The
captivity of his "beloved wife and only son" are mentioned with
exultation as causing him poignant misery: the death of any near
friend is triumphantly recorded as a new blow on his
sensibilities; but the treachery and desertion of many of his
followers, in whose affections he had confided, is said to have
desolated his heart and to have bereaved him of all further
comfort. He was a patriot attached to his native soil--a prince
true to his subjects and indignant of their wrongs--a soldier
daring in battle, firm in adversity, patient of fatigue, of
hunger, of every variety of bodily suffering, and ready to perish
in the cause he had espoused. Proud of heart and with an
untamable love of natural liberty, he preferred to enjoy it among
the beasts of the forests or in the dismal and famished recesses
of swamps and morasses, rather than bow his haughty spirit to
submission and live dependent and despised in the ease and luxury
of the settlements. With heroic qualities and bold achievements
that would have graced a civilized warrior, and have rendered him
the theme of the poet and the historian, he lived a wanderer and
a fugitive in his native land, and went down, like a lonely bark
foundering amid darkness and tempest, without a pitying eye to
weep his fall or a friendly hand to record his struggle.
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