at the mainmast, by an outcry, which scarce gave each man seven pence apiece. Not long after we took a Scot fraught from St. Michael's to Bristow. He had better fortune than the other; for, having but taken a boat's loading of sugar, marmalade, suckets, and such like, we descried four sail, after whom we stood, who, furling their mainsails, attended us to fight. But our French spirits were content only to perceive they were English red crosses. Within a very small time after, we chased four Spanish ships came from the Indies. We fought with them four or five hours, tore their sails and sides, yet not daring to board them, lost them. A poor carvell of Brasil, was the next we chased; and after a small fight, thirteen or fourteen of her men being wounded, which was the better half, we took her, with 370 chests of sugar, (a prize worth 16,000 crowns). The next was a West Indiaman, of 160 tons, with 1200 hides, 50 chests of cochineal, 14 coffers of wedges of silver, 8000 rials of 8, and six coffers of the King of Spain's treasure, besides the pillage and rich coffers of many rich passengers, (a prize worth 200,000 crowns.) Two months they kept me in this manner to manage their fights against the Spaniards, and be a prisoner when they took any English. Now though the captain had oft broke his promise, which was to put me ashore on the isles, or the next ship he took, yet at last he was entreated I should go for France in the carvell of sugar; himself resolved still to keep the seas. Within two days after, we were hailed by two West Indiamen; but when they saw us wave them for the King of France, they gave us their broadsides, shot through our mainmast, and so left us. Having lived thus near three months among those French men-of-war, with much ado we arrived at the Gulion, not far from Rochelle; where, instead of the great promises they always fed me with, of double satisfaction and full content, they kept me five or six days prisoner in the carvell, accusing me to be him that burnt their colony in New France, to force me give them a discharge before the judge of the admiralty, and so stand to their courtesy for satisfaction, or lie in prison, or a worse mischief. To prevent this choice, in the end of such a storm that beat them all under hatches, I watched my opportunity to get ashore in their boat; whereinto, in the dark night, I secretly got, and with a half pike that lay by me, put adrift for Rat Isle. But the current was so strong and the sea so great, I went adrift to 18

sea; till it pleased God the wind so turned with the tide, that although I was all this fearful night of gusts and rain in the sea the space of twelve hours, when many ships were driven ashore, and divers split (and being with sculling and baling the water tired, I expected each minute would sink me,) at last I arrived in an oozy isle by Charowne, where certain fowlers found me near drowned, and half dead, with water, cold and hunger. By those, I found means to get to Rochelle, where I understood the man-of-war which we left at sea, and the rich prize was split, the captain drowned, and half his company the same night, within seven leagues of that place from whence I escaped alone, in the little boat, by the mercy of God, far beyond all men's reason, or my expectation. Arriving at Rochelle, upon my complaint to the judge of the admiralty, I found many good words and fair promises; and ere long many of them that escaped drowning told me the news they heard of my own death. These I arresting, their several examinations did so confirm my complaint, it was held proof sufficient. All which being performed according to the order of justice, from under the judge's hand, I presented it to the English ambassador then at Bordeaux, where it was my chance to see the arrival of the king's great marriage brought from Spain. Of the wreck of the rich prize some 36,000 crowns' worth of goods came ashore and was saved with the carvell, which I did my best to arrest. The judge did promise me I should have justice. What will be the conclusion, as yet I know not.* But under the color to take pirates and West Indiamen (because the Spaniards will, not suffer the French trade in the West Indies) any goods from thence, though they take them upon the coast of Spain, are lawful prize; or from any of his territories out of the limits of Europe.

Leaving thus my business in France, I returned to Plymouth, to find them that had thus buried me amongst the French, and not only buried me, but with so much infamy as such treacherous cowards could suggest to excuse their villanies. But my clothes, books, instruments, arms, and what I had, they shared amongst them, and what they liked, feigning the French had all was wanting, and had thrown them into the sea, taken their ship and all, had they not run away and left me as they did. The chieftains of this mutiny

They betrayed me, having the broad seal of England; and near twenty sail of English more, besides them concealed, in like manner were betrayed that year.

that I could find, I laid by the heels; the rest, like themselves, confessed the truth as you have heard. Now how I have or could prevent these accidents, I rest at your censures. But to the matter.

New-found-land at the first, I have heard, was held as. desperate a fishing as this I project in New-England. Placentia and the Bank were also as doubtful to the French. But, for all the disasters happened me, the business is the same it was; and the five ships (whereof one was reported more than three hundred tons) went forward, and found fish so much, that neither Izeland man nor New-found-land man I could hear of hath been there, will go any more to either place, if they may go thither. So that upon the return of my Vice-Admiral that proceeded on her voyage when I spent my masts, from Plymouth this year are gone four or five sail, and from London as many, only to make voyages of profit. Where the Englishmen have yet been, all their returns together (except Sir Fr. Popham's) would scarce make one a saver of near a dozen I could nominate, though there be fish sufficient, as I persuade myself, to freight yearly four or five hundred sail, or as many as will go. For this fishing stretcheth along the coast from Cape Cod to New-foundland, which is seven or eight hundred miles at the least, and hath his course in the deeps, and by the shore, all the year long, keeping their haunts and feedings as the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. But all men are not such as they should be, that have undertaken those voyages; and a man that hath but heard of an instrument, can hardly use it so well as he that by use hath contrived to make it. All the Romans were not Scipios, nor all the Genoese Columbuses, nor all Spaniards Corteses. Had they dived no deeper in the secrets of their discoveries than we, or stopped at such doubts and poor accidental chances, they had never been remembered as they are; yet had they no such certainties to begin as we. But, to conclude, Adam and Eve did first begin this innocent work to plant the earth. to remain to posterity; but not without labor, trouble and industry. Noah and his family began again the second plantation; and their seed, as it still increased, hath still planted new countries, and one country another; and so the world to that estate it is; but not without much hazard, travail, discontents, and many disasters. Had those worthy fathers and their memorable offspring not been more diligent

140

Captain John Smith's Description, &c.

for us now in these ages, than we are to plant that yet unplanted, for the after livers; had the seed of Abraham, our Saviour Christ, and his Apostles, exposed themselves to no more dangers to teach the gospel and the will of God than .we ;—even we ourselves had at this present been as salvage and as miserable as the most barbarous salvage yet uncivilized. The Hebrews and Lacedæmonians, the Goths, the Grecians, the Romans, and the rest, what was it they would not undertake to enlarge their territories, enrich their subjects, resist their enemies? Those that were the founders of those great monarchies and their virtues, were no silvered, idle, golden Pharisees, but industrious, iron-steeled publicans. They regarded more provisions and necessaries for their people than jewels, riches, ease, or delight for themselves. Riches were their servants, not their masters. They ruled (as fathers, not as tyrants,) their people as children, not as slaves. There was no disaster could discourage them, and let none think they encountered not with all manner of encumbrances. And what have ever been the works of the greatest princes of the earth, but planting of countries and civilizing barbarous and inhumane nations to civility and humanity? whose eternal actions fill our histories. Lastly, the Portugals and Spaniards, whose ever-living actions before our eyes, will testify with them our idleness and ingratitude to all posterities, and the neglect of our duties in our piety and religion we owe our God, our King, and country, and our want of charity to those poor salvages, whose country we challenge, use and possess, except we be but made to use and mar what our forefathers made, or but only tell what they did, or esteem ourselves too good to take the like pains. Was it virtue in them to provide that doth maintain us and baseness for us to do the like for others? Surely no. Then seeing we are not born for ourselves, but each to help other, and our abilities are much alike at the hour of our birth and the minute of our death; seeing our good deeds or our bad, by faith in Christ's merits, is all we have to carry our souls to heaven or hell; seeing honor is our lives' ambition, and our ambition after death to have an honorable memory of our life; and seeing by no means we would be abated of the dignities and glories of our predecessors, let us imitate their virtues to be worthily their suc

cessors.

FINIS.

OTH

AN ACCOUNT OF THE CAPTIVITY OF HUGH GIBSON AMONG THE DELAWARE INDIANS OF THE BIG BEAVER AND THE MUSKINGUM, FROM THE LATTER PART OF JULY 1756, To THE BEGINNING OF APRIL, 1759.

To the Rev. Abiel Holmes, D.D., LL.D., Corresponding Secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

REV. AND DEAR SIR,

Vicinity of Pittsburg, 27th February, 1834.

Very numerous were the instances of alarm, terror, captivity, extreme suffering, and murder in its most appalling forms, among the early settlers of the interior parts of Pennsylvania; of which, however, little is at present known, except from vague and obscure tradition. Full accounts of these, if it were possible to collect them, would swell a volume to no ordinary size, and of most painful interest.

To rescue from oblivion some notices of the captivity of the late HUGH GIBSON, I spent a day and a night with this venerable man, in February, 1826, while his mental powers were unusually bright, for one at the age of eighty-five years. It was very gratifying to him to have it in his power, before the close of his pilgrimage, to give, as he did in detail with great minuteness, a narrative of that part of his life which he had spent with the Indians. I took a brief memorandum of the facts, as he related them; and then making a transcript, in extenso, in a plain style, of what I had written, carefully read it to Mr. Gibson, in order that, if requisite, any corrections might be introduced. But, as it was found to be fully to his mind, none were suggested.

I will only add, that Mr. Gibson departed this life on the 30th day of the following July,-five months after my last interview with him. Your friend and brother,

TIMOTHY ALDEN. .

HUGH GIBSON, an account of whose trials and sufferings among the Indians is now, for the first time, submitted to the public, was the eldest son of David Gibson and his wife, originally Mary M'Clelland. His parents lived at the Six .Miles' Cross, near Stewart's Town, in the north of Ireland, till about the year 1740, when they crossed the Atlantic and settled on a plantation of their purchase in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, two miles and a half below Peach