regardless of the prayers of the people, who feared the ire of the exasperated Cherokees, he embarked for Halifax.

Instead of being subdued, the Cherokees were more fiercely inflamed against the English. They prepared for war next year, when Colonel Grant, with a stronger force, compelled them to stand on the defensive. He burned their villages, desolated their fields, and killed many of their warriors.

Francis Marion, the great partisan hero, was a provincial officer in this expedition. One of the most touching epistles in the English language is his letter on the destruction of the homes and fields

of the unfortunate savages. The nation, finally dispirited by their long and continued reverses, humbly sued for peace in June, 1761, and a treaty

to that effect was made.

Although war had ended in America, the French and English continued it on the ocean, and among the West Indian islands, with almost unbroken success by the latter, until the treaty of peace, negotiated in 1762, and signed at Paris on the 10th of February, 1763. By its terms, France ceded to Great Britain all her claimed territory in America eastward of the Mississippi River, north of the latitude of the Iberville River, a little below Baton Rouge. New Orleans and the whole of Louisiana were ceded by France to Spain, at the

same time; so her entire possessions in North America, for which she had labored and fought for more than a century, were relinquished. Spain, with whom the English had been at war, ceded east and west Florida to Great Britain. Thus England held undisputed possession (save by the Indians) of the whole continent from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to the frozen sea, and, by prescriptive right, claimed the whole country from ocean to

ocean.

Scarcely had the storm of war in the south been subdued, ere another far more portentous gathered in the great north west. All over the western country, there existed a deep-seated jealousy of the English among the Indians. The English were cold and indifferent compared with the generous French.

No sooner had the savages learned of the treaty of Paris, in 1733, by which France had ceded the country to Great Britain, without their leave, than there was widespread indignation among them. The arrogance of Amherst in his official intercourse fanned the flame, and a vast confederacy was formed for the purpose of attacking all the English forts on the frontiers on the same day, to destroy their garrisons, and to desolate their settlements, west of the Alleghanies.

Pontiac, the great Ottawa chief, then about fifty

years of age, was at the head of this conspiracy. He sent embassadors to all the tribes around the lakes, and all over the country southward far toward the Gulf of Mexico. A great council of many tribes was convened on the 27th of April. Pontiac, in a stirring address, recounted all the wrongs the red race had suffered at the hands of the English, and assured his warriors that the French were soon to return and reconquer Canada, when the Indians would once more fight on their side. He appealed to their superstition by narrating Indian legends, and in various ways excited them with a burning desire for immediate action.

A great conspiracy was formed in which Pontiac was, himself, to assail Detroit. Treachery was resorted to as a means of entering the fort at Detroit then under command of Major Gladwin; but the commandant was informed by an Indian woman of the intended treachery and assured that the signal for the attack would be in the manner that Pontiac delivered the belt of wampum to the major.

With his warriors carrying short guns and tomahawks under their blankets, Pontiac entered the fort; but was amazed and quite alarmed to find that the guards were all on duty, and every soldier in the fort had a musket in his hand. At the moment of delivery of the belt, the drums of the garrison beat the long roll, and the guards levelled

their muskets at the chief, while the officers drew their swords and pistols. The chief and his body guard retreated, the gates were closed and the siege, which continued for more than a year, commenced.

By similar acts of treachery, or by sudden and unexpected assaults, every post west of Oswego, excepting Niagara, Fort Pitt and Detroit, fell into the hands of the dusky foe within a fortnight afterward. At Michillimackinack, Indians came to the fort at the close of May, as if to trade. Every day they engaged in the exciting pastime of ballplaying on the plain near the fort. On the 2d of June, their squaws came with them, entered the fort, carrying hatchets and knives concealed under their blankets. The commander of the fort and the lieutenant were standing outside watching the game, when the ball was thrown to the gate. Some Indians rushed after it, and coming behind the officers carried them off to the woods. Others rushed in and slew most of the garrison.

After a year of war on the frontier, the beleaguered forts were relieved and the enemy sued for peace. The haughty Pontiac refusing to yield, went to the Illinois country where no Englishman had been and where the French flag yet waved. Among the tribes there, he exerted his eloquence to induce them to make war on the English. He sent an ambassador to New Orleans to ask the

French to aid him; but he failed. For some years, Pontiac, who was a Catawba adopted by the Ottawas, continued to be a disturbing element. An English trader employed a vagabond Indian to kill him. For a barrel of rum, that savage stole softly behind Pontiac, while he stood in the forest leaning on his gun in a reflecting mood, and buried his hatchet in his brain.

The colonies were now comparatively at peace.

Noah Stevens and his cousin Jean Baptiste returned to New York, where Jean Baptiste Stevens married Adrianne Blanc and settled in the State, while Noah made his home in the city.

Their fathers, Elmer and George Stevens, passed their days in Virginia, each living to a ripe old age and witnessing the beginning of that Revolution out of which grew the great American Republic.