a man-of-war, which they had furnished with several resolute, stout hands, but they were strangely disappointed of coming up with any of the Indian mariners, so that they were forced to return without doing any considerable execution upon them.

During these troubles Major Andros, the Governor of New York, being willing to secure the interest of his Highness the Duke of York in those parts, lest, in the absence of the English, some foreign nation should take the advantage of possessing themselves of any part of the dominions belonging to our nation, timely sent a sloop with a considerable number of soldiers to the parts about Pemaquid, which when the Indians, that had all this while been up in rebellion, understood, they were at the last willing to fall into a kind of amity and friendship. In the beginning of August news of this overture came to the Massachusetts, the comfort of which was not a little augmented by the certain information that came soon after of fifteen English captives returned to the soldiers of Major Andros, and hopes of a general peace; and the confirmation thereof was more increased by the news of the return of the rest of the vessels, that were taken by the enemy, into the hands of the English. In which posture were things left in those parts in the beginning of winter, and nothing of another nature was discoursed in the end of February following, nor yet in the end of June that next ensued.

But the tragical sufferings of the poor English are not as yet all accomplished in other parts of the country, for about September the 19th following, forty or fifty River Indians fell suddenly upon the town of Hatfield, about Connecticut, who were a little too secure, and too ready to say the bitterness of death was past, because they had neither seen nor heard of any enemy in those parts for half a year before. But at this time, as a considerable number of the inhabitants of that small village were employed in raising the frame of an house without the palisadoes, that defended their houses from any sudden incursions of the enemy, they were violently and sud

In August, says Belknap.-H.

denly assaulted by forty or fifty Indians, when they were in no capacity to resist or defend themselves, so as several were shot down from the top of the house which they were raising, and sundry were carried away captive, to the number of twenty or more, which was made up [to] twenty-four with them they carried away the same or the next day from Deerfield,1 whither some of the inhabitants had unadvisedly too soon returned. One of the company escaped out of their hands two or three days after, who informed that they had passed with their poor captives two or three times over the River of Connecticut to prevent being pursued. It was said, also, that about a fortnight after the same Indians attempted to take a mill at Hadley, two miles from the town, and missing their end, pretended a kind of parley, and promised to return those they had captivated a little before; but it proved but one of their usual deceits, whereby they were wont to abuse the English; for where, or in what condition, those captives are at present, must be the subject of the reader's prayers rather than of the author's story.

Yet, since the writing of the premises, Benjamin Wait and Stephen Jennings, two men of Hatfield, whose wives were amongst the number of the forementioned captives, having obtained a commission from the government of the Massachusetts, pursued after them in the depth of winter, (though not with such a number as those with which Abram pursued after the army that carried captive his kinsman, Lot,) and overtook them about Canada, and, by the help of the French there seated, recovered their wives, with other captives, which they brought back by way of ransom, and not by force of

arms.

Their adventure being attended with so many difficulties and dangers, in the depth of winter, not to be paralleled with any attempt of that nature since the English came into those parts, wherein they were surely led along by a divine nutus, as well as by the innate love to their wives, (which would have afforded matter for a large fiction to some of the ancient poets,) is as followeth from their own mouths. On the 24th of October,

1 See in Drake's Tragedies of the Wilderness, (12mo, Bost. 1844,) pp. 60-8, the "Narrative of Quintin Stockwell, who was taken at Deerfield by a party of Inland Indians, in the year 1677."-H.

1677, they advanced towards Westfield, and from thence to Albany, where they arrived the Thursday seven-night after, distant at least two hundred miles from Boston, and instead of being encouraged and furthered in so commendable an enterprise, they were by force and strong hand, after two or three attempts to pass on towards Canada, (whither it was conceived their wives, with the other captives, were carried by the Indians,) carried back above twenty miles from Sconektoket to Albany, where they were detained prisoners till they could be sent down to the Governor of New York, upon pretence of an order at that very time newly come from the said Governor, that none, either Christian or Pagan, should go that way to the French, but first to be sent down to him, which was about one hundred miles down Hudson's River. Being thither brought, it appeared he had little to say to them, and at last, by the intercession of Captain Brockhurst, they were sent back again to Albany with a pass. It was now the 19th of November before they recovered that stage.

And there also they met with no small discouragements, by rumors and other false suggestions, sufficient to have diverted the most constant undertakers from their purpose, had they not been carried with an invincible resolution. Thereabouts they tarried till about the 10th of December, in expectation of having the Lakes, over which they were to pass, frozen hard enough to bear them. They found no small difficulty in procuring a pilot; Captain Salisbury, the Governor there, discouraging a Frenchman which they had hired from undertaking that service, so as they were forced to agree with a Mohawk Indian to conduct them to the first Lake, which was sixteen leagues over, which he faithfully performed. It was about the 16th of December when they came thither; they found it open, but their pilot finding a canoe, fitted it up for them and drew for them a draught of the Lakes by which they were to pass. They were three days passing the first Lake, and then carrying the canoe upon their backs two miles over a neck of land, they entered the Great Lake, which, the second day, they

* Schenectady.-ED.

hoping to trust to the ice, left their canoe, but having travelled one day upon the ice they were forced to return back to fetch their canoe, and then went by water till they came to the land, being windbound six days in the interim; so as they made it about the first of January, having travelled three days without a bit of bread, or any other relief but of some raccoon's flesh, which they had killed in an hollow tree. On the 6th of January they came to Shampley,* a small village of ten houses, belonging to the French; only by the way they met with a bag of biscuit and a bottle of brandy in an empty wigwam, with which they were not a little refreshed; and in travelling towards Sorrell, fifty miles distant from thence, they came to a lodging of Indians, amongst whom was Steven Jennings's wife, by whom they understood how hard it was with the rest, yet resolved, according to advice, to give them good words, and hastened to bargain for their redemption. At Sorrell they found five more of the captives, two of which the Indians had pawned for drink; the remainder of them were in the woods. From this place they had two hundred miles to Kebeck,† which in the next place they travelled to, where they were civilly entertained by the French Governor, who at the last granted them a guard of eleven persons towards Albany, whither they began to march on the 19th of April, 1678, and arrived there about the middle of May following, having spent sixteen days upon the Lake, two days in crossing the neck of land betwixt the upper branches of Canada and Hudson's River, which they came swiftly down in two days more; the rest of the time they spent in hunting. They tarried at Albany from Wednesday, May 22d, till Monday following, from which they came on foot twenty miles to Vanterhook, where they were met with horses and men that carried them safely to Westfield, a few days after. They brought with them nineteen captives, which had been carried away by the Indians September before. Their ransom cost above £200, which was gathered by contribution among the English.

* Chamblee.-ED.

† Quebeck.-ED.

CHAP. LXXV.1

Memorable occurrents and sad accidents that happened in New England from 1666 to 1682.

ALL things come alike to all, saith the wise man, and no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them; yet it is too often seen that men that are but of yesterday, and know nothing, dare adventure to enter Sinto the secret of the Almighty, and will undertake to give an account of his judgments and actions, assigning the reason of this and that sudden and unexpected stroke of death, not considering that our Savior acquits those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell, and the Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, from being guilty of more sin than the rest of the inhabitants in those places. All men stand condemned in Adam, and therefore at all times are obnoxious unto the stroke of death, whenever the writ of execution is issued forth; nor is the Almighty confined to one and the same harbinger, having always his arrow upon the string to shoot in the darkness and at noon day.

April 5th, 1663, Mr. John Norton, the reverend teacher of the church at Boston, (after Mr. Cotton,) was taken out of this life by a sudden change, which the Quakers imputed to a judgment of God upon him for opposing their doctrine in the country. He was a man of great worth and learning, a ready scribe in the Law of God, one that had the tongue of the learned to speak a word in season to the weary soul, besides an eminent acumen, with which he was endowed in polemical divinity and all controversial points of religion, especially those of the present age.

He was desired by the ministers of New England to draw up an answer, in their names, to the Sylloge Questionum, sent over by the Rev. [William] Apollonius, pastor of the church at Middleburg, to the Congregational divines in London, and by them commended to those of New England.

In his answer, besides the satisfaction he gave to those ' LXXIV in the MS.-H. The Quakers remarked, "John Norton, Chief Priest in Boston, by the immediate power of the Lord was smitten, and as he was sinking down by the fireside, being under just judg ment, he confessed the hand of the Lord was upon him, and so he died." Hutchinson, i. 205.—H.