But if Catharine Creek keeps its secrets, a record, though a more prosaic one, remains. Before the days of daily papers, every one kept a journal and some of those written by Sullivan's soldiers have been carefully preserved. Quaint old records they are with here and there a refreshing touch of humor. Major Jeremiah Fogg, for instance, deserves a more fitting name, for he lights up his accounts by many vivid bits of description. He tells us, among other things, that "the surrounding country was as uneven as a sea in the tempest" and was seamed by "prodigious gullies."

The army spent the second of September in camp and evidently they took the opportunity to write up their journals. They all record the terrors of the night in Bear Swamp and the day's rest at Catharine's town. Each one varies the name to suit his individual taste. They write it Katareen's Town, French Cathrene, Queen Catharene's Castle, French Catherone's Town and Cheoquock, and there are almost as many ways of spelling Catharine as there are writers. The Indian name of the village was Sheoquoga.

We learn from these journals that the village consisted of forty or fifty houses and as each house was a "long house," that is built to shelter five or six families, there must have been several hundred Indians in the settlement. These houses were not rude wigwams of bark or skins stretched on poles, but substantial dwellings: indeed, we are told that "the Queen's Palace was a gambril ruft house about 30 feet long and 18 feet wide." Neither was the village surrounded by forests as we might imagine, but by fields of corn and by "apple and peach trees fruited deep."

The soldiers heard the barking of dogs as they approached and the fires were still burning, but the town was deserted except for one old squaw, too feeble to go with the others. She was a veritable "find" for the annalists and no one who brought his record down to September second failed to use her as material. Major Fogg dubbed her "Madam Sacho," and said she was a "full-blooded, antediluvian hag." They made various guesses as to her age and Lieutenant Beatty, who evidently believed “a woman is as old as she looks," boldly pronounced her to be a hundred and twenty years old at least. They treated her kindly, however, building a little hut for her in a secluded place and leaving her some bacon, a bag of meal and some of their few remaining biscuits, though not an officer under the rank of a field officer had tasted any since leaving Tioga. The same Lieutenant Beatty remarks, a little grudgingly perhaps, "I suppose now she will live in splendor."

In turn she told them, and truthfully, as they afterward learned, that Col. Butler had been there a few days before stirring up the tribe; that the women had begged to remain in their homes, but had not been permitted to do so for fear they would be captured and held as hostages; that they had been sent away in the morning, but that the braves had waited till they could hear the march of the army and the voices of the soldiers.

Some say that Queen Catharine lingered behind and hid under the "Rushing Waters" that are now called for her, Montour Falls. They may be seen from almost any point in the village, rushing from one of Major Fogg's "prodigious gullies." The stream starts high up in the

western hill and, reaching its brink two hundred feet above the town, plunges down only to rise again half its height in mist that catches the sunlight and reflects all the rainbow's tints. When it first flashed its spray before the dazzled eyes of Sullivan's soldiers, one of them, at least, believed it to be the great Niagara of which he had heard the trappers tell. If you creep close If you creep close to the edge you can see the cavern under the fall where the fugitive queen concealed herself, or rather, though not quite the same thing to be sure where tradition says she was hidden.

But the sun was already setting on the western hill, for, alas, it does not stand still even in this enchanted land, and we reluctantly turned from the site of Queen Catharine's town to follow a little further the path she took when she bade a last farewell to the village that still bears her name. On the one side, the mountains rose precipitously two

hundred feet from the well-trodden road; on the other side, Catharine Creek ever wound in and out, as if guiding us to the broader pathway down which Queen Catharine disappeared. At last Seneca Lake lay before us, like a second heaven with its white mass of reflected clouds.

We looked far down its smooth expanse till the blue hills were blurred into the rosy haze of the September sunset, and, as we gazed, a vision came of that September dawn, more than a century ago. We seem to hear the dirge of a departing race. From the southern shore a flotilla of canoes shot out and, leading them in the royal canoe, the eagle's feathers in her hair, the robes of beaver and martin beneath her feet, Queen Catharine sat, a fugitive but still a queen, like Arthur of old "going a long way," while in fancy, we stood as stood Sir Bedivere,

"Revolving many memories, till the hull Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn

And on the mere the wailing died away."

WH

ITH the rise of the Tudors in England, her navy took definite shape and became of acknowledged importance. It is true she had possessed at various times quite formidable fleets. Three hundred years earlier, under the great Plantagnet, two hundred vessels had been used to convey her army to the crusade in the Holy Land, and for generations the ceasless wars between France and England had necessitated some means of transporting soldiers across the Channel. But it was due to the first Tudor king that any amount of thought was given to systematically strengthening the very small collection of miscellaneous vessels that by courtesy might be considered the Royal Navy of England.

In those early days England did not dream of becoming the successful rival of Spain, who was unquestionably the mistress of the seas, but her attempt at a navy gave Bartholomew, the younger brother of Columbus, when efforts elsewhere had been futile, the suggestion to appeal to Henry the Seventh to furnish ships and money for the Cathay project. The king turned a deaf ear to his entreaties and thus lost to England the opportunity of discovery that finally became the glory of Spain. Columbus, in pursuing the theory of the shorter route to Cathay, discovered a world of which he had never dreamed and

the magnitude of his discovery he never realized. No more did Europe. For over a century the belief in the existence of the passage that led directly to the treasures of the East was unshaken, and even in the face of accumulating testimony that overthrew the old theory, the world was slow to learn that it was America, not China, that had been discovered.

During these years England forged steadily ahead; her power upon the sea was growing. Henry the Eighth is accredited with planning a methodical arrangement for the government of the navy, and he could boast four men-of-war and fifty-three other ves sels, in all. Under his daughter, Mary, the navy was permitted to go to ruin; her reign, however, was short, and when the last of the Tudors wielded the sceptre, Elizabeth's navy was one to be feared, not on account of the number or superiority of her vessels, but in the quality of the men who manned them, winning for her the proud title of "Restorer of Naval Power and Sovereign of the Northern Seas." Her dauntless seamen were inspired by four motives, war, discovery, commerce, and colonization. Howard, Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, Frobisher, each have added to England's fame, while the united. efforts of all made possible the defeat of the Armada. Their life work. called forth some of the noblest qualities of manhood, for it was an age of

fearlessness and adventure, an age of ambition and courage, of steadfastness and patient endurance, this golden age of Elizabeth. True, these men had many faults, but they were heroes, and the age of hero-worshippers has never passed. If we admit that a child's education begins a hundred years before he is born, then we must look to many influences such as these, to appreciate the forces that shaped the life of one man and the destiny of a continent.

At Willoughby, in the county of Lincoln, there lived a well-to-do farmer by the name of George Smith, to whom was born in the year 1579 a child to be known to future generations by the prosaic name of John Smith; but the name is the only thing about him that is prosaic, for his was a life full of stirring events, crowned by noble achievement. As a child he dreamed dreams, the life upon the sea attracted him and, fired by the example of the men of his day whose adventures were repeated again and again in every home in England, he ran away from the merchant of Lynn to whom he had been apprenticed since his father's death, and at the age of fifteen went to France in attendance on Lord Willoughby's second son, and there he first began to learn the life of a soldier. But it was not long ere Henry of Navarre agreed to the Peace of the League, against which he had struggled for so many years, and civil war was at an end in France. Smith then drifted to the Low Countries, where for four years he fought for the Protestant cause before he returned to his old home in Lincolnshire.

No doubt he became the hero of

the hour, but the interested rustics evidently wearied him, for, as he expresses it, he was "glutted with too much company," so with one servant he retired to the woods, where "by a faire brooke he built himself a pavillion of boughs;" here, with the exercise of horse, lance, and ring, and with two books, "Marcus Aurelius and Macheavillie's Arte of Warre," he passed some little time in rest and study. But such a spirit as Smith's could not remain long inactive; he was only nineteen, with all the inexperience, over-confidence, and enthusiasm of youth. The thought of the slaughtered Christians appealed to the poetic and chivalrous side of his nature, and he determined to try his fortunes against the Turks.

His first experience was to make the acquaintance of some Frenchmen, who, seeing in him an easy victim, represented themselves as also eager to fight the Turks and begged him to join their party; when they lured him to France they promptly robbed him and left him to make his way as best he could to Marseilles, where he took ship for Italy. The other passengers were all Roman Catholics on their way to the Eternal City, and when a severe storm arose and he was discovered to be the only Protestant aboard, it was decided to follow the example of the ancient mariners of Joppa, and cast the offender into the sea. No great fish was provided for his transportation, but he was not far distant from the deserted little island of St. Mary's, and being an expert swimmer reached the shore. Fortunately in this uninhabited spot he was destined to remain only twenty-four hours before a passing French vessel was

hailed and took him on board; then came a cruise in the Mediterranean, terminating in a fight with a Venetian vessel, more than twice the size of the French, in which the latter was victorious, and as Smith was conspicuous for his valor, he obtained a corresponding share of the spoils.

Meanwhile the armies of Rodolph of Germany were waging war with the Turks under the Third Mahomet. Smith after reaching Italy, made a leisurely journey to Gratz in Styria, the residence of Ferdinand. Archduke of Austria, afterwards Emperor of Germany. Here he was soon introduced to several persons of distinction in the imperial army and was fortunate in attaching himself to the staff of the Earl of Meldritch, a colonel of cavalry. The year 1601 was nearly closed, and the advantage of the conflict had so far been with the Turk. Hungary had been the battlefield, and many of the strongest fortresses were taken, and the crescent was waving triumphant as far even as Canissia on the border of Styria. This was no time for one who merely sought the spoils of war to join the Christians, yet, young as he was, our soldier of fortune offered his free lance with so much heartiness and such evident love of the science of war, that he attracted the attention of those highest in command, who listened to his various plans for conducting the campaign with a sense of good-natured amusement, that quickly gave place to the feeling that here might be a budding genius. And so it proved.

The Turks had moved on as far as Olympach and were besieging that important place with twenty thousand men. Baron Kisell, with the cavalry

of Meldritch, ten thousand men in all, had gone to the relief of Lord Ebersbaught, but unless the besieged and the relieving party could act in unisou nothing could be effected. Smith told Kisell that one day he had discussed with Lord Ebersbaught the subject of telegraphing by means of torches, a practice that had once been used by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Permission was given him to attempt this means of communication, and that night on the mountain, Smith built three fire signals to which Ebersbaught, keenly on the alert for aid, replied in like fashion. The message was carefully spelled out, the number of torches displayed at one time corresponding to the letter of the alphabet. "On Thursday night - I will charge on the

-

sally

you," and Lord Ebersbaught answered: "I will."

Smith unfolded another plan to divide the strength of the Turks and to render half their force useless. The Turkish army lay on both sides of the river; behind one of these divisions he arranged at stated intervals "two or three thousand pieces of match," connected by lines, and "armed with powder," this was to be fired before the alarm and would thus seem so many musketeers. This manœuvre kept half of the Turks chained to the spot, where they awaited in vain the full charge of Kisell's forces, while Ebersbaught made a successful sally from the town. The Turks were slain in great numbers and the siege was raised. Smith received wellearned honor and reward, and was given a command of two hundred and fifty horse, and, though but twenty