Note 1 — PROVIDENCE ISLAND.

British Museum, Sloane MSS., 758; pp. 143-173 contain Gov. Nathaniel Butler's "Diary of my Present Employment", extracts from the earlier part of which are given here, exhibiting the dealings of a minor colonial governor with problems of privateering, and incidentally somewhat of his daily life. The whole journal runs from February 10, 1639, to May 3, 1640, and is largely occupied with an unsuccessful privateering voyage in the Caribbean which the governor undertook on his own account. England was not at war in February, 1639, but war had long existed between Spain and the Netherlands, and the depredations carried out from Providence were sure ultimately to provoke Spanish reprisals. It was moreover almost an accepted maxim that there was "No peace beyond the Line", i.e., west of the prime meridian and south of the Tropic of Cancer.