If Frontenac hoped that the Iroquois would cease after this to give him trouble, he was destined to disappointment. All his endeavours to conciliate them failed; their chiefs were still convinced that they had more to hope for as allies of the English, and took measures accordingly. English and French colonists now hated one another with a hate that was never to slumber for the next seventy years, until Wolfe was to plant the blood-red flag of England on the frowning heights of Quebec. During the winter of 1691 and 1692 there were numerous terrible border raids, in one of which the Abenakis devastated more than fifty leagues of English territory and utterly destroyed Yorktown. Both French and English used the Indians as so many packs of human bloodhounds to track their foes to death. Both sides resorted to the practice of paying a price for the bodies, alive or dead, of the {140} hostile savages. A French regular soldier received ten louis for the scalp of an Iroquois; a volunteer received twenty. If he had to hunt the red-man like any other wild animal, he could claim fifty louis for his scalp. This practice was not confined to the Canadians. Corresponding premiums were paid by the English. Living captives were often handed over to their Indian allies to appease their delight in human suffering and bloodshed. Once one of Frontenac's officers, ravaging the country of the Oneidas, found a solitary old man in a certain village. He was nearly a hundred years of age, but do not imagine his years awakened any compassion in his captors, who at once handed him over to their savage allies. The old brave awaited his fate as calmly as any of those Roman senators whose city was taken by the Gauls. Father Charlevoix tells us the story. He says it was a strange sight to behold more than four hundred savage tormentors forming a circle round a decrepit object from whom they could not wring a single cry, and who, as long as the breath remained in his body, taunted them with being the slaves of weak and foolish Frenchmen. Only once did he complain, and that was when one of his butchers, on purpose to finish the scene, stabbed him repeatedly in the breast. "Ah," he murmured hoarsely, "why did you not wait until you had done your worst, so that you might behold how a man ought to die!"