I have given an account already of what I found to have been the case down the river among the seafaring men, how the ships lay in the "offing," as it is called, in rows or lines, astern of one another, quite down from the Pool as far as I could see. I have been told that they lay in the same manner quite down the river as low as Gravesend,[222] and some far beyond, even everywhere, or in every place where they could ride with safety as to wind and weather. Nor did I ever hear that the plague reached to any of the people on board those ships, except such as lay up in the Pool, or as high as Deptford Reach, although the people went frequently on shore to the country towns and villages, and farmers' houses, to buy fresh provisions (fowls, pigs, calves, and the like) for their supply. Likewise I found that the watermen on the river above the bridge found means to convey themselves away up the river as far as they could go; and that they had, many of them, their whole families in their boats, covered with tilts[223] and bales, as they call them, and furnished with straw within for their lodging; and that they lay thus all along by the shore in the marshes, some of them setting up little tents with their sails, and so lying under them on shore in the day, and going into their boats at night. And in this manner, as I have heard, the riversides were lined with boats and people as long as they had anything to subsist on, or could get anything of the country; and indeed the country people, as well gentlemen as others, on these and all other occasions, were very forward to relieve them, but they were by no means willing to receive them into their towns and houses, and for that we cannot blame them.