University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

Paradise Lost.

If we can believe the immortal poet, from
whom we have taken the above lines, to serve as
our letter of introduction to the gentle reader, the
grief of our first parents for the loss of Paradise
was not so deep and overwhelming but that they
almost immediately found comfort, when they reflected
they had exchanged it for the land of
Eden,—itself a paradise, though an earthly and
unsanctified one:

The exiles of America, who first forsook their
homes on the borders of the Atlantic, to build
their hearths among the deserts of the West, had
a similar consolation; they were bending their
steps towards a land, to which rumour at first, and
afterwards the reports of a thousand adventurous
visitants, had affixed the character of a second
elysium. The Dorado of the Spaniards, with its
cities built of gold, its highways paved with diamonds
and rubies, was not more captivating to
the brains of Sir Walter Raleigh and his fellow
freebooters of the 16th century, than was the
Kentucky of the red men, with its fertile fields,

and ever-blooming forests, to the imaginations of
their descendants, two hundred years after. It
was not unnatural, indeed, that men should regard
as an Eden the land in which the gallant
Daniel Boone, while taking his “pleasing ramble”
on the 22d of December, 1769, discovered
“myriads of trees, some gay with blossoms, others
rich with fruits;” which blossoms and fruits, as he
tells us, were “beautifully coloured, elegantly
shaped, and charmingly flavoured.”[1]

It might be difficult, in these degenerate days,
to find fruits and flowers adorning any forest in
Kentucky, at Christmas; yet there was enough,
and more than enough, in the wild beauty and
unexampled fertility of the country, to excuse the
rapture of the hunter and to warrant high expectations
on the part of the eastern emigrants,
to whom he had opened a path through the wilderness,
which they were not slow to follow. A
strong proof of the real attractions of the land
was to be seen in the crowds rushing towards it,
year after year, regardless of all adverse circumstances.
Suffering and privation of all kinds
were to be endured on the long and savage road,
in which mountain, river, bog, and forest were to
be passed, and often, too, in the teeth of a lurking
foe; while peril of every imaginable aspect was
still to be encountered, when the journey was at
an end. The rich fields,—the hunting-grounds of
a dozen tribes of Indians,—to be possessed, were
first to be won, and won from an enemy at once
brave and cruel, resolute and wily, who had shown
no disposition to yield them except with life, and

who had already stained them with the best blood
of the settler. Such evils were well known to
exist; but they imposed little check on the ardour
of adventurers: the tide of emigration, at first a
little rivulet, lost among forests, increased to a
river, the river grew into a flood, overflowing the
whole land; and, in 1792, sixteen years after the
first block-house was built in the woods, the `wilderness'
of Kentucky was admitted into the Federal
Union, a free and sovereign State, with a
population of seventy-five thousand souls.

Ten years before that happy event—for it is
to this early period we must ask the attention of
the reader,—the Shawanee and the Wyandot still
hunted the bear and buffalo in the cane-brake, and
waylaid the settler at the gates of his solitary
stronghold. The `District of Kentucky,' then
within the territorial jurisdiction of Virginia, comprised
but three inhabited counties, Fayette, Jefferson,
and Lincoln; of which, to play the geographer
briefly, it needs only to say, that the first
occupied all the country north and east of the
Kentucky river; the second all the region west
of that river as far as Green river, which, with
the redoubtable Salt, the river of Roarers, formed
also its southern bounds; while the third extended
over all the territory lying south of the two others,
and was therefore the first reached by emigrants
coming from Virginia and the Carolinas through
the Gap of the Cumberlands. In these counties,
the settlements were already somewhat numerous,
although confined, for the most part, to the neighbourhood
of the stations, or forts, which were the
only effectual places of refuge for the husbandman
and his family, when the enemy was abroad in the
land. These stations were mere assemblages of
huts, sometimes, in number, approaching to villages,

surrounded, or at least connected, hut to
hut, by ranges of strong palisades, easily defended
against assailants armed only with knives and
rifles. Founded, in the first place, by some bold
and resolute pioneer, each station, as the land
filled with settlers, was enlarged to receive other
inhabitants, who were glad to unite with the founder
in defending from attack a place so necessary
to their own safety, and easily conceded him a
kind of military authority over them, which was
usually confirmed by a commission from the State,
on the division of the District into counties, and
exercised with due military spirit, on all proper
occasions.

The sun of an August afternoon, 1782, was yet
blazing upon the rude palisades and equally rude
cabins of one of the principal stations in Lincoln
county, when a long train of emigrants, issuing
from the southern forest, wound its way over the
clearings, and among the waving maize-fields
that surrounded the settlement, and approached the
chief gate of its enclosure.

The party was numerous, consisting perhaps of
seven or eight score individuals in all, men, women,
and children, the last bearing that proportion
to the others in point of numbers usually
found in a borderer's family, and thus, with the
help of pack-horses, cattle, and a few negroes, the
property of the more wealthy emigrants, scattered
here and there throughout the assemblage, giving
to the whole train the appearance of an army, or
moving village, of Vandals in quest of some new
home to be won with the edge of the sword. Of
the whole number there were at least fifty well
armed; some of these, however, being striplings
of fourteen, and, in one or two instances, even of
twelve, who balanced the big rifle on their shoulders,

or sustained it over their saddle-bows, with
all the gravity and dignity of grown warriors;
while some few of the negroes were provided with
the same formidable weapons. In fact, the dangers
of the journey through the wilderness required
that every individual of a party should be
well armed, who was at all capable of bearing
arms; and this was a kind of capacity which necessity
instilled into the American frontiersman
in the earliest infancy.

Of this armed force, such as it was, the two
principal divisions, all well mounted, or at least
provided with horses, which they rode or not as
the humour seized them, were distributed in military
order on the front and in the rear; while
scouts leading in the van, and flanking-parties
beating the woods on either side, where the nature
of the country permitted, indicated still further
the presence of a martial spirit on the part of the
leaders. The women and children, stowed carefully
away for the most part with other valuable
chattels, on the backs of pack-horses, were mingled
with droves of cattle in the centre, many of
which were made to bear burthens as well as the
horses. Of wheeled carriages there was not a
single one in the whole train, the difficulties of the
road, which was a mere bridle-path, being such
that they were never, at that early day, attempted
to be brought into the country, unless when
wafted in boats down the Ohio.

Thus marshalled, and stealing from the depth of
the forest into the clearings around the Station,
there was something in the appearance of the train
wild, singular, and striking. The tall and robust
frames of the men, wrapped in blanket-coats
and hunting-frocks,—some of which, where the
wearers were young and of gallant tempers,

were profusely decked with fringes of yellow,
green, and scarlet; the gleam of their weapons;
and the tramp of their horses; gave a warlike air
to the whole, typical, it might be supposed, of the
sanguinary struggle by which alone the desert
was to be won from the wandering barbarian;
while the appearance of their families, with their
domestic beasts and the implements of husbandry,
was in harmony with what might be supposed the
future destinies of the land, when peaceful labour
should succeed to the strife of conquest.

The exiles were already in the heart of their
land of promise, and many within view of the
haven where they were to end their wanderings.
Smiles of pleasure lighted their way-worn countenances,
as they beheld the waving fields of
maize and the gleam of the distant cabins; and
their satisfaction was still further increased, when
the people of the Station, catching sight of them,
rushed out, some mounted and others on foot, to
meet them, uttering loud shouts of welcome, such
as, in that day, greeted every band of new-comers;
and adding to the clamour of the reception a feude-joie,
which they fired in honour of the numbers
and martial appearance of the present company.
The salutation was requited, and the stirring hurrahs
returned, by the travellers, most of whom
pressed forward to the van in disorder, eager to
take part in the merry-making ere it was over, or
perhaps to seek for friends who had preceded
them in the journey through the wilderness. Such
friends were, in many instances found, and their
loud and affectionate greetings were mingled with
the scarce less cordial welcomes extended by the
colonists even to the unknown stranger. Such was
the reception of the emigrants at that period and
in that country, where men were united together

by a sense of common danger; and where every
armed visiter, besides being an accession to the
strength of the colonists, brought with him such
news of absent friends and still remembered homes
as was sure to recommend him to favour.

The only individual who, on this occasion of rejoicing,
preserved a melancholy countenance, and
who, instead of riding forward, like the others, to
shake hands with the people of the Station, betrayed
an inclination to avoid their greetings altogether,
was a young man, who, from the position
he occupied in the band, and from other causes,
was entitled to superior attention. With the rank
and nominal title of Second Captain,—a dignity
conferred upon him by his companions, he was,
in reality, the commander of the party, the ostensible
leader being, although a man of good repute
on the Virginia border, entirely wanting in the
military reputation and skill which the other had
acquired in the armies of the Republics, and of
which the value was fully appreciated, when danger
first seemed to threaten the exiles on their
march. He was a youth of scarce twenty-three
years of age; but five of those years had been
passed in camps and battles; and the labours, passions,
and privations of his profession had antedated
the period of manhood. A frame tall and
athletic, a countenance which, although retaining
the smoothness and freshness of youth, was yet
marked with the manly gravity and decision of
mature life, added, in appearance, at least six
years to his age. He wore a hunting-frock of the
plainest green colour, with cap and leggings of leather,
such as were worn by many of the poorest
or least pretending exiles; like whom also he bore
a rifle on his shoulder, with the horn and other
equipments of a hunter. There was little, therefore,

to distinguish him, at the first view, from
among his companions; although his erect military
bearing, and the fine blooded bay horse
which he rode, would have won him more than a
passing look. The holsters at his saddle-bow, and
the sabre at his side, were weapons not indeed
very generally worn by frontiersmen, but still
common enough to prevent their being regarded
as badges of rank.

With this youthful officer, the rear-guard, which
he commanded, having deserted him, to press forward
to the van, there remained only three persons,
two of whom were negro slaves, both mounted
and armed, that followed at a little distance behind,
leading thrice their number of pack-horses.
The third was a female, who rode closely at his
side, the rein of her pony being, in fact, grasped
in his hand; though he looked as if scarce conscious
that he held it,—a degree of insensibility
that would have spoken little in his favour to an
observer; for his companion was both young and
beautiful, and watched his moody countenance on
her part with looks of the most anxious and affectionate
interest. Her riding-habit, chosen, like his
own garments, with more regard to usefulness than
beauty, and perhaps somewhat the worse for its
encounters with the wind and forest, could not
conceal the graceful figure it defended; nor had
the sunbeam, though it had darkened the bright
complexion exposed to its summer fury, during a
journey of more than six weeks, robbed her fair
visage of a single charm. There was, in the general
cast of features, a sufficient resemblance between
the two to indicate near relationship; although
it was plain that the gloom seated upon
the brow of her kinsman, as if a permanent characteristic,
was an unwelcome and unnatural

visitant on her own. The clear blue eye, the
golden locks floating over her temples, the ruddy
cheek and lip of seventeen, and, generally, the
frank and open character of her expression, betokened
a spirit too joyous and elastic to indulge
in those dark anticipations of the future or mournful
recollections of the past, which clouded the
bosom of her relative. And well for her that such
was the cheerful temper of her mind; for it was
manifest, from her whole appearance, that her lot,
as originally cast, must have been among the gentle,
the refined, and the luxurious, and that she
was now, for the first time, exposed to discomfort,
hardship, and suffering, among companions, who,
however kind and courteous of conduct, were unpolished
in their habits, conversation, and feelings,
and, in every other respect, unfitted to be her
associates.

She looked upon the face of her kinsman, and
seeing that it grew the darker and gloomier the
nearer they approached the scene of rejoicing, she
laid her hand upon his arm, and murmured softly
and affectionately,—

“Roland,—cousin,—brother!—what is it that
disturbs you? Will you not ride forward, and salute
the good people that are making us welcome?”

“Us!” muttered the young man, with a bitter
voice; “who is there on earth, Edith, to welcome
us? Where shall we look for the friends and kinsfolk,
that the meanest of the company are now
finding among yonder noisy barbarians?”

“You do them injustice, Roland,” said the
maiden. “Yesternight we had experience at the
Station we left, that these wild people of the
woods do not confine their welcomes to kinsmen.
Kinder and more hospitable people do not exist in
the world.”

“It is not that, Edith,” said the young man;
“I were but a brute to doubt their hospitality.
But look, Edith; we are in Kentucky, almost at
our place of refuge. Yonder hovels, lowly, mean,
and wretched,—are they the mansions that should
shelter the child of my father's brother? Yonder
people, the outcasts of our borders, the poor, the
rude, the savage,—but one degree elevated above
the Indians, with whom they contend,—are they
the society from whom Edith Forrester should
choose her friends?”

“They are,” said Edith, firmly; “and Edith
Forrester asks none better. In such a cabin as
these, and, if need be, in one still more humble,
she is content to pass her life, and dream that she
is still in the house of her fathers. From such
people, too, she will choose her friends, knowing
that, even among the humblest of them, there are
many worthy of her regard and affection. What
have we to mourn in the world we have left behind
us? We are the last of our name and race;
fortune has left us nothing to regret. My only relation
on earth, saving yourself, Roland,—saving
yourself, my cousin, my brother,”—her lip quivered,
and, for a moment, her eyes were filled with
tears,—“my only other living relation resides in
this wilderness-land; and she, tenderly nurtured
as myself, finds in it enough to engage her thoughts
and secure her happiness. Why, then, should not I?
Why should not you? Trust me, dear Roland, I
should myself be as happy as the day is long, could
I only know that you did not grieve for me.”

“I cannot but choose it,” said Roland. “It is
to me you owe the loss of fortune and your present
banishment from the world.”

“Say not so, Roland, for it is not true; No! I
never can believe that our poor uncle would have

carried his resentment, for such a cause, so far.
But supposing that he could, and granting that all
were as you say, I am prouder to be the poor
cousin of Roland Forrester, who has bled in the
battles of his country, than if I were the rich and
courted kinswoman of one who had betrayed the
memory of his father.”

“You are, at least, an angel;” said the youth;
“and I am but a villain to say or do any thing to
give you pain. Farewell then to Fell-hallow, to
old James River, and all! If you can forget these
things, Edith, so will I; at all events, I will try.”

“Now,” said Edith, “you talk like my true
cousin.”

“Well, Edith, the world is before us; and shame
be upon me, if I, who have health, strength, and
youth to back my ambition, cannot provide you a
refuge and a home. I will leave you for a while
in the hands of this good aunt at the Falls; and
then, with old Emperor there for my adjutant, and
Sam for my rank and file, I will plunge into the
forest, and scatter it as I have seen a band of tories
scattered by my old major, (who, by the by,
is only three years older than myself,) Henry Lee,
not many years back. Then, when I have built
me a house, furrowed my acres with my martial
plough-share, (for to that, it appears, my sword
must come,) and reaped my harvest with my own
hands, (it will be hard work to beat my horse-pistols
into a sickle,) then, Edith —”

“Then, Roland,” said the maiden, with a smile
and a tear, “if you should still remember your poor
cousin, it will not be hard to persuade her to follow
you to your retreat, to share your fortunes of
good and of evil, and to love you better in your
adversity than she ever expected to love you in
your prosperity.”

“Spoken like my true Edith!” said the young
officer, whose melancholy fled before her soft accents,
as the evil spirit of Saul before the tinklings
of the Jewish harp,—“spoken like my true Edith;
for whom I promise, if fate smile upon my exertions,
to rear a new Fell-hallow on the banks of
the Ohio, in which I will be, myself, the first to
forget that on James River.—And now, Edith,
let us ride forward and meet yon gay looking
giant, whom, from his bustling demeanour, and
fresh jerkin, I judge to be the commander of the
Station, the redoubtable Colonel Bruce himself.”

As he spoke, the individual thus alluded to, separating
himself from the throng, galloped up to
the speaker, and displayed a person which excited
the envy even of the manly-looking Forrester.
He was a man of at least fifty years, but as hale
as one of thirty, without a single gray hair to deform
the beauty of his raven locks, which fell
down in masses nearly to his shoulders. His stature
was colossal, and the proportions of his frame
as just as they were gigantic; so that there was
much in his appearance of real native majesty.
Nothing, in fact, could be well imagined more
truly striking and grand than his appearance, as
seen at the first glance; though the second revealed
a lounging indifference of carriage, amounting, at
times, to something like awkwardness and uncouthness,
which a little detracted from the effect.
Such men were oft-times, in those days,
sent from among the mountain counties of Virginia,
to amaze the lesser mortals of the plains,
who regarded them as the genii of the forest, and
almost looked, as was said of the victor of the
Kenhawa,[2] himself of the race, to see the earth

tremble beneath their footsteps. With a spirit
corresponding to his frame, he would have been
the Nimrod, or Meleager, that he seemed. But
nature had long before extinguished the race of
demigods; and the worthy Commander of the Station
was not of them. He was a mortal man,
distinguished by little, save his exterior, from other
mortal men, and from the crowd of settlers who
had followed him from the fortress. He wore, it
is true, a new and janty hunting-shirt of dressed
deer-skin, as yellow as gold, and fringed and furbelowed
with shreds of the same substance, dyed as
red as blood-root could make them; but was
otherwise, to the view, a plain yeoman, endowed
with those gifts of mind only which were necessary
to his station, but with the virtues which are
alike common to forest and city. Courage and
hospitality, however, were then hardly, accounted
virtues, being too universal to be distinguished as
such; and courtesy was equally native to the independent
borderer.

He shook the young officer heartily by the hand,
a ceremony which he instantly repeated with the
fair Edith; and giving them to understand that
he claimed them as his own especial guests, insisted,
with much honest warmth, that old companionship
in arms with one of their late nearest and
dearest kinsmen had given him a double right to
do so:—

“You must know,” said he, “the good old Major,
your uncle, the brave old Major Roly, as
we called him, Major Roland Forrester:—well,
K'-yaptin,—well, young lady,—my first battle war
fought under his command; and an excellent
commander he war; it war on the bloody Monongahela,
whar the Frenchmen and Injuns
trounced us so promiskous. Perhaps you've h'ard

him tell of big Tom Bruce,—for so they called
me then? I war a copporal in the first company
of Rangers that crossed the river. Lord! how
the world is turning upside down! I war a copporal
then, and now I'm a k'-yunnel; a greater
man in commission than war ever my old Major;
and the Lord, he knows, I thought my old Major
Forrester war the greatest man in all Virginee,
next to the G'-yovernor, and K'-yunnel George
Washington! Well, you must know, we marched
up the g'-yully that runs from the river; and bang
went the Savages' g'-yuns, and smash went their
hatchets; and then it came to close quarters, a
regular, rough-and-tumble, hard scratch! And so
I war a-head of the Major, and the Major war
behind, and the fight had made him as ambitious[3]
as a wild-cat, and he war hungry for a shot; and
so says he to me, for I war right afore him, `Git
out of my way, you damned big rascal, till I git a
crack at 'em!' And so I got out of his way, for
I war mad at being called a damned big rascal,
especially as I war doing my best, and covering
him from mischief besides. Well! as soon as I
jumped out of his way, bang went his piece, and
bang went another, let fly by an Injun;—down
went the Major, shot right through the hips, slam-bang.
And so said I, `Major,'—for I warn't
well over my passion,—`if you'd 'a' taken things
easy, I'd 'a' stopped that slug for you.' And so
says he, `Bang away, you big fool, and don't
stand talking.' And so he swounded away; and
that made me ambitious too, and I killed two of
the red niggurs, before you could say Jack Robinson,
just by way of satisfaction for the Major;
and then I helped to carry him off to the tumbrels.
I never see'd my old Major from that day to this;
and it war only a month ago that I h'ard of his
death. I honour his memory: and so, K'-yaptin,
you see, thar's a sort of claim to old friendship between
us.”

To this characteristic speech, which was delivered
with great earnestness, Captain Forrester
made a suitable response; and intimating his willingness
to accept the proffered hospitality of his
uncle's companion in arms, he rode forward with
his host and kinswoman towards the Station, of
which, when once fairly relieved from the forest,
he had a clear view.

It was a quadrangle of stout pickets, firmly
driven into the earth, on the brow of a knoll of
very gentle ascent, with a strong, though low
block-house at each corner; and was sufficiently
spacious to contain a double row of cabins, between
which was a vacant area, as well as two
others betwixt the cabins and the stockade; and
thus afforded shelter not only for its defenders and
their families, but for their cattle and horses,
which were always driven in, if possible, when an
attack was apprehended. A sense of security,
arising from increase of numbers, and the absence
of hostilities for a long period, had begot a contempt
for the confined limits of the stockade; and
a dozen or more of the settlers had built their
cabins without the enclosure, on the slope of the
hill, which had now assumed the appearance of a
village; though one, it must be confessed, of exceedingly
rude and primitive appearance. The
houses were, in every instance, of logs, even to
the chimneys; which being, therefore, of a combustible
temper, notwithstanding the goodly daubing
of clay with which they were plastered, were
made to incline outwards from the perpendicular,

so as to be detached from the building itself, as
they rose. By this arrangement, the dangers of a
conflagration were guarded against; for when the
burning of the chimney involved, as doubtless it
often did, the wooden materials of the chimney
itself, it was easy to tear it down, before the flames
communicated to the cabin.

Such was the appearance of a fortified settlement,
at that time, one of the most prominent of
all the Stations in Kentucky; and when we repeat
that the forest had vanished in its immediate
vicinity, to make way for rich fields of corn,—
that divers great gaps were, at a distance, seen in
its massive green walls, where the tall oaks and
walnuts, girdled and leafless, but not yet fallen,
admitted the sunshine upon other crops as rich
and as verdant,—and that all beyond and around
was a dark and solemn wilderness, the tree-top
aloft and the cane-brake below, we have a proper
idea of the aspect and condition of the lonely
strongholds, which succeeding years saw changed
into towns and villages.

The Station seemed unusually populous, as, indeed,
it was; but Roland, as he rode by, remarked,
on the skirts of the village, a dozen or more shooting-targets
set up on the green, and perceived it
was a gala-day which had drawn the young men
from a distance to the fort. This, in fact, he was
speedily told by a youth, whom the worthy Bruce
introduced to him as his oldest son and namesake,
`big Tom Bruce,—the third of that name; the
other two Toms,—for two others he had had,—
having been killed by the Injuns, and he having
changed the boy's name, that he might have a
Tom in the family.' The youth was worthy of his
father, being full six feet high, though scarcely
yet out of his teens, and presented a visage of

such serene gravity and good-humoured simplicity,
as won the affections of the soldier in a moment.

“Thar's a boy now, the brute,” said Colonel
Bruce, sending him off to assist in the distribution of
the guests among the settlers, “that comes of the
best stock for loving women and fighting Injuns
in all Kentucky! And so, captain, if young madam,
your sister h'yar, is for picking a husband out of
Kentuck, I'll say it, and stand to it, thar's not a
better lad to be found than Tom Bruce, if you
hunt the District all over. You'd scarce believe
it, mom,” he continued, addressing Edith herself,
“but the young brute did actually take the
scalp of a full grown Shawnee, before he war
fourteen y'ar old, and that in fa'r fight, whar thar
war none to help him. The way of it war this:
Tom war out in the range, looking for a neighbour's
horse; when what should he see but two
great big Shawnees astride of the identicular
beast he war hunting! Away went Tom, and
away went the bloody villians hard after, one of
'em afoot, the other on the horse. `Now,' said Tom,
`this won't do, no how;' and so he let fly at the
mounted feller; but being a little skeary, as how
could he help it, the young brute, being the first
time he ever banged at an Injun, he hit the horse,
which dropped down in a flurry; and away comes
the red devil over his head, like a rocket, eend on to a
sapling. Up jumps Tom and picks up the Injun's
gun; and bang goes the other Shawnee at him, and
jumps to a tree. `A bird in the hand,' said Tom,
`is worth two in a bush;' and with that, he blows
out the first feller's brains, just as he is gitting up,
and runs into the fort, hard chased by the other.
And then to see the feller, when I asked him why
he did n't shoot the Injun that had fired at him,
and so make sure of both, the other being in a

sort of swound-like from the tumble, and ready to
be knocked on the head at any moment? `Lord!'
said Tom, `I never thought of it, I war such a
fool!' and with that he blubbered all night, to
think he had not killed them both. Howsomever, I
war always of opinion that what he had done war
good work for a boy of fourteen.—But, come now,
my lovely young mom; we are entering the
Station. May you never enter a house where you
are less welcome.”