journal of his residence in Labrador is one of the most entertaining records of sport with the rifle that has come down to us from the last century. We can judge from it what were considered hunting ranges at that time, as Cartwright was in the habit of pacing off his longer shots and recording them. He registers seven shots at deer or caribou at from 300 to 400 yards, all of them misses. His longest successful shot was 200 yards at a hind, which was pierced through the heart but ran sixty yards before she dropped. One of his companions, firing random shots at a herd of deer more than 300 yards away, wounded one of them slightly. The same man shot a pair of hinds through with one bullet at 200 yards, but both got away. Cartwright fired at a deer 185 yards distant, and the ball "grounded a foot short." He records a number of successful shots at deer or bears at from 120 to 160 yards, a loon killed at 100 and a raven at above 100 yards, but it is evident that the lack of elevating rear sights made greater ranges uncertain. The hunter speaks lovingly of his favorite weapon, a short-barreled Hanoverian rifle, and preferred it even for feathered game, of which seldom a day passed without his securing a bag. In shooting grouse or other birds he generally knocked their heads off cleanly with a bullet. One day he makes this entry: "I knocked off the heads of a brace of spruce-game at one shot, and of a pair of ducks at another, with my rifle." On another occasion he speaks of taking two grouse in a line with each other and cutting both their heads off at fifty yards' distance. No doubt Cartwright could have done better with an American rifle at the longer ranges, for the arms turned out by backwoods artisans were superior to those imported. It is doubtful if even the best modern workmanship has produced a weapon so well adapted to the service required of it as was the homely border rifle at that time. He did not secure one, for unfortunately war was brewing, and the trader soon found himself at the mercy of Yankee privateers. We have reached a significant date. On the 14th of June, 1775, the continental congress passed a resolution for raising six companies of riflemen in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia, which were. to join the main army at Cambridge and be scattered about to remove the enemy's officers. Most of the couriers bearing these orders had to ride three or four hundred miles to deliver them. Instead of the eight hundred men asked for by congress, fourteen hundred and sixty responded to the call. They were completely armed and accoutred, marched on foot from. four to seven hundred miles, or more, and reported for duty to Washington within less than sixty days from the date when authority was given for their enlistment, all without a penny being advanced by the continental treasury. In the Philadelphia newspapers for August, 1775, are two distinct accounts by eye-witnesses of exhibitions given by the Maryland riflemen while marching to the seat of war. The detachment numbered one hundred and thirty men, under the leadership of Michael Cresap. They came from the mountains and backwoods, and were bred from infancy to endure hardships and court danger. Many of them had served in Dunmore's war and bore the scars of wounds received from their savage enemies. Some had traveled near eight hundred miles, from the banks of the Ohio, but stepped as lightly as if the march had just begun. At Fredericktown, Maryland, they were supplied from the magazine with powder which needed airing and was not in good condition for rifles. Yet in the evening they astonished all beholders by their precision in off-hand practice, as well as in shooting when lying on their backs, breasts, or sides, and after running briskly as in a skirmish. Again at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, they repeated these exercises with variations. Two brothers took a piece of board five inches broad and seven inches long, with a bit of white paper about the size of a silver dollar nailed in the centre. While one of them supported this board perpendicularly between his knees, the other walked to a place upward of sixty yards away, and turning fired eight bullets consecutively through the board, shooting off-hand. Another of the company held a barrel-stave perpendicularly in his hand, with one edge close to his side, while a comrade shot several bullets through it from the same distance. The spectators were surprised, but some of the marksmen told them that there were upward of fifty persons in that company who could do the same thing, while there were none but could "plug nineteen bullets out of twenty within an inch of the head of a ten-penny nail." To show their confidence in their own skill, some offered to stand with apples on their heads while others would shoot them off at sixty yards, but the sensible people of Lancaster declined to witness such a performance. The brothers mentioned in this narrative may have been the Shains, members of Cresap's company, who seldom missed a mark the size of a cent at twenty or twenty-five yards, off-hand shooting. John Jacob tells of seeing three of Cresap's men fire simultaneously at a buzzard that was flying over them at a considerable height. The bird fell, and each man declared he had killed it. On examination it was found that all three bullets had hit their mark. There was much rejoicing everywhere along the line of march, and Bradford the Philadelphia printer wrote to his British cousins: “This province has raised 1,000 riflemen, the worst of whom will put a ball into a man's head at the distance of 150 or 200 yards; therefore advise your officers who shall hereafter come out to America to settle their affairs in England before their departure." The first body of riflemen to arrive in the American camp was Captain Nagle's company of Berks county Germans. The others soon followed and attracted much attention. They are described as tall and hardy fellows, many over six feet in height, dressed in white or brown hunting-shirts with double capes, round caps, Indian leggins and moccasins. On their breasts in capital letters they wore the motto LIBERTY OR DEATH! Each man carried his own rifle, tomahawk, and hunting-knife. Their deportment was modest, their discipline a model for all the camp. We have the testimony of several different records that a party of them while advancing quickly at a review fired their bullets into poles only seven inches in diameter from a distance of two hundred and fifty yards with few misses. They were employed at once as sharpshooters and began to pick off British officers at more than twice the range of common muskets. In one day the riflemen killed ten of a reconnoitring party, of whom three were field officers, and shot a sentry at the distance of two hundred and fifty yards when only half his head was visible. It was also reported that they killed three men on board a ship at Charlestown ferry at a range of fully half a mile. Their fire was directed mostly at the handsome uniforms, which gave point to one of Burke's angriest invectives in parliament. "These men," he exclaimed, "know much more of your army than your return can give them. They coop it up, besiege it, destroy it, crush it. Your officers are swept off by the rifles if they show their noses." Such was the nucleus which has since grown into the army of the United States; for these were the first troops levied in America by authority of a central representative government. Among the motley ranks of Puritans and cavaliers, Dutch, Germans, Irish, and all the other sharply contrasted elements of the continental army, this handful of men was all that typified a common nationality. They were Americans, different from all other peoples in dialect, in dress, in habits, and in aspirations. All that was theirs, even of sentiment and tradition, they owed to the great wild country that they came to defend. in their minds no association with escape from bondage. It was not an idea that had come to them by laborious study or hazardous speculation. They held those truths to be self-evident which became a basis for the declaration of independence, and the certainty of their trust was witnessed grandly when colonial times had passed away. ITHACA, NEW YORK. Freedom had Horace Kephart. THE DEACON'S WOOING A CONNECTICUT LEGEND In seventeen hundred thirty-four- He tilled his fields and improved his kine, Than which were none in the town more fine, And all his acres were fair to view, While, close and thrifty, his riches grew. Of course, such acts in the staid old town The worse in him because there was known Although the old people held aloof The quiet maidens for miles around Despite it all he was fancy free For time unnamed, until Betsy Lee, And while no murmurs of love had passed, The flying days brought the early fall, VOL. XXIV.-No. 3.-13 |