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Updated: May 14, 2025
'I am only lost in a labyrinth of words; and am waiting for Principle to come and be my guide. But I am afraid she carries a dark lanthorn, which will but blind those that look. 'I suspect, sir, said I, 'you are less at loss for a joke than an argument; and that you prefer bush-fighting. For my own part, I love the fair and open field of enquiry.
Had all his troops been as daring as himself, the camp might have been carried by assault; but the Canadians and Indians held back, posted themselves behind trees, and took to bush-fighting. He kept up a fire by platoons, but at too great a distance to do much mischief; the Canadians and Indians fired from their coverts. The artillery played on them in return.
Too much excited to heed the recall just then sounded, a dozen or two of the Zouaves, remembering their unexpended ammunition, tried their hand for the time at bush-fighting, with more or less success. Some of them were shot down, but others succeeded in killing or capturing the peculiar fugitives of whom they started in chase.
Their heavy, muscular legs advertised that they were bushmen. Each claimed long experience in bush-fighting, most of them showed scars of bullet or spear-thrust in proof, and all were wild for a chance to break the humdrum monotony of plantation labour by going on a killing expedition.
How much better this thorough interpenetration of ideas than a barren interchange of courtesies, or a bush-fighting argument, in which each man tries to cover as much of himself and expose as much of his opponent as the tangled thicket of the disputed ground will let him! My thoughts flow in layers or strata, at least three deep.
In disciplining his men, they were instructed not merely in ordinary and regular tactics, but in all the strategy of Indian warfare, and what is called "bush-fighting," a knowledge indispensable in the wild wars of the wilderness. Stockaded forts, too, were constructed at various points, as places of refuge and defence, in exposed neighborhoods.
They held many long consultations together, and in every case it was Dumont who laid down the details of the military campaign. "These Canadian soldiers," he would say, "can not fight us here. We will entrench ourselves in positions against which they may fire cannon or gatling guns in vain. They are not used to bush-fighting, and will all the time expose themselves to our bullets.
An irregular battle, probably little else than wild skirmishing and bush-fighting, was kept up from two o'clock in the afternoon until night. Las Casas was present on the occasion, and, from his account, the Indians must have shown instances of great personal bravery, though the inferiority of their weapons, and the want of all defensive armor, rendered their valor totally ineffectual.
As to Wyeth, and his little band of "down easters," they were perfectly astounded by this second specimen of life in the wilderness; the men, being especially unused to bush-fighting and the use of the rifle, were at a loss how to act. Wyeth, however, acted as a skilful commander.
In high good humor with their easy triumph, the savages now formed a circle round the fire and performed a war dance, with the unlucky trappers for rueful spectators. This done, emboldened by what they considered cowardice on the part of the white men, they neglected their usual mode of bush-fighting, and advanced openly within twenty paces of the willows.
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