maining inhabitants of that neighborhood, remote
from any fort or populous settlement to which they could fly for
security, retired to the mountains and remained for several days
concealed in a cave. They then caught their horses and moved their
families to the West Fork; and when they visited the places of their
former habitancy for the purpose of collecting their stock and
carrying it off with their other property, scarce a vestige of them
was to be seen,--the Indians had been there after they left the cave,
and burned the houses, pillaged their movable property, and destroyed
the cattle and hogs.

Among the few interesting incidents which occurred in the upper
country, during this year, was the captivity and remarkable escape of
two brothers, John and Henry Johnson:--the former thirteen, the latter
eleven years of age. They lived at a station on the west side of the
Ohio river near above Indian Short creek; and being at some distance
from the house, engaged in the sportive amusements of youth, became
fatigued and seated themselves on an old log for the purpose of
resting. They presently observed two men coming towards them, whom
they believed to be white men from the station until they approached
so close as to leave no prospect of escape by flight, when to their
great grief they saw that two Indians were beside them. They were made
prisoners, and taken about four miles, when after partaking of some
roasted meat and parched corn given them by their captors, they were
arranged for the night, by being placed between the two Indians and
each encircled in the arms of the one next him.

Henry, the younger of the brothers, had grieved much at the idea of
being carried off by the Indians, and during his short but sorrowful
journey across the hills, had wept immoderately. John had in vain
endeavored to comfort him with the hope that they should be enabled to
elude the vigilence of the savages, and to return to the hearth of
their parents and brethren. He refused to be comforted.--The ugly red
man, with his tomahawk and scalping knife, which had been often called
in to quiet the cries of his infancy, was now actually before him; and
every scene of torture and of torment which had been depicted, by
narration, to his youthful eye, was now present to his terrified
imagination, hightened by the thought that they were about to be
re-enacted on himself. In anticipation of this horrid doom for some
time he wept in bitterness and a