1692.] ATTACK ON WELLS. 353 



Wells, like York, was a small settlement of scat- 

 tered houses along the sea-shore. The year be- 

 fore, Moxus had vainly attacked it with two 

 hundred warriors. All the neighboring country 

 had been laid waste by a murderous war of detail, 

 the lonely farm-houses pillaged and burned, and the 

 survivors driven back for refuge to the older settle- 

 ments. 1 Wells had been crowded with these refu- 

 gees ; but famine and misery had driven most of 

 them beyond the Piscataqua, and the place was 

 now occupied by a remnant of its own destitute 

 inhabitants, who, warned by the fate of York, had 

 taken refuge in five fortified houses. The largest 

 of these, belonging to Joseph Storer, was surrounded 

 by a palisade, and occupied by fifteen armed men, 

 under Captain Convers, an officer of militia. On 

 the ninth of June, two sloops and a sail-boat ran up 

 the neighboring creek, bringing supplies and four- 

 teen more men. The succor came in the nick of 

 time. The sloops had scarcely anchored, when a 

 number of cattle were seen running frightened and 

 wounded from the woods. It was plain that an 

 enemy was lurking there. All the families of the 

 place now gathered within the palisades of Storer's 

 house, thus increasing his force to about thirty 

 men ; and a close watch was kept throughout the 

 night. 



In the morning, no room was left for doubt. 

 One John Diamond, on his way from the house to 



1 The ravages committed by the Abenakis in the preceding year 

 among the scattered farms of Maine and New Hampshire are said by 

 Frontenac to have been " impossible to describe." Another French 

 writer says that they burned more than 200 houses. 



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