WIFERY.

At an early meeting of the colonists, the town was named Gallipolis (town of the French). I did not arrive till nearly all the colonists were there. I descended the river in 1791, in flat boats, loaded with troops, commanded by Gen. St. Clair, destined for an expedition against the Indians. Some of my countrymen joined that expedition; among others was Count Malartie, a captain in the French guard of Louis XVI. General St. Clair made him one of his aide-de-camps in the battle, in which he was severely wounded. He went back to Philadelphia, from whence he returned to France. The Indians were encouraged to greater depredations and murders, by their success in this expedition, but most especially against the American settlements. From their intercourse with the French in Canada, or some other cause, they seemed less disposed to trouble us. Imme

diately after St. Clair's defeat, Col. Sproat, commandant at Marietta, appointed four spies for Gallipolis-two Americans and two French, of which I was one, and it was not until after the treaty at Greenville, in 1795, that we were released.

Notwithstanding the great difficulties, the difference of tempers, education and professions, the inhabitants lived in harmony, and having little or nothing to do, made themselves agreeable and useful to each other. The Americans and hunters, employed by the company, performed the first labors of clearing the township, which was divided into lots.

Although the French were willing to work, yet the clearing of an American wilderness and its heavy timber, was far more than they could perform. To migrate from the Eastern States to the "far west" is painful enough now-a-days, but how much more so it must be for a citizen of a large European town! even a farmer of the old countries would find it very hard, if not impossible, to clear land in the wilderness. Those hunters were paid by the colonists to prepare their garden ground, which was to receive the seeds brought from France; few of the colonists knew how to make a garden, but they were guided by a few books on that subject, which they had brought likewise from France.

The colony then began to improve in its appearance and comfort. The fresh provisions were supplied by the company's hunters, the others came from their magazines. When on the expeditions of Generals St. Clair and Wayne many of the troops stopped at Gallipolis to take provisions, which had been deposited there for that purpose by government;

the Indians, who no doubt often came there in the night, at last saw the regulars going morning and evening round the town in order to ascertain if there were any Indian traces, and attacked them, killing and wounding several-a soldier, besides other wounds, was tomahawked, but recovered. A French colonist, who had tried to raise corn at some distance from the town, seeing an Indian rising from behind some brushwood against a tree, shot him in the shoulder; the Indian hearing an American patrole, must have thought that the Frenchman made a part of it; and sometime afterward a Frenchman was killed, and a man and woman made prisoners, as they were going to collect ashes to make soap, at some distance from town.

After this, although the Indians committed depredations on the Americans on both sides of the river, the French had suffered only by the loss of some cattle carried away, until the murder of the man above related. The Scioto Company, in the mean time, had nearly fulfilled all their engagements during six months, after which time they ceased their supply of provisions to the colonists, and one of their agents gave as a reason for it, that the company had been cheated by one or two of their agents in France, who, having received the funds in France for the purchased lands, had kept the money for themselves and run off with it to England, without having purchased or possessing any of the tract which they had sold to the deceived colonists. This intelligence exasperated them, and was the more sensibly felt as a scarcity of provisions added to their disappointment. The winter was uncommonly severe; the creek and the Ohio were frozen; the hunters had no longer any meat to sell; flat boats could not come down with flour to furnish as they had done before. This produced almost a famine in the settlement, and a family of eight persons, father, mother, and children, was obliged to subsist for eight or ten days on dry beans, boiled in water, without either salt, grease or bread, and those had never known, before that time, what it was to want for anything. On the other hand, the dangers from the Indians seemed to augment every day.

The colonists were by this time weary of being confined to a few acres of land; the result of their industry was lost; the money and clothes which they had brought were nearly gone. They knew not to whom they were to apply to get their lands; they hoped that if Wayne's campaign forced the Indians to make a lasting peace, the Scioto Company

would send immediately, either to recover or to purchase those promised lands; but they soon found out their mistake. After the treaty of Greenville, many Indians passing through Gallipolis, on their way to the seat of government, and several travellers, revealed the whole transaction, from which it was ascertained that the pretended Scioto Company was composed of New Englanders, the names of very few only being known to the French, who, being themselves ignorant of the English language, and at such a distance from the place of residence of their defrauders, and without means for prosecuting them, could get no redress.

Lonely Condition of the Colonists.-Far in a distant land, separated forever from their friends and relations-with exhausted means, was it surprising that they were disheartened, and that every social tie should have been loosened, nearly broken, and a great portion of the deceived colonists should have become reckless? May the happy of this day never feel as they did, when all hope was blasted, and they were left so destitute! Many of the colonists went off and settled elsewhere with the means that remained to them, and resumed their trades in more populous parts of the country; others led a half-savage life, as hunters for skins: the greater part, however, resolved, in a general assembly, to make a memorial of their grievances, and send it to Congress. The memorial claimed no rights from that body, but it was a detail of their wrongs and sufferings, together with an appeal to the generosity and feelings of Congress; and they did not appeal in vain. One of the colonists proposed to carry the petition; he only stipulated that his expenses should be paid by a contribution of the colonists, whether he succeeded or not in their object; but he added that if he obtained for himself the quantity of land which he had

paid for, and the rest had none, he should be repaid by their gratitude for his efforts.

The French Grant.-At Philadelphia he met with a French lawyer, M. Duponceau, and through his means he obtained from Congress a grant of 24,000 acres of land, known by the name of the French grant, opposite to Little Sandy, for the French, who were still resident at Gallipolis. The act annexed the condition of settling on the lands three years before receiving the deed of gift. The bearer of the petition had his 4,000 acres; the rest was divided among the remaining French, amounting to ninety-two persons, married and single.

Each inhabitant had thus a lot of 217 acres of land; but before the surveys and other arrangements could be made, some time was necessary, during which, those who had reclaimed the wilderness and improved Gallipolis being reluctant to lose all their labor, and finding that a company, owning the lands of Marietta, and where there was a settlement previous to that of the French colony, had met to divide lands which they had purchased in a common stock, the colonists sent a deputation for the purpose of proposing to the company to sell them the spot where Gallipolis was and is situated, and to be paid in proportion to what was improved, which was accepted. When at last the distribution of the lots of the French grant was achieved, some sold their share, others went to settle on it, or put tenants, and either remained at Gallipolis, or went elsewhere; but how few entered again heartily into a new kind of life, many having lost their lives and others their health. amid hardships, excess of labor, or the indolence which follows discouragement and hopeless efforts! Few of the original settlers remain at Gallipolis: not many at the French grant.

and gilders to the king, coach-makers, friseurs and peruke-makers, and a variety of others who might have found some employment in our larger towns, but who were entirely out of their place in the wilds of Ohio. Their means by this time had been exhausted, and they were beginning to suffer from the want of the comforts and even the necessaries of life.

The country back from the river was still a wilderness, and the Gallipotians did not pretend to cultivate anything more than small garden spots, depending for their supply of provisions on the boats which now began to descend the river; but they had to pay in cash and that was become scarce. They still assembled at the ball-room twice a week; it was evident, however, that they felt disappointment, and were no longer happy. The predilections of the best among them being

on the side of the Bourbons, the horrors of the French revolution, even in their remote situation, mingled with their private misfortunes, which had at this time nearly reached their acme in consequence of the discovery that they had no title to their lands, having been cruelly deceived by those from whom they had purchased. It is well known that Congress generously made them a grant of 20,000 acres, from which, however, but few of them ever derived any advantage.

As the Ohio was now more frequented, the house was occasionally resorted to, and especially by persons looking out for land to purchase. The doctor had a small apartment which contained his chemical apparatus, and I used to sit by him as often as I could, watching the curious operation of his blow

pipe and crucible. I loved the cheerful little man, and he became very fond of me in return. Many of my countrymen used to come and stare at his doings, which, they were half inclined to think, had a too near resemblance to the black art. The doctor's little phosphoric matches, igniting spontaneously when the little glass tube was broken, and from which he derived some emolument, were thought by some to be rather beyond mere human power. His barometer and thermometer, with the scale neatly painted with the pen, and the frames richly carved, were objects of wonder, and probably some of them are yet extant in the west. what most astonished some of our visitors was a large peach in a glass bottle, the neck of which would only admit a common cork;

But

this was accomplished by tying the bottle to the limb of a tree, with the peach when. young inserted into it. His swans which swam around basins of water amused me more than any wonders exhibited by the wonderful man.

The French Philosophers and the Savages. -The doctor was a great favorite with the Americans, as well for his vivacity and sweetness of temper, which nothing could sour, as on account of a circumstance which gave him high claim to the esteem of the backwoodsmen. He had shown himself, notwithstanding his small stature and great good nature, a very hero in combat with the Indians. He had descended the Ohio in company with two French philosophers who were believers in the primitive innocence and goodness of

the children of the forest. They could not be persuaded that any danger was to be apprehended from the Indians. As they had no intentions to injure that people, they supposed no harm could be meditated on their part. Dr. Saugrain was not altogether so well convinced of their good intentions, and accordingly kept his pistols loaded. Near the mouth of the Sandy a canoe with a party of warriors approached the boat; the philosophers invited them on board by signs, when they came rather too willingly. The first thing they did on coming on board of the boat was to salute the two philosophers with the tomahawk, and they would have treated the doctor in the same way but that he used his pistols with good effect-killed two of the savages and then leaped into the water, div