overlooked the smouldering
dwellings of their foes. Here was enacted one of the wildest scenes of
barbarian bacchanals. Enormous fires were built, which, with roaring,
crackling flame, illumined for leagues around the sombre forest.
Fifteen hundred savages, delirious with victory, and prodigal of their
immense booty of oxen, cows, sheep, swine, calves, and fowl, reveled
in such a feast as they had hardly dreamed of before. Cattle were
roasted whole and eagerly devoured, with dances and with shouts which
made the welkin ring. With wastefulness characteristic of the
Indians, they took no thought for the morrow, but slaughtered the
animals around them in mere recklessness, and, when utterly satiated
with the banquet, the ground was left strewed with smoking and savory
viands sufficient to feed an army.

The night was cold; the ground was covered with snow, and a piercing
wind swept the icy eminence. Mrs. Rowlandson, holding her wounded and
moaning child in her arms, and with the group of wretched captives
around her, sat during the long hours of the dreadful night, shivering
with cold, appalled at the awful fate which had befallen her and her
family, and endeavoring in vain to soothe the anguish of her dying
daughter. "This was the dolefullest night," she exclaims in her
affecting narrative, "that my eyes ever saw. Oh, the roaring and
singing, dancing and yelling of those black creatures in the night,
which made the place a lively resemblance of hell."

The next morning the Indians commenced their departure into the
wilderness. Mrs. Rowlandson toiled along on foot, with her dying child
in her arms. The poor little girl was in extreme anguish, and often
cried out with pain. At length the mother became so exhausted that
she fell fainting to the ground. The Indians then placed her upon a
horse, and again gave her her child to carry. But the horse was
furnished with neither saddle nor bridle, and, in going down a steep
hill, stumbled, and they both were thrown over his neck. This incident
was greeted by the savages with shouts of laughter. To add to their
sufferings, it now began to snow. All the day long the storm wailed
through the tree-tops, and the snow was sifted down upon their path.
The woe-stricken captives toiled along until night, when the Indians
again encamped upon the open ground.

"And now," writes Mrs. Rowlandson, "I must sit in the snow
by a little fire, and a few boughs behind me, with my sick