from his house, he was unable to make a choice, or to leave any one of the number. He therefore determined to take his lot with them, and to defend them from their murderers, or die by their side. A body of the Indians pursued, and came up with him, and from near distances fired at him and his little company. He returned the fire, and retreated alternately. For more than a mile he kept so resolute a face to his enemy, retiring in the rear of his charge; returning the fire of the savages so often, and with so good success, and sheltered so effectually his terrified companions, that he finally lodged them all safe from the pursuing butchers, in a distant house. When it is remembered how numerous his assailants were, how bold, when an overmatch for their enemies, how active, and what excellent marksmen, a devout mind will consider the hand of Providence as unusually visible in the preservation of this family.

Another party of the Indians entered the house immediately after Mr. Dustan had quitted it, and found Mrs. Dustan and her nurse, who was attempting to fly with the infant in her arms. Mrs. Dustan they ordered to rise instantly; and, before she could completely dress herself, obliged her and her companion to quit the house, after they had plundered it, and set it on fire. In company with several other captives, they began their march into the wilderness, she feeble, sick, terrified beyond measure, partly clad, one of her feet bare, and the season utterly unfit for comfortable travelling. The air was chilly and keen, and the earth covered, alternately, with snow and deep mud. Her conductors were unfeeling, insolent, and revengeful. Murder was their glory, and torture their sport. Her infant was in her nurse's arms; and infants were the customary victims of savage barbarity.

The company had proceeded but a short distance, when an Indian, thinking it an incumbrance, took the child out of the nurse's arms, and dashed its head against a tree. What were then the feelings of the mother?

Such of the other captives as began to be weary, and to lag, the Indians tomahawked. The slaughter was not an act of revenge nor of cruelty. It was a mere

convenience; and effort so familiar, as not even to excite an emotion.

Feeble as Mrs. Dustan was, both she and her nurse sustained, without yielding, the fatigue of the journey. Their intense distress for the death of the child, and of their companions, anxiety for those whom they had left behind, and unceasing terror for themselves, raised these unhappy women to such a degree of vigour, that, notwithstanding their fatigue, their exposure to cold, their sufferance of hunger, and their sleeping on damp ground under an inclement sky, they finished an expedition of about one hundred and fifty miles, without losing their spirits, or injuring their health.

The wigwam, to which they were conducted, and which belonged to the savage, who had claimed them as his property, was inhabited by twelve persons. In the month of April this family set out with their captives for an Indian settlement, still more remote, and informed them, that when they arrived at the settlement, they must be stripped, scourged, and run the gauntlet, naked, between two files of Indians, containing the whole number found in the settlement; for such, they declared, was the standing custom of their nation. This information, you will believe, made a deep impression on the minds of the captive women; and led them, irresistibly, to devise all the possible means of escape. On the 31st of the same month, very early in the morning, Mrs. Dustan, while the Indians were asleep, having awaked her nurse, and fellow prisoner (a youth taken some time before from Worcester), dispatched, with the assistance of her companions, ten of the twelve Indians. The other two escaped. With the scalps of these savages they returned through the wilderness; and, having arrived safely at Haverhill, and afterwards at Boston, received a handsome reward for their intrepid conduct from the legislature.

Whether all their sufferings, and all the danger of suffering anew, justified this slaughter, may probably be questioned by some exact moralist. Precedents innumerable, and of high authority, may indeed be urged in behalf of these captives; but the moralist will equally question the rectitude of these. Few persons, however,

agonising as Mrs. Dustan did, under the evils which she had already suffered, and in the full apprehension of those which she was destined to suffer, would have been able to act the part of nice casuists; and fewer still, perhaps, would have exercised her intrepidity. That she herself approved of the conduct, which was applauded by the magistrates and divines of the day, in the cool hours of deliberation, cannot be doubted. The truth is, the season of Indian invasion, burning, butchering, cap. tivity, threatening, and torture, is an unfortunate time for nice investigation and critical moralizing. A wife, who had just seen her house burnt, her infant dashed against a tree, and her companions coldly murdered one by one; who supposed her husband, and her remaining children, to have shared the same fate; who was threatened with torture, and indecency more painful than torture; and who did not entertain a doubt, that the threatening would be fulfilled; would probably feel no necessity, when she found it in her power to dispatch the authors of her sufferings, of asking questions concerning any thing but the success of the enterprise.

But, whatever may be thought of the rectitude of her conduct, that of her husband is in every view honourable. A finer succession of scenes for the pencil was hardly ever presented to the eye, than is furnished by the efforts of this gallant man, with their interesting appendages. The artist must be destitute indeed of talents, who could not engross every heart, as well as every eye, by exhibitions of this husband and father flying to rescue his wife, her infant, and her nurse, from the approaching horde of savages, attempting on his horse to select from this flying family the child which he was the least able to spare, and unable to make the selection; facing, in their rear, the horde of hell hounds; alternately and sternly retreating behind his inestimable charge, and fronting the enemy again, receiving and returning their fire, and presenting himself equally as a barrier against murderers, and a shelter to the flight of innocence and anguish. In the back ground of some or other of these pictures might be exhibited, with power. ful impression, the kindled dwelling, the sickly mother, the terrified nurse, with the new-born infant in her

arms, and the furious natives surrounding them, driving them forward, and displaying the trophies of savage victory, and the insolence of savage triumph.

INDIAN CRUELTY, AND THE INTREPIDITY OF MRS. HEARD.

(The same)

FROM the settlement of Dover until the year 1675, the planters appear to have lived, generally, in peace with the savages. In Philip's war, several inroads were made upon the scattered settlements within the township. Some of the inhabitants were killed, and a few houses destroyed. In the year 1689, the Indians killed and captivated more than fifty of these people, and burnt some of their houses, together with the mills in the neighbourhood. On this occasion Major Waldron,

During the concealment and abode at Hadley, of the two Proscribed Judges of Charles 1st. the most famous and memorable Indian war of New England took place. This was called King Philip's war. Philip was a powerful sachem, and resided at Mount Hope, in Rhode Island; where he was soon after this war put to death by Colonel Church. All the new frontier towns of New England were attacked, and Hadley was then exposed as a place of that description. The time the savages fixed upon to make the assault was while the inhabitants were assembled in the meeting-house to observe a fast-day; but fortunately it had been some time a custom for the men to attend public worship, armed. Had the town been taken, the discovery of Whalley and Goffe would have been inevitable. The men took up their arms, and attempted a defence, but were soon thrown into confusion, when (as it is related to this day) a stranger suddenly appeared among them, of venerable aspect, and different in his apparel from the inhabitants; who rallied, and disposing them in the best military manner, led them to the charge, routed the Indians, and saved the town. In the moment of victory their deliverer vanished. The inhabitants,

a celebrated partizan, of great bravery and reputation, who had been president of New-Hampshire, was betrayed and murdered. The Indians were professedly at peace with the English. With every appearance of good-will, a sachem, named Mesandowit, and two Indian women, applied to Major Waldron for permission to lodge in his house, which was fortified and garrisoned. They were accordingly admitted and hospitably entertained. The same night, while the family were asleep, these fiends opened the door. A body of their warriors, as had been preconcerted, immediately rushed in and forced the room in which this venerable champion, then eighty years of age, lay. He seized his sword and drove them out of the room. But one of them, who had stolen behind him, knocked hini down with a hatchet. They then seated him in an elbow-chair upon a table; cut him across the breast and belly; severed his nose and ears, and forced them into his mouth; and finally, placing his sword under him as he fell, terminated his gallant and useful life. To finish the tragedy, they killed or captivated the rest of the family, and set the house on fire.

At this time, a Mrs. Heard, together with a daughter, three sons, and several other persons, was returning from Portsmouth. When they came near to Dover, they were alarmed by the noise of the firing, and the war-whoop. The anguish which they felt for their families induced them to advance farther up the river, and land onefourth of a mile from Major Waldron's garrison. When they had become within sight of Mrs. Heard's house,

unable to account for the phenomenon, believed that they had been commanded by an angel, sent from heaven for their protection.

This supposed angel was Goffe, who never before ventured from his concealment. Whalley was then in a state of second childhood. Such was their caution to prevent a discovery of their retreat, that the inhabitants never knew them, or who it was that so ably led them against the savages, until they both had paid the debt of nature.-Janson's Stranger in America.