ant attacks of Marion, and long marches, combined with much
desertion; but his loss is not confessed by the enemy, nor could it be
discovered by the Americans.--Had he been able to have cooperated with
Doyle in sufficient time, with their overwhelming force, assisted by
Harrison and Ganey, with an equal, if not greater number of tories;
there can be little doubt, but Gen. Marion with his scanty means of
defence, must either have fallen in the conflict or been driven out of
the country. When he first marched from Scott's lake, Col. Watson had
only seventy miles to traverse, and only Black river to pass, before
he reached Snow's island; yet such was the consummate skill and
indefatigable exertions of Gen. Marion, that from the 9th of March until
the 10th of April, he had not reached his place of destination, and then
made a hasty retreat through roads unfrequented, and over wide swamps
and rivers, unpursued. To effect this he took a circuitous route, nearly
one hundred miles out of his way, which detained him until about the
9th of May, more than two months from his first setting out on this
expedition.

Col. Watson was considered by the British one of their best partisans;
yet we have seen how he was foiled. Had his regiment attempted, as was
no doubt intended, to ford the river at the lower bridge, they would
have found the passage narrow, and the river at that time deep; or had
he undertaken to repair the bridge, in either case he must have lost
a great portion of his men. He was, however, a better officer than
historian or civilian, otherwise he would not have justified the
practice of burning houses, in the face of the universal censure cast
upon Lewis XIV. for adopting the same measure in the Palatinate. But
when Watson, Balfour, and other British officers, professing to know the
laws of war and nations, burnt houses and hanged those citizens who
had taken deceptive paroles upon their authority, certainly it may be
affirmed that Marion, who was self-taught, and had no book of the law
of nations, or perhaps any other book in his camp, was justifiable as
a matter of retaliation, to shoot down their pickets and cut off their
sentinels wherever he could find them; and always to fight such invaders
in their own barbarian manner. Nothing ever showed, in such a strong
light, the plain good sense of Marion. Col. Watson had orders to burn
houses, but did not however appear to wish to carry them rigourously
into effect. It is