The old Indian captured above having promised to lead us to Wetquescheck, which consisted of three castles, sixty-five men were despatched under Baxter and Pieter Cock, who found them empty, though thirty Indians could have stood against two hundred soldiers since the castles were constructed of plank five inches thick, nine feet high, and braced around with thick balk full of port-holes. Our people burnt two, reserving the third for a retreat. Marching eight or nine leagues further, they discovered nothing but some huts, which they could not surprize as they were discovered. They came back having killed only one or two Indians, taken some women and children prisoners and burnt much corn. Meanwhile we were advised that Pennewitz,<1> one of the oldest and most experienced Indians in the country, and who in the first conspiracy had given the most dangerous advice--to wit, that they should wait and not attack the Dutch until all suspicion had been lulled, and then divide themselves equally through the houses of the Christians and slaughter all these in one night--was secretly waging war against us with his tribe, who killed some of our people and set fire to the houses. It was therefore resolved to send thither a troop of one hundred and twenty men. The burghers under their company, the English under the Sergeant Major Van der Hyl<2> (who within a few days had offered his services and was accepted), the veteran soldiers under Pieter Cock, all under the command of Mr. La Montagne, proceed hence in three yachts, land in Scouts Bay on Long Island,<3> and march towards Heemstede<4> (where there is an English colony dependent on us.) Some sent forward in advance dexterously killed an Indian who was out as a spy. Our force was divided into two divisions--Van der Hil with fourteen English towards the smallest, and eighty men towards the largest village named Matsepe,<5> both which were very successful, killing about one hundred and twenty men; of ours one man remained on the field and three were wounded. <1> Chief of the Canarsee tribe, in western Long Island. <2> John Underhill, whose unctuous piety and profligate life have an important place in Winthrop and other New England historians. With Captain John Mason he had the leading part in the crushing of the Pequots in 1637. Banished from Massachusetts and restored, this amusing reprobate had gone to the Dutch, "having good offers made him by the Dutch governor (he speaking the Dutch tongue and his wife a Dutch woman)," but had now settled at Stamford. Later he lived at Flushing and at Oyster Bay, where he died in 1672. <3> Now called Manhasset Bay. <4> Now Hempstead, Long Island, where early in 1644 Robert Fordham and other English from Stamford had formed a colony under New Netherland jurisdiction. <5> Mespath, now Newtown, Long Island. <6> Stamford.