the arrival
of any vessel, or any dangerous report, they compromised all their
private quarrels and united for the common defence.

The negroes soon discovered that I had no means to annoy them, and that
the English traders were very jealous of me as a trespasser on their
exclusive right to trade here, I being the first American who had
attempted to open a trade with the Indians within the last fourteen
years. These negroes soon commenced trading with me, having fifty or
sixty dollars in money, and earnestly solicited my friendly aid, by
informing them of any plot I should discover from the English traders,
or the Mosquito king's officers to apprehend them, promising on their
part to sell me all the tortoise-shell they could catch, and purchase
all their goods from me. I readily ratified the treaty for my own
safety. To use an old adage, "Those who live in glass houses must never
throw stones."

My goods were poorly protected against robbers, my store being covered
on the outside with thin slips of wood, resembling lath wove together
like a basket and admitting light through the spaces sufficient to read
or write without windows. A man could kick a hole through it in two
minutes.

Soon after I purchased a mahogany canoe, made a sail to fit her, and
took a number of excursions to the neighboring villages, purchasing
shell, gum, &c. It frequently happened that I did not see a white man in
two or three weeks. The negroes often got alarmed by hearing false
reports about their apprehension, and finding that I sometimes did not
reach home until after dark, they came to my store and requested me to
wear a white chip hat when I went on any excursion, or appeared out
after dark, that they might know me, as they had agreed to shoot any
strange white man who should approach them in the night. I complied with
their request for my own safety. I have frequently called at their house
in the night to procure a light, always calling them by name before I
approached their door, and always found them laying on their arms, ready
to repel any attack.

Some weeks after, my landlord purchased from me a quantity of goods,
and I advanced him about six hundred dollars in cash, which he agreed to
pay me in tortoise-shell, at two dollars per pound, it being worth at
that time seven dollars in New-York. He embarked in a large canoe on a
trading voyage, along the southern coast of that country, a distance of
about two degrees. Most of the able-