The location had its advantages. It was convenient for hunters and accessible to Newport, at which port furs could be shipped to England and needed supplies be received in return. Here, in the heart of the Narragansett country, Roger Williams passed six busy years of his life, his business yielding him one hundred pounds annually. He planted and harvested his crops, continued to serve as mediator between the natives and the colonists, and to take an active part in the affairs of the colony. He found at Narragansett a most congenial neighbor in the person of Richard Smith, a prosperous trader and the owner of a large estate. A fugitive from English persecution, he had resided for a time in Plymouth territory, and then, for the sake of a still more liberal atmosphere, moved to the Narragansett Bay region. His was the first English house in that section, built a few years after the settlement of Providence. Mrs. Smith was the soul of courtesy and hospitality and the Williams family was fortunate in having her and her good husband within neighborly distance. That Roger Williams, too, was the best of neighbors, we have abundant proof. No kindly service was too small for him to undertake if he could thereby help those about him, whether English or Indian. Now he busied himself trying to find the stray cattle of a friend, again he gave his house over to Massachusetts soldiers who had come to collect the wampum debt from the Narragansetts. The savages were continually making excuses to Roger Williams for their delay in settling the heavy account. Many of these were genuine enough, no doubt. He listened to the grievances of both sides and, as usual, poured oil on the troubled waters. To the Narragansetts, he was friend, peace-maker, adviser, physician. They served in his household, for the early records of the province show that he was granted “leave to suffer a native, his hired household servant, to kill fowl for him in his piece at Narragansett about his house.” Their bodily ailments were ever a source of care and anxiety to him. Though Providence Plantations was a temperate colony, yet Roger Williams was allowed to administer “a little wine or strong water” to the red men in their illnesses. “I might have gained thousands by that trade,” he once said, “but God hath graciously given me rather to choose a dry morsel.” When in need of greater medical skill than his own, he wrote his friend, John Winthrop the younger, of Connecticut, for medicine and a “drawing plaster,” adding generously, “if the charge rise to one or two crowns, I shall thankfully send it.”