ourteen
barrels in a last) of tar, pitch, and soap-ashes, produced some
specimens of glass, dug a well of excellent sweet water in the fort,
which they had wanted for two years, built twenty houses, repaired
the church, planted thirty or forty acres of ground, and erected a
block-house on the neck of the island, where a garrison was stationed
to trade with the savages and permit neither whites nor Indians to pass
except on the President's order. Even the domestic animals partook the
industrious spirit: "of three sowes in eighteen months increased 60 and
od Pigs; and neare 500 chickings brought up themselves without having
any meat given them." The hogs were transferred to Hog Isle, where
another block house was built and garrisoned, and the garrison were
permitted to take "exercise" in cutting down trees and making clapboards
and wainscot. They were building a fort on high ground, intended for
an easily defended retreat, when a woful discovery put an end to their
thriving plans.

Upon examination of the corn stored in casks, it was found half-rotten,
and the rest consumed by rats, which had bred in thousands from the few
which came over in the ships. The colony was now at its wits end, for
there was nothing to eat except the wild products of the country. In
this prospect of famine, the two Indians, Kemps and Tussore, who had
been kept fettered while showing the whites how to plant the fields,
were turned loose; but they were unwilling to depart from such congenial
company. The savages in the neighborhood showed their love by bringing
to camp, for sixteen days, each day at least a hundred squirrels,
turkeys, deer, and other wild beasts. But without corn, the work of
fortifying and building had to be abandoned, and the settlers dispersed
to provide victuals. A party of sixty or eighty men under Ensign Laxon
were sent down the river to live on oysters; some twenty went with
Lieutenant Percy to try fishing at Point Comfort, where for six weeks
not a net was cast, owing to the sickness of Percy, who had been burnt
with gunpowder; and another party, going to the Falls with Master West,
found nothing to eat but a few acorns.

Up to this time the whole colony was fed by the labors of thirty or
forty men: there was more sturgeon than could be devoured by dog and
man; it was dried, pounded, and mixed with caviare, sorrel, and other
herbs, to make bread; bread was also made of the "Tockwhogh" root, and
with the fish and these wi