tomahawk from his side, and with this instrument of death killed and scalped him. When I beheld this second scene of inhuman butchery, I fell to the ground senseless, with my infant in my arms, it being under, and its little hands in the hair of my head. How long I remained in this state of insensibility I know not. "The first thing I remember was my raising my head from the ground, and my feeling myself exceedingly overcome with sleep. I cast my eyes around, and saw the scalp of my dear little boy, fresh bleeding from his head, in the hand of one of the savages, and sunk down to the earth again, upon my infant child. The first thing I remember, after witnessing this spectacle of woe, was the severe blows I was receiving from the hands of the savages, though at this time I was unconscious of the injury I was sustaining. After a severe castigation, they assisted me in getting up, and supported me when up. "In the morning one of them left us, to watch the trail or path we had come, to see if any white people were pursuing us. During the absence of the Indian who was the one that claimed me, the other, who remained with me, and who was the murderer of my last boy, took from his bosom his scalp and prepared a hoop, and stretched the scalp upon it. Those mothers who have not seen the like done by one of the scalps of their own children-and few, if any, ever had so much misery to endure will be able to form but faint ideas of the feelings which then harrowed up my soul!" While returning from this expedition, they fell in with the third war party from Quebec, and joining forces an attack was made on Casco. A part of the garrison having been destroyed, the remainder surrendered as prisoners of war. The terror produced by these attacks on the colonies not only helped to confirm the rumors and accounts of the implacable hatred of the French Roman Catholics against all whom they esteemed as heretics, but also roused up a determined spirit of vengeance. Accordingly delegates from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, met in New York, in May, 1690; and, following Leisler's suggestion, a plan for the conquest of Canada was re- 1690. solved upon. A fleet and army were to sail from Boston to attack Quebec, and nine hundred men were to be raised in Connecticut and New York, to march by land against Montreal. Sir William Phipps, a man of little competency but considerable previous success, having visited and plundered Acadie with a small fleet and some seven or eight hundred men, was placed in command of the expedition by sea. It consisted of thirty-two vessels and two thousand men, the larger part of which were pressed into the service. Three ships sent by Leisler from New York joined this enterprise. The land forces were commanded by Winthrop, son of the late governor of Connecticut, Milbourne acting as commissary. The result of both expeditions was singularly mortifying. Schuyler and the Iroquois who had pressed forward to Montreal were repulsed by the ef CH. I.] FAILURE OF THE ATTACK ON QUEBEC. News having been brought to Frontenac by an Indian runner from Piscataqua of the meditated attack upon Quebec, the energetic old soldier reached that stronghold just three days before the fleet, under Phipps, made its appearance before the walls. Without pilots or charts, it had been nine weeks making its way up the St. Lawrence. Phipps had calculated on surprising the place, and found it, almost impregnable by nature, already placed in a posture of defence by the vigor and activity of the veteran Frenchman. Chagrined as he was, he determined to put a bold front upon the matter, and accordingly summoned Frontenac to surrender in the name of King William of England, demanding his positive answer within an hour. The British officer who bore the summons summons was ushered blindfold into the presence of Frontenac and his associates in the council-room of the castle of Quebec. "Read your message," said Frontenac. Having obeyed, the Englishman laid his watch on the table with these words "It is now ten: I wait your answer for an hour." Enraged at his presumption, the old soldier answered, "I do not acknowledge King William, and I well know that the Prince of Orange is an 155 usurper, who has violated the most sacred rights of blood and religion." The British officer requested that this answer should be put in writing. "I will answer your master at the cannon's mouth," replied the exasperated Frenchman, "that he may learn that a man of my rank is not to be summoned in this manner." Phipps finding that nothing could be accomplished, and that winter was now approaching, abandoned the enterprise with shame and disappointment; after losing several of his ships among the dangerous shoals of the St. Lawrence, he arrived at Boston with his damaged fleet. On his arrival, in December, the treasury was empty, and as the troops threatened a riot, the colonial government found it necessary to meet the emergency by issuing the first paper money ever used in the English colonies. (The total amount issued was about $130,000.) Frontenac wrote home to France in triumph, and to commemorate his brave defence of Canada, the king ordered a medal to be struck with this inscription : this inscription: "Francia in novo orbe victrix: Kebeca Liberata.-A. D. M.D.C.X.c," while a church was built in the lower town, and dedicated to "Notre Dame de la Victoire.' ,, Not long after a French fleet restored Acadie to its original possessors. It would seem as if this desolating struggle were of itself calamity enough for New York and Massachusetts, and yet both these colonies were witnesses of tragic scenes and events, even more deplorable than the sanguinary ravages of combined French and Indian ferocity. The tragic end of Leisler's career we have already narrated, when there was 1692. poured out the blood of the first political martyr on the soil of New York. Massachusetts, worn down by her previous military efforts, was exposed to frequent incursions. Sir William Phipps, in 1692, returned from England, where he had gone to solicit an expedition against Quebec, with the new charter of Massachusetts and his commission as governor. In some respects the charter was gratifying, and in others not at all so. The extent of the province was very considerably increased; the governor was to be appointed by the crown with a veto power on the acts of the General Court; to the king was reserved the power of annulling any law within three years after its passage; and toleration was secured to all except papists, thus giving a death-blow to the theocratic absolutism which had so long prevailed. Plymouth was joined to Massachusetts, and New Hampshire separated from it, in both cases contrary to their wishes. Phipps found on his arrival not only many and severe trials awaiting him, in consequence of the continued inroads from Canada and the heavy expenses of the war, but alas, other and more terrible trials, the very account of which appears to be almost incredible. A belief in witchcraft was at this date very prevalent in England, and it was adjudged a capital offence, particularly by a statute of James I., who had himself written a treatise on the art of detecting witches. During the Long Parliament, a vast number of persons fell victims to the popular delusion. Shortly after the Restoration, Sir Mat thew Hale, revered no less in the colonies than the mother country for piety and wisdom, had adjudged to death two poor old women in Suffolk, for this supposed crime. Witch stories and printed narratives were widely current. It need not excite surprise, then, that a people like that of New England, whose temperament was naturally serious, to whom every incident of life was looked upon as a special providence, and who were filled with a large measure of faith in spiritual influences and manifestations, should have been ready to embrace a delusion of this kind. Notwithstanding the general impression in favor of the reality of witchcraft, it had been many years now since any execution had taken place 1658. for this offence. In 1688, however, while Andros was still governor, four children of pious parents in Boston suddenly began to display every appearance of having been bewitched. The eldest, a girl of thirteen, had charged an Irish servant girl with stealing, a charge which was bitterly resented by the girl's mother. Soon after, to revenge herself, as it would seem, upon the old Irishwoman, the girl and three younger children took occasion to bark like dogs, or purr like cats, to scream and shout, or appear to be deaf, blind, or dumb. Cotton Mather, a man of multitudinous learning, but very vain, credulous, and fanatically inclined, in company with other ministers, kept a day of fasting and prayer, and succeeded in relieving the youngest child. The others persevered and accused the old woman of bewitching them. She CH. I.] THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. was apprehended and put on trial, and though it seems almost certain that she was more than half crazy or silly, yet the physicians having certified her sanity she was condemned and executed. Cotton Mather took the eldest girl home to his house, where she continued to act in the same extraordinary manner. The credulous divine set himself seriously to study this subject, and then put forth a sermon and narrative under the title of "Memorable Providences relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions." "There are multitudes of Sadducees, in our days," says the recommendatory preface, signed by the other four ministers of Boston, "and we shall come, in the opinion of these mighty acute philosophers, to credit nothing but what we can see and feel. How much this fond opinion hath gotten ground in this debauched age is awfully observable. God is therefore pleased, besides his witness borne to this truth in sacred writ, to suffer devils to do such things in the world, as shall stop the mouths of gainsayers and extort a confession from them." The book was republished in England and Richard Baxter even was led to preface it and give in his adhesion to the truth of these wonderful stories. The girl who had given rise to all this does not seem to have attracted attention for any length of time, and, so far as appears, became soon after very much like other perverse and troublesome children of her age. But the matter was by no means to end here. The seed had been sown and the fruit was not long in coming to maturity. Nearly four years after the 157 case noted above, three young girls in the family of Mr. Parris, minis- 1692. ter of Salem-now Danversbegan to act in a way which, the doctors declared, showed that they were bewitched. Tituba, an old Indian servant, who had used some superstitious rites to discover the witch, was herself accused by the children, and being well scourged by her master, confessed herself the guilty agent. A fast day was appointed by the neighboring ministers, among whom appeared Cotton Mather, glorying in the confirmation of his previous statements. The excitement rapidly spread-the girls accused others--the ministers implicitly received their statements. The divisions among the people of Parris's congregation, if indeed they did not prompt to accusations wilfully false, at least facilitated the belief of them. Parris selected for his Sunday's text the words, “Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" At this a sister of one of the accused, being offended, rose up and left the place, and was herself immediately denounced and sent to prison as an accomplice. Matters began to look very serious. So much importance was attached to what had taken place, that in April the deputy governor-this was before Phipps's arrival-proceeded to Salem, and with five other magistrates held a court in the meeting-house. Parris, acting as both clerk and accuser, was very diligent in hunting out witches and suggesting fresh accusations. The afflicted were placed on one hand, and the accused on the other, the latter being held by the arms lest they should The new governor, who was very considerably under the influence of Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather, proceeded vigorously in the work which he found ready to his hands. He put the prisoners in irons, and organized a special court for the trial of cases, with Stoughton, the lieutenant governor as president. In the beginning of June, the court assembled, and in a few days ordered for hanging an old woman, convicted on evidence such as we have noted above, evidence inflict torment on the former, who declared themselves haunted by their spectres, and solicited to subscribe a covenant with the devil, and on their refusal pricked and injured. The husband of Elizabeth Procter, one of the accused, having boldly accompanied her into court, the possessed cried out upon him also. "There is Goodman Procter going to take up Mrs. Pope's feet!" cries one of them, and "her feet are immediately taken up." "He is going to Mrs. Pope !" cries another, and "straightway Mrs. Pope falls into fits."-if the word be not prostituted by this One Bishop, a farmer, had brought use of it-which to people in the posround a possessed servant by the appli- session of their senses, seems to be the cation of a horsewhip, and had rashly perfection of nonsense and absurdity. hinted that he could with the like At a second session of the court, June remedy cure the whole company of the 30th, five women were tried and conafflicted. For this scoffing, as it was victed. One of these, Rebecca Nurse, a denounced, he soon found himself in woman of excellent character, was acprison. Between fanaticism and terror quitted at first, but at the outcry of the the minds of the accused appear to accuser, was condemned and hung with have become unhinged; many, stag- the rest. Some few dared to resist and gered by the results ascribed to their hurl defiance at their accusers. "You agency, for a while believed themselves, are a witch, you know you are!" said it would seem, to be what they were minister Noyes to Sarah Good. You called; and others, finding no safety are a liar!" was the indignant retort; but in confession, gave fraudulent and “and if you take my life God will give circumstantial narratives of interviews you blood to drink!" But most of with the devil, and of riding through those accused made confession or set the air on a broomstick; and these afloat new accusations. confessions, reacting upon minds already fully persuaded of the reality of the crime, tended to fortify them still further in their delusion, and to give | birth to a still widening circle of accusations and confessions. By the time that Governor Phipps arrived, there were nearly a hundred persons already in prison, and the excitement was still rapidly on the increase. At the third session of the court, early in August, six prisoners were tried and convicted, the husband of Elizabeth Procter and John Willard being of the number. The conduct of Willard and Procter, at the time of execution, was well calculated to arouse a maddened and deluded community to reflection. The case of Burroughs is very remarkable. He was himself a |