At about eleven o’clock we reached the confines of the rocky ground; here we rested for three hours, and took a meal, of which we were very much in want, having tasted nothing but berries and plums since our departure from the schooner, for we had been so much engrossed by the digging of the cachette that we had forgotten to take with us any kind of provision.

Our flight, or, to say better, our journey, passed without anything remarkable.  We arrived, as we had expected, a day and a half before the Umbiquas:  and, of course, were prepared for them.  The squaws, children, and valuables were already in the boat-house with plenty of water, in case the enemy should attempt to fire it.  The presence of a hostile war-party had been singularly discovered two days before; three children having gone to a little bay at a short distance from the post, to catch some young seals, discovered four canoes secured at the foot of a rock, while, a little farther, two young men were seated near a fire cooking comfortably one of the seals they had taken.  Of course the children returned home, and the only three men who had been left at the post (three old men) went after their scalps.  They had not returned when we arrived; but in the evening they entered the river with the scalps of the two Umbiquas, whom they had surprised, and the canoes, which were safely deposited in the store.

Our position was indeed a strong one.  Fronting us to the north we had a large and rapid river; on the south we were Banked by a ditch forty feet broad and ten feet deep, which isolated the building from a fine open ground, without my bush, tree, or cover; the two wings were formed by small brick towers twenty feet high, with loop-holes, and a door ten feet from the ground; the ladder to which, of course, we took inside.  The only other entrance, the main one, in fact, was by water:  but it could be approached only by swimming.  The fort was built of stone and brick, while the door, made of thick posts, and lined with sheets of copper, would have defied, for a long time, the power of their axes or fire.  Our only anxiety was about the inflammable quality of the roof, which was covered with pine shingles.  Against such an accident, however, we prepared ourselves by carrying water to the upper rooms, and we could at any time, if it became necessary, open holes in the roof, for we greater facility of extinguishing the fire.  In the meantime we covered it with a coat of clay in the parts which were most exposed.

We were now ten men, seven of us armed with firearms and pretty certain of our aim:  we had also sixteen women and nine children, boys and girls, to whom various posts were assigned, in case of a night attack.  The six warriors who had gone to the settlement for firearms would return in a short time, and till then we had nothing to do but to be cautious, to wait for the enemy, and even bear their first attack without using our firearms, that they might not suspect our