Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 391, May, 1848Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 391, May, 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
consulted no confederates, but fled outright; and, though naked,
emaciated, and ignorant of the country, defeated his pursuers by sheer
fleetness of foot and endurance of fatigue. Profusely bleeding--without
even such a verdant show of clothing as Ulysses endowed himself with
when he met Nausica--emaciated to the last extremity, he somewhat
astonished and also alarmed a female neighbour by an unceremonious
morning call, dropping exhausted on the floor ere he could communicate
or receive intelligence. Little need had he too speedily to recover
his faculties; the first news he heard was that his broken-hearted
wife had not long survived the calamity of his capture. He seems to
have now acquired a decided taste for vagrant habits, mingled with a
spirit of vindictive animosity towards the Indians, against whom he
records several exterminating onsets with a sort of horrible relish.
He enlisted himself as a soldier. But American warfare then allowed a
far wider latitude for varied military operations than the ordinary
experience of the ranks: and sometimes he was an Indian warrior,
patiently unravelling and following up a trail; at another time we
find him commanding a detachment of colonists as one versed in the
native mode of fighting, with the rank and emoluments of a lieutenant.
In his little book he details his various military adventures with
much spirit and apparent truthfulness. We have from his pen a
description of one enterprise, which is a little romance in itself. A
lover, hearing that the home of the object of his affections has been
desolated, and his beloved carried off by a band of one of the most
formidable of the tribes of predatory Indians, in his frantic zeal
raises a party of adventurers, with whom he tracks their path. He
arrives just in time to save the damsel from the worst horrors of such
a fate, and the marauders are put to the sword. The whole narrative
has an animation and interest not unworthy of Cooper, who appears to
have been acquainted with Williamson's book, and may not improbably
have derived from it a part of his information about the military
operations of Vaudreuil and Montcalm with the Indians in the French
interest. Williamson was indeed a captive at that capitulation of
Oswego which has cast so deep a stain on the honour of this commander,
and he was soon afterwards sent to England as an exchanged prisoner.
He complains that, on his voyage, "though the French behaved with a
good deal of politeness, we were almost starved for want of
provisions." He arrived at Plymouth in November 1765, and, owing to a
severe wound in one of his hands, was discharged as incapable of
farther service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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