In the meantime, I in part settled myself here; for, first of all, I married,
and that not either to my disadvantage or dissatisfaction, and had three children,
two sons and one daughter; but my wife dying, and my nephew coming home with good
success from a voyage to Spain, my inclination to go abroad, and his importunity,
prevailed, and engaged me to go in his ship as a private trader to the East Indies;
this was in the year 1694.
In this voyage I visited my new colony in the island, saw my successors the Spaniards,
had the old story of their lives and of the villains I left there; how at first
they insulted the poor Spaniards, how they afterwards agreed, disagreed, united,
separated, and how at last the Spaniards were obliged to use violence with them;
how they were subjected to the Spaniards, how honestly the Spaniards used them -
a history, if it were entered into, as full of variety and wonderful accidents as
my own part - particularly, also, as to their battles with the Caribbeans, who landed
several times upon the island, and as to the improvement they made upon the island
itself, and how five of them made an attempt upon the mainland, and brought away
eleven men and five women prisoners, by which, at my coming, I found about twenty
young children on the island.
Here I stayed about twenty days, left them supplies of all necessary things,
and particularly of arms, powder, shot, clothes, tools, and two workmen, which I
had brought from England with me, viz. a carpenter and a smith.
Besides this, I shared the lands into parts with them, reserved to myself the
property of the whole, but gave them such parts respectively as they agreed on;
and having settled all things with them, and engaged them not to leave the place,
I left them there.
From thence I touched at the Brazils, from whence I sent a bark, which I bought
there, with more people to the island; and in it, besides other supplies, I sent
seven women, being such as I found proper for service, or for wives to such as would
take them. As to the Englishmen, I promised to send them some women from England,
with a good cargo of necessaries, if they would apply themselves to planting - which
I afterwards could not perform. The fellows proved very honest and diligent after
they were mastered and had their properties set apart for them. I sent them, also,
from the Brazils, five cows, three of them being big with calf, some sheep, and
some hogs, which when I came again were considerably increased.
But all these things, with an account how three hundred Caribbees came and invaded
them, and ruined their plantations, and how they fought with that whole number twice,
and were at first defeated, and one of them killed; but at last, a storm destroying
their enemies' canoes, they famished or destroyed almost all the rest, and renewed
and recovered the possession of their plantation, and still lived upon the island.
All these things, with some very surprising incidents in some new adventures
of my own, for ten years more, I shall give a farther account of in the Second Part
of my Story.