walks of civilization and refinement, which they had helped to adorn, took up their abode in the wilderness, in rude huts; here and there, upon the banks of lakes and rivers, where there were none of even the foot prints of civilization, save their own. Solitary and alone, they wrestled with the rude savage; displayed the cross, the emblem of salvation, to his wondering gaze, and disarmed his fierce resentments by mild persuasion; adapting themselves to his condition, and inducting him into the sublime mysteries of a religion of peace and universal brotherhood. Each missionary was a wanderer:-ice, snow, swollen streams, winds and tempests, summer's heats and winter's chills, were to him no hindrances, when duty and devotion urged him onward. Inured to toil and privation, a small parcel of parched corn and a bit of jerked beef, would be his only sustenance in long journeys through the forests, seeking new fields of missionary labor. Often were they martyrs there are few localities in all the vast region they traversed, where one or more of them did not yield up his life as an earnest of his faith. As often as they perished by the tomahawk, the rigors of the climate, exposure, fatigue or disease, their ranks were supplied. Like disciplined soldiers, the Jesuit missionaries, one after another, would fill ranks, the vacancy of which would admonish them of danger.

And where are now the evidences of all these long years of missionary enterprize, zeal and martyrdom? In the small villages of Western New York, which now contain remnants of the once powerful Iroquois, there is the form of the cross in their silver ornaments, and around the western Lakes and Rivers, the traveller may see in addition to this, occasionally, a rude cross, over an Indian grave. This is all that is left, save written records, to remind us of that extraordinary, long continued, missionary advent. All else faded away with the decline of French power. The good missionary, worn out in the service, either rested from his labors under the mould of the forests he had penetrated, or retired when the flag of his country no longer gave him confidence and protection. The treaty of 1763 forbid any recruits of his order. In his absence, his simple neophytes soon forgot his teachings. The symbols of his faith no longer reminded them of the "glad tidings" he had proclaimed. Tradition even of his presence, has become obscure.

Never perhaps, was rejoicing in England, as universal and enthu siastic, as when the news of the conquest of Quebec-the con

quest of Canada as it was rightly construed-reached there. High expectations of the value and importance of the French possessions had been raised; and hatred of the French had become a universal public sentiment. A series of defeats and misfortunes that had previously attended the British arms in this quarter; in the war then waging, had disposed the people of England to make the most of victories when they finally came. A public thanksgiving was proclaimed, pageants upon land and water succeeded, with bonfires and illuminations. The victory was the theme of the press and the pulpit, of the poet and the player. Mingled with all this, was mourning for the brave men that had perished in the long succession of conflicts, or rather the reverse of the picture, was the funeral pageant, the widow's and the orphan's tears, the hearths made desolate. When the remains of the lamented Wolf were carried home and conveyed to Greenwich cemetry, there was a solemn and imposing hiatus in the national jubilee ;- but that over, England became again joyous in view of an immense accession of empire, and the triumph of its armies.

We know how well it is ordered for us, as individuals, that a curtain is drawn between the present and the future; that our present happiness is unalloyed by any taste of the bitter drugs that are concealed even in the cup of bliss. So with nations, if they could always see the tendency and the end of events, there would have been less rejoicing at the triumphs of arms. How would it have appalled England; how would her King, her Statesmen, sitting under triumphal arches, or holding saturnalias at festive boards, have been affrighted and dismayed, if some prophetic hand had inscribed upon their walls:-"YOU HAVE GAINED A PROVINCE AND LOST ÁN EMPIRE!"

And such was the destiny; - crowding into a brief space, the cause and the effect, the triumph and its consequences. Illy fitted for the great task that was before them, would the feeble colonies have been, at the commencement of the Revolution, in the absence of the apprenticeship in the trade of war, that the last French and English war upon this continent afforded. What better discipline could men have had; what better experience, to inure them to toil, privation and danger, than was had in the expeditions to the Ohio and the Allegany, the siege of Louisburg, Quebec, Montreal, Crown Point and Niagara? Every campaign was a school far

better than West Point and Annapolis. Mingled in all these were the colonists of New York and New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Out of the ranks of those retired armies, came a host of the efficient men, who, upon the breaking out of the Revolution, so well convinced their military instructors of the proficiency they had made under their tuition. The military skill and genius necessary to organize armies, the courage and chivalry necessary to lead them to triumph, which had been inert, was aroused in the stirring scenes of the French war; its succession of splendid triumphs. England had made war a profession with a large number of the colonists, little thinking where would be the field and what the occasion of its practice. In the prosecution of the French war, England had fearfully augmented its public debt; in an hour of evil councils, against the protestations of her wisest statesmen, taxation of the colonies was added to the burthens, the privations and sufferings that had borne so heavily upon them. And it may be added, that a handful of feeble colonies would hardly have ventured to strike a blow for separation, as long as the French held dominion here. Independence achieved, the colonies would necessarily have had to assume the relative condition that England bore with France. They would have assumed England's quarrels, growing out of unsettled boundaries and disputed dominions.

Had there been no English conquest of French dominions, the separation of the colonies, if realized at all, would have been an event far removed from the period in which it was consummated. France surrendered her splendid possessions in America, sullenly and grudgingly, yielded to destiny and a succession of untoward events, hoping for some event-some "tide in the affairs of men," that would wrest from England's Crown the bright jewel she had picked up on the banks of the St. Lawrence, bathed in blood; and which she was displaying with a provoking air of triumph. It came more speedily than the keenest eye of prophecy could have foreseen. In a little more than twenty years after the fall of Quebec, La Fayette, Rochambeau, Chastelleux, D'Estang, M. de Choisy, Viomenil, de Grasse, M. de St. Simon, and a host of gallant Frenchmen beside, saw the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown; an event as crowning and decisive, in the loss of an empire, as was the surrender of Quebec, in the loss of a colony.

CHAPTER IV.

ENGLISH DOMINION-BORDER WARS OF THE REVOLUTION.

FROM the end of French dominion in Western New York, to the close of the Revolution, constituted a period of twenty-four years; the events of which, having an immediate bearing upon our local region, must be crowded into a space too limited for elaborate detail; allowing of but little more than what is necessary to prevent a break in the chain of events that leads us to the main design of the work in hand.

Little of historical interest occurred previous to the Revolution. The English would seem to have made no better use of the rich prize that the fortunes of war had thrown into their hands, than had their French predecessors. Settlements made the advance of but a day's walk, and occupancy in any form, west of the lower valley of the Mohawk, was but the fortresses of Oswego and Niagara, and small English trading establishments, that had succeeded those of the French. The rich soil, that has made this region the prosperous home of hundreds of thousands; in which lay dormant the elements of more enduring wealth than would have been the richest "placers" of California, had no attractions for their adventurers, and were without the narrow circle of enterprize that bounded the views of colonial governors and legislators.

The change of occupants does not seem to have pleased the Senecas. Scarcely had the English got a foothold in their county, before a war was commenced by an attack upon a British wagon-train and its guard, as they were passing over the Portage from Lewiston to Schlosser. A tragical event that has much prominence in the local reminiscences of that region. This was followed by an attack upon a detachment of British soldiers at Black Rock, on their way from Niagara to Detroit. Sir William Johnson, in his official correspondence, called the Senecas a "troublesome people."

All of English dominion west of Albany, other than its military posts, was a "one man power;" and before proceeding farther, it will be necessary to give some account of that one man, who has already, incidentally, been introduced in our narrative.

SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON.

He was a native of Ireland, of a good family, and was well educated. Soon after he became of age, in 1737 or '8, he came to America as the land agent of his uncle, Sir Peter Warren, an Admiral in the English navy, who had acquired a considerable tract of land upon the Mohawk, in the present county of Montgomery. He located a few miles from the present village of Port Jackson. Of a romantic disposition, and having acquired, from the unsuccessful termination of a love affair in his native country, some distaste for civilized society, which he was well qualified to adorn, he had not been long a resident in the backwoods of America, when he had determined upon permament settlement. He formed an exception to a large majority of his countymen, in the ease and facility with which he exchanged the refinements of civilized society for life in the woods, with few but the native Indians for neighbors or associates. No Frenchman ever sit himself down upon the borders of our western lakes, alone of all his race, in the midst of Indian wigwams, and sooner merged and blended himself with all about him. Says the London Gentleman's Magazine, (1755): - "Besides his skill and experience as an officer, he is particularly happy in making himself beloved by all sorts of people, and can conform to all companies and conversations. He is very much the fine gentleman in genteel company. But as the inhabitants next to him are mostly Dutch, he sits down with them and smokes his tobacco, drinks flip, and talks of improvements, bear and beaver skins. Being surrounded with Indians, he speaks several of their languages well, and has always some of them with him. He takes care of their wives and old Indians, when they go out on parties, and even wears their dress. In short, by his honest dealings with them in trade, and his courage, which has often been successfully tried with them, and his courteous behavior, he has so endeared himself to them, that they chose him one of their chief Sachems, or Princes, and esteem him as their father."