so many points exposed to attack; but there is no doubt that it might have wrought fearful havoc.  We can, at any rate, find no difficulty in comprehending the manifold perplexity of the Massachusetts men at this time, threatened as they were at once by an Indian crusade, by the machinations of a faithless king, and by a bitter theological quarrel at home, in this eventful year when they laid aside part of their incomes to establish Harvard College. [Sidenote:  Origin of the Pequot War]

The schemes of Sassacus were unsuccessful.  The hereditary enmity of the Narragansetts toward their Pequot rivals was too strong to be lightly overcome.  Roger Williams, taking advantage of this feeling, so worked upon the minds of the Narragansett chiefs that in the autumn of 1636 they sent an embassy to Boston and made a treaty of alliance with the English.  The Pequots were thus left to fight out their own quarrel; and had they still been separated from the English by the distance between Boston and the Thames river, the feud might very likely have smouldered until the drift of events had given a different shape to it.  But as the English had in this very year thrown out their advanced posts into the lower Connecticut valley, there was clearly no issue from the situation save in deadly war.  All through the winter of 1636-37 the Connecticut towns were kept in a state of alarm by the savages.  Men going to their work were killed and horribly mangled.  A Wethersfield man was kidnapped and roasted alive.  Emboldened by the success of this feat, the Pequots attacked Wethersfield, massacred ten people, and carried away two girls. [Sidenote:  Sassacus is foiled by Roger Williams] [Sidenote:  The Pequots take the warpath alone]

Wrought up to desperation by these atrocities, the Connecticut men appealed to Massachusetts and Plymouth for aid, and put into service ninety of their own number, under command of John Mason, an excellent and sturdy officer who had won golden opinions from Sir Thomas Fairfax, under whom he had served in the Netherlands.  It took time to get men from Boston, and all that Massachusetts contributed to the enterprise at its beginning was that eccentric daredevil John Underhill, with a force of twenty men.  Seventy friendly Mohegans, under their chief Uncas, eager to see vengeance wrought upon their Pequot oppressors, accompanied the expedition.  From the fort at Saybrook this little company set sail on the twentieth of May, 1637, and landed in brilliant moonlight near Point Judith, where they were reinforced by four hundred Narragansetts and Nyantics.  From this point they turned westward toward the stronghold of the Pequots, near the place where the town of Stonington now stands.  As they approached the dreaded spot the courage of the Indian allies gave out, and they slunk behind, declaring that Sassacus was a god whom it was useless to think of attacking.  The force with which Mason and Underhill advanced to the fray consisted of just