than the rapids of the Maumee, where they were seized, stripped of clothing, and threatened with death.  Pontiac was now among the Miamis, still striving to get together a following to continue the war.  The prisoners were taken to Pontiac’s camp.  But the Ottawa chief did not deem it wise to murder a British officer on this occasion, and Morris was released and forced to retrace his steps.  He arrived at Detroit after the middle of September, only to find that Bradstreet had already departed.  The story will be found in more detail in Parkman’s Conspiracy of Pontiac.]

Bradstreet was at Detroit by August 26, and at last the worn-out garrison of the fort could rest after fifteen months of exacting duties.  Calling the Indians to a council, Bradstreet entered into treaties with a number of chiefs, and pardoned several French settlers who had taken an active part with the Indians in the siege of Detroit.  He then sent troops to occupy Michilimackinac; Green Bay, and Sault Ste Marie; and sailed for Sandusky to meet the Delawares and Shawnees, who had promised to bring in their prisoners.  But none awaited him:  the Indians had deliberately deceived him and were playing for time while they continued their attacks on the border settlers.  Here he received a letter from Gage ordering him to disregard the treaty he had made with the Delawares and to join Bouquet at Fort Pitt, an order which Bradstreet did not obey, making the excuse that the low state of the water in the rivers made impossible an advance to Fort Pitt.  On October 18 he left Sandusky for Niagara, having accomplished nothing except occupation of the forts.  Having already blundered hopelessly in dealing with the Indians, he was to blunder still further.  On his way down Lake Erie he encamped one night, when storm threatened, on an exposed shore, and a gale from the north-east broke upon his camp and destroyed half his boats.  Two hundred and eighty of his soldiers had to march overland to Niagara.  Many of them perished; others, starved, exhausted, frost-bitten, came staggering in by twos and threes till near the end of December.  The expedition was a fiasco.  It blasted Bradstreet’s reputation, and made the British name for a time contemptible among the Indians.

The other expedition from Fort Pitt has a different history.  All through the summer Bouquet had been recruiting troops for the invasion of the Delaware country.  The soldiers were slow in arriving, and it was not until the end of September that all was ready.  Early in October Bouquet marched out of Fort Pitt with one thousand provincials and five hundred regulars.  Crossing the Alleghany, he made his way in a north-westerly direction until Beaver Creek was reached, and then turned westward into the unbroken forest.  The Indians of the Muskingum valley felt secure in their wilderness fastness.  No white soldiers had ever penetrated to their country.  To reach their villages dense woods had to be penetrated,