strife with Massachusetts, in which the popular mind was so deeply interested that, to this day, the figure of a codfish is suspended in the hall of its representatives.

Thus France, bounding its territory next New England by the Kennebec, claimed New England east of that river, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Labrador, and Hudson's Bay; and, to assert and defend this boundless region, Acadia and its dependencies counted but nine hundred French inhabitants. The missionaries, swaying the mind of the Abenakis, gave the hope of savage allies.

Aug. 25.

On the declaration of war by France against Eng-1689. land, Count Frontenac, once more governor of Can- June 25. ada, was charged to recover Hudson's Bay; to protect Acadia; and, by a descent from Canada, to assist a fleet from France in making conquest of New York. Of that province De Callières was, in advance, appointed governor; the English Catholics were to be permitted to remain; other inhabitants, to be sent into Pennsyl- Sept. 25. vania or New England. But, on reaching the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Frontenac learned the capture of Montreal. On the twenty-fifth of August, the Iroquois, fifteen hundred in number, reached the Isle of Montreal, at La Chine, at break of day, and, finding all asleep, set fire to the houses, and engaged in one general massacre. In less than an hour, two hundred people met death under forms too horrible for description. Approaching Montreal, they made an equal number of prisoners; and, though they never were masters of the city, they roamed unmolested over the island till the middle of October. In the moment of consternation, Denonville ordered Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, to be evacuated and razed. From Three Rivers to Mackinaw, there remained not one French town, and hardly even a post.

De Sainte

1689.

In Hudson's Bay, a band of brothers. Hélène and D'Iberville-sustained the honor of French arms. They were Canadians, sons of Charles Lemoine, an early emigrant from Normandy, whose numerous offspring gave to American history the name of Bienville. Passing across the ridge that divides the rivers of

Hudson's Bay from those of the St. Lawrence, amidst marvellous adventures, by hardy resolution and daring presence of mind, they had, in 1686, conquered the posts of the English from Fort Rupert to Albany River, leaving them no trading-house in the bay, except that of which, in 1685, they had dispossessed the French at Port Nelson. That post remained to the English; but the sons of Lemoine intercepted the forces which were sent to proclaim William of Orange monarch over jagged cliffs and deep ravines never warmed by a sunbeam, — over the glaciers and mountains, the rivers and trading-houses in Hudson's Bay. Exulting in their success, they returned to Quebec.

1689.

In the east, blood was first shed at Cocheco, where, June 27. thirteen years before, an unsuspecting party of three hundred and fifty Indians had been taken prisoners, and shipped for Boston, to be sold into foreign slavery. The memory of the treachery was indelible; and the Indian emissaries of Castin easily excited the tribe of Penacook to revenge. On the evening of the twenty-seventh of June, two squaws repaired to the house of Richard Waldron, and the octogenarian magistrate bade them lodge on the floor. At night, they rise, unbar the gates, and summon their companions, who at once enter every apartment. "What now? what now?" shouted the brave old man; and, seizing his sword, he defended himself till he fell stunned by a blow from a hatchet. They then placed him in a chair on a table in his own hall: "Judge Indians again!" thus they mocked him; and, making sport of their debts to him as a trader, they drew gashes across his breast, and each one cried: "Thus I cross out my account!" At last, the mutilated man reeled from faintness, and died in the midst of tortures. The Indians, burning his house and others that stood near it, having killed three-andtwenty, returned to the wilderness with twenty-nine captives.

August comes. The women and children, at the Penobscot village of Canibas, have confessed their sins to the priest Thury, that so they may uplift purer hands, while their fathers and brothers proceed against the heretics; in the

little chapel, the missionary and his neophytes have estab lished a perpetual rosary during the expedition, and even the hours of repast do not interrupt the edifying exercise. A hundred warriors, purified also by confession, in a fleet of bark canoes, steal out of the Penobscot, and paddle towards Pemaquid. Thomas Gyles and his sons are at work, in the sunny noontide, making hay: a volley whistles by them; a short encounter ends in their defeat. "I ask no favor," says the wounded father, "but leave to pray with my children." Pale with the loss of blood, he commends his children to God, then bids them farewell for this world, yet in the hope of seeing them in a better. The Indians, restless at delay, use the hatchet, and, for burial, heap boughs over his body. After a defence of two days, the stockade at Pemaquid capitulates; and the warriors return to Penobscot to exult over their prisoners. Other inroads were made by the Penobscot and St. John Indians, so that the settlements east of Falmouth were deserted.

In September, commissioners from New England held a conference with the Mohawks at Albany, soliciting an alliance. "We have burnt Montreal," said they; "we are allies of the English; we will keep the chain unbroken. But they refused to invade the Abenakis.

Had Frontenac never left New France, Montreal would probably have been safe. He now used every effort to win the Five Nations to neutrality or to friendship. To recover esteem in their eyes; to secure to Durantaye, the commander at Mackinaw, the means of treating with the Hurons and the Ottawas, it was resolved by Frontenac to make a triple descent into the English provinces.

Jan.

From Montreal, a party of one hundred and ten, 1600. composed of French and of the Christian Iroquois, having De Mantet and Sainte Hélène as leaders, and D'Iberville, the hero of Hudson's Bay, as a volunteer, - for twoand-twenty days waded through snows and morasses, through forests and across rivers, to Schenectady. The village had given itself calmly to slumber: at its open and unguarded gates the invaders entered silently, and Feb. 8. having, just before midnight, reached its heart, the

war-whoop was raised dreadful sound to the mothers of that place and their children!—and the dwellings set on fire. Of the inhabitants, some, half-clad, fled through the snows to Albany; sixty were massacred, of whom seventeen were children and ten were Africans. For such ends had the hardships of a winter's expedition, frost, famine, and frequent deaths, been encountered.

Mar. 27.

The party from Three Rivers, led by Hertel de Rouville, consisting of fifty-two persons, of whom three were 1690. his sons and two his nephews, surprised the settlement at Salmon Falls, on the Piscataqua, and, after a bloody engagement, burned houses, barns, and cattle in the stalls, and took fifty-four prisoners, chiefly women and children. The prisoners were laden by the victors with spoils from their own homes. Robert Rogers, rejecting his burden, was bound by the Indians to a tree, and dry leaves kindled about him, yet in such heaps as would burn but slowly. Mary Furguson, a girl of fifteen, burst into tears. from fatigue, and was scalped forthwith. Mehetabel Goodwin lingered apart in the snow to lull her infant to sleep, lest its cries should provoke the savages: angry at her delay, her master struck the child against a tree, and hung it among the branches. The infant of Mary Plaisted was thrown into the river, that, eased of her burden, she might walk faster.

Returning from this expedition, Hertel met the warparty, under Portneuf, from Quebec, and, with them and a re-enforcement from Castin, made a successful attack on the fort and settlement in Casco Bay.

Meantime, danger taught the colonies the necessity of union. In March, 1690, the idea of a colonial "congress,' familiar from the times when wars with the Susquehannahs brought agents of Virginia and Maryland to New York, arose at Albany. On the eighteenth of that month, letters were despatched from the general court of Massachusetts "to the several governors of the neighboring colonies, desiring them to appoint commissioners to meet at Rhode Island on the last Monday in April next, there to advise and conclude on suitable methods in assisting each other for

the safety of the whole land, and that the governor of New York be desired to signify the same to Maryland, and parts adjacent." Leisler heartily favored the design; the place of meeting was changed to New York; and there, on the first day of May, commissioners from Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New York, each of which had at that time a self-constituted government, came together by their own independent acts. In that assembly, it was resolved to attempt the conquest of Canada by sending an army over Lake Champlain, against Montreal, while Massachusetts should attack Quebec with a fleet. Preparing the forms of independence and union, the colonies which were present in the meeting not only provided for order and tranquillity at home, but of themselves planned the invasion of Acadia and Canada.

1690.

Acadia was soon conquered: before the end of May, Sir William Phips sailed to Port Royal, which readily surrendered. New England became mistress of the coast to the eastern extremity of Nova Scotia, though the native hordes of that wilderness still retained their affection for the French.

While the people of New England and New York were concerting the grand enterprise of the reduction of Canada, the French had, by their successes, inspired the savages with respect, and renewed their intercourse with the west. But, in August, Montreal became alarmed. An Indian announces that an army of Iroquois and English was busy in constructing canoes on Lake George; and immediately Frontenac himself placed the hatchet in the hands of his allies, and, with the tomahawk in his own grasp, old as he was, chanted the war-song and danced the war-dance. On the twentyninth of August, it was said that an army had reached Lake Champlain; but, on the second of September, the spies could observe no trail. The projected attack by land was defeated by divisions; Leisler charging Winthrop of Connecticut with treachery, and the forces from Connecticut blaming Milborne, the commissary of New York, for the insufficiency of the supplies.

But just as Frontenac, in the full pride of security, Oct. 10. was preparing to return to Quebec, he heard that an