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Allston I shall esteem as one of my best and most intimate friends, and in whatever I can assist him or his I shall feel proud in being able to do it. "Mr. and Mrs. Allston are well. I dined with them yesterday at Captain Visscher's, whom I have mentioned to you before as one of our passengers.
This could never have been done had not Honikol Herkimer kept perfectly his self-control and balance, like an eagle in a tempest. Visscher's regiment, in the rear, had not got fairly into the gulf, owing to the delay in dragging the wagon along, when the ambushed Indians fired their first volley; and he and his men, finding themselves outside the fiery circle, promptly ran away.
"I have before me Colonel Visscher's partial report of the battle of Oriskany. Your name is not mentioned in this report, but, knowing you as I believe I do, I am satisfied that you did your full duty in that terrible affair; although, in your report to me by Oneida runner, you record the action as though you yourself were a mere spectator.
Captain Jacob Seeber was in sight, upon a hillock below us to the north, with a score of his Canajoharie company in a circle, firing outward at the enemy. Across the ravine Captain Jacob Gardenier, a gigantic farmer, armed with a captured Indian spear, had cut loose with his men from Visscher's retreat, and had fought his way back to help us.
It is true that Colonel Visscher's regiment was detailed as a rear-guard, and I question if even such a precaution would have been taken but for the fact that the provision and ammunition wagons, which were not able to move at as rapid a pace as the men, needed something in the way of protection.
Visscher's regiment had been chased northward toward the river, whither the fighting from the ravine had also in large part drifted. How the combat was going down there, it was difficult to say. There were dead men behind every tree, it seemed. Commands were so broken up, and troops so scattered by the stern exigencies of forest fighting, that it could not be known who was living and who was dead.
Roemer Visscher, the youngest member of the triumvirate, was like Spiegel an Amsterdammer, a Catholic and a well-to-do merchant. His poetical efforts did not attain a high standard, though his epigrams, which were both witty and quaint, won for him from his contemporaries the name of the "Second Martial." Roemer Visscher's fame does not, however, rest chiefly upon his writings.
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