve or fifteen printing-offices, from which are issued ten weekly, four triweekly, four daily, four monthly, and one quarterly publications. Two medical publications, of a highly respectable character, are issued. The Western Monthly Magazine is too well known to need special notice here. The Cincinnati Mirror is a respectable literary periodical. The Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, and, perhaps, other sects, have each their weekly paper, respectable in size and character. During four months, in 1831, there were issued from the Cincinnati press, 86,000 volumes, of which 20,300 were original works. In the same period, the periodical press issued 243,200 printed sheets. The business has increased greatly since that time. The "_College of Professional Teachers_," is an institution formed at the convention of teachers, held in this city, in October, 1832. Its objects are to _unite_ the professional instructers of youth throughout the Western country in the cause in which they are engaged, and to elevate the character of the profession. Their meetings are held on the first Monday in October annually. Lectures are given, discussions held, reports made, and a respectable volume of transactions published annually. There is no doubt that much good will result to the cause of education in the West, from this annual convocation. _Law School._--An institution of this character has been organized, under the management of Hon. J. C. Wright, and other gentlemen of the bar. Of _Medical Schools_ there are two, at the heads of which are gentlemen of high character and attainments in their profession. The _Mechanics' Institute_ is designed for the diffusion of scientific knowledge among the mechanics and citizens generally, by means of popular lectures and mutual instruction. The _Cincinnati Lyceum_ was formed for the purpose of useful instruction and entertainment, by means of popular lectures and debates. The _Academic Institute_ is designed to aid the cause of education, and elevate the profession, amongst the teachers in Cincinnati. Its meetings are monthly. The _Athenæum_ is an institution under the management of Roman Catholic Priests. The college edifice is a splendid and permanent building, of great capacity. The _Woodward High School_ was founded by the late William Woodward. The fund yields an income of about $2000 annually. It is conducted by four professors, and has about one hundred and twenty students. The corporation has established a system of free schools, designed to extend the benefits of primary education to all classes, and ten or twelve large edifices have been erected for the purpose. I regret the want of documents to give particulars of this liberal and praiseworthy enterprise, which reflects much honor upon the city and its honorable corporation. In 1833, there were twenty public schools for males and females, and two thousand pupils. Many excellent private schools and seminaries, some of deserved celebrity, are sustained by individual enterprise. COLUMBUS, the political capital of the State, and nearly in the centre of the State, is a beautiful city, on the east bank of the Scioto river. In 1812, it was covered with a dense forest, when it was selected by the legislature for the permanent seat of government. The public buildings are a state house, a court house for the Supreme Court, a building for the public offices, a market house, &c., all of brick. The State penitentiary is here, for which a new substantial building is constructing, and an Asylum for the deaf and dumb, sustained by legislative aid. Chillicothe, Cleaveland, Zanesville, Steubenville, Circleville and many others, are large and flourishing towns. _Education._--Charters for eight or ten colleges and collegiate institutions have been granted. Congress has granted 92,800 acres of public land to this State, for colleges and academies. One township, (23,040 acres,) and a very valuable one, has been given to the Miami University, at Oxford. Two townships of land, (46,080 acres,) though of inferior quality, have been given to the Ohio University. Academies have been established in most of the principal towns. A common school system has been established by the legislature. Each township has been divided into school districts. Taxes are levied to the amount of three fourths of a mill upon the dollar of taxable property in the State, which, with the interest accruing from the different school funds already noticed, are applied towards the expenses of tuition. Five school examiners are appointed in each county, by the Court of Common Pleas, who are to examine teachers. The governor, in his recent Message, speaks of the common school system as languishing in proportion to other improvements. _Form of Government._--The legislative authority is vested in a Senate and House of Representatives; both of which, collectively, are styled the General Assembly. The members of both branches are chosen by counties, or by districts composed of counties, according to population. The representatives are chosen annually; the senators biennially. The General Assembly has the sole power of enacting laws; the signature or assent of the governor not being necessary in any case whatever. The judiciary system comprises three grades of courts:--the Supreme Court, Courts of Common Pleas, and Justices' Courts. The justices of the peace are chosen triennially, by the people. The executive authority is vested in a governor, who is elected biennially, and must be thirty years of age, and have resided in the State at least four years. He is commander-in-chief of all the militia, and commissions all officers in the State, both civil and military. Each free, white, male citizen of the United States, of twenty-one years of age, and a resident of the State one year preceding an election, is entitled to a vote in all elections. The following shows the professions, occupations, and nativity of the members of the legislature of Ohio, during the present winter, (1835-6,) and is about a proportionate estimate for other Western States:-- The members of the Ohio legislature, as to their occupations and professions, are:--farmers, 53; lawyers, 17; merchants, 13; doctors, 5; printers, 3; surveyors, 2; millers, 2; masons, 2; carpenters, 2; painter, 1; watch-maker, 1; blacksmith, 1; house joiner, 1. Their nativity is as follows:--Ohio, 7; Pennsylvania, 30; Virginia, 22; New England States, 17; Maryland, 8; New York, 7; New Jersey, 4; Kentucky, 3; Delaware, 2; North Carolina, 1; Ireland, 5; England, 1; Germany, 1. The youngest member in the Senate, is 33 years of age, and the oldest 56. In the House, the youngest 26; oldest 67. Under the Constitution, a senator must be 30; and a member of the House, 26. _Antiquities._--Much has been said about the antiquities of Ohio,--the fortifications, artificial mounds, and military works, supposed to indicate a race of civilized people, as the possessors of the country, anterior to the Indian nations. At Marietta, Circleville, Paint Creek, and some other places, are, doubtless, antiquities, that exhibited, upon their first discovery, strong marks of a military purpose. I have no doubt, however, that credulity and enthusiasm have greatly exaggerated many appearances in the West, and magnified them into works of vast enterprise and labor. Mounds of earth are found in every country on the globe, of all forms and sizes; and why should they not exist in the western valley? Mr. Flint states that he has seen a horse shoe dug up at the depth of thirty-five feet below the surface, with nails in it, and much eroded by rust. He mentions also a sword, which is _said_ to be preserved as a curiosity, but which he had not seen, found enclosed in the wood of the roots of a tree, which could not have been less than five hundred years old! Those who delight especially in the marvellous, may consult the "Description of the Antiquities discovered in the State of Ohio, and other Western States, by Caleb Atwater, Esq." _History._--The first permanent settlement of Ohio, was made at Marietta, on the 7th day of April, 1788, by 47 persons from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. This was the nucleus around which has grown up the populous State of Ohio. Amongst the most active promoters of this colony, were those called then "The Ohio Company." The next settlement was that of Symmes' purchase, made at Columbia, six miles above Cincinnati, in Nov. 1789, by Major Stiles and twenty-five others, under the direction of Judge Symmes. A colony of French emigrants settled at Gallipolis in 1791. In 1796 settlements were made by New England emigrants at Cleaveland and Conneant, on the southern shore of lake Erie. The intermediate country gradually filled up by emigration from various parts of the United States. Some slight diversity exists, in different sections of the State, in manners, customs, and feelings, amongst the people, in accordance with the States or countries from which they or their fathers emigrated. These shades of character will become blended, and the next generation will be _Ohians_, or, to use their own native cognomen, _Buckeyes_. In Sept., 1790, the first territorial legislature convened at Cincinnati. The governor having exercised his right of _veto_ in relation to the removal of a county seat, an unhappy collision followed, and, upon framing the State Constitution, in Nov., 1802, the convention prevented the governor of the State from ever exercising the _negative_ power upon acts of the legislature. DATE OF ORGANIZATION OF SOME OF THE OLDEST COUNTIES. Washington, July 27th, 1788 Hamilton, Jan. 2d, 1790 Adams, July 10th, 1797 Jefferson, July 29th, 1797 Ross, August 20th, 1798 Trumbull, July 10th, 1800 Clermont, December 6th, 1800 Belmont September 7th, 1801 These were all organized under the territorial government. INDIANA. Length 240, breadth 150 miles. Between 37° 48' N. latitude, and 7° 45' and 11° W. longitude. Bounded north by the State of Michigan and lake Michigan, east by Ohio, south by the Ohio river, which separates it from Kentucky, and west by Illinois. It contains about 37,000 square miles, equal to 23,680,000 acres. It is naturally subdivided into the hilly portion, bordering on the Ohio; the level, timbered portion, extending across the middle of the State; the Wabash country, on that river; and the northern portion bordering on the State of Michigan and the lake. The two last portions include nearly all the prairie country. For civil purposes, this State has been divided into counties, and those subdivided into townships. TABLE. ------------+----------+------+----------++-----------------+------------- | | | || |Bearing and | Date of |Square|Population|| |distance from COUNTIES. |Formation.|miles.| 1830. ||SEATS OF JUSTICE.|Indianopolis. ------------+----------+------+----------++-----------------+------------- Allen, | 1823 | 720 | 1,000 || Fort Wayne, | Bartholomew,| 1821 | 588 | 5,800 || Columbus, | Boon, | 1830 | 400 | 622 || Lebanon, | Carroll, | 1828 | 450 | 1,614 || Delphi, | Cass, | 1829 | 460 | 1,154 || Logansport, | Clark, | 1802 | 400 | 10,719 || Charlestown, | Clay, | 1825 | 360 | 1,616 || Bowling Green, | Clinton, | 1830 | 450 | 1,423 || Frankfort, | Crawford, | 1818 | 350 | 3,184 || Fredonia, | Daviess, | 1816 | 460 | 4,512 || Washington, | Dearborn, | 1802 | 448 | 14,573 || Lawrenceburgh, | Decatur, | 1821 | 400 | 5,854 || Greensburgh, | Delaware, | 1827 | 400 | 2,372 || Muncietown, | Dubois, | 1817 | 420 | 1,774 || Jasper, | Elkhart, | 1830 | 576 | 935 || Goshen, | Fayette, | 1818 | 200 | 9,112 || Connersville, | Floyd, | 1819 | 200 | 6,363 || New Albany, | Fountain, | 1825 | 400 | 7,644 || Covington, | Franklin, | 1810 | 400 | 10,199 || Brookville, | Gibson, | 1813 | 450 | 5,417 || Princeton, | Grant, | 1831 | 415 | ---- || Marion, | Greene, | 1821 | 540 | 4,250 || Bloomfield, | Hamilton, | 1823 | 400 | 1,705 || Noblesville, | Hancock, | 1828 | 340 | 1,569 || Greenfield, | Harrison, | 1808 | 470 | 10,288 || Corydon, | Hendricks, | 1823 | 420 | 3,967 || Danville, | Henry, | 1821 | 440 | 6,498 || Newcastle, | Huntington, | 1832 | 400 | ---- || | Jackson, | 1815 | 500 | 4,894 || Brownstown, | Jefferson, | 1809 | 400 | 11,465 || Madison, | Jennings, | 1816 | 400 | 3,950 || Vernon, | Johnson, | 1822 | 300 | 4,130 || Franklin, | Knox, | 1802 | 540 | 6,557 || Vincennes, | La Porte, | 1832 | 420 | ---- || La Porte, | Lagrange, | 1832 | 380 | ---- || Mongoquinon, | Lawrence, | 1818 | 460 | 9,237 || Bedford, | Madison, | 1823 | 420 | 2,442 || Andersontown, | Marion, | 1821 | 440 | 7,181 || INDIANOPOLIS, | Martin, | 1818 | 340 | 2,010 || Mount Pleasant, | Miami, | 1832 | 330 | ---- || Miamisport, | Monroe, | 1818 | 560 | 6,578 || Bloomington, | Montgomery, | 1822 | 500 | 7,376 || Crawfordsville, | Morgan, | 1821 | 530 | 5,579 || Martinsville, | Orange, | 1815 | 378 | 7,909 || Paoli, | Owen, | 1818 | 380 | 4,060 || Spencer, | Parke, | 1821 | 450 | 7,534 || Rockville, | Perry, | 1814 | 400 | 3,378 || Rome, | Pike, | 1816 | 430 | 2,464 || Petersburgh, | Posey, | 1814 | 500 | 6,883 || Mount Vernon, | Putnam, | 1821 | 490 | 8,195 || Greencastle, | Randolph, | 1818 | 440 | 3,912 || Winchester, | Ripley, | 1818 | 400 | 3,957 || Versailles, | Rush, | 1821 | 400 | 9,918 || Rushville, | Scott, | 1817 | 200 | 3,097 || Lexington, | Shelby, | 1821 | 430 | 6,294 || Shelbyville, | Spencer, | 1818 | 400 | 3,187 || Rockport, | St. Joseph, | 1830 | 740 | 287 || South Bend, | Sullivan, | 1816 | 430 | 4,696 || Merom, | Switzerland,| 1814 | 300 | 7,111 || Vevay, | Tippecanoe, | 1826 | 500 | 7,161 || La Fayette, | Union, | 1821 | 224 | 7,957 || Liberty, | Vanderburgh,| 1818 | 225 | 2,610 || Evansville, | Vermillion, | 1823 | 280 | 5,706 || Newport, | Vigo, | 1818 | 400 | 5,737 || Terre Haute, | Wabash, | 1832 | 380 | ---- || | Warren, | 1828 | 350 | 2,854 || Williamsport, | Warrick, | 1813 | 412 | 2,973 || Boonville, | Washington, | 1813 | 550 | 13,072 || Salem, | Wayne, | 1810 | 420 | 23,344 || Centerville, | The total population in 1830, was 341,582. The estimated population in the message of Gov. Noble to the legislature, December, 1835, was 600,000. The counties in which the population has not been given in the foregoing table, have been formed since 1830. Probably other new counties, along the waters of the Wabash and Kankakee, have been formed recently, of which no intelligence has been had by the author. The counties in the northern portion of the State have increased the most in population since 1830. For electing representatives to Congress, the State is divided into seven electoral districts. For judicial purposes, it is divided into eight circuits, in each of which there is a circuit judge, who, together with two associates in each county, holds the circuit courts. POPULATION AT DIFFERENT PERIODS. Population. | Increase. In 1800,(excluding Illinois,) 2,641 | From 1800 to 1810, 21,879 " 1810, 24,520 | " 1810 to 1820, 122,658 " 1820, 147,178 | " 1820 to 1825, 74,822 " 1825, 222,000 | " 1825 to 1830, 119,582 " 1830, 341,582 | " 1830 to 1835, 119,582 " 1835,(estimate,) 600,000 | In 1825, the number of voters was 36,977, and the number of paupers 217! _Face of the Country, &c._--The counties bordering on the Ohio river are hilly;--sometimes abrupt, precipitous, stony, occasionally degenerating into knobs and ravines. Commencing at the mouth of White river on the Wabash, and following up that stream on its east fork, and thence along the Muskakituck, through Jennings and Ripley counties to Lawrenceville, and you leave the rough and hilly portion of Indiana, to the right. Much of the country we have denominated hilly is rich, fertile land, even to the summits of the hills. On all the streams are strips of rich alluvion of exhaustless fertility. The interior, on the two White rivers and tributaries, is moderately undulating, tolerably rich soil, and much of it heavily timbered with oaks of various species, poplar, beech, sugar tree, walnuts, hickory, elm, and other varieties common to the West. There is much level, table land, between the streams. Along the Wabash, below Terre Haute, is an undulating surface, diversified with forest and prairie, with a soil of middling quality, interspersed with some very rich tracts. Along the Wabash and its tributaries above Terre Haute, the land in general is first rate,--a large proportion forest, interspersed with beautiful prairies. The timber consists of oaks of various species, poplar, ash, walnut, cherry, elm, sugar tree, buckeye, hickory, some beech, sassafras, lime, honey locust, with some cotton wood, sycamore, hackberry and mulberry on the bottom lands. The undergrowth is spice bush, hazel, plum, crab apple, hawthorn and vines. Along the northern part of the State are extensive prairies and tracts of barrens, with groves of various kinds of timber and skirts of burr oak. Towards lake Michigan, and along the Kankakee and St. Joseph rivers, are lakes, swamps and marshes. _Rivers._--The Ohio meanders along the southeastern and southern parts of the State for 350 miles. The east and west forks of White river, and their tributaries, water the interior counties for 100 miles in extent. They are both navigable streams for flat boats during the spring and autumn floods. The Wabash river has several heads, which interlock with the waters of the St. Joseph and St. Mary's, which form the Maumee of lake Erie. It runs a south-westwardly course across the State to Warren county,--thence southwardly to Vigo county, where it becomes the boundary between Indiana and Illinois, along which it meanders to the Ohio, which it enters 12 miles above Shawneetown. The St. Joseph of lake Michigan, already noticed under the State of Michigan, makes a curve into Elkhart and St. Joseph counties, forming what is called the _South Bend_. The Kankakee, which is the longest branch of Illinois river, rises in Indiana, near the South Bend. Some of its head waters interlock with those of Tippecanoe, a prominent tributary of the Wabash. SKETCH OF EACH COUNTY. The following sketch of each county,--its streams, surface, soil, and minerals,--has been made and collated with much labor, from an excellent Gazetteer of this State, published in 1833, by Douglass and Maguire of Indianopolis,--from personal observation of many of the older counties,--and from an extensive correspondence. ALLEN.--Streams; St. Joseph's and St. Mary's, which form the Maumee of lake Erie, navigable for small keel boats,--and numerous creeks; generally heavily timbered; soil, clay,--sandy on the rivers. BARTHOLOMEW.--Streams; Driftwood, Clifty, Flat Rock, and Salt Creeks,--all mill streams. Surface, level; soil, a rich loam, mixed with sand and gravel; the western part hilly, with clay soil. Minerals; limestone, coal, iron ore, red ochre. BOON.--Watered by the tributaries of Raccoon and Sugar Creeks. Surface, level,--soil rich. CARROLL.--Streams; Wabash river, Deer, Rock, and branches of Wildcat creeks. Considerable timber,--some prairies, of which Deer prairie is the largest and most beautiful. Considerable quantities of limestone on the surface; a remarkable spring near Delphi,--the water reddish. CASS.--Streams are Wabash and Eel rivers, which unite at Logansport,--the head of steamboat navigation of the Wabash, and termination of the W. and E. canal. Surface, generally level, rolling towards the rivers with abrupt bluffs; soil, near the rivers, a mixture of loam and sand; at a distance from them, flat and clayey. Large proportion, forest land,--some prairies. CLARK.--Silver and Fourteen Mile creeks furnish excellent mill sites. Ohio river on the south. Surface, rolling and hilly; soil, loam, mixed with sand. Minerals; limestone, gypsum, water lime, marble, salt, iron ore, copperas, alum. CLAY.--Eel river and tributaries. Surface moderately undulating; soil various, chiefly clay and loam, and a mixture of sand, in places; timber predominates,--some prairies. CLINTON.--Watered by the South, Middle, and Kilmore's Forks of Wildcat creek. Surface, moderately undulating, or level: Twelve Mile prairie extends from S. W. to N. E. 12 miles, and is three fourths of a mile wide. The remainder timbered land. Soil, a rich sandy loam, and exceedingly fertile. CRAWFORD.--Waters; the Ohio and Blue rivers,--plenty of water power, and excellent springs. Surface, hilly and broken; in places, tolerably productive; in others, soil thin and rocky. A timbered region, and abundance of limestone. DAVIESS.--Streams; Forks of White river, with its tributaries, Smother's, Prairie, Veal, Aikman's and Sugar creeks. Level bottoms on the rivers--sometimes inundated; undulating on the high grounds. Soil on the West Fork, sandy; much timber,--an extensive tract of sugar tree; some prairies. The county destitute of rock near the surface; plenty of lime and sandstone in the bed of West Fork of White river, at the rapids. Plenty of coal. DEARBORN.--Watered by the Great Miami, Whitewater, Laughery, Hogan's and Tanner's creeks. Surface, hilly and broken, with rich, level, bottom lands, on the Miami. Soil, one fourth first rate, one fourth second rate,--remainder inferior. A timbered region. DECATUR.--Flat Rock, Clifty, and Sand creeks, are all good mill streams. Surface, generally level,--some parts undulating; soil, loam, with a substratum of clay; well adapted to grain--timbered. Minerals; limestone, some iron ore and coal. DELAWARE.--Streams; Missisinawa, and West Fork of White river; surface tolerably level; soil, loam, mixed with sand. Minerals; some limestone, and granite bowlders scattered over the surface. DUBOIS.--Streams; East Fork of White river, Patoka and Anderson creeks. Surface rolling,--some parts hilly and broken,--some level tracts; soil rich and sandy loam near the streams. Minerals; sand rock and coal. ELKHART.--Watered by St. Joseph of lake Michigan, Elkhart and tributaries. Surface, generally level,--a portion undulating; soil various, but generally rich; forest and prairie, both wet and dry. FAYETTE.--Watered by the West Fork of Whitewater, and a small lake in the north. Surface, undulating; soil, on the high ground, clayey, and a mixture of sand,--on the bottom lands, a rich, sandy loam. Limestone found in masses and quarries. FLOYD.--Watered by the Ohio river, Silver creek, and some head branches of Big and Little Indian creeks. Surface various,--a range of knobs,--east of these knobs, it is gently undulating; soil inferior. Minerals; shale, soft sandstone, limestone, freestone, iron ore, and some traces of coal. A boiling spring, from which is emitted an inflammable gas. FOUNTAIN.--Watered by the Wabash river, and Coal and Shawnee creeks, with numerous mill sites. Surface, gently undulating; soil, a black loam, mixed with sand, and very rich. Minerals; coal, and some sandstone. FRANKLIN.--Watered by the East and West Forks of Whitewater. Surface, on the eastern part level,--western, rolling; soil, in the central and northern parts, a black loam,--in the south-west, thin and clayey. GIBSON.--Watered by the Wabash, White, and Patoka rivers. Surface, rolling and timbered; soil, generally a sandy loam, and productive. GRANT.--Watered by the Missisinawa and tributaries. Surface level,--generally heavily timbered; soil, clay and loam on the table lands,--sandy on the river bottoms. GREEN.--Watered by White and Eel rivers, and Richland creek; soil, on the rivers a rich loam,--on the bluffs, sandy,--east side, hilly,--west side, level. White river is navigable. Minerals; lime and sandstone, coal, and some iron ore. HAMILTON.--The streams are White river, and Cicero, Coal, Stoney, and Fall creeks. Generally forest,--some few prairies; soil, in places, clay,--more generally, a sandy loam. Minerals; lime, and some soft sand rock. HANCOCK.--Watered by Blue river, Sugar and Brandywine creeks, with excellent mill sites, and well supplied with springs. Surface, either level or gently undulating; soil, a rich loam, mixed with sand,--heavily timbered. HARRISON.--Watered by Big and Little Indian, and Buck creeks, and Blue river. Surface various,--some parts hilly and broken,--some parts undulating,--some parts level; soil, in the low grounds, a rich loam,--on the high grounds, calcareous and gravelly. A large tract of "barrens" in the west. Minerals; a quarry and several caves of black flint, salt licks, limestone. HENDRICKS.--The waters are White Lick, and branches of Eel river, with good mill sites. Surface, gently rolling, and timbered with the varieties of the Wabash country; soil, a mixture of clay, loam and sand. HENRY.--Watered by Blue river, Flat Rock and Fall creeks. Surface, in some places, broken,--in most parts, level; soil, a mixture of sand with loam and clay. Plenty of springs and mill sites. Mostly timbered, but several tracts of prairie. HUNTINGTON.--The streams are Salamania, Little river, and Wabash. Surface, on the rivers, level,--back, gently undulating; soil, loam and clay, with a slight mixture of sand. Several tracts of prairie, but generally forest land. JACKSON.--Watered by Indian, Driftwood, White, Muscatatack, and Gum creeks. Surface, rolling and in places hilly; soil, clay and loam, mixed with sand. In the forks of the creeks, sand predominates. On the west and north-west, inclined to clay. JEFFERSON.--Watered by the Ohio river, Indian, Kentucky and Big creeks. Surface various; along the river and creeks, low alluvion; soil, loam mixed with sand. The bottoms are bounded by precipitous bluffs, with towering cliffs of limestone. The table lands are undulating, and the soil inclined to clay. Timber various. Abounds with limestone, masses of freestone, and scattered granite bowlders. JOHNSON.--Watered on the eastern side by Blue river, and Sugar and Young's creeks,--on the western side by Indian, Crooked, and Stott's creeks. Surface, gently undulating; soil, a rich, black, sandy loam; timbered. Minerals; masses of freestone, and scattered granite bowlders. JENNINGS.--Watered by Graham's Fork, and the North Fork of the Muscatatack. Surface, in some parts level, some parts very hilly; soil, calcareous, rich and productive; timber of all varieties; abounds with limestone. KNOX.--The Wabash on the west side,--White river south,--the West Fork of White river east,--and Maria and Duchain creeks, interior. Surface undulating; soil, somewhat various,--a rich loam in places,--sandy in other places;--some tracts of prairie, but timber predominates. LAGRANGE.--Watered by Pigeon and Crooked rivers. Surface, gently rolling; northern part extensive prairies; southern portion chiefly forest; soil, loam and sand. LA PORTE.--Watered by the Kankakee, Galena, and Trail creek, at the mouth of which is Michigan city, and a harbor for lake Michigan commerce. Surface, gently undulating; abounds with large, rich prairies, with groves of timber, and lakes of clear water interspersed; soil, a sandy loam, rich and productive. LAWRENCE.--Watered by Salt, Indian, Guthrie's, Beaver, and Leatherwood creeks, and excellent springs. Surface, generally hilly,--some level lands;--soil, on the water courses, sandy,--back from the streams, loam and clay. Abounds with limestone. MADISON.--The West Fork of White river is navigable. The other streams are Killbuck, Pipe, Lick and Fall creeks. Surface, generally level, with some broken land near the streams; timbered, with a wet prairie, 7 miles long and three fourths of a mile wide; soil, sand, mixed with clay and loam,--productive. Minerals; lime and freestone, marble that polishes well, and some traces of iron ore. MARION.--West Fork of White river passes through it, on which is situated INDIANOPOLIS, the capital of the State. Fall creek is an excellent mill stream. Surface, chiefly level forest land; soil, a deep black loam, with a mixture of sand. Large granite bowlders are scattered over the surface. MARTIN.--The East Fork of White river passes through it, and receives Lost river from the left, and Indian and Flint creeks from the right. Surface, on the east side of White river, broken and hilly; soil, clay and loam; on the west side, level, or gently undulating, with portions of barrens and prairie land; soil, clay and loam, mixed with sand. Minerals; coal in large quantities, lime, sand and freestone. MIAMI.--The Wabash and Eel rivers pass through it, and the Missisinawa comes from the east, and enters the Wabash about the centre of the county. The Wabash and Erie canal passes through it. Surface, gently undulating and beautiful,--chiefly forest, and interspersed with small prairies; soil, the richest in the State, of loam, clay and sand intermixed. MONROE.--Streams; Salt, Clear, Indian, Raccoon, Richland, and Bean-blossom creeks,--pure springs. Surface, hilly and undulating; soil, second rate. Minerals; limestone rock, salt licks, with manufactories of salt. MONTGOMERY.--The heads of Shawnee and Coal creeks in the north-west,--Sugar creek in the centre,--and Big Raccoon on the southeastern part. Surface, gently undulating; the northern portion prairie, interspersed with groves, with a rich soil of black loam, mixed with sand,--the middle and southern portions timbered. Excellent quarries of rock in the middle,--granite bowlders in the northern parts. MORGAN.--White river, which is navigable. The mill streams are White Lick, Sycamore, Highland, and Lamb's creeks on the west side, and Crooked, Stott's, Clear, and Indian creeks on the east side. Surface, generally rolling,--some parts hilly; soil, calcareous and clayey,--on the bottoms, a rich sandy loam. Minerals; limestone, and some iron ore. ORANGE.--Streams; Lost river, French Lick, and Patoka. Surface, hilly and broken,--limestone rock,--springs of water, of which Half-moon and French Lick are curiosities. On the alluvial bottoms, the soil is loamy,--on the hills, calcareous, and inclined to clay. Excellent stones for grit, equal to the Turkey oil stones, are found in this county. OWEN.--Watered by the West Fork of White river, with its tributaries, Raccoon, Indian, Mill, Rattlesnake, and Fish creeks. The falls of Eel river furnish the best water power in the State. Surface rolling; soil, in some places a dark loam,--in others clayey and calcareous. Minerals; immense bodies of lime rock, and some iron ore. PARKE.--Watered by the Big and Little Raccoon, and Sugar creeks, (with excellent mill sites,) all of which enter the Wabash on its western side. Surface, generally level,--some beautiful prairies, but mostly forest land; soil, a loam mixed with sand and rich. Minerals; lime and sandstone, coal and iron ore. PERRY.--Watered by the Ohio river, with Anderson's, Bear, Poison, and Oil creeks interior. Some level land, with a rich, sandy loam, on the streams,--all the high lands very broken; hilly, with a clayey, sterile soil. Minerals; immense bodies of limestone, grindstone quarries, iron ore and coal. PIKE.--Has White river on the north, and Patoka creek through the centre. Surface all forest land and undulating; soil, eastern part clay and sand,--western, a rich, dark loam, mixed with sand,--some swampy land. Minerals, limestone and coal. POSEY.--In the forks of the Ohio and Wabash, with Big, Mill, and McFadden's creeks interior, and good springs. Surface, rolling, and all forest land; soil, a sandy loam, and produces well. Minerals; sand, and limestone and coal. PUTNAM.--Has Raccoon creek, and Eel river, with abundant water privileges, and fine springs. Surface, gently undulating; soil, in places calcareous and clayey,--in other places a rich loam; limestone. RANDOLPH.--Watercourses, the West Fork of White river and Missisinawa and their tributaries, which furnish good mill sites. Surface, either level or gently undulating; soil, a rich loam,--in some places marshy; a small quantity of limestone, with granite bowlders. RIPLEY.--Watered by Laughery and Graham's creek. Surface level, forest land; soil clay,--in some parts inclines to sand,--with limestone abundant. RUSH.--The streams are Big and Little Blue rivers, Big and Little Flat Rock, with excellent water power. Surface, moderately rolling, and heavily timbered; soil, loam on clay, with a slight mixture of sand. SCOTT.--Watered by tributaries of the Muscatatack. Surface rolling,--some flat lands inclining to marsh; soil, clay. Minerals; limestone, iron ore, salt, sulphur, and copperas. SHELBY.--Watered by Big and Little Blue rivers, Brandywine, and Sugar creeks, with good mill sites,--all heads of the East Fork of White river. Surface, generally level with forest land; soil, clay mixed with loam. SPENCER.--Ohio river, Anderson's, Little Pigeon, and Sandy creeks. Surface tolerably level, and forest land; soil, clay mixed with loam. Minerals; coal, and lime and sand rock. ST. JOSEPH.--St. Joseph's river, Kankakee, and Bobango, with some small creeks. Extensive marshes on the Kankakee, and near the South Bend of the St. Joseph. These marshes are of vegetable formation. Surface, in some parts level,--in others gently undulating; soil, a loam,--in some places sand. The north-west part chiefly prairies and barrens, including the large and fertile prairies of Portage and Terre Coupe. The north-eastern, barrens,--the south-eastern, forest. Minerals are granite bowlders, and bog iron ore. SULLIVAN.--Has the Wabash river on its western side, and Turman's, Busseron, and Turtle creeks interior. Surface rolling,--some prairies, but generally forest land,--some poor barrens; soil, loam and sand;--lime and sand rock and coal. SWITZERLAND.--The Ohio east and south,--Indian, Plum, Bryant's, Turtle, and Grant's creeks interior. Surface various,--bottom lands level, and rich,--then a range of precipitous bluffs, with cliffs of limestone,--the table land rolling with a calcareous and clayey soil. At Vevay are extensive vineyards. TIPPECANOE.--Watered by the Wabash river, and Wildcat, Wea, Burnett's, and Mill Branch creeks. The Wabash affords navigation, and the other streams excellent mill sites. Surface gently undulating, with extensive level tracts, and consists of one half prairie, one eighth barrens, and the remainder heavy forest land. The prairie soil is a rich, black loam,--the barrens cold, wet clay,--the forest a very rich loam and sand. UNION.--Streams; the East Fork of White river and its tributaries, Hanna's, Richland, and Silver creeks, all of which furnish excellent mill sites. Surface, moderately rolling; soil, a dark loam. VANDERBURGH.--Watered by the Ohio, and Great Pigeon creek. Surface, high, dry, rolling land, with good timber, and well watered; soil, clay and sand, of inferior quality. Minerals; lime and sandstone, salines, and a mineral spring. VERMILLION.--A long, narrow county, between the Wabash river and the State of Illinois. The streams are Wabash, Big and Little Vermillion, and their tributaries. Surface high, rolling land, with abrupt bluffs near the streams; a good proportion of prairie and timber; soil, rich, sandy loam, and very productive. Minerals; freestone and limestone, and large coal banks. VIGO.--The Wabash passes through it--navigable. The mill streams are Prairie, Honey, Otter, and Sugar creeks, but their waters fail in a dry season. Surface level, or gently undulating, with forest and prairies; soil, rich loam and sand,--first rate. Minerals; gray limestone, freestone, and inexhaustible beds of coal. WABASH.--The Wabash river, and W. and E. canal, pass through it, as does the Missisinawa, Eel, Bluegrass, and Salamania. Surface,--wide, rich bottoms on the streams,--bluffs and ravines adjoining,--table lands further back, either dry and rolling, or flat and wet, and abound with willow swamps. Limestone rock abundant, and many excellent springs of pure water. WARREN.--The Wabash on the S. E. border for thirty miles, and navigated by steamboats; interior streams, Rock, Redwood, and Big and Little Pine creeks, all of which afford good mill sites. Some pine and cedar timber. Surface generally level, with broken land on the bluffs of creeks; some forest, but the largest proportion prairie; soil, a rich and very fertile loam. Minerals; lime and excellent freestone for building purposes,--coal,--iron,--lead and copper,--with several old "diggings" and furnaces, where both copper and lead ore have been smelted in early times. WARRICK.--Watered by the Ohio river, Big and Little Pigeon, and Cypress. Surface, rolling and hilly; soil, a sandy loam on clay. Minerals; quarries of freestone, some limestone, and inexhaustible beds of coal. WASHINGTON.--Streams; Muscatatack on the north, Rush, Twin, Highland, Delany's, Elk, Bear, and Sinking creeks, and the heads of Blue and Lost rivers, with mill sites. Surface, diversified from gentle undulations, to lofty and precipitous hills; soil, in part, second rate, with much of inferior quality. Substratum of limestone, caves, hollows, and sink holes. WAYNE.--Streams, East and West Forks of Whitewater, with excellent water power for machinery. Surface, moderately hilly; heavy forest land; soil, a rich loam; substratum, clay. Minerals; generally, limestone, and excellent for buildings. _Form of Government._--This differs very little from that of Ohio. The Constitution provides that an enumeration be made every five years of all free white male inhabitants, above the age of twenty-one years; and the representation of both houses of the General Assembly is apportioned by such enumeration, in such ratio that the number of representatives shall never be less than 36, nor exceed 100, and the number of senators not exceeding one half, nor less than one third the number of representatives. Every free white male citizen, twenty-one years of age, who has resided in the State one year, is entitled to vote; "except such as shall be enlisted in the army of the U. S., or their allies." Elections are held annually, by ballot, on the first Monday in August. Senators, the governor, and lieutenant governor, hold their offices for three years. The judiciary is vested in a Supreme Court, in Circuit Courts, Probate Courts, and Justices of the peace. The Supreme Court consists of three judges, who are appointed by the governor, with the advice and consent of the senate, for the term of seven years, and have appellate jurisdiction. The Circuit Courts consist of a presiding judge in each judicial circuit, elected by joint ballot of both houses of the General Assembly, and two associate judges in each county, elected by the qualified voters in their respective counties, for a like term. The Probate Courts consist of one judge for each county, who is elected by the voters, for the same term. Justices of the peace are elected in each township, for the term of five years, and have jurisdiction in criminal cases throughout the county, but, in all civil cases, throughout the township. _Finances._--The Indiana Gazetteer, of 1833, estimates that the revenue for State purposes amounted to about $35,000 annually, and, for county purposes, to about half that sum. The aggregate receipts for 1835, according to the governor's message, of Dec. 1835, amounted to $107,714; expenditures for the same time, $103,901. Sales of canal lands for the same period, $175,740. The canal commissioners have borrowed $605,257, for canal purposes, on a part of which they obtained two per cent. premium, and, on another part, as high as seven per cent.; and have also borrowed $450,000 bank capital, for which they received four and a half per cent. premium. Three per cent. on all sales of U. S. lands within the State, is paid by the general government into the State treasury, to be expended in making roads. The receipts from this source, in 1835, amounted to $24,398. Sales and rents of saline lands, produced an income of $4,636. The proceeds of certain lands, donated by the general government towards the construction of a road from the Ohio river to lake Michigan, amounted to $33,030. _Internal Improvements._--This State has entered with great spirit upon a system of internal improvements. It consists of canalling, improving river navigation, rail-roads, and common turnpike roads. _Wabash and Erie Canal._--This work will extend from La Fayette, on the Wabash river, up the valley of that stream, to the Maumee and to the boundary of Ohio; distance, 105 miles. The cost of construction has been estimated at $1,081,970, and lands to the amount of 355,200 acres, have been appropriated by the general government, the proceeds of which will be sufficient to complete the canal to Fort Wayne. The middle division, 32 miles, was completed in July, 1835, and the remainder is in active progress. Its whole distance, through a part of Ohio to Maumee bay, at the west end of lake Erie, will be 187 miles. The _Whitewater Canal_, 76 miles in length, along the western branch of Whitewater, is intended to pass through Connorsville, Brookville, Somerset, and other towns, to Lawrenceburgh, on the Ohio river. Provision is made to improve the navigation of the Wabash river, in conjunction with Illinois, where it constitutes the boundary line, and, by this State alone, further up. _Rail-Roads._--From Evansville, on the Ohio, to La Fayette on the Wabash, 175 miles; from La Fayette to Michigan city, 90 miles; forming a line from the Ohio river to lake Michigan, 265 miles in length:--From Madison, on the Ohio, to Indianopolis, the seat of government, 85 miles; and several others were projected two years since. But at the session of the legislature of 1835-6, a bill was passed to borrow, in such instalments as should be needed, _ten millions_ of dollars; and a system of internal improvements, including canals, rail-roads, and the improvement of river navigation, was marked out. In a few years, this State will be prominent in this species of enterprise. _Synopsis of Canals surveyed by order of the Indiana Legislature during the Year 1835._ La Fayette and Terre Haute division of the Wabash and Erie canal. Length, 90 miles; total cost, $1,067,914.70; per mile, $11,865 79. Central canal, north of Indianopolis. Total length, from Indianopolis via Andersontown, Pipe creek summit to the Wabash and Erie canal at Wabash town, 103 miles 34 chains; total cost, $1,992,224.54; per mile, $17,106 51. Length, via Pipe creek summit to Peru, near the mouth of the Missisinawa, 114 miles 46 chains; total cost, $1,897,797.19; per mile, $14,871.85. Length, via Pipe creek summit (including lateral canal to Muncietown) to Wabash town, 124 miles 51 chains; total cost, $2,103,153.61; per mile, $15,873.83. Length, via Pipe creek summit (including lateral canal to Muncietown) to Peru, 185 miles 63 chains; total cost, $2,008,726.26; per mile, $14,793.12. Total length, from Indianopolis via Muncietown to the Wabash and Erie canal at Peru, 131 miles 41 chains; total cost, $2,058,929.41; per mile, $14.549 71. Central canal, south of Indianopolis. Total length, from Indianopolis to Evansville, 188 miles; total cost, $2,642,285.92; per mile, $14,054.71. Route down the valley of Main Pigeon. Length, 194 miles; total cost, $2,400,957.70; per mile, $12,376.02. Terre Haute and Eel river canal, which forms a connexion between the Wabash and Erie canal and White river or Central canal. Total length, 40-½ miles; total cost, $629,631 65; which, including a feeder, is $13,540.46 per mile. Wabash and Erie canal, eastern division, [east of Fort Wayne], Upper line: Length, 19 miles 30 chains; total cost, $154,113.13; per mile, $7,952.17.--Lower line: Total length, 20 miles 76-½ chains; total cost, $254,817.52; per mile, $11,159.04. The following are the works provided for in the Bill, and the sums appropriated for them: 1st. The White Water Canal, including a lateral canal or rail-road, to connect said canal with the Central or White river canal, $1,400,000 2d. Central or White river Canal, 3,500,000 3d. Extension of the Wabash and Erie Canal, 1,300,000 4th. Madison and La Fayette Rail-road, 1,300,000 5th. A M'Adamized turnpike road from New Albany to Vincennes, 1,150,000 6th. Turnpike or rail-road from New Albany to Crawfordsville, 1,300,000 7th. Removing obstructions in the Wabash, 50,000 ----------- $10,000,000 8th. The Bill gives the credit of the State to the Lawrenceburgh and Indianopolis Rail-road Company, for the sum of $500,000. _Manufactures._--Besides the household manufacture of cotton and flannels, common to the western people, at Vincennes, and probably other towns, machinery is employed in several establishments. It will be seen from the sketch of each county, already given, that in most parts of the State there is a supply of water power for manufacturing purposes. Both water and steam power, saw and grist mills, are already in operation in various parts of the State. _Education._--The same provision of one section of land in each township, or a thirty-sixth part of the public lands, has been made for the encouragement of common schools, as in other Western States. A law has been enacted providing for common schools, and the public mind has become measurably awakened to the subject of education. Some most extravagant and exaggerated statements have been made relative to an incredible number of children in this State, "who have no means of education." As in all new countries, the first class of emigrants, having to provide for their more immediate wants, have not done so much as is desirable to promote common school education; but we have no idea they will slumber on that subject, while they are wide awake to the physical wants and resources of the country. Academies have been established in several counties, and a college at Bloomington, from the encouragement of State funds, and other institutions are rising up, of which the Hanover Institution near the Ohio river, and Wabash College at Crawfordsville, promise to be conspicuous. _History._--This country was first explored by adventurers from Canada, with a view to the Indian trade, towards the close of the seventeenth century; and the place where Vincennes now stands is said to have been thus early occupied as a trading post. A company of French from Canada, made a settlement here in 1735. The country, in common with the Western Valley, was claimed by France, until it was ceded to Great Britain, at the treaty of peace in 1763, under whose jurisdiction it remained, until subdued by the American arms under the intrepid Gen. G. R. Clark, and his gallant band, in 1779. A territorial government was organized by Congress in 1787, including all the country north-west of the river Ohio, which was then called the North-western Territory. In 1802, when the State of Ohio was organized, all that part of the Territory lying west of a line due north from the mouth of the Great Miami, was organized into the Territory of Indiana,--which was divided, and from which Illinois Territory was formed in 1809. In June, 1816, a constitution was adopted, and at the ensuing session of Congress, Indiana was made a State. _General Remarks._--The importance of Indiana, as a desirable State for the attention of the emigrant to the West, has been too much overlooked. Though not possessing quite equal advantages with Illinois, especially in the quality and amount of prairie soil, it is far superior to Ohio, and fully equal,--nay, in our estimation, rather superior to Michigan. Almost every part is easy of access, and in a very few years the liberal system of internal improvements, adopted and in progress, will make almost every county accessible to public conveyances, and furnish abundant facilities to market. Along the wide, alluvion bottoms of the streams, and amidst a rank growth of vegetation, there is usually more or less autumnal fever, yet, in general, there is very little difference in any of the Western States as to prospects of health. Mechanics, school teachers, and laborers of every description, are much wanted in this State, as they are in all the States further west; and all may provide abundantly and easily, all the necessaries of living for a family, if they will use industry, economy and sobriety. FOOTNOTES: [10] See a valuable statistical article, by B. Drake, Esq., in the Western Monthly Magazine, for January, 1836, entitled, "_Cincinnati, at the close of 1835_." CHAPTER XI. ILLINOIS. Situation, Boundaries, and Extent. The State of Illinois is situated between 37° and 42°, 30´ N. latitude; and between 10° 25´, and 14°30´ W. longitude from Washington city. It is bounded on the north by Wisconsin Territory, north-east by lake Michigan, east by Indiana, south-east and south by Kentucky, and west by the State and Territory of Missouri. Its extreme length is 380 miles; and its extreme width, 220 miles; its average width, 150 miles. The area of the whole State, including a small portion of lake Michigan within its boundaries, is 59,300 square miles. The water area of the State is about 3,750 square miles. With this, deduct 5,550 square miles for irreclaimable wastes, and there remains 50,000 square miles, or 32 millions of acres of arable land in Illinois,--a much greater quantity than is found in any other State. In this estimate, inundated lands, submerged by high waters, but which may be reclaimed at a moderate expense, is included. _Face of the Country, and qualities of Soil._--The general surface is level, or moderately undulating; the northern and southern portions are broken, and somewhat hilly, but no portion of the State is traversed with ranges of hills or mountains. At the verge of the alluvial soil on the margins of rivers, there are ranges of "bluffs" intersected with ravines. The bluffs are usually from fifty to one hundred and fifty feet high, where an extended surface of table land commences, covered with prairies and forests of various shapes and sizes. When examined minutely, there are several varieties in the surface of this State, which will be briefly specified and described. 1. _Inundated Lands._ I apply this term to all those portions, which, for some part of the year, are under water. These include portions of the river bottoms, and portions of the interior of large prairies, with the lakes and ponds which, for half the year or more, are without water. The term "bottom" is used throughout the West, to denote the alluvial soil on the margin of rivers, usually called "intervales," in New England. Portions of this description of land are flowed for a longer or shorter period, when the rivers are full. Probably one eighth of the bottom lands are of this description; for, though the water may not stand for any length of time, it wholly prevents settlement and cultivation, though it does not interrupt the growth of timber and vegetation. These tracts are on the bottoms of the Wabash, Ohio, Mississippi, Illinois, and all the interior rivers. When the rivers rise above their ordinary height, the waters of the smaller streams, which are backed up by the freshets of the former, break over their banks, and cover all the low grounds. Here they stand for a few days, or for many weeks, especially towards the bluffs; for it is a striking fact in the geology of the western country, that all the river bottoms are higher on the margins of the streams than at some distance back. Whenever increase of population shall create a demand for this species of soil, the most of it can be reclaimed at comparatively small expense. Its fertility will be inexhaustible, and if the waters from the rivers could be shut out by dykes or levees, the soil would be perfectly dry. Most of the small lakes on the American bottom disappear in the summer, and leave a deposit of vegetable matter undergoing decomposition, or a luxuriant coat of weeds and grass. As our prairies mostly lie between the streams that drain the country, the interior of the large ones are usually level. Here are formed ponds and lakes after the winter and spring rains, which remain to be drawn off by evaporation, or absorbed by an adhesive soil. Hence the middle of our large, level prairies are wet, and for several weeks portions of them are covered with water. To remedy this inconvenience completely, and render all this portion of soil dry and productive, only requires a ditch or drain of two or three feet deep to be cut into the nearest ravine. In many instances, a single furrow with the plough, would drain many acres. At present, this species of inundated land offers no inconvenience to the people, except in the production of miasm, and even that, perhaps, becomes too much diluted with the atmosphere to produce mischief before it reaches the settlements on the borders of the prairie. Hence the inference is correct, that our inundated lands present fewer obstacles to the settlement and growth of the country, and can be reclaimed at much less expense, than the swamps and salt marshes of the Atlantic States. 2. _River Bottoms or Alluvion._ The surface of our alluvial bottoms is not entirely level. In some places it resembles alternate waves of the ocean, and looks as though the waters had left their deposit in ridges, and retired. The portion of bottom land capable of present cultivation, and on which the waters never stand, if, at an extreme freshet, it is covered, is a soil of exhaustless fertility; a soil that for ages past has been gradually deposited by the annual floods. Its average depth on the American bottom, is from twenty to twenty-five feet. Logs of wood, and other indications, are found at that depth. The soil dug from wells on these bottoms, produces luxuriantly the first year. The most extensive and fertile tract, of this description of soil, in this State, is the _American Bottom_, a name it received when it constituted the western boundary of the United States, and which it has retained ever since. It commences at the mouth of the Kaskaskia river, five miles below the town of Kaskaskia, and extends northwardly along the Mississippi to the bluffs at Alton, a distance of ninety miles. Its average width is five miles, and contains about 450 square miles, or 288,000 acres. Opposite St. Louis, in St. Clair county, the bluffs are seven miles from the river, and filled with inexhaustible beds of coal. The soil of this bottom is an argillaceous or a silicious loam, according as clay or sand happens to predominate in its formation. On the margin of the river, and of some of its lakes, is a strip of heavy timber, with a thick undergrowth, which extends from half a mile to two miles in width; but from thence to the bluffs, it is principally prairie. It is interspersed with sloughs, lakes, and ponds, the most of which become dry in autumn. The soil of the American bottom is inexhaustibly rich. About the French towns it has been cultivated, and produced corn in succession for more than a century, without exhausting its fertilizing powers. The only objection that can be offered to this tract is its unhealthy character. This, however, has diminished considerably within eight or ten years. The geological feature noticed in the last article--that all our bottoms are higher on the margin of the stream, than towards the bluffs, explains the cause why so much standing water is on the bottom land, which, during the summer, stagnates and throws off noxious effluvia. These lakes are usually full of vegetable matter undergoing decomposition, and which produces large quantities of miasm. Some of the lakes are clear and of a sandy bottom, but the most are of a different character. The French settled near a lake or a river, apparently in the most unhealthy places, and yet their constitutions are little affected, and they usually enjoy good health, though dwarfish and shrivelled in their form and features. "The villages of Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher, and Cahokia, were built up by their industry in places where Americans would have perished. Cultivation has, no doubt, rendered this tract more salubrious than formerly; and an increase of it, together with the construction of drains and canals, will make it one of the most eligible in the States. The old inhabitants advise the emigrants not to plant corn in the immediate vicinity of their dwellings, as its rich and massive foliage prevents the sun from dispelling the deleterious vapors."[11] These lakes and ponds could be drained at a small expense, and the soil would be susceptible of cultivation. The early settlements of the Americans were either on this bottom, or the contiguous bluffs. Besides the American bottom, there are others that resemble it in its general character, but not in extent. In Union county, there is an extensive bottom on the borders of the Mississippi. Above the mouth of the Illinois, and along the borders of the counties of Calhoun, Pike, and Adams, there are a series of bottoms, with much good and elevated land; but the inundated grounds around, present objections to a dense population at present. The bottoms of Illinois, where not inundated, are equal in fertility, and the soil is less adhesive than most parts of the American bottom. This is likewise the character of the bottoms in the northern parts of the State. The bottoms of the Kaskaskia are generally covered with a heavy growth of timber, and in many places inundated when the river is at its highest floods. The extensive prairies adjoining, will create a demand for all this timber. The bottom lands on the Wabash are of various qualities. Near the mouth, much of it is inundated. Higher up it overflows in high freshets. These bottoms, especially the American are the best regions in the United States for raising stock, particularly horses, cattle, and swine. Seventy-five bushels of corn to the acre is an ordinary crop. The roots and worms of the soil, the acorns and other fruits from the trees, and the fish of the lakes, accelerate the growth of swine. Horses and cattle find exhaustless supplies of grass in the prairies; and pea vines, buffalo grass, wild oats, and other herbage in the timber, for summer range; and often throughout most of the winter. In all the rush bottoms, they fatten during the severe weather on rushes. The bottom soil is not so well adapted to the production of small grain, as of maize or Indian corn, on account of its rank growth, and being more subject to blast, or fall down before harvest, than on the uplands. 3. _Prairies._ Much the largest proportion is undulating, dry, and extremely fertile. Other portions are level, and the soil in some cases proves to be wet;--the water, not running off freely, is left to be absorbed by the soil, or evaporated by the sun. Crawfish throw up their hillocks in this soil, and the farmer who cultivates it, will find his labors impeded by the water. In the southern part, that is, south of the National road leading from Terre Haute to the Mississippi, the prairies are comparatively small, varying in size from those of several miles in width, to those which contain only a few acres. As we go northward, they widen and extend on the more elevated ground between the water courses to a vast distance, and are frequently from six to twelve miles in width. Their borders are by no means uniform. Long points of timber project into the prairies, and line the banks of the streams, and points of prairie project into the timber between these streams. In many instances are copses and groves of timber, from one hundred to two thousand acres, in the midst of prairies, like islands in the ocean. This is a common feature in the country between the Sangamon river and lake Michigan, and in the northern parts of the State. The lead mine region, both in this State and the Wisconsin territory, abounds with these groves. The _origin_ of these prairies has caused much speculation. We might as well dispute about the origin of forests, upon the assumption that the natural covering of the earth was grass. Probably one half of the earth's surface, in a state of nature, was prairies or barrens. Much of it, like our western prairies, was covered with a luxuriant coat of grass and herbage. The _steppes_ of Tartary, the _pampas_ of South America, the _savannas_ of the Southern, and the _prairies_ of the Western States, designate similar tracts of country. Mesopotamia, Syria, and Judea had their ancient prairies, on which the patriarchs fed their flocks. Missionaries in Burmah, and travellers in the interior of Africa, mention the same description of country. Where the tough sward of the prairie is once formed, timber will not take root. Destroy this by the plough, or by any other method, and it is soon converted into forest land. There are large tracts of country in the older settlements, where, thirty or forty years since, the farmers mowed their hay, that are now covered with a forest of young timber of rapid growth. The fire annually sweeps over the prairies, destroying the grass and herbage, blackening the surface, and leaving a deposit of ashes to enrich the soil. 4. _Barrens._ This term, in the western dialect, does not indicate _poor land_, but a species of surface of a mixed character, uniting forest and prairie. The timber is generally scattering, of a rough and stunted appearance, interspersed with patches of hazle and brushwood, and where the contest between the fire and timber is kept up, each striving for the mastery. In the early settlements of Kentucky, much of the country below and south of Green river presented a dwarfish and stunted growth of timber, scattered over the surface, or collected in clumps, with hazle and shrubbery intermixed. This appearance led the first explorers to the inference that the soil itself must necessarily be poor, to produce so scanty a growth of timber, and they gave the name of _barrens_ to the whole tract of country. Long since, it has been ascertained that this description of land is amongst the most productive soil in the State. The term _barren_ has since received a very extensive application throughout the West. Like all other tracts of country, the barrens present a considerable diversity of soil. In general, however, the surface is more uneven or rolling than the prairies, and sooner degenerates into ravines and sink-holes. Wherever timber barely sufficient for present purposes can be found, a person need not hesitate to settle in the barrens. These tracts are almost invariably healthy; they possess a greater abundance of pure springs of water, and the soil is better adapted for all kinds of produce, and all descriptions of seasons, wet and dry, than the deeper and richer mould of the bottoms and prairies. When the fires are stopped, these barrens produce timber, at a rate of which no northern emigrant can have any just conception. Dwarfish shrubs and small trees of oak and hickory are scattered over the surface, where for years they have contended with the fires for a precarious existence, while a mass of roots, sufficient for the support of large trees, have accumulated in the earth. As soon as they are protected from the ravages of the annual fires, the more thrifty sprouts shoot forth, and in ten years are large enough for corn cribs and stables. As the fires on the prairies become stopped by the surrounding settlements, and the wild grass is eaten out and trodden down by the stock, they begin to assume the character of barrens; first, hazle and other shrubs, and finally, a thicket of young timber, covers the surface. 5. _Forest, or timbered Land._ In general, Illinois is abundantly supplied with timber, and were it equally distributed through the State, there would be no part in want. The apparent scarcity of timber where the prairie predominates, is not so great an obstacle to the settlement of the country as has been supposed. For many of the purposes to which timber is applied, substitutes are found. The rapidity with which the young growth pushes itself forward, without a single effort on the part of man to accelerate it, and the readiness with which the prairie becomes converted into thickets, and then into a forest of young timber, shows that, in another generation, timber will not be wanting in any part of Illinois. The kinds of timber most abundant are oaks of various species, black and white walnut, ash of several kinds, elm, sugar maple, honey locust, hackberry, linden, hickory, cotton wood, pecan, mulberry, buckeye, sycamore, wild cherry, box elder, sassafras, and persimmon. In the southern and eastern parts of the State are yellow poplar, and beech; near the Ohio are cypress, and in several counties are clumps of yellow pine and cedar. On the Calamick, near the south end of lake Michigan, is a small forest of white pine. The undergrowth are redbud, pawpaw, sumach, plum, crab apple, grape vines, dogwood, spice bush, green brier, hazle, &c. The alluvial soil of the rivers produces cotton wood and sycamore timber of amazing size. For ordinary purposes there is now timber enough in most parts of the State, to say nothing about the artificial production of timber, which may be effected with little trouble and expense. The black locust, a native of Ohio and Kentucky, may be raised from the seed, with less labor than a nursery of apple trees. It is of rapid growth, and, as a valuable and lasting timber, claims the attention of our farmers. It forms one of the cleanliest and most beautiful shades, and when in blossom gives a rich prospect, and sends abroad a delicious fragrance. 6. _Knobs, Bluffs, Ravines, and Sink-holes._ Under these heads are included tracts of uneven country found in various parts of the State. _Knobs_ are ridges of flint limestone, intermingled and covered with earth, and elevated one or two hundred feet above the common surface. This species of land is of little value for cultivation, and usually has a sprinkling of dwarfish, stunted timber, like the barrens. The steep hills and natural mounds that border the alluvions have obtained the name of _bluffs_. Some are in long, parallel ridges, others are in the form of cones and pyramids. In some places precipices of limestone rock, from fifty to one or two hundred feet high, form these bluffs. _Ravines_ are formed amongst the bluffs, and often near the borders of prairies, which lead down to the streams. _Sink-holes_ are circular depressions in the surface, like a basin. They are of various sizes, from ten to fifty feet deep, and from ten to one or two hundred yards in circumference. Frequently they contain an outlet for the water received by the rains. Their existence shows that the substratum is secondary limestone, abounding with subterraneous cavities. There are but few tracts of _stony ground_ in the State; that is, where loose stones are scattered over the surface, and imbedded in the soil. Towards the northern part of the State, tracts of stony ground exist. Quarries of stone exist in the bluffs, and in the banks of the streams and ravines throughout the State. The soil is porous, easy to cultivate, and exceedingly productive. A strong team is required to break up the prairies, on account of the firm, grassy sward which covers them. But when subdued, they become fine, arable lands. _Rivers, &c._--This State is surrounded and intersected by navigable streams. The Mississippi, Ohio and Wabash rivers are on three sides,--the Illinois, Kaskaskia, Sangamon, Muddy, and many smaller streams are entirely within its borders,--and the Kankakee, Fox, Rock, and Vermillion of the Wabash, run part of their course within this State. The Mississippi meanders its western border for 700 miles. Its principal tributaries within Illinois, are Rock, Illinois, Kaskaskia, and Muddy rivers. The Illinois river commences at the junction of the Kankakee, which originates near the South Bend in Indiana, and the Des Plaines, which rises in the Wisconsin Territory. From their junction, the Illinois runs nearly a west course, (receiving Fox river at Ottawa, and Vermillion near the foot of the rapids,) to Hennepin, where it curves to the south and then to the south-west, receiving a number of tributaries, the largest of which are Spoon river from the right and Sangamon from the left, till it reaches Naples. Here it bends gradually to the south, and continues that course till within six miles of the Mississippi, when it curves to the south-east, and finally, to nearly an east course. Its length, (without reckoning the windings of the channel in navigation,) is about 260 miles, and is navigable for steamboats at a moderate stage of water to the foot of the rapids. The large streams on the eastern side of the State are Iroquois, a tributary to the Kankakee, Vermillion of the Wabash, which enters that river in Indiana, Embarras, that has its source near that of the Kaskaskia, runs south-easterly, and enters the Wabash 9 miles below Vincennes, and Little Wabash near its mouth. Along the Ohio, the only streams deserving note are the Saline and Bay creeks, and Cash river, the last of which enters the Ohio six miles above its confluence with the Mississippi. _Productions._--These are naturally classed into _mineral_, _animal_ and _vegetable_. _Minerals._ The northern portion of Illinois is inexhaustibly rich in mineral productions, while coal, secondary limestone, and sandstone, are found in every part. Iron ore has been found in the southern parts of the State, and is said to exist in considerable quantities in the northern parts. Native copper, in small quantities, has been found on Muddy river, in Jackson county, and back of Harrisonville, in the bluffs of Monroe county. Crystallized gypsum has been found in small quantities in St. Clair county. Quartz crystals exist in Gallatin county. Silver is supposed to exist in St. Clair county, two miles from Rock Spring, from whence Silver creek derives its name. In early times, a shaft was sunk here, by the French, and tradition tells of large quantities of the precious metals being obtained. In the southern part of the State, several sections of land have been reserved from sale, on account of the silver ore they are supposed to contain. _Lead_ is found in vast quantities in the northern part of Illinois, and the adjacent territory. Here are the richest lead mines hitherto discovered on the globe. This portion of country lies principally north of Rock river and south of the Wisconsin. Dubuque's, and other rich mines, are west of the Mississippi. Native copper, in large quantities, exists in this region, especially at the mouth of Plum creek, and on the Peek-a-ton-o-kee, a branch of Rock river. The following is a list of the principal diggings in that portion of the lead mine region that lies between Rock river and the Wisconsin, embracing portions of Illinois State, and Wisconsin Territory. Some of these diggings are, probably, relinquished, and many new ones commenced. Apple Creek, GALENA and vicinity, Cave Diggings, Buncombe, Natchez, Hardscrabble, New Diggings, Gratiot's Grove, Spulburg, W. S. Hamilton's, Cottle's, McNutt's, Menomonee Creek, Plattsville, CASSVILLE and vicinity, Madden's, Mineral Point, Dodgeville, Worke's Diggings, Brisbo's, Blue Mounds, Prairie Springs, Hammett & Campbell's, Morrison's, and many others. _Amount of Lead Manufactured._ For many years the Indians, and some of the French hunters and traders, had been accustomed to dig lead in these regions. They never penetrated much below the surface, but obtained considerable quantities of the ore which they sold to the traders. In 1823, the late Col. James Johnson, of Great Crossings, Ky., and brother to the Hon. R. M. Johnson, obtained a lease of the United States government, and made arrangements to prosecute the business of smelting, with considerable force, which he did the following season. This attracted the attention of enterprising men in Illinois, Missouri, and other States. Some went on in 1826, more followed in 1827, and in 1828 the country was almost literally filled with miners, smelters, merchants, speculators, gamblers, and every description of character. Intelligence, enterprise, and virtue, were thrown in the midst of dissipation, gaming, and every species of vice. Such was the crowd of adventurers in 1829, to this hitherto almost unknown and desolate region, that the lead business was greatly overdone, and the market for awhile nearly destroyed. Fortunes were made almost upon a turn of the spade, and lost with equal facility. The business has revived and is profitable. Exhaustless quantities of mineral exist here, over a tract of country two hundred miles in extent. The following table shows the amount of lead made annually at these diggings, from 1821, to Sept, 30, 1835: Lbs. of lead made from 1821, to Sept. 1823, 335,130 do. for the year ending Sept. 30, 1824, 175,220 do. do. do. 1825, 664,530 do. do. do. 1826, 958,842 do. do. do. 1827, 5,182,180 do. do. do. 1828, 11,105,810 do. do. do. 1829, 13,344,150 do. do. do. 1830, 8,323,998 do. do. do. 1831, 6,381,900 do. do. do. 1832, 4,281,876 do. do. do. 1833, 7,941,792 do. do. do. 1834, 7,971,579 do. do. do. 1835, 3,754,290 ---------- Total, 70,420,357 The rent accruing to government for the same period, is a fraction short of six millions of pounds. The government formerly received 10 per cent. in lead for rent. Now it is 6 per cent. A part of the mineral land in the Wisconsin Territory has been surveyed and brought into market, which will add greatly to the stability and prosperity of the mining business. _Coal._ Bituminous coal abounds in Illinois. It may be seen, frequently, in the ravines and gullies, and in the points of bluffs. Exhaustless beds of this article exist in the bluffs of St. Clair county, bordering on the American bottom, of which large quantities are transported to St. Louis, for fuel. There is scarce a county in the State, but what can furnish coal, in reasonable quantities. Large beds are said to exist, near the Vermillion of the Illinois, and in the vicinity of the rapids of the latter. _Agatized Wood._ A petrified tree, of black walnut, was found in the bed of the river Des Plaines, about forty rods above its junction with the Kankakee, imbedded in a horizontal position, in a stratum of sandstone. There is fifty-one and a half feet of the trunk visible,--eighteen inches in diameter at its smallest end, and probably three feet at the other end. _Muriate of Soda_, or common salt. This is found in various parts of the State, held in solution in the springs. The manufacture of salt by boiling and evaporation is carried on in Gallatin county, twelve miles west-north-west from Shawneetown; in Jackson county, near Brownsville; and in Vermillion county, near Danville. The springs and land are owned by the State, and the works leased. A coarse freestone, much used in building, is dug from quarries near Alton, on the Mississippi, where large bodies exist. Scattered over the surface of our prairies, are large masses of rock, of granitic formation, roundish in form, usually called by the people "_lost rocks_." They will weigh from one thousand to ten or twelve thousand pounds, and are entirely detached, and frequently are found several miles-distant from any quarry. Nor has there ever been a quarry of granite discovered in the State. These stones are denominated _bowlders_ in mineralogy. They usually lie on the surface, or are partially imbedded in the soil of our prairies, which is unquestionably of diluvial formation. How they came here is a question of difficult solution. _Medicinal Waters_, are found in different parts of the State. These are chiefly sulphur springs and chalybeate waters. There is said to be one well in the southern part of the State strongly impregnated with the sulphate of magnesia, or Epsom salts, from which considerable quantities have been made for sale, by simply evaporating the water, in a kettle, over a common fire. There are several sulphur springs in Jefferson county, to which persons resort for health. _Vegetable Productions._ The principal trees and shrubs of Illinois have been noticed under the head of "_Forest or timbered land_." Of oaks there are several species, as overcup, burr oak, swamp or water oak, white oak, red or Spanish oak, post oak, and black oak of several varieties, with the black jack, a dwarfish, gnarled looking tree, excellent for fuel, but good for nothing else. The black walnut is much used for building materials and cabinet work, and sustains a fine polish. In most parts of the State, grape vines, indigenous to the country, are abundant, which yield grapes that might advantageously be made into excellent wine. Foreign vines are susceptible of easy cultivation. These are cultivated to a considerable extent at Vevay, Switzerland county, Indiana, and at New Harmony on the Wabash. The indigenous vines are prolific, and produce excellent fruit. They are found in every variety of soil; interwoven in every thicket in the prairies and barrens; and climbing to the tops of the very highest trees on the bottoms. The French in early times, made so much wine as to export some to France; upon which the proper authorities prohibited the introduction of wine from Illinois, lest it might injure the sale of that staple article of the kingdom. I think the act was passed by the board of trade, in 1774. The editor of the Illinois Magazine remarks, "We know one gentleman who made twenty-seven barrels of wine in a single season, from the grapes gathered with but little labor, in his immediate neighborhood." The wild plum is found in every part of the State; but in most instances the fruit is too sour for use, unless for preserves. Crab apples are equally prolific, and make fine preserves with about double their bulk of sugar. Wild cherries are equally productive. The persimmon is a delicious fruit, after the frost has destroyed its astringent properties. The black mulberry grows in most parts, and is used for the feeding of silk-worms with success. They appear to thrive and spin as well as on the Italian mulberry. The gooseberry, strawberry, and blackberry, grow wild and in great profusion. Of our nuts, the hickory, black walnut, and pecan, deserve notice. The last is an oblong, thin shelled, delicious nut, that grows on a large tree, a species of the hickory, (the _Carya olivæ formis_ of Nuttall.) The pawpaw grows in the bottoms, and rich, timbered uplands, and produces a large, pulpy, and luscious fruit. Of domestic fruits, the apple and peach are chiefly cultivated. Pears are tolerably plenty in the French settlements, and quinces are cultivated with success by some Americans. Apples are easily cultivated, and are very productive. They can be made to bear fruit to considerable advantage in seven years from the seed. Many varieties are of fine flavor, and grow to a large size. I have measured apples, the growth of St. Clair county, that exceeded thirteen inches in circumference. Some of the early American settlers provided orchards. They now reap the advantages. But a large proportion of the population of the frontiers are content without this indispensable article in the comforts of a Yankee farmer. Cider is made in small quantities in the old settlements. In a few years, a supply of this beverage can be had in most parts of Illinois. Peach trees grow with great rapidity, and decay proportionably soon. From ten to fifteen years may be considered the life of this tree. Our peaches are delicious, but they sometimes fail by being destroyed in the germ by winter frosts. The bud swells prematurely. _Garden Vegetables_ can be produced here in vast profusion, and of excellent quality. That we have few of the elegant and well dressed gardens of gentlemen in the old states, is admitted; which is not owing to climate, or soil, but to the want of leisure and means. Our Irish potatoes, pumpkins and squashes are inferior, but not our cabbages, peas, beets, or onions. A cabbage head, two or three feet in diameter including the leaves, is no wonder on this soil. Beets often exceed twelve inches in circumference. Parsnips will penetrate our light, porous soil, to the depth of two or three feet. The _cultivated vegetable productions in the field_, are maize or Indian corn, wheat, oats, barley, buckwheat, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, rye for horse feed and distilleries, tobacco, cotton, hemp, flax, the castor bean, and every other production common to the Middle States. _Maize_ is a staple production. No farmer can live without it, and hundreds raise little else. This is chiefly owing to the ease with which it is cultivated. Its average produce is fifty bushels to the acre. I have oftentimes seen it produce seventy-five bushels to the acre, and in a few instances, exceed one hundred. _Wheat_ yields a good and sure crop, especially in the counties bordering on the Illinois river. It weighs upwards of 60 pounds per bushel; and flour from this region has preference in the New Orleans market, and passes better inspection than the same article from Ohio or Kentucky. In 1825, the weevil, for the first time, made its appearance in St. Clair and the adjacent counties, and has occasionally renewed its visits since. Latterly, some fields have been injured by the fly. A common, but slovenly practice amongst our farmers, is, to sow wheat amongst the standing corn, in September, and cover it by running a few furrows with the plough between the rows of corn. The dry stalks are then cut down in the spring, and left on the ground. Even by this imperfect mode, fifteen or twenty bushels of wheat to the acre are produced. But where the ground is duly prepared by fallowing, and the seed put in at the proper time, a good crop, averaging from twenty-five to thirty-five bushels per acre, rarely fails to be procured. The average price of wheat at present is a dollar per bushel, varying a little according to the competition of mills and facilities to market. In many instances a single crop of wheat will more than pay the expenses of purchasing the land, fencing, breaking the prairie, seed, putting in the crop, harvesting, threshing, and taking it to market. Wheat is now frequently sown on the prairie land as a first crop, and a good yield obtained. Flouring mills are now in operation in many of the wheat growing counties. Steam power is getting into extensive use both for sawing timber, and manufacturing flour. It is to be regretted, that so few of our farmers have erected barns for the security of their crops. No article is more profitable, and really more indispensable to a farmer, than a large barn. _Oats_ have not been much raised till lately. They are very productive, often yielding from forty to fifty bushels on the acre, and usually sell for twenty-five cents the bushel. The demand for the use of stage and travellers' horses is increasing. _Hemp_ is an indigenous plant in the southern part of this State, as it is in Missouri. It has not been extensively cultivated; but wherever tried, is found very productive, and of an excellent quality. It might be made a staple of the country. _Tobacco_, though a filthy and noxious weed, which no human being ought ever to use, can be produced in any quantity, and of the first quality, in Illinois. _Cotton_, for many years, has been successfully cultivated in this State for domestic use, and some for exportation. Two or three spinning factories are in operation, and produce cotton yarn from the growth of the country with promising success. This branch of business admits of enlargement, and invites the attention of eastern manufacturers with small capital. Much of the cloth made in families who have emigrated from States south of the Ohio is from the cotton of the country. _Flax_ is produced, and of a tolerable quality, but not equal to that of the Northern States. It is said to be productive and good in the northern counties. _Barley_ yields well, and is a sure crop. The _palma christi_, or castor oil bean, is produced in considerable quantities in Madison, Randolph, and other counties, and large quantities of oil are expressed and sent abroad. _Sweet Potatoes_ are a delicious root, and yield abundantly, especially on the American bottom, and rich sandy prairies. But little has been done to introduce cultivated grasses. The prairie grass looks coarse and unsavory, and yet our horses and cattle will thrive well on it. To produce timothy with success, the ground must be well cultivated in the summer, either by an early crop, or by fallowing, and the seed sown about the 20th of September, at the rate of _ten or twelve quarts of clean seed to the acre_, and lightly brushed in. If the season is in any way favorable, it will get a rapid start before winter. By the last week in June, it will produce two tons per acre, of the finest hay. It then requires a dressing of stable or yard manure, and occasionally the turf may be scratched with a harrow, to prevent the roots from binding too hard. By this process, timothy meadows may be made and preserved. There are meadows in St. Clair county, which have yielded heavy crops of hay in succession, for several years, and bid fair to continue for an indefinite period. Cattle, and especially horses, should never be permitted to run in meadows in Illinois. The fall grass may be cropped down by calves and colts. There is but little more labor required to produce a crop of timothy, than a crop of oats, and as there is not a stone or a pebble to interrupt, the soil may be turned up every third or fourth year for corn, and afterwards laid down to grass again. A species of blue grass is cultivated by some farmers for pastures. If well set, and not eaten down in summer, blue grass pastures may be kept green and fresh till late in autumn, or even in the winter. The English spire grass has been cultivated with success in the Wabash country. Of the trefoil, or clover, there is but little cultivated. A prejudice exists against it, as it is imagined to injure horses by affecting the glands of the mouth, and causing them to slaver. It grows luxuriantly, and may be cut for hay early in June. The white clover comes in naturally, where the ground has been cultivated, and thrown by, or along the sides of old roads and paths. Clover pastures would be excellent for swine. _Animals._ Of _wild animals_ there are several species. The buffalo is not found on this side the Mississippi, nor within several hundred miles of St. Louis. This animal once roamed at large over the prairies of Illinois, and was found in plenty, thirty-five years since. _Wolves_, _panthers_ and _wild cats_, still exist on the frontiers, and through the unsettled portions of the country, and annoy the farmer by destroying his sheep and pigs. _Deer_ are also very numerous, and are valuable, particularly to that class of our population which has been raised to frontier habits; the flesh affording them food, and the skins, clothing. Fresh venison hams usually sell for twenty-five cents each, and when properly cured, are a delicious article. Many of the frontier people dress their skins, and make them into pantaloons and hunting shirts. These articles are indispensable to all who have occasion to travel in viewing land, or for any other purpose, beyond the settlements, as cloth garments, in the shrubs and vines, would soon be in strings. It is a novel and pleasant sight to a stranger, to see the deer in flocks of eight, ten, or fifteen in number, feeding on the grass of the prairies, or bounding away at the sight of a traveller. The _brown bear_ is also an inhabitant of the unsettled parts of this State, although he is continually retreating before the advance of civilization. Foxes, raccoons, opossums, gophers, and squirrels, are also numerous, as are muskrats, otters, and occasionally beaver, about our rivers and lakes. Raccoons are very common, and frequently do mischief in the fall, to our corn. Opossums sometimes trouble the poultry. The _gopher_ is a singular little animal, about the size of a squirrel. It burrows in the ground, is seldom seen, but its _works_ make it known. It labors during the night, in digging subterranean passages in the rich soil of the prairies, and throws up hillocks of fresh earth, within a few feet distance from each other, and from twelve to eighteen inches in height. The gray and fox squirrels often do mischief in the cornfields, and the hunting of them makes fine sport for the boys. _Common rabbits_ exist in every thicket, and annoy nurseries and young orchards exceedingly. The fence around a nursery must always be so close as to shut out rabbits; and young apple trees must be secured, at the approach of winter, by tying straw or corn stalks around their bodies, for two or three feet in height, or the bark will be stripped off by these mischievous animals. _Wild horses_ are found ranging the prairies and forests in some parts of the State. They are small in size, of the Indian or Canadian breed, and very hardy. They are found chiefly in the lower end of the American Bottom, near the junction of the Kaskaskia and Mississippi rivers, called _the Point_. They are the offspring of the horses brought there by the first settlers, and which were suffered to run at large. The Indians of the West have many such horses, which are commonly called Indian ponies. _Domestic Animals._ These are the same as are found in other portions of the United States. But little has been done to improve the breed of horses amongst us. Our common riding or working horses average about fifteen hands in height. Horses are much more used here than in the Eastern States, and many a farmer keeps half a dozen or more. Much of the travelling throughout the Western country, both by men and women, is performed on horseback; and a large proportion of the land carriage is by means of large wagons, with from four to six stout horses for a team. A great proportion of the ploughing is performed by horse labor. Horses are more subject to diseases in this country than in the old States, which is thought to be occasioned by bad management, rather than by the climate. A good farm horse can be purchased for fifty dollars. Riding or carriage horses, of a superior quality, cost about seventy-five or eighty dollars. Breeding mares are profitable stock for every farmer to keep, as their annual expense in keeping is but trifling: their labor is always needed, and their colts, when grown, find a ready market. Some farmers keep a stallion, and eight or ten brood mares. _Mules_ are brought into Missouri, and find their way to Illinois, from the Mexican dominions. They are a hardy animal, grow to a good size, and are used by some, both for labor and riding. Our _neat cattle_ are usually inferior in size to those of the old States. This is owing entirely to bad management. Our cows are not penned up in pasture fields, but suffered to run at large over the commons. Hence _all_ the calves are preserved, without respect to quality, to entice the cows homeward at evening. In autumn their food is very scanty, and during the winter they are permitted to pick up a precarious subsistence amongst fifty or a hundred head of cattle. With such management, is it surprising that our cows and steers are much inferior to those of the old States? And yet, our beef is the finest in the world. It bears the best inspection of any in the New Orleans market. By the first of June, and often by the middle of May, our young cattle on the prairies are fit for market. They do not yield large quantities of tallow, but the fat is well proportioned throughout the carcass, and the meat tender and delicious. By inferiority, then, I mean the _size_ of our cattle in general, and the quantity and quality of the milk of cows. Common cows, if suffered to lose their milk in August, become sufficiently fat for table use by October. Fallow heifers and steers, are good beef, and fit for the knife at any period after the middle of May. Nothing is more common than for an Illinois farmer to go among his stock, select, shoot down, and dress a fine beef, whenever fresh meat is needed. This is often divided out amongst the neighbors, who in turn, kill and share likewise. It is common at camp and other large meetings, to kill a beef and three or four hogs for the subsistence of friends from a distance. Steers from three years old or more, have been purchased in great numbers in Illinois, by drovers from Ohio. Cattle are sometimes sent in flat boats down the Mississippi and Ohio, for the New Orleans market. We can hardly place limits upon the amount of beef cattle that Illinois is capable of producing. A farmer calls himself poor, with a hundred head of horned cattle around him. A cow in the spring is worth from seven to ten or fifteen dollars. Some of the best quality will sell higher. And let it be distinctly understood, once for all, that a poor man can always purchase horses, cattle, hogs, and provisions, for labor, either by the day, month, or job. Cows, in general, do not produce the same amount of milk, nor of as rich a quality as in older States. Something is to be attributed to the nature of our pastures, and the warmth of our climate, but more to causes already assigned. If ever a land was characterized justly, as "flowing with milk and honey," it is Illinois and the adjacent States. From the springing of the grass till September, butter is made in great profusion. It sells at that season in market for about ten cents. With proper care it can be preserved in tolerable sweetness for winter's use. Late in autumn and early in the winter, sometimes butter is not plenty. The feed becomes dry, the cows range further off, and do not come up readily for milking, and dry up. A very little trouble would enable a farmer to keep three or four good cows in fresh milk at the season most needed. Cheese is made by many families, especially in the counties bordering on the Illinois river. Good cheese sells for eight and sometimes ten cents, and finds a ready market. _Swine._ This species of stock may be called a staple in the provision of Illinois. Thousands of hogs are raised without any expense, except a few breeders to start with, and a little attention in hunting them on the range, and keeping them tame. Pork that is made in a domestic way and fatted on corn, will sell from three to four and five dollars, according to size, quality, and the time when it is delivered. With a pasture of clover or blue grass, a well-filled corn crib, a dairy, and slop barrel, and the usual care that a New Englander bestows on his pigs, pork may be raised from the sow, fatted, and killed, and weigh from two hundred to two hundred and fifty, within twelve months; and this method of raising pork would be profitable. Few families in the west and south put up their pork in salt pickle. Their method is to salt it sufficiently to prepare it for smoking, and then make bacon of hams, shoulders, and middlings or broadsides. The price of bacon, taking the hog round, is about seven and eight cents. Good hams command eight and ten cents in the St. Louis market. Stock hogs, weighing from sixty to one hundred pounds, alive, usually sell from one to two dollars per head. Families consume much more meat in the West in proportion to numbers, than in the old States. _Sheep_ do very well in this country, especially in the older settlements, where the grass has become short, and they are less molested by wolves. _Poultry_ is raised in great profusion,--and large numbers of fowls taken to market. Ducks, geese, swans, and many other aquatic birds, visit our waters in the spring. The small lakes and sloughs are often literally covered with them. Ducks, and some of the rest, frequently stay through the summer and breed. The prairie fowl is seen in great numbers on the prairies in the summer, and about the corn fields in the winter. This is the grouse of the New York market. They are easily taken in the winter. Partridges, (the quail of New England,) are taken with nets, in the winter, by hundreds in a day, and furnish no trifling item in the luxuries of the city market. _Bees._ These laborious and useful insects are found in the trees of every forest. Many of the frontier people make it a prominent business, after the frost has killed the vegetation, to hunt them for the honey and wax, both of which find a ready market. Bees are profitable stock for the farmer, and are kept to a considerable extent. _Silk-worms_ are raised by a few persons. They are capable of being produced to any extent, and fed on the common black mulberry of the country. _Manufactures._--In the infancy of a state, little can be expected in machinery and manufactures. And in a region so much deficient in water power as some parts of Illinois is, still less may be looked for. Yet Illinois is not entirely deficient in manufacturing enterprise. _Salt._ The principal salines of this State have been mentioned under the head of minerals. The principal works are at Gallatin, Big Muddy, and Vermillion salines. _Steam Mills_ for flouring and sawing are becoming very common, and in general are profitable. Some are now in operation with four run of stones, and which manufacture one hundred barrels of flour in a day. Mills propelled by steam, water, and animal power, are constantly increasing. Steam mills will become numerous, particularly in the southern and middle portions of the State, and it is deserving remark that, while these portions are not well supplied with durable water power, they contain, in the timber of the forest, and the inexhaustible bodies of bituminous coal, abundant supplies of fuel; while the northern portion, though deficient in fuel, has abundant water power. A good steam saw-mill with two saws can be built for $1,500; and a steam flouring mill with two run of stones, elevators, and other apparatus complete, and of sufficient force to turn out forty or fifty barrels of flour per day, may be built for from $3,500 to $5,000. Ox mills on an inclined plane, and horse mills by draught, are common through the country. _Castor Oil._ Considerable quantities of this article have been manufactured in Illinois from the palma christi, or castor bean. One bushel of the beans will make nearly two gallons of the oil. There are five or six castor oil presses in the State, in Madison, Randolph, Edwards, and perhaps in other counties. Mr. Adams of Edwardsville, in 1825, made 500 gallons, which then sold at the rate of two dollars fifty cents per gallon. In 1826, he made 800 gallons; in 1827, 1000 gallons,--the price then, one dollar seventy-five cents: in 1828, 1800 gallons, price one dollar. In 1830, he started two presses and made upwards of 10,000 gallons, which sold for from seventy-five to eighty-seven cents per gallon: in 1831, about the same quantity. That and the following season being unfavorable for the production of the bean, there has been a falling off in the quantity. The amount manufactured in other parts of the State has probably exceeded that made by Mr. Adams. _Lead._ In Jo Daviess county are eight or ten furnaces for smelting lead. The amount of this article made annually at the mines of the Upper Mississippi, has been given under the head of minerals. _Boat Building_ will soon become a branch of business in this State. Some steamboats have been constructed already within this State, along the Mississippi. It is thought that Alton and Chicago are convenient sites for this business. There is in this State, as in all the Western States, a large amount of domestic manufactures made by families. All the trades, needful to a new country, are in existence. Carpenters, wagon makers, cabinet makers, blacksmiths, tanneries, &c., may be found in every county and town, and thousands more are wanted. There has been a considerable falling off in the manufacture of whiskey within a few years, and it is sincerely hoped by thousands of citizens, that this branch of business, so decidedly injurious to the morals and happiness of communities and individuals, will entirely decline. Several companies for manufacturing purposes, have been incorporated by the legislature. _Civil Divisions._--There are 66 counties laid off in this State, 59 of which are organized for judicial purposes. The six last named in the following table were laid off at the recent session of the legislature, Jan. 1836. The county of _Will_ was formed from portions of Cook, Lasalle, and Iroquois, with the town of Juliet for its seat of justice, near the junction of the Kankakee and Des Plaines. In this State, there are no _civil_ divisions into townships as in Ohio, Indiana, &c. The township tracts of six miles square, in the public surveys, relate exclusively to the land system. The State is divided into _three_ districts to elect representatives to Congress, and into _six_ circuits for judicial purposes. TABULAR VIEW OF THE COUNTIES. ------------+----------+------+--------+----------+--------------+----------------- | | | | | |Distance & |Date of |Square|Votes |Population|SEATS OF |bearing from COUNTIES. |formation.|miles.|in 1834.| 1835. |JUSTICE. |Vandalia. ------------+----------+------+--------+----------+--------------+----------------- Adams, | 1825 | 820 | 728 | 7042 |Quincy, |175 _n. w._ Alexander, | 1819 | 375 | 249 | 2050 |Unity, |135 _s._ Bond, | 1817 | 360 | 519 | 3580 |Greenville, | 19 _w. s. w._ Calhoun, | 1825 | 260 | 151 | 1091 |Gilhead, |134 _w. n. w._ Champaign, | 1833 | 864 | 102 | 1045 |Urbanna, |103 _n. n. e._ Clark, | 1819 | 500 | 451 | 3413 |Darwin,[A] or | 82 _e. n. e._ | | | | | Marshall, | Clay, | 1824 | 620 | 172 | 1648 |Maysville, | 50 _s. e._ Clinton, | 1824 | 500 | 414 | 2648 |Carlyle, | 28 _s. s. w._ Crawford, | 1816 | 378 | 519 | 3540 |Palestine, |100 _e._ Coles, | 1830 | 1248 | 680 | 5125 |Charleston, | 75 _n. e._ Cook, | 1830 | [B] | 528 | 9826 |Chicago, |268 _n. n. e._ Edgar, | 1823 | 648 | 788 | 6668 |Paris, |100 _n. e._ Edwards, | 1814 | 200 | 239 | 2006 |Albion, | 96 _s. e._ Effingham, | 1831 | 486 | 129 | 1055 |Ewington, | 29 _e. n. e._ Fayette, | 1821 | 684 | 665 | 3638 |VANDALIA, | Franklin, | 1818 | 850 | 759 | 5551 |Frankfort, | 83 _s._ Fulton, | 1825 | 590 | 607 | 5917 |Lewistown, |135 _n. n. w._ Gallatin, | 1812 | 828 | 1312 | 8660 |Equality, |100 _s. s. e._ Greene, | 1821 | 912 | 1360 | 12274 |Carrollton, | 90 _w. n. w._ Hamilton, | 1821 | 378 | 460 | 2877 |McLeansboro', | 76 _s. s. e._ Hancock, | 1825 | 775 | 357 | 3249 |Carthage, |180 _n. w._ Henry (not | 1825 | 800 | -- | 118 | |210 _n. n. w._ organized,)| | | | | | Iroquois, | 1833 | [B] | 67 | 1164 |(Not |165 _n. n. e._ | | | | | established,)| Jackson, | 1816 | 576 | 354 | 2783 |Brownsville, | 96 _s. s. w._ Jasper, | 1831 | 288 | -- | 415 |Newton, | 60 _e._ Jefferson, | 1819 | 576 | 455 | 3350 |Mount Vernon, | 48 _s. s. e._ Jo Daviess, | 1827 | [B] | 492 | 4038 |Galena, (nnw) |300 _n. n. w._ Johnson, | 1812 | 486 | 316 | 2166 |Vienna, |120 _s._ Knox, | 1825 | 792 | 180 | 1600 |Knoxville, |182 _n. n. w._ Lasalle, | 1831 | [B] | 289 | 4754 |Ottawa, |187 _n._ Lawrence, | 1821 | 560 | 618 | 4450 |Lawrenceville,| 88 _e. s. e._ Macon, | 1829 | 404 | 292 | 3022 |Decatur, | 75 _n._ Madison, | 1812 | 750 | 1307 | 9016 |Edwardsville, | 58 _w._ Macoupen, | 1829 | 720 | 624 | 5554 |Carlinville, | 55 _w. n. w._ Marion, | 1823 | 576 | 372 | 2844 |Salem, | 25 _s. s. e._ McDonough | 1825 | 576 | 304 | 2883 |Macomb, |155 _n. w._ McLean, | 1830 | 1916 | 496 | 5311 |Bloomington, |120 _n._ Mercer, | 1825 | 558 | -- | 497 |New Boston, |209 _n. w._ Monroe, | 1816 | 360 | 449 | 2660 |Waterloo, | 72 _s. w._ Montgomery, | 1821 | 960 | 475 | 3740 |Hillsboro', | 28 _n. w._ Morgan, | 1823 | 1150 | 2717 | 19214 |Jacksonville, | 91 _n. w._ Peoria, | 1825 | 648 | 223 | 3220 |Peoria, |141 _n. n. w._ Perry, | 1827 | 446 | 273 | 2201 |Pinckneyville,| 71 _s. s. w._ Pike, | 1821 | 800 | 657 | 6037 |Pittsfield, |126 _w. n. w._ Pope, | 1816 | 576 | 444 | 3756 |Golconda, |130 _s. s. e._ Putnam, | 1825 | 1340 | 383 | 4021 |Hennepin, | 80 _n._ Randolph, | 1795 | 540 | 814 | 5695 |Kaskaskia, | 90 _s. s. w._ Rock Island,| 1831 | 377 | 83 | 616 |Stephenson, | 20 _n. w._ Sangamon, | 1821 | 1234 | 2219 | 17573 |Springfield, | 79 _n. n. w._ Schuyler, | 1825 | 864 | 680 | 6361 |Rushville, |128 _n. w._ Shelby, | 1827 | 1080 | 636 | 4848 |Shelbyville, | 40 _n. n. e._ St. Clair, | 1795 | 1030 | 1183 | 9055 |Belleville, | 64 _w. s. w._ Tazewell, | 1827 | 1130 | 433 | 5850 |Tremont, |131 _n._ Union, | 1818 | 396 | 545 | 4156 |Jonesboro', |120 _s._ Vermillion, | 1826 | 1000 | 1025 | 8103 |Danville, |135 _n. e._ Wabash, | 1824 | 180 | 441 | 3010 |Mount Carmel, | 95 _s. e._ Warren, | 1825 | 900 | 266 | 2623 |Monmouth, |184 _n. w._ Washington, | 1818 | 656 | 333 | 3292 |Nashville, | 48 _s. s. w._ Wayne, | 1819 | 576 | 471 | 2939 |Fairfield, | 76 _s. e._ White, | 1815 | 516 | 977 | 6489 |Carmi, |103 _s. e._ [A] It is expected the seat of justice of Clark county will be removed to _Marshall_, 10 miles N. W. from Darwin, and on the National Road. The distance is computed to Marshall. [B] These counties have been recently subdivided, and their superficial area is not known. -------------+----------+------+--------+----------+------------------------------- _New Counties| | | | | formed, Jan. |Date of |Square|Votes |Population|SEATS OF JUSTICE. 1836._ |formation.|miles.|in 1834.| 1835. | -------------+----------+------+--------+----------+------------------------------- Will, | 1836 | | | |Juliett. Whiteside, | " | | | | These counties were taken Kane, | " | | | |from Jo Daviess, Lasalle, Cook, Ogle, | " | | | |and Iroquois. The seats of McHenry, | " | | | |justice not established, and Winnebago, | " | | | |much of the land unsurveyed, +----------+------+--------+----------+though rapidly settling. _Total,_ | | | 34,102 | 272,427 | SKETCHES OF EACH COUNTY. ADAMS.--The streams are Bear creek and branches, Cedar, Tyrer, Mill, Fall, and Pigeon creeks, with the Mississippi river on its western border. Timber various, with equal portions of prairie. First rate county. ALEXANDER.--In the forks of the Ohio and Mississippi, with Cash river through it. All timbered,--half alluvion,--some inundated at high water,--lime and sandstone on the Ohio;--soil, generally rich. BOND.--Shoal creek and its branches through it, with Hurricane creek on the east side;--proportioned into timber and prairie;--rather level,--second rate. Sandstone, coal, and salt springs. CALHOUN.--Long and narrow, in the forks of the Illinois and Mississippi;--alluvial and sometimes inundated along the rivers;--broken bluffs and interior table land;--good soil;--prairies at the foot of the bluffs. Coal, lime and sandstone. CHAMPAIGN.--The streams are the heads of the Kaskaskia, Sangamon, Vermillion of Illinois, Salt Fork of the Vermillion of the Wabash, and the Embarras, all running in opposite directions. Extensive prairies, a little undulating and rich;--timber in groves;--many granite bowlders. CLARK.--North Fork of Embarras, Mill and Big creeks. Timber and prairie,--second rate soil. CLAY.--Watered by Little Wabash and tributaries. Two thirds prairie,--of inferior quality,--rather level and wet. CLINTON.--Kaskaskia river, with its tributaries, Crooked, Shoal, Beaver and Sugar creeks, pass through it. Equally proportioned into timber and prairie. Soil, second rate; surface, a little undulating. COLES.--The Kaskaskia, Embarras, and heads of the Little Wabash water it. Much excellent land,--much undulating, rich prairie;--some level and wet land in the southeastern part. Timber in sufficient quantities. COOK.--Adjoins Lake Michigan, and has the branches of Chicago, Des Plaines, Du Page, Au Sable and Hickory creeks. Surface, tolerably level; rich soil,--extensive prairies,--timber in groves;--a few swamps. Plenty of limestone, and the streams run over rocky beds. CRAWFORD.--The Wabash river on its eastern side, with Lamotte, Hudson, Raccoon and Sugar creeks. Some level prairies, rather sandy, with a full supply of timber. EDGAR.--Watered by Big, Clear, and Brulette's creeks on the eastern, and Little Embarras on its western side. Southern and eastern sides timbered; northern and western sides much prairie; some undulating,--some level and rather wet. Grand View is a delightful tract of country. EDWARDS.--The Little Wabash on its western, and Bon Pas on its eastern border. Several prairies, high, undulating, and bounded by heavy timber. Soil, second quality. EFFINGHAM.--Watered by the Little Wabash and its tributaries; due proportion of timber and prairie; tolerably level,--second rate. FAYETTE.--Kaskaskia river, Hurricane, Higgens', Ramsey's and Beck's creeks. The bottom lands on the Kaskaskia low, and inundated at high water; considerable prairie; much heavy timber; soil, second rate. FRANKLIN.--Watered by the Big Muddy and its branches, and the South Fork of Saline creek. The prairies small, fertile and level,--timber plenty,--soil rather sandy. FULTON.--The Illinois on the south-eastern side, with Spoon river and several small creeks through it. About half heavily timbered, with rich, undulating prairies; streams flow over a pebbly bed; soil, first rate. GALLATIN.--Joins the Wabash and Ohio rivers, and has the Saline and branches running through it. Soil, sandy, with sand rock, limestone, quartz crystals, excellent salines, &c. Timber of various kinds; no prairies. GREENE.--Has the Mississippi south, the Illinois west, with Otter, Macoupen and Apple creeks. Much excellent land, both timber and prairie, in due proportion, with abundance of lime and sandstone, and coal. HAMILTON.--Watered by branches of the Saline, and Little Wabash; a large proportion timbered land; soil, second and third rate, with some swamp in the northern part. Sandstone and some lime. HANCOCK.--Besides the Mississippi, it has a part of Bear, Crooked, and Camp creeks; large prairies; timber along the streams; rich, first rate land. HENRY.--Has Rock river north, with Winnebago swamp, and its outlet on Green river, and one of the heads of Spoon river, and Edwards river interior. Some rich, undulating prairies and groves, with considerable wet, swampy land. Not much population. IROQUOIS.--Kankakee, Iroquois and Sugar creek. Sand ridges and plains; much rich prairie; some timber, but deficient. It is found chiefly in groves and strips along the water courses. JACKSON.--Has the Mississippi on the southwest, and Muddy river running diagonally through it, with some of its tributaries. Some prairies in the north-eastern part,--much heavy timber,--some hilly and broken land,--with abundance of coal, saline springs, lime and sandstone. JASPER.--The Embarras runs through it, and the Muddy Fork of the Little Wabash waters its western side. Much of both the prairie and timbered land is level and rather wet; some fertile tracts. JEFFERSON.--Watered by several branches of the Big Muddy and Little Wabash. Soil, second rate; surface, a little undulating; one third prairie; several sulphur and other medicinal springs. JO DAVIESS.--Formerly embraced all the State north-west of Rock river, but recently divided into three or four counties. Besides the Mississippi, it has Fever river, Pekatonokee, Apple river, and Rush and Plum creeks. A rich county, both for agricultural and mining purposes. Timber scarce, and in groves; surface undulating,--in some places hilly; well watered by streams and springs, and has good mill sites. Copper and lead ore in abundance. JOHNSON.--The Ohio on the south, Cash river and Big Bay creek, and a series of lakes or ponds interior. A timbered country, tolerably level; soil sandy, with considerable quantities of second rate land. KNOX.--Watered by Henderson and Spoon rivers, and their tributaries. The prairies large, moderately undulating, and first quality of soil, with excellent timber along the water courses. LASALLE.--Besides the Illinois river, which passes through it, Fox river, Big and Little Vermillion, Crow, Au Sable, Indian, Mason, Tomahawk, and other creeks, water this county. They generally run on a bed of sand or lime rock, and have but little alluvial bottom lands. Deficient in timber, but has an abundance of rich, undulating prairie, beautiful groves, abundant water privileges, and extensive coal banks. LAWRENCE.--The Wabash east, Fox river west, and Embarras and Raccoon through it. An equal proportion of timber and prairie, some excellent, other parts inferior,--and some bad, miry swamps, called "_purgatories_." MACON.--South-east portion, watered by the Kaskaskia and tributaries; the middle and northern portions by the North Fork of Sangamon, and the north-western part by Salt creek. The prairies large, and in their interior, level and wet,--towards the timber, dry, undulating and rich. MADISON.--The Mississippi lies west; Cahokia and Silver creeks, and Wood river, run through it. A part of this county lies in the American bottom, and is a rich and level alluvion; but much of the county is high, undulating, and proportionably divided into timber and prairie. Well supplied with stone quarries and coal banks. MACOUPEN.--The Macoupen creek and branches water its central and western parts, the Cahokia the south-eastern, and the heads of Wood river and Piasau, the south-western parts. A large proportion of the county is excellent soil, well proportioned into timber and prairie, and slightly undulating. MARION.--Watered by the East Fork, and Crooked creek, tributaries of Kaskaskia river, on its western, and heads of Skillet Fork of Little Wabash on its eastern side. Much of the land of second quality, slightly undulating, about one third timbered,--some of the prairie land level, and inclined to be wet. MCDONOUGH.--Crooked creek and its branches water most of the county. The eastern side, for 8 or 10 miles in width, is prairie,--the western and middle parts suitably divided between prairie and forest land; surface, moderately undulating; soil, very rich. MCLEAN.--One third of the eastern, and a portion of the northern side, is one vast prairie. The timber is beautifully arranged in groves; the surface moderately undulating, and the soil dry and rich. The head waters of the Sangamon, Mackinau, and the Vermillion of the Illinois, are in this county. Its minerals are quarries of lime and sandstone, and granite bowlders, scattered over the prairies. MERCER.--Has the Mississippi on the west, and Pope and Edwards rivers interior, along which are fine tracts of timber; in its middle and eastern parts are extensive prairies; surface, generally undulating; soil, rich. MONROE.--Watered by Horse, Prairie de Long, and Fountain creeks. The American bottom adjacent to the Mississippi is rich alluvion, and divided into timber and prairie. On the bluffs are ravines and sink-holes, with broken land. Further interior is a mixture of timber and prairie. Abundance of limestone, coal, and some copper. MONTGOMERY.--Watered by Shoal creek and branches, and Hurricane Fork. Surface, high and undulating, and proportionably divided into timber and prairie. Soil, second rate. MORGAN.--A first rate county,--well proportioned into prairie and forest lands,--much of the surface undulating; watered by the Illinois river and Mauvaise-terre, Indian, Plum, Walnut, and Sandy creeks, and heads of Apple creek. Coal, lime and freestone. PEORIA.--Watered by the Illinois, Kickapoo, Copperas, Senatchwine, and heads of Spoon river. Surface, moderately rolling, rich soil, and proportionately divided into prairie and forest. PERRY.--Streams; Big Beaucoup, and Little Muddy; one third prairie, tolerably level, and second rate soil. PIKE.--Besides Mississippi and Illinois, which wash two sides, it has the Suycartee slough, running through its western border, and navigable for steamboats, and a number of smaller creeks. The land and surface various,--much of it excellent undulating soil,--some rich alluvion, inundated at high water,--large tracts of table land, high, rolling, and rich, with due proportion of timber and prairie. A large salt spring. POPE.--With the Ohio river east and south, it has Big Bay, Lusk's, and Big creeks interior. A timbered region, tolerably level, except at the bluffs, with good sandy soil, and sand and limestone. PUTNAM.--The Illinois runs through it,--Spoon river waters its north-western part, and Bureau, Crow, Sandy, and some other streams, water its middle portions. Here are beautiful groves of timber, and rich, undulating and dry prairies, fine springs, and good mill sites. Lime, sand and freestone, and bituminous coal. A few tracts of wet prairie, with some ponds and swamps, are in the north-western part. RANDOLPH.--Has the Mississippi along the western side; Kaskaskia river passes diagonally through it; soil, of every quality, from first rate to indifferent; surface, equally as various, with rocky precipices at the termination of the alluvial bottoms. ROCK ISLAND.--Is at the mouth of Rock river, which, with the Mississippi, and some minor streams, drain the county. Rich alluvion along the Mississippi, with much excellent table land,--both timber and prairie interior. Some wet, level prairie, south of Rock river. SANGAMON.--Watered by Sangamon river and its numerous branches. Much of the soil is of the richest quality, with due proportions of timber and prairie, moderately undulating, and a first rate county. SCHUYLER.--The south-eastern side has the Illinois, the interior has Crooked and Crane creeks, and the south-west has McKee's creek. Along the Illinois is much timber, with some inundated bottom lands. Interior, there is a due proportion of prairie and timber and rich soil, with an undulating surface. SHELBY.--Is watered by the Kaskaskia and tributaries; has a large amount of excellent land, both timber and prairie, with good soil, moderately undulating. ST. CLAIR.--The streams are Cahokia, Prairie du Pont, Ogle's, Silver, Richland, and Prairie de Long creeks, and Kaskaskia river. The land is various, much of which is good, first and second rate, and proportionably divided into timber, prairie, and barrens. The minerals are lime and sandstone, and extensive beds of coal, and shale. TAZEWELL.--Watered by the Illinois, Mackinau, and their tributaries. Much of the surface is undulating, soil rich; prairie predominates, but considerable timber, with some broken land about the bluffs of Mackinau, and some sand ridges and swamps in the southern part of the county. UNION.--Watered by the Mississippi, Clear creek, the heads of Cash, and some of the small tributaries of the Big Muddy. Much of the surface is rolling and hilly,--all forest land. Soil, second and third rate. Some rich alluvial bottom. VERMILLION.--Is watered by Big and Little Vermillion of the Wabash, with large bodies of excellent timber along the streams, and rich prairies interior. Surface, undulating and dry; soil, deep, rich, and calcareous. WABASH.--Has Wabash river on the east, Bon Pas on the west, and some small creeks central; surface rolling, and a mixture of timber and prairie; soil, generally second rate. Minerals; lime and sandstone. WARREN.--Besides the Mississippi, its principal stream is Henderson river, which passes through it, with Ellison, Honey, and Camp creeks. Much of the land on these streams is rich, undulating, deficient somewhat in timber, with excellent prairie. Along the Mississippi, and about the mouth of Henderson, the land is inundated in high water. WASHINGTON.--Has the Kaskaskia on its north-western side, with Elkhorn, Little Muddy, Beaucoup, and Little Crooked creeks interior. The prairies are rather level, and in places inclined to be wet; the timber, especially along the Kaskaskia, heavy. WAYNE.--The Little Wabash, with its tributaries, Elm river, and Skillet Fork, are its streams. It is proportionably interspersed with prairie and woodland, generally of second quality. WHITE.--The eastern side washed by the Big Wabash, along which is a low, inundated bottom; the interior is watered by the Little Wabash and its tributaries. Some prairie, but mostly timber. Soil and surface various. Some rich bottom prairies, with sandy soil. TOWNS. Vandalia is the seat of government till 1840, after which it is to be removed to Alton, according to a vote of the people in 1834, unless they should otherwise direct. It is situated on the right bank of the Kaskaskia river, in N. lat. 39° 0' 42", and 58 miles in a direct line, a little north of east from Alton. The public buildings are temporary. Population, about 750. _Alton._ Two towns of this name are distinguished as Alton, and Upper Alton. Alton is an incorporated town, situated on the bank of the Mississippi, two and a half miles above the mouth of the Missouri, and at the place where the curve of the Mississippi penetrates the furthest into Illinois, 18 miles below the mouth of the Illinois river. For situation, commerce, business of all kinds, health, and rapidity of growth, it far exceeds any other town on the east bank of the Mississippi, above New Orleans. The population is about 2000. The commercial business done here is already immense, and extends through more than half of Illinois, besides a large trade on the western side of the Mississippi. Five large mercantile establishments do wholesale business only, four do wholesale and retail, besides four wholesale and retail groceries, and fifteen or twenty retail stores and groceries; and yet many more mercantile houses are necessary for the business of the country. Great facilities for business of almost every description, especially for every kind of mechanics, are to be had here. It offers one of the best situations on the western waters for building and repairing steamboats. Town lots and lands adjacent have risen in value from 500 to 1000 per cent. within the last twelve months. Alton has respectable and well finished houses of worship for the Presbyterian, Methodist Protestant, and Baptist denominations; two good schools, a Lyceum, that holds weekly meetings, and two printing-offices. The population in general, is a moral, industrious, enterprising class. Few towns in the West have equalled this in contributions for public and benevolent objects, in proportion to age and population. Arrangements have been made for doing an extensive business in the slaughtering and packing of pork and beef. Four houses are engaged in that line, and have slaughtered about 25,000 hogs the present season. Many buildings will be erected the approaching season, amongst which will be an extensive hotel, which is much needed. The town is situated at the base, side, and top, of the first bluffs that extend to the river, above the mouth of the Kaskaskia. Adjacent to it, and which will eventually become amalgamated, is Middletown, laid off directly in the rear. _Upper Alton_ is from two and a half to three miles back from the river, and in the rear of Lower Alton, on elevated ground, and in every respect a very healthy situation. It has exceeding 120 families, and is rapidly improving. Adjacent to it, and forming now a part of the town plat, is "_Shurtleff College, of Alton, Illinois_," which bids fair to become an important and flourishing institution. Also "_Alton Theological Seminary_," which has commenced operations. Both these institutions have been gotten up under the influence and patronage of the Baptist denomination. A female seminary of a high order, under the name of the "_Alton Female Institute_," has been chartered, and a building is about to be erected for the purpose. The Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians have congregations here, and two houses of worship are to be built the present year. _Chicago_ is the largest commercial town in Illinois. It is situated at the junction of North and South branches, and along the main Chicago, near its entrance into lake Michigan, on a level prairie, but elevated above the highest floods. A recent communication from a respectable mercantile house, gives the following statistics: "Fifty-one stores, 30 groceries, 10 taverns, 12 physicians, 21 attorneys, and 4,000 inhabitants. We have four churches, and two more building, one bank, a Marine and Fire Insurance company about to go into operation, and a brick hotel, containing 90 apartments. There were 9 arrivals and departures of steamboats in 1835, and 267 of brigs and schooners, containing 5,015 tons of merchandise and 9,400 barrels of salt, besides lumber, provisions, &c. The harbor now constructing by the U. S. government, will be so far completed in 1836, as to admit vessels and steamboats navigating the lakes. A few miles back of Chicago are extensive tracts of wet prairie. _Galena_ is the seat of justice for Jo Daviess county, situated on Fever river, in the midst of the mining district. It has about 20 stores, a dozen groceries, and about 1,000 inhabitants. _Springfield_ is near the geographical centre of the State, and in the midst of a most fertile region of country. It is a flourishing inland town, and contains about 2,000 inhabitants. _Jacksonville_, the county seat of Morgan county, has about the same population, and is equally delightful and flourishing. One mile west, on a most beautiful eminence, stands "_Illinois College_," founded under the auspices of the Presbyterian denomination, and bids fair to become a flourishing seat of learning. I have not room to name, much less describe, the many growing towns and villages in this State, that excite and deserve the attention of emigrants. On the Illinois river are Ottawa, and several eligible sites in its vicinity, where towns have commenced; Beardstown, a short distance below the mouth of Sangamon river, Peoria, at the foot of Peoria lake, (a most beautiful site, and containing 1,000 inhabitants,) Meredosia, Naples, Pekin, Hennepin, &c. On the Mississippi, are Quincy, Warsaw, New Boston, and Stephenson, the seat of justice for Rock Island county. Interior, are Bloomington, Decatur, Tremont, Shelbyville, Hillsboro', Edwardsville, Carlyle, Belleville, Carrollton, and many others. Towards the Wabash, are Danville, Paris, Lawrenceville, Carmi, and Mount Carmel, the last of which has an importance from being connected with the grand rapids of the Wabash. Shawneetown is the commercial depot for the south-eastern part of the State. On the Military Tract are Rushville, Pittsfield, Griggsville, Carthage, Macomb, Monmouth, Knoxville, Lewistown, Canton, &c., all pleasant sites, and having a population from two or three hundred to one thousand inhabitants. For a more particular description of each county, town, and settlement, with all other particulars of Illinois, the reader is referred to "A GAZETTEER OF ILLINOIS," by the author of this GUIDE. _Projected Improvements._--The project of uniting the waters of lake Michigan and the Illinois, by a canal, was conceived soon after the commencement of the Grand canal of New York, and a Board of commissioners, with engineers, explored the route and estimated the cost, in 1823. Provision, by a grant of each alternate section of land within five miles of the route, having been granted by Congress, another Board of commissioners was appointed in 1829, a new survey was made, and the towns of Chicago and Ottawa laid off, and some lots sold in 1830. Various movements have since been made, but nothing effectually done, until the recent special session of the legislature, when an act was passed to authorize the Governor to borrow funds upon the faith of the State; a new Board of commissioners has been organized, and this great work is about to be prosecuted with vigor to its completion. Funds, in part, have been provided, from the sales of certain saline lands belonging to the State, to improve the navigation of the Great Wabash, at the Grand Rapids, near the mouth of White river, in conjunction with the State of Indiana. From the same source, funds are to be applied to the clearing out of several navigable water-courses, and repairing roads, within the State. Charters have been granted to several rail-road companies, some of which have been surveyed and the stock taken. One from Alton to Springfield was surveyed last year, and the stock subscribed in December. Another from St. Louis, by the coal mines of St. Clair county, to Belleville, 13 miles, is expected to be made immediately. The project of a central railway from the termination of the Illinois and Michigan canal, at the foot of the rapids, a few miles below Ottawa,--through Bloomington, Decatur, Shelbyville, Vandalia, and on to the mouth of the Ohio river, has been entered upon with spirit. Another charter contemplates the continuance of a route, already provided for in Indiana, and noticed under Ohio, from La Fayette, Ia. by Danville, Shelbyville and Hillsboro,' to Alton, the nearest point from the east to the Mississippi. A rail-road charter was granted at a previous session of the legislature from Meredosia to Jacksonville, and another from Vincennes to Chicago. We have only room to mention the following charters, which have been recently granted, in addition to those already specified: One from Pekin to Tremont, in Tazewell county, 9 miles. One from the Wabash, by Peoria to Warsaw, in Hancock county. The Wabash and Mississippi rail-road company. The Mount Carmel and Alton rail-road company. The Rushville rail-road company. The Winchester, Lynville, and Jacksonville rail-road company. The Shawneetown and Alton rail-road company. The Pekin, Bloomington, and Wabash rail-road company. The Waverly and Grand Prairie rail-road company. The Galena and Chicago Union rail-road company. The Wabash and Mississippi Union rail-road company. The Mississippi, Carrollton and Springfield rail-road company. The _National Road_ is in progress through this State, and considerable has been made on that portion which lies between Vandalia and the boundary of Indiana. This road enters Illinois at the north-east corner of Clark county, and passes diagonally through Coles and Effingham counties in a south-westerly course to Vandalia, a distance of 90 miles. The road is established 80 feet wide, the central part 30 feet wide, raised above standing water, and not to exceed three degrees from a level. The base of all the abutments of bridges must be equal in thickness to one third of the height of the abutment. The road is not yet placed in a travelling condition. The line of the road is nearly direct, the loss in 90 miles being only the 88th part of one per cent. Between Vandalia and Ewington, for 23 miles, it does not deviate in the least from a direct line. From Vandalia westward, the road is not yet located, but it will probably pass to Alton. _Education._--The same provision has been made for this as other Western States, in the disposal of the public lands. The section numbered sixteen in each township of land, is sold upon petition of the people within the township, and the avails constitute a permanent fund, the interest of which is annually applied towards the expenses, in part, of the education of those who attend school, living within the township. A school system, in part, has been arranged by the legislature. The peculiar and unequal division of the country into timber and prairie lands, and the inequality of settlements consequent thereupon, will prevent, for many years to come, the organization of school districts with _defined geographical boundaries_. To meet this inconvenience, the legislature has provided that any number of persons can elect three trustees, employ a teacher in any mode they choose, and receive their proportion of the avails of the school funds. _In all cases, however, the teacher must keep a daily account of each scholar who attends school, and make out a schedule of the aggregate that each scholar attends, every six months_, and present it, certified by the trustees of the school, to the school commissioner of the county, who apportions the money accordingly. This State receives three per cent. on all the net avails of public lands sold in this State, which, with the avails of two townships sold, makes a respectable and rapidly increasing fund, the interest only of which can be expended, and that only to the payment of instructers. Good common school teachers, both male and female, are greatly needed, and will meet with ready employ, and liberal wages. Here is a most delightful and inviting field for Christian activity. Common school, with Sunday school instruction, calls for thousands of teachers in the West. Several respectable academies, are in operation, and the wants and feelings of the community call for many more. Besides the colleges at Jacksonville and Alton already noticed, others are projected, and several have been chartered. The Methodist denomination have a building erected, and a preparatory school commenced, at Lebanon, St. Clair county. The Episcopalians are about establishing a college at Springfield. One or more will be demanded in the northern and eastern portions of the State; and it may be calculated that, in a very brief period, the State of Illinois will furnish facilities for a useful and general education, equal to those in any part of the country. _Government._--The Constitution of Illinois was formed by a convention held at Kaskaskia, in August, 1818. It provides for the distribution of the powers of government into three distinct departments,--the legislative, executive, and judiciary. The legislative authority is vested in a general assembly, consisting of a senate and house of representatives. Elections are held biennially, as are the ordinary sessions of the legislature. Senators are elected for four years. The executive power is vested in the governor, who is chosen every fourth year, by the electors for representatives; but the same person is ineligible for the next succeeding four years. The lieutenant governor is also chosen every four years. The judicial power is vested in a supreme court, and such inferior courts as the general assembly from time to time shall establish. The supreme court consists of a chief justice and three associate judges. The governor and judges of the supreme court constitute a council of revision, to which all bills that have passed the assembly must be submitted. If objected to by the council of revision, the same may become a law by the vote of a majority of all the members elected to both houses. The right of suffrage is universal. All white male inhabitants, citizens of the United States, twenty-one years of age, and who have resided within the State six months next preceding the elections, enjoy the right of voting. Votes are given _viva voce_. The introduction of slavery is prohibited. The Constitution can only be altered by a convention. GENERAL REMARKS. 1. Farms somewhat improved, are almost daily exchanging owners, and a considerable spirit of enterprise has been awakened within a year or two past. The prices of farms and improvements vary greatly, and are influenced much by factitious and local circumstances. From St. Clair county northward, they average probably from five to ten dollars per acre, and are rising in value. In some counties, farms will cost from 2 to 5 dollars per acre. A _farm_ in Illinois, however, means a tract of land, much of it in a state of nature, with some cheap, and, frequently, log buildings, with 20, 40, 60, 80, or 100 acres, fenced and cultivated. Good dwellings of brick, stone, or wood, begin to be erected. Amongst the older residents, there have been but few barns made. The want of adequate supplies of lumber, and of mechanics, renders good buildings more expensive than in the new countries of New England or New York. 2. Merchant's goods, groceries, household furniture, and almost every necessary and comfort in house-keeping, can be purchased here; and many articles retail at about the same prices as in the Atlantic States. 3. The following table will exhibit the cost of 320 acres of land, at Congress price, and preparing 160 acres for cultivation or prairie land: Cost of 320 acres at $1,25 per acre, $400 Breaking up 160 acres prairie, $2 per acre, 320 Fencing it into four fields with a Kentucky fence of eight rails high, with cross stakes, 175 Add cost of cabins, corn cribs, stable, &c. 250 ----- Making the cost of the farm, $1145 In many instances, a single crop of wheat will pay for the land, for fencing, breaking up, cultivating, harvesting, threshing, and taking to market. 4. All kinds of mechanical labor, especially those in the building line, are in great demand; and workmen, even very coarse and common workmen, get almost any price they ask. Journeymen mechanics get $2 per day. A carpenter or brick mason wants no other capital, to do first rate business, and soon become independent, than a set of tools, and habits of industry, sobriety, economy and enterprise. 5. Common laborers on the farm obtain from $12 to $15 per month, including board. Any young man, with industrious habits, can begin here without a dollar, and in a very few years become a substantial farmer. A good cradler in the harvest field will earn from $1,50 to $2 per day. 6. Much that we have stated in reference to Illinois, will equally apply to Missouri, or any other Western State. Many general principles have been laid down, and particular facts exhibited, with respect to the general description of the State, soil, timber, kinds of land, and other characteristics, under Illinois, and, to save repetition, are omitted elsewhere. FOOTNOTES: [11] Beck. CHAPTER XII. MISSOURI. Length, 278; medium breadth, 235 miles: containing 64,500 square miles, and containing 41,280,000 acres. Bounded north by the Des Moines country, or New Purchase, attached to Wisconsin Territory, west by the Indian Territory, south by Arkansas, and east by the Mississippi river. Between 36° and 40° 37' N. latitude, and between 11° 15' and 17° 30' west longitude. _Civil Divisions._--It is divided into 50 counties, as follows:--Barry, Benton, Boone, Callaway, Cape Girardeau, Carroll, Chaviton, Clay, Clinton, Cole, Cooper, Crawford, Franklin, Gasconade, Green, Howard, Jackson, Jefferson, Johnson, La Fayette, Lewis, Lincoln, Madison, Marion, Munroe, Montgomery, Morgan, New Madrid, Perry, Pettis, Pike, Polk, Pulaski, Randolph, Ralls, Ray, Ripley, Rives, St. Francois, St. Genevieve, St. Charles, St. Louis, Saline, Scott, Shelby, Stoddart, Van Buren, Warren, Washington, and Wayne. POPULATION AT DIFFERENT PERIODS. _Population._ | _Increase._ 1810, (including Arkansas,) 19,833 | From 1810 to 1820, 46,753 1820, 66,586 | " 1820 " 1824, 14,500 1824, 80,000 | " 1824 " 1830, 60,455 1830, 140,455 | " 1830 " 1832, 35,820 1832, 176,276 | " 1832 " 1836, 33,724 1836, (estimated for Jan'y) 210,000 | The Constitution is similar to that of Illinois, in its broad features, excepting the holding of slaves is allowed, and the General Assembly has no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves, without the consent of their owners, or paying an equivalent. It is made the duty of the General Assembly "to oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity, and to abstain from all injuries to them extending to life or limb." "Slaves shall not be deprived of an impartial trial by jury." In 1832, there were in the State, 32,184 slaves, and 661 free colored persons. Every free white male citizen has the right of suffrage, after a residence in the State of one year. _Surface, Soil and Productions._--The surface of this State is greatly diversified. South of Cape Girardeau, with the exception of some bluffs along the Mississippi, it is entirely alluvial, and a large proportion consists of swamp and inundated lands, the most of which are heavily timbered. From thence to the Missouri river, and westward to the dividing grounds between the waters of the Osage and Gasconade rivers, the country is generally timbered, rolling, and in some parts, quite hilly. No part of Missouri, however, is strictly mountainous. Along the waters of Gasconade and Black rivers the hills are frequently abrupt and rocky, with strips of rich alluvion along the water courses. Much of this region abounds with minerals of various descriptions. Lead, iron, coal, gypsum, manganese, zinc, antimony, cobalt, ochre of various kinds, common salt, nitre, plumbago, porphyry, jasper, chalcedony, buhrstone, marble, and freestone, of various qualities. The lead and iron ore are literally exhaustless, and of the richest quality. To say there is probably iron ore enough in this region to supply the United States with iron for one hundred thousand years to come, would not be extravagant. Here, too, is water power in abundance, rapid streams, with pebbly beds, forests of timber, and exhaustless beds of bituminous coal. The only difficulty of working this vast body of minerals is the inconvenience of getting its proceeds to the Mississippi. The streams that rise in this region, run different courses into the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the Arkansas, but they are too rapid and winding in their courses to afford safe and easy navigation. Were the rafts now lodged in the St. Francois, removed by the agency of government, as they have been in Red river, the lower section of the mineral country could be reached by steamboat navigation. The citizens of St. Louis, very recently, have entered upon the project of a railway from that city, through the heart of this country, to the fine farming lands in the south-western part of the State. Such a project, carried into effect, would open a boundless field of wealth in Missouri. The western part of the State is divided into prairie and forest land, much of which is fertile. Along the Osage, it is hilly, and the whole is undulating, and regarded as a healthy region, abounding with good water, salt springs, and limestone. North of the Missouri the face of the country is diversified, with a mixture of timber and prairie. From the Missouri to Salt river, good springs are scarce, and in several counties it is difficult to obtain permanent water by digging wells. Artificial wells, as they may be called, are made by digging a well forty or fifty feet deep, and replenishing it with a current of rain water from the roof of the dwelling house. Much of the prairie land in this part of the State is inferior to the first quality of prairie land in Illinois, as the soil is more clayey, and does not so readily absorb the water. Between Salt river and Des Moines, is a beautiful and rich country of land. The counties of Ralls, Marion, Monroe, Lewis and Shelby, are first rate. The counties of Warren, Montgomery, Callaway, Boone, Howard, and Chaviton, all lying on the north side of the Missouri river, are rolling,--in some places are bluffs and hills, with considerable good prairie, and an abundance of timbered land. Farther west, the proportion of prairie increases to the boundary line, as it does to the northward of Boone, Howard and Chaviton counties. After making ample deductions for inferior soil, ranges of barren hills, and large tracts of swamp, as in the south, the State of Missouri contains a vast proportion of excellent farming land. The people generally are enterprising, hardy and industrious, and most of those who hold slaves, perform labor with them. Emigrants from every State and several countries of Europe, are found here, but the basis of the population is from Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The natural productions of Missouri are similar to those States already described, and the agricultural productions are the same as in Illinois, except that more tobacco is produced in the middle, and considerable quantities of cotton in the southern counties. _Towns._--The city of Jefferson is the political capital of the State. It is situated on the right bank of the Missouri, a few miles above the mouth of the Osage, and about 138 miles from St. Louis. It is a small town, with little business, except what pertains to the government of the State. A state house, governor's house and penitentiary have been erected. St. Louis is the commercial capital, and the most important place in all this portion of the Valley of the Mississippi. It stands on the western bank of the Mississippi, 180 miles above the junction of the Ohio, 18 miles below that of the Missouri, and 38 miles below that of the Illinois. It is beautifully situated on ascending and elevated ground, which spreads out into an undulating surface to the west for many miles. Two streets are parallel with the river on the first bank, and the rest of the city stands on the second bank; but very little grading is necessary, to give the streets running back from the river, their proper inclination. The old streets, designed only for a French village, are too narrow for public convenience, but a large part of the city has been laid out on a liberal scale. The Indian and Spanish trade, the fur and peltry business, lead, government agencies, army supplies, surveys of government lands, with the regular trade of an extensive interior country, makes St. Louis a place of great business, in proportion to its population, which is about 10,000. The following, from the register of the wharf master, will exhibit the commerce for 1835: STEAMBOAT REGISTER. Number of different boats arrived, 121 Aggregate of tonnage, 15,470 Number of arrivals, 803 Wharfage collected, $4,573.60 _Wood and Lumber, liable to Wharfage._ Plank, joist, and scantling, 1,414,330 feet. Shingles, 148,000 Cedar posts, 7,706 Cords of fire-wood, 8,066 The proportionate increase of business will be seen by reference to the following registry for 1831: Different steamboats arrived, 60 Average amount of tonnage, 7,769 Number of entries, 532 The morality, intelligence and enterprise of this city is equal to any other in the West, in proportion to its size. The American population is most numerous, but there are many French, Irish and Germans. About one third of the inhabitants are Roman Catholics. The Presbyterians, Methodists, and Episcopalians have large congregations and houses of worship: the Baptists and Unitarians are rather small, and without public edifices. The Roman Catholic cathedral is a costly pile of buildings of freestone, and has a splendid chime of bells, sent over from Europe. St. Louis is a pleasant and healthy situation, and surrounded with a fertile country. We have not space to give particulars respecting many interesting and flourishing towns in Missouri. Cape Girardeau is a commercial depot for the southern part of the State. St. Genevieve stands a little back from the river, and is known only as an old French village. Selma is a landing and depot for the lead mine country, 38 miles below St. Louis. Clarksville, Hannibal, Saverton, and La Grange are commercial sites on the Mississippi, above the mouth of Missouri. Palmyra is a beautiful town, of about 1,000 inhabitants, and the seat of justice for Marion county. Along the Missouri are Portland, Rocheport, Boonville, Lexington, Independence, and many other places of various degrees of importance. Franklin formerly stood on the north bank of Missouri, but most of it has been removed, three miles interior, to the bluffs. Potosi is a central town, in the mineral district. Fulton, Columbia, and Fayette are the seats of justice for Callaway, Boone, and Howard counties, and are pleasant and flourishing towns. About the same provision for education has been made in this as in other Western States, and a disposition to encourage schools, academies and colleges is fast increasing. CHAPTER XIII. ARKANSAS, AND TERRITORIAL DISTRICTS. Arkansas, which has recently formed a constitution, lies between 33° and 36° 30' N. latitude, and between 13° 30' and 17° 45' W. longitude. Length, 235; medium breadth, 222 miles;--containing about 50,000 square miles, and 32,000,000 acres. _Civil Divisions._--The following are the counties, with the population, from the census taken in 1835: Counties. Population. Arkansas, 2,080 Carroll, 1,357 Chicot, 2,471 Conway, 1,214 Clark, 1,285 Crawford, 3,139 Crittenden, 1,407 Greene, 971 Hempstead, 2,955 Hot-Spring, 6,117 Independence, 2,653 Izard, 1,879 Jackson, 891 Jefferson, 1,474 Johnson, 1,803 La Fayette, 1,446 Lawrence, 3,844 Miller, 1,373 Mississippi, 600 Monroe, 556 Phillips, 1,518 Pike, 449 Pope, 1,318 Pulaski, 3,513 Scott, 100 Sevier, 1,350 St. Francis, 1,896 Union, 878 Van Buren, 855 Washington, 6,742 ------ Total, 58,212 Another table we have seen, makes out the population, as officially reported (with the exception of two counties, from which returns had not been made,) to be 51,809;--white males, 22,535; white females, 19,386;--total whites, 41,971: slaves, 9,629;--free persons of color, 209. The population, in 1830, 30,388;--in 1833, 40,660. The following graphical description of Arkansas, from the pen of a clergyman in that State, is corroborated by testimony in our possession, from various correspondents. It was written in 1835. _Letter from Rev. Harvey Woods, to the Editor of the Cincinnati Journal._ "Arkansas Territory is a part of that vast country ceded to the United States by France, in 1803. From the time of the purchase, till lately, the tide of emigration hardly reached thus far. In 1800, the population was 1052. Arkansas was erected into a Territory in 1819. At this time it is receiving a share of those who retire beyond the Mississippi. _Rivers._--The Territory is admirably intersected with navigable rivers. The Mississippi on the east, the Great Red river on the south. Between these, and running generally from N. W. to S. E. are the St. Francis, White, Arkansas, and Washitau rivers; all fine streams for steamboat navigation. _Face of the Country._--It is various. No country affords more diversified scenery. The country in the east, for 100 miles, is flat with marshes and swamps; in the middle, broken and hilly; and in the west, hilly and mountainous. There are some prairies, some thickly timbered land, some heavy timbered. The country is generally a timbered country. Some parts are sandy, some rocky, and some flinty. _Soil._--Should a man travel here, and expect to find all good land, he would be sadly disappointed. The best lands are generally contiguous to the rivers and creeks; and these are exceedingly fertile, not surpassed by any soil in the United States. Arkansas soil that is rich, has just sand enough to make it lively and elastic. Our best lands are covered with walnut, hackberry, mulberry, oak, ash, grape vines, &c. _Water._--The hilly and mountainous parts are well supplied with springs, limestone, and freestone. Also good streams for mills. In the flat country, good water is easily obtained by digging. _Productions._--Cotton and corn are the principal. The Arkansas cottons commanded the best price last season, in the Liverpool market. It is a country of unequalled advantages for raising horses, mules, cattle and hogs. _Climate._--It is mild, and from its difference in latitude, say from 32° 40' to 36° 30' N., and the difference in local situation, we would guess, and correctly too, that there is much difference in the health of different places; the high and northern parts healthy, and the flat and southern subject to agues and bilious fevers. The climate has been considered unhealthy to new settlers; but it is not more so than other new countries. _Minerals._--There are quantities of iron, lead, coal, salt, and, it is asserted by some, silver. There are many salt and sulphur springs. On the Arkansas river, beyond the limits of the Territory proper, is a section of country called the salt prairie, which, according to good authority, is covered for many miles, from four to six inches deep, with pure white salt. In the Hot Spring country, are the famous hot springs, much resorted to by persons of chronic and paralytic diseases. The temperature, in dry, hot weather, is at boiling point. _State of Society._--The general character of the people is brave, hardy, and enterprising--frequently without the polish of literature, yet kind and hospitable. The people are now rapidly improving in morals and intellect. They are as ready to encourage schools, the preaching of the gospel, and the benevolent enterprises of the age, as any people in new countries. The consequences of living here a long time without the opportunity of educating their children, and destitute of the means of grace, are, among this population, just what they always will be under similar circumstances. Ministers of all denominations are "few and far between." We have no need _here_ to build on other's foundation. I am living in Jackson county, on White river. This county has a larger quantity of good land than any one in the Territory. White river is always navigable for steamboats to this place, 350 miles from its mouth. Well-water is good,--some fine springs. Washington county, and some others, that have the reputation of better health, are more populous. We want settlers; and we have no doubt that vast numbers of families in the States, particularly the poor, and those in moderate circumstances, would better their situation by coming here, where they can get plenty of fertile and fresh land at government price, $1,25 per acre. They can have good range, and all the advantages of new countries. Emigrants, however, ought not to suffer themselves to expect all sunshine, and no winter. We have cloudy days and cold weather, even in Arkansas! If they have heard of the _honey pond_, where flitters grow on trees, they need not be surprised if they don't find it. Cabins cannot be built, wells dug, farms opened, rails made, and meeting-houses and school-houses erected, without work. It may be asked, "If Arkansas be so fine a country, why has it not been settled faster?" There are perhaps three reasons;--a fear of the Indians, a fear of sickness, a fear of bad roads. The Indians are now all peaceably situated beyond the Territory proper, and are blessed with the labors of a number of good pious missionaries, who are teaching them to read the Bible, and showing the tall sons of the forest the way that leads to heaven. Sickness is no more to be dreaded here than in Illinois and Missouri. The roads have indeed been bad.--For a long time, no one could venture through the Mississippi swamps, unless he was a Daniel Boone. But appropriations have been made by Congress for several roads. This summer, roads from Memphis to Little Rock, and to Litchfield and Batesville, and other points, will be completed. An appropriation of upwards of $100,000 has been made to construct a road through the Mississippi swamp. Again: we want settlers--we want physicians, lawyers, ministers, mechanics and farmers. We want such, however, and _only such_ as will make good neighbors. If any who think of coming to live with us, are gamblers, drunkards, Sabbath-breakers, profane swearers, or the like, we hope that when they leave their _old_ country, they will leave their _old_ habits." We have not seen the Constitution of this State, now pending before Congress for admission into the Union, but understand that its essential principles are the same as that of the other Western States. WISCONSIN TERRITORY. Under this name is now comprehended an extensive district of country, lying on both sides of the Mississippi river, above Illinois and Missouri, and extending indefinitely north. That portion lying betwixt the northern boundary of Illinois and the Wisconsin river, and from lake Michigan to the Mississippi, has the Indian title extinguished, and, in part, has been surveyed and brought into market. There is much excellent land in this part of the Territory, and it is well watered with perennial streams and springs. Offices are opened for the sale of public lands, at Mineral Point and Green Bay, and a large amount has been sold, and some at a high price. The country immediately bordering on lake Michigan, is well timbered, with various trees. Here are red, white, black and burr oaks, beech, ash, linden, poplar, walnut, hickory, sugar and white maple, elm, birch, hemlock, and pine, with many other kinds. The soil is not so deep and dark a mould as in the prairies of Illinois, but is fertile and easily cultivated; and sandy, especially about the town of Green Bay. Towards the lake, and near the body of water called Sturgeon Bay, connected with Green Bay, and between that and the lake, are extensive swamps and cranberry marshes. Wild rice, tamarisk, and spruce, grow here. About Rock river and from thence to the Mississippi, there is much excellent land, but a deficiency of timber. Lead and copper ore, and probably other minerals, abound in this part of the country. Along to the east and north of the Four lakes, are alternate quagmires and sand ridges, for 50 miles or more, called by the French _coureurs du bois_, "_Terre Tremblant_," (trembling land,) the character of which is sufficiently indicated by the name. There are several small lakes in the district of country we are now examining, the largest of which is Winnebago. It is situated 30 or 40 miles south of Green Bay,--is about ten miles long, and three broad, and is full of wild rice. Fox river passes through it. Kushkanong is six or eight miles in diameter, with some swamps and quagmires in its vicinity. It is on Rock river, between Catfish and Whitewater. The _Four lakes_ are strung along on a stream called Catfish, which enters Rock river 25 or 30 miles above the boundary of Illinois. They are 6 or 8 miles long, abounding with fish, and are surrounded with an excellent farming country. Green Bay settlement and village is 230 miles north of Chicago, 220 north-east from Galena, 120 from Fort Winnebago, and in N. latitude 44° 44'. _Navarino_ is a town recently commenced in this vicinity, with an excellent harbor, grows rapidly, and bids fair to become a place of importance. Property has risen the last year most astonishingly. Fort Winnebago is a military post, at the bend, and on the right bank of Fox river, opposite the portage. From thence to the Wisconsin, is a low wet prairie, of three fourths of a mile, through which, a company has been chartered to cut a canal. On this route, the first explorers reached the Mississippi in 1673. The Wisconsin river, however, without considerable improvement, is not navigable for steamboats, at ordinary stages of the water, without much trouble. It is full of bars, islands, rocks, and has a devious channel. The streams that rise in the eastern part of this Territory, and flow into lake Michigan, north of the boundary of Illinois, are in order as follows: Pipe creek, a small stream, but a few miles from the boundary,--Root river next,--then Milwaukee, 90 miles from Chicago. It rises in the swampy country, south of Winnebago lake, runs a south-easterly course, and, after receiving the Menomone, forms Milwaukee bay. Here is a town site, on both sides of the river, with a population of six or eight hundred, which promises to become a place of business. The soil up the Milwaukee is good, from 6 to 32 inches in depth, a black loam and sand. Passing northward down the lake is Oak creek, 9 miles below Milwaukee,--thence 21 miles is Sauk creek, a small stream. Seventy miles from Milwaukee is Shab-wi-wi-a-gun. Here is found white pine, maple, beech, birch and spruce, but very little oak: the surface level and sandy. Pigeon river is 15 or 20 miles further on, with excellent land on its borders;--timber,--maple, ash, beech, linden, elm, &c. Fifteen miles further down, is Manatawok. Here commences the hemlock, with considerable pine. This stream is about 40 or 50 miles from Green Bay settlement. Twin rivers are below Manatawok, with sandy soil, and good timber of pine and other varieties. From Milwaukee to Green Bay, by a surveyed route, is 112 miles;--by the Indian trail, commonly travelled, 135 miles. North of the Wisconsin river, is Crawford county, of which Prairie du Chien is the seat of justice. From the great bend at Fort Winnebago across towards the Mississippi is a series of abrupt hills, rising several hundred feet, and covered with a dense forest of elm, linden, oak, walnut, ash, sugar maple, &c. The soil is rich, but is too hilly and broken for agricultural purposes. There is no alluvial soil, or bottoms along the streams, or grass in the forests. The Wisconsin river rises in an unexplored country towards lake Superior. The _coureurs du bois_, and _voyageurs_ represent it as a cold, mountainous, dreary region, with swamps. West of the Mississippi, above Des Moines, and extending northward to a point some distance above the northern boundary of Illinois, and for 50 miles interior, is a valuable country, purchased of the Indians in 1832. Its streams rise in the great prairies, run an east or south-eastern course into the Mississippi. The most noted are Flint, Skunk, Wau-be-se-pin-e-con, Upper and Lower Iowa rivers, and Turkey, Catfish, and Big and Little Ma-quo-ka-tois, or Bear creeks. The soil, in general, is excellent, and very much resembles the military tract in Illinois. The water is excellent,--plenty of lime, sand and freestone,--extensive prairies, and a deficiency of timber a few miles interior. About Dubuque, opposite Galena, are extensive and rich lead mines. Burlington is a town containing a population of 700, at the Flint hills opposite Warren county, Illinois. Dubuque is situated on the Mississippi, on a sandy bottom, above high water, and 14 miles N. W. from Galena. It has about 60 stores and groceries, 2 taverns, 2 churches, and about 1000 inhabitants, and we have before us the prospectus for the "DUBUQUE VISITER," a weekly newspaper. Peru is in the vicinity, and contains about 500 inhabitants. The New Purchase, as this district of country is called, is divided into two counties, Dubuque, and Des Moines, and contains a population of 8 or 10,000. The whole Wisconsin Territory is estimated by its legislature, now in session, to contain 30,000 inhabitants. Hitherto, for civil purposes, this region has formed a part of Michigan Territory, and still its legislature acts under that name; but a bill is before Congress to organize a territorial government under the name of WISCONSIN, which doubtless will be effected in a few weeks. Not many years will elapse before two new States will be formed out of this district of country, the one on the eastern, and the other on the western, side of the Mississippi. CHAPTER XIV. LITERARY AND RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS FOR THE WEST. Colleges;--Statistical Sketches of each Denomination;--Roman Catholics;--Field for effort, and progress made. In giving a sketch of literary and religious institutions in the West, the very limited space remaining to be occupied in this work, compels me to throw together a few general facts only. The author has made some progress in collecting materials, and he designs to prepare another work soon, in which a variety of particulars and sketches will be given of the early history, progress of literary and religious institutions, colleges, seminaries, churches, Bible, Sunday school, education and other kindred societies in the Western Valley, with the present aspect of each denomination of Christians. The interest taken in the affairs of the West, and the anxiety evinced by the community for facts and particulars on those subjects, demand that they should be treated more in detail than the limits of this Guide will allow. I. COLLEGES. OHIO.--_Ohio University_, at Athens, was founded in 1802;--has an endowment of 46,030 acres of land, which yields $2,300 annually. A large and elegant edifice of brick was erected in 1817. The number of students about 90. _Miami University_, was founded in 1824, and is a flourishing institution at Oxford, Butler county, 37 miles from Cincinnati. It possesses the township of land in which it is situated, and from which it receives an income of about $5000. Number of students about 200. Patronized by Presbyterians. The _Cincinnati College_ was incorporated in 1819, continued to be sustained as a classical institution for some years, and then suspended operations. It has been revived and re-organized lately, and will probably be sustained. _Kenyon College_, at Gambier, Knox county, in a central part of the State, was established in 1828, through the efforts of Rev. Philander Chase, then bishop of the Ohio Diocess, who obtained about $30,000 in England to endow it. Its chief patrons were those excellent British noblemen, Lords Kenyon and Gambier. It is under Episcopal jurisdiction, and has a theological department, for the education of candidates for the ministry in the Episcopal church. It has about 150 students. _Western Reserve College_ is at Hudson. It was founded by Presbyterians and Congregationalists in 1826, and has 82 students in all its departments. _Franklin College_ is in New Athens, Harrison county, on the eastern side of the State, and has about 50 students. The _Granville Literary and Theological Institution_ originated under patronage of the Baptist denomination in 1831. It is designed to embrace four departments,--preparatory, English, collegiate, and theological. It is rapidly rising, and contains more than 100 students. _Oberlin Institute_ has been recently established in Lorain county, under the influence of "new measure" Presbyterians, with four departments, and has 276 students, as follows: In the theological department, 35; collegiate, 37; preparatory, 31; female, 73. The citizens of Cleveland have recently contributed to it $15,000, of which six persons gave $1000 each. The _Willibough Collegiate Institute_ is in the lake country of Ohio, and has been gotten up within a few years past. The _Marietta Collegiate Institute_ is said to be a flourishing and respectable institution, having a large number of students in various departments. INDIANA.--_Indiana college_ is a State institution, established at Bloomington, and commenced operations in 1828. Present number of students not known. In 1832 the number exceeded 50. _Hanover College_ is at South Hanover, six miles below the town of Madison, and near the Ohio river. It is a flourishing institution, with arrangements for manual labor, and is styled "South Hanover College and Indiana Theological Seminary." The number of students exceed 100. _Wabash College_, at Crawfordsville, has just commenced operations under auspicious circumstances. Under patronage of the Presbyterians. ILLINOIS.--_Illinois College_, near Jacksonville, commenced as a preparatory school in 1830, and has made rapid progress. Large funds for its endowment have been recently provided in the Eastern States. The number of students about 80. _Shurtleff College of Alton, Illinois_, was commenced under the efforts of Baptists at Alton in 1832, as a preparatory institution;--chartered as a college in February, 1835, and has been recently named in honor of a liberal patron, Dr. Benjamin Shurtleff, of Boston, Mass., who has presented the institution with $10,000. It has 60 students, and its prospects are encouraging. _McKendreean College_ has been chartered, a building erected, and a school commenced at Lebanon. It is connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church. Charters have been recently granted for other colleges in this State, and measures adopted to bring some of them into existence. The Rev. Philander Chase, whose persevering labors brought into existence and successful operation, Kenyon college in Ohio, and who is now bishop of Illinois, is at present in England, where, by recent advices, he has obtained $50,000 to invest in Illinois lands, and to establish a college for the interests of the Episcopal church. MISSOURI.--The Roman Catholics have two institutions of a collegiate character, established in this State, _St. Mary's College_, in Perry county, was established by Bishop Du Bourg, in 1822. It has 6,000 volumes in the library. Including the _nunnery_, and school for females, a seminary for the education of _priests_, a preparatory, and a primary school, the number of teachers and students are about 300. _St. Louis University_ was founded in 1829, and is conducted by the Fathers of the society of Jesuits. The edifice is 130 feet, by 40, of 4 stories, including the basement, and is situated on elevated and pleasant ground, on the confines of the city. For the Protestants, the following institutions have been established. _Columbia College_, adjacent to Columbia, Boon county. The institution opened in 1835, under encouraging circumstances. _Marion College_ is in a delightful tract of country, a prairie region, in the western part of Michigan county,--and has between 80 and 100 students. It is connected with the Presbyterian interests. The project as developed by some of its founders, is an immense one, including English, scientific, classical, theological, medical, agricultural, and law departments,--all to be sustained by manual labor, and the proceeds of extensive farms. Doubtless, by prudent and persevering efforts, a respectable college may be brought into successful operation. A _college_ at St. Charles, has been founded, principally by the liberality of George Collier, a merchant of St. Louis, and two or three other gentlemen, and a classical and scientific school has been commenced. ARKANSAS.--Efforts are making to establish a college by Presbyterian agency, at Cane Hill, in this newly formed State. Two or three collegiate institutions will soon be needed in this region. KENTUCKY.--_Transylvania University_, at Lexington, is the oldest collegiate institution in the West. It was commenced, by a grant of 8,000 acres of land by the legislature of Virginia, in 1783, and was then called "Transylvania Seminary." The "Kentucky Academy" was founded in 1794, and both institutions were united and incorporated in 1798, under the present name. It has classical, medical, law, and preparatory departments,--and including each, from 300 to 400 students. _Center College_, at Danville, was founded by the Presbyterian church, in 1818, for which the synod of Kentucky pledged $20,000. Number of students about 100. _Augusta College_ was founded in 1822, by the Ohio and Kentucky conferences of the Methodist Episcopal church. It adopted collegiate regulations in 1828. Number of students in the collegiate, academical and primary departments, about 200. _Cumberland College_ was incorporated in 1824, and is established at Princeton, in the western part of the State. It is under the patronage and jurisdiction of the Cumberland Presbyterians. A farm, including a tract of 5,000 acres of land, with workshops, furnish facilities for manual labor. It has about 80 students. _St. Joseph's College_ is a Roman Catholic institution, at Bardstown, with college buildings sufficient to accommodate 200 students, and valued at $60,000. It commenced with 4 students in 1820. In 1833 there were in the collegiate and preparatory departments, 120 students. The St. Thomas and St. Mary Seminaries are also under the charge of Roman Catholic priests, the one in Nelson county, four miles from Bardstown, and the other in Washington county. A college was founded by the Baptists at Georgetown in 1830, but from untoward circumstances, is probably relinquished by the denomination. TENNESSEE.--The _University of Nashville_ is a prominent institution. The laboratory is one of the finest in the United States, and the mineralogical cabinet, not exceeded, and this department, as well as every other in the college, is superintended with much talent. The number of students is about 100. _Greenville_, _Knoxville_ and _Washington_ colleges are in East Tennessee. _Jackson College_ is about to be removed from its present site, and located at Columbia. $25,000 have been subscribed for the purpose. A Presbyterian Theological Seminary is at Maryville. MISSISSIPPI.--_Jefferson College_ is at Washington, six miles from Natchez. It has not flourished as a college, and is now said to be conducted somewhat on the principle of a military academy. _Oakland College_ has been recently founded by Presbyterians, and bids fair to exert a beneficial influence upon religion and morals, much needed in that State. The Baptist denomination are taking measures to establish a collegiate institution in that State. LOUISIANA.--Has a college at Jackson, in the eastern part of the State, The Roman Catholics have a college at New Orleans. There is a respectable collegiate institution, under the fostering care of the Methodist Episcopal Church, at Lagrange, in the north-western part of ALABAMA. Academies have been established in various parts of the West, for both sexes, and there are female seminaries of character and standing at Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Granville, Louisville, Lexington, Nashville, and many other places. Several more colleges, and a large number of minor institutions, will be needed very shortly to supply the demands for education in the West. The public mind is awake to the subject of education, and much has already been done, though a greater work has yet to be accomplished to supply the wants of the West in literary institutions. An annual convention is held in Cincinnati, on the first Monday in October, denominated the "_Western Institute and College of Professional Teachers_." Its object, according to the constitution, is, "to promote by every laudable means, the diffusion of knowledge in regard to education, and especially by aiming at the elevation of the character of teachers, who shall have adopted instruction as their regular profession." The first meeting was held in 1831, under the auspices of the "Academic Institute," a previously existing institution, but of more limited operations. The second convention, in 1832, framed a constitution and chose officers, since which time regular meetings have been held by delegates or individuals from various parts of the West, and a volume of Transactions of 300 or 400 pages published annually. II. THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTIONS. The _Western Theological Seminary_ at Alleghany town, opposite Pittsburg, is under the jurisdiction of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. It commenced operations in 1829. At _Canonsburg_ is a seminary belonging to the Associate church, of which Dr. Ramsey is Professor. The Associate Reformed church have a theological school in Pittsburg, under charge of the Rev. John T. Pressly D. D. The Baptist denomination are now engaged in establishing a manual labor academy in the vicinity of Pittsburg, for both ministerial and general education. The theological departments of Oberlin, Granville, and other collegiate institutions, have been noticed already. _Lane Seminary_, near Cincinnati, was founded in 1830, by Messrs. E. & W. A. Lane, merchants, of New Orleans, who made a very liberal offer of aid. Its location is excellent, two and a half miles from Cincinnati, at Walnut Hills, and is under the charge of the Rev. Dr. Beecher, and a body of professors. Number of students about 40. The _Hanover Institution_ in Indiana, has been noticed already. In the theological department are three professors and 12 students. The Baptists in this State are about establishing a manual labor seminary for ministerial and general education. A valuable property has been purchased, adjoining Covington, Ky., opposite Cincinnati, and measures have been put in train to found a theological seminary by the Baptist denomination. The executive committee of the "_Western Baptist Education Society_," have this object in charge. The "_Alton Theological Seminary_," located at Upper Alton, Illinois, is under an organization distinct from that of _Shurtleff College_, already noticed. This institution has 50 acres of valuable land, and a stone edifice of respectable size, occupied at present in joint concern with the college, and a valuable library of several hundred volumes. Its organization has been but recently effected. Rev. L. Colby, is professor, with 8 students. Other institutions, having theological education, either in whole or in part, their object, are in contemplation. Two remarks, by way of explanation are here necessary. 1. Most of the colleges and theological schools of the Western Valley have facilities for manual labor, or are making that provision. In several, some of the students pay half, and even the whole of their expenses, by their own efforts. Public sentiment is awake to this subject, and is gaining ground. 2. In enumerating the students, the members of the preparatory departments are included, many of whom do not expect to pass through a regular collegiate course. The circumstances and wants of the country, from its rapid growth, seem to require the appendage of a large preparatory department to every college. It may be well to observe here, that a great and increasing demand exists in all the Western States, and especially those bordering on the Mississippi, for teachers of primary schools. Hundreds and thousands of moral, intelligent, and pious persons, male and female, would meet with encouragement and success in this department of labor. It is altogether unnecessary for such persons to write to their friends, to make inquiries whether there are openings, &c. If they come from the older States with the proper recommendations as to character and qualifications, they will not fail to meet with employment in almost any quarter to which they may direct their course. There is not a county in Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, or Indiana, where persons would not meet with constant employment in teaching, and especially where teachers in Sabbath schools are needed. Persons desirous of such a field, of humble, yet useful labor, should come here with the fixed purpose to mix with, and conform to the usages of the Western population, to avoid fastidiousness, and to submit to the plain, frank, social, and hospitable manners of the people. III. DEAF AND DUMB ASYLUMS. There are two institutions of this description in the West,--one at Columbus, Ohio; the other at Danville, Ky. The one in Ohio contains about 50 pupils. IV. MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS. The medical department in Transylvania University, Kentucky, has six professors, and usually about 200 students to attend the lectures. Fees for an entire course, with matriculation and library, $110. Two medical institutions of respectable standing exist in Cincinnati,--one connected with the Miami university, the other with Cincinnati college. The _Ohio Reformed Medical School_, was established at Worthington, 9 miles north of Columbus, in 1830. No specified time is required for study, but when a student will pass examination, he is licensed to practice. V. LAW SCHOOLS. The law department of Transylvania University, is under the charge of two able professors, who hear recitations and deliver lectures. The average number of students is about 40. A law school was established at Cincinnati, in 1833, with four professors,--Messrs. John C. Wright, John M. Goodenow, Edward King, and Timothy Walker. The bar, the institution, and the city have recently sustained a severe loss in the decease of Mr. King. VI. BENEVOLENT AND RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES. To enumerate and give particulars of all these, would make a volume. We can but barely call the attention of the reader to some of the more prominent organizations, amongst the different Christian denominations in this great Valley, for doing good. The _Foreign Missionary Society of the Valley of the Mississippi_, is a prominent auxiliary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Its seat is Cincinnati, but by agencies and branches, it operates throughout the Valley. The Report of November, 1835, states that _eighteen thousand six hundred and fifty eight dollars_ had been received into the treasury the preceding year. An edition of 3000 copies of the Missionary Herald is republished in Cincinnati, for circulation in the West. The _Western Education Society_, connected with the American Education Society, has also its seat of operations at Cincinnati. Auxiliaries also exist in most of the Western States. 71 beneficiaries were under its charge at the last anniversary. The _American Tract Society_ has auxiliaries and agencies in most of the Western States. The operations of the _American Bible Society_, through its numerous auxiliaries, is felt to the remotest parts of the West. The _American Sunday School Union_ has recently established a central agency in Cincinnati, and is preparing to renew, and greatly enlarge its very important efforts for the benefit of the rising generation in the West. A series of very interesting anniversaries are held in Cincinnati, the first week in November, when all the great objects of Christian effort receive a renewed impulse. The _American Home Missionary Society_ has more than 200 missionaries, laboring in the States, west of the mountains. In 1835, they assisted 217 Presbyterian ministers in this field. The _Temperance Effort_ has not been neglected, and an interesting change is going forward, in a quiet and noiseless way, in the habits of the people, in reference to the use of intoxicating liquors. It is to be hoped that more prompt and vigorous efforts will be made to promote this cause, but even now, there are many thousands, who abstain from the use of spiritous liquors, without any formal pledge. The _Methodist Episcopal Church_, in addition to their regular system of circuits, are extending the influence of their denomination on the frontiers, by missionary operations, and their labors are prospered. The _Baptist denomination_ have made some important movements in the Western Valley within the last three years. Their Home Mission Society has nearly 100 missionaries in the West. In November, 1833, the "_General Convention of Western Baptists_," was organized by more than 100 ministers and brethren, assembled from various parts of the West. It is not an ecclesiastical body, claiming jurisdiction either over churches or ministers, nor is it strictly a missionary body. Its business, according to the constitution, is "to promote by all lawful means, the following objects, to wit:--Missions both foreign and domestic;--ministerial education, for such as may have first been licensed by the churches; Sunday schools, including Bible classes; religious periodicals; tract and temperance societies, as well as all others warranted by Christ in the gospel." At its second session, in 1834, the "_Western Baptist Education Society_" was formed. Its object is "the education of those who give evidence to the churches of which they are members, that God designs them for the ministry." The executive committee are charged temporarily, with establishing the Central Theological Seminary, already mentioned, at Covington, Ky. Many other interesting associations for humane, philanthropic, and religious purposes exist in the Valley, which are necessarily omitted. VII. THE PERIODICAL PRESS. The number of different periodicals published in the Valley of the Mississippi, must exceed 400, of which 12 or 15 are daily papers. There are 25 weekly periodicals in Mississippi, 116 in Ohio, 38 in Indiana, 19 in Illinois, 17 in Missouri, 3 and probably more, in Arkansas, 2 at least in Wisconsin Territory. The _Western Monthly Magazine_, edited by James Hall, Esq., and published at Cincinnati is well known. The _Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences_, edited by Daniel Drake, M. D., Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Cincinnati College, is published quarterly, in Cincinnati. There are a number of religious weekly, semi-monthly, and monthly periodicals, devoted to the interests of the principal denominations through the Valley. There are known to be at least one in Western Virginia, 2 in Western Pennsylvania, 7 in Ohio, 4 in Kentucky, 4 in Tennessee, 2 in Illinois, 2 in Missouri, and one in New Orleans. Supposing the average number of copies of Western periodicals equalled 750, this, estimating the different periodicals at 400, would give 300,000. We see no marked and essential difference in the talent, with which the editorial press is conducted, betwixt the Eastern and Western States. The limits of this work will not allow me to add further evidence that our Western population is not all "illiterate," and that "not more than one person in ten can read," than the following epitome of the issues, of one of the publishing houses in Cincinnati, as exhibited in the Cincinnati Journal: "_Western Enterprise._--The enterprise of the West is not generally appreciated. As a specimen, we have procured from Messrs. Corey & Webster the following LIST OF BOOKS published by them within the last three years. These books, with the exception of the Life of Black-Hawk, are of sterling value. The Western Primer, 60,000; Webster's Spelling Book, 600,000; the Primary Reader, 7,500; the Elementary Reader, 37,000; Western Reader, 16,000; Webster's History of the United States, 4000; Miss Beecher's Geography, 15,000; Pocket Testament, 6,500; Watts' and Select Hymns, 8000; Dr. Beecher's Lectures on Scepticism, three editions, 1000 each; Prof. Stowe's Introduction to the Study of the Bible, 1500; the Christian Lyre, 2000; Mitchell's Chemistry, 1000; Eberle on the Diseases of Children, 2000; Ditto Notes of Practice, 1500; Young Lady's Assistant in Drawing, 1000;, Munsell's Map, 3,500; Chase's Statutes of Ohio, three volumes, 1000; Hammond's Reports, 6th vol. 500; total, _seven hundred and seventy eight thousand two hundred and fifty!!!_ Probably some of the many other publishers in the city have got out nearly or quite as many books. Truly, we are a book-making and book-reading nation." VIII. RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS. In exhibiting the following statistics, entire correctness is not attempted. In some of the States, the latest reports have been had,--in others, the author has taken data of two or three years date. Of the numbers of some of the numerous sects existing, the opinions of individuals have been the chief data he could obtain. 1. _Baptists._ ----------------------+-----------+------------+--------------- | Churches. | Ministers. | Communicants. ----------------------+-----------+------------+--------------- Western Pennsylvania, | 50 | 30 | 2,569 Western Virginia, | 89 | 48 | 3,306 Ohio, | 332 | 175 | 13,926 Michigan, | 60 | 30 | 1,700 Indiana, | 320 | 175 | 15,000 Illinois, | 240 | 163 | 6,741 Missouri, | 180 | 115 | 6,990 Arkansas, | 25 | 18 | 700 Louisiana, | 20 | 12 | 1,000 Mississippi, | 100 | 46 | 4,000 North Alabama, | 125 | 53 | 5,700 Tennessee, | 348 | 292 | 22,868 Kentucky, | 558 | 296 | 38,817 Total, 2447 churches, 1353 ministers, and 123,317 communicants. _Periodicals._--The _Cross and Journal_, weekly, and _Baptist Advocate_, monthly, at Cincinnati;--the _Baptist Banner_, weekly, at Shelbyville, Ky.;--the _Baptist_, a large monthly quarto, at Nashville, Ten.;--the _Pioneer_, semi-monthly, at Rock Spring, but shortly to be enlarged, removed to Upper Alton, and published weekly;--and the _Witness_, a small quarto, published weekly at Pittsburg. 2. _Methodists_, (_Episcopal._) This denomination is divided into Conferences, which are not arranged exactly with the boundaries of the States. A large book and printing-office is established at Cincinnati, where all the society's publications are kept for sale. Another depository is kept at Nashville. -----------------------+---------+--------+--------+--------+------------ |Circuit |White |Colored.|Indians.|Total number Conferences. |Preachers|members.| | |of members. |&c. | | | | -----------------------+---------+--------+--------+--------+------------ Mississippi, | 55 | 6,358 | 2,622 | 727 | 9,707 Alabama, (one District,| | | | | in the Valley,) | 16 | 3,051 | 492 | | 3,543 Pittsburg, | 156 | 40,155 | 296 | | 40,451 Ohio, | 204 | 62,686 | 544 | 217 | 63,447 Missouri, (including | | | | | Arkansas,) | 57 | 7,948 | 1,061 | 889 | 9,898 Kentucky, | 100 | 25,777 | 5,592 | | 31,369 Illinois, | 61 | 15,038 | 59 | | 15,097 Indiana, | 70 | 24,984 | 229 | | 25,213 Holston, | 62 | 21,559 | 2,478 | | 24,031 Tennessee, | 120 | 29,794 | 5,043 | 508 | 35,345 +---------+--------+--------+--------+------------ Total, | 901 |237,350 | 18,416 | 2,341 | 258,101 Allowing two _local_ to one _circuit_ preacher, which is rather under than over the proportion, would make 1802, which, added to the number of those whose names are on the Minutes of the Conferences, would make 2703 Methodist Episcopal ministers of the gospel in the Valley of the Mississippi. The Pittsburg Conference Journal, Western Christian Advocate, and Western Methodist, are their periodicals. 3. _Methodist Protestants._--There are two conferences of this denomination in the West,--the Pittsburg, and Ohio conferences, and their circuits, preaching stations and members extend through the States north of the Ohio river, with a few stations and churches south. _Pittsburg Conference_ has 28 circuits, and 85 local preachers and licentiates, 25 circuits, 4 stations, and 2 mission circuits, with 6,902 members in society. _Ohio Conference_, has 28 circuit, 90 local preachers, 22 circuits, 3 stations, 3 missionary circuits, and 3667 members. The Methodist Correspondent, a neat semi-monthly quarto periodical, published at Zanesville, Ohio, is devoted to their interests. 4. _Presbyterians._--The following table (with the exception of Illinois) is constructed from the returns to the General Assembly in 1834,--the Minutes of 1835, we understand, have not been printed. ------------------+-----------+------------+--------------- States and parts. | Churches. | Ministers. | Communicants. ------------------+-----------+------------+--------------- W. Pennsylvania | | | and W. Va. | 212 | 135 | 22,687 Michigan, | 32 | 20 | 1,397 Ohio, | 400 | 255 | 27,821 Indiana, | 99 | 55 | 4,339 Illinois, | 71 | 50 | 2,000 Missouri, | 33 | 29 | 1,549 Arkansas, | 12 | 9 | 390 Kentucky, | 120 | 83 | 8,378 Tennessee, | 121 | 90 | 9,926 North Alabama, | 15 | 12 | 725 Mississippi, | 33 | 24 | 761 Total, 56 Presbyteries, 1,148 churches, 753 ministers, and 79,973 communicants. _Periodicals._--The _Cincinnati Journal and Western Luminary_, published at Cincinnati;--_Christian Herald_, at Pittsburg;--_Ohio Observer_, at Hudson, Ohio;--_Western Presbyterian Herald_, at Louisville, Ky.;--_New Orleans Observer_, at New Orleans;--and _St. Louis Observer_, at St. Louis, Mo.,--all weekly;--and the _Missionary Herald_, republished at Cincinnati, monthly. 5. _Cumberland Presbyterians._--This sect originated from the Presbyterian church in 1804, in Kentucky, but did not increase much till 1810, or 12. They are spread through most of the Western States, and have 34 Presbyteries, 7 Synods, and one General Assembly. The Minutes of their General Assembly, now before me, are not sufficiently definite to give the number of congregations. These probably exceed 300. An intelligent member of that denomination states the number of ordained preachers to be 300, licentiates, 100, candidates for the ministry, 150, and communicants, 50,000. _Periodicals._--The _Cumberland Presbyterian_ is a weekly paper, published at Nashville, Tenn. Another has been recently started at Pittsburg. 6. _Congregationalists._--In Ohio, especially in the northern part, are a number of Congregational churches and some ministers, as there are in Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. There are 2 or 3 ministers, 12 or 15 congregations, and about 500 communicants in Illinois, who are organized into an association in Illinois. 7. _Protestant Episcopal Church._--This denomination has 7 Diocesses in the Western or south-western States, exclusive of Western Pennsylvania, and Western Virginia, which belong to the Diocesses of those States. They are, Ohio,--Michigan,--Illinois,--Kentucky,--Tennessee,--Mississippi, and Indiana, and Missouri. There are about 75 or 80 ministers, and twice as many churches in the West. Provision has been made in part, for the endowment of the theological seminary at Gambier, O., in England, and Bishop McIlvaine has obtained about $12,600, to be appropriated in the erection of a gothic edifice to be called "Bexley Hall," with three stories, and accommodations for fifty students. A weekly periodical is issued at the same place to support the interests of the denomination. 8. _German Lutherans._--We have no data to give the statistics of this denomination. There is a Synod in Ohio, another in Western Pennsylvania, and perhaps others. There are probably 50 or 60 ministers in the West, and 150 congregations. 9. _German Reformed Church._--There are 80 congregations in Ohio, 20 in Indiana, and probably 50 others in the West, with 40 or 50 ministers. 10. The _Tunkers_, or _Dunkards_, have 40 or 50 churches, and about half as many ministers in the Western States. 11. The _Shakers_ have villages in several places in Ohio, and Kentucky, but are losing ground. 12. The _Mormons_ have a large community at Kirkland, Ohio, where, under the direction of their prophet, Joseph Smith, they are building a vast temple. They have probably 200 preachers, and as many congregations in the West, and still make proselytes. 13. _Christian Sect_, or _Newlights_, have become to a considerable extent amalgamated with the "_Reformers_," or "_Campbellites_." I have not data on which to construct a tabular view of this sect,--but from general information, estimate the number of their "bishops," and "proclaimers," at 300, and their communicants at 10,000 or 12,000. They have three or four monthly periodicals. Alexander Campbell, who may be justly considered the leader of this sect, (though they disclaim the term _sect_,) is a learned, talented, and voluminous writer. He conducts their leading periodical, the _Millennial Harbinger_. 14. The "_United Brethren in Christ_," are a pious, moral and exemplary sect, chiefly in Ohio, but scattered somewhat in other Western States. They are mostly of German descent, and in their doctrinal principles and usages, very much resemble the Methodists. They have about 300 ministers in the West, and publish the _Religious Telescope_, a large weekly paper, of evangelical principles, and well conducted. It is printed at Circleville, Ohio. 15. _Reformed Presbyterians_, or _Covenanters_, have 20 or 30 churches, and as many ministers, but are much dispersed through the Northern Valley. 16. The _Associate Church_, or _Seceders_, are more numerous than the Covenanters. 17. The _Associate Reformed Church_. The Western Synod of this body still exists as a separate denomination. Their theological school, at Pittsburg, has already been noticed. I know not their numbers, but suppose they exceed considerably the _Associate Church_. 18. The _Friends_ or _Quakers_, have a number of societies in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, &c. 19. The _Unitarians_ have societies and ministers at Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and probably in other places. There are many other sects and fragments in the West. The Valley of the Mississippi, like all new countries, is a wide and fertile field for the propagation of error, as it is for the display of truth. IX. ROMAN CATHOLICS. The number of Papal Diocesses in the Valley, including the one at Mobile, is _seven_, of each of which a very brief sketch will be given, commencing with, 1. _Detroit_, including Michigan and the North-Western Territory,--1 bishop, with sub-officers, 18 priests, and as many chapels. At Detroit and vicinity, for 2 or 3 miles, including the French, Irish and Germans, Roman Catholic families make up one third of the population; probably 3,500, of all ages. At Ann Arbor, and in the towns of Webster, Scio, Northfield, Lima and Dexter are many. At and near Bert rand on the St. Joseph's river, adjoining Indiana, they have a school established and an Indian mission. Including the fur traders, and Indians, they may be estimated at 10,000 in this Diocess.[12] 2. _Cincinnati._--A large cathedral has been built in this place, and 15 or 520 chapels in the Diocess. Ten years ago, the late bishop Fenwick could not count up 500. The emigration of foreigners, and the laborers on the Ohio canals, and not a little success in proselyting, account for the increase. There are 25 congregations, and 18 priests. A literary institution, called the _Athenæum_, is established at Cincinnati, where the students are required to attend the forms of worship, and the Superior inspects all their letters. St. Peter's Orphan Asylum is under charge of 4 "Sisters of Charity." The number of Catholics in Cincinnati is variously estimated, the medium of which is 6000, and as many more dispersed through the State. 3. _Bardstown._--This includes the State of Kentucky, and has a bishop, with the usual subordinates, 27 congregations, and 33 priests, 11 of whom reside at Bardstown. A convent of 6 Jesuit priests at Lebanon; another of 5 Dominicans, called St. Rose, in Washington county; the college at Bardstown, already noticed, and St. Mary's Seminary in Washington county, for the education of priests. Of _female_ institutions, there are the _Female Academy of Nazareth_ at Bardstown, conducted by the "Sisters of Charity," and superintended by the bishop and professors of St. Joseph's college,--150 pupils; the female academy of Loretto, Washington county, with accommodation for 100 boarders, and directed by the "_Sisters of Mary at the foot of the cross_." This order have six other places for country schools, and are said to be 135 in number. The _Convent of Holy Mary_, and the _Monastery of St. Magdalene_, at St. Rose, Washington county, by Dominican nuns, 15 in number, and in 1831, 30 pupils. The Catholics have a female academy at Lexington with 100 pupils. I have no data to show the Roman Catholic population of this State, but it is by no means proportionate to the formidable machinery here exhibited. All this array of colleges, seminaries, monasteries, convents and nunneries is for the work of proselyting, and if they are not successful, it only shows that the current of popular sentiment sets strongly in another direction. 4. _Vincennes._--This is a new Diocess, recently carved out of Indiana and Illinois by the authority of an old gentleman, who lives in the city of Rome! It includes a dozen chapels, 4 or 5 priests, the St. Claire convent at Vincennes, with several other appendages. The Roman Catholic population of this State is not numerous, probably not exceeding 3000. Illinois has about 5000, a part of which is under the jurisdiction of St. Louis Diocess. In Illinois there are 10 churches, and 6 priests, a part of which are included in the Diocess of Indiana. A convent of nuns of the "_Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary_," at Kaskaskia, who conduct a female school, with a few boarders and about 30 or 40 day scholars. 5. _St. Louis._--This Diocess includes 18 congregations and 19 priests, with the following appendages: 1. _St. Louis University_, already noticed, with 6 priests for instructors, and 150 students, of which, about 80 are boarders. The rules require their attendance on morning and evening prayers, the catechism, and divine service on Sundays and holidays. 2. St. Mary's College, also noticed in our description of colleges. 3. Noviciate for _Jesuits under St. Stanislaus_, in St. Louis county. Of female institutions there are,--1. Convent of the "_Ladies of the Sacred Heart_," at St. Louis; 2. another of the same description, and their noviciate, at Florrissant;--3. another of the same order at St. Charles;--4. a female academy at Carondalet, six miles below St. Louis, by the "_Sisters of Charity_;"--5. a convent and academy of the "_Sisters of Loretto_," at New Madrid;--6. a convent and female academy at Frederickstown, under supervision of a priest;--7. a convent and female academy of the "_Sisters of Loretto_," in Perry county. The Roman Catholic population in Missouri does not exceed 15,000. Their pupils, of both sexes, may be estimated at 700. To the above may be added the hospital, and the asylum for boys, in St. Louis, under the management of the Sisters of Charity. Roman Catholic teachers, usually foreigners, disperse themselves through the country, and engage in teaching primary schools; availing themselves of intercourse with the families of their employers to instruct them in the dogmas of their religion. The greatest success that has attended the efforts of the priests in converting others, has been during the prevalence of the cholera, and especially after collapse and insensibility had seized the person! We know of more than 60 Roman Catholics who have been converted to the faith of Christ and joined Christian churches within 3 or 4 years past, in this State. 6. _New Orleans._--The Roman Catholics in Louisiana are numerous, probably including one third of the population. Relatively, Protestants are increasing, as a large proportion of the emigration from the other States, who care any thing about religion, are Protestants. There are 26 congregations, and 27 priests with several convents, female seminaries, asylums, &c. 7. _Mobile._--A splendid cathedral has been commenced here. This Diocess extends into Florida. FOOTNOTES: [12] The reader will note that our estimates of Roman Catholics include the whole family of every age. Whereas, our statistics of Protestant denominations included only communicants. CHAPTER XV. Suggestions to Emigrants--Canal, Steamboat and Stage Routes--Other Modes of Travel--Expenses--Roads, Distances, &c. &c. In the concluding chapter to this GUIDE, it is proposed to give such information as is always desirable to emigrants upon removing, or travelling for any purpose, to the West. 1. Persons in moderate circumstances, or who would save time and expense, need not make a visit to the West, to ascertain particulars previous to removal. A few general facts, easily collected from a hundred sources, will enable persons to decide the great question whether they will emigrate to the Valley. By the same means, emigrants may determine to what State, and to what part of that State, their course shall be directed. There are many things that a person of plain, common sense will take for granted without inquiry,--such as facilities for obtaining all the necessaries of life; the readiness with which property of any description may be obtained for a fair value, and especially farms and wild land; that they can live where hundreds of thousands of others of similar habits and feelings live; and above all, they should take it for granted, that there are difficulties to be encountered in every country, and in all business,--that these difficulties can be surmounted with reasonable effort, patience and perseverance, and that in every country, people sicken and die. 2. Having decided to what State and part of the State an emigrant will remove, let him then conclude to take as little furniture and other luggage as he can do with, especially if he comes by public conveyances. Those who reside within convenient distance of a sea port, would find it both safe and economical to ship by New Orleans, in boxes, such articles as are not wanted on the road, especially if they steer for the navigable waters of the Mississippi. Bed and other clothing, books, &c., packed in boxes, like merchants' goods, will go much safer and cheaper by New Orleans, than by any of the inland routes. I have received more than one hundred packages and boxes, from eastern ports, by that route, within 20 years, and never lost one. Boxes should be marked to the owner or his agent at the river port where destined, and to the charge of some forwarding house in New Orleans. The freight and charges may be paid when the boxes are received. 3. If a person designs to remove to the north part of Ohio, and Indiana, to Chicago and vicinity, or to Michigan, or Greenbay, his course would be by the New York canal, and the lakes. The following table, showing the time of the opening of the canal at Albany and Buffalo, and the opening of the lake, from 1827 to 1835, is from a report of a committee at Buffalo to the common council of that city. It will be of use to those who wish to take the northern route in the spring. ------+-----------------+-----------------+----------------- | Canal opened at | Canal opened at | Lake Erie opened Year. | Buffalo. | Albany. | at Buffalo. ------+-----------------+-----------------+----------------- 1827 | April 21 | April 21 | April 21 1828 | " 1 | " 1 | " 1 1829 | " 25 | " 29 | May 10 1830 | " 15 | " 20 | April 6 1831 | " 16 | " 16 | May 8 1832 | " 18 | " 25 | April 27 1833 | " 22 | " 22 | " 23 1834 | " 16 | " 17 | " 6 1835 | " 15 | " 15 | May 8 The same route will carry emigrants to Cleveland and by the Ohio canal to Columbus, or to the Ohio river at Portsmouth, from whence by steamboat, direct communications will offer to any river port in the Western States. From Buffalo, steamboats run constantly, (when the lake is open,) to Detroit, stopping at Erie, Ashtabula, Cleveland, Sandusky and many other ports from whence stages run to every prominent town. Transportation wagons are employed in forwarding goods. SCHEDULE FROM BUFFALO TO DETROIT BY WATER. Miles. Dunkirk, N. Y., 39 Portland, " 18-57 Erie, Pa., 35-92 Ashtabula, Ohio, 39-131 Fairport, " 32-163 Cleveland, Ohio, 30-193 Sandusky, " 54-247 Amherstburg, N. C. 52-299 Detroit, Mich., 18-317 _From thence to Chicago, Illinois._ Miles. St. Clair River, Michigan, 40 Palmer, 17-57 Fort Gratiot, 14-71 White Rock, 40-111 Thunder Island, 70-181 Middle Island, 25-206 Presque Isle, 65-271 Mackinaw, 58-329 Isle Brule, 75-404 Fort Howard, W. Territory, 100-504 Milwaukee, W. T. 310-814 Chicago, Ill., 90-904 _From Cleveland to Portsmouth, via. Ohio canal._ Miles. Cuyahoga Aqueduct, 22 Old Portage, 12-34 Akron, 4-38 New Portage, 5-43 Clinton, 11-54 Massillon, 11-65 Bethlehem, 6-71 Bolivar, 8-79 Zoar, 3-82 Dover, 7-89 New Philadelphia, 4-93 New-Comers' Town, 22-115 Coshocton, 17-132 Irville, 26-158 Newark, 13-171 Hebron, 10-181 Licking Summit, 5-186 Lancaster Canaan, 11-197 Columbus, side cut, 18-215 Bloomfield, 8-223 Circleville, 9-232 Chillicothe, 23-255 Piketon, 25-280 Lucasville, 14-294 Portsmouth, (Ohio river,) 13-307 The most expeditious, pleasant and direct route for travellers to the southern parts of Ohio and Indiana; to the Illinois river, as far north as Peoria; to the Upper Mississippi, as Quincy, Rock Island, Galena and Prairie du Chien; to Missouri; and to Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Natches and New Orleans is one of the southern routes. There are, 1st, from Philadelphia to Pittsburg by rail-roads and the Pennsylvania canal; 2nd, by Baltimore,--the Baltimore and Ohio rail-road,--and stages to Wheeling; or, 3dly, for people living to the south of Washington, by stage, via Charlottesville, Va., Staunton, the hot, warm, and white sulphur springs, Lewisburg, Charlestown, to Guyandotte, from whence a regular line of steamboats run 3 times a week to Cincinnati. Intermediate routes from Washington city to Wheeling; or to Harper's ferry, to Fredericksburg, and intersect the route through Virginia at Charlottesville. _From Philadelphia to Pittsburg, via rail-road and canal._ Miles. Columbia on the Susquehanna river by rail-road, daily, 81 By canal packets to Bainbridge, 11-92 Middletown, 17-109 Harrisburg, 10-119 Juniata river, 15-134 Millerstown, 17-151 Mifflin, 17-168 Lewistown, 13-171 Waynesburg, 14-195 Hamiltonville, 11-206 Huntingdon, 7-213 Petersburg, 8-221 Alexandria, 23-244 Frankstown and Hollidaysburgh, 3-247 From thence by rail-road across the mountain to Johnstown is 38-285 By canal to Blairsville, 35-320 Saltzburg, 18-338 Warren, 12-350 Alleghany river, 16-366 PITTSBURG, 28-394 The _Pioneer_ line on this route is exclusively for passengers, and professes to reach Pittsburg in _four_ days--but is sometimes behind several hours. Fare through, $10. Passengers pay for meals. _Leech's line_, called "_the Western Transportation line_," takes both freight and passengers. The packet boats advertise to go through to Pittsburg in _five_ days for $7. Midship and steerage passengers in the transportation line in six and a half days; merchandize delivered in 8 days. Generally, however, there is some delay. Emigrants must not expect to carry more than a small trunk or two on the packet lines. Those who take goods or furniture, and expect to keep with it, had better take the transportation lines with more delay. The price of meals on the boats is about 37-½ cents. On all the _steamboats_ on the Western waters, no additional charge is made to cabin passengers for meals,--and the tables are usually profusely supplied. Strict order is observed, and the waiters and officers are attentive. _Steamboat route from Pittsburg to the mouth of Ohio._ Miles. Middletown, Pa. 11 Economy, " 8-19 Beaver, " 10-29 Georgetown, " 13-42 Steubenville, Ohio, 27-69 Wellsburgh, Va., 7-76 Warren, Ohio, 6-82 _Wheeling_, Va., 10-92 Elizabethtown, " 11-103 Sistersville, " 34-137 Newport, Ohio, 27-164 _Marietta_, Ohio 14-178 Parkersburgh, Va., 11-189 Belpre, and Blennerhassett's Isl'd, O., 4-193 Troy, Ohio, 10-203 Belleville, Va., 7-210 Letart's Rapids, Va., 37-247 Point Pleasant, " 27-274 Gallipolis, Ohio, 4-278 _Guyandot_, Va., 27-305 Burlington, Ohio, 10-315 Greensburg, Ky., 19-334 Concord, Ohio, 12-346 _Portsmouth_, (Ohio, canal,) 7-353 Vanceburg, Ky., 20-373 Manchester, Ohio, 16-389 _Maysville_, Ky., 11-400 Charleston, " 4-404 Ripley, Ohio, 6-410 Augusta, Ky., 8-418 Neville, Ohio, 7-425 Moscow, " 7-432 Point Pleasant, Ohio 4-436 New Richmond, " 7-443 Columbia, " 15-458 Fulton, " 6-464 CINCINNATI, Ohio 2-466 North Bend, " 15-481 Lawrenceburgh, Ia., and mouth of the Miami, 8-489 Aurora, Ia., 2-491 Petersburg, Ky., 2-493 Bellevue, " 8-501 Rising Sun, Ia., 2-503 Fredericksburgh, Ky., 18-521 Vevay, Ia., and Ghent, Ky., 11-532 Port William, Ky., 8-540 Madison, In., 15-555 New London, In., 12-567 Bethlehem, " 8-575 Westport, Ky., 7-582 Transylvania, Ky., 15-597 LOUISVILLE, Ky., 12-609 Shippingsport thro' the canal, 2-½-611-½ New Albany, In., 1-½-613 Salt River, Ky., 23-636 Northampton, Ia., 18-654 Leavenworth, " 17-671 Fredonia, " 2-673 Rome, In., 32-705 Troy, " 25-730 Rockport, In., 16-746 Owenburgh, Ky., 12-758 _Evansville_, Ia., 36-794 Henderson, Ky., 12-806 Mount Vernon, Ia., 28-834 Carthage, Ky., 12-846 Wabash River, Ky., 7-853 Shawneetown, Ill., 11-864 Mouth of Saline, Ill., 12-876 Cave in Rock, " 10-886 Golconda, " 19-905 _Smithland_, mouth of the Cumberland River, Ky., 10-915 _Paducah_, mouth of the Tennessee River, Ky., 13-928 Caledonia, Ill., 31-959 Trinity, mouth of Cash River, Ill., 10-969 MOUTH OF THE OHIO RIVER, 6-975 Persons who wish to visit Indianopolis will stop at Madison, Ia., and take the stage conveyance. From Louisville, via Vincennes, to St. Louis by stage, every alternate day, 273 miles, through in three days and half. Fare $17. Stages run from Vincennes to Terre Haute and other towns up the Wabash river. At _Evansville_, Ia., stage lines are connected with Vincennes and Terre Haute; and at _Shawneetown_ twice a week to Carlyle, Ill., where it intersects the line from Louisville to St. Louis. From Louisville to Nashville by steamboats, passengers land at Smithland at the mouth of Cumberland river, unless they embark direct for Nashville. In the _winter_ both stage and steamboat lines are uncertain and irregular. Ice in the rivers frequently obstructs navigation, and high waters and bad roads sometimes prevent stages from running regularly. Farmers who remove to the West from the Northern and Middle States, will find it advantageous in many instances to remove with their own teams and wagons. These they will need on their arrival. Autumn, or from September till November, is the favorable season for this mode of emigration. The roads are then in good order, the weather usually favorable, and feed plenty. People of all classes from the States south of the Ohio river, remove with large wagons, carry and cook their own provisions, purchase their feed by the bushel, and invariably _encamp out at night_. Individuals who wish to travel through the interior of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, &c., will find that the most convenient, sure, economical and independent mode is on horseback. Their expenses will be from 75 cents to $1.50 per day, and they can always consult their own convenience and pleasure as to time and place. Stage fare is usually 6 cents per mile in the West. Meals at stage houses, 37-½ cents. _Steamboat fare, including meals._ From Pittsburg to Cincinnati, $10 " Cincinnati to Louisville, 4 " Louisville to St. Louis, 12 And frequently the same from Cincinnati to St. Louis;--varying a little, however. A _deck_ passage, as it is called, may be rated as follows: From Pittsburg to Cincinnati, $3 " Cincinnati to Louisville, 1 " Louisville to St. Louis, 4 The _deck_ for such passengers is usually in the midship, forward the engine, and is protected from the weather. Passengers furnish their own provisions and bedding. They often take their meals at the cabin table, with the boat hands, and pay 25 cents a meal. Thousands pass up and down the rivers as deck passengers, especially emigrating families, who have their bedding, provisions, and cooking utensils on board. The whole expense of a single person from New York to St. Louis, via. Philadelphia and Pittsburg, with cabin passage on the river, will range between $40 and $45. Time from 12 to 15 days. Taking the transportation lines on the Pennsylvania canal, and a deck passage on the steamboat, and the expenses will range between 20 and $25, supposing the person buys his meals at 25 cents, and eats twice a day. If he carry his own provisions, the passage, &c., will be from 15 to $18. The following is from an advertisement of the _Western Transportation, or Leech's Line, from Philadelphia_: Miles. Days. Fare to Pittsburg, 400 6-½ $6.00 " " Cincinnati, 900 8-½ 8.50 " " Louisville, 1050 9-½ 9.00 " " Nashville, 1650 13-½ 13.00 " " St. Louis, 1750 14 13.00 The above does not include meals. _Packet Boats for Cabin Passengers, same line._ Miles. Days. Fare to Pittsburg, 400 5 $7 " " Cincinnati, 900 8 17 " " Louisville, 1050 9 19 " " Nashville, 1650 13 27 " " St. Louis, 1750 13 27 Emigrants and travellers will find it to their interest always to be a little sceptical relative to the statements of stage, steam and canal boat agents, to make some allowance in their own calculations for delays, difficulties and expenses, and above all, to _feel_ perfectly patient and in good humor with themselves, the officers, company, and the world, even if they do not move quite as rapid, and fare quite as well as they desire. ERRATA. Page 40, 8th line from the bottom, for _Tau-mar-wans_, read Tau-mar-waus. 41. For _Milwankee_, read Milwaukee. " For _Fonti_, read Tonti. GOULD, KENDALL & LINCOLN, PUBLISHERS, BOOKSELLERS, AND STATIONERS, 59 Washington St. Boston. G. K. & L. keep a general assortment of Books in the various departments of Literature, Science and Theology.--Among the many valuable works which they publish, are the following, for SCHOOLS: WAYLAND'S ELEMENTS OF MORAL SCIENCE. Abridged and adapted to the Use of Schools and Academies, by the Author, FRANCIS WAYLAND, D. D., President of Brown University, and Professor of Moral Philosophy. The publishers would respectfully request the attention of Teachers and School Committees to this valuable work; it has received the unqualified approbation of all who have examined it; and it is believed admirably calculated to exert a wholesome influence on the minds of the young. Such an influence as will be likely to lead them to the formation of correct moral principles. ROMAN ANTIQUITIES AND ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. By CHARLES K. DILLAWAY, A. M., Principal in the Boston Public Latin School. Illustrated by elegant engravings. Third edition, improved. This work is rapidly going into use all over our country; it is already introduced into most of our High Schools and Academies, and many of our Colleges;--a new and beautiful edition has just been published. BLAKE'S NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, _New Edition_, Enlarged. Being Conversations on Philosophy, with the addition of Explanatory Notes, Questions for Examination, and a Dictionary of Philosophical Terms. With twenty-eight steel engravings. By Rev. J. L. BLAKE, A. M. Perhaps no work has contributed so much as this to excite a fondness for the study of Natural Philosophy in youthful minds. The familiar comparisons with which it abounds, awaken interest, and rivet the attention of the pupil. It is introduced, with great success into the Public Schools in Boston. BLAKE'S FIRST BOOK IN ASTRONOMY. Designed for the Use of Common Schools. Illustrated by steel plate engravings. By Rev. J. L. BLAKE, A. M. FIRST LESSONS IN INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY; or, a Familiar Explanation of the Nature and Operations of the Human Mind. _Second Edition._ Edited by Rev. SILAS BLAISDALE. One volume, 12mo. 360 pages. YOUNG LADIES' CLASS BOOK. A Selection of Lessons for Reading, in Prose and Verse. By EBENEZER BAILEY, A. M., Principal of the Young Ladies' High School, Boston. Thirteenth stereotype edition. In order to give this work a more extended circulation;--notwithstanding its sale is now great,--the publishers have determined to REDUCE THE PRICE, in order to remove every obstacle in the way of its being introduced into _all our female schools_ throughout the country. PALEY'S THEOLOGY. _Eighth Edition_, illustrated by Forty Plates, and Selections from the Notes of Dr. Paxton, with additional Notes, original and selected, for this Edition, with a Vocabulary of Scientific Terms. Edited by an eminent Physician of Boston. THE CLASS BOOK OF NATURAL THEOLOGY; or, the Testimony of Nature to the Being, Perfections and Government of God. By the Rev. HENRY FERGUS; revised, enlarged, and adapted to Paxton's Illustrations; with Notes, selected and original, Biographical Notices, and a Vocabulary of Scientific Terms. By CHARLES HENRY ALDEN, A. M., Principal of the Philadelphia High School for Young Ladies. THE NATIONAL ARITHMETIC, combining the Analytic and Synthetic Methods, in which the Principles of Arithmetic are explained in a perspicuous and familiar manner; containing also, practical systems of Mensuration, Gauging, Geometry, and Book-Keeping, forming a complete Mercantile Arithmetic, designed for Schools and Academies in the United States. By BENJAMIN GREENLEAF, A. M., Preceptor of Bradford Academy. BALBI'S GEOGRAPHY. An Abridgment of Universal Geography, Modern and Ancient, chiefly compiled from the Abrégé de Geographie of ADRIAN BALBI. By T. G. BRADFORD; accompanied by a splendid Atlas, and illustrated by engravings. The above work contains 520 pages 12mo. and is the most copious School Geography yet offered to the public, and it is believed to be an important improvement, especially for the use of the higher schools and seminaries. It has received the sanction of all Teachers who have examined it, and has been favorably noticed in many of our public Journals. The Atlas accompanying this work, contains thirty-six maps and charts,--and is confidently recommended as superior, in every respect, to any thing of the kind now in use. _Religious Works._ THE COMPLETE WORKS OF THE REV. ANDREW FULLER, with a Memoir of his Life. By ANDREW GUNTON FULLER, in two volumes. With a correct likeness. This valuable work is now published in two large octavo volumes, on fair type and fine paper, at a very low price. The cost of former editions ($14) precluded many from possessing it. The publishers are gratified in being able to offer to the Christian public a work so replete with doctrinal arguments and _practical_ religion, at a price that every minister and student may possess it. No Christian can read Fuller, without having his impulses to action quickened; and every student ought to _study_ him, if he wishes to arm himself against every enemy. CAMPBELL AND FENELON ON ELOQUENCE. Comprising Campbell's Lectures on Systematic Theology and Pulpit Eloquence, &c. Edited by Prof. RIPLEY, of Newton Theological Institution. MORRIS'S MEMOIRS OF FULLER. The Life and Character of the Rev. Andrew Fuller Edited by Rev. RUFUS BABCOCK, Jr., President of Waterville College. FEMALE SCRIPTURE BIOGRAPHY. Including an Essay on what Christianity has done for Women. By F. A. COX, D. D., LL. D., of London. In 2 vols. This is a very interesting work, and should be in the hands of every female professor, and in every Church and Sabbath School Library in the land. REMAINS OF REV. RICHARD CECIL, M. A. To which is prefixed a View of his Character. By JOSIAH PRATT, B. D., F. A. S. CHURCH MEMBER'S GUIDE. By J. A. JAMES, A. M., Birmingham, England. Edited by J. O. CHOULES, A. M., Pastor of the First Baptist Church in New Bedford, Mass. HELP TO ZION'S TRAVELLERS. By Rev. ROBERT HALL. With a Preface by Dr. RYLAND. Edited by Rev. J. A. WARNE. THE TRAVELS OF TRUE GODLINESS. By the Rev. BENJAMIN KEACH, London. And a Memoir of his Life. By HOWARD MALCOM. A. M. AIDS TO DEVOTION; in three parts. Including Watts' Guide to Prayer. [A very valuable and truly excellent work.] BEAUTIES OF COLLYER. Selections from Theological Lectures. By Rev. W. B. COLLYER, D. D., F. S. A. BAXTER'S SAINT'S REST. By Rev. RICHARD BAXTER. Abridged by B. FAWCETT, A. M. BAXTER'S CALL TO THE UNCONVERTED, to which are added several valuable Essays. By RICHARD BAXTER. With an Introductory Essay. By THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. THE CHRISTIAN CONTEMPLATED; in a Course of Lectures delivered in Argyle Chapel, Bath, England. By WILLIAM JAY. MEMOIRS OF HOWARD. Compiled from his Diary, his Confidential Letters, and other authentic Documents. By JAMES B. BROWN. Abridged by a Gentleman of Boston, from the London quarto edition. THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. In Three Books. By THOMAS à KEMPIS. With an Introductory Essay, by THOMAS CHALMERS, of Glasgow. AN EXAMINATION OF PROF. STUART ON BAPTISM. By HENRY J. RIPLEY, Professor of Biblical Literature in the Newton Theological Institution. MEMOIR OF REV. WM. STAUGHTON, D. D. By Rev. W. S. LYND, A.M., of Cincinnati, Ohio. Embellished with a Likeness. The thousands still living, who have listened with rapture to the messages of salvation that flowed from his lips; those gentlemen, who have been trained up by his hand for usefulness in society, and especially those whose gifts in the church he aided and cherished by his instructions, as well as the Christian and literary public, will review his life with peculiar satisfaction. LIFE OF PHILIP MELANCTHON, comprising an account of the most important transactions of the REFORMATION. By F. A. COX, D. D. LL. D., of London. From the Second London edition, with important alterations, by the Author, for this edition. MEMOIR OF MRS. ANN H. JUDSON, late Missionary to Burmah. New and enlarged edition Including a History of the American Baptist Mission in the Burman Empire to the present time. By JAMES D. KNOWLES. Embellished with engravings. NEW AND IMPROVED EDITION, JUST PUBLISHED. MEMOIR OF GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN, late Missionary to Burmah, containing much intelligence relative to the Burman Mission. By Rev. ALONZO KING, of Northborough, Mass. With a Valuable Essay, by a distinguished Clergyman. The rapid sale of the large edition of this work first published,--the increasing demand for it,--and the evident good which its circulation has accomplished, have induced the publishers to bestow much expense and labor upon it, in order to present the present edition in as complete and attractive a form as possible, with a view to giving it a still wider and more rapid circulation. A valuable Essay of _thirty-five pages_, written at the request of the publishers has been added; and in addition to its having been handsomely stereotyped, a correct likeness of Mr. Boardman, taken on steel, from a painting in possession of the family, and a beautiful vignette representing the baptismal scene just before his death, have also been added. +-----------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the | | original document have been preserved. | | | | Errata mentioned on Page 374 have been | | corrected in the text. | | | | Typographical errors corrected in the text: | | | | Page vii hut changed to but | | Page x Mitchel's changed to Mitchell's | | Page 25 steril changed to sterile | | Page 31 Wos-sosh-e changed to Wos-sosh-ee | | Page 35 chesnut changed to chestnut | | Page 36 persimon changed to persimmon | | Page 36 paupau changed to pawpaw | | Page 36 pecaun changed to pecan | | Page 38 turkies changed to turkeys | | Page 44 steril changed to sterile | | Page 48 harrassed changed to harassed | | Page 61 Farenheit changed to Fahrenheit | | Page 70 Chein chanaged to Chien | | Page 75 occacasionally changed to occasionally | | Page 100 journies changed to journeys | | Page 114 Poineer chainged to Pioneer | | Page 135 Saginau changed to Saginaw | | Page 137 territoriesr changed to territories | | Page 138 Chilicothe changed to Chillicothe | | Page 138 Miueral changed to Mineral | | Page 139 Chilicothe changed to Chillicothe | | Page 156 Punchas changed to Puncahs | | Page 162 Fonti's changed to Tonti's | | Page 175 artizans changed to artisans | | Page 207 it changed to its | | Page 211 Considerble changed to Considerable | | Page 223 Bowlinggreen changed to Bowling Green | | Page 231 Missisinewa changed to Missisinawa | | Page 237 Missasinawa changed to Missisinawa | | Page 262 pecaun changed to pecan | | Page 273 pecaun changed to pecan | | Page 279 gophars changed to gophers | | Page 280 gophar changed to gopher | | Page 290 Macoupin changed to Macoupen | | Page 304 attornies changed to attorneys | | Page 337 Lorrain changed to Lorain | | Page 339 circumstanses changed to circumstances | | Page 360 accomodation changed to accommodation | | Page 367 Masillon changed to Massillon | | Page 368 Charlottsville changed to Charlottesville | | Page 368 Guiandotte changed to Guyandotte | | Page 368 Juniatta changed to Juniata | | Page 368 Holladaysburgh changed to Hollidaysburgh | | Page 377 Guaging changed to Gauging | +-----------------------------------------------------+ 
29244	----	Transcriber's Note This is a 1971 reprint edition of the 1895 edition of "Chronicles of Border Warfare." The modern title page and verso have been relocated to the end of the text. The 1895 edition includes and expands on the original 1831 edition. Throughout this text, the pagination of the original edition is indicated by brackets, such as [54]. Capitalization standards for the time (i.e. "fort Morgan," "mrs. Pindall," "Ohio river") have been preserved. Variable hyphenation has been preserved. Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. Author's punctuation style has been preserved. Typographical problems have been corrected as listed in the Transcriber's Note at the end of the text. Passages in italics are indicated by _underscores_. CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE [Illustration] CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE OR, A History of the Settlement by the Whites, of North-Western Virginia, and of the Indian Wars and Massacres in that section of the State WITH REFLECTIONS, ANECDOTES, &c. BY ALEXANDER SCOTT WITHERS A New Edition EDITED AND ANNOTATED BY REUBEN GOLD THWAITES Secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society, editor of "Wisconsin Historical Collections," and author of "The Colonies, 1492-1750," "Historic Waterways," "Story of Wisconsin," etc. _With the addition of a Memoir of the Author, and several Illustrative Notes._ BY THE LATE LYMAN COPELAND DRAPER Author of "King's Mountain and Its Heroes," "Autograph Collections of the Signers," etc. CINCINNATI THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY 1895 Copyright, 1895 By REUBEN GOLD THWAITES All rights reserved CONTENTS. Portrait of the Author Frontispiece. PAGE Editor's Preface v Memoir of the Author, by Lyman C. Draper viii Original Title-page (photographic fac-simile) xiii Original Copyright Notice xiv Original Advertisement xv Original Table of Contents (with pagination revised) xvii Author's Text (with editorial notes) 1 Index, by the Editor 431 EDITOR'S PREFACE. It is sixty-four years since the original edition of Withers's _Chronicles of Border Warfare_ was given to the public. The author was a faithful recorder of local tradition. Among his neighbors were sons and grandsons of the earlier border heroes, and not a few actual participants in the later wars. He had access, however, to few contemporary documents. He does not appear to have searched for them, for there existed among the pioneer historians of the West a respect for tradition as the prime source of information, which does not now obtain; to-day, we desire first to see the documents of a period, and care little for reminiscence, save when it fills a gap in or illumines the formal record. The weakness of the traditional method is well exemplified in Withers's work. His treatment of many of the larger events on the border may now be regarded as little else than a thread on which to hang annotations; but in most of the local happenings which are here recorded he will always, doubtless, remain a leading authority--for his informants possessed full knowledge of what occurred within their own horizon, although having distorted notions regarding affairs beyond it. The _Chronicles_ had been about seven years upon the market, when a New York youth, inspired by the pages of Doddridge, Flint, and Withers, with a fervid love for border history, entered upon the task of collecting documents and traditions with which to correct and amplify the lurid story which these authors had outlined. In the prosecution of this undertaking, Lyman C. Draper became so absorbed with the passion of collecting that he found little opportunity for literary effort, and in time his early facility in this direction became dulled. He was the most successful of collectors of materials for Western history, and as such did a work which must earn for him the lasting gratitude of American historical students; but unfortunately he did little more than collect and investigate, and the idea which to the last strongly possessed him, of writing a series of biographies of trans-Alleghany pioneers, was never realized. He died August 26, 1891, having accomplished wondrous deeds for the Wisconsin Historical Society, of which he was practically the founder, and for thirty-three years the main stay; in the broader domain of historical scholarship, however, he had failed to reach his goal. His great collection of manuscripts and notes, he willed to his Society, which has had them carefully classified and conveniently bound--a lasting treasure for historians of the West and Southwest, for the important frontier period between about 1740 and 1816. Dr. Draper had exhibited much ability as an editor, in the first ten volumes of the _Wisconsin Historical Collections_. In 1890, the Robert Clarke Company engaged him, as the best living authority on the details of Western border history, to prepare and edit a new edition of Withers. He set about the task with interest, and was engaged in the active preparation of "copy" during his last months on earth; indeed, his note upon page 123 of this edition is thought to have been his final literary work. He had at that time prepared notes for about one-fourth of the book, and had written his "Memoir of the Author." The matter here rested until the autumn of 1894, when the publishers requested the present writer to take up the work where his revered friend had left it, and see the edition through the press. He has done this with some reluctance, conscious that he approached the task with a less intimate knowledge of the subject than his predecessor; nevertheless he was unwilling that Dr. Draper's notes on the early pages should be lost, and has deemed it a labor of love to complete the undertaking upon which the last thoughts of the latter fondly dwelt. In the preparation of his own notes, the editor has had the great advantage of free access to the Draper Manuscripts; without their help, it would have been impossible to throw further light on many of the episodes treated by the author. The text of Withers has been preserved intact, save that where errors have obviously been typographical, and not intended by the author, the editor has corrected them--perhaps in a dozen instances only, for the original proof-reading appears to have been rather carefully done. The pagination of the original edition has in this been indicated by brackets, as [54]. In the original, the publisher's "Advertisement" and the "Table of Contents" were bound in at the end of the work,--see collation in Field's _Indian Bibliography_,--but evidently this was a make-shift of rustic binders in a hurry to get out the long-delayed edition, and the editor has taken the liberty to transfer them to their proper place; also, while preserving typographical peculiarities therein, to change the pagination in the "Contents" to accord with the present edition. In order clearly to indicate the authorship of notes, those by Withers himself are unsigned; those by Dr. Draper are signed "L. C. D."; and those by the present writer, "R. G. T." REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. Madison, Wis., February, 1895. MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. BY LYMAN COPELAND DRAPER. In 1831, an interesting volume appeared from the press of Joseph Israel, of Clarksburg, in North Western Virginia, prepared by Alexander Scott Withers, on the border wars of the West. It was well received at the time of its publication, when works on that subject were few, and read with avidity by the surviving remnant of the participators in the times and events so graphically described, and by their worthy descendants. Historians and antiquarians also received it cordially, universally according it high praise. Mann Butler, the faithful historian of Kentucky, declared that it was "a work to which the public was deeply indebted," composed, as it was, with "so much care and interest." The late Samuel G. Drake, the especial historian of the Red Man, pronounced it "a work written with candor and judgment." The late Thomas W. Field, the discriminating writer on _Indian Bibliography_, says: "Of this scarce book, very few copies are complete or in good condition. Having been issued in a remote corner of North-Western Virginia, and designed principally for a local circulation, almost every copy was read by a country fireside until scarcely legible. Most of the copies lack the table of contents. The author took much pains to be authentic, and his chronicles are considered by Western antiquarians, to form the best collection of frontier life and Indian warfare, that has been printed." Of such a work, now difficult to procure at any price, a new edition is presented to the public. In 1845, the writer of this notice visited the Virginia Valley, collecting materials on the same general subject, going over much the same field of investigation, and quite naturally, at that early period, identifying very large the sources of Mr. Withers's information, thus making it possible to reproduce his work with new lights and explanations, such as generally give pleasure and interest to the intelligent reader of border history.[1] In 1829, a local antiquary, of Covington, a beautiful little village nestling in a high mountain valley near the head of James River, in Alleghany County, Virginia, gathered from the aged pioneers still lingering on the shores of time, the story of the primitive settlement and border wars of the Virginia Valley. Hugh Paul Taylor, for such was his name, was the precursor, in all that region, of the school of historic gleaners, and published in the nearest village paper, _The Fincastle Mirror_, some twenty miles away, a series of articles, over the signature of "Son of Cornstalk," extending over a period of some forty stirring years, from about 1740 to the close of the Revolutionary War. These articles formed at least the chief authority for several of the earlier chapters of Mr. Withers's work. Mr. Taylor had scarcely molded his materials into shape, and put them into print, when he was called hence at an early age, without having an opportunity to revise and publish the results of his labors under more favorable auspices. Soon after Mr. Taylor's publication, Judge Edwin S. Duncan, of Peel Tree, in then Harrison, now Barbour County, West Virginia, a gentleman of education, and well fitted for such a work, residing in the heart of a region rife with the story of Indian wars and hair-breadth escapes, made a collection of materials, probably including Mr. Taylor's sketches, with a view to a similar work; but his professional pursuits and judicial services interposed to preclude the faithful prosecution of the work, so he turned over to Mr. Withers his historic gatherings, with such suggestions, especially upon the Indian race, as by his studies and reflections he was enabled to offer. Other local gleaners in the field of Western history, particularly Noah Zane, of Wheeling, John Hacker, of the Hacker's Creek settlement, and others, freely furnished their notes and statements for the work. Mr. Withers, under these favorable circumstances, became quite well equipped with materials regarding especially the first settlement and Indian wars of the region now comprising West Virginia; and, to a considerable extent, the region of Staunton and farther southwest, of the French and Indian War period, together with Dunmore's War, and the several campaigns from the western borders of Virginia and Pennsylvania into the Ohio region, during the Revolutionary War. Alexander Scott Withers, for his good services in the field of Western history, well deserves to have his name and memory perpetuated as a public benefactor. Descending, on his father's side, from English ancestry, he was the fourth child of nine, in the family of Enoch K. and Jennet Chinn Withers, who resided at a fine Virginia homestead, called Green Meadows, half a dozen miles from Warrenton, Fauquier county, Virginia, where the subject of this sketch was born on the 12th of October, 1792--on the third centennial anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus. His mother was the daughter of Thomas Chinn and Jennet Scott--the latter a native of Scotland, and a first cousin of Sir Walter Scott. Passing his early years in home and private schools, he became from childhood a lover of books and knowledge. He read Virgil at the early age of ten; and, in due time, entered Washington College, and thence entered the law department of the venerable institution of William and Mary, where Jefferson, Monroe, Wythe, and other Virginia notables, received their education. Procuring a license to practice, he was admitted to the bar in Warrenton, where for two or three years he practiced his profession. His father dying in 1813, he abandoned his law practice, which he did not like, because he could not overcome his diffidence in public speaking; and, for quite a period, he had the management of his mother's plantation. In August, 1815, he was united in marriage with Miss Melinda Fisher, a most estimable lady, a few months his junior; and about 1827, having a growing family, he looked to the Great West for his future home and field of labor, and moved to West Virginia, first locating temporarily in Bridgeport, in Harrison County, and subsequently settling near Clarksburg in the same county, where he devoted much time in collecting materials for and writing his _Chronicles of Border Warfare_. The publisher, Joseph Israel, who took a deep interest in the work, as his "Advertisement" of it suggests, must have realized ample recompense for the work, as he had subscribers for the full edition issued; yet, from some cause, he failed pecuniarily, and Mr. Withers got nothing whatever for his diligence and labor in producing it, save two or three copies of the work itself. He used to say, that had he published the volume himself, he would have made it much more complete, and better in every way; for he was hampered, limited, and hurried--often correcting proof of the early, while writing the later chapters. Mr. Israel, the publisher, died several years ago. After this worthy but unremunerative labor, Mr. Withers turned his attention to Missouri for a suitable home for his old age. He was disappointed in his visit to that new state, as the richer portions of the country, where he would have located, were more or less unhealthy. So he returned to West Virginia, and settled near Weston, a fine, healthful region of hills and valleys, where he engaged in agricultural pursuits, in which he always took a deep interest. He also served several years as a magistrate, the only public position he ever filled. The death of his wife in September, 1853, broke sadly into his domestic enjoyments; his family were now scattered, and his home was henceforward made with his eldest daughter, Mrs. Jennet S. Tavenner, and her husband, Thomas Tavenner, who in 1861 removed to a home adjoining Parkersburg, in West Virginia. Here our author lived a retired, studious life, until his death, which occurred, after a few days' illness, January 23, 1865, in the seventy-third year of his age. Mr. Withers had no talent for the acquisition of wealth; but he met with marked success in acquiring knowledge. He was an admirer of ancient literature, and to his last days read the Greek classics in the original. A rare scholar, a lover of books, his tastes were eminently domestic; he was, from his nature, much secluded from the busy world around him. Nearly six feet high, rather portly and dignified, as is shown by his portrait, taken when he was about sixty years of age--he was kind and obliging to all, and emphatically a true Virginia gentleman of the old school. His sympathies during the War of Secession, were strongly in favor of the Union cause, the happy termination of which he did not live to witness. His son, Henry W. Withers, served with credit during the war in the Union service in the Twelfth Virginia Regiment. Mr. Withers was blessed with two sons and three daughters--one of the sons has passed away; the other, Major Henry W. Withers, resides in Troy, Gilmer county, West Virginia; Mrs. Tavenner still lives at Parkersburg; Mrs. Mary T. Owen, at Galveston, Texas, and Mrs. Elizabeth Ann Thornhill, in New Orleans. ----- [1] The venerable Mark L. Spotts, an intelligent and long-time resident of Lewisburg, West Virginia, writes, in December, 1890: "I had an old and particular friend, Mr. Thomas Matthews, of this place, who, many years ago, conceived the idea of preparing and publishing a revised edition of Withers's _Border Warfare_, and no doubt had collected many facts looking to such a publication; but the old man's health gave way, he died, and his widow moved away, and what became of his notes, I can not say--perhaps destroyed."--L. C. D. CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE, OR A HISTORY OF THE SETTLEMENT BY THE WHITES, OF NORTH-WESTERN VIRGINIA: AND OF THE INDIAN WARS AND MASSACRES, IN THAT SECTION OF THE STATE, WITH REFLECTIONS, ANECDOTES, &c. BY ALEXANDER S. WITHERS. CLARKSBURG, V.A. PUBLISHED BY JOSEPH ISRAEL, 1831 WESTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA, _to wit_: Be it remembered, That on the twenty-sixth day of January, in the Fifty-fifth year of the Independence of the United States of America, JOSEPH ISRAEL, of the said District, hath deposited in this Office, the title of a Book, the right whereof he claims as Proprietor, in the words following, To wit: "Chronicles of Border Warfare, or a history of the settlement, by the whites, of North-Western Virginia: and of the Indian wars and massacres, in that section of the State; with reflections, anecdotes, &c.--By ALEXANDER S. WITHERS, 1831," in conformity to the act of Congress of the United States, entitled "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts and books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned;" and also to an act, entitled "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts and books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned, and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of Designing, Engraving and Etching historical and other prints." JASPER YEATES DODDRIDGE, _Clerk of the Western District of Virginia_. ADVERTISEMENT. The "Chronicles of Border Warfare" are now completed and presented to the public. Circumstances, over which the publisher had no control, have operated to delay their appearance beyond the anticipated period; and an apprehension that such might be the case, induced him, when issuing proposals for their publication, not positively to name a time at which the work would be completed and ready for delivery. This delay, although unavoidable, has been the source of regret to the publisher, and has added considerably to the expenditure otherwise necessarily made, in attempting to rescue from oblivion the many interesting incidents, now, for the first time recorded. To preserve them from falling into the gulph of forgetfulness, was the chief motive which the publisher had in view; and should the profits of the work be sufficient to defray the expenses, actually incurred in its preparation and completion, he will be abundantly satisfied. That he will be thus far remunerated, is not for an instant doubted,--the subscription papers having attached to them, as many names as there are copies published. In regard to the manner of its execution, it does not perhaps become him to speak. He was attentive to his duties, and watched narrowly the press; and if typographical errors are to be found, it must be attributed to the great difficulty of preventing them, even when the author is at hand to correct each proof sheet. They are however, certainly few, and such as would be likely to escape observation. JOSEPH ISRAEL, _Publisher_. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION.--General view of the discovery of North America, by England, France and Spain. 1 to 11. Aborigines of America--Their origin. 12-27. Their persons and character--Indian antiquities. 28-43. CHAPTER 1. Of the country west of Blue ridge, difficulties attending its first settlement; Indians in neighborhood--their tribes and numbers. Various parties explore the Valley; their adventures. Benjamin Burden receives a grant of land; settles 100 families, their general character, West of Blue ridge divided into two counties; its present population, &c. Discovery of Greenbrier, explored by Martin and Seal; by the Lewis's, Greenbrier Company, settlement of Muddy Creek and Big Levels, of New river and Holstein; of Gallipolis by French. 44-62. CHAP. 2nd. North Western Virginia, divisions and population, Importance of Ohio river to the French, and the English; Ohio Company; English traders made prisoners by French, attempt to establish fort frustrated, French erect Fort du Quesne; War; Braddock's defeat; Andrew Lewis, character and services; Grant's defeat, capture of Fort du Quesne and erection of Fort Pitt: Tygart and Files settle on East Fork of Monongahela, File's family killed by Indians, Dunkards visit the country, settle on Cheat, their fate; settlement under Decker on the Monongahela, destroyed by Indians, pursuit by Gibson, origin of Long knives. 63-80. CHAP. 3rd. Expedition to the mouth of Big Sandy, ordered back by governor, their extreme sufferings: Dreadful catastrophe at Levit's Fort, Shawnees visit James river settlements, their depredations and defeat, fortunate escape of Hannah Dennis, destruction at Muddy creek and Big Levels, Mrs. Clendennin, Indians visit Jackson and Catawba rivers, discovered, pursued, overtaken and dispersed, Mrs. Gunn. 81-99. CHAP. 4th. Indians commit depredations in Pennsylvania, burn three prisoners, excesses of Paxton Boys, Black Boys of great service to frontier, engagement at Turtle creek, Traders attempt to supply Indians, affair at Sidelong hill, Fort Bedford taken by Blackboys, Capt. James Smith, his character and services. 100-116. CHAP. 5th. Deserters from Fort Pitt visit head of Monongahela, The Pringles, Settlements of Buckhannon, of Hacker's creek, Monongahela and other places, Of Wheeling by Zane's, Their Character, Character of Wm. Lowther, Objects and character of the first settlers generally. 117-133. CHAP. 6th. War of 1774, Inquiry into its cause, Boone and others visit Kentucky, Emigrants attacked by Indians, Surveyors begin operations there, Affair at Captina, and opposite Yellow creek, Excesses of Indians, Preparations for [ii] war, Expedition against Wappatomica, Incursion of Logan and others, Of Indians on West Fork. 134-158. CHAP. 7th. Indians come on Big Kenhawa, Lewis and Jacob Whitsel taken prisoners, Their adventurous conduct, Plan of Dunmore's campaign, Battle at Point Pleasant, Dunmore enters Indian country and makes peace, Reflections on the motives of Dunmore's conduct. 159-186. CHAP. 8th. General view of the relative situation of Great Britain and the colonies, British emissaries and American Tories stimulate the Savages to war, Progress of settlements in Kentucky, Character of Harrod, Boone and Logan, Attack on Harrod's fort, on Boone's and on Logan's, Bowman arrives to its relief, Cornstock visits Point Pleasant, Projected campaign against the Indians abortive, Cornstock's son visits him, Gilmore killed, Murder of Cornstock, Of Ellinipsico and others, Character of Cornstock. 187-214. CHAP. 9. General alarm on the frontier, Savages commit depredations, Intelligence of contemplated invasion, Condition of Wheeling, Indians seen near it, Two parties under captain Mason and captain Ogal decoyed within the Indian lines and cut to pieces, Girty demands the surrender of Wheeling, Col. Zane's reply, Indians attacks the fort and retire, Arrival of col. Swearingen with a reinforcement, of captain Foreman, Ambuscade at Grave creek narrows, conspiracy of Tories discovered and defeated, Petro and White taken prisoners, Irruption into Tygarts Valley, Murder at Conoly's and at Stewarts. 215-235. CHAP. 10. Measures of defence, Fort M'Intosh erected, exposed situation, commencement of hostilities, Attack on Harbert's blockhouse, Murder at Morgan's on Cheat, Of Lowther and Hughes, Indians appear before Fort at the point, Decoy Lieut. Moore into an ambuscade, a larger army visits Fort, stratagem to draw out the garrison, Prudence and precaution of capt. M'Kee. Fort closely besieged, Siege raised, Heroic adventure of Prior and Hammond to save Greenbrier, Attack on Donnelly's Fort, Dick Pointer, Affair at West's Fort, Successful artifice of Hustead, Affair at Cobern's fort, at Strader's, Murder of Stephen Washburn, captivity, &c. of James, Projected invasion of Indian country, Col. Clarke takes Kaskaskias and other towns, Fort Lawrens erected by Gen. M'Intosh and garrisoned. 236-256. CHAP. 11. Gov. Hamilton marches to St. Vincent--critical situation of col. Clarke, his daring expedition against Hamilton, condition of Fort Lawren's, Successful stratagem of Indians there, Gen. M'Intosh arrives with an army, Fort evacuated, Transactions in Kentucky, captivity of Boone, his escape and expedition against Paint creek town, Indian [iii] army under Du Quesne appear before Boone's fort, politic conduct of Boone, Fort assaulted, Assailants repulsed, Expedition against Chilicothe towns under Bowman, Its failure, Kentucky increases rapidly in population. 257-274. CHAP. 12. Hacker's creek settlement breaks up, Alarm of Indians near Pricket's fort, Stephen and Sarah Morgan sent to farm, Dream and anxiety of their father, His fearful encounter with two Indians, Kills both, Heroism of Mrs. Bozarth, Murders on Snow creek, captivity of Leonard Schoolcraft, Indians surprize Martin's fort, destruction there, Irruptions into Tygart's valley, Indians attack the house of Samuel Cottrail, Murder of John Schoolcraft's family, Projected campaign of British and Indians, Indians again in Tygart's Valley, mischief there, West's fort invested, Hazardous adventure of Jesse Hughs to obtain assistance, Skirmish between whites and savages, coolness and intrepidity of Jerry Curl, Austin Schoolcraft killed and his niece taken prisoner, Murder of Owens and Judkins, of Sims, Small Pox terrifies Indians, Transactions in Greenbrier, Murder of Baker and others, last outrage in that country. 275-293 CHAP. 13. Operations of combined army of British and Indians, Surrender of Ruddle's Station, Outrages of savages there, Col. Byrd enabled to restrain them, Martin's station surrenders, Byrd returns to the Indian towns, Escape of Hinkstone, Invasion of North Western Virginia, Plan of campaign, Indians discovered near Wheeling, Take prisoners, Alarmed for their own safety, kill their prisoners and retire, Expedition under Col. Broadhead, against the Munsies, against Coshocton, excesses of the whites there, Expedition under Gen. Clarke against Chilicothe and Piqua, Battle at Piqua, Indian depredations in Virginia, murder of capt. Thomas and family, of Schoolcraft, Manear, and others, Destruction of Leading creek settlement, aggressors overtaken by a party under Col. Lowther, Affair of Indian creek, murder of Mrs. Furrenash, Williamson's first expedition against Moravian Indians, Prisoners taken sent to Fort Pitt, Set at liberty, Their settlements broken up by Wyandotts. 294-317. CHAP. 14. The murder of Monteur and his family, others taken prisoners, Second expedition of Williamson against Moravians, its success and the savage conduct of the whites, Expedition under Crawford, his defeat--Is taken prisoner and burned; captivity and escape of Doctor Knight, of Slover; Death of Mills--Signal achievement of Lewis Whitsel. 318-339. CHAP. 15. Murder of White, Dorman and wife taken prisoners; Inhabitants on Buckhannon evacuate the fort, attacked by Indians on their way to the Valley; Whites visiting [iv] Buckhannon settlement discovered and watched by Indians--conduct of George Jackson to obtain aid, Stalnaker killed, Indians cross Alleghany--miss Gregg killed by Dorman, murder of mrs. Pindall, of Charles Washburn, of Arnold and Richards--Daring conduct of Elias Hughes--murder of Corbly's family--Grand council of Indians at Chillicothe, Its determinations; Indian army enters Kentucky; Affair at Bryants station; Battle of Blue Licks--Expedition under Gen. Clarke, Attack on Wheeling, Attempt to demolish the fort with a wooden cannon, Signal exploit of Elizabeth Zane, Noble conduct of Francis Duke, Indians withdraw, Attack on Rives [Rice's] Fort, Encounter of Poe with two Indians. 340-364. CHAP. 16. Peace with G. Britain, War continued by Indians--Operations in N. W. Virginia--murder of Daniel Radcliff, Attack on Cunninghams upon Bingamon, murders there; murders in Tazewell, of Davison, of Moore, mrs. Moore and seven children taken prisoners, their fate--murder of Ice, &c. Levi Morgan encounters two Indians, Indians steal horses on West Fork, pursued and punished by col. Lowther--murder of the Wests on Hacker's creek, Remarkable recovery of J. Hacker's daughter--murder of the Johnsons on Ten-mile creek, At Macks, Artifice of John Sims. 365-383. CHAP. 17. Rapid increase of population of Kentucky, operations there--Preparations of the general Government to carry on the war in the Indian country, Settlement of Marietta, Of Cincinatti, Fort Washington erected, Settlement of Duck creek, Big Bottom and Wolf creeks--Harmar's campaign, murder of whites on Big Bottom, murder of John Bush--Affair at Hansucker's on Dunkard--murder of Carpenter and others and escape of Jesse Hughes--campaign under Gen. St. Clair--Attack at Merrill's, Heroic conduct of mrs. Merrill, Signal success of expedition under Gen. Scott. 384-407. CHAP. 18. Indians visit Hacker's creek--murder of the Waggoners and captivity of others--murder of Neal and Triplet, major Truman and col. Hardin killed, Greater preparations made by General Government, John and Henry Johnson, Attack on the hunting camp of Isaac Zane, Noble conduct of Zane--Treatment of Indian prisoners, Fort Recovery erected, Escape of Joseph Cox--murder of miss Runyan and attack on Carder's, Indians kill and make prisoners the Cozads, Affair at Joseph Kanaan's, Progress of army under Gen. Wayne, Indians attack and defeat detachment under M'Mahon, battle of Au Glaize and victory of General Wayne, Affair at Bozarth's on Buckhannon--Treaty of Greenville. 408-430. [3] INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. It is highly probable that the continent of America was known to the Ancient Carthaginians, and that it was the great island Atalantis, of which mention is made by Plato, who represents it as larger than Asia and Africa. The Carthaginians were a maritime people, and it is known that they extended their discoveries beyond the narrow sphere which had hitherto limited the enterprise of the mariner. And although Plato represents Atalantis as having been swallowed by an earthquake, and all knowledge of the new continent, if any such ever existed, was entirely lost, still it is by no means improbable, that it had been visited by some of the inhabitants of the old world, prior to its discovery by Columbus in 1492. The manner of this discovery is well known, as is also the fact that Americo Vespucci, a Florentine, under the authority of Emmanuel king of Portugal, in sailing as far as Brazil discovered the main land and gave name to America. These discoveries gave additional excitement to the adventurous spirit which distinguished those times, and the flattering reports made of the country which they had visited, inspired the different nations of Europe, with the desire of reaping the rich harvest, which the enlightened and enterprising mind of Columbus, had unfolded to their view. Accordingly, as early as March 1496, (less than two years after the discovery by Columbus) a commission was granted by Henry VII king of England, to John Cabot and his three sons, empowering them to sail under the English banner in quest of new discoveries, and in the event of their success to take possession, in the name of the king of England, of the countries thus discovered and not inhabited by _Christian people_. The expedition contemplated in this commission was never carried into effect. But in May 1498 Cabot with his son Sebastian, embarked on a voyage to attain the desired object, and succeeded in his design so far as to effect a discovery of [4] North America, and although he sailed along the coast from Labrador to Virginia, yet it does not now appear that he made any attempt either at settlement or conquest. This is said to have been the first discovery ever made of that portion of our continent which extends from the Gulph of Mexico to the North pole; and to this discovery the English trace their title to that part of it, subsequently reduced into possession by them.[1] As many of the evils endured by the inhabitants of the western part of Virginia, resulted from a contest between England and France, as to the validity of their respective claims to portions of the newly discovered country, it may not be amiss to take a general view of the discoveries and settlements effected by each of those powers. After the expedition of Cabot, no attempt on the part of England, to acquire territory in America, seems to have been made until the year 1558. In this year letters patent were issued by Queen Elizabeth, empowering Sir Humphrey Gilbert to "discover and take possession of such remote, heathen, and barbarous lands, as were not actually possessed by any _christian prince or people_." Two expeditions, conducted by this gentleman terminated unfavorably. Nothing was done by him towards the accomplishment of the objects in view, more than the taking possession of the island of New Foundland in the name of the English Queen. In 1584 a similar patent was granted to Sir Walter Raleigh, under whose auspices was discovered the country south of Virginia. In April of that year he dispatched two vessels under the command of Amidas and Barlow, for the purpose of visiting, and obtaining such a knowledge of the country which he proposed to colonize, as would facilitate the attainment of his object. In their voyage they approached the North American continent towards the Gulph of Florida, and sailing northwardly touched at an island situate on the inlet into Pamlico sound, in the state of North Carolina. To this island they gave the name of Wocoken, and proceeding from thence reached Roanoke near the mouth of Albemarle sound. After having remained here some weeks, and obtained from the natives the best information which they could impart concerning the country, Amidas and Barlow returned to England. In the succeeding year Sir Walter had fitted out a squadron of seven ships, the command of which he gave to Sir Richard [5] Grenville. On board of this squadron were passengers, arms, ammunition and provisions for a settlement. He touched at the islands of Wocoken and Roanoke, which had been visited by Amidas and Barlow, and leaving a colony of one hundred and eight persons in the island of Roanoke, he returned to England. These colonists, after having remained about twelve months and explored the adjacent country, became so discouraged and exhausted by fatigue and famine, that they abandoned the country. Sir Richard Grenville returning shortly afterwards to America, and not being able to find them, and at a loss to conjecture their fate, left in the island another small party of settlers and again set sail for England. The flattering description which was given of the country, by those who had visited it, so pleased Queen Elizabeth, that she gave to it the name of Virginia, as a memorial that it had been discovered in the reign of a Virgin Queen. Other inefficient attempts were afterwards made to colonize North America during the reign of Elizabeth, but it was not 'till the year 1607, that a colony was permanently planted there. In December of the preceding year a small vessel and two barks, under the command of captain Newport, and having on board one hundred and five men, destined to remain, left England. In April they were driven by a storm into Chesapeak bay, and after a fruitless attempt to land at Cape Henry, sailed up the Powhatan (since called James) River, and on the 13th of May 1607, debarked on the north side of the river at a place to which they gave the name of Jamestown. From this period the country continued in the occupancy of the whites, and remained subject to the crown of Great Britain until the war of the revolution. A new charter which was issued in 1609 grants to "the treasurer and company of the adventurers, of the city of London for the first colony of Virginia, in absolute property the lands extending from Point Comfort along the sea coast two hundred miles to the northward, and from the same point, along the sea coast two hundred miles to the southward, and up into the land throughout from sea to sea, west and north-west; and also all islands lying within one hundred miles of the coast of both seas of the precinct aforesaid." Conflicting charters, granted to other corporations, afterwards narrowed her limits; that she has been since reduced to her present comparatively small extent of territory, is attributable exclusively [6] to the almost suicidal liberality of Virginia herself. On the part of France, voyages for the discovery and colonization of North America were nearly contemporaneous with those made by England for like objects. As early as the year 1540, a commission was issued by Francis 1st for the establishment of Canada.[2] In 1608, a French fleet, under the command of Admiral Champlaine, arrived in the St. Lawrence and founded the city of Quebec. So successful were her attempts to colonize that province, that, notwithstanding its proximity to the English colonies, and the fact that a Spanish sailor had previously entered the St. Lawrence and established a port at the mouth of Grand river--neither of those powers seriously contested the right of France to its possession.--Yet it was frequently the theatre of war; and as early as 1629 was subdued by England. By the treaty of St. Germains in 1632 it was restored to France, as was also the then province of Acadie, now known as Nova Scotia. There is no doubt but that this latter province was, by priority of settlement, the property of France, but its principal town having been repeatedly reduced to possession by the English, it was ceded to them by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. To the country bordering the Mississippi river, and its tributary streams, a claim was made by England, France and Spain. The claim of England (based on the discovery by the Cabots of the eastern shore of the United States,) included all the country between the parallels of latitude within which the Atlantic shore was explored, extending westwardly to the Pacific ocean--a zone athwart the continent between the thirtieth and forty-eighth degrees of North latitude. From the facility with which the French gained the good will and friendly alliance of the Natives in Canada, by intermarrying with, and assimilating themselves to the habits and inclinations of, these children of the forest, an intimacy arose which induced the Indians to impart freely to the French their knowledge of the interior country. Among other things information was communicated to them, of the fact that farther on there was a river of great size and immense length, which pursued a course opposite to that of the St. Lawrence, and emptied itself into an unknown sea. It was conjectured that it must necessarily flow either into the Gulph of Mexico, or the South Sea; and in 1673 Marquette and Joliet, French missionaries, together with five other men, commenced a journey [7] from Quebec to ascertain the fact and examine the country bordering its shores. From lake Michigan they proceeded up the Fox river nearly to its source; thence to Ouisconsin; down it to the Mississippi, in which river they sailed as far as to about the thirty-third degree of north latitude. From this point they returned through the Illinois country to Canada. At the period of this discovery M. de La Salle, a Frenchman of enterprise, courage and talents but without fortune, was commandant of fort Frontignac. Pleased with the description given by Marquette and Joliet, of the country which they had visited, he formed the determination of examining it himself, and for this purpose left Canada in the close of the summer of 1679, in company with father Louis Hennepin and some others.[3] On the Illinois he erected fort Crevecoeur, where he remained during the winter, and instructing father Hennepin, in his absence to ascend the Mississippi to its sources, returned to Canada. M. de La Salle subsequently visited this country, and establishing the villages of Cahokia and Kaskaskia, left them under the command of M. de Tonti, and going back to Canada, proceeded from thence to France to procure the co-operation of the Ministry in effecting a settlement of the valley of the Mississippi. He succeeded in impressing on the minds of the French Ministry, the great benefits which would result from its colonization, and was the first to suggest the propriety of connecting the settlements on the Mississippi with those in Canada by a cordon of forts; a measure which was subsequently attempted to be carried into effect. With the aid afforded him by the government of France, he was enabled to prepare an expedition to accomplish his object, and sailing in 1684 for the mouth of the Mississippi, steered too far westward and landed in the province of Texas, and on the banks of the river Guadaloupe. Every exertion which a brave and prudent man could make to effect the security of his little colony, and conduct them to the settlement in Illinois, was fruitlessly made by him. In reward for all his toil and care he was basely assassinated; the remnant of the party whom he was conducting through the wilderness, finally reached the Arkansas, where was a settlement of French emigrants from Canada. The colonists left by him at the bay of St. Bernard were mostly murdered by the natives, the remainder were carried away by the Spaniards in 1689. [8] Other attempts made by the French to colonize the Mississippi near the Gulph of Mexico, were for some time unavailing. In an expedition for that purpose, conducted by M. Ibberville, a suit of armor on which was inscribed Ferdinand de Soto, was found in the possession of some Indians. In the year 1717 the spot, on which New Orleans now stands, was selected as the centre of the settlements, then first made in Louisiana, and the country continued in the possession of France until 1763. By the treaty of Paris in that year, she ceded to Great Britain, together with Canada her possessions east of the Mississippi, excepting only the island of New Orleans--this and her territory on the west bank of that river were transferred to Spain. The title of Spain to the valley of the Mississippi, if made to depend on priority of discovery, would perhaps, to say the least, be as good as that of either of the other powers. Ferdinand de Soto, governor of Cuba, was most probably the first white man who saw that majestic stream. The Spaniards had early visited and given name to Florida. In 1528 Pamphilo de Narvaez obtained a grant of it, and fitting out an armament, proceeded with four or five hundred men to explore and settle the country. He marched to the Indian village of Appalachas, when he was attacked and defeated by the natives. The most of those who escaped death from the hands of the savages, perished in a storm, by which they were overtaken on their voyage home. Narvaez himself perished in the wreck, and was succeeded in his attempt at colonization by de Soto. Ferdinand de Soto, then governor of Cuba, was a man of chivalrous and enterprising spirit, and of cool, deliberate courage. In his expedition to Florida, although attacked by the Indians, immediately on his landing, yet, rather seeking than shunning danger, he penetrated the interior, and crossing the Mississippi, sickened and died on Red river. So frequent and signal had been the victories which he had obtained over the Indians, that his name alone had become an object of terror to them; and his followers, at once to preserve his remains from violation, and prevent the natives from acquiring a knowledge of his death, enclosed his body in a hollow tree, sunk it in the Red river and returned to Florida. Thus, it is said, were different parts of this continent discovered; and by virtue of the settlements thus effected, by [9] those three great powers of Europe, the greater portion of it was claimed as belonging to them respectively, in utter disregard of the rights of the Aborigines. And while the historian records the colonization of America as an event tending to meliorate the condition of Europe, and as having extended the blessings of civil and religious liberty, humanity must drop the tear of regret, that it has likewise forced the natives of the new, and the inhabitants of a portion of the old world, to drink so deeply from the cup of bitterness. The cruelties which have been exercised on the Aborigines of America, the wrong and outrage heaped on them from the days of Montezuma and Guatimozin, to the present period, while they excite sympathy for their sufferings, should extenuate, if not justify the bloody deeds, which revenge prompted the untutored savages to commit. Driven as they were from the lands of which they were the rightful proprietors--Yielding to encroachment after encroachment 'till forced to apprehend their utter annihilation--Witnessing the destruction of their villages, the prostration of their towns and the sacking of cities adorned with splendid magnificence, who can feel surprised at any attempt which they might make to rid the country of its invaders. Who, but must applaud the spirit which prompted them, when they beheld their prince a captive, the blood of their nobles staining the earth with its crimson dye, and the Gods of their adoration scoffed and derided, to aim at the destruction of their oppressors.--When Mexico, "with her tiara of proud towers," became the theatre in which foreigners were to revel in rapine and in murder, who can be astonished that the valley of Otumba resounded with the cry of "Victory or Death?" And yet, resistance on their part, served but as a pretext for a war of extermination; waged too, with a ferocity, from the recollection of which the human mind involuntarily revolts, and with a success which has forever blotted from the book of national existence, once powerful and happy tribes. But they did not suffer alone. As if to fill the cup of oppression to the brim, another portion of the human family were reduced to abject bondage, and made the unwilling cultivators of those lands, of which the Indians had been dispossessed. Soon after the settlement of North America was commenced, the negroes of Africa became an article of commerce, and from subsequent importations and natural [10] increase have become so numerous as to excite the liveliest apprehensions in the bosom of every friend to this country. Heretofore they have had considerable influence on the affairs of our government; and recently the diversity of interest, occasioned in Virginia, by the possession of large numbers of them in the country east of the blue ridge of mountains, seemed for a while to threaten the integrity of the state.--Happily this is now passing away, but how far they may effect the future destines of America, the most prophetic ken cannot foresee. Yet, although the philanthropist must weep over their unfortunate situation, and the patriot shudder in anticipation of a calamity which it may defy human wisdom to avert; still it would be unfair to charge the existence of slavery among us to the policy of the United States, or to brand their present owners as the instruments of an evil which they cannot remove. And while others boast that they are free from this dark spot, let them remember, that but for them our national escutcheon might have been as pure and unsullied as their own.[4] We are indebted to the Dutch for their introduction into Virginia, and to the ships of other than slave holding communities, for their subsequent unhallowed transportation to our shores. Yet those who were mainly instrumental in forging the chains of bondage, have since rendered the condition of the negro slave more intolerable by fomenting discontent among them, and by "scattering fire brands and torches," which are often not to be extinguished but in blood. Notwithstanding those two great evils which have resulted from the discovery and colonization of America, yet to these the world is indebted for the enjoyment of many and great blessings. They enlarged the theatre of agricultural enterprise, and thus added to the facilities of procuring the necessaries of life. They encouraged the industry of Europeans, by a dependence on them for almost every species of manufacture, and thus added considerably to their population, wealth and happiness; while the extensive tracts of fertile land, covering the face of this country and inviting to its bosom the enterprising [11] foreigner, has removed a far off any apprehension of the ill effects arising from a too dense population. In a moral and political point of view much good has likewise resulted from the settlement of America. Religion, freed from the fetters which enthralled her in Europe, has shed her benign influence on every portion of our country. Divorced from an adulterous alliance with state, she has here stalked forth in the simplicity of her founder; and with "healing on her wings, spread the glad tidings of salvation to all men." It is true that religious intolerance and blind bigotry, for some time clouded our horizon, but they were soon dissipated; and when the sun arose which ushered in the dawn of our national existence scarce a speck could be seen to dim its lustre. Here too was reared the standard of civil liberty, and an example set, which may teach to the nations of the old world, that as people are really the source of power, government should be confided to them. Already have the beneficial effects of this example been manifested, and the present condition of Europe clearly shows, that the lamp of liberty, which was lighted here, has burned with a brilliancy so steady as to have reflected its light across the Atlantic. Whether it will be there permitted to shine, is somewhat problematical. But should a "holy alliance of legitimates" extinguish it, it will be but for a season. Kings, Emperors and Priests cannot succeed much longer in staying the march of freedom. The people are sensibly alive to the oppression of their rulers--they have groaned beneath the burden 'till it has become too intolerable to be borne; and they are now speaking in a voice which will make tyrants tremble on their throne. ----- [1] The author errs somewhat in his review of the voyages of the Cabots. In 1497, John set out to reach Asia by way of the north-west, and sighted Cape Breton, for which the generous king gave him £10 and blessed him with "great honours." In 1498, Sebastian's voyage was intended to supplement his father's; his exploration of the coast extended down to the vicinity of Chesapeake Bay.--R. G. T. [2] This refers to the explorations of Jacques Cartier. But as early as 1534 Cartier sailed up the estuary of the St. Lawrence "until land could be seen on either side;" the following year he ascended the river as far as the La Chine rapids, and wintered upon the island mountain there which he named Mont Real. It was in 1541 that he made his third voyage, and built a fort at Quebec. The author's reference, a few lines below, to a "Spanish sailor" in the St. Lawrence, is the result of confusion over Cartier's first voyages; Cortereal was at Newfoundland for the Portuguese in 1500; and Gomez for Spain in 1525.--R. G. T. [3] The author wrote at too early a date to have the benefit of Parkman's researches. La Salle had probably discovered the Ohio River four years before the voyage of Joliet and Marquette.--R. G. T. [4] It is said, that Georgia, at an early period of her colonial existence, endeavored by legislative enactment to prevent the importation of slaves into her territory, but that the King of England invariably negatived those laws, and ultimately Oglethorpe was dismissed from office, for persevering in the endeavor to accomplish so desirable an object. It is an historical fact that slaves were not permitted to be taken into Georgia, for some time after a colony was established there. [3] INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER II. When America was first visited by Europeans, it was found that its inhabitants were altogether ignorant of the country from which their ancestors had migrated, and of the period at which they had been transplanted to the new world. And although there were among them traditions seeming to cast a light upon these subjects, yet when thoroughly investigated, they tended rather to bewilder than lead to any certain conclusion. The origin of the natives has ever since been a matter of curious speculation with the learned; conjecture has succeeded conjecture, hypothesis has yielded to hypothesis, as wave recedes before wave, still it remains involved in a labyrinth of inexplicable difficulties, from which the most ingenious mind will perhaps never be able to free it. In this respect the situation of the aborigines of America does not differ from that of the inhabitants of other portions of the globe. An impenetrable cloud hangs over the early history of other nations, and defies the researches of the learned in any attempt to trace them to their origin. The attempt has nevertheless been repeatedly made; and philosophers, arguing from a real or supposed conformity of one people to another, have vainly imagined that they had attained to certainty on these subjects. And while one has in this manner, undertaken to prove China to have been an Egyptian colony, another, pursuing the same course of reasoning, has, by way of ridicule, shewn how easily a learned man of Tobolski or Pekin might as satisfactorily prove France to have been a Trojan, a Greek or even an Arabian colony; thus making manifest the utter futility of endeavoring to arrive at certainty in this way.[1] [13] Nor is this to be at all wondered at, when we reflect on the barbarous state of those nations in their infancy, the imperfection of traditionary accounts of what had transpired centuries before, and in many instances the entire absence of a written language, by which, either to perpetuate events, or enable the philosopher by analogy of language to ascertain their affinity with other nations. Conjectural then as must be every disquisition as to the manner in which this continent was first peopled, still however, as many men eminent for learning and piety have devoted much labor and time to the investigation of the subject, it may afford satisfaction to the curious to see some of those speculations recorded. Discordant as they are in many respects, there is nevertheless one fact as to the truth of which they are nearly all agreed; Mr. Jefferson is perhaps the only one, of those who have written on the subject, who seems to discredit the assertion that America was peopled by emigrants from the old world. How well the conjecture, that the eastern inhabitants of Asia were descendants of the Indians of America can be supported by any knowledge which is possessed of the different languages spoken by the Aborigines, will be for others to determine. "Neque confirmare argumentis, neque refellere, in animo est; ex ingenio suo, quisque demat vel addat fidem." Among those who have given to the world their opinions on the origin of the natives of America, is Father Jos. Acosta, a Jesuit who was for some time engaged as a missionary among them. From the fact that no ancient author has made mention of the [14] compass, he discredits the supposition that the first inhabitants of this country found their way here by sea. His conclusion is that they must have found a passage by the North of Asia and Europe which he supposes to join each other; or by those regions which lie southward of the straits of Magellan. Gregorio Garcia, who was likewise a missionary among the Mexicans and Peruvians, from the traditions of those nations, and from the variety of characters, customs, languages and religion, observable in the new world, has formed the opinion that it was peopled by several different nations. John de Laet, a Flemish writer, maintains that America received its first inhabitants from Scythia or Tartary, and soon after the dispersion of Noah's grand-sons. The resemblance of the northern Indians, in feature, complexion and manner of living, to the Scythians, Tartars, and Samojedes, being greater than to any other nations. Emanuel de Moraez, in his history of Brazil, says that this continent was wholly peopled by the Carthaginians and Israelites. In confirmation of this opinion, he mentions the discoveries which the Carthaginians are known to have made beyond the coast of Africa. The progress of these discoveries being stopped by the Senate of Carthage, those who happened to be in the newly discovered countries, cut off from all communication with their countrymen, and being destitute of many of the necessaries of life, easily fell into a state of barbarism. George de Huron, a Dutch writer on this subject, considering the short space of time which elapsed between the creation of the world and the deluge, maintains that America could not have been peopled before the flood. He likewise supposes that its first inhabitants were located in the north; and that the primitive colonies extended themselves over the whole extent of the continent, by means of the Isthmus of Panama. It is his opinion that the first founders of these Indian colonies were Scythians; that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians subsequently got to America across the Atlantic, and the Chinese across the Pacific ocean, and that other nations might have landed there by one of these means, or been thrown on the coast by tempest: since through the whole extent of the continent, both in its northern and southern parts there are evident marks of a mixture of the northern nations with those who have come from other places. [15] He also supposes that another migration of the Phoenicians took place during a three years voyage made by the Tyrian fleet in the service of king Solomon. He asserts, on the authority of Josephus, that the port at which this embarkation was made, lay in the Mediterranean. The fleet, he adds, went in quest of Elephants' teeth and Peacocks, to the western coast of Africa, which is Tarshish, then for gold to Ophir, which is Haite or the Island of Hispaniola. In the latter opinion he is supported by Columbus, who, when he discovered that Island, thought he could trace the furnaces in which the gold had been refined. Monsieur Charlevoix, who travelled through North America, is of opinion that it received its first inhabitants from Tartary and Hyrcania. In support of this impression he says that some of the animals which are to be found here, must have come from those countries: a fact which would go to prove that the two hemispheres join to the northward of Asia. And in order to strengthen this conjecture, he relates the following story, which he says was told to him by Father Grollon, a French Jesuit, as matter of fact. Father Grollon said, that after having labored some time in the missions of New France, he passed over to China. One day as he was travelling in Tartary he met a Huron woman whom he had known in Canada. He asked her by what adventure she had been carried into a country so very remote from her own; she replied that having been taken in war, she was conducted from nation to nation, until she reached the place where she then was. Monsieur Charlevoix narrates another circumstance of a similar kind. He says that he had been assured, another Jesuit had met with a Floridian woman in China. She also had been made captive by certain Indians, who gave her to those of a more distant country, and by these again she was given to those of another nation, 'till having been successively passed from country to country, and after having travelled through regions extremely cold, she at length found herself in Tartary. Here she had married a Tartar, who had attended the conquerors in China, and with whom she then was. Arguing from these facts and from the similarity of several kinds of wild beasts which are found in America, with those of Hyrcania and Tartary, he arrives at what he deems, a [16] rational conclusion, that more than one nation in America had Scythian or Tartarian extraction. Charlevoix possessed a good opportunity of becoming acquainted with the character and habits of the American Indians. His theory however has been controverted by some, possessing equal advantages of observation. Mr. Adair, an intelligent gentleman who resided among the nations during the space of forty years, and who became well acquainted with their manners, customs, religion, traditions and language, has given to them a very different origin. But perfect soever as may have been his knowledge of their manners, customs, religion and traditions, yet it must be admitted that any inquiry into these, with a view to discover their origin, would most probably prove fallacious. A knowledge of the primitive language, alone can cast much light on the subject. Whether this knowledge can ever be attained, is, to say the least, very questionable--Being an unwritten language, and subject to change for so many centuries, it can scarcely be supposed now to bear much, if any affinity, to what it was in its purity. Mr. Adair says, that from the most exact observation he could make during the long time which he traded among the Indians, he was forced to believe them lineally descended from the Israelites, either when they were a maritime power, or soon after the general captivity; most probably the latter. He thinks that had the nine tribes and a half, which were carried off by Shalmanezer, king of Assyria, and which settled in Media, remained there long, they would, by intermarrying with the nations of that country, from a natural fickleness and proneness to idolatry, and from the force of example, have adopted and bowed before the Gods of the Medes and Assyrians; and have carried them along with them. But he affirms that there is not the least trace of this idolatry to be discovered among the Indians: and hence he argues that those of the ten tribes who were the forefathers of the natives, soon advanced eastward from Assyria and reached their settlements in the new continent, before the destruction of the first Temple. In support of the position that the American Indians are thus descended, Mr. Adair adduces among others the following arguments: _1st, Their division into tribes._ "As each nation has its particular symbol, so each tribe has [17] the badge from which it is denominated. The Sachem is a necessary party in conveyances and treaties, to which he affixes the mark of his tribe. If we go from nation to nation among them, we shall not find one, who does not distinguish himself by his respective family. The genealogical names which they assume, are derived either from the names of those animals whereof the cherubim is said in revelation to be compounded; or from such creatures as are most similar to them. The Indians bear no religious respect to the animals from which they derive their names; on the contrary they kill them whenever an opportunity serves. "When we consider that these savages have been upwards of twenty centuries without the aid of letters to carry down their traditions, it can not be reasonably expected, that they should still retain the identical names of their primogenial tribes: their main customs corresponding with those of the Israelites, sufficiently clear the subject. Moreover they call some of their tribes by the names of the cherubinical figures, which were carried on the four principal standards of Israel." _2nd, Their worship of Jehovah._ "By a strict, permanent, divine precept, the Hebrew nation was ordered to worship at Jerusalem, Jehovah the true and living God, who by the Indians is styled '_Yohewah_.' The seventy-two interpreters have translated this word so as to signify, _Sir_, _Lord_, _Master_, applying to mere earthly potentates, without the least signification or relation to that great and awful name, which describes the divine presence." _3rd, Their notions of a theocracy._ "Agreeably to the theocracy or divine government of Israel, the Indians think the deity to be the immediate head of the state. All the nations of Indians have a great deal of religious pride, and an inexpressible contempt for the white people. In their war orations they used to call us _the accursed people_, but flatter themselves with the name of the _beloved people_, because their supposed ancestors were, as they affirm, under the immediate government of the Deity, who was present with them in a peculiar manner, and directed them by Prophets, while the rest of the world were aliens to the covenant.[2] When the old Archimagus, or any of their Magi, is [18] persuading the people at their religious solemnities, to a strict observance of the old _beloved or divine speech_, he always calls them the _beloved or holy people_, agreeably to the Hebrew epithet, _Ammi_, (my people) during the theocracy of Israel. It is this opinion, that God has chosen them out of the rest of mankind, as his peculiar people, which inspires the white Jew, and the red American, with that steady hatred against all the world except themselves, and renders them hated and despised by all." _5th, Their language and dialects._ "The Indian language and dialects appear to have the very idiom and genius of the Hebrew. Their words and sentences are expressive, concise, emphatical, sonorous and bold; and often both the letters and signification are synonymous with the Hebrew language." Of these Mr. Adair cites a number of examples. _6th, Their manner of counting time._ "The Indians count time after the manner of the Hebrews. They divide the year into spring, summer, autumn and winter. They number their year from any of these four periods, for they have no name for a year; and they subdivide these and count the year by lunar months, like the Israelites who counted time by moons, as their name sufficiently testifies. "The number and regular periods of the religious feasts among the Indians, is a good historical proof that they counted time by and observed a weekly Sabbath, long after their arrival in America. They began the year at the appearance of the first new moon of the vernal equinox, according to the ecclesiastical year of Moses. 'Till the seventy years captivity [19] commenced, the Israelites had only numeral names for their months, except Abib and Ethanim; the former signifying a _green ear of corn_, the latter _robust or valiant_; by the first name the Indians as an explicative, term their passover, which the trading people call _the green corn dance_." _7th, Their prophets or high priests._ "In conformity to, or after the manner of the Jews, the Indians have their prophets, high priests, and others of a religious order. As the Jews have a Sanctum Sanctorum, so have all the Indian nations. There they deposit their consecrated vessels--none of the laity daring to approach that sacred place. The Indian tradition says, that their forefathers were possessed of an extraordinary divine spirit by which they foretold future events; and that this was transmitted to their offspring, provided they obeyed the sacred laws annexed to it.[3] [20] _Ishtoallo_ is the name of all their priestly order and their pontifical office descends by inheritance to the eldest. There are traces of agreement, though chiefly lost, in their pontifical dress. Before the Indian Archimagus officiates in making the supposed holy fire for the yearly atonement of sin, the _Sagan_ clothes him with a white ephod, which is a waistcoat without sleeves. In resemblance of the Urim and Thummim the American Archimagus wears a breastplate made of a white conch-shell, with two holes bored in the middle of it, through which he puts the ends of an otter-skin strap; and fastens a buck-horn white button to the outside of each; as if in imitation of the precious stones of the Urim." In remarking upon this statement of Mr. Adair, Faber, a learned divine of the church of England, has said, that Ishtoallo (the name according to Adair of the Indian priests) is most probably a corruption of _Ish-da-Eloah_, a man of God, (the term used by the Shunemitish woman in speaking of Elisha;) and that _Sagan_ is the very name by which the Hebrews called the deputy of the High Priest, who supplied his office and who performed the functions of it in the absence of the high priest, or when any accident had disabled him from officiating in person. _8th, Their festivals, fasts and religious rites._ "The ceremonies of the Indians in their religious worship,[21] are more after the Mosaic institution, than of Pagan imitation. This could not be the fact if a majority of the old nations were of heathenish descent. They are utter strangers to all the gestures practiced by Pagans in their religious rites. They have likewise an appellative, which with them is the mysterious, essential name of God; the _tetragrammaton_, which they never use in common speech. They are very particular of the time and place, when and where they mention it, and this is always done in a very solemn manner. It is known that the Jews had so great and sacred regard for the four lettered, divine name, as scarcely ever to mention it, except when the High Priest went into the sanctuary for the expiation of sins." Mr. Adair likewise says that the American Indians, like the Hebrews, have an ark in which are kept various holy vessels, and which is never suffered to rest on the bare ground. "On hilly ground, where stones are plenty, they always place it on them, but on level land it is made to rest on short legs. They have also a faith, in the power and holiness of their ark, as strong as the Israelites had in theirs. It is too sacred and dangerous to be touched by any one, except the chieftain and his waiter. The leader virtually acts the part of a priest of war protempore, in imitation of the Israelites fighting under the divine military banner." Among their other religious rites the Indians, according to Adair, cut out the sinewy part of the thigh; in commemoration, as he says, of the Angel wrestling with Jacob. _12th, Their abstinence from unclean things._ "Eagles of every kind are esteemed by the Indians to be unclean food; as also ravens, crows, bats, buzzards and every species of owl. They believe that swallowing gnats, flies and the like, always breed sickness. To this that divine sarcasm alludes 'swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat.'" Their purifications for their Priests, and for having touched a dead body or other unclean thing, according to Mr. Adair, are quite Levitical. He acknowledges however, that they have no traces of circumcision; but he supposes that they lost this rite in their wanderings, as it ceased among the Hebrews, during the forty years in the wilderness. _15th, Their cities of refuge._ "The Israelites had cities of refuge for those who killed persons unawares. According to the same particular divine [22] law of mercy, each of the Indian nations has a house or town of refuge, which is a sure asylum to protect a man-slayer, or the unfortunate captive, if they can but once enter into it. In almost every nation they have peaceable towns, called ancient holy, or white towns. These seem to have been towns of refuge; for it is not in the memory of man, that ever human blood was shed in them, although they often force persons from thence and put them to death elsewhere." _16th, Their purifications and ceremonies preparatory._ "Before the Indians go to war they have many preparatory ceremonies of purification and fasting like what is recorded of the Israelites." _21st, Their raising seed to a deceased brother._ "The surviving brother, by the Mosaic law, was to raise seed to a deceased brother, who left a widow childless. The Indian custom looks the very same way; but in this as in their law of blood, the eldest brother can redeem." With these and many arguments of a like kind, has Mr. Adair endeavored to support the conjecture, that the American Indians are lineally descended from the Israelites; and gravely asks of those who may dissent from his opinion of their origin and descent, to inform him how they came here, and by what means they formed the long chain of rites and customs so similar to those of the Hebrews, and dissimilar to the rites and customs of the pagan world. Major Carver, a provincial officer who sojourned some time with the Indians and visited twelve different nations of them, instead of observing the great similarity, mentioned by Adair as existing between the natives and Hebrews, thought he could trace features of resemblance between them and the Chinese and Tartars; and has undertaken to shew how they might have got here. He says, "Although it is not ascertained certainly, that the continents of Asia and America join each other, yet it is proven that the sea which is supposed to divide them, is full of islands the distance from which to either continent, is comparatively trifling. From these islands a communication with the main land could be more readily effected than from any other point." "It is very evident that the manners and customs of the American Indians, resemble that of the Tartars; and I have no doubt that in some future era, it will be reduced to a certainty that in some of the wars between the Chinese and Tartars, a part [23] of the inhabitants of the northern provinces were driven from their country and took refuge in some of these islands, and from thence found their way to America. At different periods each nation might prove victorious, and the conquered by turns fly before the conquerors; and hence might arise the similitude of the Indians to all these people, and that animosity which exists among so many of their tribes." After remarking on the similarity which exists between the Chinese and Indians, in the singular custom of shaving or plucking out the hair leaving only a small spot on the crown of the head; and the resemblance in sound and signification which many of the Chinese and Indian words bear to each other, he proceeds, "After the most critical inquiry and mature deliberation, I am of opinion that America received its first inhabitants from the northeast, by way of the islands mentioned as lying between Asia and America. This might have been effected at different times and from different parts: from Tartary, China, Japan or Kamschatka, the inhabitants of these countries resembling each other, in color, feature and shape." Other writers on this subject, coinciding in opinion with Carver, mention a tradition which the Indians in Canada have, that foreign merchants clothed in silk formerly visited them in great ships: these are supposed to have been Chinese, the ruins of Chinese ships having been found on the American coast. The names of many of the American kings, are said to be Tartar; and Tartarax, who reigned formerly in Quivira, means the Tartar. Manew, the founder of the Peruvian empire, most probably came from the Manchew Tartars. Montezuma, the title of the emperors of Mexico, is of Japanese extraction; for according to some authors it is likewise the appellation of the Japanese Monarch. The plant Ginseng, since found in America, where the natives termed it Garentoguen, a word of the same import in their language, with Ginseng in the Tartar, both meaning THE THIGHS OF A MAN. Dr. Robertson is decidedly of opinion, that the different tribes of American Indians, excepting the Esquimaux, are of Asiatic extraction. He refers to a tradition among the Mexicans of the migration of their ancestors from a remote country, situated to the north-west of Mexico, and says they point out their various stations as they advanced into the interior provinces, which is precisely the route they must have held, if they had been emigrants from Asia. Mr. Jefferson, in his notes on Virginia, says, that the passage from Europe to America was always practicable, even to the imperfect [24] navigation of the ancient times; and that, from recent discoveries, it is proven, that if Asia and America be separated at all it is only by a narrow streight. "Judging from the resemblance between the Indians of America and the eastern inhabitants of Asia, we should say that the former are descendants of the latter, or the latter of the former, except indeed the Esquimaux, who, from the same circumstance of resemblance, and from identity of language, must be derived from the Greenlanders. A knowledge of their several languages would be the most certain evidence of their derivation which could be produced. In fact it is the best proof of the affinity of nations, which ever can be referred to." After regretting that so many of the Indian tribes have been suffered to perish, without our having collected and preserved the general rudiments of their language, he proceeds, "Imperfect as is our knowledge of the tongues spoken in America, it suffices to discover the following remarkable fact. Arranging them under the radical ones to which they may be palpably traced, and doing the same by those of the red men of Asia, there will be found probably twenty in America, for one in Asia, of those radical languages; so called because if ever they were the same, they have lost all resemblance to one another. A separation into dialects may be the work of a few ages only, but for two dialects to recede from one another, 'till they have lost all vestiges of their common origin, must require an immense course of time; perhaps not less than many people give to the age of the earth. A greater number of those radical changes of language having taken place among the red men of America proves them of greater antiquity than those of Asia." Indian traditions say, that "in ancient days the Great Island appeared upon the big waters, the earth brought forth trees, herbs and fruits: that there were in the world a good and a bad spirit, the good spirit formed creeks and rivers on the great island, and created numerous species of animals to inhabit the forests, and fishes of all kinds to inhabit the water. He also made two beings to whom he gave living souls and named them Ea-gwe-howe, (real people). Subsequently some of the people became giants and committed outrages upon the others. After many years a body of Ea-gwe-howe people encamped on the bank of a majestic stream, which they named, Kanawaga (St. Lawrence.) After a long time a number of foreign people sailed from a part unknown, but unfortunately the winds drove them off and they ultimately landed on the southern part of the great island and many of the crew perished. Those who survived, selected a place for residence, erected fortifications, became a numerous people and extended their settlements."[4] Thus various and discordant are the conjectures respecting the manner in which this continent was first peopled. Although some [25] of them appear more rational and others, yet are they at best but hypothetical disquisitions on a subject which will not now admit of certainty. All agree that America was inhabited long anterior to its discovery by Columbus, and by a race of human beings, who, however numerous they once were, are fast hastening to extinction; some centuries hence and they will be no more known. The few memorials, which the ravages of time have suffered to remain of them, in those portions of the country from which they have been long expelled; have destruction dealt them by the ruthless hand of man. History may transmit to after ages, the fact that they once were, and give their "local habitation and their name." These will probably be received as the tales of fiction, and posterity be at as much loss to determine, whether they ever had an existence, as we now are to say from whence they sprang. "I have stood upon Achilles' tomb And heard Troy doubted. Time will doubt of Rome." ----- [1] "If a learned man of Tobolski or Pekin were to read some of our books, be might in this way demonstrate, that the French are descended from the Trojans. The most ancient writings, he might say, and those in most esteem in France, are romances: these were written in a pure language, derived from the ancient Romans, who were famous for never advancing a falsehood. Now upwards of twenty of these authentic books, affirm that Francis, the founder of the monarchy of the Franks, was son to Hector. The name of Hector has ever since been preserved by this nation; and even in the present century one of the greatest generals was called Hector de Villars. "The neighboring nations (he would continue,) are so unanimous in acknowledging this truth, that Ariosto, one of the most learned of the Italians, owns in his Orlando, that Charlemagne's knights fought for Hector's helmet. Lastly, there is one proof which admits of no reply; namely, that the ancient Franks to perpetuate the memory of the Trojans, their ancestors, built a new city called Troye, in the province of Champagne; and these modern Trojans have always retained so strong an aversion to their enemies, the Greeks, that there is not at present four persons in the whole province of Champagne, who will learn their language; nay, they would never admit any Jesuits among them; probably because they had heard it said, that some of that body used formerly to explain Homer in their public schools." Proceeding in this manner, M. de Voltaire shows how easily this hypothesis might be overturned; and while one might thus demonstrate that the Parisians are descended from the Greeks, other profound antiquarians might in like manner prove them to be of Egyptian, or even of Arabian extraction; and although the learned world might much puzzle themselves to decide the question, yet would it remain undecided and in uncertainty.--_Preface to the Life of Peter the Great._ [2] In a small work entitled "Ancient History of the Six Nations," written by David Cusick, an educated Indian of the Tuscarora village, frequent mention is made of the actual presence among them, of Tarenyawagua, or Holder of the Heavens, who guided and directed them when present, and left rules for their government, during his absence. Several miracles performed by him are particularly mentioned. It likewise speaks of the occasional visits of Angels or 'agents of the Superior power' as they are called by Cusick; and tells of a visitor who came among the Tuscaroras long anterior to the discovery of America by Columbus. "He appeared to be a very old man, taught them many things, and informed them that the people beyond the great water had killed their Maker, but that he rose again. The old man died among them and they buried him--soon after some person went to the grave and found that he had risen; he was never heard of afterwards." [3] In confirmation of this tradition among the Indians, the following somewhat singular circumstance related by Mr. Carver, may with propriety be adduced: While at Grand Portage, from the number of those who were there and the fact that the traders did not arrive as soon as was expected, there was a great scarcity of provisions, and much consequent anxiety as to the period of their arrival. One day, Mr. Carver says, that while expressing their wishes for the event, and looking anxiously to ascertain if they could be seen on the Lake, the chief Priest of the Kilistines told them that he would endeavor in a conference with the Great Spirit, to learn at what time the traders would arrive: and the following evening was fixed upon for the spiritual conference. When every preparation had been made, the king conducted Mr. Carver to a spacious tent, the covering of which was so drawn up as to render visible to those without, every thing which passed within. Mr. Carver being seated beside the king within the tent, observed in the centre a place of an oblong shape, composed of stakes stuck at intervals in the ground, forming something like a coffin, and large enough to contain the body of a man. The sticks were far enough from each other to admit a distinct view by the spectators, of what ever passed within them; while the tent was perfectly illuminated. When the Priest entered, a large Elk-skin being spread on the ground, he divested himself of all his clothing, except that around his middle, and laying down on the skin enveloped himself (save only his head) in it. The skin was then bound round with about forty yards of cord, and in that situation he was placed within the ballustrade of sticks. In a few seconds he was heard to mutter, but his voice, gradually assuming a higher tone, was at length extended to its utmost pitch, and sometimes praying, he worked himself into such an agitation as to produce a foaming at the mouth. To this succeeded a speechless state of exhaustion, of short duration; when suddenly springing on his feet, and shaking off the skin, as easily as if the bands with which it had been lashed around him, were burned asunder, he addressed the company in a firm and audible voice: "My Brothers, said he, the Great Spirit has deigned to hold a talk with his servant. He has not indeed told me when the traders will be here; but tomorrow when the sun reaches the highest point in the heavens, a canoe will arrive, the people in that canoe will inform us when the traders will arrive." Mr. Carver adds that on the next day at noon a canoe was descried on the lake at the distance of about three miles,--completely verifying the prediction of the High Priest, in point of time. From the people on board this canoe they learned that the traders would be at the portage on the second day thereafter, at which time they actually did arrive. [4] Indian traditions by Cusick. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER III. The aborigines of America, although divided into many different tribes, inhabiting various climates, and without a community of language, are yet assimilated to each other in stature and complexion, more strikingly than are the inhabitants of the different countries of Europe. The manners and customs of one nation, are very much the manners and customs of all; and although there be peculiarities observable among all, yet are they fewer and less manifest than those which mark the nations of the old world, and distinguish them so palpably from each other. A traveller might have traversed the country, when occupied exclusively by the natives, without remarking among them, the diversity which exists in Europe; or being impressed with the contrast which a visit across the Pyrennes would exhibit, between the affability and vivacity of a Frenchman at a theatre or in the Elysian fields, and the hauteur and reserve of a Spaniard at their bloody circus, when "bounds with one lashing spring the mighty brute." [26] Nor is there much in savage life, calculated to inspire the mind of civilized man, with pleasurable sensations. Many of the virtues practised by them, proceed rather from necessity or ignorance than from any ethical principle existing among them. The calm composure with which they meet death and their stoical indifference to bodily pain, are perhaps more attributable to recklessness of life and physical insensibility,[1] than to fortitude or magnanimity; consequently they do not much heighten the zest of reflection, in contemplating their character. The christian and the philanthropist, with the benevolent design of improving their morals and meliorating their condition, may profitably study every peculiarity and trait of character observable among them; it will facilitate their object and enable them the more readily to reclaim them from a life of heathenish barbarity, and to extend to them the high boons of civilization and christianity. It has been observed that the different tribes of natives of North America, resemble each other very much in stature and complexion, in manners and customs; a general description of these will therefor be sufficient. The stature of an Indian, is generally that of the medial stature of the Anglo Americans; the Osages are said to form an exception to this rule, being somewhat taller. They are almost universally straight and well proportioned; their limbs are clean, but less muscular than those of the whites, and their whole appearance strongly indicative of effeminacy. In walking, they invariable place one foot directly before the other--the toes never verging from a right line with the heel. When traveling in companies, their manner of marching is so peculiar as to have given rise to the expression, "_Indian file_;" and while proceeding in this way, each carefully places his foot in the vestige of the foremost of the party, so as to leave the impression of the footsteps of but one. They have likewise in their gait and carriage something so entirely different from the gait and carriage of the whites, as to enable a person to pronounce on one at a considerable distance. The hair of an Indian is also strikingly different from that of the whites. It is always black and straight, hangs loose and looks as if it were [27] oiled. There is a considerable resemblance in appearance, between it and the glossy black mane of a thoroughbred horse; though its texture is finer. In the squaws there exist, the same delicacy of proportion, the same effeminacy of person, the same slenderness of hand and foot, which characterise the female of refined society; in despite too of the fact, that every laborious duty and every species of drudgery, are imposed on them from childhood. Their faces are broad, and between the eyes they are exceedingly wide; their cheek bones are high and the eyes black in both sexes--the noses of the women inclining generally to the flat nose of the African; while those of the men are more frequently aquiline than otherwise. Instances of decrepitude and deformity, are rarely known to exist among them: this is probably owing to the manner in which they are tended and nursed in infancy. It is not necessary that the mother should, as has been supposed, be guilty of the unnatural crime of murdering her decrepid or deformed offspring--the hardships they encounter are too great to be endured by infants not possessed of natural vigor, and they sink beneath them. Their countenances are for the most inflexible, stern and immovable. The passions which agitate or distract the mind, never alter its expression, nor do the highest ecstacies of which their nature is susceptible, ever relax its rigidity. With the same imperturbability of feature, they encounter death from the hand of an enemy, and receive the greetings of a friend. In their intercourse with others, they seem alike insensible to emotions of pleasure and of pain; and rarely give vent to feelings of either. The most ludicrous scenes scarcely ever cause them to laugh, or the most interesting recitals draw from them more than their peculiar monosyllabic expression of admiration. In conversation they are modest and unassuming; indeed taciturnity is as much a distinguishing trait of Indian character, as it ever was of the Roman. In their councils and public meetings, they never manifest an impatience to be heard, or a restlessness under observations, either grating to personal feeling or opposite to their individual ideas of propriety: on the contrary they are still, silent and attentive; and each is heard with the respect due to his years, his wisdom, his experience, or the fame which his exploits may have acquired him. [28] A loud and garrulous Indian is received by the others with contempt, and a cowardly disposition invariably attributed to him-- "Bold at the council board, But in the field he shuns the sword," is as much and truly an apothegm with them as with us. Their taciturnity and irrisibility however, are confined to their sober hours. When indulging their insatiate thirst for spirit, they are boisterous and rude, and by their obstreperous laughter, their demoniacal shrieks and turbulent vociferations, produce an appalling discord, such as might well be expected to proceed from a company of infernal spirits at their fiendish revels; and exhibit a striking contrast to the low, monotonous tones used by them at other times. There can be no doubt that the Indians are the most lazy, indolent race of human beings. No attempt which has ever been made to convert them into slaves, has availed much. The rigid discipline of a Spanish master, has failed to overcome that inertness, from which an Indian is roused only by war and the chase--Engaged in these, he exhibits as much activity and perseverance, as could be displayed by any one; and to gratify his fondness for them, will encounter toils and privations, from which others would shrink. His very form indicates at once, an aptitude for that species of exercise which war and hunting call into action, and an unfitness for the laborious drudgery of husbandry and many of the mechanic arts. Could they have been converted into profitable slaves, it is more than probable we should never have been told, that "the hand of providence was visible in the surprising instances of mortality among the Indians, to make room for the whites." In their moral character many things appear of a nature, either so monstrous as to shock humanity, or so absurd as to excite derision; yet they have some redeeming qualities which must elicit commendation. And while we view with satisfaction those bright spots, shining more brilliantly from the gloom which surrounds them, their want of learning and the absence of every opportunity for refinement, should plead in extenuation of their failings and their vices. Some of the most flagrant of these, if not encouraged, have at least been sanctioned by the whites. In the war between the New England colonies and the Narragansetts, it was the misfortune of the brave Philip, after having witnessed the destruction of the [29] greater part of his nation, to be himself slain by a Mohican. After his head had been taken off, Oneco, chief of the Mohicans, then in alliance with the colonists, claimed that he had a right to feast himself on the body of his fallen adversary. The whites did not object to this, but composedly looked on Oneco, broiling and eating the flesh of Philip--and yet cannibalism was one of their most savage traits of character. This was a general, if not an universal custom among the Indians, when America became known to the whites. Whether it has yet entirely ceased is really to be doubted: some of those who have been long intimate with them, affirm that it has not; though it is far from being prevalent. The Indians are now said to be irritable; but when Europeans first settled among them, they were not more irascible than their new neighbors. In their anger however, they differ very much from the whites. They are not talkative and boisterous as these are, but silent, sullen and revengeful. If an injury be done them, they never forget, they never forgive it. Nothing can be more implacable than their resentment--no time can allay it--no change of circumstances unfix its purpose. Revenge is to them as exhilarating, as the cool draught from the fountain, to the parched and fevered lips of a dying man. When taking vengeance of an enemy, there is no cruelty which can be exercised, no species of torture, which their ingenuity can devise, too severe to be inflicted. To those who have excited a spirit of resentment in the bosom of an Indian, the tomahawk and scalping knife are instruments of mercy. Death by the faggot--by splinters of the most combustible wood, stuck in the flesh and fired--maiming and disemboweling, tortures on which the soul sickens but to reflect, are frequently practiced. To an enemy of their own color, they are perhaps more cruel and severe, than to the whites. In requiting upon him, every refinement of torture is put in requisition, to draw forth a sigh or a groan, or cause him to betray some symptom of human sensibility. This they never effect. An Indian neither shrinks from a knife, nor winces at the stake; on the contrary he seems to exult in his agony, and will mock his tormentors for the leniency and mildness of their torture.[2] [30] Drinking and gambling are vices, to which the Indians, as well as the whites, are much addicted. Such is their fondness for spirit of any kind that they are rarely known to be sober, when they have it in their power to be otherwise. Neither a sense of honor or of shame has been able to overcome their propensity for its use; and when drunk, the ties of race, of friendship and of kindred are too weak, to bind their ferocious tempers. In gambling they manifest the same anxiety, which we see displayed at the card table of the whites. The great difference seems to be, that we depend too frequently on sleight and dexterity; whereas while they are shaking their gourd neck of half whited plumbstones, they only use certain _tricks_ of conjuration, which in their simplicity they believe will ensure them success. To this method of attaining an object, they have frequent recourse. Superstition is the concomitant of ignorance. The most enlightened, are rarely altogether exempt from its influence--with the uninformed it is a master passion, swaying and directing the mind in all its operations. In their domestic economy, Indians are, in some respects, like the rude of all countries. They manifest but little respect for the female; imposing on her not only the duties of the hut, but also the more laborious operations of husbandry; and observing towards them the hauteur and distance of superior beings. There are few things, indeed, which mark with equal precision, the state of civilization existing in any community, as the rank assigned in it to females. In the rude and barbarous stages of society, they are invariably regarded as inferior beings, [31] instruments of sensual gratification, and unworthy the attention and respect of men. As mankind advance to refinement, females gradually attain an elevation of rank, and acquire an influence in society, which smoothes the asperities of life and produces the highest polish, of which human nature is susceptible. Among the Indians there is, however rude they may be in other respects, a great respect always paid to female chastity. Instances in which it has been violated by them, if to be found at all, are extremely few. However much the passion of revenge may stimulate to acts of cruelty, the propensities of nature never lead them to infringe the virtue of women in their power. The general character of the Indians, was more estimable, when they first became known to Europeans, than it is at present. This has been ascribed to the introduction of ardent spirits among them--other causes however, have conspired to produce the result. The cupidity of those who were engaged in commerce with the natives, too frequently prompted them to take every advantage, for self aggrandizement, which they could obtain over the Indians. In the lucrative traffic carried on with them, the influence of honesty was not predominant--the real value of the commodity procured, was never allowed; while upon every article given in exchange, extortion alone affixed the price. These examples could not fail to have a deteriorating effect upon their untutored minds; and we find them accordingly losing their former regard for truth, honesty and fidelity; and becoming instead deceitful, dishonest and treacherous. Many of their ancient virtues however, are still practised by them. The rights of hospitality are accorded to those who go among them, with a liberality and sincerity which would reflect credit on civilized man. And although it has been justly said that they rarely forgive an enemy, yet is it equally true that they never forsake their friends; to them they are always kind, generous and beneficent. After the ceremony of introduction is over,[3] a captive enemy, [32] who is adopted by them, is also treated with the utmost humanity and attention. An Indian cheerfully divides his last morsel with an adopted son or brother; and will readily risk life in his defence. Such indeed, is the kindness which captives thus situated invariably receive, that they frequently regret the hour of their redemption, and refuse to leave their red brethren, to return and mingle with the whites. As members of a community, they are at all times willing to devote their every faculty, for the good of the whole. The honor and welfare of their respective tribes, are primary considerations with them. To promote these, they cheerfully encounter every privation, endure every hardship, and face every danger. Their patriotism is of the most pure and disinterested character; and of those who have made us feel so sensibly, the horrors of savage warfare, many were actuated by motives which would reflect honor on the citizens of any country. The unfortunate Tecumseh was a remarkable example of the most ardent and patriotic devotion to his country. Possessed of an acute and discerning mind, he witnessed the extending influence of the whites, with painful solicitude. Listening with melancholy rapture, to the traditionary accounts of the former greatness of his nation, and viewing in anticipation the exile or extinction of his race, his noble soul became fired with the hope that he might retrieve the fallen fortune of his country, and restore it to its pristine dignity and grandeur. His attachment to his tribe impelled him to exertion and every nerve was strained in its cause. Determined if possible to achieve the independence of his nation, and to rid her of those whom he considered her oppressors, he formed the scheme of uniting in hostility against the United States, all the tribes dwelling east of the Mississippi river. In the prosecution of this purpose, he travelled from Mackinaw to Georgia,[4] and with wonderful adroitness practised on the different feelings of his red brethren. Assuming at times the character of a prophet, he wrought powerfully on their credulity and superstition.--Again, depending on the force of oratory, the witchery of his eloquence drew many [33] to his standard. But all was in vain--His plans were entirely frustrated. He had brought none of his auxiliaries into the field; and was totally unprepared for hostilities, when his brother, the celebrated Shawanese prophet, by a premature attack on the army under Gen. Harrison, at an inauspicious moment, precipitated him into a war with the United States. Foiled by this means, Tecumseh joined the standard of Great Britain in the war of 1812; and as a Brigadier General in her army, lost his life, bravely supporting the cause which he had espoused. He deserved a better fate; and but for prejudice which is so apt to dim the eye and distort the object, Tecumseh would, most probably, be deemed a martyr for his country, and associated in the mind with the heroes of Marathon and Thermopylæ. To contemplate the Indian character, in a religious point of view, is less gratifying than to consider it in regard to the lesser morals. At the period of the settlement of Western Virginia, excepting the Moravians, and a few others who had been induced by the zeal and exertions of Roman catholic missionaries to wear the cross, the Indians north west of the Ohio river, were truly heathens. They believed indeed in a First Cause, and worshiped the Good Spirit; but they were ignorant of the great truths of Christianity, and their devotions were but superstitious acts of blind reverence. In this situation they remain generally at the present day, notwithstanding the many laudable endeavors which have been made to christianize them. Perhaps there was never a tribe in America, but believed in the existence of a Deity; yet were their ideas of the nature and attributes of God, not only obscure, but preposterous and absurd. They believe also in the existence of many inferior deities, whom they suppose to be employed as assistants in managing the affairs of the world, and in inspecting the actions of men. Eagles and Owls are thought by some to have been placed here as observers of the actions of men; and accordingly, when an eagle is seen to soar about them by day, or an owl to perch near them at night, they immediately offer sacrifice, that a good report may be made of them to the Great Spirit. They are likewise believers in the immortality of the soul; and have such an idea of a future state of existence, as accords with their character and condition here. Strangers to [34] intellectual pleasures, they suppose that their happiness hereafter will consist of mere sensual gratifications; and that when they die, they will be translated to a delightful region, where the flowers never fade, nor the leaves fall from the trees; where the forests abound in game, and the lakes in fish, and where they expect to remain forever, enjoying all the pleasures which delighted them here.[5] In consequence of this belief, when an Indian dies, and is buried, they place in the grave with him, his bow and arrows and such weapons as they use in war, that he may be enabled to procure game and overcome an enemy. And it has been said, that they grieve more for the death of an infant unable to provide for itself in the world of spirits, than for one who had attained manhood and was capable of taking care of himself. An interesting instance of this is given by Major Carver, and furnishes at once, affecting evidence of their incongruous creed and of their parental tenderness. Maj. Carver says: "Whilst I remained with them, a couple whose tent was near to mine, lost a son about four years old. The parents were so inconsolable for its loss, and so much affected by its death, that they pursued the usual testimonies of grief with such uncommon vigor, as through the weight of sorrow and loss of blood, to occasion the death of the father. The mother, who had been hitherto absorbed in grief, no sooner beheld her husband expire, than she dried up her tears, and appeared cheerful and resigned. "As I knew not how to account for so extraordinary a transition, I took an opportunity to ask her the reason of it. She replied, that as the child was so young when it died, and unable to support itself in the country of spirits, both she and her husband had been apprehensive that its situation would be far from pleasant; but no sooner did she behold its father depart for the same place, and who not only loved the child with the tenderest affection, but was a good hunter and [35] able to provide plentifully for its support, than she ceased to mourn. She added that she saw no reason to continue her tears, as the child was now happy under the protection of a fond father; and that she had only one wish remaining to be gratified, and that was a wish to be herself with them."[6] In relation to the Indian antiquities so frequently met with in America, much doubt still exists. When and for what purpose many of those vast mounds of earth, so common in the western country, were heaped up, is matter of uncertainty. Mr. Jefferson has pronounced them to be repositories of the dead; and many of them certainly were designed for that purpose; perhaps all with which he had become acquainted previous to the writing of his notes of Virginia. Mr. Jefferson did not deem them worthy the name of monuments. Since the country has been better explored, many have been discovered justly entitled to that appellation, some of which seem to have been constructed for purposes other than inhumation.[7] These are frequently met with in the valley of the Mississippi, and are said to extend into Mexico. The most celebrated works of this class, are believed to be those at Circleville in Ohio, which have so frequently been described, and are justly considered memorials of the labor and perseverance of those by whom they were erected. There is a tradition among the Indians of the north, which if true would furnish a very rational solution to the question, "for what purpose were they constructed?" According to this tradition about "two thousand two hundred years, before Columbus discovered America, the northern nations appointed a prince, and immediately after, repaired to the south and visited the GOLDEN CITY, the capital of a vast empire. After a time the emperor of the south built many forts throughout his dominions, and extending them northwardly almost penetrated the lake Erie. This produced much excitement. The people of the north, afraid that they would be deprived of the country on the south side of the great lakes, determined to defend it against the infringement of any foreign people; long and bloody wars ensued which lasted about one hundred years. The people of the north, being more skillful in the use of bows and arrows, and capable of enduring hardships which proved fatal to those of the south, gained the conquest; and all the towns and forts, which had been erected by their enemy, were totally destroyed and left in a heap of ruins."[8] The most considerable of those tumuli or sepulchral mounds, which are found in Virginia, is that on the bottoms of Grave creek, near its entrance into the Ohio, about twelve miles below Wheeling, and is the only large one in this section of the country. Its diameter at the base, is said to be one hundred yards, its perpendicular height about eighty feet, and the diameter at its summit, forty-five feet. Trees, of all sizes and of various kinds, are growing on its sides; and fallen [36] and decayed timber, is interspersed among them; a single white oak rises out of a concavity in the centre of its summit.[9] Near to Cahokia there is a group (of about two hundred) of these mounds, of various dimensions.[10] The largest of these is said to have a base of eight hundred yards circumference, and an altitude of ninety feet. These and the one mentioned as being on Grave creek and many smaller ones in various parts of the country, were no doubt places of inhumation.[11]--Many have been opened, and found to contain human bones promiscuously thrown together. Mr. Jefferson supposed the one examined by him, (the diameter of whose base was only forty feet and height twelve) to contain the bones of perhaps a thousand human beings, of each sex and of every age. Others have been examined, in which were the skeletons of men of much greater stature, than that of any of the Indians in America, at the time of its discovery, or of those with whom we have since become acquainted. It is a well known fact, that since the whites became settled in the country, the Indians were in the habit of collecting the bones of their dead and of depositing them in one general cemetery; but the earth and stone used by them, were taken from the adjacent land. This was not invariably the case, with those ancient heaps of earth found in the west. In regard to many of them, this singular circumstance is said to be a fact, that the earth, of which they are composed, is of an altogether different nature, from that around them; and must, in some instances, have been carried a considerable distance. The tellurine structures at Circleville are of this sort; and the material of which they were constructed, is said to be distinctly different, from the earth any where near to them. The immensity of the size of these and many others, would induce the supposition that they could not have been raised by a race of people as indolent as the Indians have been, ever since a knowledge was had of them. Works, the construction of which would now require the concentrated exertions of at least one thousand men, aided by the mechanical inventions of later days, for several months, could hardly have been erected by persons, so subject to lassitude under labor as they are: unless indeed their population was infinitely greater than we now conceive it to have been. Admitting however, this density of population to have existed, other circumstances would corroborate the belief, that the country once had other inhabitants, than the progenitors of those who have been called, the aborigines of America: one of these circumstances is the uncommon size of many of the skeletons found in the smaller mounds upon the hills. If the fact be, as it is represented, that the larger skeletons are invariably found on elevated situations, remote from the larger water courses, it would tend to show that there was a diversity of habit, and admitting their cotemporaneous existence, perhaps no alliance or intercourse between those, whose remains they are, and the persons by whom those large mounds and fortifications were erected, [37] these being found only on plains in the contiguity of large streams or inland lakes; and containing only the bones of individuals of ordinary stature. Another and stronger evidence that America was occupied by others than the ancestors of the present Indians, is to be found in those antiquities, which demonstrate that iron was once known here, and converted to some of the uses ordinarily made of it. In graduating a street in Cincinnati, there was found, twenty-five feet below the surface of the earth, a small horse shoe, in which were several nails. It is said to present the appearance of such erosion as would result from the oxidation of some centuries. It was smaller than would be required for a common mule.[12] Many are the instances of pieces of timber found, various depths below the surface of the earth, with the marks of the axe palpably visible on them.[13] A sword too, said to have been enclosed in the wood of the roots of a tree not less than five hundred years old, is preserved in Ohio as a curiosity. Many other instances might, if necessary, be adduced to prove, that implements of iron were in use in this country, prior to its occupation by the whites. Now if a people once have the use of that metal, it is far from probable that it will ever after be lost to them: the essential purposes to which it may be applied, would preserve it to them. The Indians however, 'till taught by the Europeans, had no knowledge of it. Many of the antiquities discovered in other parts of the country, show that the arts once flourished to an extent beyond what they have ever been known to do among the Indians. The body found in the saltpetre cave of Kentucky, was wrapped in blankets made of linen and interwoven with feathers of the wild turkey, tastefully arranged. It was much smaller than persons of equal age at the present day, and had yellowish hair. In Tennessee many walls of faced stone, and even walled wells have been found in so many places, at such depths and under such circumstances, as to preclude the idea of their having been made by the whites since the discovery by Columbus. [38] In this state too, have been found burying grounds, in which the skeletons seem all to have been those of pigmies: the graves, in which the bodies had been deposited, were seldom three feet in length; yet the teeth in the skulls prove that they were the bodies of persons of mature age. Upon the whole there cannot be much doubt, that America was once inhabited by a people, not otherwise allied to the Indians of the present day, than that they were descendants of him, from whom has sprung the whole human family. ----- [1] It is said that the nerves of an Indian do not shrink as much, nor shew the same tendency to spasm, under the knife of the surgeon, as the nerves of a white man in a similar situation. [2] A Narraganset, made prisoner by Maj. Talcott in 1679, begged to be delivered to the Mohicans that he might be put to death in their own way. The New Englanders complying with his request, preparations were made for the tragical event. "The Mohicans, formed a circle, and admitting within it as many of the whites as chose to witness their proceedings, placed the prisoner in the centre. One of the Mohicans, who had lost a son in the late engagement, with a knife cut off the PRISONER'S EARS! then his NOSE! and then the FINGERS off each hand! after the lapse of a few moments, his EYES WERE DUG OUT, AND THEIR SOCKETS FILLED WITH HOT EMBERS!! All this time the prisoner instead of bewailing his fate, seemed to surpass his tormentors in expressions of joy. At length when exhausted with loss of blood and unable to stand, his executioner closed the tragic scene by beating out his brains with a tomahawk."--_Indian Wars, by Trumbull._ [3] Indians consider the running of the gauntlet, as but the ceremony of an introduction; and say that it is "like the shake hands and howde do, of the whites." [4] While performing this tour, Tecumseh carried a RED STICK, the acceptance of which was considered a joining of his party--Hence those Indians who were hostile to the United States, were denominated RED STICKS. [5] Pope has very finely expressed the leading articles of religion among the Indians in the following lines. Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud science never taught to stray Far as the Solar Walk or Milky Way; Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n, Behind the cloud-topt hill an humbler heav'n; Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd, Some happier island in the wat'ry waste; Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. To BE, contents his natural desire, He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire: But thinks admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company. [6] The author's summary of Indian character is for the most part excellent, and in accord with more recent conclusions. See Chap. I. of _The Colonies_, in "Epochs of American History" (Longmans, 1892.)--R. G. T. [7] Gen. George Rogers Clark, an early and careful observer, scouted the idea advanced by Noah Webster, in Carey's _American Museum_, in 1789, that these extraordinary Western military defenses were the work of De Soto. "As for his being the author of these fortifications," says Clark, "it is quite out of the question; they are more numerous than he had men, and many of them would have required fifty thousand men for their occupancy."--L. C. D. [8] Indian traditions, by Cusick. [9] This description, written by Withers in 1831, still holds good in the main. The mound, which proves to have been a burial tumulus, is now surrounded by the little city of Moundsville, W. Va., and is kept inclosed by the owner as one of the sights of the place. The writer visited it in May, 1894.--R. G. T. [10] George Rogers Clark, who was repeatedly at Cahokia during the period 1778-80, says: "We easily and evidently traced the town for upwards of five miles in the beautiful plain below the present town of Kahokia. There could be no deception here, because the remains of ancient works were thick--the whole were mounds, etc." Clark's MS. statement; Schoolcraft's _Indian Tribes_, IV., p. 135.--L. C. D. [11] This mound was used, at least in part, for burial purposes. Nearly fifty years ago, when the writer of this note explored this remarkable artificial elevation of eighty feet in height, he found in the excavation numerous beads of shell or bone, or both, ornaments of the dead buried there.--L. C. D. [12] This proves nothing. A silver medal of John Quincy Adams's administration, evidently presented to some Indian chief was, in 1894, found in Wisconsin, twelve feet below the surface. Iron and silver tools and ornaments, evidently made in Paris for the Indian trade, have been found in Ohio and Wisconsin mounds. It is now sufficiently demonstrated that the mound-builders were the ancestors of the aborigines found in the country by the first white settlers, and that the mounds are of various ages, ranging perhaps from three hundred to a thousand years. Various _Reports_ of the Bureau of Ethnology go into the matter with convincing detail.--R. G. T. [13] Jacob Wolf, in digging a well on Hacker's creek, found a piece of timber which had been evidently cut off at one end, twelve or thirteen feet in the ground--marks of the axe were plainly distinguishable on it. [39] CHRONICLES OF BORDER WARFARE. CHAPTER I At the time when Virginia became known to the whites, it was occupied by many different tribes of Indians, attached to different nations. That portion of the state lying north west of the Blue ridge, and extending to the lakes was possessed by the Massawomees. These were a powerful confederacy, rarely in amity with the tribes east of that range of mountains; but generally harrassing them by frequent hostile irruptions into their country. Of their subsequent history, nothing is now known. They are supposed by some to have been the ancestors of the Six Nations. It is however more probable, that they afterwards became incorporated with these, as did several other tribes of Indians, who used a language so essentially different from that spoken by the Six Nations, as to render the intervention of interpreters necessary between them. As settlements were extended from the sea shore, the Massawomees gradually retired; and when the white population reached the Blue ridge of mountains, the valley between it and the Alleghany, was entirely uninhabited. This delightful region of country was then only used as a hunting ground, and as a highway for belligerant parties of different nations, in their military expeditions against each other. In consequence of the almost continued hostilities between the northern and southern Indians, these expeditions were very frequent, and tended somewhat to retard the settlement of the valley, and render a residence in it, for some time, insecure and unpleasant. Between the Alleghany mountains and the Ohio river, within the present limits of Virginia, there were some villages interspersed, inhabited by small numbers of Indians; the most [40] of whom retired north west of that river, as the tide of emigration rolled towards it. Some however remained in the interior, after settlements began to be made in their vicinity. North of the present boundary of Virginia, and particularly near the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, and in the circumjacent country the Indians were more numerous, and their villages larger. In 1753, when Gen. Washington visited the French posts on the Ohio, the spot which had been selected by the Ohio company, as the site for a fort, was occupied by Shingess, king of the Delawares; and other parts of the proximate country, were inhabited by Mingoes and Shawanees.[1] When the French were forced to abandon the position, which they had taken at the forks of Ohio, the greater part of the adjacent tribes removed farther west. So that when improvements were begun to be made in the wilderness of North Western Virginia, it had been almost entirely deserted by the natives; and excepting a few straggling hunters and warriors, who occasionally traversed it in quest of game, or of human beings on whom to wreak their vengeance, almost its only tenants were beasts of the forest. In the country north west of the Ohio river, there were many warlike tribes of Indians, strongly imbued with feelings of rancorous hostility to the neighboring colonists. Among the more powerful of these were the Delawares, who resided on branches of Beaver Creek, Cayahoga, and Muskingum; and whose towns contained about six hundred inhabitants--The Shawanees, who to the number of 300, dwelt upon the Scioto and Muskingum--The Chippewas, near Mackinaw, of 400--Cohunnewagos, of 300, and who inhabited near Sandusky--The Wyandots, whose villages were near fort St. Joseph, and embraced a population of 250--The Twightees, near fort Miami, with a like population--The Miamis, on the river Miami, near the fort of that name, reckoning 300 persons--The Pottowatomies of 300, and the Ottawas of 550, in their villages near to forts St. Joseph and Detroit,[2] and of 250, in the towns near Mackinaw. Besides these, there were in the same district of country, others of less note, yet equally inimical to the whites; and who contributed much to the annoyance [41] of the first settlers on the Ohio, and its tributaries. There were likewise the Munsies, dwelling on the north branch of the Susquehanna, and on the Allegheny river--The Senecas, on the waters of the Susquehanna, Ontario and the heads of the Allegheny--The Cayugas, on Cayuga lake, and the Sapoonies, who resided in the neighborhood of the Munsies. In these tribes was an aggregate population of 1,380 souls, and they likewise aided in committing depredations on our frontiers. Those who ventured to explore and occupy the south western portion of Virginia, found also in its vicinity some powerful and warlike tribes. The Cherokees possessed what was then, the western part of North Carolina and numbered 2,500--The Chicasaws, residing south of the Cherokees, had a population of 750--and the Catawbas, on the Catawba river in South Carolina with only 150 persons. These latter were remarkably adventurous, enterprising and courageous; and notwithstanding their remote situation, and the paucity of their numbers, frequently traversed the valley of Virginia, and even penetrated the country on the north branch of the Susquehanna, and between the Ohio river and lake Erie, to wage war upon the Delawares. Their success in many of these expeditions, is preserved in the traditions of the Delawares, who continue to regard them as having used in these wars, a degree of cunning and stratagem, to which other tribes have never approached.[3] Such were the numbers and positions of many of the proximate Indians about the time settlements were begun to be [42] made on the Monongahela river and its branches. Anterior to this period, adventurers had explored, and established themselves, in various parts of the valley between the Blue ridge and the Alleghany mountain. That section of it, which was included within the limits of the Northern-Neck, was the first to become occupied by the whites. The facilities afforded by the proprietor for obtaining land within his grant, the greater salubrity of climate and fertility of soil near to the Blue ridge, caused the tide of emigration to flow rapidly towards the upper country, and roll even to the base of that mountain. Settlements were soon after extended westwardly across the Shenandoah, and early in the eighteenth century Winchester became a trading post, with sparse improvements in its vicinity. About this time Thomas Morlin, a pedlar trading from Williamsburg to Winchester, resolved, in conjunction with John Salling a weaver also from Williamsburg, to prosecute an examination of the country, beyond the limits which had hitherto bounded the exploratory excursions of other adventurers. With this view, they travelled up the valley of the Shenandoah, and crossing James river and some of its branches, proceeded as far as the Roanoke, when Salling was taken captive by a party of Cherokees. Morlin was fortunate enough to elude their pursuit, and effect a safe retreat to Winchester. Upon the return of the party by whom Salling had been captivated, he was taken to Tennessee where he remained for some years. When on a hunting expedition to the Salt licks of Kentucky, in company with some Cherokees to kill buffalo, they were surprised by a party of Illinois Indians, with whom the Cherokees were then at war, and by them Salling was again taken prisoner. He was then carried to Kaskaskia, when he was adopted into the family of a squaw whose son had been killed in the wars. While with this nation of Indians, Salling frequently accompanied parties of them on hunting excursions, a considerable distance to the south. On several occasions he went with them below the mouth of the Arkansas, and once to the Gulph of Mexico. In one of those expeditions they met with a party of Spaniards, exploring the country and who needed an interpreter. For this purpose they purchased Salling of his Indian mother for three strands of beads and a Calumet. Salling attended them to the post at Crevecoeur; from which [43] place he was conveyed to fort Frontignac: here he was redeemed by the Governor of Canada, who sent him to the Dutch settlement in New York, whence he made his way home after an absence of six years.[4] The emigration from Great Britain to Virginia was then very great, and at the period of Salling's return to Williamsburg, there were then many adventurers, who had but recently arrived from Scotland and the north of England. Among these adventurers were John Lewis[5] and John Mackey. Salling's return excited a considerable and very general interest, and drew around him many, particularly of those who had but lately come to America, and to whom the narrative of one, who had been nearly six years a captive among the Indians, was highly gratifying. Lewis and Mackey listened attentively to the description given of the country in the valley, and pleased with its beauty and fertility as represented by Salling, they prevailed on him to accompany them on a visit to examine it more minutely, and if found correspondent with his description to select in it situations for their future residence. Lewis made choice of, and improved, a spot a few miles below Staunton, on a creek which bears his name--Mackey on the middle branch of the Shenandoah near Buffalo-gap; and Salling in the forks of James river, below the Natural Bridge, where some of his descendants still reside. Thus was effected the first white settlement ever made on the James river, west of the Blue ridge.[6] In the year 1736, Lewis, being in Williamsburg, met with Benjamin Burden (who had then just come to the country as agent of Lord Fairfax, proprietor of the Northern Neck,) and on whom he prevailed to accompany him home. Burden remained at Lewis's the greater part of the summer, and on his return to Williamsburg, took with him a buffalo calf, which while hunting with Samuel[7] and Andrew Lewis (elder sons of John) they had caught and afterwards tamed. He presented this calf to Gov. Gooch, who thereupon entered on his journal, [44] an order, authorizing Burden to locate conditionally, any quantity of land not exceeding 500,000 acres on any of the waters of the Shenandoah, or of James river west of the Blue ridge. The conditions of this grant were, that he should interfere with no previous grants--that he should settle 100 families, in ten years, within its limits; and should have 1000 acres adjoining each cabin which he should cause to be built, with liberty to purchase any greater quantity adjoining, at the rate of fifty pounds per thousand acres. In order to effect a compliance with one of these conditions, Burden visited Great Britain in 1737; and on his return to Virginia brought with him upwards of one hundred families of adventurers, to settle on his grant.[8] Amongst these adventurers were, John Patton, son-in-law to Benjamin Burden, who settled on Catawba, above Pattonsburg[9]--Ephraim McDowell, who settled at Phoebe's falls--John, the son of Ephraim,[10] who settled at Fairfield, where Col. James McDowell now lives--Hugh Telford, who settled at the Falling spring, in the forks of James river--Paul Whitley, who settled on Cedar creek, where the Red Mill now is--Archibald Alexander, who settled on the North river, opposite Lexington--Andrew Moore, who settled adjoining Alexander--Sampson Archer, who settled at Gilmore's spring, east of the Bridge tavern, and Capt. John Matthews, who married Betsy Archer, (the daughter of Sampson) settled where Major Matthews lives, below the Natural bridge. Among others who came to Virginia at this time, was an Irish girl named Polly Mulhollin. On her arrival she was hired to James Bell to pay her passage; and with whom she remained during the period her servitude was to continue. At its expiration she attired herself in the habit of a man; and with hunting shirt and mocassons, went into Burden's grant, for the purpose of making improvements and acquiring a title to land. Here she erected thirty cabins, by virtue of which she held one hundred acres adjoining each. When Benjamin Burden the younger, came on to make deeds to those who held cabin rights, he was astonished to see so many in the name of Mulhollin. Investigation led to a discovery of the mystery, to the great mirth of the other claimants. She resumed her christian name and feminine dress, and many of [45] her respectable descendants still reside within the limits of Burden's grant.[11] When in 1752 Robert Dinwiddie came over as governor of Virginia, he was accompanied by many adventurers; among whom was John Stuart,[12] an intimate friend of Dinwiddie, who had married the widow of John Paul (son of Hugh, bishop of Nottingham.) John Paul, a partizan of the house of Stuart, had perished in the siege of Dalrymple castle in 1745, leaving three children--John, who became a Roman catholic priest and died on the eastern shore of Maryland--Audley, who was for ten years an officer in the British colonial forces,--and Polly, who married Geo. Matthews, afterwards governor of Georgia. Mrs. Paul (formerly Jane Lynn, of the Lynns of Loch-Lynn, a sister to the wife of John Lewis) had issue, by Stuart, John, since known as Col. Stuart of Greenbrier, and Betsy, who became the wife of Col. Richard Woods of Albemarle. The greater part of those, who thus ventured "on the untried being" of a wilderness life, were Scottish presbyterian dissenters; a class of religionists, of all others perhaps, the most remarkable for rigid morality. They brought with them, their religious principles, and sectional prepossessions; and acting upon those principles acquired for their infant colony a moral and devotional character rarely possessed by similar establishments. While these sectional prepossessions, imbibed by their descendants, gave to their religious persuasions, an ascendency in that section of country, which it still retains. They were also men of industry and enterprise. Hunting, which too frequently occupies the time, of those who make the forest their dwelling place, and abstracts the attention from more important pursuits, was to them a recreation--not the business of life. To improve their condition, by converting the woods into fertile plains, and the wilderness into productive meadows, was their chief object. In the attainment of this, they were eminently successful. Their individual circumstances became prosperous, and the country flourishing. The habits and manners of the primeval inhabitants of any country, generally give to it a distinctive character, which marks it through after ages. Notwithstanding the influx of strangers, bringing with them prejudices and prepossessions, at variance with those of the community in which they come; [46] yet such is the influence of example, and such the facility with which the mind imbibes the feelings and sentiments of those with whom it associates, that former habits are gradually lost and those which prevail in society, imperceptibly adopted by its new members. In like manner, the moral and religious habits of those who accompanied Burden to Virginia, were impressed on the country which they settled, and entailed on it that high character for industry, morality and piety, which it still possesses, in an eminent degree. At the time of the establishment of this settlement, all that part of Virginia lying west of the Blue ridge mountains, was included in the county of Orange. At the fall session, of the colonial legislature, in 1738, the counties of Frederick and Augusta were formed out of Orange--The country included within the boundaries of the Potomac river, on the north, the Blue ridge, on the east, and a line, to be run from the head spring of Hedgman, to the head spring of Potomac, on the south and west, to be the county of Frederick; the remainder of the state west of the Blue ridge, to the utmost limits of Virginia to constitute Augusta. Within its limits were included, not only a considerable portion of Virginia as she now is, but an extent of territory out of which has been already carved four states, possessing great natural advantages, and the extreme fertility of whose soil, will enable them to support perhaps a more dense population, than any other portion of North America of equal dimensions. As the settlements were extended, subdivisions were made, 'till what was once Augusta county south east of the Ohio river, has been chequered on the map of Virginia, into thirty-three counties with an aggregate population of 289,362.[13] [48] About the year 1749 there was in the county of Frederick, a man subject to lunacy, and who, when laboring under the influence of this disease, would ramble a considerable distance into the neighboring wilderness. In one of these wanderings he came on some of the waters of Greenbrier river. Surprised to see them flowing in a westwardly direction, on his return to Winchester he made known the fact, and that the country abounded very much with different kinds of Game. In consequence of this information two men, recently from New England, visited the country and took up their residence on the Greenbrier river. Having erected a cabin and being engaged in making some other improvements, an altercation arose, which caused Stephen Suel,[14] one of them, to forsake the cabin and abide for some time in a hollow tree not far from the improvement, which was still occupied by his old companion. They were thus situated in 1751, when John Lewis, of Augusta and his son Andrew were exploring the country; to whom Suel made known the cause of their living apart, and the great pleasure which he experienced now in their morning salutations, when issuing from their respective habitations; whereas when they slept under the same roof, none of those kindly greetings passed between them. Suel however did not long remain in the vicinity of Martin, the other of the two adventurers; he moved forty miles west of his first improvement, and soon after fell a prey to Indian ferocity. Martin is said to have returned to the settlements. There was no other attempt made by the whites, to improve the Greenbrier country for several years. Lewis and his son thoroughly examined it; and when permission was given to the Greenbrier company (of which John Lewis was a member) to locate 100,000 acres, on the waters of this river, they became agents to make the surveys and locations. The war between France and England in 1754 checked their proceedings; and when they, on the restoration of peace, would have resumed them, they were interdicted by a royal proclamation, issued in 1761, commanding all those who had made settlements on the western waters to remove from them; and those who were engaged in making surveys to desist. Sound policy requiring, that a good understanding should be maintained with the Indians (who claimed the country) to prevent a further cooperation on their part with France.[15] Previous to the issuing of this proclamation, some families had moved to Greenbrier and made two settlements--the one on Muddy creek, the other in the Big-Levels. These, disregarding the command of his royal majesty and rather regardless of their own safety, remained until they were destroyed by the Indians, in 1763.[16] From this time 'till 1769 Greenbrier was altogether uninhabited. Capt. John Stuart and a few other young men, then began to settle and improve the country; and although attempts were subsequently made by the Indians to exterminate them, yet they ever after continued in possession of it. [49] In the year 1756 settlements were also made on New river and on Holstein.[17] Among the daring adventurers who effected them, were Evan Shelby, William Campbell, William Preston and Daniel Boone, all of whom became distinguished characters in subsequent history. Thomas Walden,[18] who was afterwards killed on Clinch river and from whom the mountain dividing Clinch and Powel rivers derived its name, was likewise one of them. The lands taken up by them, were held as "_corn rights_" each acquiring a title to an hundred acres of the adjoining land, for every acre planted in corn. Nearly cotemporaneous with these establishments, was that at Galliopolis, on the north western bank of the Ohio, and below Point Pleasant, at the mouth of the Great Kenhawa. This was made by a party of French Jesuits, by whom the Indians were incited to make incursions, and commit the most enormous barbarities on the then frontiers.[19] This place and the mouth of Great Sandy were the chief points of rendezvous for the Ohio Indians. From the former of these places they would ascend the Kenhawa and Greenbrier rivers, and from thence crossing the mountains enter into Augusta; or after having ascended the Kenhawa, go up the New river, from which they would pass over to the James and Roanoke. From the mouth of Great Sandy they would ascend that river, and by the way of Bluestone fall over on the Roanoke and New river. From those two points, expeditions were frequently made by the Indians, which brought desolation and death into the infant settlements of the south west, and retarded their growth very much. In the spring of 1757 nearly the whole Roanoke settlement was destroyed by a party of Shawanees, who had thus made their way to it. That portion of the valley of Virginia in which establishments were thus begun to be made, was at that time one continued forest; overspreading a limestone soil of great fertility; and intersected by rivers affording extensive bottoms of the most productive alluvial land. Indeed few rivers of equal size, are bordered with as wide and fertile levels of this formation of earth, as those which water that section of country: the Roanoke particularly affords large bodies of it, capable of producing in great abundance hemp, tobacco and the different kinds of grain usually grown. In the country generally, every species of vegetable, to which the climate was congenial, grew with great luxuriancy; while the calcareous nature of the soil, adapted it finely to the production of that kind of grain, to which European emigrants were mostly used. The natural advantages of the country were highly improved by the persevering industry of its inhabitants. Its forests, felled by untiring labor, were quickly reduced to profitable cultivation, and the weeds which spontaneously sprang from the earth, were soon succeeded by the various grasses calculated to furnish the most nutritious food, for the lowing herds with which their farmers were early stocked; these yielded a present profit, and laid the sure foundation [50] of future wealth. Some of the most extensive and successful graziers of Virginia, now inhabit that country; and reap the rich reward of their management and industry, in the improved and more contiguous market of Richmond. In the infancy of these establishments, their only market was at Williamsburg. Thither the early settlers _packed_ their butter and poultry, and received in exchange salt, iron, and some of the luxuries of life; their beef and other stock was taken to the same place. In the process of time, as the country east of the Blue ridge became more improved, other markets were opened to them; and the facilities of communication were gradually increased. Their successors have already derived great advantage from those improvements; and the present generation will not only witness their farther extension, but most probably see the country first tenanted by Lewis and his cotemporaries, a great thoroughfare for the produce of several of the western states--a link of communication between the Chesapeak bay and the Gulph of Mexico. ----- [1] King Shingiss was a famous village chief, "a terror to the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania." A brother, and later the successor of King Beaver, his camp was at the mouth of Beaver Creek, which empties into the Ohio twenty-six miles below "the forks" (site of Pittsburg). Christopher Gist visited him November 24, 1750. In 1759, when Fort Pitt was built, Shingiss moved up Beaver Creek to Kuskuskis on the Mahoning, and finally to the Muskingum. The land about the mouth of Beaver Creek is called "Shingis Old Town" in the Ft. Stanwix treaty, 1784.--R. G. T. [2] The numbers here set down and those given below, are as they were ascertained by Capt. Hutchins, who visited the most of the tribes for purpose of learning their population in 1768. [3] A tradition among the Delawares says that formerly the Catawbas came near one of their hunting camps and remaining in ambush at night sent two or three of their party round the camp with Buffalo hoofs fixed to their feet, to make artificial buffalo tracks and thus decoy the hunters from their camp. In the morning the Delawares, discovering the tracks and supposing them to have been made by buffaloes, followed them some time; when suddenly the Catawbas rose from their covert, fired at and killed several of the hunters; the others fled, collected a party and went in pursuit of the Catawbas. These had brought with them, rattle snake poison corked up in a piece of cane stalk; into which they dipped small reed splinters, which they set up along their path. The Delawares in pursuit were much injured by those poisoned splinters, and commenced retreating to their camp. The Catawbas discovering this, turned upon their pursuers, and killed and scalped many of them. [4] John Peter Salling, sometimes spoken of as Peter Adam Salling, was, if not of German birth, of German descent. With his brother Henry, he early settled in the forks of James River and North Branch, in the southern part of what is now Rockbridge county, Va. The details of his early explorations in the West are involved in doubt, but that he had such adventures there seems no good reason to doubt. It will be noticed that Withers omits the date; some writers have placed it at about 1724, but the probable time was 1738-40. His descendants told Draper (about 1850) that the family tradition was, that Salling and a son were employed by the governor of Virginia to explore the country to the southwest; and when near the present Salem, Roanoke county, they were captured by Cherokees and carried to the Ohio River--one account says by way of the Tennessee, another by the New (Great Kanawha), their boat being made of buffalo skins. They appear by this tradition to have escaped, and in descending the Mississippi to have fallen into the hands of Spaniards. The son died, and the father was sent in a vessel bound for Spain, there to be tried as a British spy; but the Spaniard being captured by an English vessel, our hero was landed at Charleston, whence he reached his frontier home after an absence of over three years. This story differs in many details from the one in Kercheval's _History of the Valley of Virginia_, and also that in Withers's text, above. Salling kept a journal which was extant in 1745, for in the Wisconsin Historical Society's library is a diary kept by Capt. John Buchanan, who notes that in that year he spent two days in copying a part of it. In Du Pratz' _History of Louisiana_ (London, 1774), Salling and one John Howard are said to have made this trip in 1742, and the authority is said to be a _Report of the Government of Virginia_. But Salling must have returned home by 1742, for his name is in the roll of Capt. John McDowell's militia company, and he was probably in the fight with the Indians (Dec. 14) that year, in which McDowell lost his life. In 1746, we found Salling himself a militia captain in the Rockbridge district of Augusta county. In September, 1747, he was cited to appear at court martial for not turning out to muster--and this is the last record we have of him. Descendants, named Sallee, now live in Kentucky and Tennessee.--R. G. T. [5] John Lewis, the father of Gen. Andrew Lewis, was probably of Welsh descent, and born in 1678 in County Donegal, Ireland. About 1716 he married Margaret Lynn, of the famous Lynns of Loch Lynn, Scotland. In a dispute over his tenancy (1729), he killed a man of high station,--some say, his Catholic landlord,--and fled to Portugal, whence in 1731, after strange adventures, he emigrated to America, and was joined there by his family. Fearing to live near a sea-port he established himself on the frontier, in the Valley of Virginia, two miles east of the present site of Staunton. His house was of stone, built for defense, and in 1754 it successfully stood an Indian siege. Lewis was colonel of the Augusta county militia as early as 1743, presiding justice in 1745, and high sheriff in 1748. In 1751, then 73 years of age, he assisted his son Andrew, then agent of the Loyal Company, to explore and survey the latter's grant on Greenbrier River. It was because the old man became entangled in the thicket of greenbriers, that he gave this name to the stream. He died at his old fort homestead, February 1, 1762, aged 84 years. Some accounts state that he was a Presbyterian; he was, however, an Episcopalian.--R. G. T. [6] Lewis soon afterwards obtained leave from Governor Gooch to locate 100,000 acres of land in separate parcels on the waters of the Shenandoah and James rivers; and when he would go out in search of good land to locate, Mackey would accompany him to hunt buffalo. The former amassed a large estate, while the latter lived and died in comparative poverty. [7] As Col. John Lewis had no son Samuel, probably Thomas Lewis, the elder brother of Andrew, though near-sighted, may have engaged in buffalo hunting.--L. C. D. [8] Of the origin of Benjamin Borden, Sr. (the name was mispronounced Burden, on the frontier), little is known. He was probably from New Jersey, and early became a fur trader on the Virginia frontier; later he was in Lord Fairfax's employ as a land agent. As such, he visited Governor Gooch and obtained from him several valuable tracts--one of them (October 3, 1734), Borden Manor, on Sprout run, Frederick county; another, 100,000 acres at the head of the James, on condition of locating thereon a hundred families. At the end of two years he had erected 92 cabins with as many families, and a patent was granted him November 8, 1739, for 92,100 acres. He died in 1742, before further development of his enterprise. His son Benjamin succeeded to his vast estate, but died of small-pox in 1753. In 1744, he married the widow of John McDowell, mentioned on the next page, who had been killed in the Indian fight of December 14, 1742.--R. G. T. [9] The daughter of John Patton subsequently became the wife of Col. W. Preston, and the mother of James Patton Preston, late a governor of Virginia. ------ _Comment by L. C. D._--This note of Mr. Withers, derived from Taylor's sketches (mentioned below), is erroneous both as to Patton and Preston. Col. Patton's first name was not John, but James, as both the records and his own autograph sufficiently attest. Neither did John Preston, nor his son Col. Wm. Preston, marry Col. Patton's daughter, but John Preston married his sister. Miss Elizabeth Patton, while crossing the Shannon in a boat, met the handsome John Preston, then a young ship carpenter, and an attachment grew out of their accidental meeting. But as Miss Patton belonged to the upper class of society, there was a wide gulf between their conditions, and a runaway match was the only way out of the difficulty. Gov. James Patton Preston was named after his grand-uncle. James Patton was born in County Londonderry, Ireland, in 1692. For many years he was a prosperous navigator, and crossed the Atlantic twenty-five times with "redemptioners" for Virginia; he was also an officer in the royal navy in the wars with the Netherlands. Having obtained a grant of 120,000 acres above the Blue Ridge, he himself settled in Virginia in 1735. A man of wealth, enterprise and influence, he was a justice, sheriff, Indian treaty commissioner, and finally county lieutenant of Augusta. In 1755, he was killed by Indians while conveying ammunition to the borderers. [10] Capt. John McDowell was of Scotch descent, and born in Ulster, Ireland, but in early manhood came to America, settling first in Pennsylvania, and then the Virginia Valley (autumn of 1737). He at once became one of Benjamin Borden's surveyors, and for five years made surveys on Borden's Manor. Becoming a captain in the Augusta militia, he was ordered to go out against a party of Northern Indians who, on the war-path against the Catawbas, had taken in the Virginia Valley on their way, and annoyed and plundered the white settlers. The savages were overtaken on the North Branch of James River, some fifteen miles from McDowell's place, and an engagement ensued (Dec. 14, 1742), in which McDowell and seven others lost their lives. The Indians escaped with small losses. This was the first battle between whites and Indians, in the Virginia Valley.--R. G. T. [11] This incident is well authenticated. See the deposition of Mrs. Mary Greenlee, preserved in the famous Borden land suit, among the court records of Augusta county, Va. Mrs. Greenlee was the sister of Capt. John McDowell, and among the very earliest settlers of that part of Augusta, now Rockbridge county. Mrs Greenlee's deposition is published in full in Peyton's _History of Augusta County, Va._ (Staunton, Va., 1882), pp. 69-74.--L. C. D. [12] The late Charles A. Stuart, of Greenbrier, son of Col. John Stuart, after the appearance of Hugh Paul Taylor's sketches over the signature of "Son of Cornstalk," published in the _Staunton Spectator_ of August 21, 1829, over the signature of "Son of Blue Jacket," a brief criticism, in the nature of some corrections regarding his own family, to this effect: That Mrs. Jane Paul was no relative of Mrs. Margaret Lewis, wife of Col. John Lewis; that her first husband, Mr. Paul--not John, but probably Hugh Paul--was apparently from the north of Ireland--their son Audley Paul was born before the migration of the family to Pennsylvania; Mr. Paul, Sr., it is said, became the pastor of the Presbyterian congregation of Chester, in that province; but as Chester was a Quaker settlement, it is more likely that he located in some Presbyterian community in that region, and there must have died. Mrs. Paul, for her second husband, married Col. David Stuart, also from Ireland, by whom she had John Stuart and two daughters. Mrs. Stuart's grandchild, Charles A. Stuart, resided many years in Augusta, representing that county in the State senate, subsequently removed back to Greenbrier county, where he died about 1850, at the age of about sixty-five years. He was a man of sterling qualities.--L. C. D. [13] The following table exhibits a list of the several counties west of the Blue ridge--the counties from which each was taken--when established--their area in square miles--population in 1830, and amount of taxation for the same year. Counties. From what When Area. Population. Taxation. taken. formed. Augusta, Orange, 1738 948 19,925 6,734 Alleghany, Bath, Botetourt and Monroe, 1822 521 2,816 526 Bath, Augusta, Botetourt and Greenbrier, 1791 795 4,068 865 [47] Brooke, Ohio, 1797 202 7,040 1,136 Berkeley, Frederick, 1772 308 10,528 3,356 Botetourt, Augusta, 1770 1057 16,354 3,809 Cabell, Kanawha, 1809 1033 5,884 629 Frederick, Orange, 1738 745 26,045 9,396 Greenbrier, Botet't & Montg'ry, 1778 1409 9,059 1,716 Giles, Montgomery, Monroe and Tazewell, 1806 935 5,300 541 Grayson, Wythe, 1793 927 7,675 537 Harrison, Monongalia, 1784 1095 14,713 1,669 Hampshire, Augusta & Fred'k, 1754 989 11,279 2,402 Hardy, Hampshire, 1786 1156 5,700 2,633 Jefferson, Berkeley, 1801 225 12,927 4,721 Kanawha, Greenb'r & M'tg'ry, 1789 2090 9,334 1,453 Lewis, Harrison, 1816 1754 6,241 630 Logan, Giles, Kanawha, Cabell & Tazewell, 1824 2930 3,680 245 Lee, Russell, 1793 512 9,461 789 Monongalia, District of W. A'g'ta, 1776 721 14,056 1,492 Monroe, Greenbrier, 1799 614 7,798 1,158 Morgan, Berkeley and Hampshire, 1820 271 2,702 546 Montgomery, Fincastle, 1777 1089 12,306 1,666 Mason, Kanawha, 1804 904 6,534 915 Nicholas, Kanawha, Greenbrier and Randolph, 1818 1431 3,338 373 Ohio, District of W. A'g'ta, 1776 375 15,590 1,968 Preston, Monongalia, 1818 601 5,144 441 Pendleton, Augusta, Hardy and Rockingham, 1788 999 6,271 1,120 Pocahontas, Bath, Pendleton and Randolph, 1821 794 2,542 405 Randolph, Harrison, 1787 2061 5,000 644 Russell, Washington, 1786 1370 6,717 739 Rockingham, Augusta, 1778 833 20,663 5,056 Rockbridge, Augusta & Botetourt, 1778 680 14,244 3,276 Scott, Lee, Russell and Washington, 1814 624 5,712 503 Shenandoah, Frederick, 1772 767 19,750 4,922 Tyler, Ohio, 1814 855 4,308 757 Tazewell, Russell & Wythe, 1799 1305 5,573 727 Washington, Fincastle, 1777 1754 15,614 2,918 Wythe, Montgomery, 1790 1998 12,163 2,178 Wood, Harrison, 1799 1223 6,418 1,257 Total, 378,293 76,848 [14] Little and Big Sewell mountains, dividing Fayette and Greenbrier counties, seem to perpetuate the name and memory of this early and adventurous pioneer. Col. John Stuart states, that Sewell's final settlement was forty miles west of his primitive one, and on a creek bearing his name originating in Sewell mountain, and flowing into Gauley. Col. Preston, in his _Register_, gives September, 1756, as the date of Stephen Sewell's death by the Indians, and Jackson's River as the locality. Mrs. Anne Royall, in _Sketches of the History, Life and Manners of the United States_, (New Haven, 1826), p. 60, who visited the Greenbrier country in 1824, gives the name of Carver as Sewell's companion. "These two men," says Mrs. Royall, "lived in a cave for several years, but at length they disagreed on the score of religion, and occupied different camps. They took care, however, not to stay far from each other, their camps being in sight. Sewell used to relate that he and his friend used to sit up all night without sleep, with their guns cocked, ready to fire at each other. 'And what could that be for?' 'Why, because we couldn't agree.' 'Only two of you, and could you not agree--what did you quarrel about?' 'Why, about re-la-gin.' One of them, it seems, was a Presbyterian, and the other an Episcopalian."--L. C. D. [15] An error as to date. King George's proclamation was dated Oct. 7, 1763. For full text, see _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI., pp. 46 et seq.--R. G. T. [16] Thomas King, one of the ablest of the Iroquois chiefs, related an incident at an Indian conference held at Easton, Pa., Oct. 18, 1758, which may explain why the Indians evinced so much hostility against the Greenbrier settlements. "About three years ago," said Chief King, "eight Seneca warriors were returning from war, with seven prisoners and scalps with them; and, at a place called Greenbrier, they met with a party of soldiers, not less than one hundred and fifty, who kindly invited them to come to a certain store, saying they would supply them with provisions. Accordingly they travelled two days with them, in a friendly manner, and when they came to the house, they took their arms from the Senecas. The head men cried out, 'here is death; defend yourselves as well as you can,' which they did, and two of them were killed on the spot, and one, a young boy, was taken prisoner. This gave great offense; and the more so, as it was upon the warrior's road, and we were in perfect peace with our brethren. It provoked us to such a degree that we could not get over it. He wished the boy returned, if alive; and told his name, Squissatego." See Hazard's _Penna. Register_, V., p. 373; and _Penna. Records_, VIII., pp. 197-98.--L. C. D. [17] There were settlers on both New and Holston rivers prior to 1756--Vause, Stalnacker and others on New River; and Stephen Holston, at least, on the river bearing his name, which was known as such anterior to April, 1748, when Dr. Walker, in his _Journal_ of 1750, refers to it by that designation. But William Campbell did not settle on Holston until 1767; Wm. Preston settled in 1769; Evan Shelby and family in 1771; and, while Daniel Boone passed through that country as early, it is believed, as 1760, he never "settled" there. A further notice of Stephen Holston, or Holstein, seems fitting in this connection. He was of an adventurous turn, and prior to 1748 had, during a hunt, discovered the river named after him. It was after this discovery that he settled on the Little Saluda, near Saluda Old Town, in South Carolina, where, in the summer of 1753, a party of Cherokees returning from a visit to Gov. Glen, at Charleston, behaved so rudely to Mrs. Holston, in her husband's absence, as to frighten her and her domestics away, fleeing several miles to the nearest settlement, when the house was robbed of utensils and corn, and two valuable horses were also taken. Holston and some of his neighbors settled on Holston's River, in what subsequently became Botetourt county: soon after this, they constructed canoes, and passed down the Holston into the Tennessee River, through the Muscle Shoals, and down the Ohio and Mississippi as far as Natchez. Returning from this notable adventure, his name became fixed to the noble stream which he discovered, and upon which he made the primitive settlement. His location on Holston was at the head spring of the Middle Fork; his log cabin was on the hill side some thirty rods from the spring. In 1774, one Davis occupied the place, and related that Holston had left several years before that date. On the breaking out of the Indian war in 1754, he seems to have retired with his family to Culpeper county, which was then not exempt from Indian forays; and Holston, about 1757, was captured by the Indians. But in due time he returned to the Holston country, served in the battle of Point Pleasant in 1774, on Christian's campaign against the Cherokees in 1776, and was reported in service in 1776 or 1777. As we hear no more of him, he probably did not long survive after this period.--L. C. D. [18] The first name of Walden was not Thomas--Elisha Walden was his proper name. He was a son-in-law of William Blevins, and both Walden and Blevins lived, in 1774, at the "Round-About" on Smith's River, two miles east of what is now Martinsville, Henry county, Virginia. He was then about forty years of age, nearly six feet in height, a rough frontiersman, and a noted hunter. He and several others, in 1761, penetrated into Powell's Valley, naming Walden's Mountain and Walden's Creek, and proceeded on through Cumberland Gap to Cumberland River, and a few miles beyond to the Laurel Mountain, where meeting a party of Indians, they returned. In subsequent years, Walden settled on Holston, about eighteen miles above Knoxville, where he was residing in 1796; a few years later, he removed to Powell's Valley, but soon after migrated to Missouri, where he lived hunting up to extreme old age. Save what is related from Haywood's _Hist. of Tennessee_ about the trip of 1761, this information was communicated to the writer in 1849, by Maj. John Redd, of Henry county, Va., who personally knew the old hunter very well.--L. C. D. [19] A curious misconception, this. Some of the founders of Marietta acquired in 1788 a large tract west and north of their own, and as a private speculation organized the Scioto Company. Joel Barlow, the poet, was sent to Paris to negotiate the sale of the lands. To the "Society of the Scioto," formed by him there, he sold three million acres, and France was deluged with rose-colored immigration pamphlets written by Barlow. In February, 1790, six hundred Frenchmen--chiefly professional men and small artisans from the large towns, with not an agriculturist among them--arrived in Alexandria, Va., _en route_ for the Scioto. They found that the Society, not having paid for its lands, had forfeited its rights, and deeds granted to the intending settlers were void. Five hundred finally went west, and founded Gallipolis. Poor, not knowing how to work the soil, and simple folk with no notions of independence, they suffered from famine, Indians, and yellow fever. They finally repurchased their lands, and upon the cessation of the border war gained some strength; but Gallipolis was never more than a weakling until Americans and Germans came in and put it on its feet.--R. G. T. [51] CHAPTER II. The tract of country usually denominated North Western Virginia, includes the counties of Brook, Ohio, Tyler, Wood, Lewis, Randolph, Preston, Harrison and Monongalia, covering an area of 8,887 square miles, and having a population, according to the census of 1830, of 78,510 souls. These counties, with a portion of Pennsylvania then deemed to be within the limits of Virginia, constituted the district of West Augusta; and was the last grand division of the state, to become occupied by the whites. This was perhaps owing to natural causes, as well as to the more immediate proximity of hostile Indians. The general surface of this district of country is very broken, its hills, though rich, are yet steep and precipitous, and the various streams which flow along their bases, afford but few bottoms; and these of too narrow and contracted dimensions to have attracted the adventurer, when more invited portions of the country, were alike open to his enterprise.--The Alleghany ridge of mountains, over which the eastern emigrant had to pass, presented too, no inconsiderable barrier to its earlier location; while the cold, bleak, inhospitable region, extending from the North Branch to the Cheat and Valley rivers, seemed to threaten an entire seclusion from the eastern settlements, and to render it an isolated spot, not easily connected with any other section of the state. The first attempt on the part of the English to occupy the country contiguous to the Ohio river, was made in consequence of the measures adopted by the French to possess themselves of it. France had early become acquainted with the country, so far as to perceive the facility with which her possessions in the north, might, by means of a free communication down the valley of the Mississippi, be connected with those in the south. To preserve this communication uninterrupted, to acquire influence over the neighboring Indians and to prevent the occupancy and settlement by England of the country west [52] of the Alleghany mountains, the French were early induced to establish trading posts among the Indians on the Ohio, and to obtain and preserve possession of the country by the erection of a chain of forts to extend from Canada to Louisiana.[1] To counteract those operations of the French, to possess herself of the country, to which she deemed her title to be good, and to enjoy the lucrative traffic which was then to be carried on with the Indians, England gave to an association of gentlemen in Great Britain and Virginia, (under the title of the Ohio Company,) liberty to locate and hold in their own right, 600,000 acres of land within the country then claimed by both England and France. In pursuance of this grant, steps were directly taken to effect those objects, by establishing trading houses among the Indians near the Ohio, and by engaging persons to make such a survey of the country, as would enable the grantees to effect a location of the quantity allowed them, out of the most valuable lands. The company endeavored to complete their survey with all possible secrecy, and by inducing the Indians to believe their object to be purely commercial, to allay any apprehensions, which might otherwise arise, of an attempt to gain possession of the country. The attempt to accomplish their purpose of territorial aggrandizement, with secrecy, was fruitless and unavailing.--The Pennsylvania traders, fearful that they would lose the profitable commerce carried on with the Indians, excited their jealousy by acquainting them with the real motive of the company; while the French actually seized, and made prisoners, of their traders, and opened and secured, by detachments of troops stationed at convenient situations, a communication from Presq' Isle to the Ohio river. The Ohio company sent a party of men to erect a stockade fort at the confluence of the Monongahela and Alleghany rivers, which had been recommended by General Washington as a suitable position for the erection of fortifications.[2] This party of men was accompanied by a detachment of militia, which had been ordered out by the governor; but before they could effect their object, they were driven off by the French, [53] who immediately took possession of the place, and erected thereon Fort du Quesne. These transactions were immediately succeeded by the war, usually called Braddock's war, which put an end to the contemplated settlement, and the events of which are, for the most part, matter of general history. It may not however be amiss to relate some incidents connected with this war, which though of minor importance, may yet be interesting to some; and which have escaped the pen of the historian. In Braddock's army there were two regiments of volunteer militia from Virginia.[3] One of these was commanded by Col. Russel of Fairfax; the other by Col. Fry, and was from Shenandoah and James rivers. In this latter regiment there was a company from Culpepper, commanded by Capt. Grant, (afterwards known as a considerable land holder in Kentucky) and of which John Field (who was killed in the battle at Point Pleasant) was a lieutenant. There was likewise in this regiment, a company of riflemen, from Augusta, commanded by Capt. Samuel Lewis, (the eldest son of John Lewis, who, with Mackey and Salling, had been foremost in settling that country) who was afterwards known as Col. Samuel Lewis of Rockingham.[4] In this company was also contained the five brothers of Capt. Lewis. Andrew, afterwards Gen. Lewis of Botetourt--Charles, afterwards Col. Lewis, who was likewise killed at Point Pleasant--William, John and Thomas. Among their compatriots in arms, were the five sons of Capt. John Matthews, (who had accompanied Burden to Virginia) Elihu Barkley, John McDowell,[5] Paul Whitly, James Bell, Patrick Lockard, and a number of others of the first settlers of Augusta, Rockbridge and Rockingham. From the time the army crossed the Alleghany mountain, its movements were constantly watched by Indian spies, from Fort du Quesne; and as it approached nearer the point of destination, runners were regularly despatched, to acquaint the garrison with its progress, and manner of marching.--When intelligence was received that Braddock still moved in close order, the Indians laid the plan for surprising him, and carried it into most effectual execution with but little assistance from the French.[6] [54] At the place where the English crossed the Monongahela river, there are about two acres of bottom land, bounded by the river on the east, and by a ledge of high cliffs on the west. Through these cliffs there is a considerable ravine, formed by the flowing of a small rivulet--On the summit, a wide prospect opens to the west, of a country whose base is level, but surface uneven. On this summit lay the French and Indians concealed by the prairie grass and timber, and from this situation, in almost perfect security, they fired down upon Braddock's men. The only exposure of the French and Indians, resulted from the circumstance of their having to raise their heads to peep over the verge of the cliff, in order to shoot with more deadly precision. In consequence, all of them who were killed in the early part of the action, were shot through the head.[7] The companies, commanded by Capt. Grant and Lewis,[8] were the first to cross the river. As fast as they landed they formed, and proceeding up the ravine, arrived at the plain on the head of the rivulet, without having discovered the concealed enemy which they had just passed. So soon as the rear of Braddock's army had crossed the river, the enemy raised a heart rending yell, and poured down a constant and most deadly fire. Before General Braddock received his wound, he gave orders for the whole line to countermarch and form a phalanx on the bottom, so as to cover their retreat across the river. When the main column was wheeled, Grant's and Lewis' companies had proceeded so far in advance, that a large body of the enemy rushed down from both sides of the ravine, and intercepted them. A most deadly contest ensued. Those who intercepted Grant and Lewis, could not pass down the defile, as the main body of Braddock's army was there, and it would have been rushing into the midst of it, to inevitable destruction--the sides of the ravine were too steep and rocky to admit of a retreat up them, and their only hope of escape lay in cutting down those two companies and passing [55] out at the head of the ravine. A dreadful slaughter was the consequence. Opposed in close fight, and with no prospect of security, but by joining the main army in the bottom, the companies of Grant and Lewis literally cut their way through to the mouth of the ravine. Many of Lewis's men were killed and wounded, and not more than half of Grant's lived to reach the river bank. Almost the only loss the enemy sustained was in this conflict. The unfortunate result of the campaign of 1755, gave to the French a complete ascendency over the Indians on the Ohio. In consequence of this there was a general distress on the frontier settlements of Virginia. The incursions of the Indians became more frequent and were extended so far, that apprehensions existed of an irruption into the country east of the Blue ridge.[9] This state of things continued until the capture of Fort du Quesne in 1758, by Gen. Forbes. In the regiment commanded by Washington in the army of 1758, Andrew Lewis was a Major. With this gentleman, Gen. Washington had become acquainted during the campaign of 1754, and had formed of him, as a military man, the highest expectations; his conduct at the defeat of Major Grant, realized those expectations, and acquired for him a reputation for prudence and courage which he sustained unimpaired, during a long life of public service.[10] Gen. Lewis was in person upwards of six feet high, finely proportioned, of uncommon strength and great activity. His countenance was stern and rather forbidding--his deportment distant and reserved; this rendered his person more awful than engaging. When he was at Fort Stanwich in 1768, as one of the commissioners from the colony of Virginia, to treat, in conjunction with commissioners from the eastern colonies, with the Six Nations, the Governor of New York remarked "that the earth seemed to tremble under his tread." When the war of the revolution commenced, and General [56] Washington was commissioned commander in chief, he is said to have expressed a wish, that the appointment had been given to Gen. Lewis. Be this as it may, it is certain that he accepted the commission of Brigadier General at the solicitation of Washington; and when, from wounded pride[11] and a shattered constitution, he was induced to express an intention of resigning, Gen. Washington wrote him, entreating that he would not do so, and assuring him that justice should be done, as regarded his rank. Gen. Lewis, however, had become much reduced by disease, and did not think himself able, longer to endure the hardships of a soldier's life--he resigned his commission in 1780, and died in the county of Bedford, on the way to his home in Botetourt on Roanoke river. When Major Grant, (who had been sent with a detachment for the purpose of reconnoitering the country about Fort du Quesne,) arrived in view of it, he resolved on attempting its reduction. Major Lewis remonstrated with him, on the propriety of that course, and endeavored to dissuade him from the attempt. Grant deemed it practicable to surprise the garrison and effect an easy conquest, and was unwilling that the provincial troops should divide with his Highland regulars the glory of the achievment--he therefore ordered Major Lewis two miles into the rear, with that part of the Virginia regiment then under his command. Soon after the action had commenced, Lewis discovered by the retreating fire, that Grant was in an unpleasant situation, and leaving Capt. Bullet with fifty men to guard the baggage, hastened to his relief. On arriving at the battle ground, and finding Grant and his detachment surrounded by the Indians, who had passed his rear under covert of the banks of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, Major Lewis commenced a brisk fire and made so vigorous an attack on the Indians as to open a passage through which Grant and some few of his men effected an escape. Lewis and his brave provincials became enclosed within the Indian lines and suffered dreadfully. Out of eight officers five were killed, a sixth wounded and a seventh taken prisoner. Capt. Bullet, [57] who defended the baggage with great bravery and contributed much to save the remnant of the detachment, was the only officer who escaped unhurt.[12] Out of one hundred and sixty-six men, sixty-two were killed on the spot and two were wounded. Major Lewis was himself made prisoner; and although stripped by the Indians of every article of his clothing, and reduced to perfect nudity, he was protected from bodily injury by a French officer, who took him to his tent and supplied him with clothes. Grant who had wandered all night with five or six of his men, came in, on the morning after the engagement, and surrendered himself a prisoner of war. While Grant and Lewis were prisoners, the former addressed a letter to Gen. Forbes giving a detailed account of the engagement and attributing the defeat to the ill conduct of the latter. This letter, (being inspected by the French who knew the falsehood of the charge it contained) was handed to Maj. Lewis. Exasperated at this charge, Lewis waited on Major Grant and in the interview between them, after having bestowed on him some abusive epithets, challenged him to the field. Grant declined to accept the invitation; and Lewis, after spitting in his face in the presence of several of the French officers, left him to reflect on his baseness. After this defeat a council was held by the Indians to determine on the course proper for them to pursue. The most of them had come from about Detroit at the instance of the French commandant there, to fortify Fort du Quesne against an attack by Forbes--the hunting season had arrived and many of them were anxious to return to their town. The question which attracted their attention most seriously was, whether Gen. Forbes would then retreat or advance. As Grant had been most signally defeated, many supposed that the main arm would retire into winter quarters, as Dunbar had, after the battle on the Monongahela. The French expressed a different opinion, and endeavored to prevail on the Indians to remain and witness the result. This however they refused to do, and the greater part of them left du Quesne. Upon this the commandant of the fort, in order to learn the course which Gen. Forbes would pursue, and to impress upon the English, an idea that the French were in return preparing to attack them, ordered the remainder of the Indians, a number of Canadians and some French regulars to reconnoitre the route [58] along which Gen. Forbes would be most likely to march his army, to watch their motions and harrass them as much as possible; determining if they could not thus force him to abandon the idea of attacking Du Quesne during that campaign, they would evacuate the fort and retire into Canada. When Major Grant with his men had been ordered on to Du Quesne, the main army had been left at Raystown, where it continued for some time; an advance was however posted at fort Ligonier. Between this vanguard and the detachment from Du Quesne there was a partial engagement, which resulted in the loss of some of the Maryland troops. Fort Ligonier was then closely watched by the French and Indians, and several of the sentinels were killed, before the point from which the fires were directed, was discovered; it was at length ascertained that parties of the enemy would creep under the bank of the Loyal Hanna till they could obtain a position from which to do execution. Some soldiers were then stationed to guard this point, who succeeded in killing two Indians, and in wounding and making prisoner of one Frenchman. From him the English obtained information that the greater part of the Indians had left Du Quesne, and that the fort was defenceless: the army then moved forward and taking possession of its ruins established thereon Fort Pitt.[13] The country around began immediately to be settled, and several other forts were erected to protect emigrants, and to keep the Indians in awe. Previous to this an attempt had been made by David Tygart and a Mr. Files to establish themselves on an upper branch of the Monongahela river.[14] They had been for some time frontier's men, and were familiar with the scenes usually exhibited on remote and unprotected borders; and nothing daunted by the cruel murders and savage enormities, which they had previously witnessed, were induced by some cause, most probably the uninterrupted enjoyment of the forest in the pursuit of game, to venture still farther into the wilderness. About the year 1754 these two men with their families arrived on the east fork of the Monongahela, and after examining the country, selected positions for their future residence. Files chose a spot on the river, at the mouth of a creek which still bears his name, where Beverly, the county seat of Randolph has been since established. Tygart settled a few miles farther up and also on the river. The valley in which they had thus taken up their abode, has been since called Tygart's [59] valley, and the east fork of the Monongahela, Tygart's-valley river. The difficulty of procuring bread stuffs for their families, their contiguity to an Indian village, and the fact that an Indian war path passed near their dwellings, soon determined them to retrace their steps.[15] Before they carried this determination into effect, the family of Files became the victims of savage cruelty. At a time when all the family were at their cabin, except an elder son, they were discovered by a party of Indians, supposed to be returning from the South Branch, who inhumanly butchered them all.[16] Young Files being not far from the house and hearing the uproar, approached until he saw, too distinctly, the deeds of death which were doing; and feeling the utter impossibility of affording relief to his own, resolved if he could, to effect the safety of Tygart's family. This was done and the country abandoned by them. Not long after this, Doctor Thomas Eckarly and his two brothers came from Pennsylvania and camped at the mouth of a creek, emptying into the Monongahela, 8 or 10 miles below Morgantown; they were Dunkards, and from that circumstance, the watercourse on which they fixed themselves for a while, has been called Dunkard's creek. While their camp continued at this place, these men were engaged in exploring the country; and ultimately settled on Cheat river, at the Dunkard bottom. Here they erected a cabin for their dwelling, and made such improvements as enabled them to raise the first year, a crop of corn sufficient for their use, and some culinary vegetables: their guns supplied them with an abundance of meat, of a flavor as delicious as the refined palate of a modern epicure could well wish. Their clothes were made chiefly of the skins of animals, and were easily procured: and although calculated to give a grotesque appearance to a fine gentleman in a city drawing room; yet were they particularly suited to their situation, and afforded them comfort. Here they spent some years entirely unmolested by the Indians, although a destructive war was then raging, and prosecuted with cruelty, along the whole extent of our frontier. At length to obtain an additional supply of ammunition, salt and shirting, Doctor Eckarly left Cheat, with a pack of furs and skins, to visit a trading post on the Shenandoah. On his return, he stopped at Fort Pleasant, on the South Branch; and having communicated to its inhabitants the place of his residence, and the length of time he had been living there, he was charged with being in confederacy with the Indians, and probably at that instant a spy, examining the condition of the fort. In vain the Doctor protested his innocence and the fact that he had not even seen an Indian in the country; the suffering condition [59] of the border settlements, rendered his account, in their opinion improbable, and he was put in confinement. The society, of which Doctor Eckarly was a member, was rather obnoxious to a number of the frontier inhabitants. Their intimacy with the Indians, although cultivated with the most laudable motives, and for noble purposes, yet made them objects at least of distrust to many. Laboring under these disadvantages, it was with difficulty that Doctor Eckarly prevailed on the officer of the fort to release him; and when this was done he was only permitted to go home under certain conditions--he was to be escorted by a guard of armed men, who were to carry him back if any discovery were made prejudicial to him. Upon their arrival at Cheat, the truth of his statement was awfully confirmed. The first spectacle which presented itself to their view, when the party came within sight of where the cabin had been, was a heap of ashes. On approaching the ruins, the half decayed, and mutilated bodies of the poor Dunkards, were seen in the yard; the hoops, on which their scalps had been dried, were there, and the ruthless hand of desolation had waved over their little fields. Doctor Eckarly aided in burying the remains of his unfortunate brothers, and returned to the fort on the South Branch. In the fall of 1758, Thomas Decker and some others commenced a settlement on the Monongahela river, at the mouth of what is now, Decker's creek. In the ensuing spring it was entirely broken up by a party of Delawares and Mingoes; and the greater part of its inhabitants murdered. There was at this time at Brownsville a fort, then known as Redstone fort, under the command of Capt. Paul.[17] One of Decker's party escaped from the Indians who destroyed the settlement, and making his way to Fort Redstone, gave to its commander the melancholy intelligence. The garrison being too weak to admit of sending a detachment in pursuit, Capt. Paul despatched a runner with the information to Capt. John Gibson, then stationed at Fort Pitt. Leaving the fort under the command of Lieut. Williamson, Capt. Gibson set out with thirty men to intercept the Indians, on their return to their towns. In consequence of the distance which the pursuers had to go, and the haste with which the Indians had retreated, the expedition failed in its object; they however accidentally came on a party of six or seven Mingoes, on the head of Cross Creek in Ohio (near Steubenville)--these had been prowling about the river, below Fort Pitt, seeking an opportunity of committing depredations.[18] As Capt. Gibson passed the point of a small knoll, just after day break, he came unexpectedly upon them--some of them were lying down; the others were sitting round a fire, making thongs of green hides. Kiskepila or Little Eagle, a Mingo chief, headed the party. So soon as he discovered Capt. Gibson, he raised the war whoop and fired [61] his rifle--the ball passed through Gibson's hunting shirt and wounded a soldier just behind him. Gibson sprang forward, and swinging his sword with herculean force, severed the head of the Little Eagle from his body--two other Indians were shot down, and the remainder escaped to their towns on Muskingum. When the captives, who were restored under the treaty of 1763, came in, those who were at the Mingo towns when the remnant of Kiskepila's party returned, stated that the Indians represented Gibson as having cut off the Little Eagle's head with a _long knife_. Several of the white persons were then sacrificed to appease the manes of Kiskepila; and a war dance ensued, accompanied with terrific shouts and bitter denunciations of revenge on "_the Big knife warrior_." This name was soon after applied to the Virginia militia generally; and to this day they are known among the north western Indians as the "_Long knives_," or "_Big knife nation_."[19] These are believed to have been the only attempts to effect a settlement of North Western Virginia, prior to the close of the French war. The capture of Fort du Quesne and the erection and garrisoning of Fort Pitt, although they gave to the English an ascendency in that quarter; yet they did not so far check the hostile irruptions of the Indians, as to render a residence in this portion of Virginia, by any means secure.--It was consequently not attempted 'till some years after the restoration of peace in 1765. ----- [1] This is misleading. The author has told us, in the preceding chapter, of several attempts of English coast colonists to make transmontane settlements, quite apart from thought of ousting the French. Englishmen had no sooner landed in America than they attempted to cross the Western mountain barrier. Ralph Lane made the attempt in 1586, Christopher Newport and John Smith in 1606, and Newport himself in 1607. John Lederer, a German surgeon exploring for Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, reached the top of Blue Ridge in 1609, but did not descend the western slope. Two years later, Abraham Wood discovered the Great Kanawha. It is possible that the French Jesuit Le Moyne was on the Alleghany River as early as 1656. La Salle was probably at the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville) in 1669. But it was not until about 1700 that French and English fur-traders met in open rivalry on the Ohio. It was with no thought of the French that Governor Spottswood, of Virginia, passed over the Blue Ridge in 1714. The situation in short, was this: The English colonists early wanted the over-mountain country watered by the Ohio, but were too weak at first to hold for agricultural settlement lands so far from home, in the face of a savage foe. The French wanted the valley solely for the fur trade, but Iroquois opposition long kept them from entering; when at last they were able to do so, the English colonists had also grown strong enough to move in, and then ensued the long and bloody struggle in which New France fell.--R. G. T. [2] In the journal (drawn up for the inspection of Gov. Dinwiddie) of the events of his mission to the commander of the French forces on the Ohio; this was the first of those splendid acts of a public nature, performed by Gen. Washington. [3] Only five companies of the first Virginia regiment served on Braddock's campaign--hence there was no second regiment, nor any Colonel Russell engaged in that service; there was, however, at this period, a Colonel or Lieut.-Colonel William Russell, who emigrated from England when a young lawyer, to Virginia, about 1710, and settled in Culpeper, and by the readjustment of county lines he was thrown into the new county of Orange. He was a man of much prominence, and at one time was high sheriff of Orange; and apparently lieutenant-colonel of militia, and as such, in the early part of the French and Indian War, did some frontier service, though rather advanced in years at the time. In 1753, he was sent as a commissioner to pacify the Indians in the region where Pittsburg was subsequently located. He died October 18, 1757, aged about seventy-two years. His son of the same name served with reputation at the battle of Point Pleasant, and during the Revolutionary War, retiring at its close with the brevet rank of brigadier-general.--L. C. D. [4] It has already been stated that Col. John Lewis's eldest son was Thomas, not Samuel.--L. C. D. [5] Capt. John McDowell was killed in an engagement with the Indians, in December, 1742, and of course could not have served under either Andrew or Charles Lewis.--L. C. D. [6] James Smith, afterwards Col. Smith of Bourbon county in Kentucky, was then a prisoner at du Quesne. He says that the Indians in council planned the attack on Braddock's army and selected the ground from which to make it--that the assailants did not number more than 400 men, of whom but a small proportion were French. One of the Indians laughed when he heard the order of march in Braddock's army, and said "we'll shoot them down all as one pigeon." Washington beheld the event in fearful anticipation, and exerted himself in vain with Gen. Braddock, to alter the order of march. [7] It is evident that the author never saw the site of Braddock's defeat, just below the mouth of Turtle Creek, for his description is quite inaccurate. June 30, 1755, the army, which had been following the Ohio Company's road from Will's Creek, _via_ East Meadows, crossed the Youghiogheny and proceeding in a devious course struck the head of Turtle Creek, which was followed nearly to its mouth, whence a southern course was taken to avoid the steep hills. Reaching the Monongahela just below the mouth of the Youghiogheny, they crossed (July 9) to the west side, where there is a long, narrow bottom. Nearly opposite the mouth of Turtle Creek, and about four miles below the first crossing, hills again closely approach the west bank, and the east side becomes the more favorable for marching. Here, only eight miles across country from Fort Duquesne, Braddock forded the second time, and in angling up the rather easy slope upon which is now built the busy iron-making town of Braddock, Pa., was obliged to pass through a heavily-wooded ravine. This was the place of the ambuscade, where his army was cut to pieces. Indians from the Upper Lakes, under the leadership of Charles Langlade, a Wisconsin fur-trader, were the chief participants in this affair, on the French side.--R. G. T. [8] This statement about Capts. Grant and Lewis having taken part in the battle of the Monongahela, is altogether a mistake. It must have originated in some traditional account, and become confused in some way with Grant's defeat, three years later, in which Maj. James Grant and Maj. Andrew Lewis both took a prominent part. There is no record of any Capt. Grant in Braddock's army. Andrew Lewis, though a major, was still in command of his company, and at the time of Braddock's defeat was on detached service. Gov. Dinwiddie, writing to Maj. Lewis, July 8, 1755, says: "You were ordered to Augusta with your company to protect the frontier of that county;" and, in a letter of the same date, to Col. Patton, the Governor adds: "Enclosed you have a letter to Capt. Lewis, which please forward to him: _I think he is at Greenbrier._" Capt. Robt. Orme, aide-de-camp to Gen. Braddock, in his Journal appended to Sargent's _History of Braddock's Expedition_, states under date of April, 1755, that the Virginia troops having been clothed, were ordered to march to Winchester, for arming and drilling, and then adds: "Capt. Lewis was ordered with his company of Rangers to Greenbrier river, there to build two stockade forts, in one of which he was to remain himself and to detach to the other a subaltern and fifteen men. These forts were to cover the western settlers of Virginia from any inroads of Indians."--L. C. D. [9] The MS. Journal of Col. Charles Lewis, in possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society, covering the period from October 10 to December 27, 1755, is an unconsciously eloquent picture of the hardships of life on the Virginia frontier, at this time.--R. G. T. [10] After the capitulation of Fort Necessity, and while some of the soldiers of each army were intermixed, an Irishman, exasperated with an Indian near him, "cursed the copper-coloured scoundrel" and raised his musket to shoot him. Gen. Lewis who had been twice wounded in the engagement, and was then hobbling on a staff, raised the Irishman's gun, as he was in the act of firing, and thus not only saved the life of the Indian, but probably prevented a general massacre of the Virginia troops. [11] Congress had given to Gen. Stephens, and some others (whose senior Lewis had been in former services) commissions as Major Generals. [12] Thomas Bullitt was a native of Prince William county, Virginia. He was appointed an ensign in Washington's first Virginia regiment, July 20, 1754, and promoted to a lieutenancy on October 30th following. It is said that he served in Braddock's defeat; but the records of the Virginia officers present do not include Lieut. Bullitt's name. He was, perhaps, with Capt. Lewis in the Greenbrier country, or on some other detached service. In May, 1756, he was stationed at Winchester; in July following, in command of Fort Frederick, on Jackson's River, and in November of that year, in command of Fort Cumberland. He was in active service in 1757, and early the next year we find him a captain; as such, he distinguished himself in checking the enemy and saving many of the fugitives at Grant's defeat, and shared in Gen. Forbes's successful expedition in the capture of Fort Du Quesne. In May, 1759, while guarding with one hundred men, fifteen wagons loaded with provisions for the westward, he was attacked and defeated by a strong party of French and Indians, losing thirty-five of his party killed and prisoners and all his wagons. In 1760, he was appointed a surveyor of a district bordering on the Ohio, and had much to do in early Kentucky exploration and surveys, making an early location and survey at the Falls of Ohio in 1773. In September, 1775, he was appointed adjutant-general of all the Virginia forces; and on the 9th of December following, he aided Colonel Woodford in defeating Capt. Fordyce and party at the Great Bridge. In March, 1776, Congress appointed him deputy adjutant-general of the Southern Department with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and advanced him in May following to the full rank of colonel. He died while yet in service, in 1778.--L. C. D. [13] The French destroyed Fort Duquesne in November, 1758. During the winter following, Fort Pitt was erected by the English troops. In his _Journal of a Tour to the Ohio River_ (1770), Washington says of it: "The fort is built on the point between the rivers Alleghany and Monongahela, but not so near the pitch of it as Fort Duquesne stood. It is five-sided and regular, two of which next the land are of brick; the others stockade. A moat encompasses it." Fort Pitt was invested by the Indians during Pontiac's War (1763). It was fully garrisoned until 1772, when a corporal and a few men were left as care-takers. In October of that year, the property was sold, and several houses were built out of the material. In the course of the boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia, the latter colony took possession of the ruins, through Lord Dunmore's agent there, John Conolly.--R. G. T. [14] The author overlooks the settlement made by Christopher Gist, the summer of 1753, in the town of Dunbar, Fayette county, Pa., two or three miles west of the Youghiogheny and some seventy miles northwest of Will's Creek; the site was doubtless selected by him in his trip of 1751-52. Washington, who visited him there in November, 1753, on the way to Fort Le Boeuf, calls it "Gist's new settlement," but the owner's name for his place was "Monongahela." It was the first settlement of which there is record, upon the Ohio Company's lands. Gist induced eleven families to settle near him; and on his journey home, in January, 1754, Washington met them going out to the new lands. The victory of the French over Washington, at Fort Necessity, in July, led to the expulsion from the region of all English-speaking settlers. The French commander, De Villiers, reports that he "burnt down all the settlements" on the Monongahela (from Redstone down), and in the vicinity of Gist's.--R. G. T. [15] This trail was a continuation of the famous "Warrior Branch," which coming up from Tennessee passed through Kentucky and Southern Ohio, and threading the valley of Fish Creek crossed over to Dunkard's Creek and so on to the mouth of Redstone Creek.--R. G. T. [16] In Col. Preston's MS. Register of Indian Depredations, in the Wisconsin Historical Society's library, it is stated that Robert Foyle, wife and five children, were killed on the Monongahela in 1754. Gov. Dinwiddie, in his speech to the Virginia house of burgesses in February, 1754, refers to this barbarous affair, giving the same number of the family destroyed; and the gazettes of that period state that Robert Foyle, together with his wife and five children, the youngest about ten years of age, were killed at the head of the Monongahela; their bodies, scalped, were discovered February 4th, and were supposed to have been killed about two months before.--L. C. D. [17] In 1750, the Ohio Company, as a base of operations and supplies, built a fortified warehouse at Will's Creek (now Cumberland, Md.), on the upper waters of the Potomac. Col. Thomas Cresap, an energetic frontiersman, and one of the principal agents of the Company, was directed to blaze a pack-horse trail over the Laurel Hills to the Monongahela. He employed as his guide an Indian named Nemacolin, whose camp was at the mouth of Dunlap Creek (site of the present Brownsville, Pa.), an affluent of the Monongahela. Nemacolin pointed out an old Indian trace which had its origin, doubtless, in an over-mountain buffalo trail; and this, widened a little by Cresap, was at first known as Nemacolin's Path. It led through Little Meadows and Great Meadows--open marshes grown to grass, and useful for feeding traders' and explorers' horses. Washington traveled this path in 1753, when he went to warn the French at Fort Le Boeuf. Again, but widened somewhat, it was his highway in 1754, as far north as Gist's plantation; and at Great Meadows he built Fort Necessity, where he was defeated. Braddock followed it in great part, in 1755, and henceforth it became known as "Braddock's Road." The present National Road from Cumberland to Brownsville, via Uniontown, differs in direction but little from Nemacolin's Path. For a map of Braddock's Road, see Lowdermilk's _History of Cumberland, Md._, p. 140, with description on pages 51, 52, 140-148. Ellis's _History of Fayette Co., Pa._, also has valuable data. The terminus of Nemacolin's Path was Dunlap's Creek (Brownsville). A mile-and-a-quarter below Dunlap's, enters Redstone Creek, and the name "Redstone" became affixed to the entire region hereabout, although "Monongahela" was sometimes used to indicate the panhandle between the Monongahela and the Youghiogheny. In 1752, the Ohio Company built a temporary warehouse at the mouth of Dunlap's Creek, at the end of the over-mountain trail. In 1754, Washington's advance party (Capt. Trent) built a log fort, called "The Hangard," at the mouth of the Redstone, but this was, later in the year, destroyed by the French officer De Villiers. In 1759, Colonel Burd, as one of the features of Forbes's campaign against Fort Duquesne, erected Fort Burd at the mouth of Dunlap's, which was a better site. This fort was garrisoned as late as the Dunmore War (1774), but was probably abandoned soon after the Revolutionary War. The name "Redstone Old Fort" became attached to the place, because within the present limits of Brownsville were found by the earliest comers, and can still be traced, extensive earthworks of the mound-building era.--R. G. T. [18] Cross Creek empties into the Ohio through Mingo Bottom (site of Mingo Junction, O.). On this bottom was, for many years, a considerable Mingo village.--R. G. T. [19] This statement, that Capt. Audley Paul commanded at Redstone, and of his attempting to intercept a foraging Indian party, can not possibly be true. There was no fort, and consequently no garrison, at Redstone in 1758. It was not built 'till 1759, and then by Col. James Burd, of the Pennsylvania forces. James L. Bowman, a native of Brownsville, the locality of Redstone Old Fort, wrote a sketch of the history of that place, which appeared in the _American Pioneer_ in February, 1843, in which he says: "We have seen it stated in a creditable work, that the fort was built by Capt. Paul--doubtless an error, as the Journal of Col. Burd is ample evidence to settle that matter." Col. Burd records in his Journal: "Ordered, in Aug. 1759, to march with two hundred of my battalion to the mouth of Redstone Creek, to cut a road to that place, and to erect a fort." He adds: "When I had cut the road, and finished the fort," etc. The other part of the story, about Capt. John Gibson commanding at Fort Pitt in "the fall of 1758," is equally erroneous, as Gen. Forbes did not possess himself of Fort Duquesne till Nov. 25th, 1758, within five days of the conclusion of "fall" in that year; and Gen. Forbes commanded there in person until he left for Philadelphia, Dec. 3d following. There is, moreover, no evidence that Gibson was then in service. The story of his decapitating Kis-ke-pi-la, or the Little Eagle, if there was such a person, or of his beheading any other Indian, is not at all probable. He was an Indian trader for many years, and was made prisoner by the Indians in 1763, and detained a long time in captivity. Gibson could not by any such decapitating exploit, have originated the designation of "Big Knife," or "Big Knife warrior," for this appellation had long before been applied to the Virginians. Gist says in his Journal, Dec. 7th, 1750, in speaking of crossing Elk's Eye Creek--the Muskingum--and reaching an Indian hamlet, that the Indians were all out hunting; that "the old Frenchman, Mark Coonce, living there, was civil to me; but after I was gone to my camp, upon his understanding I came from Virginia, he called me _Big Knife_." Col. James Smith, then a prisoner with the Indians, says the Indians assigned as a reason why they did not oppose Gen. Forbes in 1758, that if they had been only red coats they could have subdued them; "but they could not withstand _Ash-a-le-co-a_, or the _Great Knife_, which was the name they gave the Virginians."--L. C. D. ------ _Comment by R. G. T._--See note on p. 77, regarding erection of early forts at Redstone. James Veech, in _Monongahela of Old_, says, "We know that the late Col. James Paull served a month's duty in a drafted militia company in guarding Continental stores here [Fort Burd] in 1778." The term "Big Knives" or "Long Knives" may have had reference either to the long knives carried by early white hunters, or the swords worn by backwoods militia officers. See Roosevelt's _Winning of the West_, I., p. 197. [62] CHAPTER III. The destruction of the Roanoke settlement in the spring of 1757, by a party of Shawanees, gave rise to the campaign, which was called by the old settlers the "Sandy creek voyage." To avenge this outrage, Governor Dinwiddie ordered out a company of regulars (taken chiefly from the garrison at Fort Dinwiddie, on Jackson's river) under the command of Capt. Audley Paul; a company of minute-men from Boutetourt, under the command of Capt. William Preston; and two companies from Augusta, under Captains John Alexander[1] and William Hogg. In Capt. Alexander's company, John M'Nutt, afterwards governor of Nova Scotia, was a subaltern. The whole were placed under the command of Andrew Lewis.[2] Beside the chastisement of the Indians, the expedition had for its object, the establishment of a military post at the mouth of the Great Sandy. This would have enabled them, not only to maintain a constant watch over marauding parties of Indians from that quarter; but to check the communication between them and the post at Galliopolis; and thus counteract the influence which the French there had obtained over them.[3] The different companies detailed upon the Shawanee expedition, were required to rendezvous on the Roanoke, near to the present town of Salem in Bottetourt, where Col. Lewis was then posted. The company commanded by Capt. Hogg failed to attend at the appointed time; and Col. Lewis after delaying a week for its arrival, marched forward, expecting to be speedily overtaken by it. To avoid an early discovery by the Indians, which would have been the consequence of their taking the more public route by the Great Kenhawa; and that they might fall upon the Indians towns in the valley of the Scioto, without being interrupted or seen by the French at Galliopolis, they took the route by the way of New river and Sandy. Crossing New river below the Horse-shoe, they descended it to the mouth of Wolf creek; and ascending this to its source, passed over to the head of Bluestone river; where they delayed another week awaiting the arrival of Capt. Hogg and his company.[4]--They then marched to the head of the north fork of Sandy, and continued down it to the great Burning Spring, where they also remained a day. Here the salt and provisions, which had been conveyed [63] on pack horses, were entirely exhausted. Two buffaloes, killed just above the spring, were also eaten while the army continued here; and their hides were hung upon a beech tree. After this their subsistence was procured exclusively by hunting. The army then resumed their march; and in a few days after, it was overtaken by a runner with the intelligence that Capt. Hogg and his company were only a day's march in the rear. Col. Lewis again halted; and the day after he was overtaken by Hogg, he was likewise overtaken by an express from Francis Fauquier[5] with orders for the army to return home; and for the disbanding of all the troops except Capt. Paul's regulars,[6] who were to return to Fort Dinwiddie. This was one of the first of Gov. Fauquier's official acts; and it was far from endearing him to the inhabitants west of the Blue ridge. They had the utmost confidence in the courage and good conduct of Col. Lewis, and of the officers and men under his command--they did not for an instant doubt the success of the expedition, and looked forward with much satisfaction, to their consequent exemption in a great degree, from future attacks from the Indians. It was not therefore without considerable regret, that they heard of their countermanding orders. Nor were they received by Lewis and his men with very different feelings. They had endured much during their march, from the inclemency of the weather; more from the want of provisions--They had borne these hardships without repining; anticipating a chastisement of the Indians, and the deriving of an abundant supply of provisions from their conquered towns--They had arrived within ten miles of the Ohio river, and could not witness the blasting of their expectations, without murmuring. A council of war was held--disappointment and indignation were expressed in every feature. A majority of the officers were in favor of proceeding to the Ohio river, under the expectation that they might fall in with some of the enemy--they marched to the river and encamped two nights on its banks. Discovering nothing of an enemy, they then turned to retrace their steps through pathless mountains, a distance of three hundred miles, in the midst of winter and without provisions. The reasons assigned by the friends of Gov. Fauquier, for the issuing of those orders were, that the force detailed by Gov. Dinwiddie, was not sufficient to render secure an establishment at the contemplated point--near the Indian towns on the Scioto--within a few days journey of several thousand warriors on the Miami--in the vicinity of the hostile post at Galliopolis and so remote from the settled part of Virginia, that they could not be furnished with assistance, and supplied with provisions and military stores, without incurring an expenditure, both of blood and money, beyond what the colony could spare, for the accomplishment of that object. Had Capt. Hogg with his company, been at the place of rendezvous at the appointed time, the countermanding orders of the governor [64] could not have reached the army, until it had penetrated the enemy's country. What might have been its fate, it is impossible to say--the bravery of the troops--their familiar acquaintance with the Indian mode of warfare--their confidence in the officers and the experience of many of them, seemed to give every assurance of success--While the unfortunate result of many subsequent expeditions of a similar nature, would induce the opinion that the governor's apprehensions were perhaps prudent and well founded. That the army would soon have had to encounter the enemy, there can be no doubt; for although not an Indian had been seen, yet it seems probable from after circumstances, that it had been discovered and watched by them previous to its return. On the second night of their march homeward, while encamped at the Great falls, some of Hogg's men went out on the hills to hunt turkeys, and fell in with a party of Indians, painted as for war. As soon as they saw that they were discovered, they fired, and two of Hogg's men were killed--the fire was returned and a Shawanee warrior was wounded and taken prisoner. The remaining Indians, yelling their war whoop, fled down the river. Many of the whites, thinking that so small a party of Indians would not have pursued the army alone, were of opinion that it was only an advanced scout of a large body of the enemy, who were following them: the wounded Indian refused to give any information of their number or object. A council of war was convoked; and much diversity of opinion prevailed at the board. It was proposed by Capt. Paul to cross the Ohio river, invade the towns on the Scioto, and burn them, or perish in the attempt.[7] The proposition was supported by Lieut. M'Nutt, but overruled; and the officers, deeming it right to act in conformity with the governor's orders, determined on pursuing their way home. Orders were then given that no more guns should be fired, and no fires kindled in camp, as their safe return depended very much on silence and secrecy. An obedience to this order, produced a very considerable degree of suffering, as well from extreme cold as from hunger. The pack horses, which were no longer serviceable (having no provisions to transport) and some of which had given out for want of provender, were killed and eaten. When the army arrived at the Burning spring, the buffalo hides, which had been left there on their way down, were cut into tuggs, or long thongs, and eaten by the troops, after having been exposed to the heat produced by the flame from the spring.--Hence they called it Tugg river--a name by which it is still known. After this the army subsisted for a while on beachnuts; but a deep snow falling these could no longer be obtained, and the restrictions were removed. About thirty men then detached themselves from the main body, to hunt their way home. Several of them were known to have perished from cold and hunger--others were lost and never afterwards [65] heard of; as they had separated into small parties, the more certainly to find game on which to live. The main body of the army was conducted home by Col. Lewis, after much suffering--the strings of their mocasons, the belts of their hunting shirts, and the flaps of their shot pouches, having been all the food which they had eaten for some days.[8] A journal of this campaign was kept by Lieut. M'Nutt, a gentleman of liberal education and fine mind. On his return to Williamsburg he presented it to Governor Fauquier by whom it was deposited in the executive archives. In this journal Col. Lewis was censured for not having proceeded directly to the Scioto towns; and for imposing on the army the restrictions, as to fire and shooting, which have been mentioned.--This produced an altercation between Lewis and M'Nutt, which was terminated by a personal encounter.[9] During the continuance of this war, many depredations were committed by hostile Indians, along the whole extent of the Virginia frontier. Individuals, leaving the forts on any occasion, scarcely ever returned; but were, almost always, intercepted by Indians, who were constantly prowling along the border settlements, for purposes of rapine and murder. The particulars of occurrences of this kind, and indeed of many of a more important character, no longer exist in the memory of man--they died with them who were contemporaneous with the happening of them.[10] On one occasion however, such was the extent of savage duplicity, and such, and so full of horror, the catastrophe resulting from misplaced confidence, that the events which marked it, still live in the recollection of the descendants of some of those, who suffered on the theatre of treachery and blood. On the south fork of the South Branch of Potomac, in, what is now, the county of Pendleton, was the fort of Capt. Sivert.[11] In this fort, the inhabitants of what was then called the "Upper Tract," all sought shelter from the tempest of savage ferocity; and at the time the Indians appeared before [66] it, there were contained within its walls between thirty and forty persons of both sexes and of different ages. Among them was Mr. Dyer, (the father of Col. Dyer now of Pendleton) and his family. On the morning of the fatal day, Col. Dyer and his sister left the fort for the accomplishment of some object, and although no Indians had been seen there for some time, yet did they not proceed far, before they came in view of a party of forty or fifty Shawanees, going directly towards the fort. Alarmed for their own safety, as well as for the safety of their friends, the brother and sister endeavored by a hasty flight to reach the gate and gain admittance into the garrison; but before they could effect this, they were overtaken and made captives. The Indians rushed immediately to the fort and commenced a furious assault on it. Capt. Sivert prevailed, (not without much opposition,) on the besieged, to forbear firing 'till he should endeavor to negotiate with, and buy off the enemy. With this view, and under the protection of a flag he went out, and soon succeeded in making the wished for arrangement. When he returned, the gates were thrown open, and the enemy admitted. No sooner had the money and other articles, stipulated to be given, been handed over to the Indians, than a most bloody tragedy was begun to be acted. Arranging the inmates of the fort, in two rows, with a space of about ten feet between them, two Indians were selected; who taking each his station at the head of a row, with their tomahawks most cruelly murdered almost every white person in the fort; some few, whom caprice or some other cause, induced them to spare, were carried into captivity,--such articles as could be well carried away were taken off by the Indians; the remainder was consumed, with the fort, by fire. The course pursued by Capt. Sivert, has been supposed to have been dictated by timidity and an ill founded apprehension of danger from the attack. It is certain that strong opposition was made to it by many; and it has been said that his own son raised his rifle to shoot him, when he ordered the gates to be thrown open; and was only prevented from executing his purpose, by the interference of some near to him. Capt. Sivert was also supported by many, in the plan which he proposed to rid the fort of its assailants: it was known to be weak, and incapable of withstanding a vigorous onset; and [67] its garrison was illy supplied with the munitions of war. Experience might have taught them, however, the futility of any measure of security, founded in a reliance on Indian faith, in time of hostility; and in deep and bitter anguish, they were made to feel its realization in the present instance. In the summer of 1761, about sixty Shawanee warriors penetrated the settlements on James river. To avoid the fort at the mouth of Looney's creek, on this river, they passed through Bowen's gap in Purgatory mountain, in the night; and ascending Purgatory creek, killed Thomas Perry, Joseph Dennis and his child and made prisoner his wife, Hannah Dennis. They then proceeded to the house of Robert Renix, where they captured Mrs. Renix, (a daughter of Sampson Archer) and her five children, William, Robert, Thomas, Joshua and Betsy--Mr. Renix not being at home. They then went to the house of Thomas Smith, where Renix was; and shot and scalped him and Smith; and took with them, Mrs. Smith and Sally Jew, a white servant girl.[12] William and Audley Maxwell, and George Matthews, (afterwards governor of Georgia,) were then going to Smith's house; and hearing the report of the guns, supposed that there was a shooting match. But when they rode to the front of the house and saw the dead bodies of Smith and Renix lying in the yard, they discovered their mistake; and contemplating for a moment the awful spectacle, wheeled to ride back. At this instant several guns were fired at them; fortunately without doing any execution, except the cutting off the club of Mr. Matthews' cue. The door of the house was then suddenly opened; the Indians rushed out and raising the war cry, several of them fired--Audley Maxwell was slightly wounded in the arm. It appeared afterwards, that the Indians had seen Matthews and the Maxwells coming; and that some of them had crowded into the house, while the others with the prisoners went to the north side of it, and concealed themselves behind some fallen timber. Mrs. Renix, after she was restored to her friends in 1766, stated that she was sitting tied, in the midst of four Indians, who laying their guns on a log, took deliberate aim at Matthews; the others firing at the Maxwells--The sudden wheeling of their horses no doubt saved the lives of all three. The Indians then divided, and twenty of them taking the [68] prisoners, the plunder and some horses which they had stolen, set off by the way of Jackson's river, for the Ohio; the remainder started towards Cedar creek, with the ostensible view of committing farther depredations. But Matthews and the Maxwells had sounded the alarm, and the whole settlement were soon collected at Paul's stockade fort, at the Big spring near to Springfield. Here the women and children were left to be defended by Audley Maxwell and five other men; while the others, forming a party of twenty-two, with George Matthews at their head, set out in quest of the enemy. The Indians were soon overtaken, and after a severe engagement, were forced to give ground. Matthews and his party followed in pursuit, as far as Purgatory creek; but the night being very dark in consequence of a continued rain, the fugitives effected an escape; and overtaking their comrades with the prisoners and plunder, on the next evening, at the forks of the James and Cowpasture rivers, proceeded to Ohio without further molestation. When Matthews and his men, on the morning succeeding the engagement, returned to the field of battle, they found nine Indians dead; whom they buried on the spot. Benjamin Smith, Thomas Maury and the father of Sally Jew, were the only persons of Matthews' party, who were killed--these, together with those who had been murdered on the preceding day, were buried near the fork of a branch, in (what is now) the meadow of Thomas Cross sr. In Boquet's treaty with the Ohio Indians, it was stipulated that the whites detained by them in captivity were to be brought in and redeemed. In compliance with this stipulation, Mrs. Renix was brought to Staunton in 1767 and ransomed, together with two of her sons, William, the late Col. Renix of Greenbrier, and Robert, also of Greenbrier--Betsy, her daughter, had died on the Miami. Thomas returned in 1783, but soon after removed and settled, on the Scioto, near Chilicothe. Joshua never came back; he took an Indian wife and became a Chief among the Miamies--he amassed a considerable fortune and died near Detroit in 1810. Hannah Dennis was separated from the other captives, and allotted to live at the Chilicothe towns.[13] She learned their language; painted herself as they do; and in many respects conformed to their manners and customs. She was attentive to sick persons and was highly esteemed by the Indians, as [69] one well skilled in the art of curing diseases. Finding them very superstitious and believers in necromancy; she professed witchcraft, and affected to be a prophetess. In this manner she conducted herself, 'till she became so great a favorite with them, that they gave her full liberty and honored her as a queen. Notwithstanding this, Mrs. Dennis was always determined to effect her escape, when a favorable opportunity should occur; and having remained so long with them, apparently well satisfied, they ceased to entertain any suspicions of such a design. In June 1763, she left the Chilicothe towns, _ostensibly_ to procure herbs for medicinal purposes, (as she had before frequently done,) but _really_ to attempt an escape. As she did not return that night, her intention became suspected; and in the morning, some warriors were sent in pursuit of her. In order to leave as little trail as possible, she had crossed the Scioto river three times, and was just getting over the fourth time 40 miles below the towns, when she was discovered by her pursuers. They fired at her across the river without effect; but in endeavoring to make a rapid flight, she had one of her feet severely cut by a sharp stone. The Indians then rushed across the river to overtake and catch her, but she eluded them by crawling into the hollow limb, of a large fallen sycamore. They searched around for her some time, frequently stepping on the log which concealed her; and encamped near it that night. On the next day they went on to the Ohio river, but finding no trace of her, they returned home. Mrs. Dennis remained at that place three days, doctoring her wound, and then set off for home. She crossed the Ohio river, at the mouth of Great Kenhawa, on a log of driftwood, travelling only during the night, for fear of discovery--She subsisted on roots, herbs, green grapes, wild cherries and river muscles--and entirely exhausted by fatigue and hunger, sat down by the side of Greenbrier river, with no expectation of ever proceeding farther. In this situation she was found by Thomas Athol and three others from Clendennin's settlement, which she had passed without knowing it. She had been then upwards of twenty days on her disconsolate journey, alone, on foot--but 'till then, cheered with the hope of again being with her friends. She was taken back to Clendennin's, where they kindly [70] ministered to her, 'till she became so far invigorated, as to travel on horseback with an escort, to Fort Young on Jackson's river; from whence she was carried home to her relations. In the course of a few days after Hannah Dennis had gone from Clendennins, a party of about sixty warriors came to the settlement on Muddy creek, in the county of Greenbrier. That region of country then contained no inhabitants, but those on Muddy creek, and in the Levels; and these are believed to have consisted of at least one hundred souls. The Indians came apparently as friends, and the French war having been terminated by the treaty of the preceding spring, the whites did not for an instant doubt their sincerity. They were entertained in small parties at different houses, and every civility and act of kindness, which the new settlers could proffer, were extended to them. In a moment of the most perfect confidence in the innocense of their intentions, the Indians rose on them and tomahawked and scalped all, save a few women and children of whom they made prisoners. After the perpetration of this most barbarous and bloody outrage, the Indians (excepting some few who took charge of the prisoners) proceeded to the settlement in the Levels. Here, as at Muddy creek, they disguised their horrid purpose, and wearing the mask of friendship, were kindly received at the house of Mr. Clendennin.[14] This gentleman had just returned from a successful hunt, and brought home three fine elks--these and the novelty of being with _friendly Indians_, soon drew the whole settlement to his house. Here too the Indians were well entertained and feasted on the fruit of Clendennin's hunt, and every other article of provision which was there, and could minister to their gratification. An old woman, who was of the party, having a very sore leg and having understood that Indians could perform a cure of any ulcer, shewed it to one near her; and asked if he could heal it--The inhuman monster raised his tomahawk and buried it in her head. This seemed to be the signal of a general massacre and promptly was it obeyed--nearly every man of the settlement was killed and the women and children taken captive. While this tragedy was acting, a negro woman, who was [71] endeavoring to escape, was followed by her crying child.--To save it from savage butchery, she turned round and murdered it herself. Mrs. Clendennin, driven to despair by the cruel and unprovoked murder of her husband and friends, and the spoliation and destruction of all their property, boldly charged the Indians with perfidy and treachery; and alleged that cowards only could act with such duplicity. The bloody scalp of her husband was thrown in her face--the tomahawk was raised over her head; but she did not cease to revile them. In going over Keeny's knot on the next day, the prisoners being in the centre, and the Indians in the front and rear, she gave her infant child to one of the women to hold for a while.--She then stepped into the thicket unperceived, and made her escape. The crying of the infant soon lead to a discovery of her flight--one of the Indians observed that he could "bring the cow to her calf," and taking the child by the heels, beat out its brains against a tree. Mrs. Clendennin returned that night to her home, a distance of ten miles; and covering the body of her husband with rails and trash, retired into an adjoining corn field, lest she might be pursued and again taken prisoner. While in the corn field, her mind was much agitated by contending emotions; and the prospect of effecting an escape to the settlements, seemed to her dreary and hopeless. In a moment of despondency, she thought she beheld a man, with the aspect of a murderer, standing near her; and she became overwhelmed with fear. It was but the creature of a sickly and terrified imagination; and when her mind regained its proper tone, she resumed her flight and reached the settlement in safety.[15] These melancholy events occurring so immediately after the escape of Hannah Dennis; and the unwillingness of the Indians that she should be separated from them, has induced the supposition that the party committing those dreadful outrages were in pursuit of her. If such were the fact, dearly were others made to pay the penalty of her deliverance. This and other incidents, similar in their result, satisfied the whites that although the war had been terminated on the part of the French; yet it was likely to be continued with all its horrors, by their savage allies. This was then, and has since been, attributed to the smothered hostility of the French in [72] Canada and on the Ohio river; and to the influence which they had acquired over the Indians. This may have had its bearing on the event; but from the known jealousy entertained by the Indians, of the English Colonists; their apprehensions that they would be dispossessed of the country, which they then held (England claiming jurisdiction over it by virtue of the treaty of Paris;) and their dissatisfaction at the terms on which France had negotiated a peace, were in themselves sufficient to induce hostilities on the part of the Indians. Charity would incline to the belief that the continuance of the war was rightly attributable to these causes--the other reason assigned for it, supposing the existence of a depravity, so deep and damning, as almost to stagger credulity itself. In October, 1764, about fifty Delaware and Mingo warriors ascended the Great Sandy and came over on New river, where they separated; and forming two parties, directed their steps toward different settlements--one party going toward Roanoke and Catawba--the other in the direction of Jackson's river. They had not long passed, when their trail was discovered by three men, (Swope, Pack and Pitman) who were trapping on New river. These men followed the trail till they came to where the Indian party had divided; and judging from the routes which, had been taken, that their object was to visit the Roanoke and Jackson's river settlements, they determined on apprizing the inhabitants of their danger. Swope and Pack set out for Roanoke and Pitman for Jackson's river. But before they could accomplish their object, the Indians had reached the settlements on the latter river, and on Catawba. The Party which came to Jackson's river, travelled down Dunlap's creek and crossed James river, above Fort Young, in the night and unnoticed; and going down this river to William Carpenter's, where was a stockade fort under the care of a Mr. Brown, they met Carpenter just above his house and killed him. They immediately proceeded to the house, and made prisoners of a son of Mr. Carpenter, two sons of Mr. Brown[16] [73] (all small children) and one woman--the others belonging to the house, were in the field at work. The Indians then dispoiled the house and taking off some horses, commenced a precipitate retreat--fearing discovery and pursuit. When Carpenter was shot, the report of the gun was heard by those at work in the field; and Brown carried the alarm to Fort Young. In consequence of the weakness of this fort, a messenger was despatched to Fort Dinwiddie, with the intelligence. Capt. Paul (who still commanded there,) immediately commenced a pursuit with twenty of his men; and passing out at the head of Dunlap's creek, descended Indian creek and New river to Piney creek; without making any discovery of the enemy. On Indian creek they met Pitman, who had been running all the day and night before, to apprise the garrison at Fort Young of the approach of the Indians. Pitman joined in pursuit of the party who had killed Carpenter; but they, apprehending that they would be followed, had escaped to Ohio, by the way of Greenbrier and Kenhawa rivers.[17] As Capt. Paul and his men were returning, they accidently met with the other party of Indians, who had been to Catawba, and committed some depredations and murders there. They were discovered about midnight, encamped on the north bank of New river, opposite an island at the mouth of Indian creek. Excepting some few who were watching three prisoners, (whom they had taken on Catawba, and who were sitting in the midst of them,) they were lying around a small fire, wrapped in skins and blankets. Paul's men not knowing that there were captives among them, fired in the midst, killed three Indians, and wounded several others, one of whom drowned himself to preserve his scalp--the rest of the party fled hastily down the river and escaped. In an instant after the firing, Capt. Paul and his men rushed forward to secure the wounded and prevent further escapes. One of the foremost of his party seeing, as he supposed, a squaw sitting composedly awaiting the result, raised his tomahawk and just as it was descending, Capt. Paul threw himself between the assailant and his victim; and receiving the blow on his arm, exclaimed, "It is a shame to hurt a woman, even a squaw." Recognising the voice of Paul, the woman named him. She was Mrs. Catharine Gunn, an English lady, who had come to the country some years before; and who, previously to her marriage, had lived in the family of Capt. Paul's father-in-law, where she became acquainted with that gentleman--She had been taken captive by the Indians, on the Catawba, a few days before, when her husband and two only children were killed by them. When questioned why she had not cried out, or otherwise made known that she was a white prisoner, she replied, "I had as soon be killed as not--my husband is murdered--my children are slain--my parents are dead. I have not a relation in America--every thing dear to me here is gone--I have no wishes--no hopes--no fears--I would not have risen to my feet to save my life." [74] When Capt. Paul came on the enemy's camp, he silently posted his men in an advantageous situation for doing execution, and made arrangements for a simultaneous fire. To render this the more deadly and efficient, they dropped on one knee, and were preparing to take deliberate aim, when one of them (John M'Collum) called to his comrades, "Pull steady and send them all to hell." This ill timed expression of anxious caution, gave the enemy a moment's warning of their danger; and is the reason why greater execution was not done. The Indians had left all their guns, blankets and plunder--these together with the three white captives, were taken by Capt. Paul to Fort Dinwiddie.[18] ----- [1] Father of Dr. Archibald Alexander, sometime president of Hampden Sydney College in Virginia, and afterwards a professor at Princeton in New Jersey. ------ _Comment by L. C. D._--He was the grandfather of Dr. Alexander. [2] The attacks on the Roanoke settlement, mentioned by Withers, occurred in June and July, 1755 (not the spring of 1757, as he states); that on Greenbrier, in September following; and the expedition against the Shawnees did not take place in 1757, but in February and March, 1756. Diaries and other documents in the Wisconsin Historical Society's library prove this. Dr. Draper estimated that Lewis's force was about 263 whites and 130 Cherokees--418 in all. The several companies were officered by Peter Hogg, John Smith, William Preston, Archibald Alexander, Robert Breckenridge, Obadiah Woodson, John Montgomery, and one Dunlap. Two of Dr. Thomas Walker's companions in his Kentucky exploration of 1750, were in the expedition--Henry Lawless and Colby Chew. Governor Dinwiddie had stipulated in his note to Washington, in December, 1755, that either Col. Adam Stephen or Maj. Andrew Lewis was to command. Washington having selected the latter, dispatched him from Winchester about the middle of January, 1756, with orders to hurry on the expedition. To the mismanagement of the guides is attributed much of the blame for its failure. The interesting Journals of Capt. William Preston and Lieut. Thomas Norton are in the possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society.--R. G. T. [3] But Gallipolis was not settled until 1790, as has been previously shown. Withers confounds the modern French town of Gallipolis, whose residents were the sad victims of Indian outrages rather than the abettors of them, with the old Shawnee town just below the mouth of the Scioto (site of Alexandria, O.). This fur-trading center was a village of log huts built by the French for the accommodation of their Shawnee allies, and was a center of frontier disturbances.--R. G. T. [4] Preston's Journal does not lay much stress on Hogg's delay. Norton's Journal, speaking of Hogg, says, "common soldiers were by him scarcely treated with humanity," and he seems to have regularly overruled and disobeyed Lewis. There was much rancor in camp, and Norton writes of the Cherokee allies, "The conduct and concord that was kept up among the Indians might shame us, for they were in general quite unanimous and brotherly."--R. G. T. [5] This expedition was sent out under the auspices of Gov. Dinwiddie--Fauquier did not become governor until 1758. No countermanding orders were sent.--L. C. D. [6] Audley Paul was first lieutenant in Preston's company.--L. C. D. [7] Withers, deriving his information from Taylor's sketches, was misled as to any intention of establishing a fort at the mouth of the Kanawha; and also as to Paul's, or any one else's proposition to cross the Ohio, and invade the Shawnee towns. The only aim was, to reach the Upper Shawnee town.--L. C. D. ------ _Comment by R. G. T._--"Upper Shawnee town" was an Indian village at the mouth of Old Town Creek, emptying into the Ohio from the north, 39 miles above the mouth of the Great Kanawha. [8] If such a journal ever existed, it passed into the hands of Gov. Dinwiddie, or possibly to Gov. Fauquier; but no reference to it is found among the _Dinwiddie Papers_, as published by the Virginia Historical Society; nor in the _Calendar of State Papers_, published by the State of Virginia. It is to be remarked, however, that few of the records of that period have been preserved by that State.--L. C. D. [9] Shortly after, M'Nutt was appointed governor of Nova Scotia, where he remained until the commencement of the American revolution. In this contest he adhered to the cause of liberty, and joined his countrymen in arms under Gen. Gates at Saratoga. He was afterwards known as a meritorious officer in the brigade of Baron de Kalb, in the south--he died in 1811, and was buried in the Falling Spring church yard, in the forks of James river. [10] Preston's MS. Register of the persons of Augusta county, Va., killed, wounded, captured by the Indians, and of those who escaped, from 1754 to May, 1758, is in the Wisconsin Historical Society's library. It is to be regretted that Col. Preston, whose opportunities were so good, did not continue the Register till the end of the Indian wars. It is a most valuable document as far as it goes, and supplies many dates and facts hitherto involved in doubt and obscurity.--L. C. D. [11] Seybert's Fort was situated on the South Fork, twelve miles northeast of Franklin, in Pendleton County. At the time of this invasion, there was a fort located on the South Branch, garrisoned by Capt. James Dunlap and a company of rangers from Augusta county. Preston's Register states, that on the 27th of April, 1758, the fort at which Capt. Dunlap was stationed, was attacked and captured, the captain and twenty-two others killed; and, the next day, the same party, no doubt, attacked Seybert's Fort, killing Capt. Seybert and sixteen others, while twenty-four others were missing. Washington, at the time, placed the number as "about sixty persons killed and missing." A gazette account, published at Williamsburg, May 5th ensuing, says: "The Indians lately took and burnt two forts, where were stationed one of our ranging companies, forty of whom were killed and scalped, and Lieut. Dunlap and nineteen missing." Kercheval's _History of the Valley_ gives some further particulars: That Seybert's Fort was taken by surprise; that ten of the thirty persons occupying it, were bound, taken outside; the others were placed on a log and tomahawked. James Dyer, a lad of fourteen, was spared, taken first to Logstown, and then to Chillicothe, and retained a year and ten months, when as one of an Indian party he visited Fort Pitt, and managed to evade his associates while there, and finally reached the settlements in Pennsylvania, and two years later returned to the South Fork. It is added by the same historian, as another tradition, that after the fort had been invested two days, and two of the Indians had been killed, the garrison agreed to surrender on condition of their lives being spared, which, was solemnly promised. That when the gate was opened, the Indians rushed in with demoniac yells, the whites fled, but were retaken, except one person; the massacre then took place, and ten were carried off into captivity. Still another tradition preserved by Kercheval, says the noted Delaware chief, Killbuck, led the Indians. Seybert's son, a lad of fifteen, exhibited great bravery in the defense of the fort. Killbuck called out to Capt. Seybert, in English, to surrender, and their lives should be spared; when young Seybert at this instant, aimed his loaded gun at the chief, and the father seized it, and took it from him, saying they could not successfully defend the place, and to save their lives should surrender, confiding in Killbuck's assurances. Capt. Seybert was among the first of those sacrificed. Young Seybert was among the prisoners, and told the chief how near he came to killing him. "You young rascal," laughingly replied Killbuck, "if you had killed me, you would have saved the fort, for had I fallen, my warriors would have immediately fled, and given up the siege in despair."--L. C. D. [12] The name is Renick. Robert Renick, who was killed on the occasion referred to, was a man of character and influence in his day. His name appears on Capt. John Smith's company roll of Augusta militia as early as 1742; and four years later, he was lieutenant of a mounted company of Augusta militia. Instead of 1761, the captivity of the Renick family occurred July 25, 1757, as shown by the Preston Register, which states that Renick and another were killed on that day--Mrs. Renick and seven children, and a Mrs. Dennis, captured; and the same day, at Craig's Creek, one man was killed and two wounded. The Renick traditions state that Mrs. Renick had only five children when taken; and one born after reaching the Indian towns; and corrects some other statements not properly related in Withers's narrative of the affair.--L. C. D. [13] In 1763-65, the great Shawnee village just below the mouth of the Scioto (site of Alexandria, O.), was destroyed by floods. Some of the tribesmen rebuilt their town on a higher bottom just above the mouth (site of Portsmouth, O.), while others ascended the Scioto and built successively Old and New Chillicothe.--R. G. T. [14] Where Ballard Smith now resides. [15] Further particulars of this captivity are in Royall's _Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in U. S._ (New Haven, 1826), pp. 60-66.--R. G. T. [16] Carpenter's son (since Doctor Carpenter of Nicholas) came home about fifteen years afterwards--Brown's youngest son, (the late Col. Samuel Brown of Greenbrier) was brought home in 1769--the elder son never returned. He took an Indian wife, became wealthy and lived at Brown's town in Michigan. He acted a conspicuous part in the late war and died in 1815. ------ _Comment by L. C. D._--Adam Brown, who was captured as mentioned in the above text and note, was thought by his last surviving son, Adam Brown, Jr., whom I visited in Kansas in 1868, to have been about six years old when taken; and he died, he thought, about 1817, at about seventy-five years of age. But these dates, and his probable age, do not agree; he was either older when taken, or not so old at his death. The mother was killed when the sons were captured, and the father and some others of the family escaped. The late William Walker, an educated Wyandott, and at one time territorial governor of Kansas, stated to me, that the Wyandotts never made chiefs of white captives, but that they often attained, by their merits, considerable consequence. It is, however, certain that Abraham Kuhn, a white prisoner, grew up among the Wyandotts, and, according to Heckewelder, became a war chief among them, and signed the treaty at Big Beaver in 1785; and Adam Brown himself signed the treaties of 1805 and 1808, and doubtless would have signed later ones had he not sided with the British Wyandotts, and retired to Canada, near Malden, where he died. [17] It is highly probable that this foray took place in 1763. During this year, as features of the Pontiac uprising, bloody forays were made on the more advanced settlements on Jackson, Greenbrier, and Calf Pasture rivers, and several severe contests ensued between whites and Indians. Captains Moffett and Phillips, with sixty rangers, were ambuscaded with the loss of fifteen men. Col. Charles Lewis pursued the savages with 150 volunteers raised in a single night, and on October 3rd surprised them at the head of the South Fork of the Potomac, killing twenty-one, with no white losses. The spoils of this victory, beside the "five horses with all their trappings," sold for £250. This was the most notable of the several skirmishes which took place on the Virginia frontier, that year.--R. G. T. [18] Perhaps this affair is that related by Capt. William Christian, in a letter dated Roanoke, Oct. 19th, 1763, as published in the gazettes of that day--there are, at least, some suggestive similarities: "Being joined by Capt. Hickenbotham, with twenty-five of the Amherst militia, we marched on Tuesday last, to Winston's Meadows, where our scouts informed us, that they had discovered a party of Indians about three miles off. Night coming on, prevented our meeting them; and next day, being rainy, made it difficult to follow their tracks. As they were on their return, Capt. Hickenbotham marched to join Capt. Ingles down New River. I, with nineteen men and my ensign, took a different route in quest of them. We marched next day on their tracks until two hours before sunset, when we heard some guns, and soon afterwards discovered three large fires, which appeared to be on the bank of Turkey Creek, where it empties into New river. Upon this we immediately advanced, and found they were on an island. Being within gun-shot, we fired on them, and loading again, forded the creek. The Indians, after killing Jacob Kimberlain, a prisoner they had with them, made but a slight resistence, and ran off. We found one Indian killed on the spot, and, at a little distance, four blankets shot through, and very bloody. We took all their bundles, four guns, eight tomahawks, and two mares. They had several other horses, which being frightened by the firing, ran off and were lost. The party consisted of upwards of twenty Indians. By the tracks of blood, we imagined several of them were wounded." This affair occurred Oct. 12th.--L. C. D. [75] CHAPTER IV. During the continuance of the French war, and of that with the Indians which immediately succeeded it, the entire frontier from New York to Georgia was exposed to the merciless fury of the savages. In no instance were the measures of defence adopted by the different colonies, adequate to their object.--From some unaccountable fatuity in those who had the direction of this matter, a defensive war, which alone could have checked aggression and prevented the effusion of blood, was delayed 'till the whole population, of the country west of the Blue ridge, had retired east of those mountains; or were cooped up in forts. The chief means of defence employed, were the militia of the adjoining counties, and the establishment of a line of forts and block-houses, dispersed along a considerable extent of country, and occupied by detachments of British colonial troops, or by militiamen. All these were utterly incompetent to effect security; partly from the circumstances of the case, and somewhat from the entire want of discipline, and the absence of that subordination which is absolutely necessary to render an army effective. So great and apparent were the insubordination and remissness of duty, on the part of the various garrisons, that Gen. Washington, declared them "utterly inefficient and useless;" and the inhabitants themselves, could place no reliance whatever on them, for protection. In a particular instance, such were the inattention and carelessness of the garrison that several children playing under the walls of the fort, were run down and caught by the Indians, who were not discovered 'till they arrived at the very gate.[1] In Virginia the error of confiding on the militia, soon became apparent.[2] Upon the earnest remonstrance and entreaty of General Washington, the colonial legislature substituted a force of regulars,[3] [76] which at once effected the partial security of her frontier, and gave confidence to the inhabitants. In Pennsylvania, from the pacific disposition of her rulers and their abhorrence of war of any kind, her border settlements suffered most severely. The whole extent of her frontier was desolated by the Indians, and irruptions were frequently made by them into the interior. The establishments, which had been made in the Conococheague valley, were altogether broken up and scenes of the greatest barbarity, on one side, and of the utmost suffering on the other, were constantly exhibiting. A few instances of this suffering and of that barbarity, may not be improperly adduced here. They will serve to illustrate the condition of those who were within reach of the savage enemy; and perhaps, to palliate the enormities practiced on the christian Indians. In the fall of 1754 about forty or fifty Indians entered that province, and dividing themselves into two parties, sought the unprotected settlements, for purposes of murder and devastation: the smaller party went about the forks of Delaware--the other directing their steps along the Susquehanna. On the 2nd of October, twelve of the former appeared before the house of Peter Williamson, (a Scotchman, with no family but his wife,) who had made considerable improvement near the Delaware river. Mrs. Williamson being from home, he sat up later than usual, and about 11 o'clock was astounded at the savage war whoop, resounding from various directions, near to the house. Going to the window, he perceived several Indians standing in the yard, one of whom, in broken English, promised that if he would come out and surrender he should not be killed; threatening at the same time that if he did not, they would burn him up in his house. Unable to offer an effectual resistance, and preferring the chance of safety by surrendering, to the certainty of a horrid death if he attempted an opposition, he yielded himself up a prisoner. So soon as he was in their power they plundered the house of such articles as they could conveniently take with them, and set fire to it, and to the barn, in which was a quantity of wheat, some horses and other cattle. After inflicting some severe tortures on Williamson, and forcing him to carry a heavy weight of the plunder, which they had taken from him, they went to a neighboring house, occupied by Jacob Snyder, his wife, five children and a servant. The piercing cries, and [77] agonizing shrieks of these poor creatures, made no impression on the savages. The father, mother, and children were tomahawked and scalped, and their bodies consumed by fire together with the house. The servant was spared that he might aid in carrying their plunder; but manifesting deep distress at his situation as prisoner, he was tomahawked before they proceeded far. Before they could accomplish farther mischief a fall of snow, making them apprehensive that they would be pursued by the united force of the settlement, induced them to return to Alamingo--taking Williamson with them. On their way back, they met with the party of Indians, which had separated from them, as they approached the settlements. These had been lower down on the Susquehanna, and had succeeded in making greater havoc, and committing more depredations, than it had fallen to the lot of those who had taken Williamson, to commit. They had with them three prisoners and twenty scalps. According to the account of their transactions as detailed by the prisoners, they had on one day killed and scalped John Lewis, his wife and three children, and in a few days after had murdered, with almost every circumstance of cruelty, Jacob Miller, his wife and six children, and George Folke, his wife and nine children, cutting up the bodies of the latter family and giving them piece-meal to the hogs in the pen. Wherever they had been, destruction marked their course. In every instance the houses, barns and grain stacks were consumed by fire; and the stock killed. The three prisoners who had been brought in by the last party, endeavored soon after to effect an escape; but their ignorance of the country, and the persevering activity and vigilance of the Indians, prevented the accomplishment of their attempt. They were overtaken, and brought back; and then commenced a series of cruelties, tortures and death, sufficient to shock the sensibilities of the most obdurate heart, if unaccustomed to the perpetration of such enormities. Two of them were tied to trees, around which large fires were kindled, and they suffered to remain for some time, in the gradual but horrible state of being scorched to death. After the Indians had enjoyed awhile the writhings of agony and the tears of anguish, which were drawn from these suffering victims, one, stepping within the circle, ripped open their bodies and threw their bowels into the flames. Others, to emulate [78] this most shocking deed, approached, and with knives, burning sticks, and heated irons, continued to lacerate, pierce and tear the flesh from their breasts, arms and legs, 'till death closed the scene of horrors and rendered its victims insensible to its pains. The third was reserved a few hours, that he might be sacrificed under circumstances of peculiar enormity. A hole being dug in the ground of a depth sufficient to enable him to stand upright, with his head only exposed, his arms were pinioned to his body, he placed in it, and the loose earth thrown in and rammed closely around him. He was then scalped and permitted to remain in that situation for several hours. A fire was next kindled near his head. In vain did the poor suffering victim of hellish barbarity exclaim, that his brains were boiling in his head; and entreat the mercy of instant death. Deaf to his cries, and inexorable to his entreaties, they continued the fire 'till his eye balls burst and gushed from their sockets, and death put a period to his sufferings. Of all these horrid spectacles, Williamson was an unwilling spectator; and supposing that he was reserved for some still more cruel and barbarous fate, determined on escaping. This he was soon enabled to do; and returned to the settlements.[4] The frequent infliction of such enormities as these upon the helpless and unoffending women and children, as well as upon those who were more able to resist and better qualified to endure them; together with the desolation of herds, the devastation of crops, and the conflagration of houses which invariably characterized those incursions, engendered a general feeling of resentment, that sought in some instances, to wreak itself on those who were guiltless of any participation in those bloody deeds. That vindictive spirit led to the perpetration of offences against humanity, not less atrocious than those which they were intended to requite; and which obliterated every discriminative feature between the perpetrators of them, and their savage enemies. The Canestoga Indians, to the number of forty, lived in a village, in the vicinity of Lancaster; they were in amity with the whites, and had been in peace and quiet for a considerable length of time. An association of men, denominated the "Paxton boys," broke into their little town and murdered all who were found at home--fourteen men, women and children fell a prey to the savage brutality of those sons of civilization [79]. The safety of the others was sought to be effected, by confining them in the jail at Lancaster. It was in vain. The walls of a prison could afford no protection, from the relentless fury of these exasperated men. The jail doors were broken open, and its wretched inmates cruelly murdered.--And, as if their deaths could not satiate their infuriate murderers, their bodies were brutally mangled, the hands and feet lopped off, and scalps torn from the bleeding heads of innocent infants. A similar fate impended the christian Indians of Nequetank and Nain; and was only averted, by the timely interposition of the government of Pennsylvania. They were removed to Philadelphia, where they remained from November 1763 'till after the close of the war in December 1764; during which time the Paxton boys twice assembled in the neighborhood of the city, for the purpose of assaulting the barracks and murdering the Indians, but were deterred by the military preparations made to oppose them; and ultimately, but reluctantly, desisted. Had the feelings excited in the minds of these misguided men, by the cruelties of the Indians, been properly directed, it would have produced a quite different result. If, instead of avenging the outrages of others, upon those who were no otherwise guilty than in the complexion of their skin, they had directed their exertions to the repressing of invasion, and the punishment of its authors, much good might have been achieved; and they, instead of being stigmatized as murderers of the innocent, would have been hailed as benefactors of the border settlements. Associations of this kind were formed in that province, and contributed no little to lessen the frequency of Indian massacres, and to prevent the effusion of blood, and the destruction of property. At the time the Paxton boys were meditating and endeavoring to effect the destruction of the peaceable christian Indians, another company, formed by voluntary league, was actively engaged in checking the intrusions, of those who were enemies, and in punishing their aggressions. A company of riflemen, called the Black boys (from the fact of their painting themselves red and black, after the Indian fashion,) under the command of Capt. James Smith, contributed to preserve the Conococheague valley, during the years 1763 and 1764, from the devastation [80] which had overspread it early after the commencement of Braddock's war. Capt. Smith had been captured by the Indians in the spring of 1755, and remained with them until the spring of 1759, when he left them at Montreal, and after some time arrived at home in Pennsylvania. He was in Fort du Quesne, when the Indians and French went out to surprise Gen. Braddock; and witnessed the burnings and other dreadful tortures inflicted upon those who were so unfortunate as to have been made prisoners; and the orgies and demoniacal revels with which the victory was celebrated. He was subsequently adopted into a family, by which he was kindly treated; and became well acquainted with their manner of warfare, and the various arts practised by them, to ensure success in their predatory incursions, and afterwards to elude pursuit. He became satisfied from observation, that to combat Indians successfully, they must be encountered in their own way; and he accordingly instructed his men in the Indian mode of warfare, dressed them after the Indian fashion, and fought after the Indian manner.[5] An instance of the good effect resulting from practicing the arts and stratagems of the Indians, occurred during this war; and to its success the garrison of Fort Pitt were indebted for their preservation. After the ratification of the treaty of peace which had been concluded between England and France, war continued to be waged by the Indians on the whole western frontier. A large body of them had collected and marched to Fort Pitt, with a view to its reduction by famine. It had been invested for some time and the garrison being too weak to sally out and give battle to the besiegers, Capt. Ecuyer dispatched messengers with the intelligence of his situation and a request for aid and provisions: these were either compelled to return or be killed, as the country for some distance east of Fort Pitt was in the possession of the savages.[6] At length a quantity of provisions were ordered by Gov. Amherst for the relief of the fort, and forwarded under a strong guard commanded by Colonel Boquet. The Indians were soon apprized of this and determined on intercepting the provisions, and if practicable, to prevent their reaching the place of their destination. With this object in view, a considerable force was detached, to watch the motions of Col. Boquet and [81] upon a favorable opportunity to give him battle. In a narrow defile on Turtle creek an attack was made by the Indians, and a severe engagement ensued. Both armies fought with the most obstinate bravery, from one o'clock 'till night, and in the morning it was resumed, and continued with unabated fury for several hours. At length Col. Boquet, having placed four companies of infantry and grenadiers in ambush, ordered a retreat. So soon as this was commenced, the Indians, confident of victory, pressed forward with considerable impetuosity, and fell into the ambuscade. This decided the contest--the Indians were repulsed with great slaughter and dispersed. The loss of the British, in killed and wounded, exceeded one hundred. That they were not entirely cut off, was attributable to the stratagem of the retreat (a favorite one of the Indians;) the success of which not only saved the detachment under Col. Boquet, but likewise preserved Fort Pitt, from falling into the hands of the savage foe. The loss sustained by the enemy, must have equaled that of the British; several of their most distinguished chiefs and warriors, were of the number of the slain: and so decisive was the victory obtained over them, that in the succeeding campaign against the Indians on the Muskingum, Boquet found not much difficulty in bringing them to terms. A cessation of hostilities was agreed to, upon condition that they would give up all the whites then detained by them in captivity. Upwards of three hundred prisoners were then redeemed; but the season being far advanced and the others scattered in different parts of the country, it was stipulated, that they should be brought into Fort Pitt early in the ensuing spring; and as a security that they would comply with this condition of the armistice, six of their chiefs were delivered up as hostages--these however succeeded in making their escape before the army arrived at Fort Pitt.[7] The ill success which had attended the combined operations of the Indians, during this war, the difficulty of procuring ammunition to support it, and the fact that it had begun to be carried into their own country, disposed them to make peace. A treaty was accordingly concluded with them by Sir William Johnson in 1765. Previous to this however, some few depredations were committed by the Indians, in contravention of the agreement made with them by Col. Boquet; and which induced a belief that the want of clothes and ammunition,[82] was the real cause of their partial forbearance. It was therefore of great consequence, to prevent their obtaining a supply of these necessaries, until there could be some stronger assurance, than had been given, of their pacific disposition. Notwithstanding the prevalence of this impression, and the fact, that a royal proclamation had been issued, forbidding any person trading with the Indians, yet in March 1765 a number of wagons, laden with goods and warlike stores for the Indians, was sent from Philadelphia to Henry Pollens of Conococheague, to be thence transported on pack horses to Fort Pitt. This very much alarmed the country; and many individuals remonstrated against the propriety of supplying the Indians at that particular juncture; alleging the well known fact, that they were then destitute of ammunition and clothing, and that to furnish them with those articles, would be to aid in bringing on another frontier war, and to lend themselves to the commission of those horrid murders, by which those wars were always distinguished. Remonstrance was fruitless. The gainful traffick which could be then carried on with the Indians, banished every other consideration; and seventy horses, packed with goods, were directed on to Fort Pitt. In this situation of things, Capt. James Smith, (who had been with Boquet during the campaign of 1764, and was well convinced that a supply at that time of clothing and ammunition, would be the signal for the recommencement of hostilities) collected ten of his "Black boys," painted and dressed as Indians; and waylaid the caravan, near a place called the "Side long Hill." He disposed his men in pairs, behind trees along the road, at intervals of about 60 yards, with orders for the second not to fire 'till the first had reloaded, so that a regular, slow fire might be maintained at once, from front to rear. As soon as the cavalcade approached, the firing commenced, and the pack horses beginning to fall by the side of their conductors, excited the fear of the latter, and induced them to cry out "Gentlemen what would you have us to do." Captain Smith replied, "collect all your loads to the front, deposit them in one place; take your private property and retire." These things were accordingly done; and the goods left (consisting of blankets, shirts, beads, vermillion, powder, lead, tomahawks, scalping knives, &c.) were immediately burned or otherwise destroyed. [83] The traders then went to Fort Loudon, and obtaining of the commanding officer a party of Highland soldiers, proceeded in quest of the _Robbers_ (as they termed them;) some of whom were taken and carried into the Fort. Capt. Smith then raised about 300 riflemen, and marching to Fort Loudon, occupied a position on an eminence near it. He had not been long there before he had more than twice as many of the garrison, prisoners in his camp, as there were of his men in the guard house. Under a flag of truce proceeding from the Fort, a convention for the exchange of prisoners was entered into between Capt. Grant, the commander of the garrison, and Capt. Smith, and the latter with his men, immediately returned to their homes. [8] Occurrences such as this, were afterwards of too frequent [84] recurrence. The people had been taught by experience, that the fort afforded very little, if any protection to those who were not confined within its walls--they were jealous of the easy, and yet secure life led by the garrison, and apprehensive of the worst consequences from the intercourse of traders with the Indians. Under those feelings, they did not scruple to intercept the passage of goods to the trading posts, and commit similar outrages to those above described, if there were any interference on the part of the neighboring forts. On one occasion, Capt. Grant was himself taken prisoner, and [85] detained 'till restitution was made the inhabitants of some guns, which had been taken from them, by soldiers from the garrison; and in 1769, a quantity of powder, lead and other articles was taken from some traders passing through Bedford county, and destroyed. Several persons, supposed to have been of the party who committed this outrage, were apprehended, and laid in irons in the guard house at Fort Bedford. Capt. Smith, although in no wise engaged in this transaction, nor yet approving it, was nevertheless so indignant that an offence against the civil authorities, should be attempted to be punished by a military tribunal, that he resolved on effecting their release. To accomplish this, he collected eighteen of his "Black boys," in whom he knew he could confide; and marched along the main road in the direction of Fort Bedford. On his way to that place, he did not attempt to conceal his object, but freely told to every one who enquired, that he was going to take Fort Bedford. On the evening of the second day of their march, they arrived at the crossings of Juniata, (14 miles from Bedford) and erected tents as if they intended encamping there all night. Previous to this, Capt. Smith had communicated his intention to Mr. William Thompson (who lived in Bedford and on whom he could rely,) and prevailed on him to obtain what information he could as to the effect produced in the garrison by the preparations which he was making for its attack; and acquaint him with it. That he might be enabled to do this with greater certainty, a place and hour were appointed at which Capt. Smith would meet him. About 11 o'clock at night the march was resumed, and moving briskly they arrived near to Bedford, where they met Thompson; who communicated to them the fact, that the garrison had been apprized of their object that in consequence of having heard from them on the preceding evening, at the Crossings of Juniata, it was not expected they would arrive before mid-day, that their number was known, and the enterprise ridiculed. Thompson then returned to Bedford, and the party moved silently under covert of the banks of the river, 'till they approached near to the Fort, where they lay concealed, awaiting the opening of the gate. About day light Thompson apprised them that the guard had thrown open the gate, and were taking their morning's dram; that the arms were stacked not far from the entrance into the Fort, and three centinels on the wall. Upon hearing these things, Capt. Smith with his men rushed rapidly to the Fort, and the morning being misty, were not discovered 'till they had reached the gate. At that instant the centinels fired their guns and gave the alarm; but Capt. Smith and his men took possession of the arms, and raised a loud shout, before the soldiers of the garrison could learn the cause of the alarm, or get to the scene of action. [86] Having thus obtained possession of the Fort, Capt. Smith had the prisoners released from the guardhouse, and compelling a blacksmith to knock off their irons, left the Fort with them and returned to Conococheaque. "This, Capt. Smith says, was the first British fort in America, taken by what they called American rebels." Some time after this, an attempt was made to apprehend Capt. Smith, as he was proceeding to survey and locate land on the Youghogany river. In the encounter which succeeded, a man (by the name of Johnson) was killed; and the murder being charged on Smith, he was confined for a time in Bedford jail; but fearing a release, the civil authority sent him privately through the wilderness to Carlisle, to await a trial for the alledged offence. On hearing this, upwards of three hundred persons (among whom were his old "Black boys,") proceeded to Carlisle to effect a rescue; and were only prevented the accomplishment of their object, by the solicitation of Smith himself. He knew his innocence, and preferred awaiting a trial; and how willing soever he might have been to oppose any encroachments of the military, he held in just abhorrence, an opposition to the civil authority of his country. He was put on his trial and acquitted.[9] [87] Events such as those which have been narrated, serve to shew the state of things which existed at that day; and to point out the evils necessarily resulting, from an absence of municipal regulations. Man, in every station and condition of life, requires the controlling hand of civil power, to confine him in his proper sphere, and to check every advance of invasion, on the rights of others. Unrestrained liberty speedily degenerates into licentiousness. Without the necessary curbs and restraints of law, men would relapse into a state of nature; [88] and although the obligations of justice (the basis of society) be natural obligations; yet such are the depravity and corruption of human nature, that without some superintending and coercive power, they would be wholly disregarded; and human society, would become the field of oppression and outrage--instead of a theatre for the interchange of good offices. Civil institutions and judicial establishments; the comminations of punishment and the denunciations of law, are barely sufficient to repress the evil propensities of man. Left to themselves, they spurn all natural restrictions, and riot in the unrestrained indulgence of every passion. ----- [1] At Dickenson's fort in 1755. [2] When the Indians were most troublesome, and threatening even the destruction of Winchester, Lord Fairfax who was commandant of the militia of Frederick and Hampshire, ordered them out. Three days active exertion on his part, brought only 20 in the field. [3] Rather rangers, who seem to have been enlisted to serve a year, and were re-engaged when necessary.--L. C. D. [4] Peter Williamson had singular adventures. When a boy he was kidnapped at Aberdeen, and sent to America, for which he afterwards recovered damages. It is said that he passed a considerable period among the Cherokees. He instituted the first penny post at Edinburgh, for which, when the government assumed it, he received a pension. His _Memoirs_, and _French and Indian Cruelty Examplified_, were works of interest. He died in Edinburgh in 1799.--L. C. D. [5] Col. James Smith was born in Franklin county, Pa., in 1737; was captured by Indians in 1755, remaining in captivity until his escape in 1759. He served as ensign in 1763, and lieutenant under Bouquet in 1764; he was a leader, for several years, of the Black Boys--a sort of regulators of the traders who, the Black Boys thought, supplied the Indians with the munitions of war. As the troubles with the mother country began, Smith was selected for frontier service, and held civil and military positions--captain in the Pennsylvania line; then in 1777 as major under Washington; in 1778, he was promoted to the rank of colonel of militia, and led an expedition against the Indian town on French Creek. In 1788, he removed to Kentucky; served in the early Kentucky conventions, preparatory to State organization, and also in the legislature. He did missionary work in Kentucky and Tennessee, and preached among the Indians. He wrote a valuable account of his Indian captivity, republished a few years since by Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, and a treatise on Indian warfare, besides two controversial pamphlets against the Shakers. He died in Washington county, Ky., in 1812, aged about seventy-five years.--L. C. D. [6] Captain Simeon Ecuyer, like Bouquet, was a native of Switzerland; he did good service on the frontiers, especially in the gallant defense of Fort Pitt in 1763. He became disgusted with the bad conduct of his soldiers, especially the grenadiers, and begged leave to resign. "For God's sake," he implored Bouquet, "let me go, and raise cabbages."--L. C. D. [7] Henry Bouquet was born at Rolle, in the canton of Berne, Switzerland, in 1721, and at the age of seventeen he entered into the service of the states general of Holland; subsequently engaged under the banner of Sardinia, and distinguished himself at the battle of Cony. In 1748, he was a lieutenant-colonel in the Swiss guards, in the service of Holland. At length, in 1756, he entered the English army, serving in the Royal Americans, and co-operated with Gen. Forbes on the campaign against Fort Du Quesne, repulsing an attack of French and Indians on Loyal Hanna. He afterwards served in Canada, and was sent for the relief of Fort Pitt, when beleagured in 1763. While marching on this service, he signally defeated the Indians at Bushy Run, after a two days' engagement, in August of that year, and relieved Fort Pitt. In 1764, he led an expedition against the Ohio Indians, compelling them to sue for peace. He died at Pensacola, September 2, 1765, of a prevailing fever, in the prime of life, at the age of forty-four years. He had attained the rank of general.--L. C. D. [8] The following song was soon after composed by Mr. George Campbell (an Irish gentleman who had been educated in Dublin,) and was frequently sung in the neighborhood to the tune of the _Black Joke_. Ye patriot souls who love to sing, What serves your country and your king, In wealth, peace, and royal estate; Attention give whilst I rehearse, A modern fact, in jingling verse, How party interest strove what it cou'd, To profit itself by public blood, But justly met its merited fate. Let all those Indian traders claim, Their just reward, in glorious fame, For vile, base and treacherous ends, To Pollins in the spring they sent Much warlike stores, with an intent, To carry them to our barbarous foes, Expecting that nobody dare oppose A present to their Indian friends. Astonished at the wild design Frontier inhabitants combin'd, With brave souls to stop their career, Although some men apostatized Who first the grand attempt advis'd, The bold frontiers they bravely stood, To act for their king, and their country's good In joint league, and strangers to fear. On March the fifth, in sixty-five, Their Indian presents did arrive, In long pomp and cavalcade, Near Sidelong-hill, where in disguise, Some patriots did their train surprise, And quick as lightning tumbled their loads And kindled them bonfires in the woods; And mostly burnt their whole brigade. At Loudon when they heard the news, They scarcely knew which way to choose, For blind rage and discontent; At length some soldiers they sent out, With guides for to conduct the route, And seized some men that were travelling there And hurried them into Loudon, where They laid them fast with one consent. But men of resolution thought Too much to see their neighbors caught For no crime but false surmise; Forthwith they join'd a warlike band, And march'd to Loudon out of hand, And kept the jailors pris'ners there, Until our friends enlarged were, Without fraud or any disguise. Let mankind censure or commend, This rash performance in the end, Then both sides will find their account. 'Tis true no law can justify To burn our neighbors property, But when this property is design'd To serve the enemies of mankind, Its high treason in the amount. [9] The following extract from the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ of November 2d, 1769, details the circumstances of this transaction. "James Smith, his brother and brother in law, were going out to survey and improve their land, on the waters of the Youghogany.--Expecting to be gone some time, they took with them their arms, and horses loaded with necessaries; and as Smith's brother in law was an artist in surveying, he had also with him the instruments for that business. Travelling on their way and within nine miles of Bedford, they overtook and joined in company with one Johnson and Moorhead, who had likewise horses packed with liquor and seed wheat--their intentions being also to make improvements on their lands. Arrived at the parting of the road near Bedford, they separated, one party going through town for the purpose of having a horse shod; these were apprehended and put under confinement.--James Smith, Johnson and Moorhead taking the other road, met John Holmes of Bedford, to whom Smith spoke in a friendly manner but received no answer. Smith and his companions proceeded to where the two roads again united; and waited there the arrival of the others. "At this time a number of men came riding up, and asked Smith his name. On his telling them who he was, they immediately presented their pistols, and commanded him to surrender or he was a dead man. Smith stepped back and asking if they were highwaymen, charged them to keep off; when immediately Robert George (one of the assailants) snapped a pistol at Smith's head; and that (as George acknowledged under oath) before Smith had offered to [87] shoot. Smith then presented his gun at another of the assailants, who was holding Johnson with one hand, while with the other he held a pistol, which he was preparing to discharge. Two shots were fired, one by Smith's gun, the other by the pistol, so quick as to be just distinguishable, and Johnson fell. Smith was then taken and carried to Bedford, where John Holmes (who had met him on the road, and hastened to Bedford with the intelligence) held an inquest over the dead body of Johnson. One of the assailants being the only witness examined, it was found that "Johnson had been murdered by Smith," who was thereupon committed for trial. But jealousy arising in the breasts of many, that the inquest was not so fair as it should have been, William Deny, (the coroner of Bedford county) thought proper to re-examine the matter; and summoning a jury of unexceptionable men, out of three townships--men whose candour, probity, and honesty are unquestionable, and having raised the corpse, held a solemn inquest over it for three days. "In the course of their scrutiny, they found the shirt of Johnson, around the bullet hole, blackened by the powder of the charge with which he had been killed. One of the assailants being examined, swore to the respective spots of ground on which they stood at the time of firing, which being measured, was found to be 28 feet distance from each other. The experiment was then made of shooting at the shirt an equal distance both with and against the wind, to ascertain if the powder produced the stain; but it did not. Upon the whole the jury, after the most accurate examination and mature deliberation, brought in their verdict that one of the assailants must necessarily have done the murder." Captain Smith was a brave and enterprising man. In 1766, he, in company with Joshua Horton, Uriah Stone, William Baker and James Smith, by the way of Holstein, explored the country south of Kentucky at a time when it was entirely uninhabited; and the country between the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, to their entrance into the Ohio. Stone's river, a branch of the Cumberland and emptying into it not far above Nashville, was named by them in this expedition. After his acquittal from the charge of having murdered Johnson, he was elected and served as one of the board of commissioners, for regulating taxes and laying the county levy, in the county of Bedford. [88] He was for several years a delegate from the county of Westmoreland, to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania; and in the war of the revolution was an officer of merit and distinction. In 1781 he removed to Kentucky and settled in Bourbon county not far from Paris; was a member of the convention which set at Danville, to confer about a separation from the state of Virginia, in 1788, from which time until 1799, with the exception of two years, he was either a delegate of the convention or of the General Assembly of Kentucky. ------ _Comment by L. C. D._--It would seem from Col. Smith's own statement, that his removal to, and settlement in, Bourbon county, Ky., was in 1788. [89] CHAPTER V. The comparative security and quiet, which succeeded the treaty of 1765, contributed to advance the prosperity of the Virginia frontiers. The necessity of congregating in forts and blockhouses, no longer existing, each family enjoyed the felicities of its own fireside, undisturbed by fearful apprehensions of danger from the prowling savage, and free from the bustle and confusion consequent on being crowded together. No longer forced to cultivate their little fields in common, and by the united exertions of a whole neighborhood, with tomahawks suspended from their belts and rifles attached to their plow beams, their original spirit of enterprise was revived: and while a certainty of reaping in unmolested safety, the harvest for which they had toiled, gave to industry, a stimulus which increased their prosperity, it also excited others to come and reside among them--a considerable addition to their population, and a rapid extension of settlements, were the necessary consequence. It was during the continuation of this exemption from Indian aggression, that several establishments were made on the Monongahela and its branches, and on the Ohio river. These were nearly cotemporaneous; the first however, in order of time, was that made on the Buchannon--a fork of the Tygart's valley river, and was induced by a flattering account of the country as given by two brothers; who had spent some years in various parts of it, under rather unpleasant circumstances. Among the soldiers who garrisoned Fort Pitt, were William Childers, John and Samuel Pringle and Joseph Linsey. In 1761, these four men deserted from the fort, and ascended the Monongahela as far as to the mouth of George's creek (the site afterwards selected by Albert Gallatin, for the town of Geneva.) Here they remained awhile; but not liking the [90] situation crossed over to the head of the Youghogany; and encamping in the glades, continued there about twelve months. In one of their hunting rambles, Samuel Pringle came on a path, which he supposed would lead to the inhabited part of Virginia. On his return he mentioned the discovery and his supposition, to his comrades, and they resolved on tracing it. This they accordingly did, and it conducted them to Loony's creek, then the most remote western settlement. While among the inhabitants on Loony's creek, they were recognized and some of the party apprehended as deserters. John and Samuel Pringle succeeded in making an escape to their camp in the glades, where they remained 'till some time in the year 1764. During this year, and while in the employ of John Simpson (a trapper, who had come there in quest of furs,) they determined on removing farther west. Simpson was induced to this, by the prospect of enjoying the woods free from the intrusion of other hunters (the glades having begun to be a common hunting ground for the inhabitants of the South Branch;) while a regard for their personal safety, caused the Pringles to avoid a situation, in which they might be exposed to the observation of other men. In journeying through the wilderness, and after having crossed Cheat river at the Horse shoe, a quarrel arose between Simpson and one of the Pringles; and notwithstanding that peace and harmony were so necessary to their mutual safety and comfort; yet each so far indulged the angry passions which had been excited, as at length to produce a separation. Simpson crossed over the Valley river, near the mouth of Pleasant creek, and passing on to the head of another water course, gave to it the name of Simpson's creek. Thence he went westwardly, and fell over on a stream which he called Elk: at the mouth of this he erected a camp, and continued to reside for more than twelve months. During this time he neither saw the Pringles nor any other human being; and at the expiration of it went to the South Branch, where he disposed of his furs and skins and then returned to, and continued at, his encampment at the mouth of Elk, until permanent settlements were made in its vicinity. The Pringles kept up the Valley river 'till they observed a large right hand fork, (now Buchannon),[1] which they ascended [91] some miles; and at the mouth of a small branch (afterward called Turkey run) they took up their abode in the cavity of a large Sycamore tree.[2] The stump of this is still to be seen, and is an object of no little veneration with the immediate descendants of the first settlers. The situation of these men, during a residence here of several years, although rendered somewhat necessary by their previous conduct, could not have been very enviable. Deserters from the army, a constant fear of discovery filled their minds with inquietude.--In the vicinity of a savage foe, the tomahawk and scalping knife were ever present to their imaginations.--Remote from civilized man, their solitude was hourly interrupted by the frightful shrieks of the panther, or the hideous howlings of the wolf.--And though the herds of Buffalo, Elk and Deer, which gamboled sportively around, enabled them easily to supply their larder; yet the want of salt, of bread, and of every species of kitchen vegetable, must have abated their relish for the, otherwise, delicious loin of the one, and haunch of the others. The low state of their little magazine too, while it limited their hunting, to the bare procuration of articles of subsistence, caused them, from a fear of discovery, to shrink at the idea of being driven to the settlements, for a supply of ammunition. And not until they were actually reduced to two loads of powder, could they be induced to venture again into the vicinity of their fellow men. In the latter part of the year 1767, John left his brother, and intending to make for a trading post on the Shenandoah, appointed the period of his return. Samuel Pringle, in the absence of John, suffered a good deal. The stock of provisions left him became entirely exhausted--one of his loads of powder, was expended in a fruitless attempt to shoot a buck--his brother had already delayed his return several days longer than was intended, and he was apprehensive that he had been recognized, taken to Port Pitt and would probably never get back. With his remaining load of powder, however he was fortunate enough to kill a fine buffalo; and John soon after returned with the news of peace, both with the Indians and French. The two brothers agreed to leave their retirement. Their wilderness habitation was not left without some regret. Every object around, had become more or less endeared to them. The tree, in whose hollow they had been so [92] frequently sheltered from storm and tempest, was regarded by them with so great reverence, that they resolved, so soon as they could prevail on a few others to accompany them, again to return to this asylum of their exile. In a population such as then composed the chief part of the South Branch settlement, this was no difficult matter. All of them were used to the frontier manner of living; the most of them had gone thither to acquire land; many had failed entirely in this object, while others were obliged to occupy poor and broken situations off the river; the fertile bottoms having been previously located. Add to this the passion for hunting (which was a ruling one with many,) and the comparative scarcity of game in their neighborhood, and it need not excite surprise that the proposition of the Pringles to form a settlement, in such a country as they represented that on Buchannon to be, was eagerly embraced by many. In the fall of the ensuing year (1768) Samuel Pringle, and several others who wished first to examine for themselves, visited the country which had been so long occupied by the Pringles alone. Being pleased with it, they, in the following spring, with a few others, repaired thither, with the view of cultivating as much corn, as would serve their families the first year after their emigration. And having examined the country, for the purpose of selecting the most desirable situations; some of them proceeded to improve the spots of their choice. John Jackson (who was accompanied by his sons, George and Edward) settled at the mouth of Turkey run, where his daughter, Mrs. Davis, now lives--John Hacker[3] higher up on the Buchannon river, where Bush's fort was afterwards established, and Nicholas Heavener now lives--Alexander and Thomas Sleeth, near to Jackson's, on what is now known as the Forenash plantation. The others of the party (William Hacker, Thomas and Jesse Hughes, John and William Radcliff and John Brown) appear to have employed their time exclusively in hunting; neither of them making any improvement of land for his own benefit. Yet were they of very considerable service to the new settlement. Those who had commenced clearing land, were supplied by them with abundance of meat, while in their hunting excursions through the country, a better knowledge of it was obtained, than could have been acquired, had they been engaged in making improvements. [93] In one of these expeditions they discovered, and gave name to Stone coal creek; which flowing westwardly, induced the supposition that it discharged itself directly into the Ohio. Descending this creek, to ascertain the fact, they came to its confluence with a river, which they then called, and has since been known as, the West Fork. After having gone some distance down the river, they returned by a different route to the settlement, better pleased with the land on it and some of its tributaries, than with that on Buchannon. Soon after this, other emigrants arrived under the guidance of Samuel Pringle. Among them were, John and Benjamin Cutright, who settled on Buchannon, where John Cutright the younger, now lives; and Henry Rule who improved just above the mouth of Fink's run. Before the arrival of Samuel Pringle, John Hacker had begun to improve the spot which Pringle had chosen for himself. To prevent any unpleasant result, Hacker agreed that if Pringle would clear as much land, on a creek which had been recently discovered by the hunters, as he had on Buchannon, they could then exchange places. Complying with this condition Pringle took possession of the farm on Buchannon, and Hacker of the land improved by Pringle on the creek, which was hence called Hacker's creek.[4] John and William Radcliff, then likewise settled on this stream--the former on the farm, where the Rev. John Mitchel now lives; the latter at the place now owned by William Powers Esq.--These comprise all the improvements which were made on the upper branches of the Monongahela in the years 1769 and 1770. At the close of the working season of 1769 some of these adventurers, went to their families on the South Branch; and when they returned to gather their crops in the fall, found them entirely destroyed. In their absence the buffaloes, no longer awed by the presence of man, had trespassed on their enclosures, and eaten their corn to the ground--this delayed the removal of their families 'till the winter of 1770. Soon after the happening of this event, other settlements were made on the upper branches of the Monongahela river. Capt. James Booth and John Thomas established themselves on what has been since called Booth's creek--The former at the place now owned by Jesse Martin; and the latter where William Martin at present resides, and which is perhaps the [94] most valuable landed estate in North Western Virginia, off the Ohio river. Previous however to the actual settlement of the country above the forks of the Monongahela, some few families (in 1767) had established themselves in the vicinity of Fort Redstone, now Brownsville, in Pennsylvania.[5] At the head of these were Abraham Tegard, James Crawford, John Province, and John Harden. The latter of these gentlemen afterwards removed to Kentucky and became distinguished in the early history of that state, as well for the many excellencies of his private and public life, as for the untimely and perfidious manner of his death. In the succeeding year Jacob Vanmeter, John Swan, Thomas Hughes and some others settled on the west side of the Monongahela, near the mouth of Muddy creek, where Carmichaelstown now stands.[6] In this year too, the place which had been occupied for a while by Thomas Decker and his unfortunate associates, and where Morgantown is now situated, was settled by a party of emigrants; one of which was David Morgan, who became so conspicuous for personal prowess, and for the daring, yet deliberate courage displayed by him, during the subsequent hostilities with the Indians. In 1769, Col. Ebenezer Zane, his brothers Silas and Jonathan, with some others from the south Branch, visited the Ohio river for the purpose of commencing improvements;[7] [95] and severally proceeded to select positions for their future residence. Col. Zane chose for his, an eminence above the mouth of Wheeling creek, near to the Ohio, and opposite a beautiful and considerable island in that river. The spot thus selected by him, is now occupied by his son Noah Zane, Esq. and is nearly the centre of the present flourishing town of Wheeling. Silas Zane commenced improving on Wheeling creek where Col. Moses Shepherd now lives, and Jonathan resided with his brother Ebenezer. Several of those who accompanied the adventurers, likewise remained with Colonel Zane, in the capacity of laborers. After having made those preparations which were immediately requisite for the reception of their respective families, they returned to their former homes. In the ensuing year they finally left the South Branch, and accompanied by Col. David Shepherd, (the father of Col. Moses Shepherd,) John Wetzel (the father of Lewis) and the McCulloughs--men whose names are identified with the early history of that country--repaired again to the wilderness, and took up their permanent abode in it. Soon after this, other settlements were made at different points, both above and below Wheeling; and the country on Buffalo, Short, and Grave creeks,[8] and on the Ohio river, became the abode of civilized man. Among those who were first to occupy above Wheeling, were George Lefler, John Doddridge, Benjamin Biggs, Daniel Greathouse, Joshua Baker and Andrew Swearingen.[9] [96] The settlement thus made constituting a kind of advance _guard_, through which an Indian enemy would have to penetrate, before they could reach the interior, others were less reluctant to occupy the country between them and the Alleghany mountains. Accordingly various establishments were soon made in it by adventurers from different parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia; and those places in which settlements had been previously effected, received considerable accessions to their population. In 1772, that comparatively beautiful region of country, lying on the east fork of the Monongahela river, between the Alleghany mountains, on its south eastern, and the Laurel Hill, or as it is there called the Rich mountain, on its north western side, and which had received the denomination of Tygart's valley, again attracted the attention of emigrants.--In the course of that year, the greater part of this valley was located, by persons said to have been enticed thither by the description given of it, by some hunters from Greenbrier who had previously explored it. Game, though a principal, was not however their sole object. They possessed themselves at once of nearly all the level land lying between those mountains--a plain of 25 or 30 miles in length and varying from three fourths to two miles in width, and of fine soil. Among those who were first to occupy that section of country, we find the names of Hadden, Connelly, Whiteman, Warwick, Nelson, Stalnaker, Riffle and Westfall: the latter of these found and interred the bones of Files' family, which had lain, bleaching in the sun, after their murder by the Indians, in 1754. Cheat river too, on which no attempt at settlement had been made, but by the unfortunate Eckarly's, became an object of attention, The Horse Shoe bottom was located by Capt. James Parsons, of the South Branch; and in his neighborhood settled Robert Cunningham, Henry Fink, John Goff and John Minear. Robert Butler, William Morgan and some others settled on the Dunkard bottom. In this year too, settlements were made on Simpson's creek, the West Fork river and on Elk creek. Those who made the former, were John Powers, who purchased Simpson's right (a tomahawk improvement)[10] to the land on which Benjamin [97] Stout now resides; and James Anderson and Jonas Webb who located themselves farther up the creek. On Elk, and in the vicinity of Clarksburg there settled Thomas Nutter, near to the Forge-mills--Samuel Cottrial, on the east side of the creek and nearly opposite to Clarksburg--Sotha Hickman, on the west side of the same creek, and above Cottrial--Samuel Beard at the mouth of Nanny's run--Andrew Cottrial above Beard, and at the farm now owned by John W. Patton--Daniel Davisson, where Clarksburg is now situated, and Obadiah Davisson and John Nutter on the West Fork; the former near to the old Salt works, and the latter at the place now owned by Adam Hickman, jr. There was likewise, at this time, a considerable accession to the settlements on Buchannon and Hacker's creek. So great was the increase of population in this latter neighborhood, that the crops of the preceding season did not afford more than one third of the breadstuff, which would be ordinarily consumed in the same time, by an equal number of persons. Such indeed was the state of suffering among the inhabitants, consequent on this scarcity, that the year 1773 is called in the traditionary legends of that day, the _starving year_; and such were the exertions of William Lowther to mitigate that suffering, and so great the success with which they were crowned, that his name has been transmitted to their descendants, hallowed by the blessings of those, whose wants he contributed so largely to relieve.[11] [98] These were the principal settlements begun in North Western Virginia, prior to the year 1774. Few and scattered as they were, no sooner was it known that they were commenced, than hundreds flocked to them from different parts; and sought there the gratifications of their respective predilections. That spirit of adventurous emigration, which has since peopled, with such unprecedented rapidity, the south western and western states, and which was then beginning to develope itself, overcame the fond attachments of youth, and impelled its possessors, to the dreary wilderness. Former homes, encircled by the comforts of civilization, endeared by the grateful recollections of by-gone days, and not unfrequently, consecrated as the spots where their tenants had first inhaled the vital fluid, were readily exchanged for "the variety of untried being, the new scenes and changes," which were to be passed, before the trees of the forest could be supplanted, by the fruits of the field, or society be reared in the solitude of the desert. With a capability to sustain fatigue, not to be subdued by toil; and with a cheerfulness, not easily to be depressed; a patience which could mock at suffering and a daring which nothing could daunt, every difficulty which intervened, every obstacle which was interposed between them and the accomplishment of the objects of their pursuit, was surmounted or removed; and in a comparatively brief space of time, they rose to the enjoyment of many of those gratifications, which are experienced in earlier and more populous settlements. That their morals should, for a while, have suffered deterioration, and their manners and habits, instead of [99] approximating those of refined society, should have become perhaps, more barbarous and uncouth, was the inevitable consequence of their situation, and the certain result of circumstances, which they could not control. When that situation was changed, and these circumstances ceased to exist, a rapid progress was made in the advancement of many sections of the country, to the refinements of civilized society. The infantile state of all countries exhibits, in a greater or less degree, a prevalence of barbarism. The planting of colonies, or the formation of establishments in new countries, is ever attended with circumstances unpropitious to refinement. The force with which these circumstances act, will be increased or diminished in proportion to the remoteness or proximity of those new establishments, to older societies, in which the arts and sciences are cultivated; and to the facility of communication between them. Man is, at all times, the creature of circumstances. Cut off from an intercourse with his fellow men, and divested of the conveniences of life, he will readily relapse into a state of nature.--Placed in contiguity with the barbarous and the vicious; his manners will become rude, his morals perverted.--Brought into collision with the sanguinary and revengeful; and his own conduct will eventually be distinguished, by bloody and vindictive deeds. Such was really the situation of those who made the first establishments in North Western Virginia. And when it is considered, that they were, mostly, men from the humble walks of life; comparatively illiterate and unrefined; without civil or religious institutions, and with a love of liberty, bordering on its extreme; their more enlightened descendants can not but feel surprise, that their dereliction from propriety had not been greater; their virtue less. The objects, for the attainment of which they voluntarily placed themselves in this situation, and tempted the dangers inseparable from a residence in the contiguity of Indians, jealous of territorial encroachment, were almost as various as their individual character. Generally speaking, they were men in indigent circumstances, unable to purchase land in the neigborhoods from which they came, and unwilling longer to remain the tenants of others. These were induced to [100] emigrate, with the laudable ambition of acquiring homes, from which they would not be liable to expulsion, at the whim and caprice of some haughty lordling. Upon the attainment of this object, they were generally content; and made but feeble exertions to acquire more land, than that to which they obtained title, by virtue of their settlements. Some few, however, availed themselves of the right of pre-emption, and becoming possessed of the more desirable portions of the country, added considerably to their individual wealth. Those who settled on the Ohio, were of a more enterprising and ambitious spirit, and looked more to the advancement of their condition in a pecuniary point of view. The fertile bottoms of that river, and the facility with which, by means of it, their surplus produce might be transported to a ready market,[12] were considerations which influenced many. Others, again, looking forward to the time when the Indians would be divested of the country north west of the Ohio river, and it be open to location in the same manner its south eastern shores were, selected this as a situation, from which they might more readily obtain possession of the fertile land, with which its ample plains were known to abound. In anticipation of this period, there were some who embraced every opportunity, afforded by intervals of peace with the Indians, to explore that country and select in it what they deemed, its most valuable parts. Around these they would generally mark trees, or otherwise define boundaries, by which they could be afterwards identified. The cession by Virginia to the United States, of the North Western Territory, and the manner in which its lands were subsequently brought into market, prevented the realization of those flattering, and apparently, well founded expectations. There were also, in every settlement, individuals, who had been drawn to them solely by their love of hunting, and an attachment to the wild, unshackled scenes of a wilderness life. These were perhaps, totally regardless of all the inconveniencies, [101] resulting from their new situation; except that of being occasionally pent up in forts; and thus debarred the enjoyment of their favorite pastimes. Although hunting was not the object of most of the old settlers, yet it was for a good part of the year, the chief employment of their time. And of all those, who thus made their abode in the dense forest, and tempted aggression from the neighboring Indians, none were so well qualified to resist this aggression, and to retaliate upon its authors, as those who were mostly engaged in this pursuit. Of all their avocations, this "mimickry of war" best fitted them to thwart the savages in their purpose, and to mitigate the horrors of their peculiar mode of warfare. Those arts which enabled them, unperceived to approach the watchful deer in his lair, enabled them likewise to circumvent the Indian in his ambush; and if not always punish, yet frequently defeat him in his object. Add to this the perfect knowledge which they acquired of the woods, and the ease and certainty with which they consequently, when occasion required, could make their way to any point of the settlements and apprize the inhabitants of approaching danger; and it will be readily admitted that the more expert and successful the huntsman, the more skillful and effective the warrior. But various soever, as may have been their objects in emigrating, no sooner had they come together, than there existed in each settlement, a perfect unison of feeling. Similitude of situation and community of danger, operating as a magic charm, stifled in their birth those little bickerings, which are so apt to disturb the quiet of society. Ambition of preferment and the pride of place, too often lets and hindrances to social intercourse, were unknown among them. Equality of condition rendered them strangers alike, to the baneful distinctions created by wealth and other adventitious circumstances; and to envy, which gives additional virus to their venom. A sense of mutual dependence for their common security linked them in amity; and conducting their several purposes in harmonious concert, together they toiled and together suffered. Not all the "pomp and pride and pageantry" of life, could vie with the Arcadian scenes which encircled the rude cottages of those men. Their humble dwellings were the abode of virtues, rarely found in the "cloud capt towers and [102] gorgeous palaces" of splendid ambition. And when peace reigned around them, neither the gaudy trappings of wealth, nor the insignia of office, nor the slaked thirst for distinction, could have added to the happiness which they enjoyed. In their intercourse with others they were kind, beneficent and disinterested; extending to all, the most generous hospitality which their circumstances could afford. That selfishness, which prompts to liberality for the sake of remuneration, and proffers the civilities of life with an eye to individual interest, was unknown to them. They were kind for kindness sake; and sought no other recompense, than the never failing concomitant of good deeds--the reward of an approving conscience. It is usual for men in the decline of life, to contrast the scenes which are then being exhibited, with those through which they passed in the days of youth; and not unfrequently, to moralize on the decay of those virtues, which enhance the enjoyment of life and give to pleasure its highest relish. The mind is then apt to revert to earlier times, and to dwell with satisfaction on the manners and customs which prevailed in the hey-day of youth. Every change which may have been wrought in them is deemed a deteriorating innovation, and the sentence of their condemnation unhesitatingly pronounced. This is not always, the result of impartial and discriminating judgment. It is perhaps, more frequently founded in prepossession; and based on the prejudices of education and habit. On the other hand those who are just entering on the vestibule of life, are prone to give preference to the habits of the present generation; viewing, too often, with contemptuous derision, those of the past. Mankind certainly advance in intelligence and refinement; but virtue and happiness do not at all times keep pace with this progress. "To inform the understanding," is not always "to correct and enlarge the heart;" nor do the blandishments of life invariably add to the sum of moral excellence; they are often "as dead sea fruit that tempts the eye, but turns to ashes on the lips."--While a rough exterior as frequently covers a temper of the utmost benignity, happy in itself and giving happiness to all around. Such were the pioneers of this country; and the greater part of mankind might now derive advantage from the [103] contemplation of "their humble virtues, hospitable homes and spirits patient, noble, proud and free--their self respect, grafted on innocent thoughts; their days of health and nights of sleep--their toils, by danger dignified, yet guiltless--their hopes of cheerful old age and a quiet grave, with cross and garland over its green turf, and their grand children's love for epitaph." ----- [1] Now spelled Buckhannon.--R. G. T. [2] Sycamores, which attain gigantic proportions, are given to rotting in the lower portions of the trunk, and chambers eight feet in diameter are not uncommon. In the course of a canoe voyage down the Ohio, in the summer of 1894, I frequently saw such cavities, with the openings stopped by pickets or rails, utilized by small bottom farmers as hog-pens, chicken-coops, and calf stalls. L. V. McWhorter, of Berlin, W. Va., who has kindly sent me several MS. notes on Withers's _Chronicles_ (all of which will be duly credited where used in this edition), writes: "The aged sycamore now (1894) occupying the site, is the third generation--the grand-child--of that which housed the Pringles. It stands on the farm of Webster Dix, who assures me that it shall not be destroyed. A tradition held by his descendants has it, that when John Pringle went back to the South Branch for ammunition, Charity, the wife of Samuel, who was left behind, started immediately for the wilderness home of her husband, and found him by the path which John had blazed for his own return."--R. G. T. [3] This early and meritorious pioneer was born near Winchester, Va., Jan. 1, 1743, figured prominently in the Indian wars of his region, and served on Col. G. R. Clark's Illinois campaign of 1778; he died at his home on Hacker's Creek, April 20, 1821, in his 82d year.--L. C. D. [4] Its Indian name signified "Muddy Water."--R. G. T. [5] We have already seen (p. 74, _note_), that Gist settled at Mount Braddock, Fayette county, in 1753, and that eleven families joined him in January, 1754. There is a tradition that settlers were in the district even before Gist. It has been shown that the Gist settlements, and others in the lower Monongahela, were burned by the French in July, 1754. The English borderers fled upon the outbreak of disturbances, and did not return until about 1760-61, when confidence had been restored.--R. G. T. [6] Both Van Meter and Swan afterwards served under Col. G. R. Clark--at least, on the Kaskaskia campaign; Swan commanded a company on Clark's Shawnee campaign of 1780, and Van Meter on that of 1782. The latter moved to Kentucky in 1780; settled in Hardin county, Ky., Nov. 16th, 1798, in his seventy-sixth year.--L. C. D. ------ _Comment by R. G. T._--This note, written by Dr. Draper a few days before his death (Aug. 26, 1891), was probably his last stroke of literary work. [7] These gentlemen were descendants of a Mr. Zane who accompanied William Penn, to his province of Pennsylvania, and from whom, one of the principal streets in Philadelphia, derived its name. Their father was possessed of a bold and daring spirit of adventure, which was displayed on many occasions, in the earlier part of his life. Having rendered himself obnoxious to the Society of Friends (of which he was a member,) by marrying without the pale of that society, he moved to Virginia and settled on the South Branch, where the town of Moorfield has been since erected. One of his sons (Isaac) was taken by the Indians, when he was only nine years old, and carried in captivity, to Mad river, in Ohio. Here he continued 'till habit reconciled him to his situation, when he married a squaw, became a chief and spent the remainder of his life with them. He was never known to wage war against the whites; but was, on several occasions, of infinite service, by apprising them of meditated attacks of the Indians. His descendants still reside in Ohio. The brothers, Ebenezer, Silas and Jonathan, who settled Wheeling, [95] were also men of enterprise, tempered with prudence, and directed by sound judgment. Ready at all times, to resist and punish the aggression of the Indians, they were scrupulously careful not to provoke them by acts of wanton outrage, such as were then, too frequently committed along the frontier. Col. Ebenezer Zane had been among the first, to explore the country from the South Branch, through the Alleghany glades, and west of them. He was accompanied in that excursion by Isaac Williams, two gentlemen of the name of Robinson and some others; but setting off rather late in the season, and the weather being very severe, they were compelled to return, without having penetrated to the Ohio river. On their way home, such was the extremity of cold, that one of the Robinsons died of its effects. Williams was much frost bitten, and the whole party suffered exceedingly. To the bravery and good conduct of those three brothers, the Wheeling settlement was mainly indebted for its security and preservation, during the war of the revolution. [8] Joseph Tomlinson surveyed a claim at the mouth of Grave Creek, about 1770, but did not settle there until 1772. His cabin was the nucleus of the present Moundsville, W. Va.--R. G. T. [9] John Doddridge settled in Washington county, Pa., on the Ohio River a few miles east of the Pennsylvania-Virginia state line, in 1773; his son, Joseph Doddridge, was the author of _Notes on the Settlements and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania_, 1763-83, a valuable antiquarian work. The names of Greathouse and Baker became execrable through their connection with the massacre of Chief Logan's family, in 1774. Leffler and Biggs attained prominence in border warfare.--R. G. T. [10] "At an early period of our settlements, there was an inferior kind of land title, denominated a tomahawk right. This was made by [97] deadening a few trees near a spring, and marking on one or more of them, the initials of the name of the person, by whom the improvement was made. Rights, acquired in this way, were frequently bought and sold."--_Doddridge's Notes on Western Virginia._ [11] William Lowther was the son of Robert, and came with his father to the Hacker creek settlement in 1772. He soon became one of the most conspicuous men in that section of country; while his private virtues and public actions endeared him to every individual of the community. During the war of 1774 and subsequently, he was the most active and efficient defender of that vicinity, against the insidious attacks of the savage foe; and there were very few if any scouting parties proceeding from thence, by which the Indians were killed or otherwise much annoyed, but those which were commanded by him. He was the first justice of the peace in the district of West Augusta--the first sheriff in the county of Harrison and Wood, and [98] once a delegate to the General Assembly of the States. His military merits carried him through the subordinate grades to the rank of Colonel. Despising the pomp and pageantry of office, he accepted it for the good of the community, and was truly an effective man. Esteemed, beloved by all, he might have exerted his influence, over others, to the advancement of his individual interest; but he sought the advancement of the general weal, not a personal or family aggrandizement. His example might teach others, that offices were created for the public good, not for private emolument. If aspirants for office at the present day, were to regard its perquisites less, and their fitness for the discharge of its duties more, the country would enjoy a greater portion of happiness and prosperity, and a sure foundation for the permanence of these be laid, in the more disinterested character of her counsellors, and their consequently, increased devotion to her interests. [12] The Spaniards at New Orleans, from the first settlement of the country west of the Alleghany Mountains, sought to attach it to the province of Louisiana. Knowing the powerful efficacy of gold, in producing such results, they dispensed it with a liberal hand, to such as made New Orleans their market. The attachment of the first settlers, to the free institutions of our country, baffled every attempt to detach them from it. ------ _Comment by R. G. T._--The Spanish conspiracy was, in the main, "baffled" by the prompt action of our general government. George Rogers Clark and several other leading Kentuckians were quite willing to be "detached," for a consideration. The fact is, that at first the sense of national patriotism was weak, west of the Alleghanies; the eighteenth century had closed before efforts at separation from the East were commonly regarded as treason. The interests of the Western people apparently were centered in the south-flowing Mississippi; they seemed to have at the time little in common with the East. So long as Spain held the mouth of the river, many Western leaders thought it not improper that the West should ally itself with that power; when our government finally purchased the Spanish claim, the Western men had no further complaint. See Roosevelt's treatment of the Spanish conspiracy, in his _Winning of the West_, III., ch. iii.--R. G. T. [104] CHAPTER VI. In the year 1774, the peace, which had subsisted with but little violation since the treaty of 1765, received an interruption, which checked for a while the emigration to the North Western frontier; and involved its infant settlements in a war with the Indians. This result has been attributed to various causes. Some have asserted that it had its origin in the murder of some Indians on the Ohio river both above and below Wheeling, in the spring of that year. Others suppose it to have been produced by the instigation of British emissaries, and the influence of Canadian traders. That it was not caused by the murders at Captina, and opposite the mouth of Yellow creek,[1] is fairly inferrible from the fact, that several Indians had been previously murdered by the whites in a period of the most profound tranquillity, without having led to a similar issue; or even given rise to any act of retaliation, on the part of the friends or countrymen of those, who had been thus murdered. At different periods of time, between the peace of 1765, and the renewal of hostilities in 1774, three Indians were unprovokedly killed by John Ryan, on the Ohio, Monongahela and Cheat rivers. The first who suffered from the unrestrained licentiousness of this man, was an Indian of distinction in his tribe, and known by the name of Capt. Peter; the other two were private warriors. And but that Governor Dunmore, from the representations made to him, was induced [105] to offer a reward for his apprehension, which caused him to leave the country, Ryan would probably have continued to murder every Indian, with whom he should chance to meet, wandering through the settlements. Several Indians were likewise killed on the South Branch, while on a friendly visit to that country, in the interval of peace. This deed is said to have been done by Henry Judah, Nicholas Harpold and their associates; and when Judah was arrested for the offence, so great was the excitement among those who had suffered from savage enmity, that he was rescued from confinement by upwards of two hundred men, collected for that especial purpose. The Bald Eagle was an Indian of notoriety, not only among his own nation, but also with the inhabitants of the North Western frontier; with whom he was in the habit of associating and hunting. In one of his visits among them, he was discovered alone, by Jacob Scott, William Hacker and Elijah Runner, who, reckless of the consequences, murdered him, solely to gratify a most wanton thirst for Indian blood. After the commission of this most outrageous enormity, they seated him in the stern of a canoe, and with a piece of journey-cake thrust into his mouth, set him afloat in the Monongahela. In this situation he was seen descending the river, by several, who supposed him to be as usual, returning from a friendly hunt with the whites in the upper settlements, and who expressed some astonishment that he did not stop to see them. The canoe floating near to the shore, below the mouth of George's creek, was observed by a Mrs. Province, who had it brought to the bank, and the friendly, but unfortunate old Indian decently buried. Not long after the murder of the Bald Eagle, another outrage of a similar nature was committed on a peaceable Indian, by William White; and for which he was apprehended and taken to Winchester for trial. But the fury of the populace did not suffer him to remain there awaiting that event.--The prison doors were forced, the irons knocked off him and he again set at liberty. But a still more atrocious act is said to have been soon after perpetrated. Until then the murders committed, were only on such as were found within the limits of white settlements, and on men & warriors. In 1772, there is every reason to believe, that women and children likewise became victims to the exasperated feelings of our [106] own citizens; and this too, while quietly enjoying the comforts of their own huts, in their own village. There was at that time an Indian town on the Little Kenhawa, (called Bulltown) inhabited by five families, who were in habits of social and friendly intercourse with the whites on Buchannon and on Hacker's creek; frequently visiting and hunting with them.[2] There was likewise residing on Gauley river, the family of a German by the name of Stroud.[3] In the summer of that year, Mr. Stroud being from home, his family were all murdered, his house plundered, and his cattle driven off. The trail made by these leading in the direction of Bulltown, induced the supposition that the Indians of that village had been the authors of the outrage, and caused several to resolve on avenging it upon them. A party of five men, (two of whom were William White and William Hacker,[4] who had been concerned in previous murders) expressed a determination to proceed immediately to Bulltown. The remonstrance of the settlement generally, could not operate to effect a change in that determination. They went; and on their return, circumstances justified the belief that the pre-apprehension of those who knew the temper and feelings of White and Hacker, had been well founded; and that there had been some fighting between them and the Indians. And notwithstanding that they denied ever having seen an Indian in their absence, yet it was the prevailing opinion, that they had destroyed all the men, women and children at Bulltown, and threw their bodies into the river. Indeed, one of the party is said to have, inadvertently, used expressions, confirmatory of this opinion; and to have then justified the deed, by saying that the clothes and other things known to have belonged to Stroud's family, were found in the possession of the Indians. The village was soon after visited, and found to be entirely desolated, and nothing being ever after heard of its former inhabitants, there can remain no doubt but that the murder of Stroud's family, was requited on them. Here then was a fit time for the Indians to commence a system of retaliation and war, if they were disposed to engage in hostilities, for offences of this kind alone. Yet no such event was the consequence of the killing of the Bulltown Indians, or of those other murders which preceded that outrage; and it may be hence rationally concluded, that the murders on the Ohio river did not lead to such an event. If however, a doubt should still remain, that doubt is surely removed by the declaration of Logan himself. It was his family that was killed opposite Yellow creek, about the last of April; and in the following July (after the expedition against the Wappatomica towns, under Col. McDonald) he says, "the Indiens are not angry on account of those murders, but only myself." The fact is, that hostilities had commenced before the happening of the affair at Captina, or that near Yellow creek; and these, instead of having produced that event, were the consequence of the previous hostile movements of the Indians. [107] Those who lived more immediately in the neighborhood of the scene of action at that time, were generally of opinion, that the Indians were urged to war by the instigation of emissaries from Great Britain, and of the Canadian traders; and, independently of any knowledge which they may have had of the conduct of these, circumstances of a general nature would seem to justify that opinion. The relative situation of the American colonies and the mother country, is matter of general history, and too well known to require being repeated here. It is equally well known too, that from the first establishment of a colony in Canada, the Canadians obtained an influence over the Natives, greater than the Anglo-Americans were ever able to acquire; and that this influence was frequently exercised by them, to the great annoyance, and manifest injury of the latter. France and England have been long considered as natural enemies; and the inhabitants of their respective plantations in America, entertained strong feelings of jealousy towards each other. When by the treaty of Paris, the French possessions in North America (which had not been ceded to Spain,) were transferred to Great Britain, those feelings were not subdued. The Canadians still regarded themselves as a different people. Their national prejudices were too great to be extinguished by an union under the same prince. Under the influence of these prejudices, and the apprehension, that the lucrative commerce of the natives might, by the competition of the English traders, be diverted from its accustomed channels, they may have exerted themselves to excite the Indians to war; but that alone would hardly have produced this result. There is in man an inherent partiality for self, which leads him to search for the causes of any evil, elsewhere than in his own conduct; and under the operation of this propensity to assign the burden of wrong to be borne by others, the Jesuits from Canada and Louisiana were censured for the continuation of the war on the part of the Indians, after it had been terminated with their allies by the treaty of 1763. Yet that event was, no doubt, justly attributable to the erection of forts, and the location of land, in the district of country claimed by the natives, in the province of Pennsylvania. And in like manner, the origin of the war of 1774 may fairly be charged to the encroachments which were then being made on the Indian territory. To be convinced of this, it is necessary to advert to the promptitude of resistance on the part of the Natives, by which those encroachments were invariably met; and to recur to events happening in other sections of the country.--Events, perhaps no otherwise connected with the history of North Western Virginia, than as they are believed to have been the proximate causes of an hostility, eventuating in the effusion of much of its blood; and pregnant with other circumstances, having an important bearing on its prosperity and advancement. In the whole history of America, from the time when it first [108] became apparent that the occupancy of the country was the object of the whites, up to the present period, is there perhaps to be found a solitary instance, in which an attempt, made by the English to effect a settlement in a wilderness claimed by the Natives, was not succeeded by immediate acts of hostility on the part of the latter. Every advance of the kind was regarded by them, as tending to effect their expulsion from a country, which they had long considered as their own, and as leading, most probably, to their entire extinction as a people. This excited in them feelings of the most dire resentment; stimulating to deeds of cruelty and murder, at once to repel the encroachment and to punish its authors. Experience of the utter futility of those means to accomplish these purposes, has never availed to repress their use, or to produce an acquiesence in the wrong. Even attempts to extend jurisdiction over a country, the right of soil in which was never denied them, have ever given rise to the most lively apprehensions of their fatal consequences, and prompted to the employment of means to thwart that aim. An Indian sees no difference between the right of empire and the right of domain; and just as little can he discriminate between the right of property, acquired by the actual cultivation of the earth, and that which arises from its appropriation to other uses. Among themselves they have lines of demarkation, which distinguish the territory of one nation from that of another; and these are of such binding authority, that a transgression of them by neighboring Indians, leads invariably to war. In treaties of purchase, and other conventional arrangements, made with them by the whites, the validity of their rights to land, have been repeatedly recognized; and an infraction of those rights by the Anglo-Americans, encounters opposition at its threshold. The history of every attempt to settle a wilderness, to which the Indian title was not previously extinguished, has consequently been a history of plunder, conflagration and massacre. That the extension of white settlements into the Indian country, was the cause of the war of 1774, will be abundantly manifested by a recurrence to the early history of Kentucky; and a brief review of the circumstances connected with the first attempts to explore and make establishments in it. For several reasons, these circumstances merit a passing notice in this place. Redstone and Fort Pitt (now Brownsville and Pittsburgh) were for some time, the principal points of embarkation for emigrants to that country; many of whom were from the establishments which had been then not long made, on the Monongahela. The Indians, regarding the settlements in North Western Virginia as the line from which swarmed the adventurers to Kentucky, directed their operations to prevent the success of these adventurers, as well against the inhabitants of the upper country, as against them. While at the same time, in the efforts which were made to compel the Indians to desist from farther opposition, the North Western Virginians frequently combined [109] their forces, and acted in conjunction, the more certainly to accomplish that object. In truth the war, which was then commenced, and carried on with but little intermission up to the treaty of Fort Greenville in 1795 was a war in which they were equally interested, having for its aim the indiscriminate destruction of the inhabitants of both those sections of country, as the means of preventing the farther extension of settlements by the whites.[5] When Kentucky was first begun to be explored, it is said not to have been claimed in individual property by any nation of Indians. Its extensive forests, grassy plains and thick cane brakes, abounding with every variety of game common to such latitudes, were used as common hunting grounds, and considered by them, as open for all who chose to resort to them. The Cherokees, the Chickasaws, the Cataubas, and the Chicamaugas, from the south east; and the Illinois, the Peorias, the Delawares, the Mingoes and Shawanees from the west, claimed and exercised equal rights and privileges within its limits. When the tribes of those different nations would however meet there, frequent collisions would arise between them; and so deadly were the conflicts ensuing upon these, that, in conjunction with the gloom of its dense forests, they acquired for it the impressive appellation of "the dark and bloody ground." But frequent and deadly as may have been those conflicts, they sprang from some other cause, than a claim to exclusive property in it. In the summer of 1769, Daniel Boone, in company with John Finley (who had previously hunted through the country) and a few other men, entered Kentucky, and travelled over much of its surface, without meeting with an Indian, until the December following.[6] At this time Boone and John Steward (one of his companions,) while on a hunting excursion, were discovered by a party of Indians, who succeeded in making them prisoners. After a detention of but few days, these men effected their escape; & returning to their old camp, found that it had been plundered, and their associates, either killed or taken into captivity. They were shortly after joined by a brother of Daniel Boone and another man, from North Carolina, who were so fortunate in wandering through the wilderness, as to discover the only, though temporary residence of civilized man within several hundred miles. But the Indians had become alarmed for the possession of that country; and fearing that if Boone and Steward should be suffered to escape to the settlements, they might induce others to attempt its permanent occupancy, they sought with vigilance to discover and murder them. They succeeded in killing Steward; but Daniel Boone and his brother, then the only persons left (the man who came out with the younger Boone having been killed by a wolf,) escaped from them, and soon after returned to North Carolina. The Indians were not disappointed in their expectations. The description given of the country by the Boones, soon led others to attempt its settlement; and in 1773, six families and about forty men, all under the guidance of Daniel Boone, commenced their journey [110] to Kentucky with a view of remaining there. Before they proceeded far, they were attacked in the rear by a party of Indians, who had been observing their movements; and who in the first fire killed six of the emigrants and dispersed their cattle. Nothwithstanding that, in the engagement which ensued upon this attack, the assailants were repulsed, yet the adventurers were so afflicted at the loss of their friends, and dispirited by such serious and early opposition, that they abandoned their purpose for a time, and returned to the inhabited parts of Tennessee.[7] The Indians elated with their success in defeating this first attempt at the settlement of Kentucky, and supposing that the route pursued by the party which they had driven back, would be the pass for future adventurers, determined on guarding it closely, and checking, if possible, every similar enterprise. But while their attention was directed to this point, others found their way into the country by a different route and from a different direction. The Virginia troops, who had served in the Canadian war, had been promised a bounty in Western lands. Many of them being anxious to ascertain their value, and deeming this a favorable period for the making of surveys, collected at Fort Pitt in the fall of 1773; and descending the Ohio river to its falls, at Louisville, proceeded from thence to explore the country preparatory to a perfection of their grants.[8] About the same time too, General Thompson of Pennsylvania, commenced an extensive course of surveys, of the rich land on the North Fork of Licking; and other individuals following his example, in the ensuing winter the country swarmed with land adventurers and surveyors. So sensible were they all, that these attempts to appropriate those lands to their own use, would produce acts of hostility, that they went prepared to resist those acts; and the first party who took up their abode in Kentucky, no sooner selected a situation for their residence, than they proceeded to erect a fort for their security.[9] The conduct of the Indians soon convinced them that their apprehensions were not ill founded; and many of them, in consequence of the hostile movements which were being made, and the robberies which were committed, ascended the Ohio river to Wheeling. It is not known that any murders were done previously to this, and subsequently to the attack and repulse of the emigrants who were led on by Boone in 1773. This event happened on the tenth day of October; and it was in April the ensuing year, that the land adventurers retired to Wheeling. In this interval of time, nothing could, perhaps, be done by the Indians, but make preparation [111] for hostilities in the spring. Indeed it very rarely happens, that the Indians engage in active war during the winter; and there is, moreover, a strong presumption, that they were for some time ignorant of the fact that there were adventurers in the country; and consequently, they knew of no object there, on which their hostile intentions could operate.--Be this as it may, it is certain that, from the movements of the Indians at the close of the winter, the belief was general, that they were assuming a warlike attitude, and meditating a continuance of hostilities. War was certainly begun on their part, when Boone and his associates, were attacked and driven back to the settlement; and if it abated for a season, that abatement was attributable to other causes, than a disposition to remain quiet and peaceable, while the country was being occupied by the whites. If other evidence were wanting, to prove the fact that the war of 1774 had its origin in a determination of the Indians to repress the extension of white settlements, it could be found in the circumstance, that although it was terminated by the treaty with Lord Dunmore, yet it revived as soon as attempts were again made to occupy Kentucky, and was continued with increased ardour, 'till the victory obtained over them by General Wayne. For, notwithstanding that in the struggle for American liberty, those Indians became the allies of Great Britain, yet when independence was acknowledged, and the English forces withdrawn from the colonies, hostilities were still carried on by them; and, as was then well understood, because of the continued operation of those causes, which produced the war of 1774. That the Canadian traders and British emissaries, prompted the Indians to aggression, and extended to them every aid which they could, to render that aggression more effectually oppressive and overwhelming, is readily admitted. Yet this would not have led to a war, but for the encroachments which have been mentioned. French influence, united to the known jealousy of the Natives, would have been unavailingly exerted to array the Indians against Virginia, at the commencement of Braddock's war, but for the proceedings of the Ohio company, and the fact that the Pennsylvania traders represented the object of that association to be purely territorial. And equally fruitless would have been their endeavor to involve them in a contest [112] with Virginians at a later period, but for a like manifestation of an intention to encroach on their domain. In the latter end of April 1774, a party of land adventurers, who had fled from the dangers which threatened them below, came in collision with some Indians, near the mouth of Captina, sixteen miles below Wheeling. A slight skirmish ensued, which terminated in the discomfiture of the whites, notwithstanding they had only one man wounded, and one or two of the enemy were killed. About the same time, happened the affair opposite the mouth of Yellow creek; a stream emptying into the Ohio river from the northwest, nearly midway between Pittsburg and Wheeling.[10] In consequence of advices received of the menacing conduct of the Indians, Joshua Baker (who lived at this place) was preparing, together with his neighbors, to retire for safety, into some of the nearer forts, or to go to the older and more populous settlements, remote from danger. There was at that time a large party of Indians, encamped on both sides of Yellow creek, at its entrance into the river; and although in their intercourse at Baker's, they had not manifested an intention of speedily commencing depredations, yet he deemed his situation in the immediate contiguity of them, as being far from secure, and was on the eve of abandoning it, when a party of whites, who had just collected at his house, fired upon and killed some Indians, who were likewise there.--Among them were the brother and daughter of the celebrated chief, Logan.[11] In justification of this conduct it has been said, that on the preceding evening a squaw came over from the encampment and informed Mrs. Baker that the Indians meditated the murder of her family on the next day; and that before the firing [113] at Baker's, two canoes, containing Indians painted and armed for war, were seen to leave the opposite shore. Under these circumstances, an apparently slight provocation, and one, which would not perhaps have been, otherwise heeded, produced the fatal result. As the canoes approached the shore, the party from Baker's commenced firing on them, and notwithstanding the opposition made by the Indians, forced them to retire. An interval of quiet succeeded the happening of these events; but it was as the solemn stillness which precedes the eruption of an earthquake, when a volcanic explosion has given notice of its approach;--rendered more awful by the uncertainty where its desolating influence would be felt. It was however, a stillness of but short duration. The gathering storm soon burst over the devoted heads of those, who had neglected to seek a shelter from its wrath. The traders in the Indian country were the first victims sacrificed on the altar of savage ferocity; and a general massacre of all the whites found among them, quickly followed. A young man, discovered near the falls of Muskingum and within sight of White Eyes town, was murdered, scalped; literally cut to pieces, and the mangled members of his body, hung up on trees. White Eyes, a chief of the friendly Delawares, hearing the scalp halloo, went out with a party of his men; and seeing what had been done, collected the scattered limbs of the young man, and buried them. On the next day, they were torn from the ground, severed into smaller pieces, and thrown dispersedly at greater distances from each other. [114] Apprized of impending danger, many of the inhabitants on the frontiers of North Western Virginia, retired into the interior, before any depredations were committed, in the upper country; some took refuge in forts which had been previously built; while others, collecting together at particular houses, converted them into temporary fortresses, answering well the purposes of protection, to those who sought shelter in them. Fort Redstone, which had been erected after the successful expedition of General Forbes; and Fort Pitt, at the confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, afforded an asylum to many. Several private forts were likewise established in various parts of the country;[12] and every thing which individual exertion could effect, to ensure protection to the border inhabitants, was done. Nor did the colonial government of Virginia neglect the security of her frontier citizens. When intelligence of the hostile disposition of the Natives, reached Williamsburg, the house of Burgesses was in session; and measures were immediately adopted, to prevent massacres, and to restore tranquillity. That these objects might be the more certainly accomplished, it was proposed by General Andrew Lewis (then a delegate from Bottetourt,) to organize a force, sufficient to overcome all intermediate opposition, and to carry the war into the enemy's country. In accordance to this proposition, orders were issued by Governor Dunmore for raising the requisite number of troops, and for making other necessary preparations for the contemplated campaign; the plan of which was concerted by the Governor, Gen. Lewis and Colonel Charles Lewis (then a delegate from Augusta.) But as some time must necessarily have elapsed before the consummation of the preparations which were being made; and as much individual suffering might result from the delays unavoidably incident to the raising, equipping and [115] organizing a large body of troops, it was deemed advisable to take some previous and immediate step to prevent the invasion of exposed and defenceless portions of the country.--The best plan for the accomplishment of this object was believed to be, the sending of an advance army into the Indian country, of sufficient strength to act offensively, before a confederacy could be formed of the different tribes, and their combined forces be brought into the field. A sense of the exposed situation of their towns in the presence of an hostile army, requiring the entire strength of every village for its defence, would, it was supposed, call home those straggling parties of warriors, by which destruction is so certainly dealt to the helpless and unprotected. In conformity with this part of the plan of operations, four hundred men, to be detailed from the militia west of the mountains, were ordered to assemble at Wheeling as soon as practicable. And in the mean time, lest the surveyors and land adventurers, who were then in Kentucky, might be discovered and fall a prey to the savages, Daniel Boone was sent by the Governor to the falls of Ohio, to conduct them home from thence, through the wilderness; the only practicable road to safety, the Ohio river being so effectually guarded as to preclude the hope of escaping up it.[13] Early in June, the troops destined to make an incursion into the Indian country, assembled at Wheeling, and being placed under the command of Colonel Angus McDonald, descended the Ohio to the mouth of Captina. Debarking, at this place, from their boats and canoes, they took up their march to Wappatomica, an Indian town on the Muskingum. The country through which the army had to pass, was one unbroken forest, presenting many obstacles to its speedy advance, not the least of which was the difficulty of proceeding directly to the point proposed.[14] To obviate this, however, they were accompanied by three persons in the capacity of guides;[15] whose knowledge of the woods, and familiarity with those natural indices, which so unerringly mark the direction of the principal points, enabled them to pursue the direct course.--When they had approached within six miles of the town, the [116] army encountered an opposition from a party of fifty or sixty Indians lying in ambush; and before these could be dislodged, two whites were killed, and eight or ten wounded;--one Indian was killed, and several wounded. They then proceeded to Wappatomica without further molestation.[16] When the army arrived at the town, it was found to be entirely deserted. Supposing that it would cross the river, the Indians had retreated to the opposite bank, and concealing themselves behind trees and fallen timber, were awaiting that movement in joyful anticipation of a successful surprise.--Their own anxiety and the prudence of the commanding officer, however, frustrated that expectation. Several were discovered peeping from their covert, watching the motion of the army; and Colonel McDonald, suspecting their object, and apprehensive that they would recross the river and attack him in the rear, stationed videttes above and below, to detect any such purpose, and to apprise him of the first movement towards effecting it. Foiled by these prudent and precautionary measures and seeing their town in possession of the enemy, with no prospect of wresting it from them, 'till destruction would have done its work, the Indians sued for peace; and the commander of the expedition consenting to negotiate with them, if he could be assured of their sincerity, five chiefs were sent over as hostages, and the army then crossed the river, with these in front. When a negotiation was begun, the Indians asked, that one of the hostages might be permitted to go and convoke the other chiefs, whose presence, it was alleged, would be necessary to the ratification of a peace. One was accordingly released; and not returning at the time specified, another was then sent, who in like manner failed to return. Colonel McDonald, suspecting some treachery, marched forward to the next town, above Wappatomica, where another slight engagement took place, in which one Indian was killed and one white man wounded. It was then ascertained, that the time which should have been spent in collecting the other chiefs, preparatory to negotiation, had been employed in removing their old men, their women and children, together with what property could be readily taken off, and for making preparations for a combined attack on the Virginia troops. To punish this duplicity and to render peace really desirable, Col. McDonald burned their towns and destroyed their crops; [117] and being then in want of provisions, retraced his steps to Wheeling, taking with him the three remaining hostages, who were then sent on to Williamsburg.[17] The inconvenience of supplying provisions to an army in the wilderness, was a serious obstacle to the success of expeditions undertaken against the Indians. The want of roads, at that early period, which would admit of transportation in wagons, rendered it necessary to resort to pack horses; and such was at times the difficulty of procuring these, that, not unfrequently, each soldier had to be the bearer of his entire stock of subsistence for the whole campaign. When this was exhausted, a degree of suffering ensued, often attended with consequences fatal to individuals, and destructive to the objects of the expedition. In the present case, the army being without provisions before they left the Indian towns, their only sustenance consisted of weeds, an ear of corn each day, and occasionally, a small quantity of venison: it being impracticable to hunt game in small parties, because of the vigilance and success of the Indians, in watching and cutting off detachments of this kind, before they could accomplish their purpose and regain the main army. No sooner had the troops retired from the Indian country, than the savages, in small parties, invaded the settlements in different directions, seeking opportunities of gratifying their insatiable thirst for blood. And although the precautions which had been taken, lessened the frequency of their success, yet they did not always prevent it. Persons leaving the forts on any occasion, were almost always either murdered or carried into captivity,--a lot sometimes worse than death itself. Perhaps the first of these incursions into North Western Virginia, after the destruction of the towns on the Muskingum, was that made by a party of eight Indians, at the head of which was the Cayuga chief Logan.[18] This very celebrated [118] Indian is represented as having hitherto, observed towards the whites, a course of conduct by no means in accordance with the malignity and steadfast implacability which influenced his red brethren generally; but was, on the contrary, distinguished by a sense of humanity, and a just abhorrence of those cruelties so frequently inflicted on the innocent and unoffending, as well as upon those who were really obnoxious to savage enmity. Such indeed were the acts of beneficence which characterized him, and so great his partiality for the English, that the finger of his brethren would point to his cabin as the residence of Logan, "the friend of white men." "In the course of the French war, he remained at home, idle and inactive;" opposed to the interference of his nation, "an advocate for peace." When his family fell before the fury of exasperated men, he felt himself impelled to avenge their deaths; and exchanging the pipe of peace, for the tomahawk of war, became active in seeking opportunities to glut his vengeance.[19] With this object in view, at the head of the party which has been mentioned, he traversed the county from the Ohio to the West Fork, before an opportunity was presented him of achieving any mischief. Their distance from what was supposed would be the theatre of war, had rendered the inhabitants of that section of country, comparatively inattentive to their safety. Relying on the expectation that the first blow would be struck on the Ohio, and that they would have sufficient notice of this to prepare for their own security, before danger could reach them, many had continued to perform the ordinary business of their farms. On the 12th day of July, as William Robinson, Thomas Hellen and Coleman Brown were pulling flax in a field opposite the mouth of Simpson's creek, Logan and his party approached unperceived and fired at them. Brown fell instantly; his body perforated by several balls; and Hellen and Robinson [119] unscathed, sought safety in flight. Hellen being then an old man, was soon overtaken and made captive; but Robinson, with the elasticity of youth, ran a considerable distance before he was taken; and but for an untoward accident might have effected an escape. Believing that he was outstripping his pursuers, and anxious to ascertain the fact, he looked over his shoulder, but before he discovered the Indian giving chase, he ran with such violence against a tree, that he fell, stunned by the shock and lay powerless and insensible. In this situation he was secured with a cord; and when he revived, was taken back to the place where the Indians had Hellen in confinement, and where lay the lifeless body of Brown. They then set off to their towns, taking with them a horse which belonged to Hellen. When they had approached near enough to be distinctly heard, Logan (as is usual with them after a successful scout,) gave the scalp halloo, and several warriors came out to meet them, and conducted the prisoners into the village. Here they passed through the accustomed ceremony of running the gauntlet; but with far different fortunes. Robinson, having been previously instructed by Logan (who from the time he made him his prisoner, manifested a kindly feeling towards him,) made his way, with but little interruption, to the council house; but poor Hellen, from the decrepitude of age, and his ignorance of the fact that it was a place of refuge, was sadly beaten before he arrived at it; and when he at length came near enough, he was knocked down with a war club, before he could enter. After he had fallen, they continued to beat and strike him with such unmerciful severity, that he would assuredly have fallen a victim to their barbarous usage, but that Robinson (at some peril for the interference) reached forth his hand and drew him within the sanctuary. When he had however, recovered from the effects of the violent beating which he had received, he was relieved from the apprehension of farther suffering, by being adopted into an Indian family. A council was next convoked to resolve on the fate of Robinson; and then arose in his breast, feelings of the most anxious inquietude. Logan assured him, that he should not be killed; but the council appeared determined that he should die, and he was tied to the stake. Logan then addressed them, and with much vehemence, insisted that Robinson too should be spared; and had the eloquence displayed on that occasion been less than Logan is believed to have possessed, [120] it is by no means wonderful that he appeared to Robinson (as he afterwards said) the most powerful orator he ever heard. But commanding as his eloquence might have been, it seems not to have prevailed with the council; for Logan had to interpose otherwise than by argument or entreaty, to succeed in the attainment of his object. Enraged at the pertinacity with which the life of Robinson was sought to be taken, and reckless of the consequences, he drew the tomahawk from his belt, and severing the cords which bound the devoted victim to the stake, led him in triumph, to the cabin of an old squaw, by whom he was immediately adopted. After this, so long as Logan remained in the town where Robinson was, he was kind and attentive to him; and when preparing to go again to war, got him to write the letter which was afterwards found on Holstein at the house of a Mr. Robertson, whose family were all murdered by the Indians. Robinson remained with his adopted mother, until he was redeemed under the treaty concluded at the close of the Dunmore campaign. ----- [1] Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, represents this as happening at Grave creek, which empties into the Ohio from the south eastern, or Virginia side of this river, twelve miles below Wheeling. Those who lived near at the time and are supposed to have had the best opportunity of ascertaining the fact, say that it happened near the mouth of Captina, a creek sixteen miles below Wheeling, and on the Ohio side. ------ _Comment by R. G. T._--What is called the "Captina affair" happened April 27th, at Pipe Creek, emptying into the Ohio from the west, fourteen miles below Wheeling, and six above Captina Creek. Two friendly Shawnees were killed here by a party commanded by Michael Cresap, of Redstone, who at the time was in the neighborhood of Wheeling, surveying and clearing farms for new settlers. Cresap and his men, among whom was George Rogers Clark, then a young surveyor who had a claim at the mouth of Fish Creek, thereupon started out to destroy Chief Logan's camp, at Baker's Bottom, opposite the mouth of Yellow Creek, fifty-three miles up the Ohio, and forty miles west of Pittsburg by land; but as Logan was a well-known friend of the whites, they became ashamed of their project, and marched on across country to Fort Redstone. Meanwhile, as will be seen in due course, others were preparing to destroy Logan's band, and on April 30th occurred that infamous massacre which Logan wrongly believed to be Cresap's work. [2] Capt. Bull was a Delaware chief whose original village of Oghkwaga was on Unadilla Kiver, an eastern branch of the Susquehanna, in what is now Boone county, N. Y. He had been the prime mover in an attempt to interest the Delawares in Pontiac's conspiracy (1763). In March, 1764, a strong party of whites and friendly Indians were sent out to capture him, by Sir William Johnson, English Indian superintendent in New York. After a sharp struggle, Bull and a number of his adherents were captured and conveyed in irons to New York City, where they were imprisoned for a time, but finally discharged. The Delaware towns on the Unadilla having been burned, Bull and five families of his relatives settled what the whites called Bulltown, on the Little Kanawha. This was at a salt spring about a mile and a quarter below the present Bulltown P. O., Braxton county, Va. Capt. Bull and his people were inoffensive, and very friendly to their white neighbors, as our author says.--R. G. T. [3] Adam Stroud lived on Elk River, a few miles south of Indian Bulltown. The massacre of his family--his wife and seven children--occurred in June, 1772. Shawnees were the murderers, and not Bull's people.--R. G. T. [4] Mr. McWhorter writes me that two others were Jesse Hughes and John Cutright (corruption of Cartwright?), both of them settlers on Hacker's Creek. Hughes was a noted border scout, but a man of fierce, unbridled passions, and so confirmed an Indian hater that no tribesman, however peaceful his record, was safe in his presence. Some of the most cruel acts on the frontier are by tradition attributed to this man. The massacre of the Bulltown Indians was accompanied by atrocities as repulsive as any reported by captives in Indian camps; of these there had long been traditions, but details were not fully known until revealed by Cutright upon his death-bed in 1852, when he had reached the age of 105 years. Want of space alone prevents me from giving Mr. McWhorter's narrative of Hughes's long and bloody career. "Hughes died," he says, "in Jackson county, W. Va., at a date unknown to me, but in very old age. While he was a great scout and Indian trader, he never headed an expedition of note. This no doubt was because of his fierce temperament, and bad reputation among his own countrymen." In studying the annals of the border, we must not fail to note that here and there were many savage-hearted men among the white settlers, whose deeds were quite as atrocious as any attributed to the red-skins. Current histories of Indian warfare seldom recognize this fact.--R. G. T. [5] Lord Dunmore's War (1774) was a natural outgrowth of the strained relations which had long existed between the savages and the white colonists in their midst. As our author has made clear, minor hostilities had broken out here and there ever since the Pontiac uprising, but there had been no general campaign since Bouquet's treaty in 1764. Affairs had come to that pass by the early spring of 1774, that diplomacy was no longer possible, and an Indian war was inevitable. It was merely a question of detail, as to how and when. The immediate cause of precipitation--not the cause of the war, for that lay deeper--was the territorial dispute over the Ft. Pitt region, between Virginia and Pennsylvania. Dunmore, as royal governor of Virginia, had several reasons for bringing matters to a head--he was largely interested in land speculations under Virginia patents that would be vitiated if Pennsylvania, now becoming aggressive, should succeed in planting her official machinery at Ft. Pitt, which was garrisoned by Virginia; again, his colonists were in a revolutionary frame of mind, and he favored a distraction in the shape of a popular Indian war; finally, it seemed as though a successful raid by Virginia militia would clinch Virginia's hold on the country and the treaty of peace that must follow would widen the area of provincial lands and encourage Western settlements. April 25, 1774, he issued a proclamation in which, after reference to Pennsylvania's claims, it was asserted that Ft. Pitt was "in danger of some annoyance from the Indians," and he called on his local military commandant, the fire-eating Dr. John Connolly, "to embody a sufficient number of men to repel any insult." Connolly, evidently as part of a preconcerted plan, at once (April 26) issued a circular letter to the excited borderers, which was well calculated to arouse them, being in effect a declaration of war against the Indians. The very next day occurred the Pipe Creek affair, then came the Logan tragedy at Baker's Bottom, three days later, and at once the war was on at full-head.--R. G. T. [6] Of John Findlay (so he signed his name), "the precursor and pilot of Daniel Boone to Kentucky," but little is known and less has been published. Apparently he was a native of the north of Ireland. In early life he emigrated to the neighborhood of Carlisle, Cumberland county, Pa., a district almost wholly settled by Scotch-Irish Protestants. In February, 1752, we find him a trader among the Shawnees; the following year, he was robbed and driven off. It is probable that he served in the Pennsylvania frontier militia from the opening of the French and Indian War (1754). Boone met him on the Braddock campaign (1755), and they became fast friends. Findlay had already (1752) been in Kentucky as far as the Falls of the Ohio, in the course of his ramblings as a trader, and inspired Boone with an intense desire to seek this El Dorado of the West. It was in 1767, when settled near the head of the Yadkin River, that Boone first tried to reach Kentucky by way of the Sandy, but failed. In the winter of 1768-69, Findlay, now a peddler, with a horse to carry his traps, appeared at Boone's cabin on the Yadkin, and the two old comrades had a happy time rehearsing their various adventures during the thirteen years of separation. An expedition to Kentucky was agreed upon, and the party set out from Boone's cabin, May 1, 1769; it was composed of Findlay, now advanced in years, Daniel Boone, the latter's brother-in-law, John Stuart, and three Yadkin neighbors, Joseph Holden, James Mooney, and William Cooley. The story of their expedition through Cumberland Gap, and their long hunt, is now familiar to readers of Western history. Their principal camp was probably on Red Lick Fork of Station Camp Creek. In December, Stuart and Boone were captured by Indians, but escaped early in January (1770), and on rejoining their comrades on Rockcastle River found that Daniel's brother, Squire, had arrived with fresh horses and traps from the North Carolina home; and with him was Alexander Neely, whom Squire had found on New (Great Kanawha) River. Findlay, Holden, Mooney, and Cooley now elected to return home, leaving the others to spend a longer period in Kentucky; Findlay took the left-hand road through the West Virginia settlements, to Pennsylvania, and the others, turning to the right, wended their way to North Carolina through Cumberland Gap. Not long after this, Stuart was killed by Indians, while alone in the woods, and Neely, discouraged by his fate, returned home. The story, often copied from Withers, that Neely was killed by a wolf, is erroneous. As for Findlay, he appears to have again become an Indian trader in Western Pennsylvania; for late in 1771 he is reported to have been robbed of $500 worth of goods, by a Seneca war party raiding the Youghiogheny district. There is a tradition that not long after this he "was lost in the wilds of the West." Holden and Cooley spent the rest of their days on the Upper Yadkin. Mooney was killed at the battle of Point Pleasant (1774).--R. G. T. [7] The Boones and five other families set out from their homes on the Yadkin, Sept. 25, 1773. In Powell's Valley they were joined by forty people under Boone's brother-in-law, William Bryan. While the main party were slowly advancing through the valley, a small squad, under Boone's oldest son, James, went on a side expedition for flour, cattle, and other supplies. With these they had nearly caught up to the advance, when, not knowing they were so near, they camped on the evening of October 9 a few miles in the rear. Early in the morning of the 10th, a small band of Shawnees and Cherokees, who were nominally at peace with the whites, fell upon and, after cruel tortures, slaughtered them. In Dunmore's speech at Fort Pitt, this tragedy in Powell's Valley was alluded to as one of the chief causes of the Indian war of 1774. At the Camp Charlotte treaty (October, 1774), some of the plunder from this massacre was delivered up by the savages. After the tragedy, the greater part of the Kentucky caravan returned to their homes, but the Boones spent the winter of 1773-74 at a settlement some forty miles distant, on Clinch River. During the Dunmore War, Boone was active as an Indian fighter.--R. G. T. [8] The leader of this party was Capt. Thomas Bullitt. He was born in Fauquier county, Va., in 1730; was one of Washington's captains at the Great Meadows (1754), and fought gallantly with Braddock (1755) and Forbes (1758); in 1763, was made adjutant-general of Virginia; during the early part of the Revolution he held the same office in the Southern Department of the United States, but resigned in 1776 because not promoted; he died in Fauquier county, in 1778. The project of Franklin, Walpole, and others to found the Colony of Pittsylvania, with its seat at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, greatly stimulated Western land speculation, and there was a rush of those holding military land warrants to locate claims. Lord Dunmore's agent at Fort Pitt, Dr. John Connolly--with whom his lordship was doubtless in partnership--had large interests of this character, and Bullitt went to the Falls of the Ohio (1773) to survey lands for him. Bullitt had a surveyor's commission from Williams and Mary College, but Col. William Preston, county surveyor for Fincastle county--in which Kentucky was then included--declined to recognize any but his own deputies. Preston carried his point, and the lands were re-surveyed the following year (1774) by his deputies. Bullitt had laid off a town on this Connolly survey; but the Revolution soon broke out, Bullitt was otherwise engaged, Dunmore was deposed, Connolly was imprisoned, and the scheme fell through. In 1778, George Rogers Clark camped at the Falls on his way to the Illinois, and the garrison he established there grew into the town of Louisville. With Bullitt's surveying party in 1773, were James Douglas, James Harrod, James Sodousky, Isaac Hite, Abraham Haptonstall, Ebenezer Severns, John Fitzpatrick, John Cowan,--prominent names in later Kentucky history,--and possibly others. George Rogers Clark was probably with the party during a part of its canoe voyage down the Ohio, but seems to have gone no farther than Big Bone Creek.--R. G. T. [9] This was done by a party of men from the Monongahela, under the guidance of James Harrod; by whom was built the first cabin for human habitancy ever erected in Kentucky. This was on the present site of Harrodsburg. [10] These are the Pipe Creek and Baker's Bottom affairs, respectively mentioned on pp. 134, 149, _notes_. Yellow Creek, opposite Baker's Bottom, empties into the Ohio 51 miles below Pittsburg; Wheeling is 91 miles below Pittsburg, and Pipe Creek 104.--R. G. T. [11] There is some difficulty in fixing on the precise time when these occurrences happened. Col. Ebenezer Zane says that they took place in the latter part of April, and that the affair at Captina preceded the one at Yellow creek a few days. John Sappington, who was of the party at Baker's, and is said to be the one who killed Logan's brother, says, the murders at that place occurred on the 24th of May, and that the skirmish at Captina was on the day before (23rd May.) Col. Andrew Swearingen, a presbyterian gentleman of much respectability, one of the early settlers near the Ohio above Wheeling, and afterwards intimate with those engaged at both places, says that the disturbance opposite Yellow creek preceded the engagement [113] at Captina, and that the latter, as was then generally understood, was caused by the conduct of the Indians, who had been at Yellow creek and were descending the river, exasperated at the murder of their friends at Baker's. Mr. Benjamin Tomlinson, who was the brother-in-law of Baker and living with him at the time, says that this circumstance happened in May, but is silent as to the one at Captina. These gentlemen all agree in the fact that Logan's people were murdered at Baker's. Indeed Logan himself charges it as having been done there. The statement of Sappington, that the murders were caused by the abusive epithets of Logan's brother and his taking the hat and coat of Baker's brother in law is confirmed by Col. Swearingen and others; who also say that for some days previous, the neighborhood generally had been engaged in preparing to leave the country, in consequence of the menacing conduct of the Indians. ------ _Comment by R. G. T._--The date is now well established--April 30. Withers is altogether too lenient, in his treatment of the whites engaged in this wretched massacre. Logan, encamped at the mouth of Yellow River, on the Ohio side, was a peaceful, inoffensive Indian, against whom no man harbored a suspicion; he was made a victim of race hatred, in a time of great popular excitement. Joshua Baker, who was settled opposite him on Baker's Bottom, in Virginia, kept a low grog-shop tavern, and had recently been warned not to sell more liquor to Indians. Daniel Greathouse lived in the vicinity--a cruel, bloodthirsty fellow, who served Connolly as a local agent in fomenting hatred of Indians. It will be remembered (p. 131, _note_) that Cresap's party were intending to strike the camp of Logan, but that they abandoned the project. In the meantime, probably without knowledge of Cresap's intent, Greathouse had collected a party of 32 borderers to accomplish the same end. Logan's camp seemed too strong for them to attack openly; so they secreted themselves in Baker's house, and when Logan's family, men and women, came over to get their daily grog, and were quite drunk, set upon them and slew and tomahawked nine or ten. The chief, standing on the Ohio bank, heard the uproar and witnessed the massacre; he naturally supposed that the murderers were led by Cresap. From a friend of the whites, Logan became their implacable enemy, and during the ensuing war his forays were the bloodiest on the border. We shall hear of him and his famous speech, later on. [12] It was then that Westfall's and Casinoe's forts were erected in Tygart's valley,--Pricket's, on Pricket's creek,--Jackson's on Ten Mile, and Shepherd's on Wheeling creek, a few miles above its mouth. There were also others established in various parts of the country and on the Monongahela and Ohio rivers. Nutter's fort, near to Clarksburg, afforded protection to the inhabitants on the West Fork, from its source, to its confluence with the Valley river; and to those who lived on Buchannon and on Hacker's creek, as well as to the residents of its immediate vicinity. [13] June 20, Col. William Preston, having charge of the defenses of Fincastle county, authorized Capt. William Russell to employ two faithful woodsmen to go to Kentucky and inform the several surveying parties at work there, of their danger. June 26, Russell replied, "I have engaged to start immediately on the occasion, two of the best hands I could think of--Daniel Boone and Michael Stoner; who have engaged to reach the country as low as the Falls, and to return by way of Gasper's Lick on Cumberland, and through Cumberland Gap; so that, by the assiduity of these men, if it is not too late, I hope the gentlemen will be apprized of the imminent danger they are daily in." Boone and Stoner journeyed overland to Harrodsburg, where Col. James Harrod and thirty men were making improvements and laying out the town. The thrifty Boone secured a good lot, hastily built a claim cabin, and proceeded on his tour. At Fontaine Blue, three miles below Harrodsburg, the two scouts found another party of surveyors, whom they warned; and in going down the Kentucky River came across Capt. John Floyd's surveying party,--eight men, who had left Preston's house for Kentucky, April 9,--who agreed to meet them farther down the river. But circumstances prevented a reunion, and Floyd's band penetrated through the wilderness on their own account, and had a painful journey of sixteen days' duration before reaching Russell's Fort on Clinch River. Meanwhile, Boone and Stoner descended to the mouth of the Kentucky, and thence to the Falls of the Ohio, and found more surveyors at Mann's Lick, four miles southeast. Indians were making bloody forays through the district, and the scouts had frequent thrilling adventures. Finally, after having been absent sixty-one days and travelled 800 miles, they reached Russell's on the Clinch, in safety. Russell was absent on the Point Pleasant campaign, and Boone set out with a party of recruits to reinforce him, but was ordered back to defend the Clinch settlements. He was busy at this task until the close of the war. He was present at the Watauga treaty, March 17, 1775; later that year, he led another band to Kentucky, and early in April built Fort Boone, on Kentucky River, "a little below Big Lick," the nucleus of the Henderson colony.--R. G. T. [14] The party numbered about four hundred men. The line of march was about ninety miles in length, as estimated by the zig-zag course pursued.--R. G. T. [15] They were Jonathan Zane, Thomas Nicholson and Tady Kelly. A better woodsman than the first named of these three, perhaps never lived. [16] Doddridge locates Wapatomica "about sixteen miles below the present Coshocton." Butterfield (_History of the Girtys_) places it "just below the present Zanesville, in Logan county, Ohio, not a great distance from Mac-a-cheek." For localities of Indian towns on the Muskingum, see map in St. John de Creve Coeur's _Lettres d'un Cultivateur Américain_ (Paris, 1787), III., p. 413.--R. G. T. [17] John Hargus, a private in Capt. Cresap's company, while stationed as a vidette below the main army, observed an Indian several times raising his head above his blind, and looking over the river. Charging his rifle with a second ball, he fired, and both bullets passed through the neck of the Indian, who was found next day and scalped by Hargus. [18] Logan was the son of Shikellemus, a celebrated chief of the Cayuga nation, who dwelt at Shamokin, and always attached to the [118] English, was of much service to them on many occasions. After the close of Dunmore's war, Logan became gloomy and melancholy, drank freely and manifested symptoms of mental derangement. He remained some time at Detroit, and while there, his conduct and expressions evinced a weariness of the world. Life he said had become a burden to him, he knew no more what pleasure was, and thought it had been better if he had never existed. In this disponding and disconsolate condition he left Detroit, and on his way between that place and Miami, is said to have been murdered. [19] See p. 149, _note_, for account of the massacre.--R. G. T. [121] CHAPTER VII. When information of the hostile deportment of the Indians was carried to Williamsburg, Col. Charles Lewis sent a messenger with the intelligence to Capt. John Stuart, and requesting of him, to apprize the inhabitants on the Greenbrier river that an immediate war was anticipated, and to send out scouts to watch the warrior's paths beyond the settlements. The vigilance and activity of Capt. Stuart, were exerted with some success, to prevent the re-exhibition of those scenes which had been previously witnessed on Muddy creek and in the Big Levels: but they could not avail to repress them altogether. In the course of the preceding spring, some few individuals had begun to make improvements on the Kenhawa river below the Great Falls; and some land adventurers, to examine and survey portions of the adjoining country. To these men Capt. Stuart despatched an express, to inform them that apprehensions were entertained of immediate irruptions being made upon the frontiers by the Indians, and advising them to remove from the position which they then occupied; as from its exposed situation, without great vigilance and alertness, they must necessarily fall a prey to the savages. When the express arrived at the cabin of Walter Kelly, twelve miles below the falls, Capt. John Field of Culpepper (who had been in active service during the French war, and was then engaged in making surveys,) was there with a young Scotchman and a negro woman. Kelly with great prudence, directly sent his family to Greenbrier, under the care of a younger brother. But Capt. Field, considering the apprehension as groundless, determined on remaining with Kelly, who from prudential motives did not wish to subject himself to observation by mingling with others.[1] Left with no persons but the Scotchman and negro, they were not long permitted to doubt the reality of those dangers, of which they had been forewarned by Capt Stuart. [122] Very soon after Kelly's family had left the cabin, and while yet within hearing of it, a party of Indians approached, unperceived, near to Kelly and Field, who were engaged in drawing leather from a tan trough in the yard. The first intimation which Field had of their approach was the discharge of several guns and the fall of Kelly. He then ran briskly towards the house to get possession of a gun, but recollecting that it was unloaded, he changed his course, and sprang into a cornfield which screened him from the observation of the Indians; who, supposing that he had taken shelter in the cabin, rushed immediately into it. Here they found the Scotchman and the negro woman, the latter of whom they killed; and making prisoner of the young man, returned and scalped Kelly. When Kelly's family reached the Greenbrier settlement, they mentioned their fears for the fate of those whom they had left on the Kenhawa, not doubting but that the guns which they heard soon after leaving the house, had been discharged at them by Indians. Capt. Stuart, with a promptitude which must ever command admiration, exerted himself effectually to raise a volunteer corps, and proceed to the scene of action, with the view of ascertaining whether the Indians had been there; and if they had, and he could meet with them, to endeavor to punish them for the outrage, and thus prevent the repetition of similar deeds of violence. They had not however gone far, before they were met by Capt. Field, whose appearance of itself fully told the tale of woe. He had ran upwards of eighty miles, naked except his shirt, and without food; his body nearly exhausted by fatigue, anxiety and hunger, and his limbs greviously lacerated with briers and brush. Captain Stuart, fearing lest the success of the Indians might induce them to push immediately for the settlements, thought proper to return and prepare for that event. In a few weeks after this another party of Indians came to the settlement on Muddy creek, and as if a certain fatality attended the Kelly's, they alone fell victims to the incursion. As the daughter of Walter Kelly was walking with her uncle (who had conducted the family from the Kenhawa) some distance from the house, which had been converted into a temporary fort, and in which they lived, they were discovered and fired upon; the latter was killed and scalped, and the former being overtaken in her flight, was carried into captivity. After the murder of Brown, and the taking of Hellen and Robinson, the inhabitants on the Monongahela and its upper branches, alarmed for their safety, retired into forts. But in the ensuing September, as Josiah Pricket and Mrs. Susan Ox, who had left Pricket's fort for the purpose of driving up their cows, were returning in the evening they were way laid by a party of Indians, who had been drawn to the path by the tinkling of the cowbell. Pricket was killed and scalped, and Mrs. Ox taken prisoner. [123] It was in the course of this season, that Lewis Wetsel[2] first gave promise of that daring and discretion, which were so fully developed in his maturer years, and which rendered him among the most fortunate and successful of Indian combatants. When about fourteen years old, he and his brother Jacob, (still younger) were discovered some distance from the house, by a party of Indians, who had been prowling through the settlements on the Ohio river, with the expectation of fortunately meeting with some opportunity of taking scalps or making prisoners. As the boys were at some distance from them, and in a situation too open to admit of their being approached without perceiving those who should advance towards them, the Indians determined on shooting the larger one, lest his greater activity might enable him to escape. A shot was accordingly discharged at him, which, partially taking effect and removing a portion of his breast bone, so far deprived him of his wonted powers, that he was easily overtaken; and both he and his brother were made prisoners. The Indians immediately directed their steps towards their towns, and having travelled about twenty miles beyond the Ohio river, encamped at the Big Lick, on the waters of McMahon's creek, on the second night after they had set off. When they had finished eating, the Indians laid down, without confining the boys as on the preceding night, and soon fell to sleep. After making some little movements to test the soundness of their repose, Lewis whispered to his brother that he must get up and go home with him; and after some hesitation on the part of Jacob, they arose and set off. Upon getting about 100 yards from the camp, Lewis stopped, and telling his brother to await there, returned to the camp and brought from thence a pair of mocasons for each of them. He then observed, that he would again go back and get his father's gun; this he soon effected, and they then commenced their journey home. The moon shining brightly, they were easily able to distinguish the trail which they had made in going out; but had not however pursued it far, before they heard the Indians coming in pursuit of them. So soon as Lewis perceived by the sound of their voices that they were approaching tolerably near to them, he led his brother aside from the path, and squatting down, concealed themselves 'till their pursuers had passed them; when they again commenced travelling and in the rear of the Indians. Not overtaking the boys as soon as was expected, those who had been sent after them, began to retrace their steps. Expecting this, the boys were watchful of every noise or object before them, and when they heard the Indians returning, again secreted themselves in the bushes, and escaped observation. They were then followed by two, of the party who had made them prisoners, on horseback; but by practising the same stratagem, they eluded them also; and on the next day reached the Ohio river opposite to Wheeling. Apprehensive that it would be dangerous to apprize those on the opposite side of the river of their situation, by hallooing, Lewis set himself to work as silently, and yet as expeditiously [124] as possible, and with the aid of his little brother, soon completed a raft on which they safely crossed the Ohio; and made their way home. That persons, should, by going out from the forts, when the Indians were so generally watching around them, expose themselves to captivity or death, may at first appear strange and astonishing. But when the mind reflects on the tedious and irksome confinement, which they were compelled to undergo; the absence of the comforts, and frequently, of the necessaries of life, coupled with an overweening attachment to the enjoyment of forest scenes and forest pastimes, it will perhaps be matter of greater astonishment that they did not more frequently forego the security of a fortress, for the uncertain enjoyment of those comforts and necessaries, and the doubtful gratification of this attachment. Accustomed as they had been "free to come and free to go," they could not brook the restraint under which they were placed; and rather than chafe and pine in unwilling confinement, would put themselves at hazard, that they might revel at large and wanton in the wilderness. Deriving their sustenance chiefly from the woods, the strong arm of necessity led many to tempt the perils which environed them; while to the more chivalric and adventurous "the danger's self were lure alone." The quiet and stillness which reigned around, even when the enemy were lurking nearest and in greater numbers, inspired many too, with the delusive hope of exemption from risk, not unfrequently the harbinger of fatal consequences. It seemed indeed, impracticable at first to realize the existence of a danger, which could not be perceived. And not until taught by reiterated suffering did they properly appreciate the perilous situation of those, who ventured beyond the walls of their forts. But this state of things was of short duration. The preparations, which were necessary to be made for the projected campaign into the Indian country, were completed; and to resist this threatened invasion, required the concentrated exertions of all their warriors. The army destined for this expedition, was composed of volunteers and militia, chiefly from the counties west of the Blue ridge, and consisted of two divisions. The northern division, comprehending the troops, collected in Frederick, Dunmore,[3] and the adjacent counties, was to be commanded by Lord Dunmore, in person;[4] and the southern, comprising the different companies raised in Botetourt, Augusta and the adjoining counties east of the Blue ridge, was to be led on by Gen. Andrew Lewis. These two divisions, proceeding by different routes, were to form a junction at the mouth of the Big Kenhawa, and from thence penetrate the country north west of the Ohio river, as far as the season would admit of their going; and destroy all the Indian towns and villages which they could reach. About the first of September, the troops placed under the command [125] of Gen. Lewis rendezvoused at Camp Union (now Lewisburg) and consisted of two regiments, commanded by Col. William Fleming of Botetourt and Col. Charles Lewis of Augusta, and containing about four hundred men each. At Camp Union they were joined by an independent volunteer company under Col. John Field of Culpepper; a company from Bedford under Capt. Buford and two from the Holstein settlement (now Washington county) under Capts. Evan Shelby and Harbert. These three latter companies were part of the forces to be led on by Col. Christian, who was likewise to join the two main divisions of the army at Point Pleasant, so soon as the other companies of his regiment could be assembled. The force under Gen. Lewis, having been thus augmented to eleven hundred men, commenced its march for the mouth of Kenhawa on the 11th of September 1774.[5] From Camp Union to the point proposed for the junction of the northern and southern divisions of the army, a distance of one hundred and sixty miles, the intermediate country was a trackless forest, so rugged and mountainous as to render the progress of the army, at once, tedious and laborious. Under the guidance of Capt. Matthew Arbuckle, they however, succeeded in reaching the Ohio river after a march of nineteen days; and fixed their encampment on the point of land immediately between that river and the Big Kenhawa.[6] The provisions and ammunition, transported on packhorses, and the beeves in droves, arrived soon after. When the army was preparing to leave Camp Union, there was for a while some reluctance manifested on the part of Col. Field to submit to the command of Gen. Lewis. This proceeded from the fact, that in a former military service, he had been the senior of Gen. Lewis; and from the circumstance that the company led on by him were Independent Volunteers, not raised in pursuance of the orders of Governor Dunmore, but brought into the field by his own exertions, after his escape from the Indians at Kelly's. These circumstances induced him to separate his men from the main body of the army on its march, and to take a different way from the one pursued by it,--depending on his own knowledge of the country to lead them a practicable route to the river.[7] While thus detached from the forces under Gen. Lewis, two of his men (Clay and Coward) who were out hunting and at some little distance from each other, came near to where two Indians were concealed. Seeing Clay only, and supposing him to be alone, one of them fired at him; and running up to scalp him as he fell, was himself shot by Coward, who was then about 100 yards off. The other Indian ran off unarmed, and made his escape. A bundle of ropes found where Clay was killed, induced the belief that it was the object of these Indians to steal horses;--it is not however improbable, that they had been observing the progress of the army, and endeavoring to ascertain its numbers. Col. Field, fearing that he might [126] encounter a party of the enemy in ambush, redoubled his vigilance 'till he again joined General Lewis; and the utmost concert and harmony then prevailed in the whole army.[8] When the Southern division arrived at Point Pleasant, Governor Dunmore with the forces under his command, had not reached there; and unable to account for his failure to form the preconcerted junction at that place, it was deemed advisable to await that event; as by so doing, a better opportunity would be afforded to Col. Christian of coming up, with that portion of the army, which was then with him.[9] Meanwhile General Lewis, to learn the cause of the delay of the Northern division, despatched runners by land, in the direction of Port Pitt, to obtain tidings of Lord Dunmore, and to communicate them to him immediately. In their absence, however, advices were received from his Lordship, that he had determined on proceeding across the country, directly to the Shawanee towns; and ordering General Lewis to cross the river, march forward and form a junction with him, near to them. These advices were received on the 9th of October, and preparations were immediately begun to be made for the transportation of the troops over the Ohio river.[10] Early on the morning of Monday the tenth of that month, two soldiers[11] left the camp, and proceeded up the Ohio river, in quest of deer. When they had progressed about two miles, they unexpectedly came in sight of a large number of Indians, rising from their encampment, and who discovering the two hunters fired upon them and killed one;--the other escaped unhurt, and running briskly to the camp, communicated the intelligence, "that he had seen a body of the enemy, covering four acres of ground as closely as they could stand by the side of each other." The main part of the army was immediately ordered out under Colonels Charles Lewis,[12] and William Fleming; and having formed into two lines, [127] they proceeded about four hundred yards, when they met the Indians, and the action commenced. At the first onset, Colonel Charles Lewis having fallen, and Colonel Fleming being wounded, both lines gave way and were retreating briskly towards the camp, when they were met by a reinforcement under Colonel Field,[13] and rallied. The engagement then became general, and was sustained with the most obstinate fury on both sides. The Indians perceiving that the "tug of war" had come, and determined on affording the Colonial army no chance of escape, if victory should declare for them, formed a line extending across the point, from the Ohio to the Kenhawa, and protected in front, by logs and fallen timber. In this situation they maintained the contest with unabated vigor, from sunrise 'till towards the close of evening; bravely and successfully resisting every charge which was made on them; and withstanding the impetuosity of every onset, with the most invincible firmness, until a fortunate movement on the part of the Virginia troops, decided the day. Some short distance above the entrance of the Kenhawa river into Ohio, there is a stream, called Crooked creek, emptying into the former of these, from the North east,[14] whose banks are tolerably high, and were then covered with a thick and luxuriant growth of weeds. Seeing the impracticability of dislodging the Indians, by the most vigorous attack, and sensible of the great danger, which must arise to his army, if the contest were not decided before night, General Lewis detached the three companies which were commanded by Captains Isaac Shelby, George Matthews, and John Stuart, with orders to proceed up the Kenhawa river, and Crooked creek under cover of the banks and weeds, 'till they should [128] pass some distance beyond the enemy; when they were to emerge from their covert, march downward towards the point and attack the Indians in their rear.[15] The manoeuvre thus planned, was promptly executed, and gave a decided victory to the Colonial army. The Indians finding themselves suddenly and unexpectedly encompassed between two armies, & not doubting but that in their rear, was the looked for reinforcement under Colonel Christian, soon gave way, and about sun down, commenced a precipitate retreat across the Ohio, to their towns on the Scioto. Some short time after the battle had ended, Colonel Christian arrived with the troops which he had collected in the settlements on the Holstein, and relieved the anxiety of many who were disposed to believe the retreat of the Indians to be only a feint;[16] and that an attack would be again speedily made by them, strengthened and reinforced by those of the enemy who had been observed during the engagement, on the opposite side of the Ohio and Kenhawa rivers. But these had been most probably stationed there, in anticipation of victory, to prevent the Virginia troops from effecting a retreat across those rivers, (the only possible chance of escape, had they been overpowered by the enemy in their front;) and the loss sustained by the Indians was too great, and the prospect of a better fortune, too gloomy and unpromising, for them to enter again into an engagement. Dispirited by the bloody repulse with which they had met, they hastened to their towns, better disposed to purchase security from farther hostilities by negotiation, than risk another battle with an army whose strength and prowess, they had already tested; and found superior to their own. The victory indeed, was decisive, and many advantages were obtained by it; but they were not cheaply bought. The Virginia army sustained, in this engagement, a loss of seventy-five killed, and one hundred and forty wounded.--About one fifth of the entire number of the troops. Among the slain were Colonels Lewis and Field; Captains Buford, Morrow, Wood, Cundiff, Wilson, and Robert McClannahan; and Lieutenants Allen, Goldsby and Dillon, with some other subalterns. The loss of the enemy could not be ascertained. On the morning after the action, Colonel Christian marched his men over the battle ground and found twenty-one of the Indians lying dead; and twelve others [129] were afterwards discovered, where they had been attempted to be concealed under some old logs and brush.[17] From the great facility with which the Indians either carry off or conceal their dead, it is always difficult to ascertain the number of their slain; and hence arises, in some measure, the disparity between their known loss and that sustained by their opponents in battle. Other reasons for this disparity, are to be found in their peculiar mode of warfare, and in the fact, that they rarely continue a contest, when it has to be maintained with the loss of their warriors. It would not be easy otherwise to account for the circumstance, that even when signally vanquished, the list of their slain does not, frequently, appear more than half as great, as that of the victors. In this particular instance, many of the dead were certainly thrown into the river. Nor could the number of the enemy engaged, be ever ascertained. Their army is known to have been composed of warriors from the different nations, north of the Ohio; and to have comprised the flower of the Shawanee, Delaware, Mingo, Wyandotte and Cayuga tribes; led on by men, whose names were not unknown to fame,[18] and at the head of whom was Cornstalk, Sachem of the Shawanees, and King of the Northern Confederacy.[19] This distinguished chief and consummate warrior, proved himself on that day, to be justly entitled to the prominent station which he occupied. His plan of alternate retreat & attack, was well conceived, and occasioned the principal loss sustained by the writes. If at any time his warriors were believed to waver, his voice could be heard above the din of arms, exclaiming in his native tongue, "Be strong! Be strong;" and when one near him, by trepidation and reluctance to proceed to the charge, evinced a dastardly disposition, fearing the example might have a pernicious influence, with one blow of the tomahawk he severed his skull. It was perhaps a solitary instance in which terror predominated. Never did men exhibit a more conclusive evidence of bravery, in making a charge, and fortitude in withstanding an onset, than did these undisciplined soldiers of the forest, in the [130] field at Point Pleasant. Such too was the good conduct of those who composed the army of Virginia, on that occasion; and such the noble bravery of many, that high expectations were entertained of their future distinction. Nor were those expectations disappointed. In the various scenes through which they subsequently passed, the pledge of after eminence then given, was fully redeemed; and the names of Shelby, Campbell, Matthews, Fleming, Moore, and others, their compatriots in arms on the memorable tenth of October, 1774, have been inscribed in brilliant characters on the roll of fame.[20] Having buried the dead, and made every arrangement of which their situation admitted, for the comfort of the wounded, entrenchments were thrown up, and the army commenced its march to form a junction with the northern division, under Lord Dunmore. Proceeding by the way of the Salt Licks, General Lewis pressed forward with astonishing rapidity (considering that the march was through a trackless desert); but before he had gone far, an express arrived from Dunmore, with orders to return immediately to the mouth of the Big Kenhawa. Suspecting the integrity of his Lordship's motives, and urged by the advice of his officers generally, General [131] Lewis refused to obey these orders; and continued to advance 'till he was met, (at Kilkenny creek, and in sight of an Indian village, which its inhabitants had just fired and deserted,) by the Governor, (accompanied by White Eyes,) who informed him, that he was negotiating a treaty of peace which would supersede the necessity of the further movement of the Southern division, and repeating the order for its retreat. The army under General Lewis had endured many privations and suffered many hardships. They had encountered a savage enemy in great force, and purchased a victory with the blood of their friends. When arrived near to the goal of their anxious wishes, and with nothing to prevent the accomplishment of the object of the campaign; they received those orders with evident chagrin; and did not obey them without murmuring. Having, at his own request, been introduced severally to the officers of that division; complimenting them for their gallantry and good conduct in the late engagement, and assuring them of his high esteem, Lord Dunmore returned to his camp; and General Lewis commenced his retreat.[21] If before the opening of this campaign, the belief was prevalent, that to the conduct of emissaries from Great Britain, because of the contest then waging between her and her American colonies, the Indian depredations of that year, were mainly attributable; that belief had become more general, and had received strong confirmation, from the more portentous aspect which that contest had assumed, prior to the battle at Point Pleasant. The destruction of the tea at Boston had taken place in the March preceding. The _Boston Port Bill_, the signal for actual conflict between the colonies and mother country, had been received early in May. The house of Burgesses in Virginia, being in session at the time, recommended that the first of June, the day on which that bill was to go into operation, be observed throughout the colony "as a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer, imploring the divine interposition to avert the heavy calamity which threatened destruction to their civil rights, and the evils of a civil war." In consequence of this recommendation and its accompanying resolutions, the Governor had dissolved the Assembly. The Legislature of Massachusetts had likewise passed declaratory resolutions, expressive of their sense of the state of public affairs and the designs of Parliament; and which led [132] to their dissolution also. The committee of correspondence at Boston, had framed and promulgated an agreement, which induced Governor Gage, to issue a proclamation, denouncing it as "an unlawful, hostile and traitorous combination, contrary to the allegiance due to the King, destructive of the legal authority of Parliament, and of the peace, good order, and safety of the community;" and requiring of the magistrates, to apprehend and bring to trial, all such as should be in any wise guilty of them. A congress, composed of delegates from the different colonies, and convened for the purpose "of uniting and guiding the councils, and directing the efforts of North America," had opened its session on the 4th of September. In fine, the various elements of that tempest, which soon after overspread the thirteen united colonies, had been already developed, and were rapidly concentrating, before the orders for the retreat of the Southern division of the army, were issued by Lord Dunmore. How far these were dictated by a spirit of hostility to the cause of the colonies, and of subservience to the interests of Great Britain, in the approaching contest, may be inferred from his conduct during the whole campaign; and the course pursued by him, on his return to the seat of government. If indeed there existed (as has been supposed,) between the Indians and the Governor from the time of his arrival with the Northern Division of the army at Fort Pitt, a secret and friendly understanding, looking to the almost certain result of the commotions which were agitating America, then was the battle at Point Pleasant, virtually the first in the series of those brilliant achievements which burst the bonds of British tyranny; and the blood of Virginia, there nobly shed, was the first blood spilled in the sacred cause of American liberty.[22] It has been already seen that Lord Dunmore failed to form a junction with General Lewis, at the mouth of the Great Kenhawa, agreeably to the plan for the campaign, as concerted at Williamsburg by the commanding officer of each division. No reason for changing the direction of his march, appears to have been assigned by him; and others were left to infer his motives, altogether from circumstances. While at Fort Pitt Lord Dunmore was joined by the notorious Simon Girty,[23] who accompanied him from thence 'till the close of the expedition. The subsequent conduct of this man, his attachment to the side of Great Britain, in her [133] attempts to fasten the yoke of slavery upon the necks of the American people,--his withdrawal from the garrison at Fort Pitt while commissioners were there for the purpose of concluding a treaty with the Indians, as was stipulated in the agreement made with them by Dunmore,--the exerting of his influence over them, to prevent the chiefs from attending there, and to win them to the cause of England,--his ultimate joining the savages in the war which (very much from his instigation,) they waged against the border settlements, soon after,--the horrid cruelties, and fiendish tortures inflicted on unfortunate white captives by his orders and connivance;--all combined to form an exact counterpart to the subsequent conduct of Lord Dunmore when exciting the negroes to join the British standard;--plundering the property of those who were attached to the cause of liberty,--and applying the brand of conflagration to the most flourishing town in Virginia. At Wheeling, as they were descending the river, the army delayed some days; and while proceeding from thence to form a junction with the division under general Lewis, was joined, near the mouth of the Little Kenhawa, by the noted John Connoly, of great fame as a tory. Of this man, Lord Dunmore thence forward became an intimate associate; and while encamped at the mouth of Hock Hocking--seemed to make him his confidential adviser. It was here too, only seventy miles distant from the head quarters of General Lewis, that it was determined to leave the boats and canoes and proceed by land to the Chilicothe towns.[24] The messengers, despatched by Lord Dunmore to apprize the lower army of this change of determination, were Indian traders; one of whom being asked, if he supposed the Indians would venture to give battle to the superior force of the whites, replied that they certainly would, and that Lewis' division would soon see his prediction verified.[25] This was on the day previous to the engagement. On the return of these men, on the evening of the same day, they must have seen the Indian army which made the attack on the next morning; and the belief was general on the day of battle, that they had communicated to the Indians, the present strength and expected reinforcement of the southern division. It has also been said that on the evening of the 10th of October, while [134] Dunmore, Connoly and one or two others were walking together, his Lordship remarked "by this time General Lewis has warm work."[26] The acquaintance formed by the Governor with Connoly, in the ensuing summer was further continued, and at length ripened into one of the most iniquitous conspiracies, that ever disgraced civilized man. In July, 1775, Connoly presented himself to Lord Dunmore with proposals, well calculated to gain the favor of the exasperated Governor, and between them a plan was soon formed, which seemed to promise the most certain success. Assurances of ample rewards from Lord Dunmore, were transmitted to such officers of the militia on the frontiers of Virginia, as were believed to be friendly to the royal cause, on putting themselves under the command of Connoly; whose influence with the Indians, was to ensure their co-operation against the friends of America. To perfect this scheme, it was necessary to communicate with General Gage; and about the middle of September, Connoly, with despatches from Dunmore, set off for Boston, and in the course of a few weeks returned, with instructions from the Governor of Massachusetts, which developed their whole plan. Connoly was invested with the rank of Colonel of a regiment, (to be raised among those on the frontiers, who favored the cause of Great Britain,) with which he was to proceed forthwith to Detroit, where he was to receive a considerable reinforcement, and be supplied with cannon, muskets and ammunition. He was then to visit the different Indian nations, enlist them in the projected enterprise, and rendezvous his whole force at Fort Pitt. From thence he was to cross the Alleghany mountain, and marching through Virginia join Lord Dunmore, on the 20th of the ensuing April, at Alexandria. This scheme, (the execution of which, would at once, have laid waste a considerable portion of Virginia, and ultimately perhaps, nearly the whole state,) was frustrated by the taking of Connoly, and all the particulars of it, made known. This development, served to shew the villainous connexion existing between Dunmore and Connoly, and to corroborate the suspicion of General Lewis and many of his officers, that the conduct of the former, during the campaign of 1774, was [135] dictated by any thing else than the interest and well being of the colony of Virginia. This suspicion was farther strengthened by the readiness with which Lord Dunmore embraced the overtures of peace, and the terms on which a treaty was concluded with them; while the encamping of his army, without entrenchments, in the heart of the Indian country, and in the immediate adjacency of the combined forces of the Indian nations of Ohio, would indicate, that there must have been a friendly understanding between him and them. To have relied solely on the bravery and good conduct of his troops, would have been the height of imprudence. His army was less than that, which had been scarcely delivered from the fury of a body of savages inferior in number, to the one with which he would have had to contend; and it would have been folly in him to suppose, that he could achieve with a smaller force, what required the utmost exertions of General Lewis and his brave officers, to effect with a greater one.[27] When the Northern division of the army resumed its march for Chilicothe, it left the greater part of its provisions in a block house which had been erected during its stay at the mouth of the Hockhocking, under the care of Captain Froman with a small party of troops to garrison it. On the third day after it left Fort Gore (the block house at the mouth of Hockhocking) a white man by the name of Elliott came to Governor Dunmore, with a request from the Indians that he would withdraw the army from their country, and appoint commissioners to meet their chiefs at Pittsburg to confer about the terms of a treaty. To this request a reply was given, that the Governor was well inclined to make peace, and was willing that hostilities should cease; but as he was then so near their towns, and all the chiefs of the different nations were at that time with the army, it would be more convenient to negotiate then, than at a future period. He then named a place at which he would encamp, and listen to their proposals; and immediately despatched a courier to General Lewis with orders for his return.[28] The Indian spies reporting that General Lewis had disregarded these orders, and was still marching rapidly towards their towns, the Indians became apprehensive of the result; and one of their chiefs (the White Eyes) waited on Lord Dunmore in person, and complained that the "Long Knives" [136] were coming upon them and would destroy all their towns. Dunmore then, in company with White Eyes, visited the camp of General Lewis, and prevailed with him, as we have seen, to return across the Ohio. In a few days after this, the Northern division of the army approached within eight miles of Chilicothe, and encamped on the plain, at the place appointed for the chiefs to meet without entrenchments or breast works, or any protection, save the vigilance of the sentinels and the bravery of the troops.[29] On the third day from the halting of the army eight chiefs, with Cornstalk at their head, came into camp; and when the interpreters made known who Cornstalk was, Lord Dunmore addressed them, and from a written memorandum, recited the various infractions, on the part of the Indians, of former treaties, and different murders, unprovokedly committed by them. To all this Cornstalk replied, mixing a good deal of recrimination with the defence of his red brethren; and when he had concluded, a time was specified when the chiefs of the different nations should come in, and proceed to the negotiation of a treaty. Before the arrival of that period, Cornstalk came alone to the camp, and acquainted the Governor that none of the Mingoes would attend; and that he was apprehensive there could not a full council be convened. Dunmore then requested that he would convoke as many chiefs of the other nations as he could, and bring them to the council fire without delay, as he was anxious to close the war at once; and that if this could not be effected peaceably, he should be forced to resume hostilities. Meantime two interpreters were despatched to Logan,[30] by Lord Dunmore, requesting his attendance;--but Logan replied, that "he was a warrior, not a councillor, and would not come."[31] On the night after the return of the interpreters to camp [137] Charlotte (the name of Dunmore's encampment,) Major William Crawford, with three hundred men, left the main army about midnight, on an excursion against a small Mingo village, not far off. Arriving there before day, the detachment surrounded the town; and on the first coming out of the Indians from their huts, there was some little firing on the part of the whites, by which one squaw and a man were killed--the others about 20 in number were all made prisoners and taken to the camp; where they remained until the conclusion of a treaty. Every thing about the village, indicated an intention of their speedily deserting it.[32] Shortly after Cornstalk and two other chiefs, made their appearance at camp Charlotte, and entered into a negotiation which soon terminated in an agreement to forbear all farther hostilities against each other,--to give up the prisoners then held by them, and to attend at Pittsburgh, with as many of the Indian chiefs as could be prevailed on to meet the commissioners from Virginia, in the ensuing summer, where a treaty was to be concluded and ratified--Dunmore requiring hostages, to guarantee the performance of those stipulations, on the part of the Indians. If in the battle at Point Pleasant, Cornstalk manifested the bravery and generalship of a mighty captain; in the negotiations at camp Charlotte, he displayed the skill of a statesman, joined to powers of oratory, rarely, if ever surpassed. With the most patriotic devotion to his country, and in a strain of most commanding eloquence, he recapitulated the accumulated wrongs, which had oppressed their fathers, and which were oppressing them. Sketching in lively colours, the once happy and powerful condition of the Indians, he placed in striking contrast, their present fallen fortunes and unhappy destiny. Exclaiming against the perfidiousness of the whites, and the dishonesty of the traders, he proposed as the basis of a treaty, that no persons should be permitted to carry on a commerce with the Natives, for individual profit; but that [138] their white brother should send them such articles as they needed, by the hands of honest men, who were to exchange them at a fair price, for their skins and furs; and that no spirit of any kind should be sent among them, as from the "fire water" of the whites, proceeded evil to the Indians.[33] This truly great man, is said to have been opposed to the war from its commencement; and to have proposed on the eve of the battle at Point Pleasant, to send in a flag, and make overtures for peace; but this proposal was overruled by the general voice of the chiefs. When a council was first held after the defeat of the Indians, Cornstalk, reminding them of their late ill success, and that the Long Knives were still pressing on them, asked what should be then done. But no one answered. Rising again, he proposed that the women and children should be all killed; and that the warriors should go out and fight, until they too were slain. Still no one answered. Then, said he, striking his tomahawk into the council post, "I will go and make peace." This was done, and the war of 1774 concluded. ----- [1] He is said to have committed some offence, in the upper part of South Carolina, which rendered him obnoxious to the laws of that colony, and to evade the punishment for which, he had fled to the wilderness and taken up his abode in it. [2] Lewis Wetzel, the son of a German settler on Wheeling Creek, some fourteen miles above its mouth, was born about 1764. He and his brothers Martin, Jacob, John, and George became famous in border warfare after the close of the Revolution; the annals of the frontier abound in tales of their hardy achievements. Martin and Lewis were the heroes of most remarkable escapes from Indian captivity; John was also famous as an Indian fighter; and Jacob's name will ever be connected with the exploits of that other great border scout, Simon Kenton. But of all the brothers, Lewis achieved the widest celebrity, and two biographies of him have been published: by Cecil B. Hartley (Phila., 1860), and by R. C. V. Meyers (Phila., 1883).--R. G. T. [3] Now Shenandoah. [4] The northern wing was composed of men from Frederick, Berkeley, and Dunmore (afterwards Shenandoah) counties, and Col. Adam Stephen was placed in command. With this wing went Lord Dunmore and Major John Connolly. Counting the forces already in the field under Maj. Angus McDonald and Capt. William Crawford, this levy numbered some twelve hundred men. Among them, as scouts, were George Roger Clark, Simon Kenton, and Michael Cresap.--R. G. T. [5] Lewis was colonel of the militia of Botetourt county. Camp Union (so called because several bodies of troops met there) was on the Big Savannah or Great Levels of Greenbrier River; the town of Lewisburg now occupies the site. In Dunmore's letter to Andrew Lewis, dated July 12, he directed him to raise a sufficient body of men, and proceeding to the mouth of the Great Kanawha there erect a fort; if he deemed best he was to cross the Ohio, proceed directly to the Indian towns, and destroy their crops and supplies; in any event he was to keep communication open between Fort Wheeling and Fort Dunmore (Pittsburg). It is evident that his lordship then contemplated no separate expedition of his own, for he talks of sending Major Angus McDonald's party and a new levy to Lewis's assistance. But he changed his mind, and August 30 wrote to Lewis directing that the latter meet him at the mouth of the Little Kanawha. Lewis replied through Col. William Preston that it was now too late to change his plans; he should proceed at once with the levy just summoned, to the mouth of the Great Kanawha, and there await further orders.--R. G. T. [6] This cape was called Point Pleasant, and is now occupied by the West Virginia town of that name.--R. G. T. [7] This is misleading. On September 6, Col. Charles Lewis, with his Augusta troops, numbering about six hundred, were detached to proceed to the mouth of the Elk, and there make canoes for transporting the supplies to the mouth of the Great Kanawha. This body had in charge a drove of 108 beef cattle, and 400 pack-horses laden with 54,000 lbs. of flour. Field's company soon followed this advance.--R. G. T. [8] Saturday, the 10th, Clay and Coward were sent out to hunt deer for Field's company, on the banks of the Little Meadow. Then occurred the incident related by Withers. The Indian who escaped, hurried on to the Shawnee towns and gave them their first notice of the approach of the army. Alarmed at this incident, Field hurried and caught up with the advance under Charles Lewis. The text reads as though he had hastened back to Andrew Lewis, who had not yet left Camp Union.--R. G. T. [9] Col. Andrew Lewis marched out of Camp Union the 12th, with about 450 men. These consisted of Fleming's Botetourt troops, three companies of Fincastle men under Capts. Evan Shelby, William Herbert, and William Russell, the Bedford men under Thomas Buford, and Dunmore men under Slaughter. They had with them 200 pack-horses laden with flour, and the remainder of the beeves. Col. William Christian, who arrived at Camp Union the day Andrew Lewis left, was ordered, with the rest of the Fincastle men, to remain there, to guard the residue of the provisions, and when the brigade of horses sent to the mouth of the Elk had returned, to hurry every thing forward to the mouth of the Great Kanawha. Five weeks were thus consumed in transporting the troops and the supplies a distance of 160 miles through the tangled forest, to Point Pleasant, where the main army, upwards of 1,100 strong, had arrived, quite spent with exertions, on the 6th of October. When Christian left Camp Union for the front, Anthony Bledsoe, with a company of Fincastle men, was detailed to remain behind with the sick, while the base of supplies at the mouth of the Elk was placed in charge of Slaughter. As will be seen, Christian arrived too late to engage in the battle of Point Pleasant.--R. G. T. [10] When Lewis arrived at Point Pleasant (October 6th), he found awaiting him in a hollow tree dispatches from Dunmore, brought by Simon Kenton and two companions, directing him to join his lordship at the mouth of the Big Hockhocking, where the governor's northern wing, under Major Crawford, was building a stockade. But Lewis's men were spent, and pens had to be built for the cattle, and shelter for the stores, so no move was made. On Saturday, the 8th, came a further message from the governor, who was still at the Big Hockhocking. Lewis replied that he would join him there as soon as the troops, food supply, and powder had all reached Point Pleasant. His men were angry at Dunmore's interference, and argued with Lewis that it was sixty miles by river and over half that by land, to Dunmore's camp, whereas it was less than either to the hostile towns which they had started out to attack; and to turn aside from this purpose was to leave open for the hostiles the back-door to the frontier settlements of Virginia. The 9th was Sunday, and these sturdy Scotch-Irish Presbyterians spent the day in religious exercises, listening to a stout sermon from their chaplain. On the morrow, they were surprised by the Indians, as the sequel relates.--R. G. T. [11] James Mooney, of Russell's company, and Joseph Hughey, of Shelby's. They were surprised at the mouth of Old Town Creek, three miles distant. Hughey was killed by a shot fired by Tavenor Ross, a white renegade in Cornstalk's party.--R. G. T. [12] Few officers were ever more, or more deservedly, endeared to those under their command than Col. Charles Lewis. In the many skirmishes, which it was his fortune to have, with the Indians he was uncommonly successful; and in the various scenes of life, thro' which he passed, his conduct was invariably marked by the distinguishing characteristicks of a mind, of no ordinary stamp. His early fall on this bloody field, was severely felt during the whole engagement; and to it has been attributed the partial advantages gained by the Indian army near the commencement of the action. When the [127] fatal ball struck him, he fell at the root of a tree; from whence he was carried to his tent, against his wish, by Capt. Wm. Morrow and a Mr. Bailey, of Captain Paul's company, and died in a few hours afterwards. In remembrance of his great worth, the legislature named the county of Lewis after him. [13] An active, enterprising and meritorious officer, who had been in service in Braddock's war, and profited by his experience of the Indian mode of fighting. His death checked for a time the ardor of his troops, and spread a gloom over the countenances of those, who had accompanied him on this campaign. [14] A half-mile up the Big Kanawha.--R. G. T. [15] From MS. journals and letters in possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society, it appears that the conduct of the battle was as follows: Andrew Lewis, who as yet thought the enemy to be but a scouting party, and not an army equal in size to his own, had the drums beat to arms, for many of his men were asleep in their tents; and while still smoking his pipe, ordered a detachment from each of the Augusta companies, to form 150 strong under Col. Charles Lewis, with John Dickinson, Benjamin Harrison, and John Skidmore as the captains. Another party of like size was formed under Col. Fleming, with Captains Shelby, Russell, Buford, and Philip Love. Lewis's party marched to the right, near the foot of the hills skirting the east side of Crooked Creek. Fleming's party marched to the left, 200 yards apart from the other. A quarter of a mile from camp, and half a mile from the point of the cape, the right-going party met the enemy lurking behind trees and fallen logs at the base of the hill, and there Charles Lewis was mortally wounded. Fleming marched to a pond three-quarters of a mile from camp, and fifty rods inland from the Ohio--this pond being one of the sources of Crooked Creek. The hostile line was found to extend from this pond along Crooked Creek, half way to its mouth. The Indians, under Cornstalk, thought by rushes to drive the whites into the two rivers, "like so many bullocks," as the chief later explained; and indeed both lines had frequently to fall back, but they were skillfully reinforced each time, and by dusk the savages placed Old Town Creek between them and the whites. This movement was hastened, a half hour before sunset, by a movement which Withers confounds with the main tactics. Captains Matthews, Arbuckle, Shelby, and Stuart were sent with a detachment up Crooked creek under cover of the bank, with a view to securing a ridge in the rear of the enemy, from which their line could be enfiladed. They were discovered in the act, but Cornstalk supposed that this party was Christian's advance, and in alarm hurried his people to the other side of Old Town Creek. The battle was, by dark, really a drawn game; but Cornstalk had had enough, and fled during the night.--R. G. T. [16] During the day, a messenger had been dispatched to hurry on Christian, who with 250 men was convoying cattle and powder. In the early evening, fifteen miles from Point Pleasant, this rear party was found, toiling painfully over the wilderness trail. Christian at once left his property in charge of a small party, and arrived in camp by midnight.--R. G. T. [17] Most of the killed and wounded, on both sides, were shot in the head or breast, which indicates good marksmanship. The Indians, though skillful marksmen, did not exhibit sufficient mechanical knowledge to enable them properly to clean their guns, and thus were at some disadvantage. The statistician was at work in those days, as now, for we learn from an old diary that at Old Town Creek were found by the white victors, 78 rafts with which the Indians had crossed the Ohio to the attack, the night of October 9-10; and on the battlefield during the 10th and 12th, were collected 23 guns, 27 tomahawks, 80 blankets, and great numbers of war-clubs, shot-pouches, powder-horns, match-coats, deer-skins, "and other articles," all of which were put up at auction by the careful commissary, and brought nearly £100 to the army chest.--R. G. T. [18] Such were Redhawk, a Delaware chief,--Scoppathus, a Mingo,--Ellinipsico, a Shawanee, and son to Cornstalk,--Chiyawee, a Wyandotte, and Logan, a Cayuga. [19] The first recorded foray of Cornstalk was on October 10, 1759, against the Gilmore family and others, on Carr's Creek, in what is now Rockbridge county, Va. "The Carr's Creek massacre" was long remembered on the border as one of the most daring and cruel on record. He was again heard of during the Pontiac conspiracy, in 1763, when he led a large war-party from the Scioto towns against the Virginia frontier. Both at Muddy Creek, and the Clendenning farm near Lewisburg, on the Levels of the Greenbrier, the marauders pretended to be friendly with the settlers, and in an unguarded moment fell upon and slew them. Other massacres, in connection with the same foray, were at Carr's Creek, Keeney's Knob, and Jackson's River. The story of the captivity of Mrs. Clendenning and her children, who were taken to the Shawnee towns on the Scioto, is one of the most heartrendering in Western history. In 1764, Bouquet raided these towns, and Cornstalk was one of the hostages sent to Fort Pitt in fulfillment of the terms of the treaty, but later he effected his escape. Nothing more is heard of this warrior until 1774, when he became famous as leader of the Indians at the battle of Point Pleasant. Cornstalk's intelligence was far above that of the average Shawnee. He had, before the Dunmore War, strongly counseled his people to observe the peace, as their only salvation; but when defeated in council, he with great valor led the tribesmen to war. After the treaty of Fort Charlotte, he renewed his peace policy, and was almost alone in refusing to join the Shawnee uprising in 1777. Late in September, that year, he visited his white friends at Fort Randolph (Point Pleasant), and was retained as one of several hostages for the tribe. Infuriated at some murders in the vicinity, the private soldiers in the fort turned upon the Indian prisoners and basely killed them, Cornstalk among the number. Governor Patrick Henry and General Hand--the latter then organizing his futile expedition against the Shawnees--wished to punish the murderers; but in the prevalent state of public opinion on the border, it was easy for them to escape prosecution.--R. G. T. [20] The following gentlemen, with others of high reputation in private life, were officers in the battle at Point Pleasant. Gen. Isaac Shelby, the first governor of Kentucky, and afterwards, secretary of war;--Gen. William Campbell and Col. John Campbell, heroes of King's mountain and Long Island;--Gen. Evan Shelby, one of the most favored citizens of Tennessee, often honored with the confidence of that state;--Col. William Fleming, an active governor of Virginia during the revolutionary war;--Gen. Andrew Moore of Rockbridge, the only man ever elected by Virginia, from the country west of the Blue ridge, to the senate of the United States;--Col. John Stuart, of Greenbrier;--Gen. Tate, of Washington county, Virginia;--Col. William McKee, of Lincoln county, Kentucky;--Col. John Steele, since a governor of Mississippi territory;--Col. Charles Cameron, of Bath;--Gen. Bazaleel Wells, of Ohio; and Gen. George Matthews, a distinguished officer in the war of the revolution, the hero of Brandywine, Germantown, and of Guilford;--a governor of Georgia, and a senator from that state in the congress of the United States. The salvation of the American army at Germantown, is ascribed, in Johnston's life of Gen. Green, to the bravery and good conduct of two regiments, one of which was commanded by General, then Col. Matthews. [21] In order to get a clearer view of the situation, a few more details are essential here. For several days after the battle of Point Pleasant, Lewis was busy in burying the dead, caring for the wounded, collecting the scattered cattle, and building a store-house and small stockade fort. Early on the morning of October 13th, messengers who had been sent on to Dunmore, advising him of the battle, returned with orders to Lewis to march at once with all his available force, against the Shawnee towns, and when within twenty-five miles of Chillicothe to write to his lordship. The next day, the last rear guard, with the remaining beeves, arrived from the mouth of the Elk, and while work on the defenses at the Point was hurried, preparations were made for the march. By evening of the 17th, Lewis, with 1,150 men in good condition, had crossed the Ohio and gone into camp on the north side. Each man had ten days' supply of flour, a half pound of powder, and a pound and a half of bullets; while to each company was assigned a pack-horse for the tents. Point Pleasant was left in command of Col. Fleming,--who had been severely wounded in the battle,--Captains Dickinson, Lockridge, Herbert, and Slaughter, and 278 men, few of whom were fit for service. On the 18th, Lewis, with Captain Arbuckle as guide, advanced towards the Shawnee towns, eighty miles distant in a straight line, and probably a hundred and twenty-five by the circuitous Indian trails. The army marched about eleven miles a day, frequently seeing hostile parties but engaging none. Reaching the salt licks near the head of the south branch of Salt Creek (in the present Lick township, Jackson county, O.), they descended that valley to the Scioto, and thence to a prairie on Kinnikinnick (not Kilkenny) Creek, where was the freshly-deserted Indian village referred to above, by Withers. This was thirteen miles south of Chillicothe (now Westfall). Here they were met, early on the 24th, by a messenger from his lordship, ordering them to halt, as a treaty was nearly concluded at Camp Charlotte. But Lewis's army had been fired on that morning, and the place was untenable for a camp in a hostile country, so he concluded to seek better ground. A few hours later another messenger came, again peremptorily ordering a halt, as the Shawnees had practically come to terms. Lewis now concluded to join the northern division in force, at Camp Charlotte, not liking to have the two armies separated in the face of a treacherous enemy; but his guide mistook the trail, and took one leading directly to the Grenadier Squaw's Town. Lewis camped that night on the west bank of Congo Creek, two miles above its mouth, and five and a quarter miles from Chillicothe, with the Indian town half-way between. The Shawnees were now greatly alarmed and angered, and Dunmore himself, accompanied by the Delaware chief White Eyes, a trader, John Gibson, and fifty volunteers, rode over in hot haste that evening to stop Lewis, and reprimand him. His lordship was mollified by Lewis's explanations, but the latter's men, and indeed Dunmore's, were furious over being stopped when within sight of their hated quarry, and tradition has it that it was necessary to treble the guards during the night to prevent Dunmore and White Eyes from being killed. The following morning (the 25th), his lordship met and courteously thanked Lewis's officers for their valiant service; but said that now the Shawnees had acceded to his wishes, the further presence of the southern division might engender bad blood. Thus dismissed, Lewis led his army back to Point Pleasant, which was reached on the 28th. He left there a garrison of fifty men under Captain Russell, and then by companies the volunteers marched through the wilderness to their respective homes, where they disbanded early in November.--R. G. T. [22] This is not the view of students in our own day, coolly looking at the affair from the distance of a hundred and twenty years. There now seems no room to doubt that Dunmore was thoroughly in earnest, that he prosecuted the war with vigor, and knew when to stop in order to secure the best possible terms. Our author wrote at a time when many heroes of Point Pleasant were still alive, and his neighbors; he reflected their views, and the passions of the day. That it was, in view of the events then transpiring, the best policy to turn back the southern army, after the great battle, and not insist too closely on following up the advantage gained, seems now incontrovertible.--R. G. T. [23] Butterfield's _History of the Girtys_ (Cincinnati, 1890) is a valuable contribution to Western history. Simon, James, and George Girty were notorious renegade whites, who aided the Indians against the borderers from 1778 to 1783; Simon and George were similarly active in the Indian war of 1790-95.--R. G. T. [24] Upon leaving Pittsburg,--where the governor held a council with several Delaware and Mingo chiefs, to whom he recited the outrages perpetrated by the Shawnees since Bouquet's treaty of 1764--the northern division divided into two wings. One, 700 strong, under Dunmore, descended the river in boats; the other 500 went across the "pan-handle" by land, with the cattle, and both rendezvoused, September 30th, at Wheeling, 91 miles below Pittsburg. Next day, Crawford resumed his march along the south bank of the Ohio, to a point opposite the mouth of Big Hockhocking, 107 miles farther down. Here the men, the 200 bullocks, and the 50 pack-horses swam the Ohio, and just above the Big Hockhocking (the site of the present Hockingport) erected a blockhouse and stockade, which they called Fort Gower, in honor of the English earl of that name. A part of the earthwork can still (1894) be seen in the garden of a Hockingport residence. Dunmore's party, in 100 canoes and pirogues, arrived a few days later. While at Fort Gower, he was joined by the Delaware chiefs, White Eyes and John Montour, the former of whom was utilized as an agent to negotiate with the Shawnees--R. G. T. [25] This was William McCulloch.--R. G. T. [26] The authority for this is Stuart's _Indian Wars_, p. 56. Abraham Thomas, in his _Sketches_, relates that the governor, placing his ear at the surface of the river, said he thought he heard the firing of guns; and Thomas, then a young militiaman, was asked to do likewise, and reported that it was the rattle of musketry. The distance across country to Point Pleasant was but twenty-eight miles, but by the river windings was sixty-six. These anecdotes have been related as proof that Dunmore desired Lewis beaten. White Eyes had notified the governor that a conflict was expected, though he had reported a much smaller Indian army than Lewis's; hence his lordship had no fear of the result. Had he known that the opposing forces were equal in number, and that the whites had been surprised, he doubtless would have sent relief. Knowing the Shawnee warriors were away from home, fighting Lewis, whom he had reason to suppose was very well able to handle them, he determined to advance inland to the deserted towns on the Scioto and destroy their houses and crops. He was upon this errand when met and stopped by the messengers of peace.--R. G. T. [27] The two wings of the white army had about the same strength--1100 under Dunmore, and 1150 (after leaving Point Pleasant) under Lewis. The fighting quality was also the same, in both. It is to be remembered that in the army under Dunmore there was very little discontent at the issue, and at the close of the campaign the men heartily thanked his lordship for his valuable services in behalf of the people. They did this, too, at a time when they knew from Eastern news received in camp, that the Revolution was near at hand, and Dunmore must soon be fighting against them in behalf of his royal master.--R. G. T. [28] Dunmore had, through White Eyes, summoned the Shawnee chiefs to treat with him at Fort Gower (not Gore), but they had declined to come in. He then set out, October 11th, to waste their towns on the Scioto, as previously noted, leaving the fort in charge of Captain Kuykendall (not Froman), with whom remained the disabled and the beeves. Each man on the expedition carried flour for sixteen days. Just after the Point Pleasant battle, Lewis had dispatched a messenger to his lordship with news of the affair; Dunmore's messenger to Lewis, with instructions to the latter to join him _en route_, crossed Lewis's express on the way. The messenger from Lewis found that his lordship had marched up the Big Hockhocking valley for the Scioto, and hurried after him. The governor was overtaken at the third camp out (west of the present Nelsonville, Athens county, O.), and the good news caused great joy among the soldiers. October 17th, Dunmore arrived at what he styled Camp Charlotte (on the northern bank of Sippo Creek, Pickaway county, eight miles east of Chillicothe, in view of Pickaway Plains), and here the treaty of peace was concluded.--R. G. T. [29] Doddridge's _Notes_ says that the camp was surrounded by a breastwork of fallen trees, and an entrenchment, and Roosevelt's _Winning of the West_ follows him. But Dr. Draper was distinctly told (in 1846-51) by two survivors of the campaign, Samuel Murphy and John Grim, that Withers's account is correct; and this is confirmed in Whittlesey's _Fugitive Essays_. In the center of the field, a building of poles was erected, in which to hold the council; around this, the army encamped. A large white oak having been peeled, Dunmore wrote upon it in red chalk, "Camp Charlotte," thus honoring the then English queen.--R. G. T. [30] Logan was the Mingo chief, the massacre of whose family at Baker's Bottom, the previous April, has already been described. He had just returned (October 21) from a foray on the Holston border, bringing several scalps and three prisoners, when the trader Gibson and the scout Simon Girty were sent to him by his lordship.--R. G. T. [31] Colonel Benjamin Wilson, Sen. (then an officer in Dunmore's army, and whose narrative of the campaign furnished the facts which are here detailed) says that he conversed freely with one of the interpreters (Nicholson) in regard to the mission to Logan, and that neither from the interpreter, nor any other one during the campaign, did he hear of the charge preferred in Logan's speech against Captain Cresap, as being engaged in the affair at Yellow creek.--Captain Cresap was an officer in the division of the army under Lord Dunmore; and it would seem strange indeed, if Logan's speech had been made public, at camp Charlotte, and neither he, (who was so materially interested in it, and could at once have proved the falsehood of the allegation which it contained,) nor Colonel Wilson, (who was present during the whole conference between Lord Dunmore and the Indian chiefs, and at the time when the speeches were delivered sat immediately behind and close to Dunmore,) should have heard nothing of it until years after. ------ _Comment by R. G. T._--Withers thus shortly disposes of the famous speech by Logan, which schoolboys have been reciting for nearly a hundred years as one of the best specimens extant, of Indian eloquence. The evidence in regard to the speech, which was undoubtedly recited to Gibson, and by him written out for Lord Dunmore's perusal, and later "improved" by Jefferson, is clearly stated in Roosevelt's _Winning of the West_, I., app. iii. [32] The reason for the attack was, that the Mingoes were implacable, and Dunmore had learned that instead of coming into the treaty they purposed retreating to the Great Lakes with their prisoners and stolen horses. This Mingo village was Seekonk (sometimes called the Hill Town), 30 or 40 miles up the Scioto. Crawford left Camp Charlotte the night of the 25th, and surprised the town early in the morning of the 27th. Six were killed, several wounded, and fourteen captured; the rest escaping into the forest. Crawford burned several Mingo towns in the neighborhood.--R. G. T. [33] In remarking on the appearance and manner of Cornstalk while speaking, Colonel Wilson says, "When he arose, he was in no wise confused or daunted, but spoke in a distinct, and audible voice, without stammering or repetition, and with peculiar emphasis. His looks while addressing Dunmore, were truly grand and majestic; yet graceful and attractive. I have heard the first orators in Virginia, Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, but never have I heard one whose powers of delivery surpassed those of Cornstalk on that occasion." [139] CHAPTER VIII. Upon the close of the campaign of 1774, there succeeded a short period of perfect quiet, and of undisturbed repose from savage invasion, along the borders of North Western Virginia. The decisive battle of the 10th of October, repressed incursion for a time, and taught those implacable enemies of her citizens, their utter inability, alone and unaided, to maintain a contest of arms, against the superior power of Virginia. They saw that in any future conflict with this colony, her belligerent operations would no longer be confined to the mere purposes of defence; but that war would be waged in their own country, and their own towns become the theatre of its action. Had the leading objects of the Dunmore campaign been fully accomplished,--had the contemplated junction of the different divisions of the army taken place;--had its combined forces extended their march into the Indian territory, and effected the proposed reduction of the Chilicothe, and other towns on the Scioto and Sandusky, it would have been long indeed, before the frontier settlements, became exposed to savage inroad. A failure to effect these things however, left the Indians comparatively at liberty, and prepared to renew invasion, and revive their cruel and bloody deeds, whenever a savage thirst for vengeance should incite them to action, and the prospect of achieving them with impunity, be open before them. In the then situation of our country, this prospect was soon presented to them. The contest between Great Britain and her American colonies, which had been for some time carried on with increasing warmth, was ripening rapidly into war. The events of every day, more and more confirmed the belief, that the "_unconditional submission_" of the colonies, was the object of the parent state; and that to accomplish this, she was [140] prepared to desolate the country by a civil war, and imbrue her hands in the blood of its citizens. This state of things the Indians knew, would favor the consummation of their hopes. Virginia, having to apply her physical strength to the repulsion of other enemies, could not be expected to extend her protecting ægis over the remote and isolated settlements on her borders. These would have to depend on themselves alone, for resistance to ruthless irruption, and exemption from total annihilation. The Indians well knew the weakness of those settlements, and their consequent incapacity to vie in open conflict with the overwhelming force of their savage foes; and their heriditary resentment to the whites prompted them to take advantage of that weakness, to wreak this resentment, and involve them once more in hostilities. Other circumstances too, combined in their operation, to produce this result. The plan of Lord Dunmore and others, to induce the Indians to co-operate with the English in reducing Virginia to subjection, and defeated by the detection and apprehension of Connoly, was soon after resumed on a more extensive scale. British agents were busily engaged from Canada to the Gulph of Mexico, in endeavoring by immediate presents and the promise of future reward, to excite the savages to a war upon the western frontiers. To accomplish this object, no means which were likely to be of any avail, were neglected to be used. Gratified resentment and the certainty of plunder, were held up to view as present consequences of this measure; and the expulsion of the whites, and the repossession, by the Natives, of the country from which their fathers had been ejected, as its ultimate result.--Less cogent motives might have enlisted them on the side of Great Britain. These were too strong to be resisted by them, and too powerful to be counteracted by any course of conduct, which the colonies could observe towards them; and they became ensnared by the delusive bait, and the insidious promises which accompanied it. There were in the colonies too, many persons, who from principle or fear, were still attached to the cause of Great Britain; and who not only, did not sanction the opposition of their country to the supremacy of Parliament, but were willing in any wise to lend their aid to the royal cause. Some of those disaffected Americans, (as they were at first denominated) who resided on the frontiers, foreseeing the [141] attachment of the Indians to the side of Britain, and apprehensive that in their inroads, the friends as well as the enemies of that country, might, from the difficulty of discriminating, be exposed to savage fury; and at the same time, sensible that they had become obnoxious to a majority of their neighbors, who were perhaps, too much inclined to practice summary modes of punishment, sought a refuge among the Indians, from those impending evils. In some instances, these persons were under the influence of the most rancorous and vindictive passions, and when once with the savages, strove to infuse those passions into their breasts, and stimulate them to the repetition of those enormities, which had previously, so terribly annoyed the inhabitants of the different frontiers.[1] Thus wrought upon, their inculcated enmity to the Anglo-Americans generally, roused them to action, and the dissonant notes of the war song, resounded in their villages. For a while indeed, they refrained from hostilities against North Western Virginia. It was however, but to observe the progress of passing events, that they might act against the mountain borders, simultaneously with the British on the Atlantic coast; as a premature movement on their part, might, while Virginia was yet at liberty to bear down upon them with concentrated forces, bring upon their towns the destruction which had so appallingly threatened them after the battle at Point Pleasant. But though the inhabitants on the Virginia frontiers, enjoyed a momentary respite from savage warfare; yet were the Indians not wholly unemployed in deeds of aggression. The first attempt to occupy Kentucky, had been the signal of hostilities in 1774; and the renewed endeavors to form establishments in it, in 1775, induced their continuance, and brought on those who were engaged in effecting them, all the horrors of savage warfare. Upon the close of the campaign under Lord Dunmore, Kentucky became more generally known. James Harrod, with those who had associated themselves with him in making a settlement in that country and aided in the erection of the fort at Harrodsburg, joined the army of General Lewis at Point Pleasant; and when, after the treaty of Camp Charlotte, the army was disbanded, many of the soldiers and some of the officers, enticed by the description given of it by Harrod, returned to south Western Virginia, through that country.[2] The result of their examination of it, induced many to migrate thither immediately; and in 1775, families began to take up their residence in it. At that time, the only white persons residing in Kentucky, were those at Harrod's fort; and for a while, emigrants to that country [142] established themselves in its immediate vicinity, that they might derive protection from its walls, from the marauding irruptions of Indians. Two other establishments were, however, soon made, and became, as well as Harrod's, rallying points for land adventurers, and for many of those, whose enterprising spirits led them, to make their home in that wilderness. The first of these was that at Boonesborough, and which was made, under the superintendence of Daniel Boone. The prospect of amassing great wealth, by the purchase of a large body of land from the Indians, for a comparatively trifling consideration, induced some gentlemen in North Carolina, to form a company, and endeavor by negotiation to effect such purpose. This association was known under the title of Henderson and company; and its object was, the acquisition of a considerable portion of Kentucky.[3] The first step, necessary towards the accomplishment of this object, was, to convene a council of the Indians; and as the territory sought to be acquired, did not belong, in individual property to any one nation of them, it was deemed advisable to convoke the chiefs of the different nations south of the Ohio river. A time was then appointed at which these were to assemble; and it became necessary to engage an agent, possessing the requisite qualifications, to attend the council, on behalf of Henderson and company, and to transact the business for them. The fame of Daniel Boone which had reached them, recommended him, as one eminently qualified to discharge the duties devolving on an agent; and he was employed in that capacity. At the appointed period, the council was held, and a negotiation commenced, which resulted in the transfer, to Henderson and company, of the title of the southern Indians to the land lying south of the Kentucky river, and north of the Tennessee.[4] Boone was then placed at the head of a party of enterprising men, sent to open a road from the Holstein settlement, through the wilderness, to the Kentucky river, and to take possession of the company's purchase. When within fifteen miles of the termination of their journey, they were attacked by a body of northern Indians, who killed two of Boone's comrades, and wounded two others. Two days after, they were again attacked by them, and had two more of their party killed and three wounded.[5] From this time they experienced no farther molestation until they had arrived within the limits of the purchase, and erected a fort, at a lick near the southern bank of the Kentucky river--the site of the present town of Boonesborough. Enfeebled by the loss sustained in the attacks made on them by the Indians; and worn down by the continued labor of opening a road through an almost impervious wilderness, it was some time before they could so far complete the fort, so as to render it secure against anticipated assaults of the savages, and justify a detachment being sent from the garrison, to escort the family of Boone to his new situation. When it was thus far completed, an office [143] was opened for the sale of the company's land;[6] and Boone and some others returned to Holstein, and from thence, guarded the family of Boone, through the wilderness, to the newly erected fort. Mrs. Boone and her daughter, are believed to be the first white females who ever stood on the banks of the Kentucky river.[7] [143] In 1775 Benjamin Logan, who had been with Lord Dunmore at Camp Charlotte, visited Kentucky and selected a spot for his future residence, near to the present village of Stamford, erected thereon a fort; and in the following year moved his family thither. These were the only settlements then begun to be made within the limits of the now state of Kentucky. As the tide of emigration flowed into the country, those three forts afforded an asylum, from the Indian hostility to which the whites were incessantly subjected; and never perhaps lived three men better qualified by nature and habit, to resist that hostility, and preserve the settlers from captivity and death, than James Harrod, Daniel Boone, and Benjamin Logan. Reared in the lap of danger, and early inured to the hardships and sufferings of a wilderness life, they were habitually acquainted with those arts which were necessary to detect and defeat the one, and to lessen and alleviate the others. Intrepid and fearless, yet cautious and prudent, there was united in each of them, the sly, circumventive powers of the Indian, with the bold defiance, and open daring of the whites. Quick, almost to intuition, in the perception of impending dangers, instant in determining, and prompt in action; to see, to resolve, and to execute, were with them the work of the same moment. Rife in expedients, the most perplexing difficulties rarely found them at a loss. Possessed of these qualities, they were placed at the head of the little colonies planted around them; not by ambition, but by the universal voice of the people; from a deep and thorough conviction, that they only were adequate to the exigencies of their situation. The conviction was not ill founded. Their intellectual and physical resources were powerfully and constantly exerted for the preservation and security of the settlements; and frequently, with astonishing success, under the most inauspicious circumstances. Had they indeed, by nature, been supine and passive, their isolated situation, and the constantly repeated attempts of the Indians, at their extermination, would have aroused them, as it did others, to activity and energy, and brought their every [144] nerve into action. For them, there were no "weak, piping times of peace,"--no respite from danger. The indefatigable vigilance and persevering hostility of an unrelenting foe, required countervailing exertions on their part; and kept alive the life, which they delighted to live. From the instant those establishments were made, and emigrants placed themselves in their vicinity, the Savages commenced their usual mode of warfare; and marauding parties were ever in readiness, to seize upon, those, whose misfortune it was to become exposed to their vigilance. In the prosecution of these hostilities, incidents of the most lively and harrowing interest, though limited in their consequences, were constantly recurring; before a systematic course of operations, was undertaken for the destruction of the settlers. The Indians, seeing that they had to contend with persons, as well skilled in their peculiar mode of warfare, as themselves, and as likely to detect them, while lying in wait for an opportunity to strike the deadly blow, as they were to strike it with impunity, they entirely changed their plans of annoyance. Instead of longer endeavoring to cut off the whites in detail, they brought into the country a force, sufficiently numerous and powerful to act simultaneously against all the settlements. The consequence of this was, much individual suffering and several horrid massacres. Husbandmen, toiling to secure the product of the summer's labor, for their sustenance another season, were frequently attacked, and murdered.--Hunters, engaged in procuring meat for immediate and pressing use, were obliged to practise the utmost wariness to evade the ambushed Indian, and make sure their return to the fort. Springs and other watering places, and the paths leading to them, were constantly guarded by the savages; who would lie near them day and night, until forced to leave their covert, in quest of food to satisfy their extreme hunger; and who, when this end was attained, would return to their hiding places, with renovated strength, and increased watchfulness. The cattle belonging to the garrisons were either driven off, or killed, so that no supplies could be derived from them. This state of things continued, without intermission, 'till the severity of winter forced the Indians to depart for their towns; and then succeeded, of necessity, a truce, which had become extremely desirable to the different settlements. When we reflect on the dangers, the difficulties, the complicated distresses, to which the inhabitants were then exposed, it is really matter of astonishment that they did not abandon the country, and seek elsewhere an exemption from those evils. How women, with all the feminine weakness of the sex, could be prevailed upon to remain during the winter, and encounter with the returning spring, the returning horrors of savage warfare, is truly surprising. The frequent recurrence of danger, does indeed, produce a comparative insensibility and indifference to it; but it is difficult to conceive, [145] that familiarity with the tragic scenes which were daily exhibited there, could reconcile persons to a life of constant exposure to them. Yet such was the fact; and not only did the few, who were first to venture on them, continue in the country, but others, equally adventurous, moved to it; encountering many hardships and braving every danger, to aid in maintaining possession of the modern Canaan, and to obtain a home in that land of milk and honey. If for a while, they flattered themselves with the hope, that the ravages which had been checked by winter, would not be repeated on the return of spring, they were sadly disappointed. Hostilities were resumed, as soon as the abatement of cold, suffered the Indians to take the field; and were carried on with renovated ardor, and on an enlarged scale.[8] Feeling the hopelessness of extirpating the settlements, so long as the forts remained to afford a safe retreat to the inhabitants; and having learned, by the experience of the preceding season, that the whites were but little, if at all, inferior to them in their own arts, and were competent to combat them, in their own mode of warfare, the Indians resolved on bringing into the country a larger force, and to direct their united energies to the demolition of the different forts. To prevent any aid being afforded by the other garrisons, while operations were leveled against one, they resolved on detaching from their main body, such a number of men as was deemed sufficient to keep watch around the other forts, and awe their inmates from attempting to leave them, on any occasion. This was a course of excellent policy. It was calculated not only to prevent the marching of any auxiliary forces from one to the other of the fortresses, but at the same time by preventing hunting parties from ranging the woods, cut off the principal source, from which their supplies were derived; and thus tended to render their fall, the more certain and easy. Accordingly in March 1777, they entered Kentucky with a force of upwards of two hundred warriors; and sending some of their most expert and active men to watch around Boone's and Logan's forts, marched with the chief part of their army to attack Harrodsburg. On the 14th of March three persons (who were engaged in clearing some land) not far from Harrod's fort, discovered the Indians proceeding through the woods, and sought to escape observation and convey the intelligence to the garrison. But they too, were discovered and pursued; and one of them was killed, another taken prisoner, and the third (James, afterwards Gen. Ray, then a mere youth) reached Harrodsburg alone in safety.[9] Aware that the place had become alarmed, and that they had then no chance of operating on it, by surprise, they encamped near to it on that evening; and early on the morning of the 15th commenced a furious and animated attack. Apprized of the near approach of the enemy, the garrison had made every preparation for defense, of which their situation admitted; and when the assailants rushed to the assault, not intimidated by their horrible and unnatural yells, nor yet dispirited by the [146] presence of a force so far superior to their own, they received them with a fire so steady and well directed, as forced them to recoil; leaving one of their slain on the field of attack. This alone, argued a great discomfiture of the Indians; as it is well known to be their invariable custom, to remove, if practicable, those of their warriors who fall in battle. Their subsequent movements, satisfied the inmates of the fort, that there had been indeed a discomfiture; and that they had but little to apprehend from a renewed assault on their little fortress. After reconnoitering for a while, at a prudent distance from the garrison, the Indians kindled their fires for the night; and in the following day, leaving a small party for the purpose of annoyance, decamped with the main body of their army, and marched towards Boonesborough.[10] In consequence however, of a severe spell of March weather, they were forced to remain inactive for a time; and did not make their appearance there, until the middle of April. In the assault on Boone's fort, the Indians soon, became satisfied that it was impregnable against them; and although their repulse was not as signal here, as it had been at Harrodsburg, yet they soon withdrew from the contest, and marched towards Logan's fort,--having killed one and wounded four, of the whites.[11] Several causes combined to render an attack on the fort at Logan's station, an event of most fearful consequence.[12] Its inmates had been but a short time in the country, and were not provided with an ample supply either of provisions or ammunition. They were few in number; and though of determined spirit and undaunted fortitude, yet such was the disparity between thirteen and two hundred--the force of the garrison and the force of the assailants, joined to their otherwise destitute situation, that hope itself, could scarcely live in so perilous a situation. Had this been the first point, against which the enemy levelled their operations when they arrived in the country, it must have fallen before them. But by deferring the attack on it, 'till they had been repulsed at the two other forts, the garrison was allowed time; and availing themselves of it, to fortify their position more strongly, the issue was truly, most fortunate, though unexpected. On the night preceding the commencement of the attack on the fort, the Indians had approached near to it unperceived, and secreted themselves in a cane brake, which had been suffered to remain around the cabins. Early in the morning the women, went out to milk, guarded by most of the garrison; and before they were aware of impending danger, the concealed Indians opened a general fire, which killed three of the men, and drove the others, hastily within the fort.[13] A most affecting spectacle was then presented to view, well calculated to excite the sympathies of human nature, and arouse to action a man possessed of the generous sensibility and noble daring, which animated the bosom of Logan. One of the men who had fallen on the first fire of the Indians and had been supposed by his comrades to be dead, was in truth though [147] badly wounded, yet still alive; and was observed feebly struggling to crawl towards the fort. The fear of laceration and mangling from the horrid scalping knife, and of tortures from more barbarous instruments, seemed to abate his exertions in dragging his wounded body along, lest he should be discovered and borne off by some infuriated and unfeeling savage. It was doubtful too, whether his strength would endure long enough to enable him to reach the gate, even if unmolested by any apprehension of danger. The magnanimous and intrepid Logan resolved on making an effort to save him. He endeavored to raise volunteers, to accompany him without the fort, and bring in their poor wounded companion. It seemed as if courting the quick embrace of death, and even his adventurous associates for an instant, shrunk from the danger. At length a man by the name of Martin, who plumed himself on rash and daring deeds, consented to aid in the enterprise; and the two proceeded towards the gate. Here the spirit of Martin forsook him, and he recoiled from the hazardous adventure. Logan was then alone. He beheld the feeble, but wary exertions of his unfortunate comrade, entirely subside; and he could not hesitate. He rushed quickly through the gate, caught the unhappy victim in his arms, and bore him triumphantly into the fort, amid a shower of bullets aimed at him; and some of which buried themselves in the pallisades close by his head. A most noble and disinterested achievement, and worthy of all commendation.[14] [148] The siege being maintained by the Indians, the animation of the garrison was nearly exhausted, in repelling the frequent assaults made on the fort; and it was apparent, that the enemy did not intend speedily to withdraw their forces. Parties of Indians were frequently detached from the main body, as well to obtain a supply of provisions by hunting, as to intercept and cut off any [147] aid, which might be sent to St. Asaph's[15] from the other forts. In this posture of affairs, it was impossible that the garrison could long hold out, unless its military stores could be replenished; and to effect this, under existing circumstances, appeared to be almost impossible. Harrodsburg and Boonesborough were not themselves amply provided with stores; and had it been otherwise, so closely was the intermediate country between them and St. Asaph's, guarded by the savages, that no communication could be carried from one to the other of them. The settlement on the Holstein was the nearest point, from which it could be practicable to derive a supply of ammunition, and the distance to that neighborhood, was considerable. Logan knew the danger which must result to the garrison, from being weakened as much as it must be, by sending a portion of it on this hazardous enterprise; but he also knew, that the fort could not be preserved from falling, unless its magazine was soon replenished. Prefering the doubtful prospect of succeeding in its relief, by adopting the plan of sending to Holstein, he proposed the measure to his companions, and they eagerly embraced it. It remained then to select the party, which was to venture on this high enterprise. Important as the presence of Logan, was known to be, in the fort, yet as the lives of all within, depended on the success of the expedition and as to effect this, required the exercise of qualities rarely possessed in so great degree by any other individual, he was unanimously chosen to conduct the enterprise. Accompanied by four of the garrison, Logan, as slyly as possible, slipped from the fort, and commenced his tedious journey.[16] To lessen the chance of coming in contact [148] with straggling bands of Indians, he avoided the pack road which had been opened by Boone; and pursuing an untrodden route, reached the settlement in safety. The requisite supplies were soon engaged; and while they were being prepared for transportation, Logan was actively engaged in endeavoring to prevail on the inhabitants, to form a company as expeditiously as possible and march to their relief. With a faint promise of assistance, and with the assurance that their situation should be immediately made known to the executive authority of the state, he set off on his return. Confiding the ammunition which he had obtained, to the care of his companions, and prudently advising and instructing them in the course best to be pursued, he left them, and hastened to make his way alone, back to St. Asaph. In ten days after his departure from the fort, he returned to it again; and his [149] presence contributed much to revive and encourage the garrison; 'till then in almost utter despair of obtaining relief. In a few days after, the party arrived with the ammunition, and succeeded in entering the fort unperceived; though it was still surrounded by the Indians. With so much secrecy and caution had the enterprise been conducted, that the enemy never knew it had been undertaken, until it was happily accomplished. For some time after this the garrison continued in high expectation of seeing the besiegers depart, despairing of making any impression on the fort. But they were mistaken in this expectation. Each returning day shewed the continued investiture of the fort, and exhibited the Indians as pertinaciously intent on its reduction by assault or famine, as they were on the day of their arrival before it. Weeks elapsed, and there was no appearance of the succours which had been promised to Logan, when in the settlement on Holstein. And although the besieged were still successful in repelling every assault on the garrison, yet their stock of provisions was almost entirely exhausted; and there was no chance of obtaining a farther supply, but from the woods around them. To depend on the success of hunting parties, to relieve their necessities and prevent their actual starvation or surrender, seemed indeed, but a slender reed on which to rely; and the gloom of despondency overshadowed their hitherto sanguine countenances. But as they were resigning themselves to despair, and yielding up the last hope of being able to escape from savage fury and savage vengeance, Colonel Bowman arrived to their relief, and forced the Indians to raise the siege. It was not however, without some loss on his part. A detachment of his men, which had preceded the advance of the main army, was unfortunately unable to reach the fort, undiscovered by the besiegers; who attacked and killed them before they could enter the garrison. On the body of one of these men, was left a proclamation, issued by the Governor of Detroit promising protection and reward to those who would renounce the cause of the American colonies, and espouse that of Great Britain; and denouncing those who would not. When this proclamation was carried to Logan, he carefully kept secret its contents, lest it might produce an unfavorable effect on the minds of some of his men; worn down, exhausted, and discouraged as they then were.[17] [150] After the arrival of Colonel Bowman in the country, there was for a time, a good deal of skirmishing between his forces, aided by individuals from the different forts, and those Indians. In all of them, the superiority of the whites in the use of the rifle, became apparent to the savages; and as the feat of Captain Gibson with the sword, had previously acquired for the Virginians, the appellation of the Long Knives,[18] the fatal certainty, with which Bowman's men and the inhabitants of the various settlements in Kentucky, then aimed their shots, might have added to that title, the forcible epithet of sharp-shooters. They were as skilful and successful, too, in the practice of those arts, by which one is enabled to steal unaware upon his enemy, as the Natives themselves; and were equally as sure to execute the purposes, for which those arts were put in requisition, as these were. The consequence was, that the Indians were not only more shy in approaching the garrison, than they had been; but they likewise became, more cautious and circumspect, in their woods operations, than formerly. The frequent success of Colonel Bowman's men, in scouring the surrounding country, gave to the inhabitants of all the settlements, an opportunity of cultivating their little fields, and of laying in such a stock of provisions and military stores, as would suffice in the hour of need; when that force should be withdrawn from the country, and the Indians consequently be again enabled to overrun it. All that the inhabitants, by reason of the paucity of their numbers, could yet do, was to shut themselves in forts, and preserve these from falling into the hands of the enemy. When the term of those, who had so opportunely came to their relief, expired, and they returned to their homes, there were at Boonesborough only twenty-two, at Harrodsburg sixty-five, and at St. Asaph's fifteen men. Emigrants however, flocked to the country during the ensuing season, in great numbers; and their united strength enabled them the better to resist aggression, and conduct the various operations of husbandry and hunting--then the only occupations of the men. While these things were transacting in Kentucky, North Western Virginia enjoyed a repose undisturbed, save by the conviction of the moral certainty, that it would be again involved in all the horrors of savage warfare; and that too, at no distant period: The machinations of British agents, to [151] produce this result, were well known to be gaining advocates daily, among the savages; and the hereditary resentments of these, were known to be too deeply seated, for the victory of Point Pleasant to have produced their eradication, and to have created in their stead, a void, to become the future receptacle of kindlier feelings, towards their Virginia neighbors. A coalition of the many tribes north west of the Ohio river, had been some time forming, and the assent of the Shawanees, alone, was wanting to its perfection. The distinguished Sachem at the head of that nation, was opposed to an alliance with the British, and anxious to preserve a friendly intercourse with the colonists. All his influence, with all his energy, was exerted, to prevent his brethren from again involving themselves, in a war with the whites. But it was likely to be in vain. Many of his warriors had fallen at the mouth of the Kenhawa, and his people had suffered severely during the continuance of that war; they were therefore, too intent on retaliation, to listen to the sage counsel of their chief. In this posture of affairs, Cornstalk, in the spring of 1777, visited the fort, which had been erected at Point Pleasant after the campaign of 1774, in company with the Red Hawk, and another Indian. Captain Matthew Arbuckle was then commandant of the garrison; and when Cornstalk communicated to him the hostile preparations of the Indians,--that the Shawanees alone were wanting to render a confederacy complete,--that, as the "current set so strongly against the colonies, even they would float with the stream in despite of his endeavors to stem it," and that hostilities would commence immediately, he deemed it prudent to detain him and his companions as hostages, for the peace and neutrality of the different tribes of Indians in Ohio. He at the same time acquainted the newly organized government of Virginia, with the information which he had received from Cornstalk, and the course which he had taken with that chief, and the others who accompanied him to the garrison. Upon the receipt of this intelligence, it was resolved, if volunteers could be had for this purpose, to march an army into the Indian country and effectually accomplish the objects, which had been proposed to be achieved in the campaign of Lord Dunmore in 1774. The volunteers in Augusta and Bottetourt, were to rendezvous as early as possible, at the mouth of the Big Kenhawa, where they would be joined by [152] other troops under General Hand,[19] who would then assume the command of the whole expedition. In pursuance of this resolve, three or four companies only, were raised in the counties of Bottetourt and Augusta; and these immediately commenced their march, to the place of general rendezvous, under the command of Colonel George Skillern. In the Greenbrier country, great exertions were made by the militia officers there, to obtain volunteers, but with little effect. One company only was formed, consisting of thirty men, and the officers, laying aside all distinctions of rank, placed themselves in the line as common soldiers, and proceeded to Point Pleasant with the troops led on by Colonel Skillern. Upon their arrival at that place, nothing had been heard of General Hand, or of the forces which it was expected would accompany him from Fort Pitt; and the volunteers halted, to await some intelligence from him. The provisions, for the support of the army in its projected invasion of the Indian country, were expected to be brought down the river, from Fort Pitt; and the troops under Colonel Skillern had only taken with them, what was deemed sufficient for their subsistence on their march to the place of rendezvous. This stock was nearly exhausted, and the garrison was too illy supplied, to admit of their drawing on its stores.--While thus situated, and anxiously awaiting the arrival of General Hand with his army and provisions, the officers held frequent conversations with Cornstalk, who seemed to take pleasure in acquainting them with the geography of the country west of the Ohio river generally, and more particularly with that section of it lying between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. One afternoon while he was engaged in delineating on the floor a map of that territory, with the various water courses emptying into those two mighty streams, and describing the face of the country, its soil and climate, a voice was heard hallooing from the opposite shore of the Ohio, which he immediately recognised to be that of his son Ellinipsico, and who coming over at the instance of Cornstalk, embraced him most affectionately. Uneasy at the long absence of his father, and fearing that some unforseen evil might have befallen him, he had come to learn some tidings of him here; knowing that it was the place, to go to which he had left the nation. His visit was prompted by feelings [153] which do honor to human nature--anxious solicitude for a father,--but it was closed by a most terrible catastrophe. On the day after the arrival of Ellinipsico, and while he was yet in the garrison, two men, from Captain Hall's company of Rockbridge volunteers, crossed the Kenhawa river on a hunting excursion. As they were returning to the canoe for the purpose of recrossing to the Fort, after the termination of the hunt, Gilmore was espied by two Indians, concealed near the bank, who fired at, killed and scalped him. At that instant, Captains Arbuckle and Stuart (the latter having accompanied the Greenbrier volunteers as a private soldier) were standing on the point opposite to where lay the canoe in which Hamilton and Gilmore had crossed the river; and expressed some astonishment that the men should be so indiscreet as to be shooting near to the encampment, contrary to commands. They had scarcely time to express their disapprobation at the supposed violation of orders, when Hamilton was seen running down the bank of the river, and heard to exclaim, that Gilmore was killed. A party of Captain Hall's men immediately sprang into a canoe and went over to relieve Hamilton from danger, and to bring the body of Gilmore to the encampment. Before they relanded with the bloody corpse of Gilmore, a cry arose, "let us go and kill the Indians in the fort;" and pale with rage they ascended the bank, with captain Hall at their head, to execute their horrid purpose. It was vain to remonstrate. To the interference of Captains Arbuckle and Stuart to prevent the fulfilling of this determination, they responded, by cocking their guns, and threatening instant death to any one who should dare to oppose them. The interpreter's wife, (who had lately returned from Indian captivity, and seemed to entertain a feeling of affection for Cornstalk and his companions) seeing their danger, ran to their cabin to apprise them of it, and told them that Ellinipsico was charged with having brought with him the Indians who had killed Gilmore. This however he positively denied, averring that he came alone, and with the sole object of learning something of his father. In this time Captain Hall and his men had arrived within hearing, and Ellinipsico appeared much agitated. Cornstalk however, encouraged him to meet his fate composedly, saying, "my son, the Great Spirit has seen fit that we should die together, and has sent you here to that [154] end. It is his will and let us submit;--it is all for the best;" and turning to meet his murderers at the door, received seven bullets in his body and fell without a groan. Thus perished the mighty Cornstalk, Sachem of the Shawanees, and king of the northern confederacy in 1774: A chief remarkable for many great and good qualities. He was disposed to be at all times the friend of white men; as he ever was, the advocate of honorable peace. But when his country's wrongs "called aloud to battle," he became the thunderbolt of war; and made her oppressors feel the weight of his uplifted arm. He sought not to pluck the scalp from the head of the innocent, nor to war against the unprotected and defenceless; choosing rather to encounter his enemies, girded for battle, and in open conflict. His noble bearing,--his generous and disinterested attachment to the colonies, when the thunder of British cannon was reverberating through the land--his anxiety to preserve the frontier of Virginia from desolation and death, (the object of his visit to Point Pleasant)--all conspired to win for him the esteem and respect of others; while the untimely, and perfidious manner of his death, caused a deep and lasting regret to pervade the bosoms, even of those who were enemies to his nation; and excited the just indignation of all, towards his inhuman and barbarous murderers. When the father fell, Ellinipsico continued still and passive; not even raising himself from the seat, which he had occupied before they received notice, that some infuriated whites were loudly demanding their immolation. He met death in that position, with the utmost composure and calmness. The trepidation which first seized upon him, was of but momentary duration, and was succeeded by a most dignified sedateness and stoical apathy. It was not so with the young Red Hawk. He endeavored to conceal himself up the chimney of the cabin, in which they were; but without success. He was soon discovered and killed. The remaining Indian was murdered by piece-meal; and with almost all those circumstances of cruelty and horror, which characterize the savage, in wreaking vengeance upon an enemy. Cornstalk is said to have had a presentiment of his approaching fate. On the day preceding his death, a council of officers was convoked, in consequence of the continued absence of General Hand, and their entire ignorance of his [155] force or movements, to consult and determine on what would be the course for them to pursue under existing circumstances. Cornstalk was admitted to the council; and in the course of some remarks, with which he addressed it, said, "When I was young and went to war, I often thought, each might be my last adventure, and I should return no more. I still lived. Now I am in the midst of you, and if you choose, may kill me. I can die but once. It is alike to me, whether now or hereafter." Little did those who were listening with delight to the eloquence of his address, and deriving knowledge from his instruction, think to see him so quickly and inhumanly, driven from the theatre of life. It was a fearful deed; and dearly was it expiated by others. The Shawanees were a warlike people, and became henceforward the most deadly foe, to the inhabitants on the frontiers. In a few days after the perpetration of this diabolical outrage upon all propriety, General Hand arrived from Pittsburg without an army, and without provisions for those who had been awaiting his coming. It was then determined to abandon the expedition; and the volunteers returned to their homes.[20] ----- [1] Chief among the fomenters of disorder were the renegades Simon Girty, Matthew Elliott, and Alexander McKee. The dastardly deeds of this trio are fully set forth in Butterfield's _History of the Girtys_, an important work to all students of the annals of the West during the Revolutionary War.--R. G. T. [2] James Harrod's father emigrated from England to Virginia, about 1734, and was one of the first settlers on the Shenandoah, in the Valley of Virginia. One of his sons, Samuel, accompanied Michael Stoner on his famous Western hunting and exploring trip, in 1767; another, William, born at the new family seat, at Big Cove, in what is now Bedford County, Pa., served with distinction under George Rogers Clark. James, born in 1742, was twelve years old when his father died, leaving a large family on an exposed frontier, at the opening of the French and Indian War. In November, 1755, a raid was made on the Big Cove settlement, by the Delaware chief Shingiss (p. 45, _note_), but the Harrods were among the few families who escaped unharmed to Fort Littleton. When James was sixteen years of age he served with his brother William on Forbes's campaign, and very likely saw further service during that war. In 1772, when he had attained wide celebrity on the border as an adept in woodcraft, he helped William settle on Ten Mile Creek, a tributary of the Monongahela; and in 1773 he and several other explored Kentucky, returning home by way of Greenbrier River. We have seen (p. 152, _note_) that he was surveying the site of Harrodsburg in 1774, when warned by Boone and Stoner. Retiring with his men to the Holston, he and they joined Col. Christian's regiment, but arrived at Point Pleasant a few hours after the battle of October 10. Returning to his abandoned Kentucky settlement March 18, 1775, a fortnight before Boonesborough was founded, he was chosen a delegate to the Transylvania convention, and became a man of great prominence in the Kentucky colony. In 1779 he commanded a company on Bowman's campaign, and the year following was a captain on Clark's Indian campaign; declining a majorship, he served as a private on Clark's campaign of 1782. He was a member of the Kentucky convention (at Danville) of December, 1784, and at one time represented Kentucky in the Virginia legislature. In February, 1792, having made his will, he set out from Washington, Ky., with two men, in search of a silver mine reported to be at the Three Forks of the Kentucky. No more was heard of him or his companions, and it is still the belief of the family that the latter murdered him. He was survived by his wife and a daughter, and left a large landed estate. Harrod, although unlettered, was a man of fine presence and many sterling qualities, and made a strong impress on his generation. He is still remembered in Kentucky as one of the worthiest pioneers of that state.--R. G. T. [3] The company--successively called The Louisa Company, Henderson & Co., and The Transylvania Company--was composed of Col. Richard Henderson, Col. John Williams, Thomas Hart, Col. David Hart, Capt. Nathaniel Hart, Col. John Luttsell, James Hogg, William Johnston, and Leonard Henley Bullock. Henderson's paternal great-grandfather was a Scottish immigrant, and one of his grandmothers was Welsh. The family settled in Hanover County, Va., where Richard, son of Samuel Henderson, was born April 20, 1735. Samuel moved with his family to North Carolina, in 1745, and became sheriff of Granville County. Richard had the education of a rural youth of good station, and became a lawyer. In 1767 he was appointed one of the two associate justices of the superior court of the colony, and served with great credit for six years, when the court was abolished. During professional visits to Salisbury, Henderson heard frequently--chiefly through the brothers Hart--of the exploits of Boone, and the latter's glowing reports of the beauty and fertility of Kentucky. Relying implicitly on Boone's statements, these four men energetically resolved to settle the country. In the autumn of 1774, Henderson and Nathaniel Hart visited the Cherokees to ascertain if they would sell their claims to Kentucky, and receiving a favorable reply agreed to meet the Indians in treaty council at the Sycamore Shoals, on Watauga River. On their return home, they were accompanied by a wise old Indian (Little Carpenter), and a young buck and his squaw, delegates to see that proper goods were purchased for the proposed barter. These goods were bought in December at Cross Creek, now Fayetteville, N. C., and forwarded by wagons to Watauga. Boone was then sent out to collect the Indians, and when the council opened (March 14, 1775) had twelve hundred assembled at the Sycamore Shoals--half of them warriors. The council proceeded slowly, with much characteristic vacillating on the part of the Indians; but on the third day (March 17) the deed of sale was signed to what came to be known as "the great grant:" The tract from the mouth of the Kentucky (or Louisa) River to the head spring of its most northerly fork; thence northeasterly to the top of Powell's Mountain; thence westerly and then northwesterly to the head spring of the most southerly branch of the Cumberland; thence down that stream, including all its waters, to the Ohio, and thence up the Ohio to the mouth of the Kentucky. The Indians were conscious that they had sold what did not belong to them; and Dragging Canoe and other chiefs were outspoken in their opinion that the whites would have difficulty in settling the tract. The Indians were much dissatisfied with the division of the goods. These "filled a house" and cost £10,000 sterling, yet when distributed among so many greedy savages each had but a small share. One warrior, who received but a shirt for his portion, said he "could have shot more game in one day on the land ceded, than would pay for so slight a garment." Governors Martin, of North Carolina, and Dunmore, of Virginia, issued proclamations against the purchase, as contrary to the royal proclamation of 1763. But those who were present at the treaty--among them such prominent borderers as Daniel Boone, James Robertson, John Sevier, Isaac Shelby, Felix Walker, the Bledsoes, Richard Callaway, William Twitty, William Cocke, and Nathaniel Henderson--were heedless of such proclamations, and eager to become settlers under the company's liberal offer made to them on the spot: for each man who assisted in the first settlement, and went out and raised a crop of corn that year, a grant of 500 acres for £5 sterling, clear of all charges. Boone, as the company's agent, started out at once (March 10) with twenty men, soon reinforced to thirty; with their hatchets they blazed a bridle path over Cumberland Gap, and across Cumberland, Laurel, and Rockcastle rivers, to the banks of the Kentucky, where, after a running fight with the Indians, they arrived April 1, and founded Boonesborough. Henderson, at the head of thirty men conveying the wagons and supplies, arrived at Boonesborough April 20; with him were Luttsell and Nathaniel Hart. May 23, there met at Boonesborough the Legislature of Transylvania, in which sat eighteen delegates from the little group of four frontier forts, all established at about this time--Harrodsburg, Boiling Springs, and St. Asaph's (or Logan's Station), lying some thirty or more miles southwest of Boonesborough, the capital of this little western colony. Withers does not mention this first legislative assembly held in the Mississippi Valley. It is an interesting and suggestive episode in American commonwealth-building, and deserves careful study. Roosevelt gives it admirable treatment, in his _Winning of the West_. The journal of the convention is given at length in the appendix to the second edition of Butler's _Kentucky_; Hall's _Sketches of the West_, i., pp. 264, 265; Louisville _Literary News-Letter_, June 6, 1840; and Hazard's _U. S. Register_, iii., pp. 25-28. Henderson's MS. Journal is in the possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society, and has never yet been published. Virginia and North Carolina did not favor an independent government in Kentucky, and annulled the title of the Henderson company--but Virginia (1795) granted the proprietors in recompense 200,000 acres on Powell's and Clinch rivers. We hear little more of Richard Henderson, in pioneer history. In 1779, he was one of the North Carolina commissioners to extend the western boundary between that State and Virginia. During the winter of 1789-90 he was at the French Lick on Cumberland, where he opened a land office. His last public service was in 1781, when a member of the North Carolina house of commons. He died at his country seat in Granville County, N. C., January 30, 1785, in his fiftieth year. Two of his sons, Archibald and Leonard, attained eminence at the bar of their native State.--R. G. T. [4] Among Dr. Draper's manuscripts I find this succinct review of the aboriginal claims to Kentucky: "There is some reason to suppose that the Catawbas may once have dwelt upon the Kentucky River; that stream, on some of the ancient maps published a hundred years ago, was called the 'Cuttawa or Cawtaba River.' But that tribe of Indians, so far as we know, never laid any claim to the territory. "It would appear from the historical evidences extant, that the Shawanoes were the earliest occupants of Kentucky of whom we have any certain knowledge. Colden, the primitive historian of the Iroquois Confederacy, informs us, that when the French commenced the first settlement of Canada in 1603, the Five Nations, who then resided near the present locality of Montreal, were at war with the powerful Adirondacks, who at that time lived three hundred miles above the Three Rivers, in Canada. The Iroquois found it difficult to withstand the vigorous attacks of their enemies, whose superior hardihood was to be attributed to their constant devotion to the chase, while the Iroquois had been chiefly engaged in the more peaceful occupation of planting corn. Compelled to give way before their haughty foes, the confederates had recourse to the exercise of arms, in order, if possible, to retrieve their martial character and prowess. To raise the spirits of their people, the Iroquois leaders turned their warriors against the Satanas or Shawanoes, 'who then,' says Colden, 'lived on the banks of the lakes,'--or, as other historians assert, in Western New York, and south of Lake Erie,--and soon subdued and drove them out of the country. The Shawanoes then retired to the Ohio, along which and its tributaries they planted numerous settlements. Some of them, however, when driven from Western New York, seem to have located somewhere on the Delaware, for De Laet, in 1624, speaks of _Sawanoos_ residing on that river. "The _Jesuit Relations_ of 1661-62, allude to their residence in the West under the name of Ontouagannha or Chaoüanons; they seem to have been the same as were called Tongorias, Erighecks, Erieehonons, Eries, or Cats, by the early missionaries and historians; and the same, moreover, known in the traditions of the Senecas as Gah-kwahs, who resided on Eighteen Mile Creek, a few miles southwest of Buffalo, in Western New York, which the Senecas still call Gah-kwah-gig-a-ah Creek, which means _the place where the Gah-kwahs lived_. In 1672, the Shawanoes and their confederates in the Ohio Valley met with a disastrous overthrow by the Five Nations at Sandy Island, just below the Falls of Ohio, where large numbers of human bones were still to be seen at the first settlement of the country. The surviving Shawanoes must then have retired still farther down the Ohio, and settled probably in the western part of Kentucky; and Marquette, in 1673, speaks of their having twenty-three villages in one district, and fifteen in another, all lying quite near each other: At length the Shawanoes departed from Kentucky, and seem to have gone to the upper part of the Carolinas, and to the coast of Florida, and ever after proved a migratory people. They were evidently 'subdued,' as Colden, Evans, and Pownall inform us, and the decisive battle was fought at Sandy Island, where a vital blow was given to the balance of power on the Ohio, which decided finally the fall of Kentucky with its ancient inhabitants. "It was this conquest that gave to the powerful Iroquois all the title they ever acquired to Kentucky. At the peace of Ryswick, in 1697, their right to their western conquests was fully acknowledged; and at the treaty of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, in 1744, they ceded to Virginia all their lands west of that colony. In 1752, the Shawanoes and other western tribes, at Logstown on the Ohio, confirmed the Lancaster treaty, and sold their claim to the country south of the Ohio; and, at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, in 1768, the Six Nations made a new cession of their claim to Kentucky as low as the Cherokee or Tennessee River. Up to this period, the Cherokees never so much as thought of contesting with the Iroquois their claim to the Kentucky country; for some of the visiting Cherokees, while on their route to attend the Fort Stanwix treaty, killed game for their subsistence, and on their arrival at Fort Stanwix, tendered the skins to the Six Nations, saying, 'They are yours, we killed them after passing the Big River,' the name by which they had always designated the Tennessee. But probably discovering that other Indian nations were driving a good business by disposing of their distant land rights, the Cherokees managed to hatch up some sort of claim, which they, in part, relinquished to Virginia, at the treaty of Lochaber in 1770; and when Col. Donelson ran the line the following year, the boundary was fixed, at the suggestion of the Cherokee deputies, on the Kentucky River as the south-western line, as they delighted, they said, in natural landmarks. This considerably enlarged the cession, for which they received an additional compensation. "In 1772, the Shawanoes made no claim to Kentucky; and at the treaty of Camp Charlotte, in October, 1774, they tacitly confirmed their old sale of that country in 1752, by agreeing not even to hunt south of the Ohio. Thus, then, we see that the Iroquois had twice ceded their right to Kentucky as low as the Tennessee River, and twice received their pay; the Shawanoes had disposed of their claim, such as it was, and received for it a valuable consideration; and the Cherokees, finding it profitable to lay claim to some valuable unoccupied region, sold their newly assumed right to the country south and east of Kentucky River. Their claim, if indeed it rises to the dignity of a claim, south and west of the Kentucky, was fairly purchased by Henderson and Company, and thus with the subsequent purchase by treaty, of the Chickasaws, of the strip between the Tennessee and Mississippi, the Indian title to the whole Kentucky country was fully and fairly extinguished."--R. G. T. [5] The first attack occurred the morning of March 25, when the party were encamped near the head of Taylor's Fork of Silver Creek. Capt. Twitty and Felix Walker were severely wounded, and a negro servant killed; Twitty subsequently died from his wound. The other attack was on an outlying company, probably on Tate's Creek; this occurred the 27th, and "Thomas McDowell and Jeremiah McFeeters were," Boone wrote to Henderson, "killed and sculped."--R. G. T. [6] The purchase of Henderson and company, was subsequently declared by the legislature of Virginia, to be null and void, so far as the purchasers were concerned; but effectual as to the extinguishment of the Indian title, to the territory thus bought of them. To indemnify the purchasers for any advancement of money or other things which they had made to the Indians, the assembly granted to them 200,000 acres of land, lying at the mouth of Green river, and known generally as Henderson's grant. [7] Boone set out from Boonesborough, June 13, 1775. He left the settlement in a state approaching anarchy; there were several good men in the district, but the majority were shiftless wanderers who would brook no exercise of authority. The buffalo were fast moving westward, and all game was now getting scarce--"hunt or starve" was the motto of the hour. A diarist (Capt. Floyd) estimated that there were then a total of 300 people in all the Kentucky settlements--not reckoning "a great many land-jobbers from towards Pittsburg, who go about on the north side of Kentucky, in companies, and build forty or fifty cabins a piece on lands where no surveying has yet been done." Among the best of the numerous arrivals, were George Rogers Clark, Simon Kenton, Benjamin Logan, and Whitley, who came to be very prominent characters in Kentucky history. Boone, with his wife and daughters, and twenty-one men, arrived at Boonesborough September 6 or 7. "My wife and daughters," writes Boone, "were the first women that ever stood on the banks of Kentucky river." Mrs. McGary, Mrs. Hogan, and Mrs. Denton arrived at Harrodsburg the 8th of September, and were the first white women in that settlement. With the arrival of these families, and fresh fighting men, the Kentucky colony began to take on a permanent air, and thenceforward there was better order.--R. G. T. [8] In the winter of 1776-77, McClelland's Station and Logan's Station, (indifferently styled Fort or Station) were abandoned because of Indian attacks, and the settlers huddled into Boonesborough and Harrodsburg--although possibly Price's settlement, on the Cumberland, maintained a separate existence throughout the winter. There were at this time not to exceed a hundred and fifty white men in the country, available for active militia duty. As during January and February, 1777, the Indians were quiet, confidence was restored in some degree, and during the latter month, Logan, with his own and some half dozen other families, left Harrodsburg and re-occupied Logan's Station. Thus far, each settlement had chosen its own military leader, and discipline was practically unknown. March 5, under order and commissions from Virginia, the militia of Kentucky county were assembled and organized at Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, and Logan's Station, with George Rogers Clark as major, and Daniel Boone, James Harrod, John Todd, and Benjamin Logan as captains.--R. G. T. [9] This foray took place March 6--not the 14th, as in the text--at Shawnee Springs, four miles north-east of Harrodsburg. The whites--James Ray, William Ray, Thomas Shores, and William Coomes--were sugar-making, when attacked by about seventy Shawnees, under Black Fish. William Ray was killed, and Shores taken prisoner. James Ray outran his pursuers and gave the alarm. The unsuccessful attack on the incomplete fort of Harrodsburg occurred early the following morning, the 7th. Other brief attacks on Harrodsburg, were on March 18 and 28.--R. G. T. [10] A small detachment from Black Fish's party made a dash on workers in the Boonesborough fields, the day after the Harrodsburg fight--killing a negro, and wounding several whites.--R. G. T. [11] This assault on Boonesborough occurred the morning of Thursday, April 24. The Indians numbered about one hundred. Boone was wounded, and very nearly lost his life, in a sortie. The story of the fight abounds with instances of heroism on the part of both women and men.--R. G. T. [12] It occurred throughout Friday, May 30. The Indians are reported to have numbered fifty-seven.--R. G. T. [13] Those who went out early in the morning to milk the cows, were Mrs. Ann Logan, Mrs. Whitley, and a negro woman. They were guarded only by William Hudson, Burr Harrison, John Kennedy, and James Craig. The women and Craig escaped into the fort unharmed; Kennedy, with four balls in his body, contrived also to escape; Hudson was killed outright, and Harrison fell wounded. He was supposed by friend and foe to have been killed. The story of his final rescue by Logan, is related by Withers below. As told to Dr. Draper, by Capt. Benjamin Biggs, and as recorded in Whitley's MS. Narrative, in possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society, the story in Withers is substantially correct. It is said that Logan rolled a bag of wool before him, and thus approached Harrison under cover; then making a rush towards the latter, he picked him up in his arms and dashed successfully into the fort. These accounts make no mention of Martin's intervention. Harrison died of his wounds, June 13.--R. G. T. [14] Benjamin Logan was by birth a Virginian; and at the age of fourteen was left by the death of his father, to provide for his mother and her other children, and with the other cares of a family upon his infant hands. He discharged the duties thus devolving on him, with the utmost fidelity; and having provided amply for the support of his mother, and placed the other members of her household in eligible situations, he removed to the Holstein, married, purchased land, and commenced making improvements. From thence he went to Kentucky, where he spent the balance of his life, in the discharge of every social and relative duty, with credit to himself and advantage to the community. He was a delegate to the Virginia legislature from the county of Kentucky in 1780; was soon after commissioned county Lieutenant, (then the highest military title in the militia of a county) and in the various battles, as well as in the many skirmishes, which he fought with the Indians, his conduct and bearing were such, as fully established for him the reputation of a brave, skilful, prudent and meritorious officer. In private life, and in his intercourse with his fellow men, his whole course was distinguished by the most uncompromising honor, and expanded philanthrophy. The heroic adventure, by which he saved his wounded comrade, from the tomahawk, the scalping knife, and from fire, was but one of many such exploits, whereby he achieved good to others, at the most imminent hazard of his own life. [15] This was the name given to the station of Logan. [16] Whitley's MS. Narrative and Cowan's MS. Diary, in the Wisconsin Historical Society's library, say that Logan left alone during the night of June 6. Logan returned to his fort on the 23d, having travelled almost incessantly, and brought news that relief would soon come. Soon after Logan's expedition to the Holston, other messengers were sent to the East, clamoring for help--McGary and Hoggin to Fort Pitt, and Smith to the Yadkin; and twice Harrod vainly went forth to meet expected troops. But the Continental army was hard pressed in those days, and despite the rumor on the coast that Kentucky was in a sad way, it was long before relief could be sent.--R. G. T. [17] Bowman arrived at Boonesborough the first of August, with two companies from Virginia, under Capts. Henry Pauling and John Dunkin--the latter being soon succeeded by Isaac Ruddell. The force numbered 100 men. August 25, while six of Bowman's men were on their way to Logan's, they were attacked by Indians, two being killed and one wounded. Before escaping, the Indians left on the body of one of the men, several copies of a proclamation addressed to Clark and Logan in person, by Lieut.-Gov. Henry Hamilton, at the head of the British forces at Detroit, offering immunity to repentant rebels.--R. G. T. [18] See pp. 79, 80, _note_, for origin of the term "Long Knives."--R. G. T. [19] Edward Hand was born in Ireland. He came to America in 1774 as a surgeon's mate in the Eighth (Royal Irish) Regiment, and soon settled in Pennsylvania as a physician. When the Revolution broke out he joined a Pennsylvania regiment as lieutenant colonel, and served in the siege of Boston. In April, 1777, he was appointed brigadier-general in the Continental army, and the first of June assumed command of Fort Pitt. Lieut.-Gov. Henry Hamilton, of Detroit, under orders from London, was actively engaged in stirring up the Northwest Indians to forays on the Virginia and Pennsylvania borders, thus harrying the Americans in the rear. Hand, in whose charge was the frontier from Kittanning to the Great Kanawha, determined on an aggressive policy, and in February, 1778, undertook a campaign against the savages. An open winter, with heavy rains, prevented the force of about 500 men--chiefly from Westmoreland county--making satisfactory headway. Finally, the expedition was abandoned when it had proceeded no farther than Mahoning Creek. From the fact that this first American movement against the savages, during the Revolution, resulted only in the capture of non-combatants, in the almost deserted villages, it was long known as "the squaw campaign." Hand was a competent officer, but was much pestered, at Fort Pitt, with the machinations of tories, who were numerous among the borderers. Succeeded at Fort Pitt in 1778, by Brig.-Gen. Lachlan McIntosh, Hand in turn succeeded Stark in command at Albany. We find him, in 1779, actively engaged on Sullivan's campaign against the New York Indians, and in 1780 he became adjutant general. A member of congress in 1784-85, he was in 1790 a member of the constitutional convention of Pennsylvania, and died at Rockford, Lancaster County, Pa., September 3, 1802--R. G. T. [20] See p. 172, _note_ 2, for sketch of life and death of Cornstalk.--R. G. T. [156] CHAPTER IX. While Cornstalk was detained at Point Pleasant, as surety for the peace and neutrality of the Shawanees, Indians, of the tribes already attached to the side of Great Britain, were invading the more defenceless and unprotected settlements. Emerging, as Virginia then was, from a state of vassalage and subjection, to independence and self-government--contending in fearful inferiority of strength and the munitions of war with a mighty and warlike nation--limited in resources, and wanting in means, essential for supporting the unequal conflict, she could not be expected to afford protection and security from savage inroad, to a frontier so extensive as hers; and still less was she able to spare from the contest which she was waging with that colossal power, a force sufficient to maintain a war in the Indian country and awe the savages into quiet. It had not entered into the policy of this state to enlist the tomahawk and scalping knife in her behalf; or to make allies of savages, in a war with Christians and civilized men. She sought by the force of reason and the conviction of propriety, to prevail on them to observe neutrality--not to become her auxiliaries. "To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirsting for blood, against protestant brethren," was a refinement in war to which she had not attained. That the enemy, with whom she was struggling for liberty and life as a nation, with all the lights of religion and philosophy to illumine her course, should have made of them allies, and "let loose those horrible hell-hounds of war against their countrymen in America, endeared to them by every tie which should sanctify human nature," was a most lamentable circumstance--in its consequences, blighting and desolating the fairest portions of the country, and covering the face of [157] its border settlements, with the gloomy mantle of sorrow and woe. There is in the Indian bosom an hereditary sense of injury, which naturally enough prompts to deeds of revengeful cruelty towards the whites, without the aid of adventitious stimulants. When these are superadded, they become indeed, the most ruthless and infuriated enemy--"thirsting for blood," and causing it literally to flow, alike from the hearts of helpless infancy and hoary age--from the timorous breast of weak woman, and the undaunted bosom of the stout warrior. Leagued with Great Britain, the Indians were enabled more fully and effectually, to glut their vengeance on our citizens, and gratify their entailed resentment towards them. In the commencement of Indian depredations on North Western Virginia, during this war, the only places of refuge for the inhabitants, besides private forts and block-houses, were at Pittsburg, Redstone, Wheeling and Point Pleasant. Garrisons had been maintained at Fort Pitt and Redstone, ever after their establishment; and fortresses were erected at the two latter places in 1774. They all seemed to afford an asylum to many, when the Indians were known to be in the country; but none of them had garrisons, strong enough to admit of detachments being sent, to act offensively against the invaders. All that they could effect, was the repulsion of assaults made on them, and the expulsion from their immediate neighborhoods, of small marauding parties of the savage enemy. When Captain Arbuckle communicated to the Governor the information derived from Cornstalk, that extensive preparations were making by the Indians, for war, and the probability of its early commencement, such measures were immediately adopted, to prevent its success, as the then situation of the country would justify. A proclamation was issued, advising the inhabitants of the frontier, to retire into the interior as soon as practicable; and that they might be enabled the better to protect themselves from savage fury, some ammunition was forwarded to settlements on the Ohio river, remote from the state forts, and more immediately exposed to danger from incursion. General Hand too, then stationed at Fort Pitt, sent an express to the different settlements, recommending that they should be immediately abandoned, and the individuals composing them, should forthwith seek shelter in some contiguous fortress, or retire east of the [158] mountain. All were apprized of the impending danger, and that it was impracticable in the pressing condition of affairs, for the newly organized government to extend to them any effective protection. Thus situated, the greater part of those who had taken up their abode on the western waters, continued to reside in the country. Others, deeming the means of defence inadequate to security, and unwilling to encounter the horrors of an Indian war, no better provided than they were, pursued the advice of government, and withdrew from the presence of danger. Those who remained, sensible of dependence on their individual resources, commenced making preparations for the approaching crisis. The positions which had been selected as places of security and defence in the war of 1774, were fortified anew, and other block-houses and forts were erected by their unaided exertion, into which they would retire on the approach of danger. Nor was it long before this state of things was brought about. In June 1777,[1] a party of Indians came to the house of Charles Grigsby on Rooting creek, a branch of the West Fork, and in the county of Harrison. Mr. Grigsby being from home, the Indians plundered the house of every thing considered valuable by them, and which they could readily carry with them; and destroying many other articles, departed, taking with them Mrs. Grigsby and her two children as prisoners. Returning home soon after, seeing the desolation which had been done in his short absence, and unable to find his wife and children, Mr. Grigsby collected some of his neighbors and set out in pursuit of those, by whom the mischief had been effected,--hoping that he might overtake and reclaim from them the partner of his bosom, and the pledges of her affection. His hopes were of but momentary existence. Following in the trail of the fugitive, when they had arrived near to Loss creek, a distance of but six miles, they found the body of Mrs. Grigsby and of her younger child, where they had recently been killed and scalped. The situation of this unfortunate woman (being near the hour of confinement,) and the entire helplessness of the child, were hindrances to a rapid retreat; and fearing pursuit, the Indians thus inhumanly rid themselves of those incumbrances to their flight and left them to accidental discovery, or to become food for the beasts of the forest. [159] Stimulated to more ardent exertions by the distressing scene just witnessed, the pursuers pushed forward, with increased expectation of speedily overtaking and punishing, the authors of this bloody deed; leaving two of their party to perform the sepulture of the unfortunate mother, and her murdered infant. But before the whites were aware of their nearness to the Indians, these had become apprized of their approach, and separated, so as to leave no trail by which they could be farther traced. They had of course to give over the pursuit; and returned home, to provide more effectually against the perpetration of similar acts of atrocity and darkness. A short time after this, two Indians came on the West Fork, and concealed themselves near to Coon's fort, awaiting an opportunity of effecting some mischief. While thus lying in ambush, a daughter of Mr. Coon came out for the purpose of lifting some hemp in a field near to the fort, and by the side of the road. Being engaged in performing this business, Thomas Cunningham and Enoch James passing along, and seeing her, entered into conversation with her, and after a while proceeded on their road. But before they had gone far, alarmed by the report of a gun, they looked back and saw an Indian run up to the girl, tomahawk and scalp her. The people of the fort were quickly apprised of what had been done, and immediately turned out in pursuit; but could not trace the course taken by the savages. It afterwards appeared that the Indians had been for some time waiting for the girl to come near enough for them to catch and make her prisoner, before she could alarm the fort, or get within reach of its guns; but when one of them crossed the fence for this purpose, she espied him and ran directly towards the fort.--Fearing that he would not be able to overtake her, without approaching the fort so as to involve himself in some danger, he shot her as she ran; and going up to her he tomahawked and scalped her. In endeavoring then to secure himself by flight, he was shot at by James, but at so great distance as to prevent the doing of execution. In the neighborhood of Wheeling, some mischief of this kind was done about the same time, and by Indians who acted so warily, as to avoid being discovered and punished. A man by the name of Thomas Ryan was killed in a field some distance from the house, and a negro fellow at work with him, [160] taken prisoner and carried off. No invasion however, of that country, had been as yet, of sufficient importance to induce the people to forsake their homes and go into the forts.--Scouting parties were constantly traversing the woods in every direction, and so successfully did they, observe every avenue to the settlements, that the approach of Indians was generally discovered and made known, before any evil resulted from it. But in August the whole country bordering on the Ohio, from Fort Pitt to Wheeling, became justly alarmed for its fate; and the most serious apprehensions for the safety of its inhabitants, were excited in the bosoms of all. Intelligence was conveyed to General Hand at Fort Pitt,[2] by some friendly Indians from the Moravian towns, that a large army of the north western confederacy, had come as far as those villages, and might soon be expected to strike an awful blow on some part of the Ohio settlements. The Indian force was represented as being so great, as to preclude all idea of purchasing safety, by open conflict; and the inhabitants along the river, generally retired into forts, as soon as they received information of their danger, and made every preparation to repel an assault on them. They did not however, remain long in suspense, as to the point against which the enemy would direct its operations. Wheeling Fort, although it had been erected by the proper authorities of the government, and was supplied with arms and ammunition from the public arsenal, was not at this time garrisoned, as were the other state forts on the Ohio, by a regular soldiery; but was left to be defended solely by the heroism and bravery of those, who might seek shelter within its walls.[3] The settlement around it was flourishing, and had grown with a rapidity truly astonishing, when its situation, and the circumstances of the border country generally, are taken into consideration. A little village, of twenty-five or thirty houses, had sprung up, where but a few years before, the foot of civilized man had never trod; and where the beasts of the forest had lately ranged undisturbedly, were to be seen lowing herds and bleating flocks, at once, the means of sustenance, and the promise of future wealth to their owners.--In the enjoyment of this, comparatively, prosperous condition of things, the inhabitants little dreamed, how quickly those smiling prospects were to be blighted, their future hopes blasted, and they deprived of almost every necessary of life. They [161] were not insensible to the danger which in time of war was ever impending over them; but relying on the vigilance of their scouts, to ascertain and apprize them of its approach, and on the proximity of a fort into which they could retire upon a minute's warning, they did not shut themselves up within its walls, until advised of the immediate necessity of doing so, from the actual presence of the enemy. On the night of the first of September, Captain Ogal, who with a party of twelve men, had been for some days engaged in watching the paths to the settlement and endeavoring to ascertain the approach of danger,[4] came into Wheeling with the assurance that the enemy were not at hand. In the course of that night, however, the Indian army, consisting of three hundred and eighty-nine warriors,[5] came near to the village, and believing from the lights in the fort, that the inhabitants were on their guard, and that more might be effected by an ambuscade in the morning, than by an immediate and direct attack, posted themselves advantageously for that purpose. Two lines were formed, at some distance from each, extending from the river across the point to the creek, with a cornfield to afford them concealment. In the centre between these lines, near a road leading through the field to the fort, and in a situation easily exposing them to observation, six Indians were stationed, for the purpose of decoying within the lines, any force which might discover, and come out to molest them. Early in the morning of the second, two men, going to a field for horses, passed the first line, and came near to the Indians in the centre, before they were aware of danger.[6]--Perceiving the six savages near them, they endeavored to escape by flight. A single shot brought one of them to the ground: the other was permitted to escape that he might give the alarm. Captain Mason (who, with Captain Ogal and his party, and a few other men had occupied the fort the preceding night) hearing that there were but six of the enemy, marched with fourteen men, to the place where they had been seen. He had not proceeded far from the fort, before he came in view of them; and leading his men briskly towards where they were, soon found themselves enclosed by a body of Indians, who 'till then had remained concealed.--Seeing the impossibility of maintaining a conflict with them, he endeavored to retreat with his men, to the fort; but in [162] vain. They were intercepted by the Indians, and nearly all literally, cut to pieces.[7] Captain Mason however, and his sergeant succeeded in passing the front line, but being observed by some of the enemy, were pursued, and fired at, as they began to rise the hill. The sergeant was so wounded by the ball aimed at him, that he fell, unable again to get up; but seeing his Captain pass near without a gun and so crippled that he moved but slowly in advance of his pursuers, he handed him his, and calmly surrendered himself to his fate. Captain Mason had been twice wounded, and was then so enfeebled by the loss of blood, and faint from fatigue that he almost despaired of ever reaching the fort; yet he pressed forward with all his powers. He was sensible that the Indian was near him, and expecting every instant, that the tomahawk would sever his skull, he for a while forgot that his gun was yet charged. The recollection of this, inspiring him with fresh hopes, he wheeled to fire at his pursuer, but found him so close that he could not bring his gun to bear on him. Having greatly the advantage of ground, he thrust him back with his hand. The uplifted tomahawk descended to the earth with force; and before the Indian could so far regain his footing as to hurl the fatal weapon from his grasp, or rush forward to close in deadly struggle with his antagonist, the ball from Captain Mason's gun had done its errand, and the savage fell lifeless to the earth. Captain Mason was able to proceed only a few paces farther; but concealing himself by the side of a large fallen tree, he remained unobserved while the Indians continued about the fort. The shrieks of Captain Mason's men, and the discharge of the guns, induced Capt. Ogal to advance with his twelve scouts, to their relief. Being some distance in the rear of his men, the Indians, in closing round them, fortunately left him without the circle, and he concealed himself amid some briers in the corner of the fence; where he lay until the next day. The same fate awaited his men, which had befallen Capt. Mason's. Of the twenty six who were led out by these two officers, only three escaped death, and two of these were badly wounded: a striking evidence of the fact, that the ambuscade was judiciously planned, and the expectations of its success, well founded.[8] While these things were doing, the inhabitants of the village were busily employed in removing to the fort and preparing for its defense. A single glance at the situation of the parties led on by Mason and Ogal, convinced them of the overwhelming force of the [163] Indians, and the impossibility of maintaining an open contest with them. And so quick had been the happening of the events which have been narrated, that the gates of the fort were scarcely closed, before the Indian army appeared under its walls, with a view to its reduction by storm.[9] But before the assault was begun to be made, the attention of the garrison was directed to a summons for its surrender, made by that infamous renegado, Simon Girty.[10] This worse than savage wretch, appeared at the end window of a house not far from the fort, and told them, that he had come with a large army to escort to Detroit, such of the Inhabitants along the frontier, as were willing to accept the terms offered by Governor Hamilton, to those who would renounce the cause of the colonies and attach themselves to the interest of Great Britain; calling upon them to remember their fealty to their sovereign; assuring them of protection, if they would join his standard, and denouncing upon them, all the woes which spring from the uncurbed indulgence of savage vengeance, if they dared to resist, or fire one gun to the annoyance of his men. He then read to them, Gov. Hamilton's proclamation; and told them, he could allow only fifteen minutes to consider of his proposition. It was enough. In love with liberty, attached to their country, and without faith in his proffered protection, they required but little time to "deliberate, which of the two to choose, slavery or death." Col. Zane replied to him, "that they had consulted their wives and children, and that all were resolved to perish, sooner than place themselves under the protection of a savage army with him at its head, or abjure the cause of liberty and of the colonies." Girty then represented to them the great force of the Indians,--the impossibility that the fort could withstand the assault,--the certainty of protection if they acceded to his propositions, and the difficulty of restraining the assailants, if enraged and roused to vengeance by opposition and resistance. A shot discharged at him from the fort, caused him to withdraw from the window and the Indians commenced the assault. There were then in the fort but thirty-three men, to defend it against the attack of upwards of three hundred and eighty Indians; and bravely did they maintain their situation against the superior force of the enemy, and all that art and fury could effect to accomplish their destruction. For twenty-three hours, all was life, and energy, and activity within the walls. Every individual had particular duties to perform; and promptly and faithfully were they discharged. The more expert of the women, took stations by the side of the men; and handling their guns with soldier like readiness, aided in the repulse, with fearless intrepidity.[11] Some were engaged in moulding bullets; others in loading and supplying the [164] men with guns already charged; while the less robust were employed in cooking, and in furnishing to the combatants, provisions and water, during the continuance of the attack. It seemed indeed, as if each individual were sensible, that the safety of all depended on his lone exertions; and that the slightest relaxation of these, would involve them all in one common ruin. Finding that they could make no impression on the fort, and fearing to remain longer before it, lest their retreat might be cut off, by reinforcements from the surrounding country, the assailants fired all the houses without the walls; killed all the stock, which could be found; and destroying every thing on which they could lay their hands, retired about day light, and left the garrison in possession of the fortress, but deprived of almost every thing else. The alarm of the presence of Indians having been given after day light, and the attack on the fort commencing before sun rise, but little time was afforded them, for securing their moveable property. The greater part had taken with them nothing but their clothes, while some had left their homes with their night apparel only. Few were left the enjoyment of a bed, or the humble gratification of the coarse repast of bread and milk. Their distress was consequently great; and their situation for some time, not much more enviable, than when pent within the fort, and straining every nerve to repel its savage assailants. Before this, the Governor had sent to Col. Andrew Swearingen, a quantity of ammunition for the defence of those who remained in the country above Wheeling. By his exertions, and under his superintendence, Bolling's and Holliday's old forts were repaired, and the latter made strong enough to serve as a magazine. In it was collected, all the inhabitants from its neighborhood; and it was generally regarded, as a strong position, and able, occasionally, to detach part of its garrison, for the aid of other portions of the country. Soon after the attack was begun to be made on Wheeling, the alarm reached Shepherd's fort, and a runner was despatched from thence to Holliday's fort with the intelligence, and the apprehension that if speedy relief were not afforded, the garrison at Wheeling must fall. No expectation, of being able to collect a force sufficient to cope with the assailants, was entertained. All that was expected was, to throw succours into the fort, and thus enable the garrison the more successfully to repel assaults, and preserve it from the violence of the Indian onsets. For this purpose, Col. Swearingen left Holliday's with fourteen men, who nobly volunteered to accompany him in this hazardous enterprise, to the regret of those who remained, from an apprehension that thus weakened, if Holliday's fort were attacked it must fall easily into the hands of the enemy. These men got into a large _continental canoe_, and plied their paddles industriously, to arrive in time to be of service to the besieged. But the night being dark, and a dense fog hanging over the river, they toiled to great disadvantage, frequently coming in contact with the banks; until [165] at length it was thought advisable to cease rowing and float with the current, lest they might, unknowingly, pass Wheeling, and at the appearance of day be obliged to contend with the force of the stream, to regain that point. Floating slowly, they at length descried the light which proceeded from the burning of the houses at Wheeling, and with all their exertion could not then attain their destination before the return of day. Could they have realized their expectation of arriving before day, they might from, the river bank, in the darkness of the night, have gained admission into the fort; but being frustrated in this, they landed some of the men near above Wheeling, to reconnoiter and ascertain the situation of things: it being doubtful to them, from the smoke and fog, whether the fort and all, were not a heap of ruins. Col. Swearingen, Cap. Bilderbock and William Boshears, volunteered for this service, and proceeding cautiously soon reached the fort. When arrived there, it was still questionable whether the Indians had abandoned the attack, or were only lying concealed in the cornfield, in order to fall on any, who might come out from the fort, under the impression that danger was removed from them. Fearing that the latter was the case, it was thought prudent, not to give the preconcerted signal for the remainder of Col. Swearingen's party to come on, lest it might excite the Indians to greater vigilance and they intercept the men on their way to the fort. To obviate the difficulty arising from this apprehension, Col. Swearingen, Capt. Bilderbock and William Boshears, taking a circuitous route to avoid passing near the cornfield, returned to their companions, and escorted them to Wheeling. It then remained to ascertain whether the Indians had really withdrawn, or were only lying in ambush. A council, consisting of Col. Zane, Col. Shepherd, Doctor McMahon and Col. Swearingen, being requested to devise some expedient by which to be assured of the fact, recommended that two of their most active and vigilant men, should go out openly from the fort, and carelessly, but surely, examine the cornfield near to the palisade. Upon their return, twenty others, under the guidance of Col. Zane, marched round at some distance from the field, and approaching it more nearly on their return, became assured that the Indians had indeed despaired of success, and were withdrawn from the field. About this time Major M'Cullough arrived with forty-five men, and they all proceeded to view the battle ground. Here was indeed a pitiable sight. Twenty-three of the men who had accompanied Capts. Mason and Ogal in the preceding morning, were lying dead; few of them had been shot, but the greater part, most inhumanly and barbarously butchered with the tomahawk and scalping knife. Upwards of three hundred head of cattle, horses, and hogs, wantonly killed by the savages, were seen lying about the field, and all the houses, with every thing which they contained, and which could not be conveniently taken off by the enemy, were but heaps of ashes. It was long indeed, before the [166] inhabitants of that neighborhood regained the comforts, of which that night's desolation had deprived them. Soon after the happening of these events a company of militia under the command of Capt. Foreman, arrived from east of the Alleghany, to afford protection to the settlements around Wheeling, and occupy the fort at this place. While stationed in it, it was known that parties of Indians were still lurking about, seeking opportunities of doing mischief, and to prevent which, detachments were frequently sent on scouting expeditions. On the 26th of September, Capt. Foreman with forty five men, went about twelve miles below Wheeling and encamped for the night. He was ignorant of the practices of the Indians, and seemed rather indisposed to take council of those, who were conversant with them. After building fires for the night, he remained with his men close around them, contrary to the advice of one of the settlers, by the name of Lynn, who had accompanied him as a spy. Lynn however, would not consent to remain there himself, but taking with him those of the frontiers men who were in company, retired some distance from the fires, and spent the night. Before it was yet light, Lynn, being awake, thought he heard such a noise, as would be probably produced by the launching of rafts on the river, above the position occupied by Capt. Foreman. In the morning he communicated his suspicion that an Indian force was near them, and advised the Captain to return to Wheeling along the hill sides and avoid the bottoms. His advice was rejected; but Lynn, with the caution of one used to such a condition of things, prudently kept on the hill side with four others, while they, who belonged to the command of Capt. Foreman, continued along the level at the base of the hill. In marching along the Grave creek narrows, one of the soldiers saw a parcel of Indian ornaments lying in the path; and picking them up, soon drew around him the greater part of the company. While thus crowded together inspecting the trinkets, a galling fire was opened on them by a party of Indians who lay in ambush, and which threw them into great confusion. The fire was continued with deadly effect, for some minutes; and must eventually have caused the loss of the whole party, but that Lynn, with his few comrades rushed from the hill discharging their guns, and shouting so boisterously, as induced the Indians to believe that a reinforcement was at hand, and they precipitately retreated. In this fatal ambuscade there were twenty-one of Captain Foreman's party killed, and several much wounded; among the slain were the Captain and his two sons. It appeared that the Indians had dropped their ornaments, purposely to attract the attention of the whites; while they themselves were lying concealed in two parties; the one to the right of the path, in a sink-hole on the bottom, and the other to the left, under covert of the river bank. From these advantageous positions, they [167] fired securely on our men; while they were altogether exempt from danger 'till the party in the sink hole was descried by Lynn. His firing was not known to have taken effect; but to his good conduct is justly attributable the saving of the remnant of the detachment. The Indian force was never ascertained. It was supposed to have been small; not exceeding twenty warriors. On the ensuing day, the inhabitants of the neighborhood of Wheeling under the direction and guidance of Colonel Zane, proceeded to Grave Creek and buried those who had fallen.[12] At the time of the happening of those occurrences the belief was general, that the army which had been led to Wheeling by Girty, had been ordered on, for the purpose of conducting the tories from the settlements to Detroit; and that detachments from that army continued to hover about the frontiers for some time, to effect that object. There was then, unfortunately for the repose and tranquility of many neighborhoods, a considerable number of those misguided and deluded wretches, who, disaffected to the cause of the colonies, were willing to advance the interest of Britain, by the sacrifice of every social relation, and the abandonment of every consideration, save that of loyalty to the king. So far did their opposition, to those who espoused the cause of American liberty, blunt every finer and more noble feeling, that many of them were willing to imbrue their hands in the blood of their neighbors, in the most sly and secret manner, and in the hour of midnight darkness, for no offence but attachment to the independence of the colonies. A conspiracy for the murder of the whigs and for accepting the terms, offered by the Governor of Canada to those who would renounce their allegiance to the United States and repair to Detroit, by the relenting of one individual, was prevented being carried into effect; and many were consequently saved from horrors, equalling, if not transcending in enormity, the outrages of the savages themselves. Scenes of licentiousness and fury, followed upon the discovery of the plot.--Exasperated at its heinousness, and under the influence of resentful feelings, the whigs retaliated upon the tories, some of the evils which these had conspired to inflict upon them. In the then infuriated state of their minds, and the little restraint at that time imposed on the passions by the operation of the laws, it is really matter of admiration that they did not proceed farther, and requite upon those deluded wretches, the full measure of their premeditated wrongs. The head only of this fiendish league, lost his life; but many depredations were committed, on the property of its members. A court, for the trial of the conspirants, was held at Redstone Fort; and many of them were arraigned at its bar. But as their object had been defeated by its discovery, and as no farther danger was apprehended from them, they were released, after having been required to take the oath of allegiance to the United States and to bear with the injuries which had [168] been done their property. Those who were suspected for the murder of the chief conspirator, were likewise arraigned for that offence, but were acquitted. Hitherto the inhabitants of Tygart's Valley had escaped the ill effects of savage enmity; Indian hostility not having prompted an incursion into that country, since its permanent settlement was effected previous to the war of 1774. This however had not the effect to lull them into confident security. Ascribing their fortunate exemption from irruptions of the enemy, to other causes than a willingness on the part of the Indians, to leave them in quiet and repose, they exercised the utmost vigilance to discover their approach, and used every precaution to ensure them safety, if the enemy should appear among them. Spies were regularly employed in watching the warriors paths beyond the settlements, to detect their advance and to apprize the inhabitants of it. In September of this year (1777) Leonard Petro and Wm. White, being engaged in watching the path leading up the Little Kenhawa, killed an Elk late in the evening; and taking part of it with them, withdrew a short distance for the purpose of eating their suppers and spending the night. About midnight, White, awaking from sleep, discovered by the light of the moon, that there were several Indians near, who had been drawn in quest of them by the report of the gun in the evening. He saw at a glance, the impossibility of escaping by flight; and preferring captivity to death, he whispered to Petro to lie still, lest any movement of his, might lead to this result. In a few minutes the Indians sprang on them; and White raising himself as one lay hold on him, aimed a furious blow, with his tomahawk, hoping to wound the Indian by whom he was beset, and then make his escape. Missing his aim he affected to have been ignorant of the fact that he was encountered by Indians, professed great joy at meeting with them, and declared that he was then on his way to their towns. They were not deceived by the artifice; for although he assumed an air of pleasantness and gaity, calculated to win upon their confidence, yet the woful countenance and rueful expression of poor Petro, convinced them that White's conduct was feigned, that he might lull them into inattention, and they be enabled to effect an escape. They were both tied for the night; and in the morning White being painted red, and Petro black, they were forced to proceed to the Indian towns. When approaching a [169] village, the whoop of success brought several to meet them; and on their arrival at it, they found that every preparation was made for their running the gauntlet; in going through which ceremony both were much bruised. White did not however remain long in captivity. Eluding their vigilance, he took one of their guns and began his flight homeward.--Before he had travelled far, he met an Indian on horseback, whom he succeeded in shooting; and mounting the horse from which he fell, his return to the Valley was much facilitated. Petro was never heard of afterwards. The painting of him black, had indicated their intention of killing him; and the escape of White probably hastened his doom. During this time, and after the return of White among them, the inhabitants of Tygart's Valley practiced their accustomed watchfulness 'till about the twentieth of November; when there was a considerable fall of snow. This circumstance induced them to believe, that the savages would not attempt an irruption among them until the return of spring; and they became consequently, inattentive to their safety. Generally, the settlements enjoyed perfect quiet from the first appearance of winter, until the return of spring. In this interval of time, the Indians are usually deterred from penetrating into them, as well because of their great exposure to discovery and observation in consequence of the nakedness of the woods and the increased facility of pursuing their trail in the snows which then usually covered the earth, as of the suffering produced by their lying in wait and travelling, in their partially unclothed condition, in this season of intense cold. Instances of their being troublesome during the winter were rare indeed; and never occurred, but under very peculiar circumstances: the inhabitants, were therefore, not culpably remiss, when they relaxed in their vigilance, and became exposed to savage inroad. A party of twenty Indians, designing to commit some depredations during the fall, had nearly reached the upper end of Tygart's Valley, when the snow, which had inspired the inhabitants with confidence in their security, commenced falling. Fearful of laying themselves open to detection, if they ventured to proceed farther at that time, and anxious to effect some mischief before they returned home, they remained concealed about ten miles from the settlements, until the snow disappeared. On the 15th of December, they came to the [170] house of Darby Connoly, at the upper extremity of the Valley, and killed him, his wife and several of the children, and took three others prisoners. Proceeding to the next house, killed John Stewart, his wife and child, and took Miss Hamilton (sister-in-law to Stewart) into captivity. They then immediately changed their direction, and with great dispatch, entered upon their journey home; with the captives and plunder, taken at those two places. In the course of the evening after these outrages were committed, John Hadden passing by the House of Connoly saw a tame elk belonging there, lying dead in the yard. This, and the death-like silence which reigned around, excited his fears that all was not right; and entering into the house, he saw the awful desolation which had been committed. Seeing that the work of blood had been but recently done, he hastened to alarm the neighborhood, and sent an express to Capt. Benjamin Wilson, living about twenty miles lower in the Valley, with the melancholy intelligence. With great promptitude, Capt. Wilson went through the settlement, exerting himself to procure as many volunteers, as would justify going in pursuit of the aggressors; and so indefatigable was he in accomplishing his purpose, that, on the day after the murders were perpetrated, he appeared on the theatre of their exhibition with thirty men, prepared to take the trail and push forward in pursuit of the savages. For five days they followed through cold and wet, without perceiving that they had gained upon them. At this time many of the men expressed a determination to return. They had suffered much, travelled far, and yet saw no prospect of overtaking the enemy. It is not wonderful that they became dispirited. In order to expedite their progress, the numerous water courses which lay across their path, swollen to an unusual height and width, were passed without any preparation to avoid getting wet; the consequence was that after wading one of them, they would have to travel with icicles hanging from their clothes the greater part of a day, before an opportunity could be allowed of drying them. They suffered much too for the want of provisions. The short time afforded for preparation, had not admitted of their taking with them as much as they expected would be required, as they had already been on the chase longer than was anticipated. Under these circumstances it was with great difficulty, Captain Wilson could prevail [171] on them to continue the pursuit one day longer; hoping the Indians would have to halt, in order to hunt for food. Not yet being sensible that they gained upon them, the men positively refused going farther; and they returned to their several homes. This was the last outrage committed by the savages on North Western Virginia, in this year. And although there was not as much mischief effected by them in this season, as had been in others, yet the year 1777, has become memorable in the annals of Border Warfare. The murder of Cornstalk and his companions,--the attack on Wheeling Fort,--the loss of lives and destruction of property which then took place, together with the fatal ambuscade at Grave Creek Narrows, all conspired to render it a period of much interest, and to impress its incidents deeply on the minds of those who were actors in these scenes. ----- [1] This "year of the three sevens," as it was called, was long known as "the bloody year" of border history.--R. G. T. [2] General Hand was commandant, and George Morgan Indian agent, at Fort Pitt. Runners from the Moravian towns on the Tuscarawas and Muskingum rivers, in Ohio, frequently came into the fort during the summer, with dispatches for either of these officials. The Delawares, as a nation, were friendly throughout the year. The hostiles were chiefly composed of Wyandots and Mingoes, but with them were a few Shawnees and Delawares.--R. G. T. [3] The first fort at Wheeling was built in the summer of 1774, by order of Lord Dunmore, under direction of Majors William Crawford and Angus McDonald. It stood upon the Ohio bank about a quarter of a mile above the entrance of Wheeling Creek. Standing in open ground, it was a parallelogram of square pickets pointed at top, with bastions and sentry boxes at the angles, and enclosed over half an acre. It ranked in strength and importance, next to Fort Pitt. Within the fort were log barracks, an officers' house, a storehouse, a well, and cabins for families. A steep hill rises not far inland; between the fort and the base of this hill the forest had been leveled, and a few log cabins were nestled in the open. Such was Wheeling in 1777. At first the fort had been called Fincastle, for the Ohio Valley settlements were then in Fincastle County, Va.; but upon the opening of the Revolution the post, now in Ohio County, was named Fort Henry, in honor of the first state governor of Virginia.--R. G. T. [4] News came to Fort Pitt, early in August, that an Indian attack in force, on Wheeling, might be expected at any time. Says the Shane MSS., "White Eyes came to Fort Pitt and told them the Indians were going to take Wheeling home." August 2d, Gen. Hand wrote to David Shepherd, lieutenant of Ohio County, warning him of the perilous situation, and ordering him to leave his own fort, six miles from Fort Henry, and to rally at the latter all the militia between the Ohio and Monongahela,--the "pan-handle." Shepherd did this, and by the close of the month Fort Henry was, as he said, "Indian proof." But the non-arrival of the foe caused a relaxation of vigilance. Nine companies were allowed to go home, and by the last day of August only two companies remained in the fort, those of Capts. Joseph Ogle and Samuel Mason.--R. G. T. [5] Shepherd to Hand, Sept. 15, 1777: "By the best judges here ... it is thought their numbers must have been not less than between two and three hundred." The Shepherd, Hand, Shane, and Doddridge MSS., in the library of the Wisconsin Historical Society, throw much light on this episode.--R. G. T. [6] The Indians made their appearance on the night of August 31st--not September 1st, as in the text. The incident here related occurred at about sunrise of September 1st. Andrew Zane, young John Boyd, Samuel Tomlinson, and a negro, set out to hunt for the horses of Dr. James McMechen, because the latter wished that day to return to the older settlements, either on the Monongahela, or east of the mountains. Boyd was killed, but his companions escaped--Zane, by leaping from a cliff, the height of which local tradition places at seventy feet.--R. G. T. [7] De Hass, in his _History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of West Virginia_,--a conscientious work, which depends, however, too closely on traditions,--says (p. 225), "out of the fourteen, but two escaped."--R. G. T. [8] Among the survivors was Ogle who, like Mason, hid himself in the bushes until nightfall enabled him to return to the fort.--R. G. T. [9] As a matter of fact, the Indians made no attack on the fort at this time, being content with the success of their ambuscade. After throwing up some rude earth-works and blinds, scalping the dead whites, killing all the live stock within reach, and setting fire to the outlying cabins, they retired across the Ohio in the night, and dispersed. Their loss was one killed and nine wounded; the whites lost fifteen killed and five wounded. The next day (September 2), the whites buried their dead, and unavailingly scoured the country for Indians. Tradition has made sad havoc with the records, in regard to this first "siege" of Wheeling. Some of the deeds of heroism related below, by Withers, were incidents of the second siege--September 11, 1782, seven years later; but most of them are purely mythical, or belong to other localities. Perhaps no events in Western history have been so badly mutilated by tradition, as these two sieges.--R. G. T. [10] This statement of Withers, that Simon Girty was at the siege of Wheeling, was long accepted as fact by Western historians. But it is now established beyond doubt, that neither Simon nor his brothers were present at that affair, being at the time in the employ of Indian Agent Morgan, at Fort Pitt. For details of the evidence, consult Butterfield's _History of the Girtys_, _passim_.--R. G. T. [11] [163] The notes furnished the compiler, mention particularly a Mrs. Glum and Betsy Wheat, as performing all the duties of soldiers with firmness and alacrity. ------ _Comment by R. G. T._--Withers derived his information from traditional notes in the possession of Noah Zane, son of Ebenezer. [12] After the affair at Wheeling, September 1, the Indians returned home. But soon thereafter, Half King, head chief of the Wyandots, set out with forty of that tribe to again harry the Wheeling country. On the morning of the 26th, Capts. William Foreman with twenty-four men, Ogle with ten men, and William Linn with nine, started from Fort Henry on a scout. Linn was ranking officer, although there was little discipline. Foreman was a new arrival from Hampshire County, enlisted to go on Hand's intended expedition. They intended crossing the Ohio at Grave Creek, 12 miles below, and proceeding 8 miles farther down to Captina. At Grave, however, they found that the Tomlinson settlement (nucleus of the present Mound City, W. Va.) had been abandoned, and sacked by Indians, and no canoes were to be had. They camped for the night, and the next morning (the 27th) started to return along the river bank, to Wheeling. Linn, apprehensive of Indians, marched along the hill crest, but Ogle and Foreman kept to the trail along the bottom. At a point where the bottom narrows because of the close approach of the hills to the river--a defile then known as McMechen's (or McMahon's) Narrows--they were set upon by Half King's party, awaiting them in ambush. Foreman and twenty others were killed, and one captured. The story about Linn's gallant attack on the Indians from his vantage point on the hilltop, is without foundation. His party helped to secrete a wounded man who escaped in the melee, and then put off in hot haste for home. It was not until four days later, when reinforcements had arrived from Fort Pitt, that Colonel Shepherd ventured from the fort to bury the dead. In 1835, an inscribed stone was set up at the Narrows, to commemorate the slain.--R. G. T. [172] CHAPTER X. After the winter became so severe as to prevent the Indians from penetrating the country and committing farther aggression, the inhabitants became assured of safety, and devoted much of their time to the erection of new forts, the strengthening of those which had been formerly established, and the making of other preparations, deemed necessary to prevent the repetition of those distressing occurrences, which had spread gloom and sorrow over almost every part of North Western Virginia. That the savages would early renew their exertions to destroy the frontier settlements, and harrass their citizens, could not for an instant be doubted.--Revenge for the murder of Cornstalk, and the other chiefs killed in the fort by the whites, had operated to unite the warlike nation of the Shawanees in a league with the other Indians, against them; and every circumstance seemed to promise increased exertions on their part, to accomplish their purposes of blood and devastation. Notwithstanding all which had been suffered during the preceding season; and all, which it was confidently anticipated, would have to be undergone after the return of spring, yet did the whole frontier increase in population, and in capacity to defend itself against the encroachments of a savage enemy, aided by British emissaries, and led on by American tories. The accession to its strength, caused by the number of emigrants, who came into the different settlements, was indeed considerable; yet it was insufficient, to enable the inhabitants to purchase by offensive operations, exemption from [173] invasion, or security from the tomahawk and scalping knife. Assured of this, Virginia extended to them farther assistance; and a small body of regular troops, under the command of General McIntosh, was appropriated to their defence. In the spring of 1778, General McIntosh,[1] with the regulars and some militiamen, attached to his command, descended the Ohio river from Fort Pitt, to the mouth of Big Beaver--a creek discharging itself into that river from the north-west.[2] This was a favorable position, at which to station his troops to effect the partial security of the frontier, by intercepting parties of Indians on their way to the settlements on the opposite side of the river, and by pursuing and punishing them while engaged, either in committing havoc, or in retreating to their towns, after the consummation of their horrid purposes. Fort McIntosh was accordingly erected here, and garrisoned; a six pounder mounted for its defence. From Wheeling to Point Pleasant, a distance of one hundred and eighty-six miles,[3] there was then no obstacle whatever, presented to the advance of Indian war parties, into the settlements on the East and West Forks of the Monongahela, and their branches. The consequences of this exposure had been always severely felt; and never more so than after the establishment of Fort McIntosh. Every impediment to their invasion of one part of the country, caused more frequent irruptions into others, where no difficulties were interposed to check their progress, and brought heavier woes on them.--This had been already experienced, in the settlements on the upper branches of the Monongahela, and as they were the last to feel the effects of savage enmity in 1777, so were they first to become sacrificed to its fury in 1778. Anticipating the commencement of hostilities at an earlier period of the season, than usual, several families retired into Harbert's block-house, on Ten Mile (a branch of the West Fork,) in the month of February. And notwithstanding the prudent caution manifested by them in the step thus taken; yet, the state of the weather lulling them into false security, they did not afterwards exercise the vigilance and provident care, which were necessary to ensure their future safety. On the third of March, some children, playing with a crippled crow, at a short distance from the yard, espied a number of Indians proceeding towards them; and running briskly to the house, told "that a number of _red men_ were close by."--[174] John Murphey stepped to the door to see if danger had really approached, when one of the Indians, turning the corner of the house, fired at him. The ball took effect, and Murphey fell back into the house. The Indian springing directly in, was grappled by Harbert, and thrown on the floor. A shot from without, wounded Harbert, yet he continued to maintain his advantage over the prostrate savage, striking him as effectually as he could with his tomahawk, when another gun was fired at him from without the house. The ball passed through his head, and he fell lifeless. His antagonist then slipped out at the door, sorely wounded in the encounter. Just after the first Indian had entered, an active young warrior, holding in his hand a tomahawk with a long spike at the end, also came in. Edward Cunningham instantly drew up his gun to shoot him; but it flashed, and they closed in doubtful strife. Both were active and athletic; and sensible of the high prize for which they were contending, each put forth his utmost strength, and strained his every nerve, to gain the ascendency. For a while, the issue seemed doubtful. At length, by great exertion, Cunningham wrenched the tomahawk from the hand of the Indian, and buried the spike end to the handle, in his back. Mrs. Cunningham closed the contest. Seeing her husband struggling closely with the savage, she struck at him with an axe. The edge wounding his face severely, he loosened his hold, and made his way out of the house. The third Indian, which had entered before the door was closed, presented an appearance almost as frightful as the object which he had in view. He wore a cap made of the unshorn front of a buffalo, with the ears and horns still attached to it, and which hanging loosely about his head, gave to him a most hideous aspect. On entering the room, this infernal monster, aimed a blow with his tomahawk at a Miss Reece, which alighting on her head, wounded her severely. The mother of this girl, seeing the uplifted arm about to descend on her daughter, seized the monster by the horns; but his false head coming readily off, she did not succeed in changing the direction of the weapon. The father then caught hold of him; but far inferior in strength and agility, he was soon thrown on the floor, and must have been killed, but for the timely interference of Cunningham. Having [175] succeeded in ridding the room of one Indian, he wheeled, and sunk a tomahawk into the head of the other. During all this time the door was kept by the women, tho' not without great exertion. The Indians from without endeavored several times to force it open and gain admittance; and would at one time have succeeded, but that, as it was yielding to their effort to open it, the Indian, who had been wounded by Cunningham and his wife, squeezing out at the aperture which had been made, caused a momentary relaxation of the exertions of those without, and enabled the women again to close it, and prevent the entrance of others.--These were not however, unemployed. They were engaged in securing such of the children in the yard, as were capable of being carried away as prisoners, and in killing and scalping the others; and when they had effected this, despairing of being able to do farther mischief, they retreated to their towns. Of the whites in the house, one only was killed and four were wounded; and seven or eight children in the yard, were killed or taken prisoners. One Indian was killed, and two badly wounded. Had Reece engaged sooner in the conflict, the other two who had entered the house, would no doubt have been likewise killed; but being a quaker, he looked on, without participating in the conflict, until his daughter was wounded. Having then to contend singly, with superior prowess, he was indebted for the preservation of his life, to the assistance of those whom he refused to aid in pressing need. On the eleventh of April, some Indians visited the house of Wm. Morgan, at the Dunkard bottom of Cheat river. They there killed a young man by the name of Brain, Mrs. Morgan, (the mother of William) and her grand daughter, and Mrs. Dillon and her two children; and took Mrs. Morgan (the wife) and her child prisoners. When, on their way home, they came near to Pricket's fort, they bound Mrs. Morgan to a bush, and went in quest of a horse for her to ride, leaving her child with her. She succeeded in untying with her teeth, the bands which confined her, and wandered the balance of that day and part of the next before she came in sight of the fort. Here she was kindly treated and in a few days sent home. Some men going out from Pricket's fort some short time after, found at the spot where Mrs. Morgan had [176] been left by the Indians, a fine mare stabbed to the heart.--Exasperated at the escape of Mrs. Morgan, they had no doubt vented their rage on the animal which they had destined to bear her weight. In the last of April, a party of about twenty Indians came to the neighborhoods of Hacker's creek and the West Fork. At this time the inhabitants of those neighborhoods had removed to West's fort, on the creek, and to Richards' fort on the river; and leaving the women and children in them during the day, under the protection of a few men, the others were in the habit of performing the usual labors of their farms in companies, so as to preserve them from attacks of the Indians. A company of men, being thus engaged, the first week of May, in a field, now owned by Minter Bailey, on Hacker's creek, and being a good deal dispersed in various occupations, some fencing, others clearing, and a few ploughing, they were unexpectedly fired upon by the Indians, and Thomas Hughes and Jonathan Lowther shot down: the others being incautiously without arms fled for safety. Two of the company, having the Indians rather between them and West's fort, ran directly to Richards', as well for their own security as to give the alarm there. But they had been already apprized that the enemy was at hand. Isaac Washburn, who had been to mill on Hacker's creek the day before, on his return to Richards' fort and near to where Clement's mill now stands, was shot from his horse, tomahawked and scalped. The finding of his body, thus cruelly mangled, had given them the alarm, and they were already on their guard, before the two men from Hacker's creek arrived with the intelligence of what had been done there. The Indians then left the neighborhood without effecting more havoc; and the whites were too weak to go in pursuit, and molest them. The determination of the Shawanees to revenge the death of their Sachem, had hitherto been productive of no very serious consequences. A while after his murder, a small band of them made their appearance near the fort at Point Pleasant; and Lieutenant Moore was dispatched from the garrison, with some men, to drive them off. Upon his advance, they commenced retreating; and the officer commanding the detachment, fearing they would escape, ordered a quick pursuit. He did not proceed far before he fell into an ambuscade. He and three of his men were killed at the first [177] fire;--the rest of the party saved themselves by a precipitate flight to the fort. In the May following this transaction, a few Indians again came in sight of the fort. But as the garrison had been very much reduced by the removal of Captain Arbuckle's company, and the experience of the last season had taught them prudence, Captain McKee forbore to detach any of his men in pursuit of them. Disappointed, in their expectations of enticing others to destruction, as they had Lieutenant Moore in the winter, the Indians suddenly rose from their covert, and presented an unbroken line, extending from the Ohio to the Kanawha river in front of the fort. A demand for the surrender of the garrison, was then made; and Captain McKee asked 'till the next morning to consider of it. In the course of the night, the men were busily employed in bringing water from the river, expecting that the Indians would continue before the fort for some time. In the morning, Captain McKee sent his answer by the grenadier squaw, (sister to Cornstalk, and who, notwithstanding the murder of her brother and nephew, was still attached to the whites, and was remaining at the fort in the capacity of interpreter)[4] that he could not comply with their demand.--The Indians immediately began the attack, and for one week kept the garrison closely besieged. Finding however, that they made no impression on the fort, they collected the cattle about it and instead of returning towards their own country with the plunder, proceeded up the Kanawha river towards the Greenbrier settlement. Believing their object to be the destruction of that settlement, and knowing from their great force that they would certainly accomplish it, if the inhabitants were unadvised of their approach, Captain McKee despatched two men to Col. Andrew Donnelly's, (then the frontier house,) with the intelligence. These men soon came in view of the Indians; but finding that they were advancing in detached groups, and dispersed in hunting parties, through the woods, they despaired of being able to pass them, and returned to the fort. Captain McKee then made an appeal to the chivalry of the garrison, and asked, "who would risk his life to save the people of Greenbrier." John Pryor and Philip Hammond, at once stepped forward, and replied "WE WILL." They were then habited after the Indian manner, and painted in Indian style by the Grenadier Squaw, and departed on their hazardous, but noble and generous undertaking. Travelling, night and day, with great rapidity, they [178] passed the Indians at Meadow river, and arrived, about sunset of that day at Donnelly's fort, twenty miles farther on. As soon as the intelligence of the approach of the Indians, was communicated by these men, Col. Donnelly had the neighbors all advised of it; and in the course of the night, they collected at his house. He also dispatched a messenger to Capt. John Stuart, to acquaint him with the fact; and made every preparation to resist attack and ensure their safety, of which his situation admitted. Pryor and Hammond told them how, by the precaution of Captain McKee, the garrison at Point Pleasant had been saved from suffering by the want of water; and advised them to lay in a plentiful supply, of that necessary article. A hogshead was accordingly filled and rolled behind the door of the kitchen, which adjoined the dwelling house. Early next morning, John Pritchet (a servant to Col. Donnelly) went out for some firewood, and while thus engaged, was fired at and killed. The Indians then ran into the yard, and endeavored to force open the kitchen door; but Hammond and Dick Pointer (a negro belonging to Col. Donnelly) who were the only persons within, aided by the hogshead of water, prevented their accomplishing this object. They next proceeded to cut it in pieces, with their tomahawks. Hammond seeing that they would soon succeed in this way, with the assistance of Dick, rolled the hogshead to one side, and letting the door suddenly fly open, killed the Indian at the threshold, and the others who were near gave way. Dick then fired among them, with a musket heavily charged with swan shot, and no doubt with effect, as the yard was crowded with the enemy; a war club with a swan shot in it, was afterwards picked up near the door. The men in the house, who were asleep at the commencement of the attack, being awakened at the firing of Hammond and Dick, now opened a galling fire upon the Indians. Being chiefly up stairs they were enabled to do greater execution, and fired with such effect that, about one o'clock, the enemy retired a small distance from the house. Before they retired however, some of them succeeded in getting under the floor, when they were aided by the whites below in raising some of the puncheons of which it was made. It was to their advantage to do this; and well did they profit by it. Several of the Indians were killed in this attempt to gain admittance, while only one of the whites received a wound, which but slightly injured his hand. When intelligence was conveyed to Capt. Stuart of the approach of so large a body of savages, Col. Samuel Lewis was with him; and they both exerted themselves to save the settlement from destruction, by collecting the inhabitants at a fort where Lewisburg now stands. Having succeeded in this, they sent two men to Donnelly's to learn whether the Indians had advanced that far. As they approached, the firing became distinctly audible, and they returned [179] with the tidings. Capt. Stuart and Col. Lewis proposed marching to the relief of Donnelly's fort, with as many men as were willing to accompany them; and in a brief space of time, commenced their march at the head of sixty-six men. Pursuing the most direct route without regarding the road, they approached the house on the back side; and thus escaped an ambuscade of Indians placed near the road to intercept and cut off any assistance which might be sent from the upper settlements. Adjoining the yard, there was a field of well grown rye, into which the relief from Lewisburg, entered about two o'clock; but as the Indians had withdrawn to a distance from the house, there was no firing heard. They soon however, discovered the savages in the field, looking intently towards Donnoly's; and it was resolved to pass them. Capt. Stuart and Charles Gatliff fired at them, and the whole party rushed forward into the yard, amid a heavy discharge of balls from the savage forces. The people in the fort hearing the firing in the rear of the house, soon presented themselves at the port holes, to resist, what they supposed, was a fresh attack on them; but quickly discovering the real cause, they opened the gates, and all the party led on by Stuart and Lewis, safely entered. The Indians then resumed the attack, and maintained a constant fire at the house, until near dark, when one of them approached, and in broken English called out, "we want peace." He was told to come in and he should have it; but he declined the invitation to enter, and they all retreated, dragging off those of their slain, who lay not too near the fort. Of the whites, four only were killed by the enemy. Pritchet, before the attack commenced,--James Burns and Alexander Ochiltree, as they were coming to the house early in the morning,--and James Graham while in the fort. It was impossible to ascertain the entire loss of the Indians. Seventeen lay dead in the yard; and they were known to carry off others of their slain. Perhaps the disparity of the killed, equalled, if it did not exceed the disparity of the number engaged. There were twenty-one men at Donnoly's fort, before the arrival of the reinforcement under Stuart and Lewis; and the brunt of the battle was over before they came. The Indian force exceeded two hundred men. It was believed, that the invasion of the Greenbrier country had been projected, some time before it actually was made. During the preceding season, an Indian calling himself John Hollis, had been very much through the settlement; and was known to take particular notice of the different forts, which he entered under the garb of friendship. He was with the Indians in the attack on Donnoly's fort; and was recognized as one of those who were left dead in the yard. On the morning after the Indians departed, Capt. Hamilton went in pursuit of them with seventy men; but following two days, without [180] perceiving that he gained on them, he abandoned the chase and returned. About the middle of June, three women went out from West's fort, to gather greens in a field adjoining; and while thus engaged were attacked by four Indians, lying in wait. One gun only was fired, and the ball from it, passed through the bonnet of Mrs. Hackor, who screamed aloud and ran with the others towards the fort. An Indian, having in his hand a long staff, with a spear in one end, pursuing closely after them, thrust it at Mrs. Freeman with such violence that, entering her back just below the shoulder, it came out at her left breast. With his tomahawk, he cleft the upper part of her head, and carried it off to save the scalp. The screams of the women alarmed the men in the fort; and seizing their guns, they ran out, just as Mrs. Freeman fell. Several guns were fired at the Indian while he was getting her scalp, but with no effect. They served however, to warn the men who went out, that danger was at hand; and they quickly came in. Jesse Hughs[5] and John Schoolcraft (who were out) in making their way to the fort, came very near two Indians standing by the fence looking towards the men at West's, so intently, that they did not perceive any one near them. They however, were observed by Hughs and Schoolcraft, who, avoiding them, made their way in, safely, Hughs immediately took up his gun, and learning the fate of Mrs. Freeman, went with some others to bring in the corpse. While there, he proposed to go and shew them, how near he had approached the Indians after the alarm had been given, before he saw them. Charles and Alexander West, Chas. Hughs, James Brown and John Steeth, went with him. Before they had arrived at the place, one of the Indians was heard to howl like a wolf; and the men with Hughs moved on in the direction from which the sound proceeded. Supposing that they were then near the spot, Jesse Hughs howled in like manner, and being instantly answered, they ran to a point of the hill and looking over it, saw two Indians coming towards them. Hughs fired and one of them fell. The other took to flight. Being pursued by the whites, he sought shelter in a thicket of brush; and while they were proceeding to intercept him at his coming out, he returned by the way he had entered, and made his escape. The wounded Indian likewise got off. When the whites were in pursuit of the one who took to flight, they passed near to him who had fallen, and one of the men was for stopping and finishing him; but Hughs called to him, "he is safe--let us have the other," and they all pressed forward. On their return, however, he was gone; and although his free bleeding enabled them to pursue his track readily for a while, yet a heavy shower of rain soon falling, all trace of him was quickly lost and could not be afterwards regained. On the 16th of June as Capt. James Booth and Nathaniel Cochran, were at work in a field on Booth's creek, they were fired at by [181] the Indians. Booth fell, but Cochran, being very slightly wounded, took to flight. He was however, overtaken, and carried into captivity to their towns. From thence he was taken to Detroit, where he remained some time; and endeavoring to escape from that place, unfortunately took a path which led him immediately to the Maumee old towns. Here he was detained a while, & then sent back to Detroit, where he was exchanged, and from whence he made his way home, after having had to endure much suffering and many hardships. The loss of Booth was severely felt by the inhabitants in that settlement. He was not only an active and enterprising man, but was endowed with superior talents, and a better education than most of those who had settled in the country; and on these accounts was very much missed. In a few days after this transaction, Benjamin Shinn, Wm. Grundy, and Benjamin Washburn, returning from a lick on the head of Booth's creek, were fired on by the Indians, when near to Baxter's run. Washburn and Shinn escaped unhurt, but Grundy was killed: he was brother to Felix Grundy of Tennessee, whose father was then residing at Simpson's creek, at a farm afterwards owned by Colonel Benjamin Wilson, senior. This party of Indians continued for some days, to prowl about the neighborhood, seeking opportunities of committing murder on the inhabitants; fortunately however, with but little success. James Owens, a youth of sixteen years of age, was the only one whom they succeeded in killing after the murder of Grundy. Going from Powers' fort on Simpson's creek, to Booth's creek, his saddle girth gave way, and while he was down mending it, a ball was discharged at him, which killed both him and the horse. Seeing that the whites, in that neighborhood, had all retired to the fort; and being too weak, openly to attack it, they crossed over to Bartlett's run, and came to the house of Gilbert Hustead, who was then alone, and engaged in fixing his gun lock. Hearing a noise in the yard, for which he was unable to account, he slipped to the door, to ascertain from whence it proceeded. The Indians were immediately round it, and there was no chance for his escape. Walking out with an air of the utmost pleasantry, he held forth his hand to the one nearest him, and asked them all to walk in. While in the house he affected great cheerfulness, and by his tale [182] won their confidence and friendship. He told them that he was a King's man and unwilling to live among the rebels; for which reason, when others retired into the fort, he preferred staying at his own house, anxiously hoping for the arrival of some of the British Indians, to afford him an opportunity of getting among English friends. Learning upon enquiry, that they would be glad to have something to eat, he asked one of them to shoot a fat hog which was in the yard, that they might regale on it that night, and have some on which to subsist while travelling to their towns. In the morning, still farther to maintain the deception he was practising, he broke his furniture to pieces, saying "the rebels shall never have the good of you." He then accompanied them to their towns, acting in the same, apparently, contented and cheerful manner, 'till his sincerity was believed by all, and he obtained leave to return for his family. He succeeded in making his way home, where he remained, sore at the destruction of his property, but exulting in the success of his artifice. While this party of Indians were thus engaged, on Booth's creek and in the circumjacent country, a more numerous body had invaded the settlements lower down, and were employed in the work of destruction there. They penetrated to Coburn's creek unperceived, and were making their way (as was generally supposed) to a fort not far from Morgantown, when they fell in with a party of whites, returning from the labors of the cornfield, and then about a mile from Coburn's fort. The Indians had placed themselves on each side of the road leading to the fort, and from their covert fired on the whites, before they were aware of danger. John Woodfin being on horseback, had his thigh broken by a ball; which killed his horse and enabled them to catch him easily.--Jacob Miller was shot through the abdomen, and soon overtaken, tomahawked and scalped.--The others escaped to the fort. Woodfin was afterwards found on a considerable eminence overlooking the fort, tomahawked and scalped. The Indians had, most probably, taken him there, that he might point out to them the least impregnable part of the fortress, and in other respects give them such information, as would tend to ensure success to their meditated attack on it; but when they heard its strength and the force with which it was garrisoned, despairing of being able to reduce it, in a fit of disappointed fury, they murdered him on the spot. [183] They next made their appearance on Dunkard creek, and near to Stradler's fort. Here, as on Coburn's creek, they lay in ambush on the road side, awaiting the return of the men who were engaged at work, in some of the neighboring fields. Towards evening the men came on, carrying with them some hogs which they had killed for the use of the fort people, and on approaching where the Indians lay concealed, were fired on and several fell. Those who escaped injury from the first fire, returned the shot, and a severe action ensued. But so many of the whites had been killed before the savages exposed themselves to view, that the remainder were unable long to sustain the unequal contest. Overpowered by numbers, the few, who were still unhurt, fled precipitately to the fort, leaving eighteen of their companions dead in the road. These were scalped and mangled by the Indians in a most shocking manner, and lay some time, before the men in the fort, assured of the departure of the enemy, went out and buried them. Weakened by the severe loss sustained in this bloody skirmish, had the Indians pushed forward to attack the fort, in all human probability, it would have fallen before them. There were at that day very few settlements which could have maintained possession of a garrison for any length of time, after having suffered so great a diminution of the number of their inhabitants, against the onsets of one hundred savages, exercising their wonted energy: and still less would they be able to leave their strong holds, and cope with such superior force, in open battle. Nor were the settlements, as yet, sufficiently contiguous to each other, to admit of their acting in concert, and combining their strength, to operate effectively against their invaders. When alarmed by the approach of the foe, all that they could generally do, was, retire to a fort, and endeavor to defend it from assault. If the savages, coming in numbers, succeeded in committing any outrage, it usually went unpunished. Sensible of their want of strength, the inhabitants rarely ventured in pursuit, to harrass or molest the retiring foe. When, however, they would hazard to hang on their retreat, the many precautions which they were compelled to exercise, to prevent falling into ambuscades and to escape the entangling artifices of their wily enemies, frequently rendered their enterprises abortive, and their exertions inefficient. [184] The frequent visits paid by the Indians to the country on the West Fork, and the mischief which they would effect at these times, led several of the inhabitants to resolve on leaving a place so full of dangers, as soon as they could make the necessary preparations. A family of Washburns particularly, having several times very narrowly escaped destruction, commenced making arrangements and fitting up for their departure. But while two of them were engaged in procuring pine knots, from which to make wax for shoemaking, they were discovered, and shot at by the Indians. Stephen fell dead, and James was taken prisoner and carried to their towns.--He was there forced to undergo repeated and intense suffering before death closed the scene of his miseries. According to the account given by Nathaniel Cochran on his return from captivity, Washburn was most severely beaten, on the first evening of his arrival at their village, while running the gauntlet; and although he succeeded in getting into the council house, where Cochran was, yet he was so disfigured and mutilated, that he could not be recognised by his old acquaintance; and so stunned and stupified, that he remained nearly all night in a state of insensibility. Being somewhat revived in the morning, he walked to where Cochran sat by the fire, and being asked if he were not James Washburn, replied with a smile--as if a period had been put to his sufferings by the sympathetic tone in which the question was proposed--that he was. The gleam of hope which flashed over his countenance, was transient and momentary. In a few minutes he was again led forth, that the barbarities which had been suspended by the interposition of night, might be revived; and he made to endure a repetition of their cruelties. He was now feeble and too much exhausted to save himself from the clubs and sticks, even of the aged of both sexes. The old men and the old women, who followed him, had strength and activity enough to keep pace with his fleetest progress, and inflict on him their severest blows. Frequently he was beaten to the ground, and as frequently, as if invigorated by the extremity of anguish, he rose to his feet. Hobbling before his tormentors, with no hope but in death, an old savage passed a knife across his ham, which cutting the tendons, disabled him from proceeding farther. Still they repeated their unmerciful blows with all their energy. He was next scalped, though alive, and struggling to regain his feet. [185] Even this did not operate to suppress their cruelty. They continued to beat him, until in the height of suffering he again exhibited symptoms of life and exerted himself to move. His head was then severed from his shoulders, attached to a pole, and placed in the most public situation in the village. After the attack on the Washburns, there were but two other outrages committed in the upper country during that season. The cessation on the part of the savages, of hostile incursions, induced an abandonment of the forts, and the people returned to their several homes, and respective occupations. But aggression was only suspended for a time. In October, two Indians appeared near the house of Conrad Richards, and finding in the yard a little girl at play, with an infant in her arms, they scalped her and rushed to the door. For some time they endeavored to force it open; but it was so securely fastened within, that Richards was at liberty to use his gun for its defence. A fortunate aim wounded one of the assailants severely, and the other retreated, helping off his companion. The girl who had been scalped in the yard, as soon as she observed the Indians going away, ran, with the infant still in her arms and uninjured, and entered the house--a spectacle of most heart-rending wretchedness. Soon after, David Edwards, returning from Winchester with salt, was shot near the Valley river, tomahawked and scalped; in which situation he lay for some time before he was discovered. He was the last person who fell a victim to savage vengeance, in North Western Virginia in the year 1778. The repeated irruptions of the Indians during the summer of the year;[6] and the frequent murders and great devastation committed by them, induced Government to undertake two expeditions into the Indian country. One thousand men were placed under the command of General McIntosh, some time in the fall, and he received orders to proceed forthwith against the Sandusky towns. Between two and three hundred soldiers were likewise placed under Colonel Clarke, to operate against the Canadian settlements in Illinois. It was well known that the Governor of those settlements was an indefatigable agent of British cruelty, stimulating the savages to aggression, and paying them well for scalps, torn alike from the heads of the aged matron and the helpless infant.[7] [186] The settlements in Kentucky, were constantly the theatre of outrage and murder; and to preserve these from entire destruction, it was necessary that a blow should be aimed, at the hives from which the savages swarmed, and if possible, that those holds, into which they would retire to reap the rewards of their cruelties and receive the price of blood, should be utterly broken up. The success of those two expeditions could not fail to check savage encroachments, and give quiet and security to the frontier; and although the armies destined to achieve it, were not altogether adequate to the service required, yet the known activity and enterprise of the commanding officers, joined to their prudence and good conduct, and the bravery and indefatigable perseverance and hardiness of the troops, gave promise of a happy result. The success of the expedition under Colonel Clarke,[8] fully realized the most sanguine expectations of those, who were acquainted with the adventurous and enterprising spirit of its commander; and was productive of essential benefit to the state, as well as of comparative security to the border settlements. Descending the Ohio river, from Fort Pitt to the Falls, he there landed his troops, and concealing his boats, marched directly towards Kaskaskias. Their provisions, which were carried on their backs, were soon exhausted; and for two days, the army subsisted entirely on roots. This was the only circumstance, which occurred during their march, calculated to damp the ardor of the troops. No band of savage warriors, had interposed to check their progress,--no straggling Indian, had discovered their approach. These fortunate omens inspired them with flattering hopes; and they pushed forward, with augmented energy. Arriving before Kaskaskias in the night, they entered it, unseen and unheard, and took possession of the town and fort, without opposition. Relying on the thick and wide extended forests which interposed between them and the American settlements, the inhabitants had been lulled to repose by fancied security, and were unconscious of danger until it had become too late to be avoided. Not a single individual escaped, to spread the alarm in the adjacent settlements. But there still remained other towns, higher up the Mississippi, which, if unconquered, would still afford shelter to the savages and furnish them the means of annoyance and of ravage. Against these, Colonel Clarke immediately directed [187] operations. Mounting a detachment of men, on horses found at Kaskaskias, and sending them forward, three other towns were reduced with equal success. The obnoxious governor at Kaskaskias was sent directly to Virginia, with the written instructions which he had received from Quebec, Detroit and Michillimacinac, for exciting the Indians to war, and remunerating them for the blood which they might shed. Although the country within which Colonel Clarke had so successfully carried on operations, was considered to be within the limits of Virginia; yet as it was occupied by savages and those who were but little, if any, less hostile than they; and being so remote from her settlements, Virginia had as yet exercised no act of jurisdiction over it. But as it now belonged to her, by conquest as well as charter, the General Assembly created it into a distinct county, to be called Illinois; a temporary government was likewise established in it, and a regiment of infantry and a troop of cavalry, ordered to be enlisted for its defence, and placed under the command of its intrepid and enterprising conqueror. The expedition directed under General McIntosh, was not equally successful. The difficulty of raising, equipping, and organizing, so large a force as was placed under his command, at so great a distance from the populous district of the state, caused the consumption of so much time, that the season for carrying on effective operations had well nigh passed before he was prepared to commence his march. Anxious however, to achieve as much as could then be effected for the security of the frontier, he penetrated the enemy's country, as far as Tuscarawa, when it was resolved to build and garrison a fort, and delay farther operations 'till the ensuing spring. Fort Laurens was accordingly erected on the banks of the Tuscarawa, a garrison of one hundred and fifty men, under the command of Colonel John Gibson, left for its preservation, and the main army returned to Fort Pitt. ----- [1] Lachlan McIntosh was born near Inverness, Scotland, March 17, 1725. With his father, and 100 others of the Clan McIntosh, he emigrated to Georgia in 1736, in the train of Oglethorpe. The party founded New Inverness, in McIntosh County. Lachlan entered the Colonial army at the opening of the Revolution, and rose to be brigadier-general. In a duel with Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, he killed the latter. General McIntosh was at the siege of Savannah in 1779, was a prisoner of war in 1780, a member congress in 1784, and in 1785 a commissioner to treat with the Southern Indians. He died at Savannah, February 20, 1806.--R. G. T. [2] The distance below Pittsburg is 26 miles. See p. 45, _note_, for notice of Shingiss Old Town, at this point.--R. G. T. [3] The distance, according to the shore meanderings of the U. S. Corps of Engineers, is 263 miles; the mileage of the channel would be somewhat greater.--R. G. T. [4] See p. 176, _note_, for notice of Grenadier Squaw's Town, near Chillicothe.--R. G. T. [5] See p. 137, _note_, for notice of Jesse Hughes; also, Peyton's _History of Augusta County_, p. 353.--R. G. T. [6] These war parties largely emanated from the Detroit region. Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, writing to his superior, General Haldimand, September 16, 1778, mentions incidentally that he sent out small parties of Miamis and Chippewas, August 5, and September 5 and 9; these were but three of dozens of such forays which he incited against the Virginia and Pennsylvania borders, during that year.--R. G. T. [7] This reference is to Lieut.-Governor Hamilton, whom George Rogers Clark called "the hair-buying general."--R. G. T. [8] Gen. George Rogers Clark was born November 19, 1752, near Monticello, Albemarle County, Va. At the age of twenty he was practicing his profession as a surveyor on the upper Ohio, and took up a claim at the mouth of Fish Creek. In 1774, he participated as a captain in Dunmore's campaign against the Shawnees and Mingoes. Early in 1775, Clark went as a surveyor to Kentucky, where he acquired marked popularity, and in 1776 was elected as "a delegate to the Virginia convention, to urge upon the state authorities the claims of the colony for government and defense." He secured the formation of the new county of Kentucky, and a supply of ammunition for the defense of the border. In 1777, Clark, now a major of militia, repelled the Indian attacks on Harrodsburg, and proceeded on foot to Virginia to lay before the state authorities his plan for capturing the Illinois country and repressing the Indian forays from that quarter. His scheme being approved, he was made a lieutenant-colonel, and at once set out to raise for the expedition a small force of hardy frontiersmen. He rendezvoused and drilled his little army of a hundred and fifty on Corn Island in the Ohio river, at the head of the Falls (or rapids), opposite the present city of Louisville. June 24, 1778, he started in boats down the Ohio, and landed near the deserted Fort Massac, which was on the north bank, ten miles below the mouth of the Tennessee; thence marching across country, much pressed for food, he reached Kaskaskia in six days. The inhabitants there were surprised and coerced during the night of July 4-5, without the firing of a gun. Cahokia and Vincennes soon quietly succumbed to his influence. Lieut.-Governor Hamilton, on hearing of this loss of the Illinois country and the partial defection to the Americans of the tribes west and southwest of Lake Michigan, at once set out to organize an army, chiefly composed of Indians, to retake the Illinois. He proceeded via the Wabash and Maumee, with eight hundred men, and recaptured Vincennes, December 17. The intelligence of this movement of Hamilton was not long in reaching Clark at Kaskaskia, and he at once set out for Vincennes to recapture it. The march thither was one of the most heroic in American military annals. Hamilton surrendered to him, February 25, and was forwarded to Virginia as a prisoner. Early in 1780 he established Fort Jefferson, just below the mouth of the Ohio, and later in the season aided in repelling a body of British and Indians who had come to regain the Illinois country and attack the Spaniards at St. Louis. Leaving Colonel Montgomery to pursue the enemy up the Mississippi, Clark, with what force could be spared, hastened to Kentucky, where he quickly raised a thousand men, and invaded and laid waste the Shawnee villages, in retaliation for Capt. Henry Bird's invasion (see p. 262, _note_). Later, he was engaged in some minor forays, and was appointed a brigadier-general; but his favorite scheme of an expedition to conquer Detroit miscarried, owing to the poverty of Virginia and the activity of the enemy under Brant, McKee, Girty, and other border leaders. In 1782 Clark led a thousand men in a successful campaign against the Indians on the Great Miami. This was his last important service, his subsequent expeditions proving failures. His later years were spent in poverty and seclusion, and his social habits became none of the best. In 1793 he imprudently accepted a commission as major-general from Genet, the French diplomatic agent, and essayed to raise a French revolutionary legion in the West to overcome the Spanish settlements on the Mississippi; upon Genet's recall, Clark's commission was canceled. Later, he sought to secure employment under the Spanish (see p. 130, _note_.) He died February 18, 1818, at Locust Grove, near Louisville, and lies buried at Cave Hill, in the Louisville suburbs. In his article on Clark, in Appleton's _Cyclop. of Amer. Biog._, i., pp. 626, 627, Dr. Draper says: "Clark was tall and commanding, brave and full of resources, possessing the affection and confidence of his men. All that rich domain northwest of the Ohio was secured to the republic, at the peace of 1783, in consequence of his prowess." Cf. William F. Poole, in Winsor's _Narr. and Crit. Hist. Amer._, vi., pp. 710-742. While due credit should be given to Clark for his daring and successful undertaking, we must not forget that England's jealousy of Spain, and shrewd diplomacy on the part of America's peace plenipotentiaries, were factors even more potent in winning the Northwest for the United States.--R. G. T. [188] CHAPTER XI. No sooner had the adventurous advance of Col. Clarke, and the success with which it was crowned, become known at Detroit, than preparations were made to expel him from Kaskaskias, or capture his little army, and thus rid the country of this obstacle to the unmolested passage of the savages, to the frontier of Virginia. An army of six hundred men, principally Indians, led on by Hamilton, the governor of Detroit--a man at once bold and active, yet blood-thirsty and cruel, and well known as a chief instigator of the savages to war, and as a stay and prop of tories--left Detroit and proceeded towards the theatre of Clarke's renown. With this force, he calculated on being able to effect his purpose as regarded Col. Clarke and his little band of bold and daring adventurers, and to spread devastation and death along the frontier, from Kentucky to Pennsylvania. Arriving at Fort St. Vincent,[1] on the Wabash, about the middle of December, and deeming it too late to advance towards Kaskaskias, he repaired its battlements and converting it into a repository for warlike implements of every description, he detached the greater part of his force in marauding parties to operate against the settlements on the Ohio river, reserving for the security of his head quarters only one company of men. While these alarming preparations were being made, Col. Clarke was actively engaged in acquiring an ascendency over the neighboring tribes of Indians; and in endeavors to attach them to the cause of the United States, from principle or fear. The aid which had been voted him, fell far short of [189] the contemplated assistance, and had not yet arrived; but his genius and activity amply compensated for the deficiency. In the heart of an Indian country,--remote from every succour,--and in the vicinity of powerful and hostile tribes, he yet not only maintained his conquest and averted injury, but carried terror and dismay into the very strongholds of the savages. Intelligence of the movement of Hamilton at length reached him, and hostile parties of Indians soon hovered around Kaskaskias. Undismayed by the tempest which was gathering over him, he concentrated his forces, withdrawing garrisons from the other towns to strengthen this, and made every preparation to enable him to endure a siege, and withstand the assault of a powerful army. The idea of abandoning the country never occurred to him. He did not despair of being able to maintain his position, and he and his gallant band resolved that they would do it, or perish in the attempt. In this fearful juncture, all was activity and industry, when the arrival of a Spanish merchant who had been at St. Vincents brought information of the reduced state of Hamilton's army.[2] Convinced that a crisis had now arrived, Clarke resolved by one bold stroke to change the aspect of affairs, and instead of farther preparing to resist attack, himself to become the assailant. For this purpose, a galley, mounting two four pounders and four swivels, and having on board a company of men, was despatched, with orders to the commanding officer, to ascend the Wabash and station himself a few miles below St. Vincents, allowing no one to pass him until the arrival of the main army. Garrisoning Kaskaskias, with militia, and embodying the inhabitants for the protection of the other towns, Colonel Clarke set forward on his march across the country, on the 7th of February, 1779, at the head of one hundred and thirty brave and intrepid men.[3] Such was the inclemency of the weather, and so many and great the obstacles which interposed, that in despite of the ardor, perseverance and energy of the troops, they could yet advance very slowly towards the point of destination. They were five days in crossing the drowned lands of the Wabash, and for five miles had to wade through water and ice, frequently up to their breasts. They overcame every difficulty and arrived before St. Vincents on the evening of the twenty-third of February and almost simultaneously with the galley. Thus far fortune seemed to favor the expedition. The army had not been discovered on its march, and the garrison was totally ignorant of its approach. Much however yet remained to be done. They had arrived within view of the enemy, but the battle was yet to be fought. Sensible of the advantage to be derived from commencing the attack, while the enemy was ignorant of his approach, at seven o'clock he marched to the assault. The inhabitants instead of offering opposition, received the troops with gladness, and surrendering [190] the town, engaged with alacrity in the siege of the fort. For eighteen hours the garrison resisted the repeated onsets of the assailants; but during the night succeeding the commencement of the attack, Colonel Clarke had an entrenchment thrown up within rifle shot of the enemy's strongest battery, and in the morning, from this position, poured upon it such a well-directed shower of balls, that in fifteen minutes he silenced two pieces of cannon without sustaining any loss whatever. The advantages thus gained, induced Hamilton to demand a parley, intimating an intention of surrendering. The terms were soon arranged. The governor and garrison became prisoners of war, and a considerable quantity of military stores fell into the hands of the conqueror. [4] During the continuance of the siege, Colonel Clarke received information that a party of Indians which had been detached by Hamilton to harrass the frontiers, was returning and then near to St. Vincents with two prisoners. He immediately ordered a detachment of his men to march out and give them battle--nine Indians were taken and the two prisoners released. History records but few enterprises, which display as strikingly the prominent features of military greatness, and evince so much of the genius and daring which are necessary to their successful termination, as this; while the motives which led to its delineation, were such, as must excite universal admiration. Bold and daring, yet generous and disinterested, Colonel Clarke sought not his individual advancement in the projection or execution of this campaign. It was not to gratify the longings of ambition, or an inordinate love of fame, that prompted him to penetrate the Indian country to the Kaskaskias, nor that tempted him forth from thence, to war with the garrison at St. Vincent. He was not one of "Those worshippers of glory, Who bathe the earth in blood, And launch proud names for an after age, Upon the crimson flood." The distress and sufferings of the frontier of Virginia required that a period should speedily be put to them, to preserve the country from ravage and its inhabitants from butchery. Clarke had seen and participated in that distress and those sufferings, and put in requisition every faculty of his mind and all the energies of his body, to alleviate and prevent them. Providence smiled on his undertaking, and his exertions were crowned with complete success. The plan which had been concerted for the ensuing campaign against the frontier of Virginia, threatening to involve the whole country west of the Alleghany mountains in destruction and death, was thus happily frustrated; and he, who had been mainly instrumental in impelling the savages to war, and in permitting, if not instigating them to the commission of the most atrocious barbarities, was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy. So justly obnoxious had he [191] rendered himself by his conduct, that a more than ordinary rigor was practised upon him; and by the orders of the governor of Virginia, the governor of Detroit was manacled with irons, and confined in jail.[5] Far different was the termination of the enterprise entrusted to the conduct of General McIntosh. It has been already seen that the approach of winter forced the main army to retire to the settlements into winter quarters, before they were able to accomplish any thing, but the erection of Fort Laurens.[6] Colonel Gibson, the commandant of the garrison, though a brave and enterprising officer, was so situated, that the preservation of the fort, was all which he could accomplish; and this was no little hazard of failure, from the very superior force of the enemy, and the scarcity of provisions for the subsistance of the garrison. So soon as the Indians became acquainted with the existence of a fort so far in their country, they put in practice those arts which enable them, so successfully to annoy their enemies. Early in January, a considerable body of savages approached Fort Laurens unperceived and before the garrison was apprised that an Indian knew of its erection.[7] In the course of the night they succeeded in catching the horses outside of the fort; and taking off their bells, carried them into the woods, some distance off. They then concealed themselves in the prairie grass, along a path leading from the fort, and in the morning commenced rattling the bells, at the farther extremity of the line of ambushment, so as to induce the belief that the horses was there to be found. The stratagem succeeded. Sixteen men were sent out to bring in the horses. Allured by the sound of the bells, they kept the path, along which the Indians lay concealed, until they found themselves unexpectedly in the presence of an enemy, who opened upon them a destructive fire from front and rear. Fourteen were killed on the spot, and the remaining two were taken prisoners. On the evening of the day on which this unfortunate surprise took place, the Indian army, consisting of eight hundred and forty-seven warriors, painted and equipped for war, marched in single file through a prairie near the fort and in full view of the garrison, and encamped on an adjacent elevation on the opposite side of the river. From this situation, frequent conversations were held by them with the whites, in which they deprecated the longer continuance of hostilities, but yet protested against the encroachment made upon their territory by the whites, the erection of a fort and the garrisoning soldiers within their country, not only unpermitted by them, but for some time before they knew any thing of it. For these infringements on their rights, they were determined on prosecuting the war, and continued the investure of the fort, for six weeks. In this time they became straitened for provisions, and aware that without a fresh supply of them, they would be forced to abandon the siege, they sent word to the commander of the garrison, by a Delaware [192] Indian, calling himself John Thompson, (who, though with the whites in the fort, was permitted by both parties to go in and out, as he choose) that they were desirous of peace, and were willing to enter into a negotiation, if he would send them a barrel of flour and some tobacco. Scarce as these articles had actually become in the garrison, yet Col. Gibson complied with their request, hoping that they might be induced to make peace, or withdraw from the fort, and hopeless of timely succours from the settlements. Upon the receipt of those presents, the Indians raised the siege and marched their army off, much to the relief of the garrison, although they did not fulfil their promise of entering into a treaty. During the time the Indians remained about the fort, there was much sickness in the garrison; and when they were believed to have retired, the commandant detached Col. Clarke, of the Pennsylvania line,[8] with a party of fifteen men, to escort the invalids to Fort McIntosh. They proceeded but a small distance from the gate, where they were attacked by some Indians, who had been left concealed near the fort, for the purpose of effecting farther mischief. A skirmish ensued; but overpowered by numbers and much galled by the first fire, Col. Clarke could not maintain the conflict. With much difficulty, he and three others reached the fort in safety: the rest of the party were all killed. Col. Gibson immediately marched out at the head of the greater part of the garrison, but the Indians had retreated as soon as they succeeded in cutting off the detachment under Col. Clarke, and prudence forbade to proceed in pursuit of them, as the main army was believed to be yet in the neighborhood. The dead were however brought in, and buried with the honors of war, in front of the fort gate. In a few days after this, Gen. McIntosh arrived with a considerable body of troops and a supply of provisions for the garrison. While the savages were continuing the siege, a friendly Indian, had been despatched by Col. Gibson to acquaint Gen. McIntosh with the situation at Fort Laurens, and that without the speedy arrival of a reinforcement of men and an accession to their stock of provisions, the garrison would have to surrender; or seek a doubtful safety, by evacuating the fort and endeavoring to regain the Ohio river, in the presence of an overwhelming body of the enemy. With great promptitude the settlers flocked to the standard of Gen. McIntosh, and loading pack horses, with abundance of provisions for the supply of the garrison at Fort Laurens, commenced a rapid march to their relief. Before their arrival, they had been relieved from the most pressing danger, by the withdrawal of the Indian army; and were only suffering from the want of flour and meat. A manifestation of the great joy felt upon the arrival of Gen. McIntosh, had well nigh deprived them of the benefit to be derived from the provisions brought for them. When the relief army approached the fort, a salute was fired by the garrison, which, alarming the pack horses, caused them [193] to break loose and scatter the greater part of the flour in every direction through the woods, so that it was impossible to be again collected. The remains of those, who had unfortunately fallen into the ambuscade in January, and which had lain out until then, were gathered together and buried;[9] and a fresh detachment, under Major Vernon, being left to garrison the fort, in the room of that which had been stationed there during winter, Gen. McIntosh, withdrew from the country and returned to Fort McIntosh. In the ensuing fall, Fort Laurens was entirely evacuated; the garrison having been almost reduced to starvation, and it being found very difficult to supply them with provisions at so great a distance from the settlements and in the heart of the Indian country. During the year 1778, Kentucky was the theatre of many outrages. In January, a party of thirty men, among whom was Daniel Boone, repaired to the "Lower Blue Licks" for the purpose of making salt; and on the 7th of February, while Boone was alone in the woods, on a hunt to supply the salt makers with meat, he was encountered by a party of one hundred and two Indians and two Canadians, and made prisoner. The savages advanced to the Licks, and made prisoners of twenty-seven of those engaged in making salt.[10] Their object in this incursion, was [193] the destruction of Boonesborough; and had they continued their march thither, there is no doubt but that place, weakened as it was by the loss of so many of its men and not expecting an attack at that inclement season, would have fallen into their hands; but elated with their success, the Indians marched directly back with their prisoners to Chillicothe. The extreme suffering of the prisoners, during this march, inspired the savages with pity, and induced them to exercise an unusual lenity towards their captives. In March, Boone was carried to Detroit, where the Indians refused to liberate him, though an hundred pounds were offered for his ransom, and from which place he accompanied them back to Chillicothe in the latter part of April. In the first of June, he went with them to the Scioto salt springs, and on his return found one hundred and fifty choice warriors of the Shawanee nation, painting, arming, and otherwise equipping themselves to proceed again to the attack of Boonesborough. [194] Hitherto Boone had enjoyed as much satisfaction, as was consistent with his situation, and more than would have been experienced by the most of men, in captivity to the Indians; but when he found such great preparations making for an attack on the place which contained all that he held most dear, his love of family, his attachment to the village reared under his superintending hand, and to its inhabitants protected by his fostering care, determined him to attempt an immediate escape. Early on the morning of the 16th of June, he went forth as usual to hunt. He had secreted as much food as would serve him for one meal, and with this scanty supply, he resolved on finding his way home. On the 20th, having travelled a distance of one hundred and sixty miles, crossed the Ohio and other rivers, and with no sustenance, save what he had taken with him from Chillicothe, he arrived at Boonesborough. The fort was quickly repaired, and every preparation made to enable it to withstand a siege. In a few days after, another, of those who had been taken prisoners at the Blue Licks, escaped, and brought intelligence that in consequence of the flight of Boone, the Indians had agreed to postpone their meditated irruption, for three weeks.[11] This intelligence determined Boone to invade the Indian country, and at the head of only ten men he went forth on an expedition against Paint creek town. Near to this place, he met with a party of Indians going to join the main army, then on its march to Boonesborough, whom he attacked and dispersed without sustaining any loss on his part. The enemy had one killed and two severely wounded in this skirmish; and lost their horses and baggage. On their return, they passed the Indian army on the 6th of August, and on the next day entered Boonesborough.[12] On the 8th of August, the Indian army, consisting of four hundred and fifty men, and commanded by Capt. Du Quesne, eleven other Frenchmen, and their own chiefs, appeared before the Fort and demanded its surrender.[13] In order to gain time, Boone requested two days' consideration, and at the expiration of that period, returned for answer, that the garrison had resolved on defending it, while one individual remained alive within its walls. Capt. Du Quesne then made known, that he was charged by Gov. Hamilton, to make prisoners of the garrison, but not to treat them harshly; and that if nine of their principal men would come out, and negotiate a treaty, based on a renunciation of allegiance to the United States, and on a renewal of their fealty to the king, the Indian army should be instantly withdrawn. Boone did not confide in the sincerity of the Frenchman, but he determined to gain the advantage of farther preparation for resistance, by delaying the attack. He consented to negotiate on the terms proposed; but suspecting treachery, insisted that the conference should be held near the fort walls. The garrison were on the alert, while the negotiation continued, and did not fail to remark that many of the Indians, not [195] concerned in making the treaty, were stalking about, under very suspicious circumstances. The terms on which the savage army was to retire were at length agreed upon, and the articles signed, when the whites were told that it was an Indian custom, in ratification of compacts, that two of their chiefs should shake hands with one white man. Boone and his associates, consenting to conform to this custom, not without suspicion of a sinister design, were endeavored to be dragged off as prisoners by the savages; but strong and active, they bounded from their grasp, and entered the gate, amid a heavy shower of balls--one only of the nine, was slightly wounded. The Indians then commenced a furious assault on the fort, but were repulsed with some loss on their part; and every renewed attempt to carry it by storm, was in like manner, frustrated by the intrepidity and gallantry of its inmates.[14] Disappointed in their expectation of succeeding in this way, the savages next attempted to undermine the fort, commencing at the water mark of the Kentucky river, only sixty yards from the walls. This course was no doubt dictated to them by their French commanders, as they are ignorant of the practice of war, farther than depends on the use of the gun, and tomahawk, and the exercise of stratagem and cunning. The vigilance of the besieged however, soon led to a discovery of the attempt--the water below, was colored by the clay thrown out from the excavation, while above it retained its usual transparency; and here again they were foiled by the active exertion of the garrison. A countermine was begun by them, the earth from which being thrown over the wall, manifested the nature of their operations, and led the enemy to raise the siege, and retire from the country.[15] In the various assaults made on the fort by this savage army, two only, of the garrison, were killed, and four wounded. The loss of the enemy, as usual, could not be properly ascertained: thirty-seven were left dead on the field, and many, were no doubt wounded.[16] So signally was the savage army repulsed, in their repeated attacks on Boonesborough, that they never afterwards made any great effort to effect its reduction. The heroism and intrepidity of Boone and his assistants rendered it impregnable to their combined exertions to demolish it; while the vigilance and caution of the inhabitants, convinced them, that it would be fruitless and unavailing to devise plans for gaining admission into the fort, by stratagem or wile. Still however, they kept up a war of ravage and murder, against such as were unfortunately found defenceless and unprotected; and levelled combined operations against other and weaker positions. [196] The success of the expedition under Col. Clarke, though productive of many and great advantages to the [195] frontier inhabitants, did not achieve for them, an unmolested security. Their property was still liable to plunder, and families newly arrived among them, to be murdered or taken prisoners. Combined efforts were required, to put a period to savage aggression; and a meeting of the settlers was held at Harrodsburg, to concert measures to effect that object. Their consultation resulted in a determination, to carry the war into the enemy's country; and as the Shawanees had been most efficient in waging hostilities, it was resolved to commence operations, against their most considerable town. Two hundred volunteers were accordingly raised, and when rendezvoused at Harrodsburg, were placed under the command of Col. Bowman, and proceeded against Chillicothe.[17] The expedition thus fitted out, arrived, by forced marches, near to Chillicothe in the evening towards the latter end of July, 1779; and on deliberation, it was agreed to defer the attack 'till next morning. Before dawn the army was drawn up and arranged in order of battle. The right wing led on by Col. Bowman, was to assume a position on one side of the town, and the left, under Capt. Logan, was to occupy the ground on the opposite side; and at a given signal, both were to develope to the right and left, so as to encircle and attack it in concert.[18] The party, led on by Logan, repaired to the point assigned, and was waiting in anxious, but vain expectation for the signal of attack to be given, when the attention of the Indians was directed towards him by the barking of their dogs. At this instant a gun was discharged by one of Bowman's men, and the whole village alarmed. The squaws and children were hurried into the woods, along a path not yet occupied by the assailants, and the warriors collected in a strong cabin.[19] Logan, being near enough to perceive every movement of the enemy, ordered his men quietly to occupy the deserted huts, as a momentary shelter from the Indian fires, until Col. Bowman should march forward. It was now light; and the savages began a regular discharge of shot at his men, as they advanced to the deserted cabins. This determined him to move directly to the attack of the cabin, in which the warriors were assembled; and ordering his men to tear off the doors and hold them in front, as a shield, while advancing to the assault, he was already marching on the foe, when he was overtaken by an order from Col. Bowman, to retreat. Confounded by this command, Capt. Logan was for a time reluctant to obey it; a retreat was however, directed; and each individual, sensible of his great exposure while retiring from the towns, sought to escape from danger, in the manner directed by his own judgment; and fled to the woods at his utmost speed. There they rallied, and resumed more of order, though still too much terrified to stand a contest, when the Indians sallied out to give battle. Intimidated by the apprehension of danger, which they had not seen, [197] but supposed to be great from the retreating order of Col. Bowman, they continued to fly before the savages, led on by their chief, the Black Fish. At length they were brought to a halt, and opened a brisk, though inefficient fire, upon their pursuers. Protected by bushes, the Indians maintained their ground, 'till Capts. Logan and Harrod, with some of the men under their immediate command, mounted on pack horses, charged them with great spirit, and dislodged them from their covert. Exposed in turn to the fire of the whites, and seeing their chief fall, the savages took to flight, and Col. Bowman continued his retreat homeward, free from farther interruption.[20] In this illy conducted expedition, Col. Bowman had nine of his men killed and one wounded. The Indian loss was no doubt less: only two or three were known to be killed. Had the commanding officer, instead of ordering a retreat when Logan's men were rushing bravely to the conflict, marched with the right wing of the army to their aid, far different would have been the result. The enemy, only thirty strong, could not long have held out, against the bravery and impetuosity of two hundred backwoodsmen, stimulated to exertion by repeated suffering, and nerved by the reflection, that they were requiting it upon its principal authors. Col. Bowman doubtless believed that he was pursuing a proper course. The gallantry and intrepidity, displayed by him on many occasions, forbid the supposition that he was under the influence of any unmilitary feeling, and prompted to that course by a disposition to shrink from ordinary dangers. His motives were certainly pure, and his subsequent exertions to rally his men and bring them to face the foe, were as great as could have been made by any one; but disheartened by the fear of unreal danger, and in the trepidation of a flight, deemed to be absolutely necessary for their safety, they could not be readily brought to bear the brunt of battle. The efforts of a few cool and collected individuals, drove back the pursuers, and thus prevented an harrassed retreat. Notwithstanding the frequent irruptions of the Indians, and the constant exposure of the settlers to suffering and danger, Kentucky increased rapidly in population. From the influx of emigrants during the fall and winter months, the number of its inhabitants were annually doubled for some years; and new establishments were made in various parts of the country. In April 1779, a block house was erected on the present site of Lexington,[21] and several stations were selected in its vicinity, and in the neighborhood of the present town of Danville. Settlements were also made, in that year, on the waters of Bear Grass, Green and Licking rivers, and parts of the country began to be distinguished by their interior and frontier situation. ----- [1] Called by the English, Fort Sackville.--R. G. T. [2] From Clark's Journal: "January 29.--M. Vigo, a Spanish subject who had been at Post St. Vincents on his lawful business, arrived and gave us intelligence that Governor Hamilton, with thirty regulars and fifty volunteers and about 400 Indians, had arrived in November and taken that post with Capt. Helms and such other Americans who were there with arms, and disarmed the settlers and inhabitants."--R. G. T. [3] Forty-six men, under Lieut. John Rogers, went with the artillery and stores, in a large galley or batteau, called the "Willing." The distance to Vincennes by land, was a hundred and fifty miles.--R. G. T. [4] The originals of the correspondence between Clark and Hamilton are, with much other MS. material relative to the movements of Clark, in possession of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Hamilton's letter, in a neat, scholarly hand, ran: "Lieutenant Governor Hamilton proposes to Colonel Clark a Truce for three days, during which time he promises, there shall not be any defensive work carried on in the Garrison, on Condition Colo^l. Clark shall observe on his part a like cessation from any offensive Work-- "He further proposes that whatever may pass between them two and any persons (mutually agreed upon to be) present, shall remain secret, till matters be finally concluded-- "As he wishes that whatever the result of their conference may be the honor and credit of each party may be considered, so he wishes to confer with Colo^l. Clark as soon as may be-- "As Colo^l. Clark makes a difficulty of coming into the Garrison, L^t. G. Hamilton will speak with him before the Gate-- Henry Hamilton. "Feb^y. 24^th. 1779--Fort Sackville--" Clark's gruff reply, in rugged, but not unclerical chirography, was as follows: "Colonel Clark's Compliments to M^r. Hamilton and begs leave to inform him that Co^l. Clark will not agree to any Other Terms than that of M^r. Hamilton's Surrendering himself and Garrison, Prisoners at Discretion-- "If M^r. Hamilton is Desirous of a Conferance with Co^l. Clark he will meet him at the Church with Capt^n. Helms-- "Feb^y. 24^th., 1779. G. R. CLARK."--R. G. T. [5] Hamilton, in a letter of July 6, 1781, contained in the Haldimand Papers, in the British Museum, gives what he calls "a brief account" of his ill-starred expedition. See Roosevelt's _Winning of the West, passim._--R. G. T. [6] On the Tuscarawas River, about ten miles north of the present New Philadelphia, O., and a mile south of what is now Bolivar, Tuscarawas County. At the time Withers alludes to, it was garrisoned by 150 men under Col. John Gibson.--R. G. T. [7] Simon Girty and seventeen Indians, mostly Mingoes. Withers confounds this raid with the more formidable siege in February and March. In the January assault, Girty's band ambushed Capt. John Clark, a sergeant, and fourteen men, returning to Fort Pitt from convoying provisions to Fort Laurens. Two whites were killed, four wounded, and one taken prisoner. In February, came an attacking party of a hundred and twenty Indians (mostly Wyandots and Mingoes), led by Capt. Henry Bird, of the Eighth (or King's) Regiment; with him were Simon Girty and ten soldiers. The enemy arrived February 22, but remained in hiding. The next day Gibson sent out a guard of eighteen men, despite warnings of the enemy's presence, to assist the wagoner in collecting the horses of the fort. All the party were killed and scalped, within sight of the fort, save two, who were made prisoners. The fort was then openly invested until March 20, when the besiegers withdrew, torn with dissensions and short of supplies. See Butterfield's _Washington-Irvine Correspondence_ for further details.--R. G. T. [8] Not to be confounded with George Rogers Clark, of Kentucky.--R. G. T. [9] The bodies of these men were found to have been much devoured by the wolves, and bearing the appearance of having been recently torn by them. With a view of taking revenge on these animals for devouring their companions, the fatigue party sent to bury their remains, after digging a grave sufficiently capacious to contain all, and having deposited them in it, they covered the pit with slender sticks, bark and rotten wood, too weak to bear the weight of a wolf, and placed a piece of meat on the top and near the center of this covering, as a bait. In the morning seven wolves were found in the pit, and killed and the grave then filled up. [10] Boone had left Boonesborough January 8, in charge of thirty men, to make salt at the Lower Blue Licks, on Licking River. They carried with them, on horses, several large boiling pans, given to the settlement by the government of Virginia. So weak was the water there, that 840 gallons were necessary to make a bushel of salt, against ninety at the Kanawha salines, and forty at Onondaga. While the salt-makers were at work, two or three others of the party served as scouts and hunters; generally, Boone was one of these. This day (Saturday, February 7) Boone started out alone with his pack-horse for a supply of game, which usually was plenty in the neighborhood of the salt licks; Thomas Brooks and Flanders Callaway, his fellow scouts, were taking another circuit. Having killed a buffalo, Boone was on his way home in the afternoon, with the choicest of the meat packed upon his horse. Snow was falling fast, and he was ten miles from camp, when discovered by four Indians, outlying members of a large party of Shawnees under Munseka and Black Fish, who had taken the war-path to avenge the murder of Cornstalk (see p. 172, _note_. 2). Benumbed by cold, and unable easily to untie or cut the frozen thongs which bound on the pack, Boone could not unload and mount the horse, and after a sharp skirmish was captured, and led to the main Indian encampment, a few miles away. Boone induced his fellow salt-makers to surrender peaceably the following day (February 8); the number of prisoners was, including Boone, twenty-seven--two scouts and two salt-packers being absent. After a ten days' "uncomfortable journey, in very severe weather," says Boone, in which they "received as good treatment as prisoners could expect from savages," the party arrived at Little Chillicothe, on Little Miami--so called in contradistinction to Old Chillicothe, on the Scioto. Boone's strong, compact build caused the Indians to call him Big Turtle, and under that name he was adopted as the son of Black Fish, who took a fancy to him; sixteen of his companions were also adopted by other warriors. The ten who were not adopted were, with Boone, taken on a trip to Detroit (starting March 10), guarded by forty Indians under Black Fish. The ten were sold to Lieut. Governor Hamilton and citizens of Detroit, for £20 each, the usual price for American prisoners. Boone remained in Detroit until April 10, during which he was treated with great courtesy by Hamilton, who offered Black Fish £100 for him, but the latter declined and took the great pioneer home with him; but Boone himself was given by Hamilton a horse and trappings, with silver trinkets to give to the Indians. At Little Chillicothe, Boone was kindly treated by Black Fish, and little by little his liberty was extended. June 16, while the family were making salt on the Scioto, preparatory to another expedition against Boonesborough, Boone escaped on the horse given him by Hamilton. After many curious adventures, in the course of which he swam the Ohio, he safely reached Boonesborough, June 20, having traveled, he estimated, a hundred and sixty miles in four days. Boone's wife and family, supposing him dead, had returned to their old home in North Carolina, but Boone himself remained to assist in the defense of Boonesborough against the impending attack, of which he had brought intelligence.--R. G. T. [11] This was William Hancock, who had, like Boone, been adopted into an Indian family. Not so expert a woodsman as Boone, he had consumed twelve days in the journey from Chillicothe to Boonesborough, and suffered great hardships. He arrived at the fort July 17. In consequence of Boone's escape, he reported, the Indians had postponed their intended attack for three weeks. The next day (July 18), Boone wrote to Arthur Campbell, lieutenant of Washington County, Va. (the Holston settlements, 200 miles away), that he expected the enemy in twelve days, and that the fort was prepared for a siege of three or four weeks; but relief would then be of infinite service.--R. G. T. [12] At the close of six weeks after Hancock's arrival, Boone had become weary of waiting for the enemy, hence his expedition with nineteen men--not ten, as in the text--against the Shawnee town on Paint Creek, during the last week of August. It was the 5th of September when, undiscovered, he passed the Indian force encamped at Lower Blue Licks, and the next day arrived at Boonesborough.--R. G. T. [13] About 10 A. M. of Monday, September 7,--Withers places it a month, less a day, too early,--the hostiles crossed the Kentucky a mile and a half above Boonesborough, at a point since known as Black Fish's Ford, and soon made their appearance marching single file, some of them mounted, along the ridge south of the fort. They numbered about 400, and displayed English and French flags. The strength of the force has been variously estimated, from 330 Indians and 8 Frenchmen (Col. John Bowman), to 444 Indians and 12 Frenchmen (Boone's Narrative, by Filson). The English Indian department was represented by Capt. Isidore Chêne, who had with him several other French-Canadians; there was also a negro named Pompey, who had long lived with the Indians, and served them as interpreter; the principal chiefs were, Black Fish, Moluntha, Black Hoof, and Black Beard.--R. G. T. [14] The garrison numbered, old and young, white and black, sixty persons capable of bearing arms; only forty, however, were really effective. Women and children, dressed and armed as men, frequently appeared upon the walls, to give an appearance of greater strength.--R. G. T. [15] This ruse of the Indians was discovered on Friday, the 11th. The garrison commenced its countermine immediately, and prosecuted the work for several days. The rival parties could hear each other at work underground. When the Indians had proceeded about forty yards, two-thirds of the distance from the river bank, successive rainstorms had so saturated the earth that sections of their tunnel caved in, and this it was that frustrated their scheme.--R. G. T. [16] When the Indians retired from before Boonesboro, one hundred and twenty-five pounds weight of bullets were picked up by the garrison, besides many that stuck in the logs of the fort. A conclusive proof that the Indians were not idle, during the continuance of the siege. [17] John Bowman, of Harrodsburgh, was lieutenant of Kentucky County, and colonel of its militia. During the spring of 1779, there was a general desire to raid the unsuspecting Shawnees, in retaliation for their invasions of Kentucky, and Bowman decided to command in person this "first regular enterprise to attack, in force, the Indians beyond the Ohio, ever planned in Kentucky." The company of volunteers of the interior rendezvoused in May at Harrodsburgh, and under Capts. Benjamin Logan and Silas Harlan marched to Lexington, where they met the Boonesborough company under Capt. John Holder, and another party under Capt. Levi Todd. At the mouth of the Licking (site of Covington, Ky.), the general rendezvous agreed on, they found a company from the Falls of the Ohio (site of Louisville), under Capt. William Harrod. Also in the little army, which finally mustered 297 men, including officers, were frontiersmen from Redstone Old Fort, and other settlements in the valleys of the Ohio and Monongahela. The Redstone men were on their way home, when they heard of the expedition, and joined it at the Licking; they had been on a visit to Big Bone Lick, and had a canoe-load of relics therefrom, which they were transporting up river. The force crossed the Ohio, May 28, just below the mouth of the Licking; 32 men remained behind in charge of the boats, leaving 265 to set out for the Shawnee town of Little Chillicothe, on the Little Miami, distant about sixty-five miles northeast. George Clark and William Whitley were pilots, and George M. Bedinger adjutant and quartermaster.--R. G. T. [18] Without having seen an Indian, the expedition arrived in sight of Little Chillicothe, at dusk of May 29--Withers places the date two months ahead of the actual time. Capt. Logan had charge of the left wing, Harrod of the right, and Holder of the center. The white force now numbered 263--two men having returned to the boats, disabled; the Indians numbered about 100 warriors and 200 squaws and children. Black Fish was the principal village chief, and subordinate to him were Black Hoof and Black Beard.--R. G. T. [19] This was the council house, which was so stoutly defended that the white assailants were glad to take refuge in a neighboring hut, from which they escaped with difficulty.--R. G. T. [20] The chief cause of alarm, and the consequent disorder, was a false report started among the whites, that Simon Girty and a hundred Shawnees from the Indian village of Piqua, twelve miles distant, were marching to the relief of Black Fish. Order was soon restored, and when, fourteen miles out upon the homeward trail, Indians were discovered upon their rear, the enemy were met with vigor, and thereafter the retreat was unhampered. The force reached the Ohio, just above the mouth of the Little Miami, early on June 1. The "pack-horses" alluded to by Withers, were 163 Indian ponies captured in the Chillicothe woods; the other plunder was considerable, being chiefly silver ornaments and clothing. After crossing the Ohio in boats--the horses swimming--there was an auction of the booty, which was appraised at £32,000, continental money, each man getting goods or horses to the value of about £110. The Indian loss was five killed at the town, and many wounded; the whites had seven men killed. Little Chillicothe had been for the most part destroyed by fire, and its crops destroyed. The newspapers of the day regarded the expedition as an undoubted success.--R. G. T. [21] George W. Ranck: "April 1. Robert Patterson, at the head of twenty-five men, commenced a block house where Lexington now stands."--R. G. T. [198] CHAPTER XII. In North Western Virginia, the frequent inroads of small parties of savages in 1778, led to greater preparations for security, from renewed hostilities after the winter should have passed away; and many settlements received a considerable accession to their strength, from the number of persons emigrating to them. In some neighborhoods, the sufferings of the preceding season and the inability of the inhabitants, from the paucity of their numbers, to protect themselves from invasion, led to a total abandonment of their homes. The settlement on Hacker's creek was entirely broken up in the spring of 1779,--some of its inhabitants forsaking the country and retiring east of the mountains; while the others went to the fort on Buchannon, and to Nutter's fort, near Clarksburg, to aid in resisting the foe and in maintaining possession of the country. When the campaign of that year opened, the whole frontier was better prepared to protect itself from invasion and to shield its occupants from the wrath of the savage enemy, than it had ever been, since it became the abode of white men. There were forts in every settlement, into which the people could retire when danger threatened, and which were capable of withstanding the assaults of savages, however furious they might be, if having to depend for success, on the use of small arms only. It was fortunate for the country, that this was their dependence. A few well directed shots even from small cannon, would have demolished [199] their strongest fortress, and left them no hope from death, but captivity. In the neighborhood of Pricket's fort, the inhabitants were early alarmed, by circumstances which induced a belief that the Indians were near, and they accordingly entered that garrison. It was soon evident that their fears were groundless, but as the season was fast approaching, when the savages might be expected to commence depredations, they determined on remaining in the fort, of a night, and yet prosecute the business of their farms as usual during the day. Among those who were at this time in the fort, was David Morgan, (a relation of General Daniel Morgan,) then upwards of sixty years of age. Early in April, being himself unwell, he sent his two children--Stephen, a youth of sixteen, and Sarah, a girl of fourteen--to feed the cattle at his farm, about a mile off. The children, thinking to remain all day and spend the time in preparing ground for water melons, unknown to their father took with them some bread and meat. Having fed the stock, Stephen set himself to work, and while he was engaged in grubbing, his sister would remove the brush, and otherwise aid him in the labor of clearing the ground; occasionally going to the house to wet some linen which she had spread out to bleach. Morgan, after the children had been gone some time, betook himself to bed, and soon falling asleep, dreamed that he saw Stephen and Sarah walking about the fort yard, scalped. Aroused from slumber by the harrowing spectacle presented to his sleeping view, he enquired if the children had returned, and upon learning they had not, he set out to see what detained them, taking with him his gun. As he approached the house, still impressed with the horrible fear that he should find his dream realized, he ascended an eminence, from which he could distinctly see over his plantation, and descrying from thence the objects of his anxious solicitude, he proceeded directly to them, and seated himself on an old log, near at hand. He had been here but a few minutes, before he saw two Indians come out from the house and make toward the children. Fearing to alarm them too much, and thus deprive them of the power of exerting themselves ably to make an escape, he apprized them in a careless manner, of their danger, and told them to run towards the fort--himself still maintaining his seat on the log. The Indians then raised a hideous yell and ran in pursuit; but the old [200] gentleman shewing himself at that instant, caused them to forbear the chase, and shelter themselves behind trees. He then endeavored to effect an escape, by flight, and the Indians followed after him. Age and consequent infirmity, rendered him unable long to continue out of their reach; and aware that they were gaining considerably on him, he wheeled to shoot. Both instantly sprang behind trees, and Morgan seeking shelter in the same manner, got behind a sugar, which was so small as to leave part of his body exposed. Looking round, he saw a large oak about twenty yards farther, and he made to it. Just as he reached it, the foremost Indian sought security behind the sugar sapling, which he had found insufficient for his protection. The Indian, sensible that it would not shelter him, threw himself down by the side of a log which lay at the root of the sapling. But this did not afford him sufficient cover, and Morgan, seeing him exposed to a shot, fired at him. The ball took effect, and the savage, rolling over on his back, stabbed himself twice in the breast. Having thus succeeded in killing one of his pursuers, Morgan again took to flight, and the remaining Indian after him. It was now that trees could afford him no security--His gun was unloaded, and his pursuer could approach him safely.--The unequal race was continued about sixty yards, when looking over his shoulder, he saw the savage within a few paces of him, and with his gun raised. Morgan sprang to one side, and the ball whizzed harmlessly by him. The odds was now not great, and both advanced to closer combat, sensible of the prize for which they had to contend, and each determined, to deal death to his adversary. Morgan aimed a blow with his gun; but the Indian hurled a tomahawk at him, which cutting the little finger of his left hand entirely off, and injuring the one next it very much, knocked the gun out of his grasp, and they closed. Being a good wrestler, Morgan succeeded in throwing the Indian; but soon found himself overturned, and the savage upon him, feeling for his knife and sending forth a most horrifick yell, as is their custom when they consider victory as secure. A woman's apron, which he had taken from the house and fastened round him above his knife, so hindered him in getting at it quickly, that Morgan, getting one of his fingers in his mouth, deprived him of the use of that hand, and disconcerted him very much by continuing to grind it between his teeth. At length the [201] Indian got hold of his knife, but so far towards the blade, that Morgan too got a small hold on the extremity of the handle; and as the Indian drew it from the scabbard, Morgan, biting his finger with all his might, and thus causing him somewhat to relax his grasp, drew it through his hand, gashing it most severely. By this time both had gained their feet, and the Indian, sensible of the great advantage gained over him, endeavored to disengage himself; but Morgan held fast to the finger, until he succeeded in giving him a fatal stab, and felt the almost lifeless body sinking in his arms. He then loosened his hold and departed for the fort. On his way he met with his daughter, who not being able to keep pace with her brother, had followed his footsteps to the river bank where he had plunged in, and was then making her way to the canoe. Assured thus far of the safety of his children, he accompanied his daughter to the fort, and then, in company with a party of the men, returned to his farm, to see if there were any appearance of other Indians being about there. On arriving at the spot where the desperate struggle had been, the wounded Indian was not to be seen; but trailing him by the blood which flowed profusely from his side, they found him concealed in the branches of a fallen tree.--He had taken the knife from his body, bound up the wound with the apron, and on their approaching him, accosted them familiarly, with the salutation "How do do broder, how do broder." Alas! poor fellow! their brotherhood extended no farther than to the gratification of a vengeful feeling. He was tomahawked and scalped; and, as if this would not fill the measure of their vindictive passions, both he and his companion were flayed, their skins tanned and converted into saddle seats, shot pouches and belts--A striking instance of the barbarities, which a revengeful spirit will lead its possessors to perpetrate.[1] The alarm which had caused the people in the neighborhood of Pricket's fort, to move into it for safety, induced two or three families on Dunkard creek to collect at the house of Mr. Bozarth, thinking they would be more exempt from danger when together, than if remaining at their several homes. About the first of April, when only Mr. Bozarth and two men were in the house, the children, who had been out at play, came running into the yard, exclaiming that there were [202] "_ugly red men coming._" Upon hearing this, one of the two men in the house, going to the door to see if Indians really were approaching, received a glancing shot on his breast, which caused him to fall back. The Indian who had shot him, sprang in immediately after, and grappling with the other white man, was quickly thrown on the bed. His antagonist having no weapon with which to do him any injury called to Mrs. Bozarth for a knife. Not finding one at hand, she siezed an axe, and at one blow, let out the brains of the prostrate savage. At that instant a second Indian entering the door, shot dead the man engaged with his companion on the bed. Mrs. Bozarth turned on him, and with a well directed blow, let out his entrails and caused him to bawl out for help. Upon this, others of his party, who had been engaged with the children in the yard, came to his relief. The first who thrust his head in at the door, had it cleft by the axe of Mrs. Bozarth and fell lifeless on the ground. Another, catching hold of his wounded, bawling companion, drew him out of the house, when Mrs. Bozarth, with the aid of the white man who had been first shot and was then somewhat recovered, succeeded in closing and making fast the door. The children in the yard were all killed, but the heroism and exertions of Mrs. Bozarth and the wounded white man, enabled them to resist the repeated attempts of the Indians, to force open the door, and to maintain possession of the house, until they were relieved by a party from the neighboring settlement.--The time occupied in this bloody affair, from the first alarm by the children to the shutting of the door, did not exceed three minutes. And in this brief space, Mrs. Bozarth, with infinite self possession, coolness and intrepidity, succeeded in killing three Indians. On the eleventh of the same month, five Indians came to a house on Snowy creek, (in the, now, county of Preston,) in which lived James Brain and Richard Powell, and remained in ambush during the night, close around it. In the morning early, the appearance of some ten or twelve men, issuing from the house with guns, for the purpose of amusing themselves in shooting at a mark, deterred the Indians from making their meditated attack. The men seen by them, were travellers, who had associated for mutual security, and who, after partaking of a morning's repast, resumed their journey, unknown to the savages; when Mr. Brain and the sons of Mr. Powell [203] went to their day's work. Being engaged in carrying clap-boards for covering a cabin, at some distance from the house, they were soon heard by the Indians, who, despairing of succeeding in an attack on the house, changed their position, & concealed themselves by the side of the path, along which those engaged at work had to go. Mr. Brain and one of his sons being at a little distance in front of them, they fired and Brain fell. He was then tomahawked and scalped, while another of the party followed and caught the son as he was attempting to escape by flight. Three other boys were then some distance behind and out of sight, and hearing the report of the gun which killed Brain, for an instant supposed that it proceeded from the rifle of some hunter in quest of deer. They were soon satisfied that this supposition was unfounded. Three Indians came running towards them, bearing their guns in one hand, and tomahawks in the other. One of the boys stupefied by terror,--and unable to stir from the spot, was immediately made prisoner. Another, the son of Powell, was also soon caught; but the third, finding himself out of sight of his pursuer, ran to one side and concealed himself in a bunch of alders, where he remained until the Indian passed the spot where he lay, when he arose, and taking a different direction, ran with all his speed, and effected an escape. The little prisoners were then brought together; and one of Mr. Powell's sons, being discovered to have but one eye, was stripped naked, had a tomahawk sunk into his head, a spear ran through his body, and the scalp then removed from his bleeding head. The little Powell who had escaped from the savages, being forced to go a direction opposite to the house, proceeded to a station about eight miles off, & communicated intelligence of what had been done at Brain's. A party of men equipped themselves and went immediately to the scene of action; but the Indians had hastened homeward, as soon as they perpetrated their horrid cruelties. One of their little captives, (Benjamin Brain) being asked by them, "how many men were at the house," replied "twelve." To the question, "how far from thence was the nearest fort," he answered "two miles." Yet he well knew that there was no fort, nearer than eight miles, and that there was not a man at the house,--Mr. Powell being from home, and the twelve travellers having departed, before his father and he had gone out to [204] work. His object was to save his mother and the other women and children, from captivity or death, by inducing them to believe that it would be extremely dangerous to venture near the house. He succeeded in the attainment of his object. Deterred by the prospect of being discovered, and perhaps defeated by the superior force of the white men, represented to be at Mr. Brain's, they departed in the greatest hurry, taking with them their two little prisoners, Benjamin and Isaac Brain. So stilly had the whole affair been conducted (the report of a gun being too commonly heard to excite any suspicion of what was doing,) and so expeditiously had the little boy who escaped, and the men who accompanied him back, moved in their course, that the first intimation given Mrs. Brain of the fate of her husband, was given by the men who came in pursuit. Soon after the happening of this affair, a party of Indians came into the Buchannon settlement, and made prisoner Leonard Schoolcraft, a youth of about sixteen, who had been sent from the fort on some business.--When arrived at their towns and arrangements being made for his running the gauntlet, he was told that he might defend himself against the blows of the young Indians who were to pursue him to the council house. Being active and athletic, he availed himself of this privilege, so as to save himself from the beating which he would otherwise have received, and laying about him with well timed blows, frequently knocked down those who came near to him--much to the amusement of the warriors, according to the account given by others, who were then prisoners and present. This was the last certain information which was ever had concerning him. He was believed however, to have been afterwards in his old neighborhood in the capacity of guide to the Indians, and aiding them, by his knowledge of the country, in making successful incursions into it. In the month of June, at Martin's fort on Crooked Run, another murderous scene was exhibited by the savages. The greater part of the men having gone forth early to their farms, and those who remained, being unapprehensive of immediate danger, and consequently supine and careless, the fort was necessarily, easily accessible, and the vigilance of the savages who were lying hid around it, discovering its exposed and [205] weakened situation, seized the favorable moment to attack those who were without. The women were engaged in milking the cows outside the gate, and the men who had been left behind were loitering around. The Indians rushed forward, and killed and made prisoners of ten of them. James Stuart, James Smally and Peter Crouse, were the only persons who fell, and John Shiver and his wife, two sons of Stuart, two sons of Smally and a son of Crouse, were carried into captivity. According to their statement upon their return, there were thirteen Indians in the party which surprised them, and emboldened by success, instead of retreating with their prisoners, remained at a little distance from the fort 'till night, when they put the captives in a waste house near, under custody of two of the savages, while the remaining eleven, went to see if they could not succeed in forcing an entrance at the gate. But the disaster of the morning had taught the inhabitants the necessity of greater watchfulness. The dogs were shut out at night, and the approach of the Indians exciting them to bark freely, gave notice of impending danger, in time for them to avert it. The attempt to take the fort being thus frustrated, the savages returned to the house in which the prisoners were confined, and moved off with them to their towns. In August, two daughters of Captain David Scott living at the mouth of Pike run, going to the meadow with dinner for the mowers, were taken by some Indians who were watching the path. The younger was killed on the spot; but the latter being taken some distance farther, and every search for her proving unavailing, her father fondly hoped that she had been carried into captivity, and that be might redeem her. For this purpose he visited Pittsburg and engaged the service of a friendly Indian to ascertain where she was and endeavour to prevail on them to ransom her. Before his return from Fort Pitt, some of his neighbors directed to the spot by the buzzards hovering over it, found her half eaten and mutilated body. In September, Nathaniel Davisson and his brother, being on a hunting expedition up Ten Mile, left their camp early on the morning of the day on which they intended to return home; and naming an hour at which they would be back, proceeded through the woods in different directions. At the appointed time, Josiah went to the camp, and after waiting there in vain for the arrival of his brother, and becoming uneasy lest [206] some unlucky accident had befallen him, he set out in search of him. Unable to see or hear anything of him he returned home, and prevailed on several of his neighbors to aid in endeavouring to ascertain his fate. Their search was likewise unavailing; but in the following March, he was found by John Read, while hunting in that neighborhood. He had been shot and scalped; and notwithstanding he had lain out nearly six months, yet he was but little torn by wild beasts, and was easily recognized. During this year too, Tygarts Valley, which had escaped being visited by the Indians in 1778 again heard their harrowing yells; and although but little mischief was done by them while there, yet its inhabitants were awhile, kept in fearful apprehension that greater ills would betide them. In October of this year, a party of them lying in ambush near the road, fired several shots at Lieut. John White, riding by, but with no other effect than by wounding the horse to cause him to throw his rider. This was fatal to White. Being left on foot and on open ground, he was soon shot, tomahawked and scalped. As soon as this event was made known, Capt. Benjamin Wilson, with his wonted promptitude and energy, raised a company of volunteers, and proceeding by forced marches to the Indian crossing at the mouth of the Sandy fork of Little Kenhawa, he remained there nearly three days with a view to intercept the retreat of the savages. They however, returned by another way and his scheme, of cutting them off while crossing the river, consequently failed. Some time after this several families in the Buchannon settlement, left the fort and returned to their homes, under the belief that the season had advanced too far, for the Indians again to come among them. But they were sorely disappointed. The men being all assembled at the fort for the purpose of electing a Captain, some Indians fell upon the family of John Schoolcraft, and killed the women and eight children,--two little boys only were taken prisoners. A small girl, who had been scalped and tomahawked 'till a portion of her brains was forced from her head, was found the next day yet alive, and continued to live for several days, the brains still oozing from the fracture of her skull. The last mischief that was done this fall, was perpetrated at the house of Samuel Cottrail near to the present town of Clarksburg.--During the night considerable fear was excited, both at Cottrial's and at Sotha Hickman's on the opposite side of Elk creek, by the continued barking of the dogs, that Indians were lurking near, and in consequence of this apprehension Cottrial, on going to bed, secured well the doors and directed that no one should stir out in the morning until it was ascertained that there was no danger threatening. A while before day, Cottrial being fast asleep, Moses Coleman, who lived with him, got up, shelled some corn, and giving a few ears to Cottrial's nephew with directions to feed the pigs around [207] the yard, went to the hand mill in an out house, and commenced grinding. The little boy, being squatted down shelling the corn to the pigs, found himself suddenly drawn on his back and an Indian standing over him, ordering him to lie there. The savage then turned toward the house in which Coleman was, fired, and as Coleman fell ran up to scalp him. Thinking this a favorable time for him to reach the dwelling house, the little boy sprang to his feet, and running to the door, it was opened and he admitted. Scarcely was it closed after him, when one of the Indians with his tomahawk endeavored to break it open. Cottrail fired through the door at him, and he went off. In order to see if others were about, and to have a better opportunity of shooting with effect, Cottrail ascended the loft, and looking through a crevice saw them hastening away through the field and at too great distance for him to shoot with the expectation of injuring them. Yet he continued to fire and halloo; to give notice of danger to those who lived near him. The severity of the following winter put a momentary stop to savage inroad, and gave to the inhabitants on the frontier an interval of quiet and repose extremely desirable to them, after the dangers and confinement of the preceding season. Hostilities were however, resumed upon the first appearance of spring, and acts of murder and devastation, which had, of necessity, been suspended for a time, were begun to be committed, with a firm determination on the part of the savages, utterly to exterminate the inhabitants of the western country. To effect this object, an expedition was concerted between the British commandant at Detroit and the Indian Chiefs north west of the Ohio to be carried on by their united forces against Kentucky, while an Indian army alone, was to penetrate North Western Virginia, and spread desolation over its surface. No means which could avail to ensure success and which lay within their reach, were left unemployed. The army destined to operate against Kentucky, was to consist of six hundred Indians and Canadians, to be commanded by Col. Byrd (a British officer) and furnished with every implement of destruction, from the war club of the savages, to the cannon of their allies.[2] Happily for North Western Virginia, its situation exempted its inhabitants from having to contend against these instruments of war; the want of roads prevented the transportation of cannon through the intermediate forests, and the difficulty and labor of propelling them up the Ohio river, forbade the attempt in that way. While the troops were collecting for these expeditions, and other preparations were making for carrying them on, the settlements of North Western Virginia were not free from invasion. Small parties of Indians would enter them at unguarded moments, and kill and plunder, whenever opportunities occurred of their being done with impunity, and then retreat to their villages. Early in March (1780) Thomas Lackey discovered some mocason tracks near the upper extremity of Tygarts Valley, and thought he heard a voice saying in [208] an under tone, "_let him alone, he will go and bring more_." Alarmed by these circumstances, he proceeded to Hadden's fort and told there what he had seen, and what he believed, he had heard. Being so early in the season and the weather yet far from mild, none heeded his tale, and but few believed it. On the next day however, as Jacob Warwick, William Warwick and some others from Greenbrier were about leaving the fort on their return home, it was agreed that a company of men should accompany them some distance on the road. Unapprehensive of danger, in spite of the warning of Lackey, they were proceeding carelessly on their way, when they were suddenly attacked by some Indians lying in ambush, near to the place, where the mocason tracks had been seen on the preceding day. The men on horse back, all got safely off; but those on foot were less fortunate. The Indians having occupied the pass both above and below, the footmen had no chance of escape but in crossing the river and ascending a steep bluff, on its opposite side. In attempting this several lost their lives. John McLain was killed about thirty yards from the brow of the hill.--James Ralston, when a little farther up it, and James Crouch was wounded after having nearly reached its summit, yet he got safely off and returned to the fort on the next day. John Nelson, after crossing over, endeavored to escape down the river; but being there met by a stout warrior, he too was killed, after a severe struggle. His shattered gun breech, the uptorn earth, and the locks of Indian hair in his yet clenched hands, showed that the victory over him had not been easily won. Soon after this, the family of John Gibson were surprised at their sugar camp, on a branch of the Valley river, and made prisoners. Mrs. Gibson, being incapable of supporting the fatigue of walking so far and fast, was tomahawked and scalped in the presence of her children. West's fort on Hacker's creek, was also visited by the savages, early in this year.[3] The frequent incursions of the Indians into this settlement, in the year 1778, had caused the inhabitants to desert their homes the next year, and shelter themselves in places of greater security; but being unwilling to give up the improvements which they had already made and commence anew in the woods, some few families returned to it during the winter, & on the approach of spring, moved into the fort. They had not been long here, before the savages made their appearance, and continued to invest the fort for some time. Too weak to sally out and give them battle, and not knowing when to expect relief, the inhabitants were almost reduced to despair, when Jesse Hughs resolved at his own hazard, to try to obtain assistance to drive off the enemy. Leaving the fort at night, he broke by their sentinels and ran with speed to the Buchannon fort. Here he prevailed on a party of the men to accompany him to West's, and relieve those who had been so long confined there. They arrived before day, and it was thought advisable to abandon the place once more, and remove to Buchannon. On their way, the [209] Indians used every artifice to separate the party, so as to gain an advantageous opportunity of attacking them; but in vain. They exercised so much caution, and kept so well together, that every stratagem was frustrated, and they all reached the fort in safety. Two days after this, as Jeremiah Curl, Henry Fink and Edmund West, who were old men, and Alexander West,[4] Peter Cutright, and Simon Schoolcraft, were returning to the fort with some of their neighbor's property, they were fired at by the Indians who were lying concealed along a run bank. Curl was slightly wounded under the chin, but disdaining to fly without making a stand he called to his companions, "_stand your ground, for we are able to whip them._" At this instant a lusty warrior drew a tomahawk from his belt and rushed towards him. Nothing daunted by the danger which seemed to threaten him, Curl raised his gun; but the powder being damped by the blood from his wound, it did not fire. He instantly picked up West's gun (which he had been carrying to relieve West of part of his burden) and discharging it at his assailant, brought him to the ground. The whites being by this time rid of their encumbrances, the Indians retreated in two parties and pursued different routes, not however without being pursued. Alexander West being swift of foot, soon came near enough to fire, and brought down a second, but having only wounded him, and seeing the Indians spring behind trees, he could not advance to finish him; nor could he again shoot at him, the flint having fallen out when he first fired. Jackson (who was hunting sheep not far off) hearing the report of the guns, ran towards the spot, and being in sight of the Indian when West shot, saw him fall and afterwards recover and hobble off. Simon Schoolcraft, following after West, came to him just after Jackson, with his gun cocked; and asking where the Indians were, was advised by Jackson to get behind a tree, or they would soon let him know where they were. Instantly the report of a gun was heard, and Schoolcraft let fall his arm. The ball had passed through it, and striking a steel tobacco box in his waistcoat pocket, did him no farther injury. Cutright, when West fired at one of the Indians, saw another of them drop behind a log, and changing his position, espied him, where the log was a little raised from the earth. With steady nerves, he drew upon him. The moaning cry of the savage, as he sprang from the ground and moved haltingly away, convinced them that the shot had taken effect. The rest of the Indians continued behind trees, until they observed a reinforcement coming up to the aid of the whites, and they fled with the utmost precipitancy. Night soon coming on, those who followed them, had to give over the pursuit. A company of fifteen men went early next morning to the battle ground, and taking the trail of the Indians and pursuing it some distance, came to where they had some horses (which they had stolen after the skirmish) hobbled out on a fork of Hacker's creek. They [210] then found the plunder which the savages had taken from neighboring houses, and supposing that their wounded warriors were near, the whites commenced looking for them, when a gun was fired at them by an Indian concealed in a laurel thicket, which wounded John Cutright.[5] The whites then caught the stolen horses and returned with them and the plunder to the fort. For some time after this, there was nothing occurring to indicate the presence of Indians in the Buchannon settlement, and some of those who were in the fort, hoping that they should not be again visited by them this season, determined on returning to their homes. Austin Schoolcraft was one of these, and being engaged in removing some of his property from the fort, as he and his niece were passing through a swamp in their way to his house, they were shot at by some Indians. Mr. Schoolcraft was killed and his niece taken prisoner. In June, John Owens, John Juggins and Owen Owens, were attacked by some Indians, as they were going to their cornfield on Booth's creek; and the two former were killed and scalped. Owen Owens being some distance behind them, made his escape to the fort. John Owens the younger, who had been to the pasture field for the plough horses, heard the guns, but not suspecting any danger to be near, rode forward towards the cornfield. As he was proceeding along the path by a fence side, riding one and leading another horse, he was fired at by several Indians, some of whom afterwards rushed forward and caught at the bridle reins; yet he escaped unhurt from them all. The savages likewise visited Cheat river, during the spring, and coming to the house of John Sims, were discovered by a negro woman, who ran immediately to the door and alarmed the family.--Bernard Sims (just recovering from the small pox) taking down his gun, and going to the door, was shot. The Indians, perceiving that he was affected with a disease, of all others the most terrifying to them, not only did not perform the accustomed operation of scalping, but retreated with as much rapidity, as if they had been pursued by an overwhelming force of armed men,--exclaiming as they ran "_small pox, small pox._" After the attack on Donnelly's fort in May 1778, the Indians made no attempt to effect farther mischiefs in the Greenbrier country, until this year. The fort at Point Pleasant guarded the principal pass to the settlements on the Kenhawa, in the Levels, and on Greenbrier river, and the reception with which they had met at Col. Donnelly's, convinced them that not much was to be gained by incursions into that section of the frontiers. But as they were now making great preparations for effectual operations against the whole border country, a party of them was despatched to this portion of it, at once for the purpose of rapine and murder, and to ascertain the state of the country and its capacity to resist invasion. The party then sent into Greenbrier consisted of twenty-two [211] warriors, and committed their first act of atrocity near the house of Lawrence Drinnan, a few miles above the Little Levels. Henry Baker and Richard Hill, who were then staying there, going early in the morning to the river to wash, were shot at by them: Baker was killed, but Hill escaped back to the house. When the Indians fired at Baker, he was near a fence between the river and Drinnan's and within gunshot of the latter place. Fearing to cross the fence for the purpose of scalping him, they prized it up, and with a pole fastening a noose around his neck, drew him down the river bank & scalped and left him there. Apprehensive of an attack on the house, Mr. Drinnan made such preparations as were in his power to repel them, and despatched a servant to the Little Levels, with the intelligence and to procure assistance. He presently returned with twenty men, who remained there during the night, but in the morning, seeing nothing to contradict the belief that the Indians had departed, they buried Baker, and set out on their return to the Levels, taking with them all who were at Drinnan's and the most of his property. Arrived at the fork of the road, a question arose whether they should take the main route, leading through a gap which was deemed a favorable situation for an ambuscade, or continue on the farther but more open and secure way. A majority preferred the latter; but two young men, by the name of Bridger, separated from the others, and travelling on the nearer path, were both killed at the place, where it was feared danger might be lurking. The Indians next proceeded to the house of Hugh McIver, where they succeeded in killing its owner, and in making prisoner his wife; and in going from thence, met with John Prior, who with his wife and infant were on their way to the country on the south side of the Big Kenawha. Prior was shot through the breast, but anxious for the fate of his wife and child, stood still, 'till one of the Indians came up and laid hold on him. Notwithstanding the severe wound which he had received, Prior proved too strong for his opponent, and the other Indians not interfering, forced him at length to disengage himself from the struggle. Prior, then seeing that no violence was offered to Mrs. Prior or the infant, walked off without any attempt being made to stop, or otherwise molest him: the Indians no doubt suffering him to depart under the expectation that he would obtain assistance and endeavor to regain his wife and child, and that an opportunity of waylaying any party coming with this view, would be [212] then afforded them. Prior returned to the settlement, related the above incidents and died that night. His wife and child were never after heard of, and it is highly probable they were murdered on their way, as being unable to travel as expeditiously as the Indians wished. They next went to a house, occupied by Thomas Drinnon and a Mr. Smith with their families, where they made prisoners of Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Drinnon and a child; and going then towards their towns, killed, on their way, an old gentleman by the name of Monday and his wife. This was the last outrage committed by the Indians in the Greenbrier settlements. And although the war was carried on by them against the frontier settlements, with energy for years after, yet did they not again attempt an incursion into it. Its earlier days had been days of tribulation and wo, and those who were foremost in occupying and forming settlements in it, had to endure all that savage fury could inflict. Their term of probation, was indeed of comparatively short duration, but their sufferings for a time, were many and great. The scenes of murder and blood, exhibited on Muddy creek and the Big Levels in 1776, will not soon be effaced from the memory; and the lively interest excited in the bosoms of many, for the fate of those who there treacherously perished, unabated by time, still gleams in the countenance, when tradition recounts the tale of their unhappy lot. ----- [1] L. V. McWhorter, of Berlin, W. Va., writes me: "A few years ago, the descendants of David Morgan erected a monument on the spot where fell one of the Indians. On the day of the unveiling of the monument, there was on exhibition at the spot, a shot-pouch and saddle skirt made from the skins of the Indians. Greenwood S. Morgan, a great-grandson of the Indian slayer, informs me that the shot-pouch is now in the possession of a distant relative, living in Wetzel County, W. Va. The knife with which the Indian was killed, is owned by Morgan's descendants in Marion County, W. Va."--R. G. T. [2] See p. 262, _note_, for account of Capt. Henry Bird's attack on Fort Laurens.--R. G. T. [3] Mr. McWhorter says that this fort stood on an eminence, where is now the residence of Minor C. Hall. Upon the fort being abandoned by the settlers, the Indians burned it. When the whites again returned to their clearings, a new fort was erected, locally called Beech Fort, "because built entirely of beech logs--beech trees standing very thick in this locality." Beech Fort was not over 500 yards from the old West Fort; it was "in a marshy flat, some 75 yards east of the house built by the pioneer Henry McWhorter, and still extant as the residence of Ned J. Jackson." In the same field where Beech Fort was, "Alexander West discovered an Indian one evening; he fired and wounded him in the shoulder. The Indian made off, and fearing an ambuscade West would not venture in pursuit. Two weeks later, he ventured to hunt for the red man. Two miles distant, on what is now known as Life's Run, a branch of Hacker's Creek, the dead savage was found in a cleft of rocks, into which he had crawled and miserably perished. His shoulder was badly crushed by West's bullet." Henry McWhorter, born in Orange County, N. Y., November 13, 1760, was a soldier in the Revolution, from 1777 to the close. In 1784, he settled about two miles from West's Fort; three years later, he moved nearer to the fort, and there built the house of hewn logs, mentioned above, which "is to-day in a good state of preservation." McWhorter died February 4, 1848.--R. G. T. [4] Alexander West was prominent as a frontier scout. Rev. J. M. McWhorter, who saw him frequently, gives this description of him: "A tall, spare-built man, very erect, strong, lithe, and active; dark-skinned, prominent Roman nose, black hair, very keen eyes; not handsome, rather raw-boned, but with an air and mien that commanded the attention and respect of those with whom he associated. Never aggressive, he lifted his arm against the Indians only in time of war." West died in 1834. His house of hewed logs is, with its large barn, still standing and occupied by his relatives, about a mile east of the site of West's Fort.--R. G. T. [5] L. V. McWhorter says: "The branch of Hacker's creek on which John Cutright was wounded, is now known as Laurel Lick, near Berlin, W. Va." For notice of Cutright, see p. 137, _note_.--R. G. T. [213] CHAPTER XIII. Early in June 1780, every necessary preparation having been previously made, the Indian and Canadian forces destined to invade Kentucky, moved from their place of rendezvous, to fulfil the objects of the expedition. In their general plan of the campaign, Louisville was the point against which operations were first to be directed. The hero of Kaskaskias and St. Vincent had been for some time stationed there, with a small body of troops, to intercept the passage of war parties into the interior, and the force thus placed under his command, having been considerably augmented by the arrival of one hundred and fifty Virginia soldiers under Colonel Slaughter, that place had assumed the appearance of a regular fortification, capable of withstanding a severe shock;[1] while detachments from it gave promise of security to the settlements remote from the river, as well by detecting and checking every attempt at invasion, as by acting offensively against the main Indian towns, from which hostile parties would sally, spreading desolation along their path. The reduction of this establishment, would at once give wider scope to savage hostilities and gratify the wounded pride of the Canadians. Stung by the boldness and success of Colonel Clarke's adventure, and fearing the effect which it might have on their Indian allies, they seemed determined to achieve a victory over him, and strike a retributive blow against the position which he then held. [214] It is highly probable however, that the reputation which, the gallant exploits of Colonel Clarke had acquired for him, induced some doubts, in the minds of the commanding officers, of the ultimate success of a movement against that post.[2] They changed their destination; and when their army arrived in their boats at the Ohio, instead of floating with its rapid current to the point proposed, they chose to stem the stream; and availing themselves of an uncommon swell of the waters, ascended the river Licking to its forks, where they landed their men and munitions of war.[3] Not far from the place of debarkation, there was a station,[4] reared under the superintendence of Captain Ruddle, and occupied by several families and many adventurers. Thither Colonel Byrd, with his combined army of Canadians and Indians then amounting to one thousand men, directed his march; and arriving before it on the 22d of June, gave the first notice, which the inhabitants had of the presence of an enemy, by a discharge of his cannon. He then sent in a flag, demanding the immediate surrender of the place. Knowing that it was impossible to defend the station against artillery, Captain Ruddle consented to surrender it, provided the inhabitants should be considered prisoners to the British, and not to the Indians. To this proposition Colonel Byrd assented, and the gates were thrown open. The savages instantly rushed in, each laying his hands on the first person with whom he chanced to meet. Parents and children, husbands and wives, were thus torn from each other; and the [214] air was rent with sighs of wailing, and shrieks of agony. In vain did Captain Ruddle exclaim, against the enormities which were perpetrated in contravention to the terms of capitulation. To his remonstrances, Colonel Byrd replied that he was unable to control them, and affirmed, that he too was in their power. That Colonel Byrd was really unable to check the enormities of the savages, will be readily admitted, when the great disparity of the Canadian and Indian troops, and the lawless and uncontrolable temper of the latter, are taken into consideration. That he had the inclination to stop them, cannot be [215] doubted--his subsequent conduct furnished the most convincing evidence, that the power to effect it, was alone wanting in him.[5] After Ruddle's station had been completely sacked, and the prisoners disposed of, the Indians clamoured to be led against Martin's station, then only five miles distant. Affected with the barbarities which he had just witnessed, Colonel Byrd peremptorily refused, unless the chiefs would guaranty that the prisoners, which might be there taken, should be entirely at his disposal. For awhile the Indians refused to accede to these terms, but finding Colonel Byrd, inflexible in his determination, they at length consented, that the prisoners should be his, provided the plunder were allowed to them.--Upon this agreement, they marched forward. Martin's station, like Ruddle's, was incapable of offering any available opposition. It was surrendered on the first summons, and the prisoners and plunder divided, in conformity with the compact between Colonel Byrd and the savages. The facility, with which these conquests were made, excited the thirst of the Indians for more. Not satisfied with the plundering of Ruddle's and Martin's stations, their rapacity prompted them to insist on going against Bryant's and Lexington. Prudence forbade it. The waters were rapidly subsiding, and the fall of the Licking river, would have rendered it impracticable to convey their artillery to the Ohio. Their success too, was somewhat doubtful; and it was even then difficult to procure provisions, for the subsistence of the prisoners already taken.[6] Under the influence of these considerations, Colonel Byrd determined to return to the boats, and embarking on these his artillery and the Canadian troops, descended the river; while the Indians, with their plunder, and the prisoners taken at Ruddle's, moved across the country. Among those who were taken captive at Ruddle's station, was a man of the name of Hinkstone, remarkable for activity and daring, and for uncommon tact and skill as a woodsman. On the second night of their march, the Indians encamped on the bank of the river, and in consequence of a sudden shower of rain, postponed kindling their fires until dark, when part of the savages engaged in this business, while the remainder guarded the prisoners. Hinkstone thought the darkness favorable to escape, and inviting its attempt. He resolved on trying it, and springing suddenly from them, ran a small [216] distance and concealed himself behind a large log, under the shade of a wide spreading tree. The alarm was quickly given, and the Indians, pursuing, searched for him in every direction. It was fruitless and unavailing. Hid in thick obscurity, no eye could distinguish his prostrate body. Perceiving at length, by the subsiding of the noise without the camp, that the Indians had abandoned the search, he resumed his flight, with the stillness of death. The heavens afforded him no sign, by which he could direct his steps. Not a star twinkled through the dark clouds which enveloped the earth, to point out his course. Still he moved on, as he supposed, in the direction of Lexington. He had mistaken the way, and a short space of time, served to convince him that he was in error. After wandering about for two hours, he came in sight of the Indian fires again. Perplexed by his devious ramble, he was more at fault than ever. The sky was still all darkness, and he had recourse to the trees in vain, to learn the points of the compass by the feeling of the moss. He remembered that at nightfall, the wind blew a gentle breeze from the west; but it had now, become so stilled, that it no longer made any impression on him. The hunter's expedient, to ascertain the direction of the air, occurred to him.--He dipped his finger in water, and, knowing that evaporation and coolness would be first felt on the side from which the wind came, he raised it high in the air. It was enough.--Guided by this unerring indication, and acting on the supposition that the current of air still flowed from the point from which it had proceeded at night, he again resumed his flight. After groping in the wilderness for some time, faint and enfeebled, he sat down to rest his wearied limbs, and sought their invigoration in refreshing sleep. When he awoke, fresh dangers encircled him, but he was better prepared to elude, or encounter them. At the first dawn of day, his ears were assailed by the tremulous bleating of the fawn, the hoarse gobbling of the turkey, and the peculiar sounds of other wild animals. Familiar with the deceptive artifices, practised to allure game to the hunter, he was quickly alive to the fact, that they were the imitative cries of savages in quest of provisions. Sensible of his situation, he became vigilant to discover the approach of danger, and active in avoiding it. Several times however, with all his wariness, he found himself within a few paces of [217] some one of the Indians; but fortunately escaping their observation, made good his escape, and reached Lexington in safety, gave there the harrowing intelligence of what had befallen the inhabitants of Ruddle's and Martin's stations. The Indians after the escape of Hinkstone, crossed the Ohio river at the mouth of Licking, and, separating into small parties, proceeded to their several villages. The Canadian troops descended Licking to the Ohio, and this river to the mouth of the Great Miami, up which they ascended as far as it was navigable for their boats, and made their way thence by land to Detroit. The Indian army destined to operate against North Western Virginia, was to enter the country in two divisions of one hundred and fifty warriors each; the one crossing the Ohio near below Wheeling, the other, at the mouth of Racoon creek, about sixty miles farther up. Both were, avoiding the stronger forts, to proceed directly to Washington, then known as Catfishtown, between which place and the Ohio, the whole country was to be laid waste. The division crossing below Wheeling, was soon discovered by scouts, who giving the alarm, caused most of the inhabitants of the more proximate settlements, to fly immediately to that place, supposing that an attack was meditated on it. The Indians however, proceeded on the way to Washington making prisoners of many, who, although apprized that an enemy was in the country, yet feeling secure in their distance from what was expected to be the theatre of operations, neglected to use the precaution necessary to guard them against becoming captives to the savages. From all the prisoners, they learned the same thing,--that the inhabitants had gone to Wheeling with a view of concentrating the force of the settlements to effect their repulsion. This intelligence alarmed them. The chiefs held a council, in which it was determined, instead of proceeding to Washington, to retrace their steps across the Ohio, lest their retreat, if delayed 'till the whites had an opportunity of organizing themselves for battle, should be entirely cut off. Infuriate at the blasting of their hopes of blood and spoil, they resolved to murder all their male prisoners--exhausting on their devoted heads, the fury of disappointed expectation. Preparations to carry this resolution into effect, were immediately begun to be made. The unfortunate victims to their savage wrath, were led [218] forth from among their friends and their families,--their hands were pinioned behind them,--a rope was fastened about the neck of each and that bound around a tree, so as to prevent any motion of the head. The tomahawk and scalping knife were next drawn from their belts, and the horrid purpose of these preparations, fully consummated. "Imagination's utmost stretch" can hardly fancy a more heart-rending scene than was there exhibited. Parents, in the bloom of life and glow of health, mercilessly mangled to death, in the presence of children, whose sobbing cries served but to heighten the torments of the dying.--Husbands, cruelly lacerated, and by piece-meal deprived of life, in view of the tender partners of their bosoms, whose agonizing shrieks, increasing the anguish of torture, sharpened the sting of death. It is indeed ----"A fearful thing, To see the human soul, take wing, In any shape,--in any mood;" but that wives and children should be forced to behold the last ebb of life, and to witness the struggle of the departing spirit of husbands and fathers, under such horrific circumstances, is shocking to humanity, and appalling, even in contemplation. Barbarities such as these, had considerable influence on the temper and disposition of the inhabitants of the country. They gave birth to a vindictive feeling in many, which led to the perpetration of similar enormities and sunk civilized man, to the degraded level of the barbarian. They served too, to arouse them to greater exertion, to subdue the savage foe in justifiable warfare, and thus prevent their unpleasant recurrence. So soon as the Indian forces effected a precipitate retreat across the Ohio, preparations were begun to be made for acting offensively against them. An expedition was concerted, to be carried on against the towns at the forks of the Muskingum; and through the instrumentality of Col's Zane and Shepard, Col. Broadhead, commander of the forces at Fort Pitt, was prevailed upon to co-operate in it.[7] Before however, it could be carried into effect, it was deemed advisable to proceed against the Munsie towns, up the north branch of the Alleghany river; the inhabitants of which, had been long engaged in active [219] hostilities, and committed frequent depredations on the frontiers of Pennsylvania. In the campaign against them, as many of those, who resided in the settlements around Wheeling, as could be spared from the immediate defence of their own neighborhoods, were consociated with the Pennsylvania troops, and the regulars under Col. Broadhead. It eventuated in the entire destruction of all their corn, (upwards of 200 acres,) and in the cutting off a party of forty warriors, on their way to the settlements in Westmoreland county. Very soon after the return of the army, from the Alleghany, the troops, with which it was intended to operate against the Indian villages up the Muskingum and amounting to eight hundred, rendezvoused at Wheeling. From thence, they proceeded directly for the place of destination, under the command of Col. Broadhead.[8] When the army arrived near to Salem (a Moravian town,)[9] many of the militia expressed a determination to go forward and destroy it, but as the Indians residing there, had ever been in amity with the whites, and were not known to have ever participated in the murderous deeds of their more savage red brethren, the officers exerted themselves effectually, to repress that determination. Col. Broadhead sent forward an express to the Rev'd Mr. Heckewelder (the missionary of that place,)[10] acquainting him with the object of the expedition, & requesting a small supply of provisions, and that he would accompany the messenger to camp. When Mr. Heckewelder came, the commander enquired of him, if any christian Indians were engaged in hunting or other business, in the direction of their march,--stating, that if they were, they might be exposed to danger, as it would be impracticable to distinguish between them and other Indians, and that he should greatly regret the happening to them, of any unpleasant occurrence, through ignorance or mistake. On hearing there were not, the army was ordered to resume its march, and proceeded towards the forks of the river. At White Eyes plain, near to the place of destination, an Indian was discovered and made prisoner. Two others were seen near there, and fired at; and notwithstanding one of them was wounded, yet both succeeded in effecting their escape. Apprehensive that they would hasten to the Indian towns, and communicate the fact that an army of whites was near at hand, Col. Broadhead moved rapidly forward with the [220] troops, notwithstanding a heavy fall of rain, to reach Coshocton, (the nearest village,)[11] and take it by surprise. His expectations were not disappointed. Approaching the town, the right wing of the army was directed to occupy a position above it, on the river; the left to assume a stand below, while the centre marched directly upon it. The Indian villages, ignorant of the fact that an enemy was in their country, were all made prisoners without the firing of a single gun. So rapid, and yet so secret, had been the advance of the army, that every part of the town was occupied by the troops, before the Indians knew of its approach. Successful as they thus far were, yet the expedition accomplished but a portion of what had been contemplated. The other towns were situated on the opposite side of the river, and this was so swollen by the excessive rains which had fallen and continued yet to deluge the earth, that it was impracticable to cross over to them; and Col. Broadhead, seeing the impossibility of achieving any thing farther, commenced laying waste the crops about Coshocton. This measure was not dictated by a spirit of revenge, naturally enkindled by the exterminating warfare, waged against the whites by the savages, but was a politic expedient, to prevent the accomplishment of their horrid purposes and to lessen the frequency of their incursions. When they fail to derive sustenance from their crops of corn and other edible vegetables, the Indians are forced to have recourse to hunting, to obtain provisions, and consequently, to suspend their hostile operations for a season. To produce this desirable result, was the object sought to be obtained by the destruction which was made of every article of subsistence, found here and at the Munsie towns, and subsequently at other places. It remained then to dispose of the prisoners. Sixteen warriors, particularly obnoxious for their diabolical deeds, were pointed out by Pekillon (a friendly Delaware chief who accompanied the army of Col. Broadhead) as fit subjects of retributive justice; and taken into close custody. A council of war was then held, to determine on their fate, and which doomed them to death. They were taken some distance from town, despatched with tomahawks and spears, and then scalped. The other captives were committed to the care of the militia, to be conducted to Fort Pitt. On the morning after the taking of Coshocton, an Indian, [221] making his appearance on the opposite bank of the river, called out for the "Big Captain." Col. Broadhead demanded what he wished. I want peace replied the savage. Then send over some of your chiefs, said the Colonel. May be you kill, responded the Indian. No, said Broadhead, they shall not be killed. One of their chiefs, a fine looking fellow, then come over; and while he and Col. Broadhead were engaged in conversation, a militiaman came up, and with a tomahawk which he had concealed in the bosom of his hunting shirt, struck him a severe blow on the hinder part of his head. The poor Indian fell, and immediately expired. This savage like deed was the precursor of other, and perhaps equally attrocious enormities. The army on its return, had not proceeded more than half a mile from Coshocton, when the militia guarding the prisoners, commenced murdering them. In a short space of time, a few women and children alone remained alive. These were taken to Fort Pitt, and after a while exchanged for an equal number of white captives. The putting to death the sixteen prisoners designated by Pekillon, can be considered in no other light, than as a punishment inflicted for their great offences; and was certainly right and proper. Not so with the deliberate murder of the chief, engaged in negotiation with Col. Broadhead. He had come over under the implied assurance of the security, due to a messenger for peace, and after a positive promise of protection had been given him by the commander of the army.--His death can, consequently, only be considered as an unwarrantable murder; provoked indeed, by the barbarous and bloody conduct of the savages. These, though they do not justify, should certainly extenuate the offence. The fact, that the enemy, with whom they were contending, did not observe the rules of war, and was occasionally, guilty of the crime, of putting their prisoners to death, would certainly authorize the practice of greater rigor, than should be exercised towards those who do not commit such excesses. This extraordinary severity, of itself, tends to beget a greater regard for what is allowable among civilized men, and to produce conformity with those usages of war, which were suggested by humanity, and are sanctioned by all. But the attainment of this object, if it were the motive which prompted to the deed, can not justify the murder of the prisoners, placed [222] under the safe keeping of the militia. It evinced a total disregard of the authority of their superior officer. He had assured them they should only be detained as prisoners, and remain free from farther molestation; and nothing, but the commission of some fresh offence, could sanction the enormity. But, however sober reflection may condemn those acts as outrages of propriety, yet so many and so great, were the barbarous excesses committed by the savages upon the whites in their power, that the minds of those who were actors in those scenes, were deprived of the faculty of discriminating between what was right or wrong to be practised towards them. And if acts, savouring of sheer revenge, were done by them, they should be regarded as but the ebullitions of men, under the excitement of great and damning wrongs, and which, in their dispassionate moments, they would condemn, even in themselves. When, upon the arrival of Hinkston at Lexington, the people became acquainted with the mischief which had been wrought by the Canadian and Indian army,[12] every bosom burned with a desire to avenge those outrages, and to retort them on their authors. Runners were despatched in every direction, with the intelligence, and the cry for retribution, arose in all the settlements. In this state of feeling, every eye was involuntarily turned towards Gen. Clarke as the one who should lead them forth to battle; and every ear was opened, to receive his counsel. He advised a levy of four-fifths of the male inhabitants, capable of bearing arms, and that they should speedily assemble at the mouth of Licking, and proceed from thence to Chilicothe. He ordered the building of a number of transport boats, and directed such other preparations to be made, as would facilitate the expedition, and ensure success to its object. When all was ready, the boats with the provisions and stores on board, were ordered up the Ohio, under the command of Col. Slaughter. In ascending the river, such was the rapidity of the current, that the boats were compelled to keep near to the banks, and were worked up, in two divisions--one near each shore. While thus forcing their way slowly up the stream, one of the boats, being some distance in advance of the others and close under the north western bank, was fired into by a party of Indians. The fire was promptly returned; but before the other boats could draw nigh to her aid, a number of those on [223] board of her, was killed and wounded. As soon however, as they approached and opened a fire upon the assailants, the savages withdrew, and the boats proceeded to the place of rendezvous, without farther interruption. On the second of August, General Clarke took up the line of march from the place where Cincinnati now stands, at the head of nine hundred and seventy men. They proceeded without any delay, to the point of destination, where they arrived on the sixth of the month. The town was abandoned, and many of the houses were yet burning, having been fired on the preceding day. There were however, several hundred acres of luxuriant corn growing about it, every stalk of which was cut down and destroyed. The army then moved in the direction of the Piqua Towns, twelve miles farther, and with a view to lay waste every thing around it, and with the hope of meeting there an enemy, with whom to engage in battle; but before they had got far, a heavy shower of rain, accompanied with loud thunder and high winds, forced them to encamp. Every care which could be taken to keep the guns dry, was found to be of no avail, and General Clarke, with prudent precaution, had them all fired and re-loaded--continuing to pursue this plan, to preserve them fit for use, whenever occasion required, and keeping the troops on the alert and prepared to repel any attack which might be made on them--during the night. In the afternoon of the next day, they arrived in sight of Piqua, and as they advanced upon the town, were attacked by the Indians concealed in the high weeds which grew around. Colonel Logan, with four hundred men, was ordered to file off,--march up the river to the east, and occupy a position from which to intercept the savages, should they attempt to fly in that direction. Another division of the army was in like manner posted on the opposite side of the river, while General Clarke with the troops under Colonel Slaughter and those attached to the artillery, was to advance directly upon the town. The Indians seemed to comprehend every motion of the army, and evinced the skill of tacticians in endeavoring to thwart its purpose. To prevent being surrounded by the advance of the detachment from the west, they made a powerful effort to turn the left wing. Colonel Floyd extended his line some distance west of the town, and the engagement became general. Both armies fought with determined [224] resolution, and the contest was warm and animated for some time. The Indians, finding that their enemy was gaining on them retired unperceived, through the prairie, a few only remaining in the town. The piece of cannon was then bro't to bear upon the houses, into which some of the savages had retired to annoy the army as it marched upon the village.--They were soon dislodged and fled. On reaching the houses, a Frenchman was discovered concealed in one of them. From him it was learned, that the Indians had been apprized of the intention of Gen. Clarke to march against Chilicothe and other towns in its vicinity, by one of Col. Logan's men, who had deserted from the army while at the mouth of Licking, and was supposed to have fled to Carolina, as he took with him the horse furnished him for the expedition. Instead of this however, he went over to the enemy, and his treason, ----"Like a deadly blight, Came o'er the councils of the brave, And damped them in their hour of might." Thus forwarned of the danger which threatened them, they were enabled in a considerable degree to avoid it, and watching all the movements of the army, were on the eve of attacking it silently, with tomahawks and knives, on the night of its encamping between Chilicothe and Piqua. The shooting of the guns, convincing them that they had not been rendered useless by the rain, alone deterred them from executing this determination. Notwithstanding that the victory obtained by Gen. Clarke, was complete and decided, yet the army under his command sustained a loss in killed and wounded, as great as was occasioned to the enemy. This circumstance was attributable to the sudden and unexpected attack made on it, by the Indians, while entirely concealed, and partially sheltered. No men could have evinced more dauntless intrepidity and determined fortitude than was displayed by them, when fired upon by a hidden foe, and their comrades were falling around them. When the "combat thickened," such was their noble daring, that Girty, (who had been made chief among the Mingoes,) remarking the desperation with which they exposed themselves to the hottest of the fire, drew off his three hundred warriors; observing, that it was useless to fight with fools and madmen. The loss in killed under the peculiar [225] circumstances, attending the commencement of the action, was less than would perhaps be expected to befall an army similarly situated;--amounting in all to only twenty men. Here, as at Chilicothe, the crops of corn and every article of subsistence on which the troops could lay their hands, were entirely laid waste. At the two places, it was estimated that not less than five hundred acres of that indispensable article, were entirely destroyed.[13] An unfortunate circumstance, occurring towards the close of the engagement, damped considerably the joy which would otherwise have pervaded the army. A nephew of Gen. Clarke, who had been taken, and for some time detained, a prisoner by the savages, was at Piqua during the action. While the battle continued, he was too closely guarded to escape to the whites; but upon the dispersion of the savages which ensued upon the cannonading of the houses into which some of them had retreated, he was left more at liberty. Availing himself of this change of situation, he sought to join his friends. He was quickly discovered by some of them, and mistaken for an Indian. The mistake was fatal. He received a shot discharged at him, and died in a few hours. Notwithstanding the success of the expeditions commanded by Col. Broadhead and Gen. Clarke, and the destruction which took place on the Alleghany, at Coshocton, Chilicothe and Piqua, yet the savages continued to commit depredations on the frontiers of Virginia. The winter, as usual, checked them for awhile, but the return of spring, brought with it, the horrors which mark the progress of an Indian enemy. In Kentucky and in North Western Virginia, it is true that the inhabitants did not suffer much by their hostilities in 1781, as in the preceding years; yet were they not exempt from aggression. Early in March a party of Indians invaded the settlements on the upper branches of Monongahela river; and on the night of the 5th of that month, came to the house of Capt. John Thomas, near Booth's creek. Unapprehensive of danger, with his wife and seven children around him, and with thoughts devotedly turned upon the realities of another world, this gentleman was engaging in his accustomed devotions when the savages approached his door; and as he was repeating the first lines of the hymn, "Go worship at Emanuel's feet," a gun was fired at him, and he fell. The Indians [226] immediately forced open the door, and, entering the house, commenced the dreadful work of death. Mrs. Thomas raised her hands and implored their mercy for herself and her dear children. It was in vain. The tomahawk was uplifted, and stroke followed stroke in quick succession, till the mother and six children lay weltering in blood, by the side of her husband and their father--a soul-chilling spectacle to any but heartless savages. When all were down, they proceeded to scalp the fallen, and plundering the house of what they could readily remove, threw the other things into the fire and departed--taking with them one little boy a prisoner. Elizabeth Juggins, (the daughter of John Juggins who had been murdered in that neighborhood, the preceding year) was at the house of Capt. Thomas, when the Indians came to it; but as soon as she heard the report of the gun and saw Capt. Thomas fall, she threw herself under the bed, and escaped the observation of the savages. After they had completed the work of blood and left the house, fearing that they might be lingering near, she remained in that situation until she observed the house to be in flames. When she crawled forth from her asylum, Mrs. Thomas was still alive, though unable to move; and casting a pitying glance towards her murdered infant, asked that it might be handed to her. Upon seeing Miss Juggins about to leave the house, she exclaimed, "Oh Betsy! do not leave us." Still anxious for her own safety, the girl rushed out, and taking refuge for the night between two logs, in the morning early spread the alarm. When the scene of those enormities was visited, Mrs. Thomas was found in the yard, much mangled by the tomahawk and considerably torn by hogs--she had, perhaps in the struggle of death, thrown herself out at the door. The house, together with Capt. Thomas and the children, was a heap of ashes.[14] In April, Matthias, Simon and Michael Schoolcraft left Buchannon fort, and went to the head of Stone coal creek for the purpose of catching pigeons. On their return, they were fired upon by Indians, and Matthias killed--the other two were taken captive. These were the last of the Schoolcraft family,--fifteen of them were killed or taken prisoners in the space of a few years. Of those who were carried into captivity, none ever returned. They were believed to have consociated with the savages, and from the report of others [227] who were prisoners to the Indians, three of them used to accompany war parties, in their incursions into the settlements. In the same month, as some men were returning to Cheat river from Clarksburg, (where they had been to obtain certificates of settlement-rights to their lands, from the commissioners appointed to adjust land claims in the counties of Ohio, Youghiogany and Monongalia) they, after having crossed the Valley river, were encountered by a large party of Indians, and John Manear, Daniel Cameron and a Mr. Cooper were killed,--the others effected their escape with difficulty. The savages then moved on towards Cheat, but meeting with James Brown and Stephen Radcliff, and not being able to kill or take them, they changed their course, and passing over Leading creek, (in Tygarts Valley) nearly destroyed the whole settlement. They there killed Alexander Roney, Mrs. Dougherty, Mrs. Hornbeck and her children, Mrs. Buffington and her children, and many others; and made prisoners, Mrs. Roney and her son, and Daniel Dougherty. Jonathan Buffington and Benjamin Hornbeck succeeded in making their escape and carried the doleful tidings to Friend's and Wilson's forts. Col. Wilson immediately raised a company of men and proceeding to Leading creek, found the settlement without inhabitants, and the houses nearly all burned. He then pursued after the savages, but not coming up with them as soon as was expected, the men became fearful of the consequences which might result to their own families, by reason of this abstraction of their defence, provided other Indians were to attack them, and insisted on their returning. On the second day of the pursuit, it was agreed that a majority of the company should decide whether they were to proceeded farther or not. Joseph Friend, Richard Kettle, Alexander West and Col. Wilson, were the only persons in favor of going on, and they consequently had to return. But though the pursuit was thus abandoned, yet did not the savages get off with their wonted impunity. When the land claimants, who had been the first to encounter this party of Indians escaped from them, they fled back to Clarksburg, and gave the alarm. This was quickly communicated to the other settlements, and spies were sent out, to watch for the enemy. By some of these, the savages were discovered on the West Fork, near the mouth of Isaac's Creek, and intelligence of it immediately carried to the forts. Col. Lowther [228] collected a company of men, and going in pursuit, came in view of their encampment, awhile before night, on a branch of Hughes' river, ever since known as _Indian creek_. Jesse and Elias Hughs--active, intrepid and vigilant men--were left to watch the movements of the savages, while the remainder retired a small distance to refresh themselves, and prepare to attack them in the morning. Before day Col. Lowther arranged his men in order of attack, and when it became light, on the preconcerted signal being given, a general fire was poured in upon them. Five of the savages fell dead and the others fled leaving at their fires, all their shot bags and plunder, and all their guns, except one. Upon going to their camp, it was found that one of the prisoners (a son of Alexander Rony who had been killed in the Leading creek massacre) was among the slain. Every care had been taken to guard against such an occurrence, and he was the only one of the captives who sustained any injury from the fire of the whites.[15] In consequence of information received from the prisoners who were retaken (that a larger party of Indians was expected hourly to come up,) Col. Lowther [228] deemed it prudent not to go in pursuit of those who had fled, and collecting the plunder which the savages had left, catching the horses which [229] they had stolen, and having buried young Rony, the party set out on its return and marched home--highly gratified at the success which had crowned their exertions to punish their untiring foe. Some short time after this, John Jackson and his son George, returning to Buchannon fort, were fired at by some Indians, but fortunately missed. George Jackson having his gun in his hand, discharged it at a savage peeping from behind a tree, without effect; and they then rode off with the utmost speed. At the usual period of leaving the forts and returning to their farms, the inhabitants withdrew from Buchannon and went to their respective homes. Soon after, a party of savages came to the house of Charles Furrenash, and made prisoners of Mrs. Furrenash and her four children, and despoiled their dwelling. Mrs. Furrenash, being a delicate and weakly woman, and unable to endure the fatigue of travelling far on foot, was murdered on Hughes' river. Three of the children were afterwards redeemed and came back,--the fourth was never more heard of. In a few days after, the husband and father returned from Winchester (where he had been for salt) and instead of the welcome greeting of an affectionate wife, and the pleasing prattle of his innocent children, was saluted with the melancholy intelligence of their fate. It was enough to make him curse the authors of the outrage, and swear eternal enmity to the savage race. The early period in spring at which irruptions were frequently made by the savages upon the frontier, had induced a belief, that if the Moravian Indians did not participate in the bloody deeds of their red bretren, yet that they afforded to them shelter and protection from the inclemency of winter, and thus enabled them, by their greater proximity to the white settlements, to commence depredations earlier than they otherwise could. The consequence of this belief was, the engendering in the minds of many, a spirit of hostility towards those Indians; occasionally threatening a serious result to them. Reports too, were in circulation, proceeding from restored captives, at war with the general pacific profession of the Moravians, and which, whether true or false, served to heighten the acrimony of feeling towards them, until the militia of a portion of the frontier came to the determination of breaking up the villages on the Muskingum.[16] To [230] carry this determination into effect, a body of troops, commanded by Col. David Williamson, set out for those towns, in the latter part of the year 1781. Not deeming it necessary to use the fire and sword, to accomplish the desired object, Col. Williamson resolved on endeavoring to prevail on them to move farther off; and if he failed in this, to make prisoners of them all, and take them to Fort Pitt. Upon his arrival at their towns, they were found to be nearly deserted, a few Indians only, remaining in them. These were made prisoners and taken to Fort Pitt; but were soon liberated. It is a remarkable fact, that at the time the whites were planning the destruction of the Moravian villages, because of their supposed co-operation with the hostile savages, the inhabitants of those villages were suffering severely from the ill treatment of those very savages, because of their supposed attachment to the whites. By the one party, they were charged with affording to Indian war parties, a resting place and shelter, and furnishing them with provisions. By the other, they were accused of apprizing the whites of meditated incursions into the country, and thus defeating their purpose, or lessening the chance of success; and of being instrumental in preventing the Delawares from entering in the war which they were waging. Both charges were probably, well founded, and the Moravian Indians yet culpable in neither.[17] Their villages were situated nearly midway between the frontier establishments of the whites, and the towns of the belligerent Indians, and were consequently, convenient resting places for warriors proceeding to and from the settlements. That they should have permitted war parties after ravages to refresh themselves there, or even have supplied them with provisions, does not argue a disposition to aid or encourage their hostile operations. It was at any time in the power of those warring savages, to exact by force whatever was required of the Moravian Indians, and the inclination was not wanting, to do this or other acts of still greater enormity. That the warriors were the better enabled to make incursions into the settlements, and effect their dreadful objects by reason of those accommodations, can not be questioned; the fault however, lay not in any inimical feeling of the christian Indians towards the whites, but in their physical inability to withhold whatever might be demanded of them. And although they exerted themselves to prevail on other [231] tribes to forbear from hostilities against the whites, and apprised the latter of enterprizes projected against them, yet did not these things proceed from an unfriendly disposition towards their red brethren. They were considerate and reflecting, and saw that the savages must ultimately suffer, by engaging in a war against the settlements; while their pacific and christian principles, influenced them to forewarn the whites of impending danger, that it might be avoided, and the effusion of blood be prevented. But pure and commendable as were, no doubt, the motives which governed them, in their intercourse with either party, yet they were so unfortunate as to excite the enmity and incur the resentment of both, and eventually were made to suffer, though in different degrees, by both. In the fall of 1781, the settlements of the Moravians were almost entirely broken up by upwards of three hundred warriors, and the missionaries, residing among them, after having been robbed of almost every thing, were taken prisoners and carried to Detroit. Here they were detained until the governor became satisfied that they were guiltless of any offence meriting a longer confinement; when they were released & permitted to return to their beloved people. The Indians were left to shift for themselves in the Sandusky plains where most of their horses and cattle perished from famine.[18] ----- [1] Col. Reuben T. Durrett, in his _Centenary of Louisville_, p. 47, says that Louisville at this time consisted of Clark's original block house, with eighteen cabins, on Corn Island, at the head of the rapids; a small fort at the foot of Third street, erected by Col. John Floyd in 1779; "a large fort on the east side of a ravine that entered the Ohio at Twelfth street, and a few rude log cabins scattered through the woods near the Twelfth street fort, all occupied by one hundred inhabitants, who had cleared and cultivated garden-spots around their humble cabins."--R. G. T. [2] The expedition was sent out by Maj. A. S. De Peyster, then British commandant at Detroit. It was headed by Capt. Bird, with whom were Simon, James, and George Girty. The force, as rendezvoused at Detroit, consisted of 150 whites, and 100 Indians from the Upper Lakes; they carried two cannon. They were joined on the Miami by Capt. McKee, deputy Indian agent, and a large party of Indians, making the force of savages amount to 700.--R. G. T. [3] The original destination was Louisville, but en route the Indian chiefs compelled Bird to first proceed against the forts on the Licking.--R. G. T. [4] A station was a parallelogram of cabins, united by palisades so as to present a continued wall on the outer side, the cabin doors opening into a common square, on the inner side. They were the strong holds of the early settlers. [5] There seems to be abundant evidence that Bird, a competent officer, was humanely inclined; but he was quite in the power of his savage allies, who would brook little control of their passions. The number of prisoners taken at Isaac Ruddell's was nearly 300; about fifty more were taken at Martin's.--R. G. T. [6] The Indians had, contrary to Bird's expostulations, wantonly slaughtered all the cattle at Ruddell's Station, and this it was that caused the famine. With an abundance of food to sustain both prisoners and warriors, Bird might readily have carried out his purpose of uprooting nearly every settlement in Kentucky. There is nothing in his official report of the expedition, to warrant the statement that high water had any thing to do with the matter.--R. G. T. [7] Col. Daniel Brodhead was in command of the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment. He succeeded McIntosh at Fort Pitt, in April, 1779.--R. G. T. [8] Brodhead set out from Fort Pitt, April 7, 1781, with 150 regulars; at Wheeling he picked up David Shepherd, lieutenant of Ohio County, Va., with 134 militia, including officers; besides these were five friendly Indians, eager for Delaware scalps.--R. G. T. [9] Salem, established by Heckewelder for his Indian converts, was on the west bank of the Tuscarawas, a mile and a half south-west of the present Port Washington.--R. G. T. [10] John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder was born at Bedford, England, March 12, 1743. Coming to Pennsylvania in 1754, he was at first a cooper, but later became an assistant to Charles Frederick Post, the Moravian missionary. In 1771, he first became an evangelist to the Indians, on his own account, and spent fifteen years in Ohio, where he assisted in the work of David Zeisberger. He was a man of learning, and made important contributions to the study of American archæology and, ethnology. The last thirteen years of his life were spent in literary work. He died at Bethlehem, Pa., January 21, 1823.--R. G. T. [11] Called in some of the contemporary chronicles, Goschocking.--R. G. T. [12] Withers here reverts to the Bird invasion in the summer of 1780, and the escape of Hinkstone from his British captors, related _ante_, pp. 295-98. Clark's retaliatory expedition was made during August, 1780.--R. G. T. [13] Butterfield, in _History of the Girtys_, p. 121, places the white loss at seventeen killed, and "a number wounded;" and the Indian loss at six killed and three wounded. Clark's nephew, Joseph Rogers, was killed on August 8, the day of the general engagement. Clark left Piqua, the 10th.--R. G. T. [14] I am informed by S. R. Harrison, of Clarksburg, W. Va., that the bodies of the victims were buried about five rods from the house, and "the graves are yet marked by the original rude stones." Mr. Harrison continues, "This burial ground, and also where the house stood, had never been disturbed until March, 1888--a hundred and seven years after the massacre--when the ground about the site of the house was plowed; many interesting relics were turned up, among them a compass and sun-dial in a copper case. I myself found a number of relics among the charred ruins of the house."--R. G. T. [15] As soon as the fire was opened upon the Indians, Mrs. Rony (one of the prisoners) ran towards the whites rejoicing at the prospect of deliverance, and exclaiming, "I am Ellick Rony's wife, of the Valley, I am Ellick Rony's wife, of the Valley, and a pretty little woman too, if I was well dressed." The poor woman, ignorant of the fact that her son was weltering in his own gore, and forgetting for an instant that her husband had been so recently killed, seemed intent only on her own deliverance from the savage captors. Another of the captives, Daniel Dougherty, being tied down, and unable to move, was discovered by the whites as they rushed towards the camp. Fearing that he might be one of the enemy and do them some injury if they advanced, one of the men, stopping, demanded who he was. Benumbed with cold, and discomposed by the sudden firing of the whites, he could not render his Irish dialect intelligible to them. The white man raised his gun and directed it towards him, calling aloud, that if he did not make known who he was, he should blow a ball through him, let him be white man or Indian. Fear supplying him with energy, Dougherty exclaimed, "Loord Jasus! and am I too be killed by white people at last!" He was heard by Col. Lowther and his life saved. [16] The Moravian Indians were originally from the Susquehanna River. They moved to the Tuscarawas River in 1772, under the missionaries Zeisberger and Heckewelder, who built two villages on the eastern bank of that river, on land set apart for them by the Delawares: Schönbrunn, about three miles south-east of the present New Philadelphia, in what is now Goshen township, Tuscarawas County, O., and Gnadenhütten, lower down, in the outskirts of the present town of that name, in Clay township. The principal Delaware town, at that time, was some distance below, near the site of the present Newcomerstown; this was later moved to what is now Coshocton, at the confluence of the Tuscarawas and Walholding, which unite to form the Muskingum. At this time there was a Moravian village called Friedensstadt, on Beaver River, in what is now Lawrence County, Pa. In 1776 a new village for the accommodation of converts was established on the east bank of the Muskingum, two and a half miles below Coshocton, and called Lichtenau; William Edwards was the missionary in charge. In consequence of the disturbances on the border, Schönbrunn and Gnadenhütten were deserted in 1777, and all the teachers returned to Pennsylvania save Zeisberger and Edwards, who gathered the Indians together at Lichtenau; but in the spring of 1778, Gnadenhütten was re-occupied, with Edwards in charge. This was not for a long time, however, for in July we find Zeisberger, Heckewelder, and Edwards in charge of the union station at Lichtenau, the others being deserted. The spring of 1779 finds Edwards again at the resuscitated Gnadenhütten, Zeisberger re-occupying Schönbrunn with a small party, and Heckewelder at Lichtenau. Later in the season Zeisberger began New Schönbrunn on the west bank of the Tuscarawas, in what is now Goshen township, a quarter of a mile from the present Lockport, and a mile and a quarter south of New Philadelphia; thither he removed his flock in December. In the spring of 1780, Heckewelder abandoned Lichtenau, and took his converts to the west bank of the Tuscarawas, where he established Salem, in the present Salem township, a mile and a half north-west of Port Washington. In the autumn the Moravian villages were in general charge of Zeisberger, who traveled from one to the other; Gottlob Senseman being in charge of New Schönbrunn, Edwards of Gnadenhütten, and Heckewelder of Salem. It will thus be seen that at the time of the massacre, the Moravian villages were wholly in the valley of the Tuscarawas.--R. G. T. [17] Zeisberger and Heckewelder kept Brodhead continually informed, by letters, of the movements and councils of the hostiles. The position of the missionaries was one of exceeding delicacy, but the voluminous correspondence between them and Brodhead proves that the former were steadfast friends of the American colonies, and did effective service throughout the several years of disturbance on the frontier.--R. G. T. [18] Brodhead's successful expedition against the Coshocton Indians, in April, 1781, led to preparations for a retaliatory foray. Headed by the renegade Capt. Matthew Elliott, a party of about 250 Indians,--mostly Wyandots, with chiefs Half King, Pipe, Snip, John and Thomas Snake, and others--assembled at Gnadenhütten, for a talk with the Moravian teachers, preparatory to an expedition against Wheeling. They arrived August 17, and Zeisberger at once secretly sent a message of warning to Ft. Pitt, which threw the frontier into alarm, and caused the garrison at Wheeling to be fully prepared when the enemy appeared. A boy whom the Wyandots captured outside of Wheeling told them of Zeisberger's warning, and when the unsuccessful war party returned to Gnadenhütten (Sept. 2), vengeance was wreaked on the Moravians. The town was sacked that day, and the missionaries were kept as prisoners for several days. Finally they were released (Sept.6), on promise that they remove their converts from the line of the warpaths. September 11, the Moravians and their teachers left Salem in a body, with but few worldly goods, for most of their property had been destroyed by the Wyandots. They proceeded down the Tuscarawas to the mouth of the Walhonding, thence up the latter stream and Vernon River, and across country to the Sandusky, where they arrived October 1, and erected a few huts on the east bank of the river, about two and a-half miles above the present Upper Sandusky. Fourteen days later, the missionaries were summoned to appear before the British commandant at Detroit, Major De Peyster. Zeisberger, Heckewelder, Edwards, and Senseman left for Detroit, October 25. De Peyster questioned them closely, and finally released them with the statement that he would confer with them later, relative to their final abode. They reached the Sandusky, on their return, November 22. Meanwhile, the winter had set in early; and in danger of starving, a party of the Moravians had returned to the Tuscarawas to gather corn in the abandoned fields; while there, a party of border rangers took them prisoners and carried them to Fort Pitt. Brig.-Gen. William Irvine, then in command, treated the poor converts kindly, and allowed them to go in peace, many returning to their old villages on the Tuscarawas, to complete their dismal harvesting.--R. G. T. [232] CHAPTER XIV. The revengeful feelings which had been engendered, by inevitable circumstances, towards the Moravian Indians, and which had given rise to the expedition of 1781, under Col. Williamson, were yet more deeply radicated by subsequent events. On the night after their liberation from Fort Pitt, the family of a Mr. Monteur were all killed or taken captive; and the outrage, occurring so immediately after they were set at liberty and in the vicinity of where they were, was very generally attributed to them. An irruption was made too, in the fall of 1781, into the settlement on Buffalo creek, and some murders committed and prisoners taken. One of these, escaping from captivity and returning soon after, declared that the party committing the aggression, was headed by a Moravian warrior. These circumstances operated to confirm many in the belief, that those Indians were secretly inimical to the whites, and not only furnished the savages with provisions and a temporary home, but likewise engaged personally in the war of extermination, which they were waging against the frontier. Events occurring towards the close of winter, dispelled all doubt, from the minds of those who had fondly cherished every suggestion which militated against the professed, and generally accredited, neutrality and pacific disposition of the Moravians. On the 8th of February 1782, while Henry Fink and his son John, were engaged in sledding rails, on their farm in the Buchannon settlement, several guns were simultaneously discharged at them; and before John had time to reply to his father's inquiry, whether he were hurt, another gun was fired and he fell lifeless. Having unlinked the chain which fastened the horse to the sled, the old man [233] galloped briskly away. He reached his home in safety, and immediately moved his family to the fort. On the next day the lifeless body of John, was brought into the fort.--The first shot had wounded his arm; the ball from the second passed through his heart, & he was afterwards scalped. Near the latter part of the same month, some Indians invaded the country above Wheeling, and succeeded in killing a Mr. Wallace, and his family, consisting of his wife and five children, & in taking John Carpenter a prisoner. The early period of the year at which those enormities were perpetrated, the inclemency of the winter of 1781--2, and the distance of the towns of hostile Indians from the theatre of these outrages, caused many to exclaim, "_the Moravians have certainly done this deed_." The destruction of their villages was immediately resolved, and preparations were made to carry this determination into effect. There were then in the North Western wilderness, between three and four hundred of the christian Indians, and who, until removed by the Wyandots and whites in 1781, as before mentioned, had resided on the Muskingum in the villages of the Gnadenhutten, Salem and Shoenbrun. The society of which they were members, had been established in the province of Pennsylvania about the year 1752, and in a short time became distinguished for the good order and deportment of its members, both as men and as christians. During the continuance of the French war, they nobly withstood every allurement which was practised to draw them within its vortex, and expressed their strong disapprobation of war in general; saying, "that it must be displeasing to that Great Being, who made men, not to destroy men, but to love and assist each other." In 1769 emigrants from their villages of Friedenshutten, Wyalusing and Shesheequon in Pennsylvania, began to make an establishment in the North Western wilderness, and in a few years, attained a considerable degree of prosperity, their towns increased rapidly in population, and themselves, under the teaching of pious and beneficent missionaries, in civilization and christianity. In the war of 1774, their tranquil and happy hours were interrupted, by reports of the ill intention of the whites along the frontier, towards them, and by frequent acts of annoyance, committed by war parties of the savages. This state of things continued with but little, if any, intermission, occasionally assuming a more gloomy and portentious aspect, until the final destruction of their villages. In the spring of 1781, the principal war chief of the Delawares apprised the missionaries and them, of the danger which threatened them, as well from the whites as the savages, and advised them to remove to some situation, where they would be exempt from molestation by either. Conscious of the rectitude of their conduct as regarded both, and unwilling to forsake the comforts which their industry had procured for them, and the fields rendered productive by their labor, they disregarded the [234] friendly monition, and continued in their villages, progressing in the knowledge and love of the Redeemer of men, and practising the virtues inculcated by his word. This was their situation, at the time they were removed to Sandusky, early in the fall of 1781. When their missionaries and principal men were liberated by the governor of Detroit, they obtained leave of the Wyandot chiefs to return to the Muskingum to get the corn which had been left there, to prevent the actual starvation of their families. About one hundred and fifty of them, principally women and children went thither for this purpose, and were thus engaged when the second expedition under Col. Williamson proceeded against them. In March 1782, between eighty and ninety men assembled themselves for the purpose of effecting the destruction of the Moravian towns.[1] If they then had in contemplation the achieving of any other injury to those people, it was not promulgated in the settlements. They avowed their object to be the destruction of the houses and the laying waste the crops, in order to deprive the hostile savages of the advantage of obtaining shelter and provisions, so near to the frontier; and the removal of the Moravians to Fort Pitt, to preserve them from the personal injury which, it was feared, would be inflicted on them by the warriors. Being merely a private expedition, each of the men took with him, his own arms, ammunition and provisions; and many of them, their horses. They took up the line of march from the Mingo Bottom, and on the second night thereafter, encamped within one mile of the village of Gnadenhutten; and in the morning proceeded towards it, in the order of attack prescribed by a council of the officers. The village being built upon both sides of the river, and the scouts having discovered and reported that it was occupied on both sides, one-half the men were ordered to cross over and bear down upon the town on the western bank, while the other half would possess themselves of that part of it which lay on the eastern shore. Upon the arrival of the first division at the river, no boat or other small craft was seen in which they could be transported across; and they were for a time, in some difficulty how they should proceed. What appeared to be a canoe was at length discovered on the opposite bank, and a young man by the name of Slaughter, plunging in swam to it. It proved to be a trough for containing sugar water, and capable of bearing only two persons at a time. To obviate the delay which must have resulted from this tedious method of conveying themselves over, many of the men unclothed themselves, and placing their garments, arms and ammunition in the trough, swam by its sides, notwithstanding that ice was floating in the current and the water, consequently, cold and chilling. When nearly half this division had thus reached the western bank, two sentinels, who on the first landing had been stationed a short distance in advance, discovered and fired at, one of the Indians. [235] The shot of one broke his arm,--the other killed him. Directions were then sent to the division which was to operate on the eastern side of the river, to move directly to the attack, lest the firing should alarm the inhabitants and they defeat the object which seemed now to be had in view. The few who had crossed without awaiting for the others, marched immediately into the town on the western shore. Arrived among the Indians, they offered no violence, but on the contrary, professing peace and good will, assured them, they had come for the purpose of escorting them safely to Fort Pitt, that they might no longer be exposed to molestation from the militia of the whites, or the warriors of the savages. Sick of the sufferings which they had so recently endured, and rejoicing at the prospect of being delivered from farther annoyance they gave up their arms, and with alacrity commenced making preparations for the journey, providing food as well for the whites, as for themselves. A party of whites and Indians was next despatched to Salem, to bring in those who were there. They then shut up the Moravians left at Gnadenhutten, in two houses some distance apart, and had them well guarded, When the others arrived from Salem, they were treated in like manner, and shut up in the same houses with their brethren of Gnadenhutten. The division which was to move into the town on the eastern side of the river, coming unexpectedly upon one of the Indian women, she endeavored to conceal herself in a bunch of bushes at the water edge, but being discovered, by some of the men, was quickly killed. She was the wife of Shabosh, who had been shot by the sentinels of the other division. Others, alarmed at the appearance of a party of armed men, and ignorant that a like force was on the opposite side of the river, attempted to escape thither.--They did not live to effect their object. Three were killed in the attempt; and the men then crossed over, with such as they had made prisoners, to join their comrades, in the western and main part of the town. A council of war was then held to determine on the fate of the prisoners. Col. Williamson having been much censured for the lenity of his conduct towards those Indians in the expedition of the preceding year, the officers were unwilling to take upon themseves the entire responsibility of deciding upon their fate now, and agreed that it should be left to the men. The line was soon formed, and they were told it remained with them to say, whether the Moravian prisoners should be taken to Fort Pitt or murdered; and Col. Williamson requested that those who were inclined to mercy, should advance and form a second link, that it might be seen on which side was the majority. Alas! it required no scrutiny to determine. Only sixteen, or at most eighteen men, stepped forward to save the lives of this unfortunate people, and their doom became sealed.[2] From the moment those ill fated beings were immured in houses they seemed to anticipate the horrid destiny which awaited them; [236] and spent their time in holy and heartfelt devotion, to prepare them for the awful realities of another world. They sang, they prayed, they exhorted each other to a firm reliance on the Saviour of men, and soothed those in affliction with the comfortable assurance, that although men might kill the body, they had no power over the soul, and that they might again meet in a better and happier world, "where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary find rest." When told that they were doomed to die, they all affectionately embraced, and bedewing their bosoms with mutual tears, reciprocally sought, and obtained forgiveness for any offences which they might have given each other through life. Thus at peace with God, and reconciled with one another, they replied to those, who impatient for the slaughter had asked if they were not yet prepared, "Yes! We have commended our souls to God, and are ready to die." What must have been the obduracy of those, who could remain inflexible in their doom of death, amid such scenes as these? How ruthless & unrelenting their hearts, who unmoved by the awful spectacle of so many fellow creatures, preparing for the sudden and violent destruction of life and asking of their God, mercy for themselves and forgiveness for their enemies--could yet thirst for blood, and manifest impatience that its shedding was delayed for an instant? Did not the possibility of that innocence, which has been ever since so universally accorded to their victims, once occur to them; or were their minds so under the influence of exasperation and resentment, that they ceased to think of any thing, but the gratification of those feelings? Had they been about to avenge the murder of friends on its _known authors_, somewhat might have been pardoned to retaliation and to vengeance; but involving all in one common ruin, for _the supposed offences_ of a few, there can be no apology for their conduct,--no excuse for their crime. It were well, if all memory of the tragedy at Gnadenhutten, were effaced from the mind; but it yet lives in the recollection of many and stands recorded on the polluted page of history.--Impartial truth requires, that it should be here set down. A few of the prisoners, supposed to have been actively engaged in war, were the first to experience their doom. They were tied and taken some distance from the houses in which [237] they had been confined; despatched with spears and tomahawks, and scalped. The remainder of both sexes, from the hoary head of decrepitude, incapable of wrong, to helpless infancy, pillowed on its mother's breast, were cruelly & shockingly murdered; and the different apartments of those houses of blood, exhibited their bleeding bodies, mangled by the tomahawk, scalping knife and spear, and disfigured by the war-club and the mallet.[3] Thus perished ninety-six of the Moravian Indians. Of these, sixty-two were grown persons, one-third of whom were women; the remaining thirty-four were children.[4] Two youth alone, made their escape. One of them had been knocked down and scalped, but was not killed. He had the presence of mind to lie still among the dead, until nightfall, when he crept silently forth and escaped. The other, in the confusion of the shocking scene, slipped through a trap door into the cellar, and passing out at a small window, got off unnoticed and uninjured. In the whole of this transaction the Moravians were passive and unresisting. They confided in the assurances of protection given them by the whites, and until pent up in the houses, continued cheerful and happy. If when convinced of the murderous intent of their visitors, they had been disposed to violence and opposition, it would have availed them nothing. They had surrendered their arms (being requested to do so, as a guarantee for the security of the whites,) and were no longer capable of offering any effectual or available resistance, and while the dreadful work of death was doing, "they were as lambs led to the slaughter; & as sheep before the shearers are dumb, so opened they not their mouths." There was but a solitary exception to this passiveness, and it was well nigh terminating in the escape of its author, and in the death of some of the whites. As two of the men were leading forth one of the supposed warriors to death, a dispute arose between them, who should have the scalp of this victim to their barbarity. He was progressing after them with a silent dancing motion, and singing his death song. Seeing them occupied so closely with each other, he became emboldened to try an escape. Drawing a knife from its scabbard, he cut the cord which bound him; and springing forward, aimed a thrust at one of his conductors. The cutting of the rope had, however, drawn it so [238] tightly that he who held it became sensible that it was wrought upon in some way; and turning quickly round to ascertain the cause, scarcely avoided the stab. The Indian then bounded from them, and as he fled towards the woods, dexterously removed the cord from his wrists. Several shots were discharged at him without effect, when the firing was stopped, lest in the hurry and confusion of the pursuit, some of their own party might suffer from it. A young man, mounting his horse, was soon by the side of the Indian, and springing off, his life had well nigh been sacrificed by his rashness. He was quickly thrown to the ground, and the uplifted tomahawk about to descend on his head, when a timely shot, directed with fatal precision, took effect on the Indian and saved him. Had the Moravians been disposed for war, they could easily have ensured their own safety, and dealt destruction to the whites. If, when their town was entered by a party of only sixteen, their thirty men, aided by the youths of the village, armed and equipped as all were, had gone forth in battle array, they could have soon cut off those few; and by stationing some gunners on the bank of the river, have prevented the landing of the others of the expedition. But their faith in the sincerity of the whites--their love of peace and abhorrence of war, forbade it; and the confidence of those who first rushed into the town, in these feelings and dispositions of the Indians, no doubt prompted them to that act of temerity, while an unfordable stream was flowing between them and their only support. During the massacre at Gnadenhutten, a detachment of the whites was ordered to Shoenbrun to secure the Moravians who were there. Fortunately however, two of the inhabitants of this village had discovered the dead body of Shabosh in time to warn their brethren of danger, and they all moved rapidly off. When the detachment arrived, nothing was left for them _but plunder_.--_This was secured_, and they returned to their comrades. Gnadenhutten was then _pillaged_ of every article of value which could be easily removed; its houses--even those which contained the dead bodies of the Moravians--were burned to ashes, and the men set out on their return to the settlements.[5] The expedition against the Moravian towns on the Muskingum, was projected and carried on by inhabitants of the [239] western counties of Pennsylvania,--a district of country which had long been the theatre of Indian hostilities. Its result (strange as it may now appear) was highly gratifying to many; and the ease with which so much _Indian_ blood had been made to flow, coupled with an ardent desire to avenge the injuries which had been done them by the savages, led to immediate preparations for another, to be conducted on a more extensive scale, and requiring the co-operation of more men. And although the completion of the work of destruction, which had been so successfully begun, of the Moravian Indians, was the principal inducement of some, yet many attached themselves to the expedition, from more noble and commendable motives. The residence of the Moravians ever since they were removed to the plains of Sandusky, was in the immediate vicinity of the Wyandot villages, and the warriors from these had been particularly active and untiring in their hostility to the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania. The contemplated campaign against the Moravians, was viewed by many as affording a fit opportunity to punish those savages for their many aggressions, as it would require that they should proceed but a short distance beyond the point proposed, in order to arrive at their towns; and they accordingly engaged in it for that purpose. Other causes too, conspired to fill the ranks and form an army for the accomplishment of the contemplated objects.--The commandants of the militia of Washington and Westmoreland counties (Cols. Williamson and Marshall)[6] encouraged the inhabitants to volunteer on this expedition, and made known, that every militia man who accompanied it, finding his own horse and gun, and provisions for a month, should be exempt from two tours of militia duty; and that all horses unavoidably lost in the service, should be replaced from those taken in the Indian country. From the operation of these different causes, an army of nearly five hundred men was soon raised, who being supplied with ammunition by the Lieutenant Colonel of Washington county, proceeded to the Old Mingo towns, the place of general rendezvous--where an election was held to fill the office of commander of the expedition.[7] The candidates were Colonel Williamson and Colonel Crawford; and the latter gentleman being chosen immediately organized the troops, and prepared to march. [240] On the 25th of May, the army left the Mingo towns, and pursuing "Williamson's trail," arrived at the upper Moravian town on the Muskingum (Shoenbrun,) where (finding plenty of corn of the preceding year's crop, yet on the stalk) they halted to refresh their horses. While here, Captains Brenton and Bean, discovered and fired upon two Indians; and the report of the guns being heard in camp, the men, in despite of the exertions of their officers, rushed towards the source of alarm, in the most tumultuous and disorderly manner.--Colonel Crawford, used to the discipline of continental soldiers, saw in the impetuosity and insubordination of the troops under his command, enough to excite the liveliest apprehensions for the event of the expedition. He had volunteered to go on the campaign, only in compliance with the general wish of the troops that he should head them, and when chosen commander in chief of the forces assembled at the Mingo towns, he is said to have accepted the office with reluctance, not only sensible of the impracticability of controlling men unused to restraint, but opposed to some of the objects of the expedition, and the frequently expressed determination of the troops, to spare no Indian whom accident or the fortune of war should place in their power. From Shoenbrun the army proceeded as expeditiously as was practicable to the site of the Moravian village, near the Upper Sandusky; but instead of meeting with this oppressed and persecuted tribe, or having gained an opportunity of plundering their property, they saw nothing which manifested that it had been the residence of man, save a few desolate and deserted huts,--the people, whom it was their intention to destroy, had some time before, most fortunately for themselves, moved to the Scioto. Discontent and dissatisfaction ensued upon the disappointment. The guides were ignorant of there being any Indian towns nearer than those on Lower Sandusky, and the men became impatient to return home. In this posture of affairs, a council of war, consisting of the field officers and captains, was held, and it was resolved to move forward, and if no enemy appeared that day, to retrace their steps. Just after this determination was made known, an express arrived, from a detachment of mounted men, which had been sent forward to reconnoitre, with information that about three miles in advance a large body of Indians had been discovered hastening [241] rapidly to meet them. The fact was, that Indian spies had watched and reported the progress of the expedition, ever after it left the Mingo towns; and when satisfied of its destination, every arrangement which they could make to defeat its object, and involve the troops in the destruction to which it was their purpose to consign others, was begun by the savages. Having perfected these, they were marching on to give battle to the whites. Immediately upon the reception of this intelligence, the army moved forward, and meeting the reconnoitreing party coming in, had proceeded but a short distance farther, when they came in view of the Indians hastening to occupy a small body of woods, in the midst of an extensive plain. The battle was then begun by a heavy fire from both sides, and the savages prevented gaining possession of the woods. A party of them having however, taken post in them before the whites came up, continued much to annoy the troops, until some of them, alighting from their horses, bravely rushed forward and dislodged them. The Indians then attempted to gain a small skirt of wood on Colonel Crawford's right; but the vigilance of the commanding officer of the right wing, (Major Leet) detected the movement, and the bravery of his men defeated it. The action now became general and severe and was warmly contested until dark, when it ceased for a time without having been productive of much advantage to either side. During the night, both armies lay on their arms; adopting the wise policy of kindling large fires along the line of battle, and retreating some distance behind them, to prevent being surprised by a night attack. Early in the morning a few shots were fired, but at too great distance for execution. The Indians were hourly receiving reinforcements, and seemed busily engaged in active preparations for a decisive conflict. The whites became uneasy at their increasing strength; and a council of the officers deemed it expedient to retreat. As it would be difficult to effect this in open day, in the presence of an enemy of superior force, it was resolved to postpone it until night, making in the mean time every arrangement to ensure its success.--The killed were buried, and fires burned over the graves to prevent discovery,--litters were made for bearing the wounded, and the army was formed into three lines with them in the centre. [242] The day passed, without an attack being made by the Indians. They were still seen to traverse the plains in every direction, and in large bodies; and not until the troops were about forming the line of retreat, did they seem to have any idea that such a movement was intended. They then commenced firing a few shots, and in a little while it became apparent that they had occupied every pass, leaving open only that which led to Sandusky. Along this way, the guides conducted the main army, until they had passed the Indian lines about a mile; when wheeling to the left, they marched round and gained the trail of their outward march. Continuing in this they proceeded to the settlements without any interruption.--The savage warriors thinking it better to follow detached parties than the main army. The few shots which were fired by the Indians as the whites were forming the line of retreat, were viewed by many as evidence that their purpose had been discovered, and that these were signal guns preceding a general attack. Under these impressions, the men in front hurried off and others following the example, at least one third of the army were to be seen flying in detached parties, and in different directions from that taken by the main body, supposing that the attention of the Indians would be wholly turned to this point. They were not permitted to proceed far under this delusive supposition. Instead of following the main army, the Indians pursued those small parties with such activity, that not many of those composing them were able to escape;--one company of forty men under a Captain Williamson,[8] was the only party detached from the principal body of the troops, fortunate enough to get with the main army on its retreat. Late in the night, they broke through the Indian lines under a heavy fire and with some loss, and on the morning of the second day of the retreat, again joined their comrades in the expedition, who had marched off in a body; in compliance with the orders of the commander-in-chief. Colonel Crawford himself proceeded at the head of the army for some short distance, when missing his son, his son-in-law (Major Harrison) and two nephews,[9] he stopped to enquire for them. Receiving no satisfactory information respecting either of them, he was induced through anxiety for their fate to continue still, until all had passed on, when he resumed his flight, in company with doctor Knight[10] and two [243] others. For their greater security, they travelled some distance apart, but from the jaded and exhausted condition of their horses could proceed but slowly. One of the two men in company with the Colonel and doctor Knight, would frequently fall some distance behind the others, and as frequently call aloud for them to wait for him. Near the Sandusky creek he hallooed to them to halt, but the yell of a savage being heard near him, they went on and never again was _he heard of_. About day, Colonel Crawford's horse gave out and he was forced to proceed on foot, as was also the other of the two who had left the field with him and Knight. They continued however to travel together, and soon overtook Captain Biggs, endeavoring to secure the safety of himself and Lieutenant Ashly, who had been so badly wounded that he was unable to ride alone. A heavy fall of rain induced them to halt, and stripping the bark from some trees, they formed a tolerable shelter from the storm, and remained there all night. In the morning they were joined by another of the troops, when their company consisted of six--Colonel Crawford and Doctor Knight, who kept about an hundred yards in front--Captain Biggs and Lieutenant Ashly, in the center; and the other two men in the rear. They proceeded in this way about two miles, when a party of Delawares suddenly sprang from their hiding places into the road, and making prisoners of Colonel Crawford and Doctor Knight, carried them to the Indian camp near to where they then were. On the next day the scalps of Captain Biggs and Lieutenant Ashly, were brought in by another party of Indians who had been likewise watching the road. From the encampment, they were led, in company with nine other prisoners, to the old Wyandot town, from which place they were told they would be taken to the new town, not far off. Before setting out from this place, Colonel Crawford and Doctor Knight were painted black by Captain Pipe, a Delaware chief, who told the former, that he intended to have him shaved when he arrived among his friends, and the latter that he was to be carried to the Shawnee town, to see some of his old acquaintance. The nine prisoners were then marched off in front of Colonel Crawford and Doctor Knight, who were brought on by Pipe and Wingenim,[11] another of the Delaware chiefs. As they went on, they passed the bodies of four of the captives, who had been tomahawked and scalped on the way, and came [244] to where the remaining five were, in time to see them suffer the same fate from the hands of squaws and boys. The head of one of them (John McKinley, formerly an officer in one of the Virginia regiments) was cut off, and for some time kicked about on the ground. A while afterwards they met Simon Girty and several Indians on horseback; when Col. Crawford was stripped naked, severely beaten with clubs and sticks, and made to sit down near a post which had been planted for the purpose, and around which a fire of poles was burning briskly. His hands were then pinioned behind him, and a rope attached to the band around his wrist and fastened to the foot of a post about fifteen feet high, allowing him liberty only to sit down, or walk once or twice round it, and return the same way. Apprehensive that he was doomed to be burned to death, he asked Girty if it were possible that he had been spared from the milder instruments of the tomahawk and scalping knife, only to suffer the more cruel death by fire. "_Yes, said Girty, composedly, you must be burned Colonel._" "It is dreadful, replied Crawford, but I will endeavor to bear it patiently." Captain Pipe then addressed the savages in an animated speech, at the close of which, they rent the air with hideous yells, and immediately discharged a number of loads of powder at the naked body of their victim. His ears were then cut off, and while the men would apply the burning ends of the poles to his flesh, the squaws threw coals and hot embers upon him, so that in a little time he had too, to walk on fire. In the midst of these sufferings, he begged of the infamous Girty to shoot him. That worse than savage monster, tauntingly replied, "how can I? you see I have no gun," and laughed heartily at the scene. For three hours Colonel Crawford endured the most excruciating agonies with the utmost fortitude, when faint and almost exhausted, he commended his soul to God, and laid down on his face. He was then scalped, and burning coals being laid on his head and back, by one of the squaws, he again arose and attempted to walk; but strength failed him and he sank into the welcome arms of death. His body was then thrown into the fire and consumed to ashes.[12] Of the whole of this shocking scene, Doctor Knight was [245] an unwilling spectator; and in the midst of it was told by Girty, that it should be his fate too, when he arrived at the Shawanee towns. These were about forty miles distant; and he was committed to the care of a young warrior to be taken there. On the first day they travelled about twenty-five miles, and when they stopped for the night, the Doctor was securely fastened. In vain did he anxiously watch for an opportunity to endeavor to [244] release himself from the cords which bound him. The Indian was vigilant and slept none. About day light they arose, and while the Indian was kindling a fire, the gnats were so troublesome that he untied his prisoner, and set him likewise to making a fire to relieve them from the annoyance. The doctor took a burning coal between two sticks, and going behind the Indian towards the spot at which he was directed to excite a smoke, turned suddenly around, and struck the savage with all his force. The Indian fell forward, but quickly recovering and seeing his gun in the hands of his assailant, ran off, howling hideously.--The anxiety of Doctor Knight, saved the life of the savage.--When he seized the gun, he drew back the cock in such haste and with so much violence as to break the main spring and render it useless to him; but as the Indian was ignorant of this circumstance, he continued his flight and the doctor was then enabled to escape. After a toilsome travel of twenty-one days, during which time he subsisted altogether on wild gooseberries, young nettles, a raw terrapin and two young birds, he arrived safely at Fort McIntosh--meagre, emaciated and almost famished. Another instance of great good-fortune occurred in the person of John Slover,[13] who was also made prisoner after having travelled more than half the distance from the fatal scene of [246] action to Fort Pitt. When only eight years of age he had been taken by some Indians on New river, and detained in captivity for twelve years. In this time he became well acquainted with their manners and customs, and attached to their mode of living so strongly, that when ransomed by his friends, he left his Indian companions with regret. He had become too, while with them, familiar with the country north west of the Ohio, and an excellent woodsman; and in consequence of these attainments was selected a principal guide to the army on its outward march. When a retreat was prematurely began to be made by detached parties, he was some distance from camp, and having to equip himself for flight, was left a good way in the rear. It was not long however, before he came up with a party, whose horses were unable to extricate themselves from a deep morass, over which they had attempted to pass. Slover's was soon placed in the same unpleasant situation, and they all, alighting from them, proceeded on foot. In this manner they traveled on until they had nearly reached the Tuscarawa, when a party of savages from the way side, fired upon them. One of the men was killed, Slover and two others made prisoners, & the fifth escaped to Wheeling. Those taken captive were carried first to Wachatomakah (a small town of the Mingoes and Shawanees,) from whence after having been severely beaten, they were conducted to a larger town two miles farther. On their arrival here, they had all to pass through the usual ceremonies of running the gauntlet; and one of them who had been stripped of his clothes and painted black, was most severely beaten, mangled, and killed, and his body cut in pieces and placed on poles outside the town. Here too, Slover saw the dead bodies of Col. McClelland, Major Harrison and John Crawford; and learned that they had all been put to death but a little while before his arrival there; and although he was spared for some time, yet every thing which he saw acted towards other prisoners, led him to fear that he was reserved for a more cruel fate, whenever the whim of the instant should suggest its consummation. At length an express arrived from Detroit with a speech for the warriors, which decided his doom. Being decyphered from the belt of wampum which contained it, the speech began by enquiring why they continued to take prisoners, and said, "Provisions are scarce and when you send in [247] prisoners, we have them to feed, and still some of them are getting off, and carrying tidings of our affairs. When any of your people are taken by the rebels, they shew no mercy. Why then should you? My children take no more prisoners of any sort, men, women, or children." Two days after the arrival of the express with this speech, a council of the different tribes of Indians near, was held, and it was determined to act in conformity with the advice of the Governor of Detroit. Slover was then the only white prisoner at this town; and on the morning after the council was dissolved, about forty warriors came to the house where he was, and tying a rope around his neck, led him off to another village, five miles distant. Here again he was severely beaten with clubs & the pipe end of the tomahawk, & then tied to a post, around which were piles of wood. These were soon kindled, but a violent rain falling unexpectedly, extinguished the flames, before they had effected him. It was then agreed to postpone his execution, until the next day, and being again beaten and much wounded by their blows, he was taken to a block house, his hands tied, the rope about his neck fastened to a beam of the building, and three warriors left to guard him for the night. If the feelings of Slover would have permitted him to enjoy sleep, the conduct of the guard would have prevented it. They delighted in keeping alive in his mind the shocking idea of the suffering which he would have to endure, & frequently asking him "how he would like to eat fire," tormented him nearly all night. Awhile before day however, they fell asleep, and Slover commenced untying himself. Without much difficulty he loosened the cord from his arms, but the ligature around his neck, of undressed buffalo-hide, seemed to defy his exertions to remove it; and while he was endeavoring to gnaw it in vain, one of the sleeping Indians, rose up and going near to him, sat and smoked his pipe for some time. Slover lay perfectly still, apprehensive that all chance of escape was now lost to him. But no--the Indian again composed himself to sleep, and the first effort afterwards made, to loose the band from his neck by slipping it over his head, resulted in leaving Slover entirely unbound. He then crept softly from the house and leaping a fence, gained the cornfield. Passing on, as he approached a tree, he espied a squaw with several children lying at its root; and fearing that some of them might discover him and give the alarm of his [248] escape, he changed his course. He soon after reached a glade, in which were several horses, one of which he caught; and also found a piece of an old rug, which afforded him his only covering until he reached Wheeling. This he was enabled to do in a few days, being perfectly acquainted with the country. The town, from which Slover escaped, was the one to which Dr. Knight was to have been taken. The Indian who had him in charge, came in while Slover was there, and reported his escape--magnifying the Doctor's stature to gigantic size and attributing to him herculean strength. When Slover acquainted the warriors with the fact, that Doctor Knight was diminutive and effeminate, they laughed heartily at this Indian, and mocked at him for suffering the escape. He however bore a mark which showed that, weak and enfeebled as he was, the Doctor had not played booty when he aimed the blow at his conductor.--It had penetrated to the skull and made a gash of full four inches length. These are but few of the many incidents which no doubt occurred, to individuals who endeavored to effect an escape by detaching themselves from the main army. The number of those, thus separated from the troops, who had the good fortune to reach the settlements, was small indeed; and of the many of them who fell into the hands of the savages, Knight and Slover are believed to be the only persons, who were so fortunate as to make an escape. The precise loss sustained in the expedition, was never ascertained, and is variously represented from ninety to one hundred and twenty. Among those of the troops who went out under Col. Crawford, that came into Wheeling, was a man by the name of Mills.[14] Having rode very fast, and kept his horse almost continually travelling, he was forced to leave him, near to the present town of St. Clairsville in Ohio. Not liking the idea of loosing him altogether, upon his arrival at Wheeling he prevailed on Lewis Wetsel[15] to go with him to the place where his horse gave out, to see if they could not find him. Apprehensive that the savages would pursue the fugitives to the border of the settlements, Wetsel advised Mills that their path would not be free from dangers, and counselled him to "prepare for fighting." When they came near to the place where the horse had been left, they met a party of about forty Indians going towards [249] the Ohio river and who discovered Mills and Wetsel as soon as these saw them. Upon the first fire from the Indians Mills was wounded in the heel, and soon overtaken and killed. Wetzel singled out his mark, shot, and seeing an Indian fall, wheeled and ran. He was immediately followed by four of the savages, who laid aside their guns that they might the more certainly overtake him. Having by practice, acquired the art of loading his gun as he ran, Wetsel was indifferent how near the savages approached him, if he were out of reach of the rifles of the others. Accordingly, keeping some distance ahead of his pursuers whilst re-loading his gun, he relaxed his speed until the foremost Indian had got within ten or twelve steps of him. He then wheeled, shot him dead, and again took to flight. He had now to exert his speed to keep in advance of the savages 'till he should again load, & when this was accomplished and he turned to fire, the second Indian was near enough to catch hold of the gun, when as Wetsel expressed it, "_they had a severe wring_." At length he succeed in raising the muzzle to the breast of his antagonist, and killed him also. In this time both the pursuers and pursued had become much jaded, and although Wetsel had consequently a better opportunity of loading quickly, yet taught wariness by the fate of their companions, the two remaining savages would spring behind trees whenever he made a movement like turning towards them. Taking advantage of a more open piece of ground, he was enabled to fire on one of them who had sought protection behind a sapling too small to screen his body. The ball fractured his thigh, and produced death. The other, instead of pressing upon Wetsel, uttered a shrill yell, and exclaiming, "no catch _him_, gun always loaded," returned to his party. ----- [1] One hundred and eighty-six men, mounted, from the Monongahela settlements. Early in March, 1782, they assembled under David Williamson, colonel of one of the militia battalions of Washington County, Pa., on the east bank of the Ohio, a few miles below Steubenville. The water was high, the weather cold and stormy, and there were no boats for crossing over to Mingo Bottom. Many turned back, but about two hundred succeeded in crossing. The expedition was not a "private" affair, but was regularly authorized by the military authority of Washington County; its destination was not the Moravian settlements, but the hostile force, then supposed to be on the Tuscarawas river. It seems to have generally been understood on the border that the Moravian towns were now deserted.--R. G. T. [2] Contemporary accounts speak of a council of war, held in the evening, at which this question was decided. But a small majority voted for the butchery; Williamson himself was in the minority. Dorsey Pentecost, writing from Pittsburg, May 8, 1782 (see _Penn. Arch._, ix., p. 540), says: "I have heard it intimated that about thirty or forty only of the party gave their consent or assisted in the catastrophe."--R. G. T. [3] Lineback's Relation (_Penn. Arch._, ix., p. 525) says: "In the morning, the militia chose two houses, which they called the 'slaughter houses,' and then brought the Indians two or three at a time, with ropes about their necks, and dragged them into the slaughter houses where they knocked them down." This accords with Heckewelder's _Narrative_, p. 320, which says they were knocked down with a cooper's mallet. The victims included those converts living at Salem, who had peaceably come in to Gnadenhütten with their captors; but those at New Schönbrunn had taken the alarm and fled.--R. G. T. [4] Later authorities put the total number at ninety--twenty-nine men, twenty-seven women, and thirty-four children.--R. G. T. [5] Salem, New Schönbrunn and Gnadenhütten were all destroyed by fire. The whites returned home the following day, with ninety-six scalps--ninety Moravians and six outlying Indians. It seems certain that a few hostiles were with the Moravians at the time of the massacre.--R. G. T. [6] David Williamson, as previously seen, was a colonel of militia in Washington County, Pa.; James Marshal, as county lieutenant of Washington, was his superior officer.--R. G. T. [7] The place of rendezvous was Mingo Bottom (the present Mingo Junction, O.), and the date May 20. It was the 24th before all were present. The volunteers numbered 480, of whom two-thirds were from Washington County; most of the others were from Fayette County, Pa., and a few from Ohio County, Va. In the vote for commander, William Crawford received 235, and Williamson 230. Four field majors were elected to rank in the order named: Williamson, Thomas Gaddis, John McClelland, and one Brinton. The standard modern authority for the details of this expedition, is Butterfield's _Crawford's Expedition Against Sandusky_ (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1873).--R. G. T. [8] Col. David Williamson.--R. G. T. [9] His son John, his son-in-law Major William Harrison, and one of his nephews,--not two,--William Crawford. They were captured by the Indians and killed.--R. G. T. [10] Dr. John Knight, surgeon to the expedition. He was captured, and sentenced to death, but after thrilling adventures finally escaped.--R. G. T. [11] Wingenund.--R. G. T. [12] Colonel Crawford was then about fifty years of age, and had been an active warrior against the savages for a great while. During [245] the French war, he distinguished himself by his bravery and good conduct, and was much noticed by General Washington, who obtained for him an ensigncy. At the commencement of the revolution, he raised a regiment by his own exertions, and at the period of this unfortunate expedition, bore the commission of Colonel in the Continental army. He possessed a sound judgment, was a man of singular good nature and great humanity, and remarkable for his hospitality. His melancholy sufferings and death spread a gloom over the countenances of all who knew him. His son, John Crawford, and his son-in-law, Major Harrison, were taken prisoners, carried to the Shawanee towns and murdered. ------ _Comment by R. G. T._--Crawford was born in 1732, in Orange County, Va., of Scotch-Irish parentage. He made the friendship of Washington while the latter was surveying for Lord Fairfax, in the Shenandoah Valley, in 1749. Washington taught him his art, but in 1755 he abandoned it for a military life, and thenceforward was a prominent character on the frontier, often serving under Washington. From 1767 forward, his home was on the banks of the Youghiogheny, on Braddock's Road. Crawford fought in Dunmore's War, and throughout the Revolution did notable service on the Virginia border. [13] John Slover, one of the guides to the expedition, was among the best known scouts of his day, on the Upper Ohio. His published _Narrative_ is a prime source of information relative to the events of the campaign.--R. G. T. [14] Thomas Mills.--R. G. T. [15] Lewis Wetzel, a noted Indian fighter. See p. 161, _note_.--R. G. T. [250] CHAPTER XV. While expeditions were carrying on by the whites, against the Moravian and other Indians, the savages were prosecuting their accustomed predatory and exterminating war, against several of the settlements. Parties of Indians, leaving the towns to be defended by the united exertions of contiguous tribes, would still penetrate to the abode of the whites, and with various success, strive to avenge on them their real and fancied wrongs. On the 8th of March as William White, Timothy Dorman and his wife, were going to, and in site of Buchannon fort, some guns were discharged at them, and White being shot through the hip soon fell from his horse, and was tomahawked, scalped and lacerated in the most frightful manner.[1]--Dorman and his wife were taken prisoners. The people in the fort heard the firing and flew to arms; but the river being between, the savages cleared themselves, while the whites were crossing over. After the killing of White (one of their most active and vigilant warriors and spies) and the capture of Dorman, it was resolved to abandon the fort, and seek elsewhere, security from the greater ills which it was found would befall them if they remained. This apprehension arose from the fact, that Dorman was then with the savages, and that to gratify his enmity to particular individuals in the settlement, he would unite with the Indians, and _from his knowledge of the_ [251] _country, be enabled_ to conduct them the more securely to blood and plunder. He was a man of sanguinary and revengeful disposition, prone to quarrelling, and had been known to say, that if he caught particular individuals with whom he was at variance, in the woods alone, he would murder them and attribute it to the savages. He had led, when in England, a most abandoned life, and after he was transported to this country, was so reckless of reputation and devoid of shame for his villainies, that he would often recount tales of theft and robbery in which he had been a conspicuous actor. The fearful apprehensions of increased and aggravated injuries after the taking of him prisoner, were well-founded; and subsequent events fully proved, that, but for the evacuation of the fort, and the removal of the inhabitants, all would have fallen before the fury of savage warriors, with this abandoned miscreant at their head. While some of the inhabitants of that settlement were engaged in moving their property to a fort in Tygart's Valley (the others removing to Nutter's fort and Clarksburg,) they were fired upon by a party of savages, and two of them, Michael Hagle and Elias Paynter, fell. The horse on which John Bush was riding, was shot through; yet Bush succeeded in extricating himself from the falling animal, and escaped though closely pursued by one of the savages. Several times the Indian following him, would cry out to him, "_Stop, and you shall not be hurt--If you do not, I will shoot you_," and once Bush, nearly exhausted, and in despair of getting off, actually relaxed his pace for the purpose of yielding himself a prisoner, when turning round he saw the savage stop also, and commence loading his gun. This inspired Bush with fear for the consequences, and renewing his flight he made his escape. Edward Tanner, a mere youth, was soon taken prisoner, and as he was being carried to their towns, met between twenty and thirty savages, headed by Timothy Dorman, proceeding to attack Buchannon fort. Learning from him that the inhabitants were moving from it, and that it would be abandoned in a few days, the Indians pursued their journey with so much haste, that Dorman had well nigh failed from fatigue. They arrived however, too late, for the accomplishment of their bloody purpose; the settlement was deserted, and the inhabitants safe within the walls of other fortresses. [252] A few days after the evacuation of the fort, some of its former inmates went from Clarksburg to Buchannon for grain which had been left there. When they came in sight, they beheld a heap of ashes where the fort had been; and proceeding on, became convinced that the savages were yet lurking about. They however, continued to go from farm to farm collecting the grain, but with the utmost vigilance and caution, and at night went to an out house, near where the fort had stood. Here they found a paper, with the name of Timothy Dorman attached to it, dated at the Indian towns, and containing information of those who had been taken captive in that district of country. In the morning early, as some of the men went from the house to the mill, they saw the savages crossing the river, Dorman being with them. Thinking it best to impress them with a belief that they were able to encounter them in open conflict, the men advanced towards them,--calling to their companions in the house, to come on. The Indians fled hastily to the woods, and the whites, not so rash as to pursue them, returned to the house, and secured themselves in it, as well as they could. At night, Captain George Jackson went privately forth from the house, and at great hazzard of being discovered by the waylaying savages, proceeded to Clarksburg, where he obtained such a reinforcement as enabled him to return openly and escort his former companions in danger, from the place of its existence. Disappointed in their hopes of involving the inhabitants of the Buchannon settlements in destruction, the savages went on to the Valley. Here, between Westfall's and Wilson's forts, they came upon John Bush and his wife, Jacob Stalnaker and his son Adam. The two latter being on horse back and riding behind Bush and his wife, were fired at, and Adam fell. The old gentleman, rode briskly on, but some of the savages were before him and endeavored to catch the reins of his bridle, and thus stop his flight. He however, escaped them all. The horse from which Adam Stalnaker had fallen, was caught by Bush, and both he and Mrs. Bush got safely away on him. The Indians then crossed the Alleghany mountains, and coming to the house of Mrs. Gregg, (Dorman's former master) made an attack on it. A daughter of that gentleman, alone fell a victim to their thirst for blood. When taken prisoner, [253] she refused to go with them, and Dorman sunk his tomahawk into her head and then scalped her. She however, lived several days and related the circumstances above detailed. After the murder of John Thomas and his family in 1781, the settlement on Booth's creek was forsaken, and its inhabitants went to Simpson's creek, for greater security. In the Spring John Owens procured the assistance of some young men about Simpson's creek, and proceeded to Booth's creek for the purpose of threshing some wheat at his farm there.--While on a stack throwing down sheaves, several guns were fired at him by a party of twelve Indians, concealed not far off. Owens leapt from the stack, and the men caught up their guns. They could not, however, discover any one of the savages in their covert and thought it best to retreat to Simpson's creek and strengthen their force before they ventured in pursuit of their enemy. They accordingly did so, and when they came again to Booth's creek, the Indians had decamped, taking with them the horses left at Owens'. The men however found their trail and followed it until night.--Early next morning, crossing the West Fork at Shinnston, they went on in pursuit and came within sight of the Indian camp, and seeing some of the savages lying near their fires, fired at them, but, as was believed without effect. The Indians again took to flight; and as they were hastening on, one of them suddenly wheeled and fired upon his pursuers. The ball passed through the hunting-shirt of one of the men, & Benjamin Coplin (then an active, enterprising young man) returning the shot, an Indian was seen suddenly to spring into a laurel thicket. Not supposing that Coplin's ball had taken effect, they followed the other savages some distance farther, and as they returned got the horses and plunder left at the camp. Some time afterwards a gun was found in the thicket, into which the Indian sprang, and it was then believed that Coplin's shot had done execution. In the same spring the Indians made their appearance on Crooked run, in Monongalia county. Mr. Thomas Pindall, having been one day at Harrison's fort, at a time when a greater part of the neighbourhood had gone thither for safety, prevailed on three young men, (Harrison, Crawford and Wright, to return and spend the night with him.) Some time after they had been abed, the females waked Mr. Pindall, and telling him that they had heard several times a noise very much [254] resembling the whistling on a charger, insisted on going directly to the fort. The men heard nothing, and being inclined to believe that the fears of the females had given to the blowing of the wind, that peculiar sound, insisted that there was no danger and that it would be unpleasant to turn out then, as the night was very dark. Hearing nothing after this, for which they could not readily account, the men rose in the morning unapprehensive of interruption; and the females, relieved of their fears of being molested by savages during the night, continued in bed. Mr. Pindall walked forth to the woods to catch a horse, and the young men went to the spring hard by, for the purpose of washing. While thus engaged three guns were fired at them, and Crawford and Wright were killed. Harrison fled and got safely to the fort. The females alarmed at the report of the guns, sprang out of bed and hastened towards the fort, pursued by the Indians. Mrs. Pindall was overtaken and killed, but Rachael Pindall, her sister-in-law, escaped safely to the fort. In June some Indians came into the neighborhood of Clarksburg, and not meeting with an opportunity of killing or making prisoners any of the inhabitants without the town, one of them, more venturous than the rest, came so near as to shoot Charles Washburn as he was chopping a log of wood in the lot, and then running up, with the axe, severed his skull, scalped him, and fled safely away. Three of Washburn's brothers had been previously murdered by the savages. In August as Arnold and Paul Richards were returning to Richard's fort, they were shot at by some Indians, lying hid in a cornfield adjoining the fort, and both fell from their horses. The Indians leaped over the fence immediately and tomahawked and scalped them. These two men were murdered in full view of the fort, and the firing drew its inmates to the gate to ascertain its cause. When they saw that the two Richards' were down, they rightly judged that Indians had done the deed; and Elias Hughes, ever bold and daring, taking down his gun, went out alone at the back gate, and entered the cornfield, into which the savages had again retired, to see if he could not avenge on one of them the murder of his friends. Creeping softly along, he came in view of them standing near the fence, reloading their guns, and looking intently at the people at the fort gate. Taking [255] a deliberate aim at one of them, he touched the trigger. His gun flashed, and the Indians alarmed ran speedily away. A most shocking scene was exhibited some time before this, on Muddy creek in Pennsylvania. On the 10th of May as the Reverend John Corbly, his wife and five children were going to meeting, (Mr. Corbly being a short distance behind) they were attacked by a party of savages waylaying the road. The shrieks of Mrs. Corbly and the children, drew the husband and father to the fatal spot. As he was approaching, his wife called to him, "to fly," He knew that it was impossible for him to contend successfully against the fearful odds opposed to him, and supposing that his family would be carried away as prisoners, and that he would be enabled either to recover them by raising a company and pursuing the savages, or to ransom them, if conducted to the Indian towns, he complied with her wish, and got safely off, though pursued by one of the savages. But it was not their intention to carry them into captivity. They delighted too much, to look upon the lifeblood flowing from the heart; and accordingly shed it most profusely. The infant in its mother's arms was the first on whom their savage fury fell,--it was tomahawked and scalped. The mother then received several severe blows, but not falling, was shot through the body, by the savage who chased her husband; and then scalped. Into the brains of a little son, six years old, their hatchets were sunk to the heft. Two little girls, of two and four years of age, were tomahawked and scalped. The eldest child, also a daughter, had attempted to escape by concealing herself in a hollow log, a few rods from the scene of action. From her hiding place, she beheld all that was done, and when the bleeding scalp was torn from the head of her last little sister, & she beheld the savages retiring from the desolation which they had wrought, she crawled forth from concealment. It was too soon. One of the savages yet lingered near, to feast to satiety on the horrid spectacle. His eyes caught a glimpse of her as she crept from the log, and his tomahawk and scalping knife became red with her blood. When Mr. Corbly returned, all his hopes vanished. Which ever way he turned, the mangled body of some one of his family was presented to his view. His soul sickened at the contemplation of the scene, and he fainted and fell. When he had revived, he was cheered with the hope that some of [256] them might yet survive. Two of his daughters had manifested symptoms of returning life, and with care and attention were restored to him. Thus far in the year 1782, the settlements only suffered from the accustomed desultory warfare of the savages. No numerous collection of Indians had crossed their border,--no powerful army of warriors, threatening destruction to the forts, those asylums of their safety, had appeared among them.--But the scene was soon to change. In August, there was a grand council convened at Chilicothe, in which the Wyandots, the Shawanees, the Mingoes, the Tawas, Pottowatomies, and various other tribes were represented.[2] Girty and McKee--disgraces to human nature--aided in their deliberations. The surrender of Cornwallis, which had been studiously kept secret from the Indians, was now known to them, and the war between Great Britain and the United States, seemed to them to be verging to a close.--Should a peace ensue, they feared that the concentrated strength of Virginia, would bear down upon them and crush them at once. In anticipation of this state of things, they had met to deliberate, what course it best became them to pursue. Girty addressed the council. He reminded them of the gradual encroachments of the whites;--of the beauty of Kentucky and its value to them as a hunting ground.--He pointed out to them the necessity of greater efforts to regain possession of that country, and warned them that if they did not combine their strength to change the present state of things, the whites would soon leave them no hunting grounds; and they would consequently, have no means of procuring rum to cheer their hearts, or blankets to warm their bodies. His advice was well received and they determined to continue the war.[3] When the council was adjourned, the warriors proceeded to execute its determinations. Two armies, the one of six hundred, and the other three hundred and fifty men, prepared to march, each to it assigned station--The larger was destined to operate against Kentucky, while the smaller, was to press upon North Western Virginia; and each was abundantly supplied with the munitions of war.[4] Towards the last of August the warriors who were to act in Kentucky, appeared before Bryant's station, south of Licking river, and placed themselves under covert during night,[5] and in advantageous [257] situations for firing upon the station, so soon as its doors should be thrown open. There were at that time but few inhabitants occupying that station. William Bryant, its founder, and one in whose judgment, skill and courage, many confidently reposed for security from savage enormity, had been unfortunately discovered by some Indians near the mouth of Cane run, and killed.--His death caused most of those who had come to that place from North Carolina, to forsake the station, and return to their own country. Emigrants from Virginia, arriving some short time before, and among whom was Robert Johnson, (the father of Richard M. Johnson) to a certain extent supplied this desertion; yet it was in respect to numbers so far inferior to the savage forces, that the most resolute shuddered in apprehension of the result. The station too, was at that time, careless and inattentive to its own defence; not anticipating the appearance of a savage army before its gates. Indeed had the Indians delayed their attack a few hours, it would have been in almost an entirely defenceless condition; as the men were on that morning to have left it, for the purpose of aiding in the defence of another station, which was then understood to be assailed by an army of Indians. Fortunately however, for the inhabitants, as soon as the doors of some of the cabins were opened in the morning, the savages commenced the fire, and thus admonished them of danger, while it was not yet too late to provide against it. The Indians in the attack on Bryant's station practised their usual stratagem, to ensure their success. It was begun on the south-east angle of the station, by one hundred warriors, while the remaining five hundred were concealed in the woods on the opposite side, ready to take advantage of its unprotected situation when, as they anticipated, the garrison would concentrate its strength, to resist the assault on the south-east. But their purpose was fully comprehended by the garrison, and instead of returning the fire of the one hundred, they secretly sent an express to Lexington for assistance, and commenced repairing the pallisades, and putting themselves in the best possible condition to withstand the fury of the assailants. Aware that the Indians were posted near the spring, and believing that they would not fire unless some of the men should be seen going thither, the women [258] were sent to bring in water for the use of the garrison. The event justified their expectations--The concealed Indians, still farther to strengthen the belief, that their whole force were engaged in the attack on the south-east, forbore to fire, or otherwise contradict the impression which they had studiously sought to make on the minds of its inmates. When a sufficiency of water had been provided, and the station placed in a condition of defence, thirteen men were sent out in the direction from which the assault was made. They were fired upon by the assailing party of one hundred, but without receiving any injury; and retired again within the pallisades. Instantly the savages rushed to the assault of, what they deemed, the unprotected side of the station, little doubting their success. A steady, well directed fire, put them quickly to flight. Some of the more desperate and daring however, approached near enough to fire the houses, some of which were consumed; but a favorable wind drove the flames from the mass of the buildings and the station escaped conflagration. Disappointed of the expected success of their first stratagem, the assailants withdrew a short distance, and concealed themselves under the bank of the creek, to await the arrival of the assistance, which was generally sent to a besieged fort or station, arranging themselves in ambushment to intercept its approach. When the express from Bryant's station reached Lexington, the male inhabitants had left there to aid in the defence of Holder's station, which was reported to be attacked. Following on their route, they overtook them at Boonesborough, and sixteen mounted, and thirty footmen were immediately detached to aid the inhabitants of Bryant's station. When this reinforcement came near, the firing had entirely ceased, no enemy was visible, and they approached in the confidence that all was well. A sudden discharge of shot from the savages in ambush, dispelled that hope. The horsemen however, passed safely by. The cloud of dust produced by the galloping of their horses, obscured the view and hindered the otherwise deadly aim of the Indians. The footmen were less fortunate. Two of them were killed, and four wounded; and but for the luxuriant growth of corn in the field through which they passed, nearly all must have fallen, before the overwhelming force of the enemy. [259] Thus reinforced, the garrison did not for an instant doubt of safety; while the savages became hopeless of success by force of arms, and resorted to another expedient to gain possession of the station. In the twilight of evening, Simon Girty covertly drew near, and mounting on a stump from which he could be distinctly heard, demanded the surrender of the place. He told the garrison, that a reinforcement, with cannon, would arrive that night, and that this demand was suggested by _his humanity_, as the station must ultimately fall, and he could assure them of protection if they surrendered, but could not if the Indians succeeded by storm; and then demanded, if "they knew who was addressing them." A young man by the name of Reynolds, (fearing the effect which the threat of cannon might have upon the garrison, as the fate of Ruddle's and Martin's stations was yet fresh in their recollections,) replied, that he "knew him well, and held him in such contempt, that he had named a worthless dog which he had SIMON GIRTY; that his reinforcements and threats, were not heeded by the garrison, who expected to receive before morning such an auxiliary force as would enable them to give a good account of the cowardly wretches that followed him, whom he held in such contempt that he had prepared a number of switches with which to drive them out of the country if they remained there 'till day."[6] Affecting to deplore their obstinacy, Girty retired, and during the night, the main body of the Indian army marched off, leaving a few warriors to keep up an occasional firing and the semblance of a siege.[7] Shortly after the retreat of the savages, one hundred and sixty men, from Lexington, Harrodsburg and Boonesborough, assembled at Bryant's station, and determined to pursue them.[8] Prudence should have prevailed with them to await the arrival of Colonel Logan, who was known to be collecting additional forces from the other station; but brave and fearless, well equipped, and burning with ardent desire to chastise their savage invaders, they rather indiscreetly chose to march on, unaided, sooner than risk suffering the enemy to retire, by delaying for other troops. But the Indians had no wish to retire, to avoid the whites. The trail left by them, to the experienced eye of Daniel Boone, furnished convincing evidence, that they were only solicitous to conceal their numbers, in reality to tempt pursuit. [260] When the troops arrived at the Lower Blue Licks, they saw the only Indians, which had met their eye on the route. These were slowly ascending the ridge on the opposite side of the river. The party was halted, and Boone consulted as to what course it would be best to pursue. He was of opinion that the savage force was much greater, than most had been led to believe by the appearance of the trail, and anticipating pursuit, were then in ambush in the ravines; and he advised that the force be divided into two equal parts, the one, marching up the river, to cross it at the mouth of Elk creek, above the upper ravine, while the other party should take a position below for the purpose of co-operating whenever occasion might require; but that neither party should by any means cross the river, until spies were sent out to learn the position and strength of the enemy.[9] The officers generally were inclined to follow the counsel of Boone, but Major McGary, remarkable for impetuosity, exclaiming, "Let all who are not cowards, follow me," spurred his horse into the river. The whole party caught the contagious rashness,--all rushed across the river. There was no order,--no arrangement--no unity or concert. None "paused in their march of terror," lest "we should hover o'er the path," but each, following his own counsel, moved madly towards the sheltered ravines and wooded ground, where Boone had predicted the savages lay hid. The event justified the prediction, and showed the wisdom of his counsel. At the head of a chosen band of warriors, Girty[10] advanced with fierceness upon the whites, from the advantageous position which he covertly occupied, and "madness, despair and death succeed, the conflict's gathering wrath." The Indians had greatly the advantage in numbers, as well as position, and the disorderly front of the whites, gave them still greater superiority. The bravery of the troops for a while withstood the onset, and the contest was fierce and sanguinary 'till their right wing being turned, a retreat became inevitable. All pressed towards the ford, but a division of the savage army, foreseeing this, had been placed so as to interpose between them and it; and they were driven to a point on the river, where it could only be crossed by swimming. Here was indeed a scene of blood and carnage. Many were killed on the bank; others in swimming over, and some were tomahawked in the edge of the water. Some of those who had been foremost in getting across the river, wheeled and opened a steady fire upon the pursuers. Others, animated by the example, as soon as they reached the bank discharged their guns upon the savages, and checking them for a while enabled many to escape death. But for this stand, the footmen would have been much harrassed, and very many of them entirely cut off. As it was, the loss in slain was great. Of one hundred and seventy-six (the number of whites,) sixty-one were killed, and eight taken prisoners. Cols. Todd and Trigg,--Majors Harland and Bulger,--Capts. Gordon, McBride, and a son of Daniel Boone, were among those who fell. The loss of the savages was never known;--they [261] were left in possession of the battle ground, and at leisure to conceal or carry off their dead, and when it was next visited by the whites, none were found.[11] A most noble and generous act, performed by one of the whites, deserves to be forever remembered. While they were flying before the closely pursuing savages, Reynolds (who at Bryant's station had so cavalierly replied to Girty's demand of its surrender) seeing Col. Robert Patterson, unhorsed and considerably disabled by his wounds, painfully struggling to reach the river, sprang from his saddle, and assisting him to occupy the relinquished seat, enabled that veteran officer to escape, and fell himself into the hands of the savages. He was not long however, detained a prisoner by them. He was taken by a party of only three Indians; and two whites passing hurriedly on towards the river, just after, two of his captors hastened in pursuit of them, and he was left guarded by only one. Reynolds was cool and collected, and only awaited the semblance of an opportunity, to attempt an escape. Presently the savage in whose custody he was, stooped to tie his moccason. Suddenly he sprang to one side, and being fleet of foot, got safely off. The battle of the Blue Licks was fought on the 19th of August. On the next day Col. Logan, with three hundred men, met the remnant of the troops retreating to Bryant's station; and learning the fatal result of the contest, hurried on to the scene of action to bury the dead, and avenge their fall--if the enemy should be found yet hovering near. On his arrival not a savage was to be seen. Flushed with victory, and exulting in their revenge, they had retired to their towns, to feast the eyes of their brethren, with the scalps of the slain. The field of battle presented a miserable spectacle. All was stillness, where so lately had arisen the shout of the impetuous, but intrepid whites, and the whoop and yell of the savages, as they closed in deadly conflict; not a sound was to be heard but the hoarse cry of the vulture, flapping her wings and mounting into the air, alarmed at the intrusion of man. Those countenances, which had so lately beamed with daring and defiance, were unmeaning and inexpressive; and what with the effect produced on the dead bodies, by the excessive heat and the mangling and disfiguration of the tomahawk and scalping knife, scarcely one could be distinguished from another. Friends tortured themselves in vain, to find friends, in the huge mass of slain,--fathers to recognize their sons. The mournful gratification of bending over the lifeless bodies of dear relations and gazing with intense anxiety on their pallid features, was denied them. Undistinguished, though not unmarked, all were alike consigned to the silent grave, amid sighs of sorrow and denunciations of revenge. An expedition against the Indian towns was immediately resolved upon, and in September, Gen. Clarke marched towards them, at the head of nearly one thousand men. Being discovered on their route and the intelligence soon spreading that an army from [262] Kentucky was penetrating the country, the savages deserted their villages and fled; and the expedition was thus hindered of its purpose of chastising them. The towns however were burned, and in a skirmish with a party of Indians, five of them were killed, and seven made prisoners, with the loss of only one man.[12] The Indian forces which were to operate against North Western Virginia, for some time delayed their purpose, and did not set out on their march, until awhile before the return of those who had been sent into Kentucky. On their way, a question arose among them--against what part of the country they should direct their movements--and their division on this subject, rising by degrees 'till it assumed a serious aspect, led many of the chiefs to determine on abandoning the expedition; but a runner arriving with intelligence of the great success which had crowned the exertion of the army in Kentucky, they changed that determination, and proceeded hastily towards Wheeling. In the first of September, John Lynn (a celebrated spy and the same who had been with Capt. Foreman at the time of the fatal ambuscade at Grave creek) being engaged in watching the warriors paths, northwest of the Ohio, discovered the Indians marching with great expedition for Wheeling, and hastening to warn the inhabitants of the danger which was threatening them, swam the river, and reached the village, but a little while before the savage army made its appearance. The fort was at this time without any regular garrison, and depended for defence exclusively, on the exertions of those who sought security within its walls. The brief space of time which elapsed between the alarm by Lynn, and the arrival of the Indians, permitted only those who were immediately present to retire into it, and when the attack was begun to be made, there were not within its pallisades, twenty effective men to oppose the assault. The dwelling house of Col. Ebenezer Zane, standing about forty yards from the fort, contained the military stores which had been furnished by the government of Virginia; and as it was admirably situated as an out post from which to annoy the savages in their onsets, he resolved on maintaining possession of it, as well to aid in the defence of the fort, as for the preservation of the ammunition. Andrew Scott, George Green, Mrs. Zane, Molly Scott and Miss McCullough, were all who remained with him. The kitchen (adjoining) was occupied by Sam (a negro belonging to Col, Zane) and Kate, his wife.--Col. Silas Zane commanded in the fort. When the savage army approached, the British colors were waving over them; and before a shot was discharged at the fort, they demanded the surrender of the garrison. No answer was deigned to this demand, but the firing of several shot (by order of Silas Zane) at the standard which they bore; and the savages rushed to the assault. A well directed and brisk fire opened upon them from Col. Zane's house and the fort, soon drove them back. Again they rushed forward; and again were they repulsed. The number of [263] arms in the house and fort, and the great exertions of the women in moulding bullets, loading guns and handing them to the men, enabled them to fire so briskly, yet so effectively, as to cause the savages to recoil from every charge. The darkness of night soon suspended their attacks, and afforded a temporary repose to the besieged. Yet were the assailants not wholly inactive. Having suffered severely by the galling fire poured upon them from the house, they determined on reducing it to ashes. For this purpose, when all was quietness and silence, a savage, with a firebrand in his hand crawled to the kitchen, and raising himself from the ground, waving the torch to and fro to rekindle its flame, and about to apply it to the building, received a shot which forced him to let fall the engine of destruction and hobble howling away. The vigilance of Sam had detected him, in time to thwart his purpose. On the return of light, the savages were seen yet environing the fort, and although for some time they delayed to renew their suspended assault, yet it was evident they had not given over its contemplated reduction. They were engaged in making such preparations, as they were confident would ensure success to their exertions. Soon after the firing of the preceding day had subsided, a small boat, proceeding from Fort Pitt to the Falls of Ohio with cannon balls for the use of the troops there, put to shore at Wheeling; and the man who had charge of her, although discovered and slightly wounded by the savages, reached the postern and was admitted to the fort. The boat of course fell into the hands of the enemy, and they resolved on using the balls aboard, for the demolition of the fortress. To this end they procured a log, with a cavity as nearly corresponding with the size of the ball, as they could; and binding it closely with some chains taken from a shop hard by, charged it heavily, and pointing it towards the fort, in imagination beheld its walls tumbling into ruin, and the garrison bleeding under the strokes and gashes of their tomahawks and scalping knives. All things being ready, the match was applied.--A dreadful explosion ensued. Their cannon burst;--its slivers flew in every direction; and instead of being the cause of ruin to the fort, was the source of injury only to themselves. Several were killed, many wounded, and all, dismayed by the event. Recovering from the shock, they presently returned with redoubled animation to the charge. Furious from disappointment, exasperated with the unforseen yet fatal result, they pressed to the assault with the blindness of phrensy. Still they were received with a fire so constant and deadly, that they were again forced to retire; and most opportunely for the garrison. When Lynn gave the alarm that an Indian army was approaching, the fort having been for some time unoccupied by a garrison, and Col. Zane's house being used as a magazine, those who retired into the fortress had to take with them a supply of ammunition for its defence. The supply of powder, deemed ample at the time, by reason of the long continuance of the savages, and the repeated [264] endeavors made by them, to storm the fort was now almost entirely exhausted, a few loads only, remaining. In this emergency, it became necessary to replenish their stock, from the abundance of that article in Col. Zane's house. During the continuance of the last assault, apprized of its security, and aware of the danger which would inevitably ensue, should the savages after being again driven back, return to the assault before a fresh supply could be obtained, it was proposed that one of their fleetest men should endeavor to reach the house, obtain a keg and return with it to the fort. It was an enterprise full of danger; but many of the chivalric spirits, then pent up within the fortress, were willing to encounter them all. Among those who volunteered to go on this emprise, was Elizabeth, the younger sister of Colonel Zane. She was then young active and athletic;--with precipitancy to dare danger, and fortitude to sustain her in the midst of it. Disdaining to weigh the hazard of her own life, against the risk of that of others, when told that a man would encounter less danger by reason of his greater fleetness, she replied--"and should he fall, his loss will be more severely felt. You have not one man to spare;--a woman will not be missed in the defence of the fort." Her services were accepted. Divesting herself of some of her garments, as tending to impede her progress, she stood prepared for the hazzardous adventure; and when the gate was opened, she bounded forth with the buoyancy of hope, and in the confidence of success. Wrapt in amazement, the Indians beheld her spring forward; and only exclaiming, "a squaw, a squaw," no attempt was made to interrupt her progress. Arrived at the door, she proclaimed her embassy. Col. Zane fastened a table cloth around her waist, and emptying into it a keg of powder, again she ventured forth. The Indians were no longer passive. Ball after ball passed whizzing and innocuous by. She reached the gate and entered the fort in safety.[13] Another instance of heroic daring, deserves to be recorded [265] here. When intelligence of the investiture of Wheeling by the savages, reached Shepherd's fort, a party was immediately detached from it, to try and gain admission into the besieged fortress, and aid in its defence. Upon arriving in view, it was found that the attempt would be hopeless and unavailing, and the detachment consequently prepared to return. Francis Duke, (son-in-law to Colonel Shepherd) was unwilling to turn his back on a people, straitened as he knew the besieged must be, and declared his intention of endeavoring to reach the fort, that he might contribute to its defence. It was useless to disuade him from the attempt;--he knew its danger, but he also knew their weakness, and putting spurs to his horse, rode briskly forward, calling aloud, "open the gate,--open the gate." He was seen from the fort, and the gate was loosed for his admission; but he did not live to reach it.--Pierced by the bullets of the savages, he fell, to the regret of all. Such noble daring, deserved a better fate. During that night and the next day, the Indians still maintained the seige, and made frequent attempts to take the fort by storm; but they were invareiably repulsed by the deadly fire of the garrison and the few brave men in Colonel Zane's house. On the third night, despairing of success, they resolved on raising the siege; and leaving one hundred chosen warriors to scour and lay waste the country, the remainder of their army retreated across the Ohio, and encamped at the Indian Spring,--five miles from the river. Their loss in the various assaults upon the fort, could not be ascertained; but was doubtless very considerable. Of the garrison, none were killed and only two wounded,--the heroic Francis Duke was the only white who fell during the siege. The gallantry displayed by all, both men and women, in the defence of the fort, can not be too highly commended; but to the caution and good conduct of those few brave individuals who occupied Colonel Zane's house, its preservation has been mainly attributed. In the evening preceding the departure of the savages from before Wheeling, two white men, who had been among them for several years, and then held commands in the army, deserted from them, and on the next morning early were taken prisoners by Colonel Swearingen, who, with ninety-five men, was on his way to aid in the defence of Wheeling fort, and the chastisement of its assailants. Learning from them [266] the determination of the savages to withdraw from Wheeling, and detach a portion of their force to operate in the country, he despatched runners in every direction to alarm the country and apprize the inhabitants of danger.[14] The intelligence was received by Jacob Miller when some distance from home, but apprehensive that the meditated blow would be aimed at the fort where he resided, he hastened thither, and arrived in time to aid in preparing for its defence. The place against which the savages directed their operations, was situated on Buffaloe creek, twelve or fifteen miles from its entrance into the Ohio, and was known as Rice's fort. Until Miller's return there were in it only five men; the others having gone to Hagerstown to exchange their peltries, for salt, iron and ammunition. They immediately set about making preparations to withstand an assault; and in a little while, seeing the savages approaching from every direction, forsook the cabins and repaired to the blockhouse. The Indians perceived that they were discovered, and thinking to take the station by storm, shouted forth the war whoop and rushed to the assault. They were answered by the fire of the six brave and skilful riflemen in the house, and forced to take refuge behind trees and fallen timber. Still they continued the firing; occasionally calling on the whites to "_give up, give up. Indian too many. Indian too big. Give up. Indian no kill._" The men had more faith in the efficacy of their guns to purchase their safety, than in the preferred mercy of the savages; and instead of complying with their demand, called on them, "as cowards skulking behind logs to leave their coverts, and shew but their yellow hides, and they would make holes in them." The firing was kept up by the savages from their protected situation, until night, and whenever even a remote prospect of galling them was presented to the whites, they did not fail to avail themselves of it. The Indian shots in the evening, were directed principally against the stock as it came up as usual to the station, and the field was strewed with its dead carcases. About ten o'clock of the night they fired a large barn (thirty or forty yards from the blockhouse) filled with grain and hay, and the flames from which seemed for awhile to endanger the fort; but being situated on higher ground, and the current of air flowing in a contrary direction, it escaped conflagration. Collecting on the side of the fort opposite [267] to the fire, the Indians took advantage of the light it afforded them to renew the attack; and kept it up until about two o'clock, when they departed. Their ascertained loss was four warriors,--three of whom were killed by the first firing of the whites,--the other about sundown. George Folebaum was the only white who suffered. Early in the attack, he was shot in the forehead, through a port-hole, and instantly expired; leaving Jacob Miller, George Leffler, Peter Fullenwieder, Daniel Rice and Jacob Leffler, junior, sole defenders of the fort; and bravely and effectually did they preserve it, from the furious assaults of one hundred chosen savage warriors. Soon after the Indians left Rice's fort, they moved across the hills in different directions and in detached parties. One of these observing four men proceeding towards the fort which they had lately left, waylaid the path and killed two of them on the first fire. The remaining two fled hastily; and one of them swift of foot, soon made his escape. The other, closely pursued by one of the savages, and in danger of being overtaken, wheeled to fire. His gun snapped, and he again took to flight. Yet more closely pressed by his pursuer, he once more attempted to shoot. Again his gun snapped, and the savage being now near enough, hurled a tomahawk at his head. It missed its object and both strained every nerve for the chase. The Indian gained rapidly upon him; and reaching forth his arm, caught hold of the end of his belt. It had been tied in a bow-knot, and came loose.--Sensible that the race must soon terminate to his disadvantage unless he could kill his pursuer, the white man once more tried his gun. It fired; and the savage fell dead at his feet. Some time in the summer of this year, a party of Wyandots, consisting of seven warriors, (five of whom were, one of the most distinguished chiefs of that nation and his four brothers) came into one of the intermediate settlements between Fort Pitt and Wheeling, killed an old man whom they found alone, robbed his cabin, and commenced retreating with the plunder. They were soon discovered by spies; and eight men, two of whom were Adam and Andrew Poe, (brothers, remarkable for uncommon size, great activity, and undaunted bravery) went in pursuit of them. Coming on their trail not far from the Ohio, Adam Poe, fearing an ambuscade, left his companions [268] to follow it, while he moved across to the river under cover of the high weeds and bushes, with the view to attack them in the rear should he find them situated as he expected.--Presently he espied an Indian raft at the water's edge, but seeing nothing of the savages, moved cautiously down the bank; and when near the foot, discovered the large Wyandot chief and a small Indian standing near and looking intently towards the party of whites, then some distance lower down the bottom. Poe raised his gun, and aiming surely at the chief, pulled trigger. It missed fire, and the snap betrayed his presence. Too near to retreat, he sprang forward; and seizing the large Indian by the breast, and at the same instant encircling his arms around the neck of the smaller one, threw them both to the ground. Extricating himself from the grasp of Poe, the small savage raised his tomahawk; but as he aimed the blow, a vigorous and well directed kick, staggered him back, and he let fall the hatchet. Recovering quickly, he aimed several blows in defiance and exultation,--the vigilance of Poe distinguished the real from the feigned stroke, and suddenly throwing up his arm, averted it from his head, but received a wound in his wrist. By a violent effort, he freed himself from the grip of the chief, and snatching up a gun, shot his companion through the breast, as he advanced the third time with the tomahawk. In this time the large chief had regained his feet; and seizing Poe by the shoulder and leg threw him to the ground.--Poe however, soon got up, and engaged with the savage in a close struggle, which terminated in the fall of both into the water. Now it became the object of each to drown his antagonist, and the efforts to accomplish this were continued for some time with alternate success;--first one and then the other, being under water. At length, catching hold of the long tuft of hair which had been suffered to grow on the head of the chief, Poe held him under water, until he supposed him dead; but relaxing his hold too soon, the gigantic savage was again on his feet and ready for another grapple. In this both were carried beyond their depth, and had to swim for safety. Both sought the shore, and each, with all his might, strained every nerve to reach it first that he might end the conflict with one of the guns lying on the beach. The Indian was the more expert swimmer, and Poe, outstripped by him, turned and swam farther into the river, in the hope of avoiding being [269] shot by diving. Fortunately his antagonist laid hold on the gun which had been discharged at the little Indian, and he was enabled to get some distance into the river. At this juncture, two others of the whites came up; and one of them mistaking Poe for a wounded savage attempting to escape, shot and wounded him in the shoulder. He then turned to make for shore, and seeing his brother Andrew on the bank, called to him to "shoot the big Indian." Having done this, Andrew plunged into the river to assist Adam in getting out; and the wounded savage, to preserve his scalp, rolled himself into the water, and struggling onward, sunk and could not be found. During the continuance of this contest, the whites had overtaken the other five Indians, and after a desperate conflict, succeeded in killing all but one; with the loss of three of their companions.--A great loss, when the number engaged is taken into consideration. ----- [1] L. V. McWhorter informs me that White, who was a prominent settler, was once with others on a hunting expedition, when they surprised a small party of Indians. They killed several, but one active young brave ran off, with White close at his heels. The Indian leaped from a precipice, alighting in a quagmire in which he sank to his waist. White, with tomahawk in hand, jumped after him. In the struggle which ensued, White buried his weapon in the red man's skull. The victim's father was among those who escaped, and for a long time--McWhorter says "several years"--he lurked about the settlements trailing White. Finally, he succeeded in shooting his man, within sight of the fort. Mrs. White was an eye-witness of the tragedy. McWhorter claims that Withers is mistaken in saying that White was "tomahawked, scalped and lacerated in the most frightful manner." The avenging Indian tried to get his scalp, but an attacking party from the fort were so close upon him that he fled before accomplishing his object. McWhorter reports another case, not mentioned in Withers. One Fink was "killed by Indians in ambush, while letting down a pair of bars one evening, just in front of where the Buckhannon court-house now stands."--R. G. T. [2] The council was held at Wapatomica, in June. There were present representatives of the Ottawas, Chippewas, Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, Munsees, and Cherokees. Simon Girty came with the Wyandots; Captain McKee was then a trader at Wapatomica.--R. G. T. [3] See the alleged speech in Butterfield's _History of the Girtys_, pp. 190, 191.--R. G. T. [4] The Kentucky party was under Capt. William Caldwell, who wrote, "I crossed the Ohio with three hundred Indians and rangers." Capts. McKee and Elliott, and the three Girtys were with the expedition. Caldwell crossed the river early in July, not far below the mouth, of Limestone creek--site of the present Maysville, Ky.--R. G. T. [5] They arrived on the night of August 15.--R. G. T. [6] The above incident is mentioned in none of the contemporary chronicles, and is probably fiction.--R. G. T. [7] The attack was begun early in the morning of the 16th, and continued with more or less vigor until about 10 A. M. of the 17th. Caldwell then withdrew his force "in a leisurely manner." The attacking party lost five killed and two wounded, all Indians; the garrison lost four killed and three wounded.--R. G. T. [8] A hundred and eighty-two, under Col. John Todd. Pursuit was commenced on the 18th.--R. G. T. [9] The battle occurred at 8 A. M. of August 19, a short distance north of the Lower Blue Licks, on the Licking river, in what is now Nicholas County.--R. G. T. [10] The tendency among early Western chroniclers has been greatly to magnify the importance of Simon Girty. He was merely an interpreter on this, as on most other expeditions. Caldwell was in command. The British force now consisted of 200 Indians and 30 rangers. Some of the Indians had already left for their villages.--R. G. T. [11] The British rangers lost one of their number by death; of their Indian allies, ten were killed and fourteen wounded. Of the Kentuckians, about seventy were killed, several badly wounded, and seven made prisoners. Caldwell continued his leisurely retreat to Upper Sandusky, which he reached September 24, the Indians meanwhile dispersing to their several homes.--R. G. T. [12] Gen. George Rogers Clark gave this official report of his expedition against the Shawnees, in a letter dated Lincoln, November 27, 1782: "We left the Ohio the 4th instant, with 1050 men, surprised the principal Shawanese Town in the evening of the 10th, and immediately detached strong parties to different quarters; and in a few hours afterwards two thirds of the towns were laid in ashes, and every thing they were possessed of destroyed, except such as were most useful to the troops, the enemy not having time to secrete any part of their property. The British trading post at the head of the Miami and Carrying Place to the waters of the Lakes, shared the same by a party of 150 horse, commanded by Col. Logan, and property to a great amount was also destroyed: the quantity of provisions burnt far surpassed any idea we had of their stores. The loss of the enemy was ten scalps, seven prisoners, and two whites retaken; ours, one killed and one wounded. "After laying part of four days in their towns, and finding all attempts to bring them to a general action fruitless, we retired, as the season was far advanced and the weather threatening. I could not learn by the prisoners that they had the least idea of General Irvin's design of penetrating into their country. Should he have given them another stroke at Sandusky, it will more than double the advantages already gained. "We might probably have got many more scalps and prisoners--could we have known in time whether or not we were discovered, which we took for granted until getting within three miles when some circumstances occurred that gave us reason to think otherwise, though uncertain.--Col. Floyd, with 300 men, was ordered to advance and bring on an action or attack the town, Major Wells with a party of horse being previously detached by a different route as a party of observation: although Col. Floyd's motion was so quick as to get to the town but a few minutes later than those who discovered his approach, the inhabitants had sufficient notice to effect their escape to the woods by the alarm cry being given, and which was repeated by all that heard it; of course our party only fell in with the rear of the enemy. "I must beg leave to recommend the militia of Kentucky whose behaviour on the occasion does them honour, particularly their desire of saving prisoners." The document is here given as found in Almon's _Remembrancer_, xvi., pp. 93, 94; but it has of course been edited, after the fashion of that day, for Clark's original letters abound in misspellings.--R. G. T. [13] [264] This heroine had but recently returned from Philadelphia, where she had received her education, and was totally unused to such scenes as were daily exhibiting on the frontier. She afterwards became the wife of Mr. McGlanlin; and he dying, she married a Mr. Clarke, and is yet living in Ohio. [14] See p. 224, _note_ 1, for reference to confusion between the two sieges of Wheeling, and the over-statement of early border historians.--R. G. T. [270] CHAPTER XVI. The treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain, which terminated so gloriously the war of the revolution, did not put a period to Indian hostilities.[1] The aid which had been extended to the savages, and which enabled them so successfully to gratify their implacable resentment against the border country, being withdrawn, they were less able to cope with the whites than they had been, and were less a hindrance to the population and improvement of those sections of country which had been the theatre of their many outrages. In North Western Virginia, indeed, although the war continued to be waged against its inhabitants, yet it assumed a different aspect. It became a war rather of plunder, than of blood; and although in the predatory incursions of the Indians, individuals some times fell a sacrifice to savage passion; yet this was of such rare occurrence, that the chronicles of those days are divested of much of the interest, which attaches to a detail of Indian hostilities. For several years, scarce an incident occurred worthy of being rescued from oblivion. In Kentucky it was far otherwise. The war continued to be prosecuted there, with the wonted vigor of the savages.--The General Assembly of Virginia having, at the close of the revolution, passed an act for surveying the land set apart for her officers and soldiers, south of Green river, the surveyors descended to the Ohio, to explore the country and perform the duties assigned them. On their arrival they found it occupied by the savages, and acts of hostilities immediately [271] ensued. In December, 1783, the Legislature likewise passed an act, appropriating the country between the Scioto and Miami rivers, for the purpose of satisfying the claims of the officers and soldiers, if the land previously allotted, in Kentucky, should prove insufficient for that object. This led to a confederacy of the many tribes of Indians, interested in those sections of country, and produced such feelings and gave rise to such acts of hostility on their part, as induced Benjamin Harrison the Governor of Virginia, in November, 1784, to recommend the postponement of the surveys; and in January, 1785, a proclamation was issued, by Patrick Henry, (successor of Gov. Harrison) commanding the surveyors to desist and leave the country. A treaty was soon after concluded, by which the country on the Scioto, Miami, and Muskingum, was ceded to the United States.[2] In this interval of time, North Western Virginia enjoyed almost uninterrupted repose. There was indeed an alarm of Indians, on Simpson's creek in 1783, but it soon subsided; and the circumstance which gave rise to it (the discharge of a gun at Major Power) was generally attributed to a white man. In 1784, the settlement towards the head of West Fork, suffered somewhat from savage invasion. A party of Indians came to the house of Henry Flesher, (where the town of Weston now is) and fired at the old gentleman, as he was returning from the labors of the field. The gun discharged at him, had been loaded with two balls, and both taking effect, crippled his arm a good deal. Two savages immediately ran towards him; and he, towards the door; and just as he was in the act of entering it, one of them had approached so closely as to strike at him with the butt end of his gun. The breech came first in contact with the facing of the door, and descending on his head, seemed to throw him forward into the house, and his wife closing the door, no attempt was made by the savages to force it open. Still, however, they did not feel secure; and as soon as they became assured that the savages were withdrawn, they left the house and sought security elsewhere. Most of the family lay in the woods during the night,--one young woman succeeded in finding the way to Hacker's creek, from whence Thomas Hughes immediately departed to find the others. This was effected early next morning, and all were safely escorted to that settlement. [272] The foregoing event happened in September, and in a few days after, as Daniel Radcliff was proceeding to the Brushy Fork of Elk creek on a hunting expedition, he was shot (probably by the Indians who had been at Flesher's,) tomahawked and scalped in a shocking manner. In 1785, six Indians came to Bingamon creek, (a branch of the West Fork) and made their appearance upon a farm occupied by Thomas and Edward Cunningham. At this time the two brothers were dwelling with their families in separate houses, but nearly adjoining, though not in a direct line with each other. Thomas was then on a trading visit east of the mountain, and his wife and four children were collected in their room for the purpose of eating dinner, as was Edward with his family, in their house. Suddenly a lusty savage entered where were Mrs. Thomas Cunningham and her children, but seeing that he would be exposed to a fire from the other house, and apprehending no danger from the woman and children, he closed the door and seemed for a time only intent on the means of escaping. Edward Cunningham had seen the savage enter his brother's house, and fastened his own door, seized his gun and stepping to a small aperture in the wall next the house in which was the Indian, and which served as well for a port hole as for the admission of light, was ready to fire whenever the savage should make his appearance. But in the other house was a like aperture, and through it the Indian fired at Edward, and shouted the yell of victory. It was answered by Edward. He had seen the aim of the savage only in time to avoid it,--the bark from the log close to his head, was knocked off by the ball and flew into his face. The Indian seeing that he had missed his object, and observing an adze in the room, deliberately commenced cutting an aperture in the back wall through which he might pass out without being exposed to a shot from the other building.[3] Another of the Indians came into the yard just after the firing of his companion, but observing Edward's gun pointing through the port hole, he endeavored to retreat out of its range. He failed of his purpose. Just as he was about to spring over the fence, the gun was fired and he fell forward. The ball however only fractured his thigh bone, and he was yet able to hobble over the fence and take shelter behind a [273] coverlet suspended on it, before Edward could again load his gun. While the Indian was engaged in cutting a hole in the wall, Mrs. Cunningham made no attempt to get out. She was well aware that it would draw down upon her head the fury of the savage; and that if she escaped this, she would most probably be killed by some of those who were watching around, before the other door could be opened for her admission.--She knew too, that it was impossible for her to take the children with her, and could not brook the idea of leaving them in the hands of the savage monster. She even trusted to the hope that he would withdraw, as soon as he could, without molesting any of them. A few minutes served to convince her of the fallacy of this expectation. When the opening had been made sufficiently large, he raised his tomahawk, sunk it deep into the brains of one of the children, and throwing the scarcely lifeless body into the back yard, ordered the mother to follow after. There was no alternative but death, and she obeyed his order, stepping over the dead body of one of her children,[4] with an infant in her arms and two others screaming from horror at the sight, and clinging to her. When all were out he scalped the murdered boy, and setting fire to the house, retired to an eminence in the field, where two of the savages were, with their wounded companion.--leaving the other two to watch the opening of Edward Cunningham's door, when the burning of the house should force the family from their shelter. They were disappointed in their expectation of that event by the exertions of Cunningham and his son. When the flame from the one house communicated to the roof of the other, they ascended to the loft, threw off the loose boards which covered it, and extinguished the fire;--the savages shooting at them all the while, and their balls frequently striking close by. Despairing of accomplishing farther havoc, and fearful of detection and pursuit, the Indians collected together and prepared to retreat. Mrs. Cunningham's eldest son was first tomahawked and scalped; the fatal hatchet sunk into the head of her little daughter, whom they then took by the arms and legs, and slinging it repeatedly against a tree, ended its sufferings with its life. Mrs. Cunningham stood motionless with grief, and in momentary expectation of having the same dealt to her and her innocent infant. But no! She was [274] doomed to captivity; and with her helpless babe in her arms, was led off from this scene of horror and of wo. The wounded savage was carried on a rough litter, and they all departed, crossing the ridge to Bingamon creek, near which they found a cave that afforded them shelter and concealment.[5] After night, they returned to Edward Cunningham's, and finding no one, plundered and fired the house. When the savages withdrew in the evening, Cunningham went with his family into the woods, where they remained all night, there being no settlement nearer than eight or ten miles. In the morning, proceeding to the nearest house, they gave the alarm and a company of men was soon collected to go in pursuit of the Indians. When they came to Cunningham's and found both houses heaps of ashes, they buried the bones which remained of the boy who was murdered in the house, with the bodies of his brother and little sister, who were killed in the field; but so cautiously had the savages conducted their retreat that no traces of them could be discovered, and the men returned to their homes. Some days after, circumstances induced the belief that the Indians were yet in the neighborhood, and men were again assembled for the purpose of tracing them. They were now enabled to distinguish the trail, and pursued it near to the cave, where from the number of rocks on the ground and the care which had been taken by the Indians to leave no vestige, they could no longer discover it. They however examined for it in every direction until night forced them to desist. In thinking over the incidents of the day; the cave occurred to the mind of Major Robinson, who was well acquainted with the woods, and he concluded that the savages must be concealed in it. It was examined early next morning, but they had left it the preceding night and departed for their towns. After her return from captivity, Mrs. Cunningham stated, that in time of the search on the day before, the Indians were in the cave, and that several times the whites approached so near, that she could distinctly hear their voices; the savages standing with their guns ready to fire, in the event of their being discovered, and forcing her to keep the infant to her breast, lest its crying might point to the place of their concealment.[6] In consequence of their stay at this place on account of their wounded companion, it was some time before they arrived [275] in their own country;[7] and Mrs. Cunningham's sufferings, of body as well as mind were truly great. Fatigue and hunger oppressed her sorely,--the infant in her arms, wanting the nourishment derived from the due sustenance of the mother, plied at the breast for milk, in vain--blood came in stead; and the Indians perceiving this, put a period to its sufferings, with the tomahawk, even while clinging to its mother's bosom. It was cast a little distance from the path, and left without a leaf or bush to hide it from beasts of prey. The anguish of this woman during the journey to the towns, can only be properly estimated by a parent; her bodily sufferings may be inferred from the fact, that for ten days her only sustenance consisted of the head of a wild turkey and three papaws, and from the circumstance that the skin and nails of her feet, scalded by frequent wading of the water, came with her stockings, when upon their arrival at a village of the Delawares, she was permitted to draw them off. Yet was she forced to continue on with them the next day.--One of the Indians belonging to the village where they were, by an application of some sanative herbs, very much relieved the pain which she endured. When she came to the town of those by whom she had been made prisoner, although receiving no barbarous or cruel usage, yet everything indicated to her, that she was reserved for some painful torture. The wounded Indian had been left behind, and she was delivered to his father. Her clothes were not changed, as is the case when a prisoner is adopted by them; but she was compelled to wear them, dirty as they were,--a bad omen for a captive. She was however, not long in apprehension of a wretched fate. A conference was soon to take place between the Indians and whites, preparatory to a treaty of peace; and witnessing an uncommon excitement in the village one evening, upon inquiring, learned that the Great captain Simon Girty had arrived. She determined to prevail with him, if she could, to intercede for her liberation, and seeing him next day passing near on horseback, she laid hold on his stirrup, and implored his interference. For a while he made light of her petition,--telling her that she would be as well there as in her own country, and that if he were disposed to do her a kindness he could not as his saddle bags were too small to conceal her; but her importunity at length prevailed, and he whose heart had been so long steeled [276] against every kindly feeling, every sympathetic impression, was at length induced to perform an act of generous, disinterested benevolence. He paid her ransom, had her conveyed to the commissioners for negotiating with the Indians, and by them she was taken to a station on the south side of the Ohio.[8] Here she met with two gentlemen (Long and Denton) who had been at the treaty to obtain intelligence of their children taken captive some time before, but not being able to gain any information respecting them, they were then returning to the interior of Kentucky and kindly furnished her a horse. In consequence of the great danger attending a journey through the wilderness which lay between the settlements in Kentucky and those on the Holstein, persons scarcely ever performed it but at particular periods of the year, and in caravans, the better to defend themselves against attacks of savages. Notice of the time and place of the assembling of one of these parties being given, Mrs. Cunningham prepared to accompany it; but before that time arrived, they were deterred from the undertaking by the report that a company of travellers, stronger than theirs would be, had been encountered by the Indians, and all either killed or made prisoners. Soon after another party resolved on a visit to Virginia, and Mrs. Cunningham was furnished a horse belonging to a gentleman on Holstein (which had escaped from him while on a buffalo hunt in Kentucky and was found after his return,) to carry her that far on her way home. Experiencing the many unpleasant circumstances incident to such a jaunt, she reached Holstein, and from thence, after a repose of a few days, keeping up the Valley of Virginia, she proceeded by the way of Shenandoah, to the county of Harrison.[9] Here she was sadly disappointed in not meeting with her husband. Having understood that she had been ransomed and taken to Kentucky, he had, some time before, gone on in quest of her. Anxiety for his fate, alone and on a journey which she well knew to be fraught with many dangers, she could not cheerily partake of the general joy excited by her return. In a few days however, he came back. He had heard on Holstein of her having passed there and he retraced his steps. Arriving at his brother Edward's, he again enjoyed the satisfaction of being with all that was then dear to him on earth. It was a delightful satisfaction, but presently damped by the recollection of [277] the fate of his luckless children--Time assuaged the bitterness of the recollection and blessed him with other and more fortunate children.[10] In October 1784, a party of Indians ascended Sandy river and passing over to the head of Clynch, came to the settlement near where Tazewell court house is now located. Going first to the house of a Mr. Davisson, they killed him and his wife; and setting fire to their dwelling, proceeded towards the residence of James Moore, sr. On their way they met Moore salting his horses at a _lick trough_ in the woods, and killed him. They then went to the house and captured Mrs. Moore and her seven children, and Sally Ivens, a young lady who was there on a visit. Fearing detection, they immediately departed for Ohio with the prisoners; and in order to expedite their retreat, killed John Moore, jr. and the three younger children. Upon their arrival at the Shawanee town on the Scioto (near the mouth of Paint creek) a council was held, and it was resolved that two of the captives should be _burned alive_, to avenge the death of some of their warriors who had been killed on the Kentucky river. This dreadful doom was allotted to Mrs. Moore and her daughter Jane,--an interesting girl about sixteen years of age. They were tied to a post and tortured to death with burning splinters of pine, in the presence of the remaining members of the family. After the death of his mother and sister, James Moore was sent to the Maumee towns in Michigan, where he remained until December 1785,--his sister Mary and Sally Ivins remaining with the Shawanees. In December 1786, they were all brought to Augusta county in conformity with the stipulations of the treaty of Miami, and ransomed by their friends.[11] In the fall of 1796, John Ice and James Snodgrass were killed by the Indians when looking for their horses which they [278] had lost on a buffalo hunt on Fishing creek. Their remains were afterwards found--the flesh torn from the bones by the wolves--and buried. In a few days after Ice and Snodgrass left home in quest of their horses, a party of Indians came to Buffalo creek in Monongalia, and meeting with Mrs. Dragoo and her son in a corn field gathering beans, took them prisoners, and supposing that their detention would induce others to look for them, they waylaid the path leading [277] from the house. According to their expectation, uneasy at their continued absence, Jacob Strait and Nicholas Wood went to ascertain its cause. As they approached the Indians fired from their covert, and Wood fell;--Strait taking to flight was soon overtaken. Mrs. Strait and her daughter, hearing the firing and seeing the savages in pursuit of Mr. Strait, betook themselves also to flight, but were discovered by some of the Indians who immediately ran after them. The daughter concealed herself in a thicket of bushes and escaped observation. Her mother sought concealment under a large shelving rock, and was not afterwards discovered by the savages, although those in pursuit of her husband, passed near and overtook him not far off. Indeed she was at that time so close, as to hear Mr. Strait say, when overtaken, "don't kill me and I will go with you;" and the savage replying "will you go with me," she heard the fatal blow which deprived her husband of life. Mrs. Dragoo being infirm and unable to travel to their towns, was murdered on the way. Her son (a lad of seven) remained with the Indians upwards of twenty years,--he married a squaw, by whom he had four children,--two of whom he brought home with him, when he forsook the Indians. In 1787 the Indians again visited the settlement on Buffaloe, and as Levi Morgan was engaged in skinning a wolf which he had just taken from his trap, he saw three of them--one riding a horse which he well knew, the other two walking near behind--coming towards him. On first looking in the direction they were coming, he recognized the horse, and supposed the rider to be its owner--one of his near neighbors. A second glance discovered the mistake, and he siezed his gun and sprang behind a large rock,--the Indians at the same instant taking shelter by the side of a large tree.--As soon as his body was obscured from their view, he turned, and seeing the Indians looking towards the farther end of the [279] rocks as if expecting him to make his appearance there, he fired and one of them fell. Instantly he had recourse to his powder horn to reload, but while engaged in skinning the wolf the stopper had fallen out and his powder was wasted. He then fled, and one of the savages took after him. For some time he held to his gun; but finding his pursuer sensibly gaining on him, he dropped it under the hope that it would attract the attention of the Indian and give him a better chance of escape. The savage passed heedlessly by it. Morgan then threw his shot pouch and coat in the way, to tempt the Indian to a momentary delay. It was equally vain,--his pursuer did not falter for an instant. He now had recourse to another expedient to save himself from captivity or death. Arriving at the summit of the hill up which he had directed his steps, he halted; and, as if some men were approaching from the other side, called aloud, "come on, come on; here is one, make haste." The Indian not doubting that he was really calling to some men at hand, turned and retreated as precipitately as he had advanced; and when he heard Morgan exclaim, "shoot quick, or he will be out of reach," he seemed to redouble his exertion to gain that desirable distance. Pleased with the success of the artifice, Morgan hastened home; leaving his coat and gun to reward the savage for the deception practised on him.[12] In September of this year, a party of Indians were discovered in the act of catching some horses on the West Fork above Clarksburg; and a company of men led on by Col. Lowther, went immediately in pursuit of them.[13] On the third night the Indians and whites, unknown to each other, encamped not far apart; and in the morning the fires of the latter being discovered by Elias Hughes, the detachment which was accompanying him fired upon the camp, and one of the savages fell. The remainder taking [279] to flight, one of them passed near to where Col. Lowther and the other men were, and the Colonel firing at him as he ran, the ball entering at his shoulder, perforated him, and he fell. The horses and plunder which had been taken by the savages, were then collected by the whites, and they commenced their return home, in the confidence of false security. They had not proceeded far, when two guns were unexpectedly fired at them, and John Bonnet fell, pierced through the body. He died before he reached home.[14] [280] The Indians never thought the whites justifiable in flying to arms to punish them for acts merely of rapine. They felt authorized to levy contributions of this sort, whenever an occasion served, viewing property thus acquired as (to use their own expression) the "only rent which they received for their lands;" and if when detected in secretly exacting them, their blood paid the penalty, they were sure to retaliate with tenfold fury, on the first favorable opportunity. The murder of these two Indians by Hughes and Lowther was soon followed by acts of retribution, which are believed to have been, at least mediately, produced by them. On the 5th of December, a party of Indians and one white man (Leonard Schoolcraft) came into the settlement on Hacker's creek, and meeting with a daughter of Jesse Hughes, took her prisoner. Passing on, they came upon E. West, Senr. carrying some fodder to the stable, and taking him likewise captive, carried him to where Hughes' daughter had been left in charge of some of their party.--Here the old gentleman fell upon his knees and expressed a fervent wish that they would not deal harshly by him. His petition was answered by a stroke of the tomahawk, and he fell dead. They then went to the house of Edmund West, Jun. where were Mrs. West and her sister (a girl of eleven years old, daughter of John Hacker) and a lad of twelve, a brother of West. Forcing open the door, Schoolcraft and two of the savages entered; and one of them immediately tomahawked Mrs. West. The boy was taking some corn from under the bed,--he was drawn out by the feet and the tomahawk sank twice in his forehead, directly above each eye. The girl was standing behind the door. One of the savages approached and aimed at her a blow. She tried to evade it; but it struck on the side of her neck, though not with sufficient force to knock her down. She fell however, and lay as if killed. Thinking their work of death accomplished here, they took from a press some milk, butter and bread, placed it on the table, and deliberately sat down to eat,--the little girl observing all that passed, in silent stillness. When they had satisfied their hunger, they arose, scalped the woman and boy, plundered the house--even emptying the feathers to carry off the ticking--and departed, dragging the little girl by the hair, forty or fifty yards from the house. They then threw her over the fence, and scalped her; but as she evinced symptoms of life, Schoolcraft observed "_that is not enough_," when immediately one of the savages thrust a knife into her side, and they left her. Fortunately the point of the knife came in contact with a rib and did not injure her much. Old Mrs. West and her two daughters, who were alone when the old gentleman was taken, became uneasy that he did not return; and fearing that he had fallen into the hands of savages (as they could not otherwise account for his absence) they left the house and went to Alexander West's, who was then on a hunting expedition with his brother Edmund. They told of the absence of old Mr. West and [281] their fears for his fate; and as there was no man here, they went over to Jesse Hughes' who was himself uneasy that his daughter did not come home. Upon hearing that West too was missing, he did not doubt but that both had fallen into the hands of Indians; and knowing of the absence from home of Edmund West, Jun. he deemed it advisable to apprize his wife of danger, and remove her to his house. For this purpose and accompanied by Mrs. West's two daughters, he went on. On entering the door, the tale of destruction which had been done there was soon told in part. Mrs. West and the lad lay weltering in their blood, but not yet dead. The sight overpowered the girls, and Hughes had to carry them off.--Seeing that the savages had but just left them; and aware of the danger which would attend any attempt to move out and give the alarm that night, Hughes guarded his own house until day, when he spread the sorrowful intelligence, and a company were collected to ascertain the extent of the mischief and try to find those who were known to be missing. Young West was found--standing in the creek about a mile from where he had been tomahawked. The brains were oozing from his head; yet he survived in extreme suffering for three days. Old Mr. West was found in the field where he had been tomahawked. Mrs. West was in the house; she had probably lived but a few minutes after Hughes and her sisters-in-law had left there.--The little girl (Hacker's daughter) was in bed at the house of old Mr. West. She related the history of the transactions at Edmund West's, Jun. and said that she went to _sleep_ when thrown over the fence and was awaked by the scalping. After she had been stabbed at the suggestion of Schoolcraft and left, she tried to re-cross the fence to the house, but as she was climbing up she again went to sleep and fell back. She then walked into the woods, sheltered herself as well as she could in the top of a fallen tree, and remained there until the cocks crew in the morning. Remembering that there was no person left alive at the house of her sister, awhile before day she proceeded to old Mr. West's. She found no person at home, the fire nearly out, but the hearth warm and she laid down on it. The heat produced a sickly feeling, which caused her to get up and go to the bed, in which she was found.--She recovered, grew up, was married, gave birth to ten children, and died, as was believed, of an affection of the head, occasioned by the wound she received that night. Hughes' daughter was ransomed by her father the next year, and is yet living in sight of the theatre of those savage enormities. In March 1789, two Indians came to the house of Mr. Glass in the upper end of Ohio (now Brooke) county. They were discovered by a negro woman, who immediately exclaimed, "here are Indians." Mrs. Glass rose up from her spinning wheel, ran to the door, and was met by an Indian with his gun presented. She laid hold on the muzzle and turning it aside, begged that he would not kill, [282] but take her prisoner. He walked into the house and when joined by another Indian with the negro woman and her boy, about four years old, they opened a chest, took out a small box and some articles of clothing, and without doing farther mischief, departed with the prisoners,--Mrs. Glass and her child, two years of age, the negro woman and boy and her infant child. They had proceeded but a short distance when a consultation was held, and Mrs. Glass supposing from their gestures and frequent pointing towards the children they were the subject of deliberation, held forth her little boy to one of the savages and begged that he might be spared--adding, "he will make a fine little Indian after awhile." He signed to her to go on. The other savage then struck the negro boy with the pipe end of his tomahawk, and with the edge gave him a blow across the back of the neck, and scalped and left him. In the evening they came to the Ohio river just above Wellsburg, and descended it in a canoe about five miles, to the mouth of Rush run. They drew the canoe some distance up the run and proceeding between one and two miles farther encamped for the night.--Next morning they resumed their march and about two o'clock halted on Indian Short creek, twenty miles farther. When the savages came to the house of Mr. Glass he was at work in a field some few hundred yards off, and was ignorant that any thing extraordinary had occurred there, until in the afternoon.--Searching in vain for his wife, he became satisfied that she had been taken by the Indians; and proceeding to Well's fort prevailed on ten men to accompany him in quest of them. Early next morning they discovered the place where the Indians embarked in the canoe; and as Mr. Glass readily distinguished the impression made by Mrs. Glass' shoe on the sand, they crossed the river with great expectation of being able to overtake them. They then went down the river to the mouth of Rush run, where the canoe was found and identified by some of Mr. Glass' papers, purposely left there by Mrs. Glass. From this place the trail of the Indians and their prisoners was plainly visible, and pursuing it, the party arrived in view of the smoke from their fire on Short creek, about an hour after the Indians had halted. Crossing slyly forward, when rather more than one hundred yards off they beheld the two savages attentively inspecting a red jacket which one of them held, and Mrs. Glass and her little boy and the negro woman and her child a few paces from them.--Suddenly the Indians let fall the jacket, and looked towards the men. Supposing they were discovered, they discharged their guns and rushed towards the fire. One of the Indians fell and dropped his gun, but recovering, ran about one hundred yards when a shot aimed at him by Major McGuire brought him to his hands and knees.--Mrs. Glass informing them that there was another encampment of Indians close by, instead of following the wounded savage, they returned home with all speed. [283] In August five Indians on their way to the settlements on the waters of the Monongahela, met with two men on Middle Island creek, and killed them. Taking their horses they continued on their route until they came to the house of William Johnson on Ten Mile, and made prisoner of Mrs. Johnson and some children; plundered the house, killed part of the stock, and taking with them one of Johnson's horses, returned towards the Ohio. When the Indians came to the house, Johnson had gone to a lick not far off, and on his return in the morning, seeing what had been done, and searching until he found the trail of the savages and their prisoners, ran to Clarksburg for assistance. A company of men repaired with him immediately to where he had discovered the trail, and keeping it about a mile, found four of the children lying dead in the woods. The savages had tomahawked and scalped them, and placing their heads close together, turned their bodies and feet straight out so as to represent a cross. The dead were buried and farther pursuit given over. Other Indians, about the same time, came to the house of John Mack on a branch of Hacker's creek. He being from home, they killed all who were at the house. Two of the children, who had been sent into the woods to hunt the cattle, returning, saw a little sister lying in the yard scalped, and directly fled, and gave the alarm. In the morning some men assembled and went to ascertain the extent of the mischief. The house was no longer to be seen,--a heap of ashes was all that remained of it. The little girl who had been scalped in the yard, was much burned, and those who had been murdered in the house, were consumed with it. Mrs. Mack had been taken some distance from the house, tomahawked, scalped, and stripped naked. She was yet alive; and as the men approached, a sense of her situation induced her to exert her feeble strength in drawing leaves around her so as to conceal her nakedness. The men wrapped their hunting shirts about her, and carried her to a neighboring house. She lived a few days, gave birth to a child and died. Some time after the murder of Mack's family, John Sims, living on a branch of Gnatty creek, seeing his horses come running up much affrighted, was led to believe that the Indians had been trying to catch them. In a few minutes, the dogs began to bark furiously in the corn field adjoining, and he became satisfied the savages were approaching. Knowing [284] that he could offer no effectual resistance, if they should attack his house, he contrived an artifice to deter them from approaching. Taking down his gun, he walked around the house backward and forward, and as if speaking to men in it, called out, "_Be watchful._ They will soon be here, and as soon as you see them, draw a fine bead;" Mrs. Sims in a coarse tone of voice and with feigned resolution, answering as she had been advised, "Never fear! let them once shew their yellow hides, and we'll pepper them." He would then retire into the house, change his garments, the better to support the deception, and again go forth to watch and give directions to those within. He pursued this plan until night, when he withdrew with his family to a place of safety. The Indians had actually been in the cornfield, and near enough to have shot Sims,--the place where they had been sitting being plainly discernible next morning. Sims' artifice no doubt drove them off, and as they were retreating they fired the house of Jethro Thompson on Lost creek. In the spring of 1790, the neighborhood of Clarksburg was again visited by Indians in quest of plunder, and who stole and carried off several horses. They were discovered and pursued to the Ohio river, when the pursuers, being reinforced, determined to follow on over into the Indian country. Crossing the river and ascending the Hockhocking, near to the falls, they came upon the camp of the savages. The whites opened an unexpected fire, which killing one and wounding another of the Indians, caused the remainder to fly, leaving their horses about their camp.--These were caught, brought back and restored to their owners. In April as Samuel Hull was engaged in ploughing a field for Major Benjamin Robinson, he was discovered by some Indians, shot, tomahawked, and scalped. The murder was first ascertained by Mrs. Robinson. Surprised that Hull did not come to the house as usual, to feed the horses and get his own dinner, she went to the field to see what detained him. She found the horses some distance from where they had been recently at work; and going on, presently saw Hull lying where he had been shot. ----- [1] News of the preliminary articles of peace, which had been signed at Paris, November 30, 1782, did not reach Fort Pitt until May, 1783. In July following, De Peyster, British commandant at Detroit, gathered at that post the chiefs of eleven tribes as far south as the Great Miami and the Wabash, and informed them of the event.--R. G. T. [2] The treaty was held at Fort McIntosh, at the mouth of the Beaver, early in January, 1785. The tribes represented were the Wyandots, Chippewas, Delawares, and Ottawas. The commissioners were Arthur Lee, Richard Butler, and George Rogers Clark. Col. Josiah Harmar was in charge of the troops.--R. G. T. [3] L. V. McWhorter, well informed in the local traditions, writes: "When the Indian sprang into the house, with drawn tomahawk, he closed and for a few moments stood with his back to the door. Then, while cutting an opening through the wall, he asked Mrs. Cunningham how many men there were in the other house. She answered by holding up the extended fingers of both hands, indicating 10."--R. G. T. [4] McWhorter: "Mrs. Cunningham related that the last she saw of her little daughter, was one quivering little foot sticking up over a log behind which she had been thrown."--R. G. T. [5] McWhorter: "The cave in which Mrs. Cunningham was concealed is on Little Indian Run, a branch of Big Bingamon Creek, on which stream the tragedy took place. The cave is about two miles northwest of the site of the capture, and in Harrison County, W. Va."--R. G. T. [6] McWhorter: "Mrs. Cunningham stated that an Indian stood over her with an uplifted tomahawk, to prevent her from crying out. At times, the whites were upon the very rock above their heads."--R. G. T. [7] McWhorter says local tradition has it that the Indians remained in the cave a night and a day; they departed before daylight, during the second night. Mrs. Cunningham related that just before leaving, the wounded brave was borne from the cave by his fellows, and she never again saw him; her opinion was, that he was then dead, and his body was sunk in a neighboring pool.--R. G. T. [8] Mrs. Cunningham had been over three years with the savages, when she was taken to a great Indian conference held at the foot of the Maumee rapids, "at or near the site of the present Perrysburgh, Ohio," in the autumn of 1788. Girty brought the attention of McKee, then a British Indian agent, to the matter, and McKee furnished the trinkets which constituted the ransom.--R. G. T. [9] See McKnight's _Our Western Border_, pp. 714, 716.--R. G. T. [10] Superstition was rife among the Scotch-Irish borderers. McWhorter writes: "On the day before the capture, a little bird came into Mrs. Cunningham's cabin and fluttered around the room. Ever afterwards, she grew frightened whenever a bird would enter her house. The fear that such an occurrence would bring bad luck to a household, was an old and widely-spread superstition."--R. G. T. [11] Mary Moore afterwards became the wife of Mr. Brown, a presbyterian preacher in Augusta. Her brother James Moore, jr., still resides in Tazewell county; and notwithstanding that he witnessed the cruel murder of his mother and five brothers and sisters by the hands of the savages, he is said to have formed and still retain a strong attachment to the Indians. The anniversary of the burning of Mrs. Moore & her daughter, is kept by many in Tazewell as a day of fasting and prayer; and that tragical event gave rise to some affecting verses, generally called "Moore's Lamentation." [12] At the treaty of Au Glaize, Morgan met with the Indian who had given him this chase, and who still had his gun. After talking over the circumstance, rather more composedly than they had acted it, they agreed to test each other's speed in a friendly race. The Indian being beaten, rubbed his hams and said, "_stiff, stiff; too old, too old_." "Well, said Morgan, you got the gun by outrunning me then, and I should have it now for outrunning you;" and accordingly took it. [13] McWhorter: "Alexander West was with Col. William Lowther on this expedition. They followed the Indians to the Little Kanawha River."--R. G. T. [14] Another case of border superstition is related to me by McWhorter. Alexander West had been doing sentry duty most of the night before, and on being relieved early in the morning, sat with his back to a tree and, rifle across his lap, fell to sleep. On awakening he sprang to his feet and cried, "Boys, look out! Some of us will be killed to-day! I saw the _red doe_ in my dream; that is the sign of death; I never knew it to fail!" When Bonnett fell, it was considered in camp to be a verification of the "red sign." Bonnett was carried by his comrades on a rude stretcher, but in four days died. His body was placed in a cleft of rock and the entrance securely chinked.--R. G. T. [285] CHAPTER XVII. Upon the close of the war of the revolution, many circumstances conspired to add considerably to the population of Kentucky; and her strength and ability to cope with the savages and repel invasion, were consequently much increased. Conscious of this, and sensible of their own condition, weakened by the withdrawal of their allies, the Indians did not venture upon expeditions against its inhabitants, requiring to be conducted by the co-operation of many warriors. They preferred to wage war in small parties, against detached settlements and unprotected families; and guarding the Ohio river and the "_wilderness trace_,"[1] to cut off parties of emigrants removing to that country. In all of those they were eminently successful. In the interval of time, between the peace of 1783 and the defeat of General Harmar, in 1790, it is inferred from evidence laid before Congress, that in Kentucky, not less than one thousand human beings were killed and taken prisoners. And although the whites were enabled to carry the war into the heart of the Indian country, and frequently with success, yet did not this put a stop to their enormities. When pressed by the presence of a conquering army, they would sue for peace, and enter into treaties, which they scarcely observed inviolate 'till those armies were withdrawn from among them. In April 1785, some Indians hovering about Bear Grass, met with Colonel Christian and killed him. His loss was severely felt throughout the whole country.[2] In October of the same year, several families moving to the [286] country were attacked and defeated on Skegg's creek. Six of the whites were killed, and a number of the others made prisoners, among whom were Mrs. McClure and her infant. When the attack was begun, she secreted herself with four children in some bushes, which together with the darkness of the night, protected her from observation; and could she have overcome the feelings of a mother for her child, she might have ensured her own safety and that of her three other children by leaving her infant at some distance from them. She was aware of the danger to which its cries would expose her, and sought to prevent them by giving it the breast. For awhile it had that effect, but its shrieks at length arose and drew the savages to the spot. Three of her children were slain by her side. On hearing of this disastrous event, Capt. Whitley collected twenty-one men from the nearer stations, and went in pursuit of the aggressors. He presently overtook them, killed two of their party, and retook the prisoners and the scalps of those whom they had slain.--So signal was his success over them. In ten days afterwards, another company of _movers_, led on by Mr. Moore, was attacked, and in the skirmish which ensued, nine of their party were killed. Again Capt. Whitley went in pursuit of the savage perpetrators of this outrage, having thirty men to accompany him. On the sixth day of the pursuit, they overtook twenty mounted Indians, some of whom were clad in the clothes of those they had slain; and who dismounted and fled upon the first fire. Three of them however were killed, and eight scalps and all the plunder were recovered. In consequence of the many repeated aggressions of the savages, an expedition was this fall concerted against their towns on the Wabash, to be carried into immediate execution. Through the exertions of the county lieutenants an army of one thousand men, was soon assembled at Louisville[3] and placed under the command of Gen. Clarke, who marched directly for the theatre of contemplated operations--leaving the provisions and much of their munitions to be transported in boats. The army arrived near the towns, before the boats;--the men became dissatisfied and mutinous, and Gen. Clarke was in consequence, reluctantly forced to return without striking a blow.[4] [287] When the army under Gen. Clarke marched from Louisville, Col. Logan knowing that the attention of the Indians would be drawn almost exclusively towards it, & other towns be left exposed and defenceless, raised a body of troops and proceeded against the villages on the Great Miami, and on the head waters of Mad river. In this campaign he burned eight large towns, killed twenty warriors and took between seventy and eighty prisoners.[5] Among the troops led on by Col. Logan, was the late Gen. Lyttle (since of Cincinnati) then a youth of sixteen.[6] At the head of a party of volunteers, when the first towns on the Mad river were reduced, he charged on some of the savages whom he saw endeavoring to reach a close thicket of hazel and plum bushes. Being some distance in front of his companions, when within fifty yards of the retreating enemy, he dismounted, and raising his gun to fire, saw the warrior at whom he was aiming, hold out his hand in token of surrendering. In this time the other men had come up and were making ready to fire, when young Lyttle called to them, "they have surrendered; and remember the Colonel's orders to kill none who ask for quarters." The warrior advanced towards him with his hand extended, and ordering the others to follow him. As he approached, Lyttle gave him his hand, but with difficulty restrained the men from tomahawking him. It was the head chief with his three wives and children, two or three of whom were fine looking lads, and one of them a youth of Lyttle's age. Observing the conduct of Lyttle in preventing the murder of the chief, this youth drew close to him. When they returned to the town, a crowd of men rushed around to see the chief, and Lyttle stepped out of the crowd to fasten his horse. The lad accompanied him. A young man who had been to the spring to drink, seeing Lyttle with the Indian lad, came running towards him. The youth supposed that he was advancing to kill him, and in the twinkling of an eye let fly an arrow. It passed through Curner's dress, and grazed his side; and but for the timely twitch which Lyttle gave the lad's arm, would have killed him. His other arrows were then taken away, and he sternly reprimanded. Upon the return of Lyttle to where the chief stood, he heard Col. Logan give orders that the prisoners must not be molested, but taken to a house and placed under guard for their [288] security; and seeing Major McGary[7] riding up and knowing his disposition, he called to him saying, "Major McGary, you must not molest those prisoners" and rode off. McGary mutteringly replied, "I'll see to that;" and dismounting, entered the circle around the prisoners. He demanded of the chief, if he were at the battle of the Blue Licks. The chief probably not understanding the purport of the question, replied affirmatively. McGary instantly seized an axe from the Grenadier Squaw, standing by and sunk it into his head. Lyttle saw the descending stroke and interposed his arm to prevent it or break its force. The handle came in contact with his wrist and had well nigh broke it. Indignant at the barbarous deed, with the impetuosity of youth he drew his knife to avenge it. His arm was arrested, or the steel would have been plunged into the heart of McGary. The bloody act of this man caused deep regret, humiliation and shame to pervade the greater part of the army, and none were more affected by it, than the brave and generous Logan.--When the prisoners were conducted to the house, it was with much difficulty the Indian lad could be prevailed upon to quit the side of Lyttle. The commencement of the year 1786 witnessed treaties of peace with all the neighboring tribes;[8] but its progress was marked by acts of general hostility. Many individual massacres were committed and in the fall, a company of _movers_ were attacked, and twenty-one of them killed. This state of things continuing, in 1787 the secretary of war ordered detachments of troops to be stationed at [288] different points for the protection of the frontier. Still the Indians kept up such an incessant war against it, as after the adoption of the federal constitution, led the general government to interpose more effectually for the security of its inhabitants, by sending a body of troops to operate against them in their own country. While these things were doing, a portion of the country north west of the river Ohio, began to be occupied by the whites. One million and a half acres of land in that country, having been appropriated as military land, a company, composed of officers and soldiers in the war of the revolution, was formed in Boston in March 1786 under the title of the [289] "Ohio Company," and Gen. Rufus Putnam was appointed its agent. In the spring of 1788, he with forty-seven other persons, from Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, repaired to Marietta, erected a stockade fort for security against the attacks of Indians, and effected a permanent settlement there.[9] In the autumn of the same year, twenty families, chiefly from Essex and Middlesex counties in Massachusetts, likewise moved there, and the forests of lofty timber fell before their untiring and laborious exertions. Many of those who thus took up their abodes in that, then _distant_ country had been actively engaged in the late war, and were used, not only to face danger with firmness when it came upon them; but also to devise and practice, means to avert it. Knowing the implacable resentment of the savages to the whites generally, they were at once careful not to provoke it into action, and to prepare to ward off its effects. In consequence of this course of conduct, and their assiduity and attention to the improvement of their lands, but few massacres were committed in their neighborhoods, although the savages were waging a general war against the frontier, and carrying destruction into settlements, comparatively in the interior. In the winter of 1786, Mr. Stites of Redstone visited New York with the view of purchasing (congress being then in session there) for settlement, a tract of country between the two Miamies. The better to insure success to his project, he cultivated the acquaintance of many members of congress and endeavored to impress upon their minds its propriety and utility. John Cleves Symmes, then a representative from New Jersey, and whose aid Stites solicited to enable him to effect the purchase, becoming impressed with the great pecuniary advantage which must result from the speculation, if the country were such as it was represented to be, determined to ascertain this fact by personal inspection. He did so; and on his return a purchase of one million of acres, lying on the Ohio and between the Great and Little Miami, was made in his name. Soon after, he sold to Matthias Denman and others, that part of his purchase which forms the present site of the city of Cincinnati; and in the fall of 1789, some families from New York, New Jersey, and Redstone, descended the Ohio river to the mouth of the Little Miami. As the Indians were now more than ordinarily troublesome, forty soldiers under Lieut. Kersey, were ordered to join them for the [290] defence of the settlement. They erected at first a single blockhouse, and soon after adding to it three others, a stockade fort was formed on a position now included within the town of Columbia. In June 1789, Major Doughty with one hundred and forty regulars, arrived opposite the mouth of Licking, and put up four block houses on the purchase made by Denman of Symmes, and directly after, erected Fort Washington. Towards the close of the year, Gen. Harmar arrived with three hundred other regulars, and occupied the fort. Thus assured of safety, Israel Ludlow, (jointly interested with Denman and Patterson) with twenty other persons, moved and commenced building some cabins along the river and near to the fort.--During the winter Mr. Ludlow surveyed and laid out the town of Losantiville,[10] but when Gen. St. Clair came there as governor of the North Western Territory, he changed its name to Cincinnati.[11] [290] In 1790, a settlement was made at the forks of Duck creek, twenty miles up the Muskingum at the site of the present town of Waterford; another fifteen miles farther up the river at Big Bottom, and a third at Wolf creek near the falls. These settlements were made on a tract of one hundred thousand acres, laid off into "donation" lots of one hundred acres, and gratuitously assigned to _actual settlers_; and at the close of the year they contained nearly five hundred men, of whom one hundred and seven had families. Thus was the present flourishing State of Ohio begun to be occupied by the whites; and the mind cannot but be struck with astonishment in contemplating the wonderful changes which have been _wrought there_, in such brief space of time, by industry and enterprise. Where then stood mighty and unbroken forests, through which the savage passed on his mission of blood; or stalked the majestic buffaloe, gamboled the sportive deer, or trotted the shaggy bear, are now to [291] be seen productive farms, covered with lowing herds and bleating flocks, and teeming with all the comforts of life.--And where then stood the town of Losantiville with its three or four little cabins and their twenty inmates, is now to be seen a flourishing city with its splendid edifices, and a population of 26,513 souls. Continuing thus progressively to improve, the mind of man, "pervading and far darting" as it is, can scarcely picture the state which may be there exhibited in the lapse of a few centuries. The formations of those establishments north west of the Ohio river, incited the savages to the commission of such and so frequent enormities that measures were taken by the general government to reduce them to quiet and render peace truly desirable to them. While preparations were making to carry those measures into operation, detachments from the regular troops at Fort Washington were stationed at Duck creek, the Big Bottom and Wolf creek, for the security of the _settlers_ at those places; and when every thing was prepared, Gen. Harmar, at the head of three hundred and twenty regulars, moved from his head quarters at Fort Washington, to the Little Miami, where the militia detailed for the expedition, were then assembled. The object was to bring the Indians, if possible, to a general engagement; and if this could not be effected, to destroy their towns and crops on the Scioto and Miami. On the last day of September 1790, the army then consisting of fourteen hundred and forty-three men, (of whom only three hundred and twenty were regulars) marched forward, and on the 17th of October reached the Great Miami village.[12] It was found to be entirely deserted and all the valuable buildings in flames--having been fired by the Indians. As it was apparent that the savages had but recently left there, Col. Hardin was detached with two hundred and ten men, sixty of whom were regulars to overtake them. Having marched about six miles, he was suddenly attacked by a body of Indians who were concealed in thickets on every side of an open plain. On the first onset, the militia made a most precipitate retreat, leaving the few, but brave regulars to stand the charge. The conflict was short but bloody. The regular troops, over powered by numbers, were literally cut to pieces; and only seven of them made their escape and rejoined the main army at the Great Miami town.[13] [292] Among those who were so fortunate as to escape after the shameful flight of the militia, was Capt. Armstrong of the regulars. He reached a pond of water about two hundred yards from the field of action; and plunging himself up to the neck in it, remained there all night, a spectator of the horrid scene of a savage war dance, performed over the dead and wounded bodies of his brave soldiers. The escape of ensign Hartshorn was perhaps owing entirely to a lucky accident. As he was flying at his best speed he faltered over a log, which lay in his path, and by the side of which he concealed himself from the view of the savages. Notwithstanding the disastrous termination of this engagement, the detachment succeeded in reducing the other towns to ashes, and in destroying their crops of corn and other provisions; and rejoining the main army under Gen. Harmar, commenced their return to Fort Washington. Anxious to wipe off in another action, the disgrace which he felt would attach to the defeat, when within eight miles of Chilicothe, Gen. Harmar halted his men, and again detached Col. Hardin and Major Wylleys, with five hundred militia and sixty regulars, to find the enemy and bring them to an engagement. Early next morning, a small body of the enemy was discovered, and being attacked, fled in different directions.--The militia pursued them as they ran in despite of orders; and when by this means the regulars were left alone, they were attacked by the whole force of the Indians, excepting the small parties whose flight had drawn off the militia. A severe engagement ensued. The savages fought with desperation; & when the troops which had gone in pursuit of those who fled upon the first onset, returned to take part in the engagement, they threw down their guns and rushed upon the regulars tomahawk in hand. Many of them fell, but being so very far superior in numbers, the regulars were at last overpowered. Their firmness and bravery could not avail much, against so overwhelming a force; for though one of them might thrust his bayonet into the side of an Indian, two other savages were at hand to sink their tomahawks into his head. In his official account of this battle, Gen. Harmar claimed the victory; but the thinned ranks of his troops shewed that they had been severely worsted. Fifty of the regulars and one hundred of the militia were killed in the contest, and many wounded. The loss of the Indians was no doubt considerable, [293] or they would not have suffered the army to retire to Fort Washington unmolested.[14] Instead of the security from savage hostilities, which it was expected would result from Harmar's campaign, the inhabitants of the frontier suffered from them, more than they had been made to endure since the close of the war with Great Britain. Flushed with the success which had crowned their exertions to repel the invasion which had been made into their country, and infuriated at the destruction of their crops and the conflagration of their villages, they became more active and zealous in the prosecution of hostilities. The settlements which had been recently made in Ohio up the Muskingum, had ever after their first establishment, continued apparently on the most friendly terms with the Indians; but on the part of the savages, friendship had only been feigned, to lull the whites into a ruinous security. When this end was attained, they too were made to feel the bitterness of savage enmity. On the 2d of January 1791, a party of Indians came to the Big Bottom, and commenced an indiscriminate murder of the inhabitants; fourteen of whom were killed and five taken prisoners. The settlement at Wolf's creek escaped a similar fate, by being apprized of the destruction of Big Bottom by two men who got safely off in time of the massacre. When the Indians arrived there the next morning, finding the place prepared to receive them, they withdrew without making any serious attempt to take it. On the 24th of April, John Bush (living on Freeman's creek,) having very early sent two of his children to drive up the cattle, became alarmed by their screams, and taking down his gun, was proceeding to learn the cause of it, when he was met at the door by an Indian, who caught hold of the gun, forced it from his grasp, and shot him with it. Bush fell across the threshold, and the savage drew his knife to scalp him. Mrs. Bush ran to the assistance of her husband, and with an axe, aimed a blow at the Indian with such force that it fastened itself in his shoulder, and when he jumped back his exertion pulled the handle from her hand. She then drew her husband into the house and secured the door. In this time other of the savages had come up, and after endeavoring in vain to force open the door, they commenced shooting through it. Fortunately Mrs. Bush remained unhurt, although eleven bullets passed through her frock and some of [294] them just grazing the skin. One of the savages observing an aperture between the logs, thrust the muzzle of his gun thro' it. With another axe Mrs. Bush struck on the barrel so as to make it ring, and, the savage on drawing it back, exclaimed "_Dern you._" Still they were endeavoring to force an entrance into the house, until they heard what they believed to be a party of whites coming to its relief. It was Adam Bush, who living close by and hearing the screams of the children and the firing of the gun, had set off to learn what had given rise to them, and taking with him his dogs, the noise made by them in crossing the creek alarmed the savages, and caused them to retreat, taking off the two children as prisoners. A company of men were soon collected and went in pursuit of the Indians; but were unable to surprise them and regain the prisoners. They however, came so nearly upon them, on the Little Kenhawa,[15] that they were forced to fly precipitately, leaving the plunder and seven horses which they had taken from the settlement: these were retaken and brought back. In May, as John McIntire and his wife were returning from a visit, they passed through the yard of Uriah Ashcraft; and in a small space of time after, Mr. Ashcraft, startled by the sudden growling and springing up of one of his dogs, stepped quickly to the door to see what had aroused him. He had hardly reached the door, when he espied an Indian on the outside with his gun presented. Closing and making fast the door, he ascended the stairs that he might the better fire upon the unwelcome intruder; and after snapping three several times, and having discovered that there were other Indians in the yard, he raised a loud shout to apprize those who were within the sound of his voice, that he was surrounded by danger. Upon this the Indians moved off; and three brothers of McIntire coming to his relief, they all pursued the trail of the savages. About a mile from Ashcraft's, they found the body of John McIntire, tomahawked, scalped, and stripped; and concluding that Mrs. McIntire, was taken prisoner, they sent intelligence to Clarksburg of what had happened, and requested assistance to follow the Indians and recover the prisoner from captivity. The desired assistance was immediately afforded; and a company of men, led on by Col. John Haymond and Col. George Jackson, went in pursuit. On Middle Island creek,[16] before they were aware of their proximity to the savages, they were fired upon by them, and [295] two of the party very narrowly escaped being shot.--A ball passed through the hankerchief on the head of Col. Haymond, and another through the sleeve of Col. Jackson's shirt. The fire was promptly returned, and the men rushed forward. The Indians however, made good their retreat, though not without having experienced some injury; as was discovered by the blood, and the throwing down some of the plunder which they had taken. It was here first ascertained that Mrs. McIntire had been killed,--her scalp being among the things left--and on the return of the party, her body was found some small distance from where that of her husband had been previously discovered. Towards the last of June, another party of Indians invaded the settlement on Dunkard creek, in the county of Monongalia. Early in the morning, as Mr. Clegg, Mr. Handsucker, and two of Handsucker's sons were engaged at work in a cornfield near the house, they were shot at by some concealed savages, and Handsucker was wounded and soon overtaken. Clegg and Handsucker's sons ran towards the house, and the former entering it, defended it for a while; but confident that he would soon be driven out by fire, he surrendered on condition that they would spare his life and that of his little daughter with him. The boys passed the house, but were taken by some of the savages who were also concealed in the direction which they ran, and who had just made captive Mrs. Handsucker and her infant. They then plundered and set fire to the house, caught the horses and made off with the prisoners, leaving one of their company, as usual, to watch after their retreat. When the firing was first heard, Mrs. Clegg being some distance from the house, concealed herself in the creek, under some projecting bushes, until every thing became quiet. She then crept out, but perceiving the Indian who had remained near the burning house, she took to flight; and he having at the same time discovered her, ran in pursuit. She was so far in advance, and ran so well, that the savage, despairing of overtaking her, raised his gun and fired as she ran. The ball just grazed the top of her shoulder, but not impeding her flight, she got safely off. Mr. Handsucker, his wife and child, were murdered on the dividing ridge between Dunkard and Fish creeks.[17] Mr. Clegg after some time got back, and upon the close of the Indian war, ransomed his two daughters. [296] In the month of September Nicholas Carpenter set off to Marietta with a drove of cattle to sell to those who had established themselves there; and when within some miles from the Ohio river, encamped for the night.[18] In the morning early, and while he and the drovers were yet dressing, they were alarmed by a discharge of guns, which killed one and wounded another of his party. The others endeavored to save themselves by flight; but Carpenter being a cripple (because of a wound received some years before) did not run far, when finding himself becoming faint, he entered a pond of water where he fondly hoped he should escape observation. But no! both he and a son who had likewise sought security there, were discovered, tomahawked and scalped. George Legget, one of the drovers, was never after heard of; but Jesse Hughes succeeded in getting off though under disadvantageous circumstances. He wore long leggins, and when the firing commenced at the camp, they were fastened at top to his belt, but hanging loose below. Although an active runner, yet he found that the pursuers were gaining and must ultimately overtake him if he did not rid himself of this incumbrance. For this purpose he halted somewhat and stepping on the lower part of his leggins, broke the strings which tied them to his belt; but before he accomplished this, one of the savages approached and hurled a tomahawk at him. It merely grazed his head, and he then again took to flight and soon got off. It was afterwards ascertained that the Indians by whom this mischief was effected, had crossed the Ohio river near the mouth of Little Kenhawa, where they took a negro belonging to Captain James Neal, and continued on towards the settlements on West Fork, until they came upon the trail made by Carpenter's cattle. Supposing that they belonged to families moving, they followed on until they came upon the drovers; and tying the negro to a sapling made an attack on them. The negro availed himself of their employment elsewhere, and loosing the bands which fastened him, returned to his master. After the defeat of General Harmer, the terrors and the annoyance proceeding from Indian hostilities, still continued to harrass Kentucky, and to spread destruction over its unprotected portions. Seeing that the expeditions of the savages were yet conducted on a small scale, the better to effect their purposes, the inhabitants had recourse to other measures [297] of defence; and established many posts on the frontier, garrisoned by a few men, to watch the motions of the enemy, and intercept them in their progress, or spread the alarm of their approach. It was productive of but little benefit, and all were convinced, that successful offensive war could alone give security from Indian aggression. Convinced of this, preparations were made by the General Government for another campaign to be carried on against them; the objects of which were the destruction of the Indian villages between the Miamies; the expulsion of their inhabitants from the country, and the establishment of a chain of forts to prevent their return, until a general peace should give promise of a cessation of hostilities on their part. Means, deemed adequate to the accomplishment of those objects, were placed by Congress at the disposal of the executive, and of the army destined to effect them, he directed General Arthur St. Clair to take the command.[19] It was some time before the troops detailed for this campaign, could be assembled at Fort Washington; but as soon as they rendezvoused there, the line of march was taken up.[20] Proceeding immediately for the principal establishments of the Indians on the Miami, General St. Clair had erected the Forts Hamilton and Jefferson,[21] and placing sufficient garrisons in each, continued his march. The opening of a road for the passage of the troops and artillery, necessarily consumed much time; and while it was in progress, small parties of the enemy were often seen hovering near, and some unimportant skirmishes took place; and as the army approached the Indian villages, sixty of the militia deserted in a body. To prevent the evil influence of this example, General St. Clair despatched Major Hamtrack at the head of a regiment, to overtake and bring them back; and the rest of the army moved forward. On the night of the third of November, General St. Clair encamped near the Great Miami village, and notwithstanding the reduced state of the forces under his command, (by reason of the detachment of so large a body in pursuit of the deserters,) he proposed to march in the morning directly to its attack.[22] Having understood that the Indians were collected in great force, and apprehensive of a night attack, his men were drawn up in a square, and kept under arms until the return of day, when they were dismissed from parade for [298] the purpose of refreshment. Directly after, and about half an hour before sun rise, an attack was begun by the Indians on the rear line, and the militia there immediately gave way, and retreated,--rushing through a battalion of regulars, to the very centre of the camp. The confusion was great. Thrown into disorder by the tumultuous flight of the militia, the utmost exertion of the officers could not entirely compose the regulars, so as to render them as effective as they would otherwise have been. After the first fire, the Indians rushed forward, tomahawk in hand, until they were checked by the well directed aim of the front line; which being almost simultaneously attacked by another body of the enemy, had to direct their attention to their own assailants, and the action became general. The weight of the enemy being brought to bear on the centre of each line where the artillery had been placed, the men were driven with great slaughter from the guns and these rendered useless by the killing of the matrosses. The enemy taking advantage of this state of things, pushed forward upon the lines, and confusion began to spread itself in every quarter. A charge was ordered, and Lieutenant Colonel Drake succeeded in driving back the Indians three or four hundred yards at the point of the bayonet; but rallying, they returned to the attack, and the troops in turn gave way. At this moment the camp was entered by the left flank: and, another charge was directed. This was made by Butler and Clark's battalions with great effect, and repeated several times with success; but in each of these charges, many being killed, and particularly the officers, it was impossible longer to sustain the conflict, and a retreat was directed. To enable the troops to effect this they were again formed into line, as well as could be under such circumstances, and another charge was made, as if to turn the right flank of the enemy, but in reality to gain the road. This object was effected; and a precipitate flight commenced which continued until they reached Fort Jefferson, a distance of thirty miles, the men throwing away their guns and accoutrements as they ran. Great was the havoc done by the Indians in this engagement. Of the twelve hundred men engaged under General St. Clair, nearly six hundred were left dead on the field, and many were wounded. Every officer of the second regiment [299] was killed in the various charges made by it to retrieve the day, except three, and one of these was shot through the body. Major General Butler having been wounded, and carried to a convenient place to have his wounds dressed, an Indian desperately adventurous, broke through the guard in attendance, rushed up, tomahawked and scalped him, before his own life paid the forfeit of his rashness. General St. Clair had many narrow escapes.[23] Early in the action, a number of savages surrounded his tent and seemed resolved on entering it and sacrificing him. They were with difficulty restrained by some regular soldiers at the point of the bayonet. During the engagement eight balls passed through his clothes, and while the troops were retreating, having had his own horse killed, and being mounted on a sorry beast, "which could not be pricked out of a walk," he had to make his way to Fort Jefferson as he could, considerably in the rear of the men. During the action Adjutant Bulgess received a severe wound, but yet continued to fight with distinguished gallantry. Presently a second shot took effect and he fell. A woman who was particularly attached to him had accompanied him in the campaign, raised him up, and while supporting him in her arms, received a ball in the breast which killed her instantly. The Chicasaws were then in amity with the whites, and some of their warriors were to have cooperated with Gen. St. Clair, but did not arrive in time. There was however one of that nation in the engagement, and he killed and scalped eleven of the enemy with his own hands, and while engaged with the twelfth was himself killed, to the regret of those who witnessed his deeds of daring and of courage. According to the statement of the Indians, they killed six hundred and twenty of the American troops, and took seven pieces of cannon, two hundred head of oxen, many horses, but no prisoners.[24] They gave their own loss in killed at only sixty-five; but it was no doubt much greater. Their force consisted of four thousand warriors, and was led on by a Missasago chief who had served with the British in the late war; and who planned and conducted the attack contrary to the opinion of a majority of the chiefs, who yet, having such confidence in his skill and judgment, yielded their individual plans and gave to him the entire control of their movements. He is reported to have caused the savages to forbear the pursuit of the retreating troops; telling them that they had killed enough, and it was time to enjoy the booty they had gained with the victory. He was then about forty-five years of age, six feet in height, and of a [300] sour, morose countenance. His dress was Indian leggins and moccasons, a blue petticoat coming half way down his thighs, and European waistcoat and surtout. His head was bound with an Indian cap, reaching midway his back, and adorned with upwards of two hundred silver ornaments. In each ear he had two ear rings, the upper part of each of which was formed of three silver meddles of the size of a dollar; the lower part consisted of quarters of dollars, and more than a foot in length; one from each ear hanging down his breast,--the others over his back. In his nose he wore ornaments of silver curiously wrought and painted. Two days after the action the warriors from the Chicasaw nation arrived at Fort Jefferson, under the command of Piomingo, or the "Mountain Leader." On their march they heard of the fatal battle, and saw one of the enemy; who mistaking Piomingo's party for some of his own comrades, made up to them. He discovered the mistake when it was too late to rectify it. Piomingo accosted him in harsh tones, saying--"Rascal, you have been killing the whites," and immediately ordered two of his warriors to expand his arms, and a third to shoot him. This was done and his scalp taken. After the disastrous termination of this campaign,[25] the inhabitants of Kentucky were as much as, or perhaps more than ever, exposed to savage enmity and those incursions which mark the bitterness of Indian resentment. Soon after the retreat of the army under Gen. Sinclair, a party of them came upon Salt river, where two men and some boys were fishing; and falling suddenly upon them killed the men and made prisoners of the boys. They then liberated one of the boys, and giving him a tomahawk, directed him to go home; shew it to his friends; inform them what had been the fate of his companions, and what they were to expect for their own. The threat was fearfully executed. Many families were entirely cut off and many individuals sacrificed to their fury. Companies of Indians were constantly traversing the country in secret, and committing depredations, wherever they supposed it could be done with impunity. A remarkable instance of their failure and suffering in attempting to form an entrance into a house where was an almost unprotected family, deserves to be particularly mentioned. On the 24th of December 1791, a party of savages attacked the house of John Merril, in Nelson county. Mr. Merril, alarmed by the barking of the dogs, hastened to the door to learn the cause.--On opening it, he was fired at by two Indians and his leg and arm were both broken. The savages then ran forward to enter the house, but before they could do this, the door was closed and secured by Mrs. Merril and her daughter. After a fruitless attempt to force it open, they commenced hewing off a part of it with their tomahawks, and when a passage was thus opened, one of them attempted to enter through it. The heroic Mrs. Merril, in the midst of her screaming and affrighted children, and her groaning suffering husband, seized an axe, gave the ruffian a fatal blow, and [301] instantly drew him into the house. Supposing that their end was now nearly attained, the others pressed forward to gain admittance through the same aperture. Four of them were in like manner despatched by Mrs. Merril, before their comrades were aware that any opposition was making in the house. Discovering their mistake the survivors retired for awhile, and returning, two of them endeavored to gain admittance by climbing to the top of the house, and descending in the chimney, while the third was to exert himself at the door. Satisfied from the noise on the top of the house, of the object of the Indians, Mr. Merril directed his little son to rip open a bed and cast its contents on the fire. This produced the desired effect.--The smoke and heat occasioned by the burning of the feathers brought the two Indians down, rather unpleasantly; and Mr. Merril somewhat recovered, exerted every faculty, and with a billet of wood soon despatched those half smothered devils. Mrs. Merril was all this while busily engaged in defending the door against the efforts of the only remaining savage, whom she at length wounded so severely with the axe, that he was glad to get off alive. A prisoner, who escaped from the Indians soon after the happening of this transaction, reported that the wounded savage was the only one, of a party of eight, who returned to their towns; that on being asked by some one, "what news,"--he replied, "bad news for poor Indian, me lose a son, me lose a brother,--the squaws have taken the breech clout, and fight worse than the Long Knives." The frequent commission of the most enormous outrages, led to an expedition against the Indians, carried on by the inhabitants of Kentucky alone. An army of one thousand mounted volunteers was raised, and the command of it being given to Gen. Scott, he marched immediately for their towns.[26] When near them, he sent out two spies to learn the state of the enemy; who reported that they had seen a large body of Indians, not far from the fatal spot where St. Clair's bloody battle had been fought, enjoying themselves with the plunder there taken, riding the oxen, and acting in every respect as if drunk. Gen. Scott immediately gave orders to move forward briskly; and arranging his men into three divisions, soon came upon and attacked the savages. The contest was short but decisive.--Two hundred of the enemy were killed on the spot, the cannon and such of the other stores as were in their possession, retaken, and the savage forces completely routed. The loss of the Kentuckians was inconsiderable,--only six men were killed and but few wounded. Gen. Scott on his return, gave an affecting account of the appearance of the field, where Gen. St. Clair had been encountered by the savages. "The plain," said he, "had a very melancholy appearance. In the space of three hundred and fifty yards, lay three hundred skull bones, which were buried by my men while on the ground; from thence for miles on, and the road was strewed with skeletons, muskets, &c." A striking picture of the desolation wrought there on the bloody fourth of November. ----- [1] The "Wilderness Road" (or "trace") was the overland highway through Cumberland Gap. It was sometimes called "Boone's trace." From North Carolina and Southern Virginia, it was the nearest road to Kentucky; to those living farther north, the Ohio was the favorite highway. While the river was an easier path, it was more dangerous on account of Indians: but travelers of the early period who had come down the Ohio, preferred returning east by the Wilderness Road to poling up stream. See Thomas Speed's _Wilderness Road_, in the Filson Club publications (Louisville, 1886.)--R. G. T. [2] Col. William Christian, who served in Lord Dunmore's War. He was killed in April, 1786. John May, writing to Governor Henry from Crab Orchard, Ky., April 19, says: "The Indians about the Wabash had frequently been on Bear Grass, and Col. Christian, in order to induce others to go in pursuit of them, has upon every occasion gone himself. And last week he with about twenty men crossed the Ohio, and overtook three Indians, whom they killed; but his men not obeying his orders, which were to rush altogether on them, he with three others only overtook the Indians, and was so unfortunate as to receive a mortal wound himself and Capt. Isaac Kellar received another."--R. G. T. [3] The time for rendezvous was September 10, 1786 (letter of Col. Levi Todd to Governor Henry, August 29).--R. G. T. [4] Clark was roundly scored in contemporary accounts, for being much of the time under the influence of liquor. His futile expedition was against the Indians around Vincennes, while Logan's party, which appears practically to have revolted from Clark, had a successful campaign against the towns on Mad River. See Green's _Spanish Conspiracy_, ch. v., and Roosevelt's _Winning of the West_, iii., _passim_.--R. G. T. [5] Col. Benjamin Logan to Governor Randolph, Dec. 17, 1786: "Sept. 14, 1786, I received orders [from Clark] to collect a sufficient number of men in the District of Kentucky to march against the Shawnee's Towns. Agreeable to said orders I collected 790 men, and on the 6th of October I attacked the above mentioned Towns, killed ten of the chiefs of that nation, captured thirty-two prisoners, burnt upwards of two hundred dwelling houses and supposed to have burnt fifteen thousand bushels of corn, took some horses and cattle, killed a number of hogs, and took near one thousand pounds value of Indian furniture, and the quantity of furniture we burnt I can not account for." The force was on duty "not above twenty-seven days ... and I would venture to say the expenses will be found to be very moderate."--R. G. T. [6] William Lytle, born in Carlisle, Pa., September 1, 1770. He came to Ohio with his father, at the age of ten, and subsequently became surveyor-general of the Northwest Territory. His father served as a captain in the French and Indian War, and as a colonel in the Revolution, and headed a large colony to Ohio in 1780.--R. G. T. [7] This name is sometimes written Magery. It is the same individual who caused the disaster at the Blue Licks in August 1782. [8] The treaty with the Shawnees was negotiated January 30, 1786, at Fort Finney, near the mouth of the Great Miami, by George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler, and Samuel H. Parsons, commissioners. The treaty with the Wyandots, Delawares, Chippewas, and Ottawas was negotiated at Fort McIntosh, January 21, 1785, by Clark, Butler, and Arthur Lee. These treaties were of little avail, so long as British agents like McKee, Elliott, and Simon Girty lived among the Indians and kept them in a constant ferment against the Americans.--R. G. T. [9] The several states which, under their colonial charters had claims to territory beyond the Ohio River,--Virginia, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts,--had (1781-84) relinquished their several claims to the newly-formed United States, and the Ordinance of 1787 had provided for this Northwest Territory an enlightened form of government which was to be the model of the constitutions of the five states into which it was ultimately to be divided. There was formed in Boston, in March, 1786, the Ohio Company of Associates, and October 17, 1787, it purchased from Congress a million and a half acres in the new territory, about the mouth of the Muskingum. Many of the shareholders were Revolutionary soldiers, and great care was taken to select only good men as colonists--oftentimes these were the best and most prosperous men of their several localities. Gen. Rufus Putnam, a cousin of Israel, and a near friend of Washington, was chosen as superintendent of the pioneers. Two parties--one rendezvousing at Danvers, Mass., and the other at Hartford, Conn.--arrived after a difficult passage through the mountains at Simrall's Ferry (now West Newton), on the Youghiogheny, the middle of February, 1788. A company of boat-builders and other mechanics had preceded them a month, yet it was still six weeks more before the little flotilla could leave: "The Union Gally of 45 tons burden; the Adelphia ferry boat, 3 tons; & three log canoes of different sizes. No. of pioneers, 48." The winter had been one of the severest known on the Upper Ohio, and the spring was cold, wet, and backward; so that amid many hardships it was the seventh of April before they arrived at the Muskingum and founded Marietta, named for the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, for the love of France was still strong in the breasts of Revolutionary veterans.--R. G. T. [10] Perhaps there never was a more strange compound derivative term than this. Being situated opposite to the mouth of Licking, the name was made expressive of its locality, by uniting the Latin word _os_, (the mouth) with the Greek, _anti_ (opposite) and the French, _ville_, (a town,) and prefixing to this union from such different sources, the initial (_L_) of the river. The author of this word, must have been good at invention, and in these days of _town making_ could find ample employment for his talent. [11] In 1788, John Cleves Symmes--uncle of he of "Symmes's Hole"--the first United States judge of the Northwest Territory, purchased from congress a million acres of land on the Ohio, lying between the two Miami Rivers. Matthias Denman bought from him a square mile at the eastern end of the grant, "on a most delightful high bank" opposite the Licking, and--on a cash valuation for the land of two hundred dollars--took in with him as partners Robert Patterson and John Filson. Filson was a schoolmaster, had written the first history of Kentucky, and seems to have enjoyed much local distinction. To him was entrusted the task of inventing a name for the settlement which the partners proposed to plant here. The outcome was "Losantiville," a pedagogical hash of Greek, Latin, and French: _L_, for Licking; _os_, Greek for mouth; _anti_, Latin for opposite; _ville_, French for city--Licking-opposite-City, or City-opposite-Licking, whichever is preferred. This was in August; the Fates work quickly, for in October poor Filson was scalped by the Indians in the neighborhood of the Big Miami, before a settler had yet been enticed to Losantiville. But the survivors knew how to "boom" a town; lots were given away by lottery to intending actual settlers, who moved thither late in December or early in January, and in a few months Judge Symmes was able to write that "it populates considerably." A few weeks previous to the planting of Losantiville, a party of men from Redstone had settled at the mouth of the Little Miami, about where the suburb of California now is; and a few weeks later, a third colony was started by Symmes himself at North Bend, near the Big Miami, at the western extremity of his grant, and this the judge wished to make the capital of the new Northwest Territory. At first it was a race between these three colonies. A few miles below North Bend, Fort Finney had been built in 1785-86, hence the Bend had at first the start; but a high flood dampened its prospects, the troops were withdrawn from this neighborhood to Louisville, and in the winter of 1789-90 Fort Washington was built at Losantiville by General Harmar. The neighborhood of the new fortress became in the ensuing Indian war the center of the district. To Losantiville, with its fort, came Arthur St. Clair, the new governor of the Northwest Territory (January, 1790), and making his headquarters here, laid violent hands on Filson's invention, at once changing the name to Cincinnati, in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, of which the new official was a prominent member--"so that," Judge Symmes sorrowfully writes, "Losantiville will become extinct." It was a winter of suffering for the Western Cincinnati. The troops were in danger of starvation, and three professional hunters were contracted with to supply them with game, till corn could come in from Columbia and other older settlements on the river.--R. G. T. [12] Col. Josiah Harmar's militia were from Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. He left Fort Washington (Cincinnati), October 3. At this time the Miami Indians had seven villages in the neighborhood of the junction of St. Joseph and St. Mary's, which streams unite to form the Maumee. The village which lay in the forks of the St. Joseph and the Maumee, was the principal; one in the forks of the St. Mary's and the Maumee, which was called Kekionga, had 30 houses; at Chillicothe, on the north bank of the Maumee, were 58 houses, and opposite these 18 houses. The Delawares had two villages on the St. Mary's, 45 houses in all, and a town on the St. Joseph of 36 houses.--R. G. T. [13] A third expedition, under Maj. J. F. Hamtramck, went against the Wabash Indians, successfully destroyed several deserted villages, and reached Vincennes without loss.--R. G. T. [14] In his report to the Secretary of War, October 29, 1790, Governor St. Clair said: "I have the pleasure to inform you of the entire success of Gen. Harmar at the Indian towns on the Miami and St. Joseph Rivers, of which he has destroyed five in number, and a very great quantity of corn and other vegetable provisions. It is supposed that about two hundred of the Indians have likewise fallen in the different encounters that have happened between them and the detachment, for there has been no general action; but it has not been without considerable loss on our part.... Of the Federal troops, Major Wyllys and Lieutenant Frothingham and seventy-seven men; of the militia, Major Fontaine, Captain McMurtry, and Captain Scott, a son of General Scott, and seventy-three men, are among the slain."--R. G. T. [15] Thirteen miles below Marietta.--R. G. T. [16] Eighteen miles above Marietta, and one above St. Mary's, W. Va.--R. G. T. [17] Dunkard Creek flows eastward into the Monongahela. Fish Creek flows southwestward into the Ohio, emptying 113 miles below Pittsburg, and 58 above Marietta. A famous Indian war-trail ran up Fish and down Dunkard--a short-cut from Ohio to the western borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia.--R. G. T. [18] Soon after the establishment of Marietta, a rude wagon road was opened through the forest between that colony and Redstone (Brownsville, Pa.) This was the road Carpenter was following.--R. G. T. [19] With Gen. Richard Butler, who was killed in the final battle, second in command.--R. G. T. [20] Early in September, 1791. St. Clair had 2,000 men, fifty per cent less than had been promised him by the war department.--R. G. T. [21] Fort Hamilton, a stockade with four bastions, was on the Big Miami, 24 miles from Fort Washington (Cincinnati), on the site of the present Hamilton, O. Fort Jefferson, built of logs laid horizontally, was six miles south of the present Greenville, O. The army left Fort Jefferson, October 24.--R. G. T. [22] The army then numbered 1,400 men, and was encamped at the site of the present Fort Recovery, O., 55 miles away, as the crow flies, from the head of the Maumee, the objective point of the expedition.--R. G. T. [23] He lay sick in his tent, when the action opened, but arose and acted with remarkable courage throughout the fight. General Butler was acting commandant while St. Clair was ill, and was credibly informed by his scouts, the night before the battle, of the proximity of the enemy. But he took no precautions against surprise, neither did he communicate his news to his superior. Upon Butler's head appears to rest much of the blame for the disaster.--R. G. T. [24] The Americans lost 37 officers and 593 men, killed and missing, and 31 officers and 252 men, wounded. See _St. Clair Papers_, edited by William Henry Smith (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1882), for official details of the disaster. For Simon Girty's part, consult Butterfield's _History of the Girtys, passim._--R. G. T. [25] St. Clair arrived at Fort Washington, on his return, November 8--R. G. T. [26] This expedition under Gen. Charles Scott, one of the Kentucky committee of safety, was made in June, 1791, against the Miami and Wabash Indians. It was followed in August by a second expedition under Gen. James Wilkinson. In the course of the second campaign, at the head of 500 Kentuckians, Wilkinson laid waste the Miami village of L'Anguille, killing and capturing 42 of the savages.--R. G. T. [302] CHAPTER XVIII. Neither the signal success of the expedition under General Scott, nor the preparations which were being made by the general government, for the more rigorous prosecution of the war against them, caused the Indians to relax their exertions to harrass the frontier inhabitants. The ease with which they had overcome the two armies sent against them under Harmar and St. Clair, inspired them with contempt for our troops, and induced a belief of their own invincibility, if practising the vigilance necessary to guard against a surprise. To the want of this vigilance, they ascribed the success of Gen. Scott; and deeming it necessary only to exercise greater precaution to avoid similar results, they guarded more diligently the passes into their country, while discursive parties of their warriors would perpetrate their accustomed acts of aggression upon the persons and property of the whites. About the middle of May, 1792, a party of savages came upon a branch of Hacker's creek, and approaching late in the evening a field recently cleared by John Waggoner, found him seated on a log, resting himself after the labors of the day. In this company of Indians was the since justly celebrated General Tecumseh, who leaving his companions to make sure of those in the house, placed his gun on the fence and fired deliberately at Waggoner. The leaden messenger of death failed of its errand, and passing through the sleeve of his shirt, left Waggoner uninjured, to try his speed with the Indian. Taking a direction opposite the house, to avoid coming in contact with the savages there, he outstripped his pursuer, and got safely off. [303] In the mean time, those who had been left to operate against those of the family who were at the house, finding a small boy in the yard, killed and scalped him; and proceeding on, made prisoners of Mrs. Waggoner and her six children, and departed immediately with them, lest the escape of her husband, should lead to their instant pursuit. They were disappointed in this expectation. A company of men was soon collected, who repaired to the then desolate mansion, and from thence followed on the trail of the savages. About a mile from the house, one of the children was found where its brains had been beaten out with a club, and the scalp torn from its head. A small distance farther, lay Mrs. Waggoner and two others of her children,--their lifeless bodies mangled in the most barbarous and shocking manner. Having thus freed themselves from the principal impediments to a rapid retreat, the savages hastened on; and the pursuit was unavailing. They reached their towns with the remaining prisoners--two girls and a boy--and avoided chastisement for the outrage. The elder of the two girls did not long remain with them; but escaping to the neighborhood of Detroit with another female prisoner, continued there until after the treaty of 1795. Her sister abided with her captors 'till the close of the war; and the boy until during the war of 1812. He was then seen among some friendly Indians, and bearing a strong resemblance in features to his father, was recognized as Waggoner's captive son. He had married a squaw, by whom he had several children, was attached to his manner of life, and for a time resisted every importunity, to withdraw himself from among them. When his father visited him, it was with difficulty he was enticed to return to the haunts of his childhood, and the associates of his younger days, even on a temporary visit. When however he did return to them, the attention and kindly conduct of his friends, prevailed with him to remain, until he married and took up his permanent abode amid the habitations of civilized men. Still with the feelings natural to a father, his heart yearns towards his children in the forest; and at times he seems to lament that he ever forsook them.[1] In the summer of this year, a parcel of horses were taken from the West Fork, and the Indians who had stolen them, being discovered as they were retiring, they were pursued by Captain Coburn, who was stationed at the mouth of Little [304] Kenhawa with a party of men as scouts. Following them across the Ohio river, he overtook them some distance in the Indian country, and retaking the horses, returned to his station. Hitherto property recovered from the savages, had been invariably restored to those from whom it had been stolen; but on the present occasion a different course was pursued. Contending that they received compensation for services rendered by them in Virginia, and were not bound to treat without its limits in pursuit of the savages or to retake the property of which they had divested its rightful owners, they claimed the horses as plunder taken from the Indians, sold them, and divided the proceeds of sale among themselves--much to the dissatisfaction of those from whom the savages had taken them.[2] In the course of the ensuing fall, Henry Neal, William Triplett and Daniel Rowell, from Neal's station ascended the Little Kenhawa in canoes to the mouth of the Burning Spring run, from whence they proceeded on a Buffoloe hunt in the adjoining woods. But they had been seen as they plied their canoes up the river, by a party of Indians, who no sooner saw them placed in a situation favoring the bloody purposes of their hearts, than they fired upon them. Neal and Triplett were killed, and fell into the river.--Rowell was missed and escaped by swimming the Kenhawa, the Indians shooting at him as he swam. In a few days after the dead were found in a ripple and buried. The Indians had not been able to draw them from their watery grave, and obtain their scalps. During this year unsuccessful attempts were made by the general government, to terminate Indian hostilities by negotiation. They were too much elated with their recent success, to think of burying their resentments in a treaty of peace; and so little did they fear the operation of the governmental forces, and such was their confidence in their own strength, that they not only refused to negotiate at all, but put to death two of those who were sent to them as messengers of peace. Major Truman and Col. Hardin, severally sent upon this mission, were murdered by them; and when commissioners to treat with them, were received by them, their only answer was, a positive refusal to enter into a treaty.[3] When this determination was made known to the President, every precaution which could be used, was taken by him to prevent the recurrence of these enormities which were daily committed on the [305] frontier, and particularly in the new state of Kentucky. Gen. St. Clair, after having asked that a court of enquiry should be held, to consider of his conduct in the campaign of 1791, and finding that his request could not be granted, resigned the command of the army, and was succeeded by Gen. Anthony Wayne. That the operations of the army might not be defeated as heretofore, by a too great reliance on undisciplined militia, it was recommended to Congress to authorize the raising of three additional regiments of regular soldiers; and the bill for complying with this recommendation, notwithstanding it was strenuously opposed by a strong party hostile to the then administration, was finally passed.[4] The forts Hamilton and Jefferson, erected by Gen. St. Clair, continued to be well garrisoned; but there was some difficulty in supplying them with provisions--the Indians being always in readiness to intercept them on their way. As early as April 1792, they taught us the necessity of having a strong guard to escort supplies with safety, by a successful attack on Major Adair; who with one hundred and twenty volunteers from Kentucky, had charge of a number of pack horses laden with provisions. He was engaged by a body of savages, not much superior in number, and although he was under cover of Fort St. Clair, yet did they drive him into the fort, and carry off the provisions and pack horses. The courage and bold daring of the Indians, was eminently conspicuous on this occasion. They fought with nearly equal numbers, against a body of troops, better tutored in the science of open warfare, well mounted and equipped, armed with every necessary weapon, and almost under the guns of the fort. And they fought successfully,--killing one captain and ten privates, wounding several, and taking property estimated to be worth fifteen thousand dollars. Nothing seemed to abate their ardor for war. Neither the strong garrisons placed in the forts erected so far in advance of the settlements, nor the great preparations which were making for striking an effectual blow at them, caused them for an instant to slacken in hostilities, or check their movements against the frontier. In the spring of 1793, a party of warriors proceeding towards the head waters of the Monongahela river, discovered a marked way, leading a direction which they did not know to be inhabited by whites. It led to a settlement which had been recently made on Elk river, by Jeremiah and Benjamin Carpenter and a few others from Bath county, and who had been particularly careful to make nor leave any path which might lead to a discovery of their situation, but Adam O'Brien moving into the same section of country in the spring of 1792, and being rather an indifferent woodsman, incautiously blazed the trees in several directions so as to enable him readily to find his home, when business or pleasure should have drawn him from it. It was upon one of these marked traces that the Indians chanced to fall; and pursuing it, came to the deserted cabin of [306] O'Brien: he having returned to the interior, because of his not making a sufficiency of grain for the subsistence of his family. Proceeding from O'Brien's, they came to the House of Benjamin Carpenter, whom they found alone and killed. Mrs. Carpenter being discovered by them, before she was aware of their presence, was tomahawked and scalped, a small distance from the yard. The burning of Benjamin Carpenter's house, led to a discovery of these outrages; and the remaining inhabitants of that neighborhood, remote from any fort or populous settlement to which they could fly for security, retired to the mountains and remained for several days concealed in a cave. They then caught their horses and moved their families to the West Fork; and when they visited the places of their former habitancy for the purpose of collecting their stock and carrying it off with their other property, scarce a vestige of them was to be seen,--the Indians had been there after they left the cave, and burned the houses, pillaged their movable property, and destroyed the cattle and hogs. Among the few interesting incidents which occurred in the upper country, during this year, was the captivity and remarkable escape of two brothers, John and Henry Johnson:--the former thirteen, the latter eleven years of age. They lived at a station on the west side of the Ohio river near above Indian Short creek; and being at some distance from the house, engaged in the sportive amusements of youth, became fatigued and seated themselves on an old log for the purpose of resting. They presently observed two men coming towards them, whom they believed to be white men from the station until they approached so close as to leave no prospect of escape by flight, when to their great grief they saw that two Indians were beside them. They were made prisoners, and taken about four miles, when after partaking of some roasted meat and parched corn given them by their captors, they were arranged for the night, by being placed between the two Indians and each encircled in the arms of the one next him. Henry, the younger of the brothers, had grieved much at the idea of being carried off by the Indians, and during his short but sorrowful journey across the hills, had wept immoderately. John had in vain endeavored to comfort him with the hope that they should be enabled to elude the vigilence of the savages, and to return to the hearth of their parents and brethren. He refused to be comforted.--The ugly red man, with his tomahawk and scalping knife, which had been often called in to quiet the cries of his infancy, was now actually before him; and every scene of torture and of torment which had been depicted, by narration, to his youthful eye, was now present to his terrified imagination, hightened by the thought that they were about to be re-enacted on himself. In anticipation of this horrid doom for some time he wept in bitterness and affliction; but [307] "The tear down childhood's cheek that flows, Is like the dew drop on the rose;-- When next the summer breeze comes by And waves the bush, the flower is dry."-- When the fire was kindled at night, the supper prepared and offered to him, all idea of his future fate was merged in their present kindness; and Henry soon sunk to sleep, though enclosed in horrid hug, by savage arms. It was different with John. He felt the reality of their situation.--He was alive to the anguish which he knew would agitate the bosom of his mother, and he thought over the means of allaying it so intensely, that sleep was banished from his eyes. Finding the others all locked in deep repose, he disengaged himself from the embrace of the savage at his side, and walked to the fire. To test the soundness of their sleep, he rekindled the dying blaze, and moved freely about it. All remained still and motionless,--no suppressed breathing, betrayed a feigned repose. He gently twitched the sleeping Henry, and whispering softly in his ear, bade him get up. Henry obeyed, and they both stood by the fire. "I think, said John, we had better go home now." "Oh! replied Henry, they will follow and catch us again." "Never fear that, rejoined John, we'll kill them before we go." The idea was for some time opposed by Henry; but when he beheld the savages so soundly asleep, and listened to his brother's plan of executing his wish, he finally consented to act the part prescribed him. The only gun which the Indians had, was resting against a tree, at the foot of which lay their tomahawks. John placed it on a log, with the muzzle near to the head of one of the savages; cocked it, and leaving Henry with his finger to the trigger, ready to pull upon the signal being given, he repaired to his own station. Holding in his hand one of their tomahawks, he stood astride of the other Indian, and as he raised his arm to deal death to the sleeping savage, Henry fired, and shooting off the lower part of the Indian's jaw, called to his brother, "_lay on, for I've done for this one_," seized up the gun and ran off. The first blow of the tomahawk took effect on the back of the neck, and was not fatal. The Indian attempted to spring up; but John repeated his strokes with such force and so quickly, that he soon brought him again to the ground; and leaving him dead proceeded on after his brother. They presently came to a path which they recollected to have travelled, the preceding evening, and keeping along it, arrived at the station awhile before day. The inhabitants were however, all up and in much uneasiness for the fate of the boys; and when they came near and heard a well known voice exclaim in accents of deep distress, "_Poor little fellows, they are killed or taken prisoners_," John replied aloud,--"No mother, we are here again." When the tale of their captivity, and the means by which their deliverance was effected, were told, they did not obtain full credence. [308] Piqued at the doubts expressed by some, John observed, "you had better go and see." "But, can you again find the spot," said one. "Yes, replied he, I hung my hat up at the turning out place and can soon shew you the spot." Accompanied by several of the men, John returned to the theatre of his daring exploits; and the truth of his statement received ample confirmation. The savage who had been tomahawked was lying dead by the fire--the other had crawled some distance; but was tracked by his blood until found, when it was agreed to leave him, "_as he must die at any rate_." Companies of rangers had been for several seasons stationed on the Ohio river, for the greater security of the persons and property of those who resided on and near the frontier. During this year a company which had been stationed at the mouth of Fishing creek,[5] and had remained there until its term of service had expired, determined then on a scout into the Indian country; and crossing the river, marched on for some days before they saw any thing which indicated their nearness to Indians. Pursuing a path which seemed to be much used, they came in view of an Indian camp, and observing another path, which likewise seemed to be much frequented, Ensign Levi Morgan was sent with a detachment of the men, to see if it would conduct them to where were others of the Indians, who soon returned with the information that he had seen another of their encampments close by. Upon the receipt of this intelligence, the Lieutenant was sent forward with a party of men to attack the second encampment, while the Captain with the residue of the company should proceed against that which had been first discovered, and commence an assault on it, when he should hear the firing of the Lieutenant's party at the camp which he was sent to assail. When the second camp was approached and the men posted at intervals around it, awaiting the light of day to begin the assault, the Lieutenant discovered that there was a greater force of Indians with whom he would have to contend than was expected, and prudently resolved to withdraw his men without coming into collision with them. Orders for this movement were directly given, and the party immediately retired. There was however, one of the detachment, who had been posted some small distance in advance of the others with directions to fire as soon as the Indians should be seen stirring, and who, unapprized of the withdrawal of the others, [309] maintained his station, until he observed a squaw issuing from a camp, when he fired at her and rushed up, expecting to be supported by his comrades. He fell into the hands of those whom he had thus assailed; but his fate was far different from what he had every reason to suppose it would be, under those circumstances. It was the hunting camp of Isaac Zane, and the female at whom he had shot was the daughter of Zane; the ball had slightly wounded her in the wrist. Her father, although he had been with the Indians ever since his captivity when only nine years of age, had not yet acquired the ferocious and vindictive passions of those with whom he had associated; but practising the forbearance and forgiveness of christian and civilized man, generously conducted the wanton assailant so far upon his way, that he was enabled though alone to reach the settlement in safety. His fate was different from that of those, who had been taken prisoners by that part of the company which remained at the first camp with the Captain. When the Lieutenant with the detachment, rejoined the others, disappointment at the failure of the expedition under him, led some of the men to fall upon the Indian prisoners and inhumanly murder them. Notwithstanding that preparations for an active campaign against the savages was fast ripening to their perfection, and that the troops of the general government had penetrated as far as to the field, on which had been fought the fatal battle of the fourth of November, 1791, and erected there Fort Recovery,[6] yet did they not cease from their accustomed inroads upon the settlements, even after the winter of 1793.--In March 1794, a party of them crossed the Ohio river, and as they were advancing towards the settlements on the upper branches of the Monongahela, met with Joseph Cox, then on his way to the mouth of Leading creek on Little Kenhawa, for a load of furs and skins which he had left there, at the close of his hunt the preceding fall. Cox very unexpectedly met them in a narrow pass, and instantly wheeled his horse to ride off. Endeavoring to stimulate the horse to greater speed by the application of the whip, the animal became stubborn and refused to go at all, when Cox was forced to dismount and seek safety on foot. His pursuers gained rapidly upon him, and he saw that one of them would soon overtake him. He faced the savage who was near, and raised his gun to fire; but nothing daunted, the Indian rushed forward. Cox's gun [310] missed fire, and he was instantly a prisoner. He was taken to their towns and detained in captivity for some time; but at length made his escape, and returned safely to the settlement. On the 24th of July, six Indians visited the West Fork river, and at the mouth of Freeman's creek, met with, and made prisoner, a daughter of John Runyan. She was taken off by two of the party of savages, but did not go more than ten or twelve miles, before she was put to death. The four Indians who remained, proceeded down the river and on the next day came to the house of William Carder, near below the mouth of Hacker's creek. Mr. Carder discovered them approaching, in time to fasten his door; but in the confusion of the minute, shut out two of his children, who however ran off unperceived by the savages and arrived in safety at the house of a neighbor. He then commenced firing and hallooing, so as to alarm those who were near and intimidate the Indians. Both objects were accomplished. The Indians contented themselves with shooting at the cattle, and then retreated; and Mr. Joseph Chevront, who lived hardby, hearing the report of the guns and the loud cries of Carder, sent his own family to a place of safety, and with nobleness of purpose, ran to the relief of his neighbor. He enabled Carder to remove his family to a place of greater security, although the enemy were yet near, and engaged in skinning one of the cattle that they might take with them a supply of meat. On the next day a company of men assembled, and went in pursuit; but they could not trail the savages far, because of the great caution with which they had retreated, and returned without accomplishing any thing. Two days afterward, when it was believed that the Indians had left the neighborhood, they came on Hacker's creek near to the farm of Jacob Cozad, and finding four of his sons bathing, took three of them prisoners, and killed the fourth, by repeatedly stabbing him with a bayonet attached to a staff. The boys, of whom they made prisoners, were immediately taken to the Indian towns and kept in captivity until the treaty of Greenville in 1795. Two of them were then delivered up to their father, who attended to enquire for them,--the third was not heard of for some time after, but was at length found at Sandusky, by his elder brother and brought home. After the victory obtained by General Wayne over the Indians, [311] Jacob Cozad, Jr. was doomed to be burned to death, in revenge of the loss then sustained by the savages. Every preparation for carrying into execution this dreadful determination was quickly made. The wood was piled, the intended victim was apprized of his approaching fate, and before the flaming torch was applied to the faggots, he was told to take leave of those who were assembled to witness the awful spectacle. The crowd was great, and the unhappy youth could with difficulty press his way through them. Amid the jeers and taunts of those whom he would address, he was proceeding to discharge the last sad act of his life, when a female, whose countenance beamed with benignity, beckoned him to follow her. He did not hesitate. He approached as if to bid her farewell, and she succeeded in taking him off unobserved by the many eyes gazing around, and concealed him in a wigwam among some trunks and covered loosely with a blanket. He was presently missed, and a search immediately made for him. Many passed near in quest of the devoted victim, and he could hear their steps and note their disappointment. After awhile the uproar ceased, and he felt more confident of security. In a few minutes more he heard approaching footsteps and felt that the blanket was removed from him. He turned to surrender himself to his pursuers, and meet a dreadful death.--But no! they were two of his master's sons who had been directed where to find him, and they conducted him securely to the Old Delaware town, where he remained until carried to camp upon the conclusion of a treaty of peace.[7] In a short time after the happening of the events at Cozad's, a party of Indians made an irruption upon Tygart's Valley. For some time the inhabitants of that settlement had enjoyed a most fortunate exemption from savage molestation; and although they had somewhat relaxed in vigilance, they did not however omit to pursue a course calculated to ensure a continuance of their tranquillity and repose. Instead of flying for security, as they had formerly, to the neighboring forts upon the return of spring, the increase of population and the increased capacity of the communion to repel aggression, caused them to neglect other acts of precaution, and only to assemble at particular houses, when danger was believed to be instant and at hand. In consequence of the reports which reached them of the injuries lately committed by the [312] savages upon the West Fork, several families collected at the house of Mr. Joseph Canaan for mutual security, and while thus assembled, were visited by a party of Indians, when perfectly unprepared for resistance. The savages entered the house awhile after dark, and approaching the bed on which Mr. Canaan was lolling, one of them addressed him with the familiarity of an old acquaintance and saying "how d'ye do, how d'ye do," presented his hand. Mr. Canaan was rising to reciprocate the greeting, when he was pierced by a ball discharged at him from another savage, and fell dead. The report of the gun at once told, who were the visitors, and put them upon using immediate exertions to effect their safety by flight. A young man who was near when Canaan was shot, aimed at the murderer a blow with a drawing knife, which took effect on the head of the savage and brought him to the ground. Ralston then escaped through the door, and fled in safety, although fired at as he fled. When the Indians entered the house, there was a Mrs. Ward sitting in the room. So soon as she observed that the intruders were savages, she passed into another apartment with two of the children, and going out with them through a window, got safely away. Mr. Lewis (brother to Mrs. Canaan) likewise escaped from a back room, in which he had been asleep at the firing of the gun. Three children were tomahawked and scalped,--Mrs. Canaan made prisoner, and the savages withdrew. The severe wound inflicted on the head of the Indian by Ralston, made it necessary that they should delay their return to their towns, until his recovery; and they accordingly remained near the head of the middle fork of Buchannon, for several weeks. Their extreme caution in travelling, rendered any attempt to discover them unavailing; and when their companion was restored they proceeded on, uninterruptedly. On the close of the war, Mrs. Canaan was redeemed from captivity by a brother from Brunswick, in New Jersey, and restored to her surviving friends. Thus far in the year 1794, the army of the United States had not been organised for efficient operations. Gen. Wayne had been actively employed in the discharge of every preparatory duty devolving on him; and those distinguishing characteristics of uncommon daring and bravery, which had acquired for him the appellation of "_Mad Anthony_," and which [313] so eminently fitted him for the command of an army warring against savages, gave promise of success to his arms. Before the troops marched from Fort Washington, it was deemed advisable to have an abundant supply of provisions in the different forts in advance of this, as well for the supply of their respective garrisons, as for the subsistence of the general army, in the event of its being driven into them, by untoward circumstances. With this view, three hundred pack-horses, laden with flour, were sent on to Fort Recovery; and, as it was known that considerable bodies of the enemy were constantly hovering about the forts, and awaiting opportunities of cutting off any detachments from the main army, Major McMahon, with eighty riflemen under Capt. Hartshorn, and fifty dragoons, under Capt. Taylor, was ordered on as an escort. This force was too great to justify the savages in making an attack, until they could unite the many war parties which were near;.and before this could be effected, Major McMahon reached his destination. On the 30th of July,[8] as the escort was about leaving Fort Recovery, it was attacked by an army of one thousand Indians, in the immediate vicinity of the fort. Captain Hartshorn had advanced only three or four hundred yards, at the head of the riflemen, when he was unexpectedly beset on every side. With the most consummate bravery and good conduct, he maintained the unequal conflict, until Major McMahon, placing himself at the head of the cavalry, charged upon the enemy, and was repulsed with considerable loss. Maj. McMahon, Capt. Taylor and Cornet Terry fell upon the first onset, and many of the privates were killed or wounded. The whole savage force being now brought to press on Capt. Hartshorn, that brave officer was forced to try and regain the Fort, but the enemy interposed its strength, to prevent this movement. Lieutenant Drake and Ensign Dodd, with twenty volunteers, marched from Fort Recovery and forcing a passage through a column of the enemy at the point of the bayonet, joined the rifle corps, at the instant that Capt. Hartshorn received a shot which broke his thigh. Lieut. Craig being killed and Lieut. Marks taken prisoner, Lieut. Drake conducted the retreat; and while endeavoring for an instant to hold the enemy in check, so as to enable the soldiers to bring off their wounded captain, himself received a shot in the groin, and the retreat was resumed, leaving Capt. Hartshorn on the field. [314] When the remnant of the troops came within the walls of the Fort, Lieut. Michael, who had been early detached by Capt. Hartshorn to the flank of the enemy, was found to be missing, and was given up as lost. But while his friends were deploring his unfortunate fate, he and Lieut. Marks, who had been early taken prisoner, were seen rushing through the enemy, from opposite directions towards the Fort. They gained it safely, notwithstanding they were actively pursued, and many shots fired at them. Lieut. Marks had got off by knocking down the Indian who held him prisoner; and Lieut. Michael had lost all of his party, but three men. The entire loss of the Americans was twenty-three killed, and forty wounded.[9] The riflemen brought in ten scalps which were taken early in the action; beyond this the enemy's loss was never ascertained. Many of them were no doubt killed and wounded, as they advanced in solid columns up to the very muzzles of the guns, and were afterwards seen carrying off many of their warriors on pack horses. At length Gen. Wayne put the army over which he had been given the command, in motion;[10] and upon its arrival at the confluence of the Au Glaize and the Miami of the Lakes, another effort was made for the attainment of peace, without the effusion of blood. Commissioners were sent forward to the Indians to effect this desirable object; who exhorted them to listen to their propositions for terminating the war, and no longer to be deluded by the counsels of white emissaries, who had not the power to afford them protection; but only sought to involve the frontier of the United States in a war, from which much evil, but no good could possibly result to either party. The savages however felt confident that success would again attend their arms, and deriving additional incentives to war from their proximity to the British fort, recently erected at the foot of the rapids, declined the overture for peace, and seemed ardently to desire the battle, which they knew must soon be fought. The Indian army at this time, amounted to about two thousand warriors, and when reconnoitered on the 19th of August were found encamped in a thick bushy wood and near to the British Fort. The army of Gen. Wayne was equal in numbers to that of the enemy; and when on the morning of the 20th, it took up the line of march, the troops were so disposed as to avoid being surprised, and to come into action on the [315] shortest notice, and under the most favorable circumstances. A select battalion of mounted volunteers, commanded by Major Price, moving in advance of the main army, had proceeded but a few miles, when a fire so severe was aimed at it by the savages concealed, as usual, that it was forced to fall back. The enemy had chosen their ground with great judgment, taking a position behind the fallen timber,[11] which had been prostrated by a tornado, and in a woods so thick as to render it impracticable for the cavalry to act with effect. They were formed into three regular lines, much extended in front, within supporting distance of each other, and reaching about two miles; and their first effort was to turn the left flank of the American army. Gen. Wayne ordered the first line of his army to advance with trailed arms, to rouse the enemy from their covert at the point of the bayonet, and when up to deliver a close and well directed fire, to be followed by a charge so brisk as not to allow them time to reload or form their lines. The second line was ordered to the support of the first; and Capt. Campbell at the head of the cavalry, and Gen. Scott at the head of the mounted volunteers were sent forward to turn the left and right wings of the enemy. All these complicated orders were promptly executed; but such was the impetuosity of the charge made by the first line of infantry, so completely and entirely was the enemy broken by it, and so rapid the pursuit, that only a small part of the second line and of the mounted volunteers were in time to participate in the action, notwithstanding the great exertions of their respective officers to co-operate in the engagement; and in less than one hour, the savages were driven more than two miles and within gunshot of the British Fort, by less than one half their numbers. Gen. Wayne remained three days on the banks of the Miami, in front of the field of battle left to the full and quiet possession of his army, by the flight and dispersion of the savages. In this time, all the houses and cornfields, both above and below the British Fort, and among the rest, the houses and stores of Col. McKee,[12] an English trader of great influence among the Indians and which had been invariably exerted to prolong the war, were consumed by fire or otherwise entirely destroyed. On the 27th, the American army returned to its head quarters, laying waste the cornfields and villages on each side of the river for about fifty miles; and [316] this too in the most populous and best improved part of the Indian country. The loss sustained by the American army, in obtaining this brilliant victory, over a savage enemy flushed with former successes, amounted to thirty-three killed and one hundred wounded:[13] that of the enemy was never ascertained. In his official account of the action, Gen. Wayne says, "The woods were strewed for a considerable distance, with the dead bodies of the Indians and their white auxiliaries;" and at a council held a few days after, when British agents endeavored to prevail on them to risk another engagement, they expressed a determination to "bury the bloody hatchet" saying, that they had just lost more than two hundred of their warriors. Some events occurred during this engagement, which are deemed worthy of being recorded here, although not of general interest. While Capt. Campbell was engaged in turning the left-flank, of the enemy, three of them plunged into the river, and endeavored to escape the fury of the conflict, by swimming to the opposite shore. They were seen by two negroes, who were on the bank to which the Indians were aiming, and who concealed themselves behind a log for the purpose of intercepting them. When within shooting distance one of the negroes fired and killed one of the Indians. The other two took hold of him to drag him to shore, when one of them was killed, by the fire of the other negro. The remaining Indian, being now in shoal water, endeavored to draw both the dead to the bank; but before he could effect this, the negro who had first fired, had reloaded, and again discharging his gun, killed him also, and the three floated down the river. Another circumstance is related, which shows the obstinacy with which the contest was maintained by individuals in both armies. A soldier and an Indian came in collision, the one having an unloaded gun,--the other a tomahawk. After the action was over, they were both found dead; the soldier with his bayonet in the body of the Indian,--and the Indian with his tomahawk in the head of the soldier. Notwithstanding the signal victory, obtained by General Wayne over the Indians, yet did their hostility to the whites lead them to acts of occasional violence, and kept them for some time from acceding to the proposals for peace. In [317] consequence of this, their whole country was laid waste, and forts erected in the hearts of their settlements at once to starve and awe them into quiet. The desired effect was produced. Their crops being laid waste, their villages burned, fortresses erected in various parts of their country and kept well garrisoned, and a victorious army ready to bear down upon them at any instant, there was no alternative left them but to sue for peace. When the Shawanees made known their wish to bury the _bloody hatchet_, Gen. Wayne refused to treat singly with them, and declared that all the different tribes of the North Western Indians should be parties to any treaty which he should make. This required some time as they had been much dispersed after the defeat of the 20th of August, and the great devastation committed on their crops and provisions by the American army, had driven many to the woods, to procure a precarious subsistence by hunting. Still however, to such abject want and wretchedness were they reduced, that exertions were immediately made to collect them in general council; and as this was the work of some time, it was not effected until midsummer of 1795. In this interval of time, there was but a solitary interruption, caused by savage aggression, to the general repose and quiet of North Western Virginia; and that interruption occurred in a settlement which had been exempt from invasion since the year 1782. In the summer of 1795, the trail of a large party of Indians was discovered on Leading creek, and proceeding directly towards the settlements on the head of the West Fork, those on Buchannon river, or in Tygart's Valley. In consequence of the uncertainty against which of them, the savages would direct their operations, intelligence of the discovery which had been made, was sent by express to all; and measures, to guard against the happening of any unpleasant result, were taken by all, save the inhabitants on Buchannon. They had so long been exempt from the murderous incursions of the savages, while other settlements not remote from them, were yearly deluged with blood, that a false security was engendered, in the issue, fatal to the lives and happiness of some of them, by causing them to neglect the use of such precautionary means, as would warn them of the near approach of danger, and ward it when it came. Pursuing their usual avocations in despite of the warning which had been given them, on the day after the express had [318] sounded an alarm among them, as John Bozarth, sen. and his sons George and John were busied in drawing grain from the field to the barn, the agonizing shrieks of those at the house rent the air around them; and they hastened to ascertain, and if practicable avert the cause. The elasticity of youth enabled George to approach the house some few paces in advance of his father, but the practised eye of the old gentleman, first discovered an Indian, only a small distance from his son, and with his gun raised to fire upon him. With parental solicitude he exclaimed, "See George, an Indian is going to shoot you." George was then too near the savage, to think of escaping by flight. He looked at him steadily, and when he supposed the fatal aim was taken and the finger just pressing on the trigger, he fell, and the ball whistled by him. Not doubting but that the youth had fallen in death, the savage passed by him and pressed in pursuit of the father. Mr. Bozarth had not attained to that age when the sinews become too much relaxed for active exertion, but was yet springy and agile, and was enabled to keep ahead of his pursuer. Despairing of overtaking him, by reason of his great speed, the savage hurled a tomahawk at his head. It passed harmless by; and the old gentleman got safely off. When George Bozarth fell as the Indian fired, he lay still as if dead, and supposing the scalping knife would be next applied to his head, determined on seizing the savage by the legs as he would stoop over him, and endeavor to bring him to the ground; when he hoped to be able to gain the mastery over him. Seeing him pass on in pursuit of his father, he arose and took to flight also. On his way he overtook a younger brother, who had become alarmed, and was hobbling slowly away on a sore foot. George gave him every aid in his power to facilitate his flight, until he discovered that another of the savages was pressing close upon them. Knowing that if he remained with his brother, both must inevitably perish, he was reluctantly forced to leave him to his fate. Proceeding on, he came up with his father, who not doubting but he was killed when the savage fired at him, broke forth with the exclamation, "_Why George, I thought you were dead_," and manifested, even in that sorrowful moment, a joyful feeling at his mistake. The Indians who were at the house, wrought their work of blood upon such as would have been impediments to their [319] retreat; and killing two or three smaller children, took Mrs. Bozarth and two boys prisoners. With these they made their way to their towns and arrived in time to surrender their captives to Gen. Wayne. This was the last mischief done by the Indians in North Western Virginia. For twenty years the inhabitants of that section of the country, had suffered all the horrors of savage warfare, and all the woes which spring from the uncurbed indulgence of those barbarous and vindicitive passions, which bear sway in savage breasts. The treaty of Greenville, concluded on the 3d of August 1795, put a period to the war, and with it, to those acts of devastation and death which had so long spread dismay and gloom throughout the land. FINIS. ----- [1] Drake, in _Aboriginal Races of North America_ (15th ed.), p. 616, cites the Waggoner massacre as "the first exploit in which we find Tecumseh engaged." L. V. McWhorter sends me this interesting note, giving the local tradition regarding the affair: "John Waggoner lived on Jesse's Run, more than two miles above its junction with Hacker's Creek. While engaged in burning logs in his clearing, he was sitting upon a log, with a handspike lying across his lap. It was thought that Tecumseh mistook this tool for a gun, and was nervous. But three in number, the Indians had entered the district with some trepidation. Over Sunday, while the settlers were holding religious services in West's Fort, the savages lay in a neighboring ravine. The dogs of the settlement barked furiously at them, and ran toward their hiding place, trying to lead their masters; but the latter supposed that the animals had merely scented wolves, hence paid no attention to them. Tecumseh was but thirty paces from Waggoner when he fired, and it is singular that he missed, for the latter was a large man and in fair view. Waggoner sprang up and started for his cabin, a short distance only, but when about fifteen yards away saw an Indian chasing one of the children around the house. Waggoner was unarmed; his gun was in the house, but he feared to enter, so ran for help to the cabin of Hardman, a neighbor. But Hardman was out hunting, and there was no gun left there. The screams of his family were now plainly heard by Waggoner, and he was with difficulty restrained from rushing back to help them, unarmed. Jesse Hughes carried the news into the fort, and a rescue party at once set out. Mrs. Waggoner and her three youngest children had been carried across the ridge to where is now Rev. Mansfield McWhorter's farm, on McKenley's Run, and here they were tomahawked and scalped. Henry McWhorter helped to carry the bodies to the fort, but made no mention of their being 'mangled in the most barbarous and shocking manner.'" The boy Peter, then eight years old, remained with the Indians for twenty years. The manner of his return, as related to me by Mr. McWhorter, was singular, and furnishes an interesting and instructive romance of the border. One Baker, one of John Waggoner's neighbors, went to Ohio to "squat," and on Paint Creek saw Peter with a band of Indians, recognizing him by the strong family resemblance. Baker at once wrote to the elder Waggoner, telling him of his discovery, and the latter soon visited the Paint Creek band, with a view to inducing his son to return home. But Peter was loth to go. He was united to a squaw, and by her had two children. In tears, she bitterly opposed his going. When finally he yielded to parental appeals, he promised her he would soon be back again. When the time for his return to the forest came, his relatives kept him under guard; when it had passed, he was afraid to return to his Indian relatives, having broken his word. Gradually he became reconciled in a measure to his new surroundings, but was ever melancholy, frequently lamenting that he had left his savage family. "Some time after his return to civilization," continues McWhorter, "an Indian woman, supposed to be his wife, passed through the Hacker Creek settlements, inquiring for Peter, and going on toward the East. She appeared to be demented, and sang snatches of savage songs. Peter never knew of her presence, nor would any one inform her of his whereabouts. He was reticent about his life among the Indians, and no details of that feature of his career became known to his white friends." Tecumseh, who is said to have been born on Hacker's Creek, possibly at a village near the mouth of Jesse's Run, visited the white settlements there, after the peace, and told the whites of his experiences in connection with the Waggoner massacre.--R. G. T. [2] It must be acknowledged that many of these militia forays against the Indians partook of the nature of buccaneering. The spoils were often considerable. Clark, in his Kaskaskia campaign (1778), captured so much booty, in property and slaves, that he declares his men were made "almost rich."--R. G. T. [3] In the spring of 1792, Major Trueman, Colonel Hardin, and Mr. Freeman were dispatched from Fort Washington by different routes, to open peace negotiations, but they were murdered by the savages. Gen. Rufus Putnam, aided by Hekewelder, the Moravian, succeeded in binding the Wabash and Illinois Indians to keep the peace. Later, Benjamin Lincoln, Timothy Pickering, and Beverly Randolph were ordered by the president to go to the Maumee to conclude a general treaty which Indians had declared their willingness to enter into. But the commissioners were detained at Niagara by sham conferences with Gov. John Graves Simcoe, of Canada, until the middle of July, when the Indians sent them word that unless they would in advance "agree that the Ohio shall remain the boundary between us," the proposed "meeting would be altogether unnecessary." The commissioners declined to accept this ultimatum, and returned home. Meanwhile, General Wayne was prosecuting preparations for an active campaign against the hostiles.--R. G. T. [4] On a plain near the old French-Indian-English trading village, called Logstown (just below the present Economy, Pa., on the north side of the Ohio, 18 miles below Pittsburg), Wayne's army lay encamped from November, 1792, to April 30, 1793. The army was fancifully called the "Legion of the United States," and the camp was known as Legionville. From here, Wayne proceeded to Cincinnati, and took up his headquarters in Fort Washington.--R. G. T. [5] Fishing Creek enters the Ohio 128 miles below Pittsburgh. At its mouth is now the town of New Martinsville, W. Va.--R. G. T. [6] This was an expedition made by Gen. James Wilkinson, second in command under Wayne, in December, 1793. He marched to the field from Fort Washington at the head of a thousand men, and left a garrison at the new fort.--R. G. T. [7] McWhorter says that the capture of the Cozad boys took place at the mouth of Lanson Run, near Berlin, W. Va. The boy who was killed was but six years of age; crying for his mother, an Indian grasped him by the heels and cracked his head against a tree,--a favorite method of murdering white children, among Indian war parties. "Jacob yelled once, after starting with the Indians, but was knocked down by a gun in the hands of one of the savages. When he came to his senses, a squaw was dragging him up hill by one foot. He remained with the Indians for about two years, being adopted into a chief's family. He died in 1862, in his eighty-ninth year."--R. G. T. [8] Thirtieth of June.--R. G. T. [9] The white loss, in killed, was 22, including Major McMahon.--R. G. T. [10] The force started August 8. Besides the regulars, were about 1,100 mounted Kentucky militia, under Gen. Charles Scott.--R. G. T. [11] Hence the popular name of the engagement, "Battle of Fallen Timbers."--R. G. T. [12] Alexander McKee, the renegade, of whom mention has frequently been made in foregoing pages.--R. G. T. [13] Later authorities place the white loss at 107, killed and wounded.--R. G. T. INDEX. Acosta, Father Joseph, on origin of Indians, 14. Adair, James, _History of American Indians_, 17-23. Adair, Maj., attacked by Indians, 413. Albermarle county, Va., 54. Alexander, Archibald, early settler, 52; in Sandy-creek voyage, 81. Alexander, John, in Sandy-creek voyage, 81. Alexandria, O., old Shawneetown at, 82, 92. Alexandria, Va., 60, 181. Alleghany county, Va., census (1830), 55. Alleghany mountains, early Indians in, 44, 45, 47; crossed by English, 63-66. Alleghany river, early Indians on, 45, 46, 73; discovered by Le Moyne, 64; French on, 65; Grant's defeat, 71; in Dunmore's war, 150; in Revolution, 301, 309. Allen, ----, killed at Point Pleasant, 171. Almon, J., _Remembrancer_, 355. Amherst county, Va., militia of, 99. Amherst, Jeffrey, orders Bouquet's expedition, 107. Anderson, James, early settler, 126. Appalachas, Indian village, attacked by Narvaez, 7. Arbuckle, Matthew, in Dunmore's war, 165, 170, 175; at murder of Cornstalk, 211, 212, 216; commandant of Ft. Randolph, 209, 241. Archæology. _See_ Mound-builders. Archer, Betsy, daughter of Sampson, 52. Archer, Sampson, early settler, 52, 89. Arkansas river, Salling at, 48. Armstrong, Capt., on Harmar's campaign, 394. Ashcraft, Uriah, attacked by Indians, 397. Ashly, Lieut., killed by Indians, 332. Athol, Thomas, 93. Au Glaize river, treaty of, 376; Wayne on, 424, 425. Augusta county, Va., formed, 55, 57, 61, 151; early settlers in, 53; census (1830), 55, 56; militia of, 49, 52, 66, 68, 81, 90, 164, 166, 170, 209, 210; McDowell's fight, 52; ransom of Moores, 374; Preston's _Register of Indian Depredations_, 87; _History of_, 246. Bailey, ----, in Dunmore's war, 169. Bailey, Minter, 240. Baker, ----, discovers Peter Waggoner, 410. Baker, Henry, killed by Indians, 291, 292. Baker, Joshua, murders Logan family, 125, 148-150. Baker, William, explores Kentucky, 115. Baker's bottom, massacre of Indians at, 134, 142, 148-150, 184. Bald Eagle, killed by whites, 135, 136. Barkley, Elihu, with Braddock, 66. Barlow, Joel, agent of Scioto Co., 60. Bartlett's run, 248. Bath county, Va., census (1830), 55, 56. Baxter's run, 247. Bean, Capt., on Sandusky campaign, 328. Beard, Samuel, early settler, 127. Bear Grass river, early settlements on, 274; foray on, 384, 385. Beaver, Delaware chief, 45. Beaver river, Shingiss Old Town, 45; Moravians on, 314; Ft. McIntosh built, 237; treaty at Ft. McIntosh, 366. Bedinger, George M., in Bowman's campaign, 271. Bedford county, Pa., 190; in "Black boys" uprising, 112-114. Bedford county, Va., 70; militia of, 164. Bell, James, with Braddock, 66. Berkeley county, W. Va., census (1830), 55, 56; militia of, 164. Berkeley, Sir William, fosters western exploration, 64. Berlin, W. Va., 290; foray near, 421. Beverly, W. Va., origin of, 74. Big Beaver river. _See_ Beaver. Big Bone creek, Clark at, 146. Big Bone lick, 271. Biggs, Benjamin, early settler, 125, 203; killed by Indians, 332. Big Hockhocking river. _See_ Hockhocking. Big Kanawha river. _See_ Great Kanawha. Big Knives. _See_ Long Knives. Big lick, 162. Big Miami river. _See_ Miami. Big Sandy river, in Shawnee campaign, 81-86. Big Sewell mountain, origin of name, 57. Bildercock, ----, militia officer, 227, 228. Bingamon creek, forays on, 367, 369. Bird, Henry, attacks American borderers, 254; beseiges Ft. Laurens, 262; invades Kentucky, 286, 297-300, 305. Black Beard, Shawnee chief, 268. Black boys, border regulators, 105, 106; attack Pennsylvania traders, 109-116. Black Fish, Shawnee chief, 201, 202, 266, 268, 273. Black Hoof, Shawnee chief, 268. Bledsoe, Anthony, in Dunmore's war, 167. Blevins, William, early settler, 59, 60. Blue licks, 268; Boone's captivity, 265-267; battle of, 351-354, 388. Blue ridge, 69, 83, 100; early tribes of, 44, 47; early explorations of, 64; Borden grant, 51; first settlements beyond, 50, 52, 55. Bluestone river, 61; in Sandy creek voyage, 82. Boiling Springs, Ky., represented in Transylvania legislature, 193. Bolivar, O., 261. Bonnett, John, killed by Indians, 377. Boone county, N. Y., Delawares in, 136. Boone, Daniel, on Holston, 59; first explores Kentucky, 142-144; second trip (1773), 144, 145, 147; in Dunmore's war, 152, 153, 190; founds Boonesborough, 190-197; captured by Indians, 265-267; in Chêne's attack on Boonesborough, 268, 269; in Paint creek expedition, 267, 268; at battle of Blue licks, 351-353. Boone, Mrs. Daniel, first white woman in Kentucky, 196, 197. Boone, James, killed by Indians, 144, 145. Boone, Squire, explores Kentucky, 143, 144. Boonesborough, Ky., founded, 190-197; first attacked by Indians, 200, 202, 205; Bowman's arrival, 207, 208; during Boone's captivity, 265-267; Chêne's attack on, 268, 270; during Revolution, 350, 351. Booth's creek, origin of name, 122, 123; forays on, 247, 248, 290, 309, 343. Booth, James, early settler, 122, 123; killed by Indians, 247. Borden, Benjamin, Sr., land-grant, 50-54, 66; sketch, 51. Borden, Benjamin, Jr., 52. Boshears, William, scouting service, 227, 228. Botetourt county, Va., 66, 70; census (1830), 55, 56; Holston settlement, 59; militia of, 81, 164, 165, 167, 209, 210. Bouquet, Henry, campaign against Indians, 106-109, 173; treaty with Indians, 91, 141, 173, 179. Bourbon county, Ky., 67, 115. Bowman, James L., 79. Bowman, John, campaign (1779), 190; early defense of Kentucky, 207, 208; Chillicothe expedition, 271-274; cited, 268; sketch, 271. Boyd, John, killed by Indians, 222. Bozarth, George, adventure with Indians, 429, 430. Bozarth, John, Sr., attacked by Indians, 279, 429, 430. Bozarth, John, Jr., adventure with Indians, 429, 430. Bozarth, Mrs., adventures with Indians, 279, 280. Braddock, Edward, campaign and defeat of, 65-69, 71, 72, 77, 105, 106, 143, 145, 147, 169. Braddock, Pa., 68. Braddock's road, history of, 77. Brain, ----, killed by Indians, 240. Brain, Benjamin, captured by Indians, 280, 281. Brain, Isaac, captured by Indians, 280, 281. Brain, James, killed by Indians, 280, 281. Brant, Joseph, Indian chief, 254. Braxton county, Va., Bulltown massacre, 136-138. Breckenridge, Robert, in Sandy-creek voyage, 81. Brenton, Capt., on Sandusky campaign, 328. Bridger, ----, killed by Indians, 292. Brinton, Maj., on Sandusky campaign, 328. Brodhead, Daniel, expedition to Muskingum, 300-305, 309; receives news from Moravians, 315. Brooke county, W. Va., census (1830), 55, 63; forays in, 380, 381. Brooks, Thomas, scout, 266. Brown, ----, in New-river foray, 96, 97. Brown, ----, killed by Indians, 161. Brown, Adam, Sr., imprisoned by Indians, 96, 97. Brown, Adam, Jr., 96. Brown, Coleman, killed by Indians, 156. Brown, James, chases Indians, 246; attacked by Indians, 311. Brown, John, early hunter, 121. Brown, Samuel, captured by Indians, 96. Brownsville, Pa. _See_ Redstone. Bryan, William, companion of Boone, 144. Bryant, William, killed by Indians, 348. Bryant station, Ky., threatened by Bird, 296; beseiged by Caldwell, 348-351, 353, 354. Buchanan, John, diary of, 49. Buckhannon river, early settlements on, 117-122, 127; Bulltown massacre, 136; in Dunmore's war, 151; Indian forays on, 151, 275, 282, 284, 288, 290, 318, 319, 340, 342, 343, 422, 428. Buffalo creek, first settlement on, 125; Indian forays, 318, 374-376. Buffalo gap, Mackey's settlement near, 50. Buffington, Jonathan, captured by Indians, 311. Buffington, Mrs., killed by Indians, 311. Buford, ----, captain in Dunmore's war, 164, 165, 170, 171. Bulger, Maj., killed at Blue licks, 353. Bulgess, Adj., killed by Indians, 403. Bull, Capt., killed by whites, 136-138. Bullitt, Thomas, in Forbes's campaign, 71; surveys Connolly tract, 145, 146; sketch, 71, 72. Bullock, Leonard Henley, of Transylvania Co., 191. Bulltown, Va., massacre of Delawares near, 136-138. Burd, James, at Redstone, 77-79. Burning Spring, 82, 85. Burns, James, killed by Indians, 245. Bush, Adam, chases Indians, 397. Bush, John, adventure with Indians, 341, 343; killed by Indians, 396. Bush, Mrs. John, adventure with Indians, 396, 397. Bushy run, Bouquet's fight on, 108. Butler, Mann, _Kentucky_, 193. Butler, Richard, treaty commissioner, 366, 388; in St. Clair's campaign, 401-403. Butler, Robert, early settler, 126. Butterfield, Consul W., _Crawford's Expedition Against Sandusky_, 328; _History of the Girtys_, 153, 178, 189, 224, 308, 347, 404; _Washington-Irvine Correspondence_, 262. Cabell county, W. Va., census (1830), 55, 56. Cahokia, Ill., founded by La Salle, 6; Indian mounds at, 40; captured by Clark, 253. Caldwell, William, expedition against Kentucky, 348-354. California, O., founded, 392. Calf Pasture river, in Pontiac war, 97. Callaway, Richard, at Watauga treaty, 192. Cameron, Charles, at Point Pleasant, 174. Cameron, Daniel, killed by Indians, 311. Campbell, Arthur, militia officer, 268. Campbell, Capt., on Wayne's campaign, 426, 427. Campbell, George, border poet, 110, 111. Campbell, John, at Point Pleasant, 174. Campbell, William, settles on Holston, 59; at Point Pleasant, 174. Camp Charlotte, Indian treaty at, 145, 173, 176-186, 190, 197. Camp Union, in Dunmore's war, 164, 165, 167. Canaan, Joseph, killed by Indians, 422. Canestoga Indians, killed by Paxton boys, 104, 105. Captina creek, in Dunmore's war, 134, 138, 148, 149, 153; in Revolution, 230. Carder, William, attacked by Indians, 419, 420. Carlisle, Pa., trial of Smith, 113-115; Scotch-Irish at, 143. Carmichael's, Pa., founded, 123. Carpenter, Benjamin, killed by Indians, 414. Carpenter, Dr., captured by Indians, 96, 97. Carpenter, Jeremiah, 414. Carpenter, John, captured by Indians, 319. Carpenter, Nicholas, adventure with Indians, 399, 400. Carpenter, William, killed by Indians, 96, 97. Carr's creek, massacre on, 172, 173. Carver, ----, settles on Greenbrier, 57. Carver, Jonathan, visits western Indians, 20, 21, 23, 24; on Indian creek, 38. Casper's lick, 152. Catawba Indians, early strength of, 46; attack Delawares, 47; fought by McDowell, 52; claim Kentucky, 142, 194. Catawba river, early Indians on, 46; Patton's settlement, 51; forays on, 96, 98. Catholics (Roman), missionary efforts of, 36; at Gallipolis, 60. _See_ Jesuits. Cayahoga river, Delawares on, 45. Cayuga Indians, strength of, 46; in Dunmore's war, 155, 172. Cedar creek, early settlement on, 52. Champlain, Samuel de, founds Quebec, 4, 5. Charleston, S. C., 49, 59. Charlevoix, Father, on origin of Indians, 15, 16. Cheat river, 63, 118; first settlements on, 75, 76, 126; massacre of Indians on, 135; Indian forays on, 240, 291, 310, 311. Chêne, Isidore, attacks Boonesborough, 268-270. Cherokee Indians, early strength of, 46; capture Salling, 48, 49; Williamson among, 104; visit Gov. Glen, 59; in Sandy-creek voyage, 81, 82; opposition to Kentucky settlers, 142, 145; cession to Henderson, 192, 195; during Revolution, 347. Chevrout, Joseph, relieves Carder, 420. Chew, Colby, explores Kentucky, 81. Chickamauga Indians, claim Kentucky, 142. Chickasaw Indians, early strength, 46; claim Kentucky, 142; cession to Henderson, 195; in St. Clair's campaign, 403-405. Childers, William, settles on Youghiogheny, 117, 118. Chillicothe towns, Dyer's captivity, 87; in Dunmore's war, 176, 179, 182, 183, 187; Boone's captivity, 266, 267; Bowman's expedition against, 271-274; in Piqua expedition, 305, 307-309; Indian council at, 346, 347; in Harmar's campaign, 393, 394. Chillicothe (Old), Renick captivity, 91; Hannah Dennis's escape, 91-93. Chillicothe (New), Hannah Dennis's escape, 92. Chippewa Indians, early strength, 46; fight Clark, 252; during Revolution, 347; at Ft. McIntosh treaty, 366, 388. Chiyawee, Wyandot chief, 172. Christian, William, in Cherokee campaign, 59; in New-river foray, 99; in Dunmore's war, 165, 167, 170, 171, 190; killed by Indians, 385. Cincinnati, Indian relics found in, 42; Clark on site of, 306; genesis of, 390-393; in Harmar's campaign, 393-395; in St. Clair's campaign, 401, 405; in Wayne's campaign, 413, 419, 423. Circleville, O., Indians mounds at, 41. Clark, ----, on St. Clair's campaign, 402. Clark, George, scout, 271. Clark, George Rogers, on Indian mounds, 40; in Dunmore's war, 134, 164; arrival in Kentucky, 197, 200; in early defense of Kentucky, 207; founds Louisville, 146; Illinois campaign, 121, 123, 190, 252-255, 257-261, 270, 294, 295, 411; Piqua campaign, 305-309; Shawnee campaign, 354, 355; Wabash campaign, 386; treaty commissioner, 366, 388; in Spanish conspiracy, 130; sketch, 253, 254. Clark, John, ambushed by Indians, 262. Clarke, Col., Pennsylvania militia officer, 263, 264. Clarksburg, W. Va., 275; founded, 127; in Dunmore's war, 151; during Revolution, 284, 310, 311, 341, 342, 345; miscellaneous forays near, 376, 381, 383, 397. Clay, ----, killed by Indians, 166. Clegg, ----, family captured by Indians, 398, 399. Clendennin's settlement, Hannah Dennis at, 93; massacre at, 93-95; family captured by Indians, 172, 173. Clinch river, first settlements on, 59, 60; Boone on, 145, 152; in Henderson's grant, 193; foray on, 374. Coburn, Capt., chases Indians, 410, 411. Coburn's creek, 248, 249. Cochran, Nathaniel, captured by Indians, 247, 250, 251. Cocke, William, at Watauga treaty, 192. Cohunnewago Indians, strength of, 46. Colden, C., _Five Nations of New York_, 194. Coleman, Moses, killed by Indians, 285. Columbia, O., founded, 391, 392. Congo creek, 176. Connecticut, relinquishes Western land claim, 389. Connelly, ----, early settler, 126. Connoly, Darby, killed by Indians, 234. Connolly, John, agent of Dunmore, 74, 142, 145, 149; in Dunmore's war, 164, 179-181, 188; land claim at Louisville, 145, 146. Conococheague valley, massacre in, 101, 105; a fur-trade centre, 109, 113. Cooley, William, companion of Boone, 143. Coomes, William, adventure with Indians, 201. Coon, ----, daughter killed by Indians, 218, 219. Coonce, Mark, French trader, 79. Cooper, ----, killed by Indians, 311. Coplin, Benjamin, kills an Indian, 344. Corbly, John, attacked by Indiana, 345. Corn island, Clark at, 253, 294. Cornstalk, Shawnee chief, at Point Pleasant, 168, 170, 172, 173; at treaty of Camp Charlotte, 183-186; imprisoned at Ft. Randolph, 209, 215, 216; murder of, 173, 211-214, 235, 236, 241, 266; sketch of, 172, 173. Cornwallis, Lord, surrender of, 347. Coshocton, O., 153, 314. Coshocton, Indian village, Brodhead's expedition against, 302-305, 309, 316. Cottrial, Andrew, early settler, 127. Cottrial, Samuel, early settler, 127; attacked by Indians, 284, 285. Cowan, John, on Bullitt's survey, 146. Coward, ----, adventure with Indians, 166. Cowpasture river, 91. Cox, Joseph, captured by Indians, 419. Cozad, Jacob, Sr., sons killed by Indians, 420. Cozad, Jacob, Jr., escapes from Indians, 420, 421. Craig, Lieut., killed by Indians, 424. Craig, James, adventure with Indians, 203. Craig's creek, 90. Crawford, ----, killed by Indians, 344. Crawford, James, early settler, 123. Crawford, John, killed by Indians, 331, 334, 336. Crawford, William, in Dunmore's war, 164, 168, 179, 185, 220; Sandusky campaign of, 328-339; sketch, 334. Crawford, William (nephew of foregoing), killed by Indians, 331. Cresap, Michael, in Dunmore's war, 134, 149, 154, 164; accused by Logan, 184. Cresap, Thomas, opens Braddock's road, 77. Crooked creek, 169, 170. Crooked run, Indian forays on, 282, 344. Cross creek, 78. Cross, Thomas, Sr., 91. Crouch, James, wounded by Indians, 287. Crouse, Peter, killed by Indians, 282. Culpeper county, Va., 59; militia of, 66; in Dunmore's war, 159, 164. Cumberland county, Pa., 143. Cumberland Gap, Walden's trip, 60; Boone opens path, 143, 192. Cumberland, Md., Ohio Co.'s post at, 77. Cumberland river, Walden's trip, 60; explored by Smith, 115; Boone on, 152; in Henderson's purchase, 192, 193; foray on, 200. Cundiff, ----, killed at Point Pleasant, 171. Cunningham, Edward, fight with Indians, 238, 239, 367-370, 373. Cunningham, Robert, early settler, 126. Cunningham, Thomas, 218; family attacked by Indians, 367, 373. Cunningham, Mrs. Thomas, captured by Indians, 367-373. Curl, Jeremiah, attacked by Indians, 288, 289. Curner, ----, on Mad-river campaign, 387. Cusick, David, _Ancient History of Six Nations_, 18, 26, 40. Cutright, Benjamin, early settler, 122. Cutright, John, Sr., early settler, 122; murders Indians, 137; wounded by Indians, 290. Cutright, John, Jr., 122. Cutright, Peter, attacked by Indians, 288, 289. Danville, Ky., origin of, 274; convention at, 115, 190. Davis, ----, settles on Holston, 59. Davis, Mrs., daughter of John Jackson, 121. Davisson, ----, killed by Indians, 373. Davisson, Daniel, early settler, 127. Davisson, Josiah, brother of Nathaniel, 283. Davisson, Nathaniel, killed by Indians, 283, 284. Davisson, Obadiah, early settler, 127. Decker, Thomas, early settler, 123; attacked by Indians, 77, 78. Decker's creek, first settlement on, 77. De Creve Coeurs, St. John, _Lettres_, 153. De Hass, Wills, _History of Indian Wars_, 222. De Huron, George, on origin of Indians, 15. De Kalb, Baron, 86. De Laet, John, on origin of Indians, 14. Delaware Indians, on Upper Ohio, 45, 46; attacked by Catawbas, 47; in Decker's creek massacre, 77-79; Seybert massacre, 88, 89; New-river foray, 96-99; Bulltown massacre, 136-138; Pontiac's conspiracy, 136; claim Kentucky, 142; in Dunmore's war, 150, 172, 179; during Revolution, 219, 263, 301, 303, 314, 315, 320, 332, 333, 347; in Harmar's campaign, 393; Ft. McIntosh treaty, 366, 388; subsequent foray, 371; Wayne's campaign, 421. Delaware river, massacre on, 101-104. De Moraez, Emanuel, on origin of Indians, 14. Denman, Matthias, founds Cincinnati, 390-392. Dennis, Hannah, imprisoned by Indians, 89-93, 95. Dennis, Joseph, killed by Indians, 89. Denton, ----, assists Mrs. Cunningham, 372. Denton, Mrs., settles in Kentucky, 197. Deny, William, coroner of Bedford, 114. De Peyster, Arent Schuyler, commandant at Detroit, 295, 317, 365. De Soto, Ferdinand, discovers Mississippi, 7, 8. Detroit, 91; Indian villages near, 46; under French domination, 72; Logan at, 155, 156; Connolly at, 181; Boone at, 266, 267; English headquarters during Revolution, 252, 254, 255, 257; English machinations at, 207, 231, 247, 286, 295, 299, 317, 320, 336, 337; arrival of peace news, 365. De Villiers, defeats Washington, 74; destroys Redstone fort, 77. Dickinson, John, in Dunmore's war. 170, 175. Dillon, ----, killed at Point Pleasant, 171. Dillon, Mrs., killed by Indians, 240. Dinwiddie, Robert, governor of Virginia, 53, 65; authorizes Sandy-creek voyage, 81, 83, 84; _Papers_, 68, 86. Dix, Webster, 119. Dodd, Ensign, on Wayne's campaign, 424. Doddridge, John, early settler, 125. Doddridge, Joseph, _Notes on the Settlements_, 125, 126, 153, 183; MS. of, 221. Donelson, Col., runs Indian boundary, 195. Donnelly, Andrew, beseiged by Indians, 242-245; repulses them, 291. Dorman, Timothy, captured by Indians, 340, 341; turns renegade, 341, 342. Dougherty, Daniel, captured by Indians, 311, 312. Dougherty, Mrs., killed by Indians, 311. Doughty, Maj., builds Ft. Washington, 391. Douglas, James, on Bullitt's survey, 146. Dragging Canoe, Cherokee chief, 192. Dragoo, Mrs., killed by Indians, 374, 375. Drake, Lieut., on Wayne's campaign, 424. Drake, Lieut.-col., on St. Clair's campaign, 402. Drake, Samuel G., _Aboriginal Races of North America_, 409. Draper, Lyman C., historical notes by, 40, 50-53, 57-60, 65, 66, 68, 71, 72, 75, 79, 81, 83, 85-88, 90, 96, 97, 99, 101, 104, 106-108, 115, 121, 123; interviews Salling's descendants, 48; on aboriginal claims to Kentucky, 193-195; cited, 183, 203, 254. Drinnon, Thomas, attacked by Indians, 292, 293. Drinnon, Lawrence, attacked by Indians, 291, 292. Duke, Francis, killed by Indians, 359, 360. Dunbar, Pa., settled by Gist, 74. Dunkard bottom, settled, 126; massacre on, 240. Dunkard creek, a war trail, 75: first settled on, 75; forays on, 249, 250, 279, 398, 399. Dunkards, early settlements by, 75; massacre of, 76, 77. Dunkin, John, militia officer, 207. Dunlap, James, in Sandy-creek voyage, 81; killed by Indians, 87. Dunlap creek, first settlement on, 77; foray on, 96. Dunmore, Lord, 74; in Dunmore's war, 135-190, 197, 209, 220, 253, 385; opposes Henderson's purchase, 192. Du Pratz, Le Page, _History of Louisiana_, 49. Durrett, Reuben T., _Centenary of Louisville_, 294. Dutch, introduce African slavery, 10; in New York, 48. Dyer, James, imprisoned by Indians, 87, 88. East Meadows, Braddock at, 67. Eckarly family, early settlers, 126. Eckarly, Thomas, Dunkard pioneer, 75; massacre of his brother, 76, 77. Economy, Pa., 413. Ecuyer, Simeon, under Bouquet. 107. Edwards, David, killed by Indians, 252. Edwards, William, Moravian missionary, 314, 317. Elk creek, in Caldwell's invasion, 351; during Revolution, 284; foray on, 367. Elk river, origin of name, 118, 119; first settlement on, 126, 127; Stroud massacre, 136, 137; in Dunmore's war, 166, 167, 175; foray on, 414. Elk's Eye creek. _See_ Muskingum. Ellinipsico, Cornstalk's son, 172, 211-213. Elliott, Matthew, in Dunmore's war, 182, 189; attacks Wheeling, 316, 317; encourages forays, 347, 388. Ellis, Franklin, _History of Fayette Co._, 77. English, territorial claims of, 1-5, 7; emigration to Virginia, 49; first occupation of the Ohio, 63; struggle for Forks of Ohio, 64-74; Braddock's campaign, 65-69; Forbes's campaign, 69-73; Bouquet's expedition, 106-109; Dunmore's war, 134-190; Bird's invasion, 294-300, 305, 336, 337; Caldwell's invasion, 348-354; second seige of Wheeling, 356, 357; encourage forays on American borderers, 147, 207-210, 215, 216, 224, 225, 231, 236, 252, 253, 260, 285, 286, 317, 388, 425-427. Episcopalians, 50, 57. Fairfax, Lord, land-grant of, 50, 51, 334; militia officer, 101. Fairfield, Va., settled, 52. Fallen Timbers, battle of, 425-428. Falling Spring, Va., 86. Falls of Ohio. _See_ Louisville. Fauquier county, Va., 145. Fauquier, governor of Virginia, 86. Fayette county, Pa., settled, 74, 123; militia from, 328. Fayette county, W. Va., 57. Fayetteville, N. C., 192. Field, John, with Braddock, 66; adventure with Indians, 159-161; in Dunmore's war, 164, 166, 169, 171. Files. _See_ Foyle, Robert. Files creek, first settlement on, 74. Files family, massacre of, 126. Filson, John, partner of Denman, 391; _Boone's Narrative_, 268. Fincastle county, Va., 56, 220; Preston as surveyor, 140, 146; militia of, 167. Findlay, John, explores Kentucky, 142-144. Fink, ----, killed by Indians, 340. Fink, John, killed by Indians, 318, 319. Fink, Henry, early settler, 126; attacked by Indians, 288, 318, 319. Fink's run, 122. Fish creek, a war trail, 75, 399; Clark at, 134, 253; foray on, 399. Fishing creek, foray on, 374; garrison on, 417. Fitzpatrick, John, on Bullitt's survey. 146. Fleming, William, in Dunmore's war, 164, 167-170, 174, 175. Flesher, Henry, attacked by Indians, 366, 367. Floyd, John, Kentucky surveyor, 152; _Diary of_, 196; builds fort at Louisville, 294; in Piqua campaign, 307. Florida, discovered by Spanish, 7, 8. Folebaum, George, killed by Indians, 362. Folke, George, killed by Indians, 102, 103. Fontaine, Maj., killed by Indians, 395. Forbes, John, campaign against Ft. Du Quesne, 69-73, 77, 79, 108, 145, 190. Fordyce, Capt., 72. Foreman, William, defeated by Indians, 228-230, 356. Fort Bedford, in "Black boys" uprising, 112-114. Fort Bolling, during Revolution, 226. Fort Boone, seat of Henderson colony, 153. Fort Buckhannon, during Revolution, 313. Fort Burd. _See_ Redstone. Fort Bush, 121. Fort Casinoe, in Dunmore's war, 151. Fort Coburn, during Revolution, 248. Fort Crevecoeur, built by La Salle, 6; Salling at, 48. Fort Cumberland, 71. Fort Dickenson, massacre of children, 100. Fort Dinwiddie, in Sandy-creek voyage, 81; in New-river foray, 97, 99; during Revolution, 291. Fort Du Quesne, erected, 65; Braddock's expedition, 65-69; Forbes's campaign, 69-73; destroyed, 73. _See_ Pittsburg. Fort Fincastle. _See_ Wheeling. Fort Finney, built, 392; treaty of, 388. Fort Frederick, 71. Fort Frontenac, built by La Salle, 6; Salling at, 48. Fort Gower, in Dunmore's war, 179, 182. Fort Greenville. _See_ Greenville, O. Fort Hadden, during Revolution, 286. Fort Hamilton, built by St. Clair, 401; in Wayne's campaign, 413. Fort Henry. _See_ Wheeling. Fort Holliday, during Revolution, 226, 227. Fort Jackson, in Dunmore's war, 151. Fort Jefferson (Ky.), built by Clark, 254. Fort Jefferson (O.), built by St. Clair, 401-403, 405; in Wayne's campaign, 413. Fort Laurens, during Revolution, 256, 261-265. Fort Le Boeuf, Washington at, 74, 77. Fort Ligonier, in Forbes's campaign, 73. Fort Littleton, in French and Indian war, 190. Fort Loudon, in "Black boys" uprising, 110, 111. Fort McIntosh, built, 237; during Revolution, 263, 265; treaty of, 366. Fort Martin, during Revolution, 282. Fort Massac, Clark at, 253. Fort Miami, Indian villages near, 46. Fort Necessity, Washington's defeat at, 69, 74, 77, 145. Fort Nutter, in Dunmore's war, 151; during Revolution, 275, 341. Fort Pitt. _See_ Pittsburg. Fort Pleasant, Eckarly at, 76. Fort Powers, during Revolution, 247. Fort Pricket, in Dunmore's war, 151; during Revolution, 240, 275, 279. Fort Randolph. _See_ Point Pleasant. Fort Recovery, 401; built by Wilkinson, 419; in Wayne's campaign, 423, 424. Fort Richards, during Revolution, 240, 241. Fort Sackville. _See_ Vincennes. Fort St. Joseph, Indian villages near, 46; in Wayne's campaign, 413. Fort Seybert, massacre at, 87-89. Fort Shepherd, in Dunmore's war, 151. Fort Stradler, during Revolution, 249, 250. Fort Stanwix, treaty of, 70, 195. Fort Washington. _See_ Cincinnati. Fort Wells, 381. Fort West, during Revolution, 240, 241, 245, 246; forays against, 287-290, 410. Fort Westfall, in Dunmore's war, 151; during Revolution, 343. Fort Wilson, during Revolution, 343. Fort Young, Hannah Dennis at, 93; in New-river foray, 96, 97. Fox river, explored by French, 6. Foyle, Robert, settles on Files's creek, 74; massacre of family, 75. Franklin, Benjamin, 145. Franklin county, Pa., 106. Franklin, W. Va., 87. Frederick county, Va., established, 55; census (1830), 55, 56; Borden manor, 51; militia of, 101, 164. Freeman, ----, killed by Indians, 412. Freeman, Mrs., killed by Indians, 245, 246. Freeman's creek, forays on, 396, 419. French in America, territorial claims, 5; early explorations, 4-6; occupy Upper Ohio, 45, 63, 64; ransom Salling, 48; conflict with Ohio Co., 64, 65, 74, 77, 123, 147; on Muskingum, 79: on Scioto, 82; Braddock's campaign, 65-69; Forbes's campaign, 69-73; French and Indian war, 143, 145, 156, 159, 190, 334; found Gallipolis, 60, 82; make peace with England, 106, 120; in attack on Boonesborough, 268-270; relations with Clark, 254. French creek, Smith's expedition to, 106. French lick, 193. Friedensstadt, Pa., Moravian village, 314, 319. Friend, Joseph, chases Indians, 311. Frothingham, Lieut., killed by Indians, 395. Fry, Col., in Braddock's army, 66. Fullenwieder, Peter, defends Rice's fort, 362. Fur trade, tribal barter, 34; at Winchester, 47; Borden's trade, 51; of Ohio Co., 64, 65, 67, 74, 77, 147; on Scioto, 82; French and English rivalry, 138, 139; Findlay's adventures, 143; of Dunkards, 76; Gibson's, 79; "Black-boys" trouble, 106, 109-116; Simpson's adventures, 118, 119; at Pringle's fort, 120; in Dunmore's war, 150; McKee's, 347; in W. Va., 361. Furrenash, Charles, children killed by Indians, 313. Gaddis, Thomas, on Sandusky campaign, 328. Gage, Thomas, confers with Connolly, 181. Gallatin, Albert, founds Geneva, W. Va., 117. Gallipolis, founded by French, 60, 82, 84. Game, pioneers as hunters, 131; on Greenbrier, 56, 57, 126; in Kentucky, 196, 198, 199, 206, 265, 266; in Valley of Virginia, 119-122; in Tygart's valley, 232, 234; in West Virginia, 280, 283, 367, 374, 375, 410, 411. Garcia, Gregorio, on origin of Indians, 14. Gates, Horatio, at Saratoga, 86. Gatliff, Charles, fights Indians, 244. Gauley river. 57; Stroud massacre, 136, 137. Genêt, Edmund Charles, commissions Clark, 254. Geneva, W. Va., founded, 117. George, Robert, attacks James Smith, 114. George's creek, Pringle settlement, 117; murder of Bald Eagle, 136. Georgia, early slavery in, 9, 10; in Tecumseh's conspiracy, 36. Germans, at Gallipolis. 60. Gibson, Col. John, at Fort Pitt, 78, 79; in Dunmore's war, 176, 184; expert swordsman, 207; commands Ft. Laurens, 256, 261-265. Gibson, John, family captured by Indians, 287. Giles county, Va., census (1830), 55, 56. Gilmore, ----, killed by Indians, 211, 212. Girty, George and James, renegades, 178; during Revolution, 295. Girty, Simon, in Dunmore's war, 178, 179, 184, 189; not at Wheeling seige, 224, 225, 231; during Revolution, 254, 262, 273, 295, 308, 333, 334, 347, 350-353; subsequent forays, 372, 388; in St. Clair's defeat, 404. Gist, Christopher, visits Shingiss, 45; trip down Ohio, 79; settles Fayette Co., Pa., 74, 77, 123. Glass, ----, family attacked by Indians, 380, 381. Glenn, ----, governor of South Carolina, 59. Glum, Mrs., at seige of Wheeling, 225. Gnadenhütten, Moravian village, 314, 317; sacked by whites, 319, 321-327. Gnatty creek, foray on, 382. Goff, John, early settler, 126. Goldsby, ----, killed at Point Pleasant, 171. Gooch, Sir William, grants Borden manor, 50, 51. Gordon, Capt, killed at Blue Licks, 353. Goschocking. _See_ Coshocton. Graham, James, killed by Indians, 245. Grand Portage, Carver at, 20. Grand river. _See_ Ottawa. Grant, James, with Braddock, 66; defeated by Indians, 68-73; in "Blackboys" uprising, 110, 111. Grave creek, Indian mounds on, 40; first settlement on, 125; in Dunmore's war, 134; in Foreman's defeat, 229, 230, 235, 356. Grayson county, Va., census (1830), 55. Great bridge, Va., defeat of Fordyce, 72. Greathouse, Daniel, murders Logan's family, 125, 149. Great Kanawha river, 60, 61; Salling on, 49; discovered by Wood, 64; in Sandycreek voyage, 82, 85; in Hannah Dennis's escape, 93; Squire Boone on, 143; in Dunmore's war, 145, 159-161, 164-167, 169-174, 178; in Hand's expedition, 209-211; during Revolution, 291-292; salines of, 265. Great Meadows. Washington at, 77, 145. Great Miami river. _See_ Miami. Great Sandy river, 60, 61; in New-river foray, 96. Green, George, at seige of Wheeling, 356. Green river, Henderson's grant on, 196; early surveys, 365; early settlements, 274. Green, Thomas M., _Spanish Conspiracy_, 386. Greenbrier county, W. Va., 53, 54, 57, 71, 91; census (1830), 55, 56; Shawnee attack (1755), 81; Clendennin massacre, 93-95; militia from, 210, 211; emigrants from, 286; forays into, 242-245, 291-293. Greenbrier river, 61; explored, 126; origin of name, 49; Loyal Co.'s grant, 49; first settlements on, 56-59; Lewis on, 68; in Pontiac's war, 97. Greenlee, Mary, enters land on Borden manor, 52, 53. Greenville, O., Ft. Hamilton built, 401; treaty at, 420, 430. Gregg, Mrs., attacked by Indians, 343. Grenadier Squaw, in Dunmore's war, 176; at Ft. Randolph, 242; in Mad-river campaign, 388. Grigsby; Charles, family killed by Indians, 217, 218. Grim, John, 183. Grollon, Father, on origin of Indians, 15, 16. Grundy, Felix, 247. Grundy, William, killed by Indians, 247. Gunn, Catharine, imprisoned by Indians, 98. Gwinnett, Button, killed by McIntosh, 237. Hacker, John, settles on Buckhannon, 121, 122; daughter wounded by Indians, 378-380. Hacker, Mrs., attacked by Indians, 245. Hacker, William, early hunter, 121; murders Indians, 135, 137; attacked by Indians, 245. Hacker's creek, Indian relics on, 42; origin of name, 121, 122; first settlement on, 127; in Dunmore's war, 151; Bulltown massacre, 136, 137; killing of Hughes and Lowther, 240, 241; Waggoner massacre, 408, 411; miscellaneous forays on, 275, 287-290, 367, 377, 382, 419, 420. Hadden, ----, early settler, 126. Hadden, John, 234. Hagerstown, Md., 361. Hagle, Michael, killed by Indians, 341. Haldimand, Sir Frederick, English general-in-chief, 252, 261. Half King, Wyandot chief, 230, 316. Hall, Capt., murders Cornstalk, 211, 212. Hall, James, _Sketches of the West_, 193. Hall, Minor C., 287. Hamilton, ----, adventure with Indians, 211, 212. Hamilton, Capt., chases Indians. 245. Hamilton, Henry, English lieutenant-governor, 207, 210; encourages Indian forays, 224, 225, 252, 266, 268, 269; attacks Clark, 253, 257, 258; captured by Clark, 254, 255, 259-261. Hamilton, Miss, captured by Indians, 234. Hammond, Philip, scouting adventure, 242, 243. Hampden Sydney College, Va., 81. Hampshire county, W. Va., census (1830), 56; militia from, 101, 230. Hamtramck, J. F., on Harmar's campaign, 394; on St. Clair's campaign, 401. Hancock, William, escapes from Indians, 267, 268. Hand, Edward, commands Ft. Pitt. 209-211, 213, 214, 216, 219, 221, 230; MS. of, 221; sketch, 210. Handsucker, ----, killed by Indians, 398, 399. Hangard. _See_ Redstone. Hanover county, Va., 191. Haptonstall, Abraham, on Bullitt's survey, 146. Harbert, ----, killed by Indians, 233. Hardin county, Ky., origin of name, 123. Hardin, John, early Kentucky settler, 123; on Harmar's campaign, 394; killed by Indians, 412. Hardman, ----, of Hacker's creek, 410. Hardy county, W. Va., census (1830), 56. Hargus, John, kills an Indian, 154, 155. Harlan, Silas, in Bowman's campaign, 271. Harland, Maj., killed at Blue Licks, 253. Harmar, Josiah, at treaty of Ft. McIntosh, 366; occupies Ft. Washington, 391, 392; campaign of, 384, 393-395, 400, 408. Harpold, Nicholas, kills Indians, 135. Harrison, ----, attacked by Indians, 344. Harrison, Benjamin, in Dunmore's war, 170; governor of Virginia, 366. Harrison, Burr, rescued by Logan, 203. Harrison county, W. Va., 373; census (1830), 56, 63; first sheriff of, 127; forays in, 217, 369. Harrison, S. R., cited, 310. Harrison, William, killed by Indians, 331, 334, 336. Harrison, William H., defeats Tecumseh, 36. Harrod, James, on Bullitt's survey, 146; founds Harrodsburg, 152, 190, 191; prominence as a pioneer, 197, 200; sketch, 190, 191. Harrod, Samuel, explores Kentucky, 190. Harrod, William, with Clark, 190; in Bowman's campaign, 271, 273. Harrodsburg, Ky., founded, 146, 152, 190, 191, 197; represented in Transylvania legislature, 193; first attacked by Indians, 200-202, 205, 208; Clark's defense of, 253; settlers' council at, 271. Hart, David, of Transylvania Co., 191. Hart, Nathaniel, of Transylvania Co., 191-193. Hart, Thomas, of Transylvania Co., 191. Hartley, Cecil B., _Life of Wetzel_, 161. Hartshorn, ----, ensign in Harmar's campaign, 394; captain with Wayne, 423, 424. Haymond, John, chases Indians, 398. Hayward, John, _History of Tennessee_, 60. Hazard, Samuel, _U. S. Register_, 193. Heavener, Nicholas, 121. Heckewelder, John G., Moravian missionary, 97, 301, 302, 314, 315, 317; peace commissioner, 412; _Narrative_, 325; sketch, 301, 302. Hedgman river, 55. Hellen, Thomas, captured by Indians, 156, 157; killed by Indians, 161. Helms, Leonard, holds Vincennes, 258, 260. Henderson, Archibald, 193. Henderson, Nathaniel, at Watauga treaty, 192. Henderson, Richard, founds Transylvania, 153, 191-196; sketch, 191-193. Henderson, Samuel, father of Richard, 191. Henderson, Leonard, 193. Hennepin, Father Louis, French explorer, 6. Henry county, Va., 60. Henry, Patrick, governor of Virginia, 173, 186, 220, 366. Herbert, William, in Dunmore's war, 167, 175. Hickenbotham, Capt., attacks Indians, 99. Hickman, Adam, Jr., 127. Hickman, Sotha, early settler, 127, 284. Hill, Richard, attacked by Indians, 291. Hinkstone, ----, captured by Indians, 297, 298, 305. Hite, Isaac, on Bullitt's survey, 146. Hockhocking river, in Dunmore's war, 168, 179, 182, 183; Indians raided on, 383. Hockingport, O., founded, 179. Hogan, Mrs., settles in Kentucky, 197. Hogg, James, of Transylvania Co., 191. Hogg, Peter, in Sandy-creek voyage, 81-85. Hogg, William, in Sandy-creek voyage, 81. Hoggin, ----, of St. Asaph's, 205. Holden, Joseph, companion of Boone, 143. Holder, John, in Bowman's campaign, 271. Holder's station, Ky., during Caldwell's invasion, 349. Hollis, John, Indian spy, 245. Holmes, John, informs against James Smith, 114. Holston, Stephen, settles on Holston, 59. Holston river, 60; first settlements on, 58, 115; forays on, 158, 184. Holston settlements, militia of, 165, 170, 268; Harrod at, 190; Boone at, 196; Logan at, 204-206; Mrs. Cunningham at, 372, 373. Hornbeck, Benjamin, captured by Indians, 311. Hornbeck, Mrs., killed by Indians, 311. Horse Shoe bottom, settled, 126. Horton, Joshua, explores Kentucky, 115. Howard, John, companion of Salling, 49. Hudson, William, killed by Indians, 203. Hughes, Charles, chases Indians, 246. Hughes, Elias, scouting service, 312; fights Indians, 345, 376, 377. Hughes, Jesse, early hunter, 121; chases Indians, 246, 378, 379, 410; services at Ft. West, 288; scouting service, 312; escapes from Indians, 399, 400; daughter captured by Indians, 377-380; character, 137. Hughes, Thomas, early settler, 121, 123; defense of borderers, 367; killed by Indians, 240, 241. Hughey, Joseph, killed by Indians, 168. Hull, Samuel, killed by Indians, 383. Huron Indians, possible origin of, 16. Husted, Gilbert, captured by Indians, 248. Hutchins, Thomas, geographer, 46. Iberville. Lemoyne d', finds Mississippi, 7. Ice, John, killed by Indians, 374. Illinois, early French in, 6, 7; Clark's expedition to, 146, 252-255, 257, 261. Illinois Indians, claim Kentucky, 142; agree to keep peace, 412. Ingles, Capt., on New-river campaign, 99. Indian creek, foray on, 312, 313. Indian Short creek, 380, 381, 415. Indians, origin of, 12-27; beliefs, customs and traditions, 17-43; forest commerce, 34; prehistoric remains, 39-43; intimacy with French, 5, 64; relations with Spanish, 7-9; claims to Kentucky reviewed, 193-195; relations with first settlers, 129-133; Christian missions among, 106. _See_ the several tribes. Iroquois Indians, supposed origin of, 44; oppose French on Ohio, 64; at Easton treaty, 58; at Ft. Stanwix treaty, 70; claim Kentucky, 194, 195. Irvine, William, releases Moravians, 317; Indian campaign of, 355. Isaac's creek, 312. Ivens, Sally, captured by Indians, 373, 374. Jackson, ----, adventure with Indians, 289. Jackson county, O., 175. Jackson county, W. Va., 137. Jackson, Edward, early settler, 121. Jackson, George, early settler, 121; attacked by Indians, 313; defends Buckhannon, 342; chases Indians, 398. Jackson, John, early settler, 121; attacked by Indians, 313. Jackson, Ned J., 287. Jackson's river, 57, 71, 81; Hannah Dennis on, 93; in Pontiac war, 97; forays on, 90, 96, 173. James, Enoch, adventure with Indians, 218, 219. James river, 61, 66, 86; Salling on, 48, 50; early settlements on, 52; McDowell's fight, 52; Borden's grant, 50-53; forays on, 89-91, 96. Jefferson county, W.Va., census (1830), 56. Jefferson, Thomas, on origin of Indians, 13, 14, 25, 26; on Indian mounds, 41; "improves" Logan's speech, 184; _Notes on Virginia_, 134. Jesuits, early missions to Indians, 14, 15, 60, 64, 410, 411: _Relations_, 194. Jew, ----, killed by Indians, 91. Jew, Sally, imprisoned by Indians, 90. Johnson, ----, thought to have been killed by James Smith, 113-115. Johnson, Henry and John, escape from Indians, 415-417. Johnson, Richard M., 348. Johnson, Robert, arrives in Kentucky, 348. Johnson, William, family massacred by Indians, 381, 382. Johnson, Sir William, British Indian superintendent, 108, 136. Johnston, William, of Transylvania, 191. Joliet, Louis, discovers Mississippi, 5, 6. Judah, Henry, kills Indians, 135. Juggins, Elizabeth, adventure with Indians, 309, 310. Juggins, John, killed by Indians, 290. Juniata river, 112, 113. Kanawha county, W. Va., census (1830), 55, 56. Kaskaskia, Ill., 294; founded by La Salle, 6; Salling at, 48; Clark's capture of, 253-255, 257, 258, 260, 411. Kate (negress), at seige of Wheeling, 356. Keeney's knob, massacre at, 173. Kekionga, Miami village, 393. Kellar, Isaac, killed by Indians, 385. Kelly, Tady, in Dunmore's war, 153. Kelly, Walter, killed by Indians, 159-161. Kennedy, John, wounded by Indians, 203. Kenton, Simon, border scout, 161; in Dunmore's war, 164, 167; arrival in Kentucky, 197. Kentucky, 66, 67, 75; Indian antiquities in, 43; exploration by Salling, 48, 49; by Bullitt, 71; by Walker, 81; by Smith, 115; by Findlay, 142, 143; by Boone, 142-145, 147, 152, 153, 190; by Stone, 190; Indian claims to, 193-195; Connolly's survey, 145, 146; first settlements in, 123, 197; early land jobbing, 196, 197; Harrodsburg founded, 146, 190; Indian opposition to first settlers, 140-142, 189, 190, 200-208; character of pioneers, 197-200; rapid increase of population, 274; Transylvania Co., 191-196; early missions, 106; Spanish conspiracy, 130; state convention, 106. Kentucky river, Boone on, 152, 153; Harrod on, 190; Catawbas on, 194; in Henderson's purchase. 192, 193, 195, 196; forays on, 268, 269, 374. Kercheval, Samuel, _History of Valley of Virginia_, 49, 87, 88. Kersey, Lieut. [Kearsey, John], builds at Columbia. 390, 391. Kettle, Richard, chases Indians, 311. Killbuck, Delaware chief, 88. Kimberlain, Jacob, escapes from Indians, 99. King, Thomas, Iroquois chief, 58. Kinnikinnick creek, 174, 176. Kiskepila. _See_ Little Eagle. Kittanning, in Hand's expedition, 210. Knight, John, captured by Indians, 332-335, 338. Knoxville, Tenn., 60. Kuhn, Abraham, Wyandot chief, 97. Kuydendall, Capt., in Dunmore's war, 182. Lackey, Thomas, warns settlers, 286. Lake Cayuga, early Indians on, 46. Lake Erie, Catawbas on, 47. Lake Michigan, early French on, 6. Lancaster, Pa., massacre of Canestogas, 104, 105; treaty of, 195. Land claims, Loyal Co., 49, 58; Lord Fairfax, 50, 51; Borden manor, 50-53; Ohio Co., 64, 65, 67, 74, 77, 147; Pittsylvania, 145; Virginia military warrants, 145; Transylvania Co., 191-196; Connolly, 145, 146; early Kentucky jobbers, 196, 197; "tomahawk rights," 126; Indian attitude toward, 140, 141; commissioners killed by Indians, 311; post-Revolutionary military warrants, 365, 366; Ohio Co. of Associates, 389, 390; Scioto Co., 60; Miami purchase, 390-392. Lane, Lalph, attempts western exploration, 64. Langlade, Charles, at Braddock's defeat, 68. L'Anguille, Miami village, 407. La Salle, Chevalier, explorations of, 6, 7; at falls of Ohio, 64. Lanson run, 421. Laurel hills, 126; explored by Walden, 60; by Cresap, 77; by Boone, 192. Lawless, Henry, explores Kentucky, 81. Leading creek, 419; forays on, 311, 428. Lederer, John, on Blue ridge, 64. Lee. Arthur, treaty commissioner, 366, 388. Lee county, Va., census (1830), 56. Leet, Maj., on Sandusky campaign, 330. Leffler, George, early settler, 125; defends Rice's fort, 362. Leffler, Jacob, Jr., defends Rice's fort, 362. Legget, George, lost in Indian foray, 399. Le Moyne, Father, discovers Alleghany, 64. Lewis, ----, escapes from Indians, 422. Lewis, Andrew, 49, 50; explores Greenbrier, 57, 58; with Braddock, 66; in Forbes's campaign, 68-73; in Sandy-creek voyage, 81-83, 86; in Dunmore's war, 151, 164-168, 170, 174-176, 178-183, 190; _Journal_, 81, 82. Lewis, Charles, with Braddock, 66; in Pontiac's war, 97; in Dunmore's war, 151, 159, 166-168; death, 168-171; _Journal_, 69. Lewis county, W. Va., census (1830), 56, 63. Lewis, John (1), father of Andrew, 53, 62; explores Greenbrier, 57, 58; with Braddock, 66; settles Augusta, 66; sketch, 49, 50. Lewis, John (2), scalped by Indians, 102. Lewis, John, Jr., with Braddock, 66. Lewis, Margaret, wife of John (1), 53. Lewis, Samuel, defends Greenbrier, 244, 245. Lewis, Thomas, son of John (1), 50; with Braddock, 66. Lewis, William, with Braddock, 66. Lewisburgh, W. Va., founded, 164, 165, 244; massacre near, 172, 173. Lexington, Ky., 271; founded, 52, 274; threatened by Bird, 296-298, 305; during Caldwell's invasion, 349, 351. Licking river, Thompson's surveys, 146; early settlements on, 274; Boone's captivity, 265, 266; Bird's invasion, 295, 297, 298; in Piqua campaign, 305, 307; in Caldwell's invasion, 348; other Revolutionary happenings, 271, 352. Lichtenau, Moravian village, 314. Limestone creek, 348. Lincoln, Benjamin, peace commissioner, 412. Lineback, ----, _Relation_, 324. Linn, John, in defense of Wheeling, 356, 358. Linn, William, at Foreman's defeat, 229, 230. Linsey, Joseph, settles on Youghiogheny, 117, 118. Little Carpenter, a Cherokee, 192. Little Eagle, Mingo chief, 78, 79. Little Kenawha river, Bulltown massacre, 136-138; in Dunmore's war, 165, 179; during Revolution, 232, 284; miscellaneous forays on, 376, 397, 400, 411, 419. Little Meadow creek, 166. Little Meadows, 77. Little Miami river, Shawnees on, 271; Boone on, 266; during Revolution, 273; Symmes's land-grant on, 390-392; in Harmar's campaign, 393; in St. Clair's campaign, 400-405. Little Saluda river, Holston on, 59. Little Sewell mountain, origin of name, 57. Lochaber, treaty of, 195. Lockard, Patrick, with Braddock, 66. Lockport, O., 314. Lockridge, ----, at Point Pleasant, 175. Locust Grove, Ky., 254. Logan, Ann, adventure with Indians, 203. Logan, Benjamin, builds Logan's station, 197; in seige thereof, 200, 202-207; in Bowman's campaign, 271-273; in Piqua campaign, 306; at Blue Licks, 351-354; in Shawnee campaign, 355; in Miami campaign, 386-388; sketch, 204. Logan county, O., 153. Logan county, W. Va., census (1830), 56. Logan, Mingo chief, massacre of family, 125, 134, 138, 142, 148-150, 184; attacks whites, 155-158; speech of, 184. Logan's station, Ky., founded, 197; represented in Transylvania legislature, 193; attacked by Indians, 200, 202-208. Logstown, old trading post, 413; Dyer's captivity, 87; treaty at, 195. Long, ----, assists Mrs. Cunningham, 372. "Long Knives," origin of term, 79, 80; use of, 183, 186, 207, 406. Looney's creek, 89; Pringle settlement on, 118. Losantiville, origin of name, 391, 392. _See_ Cincinnati. Loss creek, 218. Lost creek, foray on, 383. Louisa Company, settles Kentucky, 191. Louisiana, founded, 7; French in, 64; Spanish in, 130. Louisville, 271, 357; Iroquois defeat Shawnees, 194, 195; La Salle at, 64; Findlay at, 143; Boone at, 152; surveyed by Bullitt, 145; founded by Clark, 146, 253, 254; threatened by Bird, 294; in Clark's Wabash expedition, 386; _Literary News-Letter_, 193. Love, Philip, in Dunmore's war, 170. Lowdermilk, Will H., _History of Cumberland_, 77. Lowther, Jonathan, killed by Indians, 241. Lowther, Robert, early settler, 127. Lowther, William, militia officer, 127, 128; chases Indians, 312, 313, 376, 377. Loyal Company, land grant on Greenbrier, 49, 58. Loyal Hanna river, in Forbes's campaign, 73; foray on, 108. Ludlow, Israel, partner of Denman, 391. Luttsell, John, of Transylvania Co., 191, 193. Lynn, Jane, marries Hugh Paul and David Stuart, 53, 54. Lynn, Margaret, wife of John Lewis, 49. Lytle, William, on Mad-river campaign, 387, 388. McBride, Capt., killed at Blue Licks, 353. McClannahan, Robert, killed at Point Pleasant, 171. McClelland, John, on Sandusky campaign, 328, 336. McClelland's station, Ky., attacked by Indians, 200. McClure, Mrs., captured by Indians, 385. McCollum, John, in New-river foray, 99. McCulloch, William, in Dunmore's war, 180. McCullough family, early settlers, 125. McCullough, Maj., at seige of Wheeling, 228. McCullough, Miss, at seige of Wheeling, 356. McDonald, Angus, Wapatomica expedition, 138, 153-155, 164, 165; in Dunmore's war, 220. McDowell, Ephraim, early settler, 52. McDowell, James, 52. McDowell, John, early settler, 53; killed by Indians, 49, 51, 52, 66. McDowell, Thomas, killed by Indians, 196. McFeeters, Jeremiah, killed by Indians, 196. McGary, Maj., of St. Asaph's, 205; at Blue Licks, 352; in Mad-river campaign, 388. McGary, Mrs., settles in Kentucky, 197. McGuire, Maj., wounds an Indian, 381. McIntire, John, killed by Indians, 397, 398. McIntosh, Lachlan, commandant at Pittsburgh, 210, 237, 300; expedition against Sandusky, 252, 255, 256, 261, 264, 265. McIver, Hugh, killed by Indians, 292. Mack, John, family massacred by Indians, 382. McKee, Alexander, in Dunmore's war, 189; during Revolution, 254, 295, 347; ransoms Mrs. Cunningham, 372; encourages forays, 388; property destroyed by Wayne, 426. McKee, Capt., commandant at Ft. Randolph, 241-243. McKee, William, at Point Pleasant, 174. McKenley's run, 410. Mackey, John, early settler, 49, 50, 66. Mackinaw, in Tecumseh's conspiracy, 36; Chippewa villages near, 46. McKinley, John, killed by Indians, 333. McKnight, Charles, _Our Western Border_, 373. McLain, John, killed by Indians, 287. McMahon, Maj., killed by Indians, 423. McMahon's creek, 162. McMechen, James, a Wheeling settler, 222, 228, 230. McMurtry, Capt., killed by Indians, 395. McNutt, John, in Sandy-creek voyage, 81, 85, 86; in Revolution, 86; _Journal_, 86. McWhorter, Henry, early settler, 287, 288, 410. McWhorter, J. M., 288. McWhorter, L. V., cited, 119, 137, 278, 287, 340, 368-371, 376, 377, 409-411, 421. McWhorter, Mansfield, 410. Mad river, 124; Logan's campaign to, 386-388. Mahoning creek, 210. Manear, John, killed by Indians, 311. Mann's lick, 152. Marietta, O., the Scioto purchase, 60; settled by Ohio Co., 389, 390; cattle supply attacked, 399, 400. Marion county, W. Va., 279. Marks, Lieut., on Wayne's campaign, 424. Marquette, Father James, discovers Mississippi, 5, 6. Marshall, James, militia officer, 327, 328. Martin, ----, settles on Greenbrier, 57. Martin, ----, in seige of St. Asaph's, 204. Martin, Gov., opposes Henderson's purchase, 192, 193. Martin, Jesse, 123. Martin, William, 123. Martin's station, Ky., sacked by Bird, 296, 298; defended, 350. Martinsville, Va., 60. Maryland, emigrants from, 125. Mason county, W. Va., census (1830), 56. Mason, Samuel, at seige of Wheeling, 221-224, 228. Massachusetts, relinquishes Western land claim, 389. Massawomee Indians, in West Virginia, 44. Matthew, John, early settler, 52. Matthews, George, attacked by Indians, 90, 91; in Dunmore's war, 169, 170, 174. Matthews, John, with Braddock, 66. Matthews, Maj., 52. Maumee Indians, 374. Maumee river, Mrs. Cunningham on, 372; in Harmar's campaign, 393; in St. Clair's campaign, 401; peace commissioners sent to, 412; in Wayne's campaign, 424-426. Maury, Thomas, killed by Indians, 91. Maxwell, Audley, attacked by Indians, 90, 91. Maxwell, William, attacked by Indians, 90, 91. May, John, 385. Maysville, Ky., 348. Meadow river, 242. Merrill, John, wounded by Indians, 405, 406. Merrill, Mrs. John, adventure with Indians, 406. Myers, R. C. V., _Life of Wetzel_, 161. Miami Indians, early strength of, 46; Renick captivity, 91; operate against Clark, 252; in Harmar's campaign, 393-395; in St. Clair's campaign, 400-405: raided by Scott, 407, 408. Miami river, Indians on, 46; in Renick captivity, 91; in Clark's campaign, 254; during Revolution, 295, 299, 355; arrival of peace news, 365; military land-claims on, 366; Logan's campaign on, 386; treaty of Ft. Finney, 388; Symmes's land-grant on, 390, 392; in Harmar's campaign, 393-395; in St. Clair's campaign, 400-405. Michael, Lieut., on Wayne's campaign, 424. Michillimackinac, 255. _See_ Mackinaw. Middle Island creek, foray on, 381, 398. Miller, Jacob, killed by Indians (Delaware river), 102. Miller, Jacob, killed by Indians (Ft. Coburn), 249. Miller, Jacob, defends Ft. Rice, 361, 362. Mills, Thomas, killed by Indians, 338, 339. Minear, John, early settler, 126. Mingo Bottom, Indian village at, 78; in Moravian expedition, 320; in Crawford's campaign, 328, 329. Mingo Indians, on Upper Ohio, 45; Decker's-creek massacre, 77-79; New-river foray, 96-99; claim Kentucky, 142; massacre of Logan's family, 134, 138, 142, 148-150; Logan's forays, 155-158; Dunmore's war generally, 172, 179, 184, 185, 253; during Revolution, 219, 262, 308, 336, 347. Mingo Junction, O. _See_ Mingo Bottom. Missions among Kentucky and Tennessee Indians, 106. _See_ Catholics and Moravians. Missasago Indians, in St. Clair's campaign, 404. Mississippi river, 255; territorial claims in basin of, 5; French on, 5-7, 63; Spanish on, 7, 8, 130, 254; Salling on, 49; Holston on, 59; Chickasaws on, 195; in Tecumseh's conspiracy, 36; Cornstalk's knowledge of, 211. Mitchell, John, 122. Moffett, Capt., ambuscaded, 97. Mohican Indians, in King Philip's war, 32, 33. Moluntha, Shawnee chief, 268. Monday, ----, killed by Indians, 293. Monongahela river, 73-75; early Indians on, 45, 47; French on, 65; Braddock's defeat, 67-69, 72; Grant's defeat, 71; Gist's settlement, 74; Pringle settlement, 117, 118, 122; other early settlements, 77, 117. 123, 125, 190; in Dunmore's war, 135, 141, 146, 150, 151, 161; during Revolution, 221, 222, 237, 271, 309; militia from, 320; forays on, 381, 414, 419. Monongalia county, W.Va., census (1830), 56, 63; during Revolution, 311; forays in, 344, 374, 398, 399. Monroe county, W. Va., census (1830), 55, 56. Montgomery, Col., companion of Clark, 254. Montgomery county, Va., census (1830), 55, 56. Montgomery, John, in Sandy-creek voyage, 81. Monteur, ----, family massacred, 318. Monticello, Va., 253. Montour, John, Delaware chief, 179. Mooney, James, adventure with Indians, 168; companion of Boone, 143. Moore, ----, attacked by Indians, 385. Moore, Andrew, early settler, 52; in Dunmore's war, 174. Moore, James, Sr., killed by Indians, 373. Moore, James, Jr., captured by Indians, 374. Moore, Jane, burned by Indians, 374. Moore, Mrs. John, burned by Indians, 373, 374. Moore, Lieut., killed by Indians, 241. Moore, Mary, captured by Indians, 374. Moorefield, W. Va., founded, 124. Moorehead, ----, Youghiogheny settler, 114. Moravians, missionaries and Indians, 36, 412; give information to Hand, 219; visited by Brodhead, 301, 302; villages sacked by whites, 313-327, 340; historical sketch, 314. Morgan county, W. Va., census (1830), 56. Morgan, Daniel, 276. Morgan, David, early settler, 123; adventure with Indians, 276-279. Morgan, George, Indian agent, 219, 224. Morgan, Greenwood S., 279. Morgan, Levi, adventures with Indians, 375, 376, 417, 418. Morgan, Sarah and Stephen, adventure with Indians, 276-279. Morgan, William, early settler, 126; escapes from Indians, 240. Morgantown, Pa., 75; founded, 123; foray near, 248, 249. Morlin, Thomas, early peddler, 47, 48. Morrow, William, in Dunmore's war, 169, 171. Mound-building, by early Indians, 39-43. Moundsville, W. Va., "big mound" at, 40; settled, 125, 230. Mount Braddock. Pa., settled, 123. Muddy creek, 123; first settled, 58; Clendennin massacre, 93-95; miscellaneous forays on, 159, 161, 172, 173, 293, 345. Mulhollin, Polly. _See_ Mary Greenlee. Munsee Indians, on Susquehanna, 46; raided by Brodhead, 301; during Revolution, 347. Munseka, Shawnee chief, 266. Murphey, John, killed by Indians, 238. Murphy, Samuel, 183. Muscle shoals, 59. Muskingum river, early Indians on, 46; Gist on, 79; Bouquet's expedition, 108; Indian atrocities on, 150, 396; Wapatomica campaign, 153-155; Moravian villages on, 219; during Revolution, 300-305, 314, 320, 328; land cession by Indians, 366; Ohio Co.'s grant, 389; Waterford founded, 392. Nain Indians, threatened by Paxtons, 105. Nanny's run, 127. Natchez, Holston at, 59. Narragansett Indians, war with Puritans, 31-33. Narvaez, Pamphilio de, in Florida, 7. Nashville, Tenn., 115. Neal, Henry, killed by Indians, 411, 412. Neal, James, slave stolen from, 400. Neely, Alexander, companion of Boone, 143, 144. Nelson, ----, early settler, 126. Nelson county, Va., foray in, 405, 406. Nelsonville, O., 183. Nemacolin, Delaware Indian, 77. Nemacolin's path. _See_ Braddock's road Nequetank Indians, threatened by Paxtons, 105. Newcomerstown, O., 314. New Englanders, on Greenbrier, 57. New France. _See_ French. New Inverness, Ga., founded, 237. New Martinsville, O., 417. New Orleans, founded, 7; Spanish at, 130. New Philadelphia, O., 261, 314. Newport, Christopher, attempts western exploration, 64. New river, first settlements on, 59; in Sandy-creek voyage, 82; Delaware and Mingo foray, 96-99. _See_ Great Kanawha. New Schönbrunn, Moravian village, 314, 325, 326. New York, Delawares in. 136; relinquishes Western land claim, 389. Nicholas county, W. Va., 96; census (1830), 56. Nicholson, ----, interpreter, 184. Nicholson, Thomas, in Dunmore's campaign, 153. North Bend, O., founded, 392. North Branch, 63. North Carolina, Cherokees in, 46; Boone in, 143, 144, 266; Henderson family in, 191-193; emigration from, 348, 384. North river, early settlement on, 52. Northwest Territory, early tribes in, 45; cession of land claims in, 131; ordinance of 1787, 389; St. Clair's arrival, 391, 392; first settlements in, 392, 393. Norton, Thomas, _Journal_ of Sandy-creek voyage, 81, 82. Nutter, John, early settler, 127. O'Brien, Adam, 414. Ochiltree, Alexander, killed by Indians, 245. Oghkwaga, Delaware village, 136. Ogle, Joseph, at seige of Wheeling, 221-224, 228; in Foreman's defeat, 230. Oglethorpe, James, attitude toward slavery, 10. Ohio (state), Indian mounds in, 41, 42; first settlements in, 392, 393. Ohio Company, relations with French, 45; open Ohio valley to settlement, 64, 65, 67, 74, 77, 147. Ohio Company of Associates, settles Marietta, 389, 390. Ohio county. W. Va., census (1830), 55, 56, 63; during Revolution, 311. Ohio river, 36, 40, 55, 78, 115, 117, 121, 123, 125; early Indians on, 45-47; Salling on, 49; Holston on, 59; as a war trail, 75; first English occupation, 63, 64; French and English rivalry for, 64-74, 95; Decker captivity, 78, 79; in Sandy-creek voyage, 83-85; Renick captivity, 91; Hannah Dennis's escape, 92, 93; character of early settlers on, 130, 131; in Dunmore's war, 134, 138, 145, 146, 148, 149, 151-153, 156, 162-165, 167-175, 179, 183; in Henderson's purchase, 192, 193; Shawnees on, 194, 195, 209, 211, 216, 219; during Revolution, 219, 220, 227, 230, 254, 257, 264, 266, 267, 271, 273, 285, 286, 294, 295, 297-300, 305, 320, 335, 347, 355, 360, 363, 384, 389, 390, 399, 411, 415, 417; after Revolution, 367, 372, 374, 380, 381, 383; as a race boundary, 412. Old Town creek, 168, 170, 172; Shawnee village at, 85. Oneco, chief of Mohicans, 32. Orange county, Va., 55; early settlement of, 55, 66. Ordinance of 1787, 389. Orme, Robert, with Braddock, 68. Osage Indians, stature of, 29. Ottawa Indians, early strength of, 46: during Revolution, 347; at Ft. McIntosh treaty, 366, 388. Ottawa river, early French on, 5. Ouisconsin river. _See_ Wisconsin river. Owens, James, killed by Indians, 247. Owens, John, Sr., killed by Indians, 290. Owens, John, Jr., attacked by Indians, 290, 343, 344. Owens, Owen, attacked by Indians, 290. Ox, Susan, captured by Indians, 161. Pack, ----, trapper, 96. Paint creek, Boone's expedition to, 267, 268; Shawnees on, 374; Waggoner on, 410. Parsons, James, early settler, 126. Parsons, Samuel H., treaty commissioner, 388. Patterson, Robert, founds Lexington, Ky., 274; partner of Denman, 391; at battle of Blue Licks, 353. Patton, Elizabeth, marries John Preston, 51. Patton, James, early settler of Catawba, 51, 52, 68. Patton, John W., 127. Pattonsburgh, Va., 51. Paul, Audley, son of Hugh, 53; at Ft. Redstone, 77, 78; in Sandy-creek voyage, 81, 83, 85; in James-river foray, 91; in New-river foray, 97-99; in Dunmore's war, 169. Paul, Hugh, 53. Paul, Polly, marries Gov. Matthews, 53. Pauling, Henry, militia officer, 207. Paull, James, at Redstone, 80. Paxton boys, kill Canestoga Indians, 104, 105. Paynter, Elias, killed by Indians, 341. Pekillon, Delaware chief, 303, 304. Pendleton county, W. Va., census (1830), 56; Seybert massacre, 87-89. Penn, William, 124. Pennsylvania, boundary dispute with Virginia, 74; Western settlements in, 74, 75, 123-125, 143; fur trade of, 101; Paxton boys, 104, 105; "Black-boys" uprising, 109-116; Findlay's adventures, 143; _Records_, 58; _Archives_, 323. Pentecost, Dorsey, 323. Peoria Indians, claim Kentucky, 142. Perry, Thomas, killed by Indians, 89. Perrysburgh, O., 372. Peter, Captain, Indian chief, 135. Petro, Leonard, captured by Indians, 232, 233. Peyton, John L., _History of Augusta county_, 53, 246. Philadelphia, 105, 109, 124. Philip, chief of Narragansetts, 31, 32. Phillips, Capt., ambuscaded, 97. Phoebe's Falls, W. Va., settled, 52. Pickaway plains, Indian treaty at, 183-186. Pickering, Timothy, peace commissioner, 412. Pike run, Indian foray on, 283. Pindall, Rachel, chased by Indians, 344. Pindall, Thomas, attacked by Indians, 344. Piomingo, Chickasaw chief, 405. Pipe, Delaware chief, 333. Pipe, Wyandot chief, 316. Pipe creek, massacre of Indians at, 134, 142, 148. Piqua, Shawnee village, 273; Clark attacks, 305-309. Pitman, ----, trapper, 96. Pittsburg, 117, 120; French fort at, 45; treaties at, 66; Braddock's defeat, 68, 69, 106; in Forbes's campaign, 69-73, 77, 79, 80; Connolly at, 74; Dyer's escape, 87; in Bouquet's expedition, 107-109, 173; in Dunmore's war, 134, 141, 142, 145, 148, 150, 165, 167, 177-179, 181, 182; "Blackboys" uprising, 109; asked to aid Kentucky, 205; during Revolution, 220, 221, 224, 230, 254, 256, 262, 283, 318, 321-323, 335, 357, 362; arrival of peace news, 365; Hand's administration, 210, 211, 214, 216, 219; McIntosh's administration, 210, 237; warned by Moravians, 315, 317; Brodhead's expedition, 300, 301, 303, 304, 316. Pittsylvania, proposed colony of, 145. Pleasant creek, 118. Pocahontas county, W. Va., census (1830), 56. Poe, Adam, adventure with Indians, 362-364. Poe, Andrew, adventure with Indians, 363, 364. Point Pleasant, W. Va., battle of, 59, 60, 66, 143, 152, 165-178, 180, 182, 185-187, 189, 190, 208; Ft. Randolph at, 173, 291; surrender of Cornstalk at, 173, 209, 211-216; during Revolution, 237, 241-243. Pointer, Dick, fights Indians, 243. Pollens, Henry, fur trader, 109. Pompey (negro), friend of Indians, 268. Pontiac, uprising of, 73, 141, 172. Poole, William F., on Clark's campaign, 254. Port Washington, O., 301, 314. Portsmouth, O., old Shawnee town at, 92. Post, Charles F., Moravian missionary, 301. Potomac river, 55; fur trade on, 77; Seybert massacre, 87-89. Pottawattomie Indians, early strength of, 46; during Revolution, 347. Powell, Richard, sons captured by Indians, 280, 281. Powell's valley, 60; Walden in, 60; attack on Boones, 144, 145; Henderson's grant, 193. Power, Major, shot at, 366. Powers, John, early settler, 126. Powers, William, 122. Presbyterians, 50, 54, 57, 168. Presque Isle, 65. Preston county, W. Va., 280; census (1830), 56, 63. Preston, James Patton, governor of Virginia, 51. Preston, John, marries Elizabeth Patton, 51. Preston, William, militia officer, 51; settles on Holston, 59; in Sandy-creek voyage, 81, 83; surveyor, 145, 146; in Dunmore's war, 152, 165; _Journal_, 82; _Register of Indian Depredations_, 57, 75, 87, 90. Price, Maj., on Wayne's campaign, 425. Price's settlement, Ky., 200. Pricket, ----, killed by Indians, 245. Pricket, Josiah, killed by Indians, 161. Pricket's creek, 151. Prince William county, Va., 71. Pringle, Charity, 119. Pringle, John and Samuel, adventures of, 117-122. Prior, John, killed by Indians, 292. Pritchet, John, killed by Indians, 243. Province, John, early settler, 123. Province, Mrs., buries Bald Eagle, 136. Pryor, John, scouting adventure, 242, 243. Purgatory creek, 89, 91. Purgatory mountain, 89. Putnam, Rufus, heads Marietta colonists, 389, 390; peace commissioner, 412. Quakers, 124, 240. Quebec, founded by Champlain, 4, 5. Raccoon creek, 299. Radcliff, Daniel, killed by Indians, 367. Radcliff, John, early settler, 121, 122. Radcliff, Stephen, attacked by Indians, 311. Radcliff, William, early settler, 121, 122. Ralston, James, killed by Indians, 287. Ranck, Geo. W., 274. Randolph, Beverly, peace commissioner, 412. Randolph county, W. Va., census (1830), 56, 63; settled, 74. Ray, James, adventures with Indians, 201. Ray, William, killed by Indians, 201. Read, John, finds Davisson, 283. Red Hawk, Shawnee warrior, 209. Red river, De Soto on, 8. Redhawk, Delaware chief, 172. Redstone (Brownsville, Pa.), first settled 77-80, 123, 216; De Villiers at, 74; Decker massacre, 77, 78; in Dunmore's war, 134, 141, 150; tory trials, 231, 232: militia from, 271; emigrants from, 390, 392; road to Marietta, 399. Reece, ----, attacked by Indians, 239. Reece, Miss, wounded by Indian, 239. Renick family, attacked by Indians, 89-91. Reynolds, ----, at seige of Bryant's station, 350, 351, 353, 354. Rice, Daniel, attacked by Indians, 361. Rich mountain, 126. Richards, Arnold and Paul, killed by Indians, 345. Richards, Conrad, attacked by Indians, 251, 252. Richmond, Va., 62. Riffle, ----, early settler, 126. Roanoke county, Va., 61; Salling in, 49. Roanoke river, 70; explored, 48; in New-river foray, 96, 99; settlements raided by Shawnees, 61, 81, 82. Robertson, Dr., on origin of Indians, 25. Robertson family, killed by Indians, 158. Robertson, James, at Watauga treaty, 192. Robinson, ----, explorer, 124; killed by Indians, 161. Robinson, Mrs. Edward, discovers Hull's body, 383. Robinson, Maj., searches for Mrs. Cunningham, 370. Robinson, William, captured by Indians, 156-158. Rockbridge county, Va., Salling in, 48; district of Augusta, 49; first settled, 53; census (1830), 56; militia of, 66, 174, 211, 212; massacre in, 172. Rockcastle river, Boone on, 143, 192. Rockford, Pa., 210. Rockingham county, Va., census (1830), 56, 66. Rogers, John, on Clark's campaign, 258, 259. Rogers, Joseph, killed by Indians, 308. Roney, Alexander, killed by Indians, 311, 312. Roney, Mrs. Alexander, captured by Indians, 311, 312. Roosevelt, Theodore, _Winning of the West_, 80, 130, 183, 184, 193, 261, 386. Rooting creek, 217. Ross, Tavenor, renegade, 168. Rowell, Daniel, adventure with Indians, 411. Royall, Ann, _Sketches_, 57, 95. Ruddell, Isaac, arrival in Kentucky, 207; defeated by Bird, 295-297, 350. Rule, Henry, early settler, 122. Runner, Elijah, murders Bald Eagle, 135. Runyan, John, daughter killed by Indians, 419. Rush run, foray on, 380, 381. Russell county, Va., census (1830), 56. Russell, William, treaty commissioner, 66; in Dunmore's war, 152, 167, 170, 176. Ryan, John, kills Indians, 135. Ryswick, treaty of, 195. St. Asaph's. _See_ Logan's station. St. Clair, Arthur, arrives at Ft. Washington, 391, 392; names Cincinnati, 391, 392; reports on Harmar's campaign, 395; campaign against Miamis, 400-405, 407, 408, 413; resigns command, 412. St. Clairsville, O., 338. St. Joseph river, in Harmar's campaign, 393, 395. St. Lawrence river, Champlain on, 5. St. Louis, attacked by English, 254. St. Mary's river, in Harmar's campaign, 393. Salem, Va., Salling at, 49; in Sandy-creek voyage, 82. Salem, Moravian village, 301, 302, 314, 319, 322, 325, 327. Salisbury, N. C., 191. Salling, Henry, brother of John Peter, 48. Salling, John Peter, explorations of, 47-49: settles Augusta, 66. Salt creek, 175. Salt licks, in Kentucky, 48, 196, 199, 265, 266; in West Virginia, 265, 361; in Ohio, 267. Salt river, foray on, 405. Saluda Old Town, S. C., 59. Sam (negro), at seige of Wheeling, 356, 357. Sandusky, early Indians at, 46; in Dunmore's war, 187; McIntosh's expedition against, 252; Moravians at, 316, 317, 320, 327; Crawford's campaign, 327-339; Irvine's expedition, 355; Cozad at, 420. "Sandy-creek voyage," against Shawnees, 81-86. Sandy island, Iroquois defeat Shawnees at, 194, 195. Sandy river, foray on, 373. Sapoonie Indians, strength of, 46. Sappington, John, murders Indians, 148, 149. Sargent, Winthrop, expedition against Ft. Du Quesne, 68. Savannah, Ga., 237. Schoolcraft, Austin, killed by Indians, 290. Schoolcraft, Henry A., _Indian Tribes_, 40. Schoolcraft, John, family massacred, 284. Schoolcraft, Leonard, captured by Indians, 282; turns renegade, 377-379. Schoolcraft, Matthias, killed by Indians, 310. Schoolcraft, Michael, captured by Indians, 310. Schoolcraft, Simon, attacked by Indians, 288, 289; captured by Indians, 310. Schönbrunn, Moravian village, 314, 319, 328, 329. Scioto Company, settles Gallipolis, 60. Scioto river, Shawnees on, 46; in Sandy-creek voyage, 82, 84; Renick captivity, 91; Hannah Dennis on, 92; in Pontiac's war, 172; Clendenning captivity, 173; in Dunmore's war, 170, 175, 180, 182, 183, 185; during Revolution, 329; military land-claims on, 366; Moore captivity, 374; in Harmar's campaign, 393. Scoppathus, Mingo chief, 172. Scotch and Scotch-Irish, on the border, 49, 54, 101, 104, 168; in Georgia, 237; in Pensylvania, 143; in Virginia, 191, 334: in West Virginia, 373. Scott, Andrew, at seige of Wheeling. 356. Scott, Capt., killed by Indians, 395. Scott, Charles, campaign against Miami and Wabash Indians, 406-408; in Wayne's campaign, 426. Scott county, Va., census (1830), 56. Scott, David, daughters killed by Indians, 283. Scott, Jacob, murders Bald Eagle, 135. Scott, Molly, at seige of Wheeling, 356. Seekonk, Mingo village, 185. Seneca Indians, 194; at Easton treaty, 58; rob Findlay, 143. _See_ Mingo Indians. Senseman, Gottlob, Moravian missionary, 314, 317. Severns, Ebenezer, on Bullitt's survey, 146. Sevier, John, at Watauga treaty, 192. Sewell, Stephen, settles on Greenbrier, 57. Seybert, Capt., defeated by Indians, 87-89. Shabosh, killed by whites, 322, 326. Shakers, 106. Shamokin, Cayuga village, 155. Shane manuscripts, 221. Shawnee Indians, on Upper Ohio, 45; in Ohio, 46; attack Roanoke, 61, 81; Sandy-creek voyage, 82-86; Seybert massacre, 87-89; foray on James, 89-91; villages on Scioto, 92; Stroud massacre, 136, 137; Findlay among, 143; attack Boones, 145; in Dunmore's war, 134, 142, 166, 167, 172, 175-186, 253; murder of Cornstalk, 209-214; Clendenning captivity, 173; Bouquet's expedition, 173; in Kentucky, 194, 195, 201; raided by Clark, 123, 254; during Revolution, 219, 236, 265-268, 271, 273, 333, 334, 336, 347, 354, 355, 374; raided by Logan, 386-388; at Ft. Finney treaty, 388; raided by Wayne, 428. Shawnee springs, 201. Shelby, Evans, settles on Holston, 59; in Dunmore's war, 167, 168, 174. Shelby, Isaac, in Dunmore's war, 169, 170, 174; at Watauga treaty, 192. Shenandoah county, Va., census (1830), 56; militia of, 164. Shenandoah valley, 66; explored, 47; early settlers in, 46, 50, 190; Borden grant, 50-53; Fairfax survey, 334; fur trade in, 76, 120; Mrs. Cunningham in, 373. Shepherd, David, early settler, 125; militia officer, 221, 226, 228, 230; in Brodhead's expedition, 300, 301; at seige of Wheeling, 359; manuscripts of, 221. Shepherd, Moses, 124. Shesheequon, Pa., Moravian village. 319. Shikellemus, Cayuga chief, 155. Shingiss, Delaware chief, 45, 190, 194, 237. Shinn, Benjamin, attacked by Indians, 247. Shinnston, W. Va., 343. Shiver, John, captured by Indians, 282, 283. Shores, Thomas, captured by Indians, 201. Short creek, settled on, 125. Silver creek, 196. Simcoe, John G., governor of Canada, 412. Simpson's creek, 156, 247, 343; settled on, 118, 126; foray on, 366. Simpson, John, adventures of, 118, 119. Sims, Bernard, killed by Indians, 291. Sims, John, attacked by Indians, 291, 383. Six Nations. _See_ Iroquois. Skegg's creek, foray on, 385. Skidmore, John, in Dunmore's war, 170. Skillern, George, in Hand's expedition, 210, 211. Slaughter, Col., in Dunmore's war, 167, 175; commandant at Louisville, 291; in Piqua campaign, 305, 307; at Moravian massacre, 321. Slavery, first importation of negroes, 9, 10. Sleeth, Alexander and Thomas, early settlers, 121. Slover, John, captured by Indians, 335-338; _Narrative_, 335. Small pox, feared by Indians, 291. Smally, James, killed by Indians, 282. Smith, ----, of St. Asaph's, 205. Smith, Ballard, 94. Smith, Benjamin, killed by Indians, 91. Smith, James, imprisoned by French, 67; captured by Indians, 79: chief of "Black-boys," 105, 106, 109-115; explores Kentucky, 115. Smith, John, attempts western exploration, 64. Smith, John, in Sandy-creek voyage, 81; militia officer, 90. Smith, Thomas, killed by Indians, 89, 90. Smith, Mrs. Thomas, imprisoned by Indians, 90. Smith, William H., _St. Clair Papers_, 404. Snake, John and Thomas, Wyandot chiefs, 316, 317. Snip, Wyandot chief, 316. Snodgrass, James, killed by Indians, 374. Snowy creek, massacre on, 280. Snyder, Jacob, killed by Indians, 102. Sodousky, James, on Bullitt's survey, 146. South Branch (or Fork) of Potomac, 75; Dunkard massacre on, 76, 77; Indians defeated on, 97; Seybert massacre, 87-89; emigrants from, 118-120, 122, 124-126; Indians massacred on, 135. South Carolina, 46, 59, 160. Spanish, territorial claims of, 5; colonizing efforts, 7; capture Salling, 48, 49; in Kentucky conspiracy, 130, 254, 258; attack on St. Louis, 254. Speed, Thomas, _Wilderness Road_, 384. Spottswood, Gov., crosses Blue ridge, 64. Springfield, W. Va., 91. Sprout run, Borden Manor on, 51. Squissatego, Seneca brave, 58. Stalnaker, ----, settles on New, 59. Stalnaker, Adam, attacked by Indians, 343. Stalnaker, Jacob, settles on Tygart, 126; attacked by Indians, 343. Stamford, Ky., 197. Station Camp creek, Boone on, 143. Staunton, Va., 91; settlement near, 49, 50; _Spectator_, 53. Steele, John, at Point Pleasant, 174. Stephen, Adam, in Forbes's campaign, 70; in Sandy-creek voyage, 81; in Dunmore's war, 164. Steeth, John, chases Indians, 246. Steubenville, O., 78, 320. Stewart, John, killed by Indians, 234. Stites, ----, makes Miami purchase, 390. Stone Coal creek, origin of name, 121. Stone, Uriah, explores Kentucky, 115. Stoner, Michael, explores Kentucky, 152, 190. Stone's river, origin of name, 115. Stout, Benjamin, 126. Strait, Jacob, killed by Indians, 375. Stroud, Adam, killed by Indians, 136-138. Stuart, Betsy, marries Woods, 54. Stuart, Charles A., 53. Stuart, David, marries Jane Lynn, 53. Stuart, James, killed by Indians, 280. Stuart, John, pioneer on Greenbrier, 53, 54, 57-59; companion of Boone, 143, 144; in Dunmore's war, 159-161, 169, 170, 174; at murder of Cornstalk, 211, 212; defends Greenbrier, 243-245; _Memoir of Indian Wars_, 180. Sullivan, John, campaign against New York Indians, 210. Susquehanna river, 136; Munsees on, 46; forays on, 101-104. Swan, John, early settler, 123, 125, 149; militia officer, 226-228; defends Wheeling, 360. Swope, ----, trapper, 96. Sycamore shoals, treaty at, 192. Symmes, John Cleves, secures Miami land-grant, 390-392. Tanner, Edward, captured by Indians, 342. Tate, ----, at Point Pleasant, 174. Tate's creek, 196. Tawas. _See_ Ottawas. Taylor, Capt., killed by Indians, 423. Taylor, Hugh Paul, _Sketches_, 51, 53, 85. Tazewell county, Va., census (1830), 55, 56. Tazewell Court House, Va., raided by Indians, 373, 374. Tecumseh, conspiracy of, 35, 36; in Waggoner massacre, 409-411. Tegard, Abraham, early settler, 123. Telford, Hugh, early settler, 52. Tennessee, 75; stone graves in, 43; Salling in, 48, 49; early missions in, 106; Boone in, 144, 145. Tennessee river, 253; Salling on, 48, 49; Holston on, 59; explored by Smith, 115; in Henderson's purchase, 193, 195. Ten Mile creek, first settlement on, 190; in Dunmore's war, 151; forays on, 238-240, 381. Terry, Cornet, killed by Indians, 423. Thomas, Abraham, _Sketches_, 180. Thomas, John, early settler, 122, 123; killed by Indians, 309, 310, 343. Thompson, ----, surveys on Licking, 146. Thompson, Jethro, house burned by Indians, 383. Thompson, John, Indian go-between, 263. Thompson, William, assists "Blackboys." 112, 113. Todd, John, defends Kentucky, 200; killed at Blue Licks, 351, 353. Todd, Levi, in Bowman's campaign, 271; in Wabash campaign, 386. Tomlinson, Benjamin, 149; founds Moundsville, 230. Tomlinson, Samuel, adventure with Indians, 222. Tonty, Henri de, with La Salle, 6. Trails, Warrior branch, 75, 399; Nemacolin's path, 77; Cumberland Gap, 143, 152, 192, 384; Wilderness road, 384. Transylvania Company, settles Kentucky, 190-196. Treaties, Ryswick, 195; Paris (1763), 7, 106, 139; Lancaster, 195; Easton, 58; Ft. Stanwix, 45, 70, 195; Lochaber, 195; Bouquet's, 91, 108, 134, 141, 179; Camp Charlotte, 145, 147, 173, 176-186, 195, 197; Watauga, 153, 192, 195; Paris (1782), 365, 384; Au Glaize, 374, 376; Ft. McIntosh, 97, 366, 388; Ft. Finney, 388; Greenville, 141, 147, 420, 430. Trent, William, at Redstone, 77. Trigg, Col., killed at Blue Licks, 353, Triplett, William, killed by Indians, 411, 412. Trueman, Maj., killed by Indians, 412. Tugg river, origin of name, 85. Turkey creek, 99. Turkey run, 119, 121. Turtle creek, scene of Braddock's defeat, 67. Tuscarawas river, McIntosh's expedition, 256, 261; Moravian missions on, 219, 301, 313-317, 320, 336. Tuscarora Indians, legend of, 18. Twightee Indians, strength of, 46. Twitty, William, at Watauga treaty, 192; killed by Indians, 196. Tygart, David, settles in Tygart's valley, 74, 75. Tygart's valley, first settled, 74, 126; Pringles in, 117-122; in Dunmore's war, 151; during Revolution, 284, 286, 287, 311; miscellaneous forays in, 232-235, 341, 343, 421, 422, 428. Tyler county, W. Va., census (1830), 56, 63. Unadilla river, Delawares on, 136. Uniontown, Pa., 77. Valley of Virginia, early Indians in, 46; Salling's exploration, 48, 49; McDowell's fight, 52; first settled, 61, 190; Mrs. Cunningham in, 373. Valley river, 63; Pringles on, 118, 119; in Dunmore's war, 151; during Revolution, 287; forays on, 252, 311. Van Meter, Jacob, early settler, 123. Vause, ----, settles on New, 59. Veech, James, _Monongahela of Old_, 79, 80. Vernon, Maj., at Ft. Laurens, 265. Vigo, M., assists Clark, 258. Vincennes, Ind., in Clark's campaign, 253-255, 257-261, 386; Hamtramck at, 394. Virginia, Indian mounds, 40; early tribes, 44-47; Borden manor, 50-53; Loyal Co., 49; Fairfax grant, 50, 51; characteristics of early settlers, 54; Salling's operations, 47-49; early explorations, 64; Ohio Co., 64, 65; Braddock's campaign, 65-69; Forbes's campaign, 69-73; boundary dispute with Pennsylvania, 74, 142; Pontiac's war, 97; New-river foray, 96-99; militia of, 100, 101; border settlements, 125; military land warrants, 145; Wapatomica campaign, 153-155; Dunmore's attitude toward, 179; relinquishes western land claim, 130, 389; _Dinwiddie Papers_, 86; _Calendar of State Papers_, 86. Wabash Indians, raided by Hamtramck, 394; by Scott, 407, 408; agree to peace, 412. Wabash river, in Clark's campaigns, 257-259, 385, 386; arrival of peace news, 365. Wachatomakah, Indian village, 336. Waggoner, John, family massacred by Indians, 408-411. Waggoner, Peter, captured by Indians, 409-411. Walden's creek, origin of name, 60. Walden, Elisha, killed by Indians, 59, 60. Walholling river, 314, 317. Walker, Felix, at Watauga treaty, 192; wounded by Indians, 196. Walker, Thomas, explores Kentucky, 81; _Journal_, 59. Walker, William, educated Wyandot, 96, 97. Wallace, ----, killed by Indians, 319. Walpole, ----, interest in Pittsylvania, 145. Wapatomica, McDonald's expedition against, 138, 153-155; Indian council at, 347. Ward, Mrs., escapes from Indians, 422. Warrior Branch, Indian trail, 75. Wars, French and Indian, 65-74, 77-80, 100-106, 143, 190, 334, 387; McDowell's fight, 66; Sandy-creek voyage, 81-86; Bouquet's campaign, 106-109; Braddock's campaign, 143, 145, 147, 169; Forbes's campaign, 145, 150, 190; Pontiac's war, 73, 97, 141, 172; Dunmore's war, 66, 78, 127, 134-190, 209, 253, 334; Revolution, 66, 78, 86, 124, 145, 146, 177, 178, 182, 187-365, 382, 387; Hand's campaign. 209-211; Harmar's, 384, 393-395, 400, 408; St. Clair's, 400-405, 407, 408, 413; Wayne's, 412-428. Warwick, ----, early settler, 126. Warwick, Jacob, attacked by Indians, 286, 287. Warwick, William, attacked by Indians, 287. Washburn, Benjamin, attacked by Indians, 247. Washburn, Charles, killed by Indians, 345. Washburn, Isaac, killed by Indians, 241. Washburn, James, tortured by Indians, 250, 251. Washburn, Stephen, killed by Indians, 250. Washington county, Ky., 106, 190. Washington county. Pa., settled, 125; militia of, 320, 327, 328. Washington county, Va., census (1830), 56; militia of, 165, 174, 268; threatened by Bird, 299. Washington, George, in French and Indian war, 45, 65, 67, 69, 71, 74, 77, 100, 101, 145, 334; friendship for Andrew Lewis, 70; advises Sandy-creek voyage, 81; on Seybert massacre, 87; in Revolutionary war, 106; friend of Rufus Putman, 389; _Tour to the Ohio_, 73. Watauga river, treaty with Indians on, 153, 192. Waterford. O., founded, 393. Wayne, Anthony, general of army, 412; campaign against Western Indians, 147, 412-428. Webb, Jonas, early settler, 126. Wells, Bazaleel, at Point Pleasant, 174. Wells, Maj., on Shawnee campaign, 355. Wellsburg, W. Va., 380. Welsh, on the border, 49. West, Alexander, 378; chases Indians, 246, 311; adventure with Indians, 287-290; on Lowther's expedition, 376, 377; sketch, 288. West Augusta, district of, 63; first justice of peace, 127. West, Charles, chases Indians, 246. West, Edmund, Sr., attacked by Indians, 288; killed by Indians, 377-379. West, Edmund, Jr., family attacked by Indians, 378, 379. West Fork river, origin of name, 122; first settlements on, 126, 127; in Dunmore's war, 151, 156; during Revolution, 240, 311, 312, 343; miscellaneous forays on, 217, 218, 250, 251, 366, 367, 376, 400, 410, 411, 414, 419, 422, 428. West Newton, Pa., departure of Marietta pilgrims, 389. West Virginia, character of early Indians in, 36; mounds in, 40; early tribes in, 44-47; census (1830), 63; first settlements in (prior to 1774), 117-133. Westfall, ----, early settler, 126. Westfall, O., 176. Westmoreland county, Pa., 115. Westmoreland county, Va., militia of, 210, 327, 328; forays in, 301. Wetzel county, W. Va., 279. Wetzel, George, Indian fighter, 161. Wetzel, Jacob, adventure with Indians, 161-163. Wetzel, John, Indian fighter, 125, 161. Wetzel, Lewis, Indian fighter, 125, 161-163, 338, 339; sketch, 161. Wetzel, Martin, Indian fighter, 161. Wheat, Betsy, at seige of Wheeling, 225. Wheeling, W. Va., 40; founded, 124, 125; in Dunmore's war, 134, 146, 148, 149, 152-154, 163, 165, 179; first seige of, 219-228, 235; second seige, 224, 356-360; Foreman's defeat, 228-230; during Revolution, 237, 299, 301, 319, 336, 338, 362; McKee's foray, 316, 317. Wheeling creek, in Dunmore's war, 151, 161. White Eyes, Delaware chief, 150, 175, 176, 179, 180, 182, 183, 221, 302. White, John, killed by Indians, 284. White, William, murders Indians, 136, 137; captured by Indians, 232, 233; killed by Indians, 340. Whiteman, ----, early settler, 126. Whitley, Paul, early settler, 52; with Braddock, 66. Whitley, William, arrival in Kentucky, 197; scout, 271; attacks Indians, 385, 386; _Narrative_, 203, 205. Whitley, Mrs. William, adventure with Indians, 203. Whittlesey, Charles, _Fugitive Essays_, 183. Wilkinson, James, attacks Miamis, 407; builds Ft. Recovery, 419. Williams and Mary college, 145. Williams, Isaac, explorer, 124. Williams, John, of Transylvania Co., 191. Williamsburg, Va., 47, 86, 87, 159, 178; Salling at, 49; John Lewis at, 50; in Dunmore's war, 151, 154. Williamson, David, expedition against Moravians, 314-318, 320-327; in Crawford's campaign, 327, 328, 331. Williamson, Lieut., at Ft. Pitt, 78. Williamson, Peter, captured by Indians, 101-104. Will's creek, Ohio Co.'s post at, 67, 74, 77. Wilson, ----, killed at Point Pleasant, 171. Wilson, Benjamin, 184, 186, 234, 235, 247, 284, 311. Winchester, Va., 56, 68, 71, 81, 121; fur trade at, 47, 48; threatened by Indians, 101; trial of White, 136; during Revolution, 252. Wingenund, Delaware chief, 333. Winston's Meadows, 99. Wisconsin, Indian mounds in, 42. Wisconsin Historical Society, manuscripts in library of, 49, 75, 81, 87, 170, 193, 203, 205, 221, 259, 260; _Collections_, 58. Wisconsin river, explored by French, 6. Wolf creek, 82, 392, 393, 396. Wood, Abraham, discovers Great Kanawha, 64. Wood county, W. Va., census (1830), 56, 63; first sheriff of, 127. Wood, Nicholas, killed by Indians, 375. Woodfin, John, killed by Indians, 249. Woodford, Col., 72. Woods, Richard, 54. Woodson, Obadiah, in Sandy-creek voyage, 81. Wright, ----, killed by Indians, 344. Wyalusing, Pa., Moravian village, 319. Wyandot Indians, early strength of, 46; in Kansas, 96, 97; in Dunmore's war, 172; at Foreman's defeat, 230; during Revolution, 219, 262, 316, 317, 320, 327, 332, 347, 362-364; at Ft. McIntosh treaty, 366, 388. Wyllys, Maj., killed by Indians, 393, 394. Wythe county, Va., census (1830), 55, 56. Yadkin river, Boone on, 143, 144, 205. Yellow creek, Logan massacre at, 134, 138, 148-150, 184. Youghiogheny river, crossed by Braddock, 67; early settlements on, 74, 77, 113, 114, 118, 334; Marietta pilgrims on, 389. Zane, Andrew, adventure with Indians, 222. Zane, Ebenezer, 148; settles Wheeling, 124, 125; defends Wheeling, 225, 228, 230, 356-360; in Brodhead's expedition, 300. Zane, Elizabeth, at seige of Wheeling, 359. Zane, Isaac, captured by Indians, 124; daughter wounded, 418. Zane, Jonathan, settles at Wheeling, 124; in Dunmore's war, 153. Zane, Noah, 125, 225. Zane, Silas, settles at Wheeling, 124; defends Wheeling, 356, 357. Zanesville, O., 153. Zeisberger, David, Moravian missionary, 301, 314, 315, 317. The First American Frontier An Arno Press/New York Times Collection Agnew, Daniel. A History of the Region of Pennsylvania North of the Allegheny River. 1887. Alden, George H. New Government West of the Alleghenies Before 1780. 1897. Barrett, Jay Amos. Evolution of the Ordinance of 1787. 1891. Billon, Frederick. Annals of St. Louis in its Early Days Under the French and Spanish Dominations. 1886. Billon, Frederick. Annals of St. Louis in its Territorial Days, 1804-1821. 1888. Littel, William. Political Transactions in and Concerning Kentucky. 1926. Bowles, William Augustus. Authentic Memoirs of William Augustus Bowles. 1916. Bradley, A. G. The Fight with France for North America. 1900. Brannan, John, ed. Official Letters of the Military and Naval Officers of the War, 1812-1815. 1823. Brown, John P. Old Frontiers. 1938. Brown, Samuel R. The Western Gazetteer. 1817. Cist, Charles. Cincinnati Miscellany of Antiquities of the West and Pioneer History. (2 volumes in one). 1845-6. Claiborne, Nathaniel Herbert. Notes on the War in the South with Biographical Sketches of the Lives of Montgomery, Jackson, Sevier, and Others. 1819. Clark, Daniel. Proofs of the Corruption of Gen. James Wilkinson. 1809. Clark, George Rogers. Colonel George Rogers Clark's Sketch of His Campaign in the Illinois in 1778-9. 1869. Collins, Lewis. Historical Sketches of Kentucky. 1847. Cruikshank, Ernest, ed, Documents Relating to Invasion of Canada and the Surrender of Detroit. 1912. Cruikshank, Ernest, ed, The Documentary History of the Campaign on the Niagara Frontier, 1812-1814. (4 volumes). 1896-1909. Cutler, Jervis. A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indian Territory, and Louisiana. 1812. Cutler, Julia P. The Life and Times of Ephraim Cutler. 1890. Darlington, Mary C. History of Col. Henry Bouquet and the Western Frontiers of Pennsylvania. 1920. Darlington, Mary C. Fort Pitt and Letters From the Frontier. 1892. De Schweinitz, Edmund. The Life and Times of David Zeisberger. 1870. Dillon, John B. History of Indiana. 1859. Eaton, John Henry. Life of Andrew Jackson. 1824. English, William Hayden. Conquest of the Country Northwest of the Ohio. (2 volumes in one). 1896. Flint, Timothy. Indian Wars of the West. 1833. Forbes, John. Writings of General John Forbes Relating to His Service in North America. 1938. Forman, Samuel S. Narrative of a Journey Down the Ohio and Mississippi in 1789-90. 1888. Haywood, John. Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee to 1796. 1823. Heckewelder, John. History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations. 1876. Heckewelder, John. Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren. 1820. Hildreth, Samuel P. Pioneer History. 1848. Houck, Louis. The Boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase: A Historical Study. 1901. Houck, Louis. History of Missouri. (3 volumes in one). 1908. Houck, Louis. The Spanish Regime in Missouri. (2 volumes in one). 1909. Jacob, John J. A Biographical Sketch of the Life of the Late Capt. Michael Cresap. 1826. Jones, David. A Journal of Two Visits Made to Some Nations of Indians on the West Side of the River Ohio, in the Years 1772 and 1773. 1774. Kenton, Edna. Simon Kenton. 1930. Loudon, Archibald. Selection of Some of the Most Interesting Narratives of Outrages. (2 volumes in one). 1808-1811. Monette, J. W. History, Discovery and Settlement of the Mississippi Valley. (2 volumes in one). 1846. Morse, Jedediah. American Gazetteer. 1797. Pickett, Albert James. History of Alabama. (2 volumes in one). 1851. Pope, John. A Tour Through the Southern and Western Territories. 1792. Putnam, Albigence Waldo. History of Middle Tennessee. 1859. Ramsey, James G. M. Annals of Tennessee. 1853. Ranck, George W. Boonesborough. 1901. Robertson, James Rood, ed. Petitions of the Early Inhabitants of Kentucky to the Gen. Assembly of Virginia. 1914. Royce, Charles. Indian Land Cessions. 1899. Rupp, I. Daniel. History of Northampton, Lehigh, Monroe, Carbon and Schuykill Counties. 1845. Safford, William H. The Blennerhasset Papers. 1864. St. Clair, Arthur. A Narrative of the Manner in which the Campaign Against the Indians, in the Year 1791 was Conducted. 1812. Sargent, Winthrop, ed. A History of an Expedition Against Fort DuQuesne in 1755. 1855. Severance, Frank H. An Old Frontier of France. (2 volumes in one). 1917. Sipe, C. Hale. Fort Ligonier and Its Times. 1932. Stevens, Henry N. Lewis Evans: His Map of the Middle British Colonies in America. 1920. Timberlake, Henry. The Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake. 1927. Tome, Philip. Pioneer Life: Or Thirty Years a Hunter. 1854. Trent, William. Journal of Captain William Trent From Logstown to Pickawillany. 1871. Walton, Joseph S. Conrad Weiser and the Indian Policy of Colonial Pennsylvania. 1900. Withers, Alexander Scott. Chronicles of Border Warfare. 1895. Chronicles of Border Warfare Alexander Scott Withers Arno Press & The New York Times Reprint Edition 1971 by Arno Press Inc. Reprinted from a copy in The State Historical Society of Wisconsin Library LC # 75-146426 ISBN 0-405-02896-2 The First American Frontier ISBN for complete set: 0-405-02820-2 See last pages of this volume for titles. Manufactured in the United States of America Transcriber's Note Corrections in text: Page Correction vii early period, indentifying very large the sources of (identifying) xi whatever for his diligenee and labor in producing it (diligence) 8 adorned with spendid magnificence, who can feel surprised (splendid) 9 Yet, although the philanthopist must weep over (philanthropist) 10 Nothwithstanding those two great evils which have (Notwithstanding) 46 with an aggregate population ef 289,362. (population of) 51 visited Great Britian in 1737 (Britain) 101 Upen the earnest remonstrance and entreaty (Upon) 110 of the commanding officer a party of Higland soldiers (Highland) 112 they did not scruple to intercept the pussage of goods (passage) 113 from the entrace into the Fort, and three centinels on the (entrance) 120 hauch of the others. The low state of their little magazine (haunch) 126 bleeching in the sun, after their murder by the Indians, (bleaching) 160 house, had been dischaaged at them by Indian (discharged) 182 it would be more conconvenient (convenient) 203 draging his wounded body along (dragging) 211 place of rendezvous. This stock was nearly exhaused (exhausted) 216 naturally enough prompts to deeds of revangeful cruelty (revengeful) 309 was in vain. The tomahawk was uplifted, and stoke followed (stroke) 313 in the bloody deeds of their red brethern, yet that (brethren) 323 take upon themseves the entire responsibility (themselves) 345 A most schocking scene was exhibited some time before this (shocking) 345 purpose of washing. While thus engaged three guns (repeated word) 361 miles from its enterance into the Ohio, and was known (entrance) 375 Buffaloe, and as Levi Morgan was engaged in skining (skinning) 385 loss was severely felt thoughout the whole country. (throughout) 387 was the head chief with this three wives and children (his three) 393 if posssible, to a general engagement; and if this (possible) 417 a company which had been sta-stationed (printer's error) 421 assembled to witness the awful spectacle. The croud was (crowd) Corrections in footnotes: Introduction: Chapter 3, Footnote 3 consider the running of the guantlet (gauntlet) Introduction: Chapter 3, Footnote 5 Kis faithful dog shall bear him company. (His) Chapter 1, Footnote 13 Shehandoah, Frederick, 1772 767 19,750 4,922 (Shenandoah) Chapter 1, Footnote 17 with his family to Culpeper coanty, which was (Culpeper county) Chapter 5, Footnote 5 bitten, and the whole patrty suffered exceedingly. (party) Chapter 10, Footnote 8 of the tribes west and sonthwest of Lake (southwest) Chapter 18, Footnote 4 to Aprfl 30, 1793. The army was fancifully (April)