A Walk On Witch Hill

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A Walk To Witch Hill

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"Poor old Rebecca Nurse had been led, heavily ironed, up the broad isle of Salem Church to be thrust out of its communion."
Below, Samuel Drake, historian, envisions the dreadful results of the Reign of Terror for five of its victims

The Place where a great crime has been committed has always something strangely fascinating about it. Accursed though it may be, repulsive as its associations generally are, yet most people will go a greater distance to see the locality of a murder than they would take the trouble to do for any other purpose whatsoever.

The scene of the witchcraft outbreak of 1692 is an elevated knoll of no great extent, rising among the shaggy hills and spongy meadows that lie at some distance back from the more thickly settled part of the town of Danvers, Massachusetts, formerly Salem Village. It is indeed a quiet little neighborhood to have made so much noise in the world.

On the 19th of July, 1692, an unusual stir might have been observed in Salem. We may suppose the town excited beyond any thing that had been known in its history.

The condemned witches, Sarah Good, Sarah Wildes, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, and Rebecca Nurse, were to be hanged on Gallows Hills.

The narrow lane in which the common jail is situated is thronged with knots of men and women wearing gloomy, awe-struck faces, conversing in under-tones. The crowd gives way on the approach of a cart that stops in front of the prison door, which is now wide opened. On one side stands the jailer, with ponderous keys handing at his girdle; on the other is the sheriff grasping his staff of office. The guard clears a passage, and then the sheriff's voice is heard calling upon the condemned to come forth.

There are five of them, all women. They look pale, haggard, despairing. At sight of them a murmur ripples through the crowd, succeeded by solemn stillness. As they mount the cart with weak and tottering steps--for some are old and feeble and gray-haired--audible sobs are heard among the bystanders. Men's lips are compressed and teeth clenched as they look on with white faces. All is ready. The guard surrounds the cart, as if a rescue were feared. It takes a score of strong men, armed to the teeth, to conduct five helpless women to death!

I suppose there were outcries, hooting, and imprecations, as is the rabble's wont. If so, I believe they were borne with the resignation and heroism that make woman the superior of man in supreme moments. At last the cavalcade is grouped around the place of execution. The gallows and the fatal ladder are there, grotesque yet horrible. To each of those five women they mean martyrdom, and nothing less.

The provost-marshal commands silence while he reads the warrant. This formality ended, he replaces it in his belt. Expectation is intense as the condemned are seen to take leave of each other, like people who have done with this world. At the scaffold Rev. Mr. Noyes, of Salem, insulted the last moments of Sarah Good. "you are a witch, and you know it," said this servant of Christ. She turned upon him fiercely, "you lie, and if you take away my life God will give you blood to drink."

Then a shiver, like an electric spark, runs through the multitude as the hangman seizes them, pinions and blindfolds them, and, in the name of King William and Queen Mary, hangs them by the neck until dead.