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"We passed by no less than two Quaker meeting-houses. That persuasion
prevails much in the lower end of Nansemond county, for want
of ministers to pilot the people a decenter way to heaven. The ill reputation
of the tobacco in these lower parishes makes the clergy unwilling
to accept of them, except such whose abilities are as mean as their pay.
People uninstructed in any religion are apt to embrace the first that offers.
It is natural for helpless man to adore his Maker in some form or other;
and, were there any exception to this rule, I should expect it to be
among the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope and of North Carolina.
. . . . For want of men in Holy Orders, both the members of the Council
and magistrates are empowered to marry all those who will not take each
other's word. But for the ceremony of christening their children they
leave that to chance. If a parson comes in their way, they will crave a
cast of their office, as they call it; else they are content that their children
should remain as arrant pagans as themselves. They do not know Sunday
from any other day any more than Robinson Crusoe, which would give
them a great advantage were they given to be industrious."

"The whole number of people belonging to the Nottoway Town, if you
include women and children, amounts to about two hundred. These are
the only Indians of any consequence now remaining within the limits of
Virginia. The rest are either removed or dwindled to a very inconsiderable

number, either by destroying one another, or else by smallpox
or other diseases; though nothing has been so fatal to them as their
ungovernable passion for rum, with which, I am sorry to say it, they have
been but too liberally supplied by the English that live near them. And
here I must lament the bad success Mr. Boyle's charity has hitherto had
toward converting any of these poor heathen to Christianity. Many
children of our neighbouring Indians have been brought up in the College
of William and Mary. They have been taught to read and write, and
have been carefully instructed in the Christian religion till they came to
be men; yet after they returned home, instead of civilizing and converting
the rest, they have immediately relapsed into infidelity and barbarism
themselves.

"And some of them, too, have made the worst use of the knowledge
they acquired among the English, by employing it against their benefactors.
Besides, as they unhappily forget all the good they learn and
remember the ill, they are apt to be more vicious and disorderly than the
rest of their countrymen. I ought not to quit this subject without doing
justice to the great prudence of Colonel Spottswood in this affair. This
gentleman was Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia when Carolina was engaged
in a bloody war with the Indians. At that critical time it was
thought expedient to keep a watchful eye upon our tributary savages,
whom we knew had nothing to keep them to their duty but their fears.
Then it was that he demanded of each nation a competent number of their
great men's children to be sent to the College, where they served as so
many hostages for the good behaviour of the rest, and, at the same time,
were themselves principled in the Christian religion. He also placed a
schoolmaster among the Saponi Indians, at a salary of fifty pounds per
annum, to instruct their children. The person that undertook that charitable
work was Mr. Charles Griffin, a man of good family, who, by the
innocence of his life and the sweetness of his temper, was perfectly well
qualified for that pious undertaking. Besides, he had so much the secret
of mixing pleasure with instruction, that he had not a scholar who did
not love him affectionately. Such talents must needs have been blessed
with a proportionate success, had he not been unluckily removed to the
College, by which he left the good work he had begun unfinished. In
short, all the pains he had taken among the infidels had no other effect
than to make them cleanlier than other Indians are. The care Colonel
Spottswood took to tincture the Indian children with Christianity produced
the following epigram, which was not published during his administration,
for fear it might then have looked like flattery:—

"I am sorry I cannot give a better account of the state of the po
Indians with respect to Christianity, although a great deal of pains ho

been taken and still continues to be taken with them. For my part, I
must be of opinion, as I hinted before, that there is but one way of converting
these poor infidels and reclaiming them from barbarity, and that
is, charitably to intermarry with them, according to the modern policy of
the most Christian King in Canada and Louisiana. Had the English done
this at the first settlement of the Colony, the infidelity of the Indians had
been worn out at this day, with their dark complexions, and the country
had swarmed with people more than it does with insects. It was certainly
an unreasonable nicety that prevented their entering into so good-natured
an alliance. All nations of men have the same natural dignity, and we
all know that very bright talents may be lodged under a very dark skin.
The principal difference between one people and another proceeds only
from the different opportunities of improvement. The Indians by no
means want understanding, and are in figure tall and well proportioned.
Even their copper-coloured complexions would admit of blanching, if not
in the first, at the furthest in the second generation. I may safely venture
to say, the Indian women would have made altogether as honest
wives for the first planters as the damsels they used to purchase from
aboard the ships. It is strange, therefore, that any good Christian should
have refused a wholesome straight bedfellow when he might have had so
fair a portion with her as the merit of saving her soul."

"Foremost among these were the services of John Blair, who first came
out in 1704 as an itinerant missionary through the courtesy of Lord Weymouth,
and, after suffering many hardships, returned to encounter them a
second time as one of the permanent missionaries of the Society and Commissary
of the Bishop of London. At the time of Blair's first visit, he
found three small churches already built in the Colony, with glebes belonging
to them. His fellow-labourers sent out by the Society in 1707 and
the few next years were Adams, Gordon, Urmston, Rainsford, Newman,

Garzia, and Moir, some of whom, worn out by the difficulties and distresses
which poverty and fatigue and the indifference or hostility of the
people brought upon them, returned not long afterward to England.
Compelled to lodge, when at home, in some old tobacco-house, and, when
they travelled, to lie oftentimes whole nights in the woods, and to live for
days together upon no other food but bread moistened in brackish water,
journeying amid deep swamps and along broken roads through a wild and
desert country, and finding themselves at the distance of every twenty
miles upon the banks of some broad river, which they could only cross by
good boats and experienced watermen, neither of which aids were at their
command; encountering upon some of the plantations the violent opposition
of various non-conformists, already settled there in preponderating
numbers; receiving in others the promise of some small stipend from the
vestry, which was called a `living,' and, if paid at all, was paid in bills
which could only be disposed of at an excessive discount; forced, therefore,
to work hard with axe and hoe and spade to keep themselves and
their families from starving, and discerning not in any quarter a single ray
of earthly hope or comfort,—it cannot be a matter of surprise that some of
them should have sought once more the shelter and rest of their native
land. Governor Eden, and, after him, Sir Richard Everett, both appear
to have done what they could to bring about a better state of things; and,
at a later period, (1762,) Arthur Dobbs, who filled the same high office,
made earnest but vain appeals to the authorities at home, that a Bishop
might be sent out to the Province. The Assembly, also, had passed an
act as early as the year 1715, by which the whole Province was divided
into nine parishes, and a stipend, not exceeding fifty pounds, was fixed
for their respective ministers by the vestries. But, regard being had to
the peculiar condition of the Colony at that time, the letter of such an
enactment served only to provoke and aggravate dissensions. There was
no spirit of hearty co-operation in the great body of the people; and the
unwillingness of the magistrates of the several districts to set an example
of earnest and true devotion may be learned from a strange fact recorded
by Blair upon his first visit to the Province,—that, while he administered
every other ordinance required of him by the Church, he abstained from
celebrating any marriage, because the fee given upon such occasions was a
perquisite belonging to the magistrates, which he was not desirous to
deprive them of.

"Of the zeal and diligence of the clergy of North Carolina, whose
names I have given above, the reports which reached the Society in England
were uniformly satisfactory; and a deeper feeling, therefore, of regret
arises, that one of them should afterward have forfeited his good name
at Philadelphia.

"Two more of the North Carolina clergy at this time deserve to be
named with especial honour, because they had both resided as laymen for
some years in the Province, and therefore been eye-witnesses of the hardships
to which the Church there was exposed. Nevertheless, they came
forward with resolute and hopeful spirit to encounter them, and were admitted
into the ranks of her ordained missionaries. The first of these—
John Boyd—received from the Bishop of London authority to enter upon
his arduous work in 1732; and the manner in which he discharged his
duties in Albemarle county, North Carolina, until his death, six years
afterward, proved how fitly it had been conferred upon him.

"The other—Clement Hall—pursued a yet more distinguished course,

and for a longer period. He had formerly been in the commission of the
peace for the Colony, and had officiated for several years as lay-reader in
congregations which could not obtain the services of an ordained minister.
The testimony borne to him in the letters which he took with him to
England, in 1743, from the Attorney-General, sheriffs, and clergy of the
Province, was amply verified by the zeal and piety with which he afterward
fulfilled the labours of his mission. Although chiefly confined to
Chowan county, it was extended at stated periods to three others; and the
number and variety of his services may be learned in some degree from
one of his earliest reports, from which it appears that he had preached
sixteen times and baptized above four hundred children and twenty adults
in three weeks. But the mere recital of numbers would describe very
imperfectly the amount of labour involved in such visitations. The distance
and difficulties of the journeys they required must also be taken
into account; and, in the case of Hall, the difficulties became greater
through his own weakness of health. But no sooner did he end one visitation
than he made preparation for another; and, except when sickness
laid him prostrate, his work ceased not for a single day. In the face of
much opposition and discouragement, he still pressed onward, and in
many places was cheered by the eager sympathy of the people. The
chapels and court-houses of the different settlements which he visited
were seldom large enough to contain half the numbers who flocked together
to hear him. Sometimes the place of their solemn meeting was
beneath the shades of the forest; at other times, by the river-side or upon
the sea-shore, the same work of truth and holiness was permitted to `have
free course and be glorified.' A summary of the labours of Clement
Hall, made about eight years after he had entered upon them, shows that
at that time (1752) he had journeyed about fourteen thousand miles,
preached nearly seven hundred sermons, baptized more than six thousand
children and grown-up persons, (among whom were several hundred
negroes and Indians,) administered the Lord's Supper frequently to as
many as two or three hundred in a single journey, besides performing the
countless other offices of visiting the sick, of churching of women, and
of catechizing the young, which he was everywhere careful to do."

Being employed by Colonel Spottswood, our Governor,
to instruct the Indian children at this settlement, I thought it my duty to
address your lordship with this, in which I humbly beg leave to inform
you what progress I have made in carrying on this charitable design of
our excellent Governor. Should I presume to give an account of the kind
reception I met with at my arrival here from the Indian Queen, the great
men, and, indeed, from all the Indians, with a constant continuance of
their kindness and respect, and of the great sense they have of the good
that is designed them by the Governor in sending me to live with them

to teach their children, as also at the great expense he has been at, and
the many fatigues he has undergone by travelling hither in the heat of
summer, as well as in the midst of winter, to the great hazard of his
health, to encourage and promote this most pious undertaking, I should
far exceed the bounds of a letter, and intrude too much on your lordship's
time. I shall, therefore, decline this, and humbly represent to your lordship
what improvements the pagan children have made in the knowledge
of the Christian religion, which I promise myself can't but be very acceptable
to you, a pious Christian Bishop. We have here a very handsome
school-house, built at the charge of the Indian Company, in which
are at present taught seventy Indian children; and many others from the
Western Indians, who live more than four hundred miles from hence, will
be brought hither in the spring to be put under my care, in order to be
instructed in the religion of the Holy Jesus. The greatest number of my
scholars can say the Belief, the Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments,
perfectly well; they know that there is but one God, and they are able to
tell me how many persons there are in the Godhead, and what each of
those blessed Persons have done for them. They know how many sacraments
Christ hath ordained in his Church, and for what end he instituted
them; they behave themselves reverently at our daily prayers, and can
make their responses, which was no little pleasure to their great and good
benefactor, the Governor, as also to the Rev. Mr. John Cargill, Mr. Attorney-General,
and many other gentlemen who attended him in his progress
hither. Thus, my lord, hath the Governor (notwithstanding the many
difficulties he laboured under) happily laid the foundation of this great
and good work of civilizing and converting these poor Indians, who,
although they have lived many years among the professors of the best
and most holy religion in the world, yet so little care has been taken to
instruct them therein, that they still remain strangers to the covenant of
grace, and have not improved in any thing by their conversing with Christians,
excepting in vices to which before they were strangers, which is a
very sad and melancholy reflection. But that God may crown with success
this present undertaking, that thereby his Kingdom may be enlarged
by the sincere conversion of these poor heathen, I humbly recommend
both it and myself to your lordship's prayers, and beg leave to subscribe
myself, with great duty, my lord, your lordship's