observed, that the two pregnant women were found with their bellies ripped open.  An action which these savages cannot forget, especially as at that time they made fair war with the English.  They have always looked on this deed as a singular mark of the most unheard-of cruelty. [Who would not look on it in the same light?  But as no nation on earth is known to have more than ours constitutionally, a horror for such barbarities, especially in cold blood; it may be very easily presumed, that this fact was, if true, committed by some of the savages themselves, without the knowledge of the commander, or of any of the English troops.]

Five months before this action, one named Danas, or David, an English privateer, having treacherously hoisted French colors in the Streights of Fronsac, by means of a French deserter he had with him, decoyed on board his vessel the chief of the savages of Cape-Breton, called James Padanuque, with his whole family, whom he carried to Boston, where he was clapped into a dungeon the instant he was landed; from which he was only taken out to stifle him on board of a vessel, in which they pretended to return him safe to Cape-Breton.  His son, at that time a boy of eight years of age, they will absolutely not release; though, since their detention of that young savage, they have frequently had prisoners sent back to them, without ransom, on condition of restoring the young man to his country:  but though they accepted the condition, they never complied with it.

In the month of July, 1745, the same Danas, with the same success, employed the same decoy on a savage-family, which could not get out of their hands, but by escaping one night from their prisons.

About the same time one named Bartholomew Petitpas, an appointed savage-linguist, was carried away prisoner to Boston.  The savages have several times demanded him in exchange for English prisoners they then had in their hands, of whom two were officers, to whom they gave their liberty, on condition of the Bostoners returning of Petitpas; whom, however, they not only kept prisoner, but afterwards put to death.

In the same year, 1745, a missionary of the savages of Cape Breton, Natkikouesch, Picktook, and of the island of St. John, having been invited by several letters, on the part of the commodore of the English squadron, and of the general of the land-forces, to a parley, those gentlemen desired with him, concerning the savages, repaired to Louisbourg, at that time in possession of the English, on the assurances they had given him in writing, and on the formal promises they had bound with an oath, of full liberty to return from whence he came, after having satisfied them in all they wanted of him.  They detained him at Louisbourg, where they gave him a great deal of ill usage, and obliged him to embark, all sick as he was, and destitute of necessaries, on board of one of the ships of the squadron, in which he was conveyed to England, from whence he at length got to France. [Most probably he had not given the satisfaction required by those gentlemen, which had been confessedly by himself made the condition of his return.]