away.

This Invasion happening so unexpectedly and our remove so sudden,
I was forced to leave behind me that little Estate which God had
given me, lying scattered abroad in Betel-nuts, the great Commodity
of that Countrey, which I was then parting from: and much ado I had
to get my Cloths brought along with me, the Enemies, as they called
them, but my Friends being so near. And thus was I carried out of
this Countrey as poor as I came into it, leaving all the fruits of
my Labour and Industry behind me. Which called to my remembrance the
words of Job. Naked came I into this world, and naked shall I return:
God gave and God hath taken away, blessed be the Name of the Lord.

[Settled in a dismal place.] We all four were brought up together
into a Town on the top of a Mountain called Laggendenny. Where I and
my dear Friend and fellow Prisoner, and fellow Batchelor Mr. John
Loveland lived together in one House. For by this time not many of our
People were as we, that is, single men; but seeing so little hopes,
despaired of their Liberty, and had taken Wives or Bedfellows.

At our first coming into this Town, we were very much dismayed,
it being, one of the most dismal places that I have seen upon that
Land. It stands alone upon the top of a Mountain, and no other Town
near it, and not above four or five Houses in it. And oftentimes
into this Town did the King use to send such Malefactors as he was
minded suddenly to cut off. Upon these accounts our being brought to
this place could not but scare us, and the more, because it was the
King's special Order and Command to place us in this very Town.

[A comfortable Message from the King concerning us.] But this our
trouble and dejection (thanks be to God) lasted but a day. For the
King seemed to apprehend into what a fit of Fear and Sorrow this our
Remove would cast us, and to be sensible, how sadly we must needs take
it to change a sweet and pleasant Countrey, such as Handapondown and
the Countrey adjacent was, for this most sad and dismal Mountain. And
therefore the next day came a comfortable Message from the King's
own mouth, sent by no less Man than he, who had the chief Power
and Command over those People who were appointed to give us our
Victuals, where we were. This Message, which as he said himself,
he was ordered by the King to deliver to the People in our hearing,
was this, That they should not think that we were Malefactors, that
is, such who having incurred the