ing him of her treatment, in order to effect her release. I went with Mr. Simon Girty to Colonel McKee, superintendent for the Indians, who had Štogwell brought to trial to answer the complaint against him; but I could not get her rescued from him. It was however decided, that when an opportunity should occur for our return home, she should be released without any remuneration. This was punctually performed on application of Mr. Thomas Ivans.

THE RETURN OF THE CAPTIVES AS RELATED BY MR. MOORE.

Mr. Thomas Ivans, a brother of Martha, was induced to seek his lost sister and the members of Mr. Moore's family that might be still living. Clothing himself in skins, and securing some money about his person, with rifle in hand, he proceeded to the tribes in whose possession the captives had been, and traced their wanderings to their several places of abode. His sister was living with a Mr. Donaldson, receiving wages. Mary Moore was delivered up by Mr. Stogwell, and James Moore by Mr. Ariome. All being at liberty-says Mr. Moore -we immediately prepared to go to our distant friends, and as well as I remember, set out some time in October, 1789; it being about five years from the time I had been taken prisoner by the Indians, and little more than three from the captivity of my sister. A trading boat coming down the lakes we obtained a passage in it for myself and sister Polly to the Moravian towns, a distance of about two hundred miles, which was on our way to Pittsburg. There according to appointment, the day after our arrival, Thomas Ivans and his sister Martha met us. We then prepared immediately for our journey to Pittsburg. A party from some town of friendly Indians was setting out on a hunting excursion and accompanied us about half way to Pittsburg; which was a fortunate circumstance, for a considerable part of our route was through a wilderness, the hunting ground of an unfriendly tribe. While yet in company with the friendly Indians, we encamped one night in company with a large party of the other Indians, and the next morning four or five of their warriors came very early to our camp, painted red, which alarmed us very much. They made many inquiries, but did not molest us, which might not have been the case had we been alone. After this, nothing occurred worthy of notice till we reached Pittsburg. Here Mr. Ivans unfortunately got his shoulder dislocated, in consequence of which we stayed a part of the winter in the vicinity, with an uncle and aunt of his, until he became able to travel. Having expended all his money with the doctor and in travelling, he left his sister Martha, and proceeded with Polly and myself to Rockbridge, to the house of an uncle, William McPheeters,

about ten miles south-west of Staunton, near the Middle River. He received from an uncle, Joseph Moore, the administrator of her father's estate, compensation for his services; and afterwards returned and brought in his sister Martha.

A day or two after we set out, having called at a public house for breakfast; whilst it was preparing, my sister took out her Testament and was engaged in reading. Being called to breakfast she laid down her Testament, and when we resumed our journey she forgot it. After we had proceeded several miles, she thought of her Testament and strongly insisted on turning back; but such were the dangers of the way, and such the necessity of speeding our journey, that we could not turn back. Being connected in association with so many trials, and having been the source of so much consolation, the loss of the book was greatly regretted.

Thus far the narrative of James Moore;-and before we proceed to the relation of the succeeding history of Mary Moore, it is proper to state-that James Moore, the first captive, and the author of the preceding narrative-in a few years after his return from Indian captivity, sought the scenes of his youth in Tazewell, and there passed a long life of irreproachable morality and religion. He reared a large family, most of whom, with himself, became members of the Methodist Church; and closed a long life in the year 1848, noted for his tenacious memory, conscientious regard for truth, and love of the gospel of Christ. Martha Ivans married a man by the name of Hummer, moved to Indiana, and reared a large family. Two of her sons became Presbyterian ministers.

The return of the captives to Rockbridge was a matter of intense interest to the numerous relatives and the public at large. There were smiles and there were tears;-there was gladness and there was sorrow. Those who had loved the parents, and mourned their untimely end, rejoiced over the children rescued from barbarians, to which they were fast becoming assimilated. Shortly after her return, Mary Moore went to live with her uncle, Joseph Walker, in Rockbridge county, about six miles south of Lexington, at the place afterwards known as Donihoo's Tavern, now in possession of Mr. Moffit. At the age of twelve years she was baptised and admitted to the ordinance of the Lord's supper, in the Presbyterian church, by Rev. Samuel Houston, pastor of High Bridge and Falling Spring.

In mature years she became the wife of Rev. Samuel Brown, pastor of New Providence, and passed the days of her womanhood in the affections and sympathies of her husband's charge. Of the eleven children, of which she became the mother, one died in infancy, another at the age of fourteen, giving pleasing

evidence of piety; the rest survived her. Through life she retained a strong attachment for the wild people of the forest, which no sense of injury, or memory of wrong, could eradicate or blunt. Her children hung with devotion on her lips, when she could be induced to narrate the history of her early life, and wept with her over the melancholy end of her mother and sister, whose death by fire she did not witness, but whose unburied ashes were pointed out to her by the significant signs of a savage. Her patience, self-denial, and self-possession, acquired in part in her captivity, were preeminent through life. A pious and dutiful child, she was blessed with pious and dutiful children. As they came to years of discretion, they made a credible profession of religion. The sudden death of her husband left her a widow with ten children, the youngest but an infant. The moderate means left for herself and family were, by economy and good management, under the kind providence of God, sufficient to rear and educate her children. She was taken from them before the fruits of her maternal care and solicitude were fully ripened; but while the blossoms were fair.

Upon being asked some little time before her death, how it came, that her children so generally as they came to mature years made profession of faith in Christ; she replied, with some hesitation,-that besides the instruction given usually in pious families, and the means used for the conversion of children, she had added but one worthy of notice, and that was— that she and her husband, after her little ones were disposed in their little beds to sleep, used, in the quietness of the night, to bow the knee at their bedside and beg of God to make them his children and faithful servants, and ministers of the gospel. The former part of this petition was answered before her death, the latter part after she had gone to see her Saviour in heaven. Of her seven sons, all professors of religion, five entered the ministry in the Presbyterian Church; all licensed by Lexington Presbytery. A son-in-law was the successor of her husband, the comfort of her widowhood, and the guide of her young children. She saw her youngest daughter and child resign its delicate frame to the arms of death, in christian composure; and then passed herself, with overcoming faith, to see her God.

Perhaps, in her modesty, she did not see the power of her own example, and the force of her own character, formed as it had been by peculiar providences and moulded by strange circumstances. Perhaps the strangeness of the circumstances, in which she came out upon the stage of life, made her undervalue the excellence they had formed, and led her to doubt that one so different from others in all her training could possess even common excellence. And when her cheering success in training

her household was brought up to view, she attributed it to means open to all and used by many. These means are blessed of God abundantly; and the success in times past encourage men to use them in succeeding times with hope. Yet these common means receive much of their power from the habits, and more from the character of those who use them. And the peculiar influence of any individual, in any given place and course, can be fully understood only by acquaintance with the physical, mental, moral and spiritual training, by which the character has been formed, and the capabilities exercised for that peculiar end. Mary Moore was eminently fitted to be the wife of such a minister as Samuel Brown; her friends saw it; the congregation of New Providence felt it. And her fitness was the consequence of trials and sufferings that fall to the lot. of few. Her early life was passed in seclusion from the world. In App's Valley she saw nature in her grandeur, and beauty, and wildness; and her fellow creatures in the endearing relation of connexions and neighbours in the wilderness. There was little for her to love in the world but its simplicity, and in the living beings around her, but their kindness and their piety. Of the pomp and splendour of luxurious life she knew literally nothing. The double log cabin was the only dwelling she knew, and the plain food of the mountains all her taste desired. Her clothing was made beneath her father's roof. The employment of Martha Ivans was to assist Mrs. Moore in clothing the family; and Mary knew how to use her fingers for the same purpose. Her education was of a religious character and for a religious end. God was worshipped in her father's family, day by day; and she was taught to read, that she might worship God understandingly, and know how to serve Jesus Christ in a life of faith. Her parents' example taught her to turn away from society to nature and to God; to live secluded and seek for heaven as her abode, when earth and skies have passed away. While the Indians were plundering the house of Mr. Moore, of whatever they wished to preserve from the flames, each of the captives seized on something to bear away with them in their wanderings. Mary took up two New Testaments; one of which was a companion of her three years' captivity, and through her lips spoke to the Indians the unsearchable riches of Christ. In cold, hunger and fatigue, in the wigwam and the travel through the wilderness, she still clung to this relic of her father's residence, this copy of the gospel of Christ.

Her tender affections manifested the law of kindness written on her heart. She had been the companion of her little infant sister, and probably, as the family was situated, her little nurse. When the hour of peril came she would have hidden it with herself and Martha Ivans beneath the floor of one of the rooms

of the cabin; but the wailings of the little one, from a wound made in its neck, by some missile from savage hands, threatened to prevent all concealment. Rather than abandon the babe to the barbarians, she left her hiding place, and met the catastrophe in its company in the open room. Her heroic kindness was ill rewarded by the Indian, whose heart was filled with fear by the wailings of the same infant from the same cause. Lest its cries should betray their line of march, he dashed it against a tree; and taught Mary to lose in silence what she had bought with self-denial.

Her forgiveness of injuries according to the law of the gospel was manifested by the feeling she ever exercised towards the Indians from whose hands such multiplied miseries had been dealt out to her early years. She always plead for mild measures towards these poor lost barbarians, whose sufferings in this life were great, and whose prospects in futurity were dismal; and every movement for civilizing and christianizing them met her hearty approbation. The news of the conversion of any of the sons of the forest filled her heart with gratitude to God, who forgets not the outcasts. She could talk to her little ones about her captivity, and relate all she knew of her mother's death, without bitterness of feeling, though in tears.

Soon after her return to her friends, at the early age of twelve years, she asked for the privileges of the church on profession of her faith in Christ. Through sufferings the orphan had been led to God, her refuge and her treasure. What words were our Father which art in the heavens-dropping from her lips in the wilderness and at the mercy-seat of her ancestors! The word of God says-They that seek me early shall find me,and, when my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. It has not pleased God to give us the record of her Christian experience in the wilderness, nor to reveal to us the manner in which the Spirit led her into all truth; he has only shown us the desolate place and the forlorn outward circumstances of her seeking God and finding peace. But the event, the peace she found, the good hope through grace, and the devoted heart, were seen all through her life; her record of experience is found in her family and in the congregation to which her husband ministered; in her keeping a good conscience both toward God and toward man, in her self-denial for the good of others and of her own soul, in her maintaining a godly walk, in her evidently not living for this world, but for God. Alas! how often is it the case that we desire the fruits of godliness, rather than be willing to pass through the sanctifying process by which they are obtained.