Wyandotte | Page 6

of Robinson Crusoe-like interest, that might repay the
reader. As usual, the adventurers commenced their operations in the
spring. Mrs. Willoughby, and the children, were left with their friends,
in Albany; while the captain and his party pioneered their way to the
patent, in the best manner they could. This party consisted of Nick,
who went in the capacity of hunter, an office of a good deal of dignity,
and of the last importance, to a set of adventurers on an expedition of
this nature. Then there were eight axe-men, a house- carpenter, a mason,
and a mill-wright. These, with Captain Willoughby, and an invalid
sergeant, of the name of Joyce, composed the party.
Our adventurers made most of their journey by water. After finding
their way to the head of the Canaideraga, mistaking it for the Otsego,
they felled trees, hollowed them into canoes, embarked, and, aided by a
yoke of oxen that were driven along the shore, they wormed their way,
through the Oaks, into the Susquehanna, descending that river until
they reached the Unadilla, which stream they ascended until they came
to the small river, known in the parlance of the country, by the
erroneous name of a creek, that ran through the captain's new estate.
The labour of this ascent was exceedingly severe; but the whole
journey was completed by the end of April, and while the streams were
high. Snow still lay in the woods; but the sap had started, and the
season was beginning to show its promise.

The first measure adopted by our adventurers was to "hut." In the very
centre of the pond, which, it will be remembered, covered four hundred
acres, was an island of some five or six acres in extent. It was a rocky
knoll, that rose forty feet above the surface of the water, and was still
crowned with noble pines, a species of tree that had escaped the
ravages of the beaver. In the pond, itself, a few "stubs" alone remained,
the water having killed the trees, which had fallen and decayed. This
circumstance showed that the stream had long before been dammed;
successions of families of beavers having probably occupied the place,
and renewed the works, for centuries, at intervals of generations. The
dam in existence, however, was not very old; the animals having fled
from their great enemy, man, rather than from any other foe.
To the island Captain Willoughby transferred all his stores, and here he
built his hut. This was opposed to the notions of his axe-men, who,
rightly enough, fancied the mainland would be more convenient; but
the captain and the sergeant, after a council of war, decided that the
position on the knoll would be the most military, and might be
defended the longest, against man or beast. Another station was taken
up, however, on the nearest shore, where such of the men were
permitted to "hut," as preferred the location.
These preliminaries observed, the captain meditated a bold stroke
against the wilderness, by draining the pond, and coming at once into
the possession of a noble farm, cleared of trees and stumps, as it might
be by a coup de main. This would be compressing the results of
ordinary years of toil, into those of a single season, and everybody was
agreed as to the expediency of the course, provided it were feasible.
The feasibility was soon ascertained. The stream which ran through the
valley, was far from swift, until it reached a pass where the hills
approached each other in low promontories; there the land fell rapidly
away to what might be termed a lower terrace. Across this gorge, or
defile, a distance of about five hundred feet, the dam had been thrown,
a good deal aided by the position of some rocks that here rose to the
surface, and through which the little river found its passage. The part
which might be termed the key-stone of the dam, was only twenty

yards wide, and immediately below it, the rocks fell away rapidly, quite
sixty feet, carrying down the waste water in a sort of fall. Here the
mill-wright announced his determination to commence operations at
once, putting in a protest against destroying the works of the beavers. A
pond of four hundred acres being too great a luxury for the region, the
man was overruled, and the labour commenced.
The first blow was struck against the dam about nine o'clock, on the 2d
day of May, 1765, and, by evening, the little sylvan-looking lake,
which had lain embedded in the forest, glittering in the morning sun,
unruffled by a breath of air, had entirely disappeared! In its place, there
remained an open expanse of wet mud, thickly covered with pools and
the remains of beaver-houses, with a small river winding