Completely disheartened by this result, Wolfe for a moment felt despair of his object, and in that despairing mood, on the 9th of September, he wrote to Pitt. He said that, "to the uncommon strength of the country, the enemy had added, for the defence of the river, a great number of floating batteries and boats; that the vigilance of the Indians had prevented their effecting anything by surprise; that he had had a choice of difficulties, and felt at a loss how to proceed; and he concluded with the remark, that his constitution was entirely ruined, without the consolation of having done any considerable service to the State, or without any prospect of it."
So much for his past. As for his present. His only friends were treacherous savages and some few settlers and cow-boys. They would none of them miss him if he were to be laid under a pile of stones with a board cross at his head anywhere by the roadside, in the plains or among the hills. Some of them were honest men, some were desperadoes; none were his equals, not one understood the things that meant life to him. He had no abode, not so much as the coyote over there on the top of the little swell. He made his living in divers and uncertain ways. Sometimes he sent pictures to the East, studies of the things about him.[Pg 165] They sold well. Sometimes he was a scout or a guide. Sometimes he prospected and located claims with more or less good luck. Sometimes he hired himself out as a cow-boy at round-ups, as he was doing now. On the whole, he was, from the financial standpoint, more of a success than from any other.INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN 1742.
ONE:Cairness reflected upon this as he fired for exactly the seventh time at a pair of beady eyes that flashed at him over a bush-topped rock by the creek, not five and twenty yards away, and then vanished utterly. There was something uncanny about it, and he was losing patience as well as ammunition. Three bullets from a repeating rifle had about finished him. One had gone through his hat. The eyes popped up again. Cairness fired again and missed. Then he did a thoroughly silly thing. He jumped out from behind his shelter and ran and leapt, straight down, and over to the rock by the stream. The beady eyes saw him coming and sparkled, with an evil sort of laughter.
ONE:On the 7th of March the House of Commons went into committee on the establishment of the Duke of York, on account of his marriage. Fox united with Pitt in supporting the recommendation that twenty-five thousand pounds per annum should be added to the twelve thousand pounds which the duke already had; besides this the duke had a private yearly revenue of four thousand pounds, making altogether forty-one thousand a year, in addition to the bishopric of Osnaburg, in Germany, which had been conferred on the duke, though a layman and a soldier. Notwithstanding the union of Whigs and Tories on this occasion, the vote did not pass without some sharp remarks on the miserable stinginess of the King of Prussia, who only gave his daughter the paltry sum of twenty-five thousand pounds as a dowry, and stipulated that even that should be returned in case of the duke's death, though in that case his daughter was to have a permanent allowance of eight thousand pounds a year.
