Having done the things of greatest urgency, and grey-bearded father Winter being come, they needs must keep indoors, and live every man under his own roof-tree. During this time our friends had three special discomforts in this island, to wit, want of wood (for that on the said island had been used for the buildings), want of fresh water, and the night watch for fear of a surprise from the Indians who were encamped at the foot of the said island, or from some other enemy; for such is the evil disposition and fury of many Christians, that one must be more on one's guard against them than against the infidel. This it grieveth me to say; would indeed that I were a liar herein, and that I had no cause to speak it. Thus when water or wood was required they were constrained to cross the river, which on either side is more than three times as broad as the Seine at Paris. This was both painful and tedious; so that very often one had to bespeak the boat a day in advance before being able to get the use of it. On top of this came cold and snow and frost so hard that the cider froze in the casks, and each man was given his portion by weight. As for wine, it was only given out on certain days of the week. Some lazy fellows drank melted snow without troubling to cross the river. In short, unknown diseases broke out, like those which Captain Jacques Cartier has already described for us, of which for fear of vain repetition I shall therefore not give an account. No remedy could be found. 4. THE ANCIENT MARINER (1631). =Source.=--_The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captain Thomas James to Hudson Bay, 1631-2_: which is believed to be the source of much of Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_. Reprinted by the Hakluyt Society, 1894. [Nov.] I lay ashore till the 17, all which time our miseries did increase. It did snow and freeze most extremely. At which time, we looking from the shore towards the ship, she did look like a piece of ice in the fashion of a ship, or a ship resembling a piece of ice. The snow was all frozen about her.... The three-and-twentieth, the ice did increase extraordinarily, and the snow lay on the water in flakes as it did fall; much ice withal drove by us, yet nothing hard all this while. In the evening, after the watch was set, a great piece came athwart our hawse, and four more followed after him, the least of them a quarter of a mile broad; which, in the dark, did very much astonish us, thinking it would have carried us out of the harbour upon the shoals Easter Point, which was full of rocks. It was newly congealed, a matter of two inches thick, and we broke thorough it, the cable and anchor enduring an incredible stress, sometimes stopping the whole ice....