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The arrangements of the company contemplated
a meeting of the little band of emigrants at Philadelphia,
as a portion of them were to come from the
eastward; and Colonel Dangerfield accordingly
took up his line of march for that beautiful city,
unmindful of the dangers he was about to encounter
from the non-combatant inhabitants. We pass
over the farewell scene; the sincere though shortlived
griefs of the vassals of Powhatan at parting
with their good “massa” and kind “missee;” the
thoughtless wonder of the two children; the long,
last, lingering, farewell look of the parents, as they
stopped the carriage for a moment on the summit
of a hill, and gazed their eyes dim at the home
they were destined never to visit again. It was a
lovely, peaceful scene; but what is beauty, what
is peace, what is every earthly enjoyment but gall
and bitterness when we know that we see, and
feel, and taste them for the last time!

We would willingly linger a little while to describe
the abode of Colonel Dangerfield; but we
have a long journey and a long story before us.
Description must in future give place to action,
and sentiment to adventure. We must be busy,
and if we occasionally stop a moment to utter a
thought or describe a scene in the course of our
wayfaring, it must be brief, for the time is precious.
Life is short and romances long. Happy, thrice

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happy is he, and thrice three times wise, who hath
time and patience to read them all!

The party gave one day to Richmond and their
friends. Everybody pitied Mrs. Dangerfield, and
yet, perhaps, she was quite as happy as themselves;
for nothing is more common than such
mistakes. Mactabb was with them all day; and
that he gave them his time, which he considered
the most precious of all things, was a greater
proof of his friendship than even the many necessary
little articles his foresight had provided for
their comfort, and which he insisted on their accepting.
Honest Scot! perhaps thou and I are
about to part for ever; yet in this age of blustering
pretence, empty affectation, commonplace cant,
and unprincipled prodigality, I will not miss this
opportunity of bearing my testimony to thy unpretending
homely virtues, although, in honest truth,
thou hadst of all men I ever saw the most unpromising
face for a philanthropist. The colonel
presented him with the renowned Barebones, and
Mactabb promised on his word that he should
never be degraded to any useful occupation.

Nothing worthy of record occurred in the journey
to Philadelphia; but scarcely had Dangerfield
established himself in a hotel ere Pompey
Ducklegs was beleaguered by a well-meaning gentleman,
who assured him that, if so pleased,
he and all the Pompey family were free from
that moment. The name of freedom is dear to
the heart of man, most especially of the man of
colour; and Pompey was sorely tempted to abandon
his old master. Just then, however, a miserable,
debased, poverty-stricken black man came
by, and, stopping opposite the gentleman, begged
his charity.

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“Art thou not ashamed, being a freeman, friend,
to beg in the streets? Canst thou get no work?”

“I have been a long time sick, and am too
weak to work,” was the reply.

“Well, then, come to my house this afternoon,
friend, and I will give thee an order to the hospital.”

The pauper passed on without thanking him,
and he had scarcely departed when a black woman,
displaying in her face and clothing all the
indications of profligacy and misery, staggered
past them, uttering the most disgusting and blasphemous
imprecations. She was followed by a
child of the same colour, crying and calling after
her in a language as depraved as her own. Close
in their rear marched a ferocious bewhiskered
caitiff, dark as ebony, gallanted by two peace-officers;
he had been guilty of robbing and almost
murdering a white woman.

“Who all dese here people?” asked Pompey,
in a tone of dignified disgust.

“They are free people of colour, friend; and
thou canst be free likewise if thou wilt.”

“No, tank you,” quoth Ducklegs, and departed
without ceremony to solicit his master to buy
these miserable people and take them to Kentucky.

A few days sufficed to bring together and to
complete the preparations of the little band of adventurers;
and now they were on their way to
Pittsburg, whence they were to descend the
Ohio to the place of their final destination. At
that time, the region beyond the great Alleghany
range of mountains, the whole of the
valley of the Mississippi (which centres within its
vast tide the tributary waters of a thousand

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streams, coming, as it were, from the opposite ends
of the earth) was denominated the Back Woods.
The inhabitant of the Atlantic states looked at
the blue outline of these majestic hills, which are
aptly called the back-bone of North America, as
the extremest verge of the civilized world of the
West. Beyond was all forests, wild beasts, and
wild Indians, in their estimation. It was the region
of danger, of adventure, and romance, and, to the
timid, apprehensive mind, it loomed “that bourne
from whence no traveller returns.” Indeed, no
one at this late period can realize the romantic, the
appalling interest which accompanied the emigrants
to this wild and dangerous solitude, or
estimate the heroism of those who first dared to
encounter its tremendous vicissitudes.

It was towards the middle of the month of
March that they began to ascend the Alleghany
Mountains by a slow and painful pace. They
had seen them at a great distance for some days,
rearing their blue heads, and carrying their waving
lines from south to north, as far as the eye
could reach, and it seemed to them that they
formed the barriers of the world in that direction.
Occasionally they encountered one of those “land
carracks” called Pittsburg wagons, conducted by
a strange original, who lived on the road all his
life, and whom we are almost tempted to describe
as a new and rare species, which in this age of
canals, railroads, and steamboats, will, like the Mississippi
boatmen and the mammoth, soon become
extinct, and be classed among the fabulous creations
of monsters. Sometimes they met a drove
of swine, more numerous than the wool-clad warriors
of Trapoban, so disastrous to him of the rueful
countenance, and of such an original air of

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wildness, such rugged coats, and such a savage
grunt, that they seemed to be the representatives
of the wild region from which they were emigrating.
Here and there along the road were
seen the relics of many a wayfaring catastrophe,—
broken axletrees, wheels reft of their tire, and
other mementoes of disasters dire. Nay, the very
signs of the taverns savoured of an approach to
new scenes and associations. The Wild Turkey,
the Bald Eagle, the Wolf, and the Bear, portrayed
in all the horrors of rustic ingenuity, and coloured
with an utter disregard of nature and probability,
gave shrewd indications that here was to be found
entertainment for man and horse.

At length, descending the last ridge of the Alleghany,
they were greeted with the first view of
the valley of the Ohio. We would attempt to describe
the vast yet beautiful features of this striking
and magnificent display; but we are not on
a picturesque tour, and though we delight to linger
in the delicious solitudes of nature, and love
to recall their recollection more vividly by describing
them, yet time presses, and we must pass on
to other scenes.

On arriving at Pittsburg, Colonel Dangerfield
assumed the task of superintending the preparations
for embarking on the Ohio. Mr. Littlejohn
proffered his assistance with great alacrity, and it
was highly amusing to see that professional idler
all at once metamorphosed into a most provoking
and inveterate busybody, with the happiest faculty
in the world of delaying every thing he undertook
to advance, and standing in the way of everybody
he affected to assist. The colonel too was deplorably
deficient in experience of the best means
and modes of conducting these modern argonauts;

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but, as it happened, fortune had sent him a most
efficient coadjutor in the person of one of the
party, who had been in Kentucky before, and, as
he said, was as much at home there as a prairiedog
in his hole.

His name was Ambrose Bushfield, born in North
Carolina, and one of those singular examples of
native energy, inborn sagacity, and daring enterprise
with which the early history of every part
of the west abounds. Nurtured among the mountains
of his native state, free as the air he breathed,
he grew up tall and straight, and hardy as the
trees of the primeval forests, where he passed most
of his time in hunting and rural sports of danger
and enterprise. He could neither read nor write,
yet he was not ignorant or vulgar; and his feelings,
by some strange freak of nature or combination
of circumstances, partook of the character of
gentleman in more ways than one. It was said
that an early disappointment in love, or, as others
affirmed, the discovery that the region he inhabited
was becoming so populous that he could hear
his neighbour's dog bark, drove him some years
before to join his fortunes with Boone, who was
then laying the foundation of what will probably
some day be one of the richest and most populous
empires of the world.

After encountering a series of dangers and sufferings
such as nothing but reality can make credible,
he was captured by the Indians, who painted
him black, and devoted him to the torture. Their
intention was to carry him to their village before
they proceeded to the last acts of barbarity. In
the mean time they amused themselves with
placing him bound hand and foot on a half-wild
horse they had stolen on the borders of Virginia,

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and setting him adrift, like Mazeppa,[1] to scamper
through the woods full speed, while the savages
followed, yelling in horrible triumph. At every
Indian village they visited he ran the gauntlet
after their fashion, where hundreds of savages
placed themselves in parallel rows, armed with
clubs and whips, with which each one did his best
to beat him to the earth before he reached the
goal, where, if he arrived, he was entitled by inflexible
custom to exemption from the stake.
There is scarcely a possibility that this should
ever happen, except by a miracle; and accordingly
Bushfield, though he had the strength of a
giant and the nerves of a lion, was invariably
knocked down before he could gain the sanctuary
of the council-house.

Arriving at their village, preparations were
made for burning him; and the ceremony was
about to commence, by marching the wretched
victim round the village with shouts and savage
yells, with a view to wear down his strength and
spirit, so that they might enjoy his fears and banquet
on his groans. In the course of this circuit
they passed the hut of one of those renegade
white men whose crimes had banished him from
the society of his fellows, and who had taken
refuge among the Indians. His hatred of the
whites was that of a fiend; and among all the
cruel enemies, whether man or beast, whom the
early emigrants had to encounter, this wretched
outcast was the most to be dreaded. On hearing
what was going forward, he rushed out of his
cabin, like a tiger from his lair, seized the victim
round the waist, threw him to the ground with all

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the force of malignant fury, and, placing his knee
upon his breast, flourished his knife in triumph.

Bushfield recognised in this ruthless recreant
one of the early companions of his youth. He
called him by name, told him his, and besought
his good offices. The appeal was not in vain.
Wretch as he was, the renegade remembered and
yielded to the claims of his boyish associate. He
lifted him from the ground, and the recollections
of his youthful home, his early attachments; of
what he had been, and what he was, so wrought
upon his iron heart, that he embraced Bushfield,
and wept while he promised his interposition in
his favour. Such was his influence, that he
finally obtained the pardon of the captive, who
was permitted to accompany him to his hut. But
the renegade, who knew too well the unsteady nature
of the savages, and the difficulty with which
they were brought to relinquish the gratification of
torturing a prisoner, advised and assisted Bushfield
to make his escape that very night. Accordingly
he fled, and though obliged to thread a pathless
forest of some hundreds of miles without
compass or direction except his own sagacity, he
finally reached the settlement of his old friend
Boone time enough to enjoy the pleasure of avenging
his sufferings, by assisting in beating a party
of Indians that soon after besieged the little fort
of the patriarch of Kentucky. Many years having
elapsed since he left the place of his birth, he
determined to pay it a visit; but finding, as he
said, the country become so effeminate and corrupt
that the men preferred featherbeds to dry
leaves, and woollen coverlids to a sky blanket, he
was now on his return to spend the remainder of
his days in “Old Kentuck,” which after all was

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the only place for a gentleman, though to be sure
it was becoming rather too thickly settled. In his
person Bushfield was one of those rare specimens
of men, the united product of pure air,
wholesome exercise, warlike habits, and perfect
freedom of body and mind. He was upwards of
six feet high, perfectly straight, and without an
ounce of superfluous flesh in his whole composition.
There was a singular ease, one might
almost call it gracefulness, in his carriage; and
his dress, which consisted of a buckskin hunting-shirt,
a rackoon-skin cap and leggings, was highly
picturesque. There was nothing vulgar or dowdy
in his appearance or address, which was that of a
man who believed himself equal to his fellow-men
in any circumstances or situation that called for
the exercise of manly vigour or daring enterprise.

Divers were the consultations of the colonel
with his trusty and efficient counsellor Bushfield
on the selection of barks to float them down the
Ohio, for verily there was a sufficient variety to
puzzle one in the choice. Here was the Alleghany
skiff, the dug-out, formed from a single tree, the
piroque, the covered sled, the keel-boat, the flatboat,
and every other boat that the genius of man,
left to its unlimited caprices, or inspired by the
fruitful mother of invention, could contrive or
bring to maturity. Among these the capacious
broad-horn appeared eminently conspicuous, resembling
a floating house, nearly as broad as it is
long, and containing a suite of apartments for
almost every animal, from sovereign man to subject
cattle, sheep, horses, dogs, and ignoble swine.
In its primitive simplicity it hath neither bow nor
stern, larboard nor starboard; and in high spring
froshets, as they are called, it is the most

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convenient boat in the world, since if it strikes the shore
with one horn, it directly wheels round with the
current, and away it goes the other end foremost.

The colonel and his prime minister decided at
length in favour of the broad-horn, and accordingly
some of prodigious dimensions were hired,
almost large enough to accommodate the manifold
freight of old Noah's ark. In these were embarked
most of the necessaries for forming a new
settlement far in the wilderness, certain domestic
animals equally indispensable, and the company
of emigrants, with the exception of Colonel Dangerfield
and his family, who had a smaller broad-horn
provided for their especial accommodation.
The colonel had purchased a quantity of plain and
substantial furniture and a small collection of
books, among which was a volume of laws, to aid
him in the government of his woodland empire.
The river being now rising, and sufficiently high
for their purpose, they all embarked one fine sunshiny
morning, and, launching their broad-horns
on the ample tide, bade a long adieu to the haunts
of civilized man, the enjoyments of civilized life.

eaf311v1.n1

[1] See “Recollections,” of the Reverend Timothy Flint.