500 HOW THE ISLAND WAS SETTLED.

thus my colony was, in a manner, settled as follows :—The
Spaniards possessed my original habitation, which was the capital
city, and extended their plantations all along the side of the
brook, which made the creek that I have so often described, as far
as my bower; and as they increased their culture, it went always
eastward. The English lived in the north-east part, where Will
Atkins and his comrades began, and came on southward and
south-west, towards the back part of the Spaniards; and every
plantation had a great addition of land to take in, if they found
occasion, so that they need not jostle one another for want of
room.

All the east end of the island was left uninhabited, that if any
of the savages should come on shore there, only for their usual
customary barbarities, they might come and go. If they disturbed
nobody, nobody would disturb them ; and no doubt but they were
often ashore and went away again, for I never heard that the
planters were attacked or disturbed any more.

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

He agreed presently in that, if, said he, they will do their part.
“But how,” says he, “shall we obtain that of them?” I told
him we would call them together, and leave it in charge with
them, or go to them one by one, which he thought best. So we
divided it, he to speak to the Spaniards, who were all Papists,
and I to the English, who were all Protestants; and we recom-
mended it earnestly to them, and made them promise that they
never would make any distinction of Papist or Protestant in their
exhorting the savages to turn Christians; but teach them the
general knowledge of the true God, and of their Saviour Jesus
Christ. And they likewise promised us, that they would never
have any differences or disputes one with another about Yeligion.

When I came to Will Atkins’s house—I may call it so, for such