“Do you no longer fear, sir, that the war, and apprehension of Indian ravages, may drive your people off?”
“Not much at present, though the danger was great at one time. The war may do me good, as well as harm. The armies consume everything they can get—soldiers resembling locusts, in this respect. My tenants have had the commissaries among them; and, I am told, every blade of grass they can spare—all their surplus grain, potatoes, butter, cheese, and, in a word, everything that can be eaten, and with which they are willing to part, has been contracted for at the top of the market. The King pays in gold, and the sight of the precious metals will keep even a Yankee from moving.”
About the time this was said, we came in sight of the spot Herman Mordaunt had christened Ravensnest; a name that had since been applied to the whole property. It was a log building, that stood on the verge of a low cliff of rocks, at a point where a bird of that appellation had originally a nest on the uppermost branches of a dead hemlock. The building had been placed, and erected, with a view to defence, having served for some time as a sort of rallying point to the families of the tenantry, in the event of an Indian alarm. At the commencement of the present war, taking into view the exposed position of his possessions on that frontier,—frontier as to settlement, if not as to territorial limits,—Herman Mordaunt had caused some attention to be paid to his fortifications; which, though they might not have satisfied Mons. Vauban, were not altogether without merit, considered in reference to their use in case of a surprise.
The house formed three sides of a parallelogram, the open portion of the court in the centre, facing the cliff. A strong picket served to make a defence against bullets on that side; while the dead walls of solid logs were quite impregnable against any assault known in forest warfare, but that of fire. All the windows opened on the court; while the single outer door was picketed, and otherwise protected by the coverings of plank. I was glad to see by the extent of this rude structure, which was a hundred feet long by fifty in depth, that Anneke and Mary Wallace would not be likely to be straitened for room. Such proved to be the fact; Herman Mordaunt's agent having prepared four or five apartments for the family, that rendered them as comfortable as people could well expect to be in such a situation. Everything was plain, and many things were rude; but shelter, warmth and security had not been neglected.
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[ The ordinary American reader may not know that the rank of Brigadier, in the British army, is not a step in the regular line of promotion, as with us. In England, the regular military gradations are from Colonel to Major-general, Lieut. General, General, and Field Marshal. The rank of Brigadier is barely recognised, like that of Commodore, in the navy, to be used on emergencies; usually as brevet, local rank, to enable the government to employ clever colonels at need.]
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[ The late venerable Hendrick Frey was a man well known to all who dwelt in the valley of the Mohawk. He had been a friend, contemporary, and it is believed an executor of the celebrated Sir William Johnson, Bart. Thirty years since, he related to the writer the following anecdote. Young Johnson first appeared in the valley as the agent of a property belonging to his kinsman, Admiral Sir Peter Warren, K. B.; who, having married in the colony, had acquired several estates in it. Among other tracts was one called Warrens-bush, on the Mohawk, on which young Johnson first resided. Finding it difficult to get rid of the trees around his dwelling, Johnson sent down to the admiral, at New York, to provide some purchases with which to haul the trees down to the earth, after grubbing and cutting the roots on one side. An acre was lowered in this manner, each tree necessarily lying at a larger angle to the earth than the next beneath it. An easterly wind came one night, and, to Johnson's surprise, he found half his trees erect again, on rising in the morning! The mode of clearing lands by 'purchases' was then abandoned.—EDITOR.]