If from the time of the landing we could recall the long procession of the actors and the events of border-life, and pass them before the eye in one great moving panorama, how somber would be the colors of that picture! All along the grand march what scenes of captivity, suffering, bereavement, sorrow, and in these scenes, woman the most prominent figure, for she was the constant actress in this great drama of woe! The carrying away and the return of captives in war has furnished themes by which poets and artists in all ages have moved the heart of man. The breaking up of homes, the violent separations of those who are kindred by blood, and the sundering for ever of family ties were ordinary and every day incidents in the border-wars of our country: but the frequency of such occurrences does not detract from the mournful interest with which they are always fraught. At the close of the old French and Indian War, Colonel Henry Bouquet stipulated with the Indian tribes on the Ohio frontier as one of the conditions of peace that they should restore all the captives which they had taken. This was agreed to, and on his return march he was met by a great company of settlers in search of their lost relatives. "Husbands found their wives and parents their children, from whom they had been separated for years. Women frantic between hope and fear, were running hither and thither, looking piercingly into the face of every child, to find their own, which, perhaps, had died--and then such shrieks of agony! Some of the little captives shrank from their own forgotten mothers, and hid in terror in the blankets of the squaws that had adopted them. Some that had been taken away young, had grown up and married Indian husbands or Indian wives, and now stood utterly bewildered with conflicting emotions. A young Virginian had found his wife; but his little boy, not two years old when captured, had been torn from her, and had been carried off, no one knew whither. One day a warrior came in, leading a child. No one seemed to own it. But soon the mother knew her offspring and screaming with joy, folded her son to her bosom. An old woman had lost her granddaughter in the French war, nine years before. All her other relatives had died under the knife. Searching, with trembling eagerness, in each face, she at last recognized the altered features of her child. But the girl who had forgotten her native tongue, returned no answer, and made no sign. The old woman groaned, wept, and complained bitterly, that the daughter she had so often sung to sleep on her knees, had forgotten her in her old age. Soldiers and officers were alike overcome. 'Sing,' whispered Bouquet, 'sing the song you used to sing.' As the low, trembling tones began to ascend, the wild girl gave one sudden start, then listening for a moment longer, her frame shaking like an ague, she burst into a passionate flood of tears. That was sufficient. She was the lost child. All else had been effaced from