This year, on the 14th or 15th of August, a Saturday, there was such a fearful storm of wind and rain as none living hereabouts either English or Indians, ever saw. It was like those hurricanes and typhoons that writers mention in the Indies. It began in the morning, a little before day, and did not come on by degrees, but with amazing violence at the start. It blew down several houses and unroofed others; many vessels were lost at sea, and many more were in extreme danger. To the southward the sea rose twenty feet, and many of the Indians had to climb trees for safety. It took off the boarded roof of a house which belonged to the settlement at Manomet and floated it to another place, leaving the posts standing in the ground; and if it had continued much longer without the wind shifting it would probably have flooded some of the inhabited parts of the country. It blew down many hundred thousands of trees, tearing up the stronger by the roots, and breaking the higher pine-trees off in the middle; and tall young oaks and walnut trees of a good size were bent like withes,—a strange and fearful sight. It began in the southeast, and veered different ways. It lasted, though not at its worst, for five or six hours. The marks of it will remain this 100 years in these parts, where it was most violent. There was a great eclipse of the moon the second night after. Some of their neighbours at the Bay, hearing of the fame of the Connecticut River had a hankering after it, as mentioned before. Understanding that the Indians had been swept away by the recent mortality, fear of whom was the chief obstacle to them before, they now began to explore it with great eagerness. The New Plymouth people there had most trouble with the Dorchester settlers about it; for they set their minds on the place which the New Plymouth colony had not only purchased from the Indians, but where they had actually built, and the Dorchester people seemed determined if they could not remove them altogether, at any rate to leave them only an insignificant plot of land round the house, sufficient for a single family. This attempt not only to intrude themselves into the rights and possessions of others, but in effect to oust them, was thought to be most unjustifiable. Many were the letters that passed between them about it. I will first insert a few lines written from their own agent from there. _Jonathan Brewster at Matianuck to the Governor of New Plymouth_: Sir,