says he, “we should never have found means to have gotten a raft to carry them, or to have gotten a raft on shore without boat or sail; and how much less should we have done,” said he, “if any of us had been alone!” Well, I desired him to abate his compliment, and go on with the history of their coming on shore, where they landed.  He told me they unhappily landed at a place where there were people without provisions; whereas, had they had the common sense to have put off to sea again, and gone to another island a little farther, they had found provisions though without people; there being an island that way, as they had been told, where there were provisions though no people; that is to say, that the Spaniards of Trinidad had frequently been there, and filled the island with goats and hogs at several times, where they have bred in such multitudes, and where turtle and sea-fowls were in such plenty, that they could have been in no want of flesh though they had found no bread; whereas here they were only sustained with a few roots and herbs, which they understood not, and which had no substance in them, and which the inhabitants gave them sparingly enough, and who could treat them no better unless they would turn cannibals, and eat men’s flesh, which was the great dainty of the country.

They gave me an account how many ways they strove to civilize the savages they were with, and to teach them rational customs in the ordinary way of living, but in vain; and how they retorted it upon them as unjust, that they, who came thither for assistance and support, should attempt to set up for instructors of those that gave them bread; intimating, it seems, that none should set up for the instructors of others but those who could live without them.

They gave me dismal accounts of the extremities they were driven to; how sometimes they were many days without any food at all, the island they were upon being inhabited by a sort of savages that lived more indolent, and for that reason were less supplied with the necessaries of life than they had reason to believe others were in the same part of the world; and yet they found that these savages were less ravenous and voracious than those who had better supplies of food.

Also they added, that they could not but see with what demonstrations of wisdom and goodness the governing providence of God directs the event of things in the world, which they said appeared in their circumstances; for if, pressed by the hardships they were under, and the barrenness of the country where they were, they had searched after a better place to live in, they had then been out of the way of the relief that happened to them by my means.