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Chapter: "Mine ear is open, and my heart prepared: |
The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold: |
Say, is my kingdom lost?" |
SHAKESPEARE. |
It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that |
the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before |
the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious |
boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of |
France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who |
fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the |
rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the |
mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more |
martial conflict. But, emulating the patience and self-denial of the |
practised native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty; |
and it would seem that, in time, there was no recess of the woods so |
dark, nor any secret place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from |
the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their |
vengeance, or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant |
monarchs of Europe. |
Perhaps no district throughout the wide extent of the intermediate |
frontiers can furnish a livelier picture of the cruelty and fierceness |
of the savage warfare of those periods than the country which lies |
between the head waters of the Hudson and the adjacent lakes. |
The facilities which nature had there offered to the march of the |
combatants were too obvious to be neglected. The lengthened sheet of the |
Champlain stretched from the frontiers of Canada, deep within the |
borders of the neighboring province of New York, forming a natural |
passage across half the distance that the French were compelled to |
master in order to strike their enemies. Near its southern termination, |
it received the contributions of another lake, whose waters were so |
limpid as to have been exclusively selected by the Jesuit missionaries |
to perform the typical purification of baptism, and to obtain for it the |
title of lake "du Saint Sacrement." The less zealous English thought |
they conferred a sufficient honor on its unsullied fountains, when they |
bestowed the name of their reigning prince, the second of the house of |
Hanover. The two united to rob the untutored possessors of its wooded |
scenery of their native right to perpetuate its original appellation of |
"Horican."[1] |
Winding its way among countless islands, and imbedded in mountains, the |
"holy lake" extended a dozen leagues still farther to the south. With |
the high plain that there interposed itself to the further passage of |
the water, commenced a portage of as many miles, which conducted the |
adventurer to the banks of the Hudson, at a point where, with the usual |
obstructions of the rapids, or rifts, as they were then termed in the |
language of the country, the river became navigable to the tide. |
While, in the pursuit of their daring plans of annoyance, the restless |
enterprise of the French even attempted the distant and difficult gorges |
of the Alleghany, it may easily be imagined that their proverbial |
acuteness would not overlook the natural advantages of the district we |
have just described. It became, emphatically, the bloody arena, in which |
most of the battles for the mastery of the colonies were contested. |
Forts were erected at the different points that commanded the facilities |
of the route, and were taken and retaken, razed and rebuilt, as victory |
alighted on the hostile banners. While the husbandman shrank back from |
the dangerous passes, within the safer boundaries of the more ancient |
settlements, armies larger than those that had often disposed of the |
sceptres of the mother countries, were seen to bury themselves in these |
forests, whence they rarely returned but in skeleton bands, that were |
haggard with care, or dejected by defeat. Though the arts of peace were |
unknown to this fatal region, its forests were alive with men; its |
shades and glens rang with the sounds of martial music, and the echoes |
of its mountains threw back the laugh, or repeated the wanton cry, of |
many a gallant and reckless youth, as he hurried by them, in the |
noontide of his spirits, to slumber in a long night of forgetfulness. |
It was in this scene of strife and bloodshed that the incidents we shall |
attempt to relate occurred, during the third year of the war which |
England and France last waged for the possession of a country that |
neither was destined to retain. |
The imbecility of her military leaders abroad, and the fatal want of |
energy in her councils at home, had lowered the character of Great |
Britain from the proud elevation on which it had been placed, by the |
talents and enterprise of her former warriors and statesmen. No longer |
dreaded by her enemies, her servants were fast losing the confidence of |
self-respect. In this mortifying abasement, the colonists, though |
innocent of her imbecility, and too humble to be the agents of her |
blunders, were but the natural participators. |
They had recently seen a chosen army from that country, which, |
reverencing as a mother, they had blindly believed invincible--an army |
led by a chief who had been selected from a crowd of trained warriors, |
for his rare military endowments, disgracefully routed by a handful of |
French and Indians, and only saved from annihilation by the coolness and |
spirit of a Virginian boy, whose riper fame has since diffused itself, |
with the steady influence of moral truth, to the uttermost confines of |
Christendom.[2] A wide frontier had been laid naked by this unexpected |
disaster, and more substantial evils were preceded by a thousand |
fanciful and imaginary dangers. The alarmed colonists believed that the |
yells of the savages mingled with every fitful gust of wind that issued |
from the interminable forests of the west. The terrific character of |
their merciless enemies increased immeasurably the natural horrors of |
warfare. Numberless recent massacres were still vivid in their |
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