they had trodden, reflecting upon the many cut off in their prime, low and bleeding on the sod, heaped promiscuously; no honoured grave but the yawning pit to receive their disfigured bodies.
"What a deplorable error," thought the General; "in what cruel fortune am I involved! and which might have been prevented had the ill-fated Major obeyed my orders. A short delay, and he would have been supported by the body of forces he was made aware would follow him, so much more numerous than those he commanded, which were but as a handful compared to the hordes of savages he had to encounter." Nought could exculpate that officer from so perverse a disobedience of his General's orders,—having been sent forward, as previously planned, merely to reconnoitre, and upon no condition to have engaged without the chief's own personal express command; such had been the strict, deliberate, and urgent injunctions repeatedly given upon his leaving the Fort. He had fallen a victim to his indiscreet courage; and, what was still more poignant to reflect upon, the havock, the ruin, the desolation his fate involved, rendered it doubtful whether even one individual had escaped to tell the dreadful tale.
Again, as the General continued his reflections, every mischievous occurrence uniting to oppose
