96 MURDER OF A CELEBRATED SCOUT. 



It is possible that the poor fellow may have taken 

 drink on that occasion, but however that may be, for 

 once his customary vigilance slumbered, and so he 

 too, notwithstanding that he ought to have been the 

 last man to have let the Indians see him in possession 

 of such an article, or to have trusted himself out alone 

 with it upon him, at such a time and in such a place, 

 fell a victim to an act of momentary want of caution 

 and carelessness. 



It is, however, " a good horse that never stumbles, " 

 and the case itself is worth noting and remembering, 

 as an excellent instance of the fatal effects of even 

 momentary want of caution, and also of the folly of 

 exhibiting before the eyes of strangers in a wild country 

 any article of great apparent value there being no 

 surer way of incurring the risk of being certainly 

 robbed, and perhaps murdered, as in Comstock's case. 



It has often been remarked that a series of outrages 

 of this kind perpetrated upon the whites has eventually 

 proved the precursor of an Indian war, and the fact 

 of their occurrence is sufficient to show that mischief 

 is certainly brewing; for the Indians, who are them- 

 selves universally strong believers in the law of reta- 

 liation, would never sanction the commission of outrages 

 by members of their nation, unless they were prepared 

 to face the prospect of war. Wherever, in fact, a 

 civilized government has to deal with savage races, 

 this same rule may be held to apply, namely, that the 

 occurrence of an apparently organized series of outrages 

 may be regarded as the almost certain precursor of 

 an impending rising 



The cruelties which always accompany the outbreak 

 of savage warfare invariably form one of its most 



