re my present condition with what I at first expected it would be;
nay, with what it would certainly have been, if the good providence of
God had not wonderfully ordered the ship to be cast up nearer to the
shore, where I not only could come at her, but could bring what I got out
of her to the shore, for my relief and comfort; without which, I had
wanted for tools to work, weapons for defence, and gunpowder and shot for
getting my food.

I spent whole hours, I may say whole days, in representing to myself, in
the most lively colours, how I must have acted if I had got nothing out
of the ship. How I could not have so much as got any food, except fish
and turtles; and that, as it was long before I found any of them, I must
have perished first; that I should have lived, if I had not perished,
like a mere savage; that if I had killed a goat or a fowl, by any
contrivance, I had no way to flay or open it, or part the flesh from the
skin and the bowels, or to cut it up; but must gnaw it with my teeth, and
pull it with my claws, like a beast.

These reflections made me very sensible of the goodness of Providence to
me, and very thankful for my present condition, with all its hardships
and misfortunes; and this part also I cannot but recommend to the
reflection of those who are apt, in their misery, to say, "Is any
affliction like mine?" Let them consider how much worse the cases of
some people are, and their case might have been, if Providence had
thought fit.

I had another reflection, which assisted me also to comfort my mind with
hopes; and this was comparing my present situation with what I had
deserved, and had therefore reason to expect from the hand of Providence.
I had lived a dreadful life, perfectly destitute of the knowledge and
fear of God. I had been well instructed by father and mother; neither
had they been wanting to me in their early endeavours to infuse a
religious awe of God into my mind, a sense of my duty, and what the
nature and end of my being required of me. But, alas! falling early into
the seafaring life, which of all lives is the most destitute of the fear
of God, though His terrors are always before them; I say, falling early
into the seafaring life, and into seafaring company, all that little
sense of religion which I had entertained was laughed out of me by my
messmates; by a hardened despising of dangers, and the views of death,
which grew habitual to me by my long absence from all manner of