THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 99 
through the snow, surprised Schenectady at mid- 
night, and slaughtered some sixty of the inhabitants. 
In the following month a similar barbarous attack was 
made upon Salmon Falls, in New Hampshire; and 
shortly after, Fort Loyal, standing where now is the 
foot of India Street, in the city of Portland, experi- 
enced the same sort of treatment. This policy accom- 
plished so much that it was tried again. In 1692, 
York was laid in ashes, and one-third of the inhab- 
itants massacred. In 1694, two hundred and thirty 
Algonquins, led by one French officer and one Jesuit 
priest, surprised the village at Oyster River — now 
Durham, about twelve miles from Portsmouth — and 
murdered one hundred and four persons, mostly women 
and children. Some of the unhappy victims were burned 
alive. Emboldened by this success, the barbarians next 
attacked Groton, in Massachusetts, where they slew 
forty people. 
Similar incursions were made from year to year. A 
raid on Haverhill in 1697 has become famous through 
the bold exploit of a village Amazon. Hannah Dustin 
had seven days before given birth to a child, and lay 
in the farmhouse, waited on by her kindly neighbour, 
Mary Neff. Her husband was at work in a field hard 
by, having with him their seven children, of whom the 
youngest was but two years old. All at once the war- 
whoop sounded in Dustin’s ears, and snatching his 
gun and leaping on his horse he galloped toward the 
farmhouse, when he saw that the Indians were there 
before him, so that his presence would be of no avail. 
Turning quickly back to the field, he thought to seize 
as many of the children as he could, and gallop away; 
but when he looked upon the seven dear little faces 
