, (Nova-Scotia): this detachment having found two
huts of the Mickmaki-savages, in a remote corner, in which there were
five women and three children, (two of the women were big with child)
ransacked, pillaged, and burnt the two huts, and massacred the five
women and three children. It is to be observed, that the two pregnant
women were found with their bellies ripped open. An action which these
savages cannot forget, especially as at that time they made fair war
with the English. They have always looked on this deed as a singular
mark of the most unheard-of cruelty. [Who would not look on it in the
same light? But as no nation on earth is known to have more than ours
constitutionally, a horror for such barbarities, especially in cold
blood; it may be very easily presumed, that this fact was, if true,
committed by some of the savages themselves, without the knowledge of
the commander, or of any of the English troops.]

Five months before this action, one named _Danas_, or _David_, an
English privateer, having treacherously hoisted French colors in the
Streights of Fronsac, by means of a French deserter he had with him,
decoyed on board his vessel the chief of the savages of Cape-Breton,
called James Padanuque, with his whole family, whom he carried to
Boston, where he was clapped into a dungeon the instant he was landed;
from which he was only taken out to stifle him on board of a vessel, in
which they pretended to return him safe to Cape-Breton. His son, at that
time a boy of eight years of age, they will absolutely not release;
though, since their detention of that young savage, they have frequently
had prisoners sent back to them, without ransom, on condition of
restoring the young man to his country: but though they accepted the
condition, they never complied with it.

In the month of July, 1745, the same Danas, with the same success,
employed the same decoy on a savage-family, which could not get out of
their hands, but by escaping one night from their prisons.

About the same time one named Bartholomew Petitpas, an appointed
savage-linguist, was carried away prisoner to Boston. The savages have
several times demanded him in exchange for English prisoners they then
had in their hands, of whom two were officers, to whom they gave their
liberty, on condition of the Bostoners returning of Petitpas; whom,
however, they not only kept prisoner, but afterwards put to death.

In the same year, 1745, a missionary of the