The women to whom they spoke were moved by the eloquence of the treacherous Iroquois, and they persuaded the enraged combatants to bury their hatchets, and make the tree of peace grow tall and firm-rooted. They lamented, with great feeling and many tears, the loss which their country had sustained in these wars: there was not a woman among them who had not lost a son, or a brother, or a father, or a husband. They described the sorrows of bereaved mothers and widowed wives; the pains mothers endured ere they were permitted to behold their offspring; the anxieties attending the progress of their sons from infancy to manhood, from the cradle to the hour when they chewed the bitter root, and put on new mocassins; these unavoidable evils they had borne: but, after all these trials, how cruel it was, they said, to see those promising youths reared with so much care, and so tenderly beloved, fall victims to the insatiable rage of war, and a prey to the relentless cruelty of their enemies. "See them slaughtered," cried they, with tears and groans, "on the field of battle. See them put to death as prisoners by a protracted torture, and in the midst of lingering torments. Hark, the death-cries! 'Tis the Iroquois, 'tis the Delawares, 'tis the Delawares returning from battle! I see the beautiful young warriors among them, crowned with flowers, their faces painted black, and their arms tied with cords. Hark! they are singing their death-song. 'I am brave and intrepid, I do not fear death, I care not for tortures. Those who fear them are less than women. I was bred a warrior; my father never knew fear, and I am his son.' Then we behold them surrounded with flames, their flesh torn from their bones, the skin of their head peeled off, coals heaped thereon, and sharp thorns driven into their flesh. The thought of such scenes makes us curse our own existence, and shudder at the thought of bringing children into the world." Again they gave utterance to loud lamentation and wailing for the unavoidable separation they were doomed to experience from their husbands. The men they had selected for their partners, who were to protect and feed them, to cherish and make them happy, left them exposed to hunger and a thousand enemies, while they courted dangers in distant regions. Or, if they followed their husbands, they were exposed in a greater degree than those husbands themselves to the risks attending the perilous warfare.