Arrow after arrow drank her blood while thus she sung—and at length she toppled headlong into the boiling flood below.
Fierce was the pursuit and desperate the flight of the surviving Androscoggins, and the Sagamore of Saco, with his followers, never rested, day nor night, till the last vestige of the Terrentines was rooted up. To this day, in the village of Lewiston, now a thriving and wealthy manufacturing city, the new settler, digging the foundation for his princely mansion, often unearths half-consumed brands, and, sad to tell, the small skull of the child, thus designating the site of the old Indian village, and attesting to the truth of that tradition, which still preserves the memory of the destruction of the Androscoggins as we have described, and the conflagration of the village above the falls of the Pejipscot.
No white man has ventured to solve the mystery of the grotto under the sheet of water, where rest the ashes of Hope Vines.
A story is still extant to this effect: Many years ago, while Lewiston was a small village, retains its Indian name of Pejipscot, a young man was standing on the shelf of rock, which we have described, and where we have often stood ourselves, spell-bound by the majestic scenery, when suddenly, from amidst the foam and spray, appeared an old man, and stood upon the rocks beside him. His hair was of a snowy whiteness, but his eye flashed with the fires of youth as he beheld the white stranger upon the rock.
Before the latter could recover from his amazement, to inquire of his advent, the old Indian seized him in his arms and dashed him to the earth; when he recovered to look about him, he saw his aggressor rapidly paddling his canoe down the river.
For years John Bonyton lingered about the falls, in the vain desire of seeing once more the pale, spectral beauty of Hope Vines, but she appeared no more in the flesh.
Tradition delights to recall her story, and to this day, men not romantic nor visionary declare to have seen a figure, slight and beautiful, clad in snowy robes, with moccasined feet, and hair covering her form like a vail, moving sorrowfully about the falls, and the strange figure they believe to be the wraith of Hope Vines.
Thus does tradition preserve the memory of the beloved of the Sagamore of Saco.
John Bonyton at length rejoined the Sacos at what is now known as Salmon Falls. (We ought to say that this word is pronounced as if written Sawco.) He lived to extreme old age, an object of love and veneration to the people who had chosen him for their chief, or sagamore, and reviled, hated and despised by the people of the colony.
At his death he refused to be buried in the “grave-yard” of the decorous Pilgrims of the day, but gave directions for his repose not far from the beautiful falls of the Saco, within the sound of those waters which had witnessed his sorrows, his mortifications and his triumphs—whose roar had been to him a perpetual inspiration. Here, for years, was pointed out the rude stone, with its malignant epitaph, which marked the grave of a man born out of place.