The First White Man of the West Part 7

Six hundred Indians attack Boonesborough--Boone and Captain Smith go out to treat with the enemy under a flag of truce, and are extricated from a treacherous attempt to detain them as prisoners--Defence of the fort--The Indians defeated--Boone goes to North Carolina to bring bark his family.

It will naturally be supposed that foes less wary and intelligent, than those from whom Boone had escaped, after they had abandoned the hope of recapturing him, would calculate to find Boonesborough in readiness for their reception.

Boonesborough, though the most populous and important station in Kentucky, had been left by the abstraction of so many of the select inhabitants in the captivity of the Blue Licks, by the absence of Colonel Clarke in Illinois, and by the actual decay of the pickets, almost defenceless. Not long before the return of Boone, this important post had been put under the care of Major Smith, an active and intelligent officer. He repaired thither, and put the station, with great labor and fatigue, in a competent state of defence. Learning from the return of some of the prisoners, captured at the Blue Licks, the great blow which the Shawnese meditated against this station, he deemed it advisable to antic.i.p.ate their movements, and to fit out an expedition to meet them on their own ground.--Leaving twenty young men to defend the place, he marched with thirty chosen men towards the Shawnese towns.

At the Blue Licks, a place of evil omen to Kentucky, eleven of the men, anxious for the safety of the families they had left behind and deeming their force too small for the object contemplated, abandoned the enterprise and retreated to the fort. The remaining nineteen, not discouraged by the desertion of their companions, heroically persevered.

They crossed the Ohio to the present site of Cincinnati, on rafts. They then painted their faces, and in other respects a.s.sumed the guise and garb of savages, and marched upon the Indian towns.

When arrived within twenty miles of these towns they met the force with which Boone had set out. Discouraged by his escape, the original party had returned, had been rejoined by a considerable reinforcement, the whole amounting to two hundred and fifty men on horse-back, and were again on their march against Boonesborough. Fortunately, Major Smith and his small party discovered this formidable body before they were themselves observed. But instead of endeavoring to make good their retreat from an enemy so superior in numbers, and mounted upon horses, they fired upon them and killed two of their number. An a.s.sault so unexpected alarmed the Indians; and without any effort to ascertain the number of their a.s.sailants, they commenced a precipitate retreat. If these rash adventurers had stopped here, they might have escaped unmolested. But, flushed with this partial success, they rushed upon the retreating foe, and repeated their fire. The savages, restored to self-possession, halted in their turn, deliberated a moment, and turned upon the a.s.sailants. Major Smith, perceiving the imprudence of having thus put the enemy at bay, and the certainty of the destruction of his little force, if the Indians should perceive its weakness, ordered a retreat in time; and being considerably in advance of the foe, succeeded in effecting it without loss. By a rapid march during the night, in the course of the next morning they reached Boonesborough in safety.

Scarcely an hour after the last of their number had entered the fort, a body of six hundred Indians, in three divisions of two hundred each, appeared with standards and much show of warlike array, and took their station opposite the fort. The whole was commanded by a Frenchman named Duquesne. They immediately sent a flag requesting the surrender of the place, in the name of the king of Great Britain. A council was held, and contrary to the opinion of Major Smith, it was decided to pay no attention to the proposal. They repeated their flag of truce, stating that they had letters from the commander at Detroit to Colonel Boone. On this, it was resolved that Colonel Boone and Major Smith should venture out, and hear what they had to propose.

Fifty yards from the fort three chiefs met them with great parade, and conducted them to the spot designated for their reception, and spread a panther's skin for their seat, while two other Indians held branches over their heads to protect them from the fervor of the sun. The chiefs then commenced an address five minutes in length, abounding in friendly a.s.surances, and the avowal of kind sentiments. A part of the advanced warriors grounded their arms, and came forward to shake hands with them.

The letter from Governor Hamilton of Detroit was then produced, and read. It proposed the most favorable terms of surrender, provided the garrison would repair to Detroit. Major Smith a.s.sured them that the proposition seemed a kind one; but that it was impossible, in their circ.u.mstances, to remove their women and children to Detroit. The reply was that this difficulty should be removed, for that they had brought forty horses with them, expressly prepared for such a contingency.

In a long and apparently amicable interview, during which the Indians smoked with them, and vaunted their abstinence in not having killed the swine and cattle of the settlement, Boone and Smith arose to return to the fort, and make known these proposals, and to deliberate upon their decision. Twenty Indians accompanied their return as far as the limits stipulated between the parties allowed. The negotiators having returned, and satisfied the garrison that the Indians had no cannon, advised to listen to no terms, but to defend the fort to the last extremity. The inmates of the station resolved to follow this counsel.

In a short time the Indians sent in another flag, with a view, as they stated, to ascertain the result of the deliberations of the fort. Word was sent them, that if they wished to settle a treaty, a place of conference must be a.s.signed intermediate between their camp and the fort. The Indians consented to this stipulation, and deputed thirty chiefs to arrange the articles, though such appeared to be their distrust, that they could not be induced to come nearer than eighty yards from the fort. Smith and Boone with four others were deputed to confer with them. After a close conference of two days, an arrangement was agreed upon, which contained a stipulation, that neither party should cross the Ohio, until after the terms had been decided upon by the respective authorities on either side. The wary heads of this negotiation considered these terms of the Indians as mere lures to beguile confidence.

When the treaty was at last ready for signature, an aged chief, who had seemed to regulate all the proceedings, remarked that he must first go to his people, and that he would immediately return, and sign the instrument. He was observed to step aside in conference with some young warriors. On his return the negotiators from the garrison asked the chief why he had brought young men in place of those who had just been a.s.sisting at the council? His answer was prompt and ingenious. It was, that he wished to gratify his young warriors, who desired to become acquainted with the ways of the whites. It was then proposed, according to the custom of both races, that the parties should shake hands. As the two chief negotiators, Smith and Boone, arose to depart, they were both seized from behind.

Suspicious of treachery, they had posted twenty-five men in a bastion, with orders to fire upon the council, as soon as they should see any marks of treachery or violence. The instant the negotiators were seized, the whole besieging force fired upon them, and the fire was as promptly returned by the men in the bastion. The powerful savages who had grasped Boone and Smith, attempted to drag them off as prisoners. The one who held Smith was compelled to release his grasp by being shot dead.

Colonel Boone was slightly wounded. A second tomahawk, by which his skull would have been cleft asunder, he evaded, and it partially fell on Major Smith; but being in a measure spent, it did not inflict a dangerous wound. The negotiators escaped to the fort without receiving any other injury. The almost providential escape of Boone and Smith can only be accounted for by the confusion into which the Indians were thrown, as soon as these men were seized, and by the prompt fire of the men concealed in the bastion. Added to this, the two Indians who seized them were both shot dead, by marksmen who knew how to kill the Indians, and at the same time spare the whites, in whose grasp they were held.

The firing on both sides now commenced in earnest, and was kept up without intermission from morning dawn until dark. The garrison, at once exasperated and cheered by the meditated treachery of the negotiation and its result, derided the furious Indians, and thanked them for the stratagem of the negotiation, which had given them time to prepare the fort for their reception. Goaded to desperation by these taunts, and by Duquesne, who harangued them to the onset, they often rushed up to the fort, as if they purposed to storm it. Dropping dead under the cool and deliberate aim of the besieged, the remainder of the forlorn hope, raising a yell of fury and despair, fell back. Other infuriated bands took their place; and these scenes were often repeated, invariably with the same success, until both parties were incapable of taking aim on account of the darkness.

They then procured a quant.i.ty of combustible matter, set fire to it, and approached under covert of the darkness, so near the palisades as to throw the burning materials into the fort. But the inmates had availed themselves of the two days' consultation, granted them by the treacherous foe, to procure an ample supply of water; and they had the means of extinguis.h.i.+ng the burning f.a.ggots as they fell.

Finding their efforts to fire the fort ineffectual, they returned again to their arms, and continued to fire upon the station for some days.

Taught a lesson of prudence, however, by what had already befallen them, they kept at such a cautious distance, as that their fire took little effect. A project to gain the place, more wisely conceived, and promising better success, was happily discovered by Colonel Boone. The walls of the fort were distant sixty yards from the Kentucky river. The bosom of the current was easily discernible by the people within. Boone discovered in the morning that the stream near the sh.o.r.e was extremely turbid. He immediately divined the cause.

The Indians had commenced a trench at the water level of the river bank, mining upwards towards the station, and intending to reach the interior by a pa.s.sage under the wall. He took measures to render their project ineffectual, by ordering a trench to be cut inside the fort, across the line of their subterraneous pa.s.sage. They were probably apprised of the countermine that was digging within, by the quant.i.ty of earth thrown over the wall. But, stimulated by the encouragement of their French engineer, they continued to advance their mine towards the wall, until, from the friability of the soil through which it pa.s.sed, it fell in, and all their labor was lost. With a perseverance that in a good cause would have done them honor, in no wise discouraged by this failure to intermit their exertions, they returned again to their fire arms, and kept up a furious and incessant firing for some days, but producing no more impression upon the station than before.

During the siege, which lasted eight days, they proposed frequent parleys, requesting the surrender of the place, and professing to treat the garrison with the utmost kindness. They were answered, that they must deem the garrison to be still more brutally fools than themselves, to expect that they would place any confidence in the proposals of wretches who had already manifested such base and stupid treachery. They were bidden to fire on, for that their waste of powder and lead gave the garrison little uneasiness, and were a.s.sured that they could not hope the surrender of the place, while there was a man left within it. On the morning of the ninth day from the commencement of the siege, after having, as usual, wreaked their disappointed fury upon the cattle and swine, they decamped, and commenced a retreat.

No Indian expedition against the whites had been known to have had such a disastrous issue for them. During the siege, their loss was estimated by the garrison at two hundred killed, beside a great number wounded.

The garrison, on the contrary, protected by the palisades, behind which they could fire in safety, and deliberately prostrate every foe that exposed himself near enough to become a mark, lost but two killed, and had six wounded.

After the siege, the people of the fort, to whom lead was a great object, began to collect the b.a.l.l.s that the Indians had fired upon them.

They gathered in the logs of the fort, beside those that had fallen to the ground, a hundred and twenty-five pounds. The failure of this desperate attempt, with such a powerful force, seems to have discouraged the Indians and their Canadian allies from making any further effort against Boonesborough. In the autumn of this season, Colonel Boone returned to North Carolina to visit his wife and family.

When he was taken at the Blue Licks, with his a.s.sociates, who had returned, while he was left behind in a long captivity, during which no more news of him transpired than as if he were actually among the dead, the people of the garrison naturally concluded that he had been killed.

His wife and family numbered him as among the dead; and often had they shuddered on the bare recurrence of some one to the probability of the tortures he had undergone. Deeply attached to him, and inconsolable, they could no longer endure a residence which so painfully reminded them of their loss. As soon as they had settled their minds to the conviction that their head would return to them no more, they resolved to leave these forests that had been so fatal to them, and return to the banks of the Yadkin, where were all their surviving connections. A family so respectable and dear to the settlement would not be likely to leave without having to overcome many tender and pressing solicitations to remain, and many promises that if they would, their temporal wants should be provided for.

To all this Mrs. Boone could only object, that Kentucky had indeed been to her, as its name imported, a dark and _b.l.o.o.d.y Ground_. She had lost her eldest son by the savage fire before they had reached the country.

Her daughter had been made a captive, and had experienced a forbearance from the Indians to her inexplicable. She would have been carried away to the savage towns, and there would have been forcibly married to some warrior, but for the perilous attempt, and improbable success of her father in recapturing her. Now the father himself, her affectionate husband, and the heroic defender of the family, had fallen a sacrifice, probably in the endurance of tortures on which the imagination dared not to dwell. Under the influence of griefs like these, next to the unfailing resource of religion, the heart naturally turns to the sympathy and society of those bound to it by the ties of nature and affinity. They returned to their friends in North Carolina.

It was nearly five years since this now desolate family had started in company with the first emigrating party of families, in high hopes and spirits, for Kentucky. We have narrated their disastrous rencounter with the Indians in Powell's valley, and their desponding return to Clinch river. We have seen their subsequent return to Boonesborough, on Kentucky river. Tidings of the party thus far had reached the relatives of Mrs. Boone's family in North Carolina; but no news from the country west of the Alleghanies had subsequently reached them. All was uncertain conjecture, whether they still lived, or had perished by famine, wild beasts, or the Indians.

At the close of the summer of 1778, the settlement on the Yadkin saw a company on pack horses approaching in the direction from the western wilderness. They had often seen parties of emigrants departing in that direction, but it was a novel spectacle to see one return from that quarter. At the head of that company was a blooming youth, scarcely yet arrived at the age of manhood. It was the eldest surviving son of Daniel Boone. Next behind him was a matronly woman, in weeds, and with a countenance of deep dejection. It was Mrs. Boone. Still behind was the daughter who had been a captive with the Indians. The remaining children were too young to feel deeply. The whole group was respectable in appearance, though clad in skins, and the primitive habiliments of the wilderness. It might almost have been mistaken for a funeral procession. It stopped at the house of Mr. Bryan, the father of Mrs.

Boone.

The people of the settlement were not long in collecting to hear news from the west, and learn the fate of their former favorite, Boone, and his family. As Mrs. Boone, in simple and backwood's phrase, related the thrilling story of their adventures, which needed no trick of venal eloquence to convey it to the heart, an abundant tribute of tears from the hearers convinced the bereaved narrator that true sympathy is natural to the human heart. As they shuddered at the dark character of many of the incidents related, it was an hour of triumph, notwithstanding their pity, for those wiser ones, who took care, in an under tone, to whisper that it might be remembered that they had predicted all that had happened.

CHAPTER XI.

A sketch of the character and adventures of several other pioneers--Harrod, Kenton, Logan, Ray, McAffee, and others.

Colonel Boone having seen the formidable invasion of Boonesborough successfully repelled, and with such a loss as would not be likely to tempt the Indians to repeat such a.s.saults--and having thus disengaged his mind from public duties, resigned it to the influence of domestic sympathies. The affectionate husband and father, concealing the tenderest heart under a sun-burnt and care-worn visage, was soon seen crossing the Alleghanies in pursuit of his wife and children. The bright star of his morning promise had been long under eclipse; for this journey was one of continued difficulties, vexations, and dangers--so like many of his sufferings already recounted, that we pa.s.s them by, fearing the effect of incidents of so much monotony upon the reader's patience. The frame and spirit of the western adventurer were of iron.

He surmounted all, and was once more in the bosom of his family on the Yadkin, who, in the language of the Bible, hailed him as one _who had been dead and was alive again; who had been lost and was found_.

Many incidents of moment and interest in the early annals of Kentucky occurred during this reunion of Boone with his family. As his name is forever identified with these annals, we hope it will not be deemed altogether an episode if we introduce here a brief chronicle of those incidents--though not directly a.s.sociated with the subject of our memoir. In presenting those incidents, we shall be naturally led to speak of some of the other patriarchs of Kentucky--all Boones in their way--all strangely endowed with that peculiar character which fitted them for the time, place, and achievements. We thus discover the foresight of Providence in the arrangement of means to ends. This is no where seen more conspicuously than in the characters of the founders of states and inst.i.tutions.

During the absence of Colonel Boone, there was a general disposition in Kentucky to retaliate upon the Shawnese some of the injuries and losses which they had so often inflicted upon the infant settlement. Colonel Bowman, with a force of a hundred and sixty men, was selected to command the expedition; and it was destined against Old Chillicothe--the den where the red northern savages had so long concentrated their expeditions against the settlements south of the Ohio.

The force marched in the month of July, 1779, and reached its destination undiscovered by the Indians. A contest commenced with the Indians at early dawn, which lasted until ten in the morning. But, although Colonel Bowman's force sustained itself with great gallantry, the numbers and concealment of the enemy precluded the chance of a victory. He retreated, with an inconsiderable loss, a distance of thirty miles. The Indians, collecting all their forces, pursued and overtook him. Another engagement of two hours ensued, more to the disadvantage of the Kentuckians than the former. Colonel Harrod proposed to mount a number of horse, and make a charge upon the Indians, who continued the fight with great fury. This apparently desperate measure was followed by the happiest results. The Indian front was broken, and their force thrown into irreparable confusion. Colonel Bowman, having sustained a loss of nine killed and one wounded, afterwards continued an unmolested retreat.

In June of the next year, 1780, six hundred Indians and Canadians, commanded by Colonel Bird, a British officer, attacked Riddle's and Martin's stations, at the forks of the Licking, with six pieces of cannon. They conducted this expedition with so much secrecy, that the first intimation of it which the unsuspecting inhabitants had, was being fired upon. Unprepared to resist so formidable a force, provided moreover with cannon, against which their palisade walls would not stand, they were obliged to surrender at discretion. The savages immediately prostrated one man and two women with the tomahawk. All the other prisoners, many of whom were sick, were loaded with baggage and forced to accompany their return march to the Indian towns. Whoever, whether male or female, infant or aged, became unable, from sickness or exhaustion, to proceed, was immediately dispatched with the tomahawk.

The inhabitants, exasperated by the recital of cruelties to the children and women, too horrible to be named, put themselves under the standard of the intrepid and successful General Clarke, who commanded a regiment of United States' troops at the falls of Ohio. He was joined by a number of volunteers from the country, and they marched against Pickaway, one of the princ.i.p.al towns of the Shawnese, on the Great Miami. He conducted this expedition with his accustomed good fortune. He burnt their town to ashes. Beside the dead, which, according to their custom, the Indians carried off, seventeen bodies were left behind. The loss of General Clarke was seventeen killed.

We here present brief outlines of some of the other more prominent western pioneers, the kindred spirits, the Boones of Kentucky. High spirited intelligent, intrepid as they were, they can never supplant the reckless hero of Kentucky and Missouri in our thoughts. It is true, these men deserve to have their memories perpetuated in monumental bra.s.s, and the more enduring page of history. But there is a sad interest attached to the memory of Daniel Boone, which can never belong, in an equal degree, to theirs. They foresaw what this beautiful country would become in the hands of its new possessors. Extending their thoughts beyond the ken of a hunter's calculations, they antic.i.p.ated the consequences of buts and bounds, officers of registry and record, and courts of justice. In due time, they secured a fair and adequate reversion in the soil which they had planted and so n.o.bly defended.

Hence, their posterity, with the inheritance of their name and renown, enter into the heritage of their possessions, and find an honorable and an abundant residence in the country which their fathers settled.

Boone, on the contrary, was too simple-minded, too little given to prospective calculations, and his heart in too much what was pa.s.sing under his eye, to make this thrifty forecast. In age, in penury, landless, and without a home, he is seen leaving Kentucky, then an opulent and flouris.h.i.+ng country, for a new wilderness and new scenes of adventure.

Among the names of the conspicuous backwoodsmen who settled the west, we cannot fail to recognize that of James Harrod. He was from the banks of the Monongahela, and among the earliest immigrants to the "b.l.o.o.d.y Ground." He descended the Great Kenhawa, and returned to Pennsylvania in 1774. He made himself conspicuous with a party of his friends at the famous contest with the Indians at the "Point," Next year he returned to Kentucky with a party of immigrants, fixing himself at one of the earliest settlements in the country, which, in honor of him, was called Harrodsburgh.

Nature had moulded him of a form and temperament to look the formidable red man in the face. He was six feet, muscular, broad chested, of a firm and animated countenance, keen and piercing eyes, and sparing of speech.

He gained himself an imperishable name in the annals of Kentucky, under the extreme disadvantage of not knowing how to read or write! Obliging and benevolent to his neighbors, he was brave and active in their defence. A successful, because a persevering and intelligent hunter, he was liberal to profuseness in the distribution of the spoils. Vigilant and unerring with his rifle, it was at one time directed against the abundant game for the sake of his friends rather than himself; and at others, against the enemies of his country. Guided by the inexplicable instinct of forest skill, he could conduct the wanderer in the woods from point to point through the wilderness, as the needle guides the mariner upon the ocean. So endowed, others equally illiterate, and less gifted, naturally, and from instinct, arranged themselves under his banner, and fearlessly followed such a leader.

If it was reported, that a family, recently arrived in the country, and not yet acquainted with the backwood's modes of supply, was in want of food, Harrod was seen at the cabin door, offering the body of a deer or buffalo, which he had just killed. The commencing farmer, who had lost his oxen, or plough horse, in the range, and unused to the vocation of hunting them, or fearful of the Indian rifle, felt no hesitancy, from his known character, in applying to Harrod. He would disappear in the woods, and in the exercise of his own wonderful tact, the lost beast was soon seen driving to the door.

But the precincts of a station, or the field of a farm, were too uncongenial a range for such a spirit as his. To breathe the fresh forest air--to range deserts where man was not to be seen--to pursue the wild deer and buffalo--to trap the bear and the wolf, or beside the still pond, or the unexplored stream, to catch otters and beavers--to bring down the wild turkey from the summit of the highest trees; such were the congenial pursuits in which he delighted.

But, in a higher sphere, and in the service of his country, he united the instinctive tact and dexterity of a huntsman with the bravery of a soldier. No labor was too severe for his hardihood; no enterprise too daring and forlorn for his adventure; no course too intricate and complicated for his judgment, so far as native talent could guide it. As a Colonel of the militia, he conducted expeditions against the Indians with uncommon success. After the country had become populous, and he a husband and a father, in the midst of an affectionate family, possessed of every comfort--such was the effect of temperament, operating upon habit, that he became often silent and thoughtful in the midst of the social circle, and was seen in that frame to wander away into remote forests, and to bury himself amidst the unpeopled k.n.o.bs, where, in a few weeks, he would reacquire his cheerfulness. In one of these excursions he disappeared, and was seen no more, leaving no trace to determine whether he died a natural death, was slain by wild beasts, or the tomahawk of the savage.

Among the names of many of the first settlers of Harrodsburgh, are those that are found most prominent in the early annals of Kentucky. In the first list of these we find the names of McGary, Harland, McBride, and Chaplain. Among the young settlers, none were more conspicuous for active, daring, and meritorious service, than James Ray. Prompt at his post at the first moment of alarm, brave in the field, fearless and persevering in the pursuit of the enemy, scarcely a battle, skirmish, or expedition took place in which he had not a distinguished part. Equally expert as a woodsman, and skilful and successful as a hunter, he was often employed as a spy. It is recorded of him that he left his garrison, when short of provisions, by night marched to a forest at the distance of six miles, killed a buffalo, and, loaded with the choice parts of the flesh, returned to regale the hungry inhabitants in the morning. He achieved this enterprise, too, when it was well known that the vicinity was thronged with Indians, lurking for an opportunity to kill. These are the positions which try the daring and skill, the usefulness and value of men, furnis.h.i.+ng a criterion which cannot be counterfeited between reality and resemblance.

We may perhaps in this place most properly introduce another of the famous partisans in savage warfare, Simon Kenton, alias Butler, who, from humble beginnings, made himself conspicuous by distinguished services and achievements in the first settlements of this country, and ought to be recorded as one of the patriarchs of Kentucky. He was born in Virginia, in 1753. He grew to maturity without being able to read or write; but from his early exploits he seems to have been endowed with feelings which the educated and those born in the upper walks of life, appear to suppose a monopoly reserved for themselves. It is recorded of him, that at the age of nineteen, he had a violent contest with another compet.i.tor for the favor of the lady of his love. She refused to make an election between them, and the subject of this notice indignantly exiled himself from his native place. After various peregrinations on the long rivers of the west, he fixed himself in Kentucky, and soon became a distinguished partisan against the savages. In 1774, he joined himself to Lord Dunmore, and was appointed one of his spies. He made various excursions, and performed important services in this employ. He finally selected a place for improvement on the site where Was.h.i.+ngton now is.

Returning one day from hunting, he found one of his companions slain by the Indians, and his body thrown into the fire. He left Was.h.i.+ngton in consequence, and joined himself to Colonel Clarke in his fortunate and gallant expedition against Vincennes and Kaskaskia. He was sent by that commander with despatches for Kentucky. He pa.s.sed through the streets of Vincennes, then in possession of the British and Indians, without discovery. Arriving at White river, he and his party made a raft on which to cross with their guns and baggage, driving their horses into the river and compelling them to swim it. A party of Indians was concealed on the opposite bank, who took possession of the horses as they mounted the bank from crossing the river. Butler and his party seeing this, continued to float down the river on their raft without coming to land. They concealed themselves in the bushes until night, when they crossed the river, pursued their journey, and delivered their despatches.

After this, Butler made a journey of discovery to the northern regions of the Ohio country, and was made prisoner by the Indians. They painted him black, as is their custom when a victim is destined for their torture, and informed him that he was to be burned at Chillicothe.

Meanwhile, for their own amus.e.m.e.nt, and as a prelude of his torture, they manacled him hand and foot, and placed him on an unbridled and unbroken horse, and turned the animal loose, driving it off at its utmost speed, with shouts, delighted at witnessing its mode of managing with its living burden. The horse unable to shake off this new and strange enc.u.mbrance, made for the thickest covert of the woods and brambles, with the speed of the winds. It is easy to conjecture the position and suffering of the victim. The terrified animal exhausted itself in fruitless efforts to shake off its burden, and worn down and subdued, brought Butler back amidst the yells of the exulting savages to the camp.