sons; it may suffice to
mention that we went into the great river Potomac, the ship being bound
thither; and there we intended to have settled first, though afterwards
we altered our minds.

The first thing I did of moment after having gotten all our goods on
shore, and placed them in a storehouse, or warehouse, which, with a
lodging, we hired at the small place or village where we landed--I say,
the first thing was to inquire after my mother, and after my brother
(that fatal person whom I married as a husband, as I have related at
large). A little inquiry furnished me with information that Mrs. ----,
that is, my mother, was dead; that my brother (or husband) was alive,
which I confess I was not very glad to hear; but which was worse, I
found he was removed from the plantation where he lived formerly, and
where I lived with him, and lived with one of his sons in a plantation
just by the place where we landed, and where we had hired a warehouse.

I was a little surprised at first, but as I ventured to satisfy myself
that he could not know me, I was not only perfectly easy, but had a
great mind to see him, if it was possible to so do without his seeing
me. In order to that I found out by inquiry the plantation where he
lived, and with a woman of that place whom I got to help me, like what
we call a chairwoman, I rambled about towards the place as if I had
only a mind to see the country and look about me. At last I came so
near that I saw the dwellinghouse. I asked the woman whose plantation
that was; she said it belonged to such a man, and looking out a little
to our right hands, 'there,' says she, is the gentleman that owns the
plantation, and his father with him.' 'What are their Christian
names?' said I. 'I know not,' says she, 'what the old gentleman's name
is, but the son's name is Humphrey; and I believe,' says she, 'the
father's is so too.' You may guess, if you can, what a confused
mixture of joy and fight possessed my thoughts upon this occasion, for
I immediately knew that this was nobody else but my own son, by that
father she showed me, who was my own brother. I had no mask, but I
ruffled my hood so about my face, that I depended upon it that after
above twenty years' absence, and withal not expecting anything of me in
that part of the world, he would not be able to know anything of me.
But I need not have used all that caution, for the old gentleman was
grown dim-sighted by some distemper which had f