While these preparations were going on, the general^[4] was making every effort of the neighbourhood to urge those who had promised assistance, to come forward with their allotted quotas.

On the other side of the river, not very far from the Flats, lived a person whom I shall not name, though his conduct was so peculiar and characteristic of the times, that his anti-heroism is, on that sole account, worth mentioning. This person lived in great security and abundance, in a place like an earthly paradise, and scarcely knew what it was to have an ungratified wish, having had considerable wealth left to him; and from the simple and domestic habits of his life, had formed no desires beyond it, unless, indeed, it were the desire of being thought a brave man, which seemed his greatest ambition. He was strong, robust, and an excellent marksman; talked loud, looked fierce, and always expressed the utmost scorn and detestation of cowardice. The colonel applied to him, that his name, and the names of such adherents as he could bring, might be set down in the list of those who were to bring their quota, against a given time, for the general defence: with the request he complied. When the rendezvous came on, this talking warrior had changed his mind, and absolutely refused to appear. The general sent for him, and warmly expostulated on his breach of promise; the bad example, and the disarrangement of plan which it occasioned. The culprit spoke in a high tone, saying, very truly, that “the general was possessed of no legal means of coercion; that every one went or staid as they chose; and that his change of opinion, on that subject, rendered him liable to no penalty whatever.” Tired of this sophistry, the enraged general had recourse to club law, and seizing a cudgel, belaboured this recreant knight most manfully, while several Indian sachems, and many of his own countrymen and friends, coolly stood by—for the colonel’s noted common was the scene of this assault. Our poor neighbour, (as he long after became,) suffered this dreadful bastinado, unaided and unpitied; and this example, and the consequent contempt under which he laboured, (for he was ever after styled captain, and did not refuse the title,) was said to have an excellent effect in preventing such retrograde motions in subsequent campaigns.^[5] The provincial troops, aided by the faithful Mohawks, performed their duty with great spirit and perseverance. They were, indeed, very superior to the ignorant, obstinate, and mean-souled beings, who, in after times, brought the very name of provincial troops into discredit; and were actuated by no single motive but that of avoiding the legal penalty then affixed to disobedience, and enjoying the pay and provisions allotted to them by the province, or the mother country, I cannot exactly say which. Afterwards, when the refuse of mankind were selected, like Falstaff’s soldiers, and raised much in the same way, the New-York troops still maintained their respectability. This superiority might, without reproaching others, be in some measure accounted for from incidental causes. The four New-England provinces were much earlier settled—assumed sooner the forms of a civil community, and lived within narrower bounds; they were more laborious; their fanaticism, which they brought from England in its utmost fervour, long continued its effervescence, where there were no pleasures, or indeed, lucrative pursuits, to detach their minds from it: and long after that genuine spirit of piety, which, however narrowed and disfigured, was still sincere, had, in a great measure, evaporated, enough of the pride and rigour of bigotry remained, to make them detest and despise the Indian tribes, as ignorant, heathen savages. The tribes, indeed, who inhabited their district, had been so weakened by unsuccessful warfare with the Mohawks, and were so every way inferior to them, that after the first establishment of the colony, and a few feeble attacks successfully repulsed, they were no longer enemies to be dreaded, or friends to be courted. This had an unhappy effect with regard to those provinces; and to the different relations in which they stood with respect to the Indians, some part of the striking difference in the moral and military character of these various establishments must be attributed.

The people of New-England left the mother country, as banished from it by what they considered oppression; came over foaming with religious and political fury, and narrowly missed having the most artful and able of demagogues, Cromwell himself, for their leader and guide. They might be compared to burning lava, discharged by the force of internal combustion, from the bosom of the commonwealth, while inflamed by contending elements. This lava, every one acquainted with the convulsions of nature must know, takes a long time to cool, and when at length it is cooled, turns to a substance hard and barren, that long resists the kindly influence of the elements, before its surface resumes the appearance of beauty and fertility. Such were the almost literal effects of political convulsions, aggravated by a fiery and intolerant zeal for their own mode of worship, on these self-righteous colonists.