1760-17G3.] THE FOREST TRAVELLER. 155 



nothing is more remarkable in the character of 

 this people than the union of inordinate pride and 

 a generous love of glory with the mendicity of a 

 beggar or a child. 



He who wished to visit the remoter tribes of the 

 Mississippi valley — an attempt, however, which, 

 until several years after the conquest of Canada, 

 no Englishman could have made without great 

 risk of losing his scalp — would find no easier 

 course than to descend the Ohio in a canoe or 

 bateau. He might float for more than eleven 

 hundred miles down this liquid highway of the 

 wilderness, and, except the deserted cabins of 

 Logsto^vn, a little below Fort Pitt, the remnant 

 of a Shawanoe village at the mouth of the Scioto, 

 and an occasional hamlet or solitary wigwam along 

 the deeply wooded banks, he would discern no 

 trace of human habitation through all this vast 

 extent. The body of the Indian population lay 

 to the northward, about the waters of the tributary 

 streams. It behooved the voyager to observe a sleep- 

 less caution and a hawk-eyed vigilance. Some- 

 times his anxious scrutiny would detect a faint 

 blue smoke stealing upward above the green bosom 

 of the forest, and betraying the encamping place of 

 some lurking war-party. Then the canoe would 

 be drawn in haste beneath the overhanging bushes 

 which skirted the shore ; nor would the voyage be 

 resumed until darkness closed, when the little 

 vessel would drift swiftly and safely by the point 

 of danger.^ 



1 Mitchell, Contest in America. Pouchot, Guerre de VAm&ique. Expe- 

 dition against the Ohio Indians, appendix. Hutchins, Topographical Descrip- 



