Page:Eventful life, and curious adventures of Peter Williamson.pdf/11

 The Life of Peter Williamson. 18

and store they had got. When wards the Great Swamp ; where, provisions became scarce, they being arrived, they lay on for made their way towards Sus- eight or nine days, sometimes quehanna; where, still to add diverting themselves in exercis- to the many barbarities they ing the most atrocious and had committed, passing near barbarous cruelties on their un- another house, inhabited by an happy victim, the old man : unhappy old man, whose name sometimes they would strip him was John Adams, with his naked, and paint him all over wife and four small children; with various sorts of colours, and meeting with no resis- which they extracted or made tance, they immediately scalped from herbs and roots; at o- the unhappy wife and her four their times they would pluck children, before the good old the white hair from his vener- man’s eyes.Inhuman and able head, and tauntingly tell horrid as this was, it did not him, he was a fool for living them; for when they so long, and that they would had murdered the poor woman, shew him kindness by putting they acted with her in such him out of the world; to all brutal manner, as decency which the poor creature could will not permit me to mention : but vent his sighs, his tears, his and this even before the un- moans, and entreaties, that to happy husband, who, not being my affrighted imagination, were able to avoid the sight, and enough to penetrate a heart of incapable of affording her the adamant, and soften the most least relief, intreated them to obdurate savage. In vain, alas ! put an end to his miserable were all his tears, for daily did life: but they were as deaf and they tire themselves with the regardless to the tears, prayers, various means they tried to tor- and entreaties of this vener- ment him; sometimes tying able sufferer, as they had been him to a tree, and whipping to those of the others, and pro- him; at other times scorching needed in their hellish purpose his furrowed cheeks with red- of burning and destroying his hot coals, and burning his legs, house, barn, corn, hay, cattle, quite to the knees: but the and every thing the poor man good old man, instead of repin- few hours before was master ing, or wickedly arraigning the f. Having saved what they divine justice, like many o- nought proper from the flames, thers in such cases, even in the they gave the old man, feeble, greatest agonies, incessantly off weak, and in the miserable fered up his prayers to the condition he then was, as well Almighty, with the most fer- s myself, burdens to carry, vent thanksgiving for his for- and loading themselves like- mer mercies, and hoping the wise with bread and meat, flames then surrounding and pursued their journey on to- burning his aged limbs, would