Several times French Choctaws bribed to
murder him, waylaid Adair on the trail--twice when he was
alone--only to be baffled by the imperturbable self-possession
and alert wit which never failed him in emergencies.
Winning a Choctaw trade cost Adair, besides attacks on his life,
2200 pounds, for which he was never reimbursed, notwithstanding
Governor Glen's agreement with him. And, on his return to
Charleston, while the Governor was detaining him "on one pretext
or another," he found that a new expedition, which the Governor
was favoring for reasons of his own, had set out to capture his
Chickasaw trade and gather in "the expected great crop of
deerskins and beaver...before I could possibly return to the
Chikkasah Country." Nothing daunted, however, the hardy trader
set out alone.
"In the severity of winter, frost, snow, hail and heavy rains
succeed each other in these climes, so that I partly rode and
partly swam to the Chikkasah country; for not expecting to stay
long below [in Charleston] I took no leathern canoe. Many of the
broad, deep creeks...had now overflowed their banks, ran at a
rapid rate and were unpassable to any but DESPERATE PEOPLE...
the rivers and swamps were dreadful by rafts of timber driving
down the former and the great fallen trees floating in the
latter.
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