286 Timehri. 
latter’s project for colonizing Guiana, where he spent some months in 1609, 
trying to found a plantation on the River Wiapoco, or Oyapok, in the region 
now forming part of French Guiana. On his return from Guiana, Harcourt, 
in the Rose of 80 tons, with a pinnace of 36 tons called the Patience, put in at 
“‘ Nevis,’’ to take ballast and more water, for the ships were very light. Here 
they stayed from the 12th to the 16th of October, 1609, during which Harcourt 
himself took the waters, of which his experience is thus recorded. 
“Tn this island there is a hot bath, which as well for the reports that I have 
heard, as also for that I have seen and found by experience, I do hold for one 
of the best and most sovereign in the world. I have heard that divers of our 
nation have there been cured of the leprosy, and that one of the same persons, 
now or lately, dwelled at Wolwich near the river of Thames, by whom the truth 
may be known, if any man desire to be further satisfied therem. As for my own 
experience, although it was not much, yet the effects that I found it work, both 
in myself and others of my company, in two days space, do cause me to conceive 
the best of it. For, at my coming thither, I was grievously vexed with an 
extreme cough, which I much feared would turn me to great harm ; but, by 
bathing in the bath, and drinking of the water, I was speedily cured ; and, 
ever since that time, I have found the state of my body (I give God thanks for 
it) far exceeding what it was before, in strength and health. Moreover, one of 
my company, named John Huntbach, servant to my brother, as he was making 
a fire, burned his hand with gunpowder, and in doubt thereby to lose the use of 
one or two of his fingers, which were shrunk up with the fire ; but he went pre- 
sently to the bath, and washed and bathed his hand a good space therein, which 
soppled his fingers in such a manner, that, with great ease, he could stir and 
stretch them out ; and the fire was so washed out of his hand, that, within the 
space of twenty-four hours, by twice or thrice washing and bathing it, the 
soreness thereof was cured ; only the eye-sore for the time remained. Further- 
more, two or three others of my company, having swellings in their legs, were 
by the bath cured inaday. This can I affirm and boldly justify having been 
an eye-witness there.—”’ [Harleian Miscellany, Edition 1810, Vol. VI., p. 
512, British Museum 20824. ] 
To the curative properties of the waters of the bath at Nevis the following 
testimony is given in Captain John Smith’s General Historie of Virginia, New 
England and The Summer Isles, and published in 1630. From a statement 
made therein, it appears that the famous colonizer, when on his way to take 
part in founding a colony in Virginia, put in at the “little Isle of Nevis, ’’ as 
he writes the name of the Island. Of his stay there (probably in January, 1607) 
Smith gives an account from which the following mention of The Bath is taken : 
“Tn this little Isle of Nevis, more than twenty years ago, I have remained a 
good time together, to wod, and water and refresh my men; it is all woddy 
but by the sea side southward there are sands like downes, where a thousand 
men may quarter themselves conveniently ; but in most places the wod growth 
close to the water side, at a high water marke, and in some places so thicke 
of a soft, spungy wood, like a wilde figge tree, you cannot get through it, but 
by making your way with hatchets, or fauchions. Whether it was the dew of the 
