A GREAT HUNTING ADVENTURE.
COLONEL HORRY'S EXPLOITS.
ELERSON'S FAMOUS RACE.
MOLLY PITCHER AT MONMOUTH.
NEW YORK
BEADLE AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS,
118 WILLIAM STREET.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by
BEADLE AND COMPANY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of New York.
A REMARKABLE
HUNTING-EXCURSION.
On a September morning of the year 1817, Solomon Sweatland, of Conneaut,
on the Ohio shore of Lake Erie, had risen at earliest dawn to enjoy his
favorite amusement of hunting deer. Royal game was this, and hunted in
royal parks, which the dukes and princes of haughty old England might
envy, and, best of all, they were not barred from the poorest settler.
There was no punishment for "poaching" on the magnificent prairies, and
in the glorious forests of the West. The men who there slung their
rifles over their shoulders, and set out, careless whether they met a
fawn or a panther, would have sneered at an English hunting-ground as a
bit of a handkerchief which one of their favorite "per-raries" could
tuck away in her pocket and never feel it. Men who can "drive the nail"
and "snuff a candle," three shots out of six, and who kill such dainty
game as squirrels by blowing the breath out of them with the wind of
their bullets instead of lacerating their little bodies with the ball;
who have hand-to-hand, or hand-to-paw, tussles with ferocious grizzlies,
and make nothing of two or three deer before breakfast, may afford to
smile at their fox-hunting, partridge-shooting English cousins. Such
were the men who first settled our now populous Western States; and we
may well believe that the healthy and thrilling excitement of pursuits
like these compensated for the want of many luxuries, and that they
became so attached to their free and venturesome modes of life, as to
feel stifled at the idea of the constraints of society.
"Their gaunt hounds yelled, their rifles flashed—
The grim bear hushed his savage growl;
In blood and foam the panther gnashed
His fangs, with dying howl;
The fleet deer ceased its flying bound,
Its snarling wolf-foe bit the ground,
And, with a moaning cry,
The beaver sunk beneath the wound,
Its pond-built Venice by."
Fascinating, even in contemplation, is a life like this. It makes the
blood tingle in the veins, the sinews stretch, and the lungs expand, to
read of the scenes which cluster around it, and to breathe, in fancy,
the pure air, and sweep, with our vision, the wide horizon.
But we must go back to our hunter, who stood, in the gray light of dawn,
without coat or waistcoat, outside his cabin, listening to the baying of
the dogs, as they drove the deer. In this part of the country, lying
along the lake, it was the custom for one party, aided by dogs, to drive
the deer into the water, when another would pursue them in boats, and
when the game was a little tired, shoot it without difficulty. Sweatland
had a neighbor who hunted with him in this manner, and he it was who had
already started a noble buck, which dashed into the lake, while
Sweatland stood listening for the direction of the dogs.
In the enthusiasm of the moment, he threw his hat on the beach, jumped
into his canoe, and pulled out after the animal, every nerve thrilling
with intense interest in the pursuit. The wind, which had been blowing
steadily from the south during the night, had now increased to a gale,
but he was too intent upon securing the valuable prize which was
breasting the waves in advance, to heed the dictates of prudence. The
race promised to be a long one, for the buck was a powerful animal, and
was not easily to be beaten by a log canoe and a single paddle.
A considerable distance from the land had been obtained, and the canoe
had already shipped a heavy sea, before he overtook the deer, which
turned and made for the opposite shore. Upon tacking to pursue him,
Sweatland was at once apprised of his danger by the fact that, with his
utmost exertions, he not only made no progress in the desired direction,
but was actually drifting out to sea. He had been observed, as he left
the shore, by his neighbor, and also by his family, and as he
disappeared from sight, great apprehension was felt for his safety.
The alarm was soon given in the neighborhood, and it was decided by
those competent to judge, that his return would be impossible, and
unless aid was afforded him, that he was doomed to perish.
Actuated by those generous impulses which often induce men to risk their
own lives for the salvation of others, three neighbors took a light boat
and started in search of the wanderer. They met the deer returning, but
saw nothing of their friend. They made stretches off shore in the
probable range of the hunter, until they reached a distance of five or
six miles from land, when, meeting with a heavy sea, in which they
thought it impossible for a canoe to live, and seeing no signs of it on
the vast expanse of waters, they reluctantly, and not without danger to
themselves, returned to shore, giving Sweatland up as lost.
Meantime, the object of their search was laboring at his paddle, in the
vain hope that the wind might abate, or that aid might reach him from
the shore.
"An antlered dweller of the wild
Had met his eager gaze,
And far his wandering steps beguiled
Within an unknown maze."
Willingly would he now have resigned every lordly buck of the forest, to
warm himself by his cabin fire, hear the laugh of his little ones, and
breathe the odor of the welcome breakfast—ay, even for his coat and a
biscuit he would have given much.
One or two schooners were in sight in the course of the day, but
although he made every effort to attract the notice of their crews, he
failed to do so. For a long time the shore continued in sight, and as he
traced its fast-receding outline, and recognized the spot where stood
his home, within whose precincts were the cherished objects of his
affection, now doubly dear from the prospect of losing them forever, he
felt that the last tie which united him in companionship with his
fellow-men was about to be dissolved—the world, with all its busy
interests, was floating far away.
Sweatland possessed a cool head and a stout heart; these, united to
considerable physical strength and power of endurance, fitted him for
the emergency in which he found himself. He was a good sailor, and his
experience taught him that "while there was life there was hope."
Experience taught him also, as the outline of the far-off shore receded
from sight, that his only expedient was to endeavor to reach the Canada
shore, a distance of fifty miles.
It was now blowing a gale, so that it required the most incredible
exertions to trim his uncouth vessel to the waves. He was obliged to
stand erect, and move cautiously from one end to the other, well aware
that one lost stroke of the paddle, or a tottering movement, would bring
his voyage to a sudden termination. Much of his attention was likewise
required in bailing out the canoe, which he managed to do with _one of
his shoes_, which were a substantial pair of stogas. Hitherto he had
been blessed by the light of day, but now, to add to his distress, night
approached, and he could only depend upon a kind Providence to guide him
over the watery waste. The sky, too, began to be overcast; an occasional
star, glistening through the scudding clouds, was all the light afforded
him through that long and fearful night.
Wet to the skin by the dashing spray; part of the time in water half way
to his knees; so cold that his blood chilled in his veins, and almost
famished, he felt that death was preferable to such long-continued
suffering; and nothing but the thought of his family gave him courage to
keep up his exertions.
When morning dawned, the outline of the Canada shore greeted his sight;
he soon made the land in the vicinity of Long Point. Here he met
additional difficulties in an adverse wind and heavy breakers, but the
same hand which had guided him thus far remained with him still; he
succeeded in safely landing. What his emotions were upon again treading
"the green and solid earth," we may faintly imagine; but his trials were
not ended. Faint with hunger and exhausted by fatigue, he was forty
miles from human habitation, while the country which intervened was a
desert, filled with marshes and tangled thickets, from which nothing
could be drawn to supply his wants. These difficulties, together with
his reduced state, made his progress toward the settlements very slow.
On his way he found a quantity of goods which had been thrown ashore
from the wreck of some vessel, which, though they afforded no immediate
relief, were afterward of service to him. After a long and toilsome
march through the wilderness, he arrived at a settlement, where he was
treated with great kindness by the people. When his strength was
sufficiently recruited, he procured a boat, and went after the wrecked
goods, which he found and brought off. He then started overland for
Buffalo, where he disposed of part of his treasure, and with the
proceeds furnished himself with a complete outfit. Here, finding the
_Traveler_, Captain Brown, from Conneaut, in the harbor, he engaged
passage on board of her. The Captain and crew, having heard of his
disappearance, looked upon him almost as one risen from the dead. His
story was so astonishing as hardly to be credible; but as he was there,
in person, to verify it, they were obliged to believe the testimony.
Within a day or two, he was on his way to rejoin his family, who, the
Captain informed him, had given him up, and were in great grief and
distress. When the packet arrived opposite the house, the crew gave
three loud, long and hearty cheers, and fired guns from the deck in
token of joy, which led the family to anticipate his return.
On landing, he found that his funeral sermon had been preached, and had
the rare privilege of seeing his own _widow_ clothed in the habiliments
of mourning.
Deer hunting, even down to a recent period, was a chosen amusement in
Ohio. At this time the animal is only found in the great forests of the
north-west counties of Paulding, Van Wart, Williams, etc., and in the
heavy woods of Wyandot and Hardin counties. Sandusky Bay, an estuary of
Lake Erie, and one of the most beautiful sheets of water in America, is
yet a great sportsman's resort, though now chiefly for wild water-fowl,
whose spring and fall season calls thither many a modern Nimrod. The
writer of this has spent many a season among the marshes and
overflow-lands at the head of the bay in pursuit of game which, with
proper care, will continue for years to afford good gunning. Only keep
out the murderous blunderbusses of certain Englishmen, which sweep away
a whole flock of green-heads and canvas-backs at a shot. We have often
been tempted to have arrested, as a common nuisance, these sneaking
prowlers after "a shot for twenty birds—not a whit less." But it was not
of birds we are to write. Sandusky Bay, in days gone by, used to afford
rare sport in deer-hunting _in the water_. To illustrate:
The bay is bounded on the east by a narrow strip of sand and cedars,
which divides it from Lake Erie. On the north is the peninsula, another
strip of rich soil, once densely covered with forests, stretching far to
the west. The sport practiced in early times was to drive the deer with
dogs from Cedar Point and the peninsula into the water, when they would
make for the opposite shore, above the town of Sandusky. The heads of
the beautiful animals could be seen a great distance, as they glided
along the surface of the clear waters. Then boats would put out, in each
of which was a dog—no guns being allowed—the men being armed only with a
knife. The deer always would scent the danger from afar, and, with
extraordinary celerity, move off up the bay, followed by the boats. When
a comparatively near approach was at length made, after hard pulling for
two or three miles, the dogs were let loose. Being fresh, and the deer
somewhat exhausted from their long swim, the dogs would gain on their
prey rapidly, and soon the struggle in the water would commence—the
noble bucks always receiving their enemy, while the ewes and fawns were
kept out of harm's reach. The bucks were, if not too much exhausted,
quite a match for the dogs. Not unfrequently their antlers would crimson
the water with the blood of their canine foe. The boats, meanwhile, were
but spectators of the contest, and only came up when their dogs showed
signs of defeat. A good dog, however, generally succeeded in fastening
to the throat of his prey, and there clung with such tenacity as to sink
and rise with the buck, avoiding the terrific strokes of its hoofs by
laying close to the deer's body. One blow of a fore-hoof has been known
to smash the skull of a mastiff. The sport, to those in the boats, is
exciting in the extreme; but strict honor used to govern the combats.
The fawns and most of the ewes were permitted to escape, and the bucks
were only slaughtered with the knife when it became evident that the
dogs would be overpowered, or when some favorite mastiff brought his
game to the boat in a conquered condition.
A startling adventure once occurred in the waters of the bay. A
well-known hunter, named Dick Moxon, somewhat addicted to drink, one day
saw a fine drove of deer coming in to land from the opposite shore. He
at once advanced, knife in hand, into the water to his waist. The bucks,
three of them, led the convoy, and made directly for their enemy to
cover the retreat of the females. The hunter found himself in a position
of imminent danger, and sought to retreat, but this the deer did not
permit, as one of them drove him down into the water by a terrible butt
with his ugly antlers. Moxon grappled the deer, but the animal trampled
the hunter and kept him down. With great presence of mind, Moxon
disappeared under water and swam for the shore, coming up a rod nearer
the land. This dodge did not save him, however, for the infuriated bucks
pursued, and soon the combat became terrible. Moxon cut right and left
with his knife, making shocking wounds in the glistening bodies of the
noble beasts; but the fight was not stayed, and the hunter's strength,
so severely overtaxed in the first encounter in deep water, began to
give way entirely. A few minutes more must have seen him down in the
water under the hoofs of the frenzied animals. At this moment a woman
appeared on the shore. It was Moxon's wife, whose cabin was not far
distant in the woods. Sally Moxon was as "coarse as a cow, but brave as
a catamount," as her husband always averred; and so she proved in this
moment of Dick's peril. Seizing his rifle, which lay on the bank, she
advanced to the rescue. One buck quickly fell from the well-aimed shot.
Then she "clubbed" her gun, and made at the nearest beast with great
caution. The buck made a furious dash at her, leaping at a bound out of
the water, almost upon her, but Sally was wide awake, and was not caught
by the ugly horns and hoofs. She struck the beast such a blow on its
neck as broke both the gunstock and the buck's spinal column. With the
rifle-barrel still in her hand, Sally then made for the last buck, a
very savage fellow, who still confronted Dick in a threatening manner.
The fight which followed was severe. Sally was knocked down into the
water, but Moxon's knife saved his spouse from being "trampled into a
pudding," as he afterward expressed it. With all his remaining strength,
he seized the deer by the horns, while with his left hand he buried his
knife to the hilt in the animal's shoulder. The deer fell in the water,
and Moxon went down under him; but Sally was, by this time, on her feet
again, and dragged Dick's almost inanimate form to the shore. The
victory was complete, though Dick was so terribly bruised that the meat
of the three bucks was long gone before the hunter could again go forth
to kill more. The moral of the story is that he learned not only never
to attack three bucks, single-handed, in four feet of water, but to let
the whisky bottle alone.
The adventure which we are now about to chronicle is quite as marvelous
as those above related, although of another character. It is deeply
interesting, as illustrating _one_ of the many phases of danger which
constantly lurked on the steps of the pioneers. Startling as were the
_romantic realities_ of those early days, needing not the touch of
fiction to heighten their interest, it will be confessed that few
incidents can equal this for a novel combination of perils.
The family of John Lewis were the first settlers of Augusta, in the
State of Virginia, and consisted of himself, his wife, and four sons,
Thomas, William, Andrew and Charles. Of these, the first three were born
in Ireland, from whence the family came, and the last was a native of
Virginia.
Lewis was a man of wealth and station in the old country, and the cause
of his present emigration to America was an attempt, on the part of a
man of whom he hired some property, to eject him therefrom, which led to
an affray, in which the noble landlord lost his life. Fearing, from the
high standing of his antagonist, the desperate character of his
surviving assailants, and the want of evidence to substantiate his case,
that his life would be in danger if he stayed, Lewis fled the country,
accompanied by a party of his tenantry, and settled in the then western
wilds of Virginia.
The father appears to have been a man of remarkable force and energy,
and all four of his sons rendered themselves conspicuous for deeds of
daring and determined bravery during the early history of Western
Virginia, and that of her infant sisters, Ohio and Kentucky, which would
require volumes to relate.
Charles Lewis, the hero of this sketch, was, even in early youth,
distinguished for those qualifications which have rendered the class to
which he belonged—the Indian fighters—so remarkable among men. He was a
young man when the Indians commenced their attacks upon the settlement
of Western Virginia, but entered the contest with a zeal and courage
which outstripped many of his older and more boastful compeers. His
astonishing self-possession and presence of mind carried him safely
through many a gallant exploit, which has rendered his name as familiar,
and his fame as dear to the memories of the descendants of the early
settlers, as household words. Cool, calm and collected in the face of
danger, and quick-witted where others would be excited and tremulous, he
was able to grasp on the instant the propitious moment for action, and
render subservient to his own advantage the most trifling incident.
He was so unfortunate, on one occasion, as to be taken prisoner by a
party of Indians while on a hunting excursion. Separated from his
companions, he was surprised and surrounded before he was aware of his
danger, and when he did become aware of his critical situation, he saw
how futile it was to contend, and how reckless and fatal it must be to
himself, should he kill one of his antagonists. He knew full well that
the blood of his enemy would be washed out in his own, and that, too, at
the stake; whereas, if he surrendered peaceably, he stood a chance of
being adopted by the Indians as one of themselves. Revolving these
things in his mind, he quietly delivered up his rifle to his captors,
who rejoiced exceedingly over their prisoner. Bareheaded, with his arms
bound tightly behind him, without a coat, and barefooted, he was driven
forward some two hundred miles toward the Indian towns, his inhuman
captors urging him on when he lagged, with their knives, and tauntingly
reminding him of the trials which awaited him at the end of his journey.
Nothing daunted, however, by their threats and menaces, he marched on in
the weary path which led him further and further from his friends,
perfectly tractable, so far as his body was concerned, but constantly
busy in his mind with schemes of escape. He bided his time, and at
length the wished-for moment came.
As the distance from the white settlements increased, the vigilance of
the Indians relaxed, and his hopes strengthened. As the party passed
along the edge of a precipice, some twenty feet high, at the foot of
which ran a mountain torrent, he, by a powerful effort, broke the cords
which bound his arms, and made the leap. The Indians, whose aim was to
take him alive, followed him, and then commenced a race for life and
liberty, which was rendered the more exciting by the fact that his
pursuers were close upon him, and could at any moment have dispatched
him. But such was not their desire, and on, on he sped, now buoyed up by
hope as his recent captors were lost to sight, and anon despairing of
success as he crossed an open space which showed them almost at his
heels. At length, taking advantage of a thicket, through which he
passed, and which hid him from their sight for a moment, he darted aside
and essayed to leap a fallen tree which lay across his path. The tangled
underbrush and leaves which grew thickly around and almost covered the
decaying trunk, tripped him as he leaped, and he fell with considerable
force on the opposite side. For an instant he was so stunned by the fall
as to lose his consciousness, but soon recovered it to find that the
Indians were searching every nook in his immediate vicinity, and that he
had fallen almost directly upon a large rattlesnake which had thrown
itself into the deadly coil so near his face that his fangs were within
a few inches of his nose. Is it possible for the most vivid imagination
to conceive of a more horrible and terrifying situation?
The pursuit of his now highly exasperated and savage enemies, who
thirsted for his recapture that they might wreak upon him an appalling
revenge, which of itself was a danger calculated to thrill the nerves of
the stoutest system, had now become a secondary fear, for death in one
of its most terrifying and soul-sickening forms was vibrating on the
tongue, and darting from the eye of the reptile before him, so near,
too, that the vibratory motion of his rattle as it waved to and fro,
caused it to strike his ear. The slightest movement of a muscle—a
convulsive shudder—almost the winking of an eyelid, would have been the
signal for his death. Yet, in the midst of this terrible danger, his
presence of mind did not leave him, but like a faithful friend did him
good service in his hour of trial. Knowing the awful nature of his
impending fate, and conscious that the slightest quivering of a nerve
would precipitate it, he scarcely breathed, and the blood flowed feebly
through his veins as he lay looking death in the eye. Surrounded thus by
double peril, he was conscious that three of the Indians had passed over
the log behind which he lay without observing him, and disappeared in
the dark recesses of the forest. Several minutes—which to him were as
many hours—passed in this terrifying situation, until the snake,
apparently satisfied that he was dead, loosed his threatening coil, and
passing _directly over his body_, was lost to sight in the luxuriant
growth of weeds which grew up around the fallen tree. Oh! what a
thrill—what a revulsion of feeling shook his frame as he was relieved
from this awful suspense. Tears—tears of joyous gratitude coursed down
his cheeks as he poured out his heart to God in thankfulness for his
escape. "I had eaten nothing," said he to his companions, after his
return, "for many days; I had no fire-arms, and I ran the risk of dying
with hunger before I could reach the settlements; but rather would I
have died than have made a meal of that generous beast."[1] He was still
in imminent danger from the Indians, who knew that he had hidden in some
secluded spot, and were searching with the utmost zeal every nook and
corner to find him. He was fortunate enough, however, to escape them,
and after a weary march through the wilderness, during which he suffered
intensely from hunger, he reached the settlements.
Footnote 1:
It was no unusual thing for hungry hunters, like the Indians, to dine
upon broiled rattlesnake!