ey
were willing to work.

The governor, who found that the having women among them would presently
be attended with some inconveniency, and might occasion some strife, and
perhaps blood, asked the three men what they intended to do with these
women, and how they intended to use them, whether as servants or as
women? One of the Englishmen answered very boldly and readily, that they
would use them as both. To which the governor said, "I am not going to
restrain you from it; you are your own masters as to that: but this I
think is but just, for avoiding disorders and quarrels among you, and I
desire it of you for that reason only, viz. that you will all engage,
that if any of you take any of these women as a woman, or wife, he shall
take but one; and that, having taken one, none else should touch her;
for though we cannot marry any of you, yet it is but reasonable that
while you stay here, the woman any of you takes should be maintained by
the man that takes her, and should be his wife; I mean," says he, "while
he continues here; and that none else should have any thing to do with
her." All this appeared so just, that every one agreed to it without any
difficulty.

Then the Englishmen asked the Spaniards if they designed to take any of
them? But every one answered, "No;" some of them said they had wives in
Spain; and the others did not like women that were not Christians; and
all together declared, that they would not touch one of them; which was
an instance of such virtue as I have not met with in all my travels. On
the other hand, to be short, the five Englishmen took them every one a
wife; that is to say, a temporary wife; and so they set up a new form of
living; for the Spaniards and Friday's father lived in my old
habitation, which they had enlarged exceedingly within; the three
servants, which they had taken in the late battle of the savages, lived
with them; and these carried on the main part of the colony, supplying
all the rest with food, and assisting them in any thing as they could,
or as they found necessity required.

But the wonder of this story was, how five such refractory, ill-matched
fellows should agree about these women, and that two of them should not
pitch upon the same woman, especially seeing two or three of them were,
without comparison, more agreeable than the others: but they took a good
way enough to prevent quarrelling among themselves; for they set the
five women by themselves in one of the