individuals in all, men, women, and children, the last bearing that
proportion to the others in point of numbers usually found in a
borderer's family, and thus, with the help of pack-horses, cattle, and a
few negroes, the property of the more wealthy emigrants, scattered here
and there throughout the assemblage, giving to the whole train the
appearance of an army, or moving village, of Vandals in quest of some new
home to be won with the edge of the sword. Of the whole number there were
at least fifty well-armed; some of these, however, being striplings of
fourteen, and, in one or two instances, even of twelve, who balanced the
big rifle on their shoulders, or sustained it over their saddle-bows,
with all the gravity and dignity of grown warriors; while some few of
the negroes were provided with the same formidable weapons. In fact, the
dangers of the journey through the wilderness required that every
individual of a party should be well armed, who was at all capable of
bearing arms; and this was a kind of capacity which necessity instilled
into the American frontiersman in the earliest infancy.

Of this armed force, such as it was, the two principal divisions, all
well mounted, or at least provided with horses, which they rode or not
as the humour seized them, were distributed in military order on the
front and in the rear; while scouts, leading in the van, and flanking
parties beating the woods on either side, where the nature of the
country permitted, indicated still further the presence of a martial
spirit on the part of the leaders. The women and children, stowed
carefully away, for the most part with other valuable chattels, on the
backs of pack-horses, were mingled with droves of cattle in the centre,
many of which were made to bear burdens as well as the horses. Of wheeled
carriages there was not a single one in the whole train, the difficulties
of the road, which was a mere bridle-path, being such that they were
never, at that early day, attempted to be brought into the country,