to help her in her journey. On the way, we discoursed of the happiness of those who had a right to an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; and God for a father and friend; as also, that it was our reasonable duty quietly to submit to the will of God, and to say, "The will of the Lord be done." My wife told me her strength of body began to fail, and that I must expect to part with her; saying, she hoped God would preserve my life, and the life of some, if not of all our children with us; and commended to me, under God, the care of them. She never spake any discontented word as to what had befallen us, but with suitable expressions justified God in what had happened. We soon made a halt, in which time my chief surviving master came up, upon which I was put upon marching with the foremost, and so made my last farewell of my dear wife, the desire of my eyes, and companion in many mercies and afflictions. Upon our separation from each other, we asked for each other grace sufficient for what God should call us to.

After our being parted from one another, she spent the few remaining minutes of her stay in reading the Holy Scriptures; which she was wont personally every day to delight her soul in reading, praying, meditating on, by herself, in her closet, over and above what she heard out of them in our family worship. I was made to wade over a small river, and so were all the English, the water above knee deep, the stream very swift; and after that to travel up a small mountain; my strength was almost spent, before I came to the top of it. No sooner had I overcome the difficulty of that ascent, but I was permitted to sit down, and be unburdened of my pack. I sat pitying those who were behind, and entreated my master to let me go down and help my wife; but he refused, and would not let me stir from him. I asked each of the prisoners (as they passed by me) after her, and heard that, passing through the above-said river, she fell down, and was plunged over head and ears in the water; after which she travelled not far, for at the foot of that mountain, the cruel and blood-thirsty savage who took her slew her with his hatchet at one stroke, the tidings of which were very awful. And yet such was the hard-heartedness of the adversary, that my tears were reckoned to me as a reproach. My loss and the loss of my children was great; our hearts were so filled with sorrow, that nothing but the comfortable hopes of her being taken away, in mercy to herself, from the evils we were to see, feel, and suffer under, (and joined to the assembly of the spirits of just men made perfect, to rest in peace, and joy unspeakable and full of glory, and the good pleasure of God thus to exercise us,) could have kept us from sinking under, at that time. That Scripture, Job i. 21, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord," -was brought to my mind, and from it, that an afflicting God was to be glorified; with some other places of Scripture, to persuade to a patient bearing my afflictions.

46

We were again called upon to march, with a far heavier burden on my spirits than on my back. I begged of God to overrule, in his providence, that the corpse of one so dear to me, and of one whose spirit he had taken to dwell with him in glory, might meet with a Christian burial, and not be left for meat to the fowls of the air and beasts of the earth, a mercy that God graciously vouchsafed to grant. For God put it into the hearts of my neighbors, to come out as far as she lay, to take up her corpse, carry it to the town, and decently to bury it soon after. In our march they killed a sucking in

fant of one of my neighbors; and before night a girl of about eleven years of age. I was made to mourn, at the consideration of my flock being, so far, a flock of slaughter, many being slain in the town, and so many murdered in so few miles from the town; and from fears what we must yet expect, from such who delightfully imbrued their hands in the blood of so many of His people. When we came to our lodging place, an Indian captain from the eastward spake to my master about killing me, and taking off my scalp. I lifted up my heart to God, to implore his grace and mercy in such a time of need; and afterwards I told my master, if he intended to kill me, I desired he would let me know of it; assuring him that my death, after a promise of quarter, would bring the guilt of blood upon him. He told me he would not kill me. We laid down and slept, for God sustained and kept us.

Mr. S. G. Drake, of Boston, has preserved in his Indian Captivities, and Book of the Indians, a number of original narratives, of a character similar to that of Williains, forming a collection of much historical value. These will always retain their place in popular interest, but from their necessary resemblance of subject and treatment to the "Redeemed Captive," do not call for separate notice.

JOHN LEDERER.

JOHN LEDERER, the first explorer of the Alleganies, prepared an account of his Three several Marches from Virginia to the west of Carolina and other parts of the continent, begun in March, 1669, and ended in September, 1670;* in Latin, which was translated by Sir William Talbot, and published in 1672. The address to the reader, by Talbot, informs us,

That a stranger should presume (though with Sir William Berkly's commission) to go into those parts of the American continent where Englishmen never had been, and whither some refused to accompany him, was, in Virginia, looked on as so great an insolence, that our traveller, at his return, instead of welcome and applause, met nothing but affronts and reproaches; for, indeed, it was their part that forsook him in the expedition, to procure him discredit that was a witness to theirs. Therefore no industry was wanting to prepare men with a prejudice against him, and this their malice improved to such a general animosity, that he was not safe in Virginia from the outrage of the people, drawn into a persuasion, that the public levy of that year went all to the expense of his vagaries. Forced by this storm into Maryland, he became known to me, though then ill affected to the man, by the stories that went about of him. Nevertheless, finding him, contrary to my expectation, a modest, ingenious per-son, and a pretty scholar, I thought it common justice to give him an occasion of vindicating himself from what I had heard of him; which truly he did, with so convincing reason and circumstance as quite abolished those former impressions in me, and made me desire this account of his Travels.

Lederer does not appear in either of his expeditions to have penetrated further than, in his

The Discoveries of John Lederer, in three several marches from Virginia, to the west of Carolina, and other parts of the continent: begun in March 1669, and ended in September 1670. Together with A general Map of the whole Territory which he traversed. Collected and Translated out of Latine, from his Discourse and Writings, by Sir William Talbot, Baronet, London: printed by J. C., for Samuel Heyrick, 1672.

own words, "to the top of the Apalatœan mountains." His tract contains but twenty-seven quarto pages, a portion of which is filled with accounts of the Indians. His "Conjectures of the Land beyond the Apalatoan Mountains" are curious:

They are certainly in a great error, who imagine that the continent of North America is but eight or ten days' journey over from the Atlantic to the Indian ocean: which all reasonable men must acknowledge, if they consider that Sir Francis Drake kept a west-north-west course from Cape Mendocino to California. Nevertheless, by what I gathered from the stranger Indians at Akenatzy, of their voyage by sea to the very mountains from a far distant north-west country, I am brought over to their opinion who think that the Indian ocean does stretch an arm or bay from California into the continent, as far as the Apalatoan mountains, answerable to the gulfs of Florida and Mexico on this side. Yet I am far from believing with some, that such great and navigable rivers are to be found on the other side of the Apalatoans falling into the Indian ocean, as those which run from them to the eastward. My first reason is derived from the knowledge and experience we already have of South America, whose Andes send the greatest rivers in the world (as the Amazon and the Rio de la Plata, &c.) into the Atlantick, but none at all into the Pacifique Sea. Another argument is, that all our waterfowl, which delight in lakes and rivers, as swans, geese, ducks, &c., come over the mountains from the lake of Canada, when it is frozen over every winter, to our fresh rivers: which they would never do, could they find any on the other side of the Apalateaus,**

FRANCIS KNAPP.

FRANCIS KNAPP, the son of George Knapp, of Chilton, in Berkshire, was born in the year 1672, and matriculated at St. John's college, Oxford.† His father, a captain in the British navy, commanded a ninety-gun ship on the American coast in the early part of the last century. The son came to America to take possession of some lands acquired by his grandfather at Watertown, near Boston, where he passed the remainder of his life, engaged in the quiet pursuits of a scholar. He was a composer of music, and the author of a poetical Epistle to Mr. B., reprinted in J. Nichols's "Select Collection of Poems, 1780," and of a poetical address to Mr. Pope, on his Windsor Forest, dated June 7, 1715, which appears among the commendatory poems prefixed to the first and subsequent editions of that poet's works. It is claimed by Samuel L. Knapp, in his American Biography, as an American production, but in a note by William Roscoe to his edition of Pope, is said to have been written in Killala, Mayo county, Ireland.

The Epistle in Nichols is a well-penned satire on the author tribe, with an ungenerous fling at

"A Mapp of Virginia discovered to ye Hills," 1651, makes the distance less than three hundred miles from the southernmost cape of Delaware to "the Sea of China, and the Indies." The author of "A Perfect Description of Virginia," sent from Virginia at the request of a gentleman of worthy note, who desired to know the true state of Virginia as it now stands, reprinted in Vol. ix. of the Second Series Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., has a similar opinion with Lederer as to rivers running west from the Alleganies. Account by John Penington, of Plantagenet's New Albion. Penn. Hist. Memoirs, Vol. iv. pt. 1. * Wood's Ath. Oxon., Ed. Bliss.

Wesley, and a humorous preference of Rymer over Dryden, while the author deprecates an act of parliament which should restrain the race of poetasters.

I grant you, such a course as this might do To make them humbly treat of what they know, Not venturing further than their brains will go. But what should I do then, for ever spoil'd Of this diversion which frail authors yield? I should no more on Dunton's counter meet, Bards that are deeply skill'd in rhyme and feet; For I am charm'd with easy nonsense more, Than all the wit that men of sense adore. With fear I view great Dryden's hallow'd nge, With fear I view it, and I read with rage. I'm all with fear, with grief, and love possest, Tears in my eyes, and anguish in my bi east, While I with mourning Anthony repine: And all the hero's miseries are mine. If I read Edgar, then my soul's at peace, Lull'd in a lazy state of thoughtless ease. No passion's ruffled by the peaceful lay, No stream, no depth, to hurry me away; Rymer in both professions harmless proves, Nor wounds when critic, nor when poet moves.

The lines prefixed to Pope announce a man of wit and taste, by whose presence Watertown should have been the gainer.

Hail, sacred Bard! a Muse unknown before
Salutes thee from the bleak Atlantic shore.
To our dark world thy shining page is shown,
And Windsor's gay retreat becomes our own.
The Eastern pomp had just bespoke our care,
And India poured her gaudy treasures here:
A various spoil adorned our naked land,
The pride of Persia glittered on our strand,
And China's Earth was cast on common sand:
Tossed up and down the glossy fragments lay,
And dressed the rocky shelves, and paved the painted

bay.

Thy treasures next arrived: and now we boast
A nobler cargo on our barren coast:
From thy luxuriant Forest we receive
More lasting glories than the East can give.

Where'er we dip in thy delightful page,
What pompous scenes our busy thoughts engage!
The pompous scenes in all their pride appear,
Fresh in the page, as in the grove they were.
Nor half so true the fair Lodona shows
The sylvan state that on her border grows,
While she the wandering shepherd entertains
With a new Windsor in her watery plains;
Thy juster lays the lucid wave surpass,
The living scene is in the Muse's glass.
Nor sweeter notes the echoing forests cheer,
When Philomela sits and warbles there,
Than when you sing the greens and opening glades,
And give us Harmony as well as Shades:
A Titian's hand might draw the grove, but
Can paint the grove, and add the music too.

you

In the New England Weekly Journal for June 28, 1731, we have met with a poem, hitherto unnoticed, descriptive of Watertown, worthy of Knapp's pen-of which the reader may judge by a few passages, marking an early and true employment of American incidents:

A NEW ENGLAND POND.

Of ancient streams presume no more to tell,
The fam'd Castalian or Pierian well.
Fresh-pond superior, must those rolls confess,
As much as Cambridge yields to Rome or Greece;

More limpid water can no fountain show, A fairer bottom or a smoother brow;

A painted world its peaceful gleam contains
The heavenly arch, the bord'ring groves and plains:
Here in mock silver Cynthia seems to roll,
And trusty pointers watch the frozen pole.
Here sages might observe the wand'ring stars,
And rudest swains commence astrologers:
Along the brim the lovely plover stalks
And to his visionary fellow talks:
Amid the wave the vagrant blackbird sees,
And tries to perch upon the imag'd trees;
On flying clouds the simple bullocks gaze
Or vainly reach to crop the shad'wy grass;
From nei'bring hills the stately horse espies
Himself a feeding and himself envies.
Hither pursu'd by op'ning hounds the hare
Blesses himself to see a forest near,
The waving shrubs he takes for real wood,
And boldly plunges in the yielding flood.
On this side willows hem the basin round,
There graceful trees the promontory crown,
Whose mingled tufts and outspread arms compose
A shade delightful to the laurell'd brows;
Here mossy couches tempt to pleasing dreams
The love-sick soul, and ease the weary limbs:-
No noxious snake disperses poison here,

Nor screams of night bird rend the twilight air.
Excepting him who when the groves are still,
Hums a'rous tunes and whispers whip-poor-will,
To hear whose carol elves in circles trip,
And lovers' hearts within their bosoms leap,
Whose savage notes the troubled mind amuse,
Banish despair, and hold the falling dews.
No ghastly horrors conjure tho'ts of woe,
Or dismal prospects to the fancy show.

BIRDS AND FISHES.

Hither ye bards for inspiration come,
Let every other fount but this be dumb.
Which way soe'er your airy genius leads,
Receive your model from these vocal shades.
Wou'd you in homely pastoral excel,
Take pattern from the merry piping quail;
Observe the blue-bird for a roundelay,
The chattering pye or ever babbling jay.
The plaintive dove the soft love verse can teach,
And mimic thrush to imitators preach.

In Pindar's strain the lark salutes the dawn,
The lyric robin chirps the evening on.
For poignant satire mind the mavis well,
And hear the sparrow for a madrigal.
For ev'ry sense a pattern here you have,
From strains heroic down to humble stave.
Not Phoebus' self, altho' the God of verse,
Could hit such fine and entertaining airs;
Nor the fair maids who round the fountain sate,
Such artless heav'nly music modulate.
Each thicket seems a Paradise renew'd,
The soft vibrations fire the moving blood.
Each sense its part of sweet delusion shares,
The scenes bewitch the eye, the song the ears.
Pregnant with scent each wind regales the smell,
Like cooling sheets th' enwrapping breezes feel.
During the dark, if poets' eyes we trust,
These lawns are haunted by some swarthy ghost.
Some Indian prince who, fond of former joys,
With bow and quiver thro' the shadow plies;
He can't in death his native grove forget,
But leaves Elyzium for his ancient seat.
O happy pond, hadst thou in Grecia flow'd,
The bounteous blessing of some watry God,
Or had some Ovid sung this liquid rise,
Distill'd, perhaps, from slighted Virgil's eyes.
Well is thy worth in Indian story known,

Thy living lymph and fertile borders shown,
Thy various flocks the cover'd shore can shun,
Drove by the fowler and the fatal gun.
Thy shining roach and yellow bristly breme,
The pick'rel, rav'nous monarch of the stream,
The perch, whose back a ring of colours shows,
The horny pout, who courts the slimy ooze,
The eel serpentine, some of dubious race,
The tortoise with his golden spotted case;
Thy hairy musk rat, whose perfume defies
The balmy odour of Arabian skies;

The throng of Harvard know thy pleasures well,
Joys too extravagant, perhaps, to tell;
Hither ofttimes the learned tribe repair,
When Sol returning warms the glowing year.

BENJAMIN COLMAN.

BENJAMIN COLMAN was born in Boston, Oct. 19, 1673. He entered " young and small" into the school of Ezekiel Cheever, by whom he was prepared for Harvard college, where he was graduated in 1692. He began to preach in the following year at Medford, near Boston, and in 1695, embarked for England. The mother country was then at war with France, and the ship was attacked by a French privateer. Mr. Colman took a gallant part in her defence, and "was exposed all the while on the quarter-deck, where four out of seven were wounded, and one mortally. He was much praised for his courage when the fight was over; but though he charged and discharged like the rest, yet he declared he was sensible of no courage, but of a great deal of fear, and when they had received two or three broadsides, he wondered when his courage would come, as he had heard others talk. In short, he fought like a philosopher and a Christian.** The vessel was captured, and all on board taken to France, where Mr. Colman was for some time imprisoned, until an exchange of prisoners between the two belligerents enabled him to visit England, where he preached several times with great success, and gained the friendship of Bates, Calamy, Howe, and other leading dissenting ministers. He was urged to remain in London, but in 1699 receiving a call from a number of leading citizens of Boston, who had built the Brattle street church, to become their first minister, he accepted it, and consequently returned to Boston, where he arrived "after a long eight weeks' sick passage," on the first of November. The congregation was formed in opposition to the Cambridge platform, and the remaining churches of Boston refused, for some years, to hold communion with its minister. He continued his connexion with the congregation until his death in 1747, preaching to them on the last Sunday of his life. He was held in great esteem as a pulpit orator, received the degree of D.D. from the University of Glasgow in 1731, and a large number of his sermons were published. In 1724 he was elected president of Harvard college, but declined the office. He was, however, a good friend to the institution, and also to Yale, procuring for both many donations from his English as well as American friends. He was thrice married and left a numerous family. The Rev. Ebenezer Turell, who married his daughter in 1749, published a life of her father, from

Life by the Rev. Ebenezer Turell, p. 6.

+ Eliot's Biog. Dict.

which the materials of this sketch have been derived. It forms a quarto volume of over two hundred pages, and deserves high commendation among American biographies. Dr. Colman wrote a short poem, Elijah's Translation, on the death of the Rev. Samuel Willard, 1707, and a few occasional verses and poetical epistles are preserved in his life. He also wrote a tract in favor of inoculation for the small-pox, in 1721.

ELIJAH'S ASCENSION.

'Twas at high noon, the day serene and fair,
Mountains of lum'nous clouds rolled in the air,
When on a sudden, from the radiant skies,
Superior light flashed in Elisha's eyes;

The heavens were cleft, and from th' imperial throne
A stream of glory, dazzling splendor shone:
Beams of ten thousand suns shot round about,
The sun and every blazoned cloud went out:
Bright hosts of angels lined the heavenly way,
To guard the saint up to eternal day.
Then down the steep descent, a chariot bright,
And steeds of fire, swift as the beams of light.
Winged seraphs ready stood, bowed low to greet
The favorite saint, and hand him to his sent.
Enthroned he sat, transformed with joys his mien,
Calm his gay soul, and like his face serene.
His eye and burning wishes to his God,
Forward he bowed, and on the triumph rode.
Saluted, as he passed the heavenly cloud,
With shouts of joy, and hallelujahs loud.
Ten thousand thousand angel-trumpets sound,
And the vast realms of heaven all echoed round.
TO UEANIA ON THE DEATH OF HER FIRST AND ONLY CHILD.

Why mourns my beauteous friend bereft ?
Her Saviour and her heaven are left:
Her lovely babe is there at rest,

In Jesus' arms embraced and blest.
Would you, Urania, wish it down
From yon bright Throne and shining Crown?
To your cold arms and empty breast,
Could Heaven indulge you the request;
Your bosom's neither warm nor fair,
Compared with Abraham's: leave it there.

He the famed father of the just,
Beheld himself but earth and dust,
Before the will of God most high,
And bid his darling Isaac die.

When Heaven required in sacrifice
The dear desire of his eyes;
And more to prove his love commands
The offering from the Father's hands;
See how th' illustrious parent yields,
And seeks Moriah's mournful fields.

He bound his lovely only child
For death; his soul serene and mild,
He reached his hand, and grasped the knife,
To give up the devoted life.

Less Heaven demands of thee, my friend;
And less thy faith shall recommend.

All it requires is to resign,

To Heaven's own act and make it thine,
By silence under discipline.

The least we to our Maker owe!
The least, Urania, you did vow!
The least that was your Saviour's claim,
When o'er your babe his glorious Name
Was called in awful Baptism! Then
You gave it back to Heaven again.

You freely owned that happy hour,
Heaven's right, propriety, and power,
The loan at pleasure to resume,
And call the pretty stranger home.
A witness likewise at its birth

I stood, that hour of joy and mirth:
I saw your thankful praises rise,
And flow from pleased, uplifted eyes
With raised devotion, one accord,
We gave the infant to its Lord.

And think, Urania, ere that day,
While the fair fruit in secret lay,
Unseen, yet loved within the womb
(Which also might have been its tomb).
How oft, before it blest your sight,
In secret prayers, with great delight,
You did recognize Heaven's right.

Now stand by these blest acts, my friend;
Stand firmly by them to the end.
Now you are tried, repeat the act;
Too just, too glorious to retract.
Think, dear Urania, how for thee,
God gave his only Son to be
An offering on the cursed tree.

Think, how the Son of God on earth
(The spotless Virgin's blessed birth), ́
Our lovely babes took up and blest,
And them high heirs of Heaven confest!

Think, how the blest of Woman stood,
While impious hands, to the cursed wood,
Nailed down her only Son and God!

Learn hence, Urania, to be dumb!
Learn thou the praise that may become
Thy lighter grief, which Heaven does please
To take such wondrous ways to ease.

Adore the God who from thee takes
No more than what he gives and makes:
And means in tenderest love the rode
To serve to thy eternal good.

WILLIAM BYRD.

IN 1841, Edmund Ruffin, of Virginia, prepared for the press and published a volume entitled The Westover Manuscripts.* It was the production of a gentleman once much celebrated in the Old Dominion, whose story cannot be better told for our purpose than in the distinguished recital of the inscription upon the monument which covers his remains in the garden of his once splendid Estate of Westover, on the north bank of James River. "Here lieth the Honorable William Byrd, Esq., being born to one of the amplest fortunes in this country, he was sent early to England for his education; where, under the care and direction of Sir Robert Southwell, and ever favoured with his particular instructions, he made a happy proficiency in polite and various learning. By the means of the same noble friend, he was introduced to the acquaintance of many of the first persons of that age for knowledge, wit, virtue, birth, or high station, and particularly contracted a most intimate and bosom friendship with the learned and illustrious Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery. He was called to the bar in the Middle Temple, studied for some time in the Low Countries, visited the court of France, and was chosen Fellow of the Royal Society. Thus eminently fitted for the service and ornament of his country, he was made receiver general of his majesty's revenues here, was thrice appointed public agent to the court and ministry of England, and

The Westover Manuscripts: containing the History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina; a Journey to the Land of Eden, A.D. 1788; and a Progress to the Mines. Written from 1728 to 1786, and now first published. By William Byrd, of Westover. Petersburg: Printed by Edmund and Julian C. Ruffin. 1841. Large Svo. pp. 143.

being thirty-seven years a member, at last became president of the council of this colony. To all this were added a great elegancy of taste and life, the well-bred gentleman and polite companion, the splendid economist and prudent father of a family, with the constant enemy of all exorbitant power, and hearty friend to the liberties of his country. Nat. Mar. 28, 1674.. Mort. Aug. 26, 1744. An. ætat. 70."

The gentleman thus described, a man of pleasure and literature, at the age of fifty-four, set out with a select party, composed of two fellow Virginian commissioners, Richard Fitz-William and William Dandridge; two surveyors, William Mayo, and the mathematical professor of William and Mary, Alexander Irvin; with the Reverend Peter Fountain* as chaplain, and a party of seventeen woodmen and hunters, for the purpose of meeting a similar body of commissioners of North Carolina to draw the boundary line between the two states. There were two expeditions for this purpose, one in the spring, the other in the fall of the year 1728. Col. Byrd conducted the Virginia party gallantly and safely through its perils on what was then a tour of discovery, and on his return to his seat at Westover caused his notes of the journey to be fairly copied, and revised them with his own hand. As now printed they form one of the most characteristic and entertaining productions of the kind ever written. They have that sharp outline in description and freshness of feeling in sentiment which marks the best Virginia tracts of Captain John Smith and his fellows a century earlier; with a humor of a more modern date derived from a good natural vein and the stores of experience of a man acquainted with books, and of society in intimacy with what was best in the old world and the new; and moreover of that privileged license of fortune which permits a man to please others by first pleasing himself. Col. Byrd is a little free in his language at times, but that belongs to the race of hearty livers of his century. There are touches in the Journal worthy of Fielding; indeed it is quite in the vein of his exquisite Journey from London to Lisbon.

The business of the expedition is narrated in a clear, straightforward manner. It had its difficulties in encounters with morasses, pocosons, and slashes, beginning with the Dismal Swamp; and there was occasionally a rainy day and sometimes a prospect of short commons. But it was free from any serious disasters, and, at the worst, seems never to have overpowered the good humor of its leader; showing that however daintily he may have been brought up, there is nothing like the spirit of a gentleman and a scholar in encountering hardships. A good portion of this pleasant narrative is taken up with accounts of the scenery, the Indians, and the large stock of game and "varmint" which gave employment to the hunters of the party, and doubtless furnished the staple of the highly-flavored stories of the "Manuscripts"

The son of the Rev. James Fontaine, & Huguenot refugee, on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, who settled in Ireland and prepared an Autobiography for the use of all his children, which is printed with valuable illustrative matter in the "Memoirs of a Huguenot Family," in a second edition, New York, 1853, by Ann Maury, one of his numerous descendants. The volume includes a sermon and several letters by the clergyman of Westover.

over the camp kettle at night. In the early parts no little wit is expended upon the traditional traits of character of the North Carolinians, who fare no better in Byrd's hands than the Yankees or the Dutchmen in the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. The inhabitants of the vicinity of Coratuck inlet seem to have furnished some extraordinary specimens of humanity in those days-one in particular of a marooner whose sole dress was his beard, and whose subsistence was "chiefly upon oysters, which his handmaid made a shift to gather from the adjacent rocks." To which he adds, "thus did these wretches live in a state of nature, and were mere Adamites, innocence only excepted." The disputed ground of the boundary was then a refuge for runaway debtors, of whom we are told: "Nor were these worthy borderers content to shelter runaway slaves, but debtors and criminals have often met with the like indulgence. But if the government of North Carolina has encouraged this unneighbourly policy in order to increase their people, it is no more than what ancient Rome did before them, which was made a city of refuge for all debtors and fugitives, and from that wretched beginning grew up in time to be mistress of a great part of the world. And, considering how fortune delights in bringing great things out of small, who knows but Carolina may, one time or other, come to be the seat of some other great empire?"

As for religion, these careless settlers seem to be quite without it, as recorded by Col. Byrd, on occasion of a Sunday service when part of his company were in the perils of the Dismal Swamp: "In these sad circumstances, the kindest thing we could do for our suffering friends was to give them a place in the Litany. Our chaplain, for his part, did his office, and rubbed us up with a seasonable sermon. This was quite a new thing to our brethren of North Carolina, who live in a climate where no clergyman can breathe, any more than spiders in Ireland." Arriving at Edenton we are told: "I believe this is the only metropolis in the Christian or Mahometan world, where there is neither church, chapel, mosque, synagogue, or any other place of public worship whatsoever. What little devotion there may happen to be is much more private than their vices. The people seem easy without a minister, as long as they are exempted from paying him. Sometimes the Society for propagating the Gospel has had the charity to send over missionaries to this country; but unfortunately the priest has been too lewd for the people, or, which oftener happens, they are too lewd for the priest. For these reasons these reverend gentlemen have always left their flocks as arrant heathen as they found them. Thus much however may be said for the inhabitants of Edenton, that not a soul has the least taint of hypocrisy, or superstition, acting very frankly and above-board in all their excesses. There is also a hint for the Virginian clergy, which his friend Fountain could have stood in no need of: "We christened two of our landlord's children, which might have remained infidels all their lives, had not we carried Christianity home to his own door. The truth of it is, our neighbours of North Carolina are not so zealous as to go much out of their way to procure this benefit