works,--full of rapid movement, brilliant
descriptions, hair-breadth escapes, thrilling adventures,--which young
persons probably read with more rapt attention than any other of his
narratives. In the opening chapter we find at Fort Edward, on the
head-waters of the Hudson, the two daughters of Colonel Munro, the
commander of Fort William Henry, on the shores of Lake George; though why
they were at the former post, under the protection of a stranger, and not
with their father, does not appear. Information is brought of the approach
of Montcalm, with a hostile army of Indians and Frenchmen, from the North;
and the young ladies are straightway hurried off to the more advanced, and
consequently more dangerous post, when prudence and affection would have
dictated just the opposite course. Nor is this all. General Webb, the
commander of Fort Edward, at the urgent request of Colonel Munro, sends
him a reinforcement of fifteen hundred men, who march off through the
woods, by the military road, with drums beating and colors flying; and
yet, strange to say, the young ladies do not accompany the troops, but set
off, on the very same day, by a by-path, attended by no other escort than
Major Heyward, and guided by an Indian whose fidelity is supposed to be
assured by his having been flogged for drunkenness by the orders of
Colonel Munro. The reason assigned for conduct so absurd that in real life
it would have gone far to prove the parties having a hand in it not to be
possessed of that sound and disposing mind and memory which the law
requires as a condition precedent to making a will is, that hostile
Indians, in search of chance scalps, would be hovering about the column of
troops, and so leave the by-path unmolested. But the servants of the party
follow the route of the column: a measure, we are told, dictated by the
sagacity of the Indian guide, in order to diminish the marks of their
trail, if, haply, the Canadian savages should be prowling about so far in
advance of their army! Certainly, all the sagacity of the fort would seem
to have been concentrated in the person of the Indian. How much of this
improbability might have been avoided, if the action had been reversed,
and the young ladies, in view of the gathering cloud of war, had been sent
from the more exposed and less strongly guarded point of Fort William
Henry to the safe fortress of Fort Edward! Then the smallness of the
escort and the risks of the journey would have be