PliStER WILLIAMSON. 
40^ 
atidi placing them near his eyes, told him his face was wet, and they 
wonld dryit; at length they sat down, and roasted their meat, of 
which they had robbed Williamson’s dwelling : having satisfied their 
hunger, they offered some to their unfortunate captive, which he 
pretended to eat. After having finished their repast, they proceeded 
onward to their winter habitations, and on their journey committed 
the most cruel outrages, till they reached Alamlngo, where the seve- 
rity of the cold increasing, they stripped him of his cloak for their 
own use, and gave him such as they usually wore themselves, being 
a piece of blanketing, and a pair of moganes, or shoes, with a yard 
of coarse cloth to put round him instead of breeches. Thus, foi* 
nearly two months, naked as he nearly was, did he endure the incle- 
mency of the weather, which rendered his limbs m a manner quite 
stiff, and unsusceptible of motion : he contrived, however, to erect a 
little wigwam with the bark of the trees, covering the same with 
earth, which made it resemble a cave : and to prevent the ill effects 
of the cold which penetrated into it, he always kept a good fire near 
the entrance. 
At length, the time arrived when the Indians were preparing for a 
new expedition, and the snow being quite gone, so that no traces of 
their footsteps could be perceived, they set forth on their journey 
towards the provinces of Pennsylvania. One night, the Indians being" 
much fatigued with their day’s excursion they fell so soundly asleep,” 
that Williamson, trusting to Divine providence for protection, effected 
his liberty ; and after very narrow escapes of being retaken he arrived; 
on the fifth day, at the house of John Bell, an old acquaintance, whOf 
kindly received him : here he remained some tune ; and on Januar^^ 
4, 1755, arrived at his father-in-law’s house in Chester County, when' 
scarcely one of the family would believe their eyes, thinking he had 
fallen a prey to the merciless cruelty of the Indians. » 
Shortly after his arrival at home, his wife having been dead tw^6 
months before, he enlisted into Colonel Shirley’s regiment, which was 
intended for the frontiers, to destroy the French ports ; in this desuB 
tory kind of warfare, he continued till Oswego was captured by the 
French in August 1756, when the French, and the Indians in their 
terest, committed the most heart-rending barbarities and excesses. * 
Williamson was one of the persons taken prisoners at Oswego; 
and was, in November 1756, brought from America to Plymouth under 
a flag of truce ; where, in about four months subsequent to his arrival, 
he was discharged as incapable of further service, occasioned by a 
wound in his left hand. He then published a narrative of his sufFeir^ 
ings, in a tract, entitled French and Indian Cruelty displayed in 
the Life and Adventures o|, Peter Williamson.” Neither the strange 
vicissitudes of his own fortu%, chequered with uncommon calamities; 
nor the good intention of his narrative, could protect him from the 
resentment of some merchants of Aberdeen, where he went in quest 
of his relations ; because, in the introduction to his narrative, he had 
noticed the manner in which he had been illegally kidnapped on 
board ship, and sold for a slave. For that publication he was im-» 
prisoned, and three hundred and lifty copies of his book, the only 
means had of obtainiug his livelihood; were taken from him,^ and 
