Contents - BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD - INDEX TO CHAPTERS - INDEX TO BIBLIOGRAPHIES - INDEX TO AUTHORS

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XV. Colonial and Revolutionary Literature; Early National Literature, Part I.

I. Travellers and Explorers, 1583–1763

§ 9. Mrs. Rowlandson

The first and the best known of these narratives is that of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. She was the wife of the minister at Lancaster, Massachusetts, where the natives seized her when they burned the town during King Philip’s War. The record of her subsequent “Removes” has seldom been equalled as a direct appeal for human sympathy. The hours following her capture may well have been

the dolefullest night that ever my eyes saw. Oh the roaring, and singing, and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell… There remained nothing to me but one poor wounded Babe, and it seemed at present worse than death, that it was in such a pitiful condition, bespeaking Compassion, and I had no refreshing for it, nor suitable things to revive it.