During the same year in which the attention of Britain was occupied by a civil broil, the colony of Carolina was visited with a terrible Indian war, which threatened its total extirpation. The numerous and powerful tribe of Indians called Yamassees, probably at the instigation of the Spaniards at Augustine, were the most active in promoting this conspiracy against the settlement, though every tribe around was more or less concerned in it. The Yamassees possessed a large territory lying backwards from Port-royal Island, on the north-east side of Savanna river, which to this day is called Indian Land. By the Carolineans this tribe had long been esteemed as friends and allies, who had admitted a number of traders into their towns, and several times assisted the settlers in their war-like enterprizes. Of all other Indians they were believed to habour in their minds the most inveterate and irreconcilable enmity to Spaniards. For many years they had been accustomed to make incursions into the Spanish territories, and to wage war with the Indians within their bounds. In their return from those southern expeditions, it had been a common practice with them to lurk in the woods round Augustine, until they surprized some Spaniard, and brought him prisoner home to their towns. On the bodies of these unfortunate prisoners they were accustomed to exercise the most wanton barbarities; sometimes cutting them to pieces slowly, joint by joint, with knives and tomahawks; at other times burying them up to the neck under ground, then standing at a distance and marking at their heads with their pointed arrows; and, at other times, binding them to a tree, and piercing the tenderest parts of their naked bodies with sharp-pointed sticks of burning wood, which last, because the most painful and excruciating method of torture, was the most common among them. To prevent such horrid cruelties from being committed on the bodies of human creatures, the legislature of Carolina passed a law, offering a reward of five pounds for every Spanish prisoner these Indians should bring alive to Charlestown; which law, though it evidently proceeded from motives of humanity, yet, in the event, it proved very inconsistent with good policy: for, in consequence of this act, the Yamassees brought several Spaniards, at different times, to Charlestown, where they claimed the reward for their prisoners, and delivered them up to the governor. Charles Craven, who was no less distinguished for humanity than valour, used to send back such prisoners to Augustine, charging the Spanish government with the expences of their passage and the reward to the Yamassees. But this humane practice, while it displayed English greatness of mind, served also to begin an intercourse, which will exhibit to us a sad specimen of Spanish honour and gratitude.