thwestern corner of what is
now the State of Maine, extended along the coast in a feeble and broken
line from Kittery to Casco. Ten years of murderous warfare had almost
ruined them. East of the village of Wells little was left except one or
two forts and the so-called "garrisons," which were private houses
pierced with loopholes and having an upper story projecting over the
lower, so that the defenders could fire down on assailants battering the
door or piling fagots against the walls. A few were fenced with
palisades, as was the case with the house of Joseph Storer at the east
end of Wells, where an overwhelming force of French and Indians had been
gallantly repulsed in the summer of 1692.[44] These fortified houses
were, however, very rarely attacked, except by surprise and treachery.
In case of alarm such of the inhabitants as found time took refuge in
them with their families, and left their dwellings to the flames; for
the first thought of the settler was to put his women and children
beyond reach of the scalping-knife. There were several of these asylums
in different parts of Wells; and without them the place must have been
abandoned. In the little settlement of York, farther westward, there
were five of them, which had saved a part of the inhabitants when the
rest were surprised and massacred.

Wells was a long, straggling settlement, consisting at the beginning of
William and Mary's War of about eighty houses and log-cabins,[45] strung
at intervals along the north side of the rough track, known as the
King's Road, which ran parallel to the sea. Behind the houses were rude,
half-cleared pastures, and behind these again, the primeval forest. The
cultivated land was on the south side of the road; in front of the
houses, and beyond it, spread great salt-marshes, bordering the sea and
haunted by innumerable game-birds.

The settlements of Maine were a dependency of Massachusetts,--a position
that did not please their inhabitants, but which they accepted because
they needed the help of their Puritan neighbors, from whom they differed
widely both in their qualities and in their faults. The Indian wars that
checked their growth had kept them in a condition more than half
barbarous. They were a hard-working and hard-drinking race; for though
tea and coffee were scarcely known, the land flowed with New England
rum, which was ranked among the necessaries of life. The better sort
could read and write in a bungling way; bu