898 AN ENGLISH COLONY.

These two men made their number five, but the other three
villains were so much wickeder than these, that after they had
been two or three days together, they turned their two new
comers out of doors to shift for themselves, and would have nothing
to do with them, nor could they for a good while be persuaded to
give them any food; as for the Spaniards, they were not yet come.

When the Spaniards came first on shore, the business began to
go forward. 'The Spaniards would have persuaded the three Eng-
lish brutes to have taken in their two countrymen again, that, as
they said, they might be all one family; but they would not hear
of it. So the two poor fellows lived by themselves; and finding
nothing but industry and application would make them live com-
fortably, they pitched their tents on the north shore of the island,
but a little more on the west, to be out of the danger of the savages,
who always landed on the east parts of the island.

Here they built them two huts, one to lodge in, and the other
to lay up their magazines and stores in; and the Spaniards having
given them some corn for seed, and especially some of the pease
which I had left them, they dug, and planted, and enclosed, after
the pattern Thad set for them all, and began to live pretty well.
Their first crop of corn was on the ground, and though it was but
a little bit of land which they had dug up at first, having had but
a little time, yet it was enough to relieve them, and find them
with bread and other eatables; and one of the fellows being the
cook’s mate of the ship, was very ready at making soup, puddings,
and other such preparations, as the rice and the milk, and such
little flesh as they got, furnished him to do.

They were going on in this little thriving posture, when the
three unnatural rogues, their own countrymen too, in mere humour
and to insult them, came and bullied them, and told them the
island was theirs; that the governor (meaning me) had given them
possession of it, and nobody else had any right to it; and that
they should build no houses upon their ground, unless they would
pay them rent for them.

The two men thought they had jested at first; asked them to
come in and sit down, and see what fine houses they were that
they had built, and tell them what rent they demanded; and one