Here they were safe from their enemies, but not from hunger. They might catch fish from the river, but they lacked space for corn fields, and the plantations of the English spread out over what had once been hunting grounds. It was inevitable that they would seek food where they could find it, and having robbed nearby farms they could not resist the temptation to commit a few murders. Associated with them were the remnants of the Doegs who had been driven out of Virginia a few years before because of the "execrable murders" they had committed. In the summer of 1675 a party of Indians paddled across the Potomac, and after killing several men, made good their escape back to Maryland. Shortly afterwards people returning from church found a man covered with ghastly wounds lying across his threshold, who managed to gasp out, "Doegs, Doegs." Immediately the alarm was sounded, and a party of thirty or more men assembled on the south bank of the river opposite the Indian reservation under the command of Colonel George Mason and Captain George Brent. At dawn they crossed over to the Maryland side. Here they divided their forces, Mason leading part in one direction through the woods and Brent the other in another. Brent came upon a cabin full of Doegs. Their chief denied knowledge of the murders, but when he started to run Brent shot him. At this the Indians in the cabin made a dash for safety in the face of a volley which brought down ten of them. In the meanwhile Mason, too, had come upon a cabin full of Indians, and had killed fourteen of them. But when he found out that they were not Doegs but Susquehannocks, he shouted: "For the Lord's sake shoot no more, these are our friends the Susquehannocks." But they now were their friends no longer. They began a series of bloody raids in Stafford County on the Virginia side of the river and Charles County in Maryland. Governor Calvert was quite right in complaining to Berkeley of the invasion of his province by an armed force to turn friendly Indians into mortal enemies. [Illustration: Courtesy Cook Collection, Valentine Museum. From Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Sept. 6, 1866 Bacon's Castle, Surry County, Virginia] [Illustration: STRANGE NEWS FROM VIRGINIA; Being a full and true ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE and DEATH OF Nathanael Bacon Esquire, Who was the only Cause and Original of all the late Troubles in that COUNTRY. With a full Relation of all the Accidents which have happened in the late War there between the Christians and Indians. LONDON, Printed for William Harris, next door to the Turn-Stile without Moor-gate, 1677.