The 28th was fixed for our departure; but, on making some inquiries about our intended journey, the Indians informed me that the rivers were, for small craft, navigable quite to their country; they strove, however, to deter me from thinking of that way, by laying before me the dangers and difficulties I must encounter; almost alone, in a journey so much further about, and continually infested with parties of northern Indians, who, though at peace with the English, would not fail to treat, in the most barbarous manner, a person whose errand they knew to be so much against their interest. They professed themselves concerned for my safety, and intreated me to go along with them: but as I thought a thorough knowledge of the navigation would be of infinite service, should these people even give us the trouble of making another campaign against them, I formed a resolution of going by water; what much conduced to this, was the slowness they march with when in a large body, and the little pleasure I could expect in such company. On the day appointed the Indians set out on their journey, and a little after I embarked on board a canoe to pursue mine: my whole company consisted of a serjeant, an interpreter, and servant, with about ten days provisions, and to the value of twenty odd pounds in goods to buy horses for our return: this was all our cargo, and yet we had not gone far before I perceived we were much too heavy loaded; the canoe being small, and very ill made, I immediately ordered my servant out, to join the Indians, giving him my gun and ammunition, as we had two others in the canoe; little could I foresee the want we were soon to experience of them. We then proceeded near two hundred weight lighter, yet before we had gone a quarter of a mile ran fast a-ground, though perhaps in the deepest part of the stream, the shoal extending quite across. Sumpter the serjeant leaped out, and dragged us near a hundred yards over the shoals, till we found deep water again. About five miles further we heard a terrible noise of a water-fall, and it being then near night, I began to be very apprehensive of some accident in passing it: we went ashore to seek the best way down; after which taking out all the salt and ammunition, lest it should get wet, I carried it along the shore, while they brought down the canoe; which they happily effected. It being now near dark, we went ashore to[[1]] encamp about a mile below the fall. Here we found a party of seven or eight Cherokee hunters, of whom we made a very particular inquiry concerning our future route: they informed us, that, had the water been high, we might from the place we then were reach their country in six days without any impediment; but as the water was remarkably low, by the dryness of the preceding summer, we should meet with many difficulties and dangers; not only from the lowness of the water, but from the northward Indians, who always hunted in those parts at that season of the year. I had already been told, and fortified myself against the latter, but the former part of this talk (as they term it) no way pleased me; it was however too late, I thought, to look back, and so was determined to proceed in what I had undertaken. We supped with the Indians on dried venison dipped in bears oil, which served for sauce. I lay (though I was too anxious to sleep) with an Indian on a large bear-skin, and my companions, I believe, lodged much in the same manner.
[1]. What is meant here by encamping, is only making a fire and lying near it, though the Indians often prop a blanket or skins upon small poles, to preserve them from the inclemency of the weather.
Early next morning we took leave of our hosts, and in less than half an hour began to experience the troubles they had foretold us, by running a-ground; we were obliged to get out, and drag the canoe a quarter of a mile before we got off the shallow; and this was our employment two or three hours a-day, for nineteen days together, during most part of which the weather was so extremely cold, that the ice hung to our cloaths, from the time we were obliged to get in the water in the morning, till we encamped at night. This was especially disagreeable to me, as I had the courses of the river to take for upwards of two hundred and fifty miles.
We kept on in this manner, without any remarkable occurrence, till the 6th of December, when our provisions falling short, I went on shore, with the interpreter’s gun, to shoot a turkey; singling one out, I pulled the trigger, which missing fire, broke off the upper chap and screw-pin; and, as I could find neither, after several hours search, rendered the gun unfit for service. M‘Cormack was not a little chagrined at the loss of his gun; it indeed greatly concerned us all; we had now but one left, and that very indifferent; but even this we were shortly to be deprived of, for we were scarce a mile from this unlucky place, when seeing a large bear coming down to the water-side, Sumpter, to whom the remaining gun belonged, took it to shoot; but not being conveniently seated, he laid it on the edge of the canoe, while he rose to fix himself to more advantage; but the canoe giving a heel, let the gun tumble over-board. It was irreparably gone, for the water here was so deep, that we could not touch the bottom with our longest pole. We were now in despair: I even deliberated whether it was not better to throw ourselves over-board, as drowning at once seemed preferable to a lingering death. Our provisions were consumed to an ounce of meat, and but very little flour, our guns lost and spoiled, ourselves in the heart of woods, at a season when neither fruit nor roots were to be found, many days journey from any habitation, and frequented only by the northern Indians, from whom we had more reason to expect scalping than succour.
We went ashore, as it was in vain to proceed, and, desponding, began to make a fire; while thus employed, several large bears came down a steep hill towards us. This, at another time, would have been a joyful sight; it now only increased our affliction. They came within the reach of a tommahawke; had we had one, and the skill to throw it, we could scarce have failed of killing. In short, they were as daring as if they had been acquainted with our misfortunes. Irritated by their boldness, I formed several schemes for killing, among which, as mending the broken gun seemed most probable, I instantly set about trying the experiment. Notching a flint on each side, I bound it to the lower chap with a leather thong. This succeeded so far, that in ten or twelve times snapping, it might probably fire, which was matter of great joy to us. Before I had finished it, the bears were frightened away; but as we had now mended our gun, we conceived great hopes. It was very probable they might return; and we were not long in expectation, for in less than a quarter of an hour, another very large one stalked down towards us, tho’ not so near as the former ones had done. M‘Cormack snatched up his gun, and followed him near a quarter of a mile. I had sat down in expectation of the event, and pulled my shoes and stockings off to dry; when I heard the report of the gun, my heart leaped for joy, since I imagined M‘Cormack would have certainly taken all imaginable precautions; but judge of my despair, when, after running myself out of breath, and bare-footed among the rocks and briars, I found he had missed, and that having left the ammunition at the place where we had encamped, he could not charge again, till I returned for it. I ran back, unable as I was, and brought it; then sat down, and he continued the chace. By this time Sumpter, who had been gathering wood, joined me, and, we soon heard M‘Cormack fire again; upon which, running with all our speed, to the place from whence the report came, we had the inexpressible joy of seeing a large bear, that might weigh near 400 weight, weltering in his blood. It being late, we propped him for that night, on an old tree, to prevent his being devoured by other beasts. Next morning my companions skinned him, and taking as much of his meat as we could conveniently carry, we left the camp in much better spirits than when we came to it.
Nothing more remarkable occurred, unless I mark for such the amazing quantity of buffaloes, bears, deer, beavers, geese, swans, ducks, turkeys and other game, till we came to a large cave; we stopped to examine it, but after climbing, with great difficulty, near 50 feet almost perpendicular, to get to it, we saw nothing curious, except some pillars of the petrified droppings, that fell from the roof, of a prodigious size. I could not, indeed, penetrate very far, for want of light. Coming back to the edge of the rock, we perceived our canoe a-drift, going down with the stream. Sumpter scrambled down the rock, and, plunging into the river, without giving himself scarce time to pull off his coat, swam a quarter of a mile before he could overtake her. When he returned, every thing on him was stiff frozen. We instantly made a fire to recover him; but this accident, joined to the severity of the weather, obliged us to stay the day and night following. We laid ourselves down to sleep in the mouth of the cave, where we had made our fire, which we no sooner did, than, oppressed with the fatigues of the preceding day, we fell into a sound sleep, from which we were awaked before midnight, by the howling of wild beasts in the cave, who kept us awake with this concert till a little before day. About four o’clock in the morning, we had a more terrifying alarm, we were stunned with a noise, like the splitting of a rock. As there had never been, to all appearance, a fire near that place, I could no otherwise account for it, than by laying it to the fire, which refining the air, might have occasioned some pressure in the cavities, or fired some collected vapour, the explosion of which had been the noise that waked us; yet, as I could not clearly comprehend it, I was under the greatest apprehensions, especially as I could perceive it hollow just under us. The severity, however, of the weather obliged us to stay the next night likewise, but the howling of the beasts, and thinking of the preceding night’s noise, prevented me from getting any sleep. On the morning of the 9th instant, we were, to my great satisfaction, obliged to decamp for want of wood. We passed the place where the canoe was taken up, and came to a fall about a quarter of a mile further, which, had she reached, we should never have seen the least atom of her cargo more.
We continued our journey much in the same manner till the 11th: as during the whole time we had seen or heard nothing of the northward Indians, the Cherokees had so menaced us with, we began to imagine ourselves secure, and that they had, for some reasons, imposed on us, when the report of a gun on one side of the river undeceived us; for as the Cherokees had told us how much the northward Indians frequented this place, it was reasonable to conclude, that they themselves came only here to fight, at which time they seldom fire, as that gives notice to the enemy where to come and reconnoitre them, but seek to hear their adversaries fire, that their scouts may measure their forces, and they take all advantages of the enemy before they come to action. We therefore concluded that this must certainly be a party of northern hunters. We were talking of this, when another gun from the opposite shore declared us in the midst of our enemies, whom there was no resisting; we heard several more some time after, which made us go as far as we possibly could before we encamped, which we did very cautiously, retiring into a thicket of canes, and chusing to lay on our wet and cold blankets, rather than make a fire to dry them, by which we might be discovered. Next day we heard several more guns on both sides of the river, which made us conjecture that the Indians had watched us, but not finding our encampment the night before, were still following us. I was resolved, however, to encamp in such an inconvenient manner no more, and to make a fire at night, whatever might be the consequence. We took all other imaginable precautions, encamping in a thicket of canes, impenetrable to the eye, as we had done the preceding night. About midnight some drops falling on my face from the trees under which we lay, awaked me, on which I imagined I heard something walk round our camp. I lay still some time to consider what could be patroling at that time of night in the rain, a thing unusual for wild beasts to do, when M‘Cormack, who had been awake for some time, asked me if I heard the noise. I told him yes, very plain, for by the cracking of the sticks that lay on the ground I could perceive it approached us. M‘Cormack starting up, swore directly it was a party of northern Indians, and ran down, in a pannic, to the canoe, and, had not I followed to prevent him, would certainly have made off with it, and left us exposed to the mercy of the enemy, if there were any pursuing us, without any means of escape; but for my part, I imagined it some half-starved animal looking for food; and Sumpter had been so certain of this, that he never moved from where he lay; for when, in an hour after, I had persuaded M‘Cormack to return to the camp, we found Sumpter fast asleep, and the noise entirely gone. We set out early the next day, on account of this alarm, and about 12 o’clock heard a noise like distant thunder. In half an hour we reached the place called the Great Falls, from which it proceeded. The river was here about half a mile broad, and the water falling from one rock to another, for the space of half a mile, had the appearance of steps, in each of which, and all about the rocks, the fish were sporting in prodigious quantities, which we might have taken with ease, had we not been too busy in working the canoe down, to look after them. I observed here the same method I had with the other falls, by going ashore and looking out the safest way for the canoe to pass; and lest some accident should happen to it, I took what salt and ammunition we had left, and carried it along the shore: if this was not so dangerous, it was quite as difficult a task; and were I to chuse again, I should prefer the danger in the canoe to the difficulty of passing such rocks, both hands occupied, with the care of the gun and ammunition. Theirs was no ways easy. Before they had passed half the fall, the canoe ran fast on a rock, and it was with the greatest difficulty they got her clear; notwithstanding which I was at last so entangled among the rocks, that I was obliged to order the canoe ashore, at a place where the current was more practicable than others, and proceed in it. We scarce advanced a hundred yards, when we ran with such violence against another rock, that Sumpter, breaking his pole in attempting to ward the shock, fell over-board; and we narrowly escaped being partakers of the same accident. Had not the canoe been of more than ordinary strength, she must certainly have dashed to pieces; she turned broadside too, shipping in a great deal of water, by which all the things were wet that I had so much laboured to preserve. We got out to right her; and as I observed some bad places below, I resolved to wade to the shore, being as much an incumbrance as a help. The water was not then above knee-deep; but, before I reached the shore, I got into a sluice as high as my arm-pits, and was near forced away by the rapidity of the stream, entangled in my surtout, and a blanket I had wrapped about me: when I got on shore, examining the damage I had sustained, I found my watch and papers spoiled by the wet, and myself almost frozen; so that, after shivering on three miles further, we were constrained to encamp, and make a fire to dry ourselves; but as it continued snowing, hailing, and raining alternately, we were again obliged to lie in wet blankets; which, though more intolerable, after the hardships we had sustained this day, we had done half the time since our departure from the Great Island.
Next morning, when we decamped, it was so excessive cold, that coming to a still place of the river, we found it frozen from bank to bank, to such a degree, that almost the whole day was spent in breaking the ice to make a passage. This, indeed, had already happened some days before, but never so severe as now.
Next morning we had the pleasure of finding the ice entirely gone, thawed, probably, by a hard rain that fell over-night, so that about two o’clock we found ourselves in Broad River, which being very high, we went the two following days at the rate of ten miles an hour, till we came within a mile of Tennessee river, when, running under the shore, we on a sudden discovered a party of ten or twelve Indians, standing with their pieces presented on the bank. Finding it impossible to resist or escape, we ran the canoe ashore towards them, thinking it more eligible to surrender immediately, which might entitle us to better treatment, than resist or fly, in either of which death seemed inevitable, from their presented guns, or their pursuit. We now imagined our death, or, what was worse, a miserable captivity, almost certain, when the headman of the party agreeably surprised us, by asking, in the Cherokee language, to what town we belonged? To which our interpreter replied, To the English camp; that the English and Cherokees having made a peace, I was then carrying the articles to their countrymen. On this the old warrior, commonly called the Slave Catcher of Tennessee, invited us to his camp, treated us with dried venison, homminy, and boiled corn. He told us that he had been hunting some time thereabouts, and had only intended returning in seven or eight days, but would now immediately accompany us.
We set out with them next morning to pursue our voyage; but I was now obliged to give over taking the courses of the river, lest the Indians, who, tho’ very hospitable, are very suspicious of things they cannot comprehend, should take umbrage at it.