I shall now speak more explicitly on this very material point. By our superintendant’s strange pursuit of improper measures to appease the Muskohge, as before noticed, the watchful French engaged the irritated Great Mortar to inspire his relations to cut off some of our traders by surprise, and follow the blow at the time the people were usually employed in the corn-fields, lest our party should stop them, in their intended bloody career. They accordingly began their hostile attack in the upper town of the nation, except one, where their mischievous red abettor lived: two white people and a negroe were killed, while they were in the horsepen, preparing that day to have set off with their returns to the English settlements. The trader, who was surly and ill-natured, they chopped to pieces, in a most horrid manner, but the other two they did not treat with any kind of barbarity; which shews that the worst people, in their worst actions, make a distinction between the morally virtuous, and vicious. The other white people of that trading house, happily were at that time in the woods;—they heard the savage platoon, and the death, and war-whoop, which sufficiently warned them of their imminent danger, and to seek their safety by the best means they could. Some of them went through the woods after night, to our friend towns; and one who happened to be near the town when the alarm was given, going to bring in a horse, was obliged to hide himself under a large fallen tree, till night came on. The eager savages came twice, pretty near him, imagining he would chuse rather to depend on the horse’s speed, than his own: when the town was engaged in dividing the spoils, his wife fearing she might be watched, took a considerable sweep round, through the thickets, and by searching the place, and making signals, where she expected he lay concealed, fortunately found him, and gave him provisions to enable him to get to our settlements, and then returned home in tears: he arrived safe at Augusta, though exceedingly torn with the brambles, as his safety required him to travel through unfrequented tracts. In the mean while, the savages having by this inflamed their greedy thirst for blood, set off swiftly, and as they darted {261} along sounding the news of war, they from a few, increased so fast, that their voices conveyed such thrilling shocks to those they were in quest of, as if the infernal legions had broken loose through their favourite Alebahma, and were invested with power to destroy the innocent. The great Okwhusketown, where they reached, lay on the western side of the large easternmost branch of Mobille river, which joins a far greater western river, almost two miles below the late Alebahma; and the English traders store-houses lay opposite to the town. Those red ambassadors of the French, artfully passed the river above the town, and ran along silently to a gentleman’s dwelling house, where they first