n succeeded in proving their
perfect innocence, but the magistrates had great difficulty in saving
their lives from the fury of the mob, who thirsted for Indian blood, and
both minister and major were insulted and reviled, so that Gookin said on
the bench that it was not safe for him to walk in the streets; and when
Eliot met with a dangerous boat accident, wishes were expressed that he
had been drowned.

Natick was looked upon with so much distrust and aversion that
Government, fearing occasions of bloodshed, decided that the inhabitants
must be removed to Deer Island. On the 7th of October a great fast-day,
with prayer and preaching, had been held, and fierce and bitter
entreaties had been uttered against the Indian Sachems, especially
Philip. One wonders whether Eliot--now seventy-one years old--felt it
come home to him that he knew not what spirit he had been of when he had
prayed for the death of the Moorish prince. It must have been a heart-
breaking time for the aged man, to see the spot founded in so much hope
and prayer, the fruit of so much care and meditation, thus broken up and
ruined, and when he was too old to do the like work over again. At the
end of that month of October, Captain Thomas Prentiss, with a party of
horse and five or six carts, arrived at Natick, and made known the
commands of the Government. Sadly but patiently the Indians submitted.
Two hundred men, women, and children were made to get together all they
could carry, and marched from their homes to the banks of the Charles
River. Here, at a spot called the Pines, Mr. Eliot met them, and they
gathered round him to hear his words of comfort, as he exhorted them to
meek patience, resignation, and steadiness to the faith. The scene was
exceedingly affecting, as the white-haired pastor stood by the river-side
beneath the tall pines, with his dark-skinned, newly reclaimed children
about him, clinging to him for consolation, but neither murmuring nor
struggling, only praying and encouraging one another. Captain Prentiss
and his soldiers were deeply touched; but at midnight, when the tide was
high enough, three large boats bore the Indians over to Deer Island. Here
they were, transplanted from their comfortable homes in the beginning of
a long and very severe winter; but, well divided by the river from all
suspicion of doing violence, they fared better than the praying Indians
of the new town of Wamesit. A barn full of hay and corn had be