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 enterprize, 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 governour of New York, upon pretence of an or der at that very time newly come from the said governour, 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 riv. er. Being thither brought, it appeared he had little to say to them, and at last, by the intercession of Capt. 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 rumours and other false suggestions, sufficient to have diverted the most constant undertakers from their purpose, had they not been carried with an invinci ble 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; Capt. Salisbury, the governour there, discour aging a Frenchman which they had hired from under. taking that service, so as they were forced to agree with a Mohawk Indian to conduct them to the first lake, which was sixteen leages 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 lakes, and then carrying their 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 inte rim; 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 wig. wam, 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 his 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 governour, 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 two hundred pounds, which was gathered by contribution among the English.

CHAP. LXXV.

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 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 Saviour 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. 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

of the same persuasion in either Englands, he was highly applauded both for the acumen of his judgment, and candour 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, where 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, vell putant superesse, quare nec ita commodè ab iis tractatur." The like testimony is given him by some of our own nation, even of the epis. copal 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 labours: 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 publick employment in England with the honoured 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.

In the year 1665, Mr. Atherton, the chief military of ficer 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 judgMoses and Aaron must be stoned when the mixed multitude in Israel have not their will; who by the perverseness of their minds become the more obdurate in their errours by the solemn strokes of Providence,

which if righly 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 harbour; Capt. 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, the former in 1660.

And in the year 1666, three were in like manner suddenly killed in a storm of thunder, whereof one was named John Shurtleff, that had a child in his hand, 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 feet long was cast up in Winter Harbour, 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 magis trates and ministers of New England passing down the harbour 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 harbour 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 so was irrecoverably lost. The other two shiftless sailors, not