ish, and always welcome to the former, to whom they conveyed what information they could glean in their adventures. "Hell and fury, sirrah! Why bid me recollect, you plead in vain-begone, or I'll seize you as a spy.' "You wont give the poor woman her flour." "No." Valley Forge, had made frequent applications for | family one week longer? recollect the distance a pass. Engagements rendered it impossible for she has walked, the weight of the bag, and recol her cruel tormentors to give her one. Rendered lect"desperate from disappointment, and the cries of her children, she started alone without a pass, and by good luck eluded the guards and reached Bristol. It will be remembered by many now living, that six brothers by the name of Loale, or Doale, about this time committed many acts of heroic "Then by my country's faith and hopes of free. bravery, but more in the character of marauders dom, you shall!" and with a powerful arm, he than soldiers. They were men full six feet high, seized the guard by the throat and hurled him to stout and active, a fearless intrepidity character- the ground. "Run, madam, run-see the guardized their deeds, and they always succeeded in house is alive-seize your flour, pass Vine-street, making their escape. A marked partiality to the and you are safe." "Twas done. The guard Americans rendered them obnoxious to the Brit-made an attempt to rise, when the stranger drew a pistol and shot him dead. The unfortunate man gazed around him with a fearless intrepidity There was but one way of escape, and that through the wood. Seizing the dead man's musket, he started like a deer pursued by the hounds. "Shoot him down! down with him!" was echoed from one line to another. The desperado was lost in the wood, and a general search commenced; the object of their pursuit in the mean time flew like lightning; the main guard was left behind, but the whole piquet line would soon be alarmed-one course alone presented itself, and that was to mount his horse, which was concealed among the bushes, and gallop down to the Delaware; a boat was already there for him. The thought was no sooner suggested than it was put in execution. He mounted his horse, and, eluding the alarmed guards, had nearly reached the Delaware. Our adventurous female, having procured her flour in a pillowcase holding about twenty pounds, was returning with a light heart to her anxious and lonely babes. She had passed the piquet guards at Frankford, and was just entering the woods a little this side, when a tall, stout man stepped from behind a tree, and putting a letter in her hand, requested her to read it. She grasp ed with eager joy the letter bearing the character of her husband's hand writing. After a pause he said, "your husband is well, madam, and requested me to say, that in a short time he will be with you; money is a scarce article among us-I mean among them; but on account of your husband's partiality to the cause of liberty, I am willing to become his banker." So saying, he handed her a purse of money, "My means, madam, are ade-in by at least fifty exasperated soldiers. One quate, or I would not be thus lavish," seeing she was about to refuse it. "You said, sir, my husband would see me shortly; how do you know that which seems so impossible? and how did you know me, who never" Here he found himself headed, and hemmed sprang from behind a tree, and demanded immediate surrender. "'Tis useless to prevaricateyou are now our prisoner, and your boat, which before excited suspicion, is now in our possession." "Son of a slave! slave to a king! how dare you to address a freeman! Surrender yourself-a Doale never surrendered himself to any man, far less to a blinded poltroon-away, or die;" and he attempted to pass. The guard levelled his gun; but himself was levelled to the dust; the ball of Doale's pistol had been swifter than his own. His case was now truly desperate; behind him was the whole line of guards-on the north of him the Frankford piquets, and on the left of him the city of Philadelphia filled with British troops. "Hush, madam, we are now approaching the British guard; suffice it to say, the American commander has that in his head, which like an earthquake, will shake the whole American continent, and expunge these miscreants; but, hark, take the road to the left-farewell." So saying, he departed. She gave one look, but vacancy filled the spot where he stood. With slow and cautious step she approached Vine-street. Already her fire burned beneath her bread, when One way and only one presented itself, and that the awful word halt! struck her to the soul. She was to cross the river. He knew his horse; he started, and found herself in the custody of a plunged in-a shout succeeded, and ere he reachBritish sentinel. "Your pass, woman." I have ed half the distance, twenty armed boats were in none, sir; my children are"-"D-n the rebel swift pursuit. His noble horse dashed through crew, why do you breed enemies to your king-the Delaware, his master spurred him on with this flour is mine-off, woman, and die with your double interest while the balls whistled around babes." A groan was her only answer. The him. The tide was running down, when he reach ruffian was about departing, when the former ed the Jersey shore, he found himself immedi messenger appeared his whole demeanor was ately opposite the old slip at Market-street. On changed; humble simplicity marked his gait-he reaching the shore he turned round, took out a approached the guard with a seeming fearfulness, pistol, and with steady aim, fired at the first boat; and begged him in a suppliant voice to give the a man fell over the side and sunk to rise no more. poor woman her flour. "Fool! idiot!" exclaim- He then disappeared in the wood. The angry, ed the guard, "who are you? see yonder guard-harassed and disappointed pursuers gave one house-if you interfere here you shall soon be its look, one curse, and returned to the Pennsylvania inmate." 66 May be so, sir; but won't you give shore, fully believing, that, if he was not the devil, the poor woman the means of supporting her little he was at least one of his principal agents. him stree DEFEAT OF GENERAL BRADDOCK. On the opposite page we present the reader with an engraved representation of the defeat of General oller Braddock. The artist, Mr. J. G. Chapman, has selected for the subject of his design, the moment that General Braddock is carried from the field mortally wounded; Lieutenant Washington assuming the command, and with his Virginia troops, covering offres the retreat of the British, and saving the corps from kutter annihilation. The best narrative of the action that we can present, is contained in the interesting Life of Washington, by that distinguished author, J. K. Paulding, from which we quote as follows::General Braddock had landed at the capes of er der Virginia, and proceeded to Williamsburgh, the seat aten of government, where he consulted with Governour Dinwiddie. He inquired for Colonel Washington, with whose character he was well acquainted, and et expressed a wish to see him. On being informed of his resignation, and the cause, he is said to have df exclaimed, that "he was a lad of sense and spirit, and had acted as became a soldier and a man of honour." He immediately wrote him a pressing invvitation to assume the situation of volunteer aiddecamp, which involved no question of rank, and which, after consultation with his family, was accepted. Washington once more resumed his military career, by joining the British forces at Belhaven. d These were shortly after reinforced by three companies of Virginia riflemen, raised by an act of the legislature, and consisting of as brave hardy spirits as ever drew a trigger. This accession made the army about two thousand strong, and with these, in the month of June, 1755, Braddock set forth in his march through the wilderness, from whence he and many others of his companions never returned. The troops under Braddock marched in two divisions to the old station at the Little meadows. On the way, Washington was attacked by a fever, and became so ill, that the commanding officer insisted upon his remaining until the rear of the army came up under Colonel Dunbar. He consented, much against his will; but the instant he was able, pushed on and joined Braddock the evening before he fell into that fatal ambuscade, where he perished with many other gallant spirits, not in a blaze of glory, but in the obscurity of the dismal forests. Washington, on rejoining the army, urged upon General Braddock the necessity of increasing and incessant caution. He dwelt much on the silent, unseen motions of the warriours of the woods, who come like birds on the wing, without being preceded by any indications of their approach, or leaving a trace behind them. But the fate of Braddock was decreed; or rather, his own conduct sealed that destiny which ever follows at the heels of folly and imprudence. He despised the advice of wisdom and experience, and bitterly did he suffer the penalty. The silly pride of a British officer disdained the lessons of a provincial youth, who had never fought on the bloody plains of Flanders. There can be no doubt that the superiority affected by the natives of England over those of the American colonies, was one of the silent yet effective causes of the Revolution. The army halted at Cumberland, for some days, and then proceeded to its ruin. Contrary to the ad vice of Washington, who wished to lead with his Virginians, the British grenadiers marched in front, about half a mile ahead; the Virginia troops followed; and the rest of the army brought up the rear. The ground was covered with whortleberry bushes reaching to the horses' bellies, until they gained the top of a hill, which commanded an extensive prospect far ahead. Here a council was held, during which, the traditionary authority I follow describes Braddock as standing with a fusee in his right hand, the breech on the ground, and rubbing the leaves with his toe, as if in great perplexity, without saying a word. The consultation over, they proceeded onward through the deep woods, the order of march being changed, and the infantry in advance. When within about seven miles of Fort Duquesne, and passing through a narrow defile, a fire from some ambushed enemy arrested their march, and laid many a soldier dead on the ground. Nothing was seen but the smoke of the unerring rifle rising above the tops of the woods, and nothing heard but the report of the fatal weapons. There was a dead silence among the savages and their allies, who, masked behind the trees, were equally invisible with the great king of terrours, whose work they were performing. The army of Braddock, and the general himself, were both taken by surprise, and the consequence was, a total neglect or forgetfulness of the proper mode of defence or attack. The army of Braddock suffered a total defeat. The survivors retreated across the Monongahela, where they rested, and the general breathed his last. His gallant behaviour during the trying situation in which he was placed, and his death, which in some measure paid the penalty of his foolhardihood, have preserved to his memory some little respect, and for his fate perhaps more sympathy than it merited. He was one of those military men of little character and desperate fortune, which mother-countries are accustomed to send out, for the purpose of foraging in the rich fields of their colonies. He was succeeded in his command by Colonel Dunbar, who ordered all the stores, except such as were indispensably necessary, to be destroyed, and sought safety, with the remainder of his European troops, in the distant repose of the city of Philadelphia, where he placed the army in winterquarters in the dog-days, leaving Virginia to the protection of her gallant rangers. The conduct of the British troops on this occasion, was, though perhaps natural in the terrible and untried situation in which they were placed, such as to excite the contempt of Washington and his provincials, to whom the escape of the surviving regulars was entirely owing. It was he and they that exclusively made head against the invisible enemy, and finally so checked his proceedings, as to secure a quiet retreat to a place of security. But for them, in all probability, scarce a man would have escaped. The British officers behaved with great gallantry, and upward of sixty of them were either killed or wounded; but the privates exhibited nothing but cowardice, confusion, and disobedience; and it seems quite probable that Washington here learned a secret which was of infinite service in his future career, by teaching him that British grenadiers were not invincible. The provincial troops, on the contrary, according | banks, and the alternation of wood and meadow to the testimony of Washington, "behaved like Michigan and Illinois abound with these "oak-openmen," to use his own language. Out of three com- ings." Beyond the Mississippi they also occur; but panies that were in the action, but thirty survived. there they hardly form a distinct feature, while on The regulars, on the contrary, "ran away like sheep this side they would appear to form a transition from before hounds," leaving every thing to the mercy of the dense American forest to the wider "rolling the enemy. "When we endeavoured to rally them," prairie," which further west ordinarily bounds the continues Washington, in his letter to the governour thick forest without any such character of country of Virginia, "in hopes of regaining the ground we intervening. had lost, and what was left on it, it was with as little success, as if we had attempted to have stopped the wild bears of the mountain, or the rivulets with our feet." TO PRESERVE SPECIMENS IN NATURAL HISTORY To preserve the skins of animals for exhibition, arsenical soap has been found to be the most perfect guard against vermin, and is prepared in the following manner, viz. camphor 5 oz.; arsenic in powder, 2 lbs.; white soap, 2 lbs. ; salt of tartar, 12 oz.; chalk in powder, 4 oz. Rub this thoroughly over the inner surface, and afterward stuff the animal for the case. THE PRAIRIES. THE most remarkable feature of the Western world is the prairies. There are districts both in South America and in Asia, the pampas and the steppes, to which they have been compared, but perhaps without sufficient reason. In Europe I am not aware that any part of the surface assumes the form and exhibits the same phenomena. Some hold, that the whole of the vast region over which they extend, was once submerged, and there is much to be said in support of this theory. They appear, however, under various forms, and from observation I should divide them into three great divisions: the "oak-openings," the rich level or rolling prairie interspersed with belts and points of timber, and the vast steril prairies of the Far West. The rich "rolling prairie," which would form the second division, presents other features, and in a great degree another vegetation. These prairies abound with the thickest and most luxuriant belts of forest, or as they are called "timbers;" appearing interspersed over the open face of the country in bands or patches of every possible form and size; sometimes checkering the landscape at short intervals, and at other times miles and miles apart. They present wide and slightly undulating tracts of the rankest herbage and flowers-many ridges and hollows filled with purple thistles-ponds covered with aquatick plants; and in Missouri, I always observed that these "rolling prairies," occupied the higher portions of the country, the descent to the forested bottoms, being invariably over steep and stony declivities. The depth and richness of the soil on these lands are almost incredible, and the edges of the bands of forest are consequently a favourite haunt of the emigrant settler and backwoodsman. The game is usually abundant. Over this class of prairie the fire commonly passes in the autumn, and to this cause alone the open state of the country is ascribed by many; as, whenever a few years elapse without the conflagration touching a district, the thick-sown seeds of the slumbering forest, with which the rich vegetable mould seems to be laden, spring up from the green sod of the country. The surface is first covered with brushwood composed of sumach, hazel, wild-cherry, and oak; and if the fire be still kept out, other forest-trees follow. From those we pass to the vast boundless prairies of the far West-such as we skirted beyond Fort Gibson, unbroken, save by the forest rising on the And first, the "oak-openings," so termed from their alluvium of some river shore below their level, or by distinctive feature of the varieties of oak which are the skirts of knotted and harsh oak-wood of stunted seen scattered over them, interspersed at times with growth-thick without luxuriance, such as the Cross pine, black-walnut, and other forest-trees, which Timbers of disagreeable memory. These prairies spring from a rich vegetable soil, generally adapted seem to occupy the highest parts of the table-land to the purpose of agriculture. The surface is ordi- toward the courses of the great rivers and their trib narily dry and rolling. The trees are of medium utaries. Here the soil is poor in the extreme, and growth, and rise from a grassy turf seldom encumber- charged with iron and salt; the water is scarce and ed with brushwood, but not unfrequently broken by bad, and the grass is luxuriant. They abound with jungles of rich and gaudy flowering plants and of abrupt and peculiarly-shaped flinty hills, swelling up dwarf sumach. Among the "oak-openings," you find from the general level-great salt plains-rock salt some of the most lovely landscape of the West, and-and occasionally with isolated rocks rising from travel for miles and miles through varied park the surface, with steep perpendicular sides, as though scenery of natural growth, with all the diversity of cut by the hand of man, standing alone in the midst gently swelling hill and dale-here, trees grouped, of the desert, a wonder to the Indian and the trapper. or standing single-and there, arranged in long The outline of these prairies is grand and majesavenues, as though by human hands, with slips of open meadow between. Sometimes, the openings are interspersed with numerous clear lakes, and with this addition become enchantingly beautiful. But few of these reservoirs have any apparent inlet. They are fed by subterraneous springs or the rains, and lose their surplus waters by evaporation. Many lie in singularly-formed hollows, reflecting in their clear bosoms the varied scenery of the swelling tick in the extreme. They are rarely perfectly level. As you advance, one immense sea of grass swells to the horizon after another, unbroken for leagues by rock or tree. They are the home of the bison, and the hunting-ground of the unfettered Indian of the North and West. REVOLUTIONARY BATTLES. THE BATTLE OF LONG-ISLAND BY SAMUEL WARD, JR. ESQ. "Harvests of souls by Hope matured, The heart that mourns its saddened hours. Had authentick records preserved for us the whole From the Knickerbocker Magazine, for April, 1839. experience of nations, the precious inheritance would ALL knowledge is but history. Each fragment of have permanently advanced our material progress; the material world reveals a story of time and change, and in a still greater degree will the heritage of acremote and endless. The principle is derived from curate memorials of the men and events of modern facts which symbolize the histories of observation civilization, of the motives of the one, and the causes and experiment, and these, in turn, involve those of of the other, enlighten posterity in the path of human the sage and philosopher, of their predecessors, and improvement. The traces of early society are proofs of by-gone ages. Upon each visible object is writ-of material and sensual progress; as for instance, ten, in familiar or in unknown characters, its history; and if we but knew the physiognomy of inanimate as well as of living creations, earth, stone, and plant would exhibit, as indeed they often do, to the naturalist, expressions as indicative of their past, as is man's countenance, with its furrow of care, or smile of joy, with passion's glow or its ashes, of his life and actions. The face of the globe, with the living imprint of God's hand upon it, unfolds a chapter in the history of the display of omnipotence, and we personify the history of our race, imbodying its undying passions and imperfections, and reproducing its mortal and perishable beauty. The variegated cheek and scented breath of the flower, fade and expire in autumn; the vegetative life abides until the coming spring. All these proclaim the insignificance of time, the majesty of eternity. While the history of human nature is indelibly traced in each successive family of men, that of human creations has to be recorded in the archive, and rescued from the crumbling column. The work of the Almighty, the living principle and its attendants, dies not; the traces of men's labour are washed 1 away by the succeeding tide. But here and there, where the forms have been preserved, they seem, when compared to the divine productions, not unlike the precise diagram, beside the harmonious and waving outlines of external natural beauty. The history we cultivate, is the natural history of society, of the joint efforts of bodies of men, to render the earth habitable for its increasing populations, and these, in turn, worthy the dwelling's protection, and grateful for its nourishment. Do not the nations of antiquity appear to have lived, and flourished, and toiled, that we might succeed to their power, inherit their experience, and reap the fruits of their labours? So also are we the servants of posterity. The road is an emblem of the destiny of those who made it; built for the use of a generation, passed over as the path to some near or distant land, succeeding races inquire not whose hands constructed it. They, too, are travelling toward their journey's end. History and times are ours; the index and dialplate which measure our span, the foundations of our knowledge, and the standard of our computation, the instruments of spiritual and material comparison. But the one sits, like a queen, upon a throne, robed in purple, a sceptre in her hand, and on her brow a diadem, wherein each race of men enshrine a new jewel. Heroes and statesmen are her courtiers, and the brightest shapes of human intelligence hover around her. The other is creation's slave, fate's executioner; unerringly reckoning the debt of man and of nature, the minutes of life, the seasons of the year. He reaps, with a pitiless scythe, the pyramid, and the bracelet upon the arm of the lonely king entombed within its giant walls. These are points of departure; for the distance accomplished may be measured; not so the route beyond. It is true, we know the virtues or the crimes of a few, in those days, when nations rose and fell, even as they now expand, and when the many felt not. They are now the lords of the earth. But only since the fiat lux of Guttemberg, have "the people" begun to realize their long-withheld inheritance; and events are now chronicled less to gratify the pride of the living, or the curiosity of the unborn, less for purposes of narration and romance, than to show the increased capabilities of man, and swell the page of his moral experience. Apart from the higher, the epochal incidents in the life of humanity, the epitomes of years, deeds, and nations, there are events which do not claim to be inscribed upon the page of general history; and yet, from the deep local influence they once exercised, still preserve a commemorative interest, and convey an impressive lesson. The great war of our independence is rife with such illustrations. Its memories and heroes crowd so thickly near us, that its history cannot yet be written. But as each day adds to the legendary store, and we draw nigh the hour when it may be traced, time silently distils the mass of events, and the mingled vapours which ascend from the alembick, will be condensed by impartiality into truth. The events we are about to recall, occurred in New York and its vicinity, between the months of September, 1775, and September, 1776. I am aware that these varying scenes and imperfect sketches may resemble a phantasmagoria, rather than pencillings of men and of actions. But they will be exhibited upon a curtain, stained with as noble blood as was ever shed in the cause of freedom; and though the hand that holds the transparent glass, be a feeble one; though faint the colours, and indistinct the outlines; the personages and scenes are not fictitious or fanciful; but once stood gallantly forth, with drawn sword or levelled musket, relieved by a battle-cloud rising from ground so near, that a cannon fired there at this moment, would startle with its reverberations the peaceful echoes around us. The revolution was hardly three months old. But already from the cradle of liberty it had strangled its serpents at Lexington and Bunker's Hill. The American army, encamped around Boston, owned WASHINGTON's command, and held at bay the beleagured British. In the oppressed colonies, a spirit of resistance had organized the resolute yeomanry; and with the victories inscribed upon the national escutcheon, the patriotick chord was vibrating in every |