“Rum” here, as elsewhere, played its important part in undermining the stamina of the natives; and its evil, as in any age, exhorters to virtue were prone only too vividly to depict. “Mr. Stone one very good preacher,” commented a Mashpee, “but he preach too much about rum. When he no preach about rum, Injun think nothing ’bout it; but when he tells how Injun love rum, and how much they drunk, then I think how good rum is and think no more ’bout sermon, my mouth waters so much for rum.” And when asked whether he preferred Mr. Stone or “Blind Joe,” a Baptist, he said: “Mr. Stone he make best sermons, but Blind Joe he make best Christians.” And as in other and later times the whites made their profit in selling drink to the Indians. As early as 1685 Governor Hinckley writes of the Indians: “They have their courts and judges; but a great obstruction to bringing them to more civility and Christianity is the great appetite of the young generation for strong liquors, and the covetous ill-humor of sundry of our English in furnishing them therewith notwithstanding all the court orders and means used to prohibit the same.” The Indians were inveterate gamblers, and although they could sit solemnly enough through a church service, they were as likely to go forth to game away all they had even to their precious knives and kettles. And the whites, as in the early days before they had made good Christians of the “salvages,” were ready to suspect them of petty thievery: for which, however, the savages were not without examples to imitate. An Indian, reproved for taking a knife from an Englishman’s house, retorted: “Barlow steals from the Quakers. Why can’t I steal?” At Yarmouth, late in the seventeen hundreds, near the mouth of Bass River, was a little cluster of wigwams; and whether for reason or not, an irate deacon, suspecting some of the community of robbing his henroost, visited them in the early morning, only to be abashed by finding them at prayer. He stole away without further inquiry about his hens. And the Indian deacon, one Naughaught, nettled, perhaps, by such suspicions, upon finding a purse of money one day, would not open it save in the presence of witnesses at the tavern. “If I were to do so,” he told them, “all the trees of the forest would see and testify against me.” And this same Naughaught had a marvellous adventure that must have made a fine story for drinkers at the tavern. Walking one day far from the habitations of man, went the tale, he was set upon by a great number of black snakes—a common and harmless reptile in the Cape Cod meadows to-day, but going about their business there in smaller companies. Unarmed, Naughaught saw that his defence lay only in a steadfast spirit. He quailed not when the snakes writhed up his body, even to the neck; and when one, bolder than the rest, faced him eye to eye, he opened his mouth and straight snapped off its head. Whereupon its companions withdrew and left Naughaught master of the field.