360 THE MASSACRE. [1763, June. 



Messengers arrived on the next day from Pontiac, 

 informing them that he was besieging Detroit, 

 and nrging them to come to his aid. . But their 

 warlike ardor had well-nigh died out. A sense- 

 less alarm prevailed among them, and they now 

 thought more of securing their own safety than of 

 injuring the enemy. A vigilant watch was kept up 

 all day, and the unusual precaution taken of plac- 

 ing guards at night. Their fears, however, did 

 not prevent them from seizing two English trad- 

 ing canoes, which had come from Montreal by 

 way of the Ottawa. Among the booty found in 

 them was a quantity of whiskey, and a general 

 debauch was the immediate result. As night 

 closed in, the dolorous chanting of drunken songs 

 was heard from within the lodges, the prelude of a 

 scene of riot ; and Wawatam, knowing that his 

 friend Henry's life would be in danger, privately 

 led him out of the camp to a cavern in the hills, 

 towards the interior of the island. Here the trader 

 spent the night, in a solitude made doubly dreary 

 by a sense of his forlorn and perilous situation. 

 On waking in the morning, he found that he had 

 been lying on human bones, which covered the 

 floor of the cave. The place had anciently served 

 as a charnel-house. Here he spent another solitary 

 night, before his friend came to apprise him that 

 he might return with safety to the camp. 



Famine soon began among the Indians, who 

 were sometimes without food for days together. 

 No complaints were heard ; but with faces black- 

 ened, in sign of sorrow, they patiently endured 



