In addition to these natural endowments for a brave soldiery, they were good riders and famous marksmen--hunters, that knew the woods almost as well by night as by day--could wind about and through the camp of an enemy, as free from suspicion as the velvet-footed squirrel, who, from the lateral branches of the pine, looks over their encampment.

They possessed resources of knowledge and ingenuity, while in swamp and thicket, not merely to avoid the danger, but, in not unfrequent instances, to convert it to their own advantage.
Nothing but the training and direction of such a mind as Marion's was needed to make, of these men, the most efficient of all partisan soldiery.

The formation of the brigade of which he now prepared to take command, has a history of its own which is worth telling.

The fame which it subsequently acquired in connection with its leader's name, and which the local traditions will not willingly let die, will justify us in the narration.

Some few preliminary facts are necessary.
The fall of Charleston, and the dispersion or butchery of those parties which had kept the field after that event, necessarily depressed the spirits and discouraged the attempt of the scattered patriots who still yearned to oppose the invaders.