are

munication with savage red men, whom they teach at once to hate them and to despise them, "Indian hostilities" the consequence, and that the Indian in taking vengeance rarely discriminates between one sort of white men and another. Bradford tells how it was that Weston's people were distressed so soon,though the ship had left them "competently provided," and though they had their half of the corn purchased of the Indians, besides what they obtained of the natives in their vicinity. He says that they "spent excessively" whatever they had or could get. He intimates that they "wasted part among the Indians" in a way which he suggests by declining to vouch for the story which some of them told about what "he that was their chief” expended in his relations with Indian women. After they began to be in want, many of them sold their garments and bedding; others became servants to the Indians-hewers of wood and bearers of water "for a cap-full of corn;" others "fell to plain stealing" from their savage neighbors. "In the end, they came to that misery that some starved and died with 'cold and hunger." In that misery "most of them left their dwellings and scattered up and down in the woods and by the water-side, where they could find ground-nuts and clams." All this while the Indians were learning to despise and scorn them, even to the extent of insulting them, and now and then robbing them of food or of "a sorry blanket" by main strength. Such was the distress which they proposed to relieve by plundering the corn-heaps of the more provident savages around them; and that design of theirs, though they were dissuaded from it, was by some of them betrayed to those who were to have been the victims. After all this, what else than "a conspiracy against the English" could be expected of the Indians?

Meanwhile the vigilance of Standish and other Plymouth men had already discovered that some, at least, of the savages, at no great distance from them, were becoming hostile, and were planning mischief. Just then (March) the news

came that their friend Massasoit was sick and likely to die. Winslow was sent by the governor to visit him, for it was 66 a commendable manner of the Indians" to visit a friend in that extremity. Accompanied by a friend from London,1 who had wintered in the colony, and was desirous of seeing more of the country, and with Hobbamoc for guide and interpreter, he undertook the journey. On their way, they were told once and again that their friend was dead. But when they arrived at Pokanoket, they found him still alive, though his sight had failed, and he seemed very near to death. The house was full of Indians in the midst of their incantations for him, "making," says Winslow, "such a hellish noise as distempered us that were well, and was therefore unlikely to ease him that was sick." Six or eight women were chafing the patient's limbs "to keep heat in him." When an interval of comparative silence had been obtained, he was told that his friends the English had come to see him. He was sufficiently conscious to ask, "Who?” They told him "Winsnow;"2 and he desired to speak with his English friend. "When I came to him," says that friend," and they told him of it, he put forth his hand to me, which I took. Then he said twice, though very inwardly, Keen Winsnow?' which is to say, 'Art thou Winslow ?' I answered, 'Ahhe,' that is, 'Yes.' Then he doubled these words, Matta neen wonckanet namen, Winsnow! that is to say, 'Oh, Winslow, I shall never see thee again."" With the aid of Hobbamoc, Winslow told him that the governor, being unable to come in person, had sent him with such things as might do good to one in such extremity. What medical

1. "One Master John Hamden, a gentleman of London," has been thought by some to be identical with the illustrious patriot, John Hampden. But, aside from the similarity of the names, there is no reason to believe that the gentleman of London" was the Hampden who makes so great a figure in English history. See Young, p. 314, 315.

2 "For they can not pronounce the letter 7, but ordinarily n in the place thereof."-Winslow, in Young, p. 318.

virtue there was in the "confection of many comfortable conserves" which he had brought, we know not; but with some difficulty he succeeded in administering a little of it, and soon he had the satisfaction of seeing his patient somewhat relieved. By his assiduous and ingenious nursing, added to the efficacy of the "confection," the recovery was in a few hours decided, though not yet complete. "With admiration," Winslow and his English friend "blessed God for giving his blessing to such raw and ignorant means," the sachem and all his Indian friends " acknowledging them as the instruments of his preservation."

Something of nobleness in the nature of the savage showed itself when he began to know that he was recovering. His first thought was of others needing similar relief, and he desired the kind friend, who had saved his life, to go from one to another of the sick throughout the village, and to give them the benefit of his healing skill; for, he said, "they were good folk," and worth caring for. At the same time he was profuse in the expression of his gratitude. He had been told the day before Winslow came, "You see how hollow-hearted your English friends are; had they been what they pretend to be, they would have visited you in your sickness." Remembering this, he said, repeating it often, "Now I see the English are my friends, and love me. While I live, I

will never forget this kindness." When his visitors, after two days, were ready to depart, he revealed to Hobbamoc, in the presence of only two or three trusty counselors, the whole story of a plot to destroy the English-how it began with the Massachusetts near Weston's colony-how the people of Nauset, Paomet, and other places had joined in the conspiracy-how he himself had been solicited and argued with-how the Massachusetts, having determined to exterminate Weston's colony, and not doubting their ability to do so, had considered that the men of Plymouth would be likely to take vengeance on them, and were postponing the execution of their purpose only till the conspiracy should be