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��yohn Stark.
��career. He was ransomed for $103 in Jul}', and arrived home in August following, having been absent about six months.
Not daunted by the unfortunate enterprise above narrated. Stark went the following season to hunt and trap on the river Androscoggin, in the present state of Maine, for the pur- pose of raising means to pay the debt incurred for his ransom from the St. Francis Indians. In this he was suc- cessful, and returned with a valuable lot of fur.
The reports brought in by Stark and Eastman concerning the beauty of the country about the upper waters of the Connecticut i-iver, induced the anthorities of the province to dispatch an enlisted company, under Col. Love- well, Maj. Talford, and Capt. Page, to explore this hitherto unknown re- gion, which they called Coos Terri- tory," and John Stark was engaged to guide the expedition. They made the journey from Concord, N. H., to Piermont and return in about two weeks.
The next year, 1754, a report being current that the French were erecting a fort at the upper Coos, Capt. Pow- ers was dispatched by Gov. Went- worth, with thirty men and a flag of truce, to demand their authority for so doing. Mr. Stark was engaged as guide, and conducted the party by the same route he had travelled two years before as a captive. No French garrison being found, the company immediately returned.
Mr. Stark had acquired so much reputation by these expeditions that upon the breaking out of the "Seven Years War" he was commissioned by the governor as second lieutenant
��of Rogers's Company of Rangers, attached to Blanchard's regiment. Capt. Rogers mustered a company of rugged foresters, every man of whom, as a hunter, could hit the size of a dollar at a hundred yards distance ; could follow the trail of man or beast ; endure the fatigue of long marches, the pangs of hunger, and the cold of winter nights, often passed without fire, shelter, or covering other than their common clothing, a blanket, perhaps a bearskin, and the boughs of the pine or hemlock. Their knowl- edge of Indian character, customs^ and manners was accurate. They were principally recruited in the vicinity of Amoskeag falls, where Rogers, a resident of the neighboring town of Dunbartou, Avhich then ex- tended to the Merrimack river, was accustomed to meet them at the an- nual fishing season. They were men who could face with equal resolution the savage animals, or the still more savage Indians of their native woods, and whose courage and fidelity were undoubted.
This year of 1755 was one of the most eventful of the early American history. It marks the fatal defeat of the disciplined little army of the in- trepid but despotic Gen. Braddock, who said that the savages might be formidable to raw American militia, but could never make any impression upon the king's regulars ; but who, had he survived the fight, would have seen the remnants of his boasted reg- ulars saved from utter annihilation by the bravery of these same Ameri- can raw militia, skilfully and valor- ously handled by the young American militia colonel, George Washington. It was in the early summer of this
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