nson, was unbounded. Many of the foreign emigrants and their
descendants were also under this sway, and the whole frontier was
spotted with loyalists under the ever hateful name of Tories. These kept
the enemy minutely informed of all movements of the revolutionists, and
were, at the same time, the most cruel of America's foes, not excepting
the Mohawks. For the fury of the latter was generally in battle, but the
former exercised their cruelties in cold blood, and generally made
deliberate preparations for them, by assuming the guise of Indians. In
these infernal masks they gave vent to private malice, and cut the
throats of their neighbors and their innocent children. In such a
position a patriot's life was doubly assailed, and it was often the
price of it, to declare himself "a son of liberty," a term then often
used by the revolutionists.

He had just entered his seventeenth year when the war against the
British authorities in the land broke out, and he immediately declared
for it; the wealthy farmer (Swartz) with whom he lived, being one of the
first who were overhauled and "spotted" by the LOCAL COMMITTEE OF
SAFETY, who paraded through the settlement with a drum and fife. He was
at the disarming of Sir John Johnson, at Johnstown, under Gen. Schuyler,
where a near relative, Conrad Wiser, Esq., was the government
interpreter. He was at Ticonderoga when the troops were formed into
hollow square to hear the Declaration of Independence read. He marched
with the army that went to reinforce Gen. Montgomery, at Quebec, and was
one of the besieged in Fort Stanwix, on the source of the Mohawk, while
Gen. Burgoyne, with his fine army, was being drawn into the toils of
destruction by Gen. Schuyler, at Saratoga--a fate from which his
_supersedeas_ by Gen. Gates, the only unjust act of Washington, did not
extricate him.

The adventures, perils, and anecdotes of this period, he loved in his
after days to recite; and I have sometimes purposed to record them, in
connection with his name; but the prospect of my doing so, while still
blessed with an excellent memory, becomes fainter and fainter.

_8th_. Otwin (_vide ante_) writes from La Pointe, in Lake Superior, in
the following terms:--

"I often look back to the happy days I spent in your family, and feel
grateful in view of them. A thousand blessings rest on your head, my
dear friend, and that of your wife, for all your kindness to me, when
first a stranger in a distant land.