iderable degree of
suffering, as well from extreme cold as from hunger. The pack horses,
which were no longer serviceable (having no provisions to transport)
and some of which had given out for want of provender, were killed and
eaten. When the army arrived at the Burning spring, the buffalo hides,
which had been left there on their way down, were cut into tuggs, or
long thongs, and eaten by the troops, after having been exposed to the
heat produced by the flame from the spring.--Hence they called it Tugg
river--a name by which it is still known. After this the army
subsisted for a while on beachnuts; but a deep snow falling these
could no longer be obtained, and the restrictions were removed.

About thirty men then detached themselves from the main body, to hunt
their way home. Several of them were known to have perished from cold
and hunger--others were lost and never afterwards [65] heard of; as
they had separated into small parties, the more certainly to find game
on which to live. The main body of the army was conducted home by Col.
Lewis, after much suffering--the strings of their mocasons, the belts
of their hunting shirts, and the flaps of their shot pouches, having
been all the food which they had eaten for some days.[8]

A journal of this campaign was kept by Lieut. M'Nutt, a gentleman of
liberal education and fine mind. On his return to Williamsburg he
presented it to Governor Fauquier by whom it was deposited in the
executive archives. In this journal Col. Lewis was censured for not
having proceeded directly to the Scioto towns; and for imposing on the
army the restrictions, as to fire and shooting, which have been
mentioned.--This produced an altercation between Lewis and M'Nutt,
which was terminated by a personal encounter.[9]

During the continuance of this war, many depredations were committed
by hostile Indians, along the whole extent of the Virginia frontier.
Individuals, leaving the forts on any occasion, scarcely ever
returned; but were, almost always, intercepted by Indians, who were
constantly prowling along the border settlements, for purposes of
rapine and murder. The particulars of occurrences of this kind, and
indeed of many of a more important character, no longer exist in the
memory of man--they died with them who were contemporaneous with the
happening of them.[10] On one occasion however, such was the extent of
savage duplicity, and such, and so full of horror, the catastrophe
resulting