hing vitality of the woman carried her to the end of the
frightful journey. A Frenchman bought her from the Indians, and she was
finally ransomed by her husband.

By far the most dangerous and harassing attacks were those of small
parties skulking under the edge of the forest, or lying hidden for days
together, watching their opportunity to murder unawares, and vanishing
when they had done so. Against such an enemy there was no defence. The
Massachusetts government sent a troop of horse to Portsmouth, and
another to Wells. These had the advantage of rapid movement in case of
alarm along the roads and forest-paths from settlement to settlement;
but once in the woods, their horses were worse than useless, and they
could only fight on foot. Fighting, however, was rarely possible; for on
reaching the scene of action they found nothing but mangled corpses and
burning houses.

The best defence was to take the offensive. In September Governor Dudley
sent three hundred and sixty men to the upper Saco, the haunt of the
Pequawket tribe; but the place was deserted. Major, now Colonel, March
soon after repeated the attempt, killing six Indians, and capturing as
many more. The General Court offered L40 for every Indian scalp, and one
Captain Tyng, in consequence, surprised an Indian village in midwinter
and brought back five of these disgusting trophies. In the spring of
1704 word came from Albany that a band of French Indians had built a
fort and planted corn at Coos meadows, high up the river Connecticut. On
this, one Caleb Lyman with five friendly Indians, probably Mohegans, set
out from Northampton, and after a long march through the forest,
surprised, under cover of a thunderstorm, a wigwam containing nine
warriors,--bound, no doubt, against the frontier. They killed seven of
them; and this was all that was done at present in the way of reprisal
or prevention.[50]

The murders and burnings along the borders were destined to continue
with little variety and little interruption during ten years. It was a
repetition of what the pedantic Cotton Mather calls _Decennium
luctuosum_, or the "woful decade" of William and Mary's War. The wonder
is that the outlying settlements were not abandoned. These ghastly,
insidious, and ever-present dangers demanded a more obstinate courage
than the hottest battle in the open field.

One curious frontier incident may be mentioned here, though it did not
happen till towards the end of the war. I