where the
opponents sheltered themselves behind trees and kept up the fight. Not
until their ammunition was nearly gone, and further resistance was
impossible, did Hunter and his men retreat, leaving Tryon master of the
field. They had lost twenty of their number besides the wounded and some
prisoners taken in the pursuit. Of Tryon's men nine were killed and
sixty-one wounded. Thus ended the affray known as the battle of the
Alamance, in which were fired the first shots for freedom from tyranny
by the people of the American colonies.

The victorious governor hastened to make revengeful use of his triumph.
He began the next day by hanging James Few, one of the prisoners, as an
outlaw, and confiscating his estate. A series of severe proclamations
followed, and his troops lived at free quarters on the Regulators,
forcing them to contribute provisions, and burning the houses and laying
waste the plantations of all those who had been denounced as outlaws.

On his return to Hillsborough the governor issued a proclamation
denouncing Herman Husbands, James Hunter, and some others, asking "every
person" to shoot them at sight, and offering a large reward for their
bodies alive or dead. Of the prisoners still in his hands, he had six of
them hung in his own presence for the crime of treason. Then, some ten
days later, having played the tyrant to the full in North Carolina, he
left that colony forever, having been appointed governor of New York.
The colony was saddled by him with an illegal debt of forty thousand
pounds, which he left for its people to pay.

As for the fugitive Regulators, there was no safety for them in North
Carolina, and the governors of South Carolina and Virginia were
requested not to give them refuge. But they knew of a harbor of refuge
to which no royal governors had come, over which the flag of England had
never waved, and where no lawyer or tax-collector had yet set foot, in
that sylvan land west of the Alleghenies on which few besides Daniel
Boone, the famous hunter, had yet set foot.

Here was a realm for a nation, and one on which nature had lavished her
richest treasures. Here in spring the wild crab-apple filled the air
with the sweetest of perfumes, here the clear mountain-streams flowed
abundantly, the fertile soil was full of promise of rich harvests, the
climate was freshly invigorating, and the west winds ripe with the seeds
of health. Here were broad groves of hickory and oak, of maple, elm,