Two days afterwards, he addressed another letter to the governor, in which he said: "Not an hour, nay, scarcely a minute, passes, that does not produce fresh alarms and melancholy accounts. Nor is it possible to give the people the necessary assistance for their defence, on account of the small number of men we have, or that are likely to be here for some time. The inhabitants are removing daily, and in a short time will leave this country as desolate as Hampshire, where scarce a family lives." "Three families were murdered night before last, at the distance of less than twelve miles from this place; and every day we have accounts of such cruelties and barbarities as are shocking to human nature. It is not possible to conceive the situation and danger of this miserable country. Such numbers of French and Indians are all round that no road is safe; and here we know not the hour we may be attacked." For nearly two years Washington vainly attempted the defence of the frontier, the French and Indians all the while plundering and murdering the inhabitants in one locality while he was defending another, multiplying scenes of barbarity as only savages could. The following description of a single scene is by Washington himself: "One day as we drew near, through the woods, to a dwelling, suddenly we heard the discharge of a gun. Whereupon, quickening our pace, and creeping up through the thick bushes to a fence, we saw what we had dreaded--a party of Indians, loaded with plunder, coming out of a house, which, by the smoke, appeared as if it were just set on fire. In a moment we gave the savages a shower of rifle balls, which killed every man of them but one, who attempted to run off, but in vain; for some of our swift-footed hunters gave chase, and soon overtook and demolished him with their tomahawks. On rushing into the house and putting out the fire, we saw a mournful sight indeed: a young woman lying on the bed floated with blood, her forehead cleft with a hatchet, and on her breast two little children, apparently twins, and about nine months old, bathing her bosom with blood flowing from their deeply gashed heads! I had often beheld the mangled remains of my murdered countrymen, but never before felt what I did on this occasion. To see these poor innocents, these little, unoffending angels, just entered upon life, and, instead of fondest sympathy and tenderness, meeting their bloody deaths, and from hands of brothers, too, filled my soul with the deepest horror of sin! "On tracing back into the corn-field the steps of the barbarians, we found a little boy, and beyond him his father, both weltering in blood. It appeared, from the print of his little feet in the furrows, that the child had been following his father's plough; and, seeing him shot down, had set off with all his might to get to the house, to his mother, but was overtaken and destroyed.