wife and family are with him in the winter season, but they spend their summers at his plantation on the Merrimac River, in Newbury. His daughter, Rebecca, is just about my age, very tall and ladylooking; she is like her brother John, who was at Uncle Hilton's last year. She hath, moreover, a pleasant wit, and hath seen much goodly company, being greatly admired by the young men of family and distinction in the Province. She hath been very kind to me, telling me that she looked upon me as a sister. I have been courteously entertained, moreover, by many of the principal people, both of the reverend clergy and the magistracy. Nor must I forbear to mention a visit which I paid with Uncle and Aunt Rawson at the house of an aged magistrate of high esteem and influence in these parts. He saluted me courteously, and made inquiries concerning our family, and whether I had been admitted into the Church. On my telling him that I had not, he knit his brows, and looked at me very sternly.

"Mr. Rawson," said he, "your niece, I fear me, has much more need of spiritual adorning than of such gewgaws as these," and took hold of my lace ruff so hard that I heard the stitches break; and then he pulled out my sleeves, to see how wide they were, though they were only half an ell. Madam ventured to speak a word to encourage me, for she saw I was much abashed and flustered, yet he did not heed her, but went on talking very loud against the folly and the wasteful wantonness of the times. Poor Madam is a quiet, sickly-looking woman, and seems not a little in awe of her hus

band, at the which I do not marvel, for he hath a very impatient, forbidding way with him, and, I must say, seemed to carry himself harshly at times towards her. Uncle Rawson says he has had much to try his temper; that there have been many and sore difficulties in Church as well as State; and he hath bitter enemies, in some of the members of the General Court, who count him too severe with the Quakers and other disturbers and ranters. I told him it was no doubt true; but that I thought it a bad use of the Lord's chastenings to abuse one's best friends for the wrongs done by enemies; and, that to be made to atone for what went ill in Church or State, was a kind of vicarious suffering that, if I was in Madam's place, I should not bear with half her patience and

sweetness.

IPSWICH, near Agawam, May 12. We set out day before yesterday on our journey to Newbury. There were eight of us, — Rebecca Rawson and her sister, Thomas Broughton, his wife, and their man-servant, my brother Leonard and myself, and young Robert Pike, of Newbury, who had been to Boston on business, his father having great fisheries in the river as well as the sea. He is, I can perceive, a great admirer of my cousin, and indeed not without reason; for she hath in mind and person, in her graceful carriage and pleasant discourse, and a certain not unpleasing waywardness, as of a merry child, that which makes her company sought of all. Our route the first day lay through the woods and

along the bor

a

ders of great marshes and meadows on the seashore. We came to Linne at night, and stopped at the house of a kinsman of Robert Pike's, man of some substance and note in that settlement. We were tired and hungry, and the supper of warm Indian bread and sweet milk relished quite as well as any I ever ate in the Old Country. The next day we went on over a rough road to Wenham, through Salem, which is quite a pleasant town. Here we stopped until this morning, when we again mounted our horses, and reached this place, after a smart ride of three hours. The weather in the morning was warm and soft as our summer days at home; and, as we rode through the woods, where the young leaves were fluttering, and the white blossoms of the wind-flowers, and the blue violets and the yellow blooming of the cowslips in the low grounds, were seen on either hand, and the birds all the time making a great and pleasing melody in the branches, I was glad of heart as a child, and thought if my beloved friends and Cousin Oliver were only with us, I could never wish to leave so fair a country.

Just before we reached Agawam, as I was riding a little before my companions, I was startled greatly by the sight of an Indian. He was standing close to the bridle-path, his half-naked body partly hidden by a clump of white birches, through which he looked out on me with eyes like two live coals. I cried for my brother and turned my horse, when Robert Pike came up and bid me be of cheer, for he knew the savage, and that he was friendly. Whereupon, he bade him come out of

the bushes, which he did, after a little parley. He was a tall man, of very fair and comely make, and wore a red woollen blanket with beads and small clam-shells jingling about it. His skin was swarthy, not black like a Moor or Guinea-man, but of a color not unlike that of tarnished copper coin. He spake but little, and that in his own tongue, very harsh and strange-sounding to my ear. Robert Pike tells me that he is Chief of the Agawams, once a great nation in these parts, but now quite small and broken. As we rode on, and from the top of a hill got a fair view of the great sea off at the east, Robert Pike bade me notice a little bay, around which I could see four or five small, peaked huts or tents, standing just where the white sands of the beach met the green line of grass and bushes of the uplands.

"There," said he, "are their summer-houses, which they build near unto their fishing-grounds and corn-fields. In the winter they go far back into the wilderness, where game is plenty of all kinds, and there build their wigwams in warm valleys thick with trees, which do serve to shelter them from the winds."

"Let us look into them," said I to Cousin Rebecca; "it seems but a stone's throw from our way."

She tried to dissuade me, by calling them a dirty, foul people; but seeing I was not to be put off, she at last consented, and we rode aside down the hill, the rest following. On our way we had the misfortune to ride over their corn-field; at the which, two or three women and as many boys set

up a yell very hideous to hear; whereat Robert Pike came up, and appeased them by giving them some money and a drink of Jamaica spirits, with which they seemed vastly pleased. I looked into one of their huts; it was made of poles like unto a tent, only it was covered with the silver-colored bark of the birch, instead of hempen stuff. A bark mat, braided of many exceeding brilliant colors, covered a goodly part of the space inside; and from the poles we saw fishes hanging, and strips of dried meat. On a pile of skins in the corner sat a young woman with a child a-nursing; they both looked sadly wild and neglected; yet had she withal a pleasant face, and as she bent over her little one, her long, straight, and black hair falling over him, and murmuring a low and very plaintive melody, I forgot everything save that she was a woman and a mother, and I felt my heart greatly drawn towards her. So, giving my horse in charge, I ventured in to her, speaking as kindly as I could, and asking to see her child. She understood me, and with a smile held up her little papoose, as she called him, who, to say truth, I could not call very pretty. He seemed to have a wild, shy look, like the offspring of an untamed animal. The woman wore a blanket, gaudily fringed, and she had a string of beads on her neck. She took down a basket, woven of white and red willows, and pressed me to taste of her bread; which I did, that I might not offend her courtesy by refusing. It was not of ill taste, although so hard one could scarcely bite it, and was made of corn meal unleavened, mixed with a dried berry, which gives it