m Colonel Montgomery's command had
now devolved, at the head of this little army of British regulars and
provincials, preceded by a vanguard of ninety Indian allies and thirty
white settlers, painted and dressed like Indians, under command of
Captain Quentin Kennedy,--in all about twenty-six hundred
men,--continued to advance into the Cherokee country. At Etchoee, the
scene of the final battle of Colonel Montgomery's campaign in the
previous year, they encountered the Cherokees in their whole force--the
united warriors of all the towns. A furious battle ensued, both sides
fighting with prodigies of valor and persistence, that resulted in
breaking forever the power of the Cherokee nation. Three hours the rage
of the fight lasted, and then the troops, pushing forward into the
country, burned and slew on every side, wasting the growing crops all
over the face of the land, and driving the inhabitants from the embers
of their towns to the refuge of caves and dens of wild beasts in the
mountains. They stayed not their hand till Atta-Kulla-Kulla came again,
now to humbly sue for peace and for the preservation of such poor
remnant as was left of his people.

After this the colonists came more rapidly into the region. A settlement
sprang up at Watauga, the site of one of Hamish's old camps as he had
journeyed on his fruitless search for those who had made his home and
the wilderness a sort of paradise. But the place, far away from Loudon
though it was, seemed sad to him. The austere range of mountain domes
on the eastern horizon looked down on him with suggestions which they
imparted to none others who beheld them. He and they had confidences and
a drear interchange of memories and a knowledge of a past that broke the
heart already of the future. He was glad to look upon them no more! His
mind had turned often to the trivial scenes, the happier times, when,
unbereaved of hope, he had hunted with the Frenchman on the banks of the
beautiful Sewanee River. And he welcomed the project of a number of the
pioneers to carry their settlement on to the region of the French Salt
Lick, which other hunters had already rendered famous, and with a few of
these he made his way thither by land while the rest traveled by water,
the way of his old journey in search of his lost happiness. And here he
lived and passed his days.

He heard from Stuart from time to time afterward, but not always with
pleasure. It is true that it afforded him a sentim