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Commander Febiger, with the "Ashuelot," found that the crime had been committed by a horde of savages, who, the authorities of the island said, were not obedient to their laws. Rear-Admiral Bell left Shanghai in June, with the "Wyoming" and "Hartford," with the intention of destroying, if possible, the lurking-places of the savages.
From March, 1877, until May, 1879, he was in command of the United States steamer Ashuelot on the Asiatic station, making a most interesting cruise, and having, for a time, the pleasure of General Grant's company on board, as a guest. Since his return from that cruise he has been on "waiting orders," varied by occasional duty as member of courts-martial, boards of examination, and the like.
One corner of this fort at Ashuelot was, however, guarded by a solid blockhouse, or, as it was commonly called, a "mount." On the 23d of April a band of sixty, or, by another account, a hundred Indians, approached the settlement before daybreak, and hid in the neighboring thickets to cut off the men in the fort as they came out to their morning work.
Below the pergola the land broke to a brook that gurgled through copses of alder, tangles of wild raspberry, and clumps of blueberry and goldenrod, carrying the waters of the lake to the Ashuelot, which bore them to the Connecticut, which swept them southward, till quietly, and almost as unobserved by the human eye as when they rose in the bosom of the hills, they fell into the sea.
In the gray dawn of the next morning, Swan Day rode out of Walton in the same stage-coach and with the same "spike-team" of gray horses which had brought him thither thirty-six hours before. When the coach reached Troy, and the bright sun broke over the picturesque scenery of the erratic Ashuelot, he drew his breath deeply, as if relieved of a burden.
One or two examples will show the nature of all. On the same stream, a few miles below, was a similar settlement, called Lower Ashuelot the germ of the present Swanzey. The rough fields, lately won from the virgin forest, showed here and there, among the stumps, a few log-cabins, roofed with slabs of pine, spruce, or hemlock.
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