o the water,
and danced in our rear, with drawn bows, taking aim, and making various
savage gesticulations. Their leader urged them to get behind some snags,
and then shoot at us. The party on the bank in front had many
muskets--and those of them, who had bows, held them with arrows ready set
in the bowstrings. They had a mass of thick bush and trees behind them,
into which they could in a moment dart, after discharging their muskets
and arrows, and be completely hidden from our sight; a circumstance that
always gives people who use bows and arrows the greatest confidence.
Notwithstanding these demonstrations, we were exceedingly loath to come
to blows. We spent a full half-hour exposed at any moment to be struck
by a bullet or poisoned arrow. We explained that we were better armed
than they were, and had plenty of ammunition, the suspected want of which
often inspires them with courage, but that we did not wish to shed the
blood of the children of the same Great Father with ourselves; that if we
must fight, the guilt would be all theirs.

This being a common mode of expostulation among themselves, we so far
succeeded, that with great persuasion the leader and others laid down
their arms, and waded over from the bank to the boats to talk the matter
over. "This was their river; they did not allow white men to use it. We
must pay toll for leave to pass." It was somewhat humiliating to do so,
but it was pay or fight; and, rather than fight, we submitted to the
humiliation of paying for their friendship, and gave them thirty yards of
cloth. They pledged themselves to be our friends ever afterwards, and
said they would have food cooked for us on our return. We then hoisted
sail, and proceeded, glad that the affair had been amicably settled.
Those on shore walked up to the bend above to look at the boat, as we
supposed; but the moment she was abreast of them, they gave us a volley
of musket-balls and poisoned arrows, without a word of warning.
Fortunately we were so near, that all the arrows passed clear over us,
but four musket-balls went through the sail just above our heads. All
our assailants bolted into the bushes and long grass the instant after
firing, save two, one of whom was about to discharge a musket and the
other an arrow, when arrested by the fire of the second boat. Not one of
them showed their faces again, till we were a thousand yards away. A few
shots were then fired over their heads, to give the