This friend in
the wilderness appeared sorry to part with them, but Dickenson was blind
both to friendship and sorrow, and obstinately took the direction
against which the chief warned him, suspecting treachery, "though we
found afterward that his counsell was good."
Robert Barrow, Mary, and the child, with two sick men, went in a canoe
along the coast, keeping the crew in sight, who, with the boy, travelled
on foot, sometimes singing as they marched. So they began the long and
terrible journey, the later horrors of which I dare not give in the
words here set down. The first weeks were painful and disheartening,
although they still had food. Their chief discomfort arose from the
extreme cold at night and the tortures from the sand-flies and
mosquitoes on their exposed bodies, which they tried to remedy by
covering themselves with sand, but found sleep impossible.
At last, however, they met the fiercer savages of whom the chief had
warned them, and practised upon them the same device of calling
themselves Spaniards. By this time, one would suppose, even Dickenson's
dull eyes would have seen the fatal idiocy of the lie. "Crying out
'Nickalees, No Espanier,' they rushed upon us, rending the few Cloathes
from us that we had; they took all from my Wife, even tearing her Hair
out, to get at the Lace, wherewith it was knotted.
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