if it had not been the Lord, who was on our side, they had swallowed us up quick; blessed be the Lord who hath not given us a prey to their teeth; our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers! The enemy were now in a pitiful pickle with toiling and moiling in the mud, and blackened with it, if mud could add blackness to such miscreants; and their ammunition was pretty well exhausted; so that now they began to draw off in all parts, and with rafts get over the river; some whereof breaking, there did not a few cool their late heat by falling into it. But first they made all the spoil they could upon the cattle about the town; and giving one shot more at the sloops, they killed the only man of ours that was killed aboard them. Then after about half an hours consultation, they sent a flag of truce to the garrison, advising them with much flattery to surrender; but the Captain sent them word, that he wanted for nothing but for men to come and fight him. The Indian replied unto Captain Converse, being you are so stout, why don't you come and fight in the open field like a man, and not fight in a garrison like a squaw? The Captain rejoined, what a fool are you? do you think thirty men a match for five hundred? No, (says the Captain, counting, as well he might, each of his fifteen men to be as good as two!) come with your thirty men upon the plain and I will meet you with my thirty as soon as you will. Upon this the Indian answered, nay, we own English fashion is all one fool: you kill me, me kill you! no, better lye somewhere and shoot a man, and he no see! that the best soldier! Then they fell to coaxing the Captain with as many fine words as the Fox in the fable had for the allurement of his prey unto him; and urged mightily, that ensign Hill, who stood with the flag of truce, might stand a little nearer their army. The Captain for a good reason to be presently discerned, would not allow that: whereupon they fell to threatning and raging, like so many defeated devils, using these words, damn ye, we'll cut you as small as tobacco before tomorrow morning. The Captain bid 'em to make haste, for he wanted work so the Indian throwing his flag on the ground, ran away, and ensign Hill nimbly stripping his flag ran into the valley; but the salvages presently fired from an ambushment behind an hill, near the place where they had urged for a parley.

And now for poor John Diamond! the enemy retreating (which opportunity the sloops took to burn down the dangerous hay-stock) into the plain, out of gun-shot they fell to torturing their captive John Diamond after a manner very diabolical. They stripped him, they scalped him alive, and after a castration, the finished that article in the punishment of traitors upon him; they slit him with knives between his fingers and his toes; they made cruel gashes in the most fleshy parts of his body, and stuck the gashes

with fire-brands which were afterwards found sticking in the wounds. Thus they butchered one poor Englishman with all the fury that they would have spent upon them all; and performed an exploit for five hundred furies to brag of at their coming home. Ghastly to express! what was it then to suffer? They returned then unto the garrison, and kept firing at it now and then till near ten a clock at night; when they all marched off, leaving behind them some of their dead; whereof one was monsieur Labocree, who had about his neck a pouch with about a dozen reliques ingeniously made up, and a printed paper of indulgencies, and several other implements; and no doubt, thought himself as good safety as if he had all the spells of Lapland about him: but it seems none of the amulets about his neck would save him from a mortal shot in the head. Thus in forty-eight hours was finished an action as worthy to be related, as perhaps any that occurs in our story. And it was not long before the valiant Gouge, who bore his part in this action, did another that was not much inferior to it, when he suddenly recovered from the French a valuable prey, which they had newly taken upon our coast."

Escape of the Dustan family." On March 15, 1697, the salvages made a descent upon the skirts of Haverhill, murdering and captivating about thirty nine persons, and burning about half a dozen houses. In this broil, one Hannah Dustan having lain in about a week, attended with her nurse, Mary Neff, a body of terrible Indians drew near unto the house where she lay, with designs to carry on their bloody devastations. Her husband hastened from his employments abroad unto the relief of his distressed family; and first bidding seven of his eight children (which were from two to seventeen years of age) to get away as fast as they could unto some garrison in the town, he went in to inform his wife of the horrible distress come upon them. E'er she could get up, the fierce Indians were got so near, that utterly despairing to do her any service, he ran out after his children; resolving that on the horse which he had with him, he would ride away with that which he should in this extremity find his affections to pitch most upon, and leave the rest unto the care of the divine providence. He overtook his children about forty rods from his door; but then such was the agony of his parental affections, that he found it impossible for him to distinguish any one of them from the rest; wherefore he took up a courageous resolution to live and die with them all. A party of Indians came up with him; and now though they fired at him, and he fired at them, yet he manfully kept at the rear of his little army of unarmed children, while they marched off with the pace of a child of five years old; until, by the singular providence of God, he arrived safe with them all unto a place of safety about a mile or two from his house. But his house must in the mean time have more dismal tragedies acted at it. The nurse trying to escape with the new born infant, fell into the hands of the formidable salvages; and those

furious tawnies coming into the house, bid poor Dustan to rise immediately. Full of astonishment she did so; and sitting down in the chimney with an heart full of most fearful expectation, she saw the raging dragons rifle all that they could carry away, and set the house on fire. About nineteen or twenty Indians now led these away, with about half a score other English captives; but e'er they had gone many steps, they dash'd out the brains of the infant against a tree; and several of the other captives, as they began to tire in the sad journey, were soon sent unto their long home; the salvages would presently bury their hatchets in their brains, and leave their carcases on the ground for birds and beasts to feed upon. However, Dustan (with her nurse) notwithstanding her present condition, travelled that night about a dozen miles, and then kept up with their new masters in a long travel of an hundred and fifty miles, more or less, within a few days ensuing, without any sensible damage in their health, from the hardships of their travel, their lodging, their diet, and their many other difficulties.

These two poor women were now in the hands of those whose tender mercies are cruelties; but the good God, who hath all hearts in his own hands, heard the sighs of these prisoners, and gave them to find unexpected favor from the master who hath laid claim unto them. That Indian family consisted of twelve persons; two stout men, three women, and seven children, and for the shame of many an English family, that has the character of prayerless upon it, I must now publish what these poor women assure me. "Tis this, in obedience to the instructions which the French have given them, they would have prayers in their family no less than thrice every day; in

the morning, at noon, and in the evening; nor would they ordinarily let their children eat or sleep, without first saying their prayers. Indeed these idolaters were like the rest of their whiter brethren persecutors, and would not endure that these poor women should retire to their English prayers, if they could hinder them. Nevertheless, the poor women had nothing but fervent prayers to make their lives comfortable or tolerable; and by being daily sent out upon business, they had opportunities together and asunder, to do like another Hannah, in pouring out their souls before the Lord. Nor did their praying friends among ourselves forbear to pour out supplications for them. Now they could not observe it without some wonder, that their Indian master sometimes when he saw them dejected, would say unto them, What need you trouble yourself? If your God will have you deliv ered, you shall be so! And it seems our God would have it so to be. This Indian family was now travelling with these two captive women, (and an English youth taken from Worcester a year and a half before,) unto a rendezvouz of salvages, which they call a town some where beyond Penacook; and they still told these poor women, that when they came to this town they must be stript, and scourg'd, and run the gantlet through the whole army of Indians. They said this was the fashion when the captives first came to a town; and they derided some of the faint hearted English, which they said, fainted and swoon'd away under the torments of this discipline. But on April 30, while they were yet, it may be, about an hundred and fifty miles from the Indian town, a little before break of day, when the whole crew was in a dead sleep, (reader, see if it proves not so!) one of these women took up a resolution to intimate the action of Jael upon Siseria ; and being where she had not her own life secured by any law unto her, she thought she was not forbidden by any law to take away the life of the murderers, by whom her child had been butchered. She heartened the nurse and the youth to assist her in this enterprise; and all furnishing themselves with hatchets for the purpose, they struck such home blows upon the heads of their sleeping oppressors, that e'er they could any of them struggle into any effectual resistance, at the feet of these poor prisoners, they bowed, they fell, they lay down: at their feet they bowed, they fell; where they bowed, there they fell down dead. Only one squaw escaped sorely wounded from them in the dark; and one boy, whom they reserved asleep, intending to bring him away with them, suddenly waked, and scuttled away from this desolation. But cutting off the scalps of the ten wretches, they came off, and received fifty pounds from the General Assembly of the province, as a recompense of their action; besides which they received many presents of congratulation from their more private friends; but none gave them a greater taste of bounty than Colonel Nicholson, the Governor of Maryland, who hearing of their action, sent them a very generous token of his favour."

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Deerfield burnt. Captivity of Rev. Mr. Williams and Family. The storm that threatened Deerfield was now approaching. In the evening of the twenty-ninth of February, 1704,t major Hertel de Rouville with two hundred French and one hundred and forty-two Indians, aided by two of his brothers, after a tedious march of between two and three hundred miles, through deep snow, arrived at an elevated pine forest‡ bordering Deerfield meadow, about two miles north of the village, where they lay concealed until after midnight. Finding all quiet, and the snow covered with a crust sufficient to support the men, Rouville deposited his snow shoes and packs at the foot of the elevation, and crossing Deerfield river, began his march through an open meadow a little before day light. As the march upon the crust produced a rustling noise, which it was apprehended might alarm the sentinels in the fort, he ordered frequent halts, in which the whole lay still for a few moments, and then rising, they dashed on with rapidity. The noise thus alternately ceasing, it was supposed would be attributed by the sentinels, to the irregularity of the wind; but the precaution was unnecessary, for the guard within the fort had improvidently retired to rest about the time the enemy commenced their march through the meadow. Arriving at the northwest quarter of the fort, where the snow in many places was drifted nearly to the top of the palisades, the enemy entered the place, and found all in a profound sleep. Parties detached in different directions assaulted the houses, broke the doors, and dragged the astonished people from their beds. Where resistance was attempted, the tomahawk or musket ended the strife. A few were so fortunate as to escape by flight to the adjacent woods; but the greatest part were killed or made pris

oners."

Early in the assault about twenty Indians attacked the house of the Rev. John Williams, who awaking from a sound sleep, instantly leaped from his bed, ran towards the door and found a party entering. Calling to awaken a couple of soldiers in his chamber, he seized a pistol from his bed tester, and presenting it to the breast of the foremost Indian, attempted to shoot him, but it missed fire. He was instantly seized, bound, and thus kept near an hour without his clothes. Two of his young children were dragged to the door and murdered, and his negro woman suffered the same fate. Mrs. Williams who had lain in but a few weeks previously, and five children were also seized, and the house rifled with unrelenting barbarity. While the Indians were thus employed, captain Stoddard, a lodger in the house, seizing his cloak, leaped from a chamber window, escaped across * These accounts are copied from Hoyt's Indian Wars. + By New Style, March 12, 1704.

Now called Petty's Plain.