mand of the lower forts. The settlers demanded Boone's
promotion for their own security.

"The land it is good, it is just to our mind, Each will have his part if
his Lordship be kind, The Ohio once ours, we'll live at our ease, With a
bottle and glass to drink when we please."

So sang the army poet, thus giving voice, as bards should ever do,
to the theme nearest the hearts of his hearers--in this case, Land!
Presumably his ditty was composed on the eve of the march from
Lewisburg, for it is found in a soldier's diary.

On the evening of October 9,1774, Andrew Lewis with his force of eleven
hundred frontiersmen was encamped on Point Pleasant at the junction of
the Great Kanawha with the Ohio. Dunmore in the meantime had led
his forces into Ohio and had erected Fort Gower at the mouth of the
Hockhocking River, where he waited for word from Andrew Lewis. *

* It has been customary to ascribe to Lord Dunmore motives of
treachery in failing to make connections with Lewis; but no real
evidence has been advanced to support any of the charges made against
him by local historians. The charges were, as Theodore Roosevelt says,
"an afterthought." Dunmore was a King's man in the Revolution; and yet
in March, 1775, the Convention of the Colony of Virginia, assembled in
opposition to the royal party, resolved: "The most cordial thanks of the
people of this colony are a tribute justly due to our worthy Governor
Lord Dunmore, for his truly noble, wise, and spirited conduct which at
once evinces his Excellency's attention to the true interests of this
colony, and a real in the executive department which no dangers can
divert, or difficulties hinder, from achieving the most important
services to the people who have the happiness to live under his
administration." (See "American Archives," Fourth Series, vol. II, p.
170.) Similar resolutions were passed by his officers on the march home
from Ohio; at the same time, the officers passed resolutions in sympathy
with the American cause. Yet it was Andrew Lewis who later drove Dunmore
from Virginia. Well might Dunmore exclaim, "That it should ever come to
this!"

The movements of the two armies were being observed by scouts from the
force of red warriors gathered in Ohio under the great leader of the
Shawanoes. Cornstalk purposed to isolate the two armies of his enemy and
to crush them in turn before they could come together. His first move
was to launch an attack on Lewis at