To him who, tired with the bondage of the old world, sought refuge in the new, these were glowing emblems of that liberty he so earnestly longed for. He hailed the land spread out before him, in all the magnificence of nature, as that which would realize his most chimerical ideas of happiness. Imagination added to its charms, and converted what was truly wild and beautiful into a paradise. The toils and dangers of the frontier life vanished away; and with a buoyant heart the wanderer adopted the unknown soil, alike ignorant and unmindful of the ills that would cluster around his future path. When want shall have been encountered in every form, sickness endured, famine driven from the door, and “hope, the star that leads the weary on,” delusive hope, shall whisper of bliss to come, he is destined to find in the savage tribes of the country, enemies more formidable than the evils of his condition. Hard fate! to survive the strife of the elements, to escape pestilence and danger only to perish by a relentless _human_ foe.
The settlement of York had enjoyed several years of prosperity, the effects of which were perceptible in a considerable degree of neatness and comfort about its dwellings. This appearance of thrift made it a surer mark for destruction. In January, 1692, a band of Abenakis and French burst upon this defenseless village, “offering its inhabitants captivity or death.” A terrible storm had just covered the earth with snow, to a depth which would have proved a barrier to any but these intrepid barbarians. They had walked on snow-shoes, the long distance from the basin of the St. John’s, the difficulties of the way only serving to increase their insatiable thirst for bloodshed. It was a serene winter’s evening, when the Abenaki braves surrounded their council-fire, a few miles from the doomed village, to determine upon their mode of assault. The purity of nature in these snowy solitudes strangely contrasted with the sanguinary deeds plotted there. She witnesses in silence the offences of her children. She beholds the members of the great brotherhood of man rise up and destroy each other, yet thunders no warning to the victim, nor hurls the fire of heaven upon the destroyer.