Vadit, fremit, refringit virgulta pede vago.
Catullus. Attys, v. 86.
The grandfathers of some who read this have told them how the
settlements of their childhood were put in fear by the irruption of the
Indians; an evil as little feared in our own day as the ravages of the
minotaur or other mythic monsters. These onsets were frequently made
into the secluded valleys of that rugged district through which the
Kanawha finds its course to the Ohio, from the great spine of mountains
which traverses Virginia and Carolina. Striking across from the Ohio to
the Sciota, the Shawnees used to pursue a “trail” well-known to hunters,
and passing in its route the town of Major-Jack, where Chilicothe now
stands. Thither in more than one instance they carried away captive men,
women and children. Although their usual practice was to slay and scalp
all able-bodied men, yet the aboriginal caprice sometimes led them to
make exceptions in favor of a fine fellow taken even in arms; as for
example when the chief who was prowling was visited with some mysterious
yearning to supply by adoption the loss of a darling son. These
statements are necessary to explain the absence of Albert, who, to say
truth, had fallen into the hands of a party of Shawnees, after being
surprised in the mountain lodge to which he had retreated from the
storm. I am not about to tell an Indian story; such may be better heard
in any frontier inn; I will therefore return to my disconsolate abbé.
When Guerin awoke to the reality of his loss, and had allowed two days
to pass without any signs of his young friend, he was almost beside
himself. Scarcely was there a man on earth less fitted for the
adventures of a new country. Yet he set on foot a variety of
explorations, by means of mountain rangers, and more especially of
Sambo, whose habits and training assimilated him to the native tribes.
The mountain lodge showed signs, obscure indeed to the eye of
civilization, but patent and convincing to the sagacity of foresters,
that a party had halted there. It was manifest that there had been a
recent fire, and some remnants of a wild turkey were near the edifice of
logs. What was more significant, the body of poor Thwackthwart was found
a few miles nearer to the river. Following this clew, Sambo divined, by
infallible signs, that a party had taken canoes at a certain bluff,
where also was discovered an illegible sentence freshly cut, or began to
be cut, on the smooth bark of a beech. The heart-broken priest, as his
only resource, betook himself to Richmond for aid and counsel; and after
waiting there for some months, with no news of de Mornay, he sadly
obeyed a vocation to the island of Martinique, fully persuaded that his
companion had fallen under the ruthless weapons of the savage; an event
by no means uncommon in that stage of our history.
This most untoward event it was, which brought me acquainted with the
friend whom of all others I shall ever remember with the liveliest and
tenderest regard; perpetually applying to him since his death the
expressions of Shenstone’s celebrated epitaph—
“Here, quanto minus
Cum reliquis versari,
Quam tui meminisse!”
Let me purposely abridge the horrors of the tale. De Mornay, after being
taken by a wearisome series of posts northward through what is now the
state of Ohio, was inducted into the Indian life not far from a British
block-house near Lake Erie. One day, when he was accompanying his chief
and father, We-mo-tox, or Burning Broomgrass, to a talk with the whites,
he was recognized by a Highland major, who had a brother among the
Frazers of North Carolina. A correspondence ensued, and the gallant
Major Frazer, in the depth of winter, set out with De Mornay, who was
gaunt and half-crippled from the exposures and chagrins of captivity,
and brought him in a sort of triumph to the banks of the Roanoke. I was
on a visit at Duncan Frazer’s, when the major, long expected, arrived
with the young stranger, whose story had come before him. Pallid and
haggard as he was, with long, tangled hair, and habiliments in which the
deer-skin oddly mingled with the cut of a garrison tailor on the lakes,
Albert struck me as I have seldom been struck by a first appearance. The
deep black eye shone with a melancholy lustre of natural gayety subdued
by sudden and early grief. Gentleness, pain, courage and meditation were
in his brow, his glance, and his reluctant smile. That night I prayed
him to share my habitation and my pursuits, and he was my companion
till—how shall I utter it—he sank away during years of beautiful
decline.