I would redeem them; and hoped I would not be unmindfu of him when I came to England: that he would give me some letters to his friends in London, to let them know how good I had been to him, and in what part of the world, and what circumstance I had left him in; and he promised me that whenever I redeemed him, the plantation, and all the improvements he had made upon it, let the value be what it would, should be wholly mine.

His discourse was very prettily delivered, considering his youth, and was the more agreeable to me, because he told me positively the match was not for himself. I gave him all possible assurances that if I lived to come safe to England, I would deliver his letters, and do his business effectually; and that he might depend I should never forget the circumstances I had left him in but still I was impatient to know who was the person to be married; upon which he told me it was my Jack of all trades and his maid Susan. I was most agreeably surprised when he named the match, for indeed I thought it very suitable. The character of that man I have given already; and as for the maid, she was a very honest, modest, sober, and religious young woman; had a very good share of sense, was agreeable enough in her person, spoke very handsomely, and to the purpose, always with decency and good manners, and neither too backward to speak, when requisite, nor impertinently forward, when it was not her business; very handy and housewifely, and an excellent manager; fit, indeed, to have been governess to the whole island, and she knew very well how to behave in every respect.

The match being proposed in this manner, we married them the same day; and as I was father at the altar, as I may say, and gave her away, so I gave her a portion; for I appointed her and her husband a handsome large space of ground for their plantation; and, indeed, this match, and the proposal the young gentleman made to give him a small property in the island, put me upon parcelling it out amongst them, that they might not quarrel afterwards about their situation.

This sharing out the land to them I left to Will Atkins, who was now grown a sober, grave, managing fellow, perfectly reformed, exceedingly pious and religious, and, as far as I may be allowed to speak positively in such a case, I verily believe he was a true penitent. He divided things so justly, and so much to every one's satisfaction, that they only desired one general writing under my hand for the whole, which I caused to be drawn up, and signed and sealed to them setting out the

bounds and situation of every man's plantation, and testifying that I gave them thereby severally a right to the whole possession and inheritance of the respective plantations or farms, with their improvements, to them and their heirs, reserving all the rest of the island as my own property, and a certain rent for every particular plantation after eleven years, if I, or any one from me, or in my name, came to demand it, producing an attested copy of the same writing.

As to the government and laws among them, I told them I was not capable of giving them better rules than they were able to give themselves; only I made them promise me to live in love and good neighbourhood with one another; and so I prepared to leave them.

One thing I must not omit, and that is, that being now settled in a kind of commonwealth among themselves, and having much business in hand, it was but odd to have seven and thirty Indians live in a nook of the island, independent and, indeed, unemployed; for, excepting the providing themselves food, which they had difficulty enough to do, sometimes they had no manner of business or property to manage. I proposed, therefore, to the governor Spaniard, that he should go to them, with Friday's father, and propose to them to remove, and either plant for themselves, or take them into their several families as servants, to be maintained for their labour, but without being absolute slaves; for I would not admit them to make them slaves by force, by any means; because they had their liberty given them by capitulation, as it were articles of surrender, which they ought not to break.

They most willingly embraced the proposal, and came all very cheerful along with him: so we allotted them land, and plantations, which three or four accepted of, but all the rest chose to be employed as servants in the several families we had settled; and thus my colony was in a manner settled, as follows: The Spaniards possessed my original habitation, which was the capital city, and extended their plantations all along the side of the brook, which made the creek that I have so often described, as far as my bower; and as they increased their culture, it went always eastward. The English lived in the north-east part, where Will Atkins and his comrades began, and came on southward and south-west, towards the back part of the Spaniards; and every plantation had a great addition of land to take in, if they found occasion, so that they need not jostle one another for want of room. All the east end of the island was left uninhabited, that if any of the savages

should come on shore there only for their usual customary barbarities, they might come and go; if they disturbed nobody, nobody would disturb them: and no doubt but they were often ashore, and went away again, for I never heard that the planters were ever attacked or disturbed any more.

It now came into my thoughts that I had hinted to my friend the clergyman that the work of converting the savages might perhaps be set on foot in his absence to his satisfaction, and told him that now I thought it was put in a fair way; for the savages being thus divided among the Christians, if they would but every one of them do their part with those which came under their hands, I hoped it might have a very good effect.

He agreed presently in that, if they did their part: "But how," says he, "shall we obtain that of them?" I told him we would call them all together, and leave it in charge with them, or go to them, one by one, which he thought best: so we divided it, he to speak to the Spaniards, who were all papists, and I to the English, who were all protestants; and we recommended it earnestly to them, and made them promise that they would never make any distinction of papist or protestant in their exhorting the savages to turn Christians, but teach them the general knowledge of the true God, and of their Saviour Jesus Christ; and they likewise promised us that they would never have any differences or disputes one with another about religion.

When I came to Will Atkins's house, (I may call it so, for such a house, or such a piece of basket-work, I believe, was not standing in the world again,) there I found the young woman I have mentioned above, and Will Atkins's wife, were become intimates; and this prudent, religious young woman, had perfected the work Will Atkins had begun; and though it was not above four days after what I have related, yet the new baptized savage woman was made such a Christian as I have seldom heard of in all my observation or conversation in the world.

it came next into my mind, in the morning before I went to them, that amongst all the needful things I had to leave with them, I had not left them a bible, in which I showed myself less considering for them than my good friend the widow was for me, when she sent me the cargo of an hundred pounds from Lisbon, where she packed up three bibles and a prayer-book. However, the good woman's charity had a greater extent than ever she imagined, for they were reserved for the comfort and

instruction of those that made much better use of them than I had done.

I took one of the bibles in my pocket, and when I came to Will Atkins's tent, or house, and found the young woman and Atkins's baptized wife had been discoursing of religion together, for Will Atkins told it me with a great deal of joy, I asked if they were together now, and he said yes; so I went into the house, and he with me, and we found them together very earnest in discourse. O, Sir," says Will Atkins, " when God has sinners to reconcile to himself, and aliens to bring home, he never wants a messenger; my wife has got a new instructor; I knew I was as unworthy as I was incapable of that work; that young woman has been sent hither from heaven; she is enough to convert a whole island of savages." The young woman blushed, and rose up to go away, but I desired her to sit still; I told her she had a good work upon her hands, and I hoped God would bless her in it.

We talked a little, and I did not perceive they had any book among them, though I did not ask; but I put my hand into my pocket, and pulled out my bible; "Here," says I to Atkins, "I have brought you an assistant that perhaps you had not before." The man was so confounded that he was not able to speak for some time; but recovering himself, he takes it with both his hands, and turning to his wife," Here, my dear," says he, "did not I tell you our God, though he lives above, could hear what we said? Here's the book I prayed for when you and I kneeled down under the bush; now God has heard us, and sent it." When he had said so, the man fell into such transports of passionate joy, that between the joy of having it, and giving God thanks for it, the tears ran down his face like a child that was crying.

The woman was surprised, and was like to have run into a mistake that none of us were aware of, for she firmly believed God had sent the book upon her husband's petition. It is true, that providentially it was so, and might be taken so in a consequent sense; but I believe it would have been no difficult matter, at that time, to have persuaded the poor woman to have believed that an express messenger came from heaven on purpose to bring that individual book; but it was too serious a matter to suffer any delusion to take place; so I turned to the young woman, and told her we did not desire to impose upon the new convert, in her first and more ignorant understanding of things, and begged her to explain to her that God may be very properly said to answer our petitions, when, in

the course of his providence, such things are in a particular manner brought to pass as we petitioned for; but we did not expect returns from Heaven in a miraculous and particular manner, and it is our mercy that it is not so.

This the young woman did afterwards effectually, so that there was, I assure you, no priestcraft used here; and I should have thought it one of the most unjustifiable frauds in the world to have had it so. But the surprise of joy upon Will Atkins is really not to be expressed; and there, we may be sure, was no delusion. Sure no man was ever more thankful in the world for any thing of its kind than he was for the bible; nor, I believe, never any man was glad of a bible from a better principle; and though he had been a most profligate creature, headstrong, furious, and desperately wicked, yet this man is a standing rule to us all for the well instructing children, viz. that parents should never give over to teach and instruct, or ever despair of the success of their endeavours, let the children be ever so refractory, or, to appearance, insensible of instruction; for, if ever God, in his providence, touches the conscience of such, the force of their education returns upon them, and the early instruction of parents is not lost, though it may have been many years laid asleep, but, some time or other, they may find the benefit of it. Thus it was with this poor man; however ignorant he was of religion and Christian knowledge, he found he had some to do with now more ignorant than himself, and that the least part of the instruction of his good father that now came to his mind was of use to him.

Among the rest it occurred to him, he said, how his father used to insist so much on the inexpressible value of the bible, the privilege and blessing of it to nations, families, and persons; but he never entertained the least notion of the worth of it till now, when being to talk to heathens, savages, and barbarians, he wanted the help of the written oracle for his assistance.

The young woman was glad of it also for the present occasion, though she had one, and so had the youth, on board our ship, among their goods, which were not yet brought on shore. And now having said so many things of this young woman, I cannot omit telling one story more of her and myself, which has something in it very informing and remarkable.

I have related to what extremity the poor young woman was reduced, how her mistress was starved to death, and died on board that unhappy ship we met at sea, and how the whole