One of our men, whom they had made privy to their design, but made him promise not to reveal it until they were gone, had told them that he would persuade me, if he could, to leave them a farther supply; and bade them come to the place after the ships were gone, and that they should find directions left for them on a piece of a board, or a letter from him set up upon a post. Thus they were well furnished with all things for immediate living. I make no doubt but they came to find these things; and, since they had a mind to make trial of a wild retired life, they might shift very well; nor would they want anything but English women to raise a new nation of English people, in a part of the world that belongs neither to Europe, Asia, Africa, or America. I also left them every man another gun, a cutlass, and a horn for powder; and I left two barrels of fine powder, and two pigs of lead for shot, in another chest by itself. I doubt not but the natives will bestow wives upon them, but what sort of a posterity they will make, I cannot foresee, for I do not find by inquiry that the fellows had any great store of knowledge or religion in them, being all Madagascar men, as we called them, that is to say, pirates and rogues; so that, for aught I know, there may be a generation of English heathens in an age or two more; though I left them five Bibles, and six or seven Prayer-books, and good books of several sorts, that they might not want instruction, if they thought fit to make use of it for themselves or their progeny. It is true, that this is a country that is remote from us of any in the yet discovered world, and consequently it would be suggested as unprofitable to our commerce; but I have something to allege in its defence, which will prove it to be infinitely more advantageous to England than any of our East India trade can be, or that can be pretended for it. The reason is plain in a few words; our East India trade is all carried on, or most part of it, by an exportation of bullion in specie, and a return of foreign manufactures or produce; and most of these manufactures also, either trifling and unnecessary in themselves, or such as are injurious to our own manufactures. The solid goods brought from India, which may be said to be necessary to us, and worth sending our money for, are but few; for example, 1. The returns which I reckon trifling and unnecessary, are such as China ware, coffee, tea, Japan work, pictures, fans, screens, &c. 2. The returns that are injurious to our manufactures, or growth of our own country, are printed calicoes, chintz, wrought silks, stuffs, of herbs and barks, block-tin, sugar, cotton, arrack, copper, and indigo. 3. The necessary or useful things are, pepper, saltpetre, dying-woods and dying-earths, drugs, lacs, such as shell-lac, stick-lac, &c., diamonds, some pearl, and raw-silk.