nsiderable distance from each other.
From the mountains we have but too much reason to expect our dreadful
enemy, the Indians; and the wilderness is a harbour, where it is
impossible to find them. It is a door through which they can enter our
country at any time; and as they seem determined to destroy the whole
frontier, our fate cannot be far distant. From lake Champlain almost all
has been conflagrated, one after another. What renders these incursions
still more dreadful is, that they most commonly take place in the dead
of the night. We never go to our fields, but we are seized with an
involuntary fear, which lessens our strength, and weakens our labour. No
other subject of discourse intervenes between the different accounts,
which spread through the country, of successive acts of devastation; and
these, told in chimney corners, swell themselves in our affrighted
imaginations into the most terrific ideas. We never sit down, either to
dinner, or supper, but the least noise spreads a general alarm, and
prevents us from enjoying the comforts of our meals. The very appetite
proceeding from labour and peace of mind is gone! Our sleep is disturbed
by the most frightful dreams! Sometimes I start awake, as if the great
hour of danger was come; at other times the howling of our dogs seems to
announce the arrival of the enemy: we leap out of bed, and run to arms; my
poor wife, with panting bosom, and silent tears, takes leave of me, as if
we were to see each other no more. She snatches the youngest children from
their beds, who, suddenly awakened, increase by their innocent questions
the horrour of the dreadful moment! She tries to hide them in the cellar,
as if our cellar was inaccessible to the fire! I place all my servants at
the window, and myself at the door, where I am determined to perish. Fear
industriously increases every sound; we all listen; each communicates to
each other his fears and conjectures. We remain thus, sometimes for whole
hours, our hearts and our minds racked by the most anxious suspense! What
a dreadful situation! A thousand times worse than that of a soldier
engaged in the midst of a most severe conflict! Sometimes feeling the
spontaneous courage of a man, I seem to wish for the decisive minute; the
next instant a message from my wife, sent by one of the children, quite
unmans me. Away goes my courage, and I descend again into the deepest
despondency: at last, finding it was a false alarm, we return onc