God's Protecting Providence

Preface

The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.

Psalm 93:4

The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.

Psalm 74:20

Every civilized people looks on ingratitude toward a benefactor, after great favors received, with a just loathing; the moral pagans of ancient times thought they could say nothing worse of a man than that he was ungrateful. How much more are Christians bound to shun the sin of ingratitude toward their God, especially in a time of such light as shines now, when every thoughtful person knows him to be the fountain of all their mercies. Next to the infinite mercy he has shown them for Christ's sake, in sending the dayspring from on high to visit their souls, surely their remarkable outward deliverances ought to stir their gratitude to their great Deliverer in a more than ordinary way. Thanksgiving, I confess, is all that we poor mortals can give back for the many favors we receive from him every day, and it rises in the heart. But since out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, how can those who are truly thankful at heart do anything but offer the calves of their lips, the sacrifice of praise, by telling their friends and acquaintances what great things God has done for them? Indeed, when the protecting hand of Providence has appeared so plainly for their help, preservation and deliverance, they are so moved that they will not keep it to their own circle. They want to publish it to the world, so that the fame of their God may spread from sea to sea, and from one end of the earth to the other.

The account that follows is long, so I will try to be short. I only want to commend to the reader's particular attention a few of the things that seem to me most remarkable.

1. The hearts of all men are in the hand of God, and he can turn them as he pleases. When the fury of these man-eaters was at its height, with their knives in one hand and the heads of the poor shipwrecked people in the other, their knees on their victims' shoulders and their looks dreadful, the savages were suddenly struck dumb. Their faces changed until they looked like another people, and the Casseekey (or King) became a shield for the distressed against the injuries of his own men. He even came to trust them so far that he would let them carry the money he had taken from them sooner than trust his own people with it. When they got away from these Indians to another place, where they hoped to be safer, they were disappointed: fresh dangers rose up as dreadful as before. Yet God allowed no further harm than the stripping of the poor rags the first Indians had left them, and some other abuses, which they were used to by then and counted light afflictions. God made the Casseekey's wife an instrument of their deliverance, for she and a few others had some tenderness of heart in them, even among so inhuman a crew.

2. Many times, when they were attacked, they were delivered in particular ways. Once an arrow shot at them narrowly missed. Another time, when some of the Indians were about to shoot arrows at them, others of their own band seized their bows and their arms; and though some of them did shoot, their arrows missed. I say nothing of the dangers they were in constantly, at every slight suspicion that they were English, of which more later. These poor sufferers had good reason to fear for their lives every moment, since about a year before, a party of Dutchmen who had also been shipwrecked there had been killed and devoured. Of the many vessels thought to have been lost on that coast, moreover, this company is the first known to have escaped. Nor is it so wonderful that these people are cruel to strangers, since they are unnatural even to their own old people, and have no more compassion on them than to make them slaves to the young. Yet these man-eaters are as cowardly as they are cruel: when the Spaniards came up, the sight of a rusty musket pointed at them was enough to make several of them run.

3. The dangers they were delivered from came not only from men: God allowed the elements as well to threaten and afflict them. Once, as they were rowing in their boat, the sea rose so high that it was dangerous to stay out on it all night, and just as dangerous to try for the shore. Yet Providence did not fail them, but brought them safe to land, as though a lane had been made through the breakers. Another time a great flood forced them to move their lodgings several times, and for several days they lived in constant fear of drowning, until at last they were saved on a hill of oyster shells. I say nothing of the many dangers they were in from the extreme cold; they are too many to touch on here. In all this, one thing is remarkable: God can give strength in the midst of weakness, and he can also take strength away and send weakness, whenever he pleases. Here were an old man, a woman with a nursing child, and another woman with child, people who seemed most unlikely to survive such hardships, and all of them came through; while several of the enslaved Africans, used to more hardship, perished.

4. Of their lodging I will say little. Any sensible person can imagine how hard it was for people well brought up to lie on a floor swarming with many kinds of crawling things. The Indians threw their berry stones on the floor and let all the filth they made lie there, and that bred the vermin. And yet this might count as good lodging beside the cold ground they often lay on afterward, without shelter, exposed to the bleak blasts of the bitter northwest wind.

5. Their food was mostly scanty, and the best of it was such as (I am inclined to think) the poorest slave here would not touch with his lips: sometimes the gills and guts of fish picked off a dunghill, sometimes the scraps the Indians threw away, and the water the Indians boiled their fish in, however filthily it had been handled. At first their sorrows were so great and their alarms so many that they could not eat. Afterward their food was so strange that they could not stomach it. At length hunger so far got the better of them that they could eat the palmetto berries with an appetite, though the taste had once been loathsome to them and almost took their breath away. They grew so fond of them, in fact, that when they happened to come by about a bushel, they thought it a great prize.

6. Another hardship was that they had to disguise themselves under the name of Spaniards, though few of them could speak any Spanish. The worst of it was that the natives often suspected them of being English, and so they were in constant danger of their lives. Whether the Indians' cruelty toward the English comes from their having nothing to fear from them, so that they think they may do what they like to our nation, or whether it comes from some particular injury that certain Englishmen have done them, I will not decide. Either way, those who are not in their power would do well to give them no just cause of offense, lest their countrymen suffer for their faults. One of these savages complained that some years before he had been carried off by English sloops, had escaped from them by swimming, and had borne a grudge ever since. If his questioning had found out that these people were English, it might have gone badly for them.

7. The kindness of the governor of St. Augustine, who clothed these naked people, fed their hungry stomachs, and had them conducted safely to Carolina, must not pass without due notice. The more so because he was a man of another nation and of a different religion, and of one, what is more, that does not teach its followers much compassion toward those it counts heretics. Nor let me forget the governor of Carolina, whose generosity completed what the governor of St. Augustine had begun, in helping and comforting these afflicted friends and countrymen of ours. With this I will end these remarks, and turn to speak more particularly of that faithful servant of the Lord, Robert Barrow, who was one of this company.

This man of God, who lived in one of the northern counties of England, was convinced early of the blessed truth of God that is professed by the people called Quakers, the Friends, as they call themselves; and soon afterward he was entrusted with the ministry of the Gospel. In his native country he was esteemed by his neighbors for his godly life, and honored in the Church of God as an elder who had stood faithful in his witness, by preaching the Gospel, by suffering for it, and by living as it teaches. In the year 1694 the Spirit of God, from whom he had first received his commission, required him to come over to these parts and preach the Gospel here as well. He was not disobedient to the heavenly call, but gave himself up to do the will of God, though it crossed his own. He showed as much in something he said before he left England, to this effect: that he would rather have laid down his natural life there and then, if by doing so he could have kept his peace with God, than cross the seas to America. Well, he came; and after he had visited these parts thoroughly, he took ship for the West Indian islands. He was at length on his way back from Jamaica to this town of Philadelphia when the calamities described in the following journal befell him. The journal shows how he bore himself under them: with what patience he was carried through, and with what faith he overcame even the very worst of men, so that it may be said that he was more than a conqueror over those bloodthirsty cannibals. He looked to him who is invisible, and by his grace saw beyond them and their cruelty. He wrestled with God in prayer for a blessing, the blessing of being delivered out of their barbarous hands and of laying his bones among faithful Friends. His fervent prayers were so effective that they prevailed with God, and his God was so gracious to him that, before he had even risen from his knees, God sealed on his spirit the assurance that his prayers were heard and would be answered in due time. No doubt he was a strength and a comfort to his companions in affliction, and they will not easily blot the memory of him from their minds.

There is one remarkable incident I cannot leave out. It shows that he had learned well from him who is a God of truth to speak the truth on every occasion, even at the risk of his life. As the reader will see in the course of the account that follows, these poor people had taken the name of Spaniards to save their lives; on that account some of them said what was false, and others kept back the truth. But this honest-hearted man, when he was asked straight out, "Nickaleer, Nickaleer?" (their word for Englishman), could do neither, and answered simply, "Yes." Asked the same about another of the company, he again answered, "Yes." For his plain dealing he was stripped of his clothes, which he had kept until then; and yet God did not let these savages touch his life, or the lives of any of his company.

In this way he passed through this hard trial, and at length he arrived here on April 1, 1697, though in great weakness. He had been taken very ill at St. Augustine with the bellyache and the flux, a dysentery, and he never recovered from it, but grew steadily worse until the day he died. It was about eight in the evening when the barkentine he was a passenger in arrived here. Several Friends went on board to bring him ashore, but he was so weak that they could not move him at that time. He told them how satisfied he was that the Lord had granted his request, that he might lay down his bones in this place; that his heart was strong, and he hoped first to see Friends again at the Meeting. He spoke of the goodness of God to him, and said that God's presence had been with him in all his trials.

The next morning, April 2, several Friends went on board to help bring the vessel up to a wharf so that he could be got ashore, and all the while he spoke as before, and the power of God was with him. About seven o'clock several Friends carried him in a hammock, wrapped in a blanket and clothes to keep him warm, to the house of Samuel Carpenter. There he spoke of the goodness of God to him, and said that his heart was still strong, and his memory and understanding good. After that his clothes were changed, and he slept a good while.¹

When he woke, he said a number of very comforting and precious things, which some of those present afterward wrote down as far as they could remember them. They are as follows. He asked what had become of George Keith's people, and was told that they were strangely divided: many of them had become Baptists, and the honest-hearted among them had come back to Friends. He said, in substance, that they had split upon the Rock they had rejected. And though it might please God to try us yet in many ways, by letting our neighboring governments tempt or persuade us to set up or establish the national ministry here, he wanted us to stand firm against it and have nothing to do with it. He believed they would also try hard to persuade us to establish and maintain a militia among us, and he wanted us to have nothing to do with that either. If we kept faithful to the Lord, he said, the Lord would defend and preserve us, and we needed no such means of preservation, for if our ways pleased the Lord, he would make even our enemies to be at peace with us. And he said further that the prophecy was fulfilled, and a remnant were witnesses to it, that swords should be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, and that those who take up the sword shall perish with the sword.^2,3,4

Speaking of some Friends in the ministry in Old England, he said: "Many Friends around us who were rich men and had public testimonies were much taken up with their worldly concerns, and this was a great hindrance to their public service. I was often speaking to them about it. For I found it a hindrance to me," he said, "and so I gave it all up into my son's hands, and he allowed my wife and me so much a year. Then I was at liberty, and had the world under my feet; and I would often be telling them so."

He often said that this place was God's plantation, a colony of his own planting. In Jamaica and Carolina, he said, there were only a few Friends, but wherever he had been, this place had a great name abroad for an honest, hardworking and good people. On that ground he urged us many times to keep up our good name, and told us how to do it: by being faithful to God, by keeping in love with one another, and by forgiving one another our trespasses. He often urged us to love one another, and repeated that saying of our Savior, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." He also pressed us to meet together often, and gave us this scripture as a reason: "For they that feared the Lord met often together, and spake often one to another, and a book of remembrance was written." He said further that the Lord had given him the desire of his heart in bringing him here, and that if he died here he was well content, and believed his wife would be content too. As the Lord had given her to him and him to her, so they had given each other up; and when he left her, it was as if he were going to his grave. Neither gold nor silver, riches nor honor, would have parted them, he said; he had done it only in obedience to the Lord, and to keep his peace with God.

He said that he had been convinced about forty-five years, and had borne a faithful testimony against the hireling priests, the paid clergy, and had been in prison seven times for it; and the Lord had always been his preserver and deliverer, by ways he never thought of. "And so, Friends," he said, "will he be to you, if you are faithful to him." Several who had been committed to prison with him, he said, had used underhand means to get their liberty, "but it was always my resolution," he said, "not to bow the knee to Baal; and yet the Lord worked my deliverance." He also said several times that in his late afflictions he had seen more of the wonders and dealings of the Lord than ever before, or than he ever would have seen if he had not gone through them; and that he had felt the Lord with him, which outweighed it all.

Speaking of how patiently he had borne his sufferings, and how the Lord's power had upheld him through them all, he told how he had asked the Lord about it, and the Lord's answer was: Let patience have its perfect work. Speaking of how sick he had been in Jamaica, for about twenty weeks, "and yet," he said, "I missed only one meeting." He also said that he had asked the Lord that he might not die by the hands of those barbarians. "For," he said, "they thirsted, or longed after our flesh, as much as ever we did after victuals."

On April 3 some Friends came into the room to visit him. At the sight of them he seemed to rejoice, and he put out his hand, ready to embrace them with great love and a very tender spirit. The Friends said they were glad to see him, but sorry to see him so very weak. He answered, "Although my body is weak, my mind is sound and my memory good." And he said further, "The Lord has been very good to me, all along to this very day, and this morning he has sweetly refreshed me." And he added, "The Lord has answered my desire; for I desired content, and that I might come to this place to lay my bones among you." And afterward he said, "It is a good thing to have a conscience void of offense, both toward God and toward man."

On Sunday, April 4, about five in the morning, he asked a Friend to write for him to his dear wife: to give her his dear love, and to tell her of his travels, and of his being here, and that the Lord was with him; that his outward affairs were settled, and that she had enough to live on. Then, with several Friends present, he said further that the Lord was with him, that all things were well, and that he had nothing left to do but die. And on that day he departed. On the Tuesday following, April 6, he was buried in the Friends' burying ground in this town of Philadelphia.

Now that I have brought my account of this good man to the last period of his life, I might very well put a period to my preface here. But I foresee that some people may be ready to say: "Here is an account of very strange events; but what credit does the writer deserve? May we rely on his authority without danger of being imposed upon?" To them I answer that he is a man well known in this town, of good credit and reputation, whose honesty and truthfulness anyone who knows him will readily trust, without suspecting any deceit. But so that every word may be established in the mouth of two or three witnesses: besides him and his wife, Joseph Kirle, the captain of the barkentine in which they were shipwrecked, a man who lives in this town when he is at home and has an honest character among his neighbors, read the account before it went to press and approved it. With that I will end, wishing my reader much satisfaction in the reading of it, but never the unhappiness of learning its truth in his own person.

Chapter 1: From Jamaica to the Wreck

A journal of the travels of several persons, and their sufferings, after they were cast away in the Gulf of Florida, among the cannibals.

The names of the persons:

	The ship's company:
	Joseph Kirle, captain of the barkentine Reformation
	Richard Limpeney, mate
	Solomon Cresson
	Joseph Buckley
	Thomas Fownes
	Thomas Jemmet
	Nathaniel Randall
	John Hilliard, the captain's boy
	Ben, the captain's slave

	Passengers:
	Robert Barrow
	Jonathan Dickinson
	Mary Dickinson
	Jonathan Dickinson, a nursing baby six months old
	Benjamin Allen

	Belonging to Jonathan Dickinson, enslaved:
	Men: Peter, London, Jack, Cesar, and Cajoe, a child
	Women: Hagar, Sarah, Bella, Susana, Quensa
	And Venus, an Indian girl

August 23, 1696

We sailed from Port Royal in Jamaica, bound for Pennsylvania, in company with twelve or thirteen merchant ships under the convoy of the frigate Hampshire, Captain Fletcher commanding.

Monday, August 24

About noon a sloop came out from Port Royal and met us off Portland Point with news that the French fleet was at Cape San Antonio.⁵

This evening we lay to off the mouth of Black River, meaning to go into Bluefields the next morning; but it fell calm for many days, and the current carried us to the west of the island.

Monday, August 31

This evening we lost sight of the Hampshire, and beat back to windward.

Tuesday, September 1

This evening we anchored west of Savanna-la-Mar, and lost our anchor.

Wednesday, September 2

Today we got into Bluefields road to take on water.

Friday, September 4

This morning we sailed from Bluefields, meaning to take our passage through the Gulf.

Monday, September 14

About noon today we came abreast of Cape San Antonio. About three miles east of the cape someone had a fire going that made a great smoke, and at length people appeared on the shore making signs for us to come in; but we had a fresh wind, and we did not know who they were, so our captain would not.

Today we sighted the high flat land behind Havana, and this evening we stood over for Cape Florida. But about eight or nine at night we saw two lights about a mile off, and fearing we had fallen in among the French fleet we tacked and stood for Havana.

Friday, September 18

This morning no sail was in sight. Most of the day was calm, and we lay twelve miles off Havana. When a fair wind came we headed for the port to ask after the French fleet, but in the afternoon a tornado came off the land: the boom jibed, struck our captain where he stood on the quarterdeck, knocked him down, and broke his leg. The accident grieved him and all of us. I had what was needed and a little experience, and set it. At this time four of my household were very sick. One of them was an Indian girl, and just as I finished binding the captain's leg she was taken with fits, which went on for some hours, and then she died. This evening we stood over for Cape Florida, with the wind northeast.⁶

Saturday, September 19

This morning the wind was against us and we stood up toward Cuba. About sunrise we saw the same two sails we had seen before, standing on the same course as we were, and took them for ships of our own convoy; we outsailed them, and by noon they were out of sight. About four in the afternoon, some twelve miles off the land and some forty-five miles east of Havana, we sighted a ship to the east of us. We took her for a Frenchman and stood in toward the shore, but she gained on us, until a tornado blew up and a great shower of rain hid us. Then we tacked and stood over for Florida. Night came on, we had a fair wind, and we saw no more of her.

Sunday, September 20

This morning we were in the Gulf with a fair wind. The two ships were still following us, and we believed them to be of our convoy.

Monday, September 21

This morning the wind was east, shifting northerly.

Tuesday, September 22

Today the storm began, from the northeast.

Wednesday, September 23

About one in the morning we felt the ship strike a few times. She floated again for five or six minutes, then ran fast aground and beat violently. The wind was fierce and the night so dark that the sailors could see no land. The seas broke over us, and within a quarter of an hour the cabin was awash. We managed after a while to get a candle lit. By then the ship was striking less often, but several of her timbers were broken and some of her planks sprung. The seas went on breaking over us and still no land could be seen, so we agreed to stay in the ship as long as she held together. About three o'clock we thought we could see land some distance off, and about then the water began to run out of her. At daylight we saw that we were on the shore itself, lying on a beach in the surf, which at times, as the waves drew back, left us dry. Looking her over, we found that the storm had driven many kinds of seabirds on board; the wind had blown some of them into and under our hen coops, and many were still alive. Our hogs and sheep had been washed overboard and swum ashore, all but one hog, which was still in the ship.

We rejoiced that we had been saved from the raging sea, and at the same moment feared what would follow, and it did follow. Still, we had hope, and we got our sick and lame ashore, and our provisions, with spars and sails to make a tent. I went with one of my slaves to look over the land for the best place to pitch it. It was a dismal wilderness: no trees, only sandhills covered with low palmetto whose stalks were so prickly that no one could walk among them. I found a hollow almost a furlong, two hundred yards, back from the beach, and he and I soon cut a path to it, with the storm and the rain still going on. There I brought my wife and our sick child, six months and twelve days old; Robert Barrow, an old man who had been sick for five or six months; the captain, whose leg had been broken a few days before; and my kinsman Benjamin Allen, who had been very ill with a violent fever for most of the voyage. We got them and some others under a few bushes there, which broke some of the wind but kept none of the rain off them. I got a fire made. Most of our people were bringing provisions ashore. Our chests and trunks and the rest of our clothing were all soaked and cold.

About eight or nine o'clock two Indian men came from the south, running fiercely and foaming at the mouth. They were naked except for a small piece of plaited straw that just hid their private parts, fastened behind with what looked like a horse's tail, made of a kind of silk grass. They had no weapons but their knives. Without stopping, they violently seized the first two of our men they met, who were carrying corn from the ship to the top of the bank where I stood to take it and put it in a cask. Our men did not resist, so they did them no harm, but took them under the arm and brought them toward me. Their faces were furious and bloody. Their hair was tied in a roll behind, and in it were stuck two bones, one shaped like a broad arrowhead and the other like a spearhead. The rest of our men came up from the ship and asked me what they should do: should they fetch their guns and kill these two? I persuaded them not, and asked them to keep quiet, showing them that they could not defend us against what would follow, and that we should put our trust in the Lord, who was able to defend us to the uttermost. I walked toward the place where our sick and lame were, the two Indians following me, and told them that the Indians had come and that more were coming. While the two Indians stood there, letting our men go and looking at us with wild, furious faces, it occurred to me to give them some tobacco and pipes. They snatched them greedily, made a snuffing noise like wild beasts, turned their backs on us and ran off.

We talked together and considered our condition. We were among a barbarous people, generally reckoned to be man-eaters, and we believed those two had gone to rouse the rest. We sat down expecting cruelty and a hard death, unless it pleased Almighty God to work wonderfully for our deliverance. In this deep distress some of us did not lose hope; blessed be the name of the Lord, in whom we trusted.

While we were in this trouble of mind, one of us proposed that we should call ourselves Spaniards, since it was known that their nation had some influence over these people; and one of us, Solomon Cresson, spoke Spanish well. It was hoped this might be a means of saving us, and most of the company agreed.

Two or three hours after the two Indians left, some of our people who were near the beach came back and said that the Indians were coming in great numbers, all running and shouting. By then the storm had much abated, the rain had stopped, and the sun had come out, which had been hidden from us for many days. The Indians all went to the ship and took out whatever they could lay hands on, except the rum, sugar, molasses, beef and pork.

But their Casseekey, for that is what they call their king, came down on us with about thirty more in a furious manner, looking dreadful and foaming at the mouth. Their weapons were large Spanish knives, except the Casseekey, who had a bayonet that had belonged to our captain. They rushed in among us crying, "Nickaleer, Nickaleer!" At first we did not understand them. They repeated it to us again and again, and at last cried, "Epainia?", that is, "Spaniard?", by which we understood that by the first word they had meant English. They were answered "Yes" in Spanish to the second; at which they cried, "No Spainia, no," and all shouted, "Nickaleer, Nickaleer!" We were sitting on our chests, boxes and trunks, and some on the ground, and the Indians surrounded us. We did not stir or move, but sat, all or most of us, very calm and still, and some of us in a good frame of spirit, freely given up to the will of God.

While we sat there, as if we hardly cared, these bloody-minded creatures placed themselves one behind each of us, kicking away the bushes that were near or under their feet. The Casseekey placed himself behind me, standing on the chest I sat on. They all held their arms out with their knives in their hands, ready to do their bloody work, and some took hold of some of us by the head, with their knees set against our shoulders. In this posture they seemed to wait for the Casseekey to begin. They were loud with words we did not understand. But suddenly it pleased the Lord to work wonderfully for our preservation. All at once every one of these savage men was struck dumb, and they stood like men amazed for about a quarter of an hour, and in that time their faces fell and they looked like a different people. They left the places they had taken behind us and came in among us, demanding that all our chests, trunks and boxes be unlocked, which was done, and they divided everything in them. The Casseekey took our money for himself and hid it secretly in the bushes. Then they set about pulling off our clothes, leaving each of us only a pair of breeches or an old coat, except my wife and child, Robert Barrow and the captain, from whom they took very little that day.

When they had finished, they asked us again, "Nickaleer, Nickaleer?" But we answered, "Pennsylvania."

We began to ask about St. Augustine, and we talked too of Santa Lucea, a town about one degree, some seventy miles, to the north. But they cunningly tried to persuade us that both places lay to the south. We made signs that they lay to the north. And we talked of Havana, which lies to the south. They had heard of these places and knew which way they lay.⁷

At length the Casseekey told us how many days' travel it was to Santa Lucea, but he did not like to hear us mention St. Augustine. They made signs that we should go south. We answered that we must go north, for St. Augustine. When they found they could not persuade us otherwise, they made signs that we should go south for Havana, and that it was only a little way.

We gave them to understand that we had come that way and were bound north, and they accepted it. We saw that the Casseekey's heart had softened toward us, for he stayed with us most of the time and for the rest of that day kept off the petty thieves, who would have had our few rags from us. Some time before night we had a shower of rain, and the Casseekey made signs for us to build some shelter, so we put up our tent and gathered some leaves to lie on.⁸

By now our ship lay high and dry on the shore, and the Indians, men and women, had gathered there by the hundreds. They had got all the goods out of her, and they covered the beach for a long way, opening all the cloth and linen and spreading it out to dry. They would touch no sort of strong drink, nor sugar nor molasses, but left those in the ship. They shouted and made great noise while they plundered. When night came on, the Casseekey put the chests and trunks he had kept for himself into our tent, which pleased us, since it meant we could expect his company, and he had now become our defender against the rage of the others. He went down to the water among his people and came back with three old coats, wet and torn, which he gave us; I had one of them. It being dark, we made a fire at each end of where we lay. But we heard dreadful noises, and fearing they were not satisfied, we expected them to fall on us. The Casseekey lay in the tent on his chests. About midnight we heard a company of Indians coming from the ship toward us, shouting terribly, and they came fiercely up to the tent; the Casseekey called out to them, and they stopped. It seems they had killed a hog and brought it to us, and the Casseekey asked us whether we would eat the hog. At our request Solomon Cresson answered that we did not eat at that time of night. At that they threw the hog down in front of the tent, and the Casseekey sent them away. They went off shouting to the shore, where some hundreds of them were reveling around our wreck.

Chapter 2: The Casseekey of Hobe

Friday, September 25

This morning, meaning to try for leave to go north, we had Solomon put the matter to the Casseekey. He answered that we must go to his town to the south.

That made us press him all the harder to let us go to Santa Lucea, since the place had a Spanish name and we supposed it to be under that nation's government, where we might expect relief. But the Casseekey told us it was two or three days' journey away, and that when we got there we would have our throats and scalps cut, and be shot, burned and eaten. We took this for a story to turn us aside, and grew only more earnest to go; but he sternly refused us, saying we must go to his town.

About eight o'clock this morning the Casseekey came into our tent, sat down among us, and asked the old question: "Nickaleer, Nickaleer?" He put it to one of us in particular, who answered, in his simplicity, "Yes." At that the Casseekey asked the same man whether another, whom he pointed to, was Nickaleer, and he again answered yes. Then the Casseekey said, "Totus Nickaleer", that is, all of us were, and left. He came back shortly with some of his men, and they fell greedily to stripping my wife and child, Robert Barrow and the captain, who had escaped until now. That left us almost naked, until their fury had somewhat abated, and then we got some things back from them, which displeased some of them. We then cut our tent to pieces and got most of our clothing out of it, and when the Indians saw that, they took the rest of it from us. Most of us men had breeches and pieces of canvas, and our whole company pleaded for my wife, so that not everything was taken from her. About noon the Indians had carried all their plunder off the beach, and many of them had gone. A guard armed with bows and arrows was set over us, we were summoned to march with them, and a load was given to everyone who was at all able to carry one. The captain, with his broken leg, was helped along by his slave Ben. My wife was made to carry her child, and they would not let any of us relieve her. If any of us offered to put down his load, they threatened to shoot him. And so we were driven along the beach barefoot.

We had saved one of the captain's quadrants and a Seaman's Calendar, with two other books. As we walked along the beach, when the moment suited, our mate Richard Limpeney took an observation, and we found ourselves in latitude twenty-seven degrees eight minutes. Some of the Indians were offended by it: when he held up his quadrant to observe, one of them drew an arrow to shoot him. But so far it had pleased God to keep them from shedding any of our blood.

One thing I have left out. Two of our sailors, Thomas Fownes and Richard Limpeney, went out from our tent this morning down to the beach where the Indians were. While they were looking at them from some distance, an Indian man came running at them with his knife in his hand and took hold of Thomas Fownes to stab him. But Thomas fell on his knees, as the Spaniards do, and begged him not to kill him; at that the Indian stopped, and told him to go back where he had come from. When Thomas got back he told us how narrowly he had escaped.

After we had walked about five miles through the deep sand, with the sun extremely hot, we came to an inlet. On the other side was the Indian town: little wigwams made of small poles stuck in the ground and bent toward one another to form an arch, and thatched with small palmetto leaves. Here we were ordered to sit down. The Casseekey came to us, scratched a hole in the sand with his hand about a foot deep until he came to water, and made signs for us to come and drink. We were extremely thirsty and did, but the water was almost salt. While we sat there we saw great fires being made on the other side of the inlet, which some of us thought were being got ready for us. After we had spent an hour there, an Indian came at last from the other side with a small canoe, and I, with my wife and child and Robert Barrow, were ordered to get in. The canoe was only just wide enough for us to sit down in. We were carried over, and when we had landed the man made signs for us to walk to the wigwams. We did; but the young Indians would act frightened and run from us. We were directed to one wigwam, which we learned afterward was the Casseekey's. It was about a man's height to the top. In it the Casseekey's wife and some old women were sitting on a platform of sticks about a foot high covered with a mat. They made signs for us to sit down on the ground, and we did. The Casseekey's wife had a young child at her breast; she gave it to another woman and wanted mine. My wife was very unwilling to allow it, but she would not be refused. She took our child and nursed it at her breast, looking it over and feeling it from head to foot, and at length gave it back to my wife. By this time another group of our people had come over and sat down by the side of the wigwam. Our Indian brought a fish boiled on a small palmetto leaf, set it down among us and made signs for us to eat; but our distress was too great for us to have any wish for food. At length all our people had been brought over, and after them came the Casseekey. As soon as he reached his wigwam he set to work. He got some stakes and stuck them in a row next to his wigwam, tied some sticks to them with small palmetto leaves fastened on, about three feet high, and laid two or three mats made of reeds down beside this screen. He made it, it seems, to keep the wind off us, and he ordered us to lie down there. We did, as many as the mats would hold; the rest lay on the ground beside us. The Casseekey went into his wigwam and sat cross-legged on his platform, and a basket of palmetto berries was brought to him, which he ate very greedily. After that some Indians came to him and talked a great deal. Night came on. When the moon was up, an Indian who performs their ceremonies stood out, looking full at the moon, making a hideous noise and crying out, and acting like a madman for half an hour, while all the Indians kept silent until he had finished. After that they all made fearful noises, some like the barking of a dog or a wolf, and other strange sounds. Then one of them got a log and sat down, holding the stick or log upright on the ground, and several others gathered around him and made a hideous noise, singing, to our amazement. At length their women joined in, which made the noise more terrible, and they kept this up until midnight. Toward morning there was a heavy dew. Our fire had burned out, and we were extremely cold.⁹

This morning the Casseekey looked on us kindly, and sent his son with his striking staff to the inlet to spear fish for us. He did it with great skill. Some of us walked down with him, and though we watched very closely when he threw his staff, we could not see a fish where he saw one; and he brought it ashore on the end of his staff. Sometimes he would run swiftly after a fish, and he seldom missed when he darted at one. In two hours he got as many fish as would feed twenty men. Others were fishing at the same time, so that fish were plentiful; but our sense of our situation took away our hunger, for some among us thought they meant to feed us up in order to feed on us.

This morning the Casseekey went off toward our ship. While he was away the other Indians looked at us very sourly, which made us fear cruelty still to come.

This afternoon we saw a great fire near where our ship lay, and concluded that our ship and our boat had been burned. That almost convinced us that they meant to destroy us. About sunset the Casseekey came home. We spoke to him, and he answered us and seemed very friendly, which we were glad of. As night came on the wind shifted to the north and blew cold, so we moved our screen, added the mats to it to keep the wind off us, and lay down on the sand. About an hour after dark a party of Indians came from the south, all armed with bows and arrows. As they came near our shelter some of us caught sight of them, and they squatted down. This seemed a fresh danger. We woke those of us who had fallen asleep and told them to be ready, for things looked dangerous: we supposed the Indians had come either to hasten our destruction or to carry us south. They sat like that for a good while, and at length went off among the wigwams. In this way danger would often loom up before us and all but swallow us; but at times we would be lifted above it, with a secret hope that God, who had preserved us through so many perils, would work our deliverance.

Some time before night Robert Barrow was urging us to be patient, and in a godly way he expounded the text of Scripture, "Because you have kept the word of my patience," and so on (Revelation 3:10). He ended with a most fervent prayer. He asked the Lord that, since he had allowed us to be cast among a barbarous and heathen people, he would, if it was his blessed will, preserve us and deliver us from among them, so that our names might not be buried in oblivion, and so that he himself might lay his body among faithful Friends. At the close of his prayer he seemed to have an assurance that his request would be granted. In all this some of us were inwardly refreshed and strengthened.

Sunday, September 27

This morning we again tried our best with the Casseekey to let us go north to St. Augustine. His answer was that we would all be killed; but at length we prevailed, and he said that we should go tomorrow. Then he took three of the enslaved men, one of Joseph Kirle's and two of mine, and went up the sound with them in a canoe.

Today the Indians were busy with what they had taken out of our ship, and would have set all of us to work for them, one at one thing, another at another. But we did not know what it might lead to, tried to keep out of it, and refused what they asked.

Still, some of our men did what they wanted, sewing some cloth together, stringing our beds, mending the locks of the chests, and so on. Whatever they thought was out of order they would keep pushing on us to mend, and still we refused outright. At one point I heard one of the chief Indians say, "English son of a bitch." The words startled me, for I believe they must have had some of our nation in their hands, from whom they had heard that expression. I went away from the wigwam much troubled.

This being the first day of the week, and since we had a large Bible and a book of Robert Barclay's, one or another of us was often reading in them. Most of us were sitting together, and Robert Barrow asked our people to wait on the Lord. In that time Robert had a word in season for us, and afterward he went to prayer. All the Indians came around us, and some of the younger ones would mock, though not so as to disturb us. The older ones stood very respectfully the whole time, and when the prayer ended they all withdrew quietly. Some of them, especially the Casseekey's eldest son, took great delight in our reading. They would take the Bible or another book and hand it to one or another of us to read; the sound of it pleased them, for they would sit quietly and listen very attentively.¹⁰

The Casseekey had been away most of the day. Then we saw our boat coming over the bar into the inlet with the enslaved men in her. We rejoiced to see our boat, for we had thought she was burned. They told us that they had gone up the sound with the Casseekey and landed near where our tent had been. Their chief business was to move the money from one place to another and bury it: the old man would trust our people with it, but not his own. When that was done they went to where our ship had burned. They launched our boat, and the old Casseekey put his chests in her, which held our linen and other trade goods. They also got a small cask, which they filled with wine from a quarter cask that had been left, and brought away sugar from the wreck that the fire had not consumed. By this time the Casseekey and the other slave arrived in the canoe. He told us we would go with our boat tomorrow, which was cheering news to us. Meanwhile some Indians had been out and brought home oysters, and the Casseekey gave us some, telling us to take as many as we liked. A little before night the Casseekey opened his chests and boxes, and his wife came and took what was in them from him. But he seemed very generous to my wife and child, and gave her several things that were useful to her and to our child.

Our boat was very leaky, so we took her into a creek and sank her, so that the water would swell her planks.

Monday, September 28

This morning we waited for a chance to ask leave to go, and it was granted us. We then asked for things they had no use for: a great glass jar holding five or six pounds of butter, some sugar, the small cask of wine, and some balls of chocolate. All of it was granted us, and a bowl as well, to bail water out of the boat. But the Casseekey wanted a slave boy of mine named Cesar. I did not know what to say to that, but he was set on it. We went down to the waterside and sent across the inlet all our people who were to go on foot. Joseph Kirle, Robert Barrow, I, my wife and child, and two of our sailors went in the boat and rowed north along the shore. The Casseekey wanted us to take our boat up the sound instead. We supposed the sound was a great river, and with no knowledge of it we were unwilling to take his advice; but his counsel was good, as we found later, for ease of passage.

The Casseekey and some other Indians went with our people toward our wreck, while we rowed along the shore. Our boat was so leaky that one person had work enough bailing out the water.

Just before we left the Indian town, several Indians wanted to take the few clothes and rags we had got; but we called out to the Casseekey, and he made them leave us alone. Solomon Cresson had been much in favor with one Indian, who would hardly stir from his wigwam without Solomon, and Solomon had to go about arm in arm with him. Among this Indian's plunder was a morning gown, which he put on Solomon, and Solomon had worn it most of the time we were there. But when the time came for us to leave, an Indian stripped it off him, leaving him only a pair of breeches, and seemed very angry.

It was high noon when we left our wreck behind, burned down to her floor timbers where she lay in the sand. We went on, some in the boat and the rest walking along the shore. A little before sunset our people came on a great number of small fish that had been thrown up on the beach, as we supposed, by the storm that had driven us ashore. They lay far from the water, much tainted, and covered the shore for nearly a mile. Our people gathered as many as they could carry. About sunset we put ashore to refresh ourselves and rest a little, and also to take my kinsman Benjamin Allen into our boat. This afternoon, as he walked, he had been taken with a fever and ague, and we had a great deal of trouble getting him along. He had been sick almost to death, from the day before we left Bluefields road until about a week before we were cast away.

One of my slaves had saved a tinderbox and flint, and we had kept two knives, and with these we got a fire going. It took much doing, for our tinder was bad and all the wood was soaked with salt water. When we had a fire, we broiled all our fish, ate heartily of some of them, and kept the rest, not knowing when we would be so well supplied again. For this some of us were truly thankful to the God of all our mercies.

We had a large fire, and many of us got in the lee of it, while others buried themselves in the sand, hoping to get a little sleep so as to be somewhat refreshed, and better able, some to walk and some to row, for the rest of the night. But the sand flies and mosquitoes were so extremely thick that sleep was impossible. The moon was shining, so we launched our boat. I, my wife and child, the captain, Robert Barrow, my kinsman Allen, Solomon Cresson, Joseph Buckley and the captain's slave went in the boat; the rest walked along the shore. About midnight or a little after, our people came past an Indian town. The Indians came out in great numbers and offered no violence beyond trying to take what little they had; but our people put up some small resistance, and the Indians gave up their purpose. They were very eager for us to come ashore and kept hailing us; but our people wanted us to keep off. We had got in among some breakers, and had a great deal of trouble getting out to sea.

Tuesday, September 29

About sunrise this morning we stood in toward the land and looked out for our people, but could not see them, so we lay to for two hours. At length we saw them coming along with a great many Indians. When they came abreast of us, the Indians waved us ashore; but we refused, seeing that they meant mischief, for every now and then they would snatch one thing or another. Our people kept pointing to us in the boat; but after some hours, seeing they could not get us ashore, the Indians left them.

At noon today Joseph Kirle, who had his quadrant and calendar, took an observation, and we were in latitude 27 degrees 45 minutes. About one o'clock we saw two Indians with bows and arrows running to meet our people. When our people saw them, they first halted and then retreated. At that the Indians let fly an arrow, which narrowly missed one of them, and so our people stopped. The Indians looked strangely at them; but our people went on, and the Indians with them, until they came to an Indian town. We saw our people go into the wigwams, but they stayed only a very short time, because the Indians tried to take from them the pieces of canvas they had. They got some water and set off again, the two Indians still following them. About this time we saw a sail to the east. At first we took her for a brigantine and agreed to follow her, but in a little while we made her out to be a canoe or boat with two masts and sails. She stood in toward the shore, but as soon as they caught sight of us she bore away; and when she saw that we did not go after her, she stood in for the Indian town again. At that a suspicion took hold among us that she might go ashore, take on a strong crew and then come after us. We rowed very hard, therefore, and kept well out to sea for some hours, and when we found they did not come out, we stood toward the shore again. The day was extremely hot, and we had had no water since we left the Indian town south of our wreck, which is called Hobe. We were eager, then, to get ashore, but when we tried, we could not. The seas were swelling very high and came rolling in from the east, so that they ran very hollow and broke almost a mile from the shore. Our captain said it was impossible to get ashore alive. But I was under some inward concern and wanted to be ashore, and told the rest of our people so. They raised the danger, all of which I saw as clearly as they did; yet I could not rest, and insisted on going ashore. The captain and the men said we would not come out of it alive; but I prevailed so far that they made the attempt and got within half a mile of the shore. Then the seas came at us so big and hollow that one of them nearly swamped us: we just got over the top of it before it broke. After that there was no persuading them to go any farther. We stood off and meant to stay out all night. Our people were very weary and the sun was setting, so we divided ourselves, half to get some sleep and the other half to keep watch and keep the boat's head to the sea. The weather looked as though it would turn bad, and the sea was rising, so I began again to persuade them to go ashore. They all wanted to, but thought it impossible. At length we resolved to venture. Committing ourselves to the protection of Almighty God, we stood in for the shore and made signs to our people that we meant to land. And it pleased God to order it so that we went ashore as though a lane had been made through the breakers, and were carried to the top of the bank, where we got old Robert Barrow and my wife and child out of the boat before a single sea came in to fill her. One did as soon as they were out; but we hauled our boat up out of the wash of the sea.¹¹

The two Indians tried to take off our clothes, which would not even cover our bodies. We were not willing to give them up, so they would snatch a piece from one of us and a bit from another, run off with it, and then come back and do the same again. These two took away what had been given to my wife and child. We did not know how to prevent it, and we bore it patiently.

We asked how far it was to Santa Lucea, since one of them spoke a little Spanish, and from his signs we understood that it was not far. They made signs that when we got there we would be put to a most cruel death; but we hoped otherwise.

Here, inland and across the sound, our people said that before dark they had seen two or three houses which looked white, as if they were plastered with lime. That gave us hope that there were Spaniards there, and we set off as the Indians directed, for Santa Lucea. They made signs that we would come to an inlet of the sea, with Santa Lucea on the other side. We walked about four miles and came to the inlet, but saw no settlement on the other side, so we decided to lie there all night.

We saw the tracks of a large bear and other wild beasts, so we set to work to gather wood and make a fire. Swarms of mosquitoes and sand flies kept us from resting. To protect ourselves from them we dug holes in the sand and laid grass in them to lie on, and most of us did so; but it was extremely cold and firewood was scarce, and we had little comfort.

About midnight we sent our people to see whether they could get our boat off and bring her into the inlet, so that we could cross to the other side. They went and launched her, but the sea was so rough that there was no getting her off: she soon filled and was set swimming, and the men, boat and all, were driven ashore again.

While our people were gone for the boat, we caught sight of some Indians in a canoe, fishing by torchlight. We sent for Solomon, who had gone to launch the boat, expecting that they would come over when they saw our fires, and we would not know what to say to them; but they did not come. We lay here keeping watch, for there was no rest to be had.

Chapter 3: Santa Lucea, and North to Jece

Monday, September 30

This morning at daybreak we saw a small canoe put off from the other side with two Indians in it, going up the river, or sound, to fish. We hailed them in Spanish, and as soon as they heard and saw us they made for the shore with all speed and ran off to their town. Seeing how shy of us they were, we began to doubt the friendship we had counted on so much, and we advised our people how to behave, especially my slaves. About sunrise we saw the Indians coming, running in very great numbers with their bows and arrows, to the inlet. They had five or six canoes there, and as many as those canoes would hold got into them; the others took to the water and swam over to us. They came in the greatest rage a barbarous people possibly could. Solomon began to speak Spanish to them, but they gave no answer until they were some distance from us; then they came running at us, crying out, "Nickaleer, Nickaleer!" We all sat still, expecting death, and death in the most barbarous manner. Those of us who spoke to them could not be heard. They rushed at us violently, ripping and tearing the few clothes we had. So many of them laid hold of the men who had breeches on that those men hardly touched the ground until they had been shaken out of them. They tore everything off my wife. Spying the lace that bound her hair, some of them were about to cut off her hair to get it, but another, like a greedy dog, snatched it and tore it off. As for our poor young child, they snatched from it what little it had, as though they would have shaken it and torn it limb from limb. When they had taken everything from us but our lives, they began to talk to one another vehemently, foaming at the mouth like wild boars, and taking up their bows and arrows and other weapons they cried out, "Nickaleer, Nickaleer!" Solomon spoke to them in Spanish and said we were Spaniards, but they would not listen to him. They went on crying, "Nickaleer, Nickaleer!", every one of them drawing his arrow back to the head. But suddenly we saw them look about and listen, and then they gave up their bloody design. One of them took a pair of breeches and gave it to my wife. We had brought our great Bible and a large book of Robert Barclay's to this place. We were all stripped as naked as the day we were born and were trying to hide our nakedness, and these cannibals took the books, tore out the leaves, and gave each of us a leaf to cover ourselves with. We took them. As they gave them they would mock us and hit us, and the next moment another of them would snatch away what the first had given, mocking and hitting us as he did it.

Robert Barrow, my wife and child and I were ordered into a canoe to be carried over to the other side of the inlet, which was two hundred yards across, with four Indians in the canoe to paddle. When we came within a canoe's length or two of the far shore, a crowd of Indians came running into the water with their bows and arrows, some up to their knees, some deeper, their bows drawn, crying out, "Nickaleer, Nickaleer!", and they kept it up without stopping. The Indians who had brought us over jumped out of the canoe and swam ashore, afraid they would be shot. But at this moment it pleased God to soften the hearts of some of them toward us, especially the Casseekey's wife and some of the chief men among them, whom God made the means of pleading for us and stopping the rage of the crowd, who seemed unwilling to be satisfied without our blood. The Casseekey ordered some of them to swim out and bring the canoe ashore. When that was done, his wife came to us with compassion, took my wife out of the canoe, and told her to follow her. We did, and went some distance from the edge of the inlet, and stood there until all our people had been brought over, which took only a little time. But the rage of some of them was still great, and they thirsted to shed our blood. A fierce struggle went on among them: some wanted to kill us and others to prevent it, and one Indian strove with another. When we were all across, we had to walk along the seashore to their town, and on the way most of us felt the rage of some of them, by blows or by stones, and a number of arrows were shot. But those who wanted to save us watched those who wanted to destroy us, and when one of these went to shoot, another would catch hold of his bow or his arm. It was so ordered that not one of us was touched by their arrows. Several of us were knocked down, and some tumbled into the sea. We did not dare help one another, but we had help, for some of them were made the means of helping us. My wife received several blows. An Indian came and took hold of her hair and was about to cut her throat, or something like it, with his knife close to her throat; but I looked at him and made a sign that he should not, and he stopped. Just then another Indian came with a handful of sea sand and filled our poor child's mouth with it. By this time the Casseekey's wife had seen how my wife was being treated and came to her, and they pulled the sand out of our child's mouth. She stayed beside my wife until we reached the Casseekey's house, which was about forty feet long and twenty-five feet wide, roofed and walled with palmetto leaves.

A range of cabins, that is, raised platforms of the kind called a barbecue, ran along one side and both ends. From the entrance on one side of the house a passage led to the platforms, with benches on each side. On these benches sat the chief Indians, and the Casseekey sat at the upper end of the platform. They held a kind of debate among themselves for an hour. After it Solomon and some others were called to the Casseekey and seated on the platform, where the Casseekey talked to Solomon in Spanish, though they could not hold a conversation. In a little while some raw deerskins were brought in and given to my wife and the enslaved women. To us men they gave the kind of thing the Indian men wear: a piece of plaited straw worked in various colors, in the shape of a triangle, with a belt four fingers broad of the same work. The belt goes around the waist; one corner of the triangle has a piece attached that comes up between the legs, with strings to the ends of the belt, and all three meet and are fastened behind with a horse's tail, or a bunch of silk grass exactly like one, of a flaxen color. This is all the clothing or covering the men wear, and this is how they clothed us. A place was set aside for us, with mats laid on the floor of the house, and we were ordered to lie down there. But the place was extremely filthy, for the stones of all the berries they eat, and all the filth they make, lay on the floor, so that the place swarmed with a great many sorts of creeping things: a large black hairy spider with two claws like a crab's, scorpions, and small bugs past counting. On these mats we lay, with the vermin crawling over our naked bodies. Brushing them off was like brushing off mosquitoes where they are thickest. The Indians sat as I have described, the Casseekey at the upper end, and the platforms were filled with men, women and children watching us. At length we heard a woman or two crying, in their manner, and very sorrowfully; one of them I took to be the Casseekey's wife. This made some of us think that something out of the ordinary was going to be done to us. We heard a strange sort of noise, not like any noise a man makes, but we could not make out what it was or where, for at one moment it sounded in one part of the house, at another in another, wherever we turned our ears. Indeed our ears and eyes could take in nothing but what was strange and dismal, and death seemed to surround us. But in time we learned what this noise was.

It came about like this. In one part of the house, where the fire was kept, an Indian man had a pot on the fire in which he was making a drink from the leaves of a shrub; we learned afterward from the Spaniards that it is called casseena. He first parched the leaves in a pot and then boiled them. Then, with a gourd that had a long neck, with a small hole at the top that a fingertip could cover and a round hole two inches across in its side, they take the liquor out of the pot and put it into a deep round bowl, which holds nearly three gallons when it is almost full. With this gourd they work the liquor and make it froth a great deal. It is a deep brown color. The noise we had found so strange was made in the brewing of this liquor: as the gourd was pressed gently down into the liquor, the air in it was forced out through the little hole at the top, and this made a sound that varied with the timing and the motion given it. When the drink was made, and cool enough to sip, it was carried first to the Casseekey in a conch shell. He threw part of it on the ground and drank up the rest, and then gave a loud "Hem!" After that the cup passed to the rest of the Casseekey's associates, seated as I described; but no other man, woman or child may touch or taste this drink. They sat sipping it, chattering and smoking tobacco, or some other herb in its place, for most of the day.¹²

About noon some fish was brought to us on small palmetto leaves, boiled with scales, heads and gills, with nothing taken out but the guts. But our troubles and our distress of mind were such that we did not care for food.

In the evening, as we lay in the place I have described, the Indians made a drum by stretching a skin over the deep bowl they brewed their drink in, and beat on it with a stick. They had a couple of rattles, each made of a small gourd on a stick with small stones inside, and shaking these they set up a most hideous howling, very wearisome to us. Some time later some of their young women came in, some singing and some dancing. This went on until midnight, and then they went to sleep.

Thursday, October 1

Today the Casseekey looked on us pleasantly and gave presents to some of us, especially my wife. He gave her a parcel of the shellfish known as clams; he roasted one or two and gave them to her, showing her that she should do the rest the same way and eat them. The Indian women would take our child and nurse it, for its mother's milk was nearly gone, so that it could not get a meal. Our child, which had been at death's door from its birth until we were cast away, now began to be cheerful and to have an appetite for food. It had no covering but a small piece of raw deerskin, not a shred of linen or wool to put on it.

About ten o'clock we saw the Indians suddenly in motion. Most of the principal men went off to their houses. The Casseekey set about dressing his hair and painting himself, and so did the rest. When they had finished they came into the Casseekey's house and took their seats in order. A short time afterwards an Indian came into the house with a small train of attendants, making a ceremonious gesture, and seated himself beside the Casseekey; the people who came with him seated themselves among the others. After a short pause the Casseekey began a speech, which lasted nearly an hour. Then the strange Indian and his companions went out to the waterside, to their canoe lying in the sound, and came back at once with the presents they had brought, which they delivered to the Casseekey while those sitting by applauded. The presents were a few bunches of the herb they make their drink from, another herb that they use instead of tobacco, and some plaited balls stuffed with moss for laying their heads on, in place of pillows. When the ceremony was over they all sat down again and fell to drinking casseena, smoking and talking for as long as the strangers stayed.

About noon some fish was brought to us. Hunger had grown strong on us, and they gave us little more than a mouthful each, which we ate. The Casseekey ordered our captain Joseph Kirle, Solomon Cresson, my wife and me to sit on their platform to eat our fish, and they gave us some of their berries to eat. We tasted them, but not one of us could bear to keep them in his mouth, for we could compare the taste of them to nothing but rotten cheese steeped in tobacco. Some time after we had eaten, some of the Indians asked us whether we were Spaniards. Solomon answered yes. Then some of the Indians would point to those of us whose hair was black or a deep brown and say that this one was a Spaniard of Havana and that one of St. Augustine; but those whose hair was light they were doubtful of, and some of them said these were no Spaniards.

About three in the afternoon the strangers went away. A little while later, having satisfied themselves that most of us were Spaniards, the Indians told us that we would be sent for to the next town. They also told us of some Nickaleers, whom we understood to be Englishmen of Bristol, six men and a woman, they said; and these were to be put to death before we could get there. We kept silent, though we were much troubled to hear it. They told us as well that a messenger would come for us to guide us to the next town, and from there to St. Augustine.

When night came on they gave themselves up to their usual singing and dancing.

About ten or twelve at night, before the singing and dancing were over, a stranger came in armed with a bow and arrows. The Casseekey and his companions talked with him for half an hour, and when they had finished, we were suddenly ordered to get up and were hurried off with this stranger. They did not give us time to see whether we were all together, and a troop of young Indian men and boys followed us for about four miles, pelting us with stones the whole way. At length all of them left us except two and our guide. But we found that Solomon Cresson, Joseph Kirle's boy, and Ben, the captain's slave, were missing, which troubled us greatly.

We had not gone more than five miles when our guide made us stop. A short distance off was an Indian town, which I suppose our guide belonged to, for Indians came from it with fire and water for him, and with palmetto leaves they made a blaze. Here we stayed nearly two hours. The flies were very thick and the night very cold, so that our naked bodies could hardly bear it. At length we left this place, and the whole night through we were tormented by the two young Indians, who every so often would pick out one or another of us to abuse, asking whether he was not a Nickaleer, or English. If he said no, they would hit him one blow or more with a club they had, and say he was. We traveled all night without stopping after we left that place.

Friday, October 2

After sunrise we came up with the wreck of the vessel we had heard was cast away. She was smashed all to pieces, for her keelson had been driven ashore. We saw hogsheads of sugar, ginger and logwood, which led us to suppose she was one of our fleet, and we thought she must be either Burroughs's ship or Smith's, of Bristol. A mile or more from there we came to an inlet. Our guide told us we must swim across, all but my wife and Robert Barrow; but we made signs that we could not. He carried Robert Barrow, Joseph Kirle, me, and my wife and child over first, and at length the whole company, for it was a long way across. By the time we were all over, the day had grown hot, and my wife was quite tired and faint, and so were Robert Barrow and Joseph Kirle, whose leg had grown so painful that it overcame him. We got under a sea grape bush for shelter from the sun, and I sent one of my slaves to look for water for them. There was none to be had, but he got some sea grapes, which, with the rest, refreshed the weak and the lame.

Our guide was for pushing us on, so we traveled about four or five miles farther and met the Casseekey of this town, who was the commander of the northern part of this coast. He was an old man, his beard and hair gray. He asked for the captain; our people pointed out Joseph Kirle, and he went to him and embraced him. Then he asked for our mate, or pilot. This man spoke Spanish better than any we had met yet, though not well enough to hold a conversation, only to ask some questions; and three or four of us could manage to answer him, for Solomon had been kept behind. This old Casseekey seemed to have compassion on us, and said that the people who had stripped us and treated us so were rogues, but that we were his comerradoes, or friends. He also said that in a few days he would take us to St. Augustine. Then he told us that six Englishmen and one woman were at his town. We asked whether he meant them for St. Augustine too, but he would shake his head and point to the south, saying, "Nickaleer, no comerradoe": the English were not his friends. These words were unwelcome to us. His people kept us company until we were within a mile or two of their town, and then they left us, going on faster and getting in ahead of us. Their town stood about half a mile inland from the seashore, on the sound, surrounded by a swamp in which white mangroves grew, and these hid the town from the sea. We were directed to the Casseekey's house, which was large and full of Indians, and then ordered to sit down. The old Casseekey fetched some water and washed the feet of Robert Barrow and of my wife. After that he got some canvas and some ginger bags of crocus, a coarse sacking, which they had taken out of the vessel cast on shore, and these were shared out among us. Joseph Kirle was given a coat, taken from the people of the other vessel, but it was ripped down the back. My wife was given two pieces of sailcloth, and I and others each had a crocus ginger bag. To cover our child they gave a piece of an old linen shirt that had belonged to a barber, the size of a small handkerchief. This was all our clothing. Robert Barrow and my wife were quite spent from walking barefoot on the hot sand. Their feet were bruised, and the stumps, stones and prickles had worn holes in them, especially in Robert Barrow's, that you could have put the tip of your thumb in. We were directed to lie down on a platform.

The other vessel's company were John Smith, master of the Nantwitch, a barque of Bristol that had come out of Jamaica with us, with five men and a woman: Andrew Murray, merchant; Andrew Barnes, mate; Hugh Allen; John Osler; John Shears; and Cornelius Toker; two boys; and a woman passenger named Penelope. We took the chance to talk with them. They had been cast away the same night we were. For two days before, they had not been able to carry any sail, and the storm drove their vessel ashore; they got into their boat and so reached land. In a short time a great part of their wreck was driven ashore, among it a barrel or more of water, some barrels of beef or pork, and their chests and many other things, which they secured. The next day they meant to travel north. But their mate, Andrew Barnes, had long been afflicted with a flux that had wasted his body to skin and bone, so that he could not help himself. They left him, traveled a mile or more, and came to the inlet, which they could not cross. They went back to fetch their boat, but before they could get away with it they saw the Indians coming at them. The Indians soon reached them and asked in Spanish what nation they were, Spanish, English or French; but they also made signs that they should hand over their clothes, which the men readily did. Still the Indians asked what nation they were. At first they answered Spaniards, but the natives looked so furious that they soon answered Englishmen. At that every one of them took up the cry, "Nickaleer, Nickaleer!", and they stripped them eagerly of everything they had on. After that they drove them north to their town; but Andrew Barnes, who could neither stand nor walk, was stripped and left behind naked on the land when the others were driven away. Before they reached the town the Indian Casseekey gave them some clothing, and no violence was done to their persons. They had had plenty of fish and berries up to the time we arrived. John Smith, Andrew Murray and the woman Penelope lived in the Casseekey's house; the rest of Smith's people lodged in other Indian houses. But when we came, the old Casseekey told them they must move out and make room for the Spaniards. Smith and Murray would not go, and the Indian did not force them out.

Some time after we had come into the house, Indian women came in loaded with baskets of berries, mostly from the palm, with some seaside cocoplums and sea grapes. The last two we could eat, but we could not bear the taste of the palm berries in our mouths. We lay down on the part of the platform set aside for us; on the other part lay the young Casseekey, or king, with a chest standing on the platform between us. Before night a quantity of large fish called drums was brought in. The old Casseekey told Joseph Kirle that these were for the Spaniards and told him to have somebody cook them. He also gave orders for a pot for us. They were soon cooked, and we ate them. When night came the old Casseekey asked about our losses, and we gave him to understand, as well as we could, that there had been a great deal of clothing and money in our vessel, which the Indians at Hobe had taken from us. He understood enough of it to grow covetous, and said he would go and get some of it from them.

About midnight Solomon Cresson arrived in a canoe with two Indians. The old Casseekey began to question him about our vessel, goods and money or silver plate, and Solomon gave him a fuller account of it than we had been able to. This made him resolve to get men and boats ready the next day and go down the sound to Hobe to have a share of it. He wanted Solomon to go with him, but Solomon refused.

We asked Solomon why he had stayed behind, and about Ben and Joseph Kirle's boy. He said he had been kept by force, but that Ben and the boy were asleep in another house when we were driven away. The Indians had some purpose in keeping Solomon that he could not rightly understand; he supposed they doubted whether we were all Spaniards. For the Indians of Santa Lucea would tell Solomon that he was a Spaniard, and some others with him, but that most of us were not, and that we had stolen him away. But Solomon denied it.

Chapter 4: Flood and Hunger at Jece

Saturday, October 3

This morning the old Casseekey left for Hobe with two canoes and ten Indians. He promised us that as soon as he came back he would carry us to St. Augustine, which he expected would be in six days if he had good weather. But today the wind had gone round to the northeast, and it looked as though the weather would turn stormy. The wind grew stronger, and toward evening the water in the sound rose until it began to cover the land and came into the houses. We had little or no rain until night; then the wind rose further, and the rain with it.

Sunday, October 4

This morning the wind was violent, with rain. The king's house was knee-deep in water, and the water was still rising. I moved with my wife and child, Robert Barrow and Benjamin Allen to an Indian house that stood on a mound of oyster shells, and there we stayed through the day. The wind went on blowing very hard from the northeast, and with all the rain the water rose every hour. The Indians began to put their dried berries into their canoes and to look for ways to keep them safe. Several of them took to their boats and carried what they had to some high ground a good distance off, where a place had been made ready for their Casseekey, or king. But before day the house we were in was afloat, and the Indians wanted to turn us out. They told us to take an old canoe with a hole in her side, almost at the bottom, big enough for a man to put his hand through, so that she was full of water; in this canoe they would have had us shift for ourselves. We were not willing to go. Again and again the Indians made signs for us to be gone, and at length they grew angry, took my kinsman Allen into the canoe, and carried him away. A little while later they came back with the canoe and told me and Robert Barrow to be gone. By then day had come, and the wind and rain were still violent. I saw a house on another oyster mound that the water had not yet got over. I made my way to it and asked by signs whether I might stay there. The Indians seemed willing, so I got my wife, my child and Robert Barrow over to it, and there we stayed. All that day the wind was violent, it rained, and the flood went on. We imagined that the sea had broken in over the land and that we would be drowned. The house was almost blown to pieces, and the Indians were always tying it up and mending it. The head man of this house had his wife suckle our child, for it was almost starved: its mother had no milk in her breasts, for we had had no food since the storm began. There was no fresh water to be had, with the sea covering the land. The Indians offered us some of their berries, and we tried to eat them but could not; the taste was so loathsome that it seemed to take our breath away when we tried. Still, we expected that if the flood lasted much longer we would not lack for water. And because we were in health and strength, and our hunger grew fierce, we kept on tasting the berries, though they did nothing to satisfy us.

Saturday, October 6

This morning the flood began to come into this house as well, and the Indians seemed very worried. The storm of wind and rain held until about midday, when the wind shifted to the southwest, still with rain; but within a few hours the flood began to go down.

Wednesday, October 7

By noon today the water had fallen many feet, and I went out to see our people whom I had left in the king's house. I found them where I had left them. All the Indians had left the house, and our people had stayed up on the platform, which stood about four feet above the floor. The flood had risen to within two or three inches of the top of it, and they said they had expected to die there. We began to tell one another how hungry and thirsty we were, but there was no help yet for either. We went to the springs, but they were all as salt as the sea. We kept struggling with the berries, but they were so offensive to us that we got no good of them. From time to time we went begging the Indian women to suckle our child, and they seldom refused.

Thursday, October 8

Today we got some water to drink, but it was very brackish, and not very good at best.

Friday, October 9

Today the young Casseekey came back to his house with his chest and his other things.

Saturday, October 10

Today we had a meal of fish, the most plentiful meal we had had since we came here. We longed for the old Casseekey to come back, and feared that this bad weather would delay him.

Sunday, October 11

Early this morning a messenger came with word that the old Casseekey was only a few leagues, perhaps ten miles, from the town, and that we might expect him this forenoon. In time he came in sight, and we all went down to the waterside to receive him. We saw that he came in state. He had lashed his two canoes together with poles laid across from one to the other, making a platform, and this was covered with a mat. On it stood a chest that had belonged to us, and with it my slave boy Cesar, whom the Casseekey of Hobe had taken from me and whom the old Casseekey had got from the Indians at Hobe. On this chest the old Casseekey sat cross-legged, freshly painted red, while his men poled the canoes in to the shore. When he saw us he cried, "Wough!" and looked at us very sternly. His people received him with great homage, and he held out his hands to be kissed, as their custom is. His chest was carried before him to his house, and he went there, and the house filled with Indians. The old Casseekey began a speech that lasted some hours, giving an account, as we supposed, of what he had heard and seen; and in it he often said "Nickaleer," which made us fear that all was not well. When he had told his story, and some of the elder Indians had given their opinions of it, they drank casseena and smoked until evening. When the house had cleared, the old Casseekey, looking very displeased, showed us several things he had got, a hatchet, a knife, the chest and many others, and asked us whether they were not ours. We said they were, and at that he would say they were Nickaleer, or English. We let him know that we had got them from the English, but that our money was Spanish. Toward evening Joseph Kirle, Solomon and I found a chance to talk with him, and we began to press him about his promise to carry us to St. Augustine. First he told us how hard and long his trip to Hobe and back had been, and that he must have time to rest before he could set out again. Then he told us that the way was long and would be wearisome, and that in several places we would have to haul the canoes overland for a great distance. He also told us how many towns lay between here and St. Augustine: ten of them. But near the end he turned an angry face on us and told us he had been informed at Hobe that we had said we were all Englishmen. When he had said this, he turned from us in anger and went away.

This laid all our hopes in the dust, and we soon saw that the Indians had grown suspicious of us. Every day now they would ask us whether we were not Nickaleer, or English, and they would not seem satisfied when we denied it. Many days passed, and the time drew near when, as we understood, the old Casseekey meant to go to St. Augustine. We went to him and asked that if all of us could not go, he would carry some of us. He told us he would carry only one. This set us arguing over which of us that one should be. Most were for me. But Joseph Kirle and I were for Solomon, because he spoke Spanish well and none of the rest of us could. We supposed that the Indians to the north spoke Spanish well, and if any other of us went and came among them, we would be found out to be what these people already supposed we were, and that might overturn all our hopes; but Solomon could get past all those dangers. These reasons did not satisfy our people, and some of them grew hot-tempered. The old Casseekey noticed it and told Solomon that if they made such a stir, he would not carry anyone; and if he did, it would be Solomon, Joseph Kirle or me. With that we persuaded him to let Solomon go, and we made ready. The Casseekey named the number of Indians who were to go with him, and a canoe was sent for. When it came, we could tell from the way she was built that she had belonged to the English. She had a great hole in the bow near the bottom and many very large splits and holes besides. Joseph Kirle and I were ordered to mend her, and with a great deal of trouble we managed it, for the canoe was badly decayed and rotten where the splits were.

Sunday, October 18

This morning the old Casseekey set out for St. Augustine with Solomon and six Indians in a canoe.

The Casseekey took a small chest, which held close to a hundred pieces of eight, as some of our people supposed, along with some other things taken from our vessel. The weather looked like rain, and we feared that if it turned bad, Solomon would hardly live to reach St. Augustine, for he had nothing to cover him but a pair of Indian breeches and a small piece of skin over his chest.¹³

We understood from the old Casseekey that it would be a month, or until the next new moon, before we could expect them back. All that time we spent in great trouble and hardship. The weather began to grow cold, and food ran very short: that is, palm berries, cocoplums and sea grapes, the three kinds already described, for the season of these fruits was over, and the Indians would have no fruit of any kind until next spring.

These people neither sow nor plant anything at all, and care for nothing but what the barren sand produces. They have as much fish as they please, but at times they would keep it scarce for us, so that one meal of fish in a week was most often our portion, and three meals a rarity. After the old Casseekey left, our hardships grew worse, especially my wife's and child's. For want of food of any kind my wife's milk was gone, and our poor child was in great need. Now and then the Indian women would give it the breast, but seldom enough to satisfy it, for one or two of their own women had young children and no milk to suckle them. We were in such extremity that anything at all would go down with us. The gills and guts of fish picked off a dunghill were welcome; and we were thankful for the scraps the Indians threw away and the water they boiled their fish in, however filthily they handled them. And though my wife hardly had any milk for our child, an Indian woman who had lately given birth and had no milk in her breasts wanted her to suckle her child, and my wife agreed. This was a means of good both to her and to our child, for the Indians would give her fish, and that helped to bring in more milk for our child. Many were our trials of body and mind among this people. Sometimes they would look at us as though they meant harm to all of us. At other times they would tell us, who were Spaniards in name, how and in what manner the people of Smith's company would be put to death. And so we were tried every day with sorrow and grievous troubles. Sometimes doubts would arise among us about what would become of us and what kind of deaths we would have to pass through; and whoever those doubts rose up in, it was hard for anyone else to help him with counsel. But there were some among us whose hope never failed, for they trusted in the Lord to work our deliverance. One thing grieved my wife and me more than any other. It was this: that if it should happen that we were put to death, we feared that our child would be kept alive and brought up as one of these people. When this thought came, it wounded us deeply.

Today the moon was entering its first quarter, and at that time the Indians hold a ceremonial dance, which they begin about eight o'clock in the morning. First an old man comes out and takes a staff about eight feet long with a broad arrowhead on its top. From the head halfway down it is painted red and white like a barber's pole. In the middle of the staff a piece of wood is fixed, shaped like the thigh, leg and foot of a man, and the lower part of the staff is painted black. This staff is carried out of the Casseekey's house and set fast in the ground, standing upright. That done, he also brings out a basket holding six rattles, which are taken out of the basket and laid at the foot of the staff. Then another old man comes and sets up a howling like a great dog, but outdoing any dog for length of breath, and at the same time makes a proclamation. When this is done, most of them, having painted themselves, some red, some black, some black and red, with their bellies girt up with ropes as tightly as they can draw them, their sheaves of arrows on their backs and their bows in their hands, gather around the staff. Six of the men they esteem most highly, one of them especially, their doctor, who is much esteemed, take up the rattles and begin a hideous noise. They stand around the staff with their rattles, bowing to it without stopping for about half an hour. While these six are so employed, all the rest are staring and scratching, pointing up and down, this side and that, every way, looking like frightened men, or more like Furies; and they keep this up until the six have done shaking their rattles. Then they all begin a dance, stamping violently on the ground without stopping for an hour or more. In that time they sweat beyond all measure, so that by the end of the dance, what with their sweat and the violent stamping of their feet, the ground is trodden into furrows; and by the next morning the place where they had danced was covered with maggots. They repeat this over and over, and keep it up until about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, by which time many were sick and faint. Then they gather in the Casseekey's house and sit down, with some hot casseena ready, which they drink freely, giving greater quantities of it to the sick and faint than to the others. Then they eat berries. On these days they eat no food until night.

The next day they began their dance at about the same time as the day before. On the third day too they began their dance at the usual time, and that day many Indians came from other towns and fell to dancing without taking any notice of one another.

On this day they were stricter than on the other two, for no woman may look at them; if any of their women go out of their houses, they go veiled with a mat.

Sunday, October 28

Today was a day of plenty for us, for we had as much fish and berries as would serve us two days.

This week we saw great baskets of dried berries brought in from various towns and delivered to the king, the young Casseekey. We supposed this to be tribute to the king of this town, who is chief of all the towns from Santa Lucea to north of this town of Jece.¹⁴

Tuesday, October 27

Today they gave us a bag of berries, the bag made of grass, which we ate in two or three days; and then we fasted as many days again before the young Casseekey would give us more.

About this time John Smith and Andrew Murray were sharply seized with fever and ague. When the fit of the ague was on them, the Indians would mock and jeer at them. We noticed this well: these people had no compassion on their own old people who were declining and past their work, nor on any of their own who lay in a weakened condition. For the younger are served before the elder, and the older people, both men and women, are slaves to the younger.

In this place we saw many signs that some of our nation had fallen into the hands of these people. There were two English canoes, one of cedar and the other of cotton tree, like those of Jamaica; several pulley blocks and sheaves of lignum vitae; several tools and knives; and in particular a razor with a man's name written on its handle: Thomas Foster. Some of these things looked as though they had been among them several years, some only a few. But we never dared to ask, for we thought they put some things in our sight to test us.

There was a man in this town who, some years before, had been carried off by some English sloops to dive on the wreck to the east of Cuba, and he had been there some time. But when the vessel put in to Cuba for water, this Indian swam ashore and got to Havana, and from there to St. Augustine, and so home to his own town. His chief charge against the English was that they had taken him and others of his people away; not that he had been badly used among them. This Indian would often call Joseph Kirle, Solomon Cresson and some of us into his house, seeming very cheerful, and ask whether we would eat; and at the same time he would ask us the name of the berries, expecting us to call them by their English name, plums. But we saw what he was driving at, and having learned what the Spaniards call them, we used that name; then he would tell us that the English called them plums. We had talk of this sort at times, for he kept trying to trap Joseph, Solomon and me in our words. But he never got the advantage of us, and after Solomon had gone we avoided all his invitations and arguments.

Saturday, October 31

Today a canoe came in loaded with fish, and it was free for anyone who wanted to take as much as he pleased. The Indians set us on to go and take some, and it was a kind of scramble between us and the young Indian men and boys. All of us got fish enough to serve us two or three days.

Chapter 5: The Spaniards Come

Monday, November 2

About sunrise this morning two strange Indians arrived, sweating hard from running, and we understood from them that the Spaniards were coming, and the old Casseekey with them. The news surprised us, and we doubted it: Solomon had been gone only sixteen days, and we understood that it would take an extraordinary passage to get here within a month. We had little time to think it over, for within an hour we heard four muskets fired. We looked out at once, and there were the Spaniards in sight, in their periagua, a big dugout boat. The Indians were like a people amazed and overcome with fear; we could see that the noise of a gun terrified them. The Spaniards landed, twelve in all: one Sebastian Lopez, commanding ten soldiers, and an Indian interpreter. The Spaniards embraced us very cheerfully and told us how glad they were to find us alive. But we could not hold a conversation, though we had Spanish enough to ask questions and to answer part of what they asked us. One of the Spaniards said that they could speak no English, and we could not speak Spanish well enough for us to understand each other properly. The Indians saw this and at once cried out, "Nickaleer, Nickaleer!" and glared at us with hatred, so that we believed, had they had their way, they would not have let us live many hours. But the Spaniards held them in awe.

We received a letter from Solomon, which he had written when he met Captain Sebastian Lopez, telling us of the great care the government of St. Augustine had for our preservation, whatever our nation. But how these men, or the governor of St. Augustine, had come to know of us, we could not understand. They had been fourteen days out from St. Augustine, which was about the time Solomon left here; they had met him about halfway and sent him on to St. Augustine with other guides, and brought the old Casseekey and his people back with them. We noticed that the old Casseekey seemed very downcast. We supposed that the Spaniards had taken from him the money and the other things he had carried with him, or else that he was angry at having been so deceived as to take us for Spaniards.

The Spaniards were extraordinarily kind to us, so that we had reason to rejoice and to thank the Lord for this part of our deliverance. They were also a terror to the Indians, for they searched their houses and took everything they could find, down to the stub of a nail. This enraged the Indians and made them still more hostile toward us, so that we dared not stir from a Spaniard's side. The Spanish captain asked where we had been cast away, and what we had in our vessel that had been saved. We gave him as good an account as we could make him understand, and it made him very eager to go down there. But he looked often at a paper, which we supposed held the governor's orders and instructions to him, and we understood that they would not allow him to carry out that plan. Besides, we made him see the danger we would be in if he and his men went off and left us among these people, who were so bitterly enraged against us.

They asked what had become of the boat that belonged to Smith's vessel, and of ours. We told them that these Indians had taken Smith's boat and sunk her somewhere in the sound, but that ours was at Santa Lucea. The Spaniards made the Indians go and show where they had sunk Smith's boat and help our people raise her, and when that was done she was brought to the town. The Spaniards were greatly pleased with her, and proposed that they in their canoe and our people in that boat should go to Hobe, so that they could get back from the Indians everything they had taken from us. But we would not support the plan: we wanted to leave these people as quickly as we could, since it had pleased God to open a way for our deliverance.

This morning the Spanish captain made the Indians provide two canoes, which he had lashed together some distance apart, with sticks laid across them and matting on top. When that was done, he sent them off for St. Augustine with four Indians, and with Joseph Kirle, John Smith, Robert Barrow, Andrew Murray, Benjamin Allen, Nathaniel Randall, John Shears, Cornelius Toker, Joseph Kirle's boy John Hilliard, and four of my slaves, Jack, Cesar, Sarah and Quensa. But they had not one morsel of food with them except a very few berries, and not one Spaniard to guard them: they were put under the command of those four Indians. About an hour after Joseph Kirle had gone, the Spanish captain had Smith's boat made ready, with two Spaniards and four of our men to row, to go to the place where the wreckage of Smith's vessel had come ashore and look for logwood or old iron. When they came back, they had found nothing of value.

But our people said that while they were searching about they had found the bones of Andrew Barnes. His skull and jawbone were broken, which made us suspect that the Indians had knocked him on the head after they drove Smith and his people away.

We told the Spanish captain that Joseph Kirle's slave Ben had been missing ever since the day after Solomon Cresson left here; he had gone off with the old Casseekey's wife, but we did not know where. The captain asked the Indians where he had gone. They said, "To Hobe." Then he ordered them to send for him, for he would not leave him behind. The Indians said he would be here within a day or two. The Spaniards were continually searching for whatever they could find of the things the Indians had got from us or from others, and when they could find no more they would offer tobacco for anything they could persuade the Indians to bring out. A leaf of tobacco, or half a leaf, would buy a yard of linen or wool or silk from the Indians. They are such admirers of tobacco that they value it above everything else. Some time before the Spaniards came, an Indian of the town who had a good quantity of ambergris boasted that when he went to St. Augustine with it he could buy from the Spaniards a looking glass, an axe, a knife or two, and three or four manocos of tobacco, a manoco being about five or six pounds. His ambergris may have weighed about five pounds.¹⁵

Wednesday, November 4

Today we made oars for Smith's boat out of sticks and the end pieces of sugar hogsheads, which had been picked up on the beach where the wreckage of Smith's vessel came ashore. This evening the old Casseekey's wife arrived with Joseph Kirle's slave Ben, and with Joseph Kirle's boat, which was a great help toward carrying us. We worked all this night fitting out the boat and making oars for her, intending to leave as soon as we could finish the job.

The Spaniards had brought few provisions with them, so they had little to spare for us. They had hardly an arroba, about twenty-five pounds, of corn, and a little bread from New Spain (Mexico), which was so bad that it was more dust and dead weevils than bread. Even a handful of it was a welcome present to us. We would mix it with a little water into a paste, which ate pleasantly. But hunger was no stranger to us, and we did not know whether we would have any food on our journey; still, our deliverance seemed to outweigh it all. The Indians would not give us any berries, but our people watched for a chance and took one of the Casseekey's bags of berries, which may have held about a bushel. That was all that thirty-one of us had to depend on.

Thursday, November 5

This morning, about three hours before day, we left this town of Jece. The weather had turned cold. We had nothing to cover our bodies but what the Indians had given us at first, except my wife: the Spaniards got her an old jacket, which had belonged to one of Smith's men, and gave it to her to wear, and also a small piece of cloth to cover our poor child. But it pleased God to strengthen us in this condition, and we rowed all day without stopping until three hours after dark, by which time we reached an Indian town. Here we met Joseph Kirle, Robert Barrow and the others, who had got there no more than an hour or two before us. They had had no food of any kind from the time they left us until they got some berries from us, and they had spent one of their two nights in a swamp. But they were as cheerful as men could be in such straits.

Among their other hardships since they left us, Joseph Kirle had nearly lost his life several times. The first time was this. While the two canoes were still lashed together, they had a few berries that were meant to be shared among them. The Irish boy, Cornelius Toker, kept taking some of them every so often, and though Joseph Kirle and others rebuked him often, he would not stop. At that Joseph Kirle struck him with the paddle he was paddling the canoe with. An Indian then took up his bow and arrow and was about to shoot Joseph, who seemed hardly to care whether he lived or died, and said besides that the Spaniards would justify him.

Another time, when he was worn out with paddling the canoe, he asked John Smith, Andrew Murray and others among them who were as able as he was to take a turn for him, and they refused. Being unable to paddle any farther, he laid his paddle down. The Indians ordered him to paddle, and he refused, saying they might kill him if they liked, and he bared his chest for them to do it. They looked as though they would, but after great threats they let him alone.

Another time the wind was high and the sea so rough that, at Joseph Kirle's urging, they had to unlash the canoes and go separately. Joseph Kirle took charge of one canoe himself, with Robert Barrow, his boy, my kinsman, Nathaniel Randall and my slaves in her. Being separated from the rest of the company in this way suited him better than before, though he had no one to help him but Nathaniel Randall. My slave Sarah had beaten and abused a girl named Quensa, and when he and Robert Barrow rebuked her for it several times, she abused them both outrageously. At that Joseph struck her with his paddle, and one of the Indians in the other canoe took his striking staff and hurled it at him, narrowly missing him.

This morning the Spanish captain ordered Joseph Kirle and those with him away at break of day, without taking any care to give them a little food. An hour or two later we followed, rowing all day without stopping until an hour or two into the night, by which time we reached an Indian town where there was nothing to be had but water. About two hours after us Joseph Kirle came in.

The Spanish captain would not let them come ashore, but ordered them to keep going, so that we could reach by the next night the place where we had to haul our boats overland from one sound into another.

Saturday, November 7

We set out very early this morning and rowed hard. About noon we reached a cluster of marshy islands, among which we had to go up creeks. The passage was very hard to find. When at last we had got near an Indian town, the Spaniards hallooed, and an Indian came out into the marsh. He was very unwilling to come near us, but at length he waded out to us to be our pilot. We set forward, and in an hour or more we had reached the place where Joseph Kirle and those with him were; the Indians with Joseph would not let them go any farther until we caught up with them. Within half an hour we reached the place where we were to haul our boats overland, about a quarter of a mile from sound to sound; at this place the sea was about a hundred yards from us. The Spanish captain gave the Indian who had last come aboard a piece of a tobacco leaf, and ordered him to go with all speed and tell his Casseekey to come with all his able men to help haul our boats overland. But we set to work ourselves and had them over by the time the Indians came. The Spanish captain gave the Casseekey a leaf or two of tobacco for himself and dismissed them, ordering only that the Casseekey send some men fishing for him. They did, and by nightfall they brought a fine catch of fish; but none of our people had any of it except my wife and Penelope. What was not eaten was kept to carry with them.

A little before night a storm of wind blew up from the northeast. It looked likely to be a miserable night of wind and rain, and we had come to a place where there was not a tree or a bush or any kind of shelter, and the wind was so very cold that we thought we would not live till the next day. We had no wood to make a fire, and we did not know what to do, but we were determined to try to get some. Some of the ablest of us went along the bay to search for driftwood and found a little. But the rain came with the night, and there was no shelter to be had except our boats, and the Spaniards would not let us touch them to turn them bottom up for a shelter. That seemed very hard, but they had made some shelter for themselves with mats. We had to be patient: we made as good a fire as we could with the sea-soaked wood we had, and lay down on the sand beside it. And it pleased God that we had a more comfortable night than we expected; only the cold was very sharp.

Sunday, November 8

We set out this morning, but the water was so low that for some miles we had to wade and push the boat along. At length we got into a deep channel, where there was nothing to be seen but marsh and water, with no solid land and no trees.

About ten o'clock we heard three or four muskets fired a little ahead of us in the channel. Our Spaniards answered at once in the same way, and before long we met. This was a periagua sent to join the one that had come for us, with orders to go to the place where we had been cast away and get whatever could be had from the Indians. But this other boat turned back, since there was nowhere to go ashore, and within an hour or two we got into the other sound, where in some places the land could not be seen from one side to the other. It had been the same in the sound we came through. About an hour before sunset we reached an Indian plantation, the first place where we had seen anything planted. It was full of pumpkin vines with some small pumpkins on them, but the Spaniards were too quick for us and got them all first; some of us got a few as big as a fist. We had a fire there, but had not the patience to cook them properly, and put them into the fire, roasted them and ate them. The Spaniards cooked their pumpkins with a great deal of care. The periagua that had come last from St. Augustine had brought bread, corn and dried beef, but it was all kept from us, except a piece of the beef as big as a stick of sealing wax, which the Spanish captain gave my wife. We saved it, expecting that things would be harder with us when we left these people. Here Captain Sebastian Lopez drew up a document and wanted me and Joseph Kirle to sign it, which we refused, for we saw that he had a design, chiefly against me, to bind me to give him some of my slaves. We answered him shortly that I considered myself and my slaves at the disposal of the governor of St. Augustine, and that we would sign no document. We borrowed a pot and boiled pumpkin leaves, with nothing to put in them but water, and they satisfied us. But this night was more terrible than the last. The wind was northwest; it did not blow hard, but it was very cold, and we lay in an open field without any shelter. One side of us would scorch while the other was freezing. About two in the morning my slave Hagar's little boy, Cajoe, was seized with convulsions, brought on chiefly by the cold and the lack of food, and we had no help to give him. The Spanish captain came to see the child, and supposing that he would die, asked whether the child was a Christian. He was told the child was as good a Christian as he could make him. But the captain called for some water, put some of it on the crown of the child's head, made the sign of the cross over him and named him Francisco. This pacified the child's father and mother.¹⁶

Monday, November 9

This morning we were to go on, and the Spaniards were to go back to the place where we had been cast away. But our two boats would not carry us all, so we had the Spaniards' great periagua to carry us one day's journey farther, to an Indian town, with four Spaniards: three of them were to bring the periagua back, and the fourth was to be our guide to St. Augustine. We set off and met with a tangled passage, for every so often we would run aground on oyster banks or shoals, almost out of sight of land. About two or three in the afternoon there was not water enough for us to go any farther: the northwesterly wind had driven the water out of the sound. But we were near the shore, where there had once been an Indian town, and we went ashore and found some ripe berries on the palmetto shrubs. We were very eager after them until a storm of wind and rain began to come on us, with night close at hand. At that we all gathered to consider what to do, since there was no possible shelter here. Our Indian guide said we could reach a town about six miles off, which we were glad to hear, for it was raining hard. We set out with our guide and walked over a stretch of scraggy, scrubby hills to the seashore, and along it until we reached the Indian town, where we got plenty of berries for our supper. It rained heavily until toward morning.

November 10

This morning the Indians did not want us to stay any longer, and our guide told us to leave, which we did. A great many young Indian men followed us for some miles along the bay and attacked Robert Barrow and several others, but they were easily stopped when we pointed a rusty musket at them, and they left us. We had a rough passage from the seashore across the land to the Indian town, for the ground was swampy, with scraggy hills, which were very hard going for our bare feet. This was a large town, and another large town lay about a mile away, in sight, where part of our company was sent to be quartered. At that town, about a year before, a party of Dutchmen had been killed. They had been cast away on the Bohemia shoals, had escaped here in a flat-bottomed boat they built, and were devoured here by these cannibals, as we understood from the Spaniards. Our people who had come in the boat saw the flat. But the Indians there seemed kind to our people and gave them fish and berries to eat. We stayed at these two towns till the next morning. The Indians of the town where I was were not as kind as those at the other town had been. Some of our people wanted to sell their rags to the Indians for fish, but we thought it the more necessary of the two evils to guard against the cold. Every day was colder than the one before, and we feared that if we were exposed to it much longer we would not live through it.

Chapter 6: The Winter March

Wednesday, November 11

This morning we left this town and set off in our two boats. Those of our people who had been at the other town were to have a large canoe to carry them from there, and were to meet us in the sound. We rowed a good many miles without meeting them, and by then it was about ten o'clock. The Spaniard chose to go ashore and travel back by land to look for them. We were by an inlet of the sea a mile across, and he ordered us to cross to the other side and wait for him there, which we did for many hours. Here we all went searching for anything to fill our bellies, some on the land and some in the water. The land yielded nothing, but in the water we found a shellfish they call water soldiers, and we ate them. At length the canoe came with our people, but our Spaniard had not come; about half an hour later he arrived in a small canoe. This was the place where Solomon had met the Spaniards. Each canoe had two Indians to pole it along, and we had an Indian named Wan-Antonia as our guide. The Spaniard said he was a Christian, but he lived in the town where the Dutchmen had been killed.

We set off in our two boats and the two canoes and rowed until night, when we were near a thicket of woods, which we chose as our lodging for the night. There was wood enough here. We made large fires, were pleased with the place, and lay down to rest. About midnight I had a great loss. I had about a quart of berries whole, and as much again pounded, to mix with water and feed our child. Someone disturbed the fire, and the cloth that held our food was burned. Everything was lost, and there was nothing more to be had until we could reach the Spaniards, which was at least two days' march. About an hour after this the wind rose in the northwest and it began to rain. But there was small palmetto growing near by, and Joseph Kirle and I set to work and made a shelter that would keep ten or more of us out of the weather. We had no sooner finished it than it rained hard. In this shower the four Indians slipped away from among us, took their canoes, and went back where they had come from. When day came we missed them, and we went down to the waterside and found the two canoes gone.

Now we were in great difficulty. But the Spaniard said that those who could travel best must go by land. The ones chosen were Richard Limpeney, Andrew Murray, Cornelius Toker, the captain's boy John Hilliard, and Penelope, with seven of my slaves, named Peter, Jack, Cesar, Sarah, Bella, Susana and Quensa. Our Spaniard and the Indian Wan-Antonia went with them to show them the way, leading them overland to the seashore and then telling them to keep along the shore to the northward.

They came back to us, and we rowed all day in our two boats without stopping until sunset. Where we put ashore was an old Indian field on a high, bleak hill. A large Indian house had stood there, but it had fallen down, and from its ruins we made a shelter against the northwest wind, which was beginning to blow very bleak. The Spaniard went to the sea, less than two miles off, to see whether our people had passed, and when he came back he said they had gone by. We asked whether they could reach any house or Indian town for shelter, for we supposed that if they were without a fire that night they could not live. He said they would have to travel all night.

Night came on. We had fire and wood enough, and had gathered a great heap of grass to lie in, hoping to get some rest. But the northwest wind grew stronger, and the cold was so violent that we were in a pitiful state and could not rest. Whether we lay or stood, if we were close enough to the fire for it to scorch us, the side away from it was ready to freeze. There was nothing for it but to stand and keep turning for most of the night. We all thought we had never felt anything like it. The Spaniard, who had clothes on, bore it no better than we who were naked. At length day came, and we had to go.

Friday, November 13

This morning we were unwilling to leave our fires, but we could not stay here, and we went to our boats. Wading in the water nearly numbed us. But we pushed on, and after rowing about six miles we came to an old house, where the Spaniard told us we must leave the boats and travel by land. We had a boggy marsh to wade through for a mile to reach the seashore, and then about fifteen or eighteen miles along the beach to the Spanish sentinel's house. The northwest wind was violent, and the cold was such that the strongest of us thought we would not live out the day.

When we had got through the boggy marsh and onto the seashore, our people, Black and White, made all the speed they could, none of them waiting for another who could not travel as fast. Only I, my wife and child, Robert Barrow, my kinsman Benjamin Allen, and my slave London, whom I kept by me to help carry my child, stayed together. The rest of our company had left us, not expecting to see some of us again, and especially Robert Barrow, my wife and the child. We followed as well as we could.

When we had gone about two miles, the cold so seized my kinsman Benjamin Allen that his limbs began to stiffen. He staggered and fell, complaining bitterly that the cold would kill him. London had our little child, and my wife and I took my kinsman, one under each arm, and helped him along. But at length his limbs were quite stiff, his speech almost gone, and he began to foam at the mouth. In this extremity we did not know what to do. If we stayed with him we must die too, and we were willing to struggle on as long as we could. We carried my kinsman and laid him under the bank, not yet dead.

I made up my mind to run after our people, some of whom were still in sight. I did, and left my wife and child with London to follow as fast as they could. I ran about two miles, making signs to them, thinking that if they looked behind them and saw me running they would stop until I caught up. I was in hopes that if I managed this I might get help to carry my kinsman along. But they did not stop, and I ran until the wind pierced me so that my legs gave way and I fell. Still I struggled, and got up and walked back to meet my wife. On the way I met the Spaniard coming out of the sandhills, and with him Ben, Joseph Kirle's slave. I made my complaint to the Spaniard, but he could not understand me well and went on. Then I turned to Ben, making him large promises if he would fetch my kinsman. He offered to go back and do his best, and he did.

At length my wife and child caught up with me. She was almost overcome with grief, telling me how we had been forced to leave our kinsman, and expecting that she and the child would be the next. Poor Robert Barrow was a long way behind us, and I feared we would never see him again. I did what I could to comfort and cheer my wife, begging her not to let grief overcome her. I had hopes that the Lord would help us in this extremity, as He had done in many others since we came into this land; and if it pleased God that we should lay down our lives in this wilderness, we might pray Him to enable us to do it willingly. Struggling like this, in deep distress of body and mind, we went on, marveling at God's goodness in preserving us so far through so many great dangers. With the sense of it a secret hope would rise in us, though tangled with human doubts and fears, that the Lord would preserve us still.

I took my child from London and carried him myself. I had an Indian mat with a slit in it, which I put my head through, so that it hung over my chest down to my waist. I carried my child under it, and it helped to break the wind off him. But the poor baby was black with cold from head to foot, and his flesh was as cold as a stone; yet he did not fret. His mother would take him now and then and give him the breast, but he could get little from it. Besides, we did not dare stop for a moment, for if we did we felt our limbs begin to fail.

About two in the afternoon we caught up with my slave Hagar, with her child on her back, almost dead. A little farther on we came to my slave girl Quensa. We thought she was dead, for she was as stiff as a dead body could be, and her eyes were fixed; but at length we saw that she was breathing. She had no sense or motion. We carried her from the waterside and laid her under the bank. This added to my wife's sorrow, and she began to fear she would not be able to travel much farther. But I tried to encourage her not to give up struggling as long as she had any strength left.

All our people were out of sight except four, and we had gained on those. I sent London to overtake them and ask them to slow their pace until we caught up, hoping that their company would cheer my wife. But they would not, and London stopped and waited for us. By this time we had lost sight of Robert Barrow. Soon after we overtook John Smith, who was one of the four. He had begun to fail and his companions had left him, and he complained bitterly; I rebuked him for it, for fear he would discourage my wife.

The sun was nearly setting, and we began to look out for the sentinel's post. London climbed several of the highest sandhills from time to time to look out, but he could see no house, and no smoke from a fire. This was terrible to us all. The day had been so cold, and the night would be much colder. We could not travel without rest, for we were a starved people inside and out; and if we stopped traveling we would be numbed at once and move no farther. In the middle of these reasonings and doubts, which we had fallen into, I caught sight of what I took to be a man standing on the bank, a great way off. I was afraid to say anything in case it proved otherwise, but soon the whole company saw him, and at length we saw him walking toward the land. That settled it, and we went up into the hills again to look out. Still we could not see the house from there, but from the next hill we saw it. This was joy to us, though we now began to feel how tired we were, for our resolution slackened once we had the house in sight.

When we reached the house we found four sentinels, and with them the Spaniard who had been our guide and three of our men: Joseph Buckley, Nathaniel Randall and John Shears. The Spaniard made us welcome and made room for us to sit down by the fire. The head man of the sentinels took a coat of kersey (a coarse wool) and gave it to my wife to cover herself, and gave each of us a piece of bread made of Indian corn, which tasted good to us. After it we had plenty of hot casseena to drink.¹⁷

It was dark. We tried hard to persuade the Spaniards to go out and look for Robert Barrow and my kinsman, offering them a good reward. They did not seem fully to understand me, but I could make them see that my kinsman was almost dead, if not quite, and that the old man was in a bad way. They made me understand that the weather was not fit to go out in, but that they would watch in case Robert should pass by. An hour or two later one of the Spaniards, walking out along the beach, met Robert and brought him into the house. We were overjoyed to see him, and asked him about our kinsman and Ben. He said our kinsman was struggling to get up and could not. Robert went to him and spoke to him; he could not answer, but cried, and Robert could not help him. Coming on, some good distance farther, he met Ben, who said he was going for Benjamin Allen, and Robert passed him. Some miles farther on he saw Jack dragging himself down from the bank, the lower part of his body dead, crying out for some fire so that he might save his life. But he did not see the girl whom we had carried out of the way.

We were deeply worried about our kinsman. We could not persuade the Spaniards to go and fetch him, or to carry out the means of making a fire; if they had done so and found them living, it might have saved them. But we hoped Ben would bring our kinsman in.

The Spaniards wanted most of us to go on to the next sentinel's house, three miles farther. But we all begged them hard to let us lie in their house, anywhere on the ground, for we could not travel any farther, and besides, the cold would kill us. We were trembling and shaking so, and so full of pain from head to foot, that it cannot be put into words. At length the Spaniards agreed that Robert Barrow, I, my wife and child, and John Smith might lie in the house; but they would not grant that favor to Joseph Buckley, Nathaniel Randall, John Shears and my slave London. One of the Spaniards took a burning brand and told those four to go with him. He led them to a small thicket of trees and showed them where to gather wood, make large fires and sleep there. The poor creatures lay out, and it turned out a hard, frosty night. The Spaniard came back and said they had got into a wood and had fire enough. We said nothing, but feared they would hardly live till morning.

After they had gone, the Spaniards parched a pint of Indian corn and gave part of it to us, which we gladly accepted, and they gave us some casseena to drink as well. We were in such extraordinary pain that we could not rest. Our feet were badly bruised: the skin was off them, and the sand had caked in the blood, so that after we had been in the house a while we could hardly set our feet to the ground. The night was extremely cold, though we were in the house; and by the fire we could not get warm, for one side scorched while the other was ready to freeze. This was how we passed the night.

Saturday, November 14

This morning we looked out and saw a very hard frost on the ground, so that it was terrible to go out of doors. Our people came back from the wood, but complained heavily of what they had suffered in the night. They had not been an hour in the house before the Spaniards ordered us all to be gone to the next sentinel's house. This grieved us all, and my wife most of all, for once she was down she could not raise herself. But go we must. Though we pleaded hard for my wife and Robert Barrow, we could not prevail on them to let the two stay until we could get a canoe. As we were all setting out, one Spaniard made a sign for my wife and me to stay, which we did, and it was to give us a handful of parched corn. As soon as we had it they told us to be gone to the next sentinel's, where there was food enough for us.

The sun was high, but we could feel no warmth from it, for the northwester was beginning to blow as hard as it had the day before. We had deep sand to travel through, which made these three miles very hard going, especially for my wife and Robert. The Spaniards sent a blanket for my wife, to be left at the next sentinel's house.

At length we came to an inlet of the sea. On the other side were the lookout and the sentinel's house. All our people were sitting here waiting to be carried over, and in a little while one of the sentinels came with a canoe and carried us across.

This sentinel would not let us into his house, but had us kindle a fire in the lee of it and sit down there. About half an hour later he told us to be gone to the next sentinel's, three miles farther on. He gave us a cup of casseena and two quarts of Indian corn for us all, and told us to go on to our company at the next house and have our corn cooked there.

I learned that Hagar had got here late the night before with her child dead on her back, and the Spaniards had buried it.

One of the Spaniards went with us to the next inlet, carrying a burning stick to set fire to some brush as a signal for the people on the other side to fetch us over, for the inlet was very wide. When the canoe came over for us, our guide took the blanket back from my wife; but the Black man who had brought the canoe over lent my wife one of his coats. We got across, but before we reached the house we had a shower of hail. At this house we were kindly received, and had such a meal as we had not had for a long time, which tasted very good to our starved stomachs. Our people had left here this morning for St. Augustine, with a guide; but John Osler and Penelope had been left here, not able to travel. We stayed here until the next day, but the night was so bitterly cold that we could not rest.

Chapter 7: St. Augustine

Sunday, November 15

This morning the Spaniards told us to get ready to travel, for they could not feed us. We understood that it was fifteen or eighteen miles to St. Augustine, and we could not walk so far, all of us being lame and stiff. We begged them to let us go in a canoe, but they refused. We begged for the two women and Robert Barrow, and at length we prevailed: they were to go up in a canoe, since the canoe was going whether we went or not.

While all this was being talked over, two Spaniards came in. One was the sentinel who had gone with our people the day before; the other was a man the governor had sent with a canoe and four Spaniards to fetch us. This was cheering news, for if we had set out to travel without a guide we would have perished. The man who came for us brought two blankets, one for my wife and the other for Penelope, and he asked us to be going.¹⁸

He had left the canoe about three miles from the house, and we left the house very unwillingly, for some of our people could not have walked a mile farther than that. The wind was still northwest and blew very fiercely, and it was bitterly cold. We shivered without stopping and had such pain in our bones that we were in violent anguish.

Our poor child was quiet, but so black with cold and shaking that it was a wonder he lived. We reached St. Augustine about two hours before nightfall. When we were put ashore we were directed to the governor's house. There we were taken up a flight of stairs, and at the head of them stood the governor, who ordered my wife to be taken to his wife's apartment. John Smith and I went into a room where the governor asked us a few questions; but seeing how terribly cold we were, he gave us a cup of Spanish wine and sent us into his kitchen to warm ourselves at the fire. About half an hour later the governor sent for John Smith and me and gave each of us a shirt and drawers, a hat and a pair of silk stockings, telling us he had no woolen clothes yet but would have some made. We put on the linen and hurried back to the kitchen fire. Robert Barrow was quartered at another house. The townspeople came to the governor's house and took whomever they chose to quarter in their homes, and so Joseph Kirle, John Smith, I, and my wife and child lodged at the governor's house. All our people who had come up with Joseph Kirle came to see us. We saw how kind the townspeople had been, for all our people were well clothed from head to foot with the best the townspeople had.

Joseph Kirle began to tell us about his journey after he left us at the bay. They had all concluded, he said, that they would never see my wife and child and Robert Barrow again, even if they did see my kinsman and me. Richard Limpeney and those who went with him had a hard march of thirty-six hours without a stop, and on it three of my slaves who went with them were lost: Jack, Cesar and Quensa sat down to rest, and in a little while they were so numbed that they could not go on, and there they perished. That made five we lost in that day's travel, and we began to fear that Ben, the captain's slave, had perished too. Joseph Kirle said he had thought he would lose some of our people on their march from the last sentinel's house to the town, for they were very tired and the cold was violent. In the latter part of that day's journey they waded for many miles through deep water and over deep sandhills, and when they came in sight of St. Augustine they had to wait for boats to fetch them, and while they waited some of them grew numb with the cold. Joseph Kirle went to the governor on our behalf and asked him to send us help, for he doubted whether we were all still alive. The governor readily agreed, and at once sent for a man fit for the purpose and charged him to get a periagua and men and go immediately to fetch us. But the tide was out, and they could not leave till midnight. The governor was so concerned that he would not go to bed until they had gone; when the tide served he went down to the waterside, saw the men push off, and gave them strict orders.

Solomon Cresson then began to tell us about his journey from Jece, during most of which it had rained hard. The Indians were very kind to him until they came to the Indian town where the Dutchmen had been killed. There some of the Indians found out that he was no Spaniard. They said nothing to him about it, but they were very surly toward him, gave him no food, and made him lie on the ground among the vermin. The next day he had to go on with the same company as before, who had grown so bitter and so full of ill will toward him that they looked ready to strike him whenever they so much as looked at him. They went on until about midday, and when they had crossed an inlet, the weather being very bad, with wind, rain and bitter cold, they put ashore. (This was the place where we had put ashore and gathered water soldiers, and where we had waited for the Spaniard when he went back to look for those of our people who were to follow us in a canoe.) These bloody people were in such a rage that he expected to die. Once ashore they quickly kindled a fire, and about then he heard the noise of a boat and oars, and in a moment the Spanish periagua put ashore right where they were. The Indians were astonished and stood there amazed, but Solomon was glad to see the Spaniards, and they him. The Spaniards took the old Casseekey's chest from him, and whatever else he had, and ordered the Indians to go back to the Indian towns they had come from. They all stayed the night, and the next morning the Spaniards sent Solomon on in the charge of two Indians belonging to those towns, whom the Spaniards ordered to take him to the sentinel's house. But these two Indians took him only a little beyond the place where we had gone ashore to travel by land, and they seemed to have mischief in their hearts against him. He asked them whether they would go on. They only looked at him sullenly and gave him no answer, and so he went on by himself, and was glad when he saw that they did not follow him.

But we wanted to know how the Spaniards had come to hear of us. It seems it happened like this.

When we reached Jece, where Smith and his company were, we passing for Spaniards and they for English, the report of us ran from one Indian town to the next, northward, as far as the northernmost town. In that town were two or more Indians who had been converted to the Roman Catholic faith. These Indians, or one of them, went to the nearest Spanish sentinel's house and reported having heard that two vessels had been cast away south of Jece, one Spanish and the other English. The Spaniards had two vessels gone to Havana for supplies, and they feared it was those vessels. And on the same day this news reached the governor of St. Augustine, news also came that one of their friars had been murdered by some of the Cape Indians. This is how we understood it. Three friars, under a vow to go among the Indians of the Cape to convert them, went to a certain town north of where we were cast away, but lying inside the sound. They won over the Casseekey of this town to embrace the Roman faith, but all his people were enraged against the friars and wanted their Casseekey to renounce his faith and put the friars to death. He would agree to neither, and so they killed him and one friar; the other two escaped. On this news a periagua was sent at once to fetch us, whatever nation we might turn out to be, and a party of Spaniards and Indians was also sent against the town where the friar was killed.

We had a plentiful supper, and we ate like people who had been half starved, for we ate without knowing when we had had enough. We found that eating berries had so changed our palates that we could no more taste salt than if it had no saltiness in it. Lodgings were found for us, but few beds.

Monday, November 16

This morning there was ice half an inch thick, as there had been for several mornings past, but it is gone as soon as the sun rises.

The governor came to our rooms this morning to ask how we were. We had had chocolate for breakfast, and he asked whether we would like anything else his house could provide: we had only to ask and it would be brought to us. We answered modestly that this was enough, although our appetites could not be satisfied. The governor described to us how poor the country was. The place is a garrison, maintained half by the King of Spain and half by the Church of Rome. All the men who live there are soldiers, each paid according to his post; a sentinel's pay is 150 pieces of eight a year. All their supplies of bread, clothing and money come from Havana and Portobelo, and it is going on three years since they have had a ship from anywhere at all, which leaves them in great want. Everything has been used up except ammunition and salt, of which they said they had enough. The governor offered us the free use of whatever his house had, and at the same time warned us to be careful when we went out, especially of certain persons who did not like our nation. We promised to be guided by him and to take only such liberty as he allowed.

Our people came in and we told them of the warning, but they said they had been all over the town and in many houses, where they were kindly received, and the people gave them whatever they had. They told us of some English who lived here, at whose houses they had been. The most respected of them was one William Carr of the Isle of Man. About thirty years ago he had been aboard a ship bound for South Carolina which missed its port and was cast away near this harbor. Many were drowned, but he and some others were brought here by the Indians; some of them got away in Spanish ships, and others died here. This man became a Roman Catholic and married a Spanish woman, by whom he had seven children, and he is an officer in the garrison. He was the chief interpreter.

Today Joseph Kirle's slave Ben arrived. He told us that after I had sent him back, he looked for my kinsman, and not finding him, went to look for a place to shelter from the cold. He found a place to creep into, lay down, and stayed there all night, but by morning he was so stiff with cold that he could not use his legs, and he dragged himself toward the bay. The Spaniard who had been our guide from the first sentinel's house went back along the bay the morning after we left there, to see whether any of our people were alive, but he found them all dead except Ben. He got a fire made, and Ben revived and recovered the use of his limbs.

William Carr the interpreter told us that the governor and two royal officers would examine us about our being cast away, what goods and money were lost in our vessel, our hardships among the Florida Indians, and so on. This was done, and every one of us signed the statement. It took two or three days to complete. When it was finished, the governor told us that he expected Captain Sebastian Lopez in a few days, and that after his arrival he would provide for our going to Carolina with canoes and men to guard us.

This week my wife came down with a fever and ague, which held her three days and then left her. The governor ordered his own doctor to give her whatever would help. The governor's kindness to us all was extraordinary. Every day he would ask us whether we wanted anything he had, and told us what he had, and we ate no worse than he did.

We saw the town from one end to the other. It is about three quarters of a mile long, not regularly laid out, and the houses do not stand close together, for they have large orchards with plenty of oranges, lemons, citrons, limes, figs and peaches. Most of the houses are old buildings, and not half of them are lived in. About three hundred men belong to the government, and many of them are kept as sentinels at their lookouts. At the north end of the town stands a large fortification, a quadrangle with bastions. Each bastion will hold thirteen guns, but no more than two thirds of the fifty-two are mounted. On the curtain, the wall between the bastions, they cannot mount any guns, since it is built only for small arms. The wall of the fort is about thirty feet high, built of sawed stone of a kind they dig out of the sand between the sea and the sound. This stone is nothing but sand and small shells bound together, and it is not very hard until it has been exposed to the sun. The fort has a moat all around it. They would not let us come near it, but Joseph Kirle found an opportunity and walked all the way around it.¹⁹

Monday, November 23

Today Joseph Kirle and I considered that our setting out for Carolina (which the Spaniards call St. George's) was talked of for the end of this week. We decided to try to provide ourselves with clothing if we could, since we would be exposed to whatever weather came and would have no shelter but what we carried with us. We were therefore inclined to sell, he his slave and I one or two of my slaves, to buy clothing and provisions. We went to the governor and offered him, if he pleased, his choice of my slaves, but he declined our offer. We then explained our situation and asked whether we might sell our slaves. He said no, we might not; nor could we sell them to anyone but himself, for the King's account, without a special license. He would therefore consult the two royal officers and give us his answer.

Tuesday, November 24

Today the governor sent for us and told us he would give us credit for whatever we and the rest of the company wanted. I told him that my wife and child would need some warmer clothing, and that Joseph Kirle and I would need some too, if it could be had. He told us to give him a list of what we needed, and if it could be had he would get it; and Joseph Kirle and I were to give our bond to pay the governor of Carolina whatever the sum came to. We were willing to do this, but we asked that our people should give us their bond for what we were taking on for their account, which the governor thought reasonable. I gave in a list of particulars for Joseph Kirle, Robert Barrow, myself and my family, and also the quantities of Indian corn, peas, dried beef, salt and earthen pots for the whole company. But no clothing was to be had, except enough cloth to make a suit for my wife and child, and a few skins that Joseph Kirle and I got. I also got seven blankets, though the price was high; these served Joseph Kirle, Robert Barrow, myself and my family. We had about 125 pounds of ration bread, so full of weevils that corn was far better; 500 pounds of dried beef; 1,500 pounds of Indian corn; 250 pounds of peas; 25 pounds of salt; jars for water; and earthen pots to boil our food in.

Wednesday, November 25

The governor sent for Joseph Kirle and me to assure us that he had got us everything that was to be had. He told us further that he had expected Sebastian Lopez before this, and that he did not want us to go until he came, for whatever Lopez could recover of our money and goods we should receive to the last penny. But we said we did not wish to be held back on that account, for we had already given all that up as lost to us. And since it had pleased God to make them the instruments of our preservation, we freely gave whatever of it was, or might be counted, ours to the governor and to the men who had been sent for us. The governor said he would have nothing to do with it, for whatever he did was for charity's sake. Then we asked that the soldiers should have it, if anything were recovered, which we doubted. And on this we considered that if those poor men should get nothing, we ought to give them something in any case; and so Joseph Kirle and I offered the governor that we would allow Captain Sebastian Lopez and his men a hundred pieces of eight for bringing us up from among the Indians. The governor was well pleased with our offer and said they should have it.

About this time Robert Barrow was taken with a grievous bellyache, after which he fell into a violent flux. Several of our people were also taken with bellyache and severe diarrhea, all of it caused chiefly by our eating beyond reason and not governing ourselves in it. Our chief diet was hominy, greens and pumpkins, with not much meat, and that plain diet was our preservation: had it been all meat, we would have destroyed ourselves. But we had the best the place could give.

Thursday, November 26

Today we signed our bond for four hundred pieces of eight, and we were to leave on the 28th or 29th. After that our people signed their bond to us, to pay their share of what had been provided for them in provisions and their part of what was to be paid for their passage from the Indians to Carolina. On this we made the best provision we could. I had got some wine and brandy for myself and my family and some small necessaries for our child, and we were firmly resolved to go through with it.

Chapter 8: Along the Coast to Carolina

Sunday, November 29

Today, after we had eaten our midday meal and the canoes were ready, a Captain Francisco de Roma was to escort us with six soldiers. The governor walked down to see us embark. In taking leave of us he embraced some of us and wished us well, saying that we would forget him when we went among our own nation, and adding that if we forgot, God would not forget him. We parted with that courtesy about two or three o'clock in the afternoon. From St. Augustine we had six or nine miles to an Indian town called Santa Cruz. When we landed there we were directed to the Indians' war house, their council house. It is built round, in sixteen sections, and in each section is a cabin, built and painted, that will hold two people. The house is about fifty feet across, and in the middle of the roof is a square opening about fifteen feet wide. This house was very clean, and fires were already made near our cabins. The Spanish captain chose cabins for himself and his soldiers and assigned us ours. In this town they have a friar and a large house of worship with three bells, and the Indians go to their devotions as faithfully, at all times and seasons, as any of the Spaniards. When night came and their devotions were over, the friar came in, and many of the Indians, men and women, held a dance in their own way and custom. We had plenty of casseena to drink, and such food as the Indians had provided for us, one bringing boiled corn, another peas, some one thing, some another. Of all this we made a good supper, and we slept till morning.

Monday, November 30

Early this morning we left this town. We had about six miles to go by canoe, and then we were to travel by land; but a cart was provided to carry our provisions and necessaries, and in it rode those who could not walk. We had about fifteen miles to a sentinel's house, where we lay all night. The next morning we traveled about twelve miles along the seashore to an inlet. There we waited for canoes to come and carry us about two miles to a town called San Juan, an Indian town on an island. We went through a fringe of woods and then for a mile through the Indians' plantations. In the middle of this island is the town of San Juan, a large town with many people. They have a friar and a house of worship. The people are very industrious. They have plenty of hogs and fowls and large crops of corn, as we could tell by their corn houses. The Indians brought us food, as at the last town, and we lay in their war house, which was larger than the one in the other town.

Wednesday, December 2

This morning the Indians brought us food for breakfast, and the friar gave my wife some loaves of bread made of Indian corn, which was something out of the ordinary, and also a number of fowls.

About ten in the morning we left San Juan and walked about a mile to the sound, where canoes and Indians were waiting to carry us to the next town. We believed that we could have come all the way by the sound, but the Spaniards did not want to show us the place.

An hour before sunset we reached the town called Santa Maria. This is a frontier and garrison town; the inhabitants are Indians, with some Spanish soldiers. We were taken to the war house, as the custom is, for every town has a war house; or, as we understood it, these houses were for their times of merriment and dancing, and for lodging and entertaining strangers. This house is about eighty-one feet across and built round, in thirty-two sections, and in each section is a cabin about eight feet long, of a good height, painted and well matted. The center of the building is a square of twenty feet, open to the sky at the top of the house, and the house is built around it. In this square is the place where they dance, with a great fire in the middle. One of the sections of the building is the gate, the way in. The native women of these towns clothe themselves with the moss of trees, making gowns and petticoats of it, which look very neat at a distance or at night. The Indian boys we saw were kept at school in the church, with the friar as their schoolmaster. This is the largest town of them all. About a mile from it is another town, called San Felipe. Here at Santa Maria we were to stay till the 5th or 6th of the month, and here we were to receive our 1,500 pounds of corn and 250 pounds of peas. While we stayed, we had the Indians beat half of our corn into meal and kept the other half whole, not knowing what weather we might have. For the friar of this town had gone to Charles Town in South Carolina some years before, and had taken a month on the passage going at this time of year. This was unwelcome news: we did not like to think of lying out a month in this season, after we had been so battered by the weather already. But we tried not to look back, considering how great our preservations had been so far.²⁰

While we stayed here we were eager to lay in all we could for our backs and our bellies. We got plenty of garlic and long pepper from the Indians to season our corn and peas, both of which gave us cramps and wind. We made ourselves wooden trays and spoons to eat with. We got rushes and made a sort of plaited rope out of them, which we chiefly meant to use in building huts or tents whenever we met with hard weather.

As the time drew near for us to leave this town, seven large canoes were provided to carry us, about sixty persons in all: eighteen of us and six of Smith's company, seven Spaniards, and thirty odd Indians who were to row the canoes and be our pilots. We had some Indians from every town, and two Casseekeys.

We understood that the Carolina Indians called the Yamasee, who are related to these Indians, had been here about a month before, trading for deerskins.²¹

I have left out something considerable that happened in St. Augustine. The woman named Penelope, who was with child, stayed with the Spaniards at their persuasion. And Joseph Kirle's boy, John Hilliard, was kept back by the Spaniards. Joseph Kirle pressed the governor hard to let him have his boy, but the lad had been taken out of town and could not be found. The governor promised that he would send the boy after him if he could; but the boy never came to us, and we were to leave the next day.

Sunday, December 6

This morning we embarked, left this place, and put in at the town of San Felipe, where the Spanish captain invited us ashore to drink casseena, which we did. The Spaniards had left something behind, so we stayed here about an hour and then set out. Some six or nine miles on, we came in sight of an Indian town called Sappataw, but we went about three miles to the north of it to a sentinel's house, where we drew our boats up on shore and were brought casseena. We made no stay, and went on rowing till the next morning. In the night we lost our way, but soon got right again.

Monday, December 7

This morning, having passed an inlet of the sea, we put ashore, cooked some food, and got a little sleep until the tide served. Some of our Indians went out hunting for deer and hogs, of which the Spaniards said there were plenty; and when the tide served we were to go to the northernmost end of this island and wait there for the hunters. One of the Indians brought in a deer, threw it down among the other Indians, and went out again to hunt at the north end of the island, where we were to meet for the night. We set out about ten o'clock and reached the appointed place an hour or two before sunset. It was a fine wood of tall trees, and we set ourselves to getting firewood for the night and moss to lie on, of both of which we got plenty, with a large oak to lie under.

The Indians brought in several hogs and deer, and we had a share of them, so that we fared richly. We had a pleasant night's rest, and got up to leave about an hour before day.

Tuesday, December 8

Today we rowed from the last place until two hours before sunset, then put ashore at a place where there had been an Indian settlement, on a high bank from which we had a view of the sound. Here we went to fetch bushes to make a shelter against the wind and dew of the night, cut dry grass to lie on, and got wood, which was a good way off; but we were resolved to have it, if labor would buy it. Those who were not employed in this were getting water and food ready, for we always had enough to do. We had a pleasant night and rested well.

Wednesday, December 9

About sunrise this morning we saw a canoe of Carolina Indians going south to hunt. They kept to the western side of the sound, being afraid of us. We sent a canoe manned with Indians and Spaniards after them to speak with them, for we wanted to get them to carry letters ahead to give notice of our coming, since we might otherwise alarm the outlying settlements of Carolina.

Our canoe chased theirs, but the Carolina Indians put ashore, ran into a marsh and fired at our people. The Spanish Indians who could speak the Yamasee language called out to them, told them their business, and begged them to come to them. But they answered that they were going hunting for the season, and told our people to be gone, for they would not come near them. Our people came back to us, the Carolina Indians went their way, and we made ready to go on. We had the Casseekey of San Juan with us, and we had sent him on ahead last night to see whether he could meet any of the Yamasee Indians of Carolina, since he knew them and was related to them; but this canoe had passed him. We set out and rowed all day until about an hour before sunset, and then put ashore at an Indian field overgrown with sedge, on low, wet land. Here we made our usual provision for lodging and lay that night in a wood, having cooked food for that evening and for the next day. We rested well that night, and at daybreak or sooner we left the place.

Thursday, December 10

About ten o'clock today we crossed an inlet, but the tide was against us, so we put ashore at an old Indian field. At this place, sheltered under some trees, was the Casseekey of San Juan. We stayed here and drank some casseena. There were great numbers of rabbits, but we made no stay. Within two hours the Casseekey was sent ahead to scout, and we followed, rowing until an hour before sunset, by which time we reached the place called Santa Catalina. There had been a great settlement of Indians here, for the land had been cleared for planting for some miles around. Here we met the Casseekey again, and also a canoe of Carolina Indians: a man, his wife and his children, with his dogs and other hunting gear, going to lie out for the winter season. The Spanish captain spoke with him through his interpreter about carrying our letters, and he readily agreed. At that the Spanish captain sat down to write to the governor of Carolina.

We had a large field to lie in, with no shelter at all nearer than a mile or more. But we spared no pains. Some fell to cutting boughs and brush at that great distance, some to carrying them to the place, some to getting firewood, so that by night we had a fine shelter.

The Spanish captain sent for me to write to the governor of Carolina, and I did. I also wrote to someone of my acquaintance there. When the letters were finished and night had come, I gave my letters to the captain and went back to my company. By this time they had finished our booth, which we thought would serve if no rain fell. We got our supper ready and our food for the next day's travel, and some dry grass to lie on, hoping to rest well that night. About ten at night the Carolina Indians set off for Carolina with our letters.

Friday, December 11

About two hours before day this morning a gust of wind came from the northwest, and the sky was overcast and looked as though we should have a great deal of rain. Before long the rain fell, and we had no shelter from it but our blankets. The rain held until daybreak, and then the northwest wind began to blow violently hard and cold. Our shelter faced the northwest, so we fell to work to turn our booth around and get more boughs, brush and grass. We used the grass to fill and hold up a bank of earth, which we raised about three or four feet high to break the wind. All this day we were busy enlarging our booth and getting wood for the fires. The northwest wind blew extremely hard, and this night was a hard one; we got little rest, the cold pinching us.

Saturday, December 12

Today the wind kept on without ceasing. We began to mend what the wind had put out of order in the night, heaped more earth onto our booth, and enlarged it somewhat; for we did not neglect by day to provide for the night, which pinched us with cold. It pinched old Robert Barrow above all. He had had a violent flux ever since St. Augustine, and the violent cold had made it grow on him so that he could not control his weakness or get any natural rest. He was so racked with the cold that at this hard time we could get no warmth into him. But he was content with our poor help, though he got little good from it. At times today we went out for wood, and we had a long way to go across an open field; by the time we got back to our booth the cold had almost numbed us.

This evening the wind dropped somewhat, and we had great hopes that it was over, but it blew fiercely in the latter part of the night.

Sunday, December 13

This morning the wind had dropped somewhat, and the sun gave out a little warmth. Joseph Kirle borrowed a gun, powder and shot from the Spaniards and went out to kill some wild geese or whatever other game he might come across. But he had no luck, and came back without any game, and we were well content with a dinner of Indian corn and dried beef. The Spanish Indians hunted all these three days and killed several deer, but they ate them as fast as they killed them, since they had little or no other provision, their corn being spent.

In the latter part of today the wind was very moderate, and we hoped to be going the next morning, so we got ready for the next day's travel.

Monday, December 14

This morning we embarked and set out in fair weather, the wind having dropped. We rowed all day until three o'clock and came to a great inlet of the sea. But the weather looked as though we should have wind and rain, and crossing the inlet would be dangerous, since it was about six miles across and a little wind makes a rough sea there. So we put ashore, on high land with tall woods, mostly pine and live oak. Here we made all the haste we could to get a shelter against the weather. The Indians set to work to build themselves little huts, or wigwams, which they had not done until now. They got small palmetto leaves and covered their huts with them, but ours were covered mostly with boughs, which would not keep out much rain. By night we had a great deal of rain and wind. This being the evening before the Spaniards' Christmas, they kept some of their ceremonies, tinkling on a piece of iron and singing, and begging for something for the next day. They begged of the Indians, and the Indians in the same way begged of the Spaniards; and whatever the Indians gave the Spaniards, the Spaniards gave back to the Indians.²²

Wednesday, December 16

This morning was very foggy and turned into a rainy day, but we kept rowing until two in the afternoon. The rain was hard and the wind rose from the northeast. We put ashore, but the captain told us we would not stay here long: he meant to go farther, and if the weather allowed, he would go on all night. But the weather was likelier to get worse than better, and we sat in the rain until night came. Then we begged the captain to let us stay all night and provide against the weather. But he claimed the weather would clear and that he would be gone. There was no likelihood of it. The rain grew heavier, and we were all wet and numb with cold. At length he agreed to stay, and then, it being night, we were hard put to it to make a shelter. But we worked on in the dark until we had made one that would keep the rain off us. We had fires, took off our wet clothes and dried them as well as we could. Toward morning the rain stopped.

Thursday, December 17

This morning at sunrise we set out and rowed until noon, when we came to an inlet and put ashore. We stayed there all afternoon and dried our blankets and whatever had not been dried the night before. We also cooked food, and as soon as it was dark we left, meaning to row all night. But the passage was a tangle among marshes, with many creeks and channels, so that sometimes we rowed up a wrong one and back again, and then rowed up another. About midnight our pilots were at a loss, not knowing which way to go, or where to find any dry land to go ashore on. But three of our boats kept rowing until we found a dry rise of ground to land on, and there we lay until day, with good fires. As soon as it was light we got into our boats and went to look for the rest of our company. We found them sitting in their canoes, which they had made fast to the sedge, and there they had stayed until we came to them.

Friday, December 18

The night was extremely foggy, and so was this morning; but we searched about and found our passage, a little channel just wide enough for our boats to pass, a mile long. After we had passed it, we came into a great sound that ran down into a large inlet, so wide that the land could not be seen from one side to the other. Into this sound comes a great river called the Sabbina River, and when we got into its current the water was fresh, even out in this great sound. The Spaniards called it the Cross-Bar, or Santa Cruz. About noon we got across this sound, and here we rowed out to sea for six miles to get into another sound. About three o'clock the wind began to blow from the northeast, and it looked very black, so that we feared a storm. We wanted to get ashore to provide against it, but the captain said that a few leagues farther on we would get near Port Royal. In the meantime we saw a canoe on the shore. We made for her, and there we found some Indian wigwams, and here we went ashore. The canoe was loaded with skins belonging to merchants in Carolina, and had four Indians belonging to her. Three of them ran away for fear of the Spaniards, and one stayed.²³

The Indians' wigwams were in bad condition, not fit to keep out the weather, so we set to work to mend them. There were plenty of palmetto leaves here, and we covered the wigwams with them and built onto them. But the storm of wind and rain came on violently before we could finish our work and held all night; even so we lay fairly dry, though the storm was very great.

Saturday, December 19

This morning the storm of wind and rain kept on from the northeast. Since we were likely to stay here some time, we enlarged our wigwam, fearing a northwester; and about ten o'clock today one began to blow fiercely, with snow for some hours. The wind was so violent that we feared the tall pines would be blown down on us. We sent the Carolina Indian out to bring his three mates in, but they would not come. The Spanish Indians complained loudly for want of food. We shared out about a hundred pounds of corn among them, not wanting to spare any more, since we did not know how long the weather would keep us here. Some of our people had almost eaten up their shares, and we expected that if we were kept here long we would have to supply them out of what we had to spare.

Sunday, December 20

Today the wind kept on from the northwest, and it was extremely cold, but in our wigwam we were well sheltered from the cold. About noon our sailors' wigwam caught fire and burned down. It was the farthest downwind of them all (for we had eight wigwams); otherwise the whole camp would have been in danger. We understood that we were no more than two or three days' journey from the English settlements. The Spanish Indians told us it was farther, until we learned better from this Indian, who belonged to that place.

Chapter 9: Charles Town, and Robert Barrow's Death

December 21

Early today we set off and crossed Port Royal Sound, which is a good many miles across. About two in the afternoon we put ashore, because the tide was against us. There was a thick wood here, where we spent a fairly comfortable night. Early in the morning we set off again and rowed all day, until one in the afternoon of the 22nd.

At that hour we reached the first settlement in Carolina, which belonged to a man named Richard Bennet. He received us kindly and gave us plenty of good food and drink, and for our sakes he showed the Spaniards every kindness he could, which the Spaniards acknowledged. We stayed there that night.

December 23

This morning we ate and drank plentifully, and about ten o'clock we left in company with some of the inhabitants. We rowed until two hours after dark and passed a number of plantations. Then we put ashore on a point of land to wait for the tide; there was a wood to shelter in, and we made good fires and stayed until midnight. At midnight we set off again and rowed until an hour or two before daybreak, by which time we had reached Governor Blake's house.²⁴

December 24

This morning, when the governor got up, he sent for Joseph Kirle, John Smith, Andrew Murray and me, and asked us about our voyage and why the Spaniards had come with us. We gave him an account of the generosity of the governor of St. Augustine toward us, and told him that he had sent us on freely, asking nothing of us beyond what we had freely agreed to. The governor sent for the Spanish captain and received from him the letters the governor of St. Augustine had sent, and also our signed obligation, which he accepted. The governor showed us a great deal of kindness and asked about each of our conditions. He sent Robert Barrow to his neighbor Margaret Bammer, an elderly Friend who lived about two miles away, who he said would take good care of him and nurse him; so Barrow went there on horseback. The governor gave clothes to Joseph Kirle, John Smith and Andrew Murray, and to me, my wife and child. To each of the rest of our people he gave a duffel blanket, a coarse woolen, which would keep them warm. Plenty of food and drink was provided. We obtained the governor's leave for the Spaniards to go with us to Charles Town, since we wanted to reward them as well as we were able.

Friday, December 25

This afternoon Joseph Kirle, John Smith, I, my wife and child went to Margaret Bammer's, where Robert Barrow was. We stayed the night, until the next morning, when the Spaniards called for us as they came by on the water.

December 26

This morning we left with the Spaniards for Charles Town, where we arrived about an hour after dark.

The gentlemen of the town chose a respectable inn to give the Spaniards food, drink and lodging, which was done so well that the Spaniards marveled at it. They stayed here eight days. We got our people together and agreed jointly to give the Spaniards a hundred pieces of eight. Joseph Kirle and I divided this among them according to their rank, and we two added to the sum.

Monday, January 4, 1697

Joseph Kirle and I got together a small present to send to the governor of St. Augustine, and today we went with the Spaniards to Governor Blake's, where we stayed one day. The governor entertained the Spaniards. When he had finished his letters, he gave the Spanish captain a handsome present and sent him homeward, with orders to call on the Yamasee Indians, where they could take as much Indian corn home with them as they pleased. The towns of these Indians are about two or three days' rowing from Charles Town.

Saturday, January 9

Today I returned with my wife and child to Charles Town, leaving Robert Barrow with Margaret Bammer, weak and in low condition. For the rest of our stay in Carolina, Captain James Ribee gave me, my wife and household, and Joseph Kirle our board and lodging. Most of our seamen found work, some in one vessel and some in another belonging to the port.

Monday, February 6

Joseph Kirle left here for the Island of Providence, hoping to find a quick passage to Pennsylvania, where he lived.²⁵

Toward the beginning of this month Robert Barrow was brought to Charles Town, extremely weak, and was lodged at the house of Mary Cross, who nursed him.

Thursday, March 18

Today I, my household and Robert Barrow went aboard and set sail from here for Pennsylvania, and after a passage of fourteen days we reached Philadelphia.

Sunday, April 4

This evening Robert Barrow departed this life. He was buried on the 6th. He had gone through great trials with much patience, and in all our worst troubles he was ready to counsel us to be patient and to wait for what the Lord our God would bring about. He often said that he believed our lives would be spared, and not lost in that wilderness among a people who would have made prey of us. And so this good man finished his course with joy, laid down his body, and is with Him who rewards the just.

We have now come through our hard passage here, and in it God's great mercy and wonderful loving-kindness have been abundantly shown to us, delivering us and preserving us to this very day. I hope that I, and all those of us who have been spared until now, will never forget or lose sight of the low state we were brought into, but that we may double our diligence in serving the Lord God. This is the longing and earnest desire of my soul. Amen.

Jonathan Dickinson.