writhing in its death-agonies. The riderless pony passed me, flying straight into the mUee, straight into that caldron of human vengeance. Charley was running across the snow, following a line of blood: the lithe figure had left a piteous trail. I saw him lift her to his knee, his breast; his head drooped low over hers. I saw him lay her on the snow and mount his horse. He passed me on the way back. I had no need to ask; his face was the face of the dead, and the fire that had died in her dead eyes was lit in his. "Shot through the heart," he muttered. "She was dead when she killed that brute. She had no word for me, only that he was the last. You know what that means; but there may be brothers of those men, —squaws,—and they are fiends. I'll carry out the captain's command." He was the last to quit that night. He'd 'a' gone on then across the divide, where two thousand of them were waiting for news that monstrous brute with the scarred left cheek started to tell them. Near to Denver on our return we met Sandy Harris, sort of looking for something. "Seen my broncho and my clothes?" he asked, dryly. I pointed to a rude sled we had made, a figure wrapped in canvas on it, and the patient little beast a-drawiug it along. His lips trembled. "She ain't dead, Bill; not that; 'tain't fair. She was daft on them devils. She would go to fight, and I thought from her wrongs she'd come out safe; for she had a right to kill 'em. My wife has told me." I cried him hush, and pointed to the man that rode beside me, who hadn't spoke nor eaten all the way. In the village the women insisted on dressing that poor corpse in a woman's gown; for Mrs. Harris said she was mad only on her troubles, and must have been, before that, as sweet a woman as ever might 'a' blessed a good man's home. I laid his picture on her breast: I found it broken and blood-stained in a tent. The man who loved her would not look upon her face: she had asked me that. I did not see him again until 1879, when he passed through Lake City, where I lived then, on his way to join Thornburg's forces after the Meeker massacre. He never married, and, true to her to the last, he fell in the fight at Milk Eiver with Thornburg and his gallant men. And this I know well: in no happy hunting-ground of the hereafter will his great soul ever roam at peace with an Indian foe. Patience Stapleton. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE WEST* SO much of the continent of North America as is now within the boundary of the United States has, at one time or another, been held in one part or another by the subjects of six European powers. The Spaniards explored and built towns in Florida, on the Gulf coast, and in the Southwest. The Swedes made settlements on the Delaware. The Dutch once held New Jersey and New York. The English took possession of the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Georgia. The French once owned the Valley of the Mississippi. The Russians were original proprietors of Alaska. In the course of the long and sometimes bloody struggle for possession by which these powers have, one by one, been expelled, the Swedes were conquered by the Dutch; the Dutch in turn were overcome by the English; and, when the eighteenth century opened, the contest between France and England was fairly under way. The French and English began their first permanent and successful occupation of this continent, the one at Quebec and the other at Jamestown, at almost the same moment of time. While the English spread along the coast, the French, prevented from coming southward by the hostility of the Indians in northern New York, pushed westward across Canada, explored the Great Lakes, and heard of the existence of a river which the Indians called the Messipi. Convinced that the stories told by the Indians were not without truth, Marquette and Joliet determined to seek the river, and in May, 1673, set out from Mackinaw. With six companions they paddled in birch canoes up Lake Michigan to Green Bay, entered Fox River, passed over the country to the Wisconsin River, and, pushing boldly out upon its waters, floated into the Mississippi. Turning their canoes southward, they went on past the Missouri, past the Ohio, and stopped not far from the mouth of the Arkansas. There the downward voyage ended, and the party went slowly back to the Lakes. Stirred by the discovery of Marquette, La Salle next took up the work, explored the Mississippi to its mouth, and, standing on the shores of the Gulf, named the country Louisiana and took possession of it in the name of France. This was in 1684. A year later, while seeking * The maps used in this article were prepared by Prof. A. B. Hart, of Harvard, for " Epochs of American History," published by Longmans, Green & Co., and are used by their permission. to enter the Mississippi from the Gulf, he passed the delta and reached the Bay of Matagorda and founded Fort St. Louis of Texas. The discovery and exploration of the Mississippi gave to France all the area drained by that river and its branches. The discovery of the Texan coast gave to her all the water-shed of that coast, while the building of Fort St. Louis carried her claims to the coast southward to a point midway between the fort and the nearest Spanish post. The nearest Spanish post was in the province of Paduco, and the Rio Grande about midway. On the maps of the seventeenth century, therefore, Louisiana extends along the Gulf from the Rio Grande to the Mobile, has the Alleghany range for an eastern boundary, and spreads westward to the Rocky Mountains and northward to the Great Lakes and the unknown regions about the sources of the Mississippi and Missouri. Thus in possession of the territory bordering the Gulf and the river St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley, the French began to overrun the country, built forts, marked out the sites of cities, and were fast shutting in the British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, when they came face to face with the English at the source of the Ohio. The building of Fort Duquesne where Pittsburg now stands opened what has been called the French and Indian War. It was in reality a war for possession of the country. In it France was worsted, and, retiring from North America, ceded her colonies to England and Spain. To England she gave Nova Scotia, Arcadia, Cape Breton, Canada, all the islands and coasts of the river and Gulf of St. Lawrence, and, drawing a line down the middle of the Mississippi River, divided her possessions in what is now the United States into two parts. All to the east of the river, save the island and city of New Orleans, she gave to England. All to the west, together with the island and city of New Orleans, she gave to Spain. The gift to Spain was by way of compensation; for she had taken part with France in the war, had lost Havana to England, and, to get the city back at the peace, had been forced to give Florida to England in exchange. No sooner did Great Britain come into possession of her new territory than she proceeded to cut it up, established the provinces of East Florida and West Florida in the south, of Quebec in the north, and, drawing a line around the head-waters of the rivers which flow into the Atlantic, set apart the country to the west of it for the use of the Indians. The province of Quebec is still of interest to us, for its south boundary is the present north boundary of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. During ten years these lines remained |