d to teach them rational customs in the ordinary way of
living, but in vain; and how they retorted upon them as unjust that they
who came there for assistance and support should attempt to set up for
instructors to those that gave them food; intimating, it seems, that none
should set up for the instructors of others but those who could live
without them. They gave me dismal accounts of the extremities they were
driven to; how sometimes they were many days without any food at all, the
island they were upon being inhabited by a sort of savages that lived
more indolent, and for that reason were less supplied with the
necessaries of life, than they had reason to believe others were in the
same part of the world; and yet they found that these savages were less
ravenous and voracious than those who had better supplies of food. Also,
they added, they could not but see with what demonstrations of wisdom and
goodness the governing providence of God directs the events of things in
this world, which, they said, appeared in their circumstances: for if,
pressed by the hardships they were under, and the barrenness of the
country where they were, they had searched after a better to live in,
they had then been out of the way of the relief that happened to them by
my means.

They then gave me an account how the savages whom they lived amongst
expected them to go out with them into their wars; and, it was true, that
as they had firearms with them, had they not had the disaster to lose
their ammunition, they could have been serviceable not only to their
friends, but have made themselves terrible both to friends and enemies;
but being without powder and shot, and yet in a condition that they could
not in reason decline to go out with their landlords to their wars; so
when they came into the field of battle they were in a worse condition
than the savages themselves, for they had neither bows nor arrows, nor
could they use those the savages gave them. So they could do nothing but
stand still and be wounded with arrows, till they came up to the teeth of
the enemy; and then, indeed, the three halberds they had were of use to
them; and they would often drive a whole little army before them with
those halberds, and sharpened sticks put into the muzzles of their
muskets. But for all this they were sometimes surrounded with
multitudes, and in great danger from their arrows, till at last they
found the way to make themselves large targets of woo