were, was, that they would, if possible, drive them up to the farther
part of the island, south-east, that if any more savages came on shore,
they might not find one another; then that they would daily hunt and
harass them, and kill as many of them as they could come at, till they
had reduced the number; and if they could at last tame them, and bring
them to any thing, they would give them corn, and teach them how to
plant, and live upon their daily Labour.
In order to this they followed them, and so terrified them with their
guns, that in a few days, if any of them fired a gun at an Indian, if he
did not hit him, yet he would fall down for fear; and so dreadfully
frighted they were, that they kept out of sight farther and farther,
till at last our men following them, and every day almost killing and
wounding some of them, they kept up in the woods and hollow places so
much, that it reduced them to the utmost misery for want of food; and
many were afterwards found dead in the woods, without any hurt, but
merely starved to death.
When our men found this, it made their hearts relent, and pity moved
them; especially the Spaniard governor, who was the most gentleman-like,
generous-minded man that ever I met with in my life; and he proposed, if
possible, to take one of them alive, and bring him to understand what
they meant, so far as to be able to act as interpreter, and to go among
them, and see if they might be brought to some conditions that might be
depended upon, to save their lives, and do us no spoil.
It was some time before any of them could be taken; but being weak, and
half-starved, one of them was at last surprised, and made a prisoner: he
was sullen at first, and would neither eat nor drink; but finding
himself kindly used, and victuals given him, and no violence offered
him, he at last grew tractable, and came to himself.
They brought old Friday to him, who talked often with him, and told him
how kind the others would be to them all: that they would not only save
their lives, but would give them a part of the island to live in,
provided they would give satisfaction; that they should keep in their
own bounds, and not come beyond them, to injure or prejudice others; and
that they should have corn given them, to plant and make it grow for
their bread, and some bread given them for their present subsistence;
and old Friday bade the fellow go and talk with the rest of his
countrymen, and hear what they said to it, assuring them that if they
did not agree immediately they should all be destroyed.
The poor wretches, thoroughly humbled, and reduced in number to about
thirty-seven, closed with the proposal at the first offer, and begged to
have some food given them; upon which twelve Spaniards and two
Englishmen, well armed, and three Indian slaves, and old Friday, marched
to the place where they were; the three Indian slaves carried them a
large quantity of bread, and some rice boiled up to cakes, and dried in
the sun, and three live goats; and they were ordered to go to the side
of an hill, where they sat down, ate the provisions very thankfully, and
were the most faithful fellows to their words that could be thought of;
for except when they came to beg victuals and directions they never came
out of their bounds; and there they lived when I came to the island, and
I went to see them.
They had taught them both to plant corn, make bread, breed tame goats,
and milk them; they wanted nothing but wives, and they soon would have
been a nation: they were confined to a neck of land surrounded with high
rocks behind them, and lying plain towards the sea before them, on the
south-east corner of the island; they had land enough, and it was very
good and fruitful; for they had a piece of land about a mile and a half
broad, and three or four miles in length.
Our men taught them to make wooden spades, such as I made for myself;
and gave among them twelve hatchets, and three or four knives; and there
they lived, the most subjected innocent creatures that were ever
heard of.
After this the colony enjoyed a perfect tranquillity with respect to the
savages, till I came to revisit them, which was in about two years. Not
but that now and then some canoes of savages came on shore for their
triumphal, unnatural feasts; but as they were of several nations, and,
perhaps, had never heard of those that came before, or the reason of it,
they did not make any search or inquiry after their countrymen; and if
they had, it would have been very hard for them to have found them out.
Thus, I think, I have given a full account of all that happened to them
to my return, at least that was worth notice. The Indians, or savages,
were wonderfully civilized by them, and they frequently went among them;
but forbid, on pain of death, any of the Indians coming to them,
because they would not have their settlement betrayed again.
One thing was very remarkable, viz. that they taught the savages to make
wicker-work, or baskets; but they soon outdid their masters; for they
made abundance of most ingenious things in wicker-work; particularly all
sorts of baskets, sieves, bird-cages, cupboards, &c. as also chairs to
sit on, stools, beds, couches, and abundance of other things, being very
ingenious at such work when they were once put in the way of it.
My coming was a particular relief to these people, because we furnished
them with knives, scissars, spades, shovels, pickaxes, and all things of
that kind which they could want.
With the help of these tools they were so very handy, that they came at
last to build up their huts, or houses, very handsomely; raddling, or
working it up like basket-work all the way round, which was a very
extraordinary piece of ingenuity, and looked very odd; but was an
exceeding good fence, as well against heat, as against all sorts of
vermin; and our men were so taken with it, that they got the wild
savages to come and do the like for them; so that when I came to see the
two Englishmen’s colonies, they looked, at a distance, as if they lived
all like bees in a hive; and as for Will Atkins, who was now become a
very industrious, necessary, and sober fellow, he had made himself such
a tent of basket work as I believe was never seen. It was one hundred
and twenty paces round on the outside, as I measured by my steps; the
walls were as close worked as a basket, in pannels or squares,
thirty-two in number, and very strong, standing about seven feet high:
in the middle was another not above twenty-two paces round, but built
stronger, being eight-square in its form, and in the eight corners stood
eight very strong posts, round the top of which he laid strong pieces,
joined together with wooden pins, from which he raised a pyramid before
the roof of eight rafters, very handsome I assure you, and joined
together very well, though he had no nails, and only a few iron spikes,
which he had made himself too, out of the old iron that I had left
there; and indeed this fellow shewed abundance of ingenuity in several
things which he had no knowledge of; he made himself a forge, with a
pair of wooden bellows to blow the fire; he made himself charcoal for
his work, and he formed out of one of the iron crows a middling good
anvil to hammer upon; in this manner he made many things, but especially
hooks, staples and spikes, bolts and hinges. But to return to the house:
after he pitched the roof of his innermost tent, he worked it up between
the rafters with basket-work, so firm, and thatched that over again so
ingeniously with rice-straw, and over that a large leaf of a tree, which
covered the top, that his house was as dry as if it had been tiled or
slated. Indeed he owned that the savages made the basket-work for him.
The outer circuit was covered, as a lean-to, all round his inner,
apartment, and long rafters lay from the thirty two angles to the top
posts of the inner house, being about twenty feet distant; so that there
was a space like a walk within the outer wicker wall, and without the
inner, near twenty feet wide.
The inner place he partitioned off with the same wicker work, but much
fairer, and divided into six apartments, for that he had six rooms on a
floor, and out of every one of these there was a door: first, into the
entry, or coming into the main tent; and another door into the space or
walk that was round it; so that this walk was also divided into six
equal parts, which served not only for a retreat, but to store up any
necessaries which the family had occasion for. These six spaces not
taking up the whole circumference, what other apartments the outer
circle had, were thus ordered: as soon as you were in at the door of the
outer circle, you had a short passage straight before you to the door of
the inner house; but on either side was a wicker partition, and a door
in it, by which you went first into a large room or storehouse, twenty
feet wide, and about thirty feet long, and through that into another
not quite so long: so that in the outer circle were ten handsome rooms,
six of which were only to be come at through the apartments of the inner
tent, and served as closets or retired rooms to the respective chambers
of the inner circle; and four large warehouses or barns, or what you
please to call them, which went in through one another, two on either
hand of the passage that led through the outer door to the inner tent.
Such a piece of basket-work, I believe, was never seen in the world; nor
an house or tent so neatly contrived, much less so built. In this great
beehive lived the three families; that is to say, Will Atkins and his
companions; the third was killed, but his wife remained with three
children; for she was, it seems, big with child when he died, and the
other two were not at all backward to give the widow her full share of
every thing, I mean as to their corn, milk, grapes, &c. and when they
killed a kid, or found a turtle on the shore; so that they all lived
well enough, though it was true, they were not so industrious as the
other two, as has been observed already.
One thing, however, cannot be omitted, viz. that, as for religion, I
don’t know that there was any thing of that kind among them; they pretty
often indeed put one another in mind that there was a God, by the very
common method of seamen, viz. swearing by his name; nor were their poor,
ignorant, savage wives much the better for having been married to
Christians as we must call them; for as they knew very little of God
themselves, so they were utterly incapable of entering into any
discourse with their wives about a God or to talk any thing to them
concerning religion.
The utmost of all the improvement which I can say the wives had made
from them, was, that they had taught them to speak English pretty well;
and all the children they had, which were near twenty in all were taught
to speak English too, from their first learning to speak, though they at
first spoke it in a very broken manner, like their mothers. There were
none of those children above six years old when I came thither; for it
was not much above seven years that they had fetched these five savage
ladies over, but they had all been pretty fruitful, for they had all
children, more or less: I think the cook’s mate’s wife was big of her
sixth child; and the mothers were all a good sort of well-governed,
quiet, laborious women, modest and decent, helpful to one another,
mighty observant and subject to their masters, I cannot call them
husbands; and wanted nothing but to be well instructed in the Christian
religion, and to be legally married; both which were happily brought
about afterwards by my means, or at least by the consequence of my
coming among them.
Having thus given an account of the colony in general, and pretty much
of my five runagate Englishmen, I must say something of the Spaniards,
who were the main body of the family, and in whose story there are some
incidents also remarkable enough.
I had a great many discourses with them about their circumstances when
they were among the savages; they told me readily, that they had no
instances to give of their application or ingenuity in that country;
that they were a poor, miserable, dejected handful of people; that if
means had been put into their hands, they had yet so abandoned
themselves to despair, and so sunk under the weight of their
misfortunes, that they thought of nothing but starving. One of them, a
grave and very sensible man, told me he was convinced they were in the
wrong; that it was not the part of wise men to give up themselves to
their misery, but always to take hold of the helps which reason offered,
as well for present support, as for future deliverance; he told me that
grief was the most senseless insignificant passion in the world, for
that it regarded only things past, which were generally impossible to be
recalled or to be remedied, but had no view to things to come, and had
no share in any thing that looked like deliverance, but rather added to
the affliction than proposed a remedy; and upon this he repeated a
Spanish proverb, which though I cannot repeat in just the same words
that he spoke it, yet I remember I made it into an English proverb of my
own, thus;
In trouble to be troubled,
Is to have your trouble doubled.
He then ran on in remarks upon all the little improvements I had made in
my solitude; my unwearied application, as he called it, and how I had
made a condition, which in its circumstances was at first much worse
than theirs, a thousand times more happy than theirs was, even now when
they were all together. He told me it was remarkable that Englishmen had
a greater presence of mind in their distress than any people that ever
he met with; that their unhappy nation, and the Portuguese, were the
worst men in the world to struggle with misfortunes; for that their
first step in dangers, after common efforts are over, was always to
despair, lie down under it and die, without rousing their thoughts up to
proper remedies for escape.
I told him their case and mine differed exceedingly; that they were cast
upon the shore without necessaries, without supply of food, or of
present sustenance, till they could provide it; that it is true, I had
this disadvantage and discomfort, that I was alone; but then the
supplies I had providentially thrown into my hands, by the unexpected
driving of the ship on shore, was such a help as would have encouraged
any creature in the world to have applied himself as I had done.
“Seignior,” says the Spaniard, “had we poor Spaniards been in your case
we should never have gotten half those things out of the ship as you
did.” “Nay,” 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.
Then they gave me an account how the savages whom they lived among
expected them to go out with them into their wars; and it was true, that
as they had fire-arms with them, had they not had the disaster to lose
their ammunition, they should not have been serviceable only to their
friends, but have made themselves terrible both to friends and enemies;
but being without powder and shot, and in a condition that they could
not in reason deny to go out with their landlords to their wars; when
they came in the field of battle they were in a worse condition than the
savages themselves, for they neither had bows nor arrows, nor could they
use those the savages gave them, so that they could do nothing but stand
still and be wounded with arrows, till they came up to the teeth of
their enemy; and then indeed the three halberts they had were of use to
them, and they would often drive a whole little army before them with
those halberts and sharpened sticks put into the muzzles of their
muskets: but that for all this, they were sometimes surrounded with
multitudes, and in great danger from their arrows; till at last they
found the way to make themselves large targets of wood, which they
covered with skins of wild beasts, whose names they knew not, and these
covered them from the arrows of the savages; that notwithstanding these,
they were sometimes in great danger, and were once five of them knocked
down together with the clubs of the savages, which was the time when one
of them was taken prisoner, that is to say, the Spaniard whom I had
relieved; that at first they thought he had been killed, but when
afterwards they heard he was taken prisoner, they were under the
greatest grief imaginable, and would willingly have all ventured their
lives to have rescued him.
They told me, that when they were so knocked down, the rest of their
company rescued them, and stood over them fighting till they were come
to themselves, all but he who they thought had been dead; and then they
made their way with their halberts and pieces, standing close together
in a line, through a body of above a thousand savages, beating down all
that came in their way, got the victory over their enemies, but to their
great sorrow, because it was with the loss of their friend; whom the
other party, finding him alive, carried off with some others, as I gave
an account in my former.
They described, most affectionately, how they were surprised with joy at
the return of their friend and companion in misery, who they thought had
been devoured by wild beasts of the worst kind, viz. by wild men; and
yet how more and more they were surprised with the account he gave them
of his errand, and that there was a Christian in a place near, much more
one that was able, and had humanity enough to contribute to their
deliverance.
They described how they were astonished at the sight of the relief I
sent them, and at the appearance of loaves of bread, things they had not
seen since their coming to that miserable place; how often they crossed
it, and blessed it as bread sent from heaven; and what a reviving
cordial it was to their spirits to taste it, as also of the other things
I had sent for their supply. And, after all, they would have told me
something of the joy they were in at the sight of a boat and pilots to
carry them away to the person and place from whence all these new
comforts came; but they told me it was impossible to express it by
words, for their excessive joy driving them to unbecoming
extravagancies, they had no way to describe them but by telling me that
they bordered upon lunacy, having no way to give vent to their passion
suitable to the sense that was upon them; that in some it worked one
way, and in some another; and that some of them, through a surprise of
joy, would burst out into tears; others be half mad, and others
immediately faint. This discourse extremely affected me, and called to
my mind Friday’s ecstasy when he met his father, and the poor people’s
ecstasy when I took them up at sea, after their ship was on fire; the
mate of the ship’s joy, when he found himself delivered in the place
where he expected to perish; and my own joy, when after twenty-eight
years captivity I found a good ship ready to carry me to my own country.
All these things made me more sensible of the relation of these poor
men, and more affected with it.
Having thus given a view of the state of things as I found them, I must
relate the heads of what I did for these people, and the condition in
which I left them. It was their opinion, and mine too, that they would
be troubled no more with the savages; or that, if they were, they would
be able to cut them off, if they were twice as many as before; so that
they had no concern about that. Then I entered into a serious discourse
with the Spaniard whom I called governor, about their stay in the
island; for as I was not come to carry any of them off, so it would not
be just to carry off some and leave others, who perhaps would be
unwilling to stay if their strength was diminished.
On the other hand I told them, I came to establish them there, not to
remove them; and then I let them know that I had brought with me relief
of sundry kinds for them; that I had been at a great charge to supply
them with all things necessary, as well for their convenience as their
defence; and that I had such particular persons with me, as well to
increase and recruit their number, as by the particular necessary
employments which they were bred to, being artificers, to assist them in
those things in which at present they were to seek.
They were all together when I talked thus to them; and before I
delivered to them the stores I had brought, I asked them, one by one, if
they had entirely forgot and buried the first animosities that had been
among them, and could shake hands with one another, and engage in a
strict friendship and union of interest, so that there might be no more
misunderstandings or jealousies.
William Atkins, with abundance of frankness and good humour, said, they
had met with afflictions enough to make them all sober, and enemies
enough to make them all friends: that for his part he would live and die
with them; and was so far from designing any thing against the
Spaniards, that he owned they had done nothing to him but what his own
bad humour made necessary, and what he would have done, and perhaps much
worse, in their case; and that he would ask them pardon, if I desired
it, for the foolish and brutish things he had done to them; and was very
willing and desirous of living on terms of entire friendship and union
with them; and would do any thing that lay in his power, to convince
them of it: and as for going to England, he cared not if he did not go
thither these twenty years.