And now he began to reap the fruit of his kind treatment of the natives, and the pains which he had taken to learn their language. "These ravens fed me in the wilderness," he wrote, with a touching application of Scripture narrative. They gave him the shelter of their squalid wigwams, and shared with him their winter store. The great chief Massasoit opened his door to him, and, when spring came, gave him a tract of land on the Seekonk River, where he "pitched and began to build and plant." Here he was soon joined by some friends from Salem, who had resolved to cast in their lot with his. But the seed which they planted had already begun to send up its early shoots, when a letter from his "ancient friend, the Governor of Plymouth," came, to "lovingly advise him" that he was "fallen into the edge of their bounds;" that they were "loth to displease the Bay," and that if he would "remove but to the other side of the water," he would have "the country before [him] and might be as free as themselves," and they "should be loving neighbors together." Williams accepted the friendly counsel, and, taking five companions with him, set out in a canoe to follow the downward course of the Seekonk and find a spot whereon he might plant and build in safety. As the little boat came under the shade of the western bank of the pleasant stream, a small party of Indians was seen watching them from a large flat rock that rose a few feet above the water's edge. "Wha-cheer, netop?--Wha-cheer?--how are you, friend?" they cried; and Williams accepting the friendly salutation as a favorable omen, turned the prow of his canoe to the shore. Tradition calls the spot where he landed, Slate Rock, and the name of Wha-cheer square has been given in advance to the land around it. What was said or done at that first interview has not been recorded, but the parting was as friendly as the meeting, and Williams resuming his course, soon found himself at the junction of the Seekonk and Mooshausick. Two points mark the intermingling of the two streams, and in those days the waters must have spread their broad bosom like a lake, and gleamed and danced within their fringe of primeval forest. Williams, following, perhaps, the counsel of the Indians, turned northward and held his way between the narrowing banks of the Mooshausick, till he espied, at the foot of a hill which rose shaggy with trees and precipitate from its eastern shore, the flash and sparkling of a spring. Here he landed, and, recalling his trials and the mighty hand that had sustained him through them all, called the place Providence. CHAPTER III. WILLIAMS OBTAINS A GRANT OF LAND AND FOUNDS A COLONY.-FORM OF GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONY.--WILLIAMS GOES TO ENGLAND TO OBTAIN A ROYAL CHARTER.