Old and new settlers were now hopeful, but their
hopes of peace and happiness were soon to be dashed to pieces.
The arrival of the third year's Colonists provoked still greater
opposition. Feeling had been gradually rising against the new settlers
at every new arrival. The excellence of the later immigrants but led
their opponents to be irritated.
CHAPTER VII.
FIGHT AND FLIGHT.
The year 1815 was a year of world-wide disaster. Napoleon's
Europe-shadowing wings had for years been over that continent and he
like a ravenous bird had left marks of his ravages among the most
prominent European nations. The world had a breathing spell for a short
time with Napoleon a virtual prisoner in Elba, but now in March of this
year he broke from the perch where he had been tethered and all Europe
was again in terror. The nations were thunderstruck; the alarm was
deepened by the appearance of Olber's great comet, and in their
superstition the ignorant were panic-stricken, while the more religious
and informed saw in these terrible events the scenes pictured in the
Apocalypse and maintained that the battle of Armageddon was at hand. The
epoch-marking battle of Waterloo in June of this year was sufficiently
near the picture of blood painted in the Revelation to satisfy the
credulous.
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