This plan
was no sooner settled than I received information that a party of these
miscreants had agreed with the four above-mentioned to meet them at a
certain place absolutely to murder the very persons intended to be their
guides, and to possess themselves of their arms and munitions and
provisions, in addition to what each was supplied with, and to take
their own route. These circumstances will, no doubt, appear to your
Grace wild and extravagant; but after having mentioned their ignorance
in the manner I have it may serve to convince your Grace that there are
improper persons in this colony who work upon that ignorance to a
dangerous degree. In consequence of the information of this design
against their guides, I ordered four soldiers to attend them to the foot
of the first mountain with orders how to act if any others attempted to
join them; none appeared, and the whole of them returned with the
soldiers, most completely sick of their journey.
Our flocks and our crops, my Lord, are all I feel any concern about;
strict, rigid, and just punishment shall constantly hang over these
delinquents, and this, I trust, they are already convinced of.
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