Putnam is full of perilous encounters incident to border
service against the Indians. In one of these he narrowly avoided
capture by the savages on the Hudson, near Fort Miller. He escaped
only by shooting the rapids with his boat, a marvellous adventure,
which is said to have wakened a superstitious veneration for him in
the minds of his Indian assailants.

Not long afterward, however, the barbarians had an opportunity of
treating him with less respect. It was in the month of August of this
year that he was engaged with a reconnoitring party in company with
the partisan Rogers, near Ticonderoga. They had been employed in
watching the movements of the enemy, and were on their return to Fort
Edward when the attention of the French partisan officer, Molang, who
was on the lookout, was attracted to them by a careless shooting-match
between Rogers and a fellow British officer. A confused hand-to-hand
action ensued in the woods, in the course of which Putnam, his gun
missing fire, "while the muzzle was pressed against the breast of a
large and well-proportioned savage," was captured and bound to a tree
by that formidable personage. The English party now rallying, drove
their pursuers backward, which brought the unfortunate Putnam to a
central position between two fires. "Human imagination," well says
Colonel Humphreys, "can hardly figure to itself a more deplorable
situation." Putnam remained more than an hour deprived of all power
save that of hearing and vision, as the musket-balls whizzed by his
ears and a ruthless savage aimed his tomahawk repeatedly, with the
infernal dexterity of a Chinese juggler, within a hair's breadth of
his person. This amusement was succeeded by the attempt of a French
petty-officer to put an end to his life by discharging his musket
against his breast. It happily missed fire. The action was now brought
to an end in favor of the Provincials; but Putnam was carried off in
the retreat by his Indian captor. He was now destined to witness one
of those scenes, since so well described by Cooper, of the peculiar
tortures inflicted by the Indians upon their prisoners in war; but
unhappily with less complacent feelings than the reader of the skilful
novelist experiences, whose terrors are tempered by the delightful art
of the narrator. With Putnam the spectator and the sufferer were the
same. He has been bound on the march with intolerable thongs, he has
almost perished under his burdens, he has been toma