20 Timehri. 



-Being employed in the woods cutting Church wayes, the negro 

 Sambo " desired me. that he might be made a Christian ; for he 

 thought to be a Christian was to be endued with all those know- 

 ledges he wanted. I promised to do my best endeavour ; and when 

 I came home, spoke to the Master of the Plantation, and told him, 

 that poor Sambo desired much to be a Christian. But his answer was, 

 That the people of that Hand were governed by the Lawes of 

 England, and by those Lawes we could not make a Christian a Slave. 

 I told him, my request was far different from that, for I desired him 

 to make a Slave a Christian. His answer was, That it was true, 

 there was a great difference in that : But, being once a Christian, 

 he could no more account him a Slave, and so lose the hold they had 

 of them as Slaves, by making them Christians ; and by that means 

 should open such a gap as all the Planters in the Hand would curse 

 him. So I was struck mute, and poor Sambo kept out of the Church; 

 as ingenious, as honest, and as good a nature! poor soul, as ever 

 wore black, or eat green. 



We tind a word or two also about the white Bondservant, although 

 not so much as I would like to have found. Whole pages are taken up 

 in describing the Palmetto Royal, and such vegetables, which one may 

 see for himself any day down Black Bock, and in the sour-grass pastures 

 about the Hole. But the white Bondservant has disappeared — he is 

 buried beneath the mould in forgotten places — and a picture of him. in 

 greater detail, would have been valuable. However since anything is 

 better than nothing, we must be thankful for those little vivid touches in 

 Ligon. which do help us to picture the exiled Kerne as he laboured in the 

 held all day and returned at night to his hut of wattle-and-daub. 



We have here the Bridge, which was the beginning of Bridgetown. 



Upon the most inward part of the bay, stands the Town, which 

 is about the bigness of Hounslo, and is called the Bridge ; for that a 

 long Bridge was made at hrst over a little nook of the Sea, which 

 was rather a Bog than Sea. A Town ill scituate ; for if they had 

 considered health, as they did conveniency. they would never have 

 set it there : of, if they had any intention at first to have built a 

 Town there, they could not have been so improvident, as not to foresee 

 the main inconveniences that must ensue, by making choice of so 

 unhealthy a place to live in. But, one house being set up, another 

 was erected, and so a third, and a fourth, till at last it came to take 

 the name of a Town ; Divers Store-houses being there built, to stow 

 their goods in, for their convenience, being near the Harbour. But 

 the main oversight was. to build their Town upon so unwholesome a 

 a place. For. the ground being somewhat lower within the Lan<l 

 than the Sea-banks are, the spring Tides flow over, and there re- 

 mains, making a great part of that flat a kind of Bog or Morasse, 

 which vents out so loathsome a savour as cannot but breathe ill 

 blood, and is (no doubt) the occasion of much sickness to those 

 that live there. 



