In 1675 trouble with the Indians came to a head in King Philip’s War, in which the Cape, although criticised by Plymouth, bore her due share. It was charged of Sandwich that “many of the soldiers who were pressed came not forth.” As a fact, Sandwich, the frontier town of the Cape, was well occupied in seeing to her own defences that must separate the Praying Indians from the hostile natives of the mainland; nor was the town of Richard Bourne, with its large Quaker element, likely to be as eager to fight the Indians as Plymouth or Massachusetts. The Cape Indians were restive enough to cause apprehension, and the towns were constantly on watch for attack without and treachery within. Restriction upon the Indians was tightened, account of them was kept the easier by providing that “every tenth Indian should have particular oversight over his nine men and present their faults to the authorities.” The five or six hundred men capable of bearing arms could have made trouble enough for the whites if they had had the will; but whether for gratitude or lack of spirit, they were loyal—some even joined the troops. Mr. Walley, who was ever friendly to the Indians and ready to give them their due, observed that so well did they fight that “throughout the land where Indians hath been employed there hath been the greatest success,” and pondered how affairs might go without their aid. “I am greatly afflicted to see the danger we are in,” he wrote Mr. Cotton, of Plymouth. “Some fear we have paid dearly for former acts of severity.” Nor were there lacking heavenly portents of disaster: in 1664 a great comet had appeared, and three years later, “about an hour within the night,” another “like a spear,” and again another in 1680. “When blazing stars have been seen,” said Increase Mather, “great mutations and miseries have come upon mortals.” The price which Mr. Walley apprehended was sufficiently heavy, yet the outcome was as might have been expected. In August, 1676, when Philip of the Wampanoags was killed, “Thus fell a mighty warrior,” and then ended his war. In the sparsely settled colonies six hundred men were slain, twelve or thirteen towns destroyed, and a huge debt contracted. Plymouth shouldered a burden that exceeded the entire personal estate of the citizens, which she met by vigorous taxation and partly, it may be said, by the sale of lands that had belonged to the exterminated Indians. The aftermath of war meant peculiar suffering for the devastated districts; the Cape, fortunate in its remoteness, offered asylum, which was, however, gratefully declined, to Rehoboth, Taunton, and Bridgewater. It is interesting that “Divers Christians in Ireland” sent over a relief fund of something over a hundred pounds. It is also interesting that no encouragement or aid had been received, or asked or expected, from the mother country; and another useful lesson in self-dependence had been learned by the colonies.