THE DIVIDING LINE 
3 
These found the first adventurers in a very starving condition, but relieved 
their wants with the fresh supply they brought with them. From Kiquotan 
they extended themselves as far as James-town, where, like true English- 
men, they built a church thqt cost no more than fifty pounds, and a tavern 
that cost five hundred. 
They had now made peace with the Indians, but there was one thing want- 
ing to make that peace lasting. The natives could, by no means, persuade 
themselves that the English were heartily their friends, so long as they dis- 
dained to intermarry with them. And, in earnest, had the English consulted 
their own security and the good of the colony — had they intended either to 
civilize or convert these gentiles, they would have brought their stomachs to 
embrace this prudent alliance. 
The Indians are generally tall and well-proportioned, which may make full 
amends for the darkness of their complexions. Add to this, that they are 
healthy and strong, with constitutions untainted by lewdness, and not en- 
feebled by luxury. Besides, morals and all considered, I cannot think the 
Indians were much greater heathens than the first adventurers, who, had 
they been good Christians, would have had the charity to take this only 
method of converting the natives to Christianity. For, after all that can be 
said, a sprightly lover is the most prevailing missionary that can be sent 
amongst these, or any other infidels. 
Besides, the poor Indians would have had less reason to complain that the 
English took away their land, if they had received it by way of portion 
with their daughters. Had such affinities been contracted in the begin- 
ning, how much bloodshed had been prevented, and how populous would 
the country have been, and, consequently, how considerable! Nor would 
the shade of the skin have been any reproach at this day ; for if a Moor may 
be washed white in three generations, surely an Indian might have been 
blanched in two. 
The French, for their parts, have not been so squeamish in Canada, who 
upon trial find abundance of attraction in the Indians. Their late grand 
monarch thought it not below even the dignity of a Frenchman to become 
one flesh with this people, and therefore ordered 100 livres for any of his sub- 
jects, man or woman, that would intermarry with a native. 
By this piece of policy we find the French interest very much strengthened 
amongst the savages, and their religion, such as it is, propagated just as far 
as their love. And I heartily wish this well-concerted scheme does not here- 
after give the French an advantage over his majesty’s good subjects on the 
northern continent of America. 
About the same time New England was pared off from Virginia by letters 
patent, bearing date April the 10th, 1608. Several gentlemen of the town 
and neighborhood of Plymouth obtained this grant, with the lord chief 
justice Popham at their head. 
Their bounds were specified to extend from 38 to 45 degrees of northern 
latitude, with a breadth of one hundred miles from the sea shore. The first 
fourteen years, this company encountered many difficulties, and lost many 
men, though far from being discouraged, they sent over numerous recruits of 
Presbyterians, every year, who for all that, had much ado to stand their 
ground, with all their fighting and praying. 
But about the year 1620, a large swarm of dissenters fled thither from the 
severities of their stepmother, the church. These saints conceiving the same 
aversion to the copper complexion of the natives, with that of the first ad- 
venturers to Virginia, would, on no terms, contract alliances with them, afraid 
perhaps, like the .Jews of old, lest they might be drawn into idolatry by those 
strange women. 
