Page:Surprising life and sufferings of Peter Williamson.pdf/9

 Having at last satisfied their brutal pleasure, they sat down round the fire and roasted the meat of which they had robbed my dwelling; and when they had satiated their voracious appetites, they offered some to me, though it may be easily-imagined I had but little appetite to eat, after the tortures and miseries I had undergone; yet was I forced to seem pleased with what they offered me, lest, by refusing it, they had again resumed their hellish practices. After the sun was set, they put out the fire, and covered the ashes with leaves, that the white people might not discover any traces or signs of their having been there.

Thus had these barbarous wretehes finished their diabolieal pieee of work; and shocking as it may seem to the humane English heart, yet what I underwent was but trifling in comparison to the torments and miseries which I afterwards saw most inhumanly inflicted on others of my unhappy fellow-ereatures.

Going from thence, along by the river Susquehana loaded as I was before, we arrived at a spot near the Apalaehian mountains, where they hid plunder under logs of wood. And, oh, shocking to relate! from thence did these hellish monsters proceed to a neighbouring house, oecupied by one Jacob Snider, and his unhappy family, consisting of his wife five children, and a young man his servant. They soon got admittanee into the unfortunate man's house, where they immediately, without the least remorse, Scalped* the

*Scalping is taking off the skin from the top of the head; which they perform with a