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against the French. Governor Clinton was there himself, a very
busy man, and, by what I could learn, very near distracted by the
factiousness of his Assembly. The Indians on both sides were on
the war-path; we saw parties of them bringing in prisoners and
(what was much worse) scalps, both male and female, for which they
were paid at a fixed rate; and I assure you the sight was not
encouraging. Altogether, we could scarce have come at a period
more unsuitable for our designs; our position in the chief inn was
dreadfully conspicuous; our Albanian fubbed us off with a thousand
delays, and seemed upon the point of a retreat from his
engagements; nothing but peril appeared to environ the poor
fugitives, and for some time we drowned our concern in a very
irregular course of living.
This, too, proved to be fortunate; and it's one of the remarks that
fall to be made upon our escape, how providentially our steps were
conducted to the very end. What a humiliation to the dignity of
man! My philosophy, the extraordinary genius of Ballantrae, our
valour, in which I grant that we were equal - all these might have
proved insufficient without the Divine blessing on our efforts.
And how true it is, as the Church tells us, that the Truths of
Religion are, after all, quite applicable even to daily affairs!
At least, it was in the course of our revelry that we made the
acquaintance of a spirited youth by the name of Chew. He was one
of the most daring of the Indian traders, very well acquainted with
the secret paths of the wilderness, needy, dissolute, and, by a
last good fortune, in some disgrace with his family. Him we
persuaded to come to our relief; he privately provided what was
needful for our flight, and one day we slipped out of Albany,
without a word to our former friend, and embarked, a little above,
in a canoe.
To the toils and perils of this journey, it would require a pen
more elegant than mine to do full justice. The reader must
conceive for himself the dreadful wilderness which we had now to
thread; its thickets, swamps, precipitous rocks, impetuous rivers,
and amazing waterfalls. Among these barbarous scenes we must toil
all day, now paddling, now carrying our canoe upon our shoulders;
and at night we slept about a fire, surrounded by the howling of
wolves and other savage animals. It was our design to mount the
headwaters of the Hudson, to the neighbourhood of Crown Point,
where the French had a strong place in the woods, upon Lake
Champlain. But to have done this directly were too perilous; and
it was accordingly gone upon by such a labyrinth of rivers, lakes,
and portages as makes my head giddy to remember. These paths were
in ordinary times entirely desert; but the country was now up, the
tribes on the war-path, the woods full of Indian scouts. Again and
again we came upon these parties when we least expected, them; and
one day, in particular, I shall never forget, how, as dawn was
coming in, we were suddenly surrounded by five or six of these
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