as loath, perhaps, to have stayed in this desolate island as I would have
been to have had them.

While these reflections were rolling in my mind, I was very thankful in
my thoughts that I was so happy as not to be thereabouts at that time, or
that they did not see my boat, by which they would have concluded that
some inhabitants had been in the place, and perhaps have searched farther
for me. Then terrible thoughts racked my imagination about their having
found out my boat, and that there were people here; and that, if so, I
should certainly have them come again in greater numbers and devour me;
that if it should happen that they should not find me, yet they would
find my enclosure, destroy all my corn, and carry away all my flock of
tame goats, and I should perish at last for mere want.

Thus my fear banished all my religious hope, all that former confidence
in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experience as I had had of
His goodness; as if He that had fed me by miracle hitherto could not
preserve, by His power, the provision which He had made for me by His
goodness. I reproached myself with my laziness, that would not sow any
more corn one year than would just serve me till the next season, as if
no accident could intervene to prevent my enjoying the crop that was upon
the ground; and this I thought so just a reproof, that I resolved for the
future to have two or three years' corn beforehand; so that, whatever
might come, I might not perish for want of bread.

How strange a chequer-work of Providence is the life of man! and by what
secret different springs are the affections hurried about, as different
circumstances present! To-day we love what to-morrow we hate; to-day we
seek what to-morrow we shun; to-day we desire what to-morrow we fear,
nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of. This was exemplified in me,
at this time, in the most lively manner imaginable; for I, whose only
affliction was that I seemed banished from human society, that I was
alone, circumscribed by the boundless ocean, cut off from mankind, and
condemned to what I call silent life; that I was as one whom Heaven
thought not worthy to be numbered among the living, or to appear among
the rest of His creatures; that to have seen one of my own species would
have seemed to me a raising me from death to life, and the greatest
blessing that Heaven itself, next to the supreme blessing of salvation,
could bestow; I say, that I should now tr