anchorite could fare worse, no hero could dare more; yet his wild, hard life has resistless charms; and, while he can wield a rifle, he will never leave it. Go with him to the rendezvous, and he is a stoic no more. Here, rioting among his comrades, his native appetites break loose in mad excess, in deep carouse, and desperate gaming. Then follow close the quarrel, the challenge, the fight, rusty rifles and fifty yards of prairie.

two

The nursling of civilization, placed in the midst of the forest, and abandoned to his own resources, is helpless as an infant. There is no clew to the labyrinth. Bewildered and amazed, he circles round and round in hopeless wanderings. Despair and famine make him their prey, and unless the birds of heaven minister to his wants, he dies in misery. Not so the practised woodsman. To him, the forest is a home. It yields him food, shelter, and raiment, and he threads its trackless depths with undeviating foot. To lure the game, to circumvent the lurking foe, to guide his course by the stars, the wind, the streams, or the trees, such are the arts which the white man has learned from the red. Often, indeed, the pupil has outstripped his master. He can hunt as well; he can fight better; and yet there are niceties of the woodsman's craft in which the white man must yield the palm to his savage rival. Seldom can he boast, in equal measure, that subtlety of sense, more akin to the instinct of brutes than to human reason, which reads the signs of the forest as the scholar reads the printed page, to which the whistle of a bird

can speak clearly as the tongue of man, and the rustle of a leaf give knowledge of life or death.1 With us the name of the savage is a byword of reproach. The Indian would look with equal scorn on those who, buried in useless lore, are blind and deaf to the great world of nature.

A striking example of Indian acuteness once came under my observation. Travelling in company with a Canadian named Raymond, and an Ogillallah Indian, we came at nightfall to a small stream called Chugwater, a branch of Laramie Creek. As we prepared to encamp, we observed the ashes of a fire, the footprints of men and horses, and other indications that a party had been upon the spot not many days before. Having secured our horses for the night, Raymond and I sat down and lighted our pipes, my companion, who had spent his whole life in the Indian country, hazarding various conjectures as to the numbers and character of our predecessors. Soon after, we were joined by the Indian, who, meantime, had been prowling about the place. Raymond asked what discovery he had made. He answered, that the party were friendly, and that they consisted of eight men, both whites and Indians, several of whom he named, affirming that he knew them well. To an inquiry how he gained his information, he would make no intelligible reply. On the next day, reaching Fort Laramie, a post of the American Fur Company, we found that he was correct in every particular, -a circumstance the more remarkable, as he had been with us for three weeks, and could have had no other means of knowledge than we ourselves.

CHAPTER VI.

1760.

THE ENGLISH TAKE POSSESSION OF THE WESTERN

THE war was over.

POSTS.

The plains around Montreal were dotted with the white tents of three victorious armies, and the work of conquest was complete. Canada, with all her dependencies, had yielded to the British crown; but it still remained to carry into full effect the terms of the surrender, and take possession of those western outposts, where the lilies of France had not as yet descended from the flagstaff. The execution of this task, neither an easy nor a safe one, was assigned to a provincial officer, Major Robert Rogers.

Rogers was a native of New Hampshire. He commanded a body of provincial rangers, and stood in high repute as a partisan officer. Putnam and Stark were his associates; and it was in this woodland warfare that the former achieved many of those startling adventures and hair-breadth escapes which have made his name familiar at every NewEngland fireside. Rogers's Rangers, half hunters, half woodsmen, trained in a discipline of their

own, and armed, like Indians, with hatchet, knife, and gun, were employed in a service of peculiar hardship. Their chief theatre of action was the mountainous region of Lake George, the debatable ground between the hostile forts of Ticonderoga and William Henry. The deepest recesses of these romantic solitudes had heard the French and Indian yell, and the answering shout of the hardy New-England men. In summer, they passed down the lake in whale boats or canoes, or threaded the pathways of the woods in single file, like the savages themselves. In winter, they journeyed through the swamps on snowshoes, skated along the frozen surface of the lake, and bivouacked at night among the snow-drifts. They intercepted French messengers, encountered French scouting parties, and carried off prisoners from under the very walls of Ticonderoga. Their hardships and adventures, their marches and countermarches, their frequent skirmishes and midwinter battles, had made them famous throughout America; and though it was the fashion of the day to sneer at the efforts of provincial troops, the name of Rogers's Rangers was never mentioned but with honor.

Their commander was a man tall and strong in person, and rough in feature. He was versed in all the arts of woodcraft, sagacious, prompt, and resolute, yet so cautious withal that he sometimes incurred the unjust charge of cowardice. His mind, naturally active, was by no means uncultivated; and his books and unpublished letters

bear witness that his style as a writer was not contemptible. But his vain, restless, and grasping spirit, and more than doubtful honesty, proved the ruin of an enviable reputation. Six years after the expedition of which I am about to speak, he was tried by a court-martial for a meditated act of treason, the surrender of Fort Michillimackinac into the hands of the Spaniards, who were at that time masters of Upper Louisiana. Not long after, if we may trust his own account, he passed over to the Barbary States, entered the service of the Dey of Algiers, and fought two battles under his banners. At the opening of the war of independence, he returned to his native country, where he made professions of patriotism, but was strongly suspected by many, including Washington himself, of acting the part of a spy. In fact, he soon openly espoused the British cause, and received a colonel's commission from the crown. His services, however, proved of little consequence. In 1778, he was proscribed and banished, under the act of New Hampshire, and the remainder of his life was passed in such obscurity that it is difficult to determine when and where he died.2

1 MS. Gage Papers.

2 Sabine, American Loyalists, 576. Sparks, Writings of Washington, III. 208, 244, 439; IV. 128, 520, 524.

Although Rogers, especially where his pecuniary interest was concerned, was far from scrupulous, I have no hesitation in following his account of the expedition up the lakes. The incidents of each day are minuted down in a dry, unambitious style, bearing the clear impress of truth. Extracts from the orderly books and other official papers are given, while portions of the narrative, verified by contemporary documents, may stand as earnests for the truth of the whole.

Rogers's published works consist of the Journals of his ranging service