th the report of his mission.[656]

[Footnote 656: _Journal of Christian Frederic Post, July, August,
September, 1758._]

As the result of it, a great convention of white men and red was held at
Easton in October. The neighboring provinces had been asked to send
their delegates, and some of them did so; while belts of invitation were
sent to the Indians far and near. Sir William Johnson, for reasons best
known to himself, at first opposed the plan; but was afterwards led to
favor it and to induce tribes under his influence to join in the grand
pacification. The Five Nations, with the smaller tribes lately admitted
into their confederacy, the Delawares of the Susquehanna, the Mohegans,
and several kindred bands, all had their representatives at the meeting.
The conferences lasted nineteen days, with the inevitable formalities of
such occasions, and the weary repetition of conventional metaphors and
long-winded speeches. At length, every difficulty being settled, the
Governor of Pennsylvania, in behalf of all the English, rose with a
wampum belt in his hand, and addressed the tawny congregation thus: "By
this belt we heal your wounds; we remove your grief; we take the hatchet
out of your heads; we make a hole in the earth, and bury it so deep that
nobody can dig it up again." Then, laying the first belt before them, he
took another, very large, made of white wampum beads, in token of peace:
"By this belt we renew all our treaties; we brighten the chain of
friendship; we put fresh earth to the roots of the tree of peace, that
it may bear up against every storm, and live and nourish while the sun
shines and the rivers run." And he gave them the belt with the request
that they would send it to their friends and allies, and invite them to
take hold also of the chain of friendship. Accordingly all present
agreed on a joint message of peace to the tribes of the Ohio.[657]

[Footnote 657: _Minutes of Conferences at Easton, October, 1758._]

Frederic Post, with several white and Indian companions, was chosen to
bear it. A small escort of soldiers that attended him as far as the
Alleghany was cut to pieces on its return by a band of the very warriors
to whom he was carrying his offers of friendship; and other tenants of
the grim and frowning wilderness met the invaders of their domain with
inhospitable greetings. "The wolves made a terrible music this night,"
he writes at his first bivouac after leaving Loyalhannon. When he
rea