Just at this time a picket, under one Lieut. Van Vechten, had been surprised near the spring which I have described in my journey, by the second party of Indians, who massacred and scalped the officer and several of his men. The convoy approached the spring with Miss M'Crea just as the horrid tragedy had concluded, and immediately began to dispute with the other party, with furious outcries and ferocious gestures. The horrors of the unfortunate young lady, as she saw the rising passions of her conductors, must be imagined; but she could not have understood the nature of their quarrel, which was as to which party should have the custody of her person, and so secure the promised reward. The defenceless creature remained a passive spectator of the combatants, who began to belabour each other with their muskets. The alarm which had been given by the picket, had caused the officer in command of Fort Edward to send a company of soldiers to the aid of Van Vechten, and as these were now seen approaching, one of the chiefs, to terminate the strife, discharged his musket at Miss M'Crea, who instantly fell. Then, seizing her by her hair, which was long and flowing, he cut the scalp, and dashed it into the face of his antagonist with a fiendish yell. After inflicting several additional wounds, both parties retreated towards Fort Anne, and tradition reports that on their way they so far compromised their quarrel as to divide their trophy; so that, on arriving at the fort, and meeting their impatient employer, each of the chiefs exhibited half of the scalp, and claimed a proportionate payment. That Jones's own scalp was so far affected as to turn white in a single night we may readily believe, and that he soon died of a broken heart is a still more credible part of the story. Who can wonder that such an event rendered the name of Burgoyne a bugbear to scare babies in all the neighbouring country; or that the massacre of Fort Edward, after inspiring the indignation of Burke, and rekindling the expiring ardour of Chatham, was cast into the teeth of Burgoyne himself, when he took his seat as a senator in the British parliament! That such an attack was unjust and unmerciful, the facts of the case, which were long misrepresented, sufficiently prove; yet, as Cardinal de Retz said of the Parisians, that he who convoked them made an _emeute_,--so it is true historically that whoever armed the American Indians made them "hell-hounds of war."