in the cabin,
to refresh myself after a fatigue which had been more intolerable, in a
quarter of a mile's passage from my coach to the ship, than I had before
undergone in a land-journey of twelve miles, which I had traveled with
the utmost expedition.

This latter fatigue was, perhaps, somewhat heightened by an indignation
which I could not prevent arising in my mind. I think, upon my entrance
into the boat, I presented a spectacle of the highest horror. The total
loss of limbs was apparent to all who saw me, and my face contained
marks of a most diseased state, if not of death itself. Indeed, so
ghastly was my countenance, that timorous women with child had abstained
from my house, for fear of the ill consequences of looking at me. In
this condition I ran the gauntlope (so I think I may justly call it)
through rows of sailors and watermen, few of whom failed of paying their
compliments to me by all manner of insults and jests on my misery. No
man who knew me will think I conceived any personal resentment at this
behavior; but it was a lively picture of that cruelty and inhumanity
in the nature of men which I have often contemplated with concern, and
which leads the mind into a train of very uncomfortable and melancholy
thoughts. It may be said that this barbarous custom is peculiar to
the English, and of them only to the lowest degree; that it is an
excrescence of an uncontrolled licentiousness mistaken for liberty, and
never shows itself in men who are polished and refined in such manner
as human nature requires to produce that perfection of which it is
susceptible, and to purge away that malevolence of disposition of which,
at our birth, we partake in common with the savage creation. This may
be said, and this is all that can be said; and it is, I am afraid, but
little satisfactory to account for the inhumanity of those who, while
they boast of being made after God's own image, seem to bear in their
minds a resemblance of the vilest species of brutes; or rather, indeed,
of our idea of devils; for I don't know that any brutes can be taxed
with such malevolence. A sirloin of beef was now placed on the table,
for which, though little better than carrion, as much was charged by the
master of the little paltry ale-house who dressed it as would have been
demanded for all the elegance of the King's Arms, or any other polite
tavern or eating-house! for, indeed, the difference between the best
house and the worst is, that a