George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[354]

On the morning of the twenty-seventh, the whole

chap. XV.} 1760.

party began their march early having a distance of eighteen miles to travel to the town of Etchowee, the nearest of the middle settlements of the Cherokees. ‘Let Montgomery be wary,’ wrote Washington; ‘he has a subtle enemy, that may give him most trouble when he least expects it.’ The army passed down the valley of the Little Tennessee, along the mountain stream which, taking its rise in Rabun County in Georgia, flows through Macon County in North Carolina. Not far from Franklin, their path lay along the muddy river with its steep clay banks, through a plain covered with the dense thicket, overlooked on one side by a high mountain, and on the other by hilly, uneven ground.¹ At this narrow pass, which was then called Crow's Creek, the Cherokees emerged from an ambush.² Morrison, a gallant officer, was killed at the head of the advanced party. But the Highlanders and provincials drove the enemy from their lurking-places; and returning to their yells three huzzas and three waves of their bonnets and hats, they chased them from height and hollow. At the ford, the army passed the river; and, protected by it on their right, and by a flankingparty on the left, treading a path sometimes so narrow that they were obliged to march in Indian file, fired upon from the rear, and twice from the front, they were not collected at Etchowee till midnight, and after a loss of twenty men, besides seventy-six wounded.³

For one day, and one day only, Montgomery