“Clerk. Are you in earnest, Mouchat?
“Negro. Yes, indeed; me tellee de true. The great master shall know me tellee de true, for he shall see the white man hangee me, Mouchat. Poor negro Mouchat will be hangee, be whippee, anything for the poor master that beggee for me.
“With this the poor fellow cried most pitifully, and there was no room to question his being in earnest; when on a sudden I appeared, for I was fetched to see all this transaction. I was not in the house at first, but was just come home from the business you sent me of, and heard it all; and indeed neither the clerk or I could bear it any longer, so he came out to me. ‘Go to him,’ says he; ‘you have made an example that will never be forgot, that a negro can be grateful. Go to him,’ adds he, ‘for I can talk to him no longer.’ So I appeared, and spoke to him presently, and let him see that I was at liberty; but to hear how the poor fellow behaved your honour cannot but be pleased.”
Mast. Prithee go on. I am pleased with it all; ’tis all a new scene of negro life to me, and very moving.
Jacque. For a good while he stood as if he had been thunderstruck and stupid; but, looking steadily at me, though not speaking a word, at last he mutters to himself, with a kind of laugh, “Ay, ay,” says he, “Mouchat see, Mouchat no see; me wakee, me no wakee; no hangee, no hangee; he live truly, very live;” and then on a sudden he runs to me, snatches me away as if I had been a boy of ten years old, and takes me up upon his back and runs away with me, till I was fain to cry out to him to stop. Then he sets me down, and looks at me again, then falls a-dancing about me as if he had been bewitched, just as you have seen them do about their wives and children when they are merry.
“Well, then, he began to talk with me, and told me what they had said to him, how I was to be hanged. ‘Well,’ says I, ‘Mouchat, and would you have been satisfied to be hanged to save me?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ says he; ’be truly hangee, to beggee you.’
“’But why do you love me so well, Mouchat?’ said I.
“’Did you no beggee me,’ he says, ‘at the great master? You savee me, make great master muchee good, muchee kind, no whippee me; me no forget; me be whipped, be hanged, that you no be hanged; me die, that you no die; me no let any bad be with you all while that me live.’
“Now, sir, your honour may judge whether kindness, well managed, would not oblige these people as well as cruelty, and whether there are principles of gratitude in them or no.”
Mast. But what, then, can be the reason that we never believed it to be so before?
Jacque. Truly, sir, I fear that Mouchat gave the true reason.
Mast. What was that, pray? That we were too cruel?
Jacque. That they never had any mercy showed them; that we never tried them whether they would be grateful or no; that if they did a fault they were never spared, but punished with the utmost cruelty; so that they had no passion, no affection, to act upon but that of fear, which necessarily brought hatred with it; but that if they were used with compassion they would serve with affection as well as other servants. Nature is the same, and reason governs in just proportions in all creatures; but having never been let taste what mercy is, they know not how to act from a principle of love.
Mast. I am convinced it is so. But now, pray tell me, how did you put this in practice with the poor negroes now in bonds yonder, when you passed such a cruel sentence upon them that they should be whipped twice a day, for four days together? Was that showing mercy?
Jacque. My method was just the same; and if you please to inquire of Mr.——, your other servant, you will be satisfied that it was so; for we agreed upon the same measures as I took with Mouchat; namely, first to put them into the utmost horror and apprehensions of the cruellest punishment that they ever heard of, and thereby enhance the value of their pardon, which was to come as from yourself, but not without our great intercession. Then I was to argue with them, and work upon their reason, to make the mercy that was showed them sink deep into their minds and give lasting impressions; explain the meaning of gratitude to them, and the nature of an obligation, and the like, as I had done with Mouchat.
Mast. I am answered. Your method is certainly right, and I desire you may go on with it; for I desire nothing on this side heaven more than to have all my negroes serve me from principles of gratitude for my kindness to them. I abhor to be feared like a lion, like a tyrant. It is a violence upon nature every way, and is the most disagreeable thing in the world to a generous mind.
Jacque. But, sir, I am doubtful that you may not believe that I intended to act thus with those poor fellows. I beseech you to send for Mr.——, that he may tell you what we had agreed on before I speak with him.
Mast. What reason have I to doubt that?
Jacque. I hope you have not; but I should be very sorry you should think me capable of executing such a sentence as you have heard me own I had passed on them, and there can be no way effectually to clear it up but this.
Mast. Well, seeing you put so much weight upon it, he shall be called for.
[He was called, and being ordered by the master to tell the measures that were concerted between them for the punishment or management of those negroes, he gave it just as Jacque had done before.]
Jacque. I hope, sir, you are now not only satisfied of the truth of the account I gave relating to the method we had agreed on, but of its being so proper and so likely to answer your end.
Mast. I am fully satisfied, and shall be glad to see that it answers the end; for, as I have said, nothing can be more agreeable to me. Nothing has so much robbed me of the comfort of all my fortunes as the cruelty used, in my name, on the bodies of those poor slaves.
Jacque. It is certainly wrong, sir; it is not only wrong as it is barbarous and cruel; but it is wrong, too, as it is the worst way of managing and of having your business done.
Mast. It is my aversion; it fills my very soul with horror. I believe if I should come by while they were using those cruelties on the poor creatures, I should either sink down at the sight of it or fly into a rage and kill the fellow that did it; though it is done, too, by my own authority.
Jacque. But, sir, I dare say I shall convince you also that it is wrong in respect of interest, and that your business shall be better discharged and your plantations better ordered, and more work done by the negroes who shall be engaged by mercy and lenity than by those who are driven and dragged by the whips and the chains of a merciless tormentor.
Mast. I think the nature of the thing speaks itself. Doubtless it should be so, and I have often thought it would be so, and a thousand times wished it might be so; but all my English people pretend otherwise, and that it is impossible to bring the negroes to any sense of kindness, and consequently not to any obedience of love.
Jacque. It may be true, sir, that there may be found here and there a negro of a senseless, stupid, sordid disposition, perfectly untractable, undocible, and incapable of due impressions; especially incapable of the generosity of principle which I am speaking of. You know very well, sir, there are such among Christians as well as among the negroes; whence else came the English proverb, That if you save a thief from the gallows, he shall be the first to cut your throat. But, sir, if such a refractory, undocible fellow comes in our way, he must be dealt with, first by the smooth ways to try him, then by the violent way to break his temper, as they break a horse; and if nothing will do, such a wretch should be sold off, and others bought in his room; for the peace of the plantation should not be broken for one devilish-tempered fellow. And if this was done I doubt not you should have all your plantations carried on and your work done, and not a negro or a servant upon it but what would not only work for you, but even die for you, if there was an occasion for it, as you see this poor Mouchat would have done for me.
Mast. Well, go on with your measures, and may you succeed. I’ll promise you I will fully make you amends for it. I long to have these cruelties out of use, in my plantation especially. As for others, let them do as they will.
Our master being gone, I went to the prisoners, and first I suffered them to be told that the great master had been there, and that he had been inclined to pardon them, till he knew what their crime was; but then he said it was so great a fault that it must be punished. Besides, the man that talked to them told them that the great master said that he knew if he had pardoned them they would be but the worse, for that the negroes were never thankful for being spared, and that there were no other ways to make them obedient but severity.
One of the poor fellows, more sensible than the other, answered, if any negro be badder for being kindly used, they should be whipped till they were muchee better; but that he never knew that, for that he never knew the negro be kindly use.
This was the same thing as the other had said, and indeed was but too true, for the overseers really knew no such thing as mercy; and that notion of the negroes being no other way to be governed but by cruelty had been the occasion that no other method was ever tried among them.
Again, if a slack hand had at any time been held upon them, it had not been done with discretion, or as a point of mercy, and managed with the assistance of argument to convince the negroes of the nature and reason of it, and to show them what they ought to do in return for it; but it was perhaps the effect of negligence, ill conduct, and want of application to the business of the plantation; and then it was no wonder that the negroes took the advantage of it.
Well, I carried on the affair with these two negroes just as I did with Mouchat, so I need not repeat the particulars; and they were delivered with infinite acknowledgments and thanks, even to all the extravagances of joy usual in those people on such occasions. And such was the gratitude of those two pardoned fellows that they were the most faithful and most diligent servants ever after that belonged to the whole plantation, Mouchat excepted.
In this manner I carried on the plantation fully to his satisfaction; and before a year more was expired there was scarce any such thing as correction known in the plantation, except upon a few boys, who were incapable of the impressions that good usage would have made, even upon them too, till they had lived to know the difference.
It was some time after this conference that our great master, as we called him, sent for me again to his dwelling-house, and told me he had had an answer from England from his friend, to whom he had written about my bill. I was a little afraid that he was going to ask me leave to send it to London; but he did not say anything like that, but told me that his friend had been with the gentleman, and that he owned the bill, and that he had all the money in his hand that the bill had mentioned; but that he had promised the young man that had given him the money (meaning me) not to pay the money to anybody but himself, though they should bring the bill; the reason of which was, that I did not know who might get the bill away from me.
“But now, Colonel Jacque,” says he, “as you wrote him an account where you was, and by what wicked arts you were trepanned, and that it was impossible for you to have your liberty till you could get the money, my friend at London has written to me, that, upon making out a due copy of the bill here, attested by a notary and sent to him, and your obligation likewise attested, whereby you oblige yourself to deliver the original to his order after the money is paid, he will pay the money.”
I told him I was willing to do whatever his honour directed; and so the proper copies were drawn as I had been told were required.
“But now, what will you do with this money, Jacque?” says he, smiling. “Will you buy your liberty of me, and go to planting?”
I was too cunning for him now indeed, for I remembered what he had promised me; and I had too much knowledge of the honesty of his principles, as well as of the kindness he had for me, to doubt his being as good as his word; so I turned all this talk of his upon him another way. I knew that when he asked me if I would buy my liberty and go to planting, it was to try if I would leave him; so I said, “As to buying my liberty, sir—that is to say, going out of your service—I had much rather buy more time in your service, and I am only unhappy that I have but two years to serve.”
“Come, come, colonel,” says he, “don’t flatter me; I love plain dealing. Liberty is precious to everybody; if you have a mind to have your money brought over, you shall have your liberty to begin for yourself, and I will take care you shall be well used by the country, and get you a good plantation.”
I still insisted that I would not quit his service for the best plantation in Maryland; that he had been so good to me, and I believed I was so useful to him, that I could not think of it; and at last I added I hoped he could not believe but I had as much gratitude as a negro.
He smiled, and said he would not be served upon those terms; that he did not forget what he had promised, nor what I had done in his plantation; and that he was resolved in the first place to give me my liberty. So he pulls out a piece of paper, and throws it to me: “There,” says he, “there’s a certificate of your coming on shore, and being sold to me for five years, of which you have lived three with me; and now you are your own master.” I bowed, and told him that I was sure, if I was my own master, I would be his servant as long as he would accept of my service. And now we strained courtesies, and he told me I should be his servant still; but it should be on two conditions: first, that he would give me £30 a year and my board for my managing the plantation I was then employed in; and, secondly, that at the same time he would procure me a new plantation to begin upon my own account, “For, Colonel Jacque,” says he, smiling, “though you are but a young man, yet ’tis time you were doing something for yourself.”
I answered that I could do little at a plantation for myself, unless I neglected his business, which I was resolved not to do on any terms whatever, but that I would serve him faithfully, if he would accept of me, as long as he lived. “So you shall,” says he again, “and serve yourself too.” And thus we parted for that time.
Here I am to observe in the general, to avoid dwelling too long upon a story, that as the two negroes who I delivered from punishment were ever after the most diligent and laborious poor fellows in the whole plantation as above, except Mouchat, of whom I shall speak more by-and-by, so they not only were grateful themselves for their good usage, but they influenced the whole plantation; so that the gentle usage and lenity with which they had been treated had a thousand times more influence upon them to make them diligent than all the blows and kicks, whippings, and other tortures could have which they had been used to. And now the plantation was famous for it; so that several other planters began to do the same, though I cannot say it was with the same success, which might be for want of taking pains with them and working upon their passions in a right manner. It appeared that negroes were to be reasoned into things as well as other people, and it was by thus managing their reason that most of the work was done.
However, as it was, the plantations in Maryland were the better for this undertaking, and they are to this day less cruel and barbarous to their negroes than they are in Barbados and Jamaica; and ’tis observed the negroes are not in these colonies so desperate, neither do they so often run away or so often plot mischief against their master, as they do in those.
I have dwelt the longer upon it that, if possible, posterity might be persuaded to try gentler methods with those miserable creatures, and to use them with humanity; assuring them that if they did so, adding the common prudence that every particular case would direct them to for itself, the negroes would do their work faithfully and cheerfully; they would not find any of that refractoriness and sullenness in their temper that they pretend now to complain of, but they would be the same as their Christian servants, except that they would be the more thankful, and humble, and laborious of the two.
I continued in this station between five and six years after this, and in all that time we had not one negro whipped, except, as I observed before, now and then an unlucky boy, and that only for trifles. I cannot say but we had some ill-natured, ungovernable negroes; but if at any time such offended, they were pardoned the first time, in the manner as above, and the second time were ordered to be turned out of the plantation. And this was remarkable, that they would torment themselves at the apprehension of being turned away, more by a great deal than if they had been to be whipped, for then they were only sullen and heavy. Nay, at length we found the fear of being turned out of the plantation had as much effect to reform them—that is to say, make them more diligent—than any torture would have done; and the reason was evident, namely, because in our plantation they were used like men, in the other like dogs.
My master owned the satisfaction he took in this blessed change, as he called it, as long as he lived; and as he was so engaged by seeing the negroes grateful, he showed the same principle of gratitude to those that served him as he looked for in those that he served, and particularly to me; and so I come briefly to that part. The first thing he did after giving me my liberty as above, and making me an allowance, was to get the country bounty to me—that is to say, a quantity of land to begin and plant for myself.
But this he managed a way by himself, and, as I found afterwards, took up, that is, purchased in my name, about three hundred acres of land, in a more convenient place than it would have otherwise been allotted me; and this he did by his interest with the lord proprietor; so that I had an extent of ground marked out to me, not next but very near one of his own plantations. When I made my acknowledgment for this to him, he told me plainly that I was not beholden to him for it all; for he did it that I might not be obliged to neglect his business for the carrying on my own, and on that account he would not reckon to me what money he paid, which, however, according to the custom of the country, was not a very great sum—I think about £40 or £50.
Thus he very generously gave me my liberty, advanced this money for me, put me into a plantation for myself, and gave me £30 a year wages for looking after one of his own plantations.
“But, Colonel,” says he to me, “giving you this plantation is nothing at all to you if I do not assist you to support it and to carry it on, and therefore I will give you credit for whatever is needful to you for the carrying it on; such as tools, provisions for servants, and some servants to begin; materials to build outhouses, and conveniences of all sorts for the plantation, and to buy hogs, cows, horses for stock, and the like; and I’ll take it out of your cargo, which will come from London, for the money of your bill.”
This was highly obliging and very kind, and the more so, as it afterwards appeared. In order to this he sent two servants of his own who were carpenters. As for timber, boards, planks, and all sorts of such things, in a country almost all made of wood they could not be wanting. These run me up a little wooden house in less than three weeks’ time, where I had three rooms, a kitchen, an outhouse, and two large sheds at a distance from the house for store houses, almost like barns, with stables at the end of them; and thus I was set up in the world, and, in short, removed by the degrees that you have heard from a pickpocket to a kidnapped, miserable slave in Virginia (for Maryland is Virginia, speaking of them at a distance); then from a slave to a head-officer or overseer of slaves, and from thence to a master-planter.
I had now, as above, a house, a stable, two warehouses, and three hundred acres of land; but, as we say, bare walls make giddy hussies, so I had neither axe nor hatchet to cut down the trees; horse, nor hog, nor cow to put upon the land; not a hoe or a spade to break ground, nor a pair of hands but my own to go to work upon.
But Heaven and kind masters make up all those things to a diligent servant; and I mention it because people who are either transported or otherwise trepanned into those places are generally thought to be rendered miserable and undone; whereas, on the contrary, I would encourage them, upon my own experience, to depend upon it, that if their own diligence in the time of service gains them but a good character, which it will certainly do if they can deserve it, there is not the poorest and most despicable felon that ever went over but may, after his time is served, begin for himself, and may in time be sure of raising a good plantation.
For example, I will now take a man in the meanest circumstances of a servant, who has served out his five or seven years; suppose a transported wretch for seven years. The custom of the place was then—what it is since I know not—that on his master’s certifying that he had served his time out faithfully, he had fifty acres of land allotted him for planting, and on this plan he begins.
Some had a horse, a cow, and three hogs given, or rather lent, them, as a stock for the land, which they made an allowance for at a certain time and rate.
Custom has made it a trade to give credit to such beginners as these for tools, clothes, nails, ironwork, and other things necessary for their planting, and which the persons so giving credit to them are to be paid for out of the crop of tobacco which they shall plant. Nor is it in the debtor’s power to defraud the creditor of payment in that manner; and as tobacco is their coin as well as their product, so all things are to be purchased at a certain quantity of tobacco, the price being so rated.
Thus the naked planter has credit at his beginning, and immediately goes to work to cure the land and plant tobacco; and from this little beginning have some of the most considerable planters in Virginia, and in Maryland also, raised themselves—namely, from being without a hat or a shoe to estates of £40,000 or £50,000; and in this method, I may add, no diligent man ever miscarried, if he had health to work and was a good husband; for he every year increases a little, and every year adding more land and planting more tobacco, which is real money, he must gradually increase in substance, till at length he gets enough to buy negroes and other servants, and then never works himself any more.
In a word, every Newgate wretch, every desperate forlorn creature, the most despicable ruined man in the world, has here a fair opportunity put into his hands to begin the world again, and that upon a foot of certain gain and in a method exactly honest, with a reputation that nothing past will have any effect upon; and innumerable people have raised themselves from the worst circumstances in the world—namely, from the cells in Newgate.
But I return to my own story. I was now a planter, and encouraged by a kind benefactor; for, that I might not be wholly taken up with my new plantation, he gave me freely, and without any consideration, my grateful negro, Mouchat. He told me it was a debt due to the affection that poor creature had always had for me; and so indeed it was, for as the fellow would once have been hanged for me, so now, and to his last, he loved me so much that it was apparent he did everything with pleasure that he did for me; and he was so overcome of joy when he heard that he was to be my negro that the people in the plantation really thought it would turn his head, and that the fellow would go distracted.
Besides this, he sent me two servants more, a man and a woman, but these he put to my account, as above. Mouchat and these two fell immediately to work for me, and they began with about two acres of land which had but little timber on it at first, and most of that was cut down by the two carpenters who built my house, or shed rather, for so it should be called.
These two acres I got in good forwardness, and most of it well planted with tobacco; though some of it we were obliged to plant with garden-stuff for food, such as potatoes, carrots, cabbages, peas, beans, &c.
It was a great advantage to me that I had so bountiful a master, who helped me out in every case; for in this very first year I received a terrible blow. For my bill, as I have observed, having been copied and attested in form, and sent to London, my kind friend and custom-house gentleman paid me the money, and the merchant at London, by my good master’s direction, had laid it all out in a sorted cargo of goods for me, such as would have made a man of me all at once; but, to my inexpressible terror and surprise, the ship was lost, and that just at the entrance into the capes; that is to say, the mouth of the bay. Some of the goods were recovered, but spoiled; and, in short, nothing but the nails, tools, and ironwork were good for anything; and though the value of them was pretty considerable in proportion to the rest, yet my loss was irreparably great, and indeed the greatness of the loss to me consisted in its being irreparable.
I was perfectly astonished at the first news of the loss, knowing that I was in debt to my patron, or master, so much that it must be several years before I should recover it; and as he brought me the bad news himself, he perceived my disorder; that is to say, he saw I was in the utmost confusion and a kind of amazement; and so indeed I was, because I was so much in debt. But he spoke cheerfully to me. “Come,” says he, “do not be so discouraged; you may make up this loss.” “No, sir,” says I; “that never can be, for it is my all, and I shall never be out of debt.” “Well, but,” says he, “you have no creditor, however, but me; and now I remember I once told you I would make a man of you, and I will not disappoint you for this disaster.”
I thanked him, and did it with more ceremony and respect than ever, because I thought myself more under the hatches than I was before. But he was as good as his word, for he did not baulk me in the least of anything I wanted; and as I had more ironwork saved out of the ship, in proportion, than I wanted, I supplied him with some part of it, and took up some linen and clothes and other necessaries from him in exchange.
And now I began to increase visibly. I had a large quantity of land cured—that is, freed from timber—and a very good crop of tobacco in view. And I got three servants more and one negro, so that I had five white servants and two negroes, and with this my affairs went very well on.
The first year, indeed, I took my wages, or salary—that is to say, £30 a year—because I wanted it very much; but the second and third year I resolved not to take it on any account whatsoever, but to leave it in my benefactor’s hands to clear off the debt I had contracted.
And now I must impose a short digression on the reader, to note that notwithstanding all the disadvantages of a most wretched education, yet now, when I began to feel myself, as I may say, in the world, and to be arrived to an independent state, and to foresee that I might be something considerable in time; I say, now I found different sentiments of things taking place in my mind. And, first, I had a solid principle of justice and honesty, and a secret horror at things past, when I looked back upon my former life. That original something—I knew not what—that used formerly to check me in the first meannesses of my youth, and used to dictate to me when I was but a child that I was to be a gentleman, continued to operate upon me now in a manner I cannot describe; and I continually remembered the words of the ancient glassmaker to the gentleman that he reproved for swearing, that to be a gentleman was to be an honest man; that without honesty human nature was sunk and degenerated; the gentleman lost all the dignity of his birth, and placed himself even below an honest beggar. These principles, growing upon my mind in the present circumstances I was in, gave me a secret satisfaction that I can give no description of. It was an inexpressible joy to me that I was now like to be, not only a man, but an honest man; and it yielded me a greater pleasure that I was ransomed from being a vagabond, a thief, and a criminal, as I had been from a child, than that I was delivered from slavery and the wretched state of a Virginia sold servant. I had notion enough in my mind of the hardships of the servant, or slave, because I had felt it and worked through it; I remembered it as a state of labour and servitude, hardship and suffering. But the other shocked my very nature, chilled my blood, and turned the very soul within me; the thought of it was like reflections upon hell and the damned spirits; it struck me with horror, it was odious and frightful to look back on, and it gave me a kind of a fit, a convulsion or nervous disorder, that was very uneasy to me.
But to look forward, to reflect how things were changed, how happy I was that I could live by my own endeavours, and was no more under the necessity of being a villain, and of getting my bread at my own hazard and the ruin of honest families—this had in it something more than commonly pleasing and agreeable, and, in particular, it had a pleasure that till then I had known nothing of. It was a sad thing to be under a necessity of doing evil to procure that subsistence which I could not support the want of, to be obliged to run the venture of the gallows rather than the venture of starving, and to be always wicked for fear of want.
I cannot say that I had any serious religious reflections, or that these things proceeded yet from the uneasiness of conscience, but from mere reasonings with myself, and from being arrived to a capacity of making a right judgment of things more than before. Yet I own I had such an abhorrence of the wicked life I had led that I was secretly easy, and had a kind of pleasure in the disaster that was upon me about the ship, and that, though it was a loss, I could not but be glad that those ill-gotten goods was gone, and that I had lost what I had stolen. For I looked on it as none of mine, and that it would be fire in my flax if I should mingle it with what I had now, which was come honestly by, and was, as it were, sent from heaven to lay the foundation of my prosperity, which the other would be only as a moth to consume.
At the same time my thoughts dictated to me, that though this was the foundation of my new life, yet that this was not the superstructure, and that I might still be born for greater things than these; that it was honesty and virtue alone that made men rich and great, and gave them a fame as well as a figure in the world, and that therefore I was to lay my foundation in these, and expect what might follow in time.
To help these thoughts, as I had learned to read and write when I was in Scotland, so I began now to love books, and particularly I had an opportunity of reading some very considerable ones, such as Livy’s Roman History, the history of the Turks, the English History of Speed, and others; the history of the Low Country wars, the history of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, and the history of the Spaniards’ conquest of Mexico, with several others, some of which I bought at a planter’s house who was lately dead and his goods sold, and others I had borrowed.
I considered my present state of life to be my mere youth, though I was now above thirty years old, because in my youth I had learned nothing; and if my daily business, which was now great, would have permitted, I would have been content to have gone to school. However, fate, that had yet something else in store for me, threw an opportunity into my hand; namely, a clever fellow that came over a transported felon from Bristol, and fell into my hands for a servant. He had led a loose life; that he acknowledged; and being driven to extremities, took to the highway, for which, had he been taken, he would have been hanged. But falling into some low-prized rogueries afterwards, for want of opportunity for worse, was catched, condemned, and transported, and, as he said, was glad he came off so.
He was an excellent scholar, and I, perceiving it, asked him one time if he could give a method how I might learn the Latin tongue. He said, smiling, Yes; he could teach it me in three months, if I would let him have books, or even without books, if he had time. I told him a book would become his hands better than a hoe; and if he could promise to make me but understand Latin enough to read it, and understand other languages by it, I would ease him of the labour which I was now obliged to put him to, especially if I was assured that he was fit to receive that favour of a kind master. In short, I made him to me what my benefactor made me to him, and from him I gained a fund of knowledge infinitely more valuable than the rate of a slave, which was what I had paid for it; but of this hereafter.
With these thoughts I went cheerfully about my work. As I had now five servants, my plantation went on, though gently, yet safely, and increased gradually, though slowly. But the third year, with the assistance of my old benefactor, I purchased two negroes more, so that now I had seven servants; and having cured land sufficient for supply of their food, I was at no difficulty to maintain them; so that my plantation began now to enlarge itself, and as I lived without any personal expense, but was maintained at my old great master’s, as we called him, and at his charge, with £30 a year besides, so all my gains was laid up for increase.
In this posture I went on for twelve years, and was very successful in my plantation, and had gotten, by means of my master’s favour, who now I called my friend, a correspondent in London, with whom I traded, shipped over my tobacco to him, and received European goods in return, such as I wanted to carry on my plantation, and sufficient to sell to others also.
In this interval my good friend and benefactor died, and I was left very disconsolate on account of my loss; for it was indeed a great loss to me. He had been a father to me, and I was like a forsaken stranger without him, though I knew the country, and the trade too, well enough, and had for some time chiefly carried on his whole business for him. Yet I seemed now at a loss; my counsellor and my chief supporter was gone, and I had no confidant to communicate myself to, on all occasions, as formerly; but there was no remedy. I was, however, in a better condition to stand alone than ever. I had a very large plantation, and had near seventy negroes and other servants. In a word, I was grown really rich, considering my first circumstances, that began as I may say with nothing; that is to say, I had nothing of stock, but I had a great beginning, for I had such a man’s friendship and support in my beginning, that indeed I needed no other stock; and if I had had £500 to have begun with, and not the assistance, advice, and countenance of such a man, I had not been in a better condition. But he promised to make a man of me; and so he did, and in one respect I may say I have merited it of him, for I brought his plantation into such order, and the government of his negroes into such a regulation, that if he had given £500 to have had it done, he would have thought his money well bestowed. His work was always in order, going forward to his mind; every thing was in a thriving posture; his servants all loved him, even negroes and all, and yet there was no such thing as a cruel punishment or severities known among them.
In my own plantation it was the same thing. I wrought so upon the reason and the affections of my negroes that they served me cheerfully, and, by consequence, faithfully and diligently; when in my neighbour’s plantation there was not a week hardly passed without such horrible outcries, roarings and yellings of the servants, either under torture or in fear of it, that their negroes would, in discourse with ours, wish themselves dead and gone, as it seems they believed they should after death, into their own country.
If I met with a sullen, stupid fellow, as sometimes it was unavoidable, I always parted with him and sold him off; for I would not keep any that sense of kind usage would not oblige. But I seldom met with such bad ones; for, by talking to them in a plain reasoning way, I found the temper of the roughest of them would break and soften. The sense of their own interest would prevail with them at first or last; and if it had not, the contrary temper was so general among my people that their own fellows and countrymen would be against them, and that served to bring them to reason as soon as any other thing. And this those who think it worth their while will easily find, viz., that having prevailed effectually over one leading man among them to be tractable, and pleased, and grateful, he shall make them all like him, and that in a little while, with more ease than can be imagined.
I was now a planter, and also a student. My pedagogue I mentioned above was very diligent, and proved an extraordinary man indeed. He taught me not only with application, but with admirable judgment in the teaching part; for I have seen it in many instances since that time that every good scholar is not fitted for a schoolmaster, and that the art of teaching is quite different from that of knowing the language taught.
But this man had both, and proved of great use to me, and I found reason, in the worth of the person, to be very kind to him, his circumstances considered. I once took the liberty to ask him how it came to pass that he, who must have had a liberal education and great advantages to have advanced him in the world, should be capable of falling into such miserable circumstances as he was in when he came over. I used some caution in entering upon an inquiry which, as I said, might not be pleasant to him to relate, but that I would make him amends by telling him, that if he desired not to enter into it with me, I would readily excuse him, and would not take it ill at all. This I did because to a man under such afflictions one should always be tender, and not put them upon relating anything of themselves which was grievous to them or which they had rather was concealed.
But he told me that it was true, that to look back upon his past life was indeed renovare dolorem; but that such mortifications were now useful to him, to help forward that repentance which he hoped he was sincerely entered upon; and that though it was with horror he looked back upon misspent time and ill-applied gifts which a bountiful Creator had blessed him with, and spared to him for a better improvement, yet he thought he ought to load himself with as much of the shame as it pleased God to make his lot, since he had already loaded himself with the guilt in a shameless manner, till God, he still hoped in mercy to him, had cut him short and brought him to public disgrace; though he could not say he had been brought to justice, for then he had been sent into eternity in despair, and not been sent to Virginia to repent of the wickedest life that ever man lived. He would have gone on, but I found his speech interrupted by a passionate struggle within, between his grief and his tears.
I took no more notice of it than to tell him that I was sorry I had asked him about it, but that it was my curiosity. When I saw that ignorant, untaught, untractable creatures come into misery and shame, I made no inquiry after their affairs; but when I saw men of parts and learning take such steps, I concluded it must be occasioned by something exceeding wicked. “So, indeed,” said he, “the judge said to me when I begged mercy of him in Latin. He told me that when a man with such learning falls into such crimes he is more inexcusable than other men, because, his learning recommending him, he could not want advantages and had the less temptation to crimes.”
“But, sir,” said he, “I believe my case was what I find is the case of most of the wicked part of the world, viz., that to be reduced to necessity is to be wicked; for necessity is not only the temptation, but is such a temptation as human nature is not empowered to resist. How good, then,” says he, “is that God which takes from you, sir, the temptation, by taking away the necessity!”
I was so sensible of the truth of what he said, knowing it by my own case, that I could not enter any further upon the discourse; but he went on voluntarily. “This, sir,” says he, “I am so sensible of that I think the case I am reduced to much less miserable than the life which I lived before, because I am delivered from the horrid necessity of doing such ill things which was my ruin and disaster then, even for my bread, and am not now obliged to ravish my bread out of the mouths of others by violence and disorder, but am fed, though I am made to earn it by the hard labour of my hands, and I thank God for the difference.” He paused here, but went on thus:—
“How much is the life of a slave in Virginia to be preferred to that of the most prosperous thief in the world! Here I live miserable, but honest; suffer wrong, but do no wrong; my body is punished, but my conscience is not loaded; and as I used to say that I had no leisure to look in, but I would begin when I had some recess, some time to spare, now God has found me leisure to repent.” He run on in this manner a great while, giving thanks, I believe most heartily, for his being delivered from the wretched life he had lived, though his misery were to be tenfold as much as it was.
I was sincerely touched with his discourse on this subject. I had known so much of the real difference of the case that I could not but be affected with it, though till now, I confess, I knew little of the religious part. I had been an offender as well as he, though not altogether in the same degree, but I knew nothing of the penitence; neither had I looked back upon anything as a crime, but as a life dishonourable and not like a gentleman, which run much in my thoughts, as I have several times mentioned.
“Well, but now,” says I, “you talk penitently, and I hope you are sincere; but what would be your case if you were delivered from the miserable condition of a slave sold for money, which you are now in? Should you not, think you, be the same man?”
“Blessed be God,” says he, “that, if I thought I should, I would sincerely pray that I might not be delivered, and that I might for ever be a slave rather than a sinner.”
“Well, but,” says I, “suppose you to be under the same necessity, in the same starving condition, should you not take the same course?”
He replied very sharply, “That shows us the need we have of the petition in the Lord’s prayer, ‘Lead us not into temptation;’ and of Solomon’s or Agar’s prayer, ‘Give me not poverty, lest I steal.’ I should ever beg of God not to be left to such snares as human nature cannot resist. But I have some hope, that I should venture to starve rather than to steal; but I also beg to be delivered from the danger, because I know not my own strength.”
This was honestly spoken, indeed; and there really were such visible tokens of sincerity in all his discourse that I could not suspect him. On some of our discourses on this subject, he pulled out a little dirty paper-book, in which he had wrote down such a prayer in verse as I doubt few Christians in the world could subscribe to; and I cannot but record it, because I never saw anything like it in my life. The lines are as follow:—
“Lord! whatsoever sorrows rack my breast,
Till crime removes too, let me find no rest;
How dark soe’er my state or sharp my pain,
Oh! let not troubles cease and sin remain.
For Jesus’ sake remove not my distress,
Till free triumphant grace shall repossess
The vacant throne from whence my sins depart,
And make a willing captive of my heart;
Till grace completely shall my soul subdue,
Thy conquest full and my subjection true.”
There were more lines on the same subject, but these were the beginning; and these touching me so sensibly, I have remembered them distinctly ever since, and have, I believe, repeated them to myself a thousand times.
I pressed him no more, you may be sure, after an answer so very particular and affecting as this was. It was easy to see the man was a sincere penitent, not sorrowing for the punishment he was suffering under; for his condition was no part of his affliction; he was rather thankful for it, as above; but his concern was a feeling and affecting sense of the wicked and abominable life he had led, the abhorred crimes he had committed both against God and man, and the little sense he had had of the condition he was in, and that even till he came to the place where he now was.
I asked him if he had no reflections of this kind after or before his sentence. He told me Newgate (for the prison at Bristol is called so, it seems, as well as that at London) was a place that seldom made penitents, but often made villains worse, till they learnt to defy God and devil; but that, however, he could look back with this satisfaction, that he could say he was not altogether insensible of it even then; but nothing that amounted to a thorough serious looking up to heaven; that he often indeed looked in, and reflected upon his past misspent life, even before he was in prison, when the intervals of his wicked practices gave some time for reflection, and he would sometimes say to himself, “Whither am I going? to what will all these things bring me at last? and where will they end? Sin and shame follow one another, and I shall certainly come to the gallows. Then,” said he, “I would strike upon my breast, and say, ‘O wicked wretch! when will you repent?’ and would answer myself as often, ‘Never! never! never! except it be in a gaol or at a gibbet.’
“Then,” said he, “I would weep and sigh, and look back a little upon my wretched life, the history of which would make the world amazed; but, alas! the prospect was so dark, and it filled me with so much terror, that I could not bear it. Then I would fly to wine and company for relief; that wine brought on excess, and that company, being always wicked company like yourself, brought on temptation, and then all reflection vanished and I was the same devil as before.”
He spoke this with so much affection that his face was ever smiling when he talked of it, and yet his eyes had tears standing in them at the same time, and all the time; for he had a delightful sorrow, if that be a proper expression, in speaking of it.
This was a strange relation to me, and began to affect me after a manner that I did not understand. I loved to hear him talk of it, and yet it always left a kind of a dead lump behind it upon my heart, which I could give no reason for, nor imagine to what it should tend; I had a heaviness on my soul, without being able to describe it or to say what ailed me.
Well, he went on with his relation. “After this,” says he, “I fell into the hands of a justice for a trifle, a piece of sport in our crime; and I, that for a hundred robberies, as well on the highway as otherwise, the particulars of which would fill a book to give an account of, ought, whenever I was taken, to be hanged in chains, and who, if it had been public, could not have failed of having twenty people come in against me, was privately hurried into a country gaol under a wrong name; tried for a small fact, within benefit of clergy, and in which I was not principally guilty, and by this means obtained the favour of being transported.
“And what think you,” said he, “has most sensibly affected me, and brought on the blessed change that, I hope I may say, God has wrought in my soul? Not the greatness of my crimes, but the wonders of that merciful Providence, which, when it has mercy in store for a man, often brings him into the briers, into sorrow and misery for lesser sins, that men may be led to see how they are spared from the punishment due to them for the greater guilt which they know lies upon them. Do you think that when I received the grant of transportation I could be insensible what a miracle of divine goodness such a thing must be to one who had so many ways deserved to be hanged, and must infallibly have died if my true name had been known, or if the least notice had been given that it was such a notorious wretch as I that was in custody? There began the first motive of repentance; for certainly the goodness of our great Creator in sparing us, when we forfeit our lives to His justice, and His merciful bringing us out of the miseries which we plunge ourselves into, when we have no way to extricate ourselves; His bringing those very miseries to be the means of our deliverance, and working good to us out of evil, when we are working the very evil out of His good; I say, these things are certainly the strongest motives to repentance that are in the world, and the sparing thieves from the gallows certainly makes more penitents than the gallows itself.
“It is true,” continued he, “that the terror of punishment works strongly upon the mind; in view of death men are filled with horror of soul, and immediately they call that repentance which I doubt is too often mistaken, being only a kind of anguish in the soul, which breeds a grief for the punishment that is to be suffered—an amazement founded upon the dreadful view of what is to follow. But the sense of mercy is quite another thing; this seizes all the passions and all the affections, and works a sincere, unfeigned abhorrence of the crime, as a crime, as an offence against our Benefactor, as an act of baseness and ingratitude to Him who has given us life and all the blessings and comforts of life, and who has conquered us by continuing to do us good, when He has been provoked to destroy us.
“This, sir,” says he, “has been the fountain of that repentance which I so much rejoice in; this is the delightful sorrow,” says he, “that I spoke of just now; and this makes smiles sit on my face while tears run from my eyes, a joy that I can no otherwise express than by telling you, sir, that I never lived a happy day since I came to an age of acting in the world till I landed in this country, and worked in your plantation, naked and hungry, weary and faint, oppressed with cold in one season, and heat in the other. Then I began to see into my own ways, and see the difference between the hardships of the body and the torment of the mind. Before I revelled in fulness, and here I struggled with hard fare; then I wallowed in sloth and voluptuous ease; here I laboured till nature sometimes was just sinking under the load; but with this difference in the felicity of either case, namely, that there I had a hell in my soul, was filled with horror and confusion, was a daily terror to myself, and always expected a miserable end; whereas here I had a blessed calm of soul, an emblem and forerunner of heaven, thankful and humble, adoring that mercy that had snatched me out of the jaws of the devil. These took up my thoughts, and made my most weary hours pleasant to me, my labour light, and my heart cheerful. I never lay down on my hard lodging but I praised God with the greatest excess of affection, not only that it was not the condemned hole, and that I was delivered from the death I had deserved, but that it was not Shooter’s Hill; that I was not still a robber, a terror to just and honest men, a plunderer of the innocent and the poor, a thief, and a villain, that ought to be rooted out from the earth for the safety of others; but that I was delivered from the horrid temptation of sinning to support my luxury, and making one vice necessary to another; and this, I bear witness, is sufficient to sweeten the bitterest sorrow, and make any man be thankful for Virginia, or a worse place, if that can be.”
He then entertained me with an opinion of his, that if it were possible for the face of heaven and hell to be disclosed and laid open, and that men could be made capable of seeing distinctly and separately the joys and glory and utmost felicity of one, and the horrors of the other, and to make a judgment of both according to the power of human reasoning, the first would have a stronger and more powerful effect to reform the world than the latter; but this we had further discourses about on many occasions.
If it should be inquired how I was capable of hearing all this, and having no impressions made upon my mind by it, especially when it so many ways suited my own case, and the condition of the former part of my life, I shall answer that presently by myself. However, I took no notice of it to him, for he had quite other notions of me than I had of myself; nor did I, as is usual in such cases, enter into any confidence with him on my own story, only that I took sometimes the occasion to let him know that I did not come over to Virginia in the capacity of a criminal, or that I was not transported; which, considering how many of the inhabitants there were so who then lived in good circumstances, was needful enough to be done.
But as to myself, it was enough that I was in condition now; ’twas no matter to anybody what I had been; and as it was grown pretty much out of memory from what original disaster I came into the country, or that I was ever a servant otherwise than voluntary, and that it was no business of mine to expose myself, so I kept that part close. But for all that, it was impossible for me to conceal the disorder I was in as often as he talked of these things. I had hitherto gone on upon a notion of things founded only in their appearance, as they affected me with good or evil, esteeming the happy and unhappy part of life to be those that gave me ease or sorrow, without regarding, or indeed much understanding, how far those turns of life were influenced by the Giver of Life, or how far they were all directed by a sovereign God that governs the world, and all the creatures he had made.
As I had no education but as you have heard, so I had had no instruction, no knowledge of religion, or indeed of the meaning of it; and though I was now in a kind of search after religion, it was a mere looking, as it were, into the world to see what kind of a thing or place it was, and what had been done in it. But as to Him that made it, there had truly been scarce a creature among all that He had made, with souls in them, that were so entirely without the knowledge of God as I was, and made so little inquiry about it.
But the serious, affectionate discourse of this young man began to have different effects upon me, and I began to say to myself, “This man’s reflections are certainly very just; but what a creature am I, and what have I been doing!—I that never once did this in all my life; that never said so much—’God, I thank Thee for all that I have been saved from, or all that I have been brought to in this world;’ and yet my life has been as full of variety, and I have been as miraculously delivered from dangers and mischiefs, and as many of them, as ever he has. And if it has all been brought to pass by an invisible hand in mercy to me, what have I been doing, and where have I lived, that I only should be the most thoughtless and unthankful of all God’s creatures?”
This, indeed, began to grow upon me, and made me very melancholy; but as to religion, I understood so little about it that if I had resolved upon any such thing as a new course of life, or to set about a religious change, I knew not at which end to begin or what to do about it.
One day it happened that my tutor—for so I always called him—had the Bible in his hand, and was looking in it, as he generally did many times every day, though I knew not for what. Seeing the Bible, I took it out of his hands, and went to look in it, which I had done so little before that I think I might safely say I had never read a chapter in it in all my life. He was talking of the Bible then as a book only, and where he had it, and how he brought it to Virginia, and in some ecstasy he took and kissed it. “This blessed book!” says he; “this was all the treasure I brought out from England with me. And a comfortable treasure it has been to me,” added he; “I would not have been without it in my sorrows for any other treasure in the world;” and so he went on at large.
I, that had no notion of what he meant—only, as I have said above, some young infant thoughts about the works of Providence in the world and its merciful dealings with me—took the book out of his hand and went to look in it; and the book opened at the Acts xxvi. 28, where Felix says to St. Paul, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” “I think,” says I, “here’s a line hits me to a tittle, upon the long account you have given of yourself, and I must say them to you, as the governor here said;” and so I read the words to him. He blushed at the text, and returns, “I wish I could answer you in the very words the Apostle returned to him in the next verse: ‘I would thou wert both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.’”
I was now more than thirty years old by my own account, and as well as it was possible for me to keep a reckoning of my age, who had nobody left that ever knew my beginning; I was, I say, above thirty years old, and had gone through some variety in the world. But as I was perfectly abandoned in my infancy, and utterly without instruction in my youth, so I was entirely ignorant of everything that was worthy the name of religion in the world; and this was the first time that ever any notion of religious things entered into my heart. I was surprised at this man’s talk, and that several ways particularly he talked so feelingly of his past circumstances, and they were so like my own, that every time he made a religious inference from his own condition, and argued from one condition of his to another, it struck into my thoughts like a bullet from a gun that I had certainly as much to be thankful for and to repent of as he had, except only that I had no knowledge of better things to be thankful for, which he had. But in return for that, I was delivered and set up in the world, made a master, and easy, and was in good circumstances, being raised from the very same low, distressed condition as he was in—I mean a sold servant—but that he remained so still; so that, if his sin had been greater than mine, so his distress was still greater.
This article of gratitude struck deep and lay heavy upon my mind. I remembered that I was grateful to the last degree to my old master, who had raised me from my low condition, and that I loved the very name of him, or, as might be said, the very ground he trod on; but I had not so much as once thought of any higher obligation; no, nor so much as, like the Pharisee, had said once, “God, I thank thee,” to Him, for all the influence which His providence must have had in my whole affair.
It occurred to me presently that if none of all these things befall us without the direction of a Divine Power, as my new instructor had told me at large, and that God had ordered everything, the most minute and least transaction of life, insomuch that not a hair of our head shall fall to the ground without His permission; I say, it occurred to me that I had been a most unthankful dog to that Providence that had done so much for me; and the consequence of the reflection was immediately this: how justly may that Power, so disobliged, take away again His wool and His flax, with which I am now clothed, and reduce me to the misery of my first circumstances.
This perplexed me much, and I was very pensive and sad; in which, however, my new instructor was a constant comforter to me, and I learned every day something or other from him; upon which I told him one morning that I thought be must leave off teaching me Latin, and teach me religion. He spoke with a great deal of modesty of his being incapable of informing me of anything that I did not know, and proposed to me to read the Scriptures every day, as the sure and only fund of instruction. I answered that, in the words of the eunuch to St. Philip when the apostle asked him if he understood what he read: “How can I, unless some one guide me?”
We talked frequently upon this subject, and I found so much reason to believe he was a sincere convert that I can speak of him as no other in all I have to say of him. However, I cannot say my thoughts were yet ripened for an operation of that kind. I had some uneasiness about my past life, and I lived now, and had done so before I knew him, a very regular, sober life, always taken up in my business and running into no excesses. But as to commencing penitent, as this man had done, I cannot say I had any convictions upon me sufficient to bring it on, nor had I a fund of religious knowledge to support me in it. So it wore off again gradually, as such things generally do where the first impressions are not deep enough.
In the meantime, as he read over long lectures of his own disasters to me, and applied them all seriously to me, so our discourse was always very solid and weighty, and we had nothing of levity between us, even when we were not concerned in religious discourses. He read history to me; and, where books were wanting, he gave me ideas of those things which had not been recorded by our modern histories, or at least that our number of books would not reach. By these things he raised an unquenchable thirst in me, after seeing something that was doing in the world; and the more because all the world was at that time engaged, more or less, in the great war wherein the French king might be said to be engaged with and against all the powers of Europe.
Now, I looked upon myself as one buried alive in a remote part of the world, where I could see nothing at all, and hear but a little of what was seen, and that little not till at least half a year after it was done, and sometimes a year or more; and, in a word, the old reproach often came in the way—namely, that even this was not yet the life of a gentleman.
It was true that this was much nearer to it than that of a pickpocket, and still nearer than that of a sold slave; but, in short, this would not do, and I could receive no satisfaction in it. I had now a second plantation, a very considerable one, and it went forward very well. I had on it almost a hundred servants already of sundry sorts, and an overseer that I had a great deal of reason to say I might depend upon, and but that I had a third in embryo, and newly begun, I had nothing to hinder me from going where I pleased.
However, I now began to frame my thoughts for a voyage to England, resolving then to act as I should see cause, but with a secret resolution to see more of the world if possible, and realise those things to my mind which I had hitherto only entertained remote ideas of by the help of books.
Accordingly I pushed forward the settlement of my third plantation, in order to bring it to be in a posture either to be let to a tenant or left in trust with an overseer, as I should find occasion.
Had I resolved to leave it to an overseer or steward, no man in the world could have been fit for it like my tutor; but I could not think of parting with him, who was the cause of my desire of travelling, and who I concluded to make my partner in my travels.
END OF VOL. I.
THE LIFE OF COLONEL JACQUE.
It was three years after this before I could get things in order, fit for my leaving the country. In this time I delivered my tutor from his bondage, and would have given him his liberty, but, to my great disappointment, I found that I could not empower him to go for England till his time was expired, according to the certificate of his transportation, which was registered; so I made him one of my overseers, and thereby raised him gradually to a prospect of living in the same manner and by the like steps that my good benefactor raised me, only that I did not assist him to enter upon planting for himself as I was assisted, neither was I upon the spot to do it. But this man’s diligence and honest application, even unassisted, delivered himself, [though not] any farther than, as I say, by making him an overseer, which was only a present ease and deliverance to him from the hard labour and fare which he endured as a servant.
However, in this trust he behaved so faithfully and so diligently that it recommended him in the country; and when I came back I found him in circumstances very different from what I left him in, besides his being my principal manager for near twenty years, as you shall hear in its place.
I mention these things the more at large that, if any unhappy wretch who may have the disaster to fall into such circumstances as these may come to see this account, they may learn the following short lessons from these examples:—
I. That Virginia and a state of transportation may be the happiest place and condition they were ever in for this life, as, by a sincere repentance and a diligent application to the business they are put to, they are effectually delivered from a life of flagrant wickedness and put in a perfect new condition, in which they have no temptation to the crimes they formerly committed, and have a prospect of advantage for the future.
II. That in Virginia the meanest and most despicable creature, after his time of servitude is expired, if he will but apply himself with diligence and industry to the business of the country, is sure (life and health supposed) both of living well and growing rich.
As this is a foundation which the most unfortunate wretch alive is entitled to, a transported felon is, in my opinion, a much happier man than the most prosperous untaken thief in the nation. Nor are those poor young people so much in the wrong as some imagine them to be that go voluntarily over to those countries, and in order to get themselves carried over and placed there, freely bind themselves there, especially if the persons into whose hands they fall do anything honestly by them; for, as it is to be supposed that those poor people knew not what course to take before, or had miscarried in their conduct before, here they are sure to be immediately provided for, and, after the expiration of their time, to be put in a condition to provide for themselves. But I return to my own story, which now begins a new scene.
I was now making provision for my going to England. After having settled my plantation in such hands as was fully to my satisfaction, my first work was to furnish myself with such a stock of goods and money as might be sufficient for my occasions abroad, and particularly might allow me to make large returns to Maryland, for the use and supply of all my plantations. But when I came to look nearer into the voyage, it occurred to me that it would not be prudent to put my cargo all on board the same ship that I went in; so I shipped at several times five hundred hogsheads of tobacco in several ships for England, giving notice to my correspondent in London that I would embark about such a time to come over myself, and ordering him to insure for a considerable sum, proportioned to the value of my cargo.
About two months after this I left the place, and embarked for England in a stout ship, carrying twenty-four guns and about six hundred hogsheads of tobacco, and we left the capes of Virginia on the 1st of August. We had a very sour and rough voyage for the first fortnight, though it was in a season so generally noted for good weather.
After we had been about eleven days at sea, having the wind most part of the time blowing very hard at west, or between the west and north-west, by which we were carried a great way farther to the eastward than they usually go in their course for England, we met with a furious tempest, which held us five days, blowing most of the time excessive hard, and by which we were obliged to run away afore the wind, as the seamen call it, wheresoever it was our lot to go. By this storm our ship was greatly damaged, and some leaks we had, but not so bad that by the diligence of the seamen they were stopped. However, the captain, after having beaten up again as well as he could against the weather, and the sea going very high, at length he resolved to go away for the Bermudas.
I was not seaman enough to understand what the reason of their disputes was, but in their running for the islands it seems they overshot the latitude, and could never reach the islands of Bermudas again. The master and the mate differed to an extremity about this, their reckonings being more than usually wide of one another, the storm having driven them a little out of their knowledge. The master, being a positive man, insulted the mate about it, and threatened to expose him for it when he came to England. The mate was an excellent sea artist and an experienced sailor, but withal a modest man, and though he insisted upon his being right, did it in respectful terms and as it became him. But after several days’ dispute, when the weather came to abate and the heavens to clear up, that they could take their observations and know where they were, it appeared that the mate’s account was right, and the captain was mistaken; for they were then in the latitude of 29 degrees, and quite out of the wake of the Bermudas.
The mate made no indecent use of the discovery at all, and the captain, being convinced, carried it civilly to him, and so the heats were over among them; but the next question was, what they should do next. Some were for going one way, some another; but all agreed that they were not in a condition to go on the direct course for England, unless they could have a southerly or south-west wind, which had not been our fate since we came to sea.
Upon the whole, they resolved by consent to steer away to the Canaries, which was the nearest land they could make except the Cape de Verde Islands, which were too much to the southward for us, if it could be avoided.
Upon this they stood away N.E., and the wind hanging still westerly, or to the northward of the west, we made good way, and in about fifteen days’ sail we made the Pico Teneriffe, being a monstrous hill in one of the Canary Islands. Here we refreshed ourselves, got fresh water and some fresh provisions, and plenty of excellent wine, but no harbour to run into, to take care of the ship, which was leaky and tender, having had so much very bad weather; so we were obliged to do as well as we could, and put to sea again, after riding at the Canaries four days only.
From the Canaries we had tolerable weather and a smooth sea till we came into the soundings—so they call the mouth of the British Channel—and the wind blowing hard at the N. and the N.W. obliged us to keep a larger offing, as the seamen call it, at our entrance into the Channel; when, behold! in the grey of the morning a French cruiser or privateer of twenty-six guns appeared, and crowded after us with all the sail they could make. In short, our captain exchanged a broadside or two with them, which was terrible work to me, for I had never seen such before, the Frenchman’s guns having raked us, and killed and wounded six of our best men.
In short, after a fight long enough to show us that if we would not be taken we must resolve to sink by her side, for there was no room to expect deliverance, and a fight long enough to save the master’s credit, we were taken, and the ship carried away to St. Malo.
I was not much concerned for the loss I had in the ship, because I knew I had sufficient in the world somewhere or other; but as I was effectually stripped of everything I had about me, and even almost my clothes from my back, I was in but a very indifferent condition. But somebody informing the captain of the privateer, that I was a passenger and a merchant, he called for me and inquired into my circumstances, and coming to hear from myself how I had been used, obliged the seamen to give me a coat and hat and a pair of shoes, which they had taken off me, and himself gave me a morning gown of his own to wear while I was in his ship, and, to give him his due, treated me very well.
I had, however, besides my being taken, the mortification to be detained on board the cruiser, and seeing the ship I was in manned with Frenchmen and sent away, as above, for St. Malo; and this was a greater mortification to me afterwards, when, being brought into St. Malo, I heard that our own ship was retaken in her passage to St. Malo by an English man-of-war and carried to Portsmouth.
When our ship was sent away the Rover cruised abroad again in the mouth of the Channel for some time, but met with no purchase. At last they made a sail, which proved to be one of their nation and one of their own trade, from whom they learned, the news having been carried to England that some French privateers lay off and on in the soundings, that three English men-of-war were come out from Plymouth on purpose to cruise in the Channel, and that they would certainly meet with us. Upon this intelligence the Frenchman, a bold, brave fellow, far from shrinking from his work, stands away N.E. for St. George’s Channel, and in the latitude of 48 degrees and a half, unhappily enough, meets with a large and rich English ship, bound home from Jamaica. It was in the grey of the morning, and very clear, when a man on the roundtop cried out, “Au voile, a sail.” I was in hopes indeed it had been the English men-of-war, and by the hurry and clutter they were in to get all ready for a fight, I concluded it was so, and got out of my hammock (for I had no cabin to lie in) that I might see what it was; but I soon found that my hopes were in vain, and it was on the wrong side; for that that being on our larboard bow, the ship lying then northward to make the coast of Ireland, by the time I was turned out I could perceive they had all their sails bent and full, having begun to chase, and making great way. On the other hand, it was evident the ship saw them too, and knew what they were, and, to avoid them, stretched away with all the canvas they could lay on for the coast of Ireland, to run in there for harbour.