454 A PATHETIC REMINISCENCE,

mind in their distress than any people that ever he met with; that
their unhappy nation and the Portuguese were the worse men in
the world to struggle with misfortunes, for their first step in
danger, atter the common efforts are over, was always to despair,
lie down under it, and die without rousing their thoughts up to
proper remedies for escape.

I told him their case and mine differed exceedingly: that they
were cast upon the shore without necessaries, without supply of
food or of present sustenance till they could provide: that it is
true I had this disadvantage and discomfort, that I was alone;
but then the supplies I had providentially thrown into my hands
by the unexpected driving of the ship on shore, were such a help
as would have encouraged any creature in the world to have
applied himself as I had done. “Seignior,’ says the Spaniard,
‘had we poor Spaniards been in your case, we should never have
gotten half those things out of the ship, as you did; nay,”
says he, “we should never have found means to have gotten a raft
to carry them, or to haye gotten the raft on shore without boat
or sail; and how much less should we have done,” said he, “ if
any of us had been alone?” Well, I desired him to abate his
compliment, and go on with the history of their coming on shore,
where they landed. He told me they unhappily landed at a place
where there were people without provisions; whereas, had they
had the common sense to have put off to sea again, and gone to
another island a little further, they had found provisions, though
without people; there being an island that way, as they had been
told, where there were provisions, though no people; that is to say,
that the Spaniards of Trinidad had frequently been there, and had
filled the island with goats and hogs at several times; where they
have bred in such multitudes, and where turtle and sea-fowls were
in such plenty, that they could have been in no want of flesh,
though they had found no bread; whereas here they were only
sustained with a few roots and herbs which they understood not,
and which had no substance in them, and which the inhabitants
gave them sparingly enough, and who could treat them no better,
unless they would turn cannibals, and eat men’s flesh, which was
the great dainty of their country.