x Preface.

The incidents of this time, the terror of the frontier settlements
after Braddock's defeat and death and Dunbar's flight, Sharpe's ener-
getic action, and his trouble with the obstinate Delegates, are more
fully recited in the Assembly Journal and in the Sharpe Correspondence.

War, even in its humanest forms, is cruel; but in this the horrors
were greatly increased by the employment, on both sides, of savages,
whose fiendish cruelty and treachery were encouraged and rewarded.
Large bounties were given for scalps, thus adding the stimulus of
avarice to their natural ferocity, with the result that they took to
scalping friends for profit as well as foes for pleasure, and they even
invented a method of making four scalps out of one—an art in which
the Cherokees, it is said, especially excelled.

It may be of interest here to note the order of a Maryland flag from
England, said flag to be " black and yellow, with the union in one
corner."

Anything like a war with the French or with Indians was sure to
arouse fanatical suspicion, in a certain element of the people, against
their Catholic fellow-citizens. There was preserved among the baser,
more bigoted, or more credulous sort, a tradition of a century's stand-
ing, that the Catholics were always waiting for an opportunity to cut
the Protestants' throats. Charges of plottings and conspiracies were
laid before the Governor, who, fortunately, was not a Seymour, and
had the matter impartially investigated, when the whole turned out a
baseless fabrication. In connection with this a curious example of
moral perversity is given in the examination and recantation of one
William Marshall or Johnson (pp. 161-174) who seems to have been
ambitious of being the Titus Oates of Maryland.

The examinations on pp. 438-467 narrate some queer happenings
in the Chesapeake Bay, which have about them something of the
flavour of comic opera.

Capt. William Mulkere of the schooner Industry, sailing under a
letter of marque issued by the Governor of the Caribbee Islands, was
standing down the Bay, when he met the brig Duke of Marlborough,
Capt. David Carcaud, coming up. Mulkere hails the brig and asks
the usual questions, coupled with a request for the latest news. Car-
caud invites Mulkere on board the brig, who when there asks to see
the brig's papers, which request is met by a demand for the sight of
Mulkere's commission. This being produced, Carcaud pronounces
Mulkere a pirate, but nevertheless exhibits his own papers, which
prove to be in an unknown tongue. Being asked if he has no papers