it more than once begin: "I think you like me well enough, and I am sure I like you very well; come, why should not we be cousins? I am sure I should like very well to be your cousin, for I have no cousins of my own where I can reach them. Well, then, you shall be my cousin for ever and ever.” In this uncouth language, and in this artless manner, were these leagues of amity commenced. Such an intimacy was never formed unless the object of it were a kind of favorite with the parents, who immediately commenced uncle and aunt to the new cousin. This, however, was a high privilege, only to be kept by fidelity and good conduct. If you exposed your new cousin's faults, or repeated her minutest secrets, or by any breach of constancy lost favor, it was as bad as refusing a challenge; you were coldly received everywhere, and could never regain your footing in society.

Aunt's title, however, became current everywhere, and was most completely confirmed in the year 1750, when she gave with more than common solemnity a kind of annual feast, at which the colonel's two brothers and sisters, aunt's sister, Mrs. Cornelius Cuyler, and their families, with several other young people related to them, assembled. It was not given on a stated day, but at the time when most of these kindred could be collected. This year I have often heard my good friend commemorate, as that on which their family stock of happiness felt the first diminution. The feast was made, and attended by all the collateral branches, consisting of fifty-two, who had a claim by marriage or descent, to call the colonel and my friend uncle and aunt, besides their parents. Among these were reckoned three or four grandchildren of their brothers. At this grand gala there could be no less than sixty persons, but many of them were doomed to meet no more; for the next year the smallpox, always peculiarly mortal here, (where it was improperly treated in the old manner,) broke out with great virulence, and raged like a plague; but none of those relatives whom Mrs. Schuyler had domesticated suffered by it; and the skill which she had acquired from the communications of the military surgeons who were wont to frequent her house, enabled her to administer advice and assistance, which essentially benefited many of the patients in whom she was particularly interested;

though even her influence could not prevail on people to have recourse to inoculation. The patriarchal feast of the former year, and the humane exertions of this, made the colonel and his consort appear so much in the light of public benefactors, that all the young regarded them with a kind of filial reverence, and the addition of uncle and aunt was become confirmed and universal, and was considered as an honorary distinction. The ravages which the smallpox made this year among their Mohawk friends, was a source of deep concern to these revered philanthropists; but this was an evil not to be remedied by any ordinary means. These people, as has been already remarked, being accustomed from early childhood to anoint themselves with bear's grease, to repel the innumerable tribes of noxious insects in summer, and to exclude the extreme cold in winter, their pores are so completely shut up, that the smallpox does not rise upon them, nor have they much chance of recovery from any acute disease; but, excepting the fatal infection already mentioned, they are not subject to any other than the rheumatism, unless in very rare instances. The ravages of disease this year operated on their population as a blow, which it never recovered; and they considered the smallpox in a physical, and the use of strong liquors in a moral sense, as two plagues which we had introduced among them, for which our arts, our friendship, and even our religion, were a very inadequate recompense.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Followers of the Army-Inconveniences resulting from such.

To return to the legion of commissaries, &c. These employments were at first given to very inferior people; it was seen, however, that as the scale of military operations and erections increased, these people were enriching themselves, both at the expense of the king, and of the inhabitants, whom they frequently exasperated into insolence or resistance, and then used that pretext to keep in their own hands the pay

ments to which these people were entitled. When their wagons and slaves were pressed into the service, it was necessary to employ such persons from the first. The colonel and the mayor, and all whom they could influence, did all they could to alleviate an evil that could not be prevented, and was daily aggravating disaffection. They found, as the importance of these offices increased, it would conduce more to the public good, by larger salaries to induce people who were gentlemen to accept them, since, having that character to support, and being acquainted with the people and their language, they knew best how to qualify and soften, and where to apply-so as least to injure or irritate. Some young men, belonging to the country, were at length prevailed on to accept two or three of these offices; which had the happiest effect, in conciliating and conquering the aversion that existed against the regulars.

Among the first of the natives who engaged in those difficult employments, was one of aunt's adopted sons, formerly mentioned-Philip Schuyler of the Pasture, as he was called, to distinguish him from the other nephew, who, had he lived, would have been the colonel's heir. He appeared merely a careless, good-humored young man. Never was any one so little what he seemed, with regard to ability, activity, and ambition, art, enterprise, and perseverance; all of which he possessed in an uncommon degree, though no man had less the appearance of these qualities: easy, complying, and good-humored, the conversations, full of wisdom and sound policy, of which he had been a seemingly inattentive witness, at the Flats, only slept in his recollection, to wake in full force when called forth by occasion.

A shrewd and able man, who was, I think, a brigadier in the service, was appointed quarter-master-general, with the entire superintendence of all the boats, buildings, &c., in New York, the Jerseys, and Canadian frontier. He had married, when very young, a daughter of Colonel Rensselaer. Having at the time no settled plan for the support of a young family, he felt it incumbent on him to make some unusual exertion for them. Colonel Schuyler and his consort not only advised him to accept an inferior employment in this business, but recommended him to the Brigadier Bradstreet, who had the power of disposing of such offices, at that time

daily growing in importance. They well knew that he possessed qualities which might not only render him a useful servant to the public, but clear his way to fortune and distinction. His perfect command of temper, his acuteness, his dispatch in business, and, in the hour of social enjoyment, his easy transition to all that careless frank hilarity and indolent good humor, which seems the peculiar privilege of the free and disencumbered mind, active and companionable, made him a great acquisition to any person under whom he might happen to be employed. This the penetration of Bradstreet soon discovered; and he became not only his secretary and deputy, but in a short time after, his ambassador, as one might say: for before Philip Schuyler was twenty-two, the general, as he was universally styled, sent him to England to negotiate some business of importance with the board of trade and plantations. In the meanwhile some other young men, natives of the country, accepted employments in the same department, by this time greatly extended. Averse as the country people were to the army, they began to relish the advantage derived from the money which that body of protectors, so much feared and detested, expended among them. This was more considerable than might at first be imagined. Government allowed provisions to the troops serving in America; without which they could not indeed have proceeded through an uninhabited country; where, even in such places as were inhabited, there were no regular markets, no competition for supply; nothing but exorbitant prices could tempt those people who were not poor, and found a ready market for all their produce in the West Indies. Now having a regular supply of such provisions as are furnished to the fleet, they had no occasion to lay out their money for such things, and rather purchased the produce of the country, liquors, &c., for which the natives took care to make them pay very high; an evil which the Schuylers moderated as much as possible, though they could not check it entirely. This provision-system was a very great, though necessary evil; for it multiplied contractors, commissaries, and store-keepers, without end. At a distance from the source of authority, abuses increase, and redress becomes more difficult; this of itself is a sufficient argument against the extension of dominion. Many of those new

comers were ambiguous characters, originally from the old country, (as expatriated Britons fondly call their native land,) but little known in this, and not happy specimens of that they had left. These satellites of delegated power had all the insolence of office, and all that avidity of gain which a sudden rise of circumstances creates in low and unprincipled minds; and they, from the nature of their employment, and the difficulty of getting provisions transported from place to place, were very frequently the medium of that intercourse carried on between the military and the natives; and did not by any means contribute to raise the British character in their estimation.*

I dwell the more minutely on all these great, though necessary evils, which invariably attend an army in its progress through a country which is the theatre of actual war, that the reader may be led to set a just value on the privileges of our highly favored region; which, sitting on many waters, sends forth her thunders through the earth; and while the farthest extremes of the east and west bend to her dominion, has not for more than half a century heard the sound of hostility within her bounds. Many unknown persons, who were in some way attached to the army, and resolved to live by it in some shape, set up as traders; carried stores suited to military consumption along with them, and finally established themselves as merchants in Albany. Some of these proved worthy characters, however; and intermarrying with the daughters of the citizens, and adopting in some degree their sober manners, became in process of time estimable members of society. Others, and indeed the greatest part of them, rose like exhalations; and obtaining credit by dint of address and assurance, glittered for a time; affecting showy and expensive modes of living, and aping the manners of their patrons. These, as soon as peace diminished the military establishment, and put an end to that ferment and fluctuation, which the actual presence of war never fails to excite, burst like bubbles on the surface of the subsiding waves, and astonished the Albanians with the novel spectacle of bankruptcy and imprisonment. All this gradually wrought a change on the face of society; yet such was the disgust which the imputed licentiousness, foppery, and extravagance of the officers, and the pretensions, unsupported by worth or knowledge, of their