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Updated: June 14, 2025
They slept on logs placed side by side to raise them above the mud and water, and fought their way with hatchets through the inundated cane-brakes. They found no game but a bear, which had taken refuge on an island in the flood; and they were forced to eat their dogs. "I never in my life," writes Tonty, "suffered so much."
There were Indian trails and streets, so called, made by the buffaloes, as in large numbers they had followed each other, selecting by a wonderful instinct their path from one feeding ground to another, through cane-brakes, around morasses, and over mountains through the most accessible defiles.
The answer came from Versailles to the cane-brakes from Versailles, where, amid scenes "which no European court could rival," the "greatest of France, princes, warriors, statesmen," were gathered week after week in the "Halls of Abundance, Venus, Mars and Apollo," from Versailles to the half-starved little group sitting in exile by the gulf, far from abundance, without love, in dread of Mars, and with no arts of Apollo save the sound of the wind in the trees and the moan of the sea: "Have I expelled heretics from France in order that they should set up a republic in America?"
The next day, the 19th, they made but a short journey, and experienced great fatigue in fording streams and cutting their way through cane-brakes. They came across a few deserted cabins of the Indians. During the slow progress of the day, their skilful Indian hunter Nika killed eight buffaloes. The most tender cuts were taken from them, and they there crossed the river by a ford.
I was going up to; her, when the rushing came nearer and nearer; I had just time to throw myself behind a small patch of briars, before another panther burst out from the cane-brakes. I had never seen before so tremendous, and, at the same time, so majestic and so beautiful an animal, as with a long and light spring it broke out of the canes.
"And is it possible," answered Reynolds, who hastened to reply, in order to conceal a strong inclination he felt for laughing, "that I have lain here three whole days?" "Three days, and four nights, and part o' another day, jest as true as buffaloes run in cane-brakes, and Injen varmints shoot white folks whensomever they git a chance," replied Mrs. Younker, with great volubility.
Had the vanished forests and cane-brakes of the eighteenth century covered the land, had the wild beasts and wild men come back to roam them, had the little girl's home been a stockade on the edge of the wilderness, she would have fitted perfectly to the time and the scene, as a little daughter of Daniel Boone.
He accordingly followed it up, until he came to an unlucky peddler, with two or three pack-horses, who had been bewildered among the cattle-tracks, and had wandered for two or three days among woods and cane-brakes, until he was almost famished. "Old Schultz brought him to his house; fed him on venison, bear's-meat, and hominy, and at the end of a week put him in prime condition.
Over fallen trees, through dense cane-brakes, through clumps of palmettoes and pawpaw thickets, I passed, dashing the branches from my path, and lacerating my skin at every step. Onward, through sluggish rivulets of water, through tough miry mud, through slimy pools, filled with horrid newts, and the spawn of the huge rana pipiens, whose hoarse loud croak at every step sounded ominous in my ear.
With their axes the men chopped out a path through the dense undergrowth and cane-brakes broad enough for a pack-horse. You will be interested to know that this bridle-path was the beginning of the famous "Wilderness Road," as it is still called.
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