THE CAPTIVE OF YORK.

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BY STELLA MARTIN.

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The winter of 1692 was no mild specimen of the climate of the New England wilds. The settlers on the inhospitable coast of Maine found its severity to exceed all their apprehensions. The few comforts which they had as yet been able to gather around them, were inadequate to the wants of that long and dreary season. Many fell victims of hardships and despondency; while not a few toiled on, cheerful and uncomplaining examples of endurance and suffering. It was perhaps more fortunate for the northern settlements than their pioneers, that they were commenced in summer, for the cold and inclemency of their early winters were enough to sadden the heart, and blast the hopes of the most visionary dreamer. The stranger who built his rude open hut in pleasant June, fanned by cool breezes during his summer toil, wot not that a few months would bring a bleakness of which he had little conception. The settlements on the Piscataqua are among the oldest in Maine; and to those who first selected the romantic site of the now beautiful village of York, it seemed enchanted land. Primeval forests covered the whole country through which the Piscataqua and its Naiad Sisters wound their way to the sea. The delicate foliage of the beech and poplar, the deep sombre green of the hemlock and fir, the pale, graceful willow, and the bright emerald maple, all blended to form a perfect forest robe, as yet untouched by the devastating hand of man. Bald peaks lent wildness to the scene, already diversified by the commanding banks of the rivers which lay calmly mirrored in their deep, clear waters. No wonder the early adventurers looked with rapturous delight upon the broad bays studded with islands, the green promontories and quiet harbors into which the streams widening their channels, gradually lost themselves in the Atlantic. The sea-fowl bathed its drooping plumage unmolested on the shores, the wild-cat ran at will, guided only by the impulses of its savage nature, and the graceful deer proudly reared its antlered head, and bounded away, the undisturbed inhabitant of the mighty wilderness.

To him who, tired with the bondage of the old world, sought refuge in the new, these were glowing emblems of that liberty he so earnestly longed for. He hailed the land spread out before him, in all the magnificence of nature, as that which would realize his most chimerical ideas of happiness. Imagination added to its charms, and converted what was truly wild and beautiful into a paradise. The toils and dangers of the frontier life vanished away; and with a buoyant heart the wanderer adopted the unknown soil, alike ignorant and unmindful of the ills that would cluster around his future path. When want shall have been encountered in every form, sickness endured, famine driven from the door, and “hope, the star that leads the weary on,” delusive hope, shall whisper of bliss to come, he is destined to find in the savage tribes of the country, enemies more formidable than the evils of his condition. Hard fate! to survive the strife of the elements, to escape pestilence and danger only to perish by a relentless human foe.