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 had joined the inland members of their tribe, and the tale of the two massacres at which Endicott had presided roused a deadly enmity against the whites throughout the length and breadth of Pequod land; nay more, even the Narragansetts and the Mohegans, who had long since sworn allegiance to the English, and were the bitter foes of the Pequods, began to show signs of making common cause with the sufferers. Had they done so, the very existence of the colonies would have been in peril, and the history of the United States of America might never have begun.

It was our old friend, Roger Williams, who saved from extermination the brethren who had cast him out from among them. More familiar than any other emigrant with the ways of the Indian, he read the signs of the times truly, and determined, at whatever risk to himself, to prevent the coalition of the Pequods with the Mohegans and Narragansetts. To quote his own account of the matter—"The Lord helped me immediately to put my life into my hand, and, scarce acquainting my wife, to ship myself, all alone, in a poor canoe, and to cut through a stormy wind with great seas, every minute in hazard of life, to the sachem's (the Narragansett chief's) house. Three days and nights," he adds, "my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequod ambassadors (come to agree on the terms of alliance against the whites), whose hands and arms, methought, reeked with the blood of my countrymen."

JOHN ENDICOTT.

At the end of the three days Williams had effected his purpose, and, instead of an alliance with the Pequods, the Narragansetts had made a new treaty with the English. The Mohegans followed their example, and, their forces augmented by many a dusky warrior, the white men of Connecticut,