“The shout Of battle, the barbarian yell, the bray Of dissonant instruments, the clang of arms, The shriek of agony, the groan of death, In one wild uproar and continued din, Shake the still air.” SOUTHEY’S _Madoc_. ’Tis related of a certain keeper of wild beasts at Florence, that, after he had entertained the spectators in the amphitheatre with their encounters on the stage, he had a strange device for forcing them back into their dens. A wooden machine, painted in the image of a great green dragon, with two lighted torches protruding from its sockets as eyes, and vomiting sulphurous flame, was wheeled into the midst of the herd, and before this onset the fiercest animal crawled howling to his cell. ’Tis an emblem of despotism; it is government coercing men by fraud and fear, by appeals to the ignorant and brutish instincts. The Pilgrim Fathers took a long stride away from that ugly ideal. They developed a nobler type of civil polity; and in nothing was their temper and Christianity more firmly shown than in their treatment of the Indians, whom they regarded as the orphaned wards of civilization. They were uniformly gentle and obliging to the savage tribes, and they were invariably and inflexibly just in treatment and in requisition. Take this for an illustration: In 1636, an Indian who had been on a trading tour to the pale-face settlements, seated himself towards evening on the day of his return in the woods on the edge of a swamp. He had with him a parcel of coats, and five pieces of wampum, the peaceful trophies of his barter. Soon he was accosted by four white men who happened to pass. A friendly chat ensued; the pipe of peace was passed; when suddenly the whites saw the coats and the wampum. At once that meanest, most unscrupulous imp in Satan’s brood, the devil of avarice, entered their hearts—avarice, of which Decker has said, “When all our sins are old in us, And go upon crutches, covetousness Does but then lie in her cradle.” They determined to assassinate the dusky trader and filch his goods. Under pretence of shaking hands with him, one of the ruffians stabbed him in the thigh; this blow was followed by another, and yet another; whereupon the death-smitten savage fled. The murderers also departed; and when they were gone the Indian crawled back from his forest hiding-place and stretched himself across the trail, that he might be discovered and receive help.