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 retiring rooms to the respective chambers of the inner
circle; and four large warehouses, or barns, or what you please to
call them, which went 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 a house or tent so neatly contrived, much less so built.
In this great bee-hive lived the three families, that is to say,
Will Atkins and his companion; the third was killed, but his wife
remained with three children, and the other two were not at all
backward to give the widow her full share of everything, 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
do not know that there was anything of that kind among them; they
often, indeed, put one another in mind that there was a God, by the
very common method of seamen, swearing by His name: nor were their
poor ignorant savage wives much 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 anything 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 most of their children, who 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. None of these children were above six years old
when I came thither, for it was not much above seven years since
they had fetched these five savage ladies over; they had all
children, more or less: 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 lacked nothing but to be well instructed
in the Christian religion, and to be legally married; both of which
were happily brought about afterwards by my means, or at least in
consequence of my coming among them.
CHAPTER VI – THE FRENCH CLERGYMAN’S COUNSEL
HAVING thus given an account of the colony in general, and pretty
much of my 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 even if means had been put into their hands, yet they
had so abandoned themselves to despair, and were so sunk under the
weight of their misfortune, that they thought of nothing but
starving. One of them, a grave and sensible man, told me he was
convinced they were in the wrong; that it was not the part of wise
men to give themselves up 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