at the present day, you come
almost immediately upon what are termed the Bottoms, or Bottom Lands,
which are rich and fertile tracts of country, of miles in extent, and
sometimes miles in breadth, almost water level, with the stream in
question slowly winding its course through them, like a deep blue ribbon
carelessly unrolled upon a dark surface. They are now mostly under
culture, and almost entirely devoted to the production of maize, which,
in the autumn of the year, presents the goodly sight of a golden
harvest. At the time of which we write, there were no such pleasant
demonstrations of civilization, but a vast unbroken forest instead, some
vestiges of which still remain, in the shape of old decaying trees,
standing grim and naked,

"To summer's heat and winter's blast,"

like the ruins of ancient structures, to remind the beholder of former
days.

On these Bottoms, about ten miles above the mouth of the Miami,
Wild-cat and his party, with their prisoners, encamped on the evening
the attack was made upon the renegade, as shown in the preceding chapter.
Possessing caution in a great degree, and fearful of the escape of his
prisoners, Wild-cat spared no precautions which he thought might enhance
the security of Younker and Reynolds. Accordingly, when arrived at the
spot where he intended to remain for the night, the chief ordered stakes
to be driven deep into the earth, some distance apart, to which the feet
of the two in question, after being thrown flat upon their backs, in
opposite directions, were tightly bound, with their hands still corded
to the crossbars as before. A rope was next fastened around the neck
of each, and secured to a neighboring sapling, in which uncomfortable
manner they were left to pass the night; while their captors, starting
a fire, threw themselves upon the earth around it, and soon to all
appearance were sound asleep.

To the tortures of her older companions in captivity, little Rosetta
was not subjected; for Oshasqua--the fierce warrior to whom Girty had
consigned her, in the expectation, probably, that she would long ere
this have been knocked on the head and scalped--had, by one of those
strange mysterious phenomena of nature, (so difficult of comprehension,
and which have been known to link the rough and bloody with the gentle
and innocent,) already begun to feel towards her a sort of affection,
and to treat her with great kindness whenever he could do so unobserved
by the ot