Though to a work of this nature a style ornamental and luxuriant would
have been evidently inapplicable, yet the author has not been wholly
inattentive to this particular, but has endeavoured to temper the dry and
formal manner of the mere journalist, with something of the historian's
ease. Long sequestered, however, from literary society, and from
convenient access to books, he had no other models than those which
memory could supply; and therefore does not presume to think his volume
proof against the rigid censor: but to liberal criticism he submits, with
the confidence of a man conscious of having neither negligence nor
presumption to impute to himself. He wrote to beguile the tedium of many
a heavy hour; and when he wrote looked not beyond the satisfaction which
at some future period might be afforded to a few friends, as well as to
his own mind, by a review of those hardships which in common with his
colleagues he had endured and overcome; hardships which in some degree he
supposes to be inseparable from the first establishment of any colony;
but to which, from the peculiar circumstances and description of the
settlers in this instance, were attached additional difficulties.

In the progress of his not unpleasing task, the author began to think
that his labours might prove interesting beyond the small circle of his
private friends; that some account of the gradual reformation of such
flagitious characters as had by many (and those not illiberal) persons in
this country been considered as past the probability of amendment, might
be not unacceptable to the benevolent part of mankind, but might even
tend to cherish the seeds of virtue, and to open new streams from the
pure fountain of mercy*.

[* "It often happens," says Dr. Johnson, "that in the loose and
thoughtless and dissipated, there is a secret radical worth, which may
shoot out by proper cultivation; that the spark of heaven, though dimmed
and obstructed, is yet not extinguished, but may, by the breath of
counsel and exhortation, be kindled into flame . . .

"Let none too hastily conclude that all goodness is lost, though it may
for a time be clouded and overwhelmed; for most minds are the slaves of
external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould
them; roll down any torrent of custom in which they happen to be caught;
or bend to any importunity that bears hard against them."

_Rambler_, No. 70.]

Nor was he without hope, that thro