OSELESSNESS OF GRIEF, 168

husbands; and wanted nothing but to be well instructed in the
Christian religion, and to be legally married; both which were
happily brought about afterwards by my means, or, at least, in
consequence of my coming among them.

Having thus given an account of the colony in general, and
pretty much of my five runagate Englishmen, I must say some-
thing of the Spaniards, who were the main body of the family,
and in whose story there are some incidents also remarkable
enough,

I had a great many discourses with them about their circum.
stances when they were among the savages. They told me
readily, that they had no instances to give of their application
or ingenuity in that country; that they were a poor, miser-
able, dejected handful of people; that if means had been put
into their hands, they had yet so abandoned themselves to despair,
and so sunk under the weight of their misfortunes, that they
thought of nothing but starving. One of them, a grave and very
sensible man, told me he was convinced they were in the wrong ;
that it was not the part of wise men to give up themselves to their
misery, but always to take hold of the helps which reason offered,
as well for present support as for future deliverance. He told mu
that grief was the most senseless, insignificant passion in the world ;
for that it regarded only things past, which were generally impos-
sible to be recalled or to be remedied, but had no view to things
to come, and had no share in anything that looked like deliverance,
but rather added to the affliction than proposed a remedy. And
upon this he repeated a Spanish proverb, which though I cannot
repeat in just the same words that he spoke in, yet I remember I
made it into an English proverb of my own, thus :—

“Tn trouble to be troubled,
Is to have your trouble doubled.”

He ran on then in remarks upon all the little improvements I
had made in my solitude; my unwearied application, as he called
it, and how I had made a condition which, in its circumstances,
was at first much worse than theirs, a thousand times more happy
than theirs was, even now, when they were all together. He told
me it was remarkable that Knglishmen had a greater presence of