ing accession to the society, and performed their duty to the public with a degree of honor and fidelity that checked abuses in others, and rescued the service they were engaged in from the reproach which it had incurred, in consequence of those fungi of society which had at first intruded into it.

By the advice of the Schuylers, there was now on the Mohawk river a superintendent of Indian affairs; the importance of which charge began to be fully understood. He was regularly appointed and paid by government. This was the justly celebrated Sir William Johnson, who held an office difficult both to define and execute. He might indeed be called the tribune of the Five Nations; their claims he asserted, their rights he protected, and over their minds he possessed a greater sway than any other individual had ever attained. He was indeed calculated to conciliate and retain the affections of this brave people; possessing in common with them many of those peculiarities of mind and manners that distinguished them from others. He was an uncommonly tall, well-made man, with a fine countenance; which, however, had rather an expression of dignified sedateness, approaching to melancholy. He appeared to be taciturn, never wasting words on matters of no importance, but highly eloquent when the occasion called forth his powers. He possessed intuitive sagacity, and the most entire command of temper, and of countenance. He did by no means lose sight of his own interest, but on the contrary raised himself to power and wealth, in an open and active manner; not disdaining any honorable means of benefiting himself; but at the same time the bad policy, as well as meanness of sacrificing respectability, to snatching at petty present advantages, were so obvious to him, that he laid the foundation of his future prosperity on the broad and deep basis of honorable dealing, accompanied by the most vigilant attention to the objects he had in view; acting so as, without the least departure from integrity on the one hand, or inattention to his affairs on the other, to give, by his manner of conducting himself, an air of magnanimity to his character, that made him the object of universal confidence. He purchased from the Indians (having the grant confirmed by his sovereign) a large and fertile tract of land upon the Mohawk river; where, having cleared and cultivated the ground, he built two spacious and convenient places

of residence; known afterwards by the names of Johnson Castle, and Johnson Hall. The first was on a fine eminence, stockaded round, and slightly fortified; the last was built on the site of the river, on a most fertile and delightful plain, surrounded with an ample and well-cultivated domain; and that again encircled by European settlers, who had first come there as architects, or workmen, and had been induced by Sir William's liberality, and the singular beauty of the district, to continue. His trade with the Five Nations was very much for their advantage; he supplying them on more equitable terms than any trader, and not indulging the excesses in regard to strong liquors, which others were too easily induced to do. The castle contained the store in which all goods meant for the Indian traffic were laid up, and all the peltry received in exchange. The hall was his summer residence, and the place round which his greatest improvements were made. Here this singular man lived like a little sovereign; kept an excellent table for strangers, and officers, whom the course of their duty now frequently led into these wilds; and by confiding entirely in the Indians, and treating them with unvaried truth and justice, without ever yielding to solicitation what he had once refused, he taught them to repose entire confidence in him; he, in his turn, became attached to them, wore in winter almost entirely their dress and ornaments, and contracted a kind of alliance with them; for, becoming a widower in the prime of life, he had connected himself with an Indian maiden, daughter to a sachem, who possessed an uncommonly agreeable person, and good understanding; and whether ever formally married to him according to our usage, or not, contrived to live with him in great union and affection all his life. So perfect was his dependence on those people, whom his fortitude and other manly virtues had attached to him, that when they returned from their summer excursions, and exchanged the last year's furs for fire-arms, &c., they used to pass a few days at the castle; when his family and most of his domestics were down at the hall. There they were all liberally entertained by their friend; and five hundred of them have been known, for nights together, after drinking pretty freely, to lie around him on the floor, while he was the only white person in a house containing great quantities of every thing that was to them valuable or desirable.

While Sir William thus united in his mode of life, the calm urbanity of a liberal and extensive trader, with the splendid hospitality, the numerous attendance, and the plain though dignified manners of an ancient baron, the female part of his family were educated in a manner so entirely dissimilar from that of all other young people of their sex and station, that as a matter of curiosity, it is worthy a recital. These two young ladies, his daughters, inherited, in a great measure, the personal advantages and strength of understanding for which their father was so distinguished. Their mother dying when they were young, bequeathed the care of them to a friend. This friend was the widow of an officer who had fallen in battle; I am not sure whether she was devout, and shunned the world for fear of its pollutions, or romantic, and despised its selfish, bustling spirit: but so it was, that she seemed utterly to forget it, and devoted herself to her fair pupils. To these she taught needlework of the most elegant and ingenious kinds, reading and writing: thus quietly passed their childhood; their monitress not taking the smallest concern in family management, nor indeed the least interest in any worldly thing but themselves: far less did she inquire about the fashions or diversions which prevailed in a world she had renounced; and from which she seemed to wish her pupils to remain forever estranged. Never was any thing so uniform as their dress, their occupations, and the general tenor of their lives. In the morning they rose early, read their prayer-book, I believe, but certainly their Bible, fed their birds, tended their flowers, and breakfasted; then they were employed for some hours with unwearied perseverance, at fine needlework, for the ornamental parts of dress, which were the fashion of the day, without knowing to what use they were to be put, as they never wore them; and had not, at the age of sixteen, ever seen a lady, excepting each other and their governess; they then read, as long as they chose, either the voluminous romances of the last century, of which their friend had an ample collection, or Rollin's ancient history, the only books they had ever seen; after dinner they regularly, in summer, took a long walk; or an excursion in the sledge, in winter, with their friend; and then returned and resumed their wonted occupations, with the sole variation of a stroll in the garden in summer, and a game at chess, or shuttlecock in winter.

Their dress was to the full as simple and uniform as every thing else; they wore wrappers of the finest chintz, and green silk petticoats; and this the whole year round without variation. Their hair, which was long and beautiful, was tied behind with a simple riband; a large calash shaded each from the sun, and in winter they had long scarlet mantles that covered them from head to foot. Their father did not live with them, but visited them every day in their apartment. This innocent and uniform life they led till the death of their monitress, which happened when the eldest was not quite seventeen. On some future occasion I shall satisfy the curiosity which this short but faithful account of these amiable recluses has possibly excited.*

CHAPTER XL.

General Abercrombie.-Lord Howe.

I MUST now return to Albany, and to the projected expedition.

General Abercrombie, who commanded on the northern lakes, was a brave and able man, though rather too much attached to the military schools of those days, to accommodate himself to the desultory and uncertain warfare of the woods; where sagacity, ready presence of mind, joined with the utmost caution, and a condescension of opinion to our Indian allies, was of infinitely more consequence than rules and tactics, which were mere shackles and incumbrances in this contention, with difficulties and perplexities more harassing than mere danger. Indeed, when an ambuscade or sudden onset was followed by defeat, here (as in Braddock's case) the result reminded one of the rout of Absalom's army; where, we are told, the wood devoured more than the sword. The general was a frequent guest with Madame, when the nature of his command would permit him to relax from the duties

* These ladies married officers, who in succession lived aid-de-camps with their father. Their manners soon grew easy; they readily acquired the habits of society, and made excellent wives.

that occupied him. He had his men encamped below Albany, in that great field which I have formerly described as the common pasture for the town. Many of the officers were quartered in the fort and town; but Lord Howe always lay in his tent, with the regiment which he commanded; and which he modelled in such a manner, that they were ever after considered as an example to the whole American army, who gloried in adopting all those rigid, yet salutary regulations, to which this young hero readily submitted, to enforce his commands by his example.

Above the pedantry of holding up standards of military rules, where it was impossible to practise them, and the narrow spirit of preferring the modes of his own country, to those proved by experience to suit that in which he was to act, Lord Howe laid aside all pride and prejudice, and gratefully accepted counsel from those whom he knew to be best qualified to direct him. Madame was delighted with the calm steadiness with which he carried through the austere rules which he found it necessary to lay down. In the first place he forbade all displays of gold and scarlet, in the rugged march they were about to undertake, and set the example by wearing himself an ammunition coat, that is to say, one of the surplus soldiers' coats cut short. This was a necessary precaution; because in the woods the hostile Indians, who started from behind the trees, usually caught at the long and heavy skirts then worn by the soldiers; and for the same reason he ordered the muskets to be shortened, that they might not, as on former occasions, be snatched from behind by these agile foes. To prevent the march of his regiment from being descried at a distance by the glittering of their arms, the barrels of their guns were all blackened; and to save them from the tearing of bushes, the stings of insects, &c., he set them the example of wearing leggins, a kind of buskin made of strong woollen cloth, formerly described as a part of the Indian dress. The greatest privation to the young and vain yet remained. Hair well dressed, and in great quantity, was then considered as the greatest possible ornament, which those who had it took the utmost care to display to advantage, and to wear in a bag or a queue, whichever they fancied. Lord Howe's was fine, and very abundant; he, however, cropped it, and ordered every one else to do the same. Every morning he rose ry