892 ONCE MORE IN THE ISLAND.

that was good. In the afternoon his frolics ran another way, for
then he would set the old man down upon the ground, and dance
about him, and make a thousand antic postures and gestures; and
all the while he did this he would be talking to him, and telling
him one story or another of his travels, and of what had happened
to him abroad, to divert him. In short, if the same filial affection
was to be found in Christians to their parents in our part of the
world, one would be tempted to say there would hardly have been
any need of the Fifth Commandment.

But this is a digression. I return to my landing. It would be
endless to take notice of all the ceremonies and civilities that the
Spaniards received me with. The first Spaniard, whom, as I said,
I knew very well, was he whose life I had saved. He came
towards the boat, attended by one more carrying a flag of truce
also; and he did not only not know me at first, but he had no
thoughts, no notion of its being me that was come till I spoke to
him. “ Seignior,” said I, in Portuguese, “do you not know me?”
At which he spoke not a word, but giving his musket to the man
that was with him, threw his arms abroad, and saying something
in Spanish that I did not perfectly hear, comes forward, and em-
braced me, telling me he was inexcusable not to know that face
again that he had once seen as of an angel from heaven sent to
save his life. He said abundance of very handsofne things, as a
well-bred Spaniard always knows how; and then beckoning to the
person that attended him, bade him go and call out his-comrades.
He then asked me if I would walk to my old habitation, where he
would give me possession of my own house again, and where I
should see there had been but mean improvements; so I walked
along with him: but, alas! I could no more find the place again
than if I had never been there; for they had planted so many
trees, and placed them in such a posture, so thick and close to one
another, and in ten years’ time they were grown so big that in
short the place was inaccessible, except by such windings and blind
ways as they themselves only, who made them, could find..

I asked them what put them upon all these fortifications? He
told me I would say there was need enough of it, when they had
given me an account how they had passed their time since their