Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/232

224 among our Northern people, of sheltering themselves in the continent of America, has no other foundation than their present insupportable condition at home. I have made all possible inquiries to learn what encouragement our people have met with, by any intelligence from those plantations, sufficient to make them undertake so tedious and hazardous a voyage, in all seasons of the year, and so ill accommodated in their ships, that many of them have died miserably in their passage, but could never get one satisfactory answer. Somebody, they knew not who, had written letters to his friend or cousin from thence, inviting him by all means to come over; that it was a fine fruitful country, and to be held for ever at a penny an acre. But the truth of the fact is this: the English established in those colonies are in great want of men to inhabit that tract of ground, which lies between them and the wild Indians, who are not reduced under their dominion. We read of some barbarous people, whom the Romans placed in their army for no other service than to blunt their enemies swords, and afterward to fill up trenches with their dead bodies. And thus our people, who transport themselves, are settled into those interjacent tracts, as a screen against the insults of the savages; and many have as much lands as they can clear from the woods, at a very reasonable rate, if they can afford to pay about a hundred years purchase by their labour. Now, beside the fox's reason, which inclines all those who have already ventured thither to