ajor McGary appeared with forty men. It was determined to
pursue the Indians, as they could not have advanced far. This purpose
was immediately carried into execution. The Indians were overtaken and
completely routed. The station suffered inconvenience from the loss of
their domestic animals, which were all killed by the Indians, previous
to their retreat. One white man was killed and another died of his
wounds in a few days. This was the last attack upon this station by the
Indians, although it remained for some years a frontier post.

We might easily swell these annals to volumes, by entering into details
of the attack of Kincheloe's station, and its defence by Colonel Floyd;
the exploits of Thomas Randolph; the captivity of Mrs. Bland and Peake;
and the long catalogue of recorded narratives of murders, burnings,
assaults, heroic defences, escapes, and the various incidents of Indian
warfare upon the incipient settlements. While their barbarity and horror
chill the blood, they show us what sort of men the first settlers of
the country were, and what scenes they had to witness, and what events
to meet, before they prepared for us our present peace and abundance.
The danger and apprehension of their condition must have been such, that
we cannot well imagine how they could proceed to the operations of
building and fencing, with sufficient composure and quietness of spirit,
to complete the slow and laborious preliminaries of founding such
establishments, as they have transmitted to their children. Men they
must have been, who could go firmly and cheerfully to the common
occupations of agriculture, with their lives in their hands, and under
the constant expectation of being greeted from the thickets and
cane-brakes with the rifle bullet and the Indian yell. Even the women
were heroes, and their are instances in abundance on record, where, in
defence of their children and cabins, they conducted with an undaunted
energy of attack or defence, which would throw into shade the vaunted
bravery in the bulletins of regular battles.

These magnanimous pioneers seem to have had a presentiment that they had
a great work to accomplish--laying the foundations of a state in the
wilderness--a work from which they were to be deterred, neither by
hunger, nor toil, nor danger, nor death. For tenderness and affection,
they had hearts of flesh. For the difficulties and dangers of their
positions, their bosoms were of iron. THEY FEARED GOD, AN