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 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