316 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. • 



were there at every battle, for their bodies lay on the 

 field when the fight was done. Bunker Hill was repre- 

 sented in every cypress gall. The cruel winter at Val- 

 ley Forge they underw^ent, though their torture was the 

 miasma and the heat. Their capitol was burned at Pa- 

 lackhckaha, and its fruitful fields were destroyed. The 

 old prison-ship lay moored for them in Tampa Bay, and 

 their highest chiefs were captives in its hold. They had 

 their Sumpters and Marions, in Chekika and Hospetarke 

 their Pulaski in Holartoochee, and their "Washington in 

 Osceola ; and had their Arnolds been discovered, as ours, 

 they would be Hving still, an independent people. 



If men are to be esteemed for high \irtues in propor- 

 tion to the obstacles they had to overcome in attainmg 

 them, and if the praise of comparative great deeds is due 

 mostly to those who have from lower life made them 

 eminent, the brave resistance of the savage in his 

 swamp is a higher deed of chivalry than the war of a 

 civilized people, with its wealth of reason and example, 

 and if it does not stand on historic page in brighter light, 

 it is because the page is written by the civilized race 

 as defence and not as a veritable history. 



One morning, as the sentinels around the fort were 

 relieved, a stranger came up to the relief, was recog- 

 nized, and then sauntered mto the camp. A huge, rough, 

 talkative fellow, a hunter by trade, and now following 

 the camp, like many others, half for the fun and half for 

 the gain ; one of that peculiar southwestern race, a sort 

 of cousin to Mike, not in blood, but in position. Mike 



