surrounding country. Here were seen hills, mountains, valleys,
cliffs, plains, and promontories, all covered with gigantic forests, the
growth of centuries, standing in their native grandeur and integrity,
unsubdued, unmutilated by the hand of man, wearing the livery of the
season, and raising aloft in mid-air their venerable trunks and branches
as if to defy the lightning of the sky and the fury of the whirlwind.
This widely-extended prospect, though rudely magnificent and
picturesque, wanted, nevertheless, some of those softer features which
might embellish and beautify, or, if the expression were permitted,
might civilize the savage wilderness of some of nature's noblest
efforts. Here were to be seen no villages nor hamlets, not a farm-house
nor cottage, no fields nor meadows with their appropriate furniture,
shocks of corn, nor herds of domestic animals. In its widest range the
eye would in vain seek to discover a cultivated spot of earth on which
to repose. Here were no marks of industry, nor of the exercise of those
arts which minister to the comfort and convenience of man; here nature
had for ages on ages held undisputed empire. In the deep and dismal
solitude of these woodlands the lone wanderer would have been startled
by the barking of the watch-dog, or the shrill clarion of a chanticleer.
Here the whistling of the plough-boy, or the milk-maid's song, sounds
elsewhere heard with pleasing emotions, would have been incongruous and
out of place."[583:A]

Dunmore, who had marched across the country to the Shawnee towns,
failing to join Lewis, runners were sent out by him toward Fort Pitt in
quest of his lordship. October the sixth the _Williamsburg Gazette_
announced advices from the frontier that the Earl of Dunmore had
concluded a treaty of peace with the Delaware Indians. And before the
return of the runners despatched from Point Pleasant, an express from
the governor reached Point Pleasant on Sunday, the nineteenth of
October, ordering General Lewis to march for the Chilicothe towns and
there join him. Preparations were immediately made for crossing the
Ohio.

In the mean time the Indians, headed by Cornstalk, had determined to
cross the Ohio, some miles above Point Pleasant, and to march down
during the night, so as to surprise the camp at daybreak. "Accordingly,
on the evening of the ninth of October, soon after dark, they began to
cross the river on rafts previously prepared. To ferry so many men over
thi