SUFFERINGS OF ROGER WILLIAMS IN THE WILDERNESS.--FOUNDS A SETTLEMENT ON THE SEEKONK RIVER.--IS ADVISED TO DEPART.--SEEKS OUT A NEW PLACE, WHICH HE CALLS PROVIDENCE. When the sentence of banishment was first pronounced against the future founder of Rhode Island, his health was so feeble that it was resolved to suspend the execution of it till spring. This, however, was soon found to be impracticable, for the affection and confidence which he had inspired presently found open expression, and friends began to gather around him in his own house to listen to his teaching. Lack of energy was not a defect of the government of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and learning that rumors of a new colony to be founded on Narragansett Bay were already afloat, it resolved to send the supposed leader of the unwelcome enterprise back to England. A warrant, therefore, was given to Captain Underhill, a man of doubtful character in the employment of the Colony, with orders to proceed directly to Salem, put the offender on board his pinnace, and convey him to a ship that lay in Boston harbor ready to sail for England with the first fair wind. When the pinnace reached Salem, he found only the wife and infant children of the banished man, and a people deeply grieved for the loss of their pastor. Williams was gone, and whither no one could say. And whither, indeed, could he go? The thin and scattered settlements of the northern colonies were bounded seaward by a tempestuous ocean, and inland by a thick belt of primeval forest, whose depths civilized man had never penetrated. If he escaped the wild beasts that prowled in their recesses, could he hope to escape the wilder savage, who claimed the forest for his hunting grounds? "I was sorely tossed," Williams writes in after years, "for fourteen weeks in a bitter winter-season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean." The brave man's earnest mind bore up the frail and suffering body.