CRUSOE AND HIS COLONISTS, 507

This was her own relation, and is such a distinct account of
starving to death as I confess I never met with, and was exceeding
entertaining to me. Iam the rather apt to believe it to be a true
account, because the youth gave me an account of a good part of it,
though, I must own, not so distinct and so feelingly as his maid ;
and the rather, because it seems his mother fed him at the price of her
ownlife. But the poor maid, though her constitution being stronger
than that of her mistress, who was in years, and a weakly woman
too, she might struggle harder with it; I say, the poor maid
might be supposed to feel the extremity something sooner than
her mistress, who might be allowed to keep the last bit something
longer than she parted with any to relieve the maid. No question,
as the case is here related, if our ship, or some other, had not so pro-
videntially met them, a few days more would have ended all their
lives, unless they had prevented it by eating one another ; and even
that, as their case stood, would have served them but a little while,
they being five hundred leagues from any land or any possibility of
relief other than in the miraculous manner it happened, but this is
by the way. I return to my disposition of things among the people.

And, first, it is to be observed here, that for many reasons I
did not think fit to let them know anything of the sloop I had
framed, and which I thought of setting up among them; for I
found, at least at my first coming, such seeds of divisions among
them, that I saw it plainly, had I set up the sloop and left it
among them, they would upon every light disgust have separated,
and gone away from one another; or perhaps have turned pirates,
and so made the island a den of thieves, instead of a plantation of
sober and religious people, so as I intended it. Nor did I leave
the two pieces of brass cannon that I had on board, or the two
quarter-deck guns that my nephew took extraordinarily, for the
same reason. I thought it was enough to qualify them for a de-
fensive war against any that should invade them; but not to set
them up for an offensive war, or to encourage them to go abroad
to attack others, which in the end would only bring ruin and de-
struction upon themselves and all their undertaking. I reserved
the sloop, therefore, and the guns for their service another way, as
T shall observe in its place.