seventy-seven Englishmen.  Their task was to assault and carry an entrenched fort or walled village containing seven hundred Pequots.  The fort was a circle of two or three acres in area, girdled by a palisade of sturdy sapling-trunks, set firm and deep into the ground, the narrow interstices between them serving as loopholes wherefrom to reconnoitre any one passing by and to shoot at assailants.  At opposite sides of this stronghold were two openings barely large enough to let any one go through.  Within this enclosure were the crowded wigwams.  The attack was skilfully managed, and was a complete surprise.  A little before daybreak Mason, with sixteen men, occupied one of the doors, while Underhill made sure of the other.  The Indians in panic sought first one outlet and then the other, and were ruthlessly shot down, whichever way they turned.  A few succeeded in breaking loose, but these were caught and tomahawked by the Indian allies, who, though afraid to take the risks of the fight, were ready enough to help slay the fugitives.  The English threw firebrands among the wigwams, and soon the whole village was in a light blaze, and most of the savages suffered the horrible death which they were so fond of inflicting upon their captives.  Of the seven hundred Pequots in the stronghold, but five got away with their lives.  All this bloody work had been done in less than an hour, and of the English there had been two killed and sixteen wounded.  It was the end of the Pequot nation.  Of the remnant which had not been included in this wholesale slaughter, most were soon afterwards destroyed piecemeal in a running fight which extended as far westward as the site of Fairfield.  Sassacus fled across the Hudson river to the Mohawks, who slew him and sent his scalp to Boston, as a peace-offering to the English.  The few survivors were divided between the Mohegans and Narragansetts and adopted into those tribes.  Truly the work was done with Cromwellian thoroughness.  The tribe which had lorded it so fiercely over the New England forests was all at once wiped out of existence.  So terrible a vengeance the Indians had never heard of.  If the name of Pequot had hitherto been a name of terror, so now did the Englishmen win the inheritance of that deadly prestige.  Not for eight-and-thirty years after the destruction of the Pequots, not until a generation of red men had grown up that knew not Underhill and Mason, did the Indian of New England dare again to lift his hand against the white man. [Sidenote:  And are exterminated]

Such scenes of wholesale slaughter are not pleasant reading in this milder age.  But our forefathers felt that the wars of Canaan afforded a sound precedent for such cases; and, indeed, if we remember what the soldiers of Tilly and Wallenstein were doing at this very time in Germany, we shall realize that the work of Mason and Underhill would not have been felt by any one in that age to merit censure or stand in need of excuses.  As a matter of practical policy the