At the appointed time and place they met, each with his friend, and each armed.  When they had approached within ten paces, Brashear stopped and said, “Are you ready?” Being answered in the affirmative, “Then fire, sir; I scorn to take the first fire.”  Dr. Tolls did so, and, missing him, stood and received Brashear’s ball through both thighs, and fell.  There was no surgeon in town, and the wounds were bleeding profusely, when Brashear went to him, and proposed to dress the wounds.  Tolls stuttered badly, and replied, “I-I-I’ll d-d-die first.”  “I can do no more,” said Brashear, and, bowing, left the ground.

This chivalry of character characterized him in everything.  Fond of amusement, he indulged himself in hunting and innocent sports, when and where he was always the life of the party.  Energetic and restless in his nature, he could not bear confinement, and, when a member of the Legislature, he was more frequently to be found walking rapidly to and fro in the lobby of the House than in his seat.  To sit still and do nothing was impossible to him.  A hundred anecdotes might be related of him, all illustrative of his lofty courage, and daring, and his utter contempt of danger.  A noble and generous spirit was ever manifested by him, in every relation of life.  His frankness and liberal hospitality, his kindness to his slaves, and his generosity to the poor, endeared him to his neighbors, who live to feel that his void can never be filled.

CHAPTER XXXII.

GRADUAL EXTINCTION OF THE RED MAN.

LINE CREEK FIFTY YEARS AGO—­HOPOTHLAYOHOLA—­McINTOSH—­UNDYING HATRED—­ A BIG POWWOW—­MASSACRE OF THE McINTOSHES—­NEHEMATHLA—­ONCHEES—­THE LAST OF THE RACE—­A BRAVE WARRIOR—­A WHITE MAN’S FRIENDSHIP—­THE DEATH-SONG—­TUSKEGA, OR JIM’S BOY.

I have been to-day, the 23d of August, over the same spot I wandered over this day fifty years ago.  What changes have supervened it is difficult to realize.  This was then a dense, unsettled wilderness.  The wild deer was on every hill, in every valley.  Limpid streams purled rippling and gladly along pebbly beds, and fell babbling over great rocks.  These alone disturbed the profound silence, where solitude brooded, and quiet was at home.  These wild forests extended west to Line Creek, then the dividing line between the Indian possessions and the newly acquired territory now constituting the State of Alabama.  Upon this territory of untamed wilderness there wandered then fifty thousand Indians, the remnant of the mighty nation of Muscogees, who one hundred and thirty years ago welcomed the white man at Yamactow, now Savannah, and tendered him a home in the New World.  Fifty years ago he had progressed to the banks of the Ocmulgee, driving before him the aboriginal inhabitant, and appropriating his domains.  Here for a time his march was stayed.  But the Indian had gone forward to meet the white man coming from the Mississippi to surround him, the more surely to effect his ultimate destruction and give his home and acres to the enterprise and capacity of the white man.