1694] MIRACULOUS RECOVERY. 161 



for Fishing, and Vessels to catch Eain-Water in, but we 

 were deny'd both one and the other. It was impossible but 

 all this ill Usage, and bad Diet, must alter our Healths, and 

 more particularly mine, for I was then above three and fifty 

 years old. At first I was attacked with a sort of Malady, 

 which we Frenchmen, in that Country, call'd Le Perse} This 

 was a continual flux of Blood, by which I was in a very short 

 time reduc'd to a very lamentable Condition : ]\Iy Distemper 

 encreasing to a dangerous Degree, the Governor was advis'd 

 of it, and desir'd to let me be brought back to his Island : He 

 sent a Surgeon, who after he had visited me, declar'd, I 

 should never recover unless I went a-shoar ; but his Opinion 

 had no better success with the cruel Governor, than my 

 Prayers : for he desir'd nothing more than to see us all 

 Perish.^ He was conjur'd at length to send at least once in 

 fifteen days some fresh Provisions, that I might have some 

 Broth made me, but which was likewise barbarously refus'd ; 

 so that wanting everything that was proper for me, I was at 

 last brought to Death's Door. My Cure was absolutely 

 despair'cl of ; but as there was no Body on that Eock that 



1 Dysentery. M. Le Gentil, ia a letter to M. de la Nux, in 1769, 

 writes : " Le flux de sang, on le connoit a File de France, & je crois qu'il 

 est de tons les pays : il doit etre mis au rang des grands incommodites 

 de I'Inde ; cette maladie est presque ton jours tres-longue, & quelque- 

 fois suivie de la mort." (Vide Voyage dans les Mers de I'Inde, vol. i, 

 pp. 675-676.) 



2 In Mr. Beaulieu's Voyage, we read of the cruelty of the Dutch to 

 their French prisoners : — " For they threw the sick men like so many 

 logs of wood out of the ship into the boat, and some they dragged 

 through the water with a rope fastened about 'em, particularly one 

 who being so dragg'd, expired immediately upon the rocks on the 

 shore"; and the English as well had their share, for when Lantore was 

 sacked by the Dutch in 1620, Mr. Spurway writes : "Our factors there 

 present were stripped, bound, beaten, tumbled over the town-wall, 

 dragged along the street with fetters about their necks, and afterwards 

 laid fast in chains. They were not so kind as to execute them outright, 

 living being then a far greater punishment than dying." (Vide Harris's 

 Voyages, vol. i, pp. 195, 217.) 



M 



