afternoon in August, while the people were generally in their fields, Donald M'Donald, one of the Scotch refugees from Johnstown, with a party of sixty Indians and Tories, made a descent upon Shell's Bush. The inhabitants mostly fled to Fort Dayton, but Shell and his family took refuge in his block-house. He and two of his sons (he had eight in all) were at work in the field. The two sons were captured, but the father and his other boys, who were near, reached the block-house in safety. It was finally besieged, but the assailants were kept at a respectful distance by the garrison. Shell's wife loaded the muskets, while her husband and sons discharged them with sure aim. M'Donald tried to burn the blockhouse, but was unsuccessful. He at length procured a crow-bar, ran up to the door, and attempted to force it. Shell fired upon him, and so wounded him in the leg that he fell. Instantly the beleaguered patriot opened the door and pulled the Scotchman within, a prisoner. He was well supplied with cartridges, and these he was obliged to surrender to his captors. The battle ceased for a time. Shell knew the enemy would not attempt to burn his castle while their leader was a prisoner within it, and, taking advantage of the lull in the battle, he went into the second story, and composedly sang the favorite hymn of Luther amid the perils that surrounded him in his controversies with the pope. * But the respite was short. The enemy, maddened at the loss of several of their number killed, and their commander a prisoner, rushed up to the block-house, and five of them thrust the muzzles of their pieces through the loop-holes. Mrs. Shell seized an ax, and, with well-directed blows, ruined every musket by bending the barrels. At the same time Shell and his sons kept up a brisk fire, which drove the enemy off. At twilight he went to the upper story and called out to his wife, in a loud voice, informing her that Captain Small was approaching from Fort Dayton with succor. In a few minutes, with louder voice, he exclaimed, "Captain Small, march your company round upon this side of the house. Captain Getman, you had better wheel your men off to the left, and come upon that side." This was a successful stratagem. There were no troops approaching, but the enemy, deceived by the trick, fled to the woods. M'Donald was taken to Fort Dayton the next day, where his leg was amputated, but the blood flowed so freely that he died in a few hours. ** The two sons of Shell
* The following is a literal translation of the hymn, made for the author of the Life of Brant by Professor Bokum, of Harvard University. It is from a German hymn book published in 1741.
A firm fortress is our God, a good defense and weapon;
He helps us free from all our troubles which have now
befallen us.
The old evil enemy, he is now seriously going to work;
Great power and much cunning are his cruel equipments,
There is none like him on the earth.
2.
With our own strength nothing can be done, we are very soon
lost:
For us the right man is fighting, whom God himself has
chosen.
Do you ask, who is he? His name is Jesus Christ,
The Lord Jehovah, and there is no other God;
He must hold the field.
3.
And if the world were full of devils, ready to devour us,
We are by no means much afraid, for finally we must overcome
The prince of this world, however badly he may behave,
He can not injure us, and the reason is, because he is the
judge,
A little word can lay him low. '.
4.
That word they shall suffer to remain, and not to be thanked
for either;
He is with us in the field, with his spirit and his gifts.
If they take from us body, property, honor, child, and wife,
Let them all be taken away, they have yet no gain from it,
The kingdom of heaven must remain to us.
** M'Donald wore a silver-mounted tomahawk, which Shell took from him. Its handle exhibited thirty-two scalp notches, the tally of horrid deeds in imitation of his Indian associates.
Death of Shell and his Son.—Cessation of Hostilities.—Departure from Fort Plain.—Albany.—Hendrick Hudson.
were carried into Canada, and they asserted that nine of the wounded enemy died on the way. Their loss on the ground was eleven killed and six wounded, while not one of the defenders of the block-house was injured. Soon after this event Shell was fired upon by some Indians, while at work in his field with his boys. He was severely wounded, and one of his boys was killed. The old man was taken to the fort, where he died of his wound. *
During this summer the Tories and Indians went down upon Warwasing and other portions of the frontier settlements of Ulster and Orange counties. These expeditions will be elsewhere considered. The irruption of Hoss and Butler into the Johnstown settlement in October, and their repulse by Colonel Willett, have been related. With that transaction closed the hostilities in Tryon county for the year, and the surrender of Cornwallis October 19, 1781 and his whole army at Yorktown, in Virginia, so dispirited the Loyalists that they made no further demonstrations, by armed parties, against the settlements. Attempts, some of them successful, were made to carry off prominent citizens. ** The Indians still hung around the borders of the settlements in small parties during 1782, but they accomplished little beyond producing alarms and causing general uneasiness. Peace ensued, the hostile savages retired to the wilderness, a few of the refugee Tories, tame and submissive, returned, and the Mohawk Valley soon smiled with the abundance produced by peaceful industry.
We left Fort Plain toward noon, and reached Albany in time to depart for New York the same evening. Columns of smoke were yet rising from the smouldering ruins of a large portion of the business part of the city lying near the river, south of State Street; and the piers along the basin, black and bare, exhibited a mournful contrast to the air of busy activity that enlivened them when we passed through the place a few weeks before. I have been in Albany many times; let us take a seat upon the promenade deck of the Isaac Newton, for the evening is pleasant, and, as we glide down the Hudson, chat a while about the Dutch city and its associations, and its sister settlement Schenectady, and thus close our
FIRST TOUR AMONG THE SCENES OF THE REVOLUTION.
The site of Albany was an Indian settlement, chiefly of the Mohawk tribes, long before Hendrick Hudson sailed up the North River. It was called Scagh-negh-ta-da, a word signifying the end of the pine woods, or beyond the pine woods. Such, and equally appropriate, was also the name of a settlement on the Mohawk, at the lower end of the valley, which still retains the appellation, though a little Anglicised in orthography, being spelled Schenectady. From the account given in Juet's Journal, published in the third volume of Purchas's Pilgrimages, of Hudson's voyage up the river, it is supposed that he proceeded in his vessel (the Half Moon) as far as the present site of Albany, and perhaps as high as Troy. *** But he left no colony there, and the principal fruit of his voyage, which he carried back to the Old World, was intelligence of the discovery of a noble river, navigable one hundred and sixty miles, and passing through the most fertile and romantic region imaginable. This