receiving many severe wounds. After a few days' more traveling, their
provisions were all expended, and the seamen began to murmur, and
resolved to take care of themselves, and not to be encumbered with women
and children. The consequence was, that forty-three of the number
separated from the rest, leaving the captain and all the male and female
passengers and children (my dear Elizabeth among them), to get on as
they could."

"How cruel!"

"Yes! but self-preservation is the first law of nature, and I fear it is
in vain to expect that persons not under the influence of religious
principles will risk their lives, or submit to much self-denial, for the
sake of alleviating the miseries of others. The reason given for this
separation was, that it was impossible to procure food for so large a
number, and that they would be more likely to obtain sustenance when
divided. The party who thus proceeded in advance encountered the most
terrible difficulties; they coasted along the seashore because they had
no other food than the shell-fish found on the rocks; they had
continually to cross rivers from a mile to two miles wide; they were
kept from their slumbers by the wild beasts which prowled around them,
and at length they endured so much from want of water, that their
sufferings were extreme. They again subdivided and separated, wandering
they hardly knew where, exposed to a burning sun, without clothing and
without food. One by one they sat down and were left behind to die, or
to be devoured by the wild beasts before they were dead. At last they
were reduced to such extremity, that they proposed to cast lots for one
to be killed to support the others; they turned back on their route,
that they might find the dead bodies of their companions for food.
Finally, out of the whole crew, three or four, purblind and staggering