Ipswitch, near Agawam, May 12.

We set out day before yesterday on our journey to Newbury. There were
eight of us,--Rebecca Rawson and her sister, Thomas Broughton, his wife,
and their man-servant, my brother Leonard and myself, and young Robert
Pike, of Newbury, who had been to Boston on business, his father having
great fisheries in the river as well as the sea. He is, I can perceive,
a great admirer of my cousin, and indeed not without reason; for she
hath in mind and person, in her graceful carriage and pleasant
discourse, and a certain not unpleasing waywardness, as of a merry
child, that which makes her company sought of all. Our route the first
day lay through the woods and along the borders of great marshes and
meadows on the seashore. We came to Linne at night, and stopped at the
house of a kinsman of Robert Pike's,--a man of some substance and note
in that settlement. We were tired and hungry, and the supper of warm
Indian bread and sweet milk relished quite as well as any I ever ate in
the Old Country. The next day we went on over a rough road to Wenham,
through Salem, which is quite a pleasant town. Here we stopped until
this morning, when we again mounted our horses, and reached this place,
after a smart ride of three hours. The weather in the morning was warm
and soft as our summer days at home; and, as we rode through the woods,
where the young leaves were fluttering, and the white blossoms of the
wind-flowers, and the blue violets and the yellow blooming of the
cowslips in the low grounds, were seen on either hand, and the birds all
the time making a great and pleasing melody in the branches, I was glad
of heart as a child, and thought if my beloved friends and Cousin Oliver
were only with us, I could never wish to leave so fair a country.

Just before we reached Agawam, as I was riding a little before my
companions, I was startled greatly by the sight of an Indian. He was
standing close to the bridle-path, his half-naked body partly hidden by
a clump of white birches, through which he looked out on me with eyes
like two live coals. I cried for my brother and turned my horse, when
Robert Pike came up and bid me be of cheer, for he knew the savage, and
that he was friendly. Whereupon, he bade him come out of the bushes,
which he did, after a little parley. He was a tall man, of very fair
and comely make, and wore a red woollen blanket with beads and small
clam-shells jingling about it. His s