community.
who, when the volunteers the first on the ground ap peared, greeted them with derisive yells, dancing, and in sulting gestures; but when they beheld the dragoons, fled precipitately towards the mountains. A pursuit of two or three miles proved unavailing, the troop horses being jaded by a long march ; and after patrolling the road for several hours, Fitzgerald returned to Fort Lane and the volun teers to their homes to make ready for the prolonged con test which was evidently before them.
An express, carried by T. McFadden Patton, was already well on the road to the seat of government to inform the governor, the superintendent of Indian affairs, and the military authorities at Vancouver of the condition of affairs in the south. So far, however, were the latter from being able to afford any aid, that an express was at that very time on the road to Fort Lane with a requisition for troops to be used in the north, as we shall see hereafter.
On the tenth of October, Lieutenant Kautz had set out from Port Orford with a party of citizens and soldiers to make an examination of a proposed route for a wagon road from that place to Jacksonville. At the great bend of Rogue river, thirty miles from the coast, he found the settlers in much alarm at a threatened attack from the In dians on Applegate creek, and returned to the fort for a larger supply of arms and ammunition, to enable him to engage the hostiles should they be met with. A few days after resuming his march he was attacked, and fought, losing five of his company, three citizens and two soldiers. He was barely able to secure an orderly retreat with the remainder of his party, and the Indians were only pre vented from securing a considerable amount of ammuni tion by his caution in unloading the pack animals at the beginning of the engagement.
In looking over the field it was Percéived that all the Indians in the country from Yreka to the Umpqua canon, and from the coast to Modoc land, were hostile, with the
