Thomas Wentworth Higginson, A book of American explorers

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[342]

Thirdly, our passage was also healthful to our passengers, being freed from the great contagion of the scurvy and other maledictions,¹ which in other passages to other places had taken away the lives of many. And yet we were, in all reason, in wonderful danger all the way, our ship being greatly crowded with passengers; but, through God's great goodness, we had none that died of the pox, but that wicked fellow that scorned at fasting and prayer. There were, indeed, two little children,—one of my own, and another beside: but I do not impute it merely to the passage; for they were both very sickly children, and not likely to have lived long if they had not gone to sea. And take this for a rule, if children be healthful when they come to sea, the younger they are, the

Francis Higginson.

better they will endure the sea, and are not troubled with sea-sickness as older people are, as we had experience in many children that went this voyage. My wife, indeed, in tossing weather, was something ill; . . . but in calm weather she recovered again, and is now much better for the sea-sickness. And for my own part, whereas I have for divers years past been very sickly, . . . and was very sick at London and Gravesend, yet from the time I came on shipboard to this day I have been strangely healthful; and now I can digest our ship diet very well, which I could not when I was at land. . . . Also divers children