The Frontiersmen by Gustave Aimard — Read

"How would you be, If He, who is the top of judgment, should But judge you as you are? O, think on that! And mercy then will breathe within your lips Like man new made. " Measure for Measure

The now liberated party left the boat, and with mingled feelings of joyfulness for their delivery, and of sadness for the waste and desolation caused by the unmerciful savages, proceeded towards the spot where had once stood the dwelling of Barton. Scarcely a trace was left of the cottage, and nothing but a mass of half-consumed and charred and blackened timbers indicated that here had once been the habitation of a happy family. On the north, the trees had been stripped of their leaves, their trunks and boughs blackened and partially consumed, while the ground appeared to have been covered with a carpet of fire. The lawn about the cottage had been made desolate, and the shrubbery and flowers that had began to gladden the wilderness with new and unaccustomed beauties, had been trodden down and broken as with a wanton and malicious desire on the part of the Indians to destroy every vestige of civilization.