FRENCH AND SPANISH INVASIONS. 319 
“deputy Governor, who held his office for two years, when the 
French and Spaniards surprised, captured, and burned Nassau, 
plundered its inhabitants, destroyed the fort, and carried the 
president and a number of prisoners to Havana. Shortly after- 
wards these formidable enemies returned to Nassau and captured 
and carried away all the inhabitants and negroes they could find. 
The few who remained fled to Carolina and Virginia, and the 
island for a short period was uninhabited. The pirates then for 
‘a number of years made it their general place of rendezvous, and, 
it is said, buried their booty in its woods. 
_ Soon after the last invasion, Burch was appointed Governor 
by the proprietors, but, upon his arrival at Providence, he dis- 
covered that subjects and ruler were all consolidated in his own 
person. Like a horseless rider, he could perambulate his capital 
on foot and alone, with the useless and unused whip and spurs 
of his high office, but a few thousands of subjects would have 
been extremely handy and desirable as a source of supply for his 
empty exchequer, for even upon small islands a man cannot get 
fat or exist long upon his titles, although, as in this instance, 
they may enable him to live in history. So this Governor with- 
out subjects, pocketed his formidable credentials, packed his 
trunks with the gilded insignia and baubles of his high office, 
and soon exchanged the new world for the old—a wiser if not a 
better man. He appears to have had no desire to play the part 
of Robinson Crusoe, and possessed so little of the ambition that 
inspired poor Sancho Panza, that he was not satisfied to be the 
Governor even of a whole archipelago of unoccupied islands. 
The lord proprietors became fully satisfied at last, that they 
had upon their hands a good sized Bahama elephant. Had their 
royal master been pleased to have given them, in lieu of the Islea 
of Summer, an equal number of square miles of volcanic moun- 
tains in the moon, which some English astronomer had falsely 
