s spirit in circulation than spirituous liquor,
for the commandant's orders were niggardly indeed as to serving out the
portions of tafia, not in the interests of temperance so much as of
discipline in view of their perilous situation so far from help, so
alone in the midst of hordes of inimical savages; his parsimony in this
regard passed with them as necessity, since they knew that rum was hard
to come by, and even this meager dole was infrequent and a luxury.
Therefore they drank their thimbleful with warm hearts and cool heads;
the riotous roared out wild songs and vied with one another in wrestling
matches or boxing encounters; the more sedate played cards or dominoes
close in to the light of the flaring fire, or listened with ever fresh
interest to the great stories often told by the gray-headed drum-major
who had served under the Duke of Cumberland in foreign lands, and
promptly smote upon the mouth any man who spoke of his royal highness as
"Billy the Butcher";[8] for there were Scotchmen in the garrison
intolerant of the title of "Hero of Culloden," having more or less
remote associations with an experience delicately mentioned in Scotland
as "being out in the Forty-five." With each fresh narration the
drum-major produced new historical details of the duke's famous fields
and added a few to the sum of the enemies killed and wounded, till it
seemed that if the years should spare him, it would one day be
demonstrated that the warlike William Augustus had in any specified
battle slain more men by sword and bayonet and good leaden ball than
were ever mustered into any army on the face of the earth. All the
soldiers were in their spruce parade trim, and every man had a bunch of
holly in his hat.

Even the Indians had been considered. In response to the invitation,
they had sent the previous day their symbolic white swan's wings painted
with streaks of white clay, and these were conspicuously placed in the
decorated hall. The gates of the fort that morning had been flung wide
open to all who would come. Tafia--in judiciously small quantities, it
is true--was served to the tribesmen about the parade, but the head-men,
Atta-Kulla-Kulla, Willinawaugh, Rayetaeh, Otacite, more than all,
Oconostota, the king of the Cherokee nation, were escorted to the great
hall of the officers' quarters, the latter on the arm of Captain Stuart
himself; the Indian king, being a trifle lame of one leg,--he was known
among the soldiers as "