And now I must part with that little company I had. Here I parted from
my daughter Mary (whom I never saw again till I saw her in Dorchester,
returned from captivity), and from four little cousins and neighbors,
some of which I never saw afterward: the Lord only knows the end of
them. Amongst them also was that poor woman before mentioned, who came
to a sad end, as some of the company told me in my travel: she having
much grief upon her spirit about her miserable condition, being so near
her time, she would be often asking the Indians to let her go home; they
not being willing to that, and yet vexed with her importunity, gathered
a great company together about her and stripped her naked, and set her
in the midst of them, and when they had sung and danced about her (in
their hellish manner) as long as they pleased they knocked her on head,
and the child in her arms with her. When they had done that they made
a fire and put them both into it, and told the other children that were
with them that if they attempted to go home, they would serve them in
like manner. The children said she did not shed one tear, but prayed all
the while. But to return to my own journey, we traveled about half a day
or little more, and came to a desolate place in the wilderness, where
there were no wigwams or inhabitants before; we came about the middle
of the afternoon to this place, cold and wet, and snowy, and hungry, and
weary, and no refreshing for man but the cold ground to sit on, and our
poor Indian cheer.
Heart-aching thoughts here I had about my poor children, who were
scattered up and down among the wild beasts of the forest. My head was
light and dizzy (either through hunger or hard lodging, or trouble or
all together), my knees feeble, my body raw by sitting double night
and day, that I cannot express to man the affliction that lay upon my
spirit, but the Lord helped me at that time to express it to Himself. I
opened my Bible to read, and the Lord brought that precious Scripture to
me. "Thus saith the Lord, refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes
from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, and they shall come again
from the land of the enemy" (Jeremiah 31.16). This was a sweet cordial
to me when I was ready to faint; many and many a time have I sat down
and wept sweetly over this Scripture. At this place we continued about
four days.