A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings, and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson/14 The fourteenth Remove


The ƒourteenth Remove.

NOW must we pack up and be gone from this thicket, bending our course toward the bay-towns. I having nothing to eat by the way this day, but a few crumbs of cake, that an Indian gave my girl, the same day we were taken. She gave it me, and I put it into my pocket: There it lay, till it was so mouldy (for want of good baking) that one could not tell what it was made of; it fell all into crumbs, and grew so dry and hard, that it was like little flints; and this refreshed me many times, when I was ready to faint. It was in my thoughts when I put it to my mouth, that if ever I returned, I would tell the world, what a blessing the Lord gave to such mean food. As we went along, they killed a deer, with a young one; they gave me a piece of the fawn, and it was so young and tender, that one might eat the bones as well as the flesh, and yet I thought it very good. When night came on, we sat down; it rained, but they quickly got up a bark wigwam, where I lay dry that night. I looked out in the morning, and many of them had lien in the rain all night, I saw by their reaking. Thus the Lord dealt mercifully with me many times, and I fared better than many of them. In the morning they took the blood of the deer, and put it into the paunch, and so boiled it: I could eat nothing of that, though they eat it sweetly. And yet they were so nice in other things, that when I had fetch'd water, and had put the dish I dipp'd the water with into the kettle of water which I brought, they would say they would knock me down, for they said it was a sluttish trick.