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Show A THRILLING ESCAPE. An overhanging rock just below Kanawha Falls was the scene of a remarkable adventure, which the Louisville Courier Journal describes as follows: The Indians were in hot pursuit of Van Bibber, a settler and man of distinction in those early times. He was hard pressed, and all access to the river below and above being cut off, he was driven to this jutting rock, which proved to be the jumping-off place for him. He stood on the rock, in full view of the enemy above and below, who yelled like demons at the certainty of his speedy capture. He stood up boldly, and with his rifle kept them at bay. As he stood there he looked across the river-saw his friends-his wife with her babe in her arms, all helpless to render assistance. They stood as if petrified with terror and amazement. She cried at the top of her voice, "Leap into the river and meet me!" Laying her babe on the grass, she seized the oars and sprang into the skiff alone. As she neared the middle of the river, her husband say the Indians coming in full force and yelling like demons. "Wife, wife," he screamed, "I'm coming, drop down a little lower." With this he sprang from his crag and descended like an arrow into the water, feet foremost. The wife rested on her oars a moment to see him rise to the surface, the little canoe floating like a cork, bobbing about on the boiling flood. It was an awful moment; it seemed an age to her. Would he ever rise? Her earnest gaze seemed to penetrate the depths of the water, and she darted her boat farther down the stream. He rose near her; in a moment the canoe was alongside of him, and she helped him to scramble into it amid a shower of arrows and shot that the baffled Indians poured into them. The daring wife did not speak a word, her husband was more dead than alive, and all depended on her strength being maintained until they could reach the bank. This they did, just where she had started, right where the babe was still lying, crowing and laughing. The men pulled the skiff high up on the sand, and the wife slowly arose and helped to lift Van Bibber to his feet. He could not walk, but she laid him down by his babe, and then seating herself, she wept wildly just as any other woman would have done under the circumstances. That babe is now a grandfather, and that rock is called "Van Bibber's Rock" to this day.-Youth's Companion. |