ame cowed and confused. The straits to which the settlers were
reduced, and their wild clamor for immediate flight, the danger from the
Indians, the death of his own son all combined failed to make him waver
one instant in his purpose. He strongly urged on the settlers the danger
of flight through the wilderness. He did not attempt to make light of
the perils that confronted them if they remained, but he asked them to
ponder well if the beauty and fertility of the land did not warrant some
risk being run to hold it, now that it was won. They were at last in a
fair country fitted for the homes of their children. Now was the time to
keep it. If they abandoned it, they would lose all the advantages they
had gained, and would be forced to suffer the like losses and privations
if they ever wished to retake possession of it or of any similar tract
of land. He, at least, would not turn back, but would stay to the bitter
end.

His words and his steadfast bearing gave heart to the settlers, and they
no longer thought of flight. As their corn had failed them they got
their food from the woods. Some gathered quantities of walnuts,
hickory-nuts, and shelbarks, and the hunters wrought havoc among the
vast herds of game. During the early winter one party of twenty men that
went up Caney Fork on a short trip, killed one hundred and five bears,
seventy-five buffaloes, and eighty-seven deer, and brought the flesh and
hides back to the stockades in canoes; so that through the winter there
was no lack of jerked and smoke-dried meat.

The hunters were very accurate marksmen; game was plenty, and not shy,
and so they got up close and rarely wasted a shot. Moreover, their
smallbore rifles took very little powder--in fact the need of excessive
economy in the use of ammunition when on their long hunting-trips was
one of the chief reasons for the use of small bores. They therefore used
comparatively little ammunition. Nevertheless, by the beginning of
winter both powder and bullets began to fail. In this emergency
Robertson again came to the front to rescue the settlement he had
founded and preserved. He was accustomed to making long, solitary
journeys through the forest, unmindful of the Indians; he had been one
of the first to come from North Carolina to Watauga; he had repeatedly
been on perilous missions to the Cherokees; he had the previous year
gone north to the Illinois country to meet Clark. He now announced that
he would himself go to