Beadle's Dime Novels No. 119: Blackeyes — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

12 BLACKEYES,. | mountains, Who could cope with the savages in their own way, and on their own ground. Our soldiers should learn to be hunters and woodsmen, as well as disciplined troops, and then our magazines of supplies might be confined to the towns and fortified places, for the forces would move without in- cumbrance, like the Indians, and would subsist on the country through which they traveled. Such a force could advance or retreat as rapidly as the savages themselves, could fight them behind their own rucks and trees, could beat them at their | Own game of stealth and stratagem, and could overcome _ them by properly developing the superior weapons, as well as the superior courage and physical powers of the white race.” “You have made a long speech, my sapient young instruc- tor, and you have spoken it so enthusiastically, that you have hardly taken time to draw breath. I presume that you would have your ragamuffin rangers take the place of. the army of the United States, and have the leading rovers commissioned over our veteran officers.” | “ By nomeans, Major Buttress. You do me wrong to suppose that I could entertain such an idea.” I would have them act as pioneers and scouts, to clear the way and feel the ground for disciplined troops, as the early settlers of the West haye formed the advance-guard of better farmers, and a more advanced civilization. My ragamuffin rangers, as you call them, would always render invaluable agsistance to the regu- Jar army, and their usefulness has often been proved. Gen- eral Braddock was a brave man, and he led a splendid army into the wilderness, but we all know how We was defeated, and how the remnant of his command was saved by the ragamuffin rangers of Virginia, led by George Washington, When St. Olair undertook his campaign against the Indians in Ohio—" | Ter “ Lieutenent Bent, you are going too far !” éxclaimed Major Buttress, with a burst of indignation. “T gaia to you, a short time ago, that you were presumptuous, but not impertinent. I now consider that you are impertinent and actually insulting. Do you pretend to insinuate that Tam a hot-headed and obsti- nate Briton, like Braddock, or a superannuated dunderhead, | like St. Clair?» Do you suppose that I will suffer my com- mand to be drawn into an ambush, and to be massacred where | Comicbooksscom