loaded with supplies.  The journey up the river had been successfully made, and the party were returning, off their guard and without the slightest thought of danger.  But their every movement had been watched by Indian scouts; and, at the Devil’s Hole, a short distance below the falls, five hundred warriors lay in ambush.  Slowly the returning provision-train wound its way along the bank of the Niagara.  On the right were high cliffs, thickly wooded; on the left a precipice, whose base was fretted by the furious river.  In the ears of the soldiers and drivers sounded the thunderous roar of the mighty cataract.  As men and horses threaded their way past the Devil’s Hole savage yells burst from the thick wood on their right, and simultaneously a fusillade from a hundred muskets.  The terrified horses sprang over the cliffs, dragging wagons and drivers with them.  When the smoke cleared and the savages rushed forward, not a living member of the escort nor a driver was to be seen.  The leader of the escort, Philip Stedman, had grasped the critical character of the situation at the first outcry, and, putting spurs to his horse, had dashed into the bushes.  A warrior had seized his rein; but Stedman had struck him down and galloped free for Fort Schlosser.  A drummer-boy, in terror of his life, had leapt over the cliff.  By good fortune his drum-strap caught on the branch of a dense tree; here he remained suspended until the Indians left the spot, when he extricated himself.  One of the teamsters also escaped.  He was wounded, but managed to roll into the bushes, and found concealment in the thick undergrowth.  The terrific musketry fire was heard at the lower landing, where a body of troops of the 60th and 80th regiments were encamped.  The soldiers hastily armed themselves and in great disorder rushed to the aid of the convoy.  But the Indians were not now at the Devil’s Hole.  The murderous work completed there, they had taken up a position in a thick wood half a mile farther down, where they silently waited.  They had chosen well their place of concealment; and the soldiers in their excitement walked into the trap set for them.  Suddenly the ominous war-cries broke out, and before the troops could turn to face the foe a storm of bullets had swept their left flank.  Then the warriors dashed from their ambush, tomahawking the living and scalping both dead and dying.  In a few minutes five officers and seventy-six of the rank and file were killed and eight wounded, and out of a force of over one hundred men only twenty escaped unhurt.  The news of this second disaster brought Major Wilkins up from Fort Niagara, with every available man, to chastise the Indians.  But when Wilkins and his men arrived at the gruesome scene of the massacre not a red man was to be found.  The Indians had disappeared into the forest, after having stripped their victims even of clothing.  With a heavy heart the troops marched back to Niagara, mourning the loss of many gallant comrades.  This was the greatest disaster, in loss of life, of the Pontiac War; but, like the defeat of Dalyell, it had little effect on the progress of the campaign.  The Indians did not follow it up; with scalps and plunder they returned to their villages to exult in wild orgies over the victory.