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.

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.

of the same persuasion in either Englands, he was highly applauded both for the acumen of his judgment, and candor of his spirit appearing therein, by those of the adverse party, which made Dr. Hornbeck, the learned Professor of Divinity at Leyden, thus to express himself in a tractate of his own, || wherein || he treats of the same controversy: "Non tædet hujus viri nonnulla prolixiùs describere, propter singulare acumen, quamvis in multis non ei accedimus; in iis et aliis accuratè disputat, et sæpè, ingenuâ suâ confessione, controversiam tollit, quam alii vel faciunt, vel putant superesse, quare nec ita commodè ab iis tractatur." The like testimony is given. him by some of our own nation, even of the Episcopal persuasion, both for his modesty and learning, in stating the controversy in difference between himself and them. Nor was he unacquainted with the mysteries of civil policy, where he had been very serviceable to the country of New England, in which he had spent the greatest part of his time and labors: what acceptance soever they found with some persons, his reward is with the Lord, who, to compensate any injury he might receive from men, gave him a speedy discharge from his burden, when it grew too heavy. The dark shadow of envy and obloquy always follows the body of virtue, which himself could never shake off, especially after his last public employment in England with the honored Mr. Bradstreet; soon after which, not too precisely to indigitate the cause of his death, he suddenly was snatched away by an unusual lypothymy, a kind of athanasia, which some have desired, so as not to feel the pains of death, though he were to pass through the gates thereof.

2

In the year 16653 Mr. Atherton, the chief military officer in New England, died suddenly by a fall from his horse, who likewise was called to conflict with the strife of tongues, and the manner of his death also noted as a judgment. Moses and Aaron must be stoned when the mixed multitude in Israel have not their wills; who, by the perverseness of their minds, become the more obdurate their errors by the solemn strokes of Providence,

1

||where ||

orton's reply to Apollonius, "in pure and elegant Latin," was published ra London in 1648.-H. See page 576.-H.

1661, Sept. 16th, says his quaint epitaph in Dorchester burying-ground; Boston Records say 17th. The discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that his death occurred in the night, "about one o'clock, A. M." of the 17th. See also Blake's Annals, pp. 21-2.-н.

which, if rightly improved, might lead them to repentance, which is the use thereof.

Much about the same time several persons were struck dead with thunder and lightning in the country. One James Peirce,' in Plymouth harbor; Captain Davenport, in the Castle near Boston, was in like manner slain, the window of the Castle being open against him, as he lay upon his bed, but no sign of battering any part of the building. This last happened in July 1665,2 the former in 1660.

3

And in the year 1666 three were in like manner suddenly killed in a storm of thunder, whereof one was named John Shirtliffe,5 that had a child in his hands, and was holding his wife in the other, both of whom escaped, when himself was struck dead.

In the year 1664 the country was smitten with a strange blasting and mildew in their wheat, by which, in many places, whole fields were quite consumed; which blasting hath continued more or less most of the following years.

In 1668 a spermaceti whale of fifty-five foot long was cast up in Winter Harbor, near Casco Bay. The like hath happened in other places of the country at several times, when, for want of skill to improve it, much gain hath slipped out of the hands of the finders.

In the spring of the year 1676 some of the magistrates and ministers of New England passing down the harbor in a lesser boat, were overrun by a bigger vessel, that steered just upon them for want of care, whereby most of them were in danger of perishing, yet were all preserved. Soon after which a rude fellow, called Irons, coming aboard a ship that lay in the same harbor before Boston, and entering into discourse about the said accident, replied to the company, that it had been no matter if they had been all drowned; but himself, presently after he left the ship, as he was about to deliver two maids (having none else beside in the boat with him,) aboard another vessel, missing his stroke with the oar, tipt himself over the side of the boat into the channel, and was irrecoverably lost. The other two shiftless sailor, not

"A young man that belonged to Boston." Davis's Morton, pp. 21s-5.-H. July 15th. Roger Clap was appointed, Aug. 10th, to succeest him in the command of the Castle. See Hutchinson, i. 232; Blake's Annass, p. 23; Clap's Memoirs, p. 32.-H. 3 At Marshfield.-H.

William, says Morton.-H.
The others, says Morton, were

being able to help themselves or him, yet were safely landed by the tide upon an island near by, so as their lives were thereby preserved. Let men take heed how they pass rash censures upon others, lest unawares they read their own destiny in pronouncing sentence upon their neighbors, and not be too forward, with the men of Miletum, to give an interpretation of the acts of Providence, the beginnings of which we may see, but cannot foresee the issue and intendment thereof.

1676. Three gentlemen and two women passing cross the harbor before Boston, (not above three quarters of a mile in breadth,) in a pleasure boat, by a sudden and very violent flaw of wind were overset in the midst of the channel, and but one man escaped, by his activity in swimming, or keeping fast hold of an oar that Providence put into his hand as a staff to pass over Jordan with, when the boisterous surges thereof began to rage and swell by the violence of the whirlwind. Everlasting arms do oft bear us up, when the waters are ready to overwhelm us, and the stream to go over our soul: let him that found safety never forget the mercy, lest a worse thing fall upon him.

In the same harbor, and within the compass of the same lustre, some merchants and gentlemen going aboard a ship that was then newly arrived, by the firing an half barrel of powder, through the carelessness of the gunner, were, with the hinder part of the ship, suddenly blown up, and divers of them sore wounded thereby, either losing their lives or their limbs, and two or three spoiled of both.

Many that go forth know not that they shall return, and the mariner that is ready to let fall his anchor knows not but it may be that fatal one which shall put an end to the navigation of his life; and many that go forth with earnest expectation, to meet their best friends, are sometimes unexpectedly found of their last enemy before they return. Within the compass of the same year, (which it seems Providence hath marked out as a year to be much observed by the people of New England,) Mr. Timothy Prout, Jun.,' master of a ship, having twelve or thirteen seamen in his company, sailing to

? Probably the son of Timothy Prout, a ship-carpenter of Boston.-H.