n the word of a Christian
and of an honest man, that I had not the distemper, he would. I assured
him that I had not; that it had pleased God to preserve me; that I lived
in Whitechapel, but was too impatient of being so long within doors, and
that I had ventured out so far for the refreshment of a little air, but
that none in my house had so much as been touched with it.

"Well, sir," says he, "as your charity has been moved to pity me and my
poor family, sure you cannot have so little pity left as to put yourself
into my boat if you were not sound in health, which would be nothing
less than killing me, and ruining my whole family." The poor man
troubled me so much when he spoke of his family with such a sensible
concern and in such an affectionate manner, that I could not satisfy
myself at first to go at all. I told him I would lay aside my curiosity
rather than make him uneasy, though I was sure, and very thankful for
it, that I had no more distemper upon me than the freshest man in the
world. Well, he would not have me put it off neither, but, to let me see
how confident he was that I was just to him, he now importuned me to go:
so, when the tide came up to his boat, I went in, and he carried me to
Greenwich. While he bought the things which he had in charge to buy, I
walked up to the top of the hill, under which the town stands, and on
the east side of the town, to get a prospect of the river; but it was a
surprising sight to see the number of ships which lay in rows, two and
two, and in some places two or three such lines in the breadth of the
river, and this not only up to the town, between the houses which we
call Ratcliff and Redriff, which they name the Pool, but even down the
whole river, as far as the head of Long Reach, which is as far as the
hills give us leave to see it.

I cannot guess at the number of ships, but I think there must have been
several hundreds of sail; and I could not but applaud the contrivance,
for ten thousand people and more who attended ship affairs were
certainly sheltered here from the violence of the contagion, and lived
very safe and very easy.

I returned to my own dwelling very well satisfied with my day's journey,
and particularly with the poor man; also I rejoiced to see that such
little sanctuaries were provided for so many families on board in a time
of such desolation. I observed, also, that, as the violence of the
plague had increased, so the ships which had families on