God to have made my lot.
It put me upon reflecting how little repining there would be among
mankind at any condition of life if people would rather compare their
condition with those that were worse, in order to be thankful, than be
always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their
murmurings and complainings.

As in my present condition there were not really many things which I
wanted, so indeed I thought that the frights I had been in about these
savage wretches, and the concern I had been in for my own preservation,
had taken off the edge of my invention, for my own conveniences; and I
had dropped a good design, which I had once bent my thoughts upon, and
that was to try if I could not make some of my barley into malt, and then
try to brew myself some beer. This was really a whimsical thought, and I
reproved myself often for the simplicity of it: for I presently saw there
would be the want of several things necessary to the making my beer that
it would be impossible for me to supply; as, first, casks to preserve it
in, which was a thing that, as I have observed already, I could never
compass: no, though I spent not only many days, but weeks, nay months, in
attempting it, but to no purpose. In the next place, I had no hops to
make it keep, no yeast to make it work, no copper or kettle to make it
boil; and yet with all these things wanting, I verily believe, had not
the frights and terrors I was in about the savages intervened, I had
undertaken it, and perhaps brought it to pass too; for I seldom gave
anything over without accomplishing it, when once I had it in my head to
began it. But my invention now ran quite another way; for night and day
I could think of nothing but how I might destroy some of the monsters in
their cruel, bloody entertainment, and if possible save the victim they
should bring hither to destroy. It would take up a larger volume than
this whole work is intended to be to set down all the contrivances I
hatched, or rather brooded upon, in my thoughts, for the destroying these
creatures, or at least frightening them so as to prevent their coming
hither any more: but all this was abortive; nothing could be possible to
take effect, unless I was to be there to do it myself: and what could one
man do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them
together with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they
could shoot as true to a mark as I could with my gun?