154 DEXOXVILLE AND THE SENECAS. [1687. 



ered. One of the escaped prisoners saw the rest 

 buried, and he saw also more than sixty very 

 dangerously wounded." * 



In the morning, the troops advanced in order of 

 battle through a marsh covered with alders and 

 tall grass, whence they had no sooner emerged 

 than, says Abbe Belmont, " we began to see the 

 famous Babylon of the Senecas, where so many 

 crimes have been committed, so much blood spilled, 

 and so many men burned. It was a village or 

 town of bark, on the top of a hill. They had 

 burned it a week before. We found nothing in it 

 but the graveyard and the graves, full of snakes 

 and other creatures ; a great mask, with teeth 

 and eyes of brass, and a bearskin drawn over it, 

 with which they performed their conjurations." a 

 The fire had also spared a number of huge recep- 

 tacles of bark, still filled with the last season's 

 corn ; while the fields around were covered with 

 the growing crop, ripening in the July sun. There 

 were hogs, too, in great number ; for the Iroquois 

 did not share the antipathy with which Indians 

 are apt to regard that unsavory animal, and from 

 which certain philosophers have argued their de- 

 scent from the Jews. 



The soldiers killed the hogs, burned the old 

 corn, and hacked down the new with their swords. 

 Next they advanced to an abandoned Seneca fort 

 on a hill half a league distant, and burned it, with 



1 Denonville an Ministre, 25 Aout, 1687. In his journal, written after- 

 wards, he says that the Senecas left twenty-seven dead on the field, and 

 carried off twenty more, besides upwards of sixty mortally wounded. 



2 Belmont. A few words are added from Saint- Vallier. 



