ty, which they could not comprehend.

Amid all the discord and threats, the New England colonies continued to
advance in population, and their villages assumed the dignity of towns.
It is difficult to form exact opinions as to the population of the
several colonies in this early period of their history. The colonial
accounts are incomplete, and those furnished by emissaries from England
are grossly false. The best estimate that can be obtained gives to New
England, in 1675, fifty-five thousand souls. Of these it is supposed
that Plymouth contained not less than seven thousand, Connecticut,
nearly fourteen thousand, Massachusetts proper, more than twenty-two
thousand, and Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, each perhaps four
thousand. The settlements were chiefly by agricultural communities,
planted near the seaside, from New Haven to Pemaquid. The beaver trade,
more than traffic in lumber and fish, had produced the village beyond
the Piscataqua; yet in Maine, as in New Hampshire, there was "a great
trade in deal boards."

A sincere attempt had been made to convert the natives and win them to
the regular industry of civilized life. The ministers of the early
emigration, fired with a zeal as pure as it was fervent, longed to
redeem those "wrecks of humanity," by planting in their hearts the seeds
of conscious virtue, and gathering them into permanent villages. No
pains were spared to teach them to read and write, and in a short time
a larger proportion of the Massachusetts Indians could do so, than the
inhabitants of Russia fifty years ago. Some of them wrote and spoke
English tolerably well. Foremost among these early missionaries, the
morning star of missionary enterprise, was John Elliot, whose
benevolence amounted to the inspiration of genius. He wrote an Indian
grammar, and translated the whole of the Bible into the Massachusetts
dialect. His actions, his thoughts, his desires, all wore the hue of
disinterested love.

The frown was on the Indian's brow, however. Clouds were rising in the
horizon. Since the Pequod war, there had been no great Indian uprising;
but there was a general feeling of uneasiness which seemed to portend a
general outbreak. The New Englanders were to feel the effects of it in
all its fury. Neither Whalley nor Goffe had been seen since the day that
Robert Stevens assisted the latter to make his escape.

The Indians, whose cupidity had been aroused by English gold, had
searched the forest