WEARY OF WELL-DOING. : 419

injure any of their plantations, they gave them hatchets and what
other tools they could spare; some pease, barley, and rice for sowing;
and, in a word, anything they wanted, but arms and ammunition.
'They lived in this separate condition about six months, and had
gotten in their first harvest, though the quantity was but small,
the parcel of land they had planted being but little; for, indeed,
having all their plantation to form, they had a great deal of work
upon their hands. And when they came to make boards, and pots,
and such things, they were quite out of their element, and could
make nothing of it; and when the rainy season came on, for want
of a cave in the earth they could not keep their grain dry, and it
was in great danger of spoiling. And this humbled them much ,
so they came and begged the Spaniards to help them, which they
very readily did, and in four days worked a great hole in the side
of the hill for them, big enough to secure their corn and other
things from the rain. But it was but a poor place at best com-
pared to mine, and especially as mine was then, for the Spaniards
had greatly enlarged it and made several new apartments in it.
About three quarters of a year after this separation, a new frolic
took these rogues, which, together with the former villany they
had committed, brought mischief enough upon them, and had very
near been the ruin of the whole colony. The three new sociates
began, it seems, to be weary of the laborious life they led, and
that without hope of bettering their circumstances; and a whim
took them, that they would make a voyage to the continent from
whence the savages came, and would try if they could not seize
upon some prisoners among the natives there, and bring them home,
so to make them do the laborious part of their work for them.
The project was not so preposterous, if they had gone no further ;
but they did nothing, and proposed nothing, but had either mis-
chief in the design or mischief in the event. And if I may give
my opinion, they scemed to be under a blast from Heaven ; for if
we will not allow a visible curse to pursue visible crimes, how
shall we reconcile the events of things with the Divine justice? It
was, certainly, an apparent vengeance on their crime of mutiny and
‘piracy that brought them to the state they were in; and as they
showed not the least remorse for the crime, but.added new villanies