Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
The battle was now on in all its fury.—Page 287.
Colonial Series
TRAIL AND TRADING POST
OR
THE YOUNG HUNTERS OF THE OHIO
PREFACE
“Trail and Trading Post” is a complete storyin itself, but forms the sixth and last volume of aline known under the general title of “ColonialSeries.”
As I have mentioned before, when I started thisseries I had in mind to write not more than threevolumes, telling of colonial times during the warbetween France and England for the possession ofCanada and the territory bordering the Great Lakes.The first book, entitled “With Washington in theWest,” told of the disastrous Braddock campaignagainst Fort Duquesne; the second, called “Marchingon Niagara,” gave many of the particulars ofGeneral Forbes’s advance against the same Frenchstronghold and likewise the particulars of the advanceof Generals Prideaux and Johnson againstFort Niagara; while the third volume, “At the Fallof Montreal,” told of the heroic fighting of GeneralWolfe at Quebec, and that last contest whichbrought this long-drawn struggle to a close.
The war with France was now over, but theviIndians were very bitter against the English, and ina fourth volume, called “On the Trail of Pontiac,”were given the particulars of how that noted redwarrior formed a conspiracy among a number oftribes to exterminate the English. The first conspiracyfailed to come to a head, but Pontiac was notdisheartened, and in a fifth volume, “The Fort inthe Wilderness,” were related how the warriorsunder him laid siege to Fort Detroit and Fort Pitt,and how the English under Colonel Bouquet wonthe bloody battle of Bushy Run,—the last regularcontest with the red men for some years tocome.
With the Indian struggle at an end, the Englishwere more eager than ever to push forward to the