visions. The latter was given
them, but they could get no information of their companions.

From hence they went to the island of St. Mary, where a canoe came off
to them with a letter directed to any white man. They knew it to be the
hand of one of their former shipmates. The contents of this letter was
to advise them to be on their guard, and not trust too much to the
blacks of this place, they having been formerly treacherous. They
inquired after their ship, and were informed, that the company had given
her to the Moors, who were gone away with her, and that they themselves
were settled at Ambonavoula, about 20 leagues to the southward of St.
Mary, where they lived among the negroes as so many sovereign princes.

One of the blacks, who brought off the letter went on board their boat,
carried them to the place called Olumbah, a point of land made by a
river on one side, and the sea on the other, where twelve of them lived
together in a large house they had built, and fortified with about
twenty pieces of cannon.

The rest of them were settled in small companies of about 12 or 14
together, more or less, up the said river, and along the coast, every
nation by itself, as the English, French, Dutch, &c. They made inquiry
of their consorts after the different prizes which belonged to them, and
they found all very justly laid by to be given them, if ever they
returned, as were what belonged to the men who went over land. Captain
White, hankering after home, proposed going out again in the boat; for
he was adverse to settling with them; and many others agreed to go under
his command; and if they could meet with a ship to carry them to Europe,
to follow their old vocation. But the others did not think it reasonable
he should have the boat, but that it should be set to sale for the
benefit of the company. Accordingly it was set up, and Captain White
bought it for 400 pieces of eight, and with some of his old consorts,
whose number was increased by others of the ship's crew, he went back
the way he had come to Methelage. Here he met with a French ship of
about 50 tons, and 6 guns, which had been taken by some pirates who
lived at Maratan, on the east side of the island, and some of the
Degrave East-Indiaman's crew, to whom the master of her refused a
passage to Europe; for as he had himself been a pirate, and
quarter-master to Bowen, in the Speaker, he apprehended their taking
away his ship. War then existing between England