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 senseless,
insignificant passion in the world, for that it regarded only things
past, which were generally impossible to be recalled or to be remedied,
but had no views of things to come, and had no share in anything that
looked like deliverance, but rather added to the affliction than proposed
a remedy; and upon this he repeated a Spanish proverb, which, though I
cannot repeat in the same words that he spoke it in, yet I remember I
made it into an English proverb of my own, thus:--

"In trouble to be troubled,
Is to have your trouble doubled."

He then ran on in remarks upon all the little improvements I had made in
my solitude: my unwearied application, as he called it; and how I had
made a condition, which in its circumstances was at first much worse than
theirs, a thousand times more happy than theirs