266 The Winning of the West 



for revenge burned like a sullen flame. The old 

 men had passed their manhood with nerves tense 

 from the strain of unending watchfulness, and souls 

 embittered by terrible and repeated disasters; the 

 young men had been cradled in stockaded forts, 

 round which there prowled a foe whose comings 

 and goings were unknown, and who was unseen till 

 the moment when the weight of his hand was felt. 

 They had been helpless to avenge their wrongs, and 

 now that there was at last a chance to do so, they 

 thronged eagerly to Lewis' standard. The left wing 

 or army assembled at the Great Levels of Green- 

 briar, and thither came the heroes of long rifle, 

 tomahawk, and hunting-shirt, gathering from every 

 stockaded hamlet, every lonely clearing and smoky 

 hunter's camp that lay along the ridges from whose 

 hollows sprang the sources of the Eastern and the 

 Western Waters. They were not uniformed, save 

 that they all wore the garb of the frontier hunter; 

 but most of them were armed with good rifles, and 

 were skilful woodsmen, and though utterly undis- 

 ciplined, they were magnificent individual fighters. 2 

 The officers were clad and armed almost precisely 

 like the rank and file, save that some of them had 

 long swords girded to their waist-belts; they car- 

 ried rifles, for, where the result of the contest de- 

 pended mainly on the personal prowess of the in- 

 dividual fighter, the leader was expected literally 

 to stand in the forefront of the battle, and to in- 

 spirit his followers by deeds as well as words. 



2 "Am. Archiv." Col. Wm. Preston's letter, Sept. 28, 1774- 



