slope of a mountain hard by; the sky would show blue overhead, and glimmer red through the low-hanging boughs toward the west; and the troops would pitch their tents under the restored peace of the elements and the placid white stars. A jolly camp it must have been. Stories of it have come down to this day--of its songs, loud, hilarious, patriotic, doubtless rudely musical; of its wild pranks, of that boyish and jocose kind denominated by sober and unsympathetic elders, “horse-play”; of the intense delight experienced by the savage allies, the Chickasaws, who participated in the campaign, in witnessing the dances of the young Highlanders--how “their sprightly manner in this exercise,” and athletic grace appealed to the Indians; how the sound of the bag-pipes thrilled them; how they admired that ancient martial garb, the kilt and plaid. No admiration, however extravagant of Scotch customs, character, or appearance, seemed excessive in the eyes of Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant, so readily did his haughty, patriotic pride acquiesce in it, and the Indian’s evident appreciation of the national superiority of the Scotch to all other races of men duly served to enhance his opinion of the mental acumen of the Chickasaws. This homage, however, failed to mollify or modify the estimate of the noble redman already formed by a certain subaltern, Lieutenant Ronald MacDonnell. “The Lord made him an Indian--and an Indian he will remain,” he would remark sagely. The policy of the British government to utilize in its armies the martial strength of semi-savage dependencies, elsewhere so conspicuously exploited, was never successful with these Indians save as the tribes might fight in predatory bands in their own wild way, although much effort was made looking toward regular enlistments. And, in fact, the futility of all endeavors to reduce the savage to a reasonable conformity to the militarism of the camp, to inculcate the details of the drill, a sense of the authority of officers, the obligations of out-posts, the heinousness of “running the guard,” the necessity of submitting to the prescribed punishments and penalties for disobedience of orders,--all rendered this ethnographic saw so marvelously apt, that it seemed endowed with more wisdom than Ronald MacDonnell was popularly supposed to possess. But such logic as he could muster operated within contracted limits. If the Lord had not fitted a man to be a soldier, why--there Ronald MacDonnell’s extremest flights of speculation paused.