His situation during the last few months of the war, was so deplorable, and yet his exertions so well sustained, that we can only look upon him with pity and admiration. His successes for some time past had been tremendous; but the tide began to ebb. The whole power of the Colonies was in the field, aided by guides and scouting-parties of his own race. The Saconets, the subjects of a near relation of his own, enlisted under Church. Other tribes complained and threatened. Their territory, as well as his, had been over-run, their settlements destroyed, and their planting and fishing-grounds all occupied by the English. Those of them who were not yet hunted down, were day and night followed into swamps and forests, and reduced to live,--if they did not actually starve or freeze,--upon the least and worst food to be conceived of. Hundreds died of diseases incurred in this manner. "I have eaten horse," said one of these miserable wretches, "but now horse is eating me." Another informed Church, on one occasion, that about three hundred Indians had gone a long way to Swanzey, in the heat of the war, for the purpose of eating clams, and that Philip was soon to follow them. At another time, the valiant captain himself captured a large party. Finding it convenient to attack a second directly after, he bade the first wait for him, and join him at a certain rendezvous. The day after the skirmish, "they came to him as they were ordered," and he drove them all together, that very night, into Bridgewater _pound,_ and set his Saconet soldiers to guard them. "Being well treated with victuals and drink," he adds, with great simplicity, "they had a merry night, and the prisoners laughed as loud as the soldiers; _not being so treated for a long time before._"