Beadle's New Dime Novels: The Specter Chief — page 9: what you’re looking at

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

THE PHANTOM CHIEF. 18 pended the navigation of the Ohio; and frota Fort Pitt, barges, Canoes and flat-botfomed boats, such as we have described, continued to bear their accustomed burthens of traders, landhunters and merchandize. Within a year or two the Moravian brethren, who had extended their missionary lnbors from the Lehigh and Sus- quehanna to the Allegheny, had taken post in one of the forks of Muskingum, and were there endeavoring to strengthen their interest with the unconverted Indiana, particularly with the Delawares, the members of whose tribe were the earliest objects of their benevolent efforts in Eastern Pennsylvania. Their converts, however, had never enjoyed the confilence of the traders and settlers, who could not separate their old associations from the Christianized savage ; and recent as was the undertaking of the brethren in the western territory, it was not to be expected that they should meet with special favor iu this quarter. With this glance at the state of the times of which we are writing, let us take a view of the inmates of the Fiat- bottom, which we left pursuing its way with ‘the current of the Ohio. Of the oarsmen and their commander, little need be said. They were of the rough class common to their calling, and as they play a very subordinate part in the scenes before us, we may properly leave them to their em- ployment. In the middle of the boat, leaning against the boarding which inclined outward, or indolently sitting or lying upon boxes and bales on the bottom, were a number of persons mostly dressed in faded hunting-shirts, each » Man wearing a deer-skin belt, with a sheath containing a knife, the size and form of which fitted it for its various employment of fighting, hunting and eating. The weather - deaten faces of these men, and their reckless countenances indicated at once the hardy discipline to which they had been subjected, and its influence upon their characters. A Venerable-looking man. whose attire, although by no means such as accorded with his evident superiority over his ‘noisy fellow-passengers, was yet both more costly and bet- ter fitted than theirs, stood near the door of the cabin with te Sek comicbookscom) el apie, © — J sa =: -