300 WILD SPOETS m THE SOUTH. 



fame, with armor newly diglit, and hither returned from 

 the cypress swamp or pathless everglade the soldier 

 whose brief campaign sent him home womided, wasted, 

 broken, with his weapons untarnished, save by the rust, 

 and his glory unmade, except by his sufierings. Here 

 fled for shelter the settler's family from then* burning 

 home, the shipwrecked sailor from pursuing storms, and 

 here the haughty chieftain came with his armed band, 

 wrapped in his wrought mantle and his stoic dignity, to 

 treat for peace or vindicate his race ; or the captured 

 warriors in their damp prison shivered on the prison ships 

 in sight of the warm life of their native forests. Here 

 " talks " were had with the tribes, treaties signed, ex- 

 peditions fitted out, forays revenged, and the barbaric 

 life of the woods mingled and flov>^ed side by side with 

 the chaster forms of civilization, as the Oswegatchie 

 pushes its black current into the blue waters of the St. 

 Lawrence, and mottles the flood with its curious con- 

 trast. 



The Avar that had been waghig for over ten years 

 through the length and breadth of the peninsula was ap- 

 parently no nearer its termination than at any previous 

 period. Small bands of Indians had been captured at 

 different times, always by some ruse, and not by open 

 warfare, and exported by ships to the far West. Several 

 noted chiefs had been slain in defending their homes, and 

 many villages and corn-fields been laid waste, but braver 

 warriors seemed to take the j^lace of the old ones, and 

 new retreats had been found in the most inaccessible 



