HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 



have been the utterance of an honest suspicion on the part 

 of Philip and his friends: it sounds more like an advantage 

 taken of the impossibility of contrary proof, to urge a con- 

 scious and mischievous slander. Nor is there any thing 

 in what Easton says to give color to the notion of a gen- 

 eral conspiracy among all the tribes to crush out the 

 whites. 



The results of the war were heavy to the Colonies. 

 Ten or twelve towns were utterly destroyed, and two- 

 score of others more or less damaged and depopulated. 

 From five to six hundred men fell in the various fights, 

 were murdered in stealthy assaults, or were carried away 

 captive, never to return. More than £100,000 were ex- 

 pended in the struggle; and, at its close, it is estimated 

 that the Old Colony was left under a debt which exceeded 

 the value of the entire personal property of its people! 

 As a natural consequence, the Plymouth Colonists were 

 nearly discouraged. But, from her thin soil and her vari- 

 ous industries, she gradually pushed on to square herself 

 with the world, until she had paid the last dollar of prin- 

 cipal and interest! 



The causes which aroused those later hostilities, which 

 called out the several Eastern Expeditions recounted in 

 this Second Part, were not different essentially from those 

 which lay at the root of " Philip's War," except as the 

 intermeddling of the French may have had to do with 



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