DARNELL'S LEAP FOR
LIFE.
It will be recollected by students of
history that in the year
1778, during the Revolution, Daniel
Boone, with twenty-seven
others was taken prisoner in Kentucky
and brought to Old
Town, or Old Chillicothe, as the
Shawanese called it. Through
the influence of Hamilton, the British
Governor, Boone with ten
of his party was taken to Detroit, while
the remaining seventeen
prisoners were left with their savage
captors. Among the latter
number was a man whose name is supposed
to have been Darnell.
Brave as a lion and cunning as a fox, he
resolved to try and effect
his escape. One night, how it is not for
us to say, he found
himself in a wood northwest of Clifton.
Beneath the branches
of a monarch of the forest, he paused to
recruit his strength when
daylight suddenly burst upon him. Not
seeming to comprehend
his dangerous situation, he did not
move, but coolly took a piece
of pemmican from his pouch and began to
devour it. He was
not unarmed, for he had stolen his rifle
and hunting accoutre-
ments from his captors.
The pemmican had scarcely been devoured
when the noise
occasioned by the breaking of a twig
assailed his ears. His
backwoods learning at once told him that
a human foot had
broken the twig, and in an instant he
was on his feet. Turning
and looking in the direction of the
noise he saw several Indians
hid behind the trees. He knew they were
Shawanese and there-
fore his bitterest enemies. What should
he do? The redskins
were in his very path and to attempt to
get beyond them was to
court death by their tomahawks or the
terrible stake. Flight
seemed the only alternative - flight in
a direction directly oppo-
site to the course he had marked out.
The savages remained be-
hind the trees intensely watching the
white man's movements.
They could have brought him down with a
bullet, but such was
not their intention. They wanted him to
die by fire in their
village. For a minute he surveyed his
perilous position and then
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