He
lived to fight another day, for the next year he was Lovewell's
lieutenant at Pequawket, but that time, as we have related, he
left his bones in the wilderness. His name still reminds us of
twilight days and forest scouts on Indian trails, with an uneasy
scalp; - an indispensable hero to New England. As the more recent
poet of Lovewell's fight has sung, halting a little but bravely
still: -
"Then did the crimson streams that flowed
Seem like the waters of the brook,
That brightly shine, that loudly dash,
Far down the cliffs of Agiochook."
These battles sound incredible to us. I think that posterity
will doubt if such things ever were; if our bold ancestors who
settled this land were not struggling rather with the forest
shadows, and not with a copper-colored race of men. They were
vapors, fever and ague of the unsettled woods. Now, only a few
arrow-heads are turned up by the plough. In the Pelasgic, the
Etruscan, or the British story, there is nothing so shadowy and
unreal.
It is a wild and antiquated looking graveyard, overgrown with
bushes, on the high-road, about a quarter of a mile from and
overlooking the Merrimack, with a deserted mill-stream bounding
it on one side, where lie the earthly remains of the ancient
inhabitants of Dunstable.
