LIFE OF JAMES WADSWORTH. 147 



soothers the magnanimity of the chiefs Avho disdained to feel resentment for the 

 woes of open war, and the fears which tiie inferior warriors entertained of the 

 prowess of the Long-Knives. To encounter the perils of this po&ilion, and per- 

 form the labor of bringing their land into cultivation, the brothers hired a small 

 baud of hardy axmen in Connecticut, purchased provisions to maintain them 

 until the first crops should ripen, and provided agricultural implements sulhcient 

 for their proposed i'arm. The whole party, with its heavy incumbrances, as- 

 cended the Hudson to Albany, then often the voyage of a week ; made the long- 

 portage through the pines to Schenectady ; embarked in bateaux upon the Mo- 

 hawk, not yet improved even by the partial operations of the Western Land and 

 Navigation Company ; and followed its tortuous course until they reached the 

 limit of continuous settlement. Here cattle were purchased to serve as the 

 foundation of a future stock and for temporary support, and the party was divided 

 into two bands. James continued the laborious task of threading nameless 

 streams, encumbered by wood-drifts and running in shallow channels, while 

 William undertook the still more difficult duty of driving the stock through the 

 pathless forest. Finally the party was again vinited upon a small savannah ou 

 the bank of the Genesee, a spot which, hardly altered in appearance, is now 

 overlooked by a flourishing town and mansions which, if unpretending, unite in 

 the highest degree the refinements and elegances of civilization. Here the bold 

 and gallant bearing of William Wadsworth, united, or we may even say di- 

 rected by the sagacity, moral courage and strict justice of James, won upon the 

 neighboring chiefs to such a degree as to have made them the instruments by 

 which the enterprise was preserved from almost immediate ruin. A house hav- 

 ing been built by the aid of no other implement but the ax, crops were planted 

 and the cattle turned to graze in the rich savannah. The virgin forest which 

 then encumbered much the greater part of the selected portion of the Geiiesee 

 Flats, was vigorously attacked, and the mighty trees yielded to the Yankee ax. 

 Classic superstition in the events which folio w^ed, would have seen the Drjj^ads 

 uniting to avenge the destruction of their desecrated groves ; for, with the au- 

 tumn came the enervating and unmanning attacks of the ague. This, to natives 

 of a country where it was unknown, presented such terrors that the hired men 

 broke the conditions of their engagement and hurried as they best could toward 

 the older settlements, leaving the two brothers almost if not quite alone in their 

 log-built cabin. In this position even mere passiveness on the part of their 

 neighbor Big-Tree, the chief of the Indian village on the Genesee, immediately 

 opposite to the settlement of the Wadsworths, might have compelled tJieru Xo 

 follow their servants ; but they now obtained from him ready and efficient aid — 

 an aid not given, however, without satisfactory equivalent, and far more than 

 repaid to his race in their waning fortunes. 



With the opening of a new spring, a fresh supply of white laborers was ob- 

 tained, and whether they were acclimatized or had been familiarized to the en- 

 demic disease, no farther interruption occurred in the progress of the clearing. 



The Indian corn of their first crop was beaten into meal in a mortar fashioned 

 by the ax from the stump of a gigantic oak, and the pestle was swung as on a 

 spring, from a long and pliant pole. Gradually in the progress of the clearing, 

 the falls of a little stream were reached, where a saw and grist mill, erected by 

 the Wadsworths, formed the nucleus of the now flourishing village of Geneseo. 



The gradual extension and successful prosecution of the enterprise, together 

 with the duties of the land agency, led to a division of the labors of the two 



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