Page:Monthly scrap book, for August.pdf/12

12 combined attack, and your country will prove the best of engineers."—So true was the maxim of the American General, that the English soldiers had to contend with little else. The Americans had incorporated the Indians into their ranks, and had made them useful in a species of war to which their habits of life had peculiarly fitted them. They sallied out of their impenetrable forests and jungles, and, with their arrows and tomahawks, committed daily waste upon the British army,—surprising their centinels, cutting off their stragglers, and even when the alarm was given and pursuits commenced, they fled with a swiftness that the speed of cavalry could not overtake, into rocks and fastnesses whither it was dangerous to follow them.

In order to limit as far as possible this species of war, in which there was so much loss and so little honour, it was the custom with every regiment to extend its outposts to a great distance beyond the encampments; to station centinels some miles in the woods, and keep a constant guard round the main body.

A regiment of foot was at this time stationed upon the confines of a boundless savannah. Its particular office was to guard every avenue of approach to the main body; the centinels, whose posts penetrated into the woods, were supplied from the ranks, and the service of this regiment was thus more hazardous than that of any other. Its loss was likewise great. The centinels were perpetually surprised upon their posts by the Indians, and were borne off their stations without communicating any alarm, or being heard of after.