and weather kept us
below, we spent some time of an afternoon in the same exercise, till
we had quite completed it. But then there were some things in it so
indescribable by words, that if I had not had some knowledge in drawing,
our history had been very incomplete. Thus it must have been, especially
in the description of the _Glumms_ and _Gawrys_ therein mentioned. In
order to gain (that so I might communicate) a clear idea of these, I
made several drawings of them from his discourses and accounts; and,
at length, after divers trials, I made such exact delineations, that
he declared they could not have been more perfect resemblances if I had
drawn them from the life. Upon a survey, he confessed the very persons
themselves could not have been more exact. I also drew with my pencil
the figure of an aerial engagement, which, having likewise had his
approbation, I have given a draught of, plate the sixth.

Then, having finished the work to our mutual satisfaction, I locked it
up, in order to peruse it at leisure, intending to have presented it to
him at our arrival in England, to dispose of as he pleased, in such
a way as might have conduced most to his profit; for I resolved,
notwithstanding our agreement, and the obligations he was under to
me, that the whole of that should be his own. But he, having been in a
declining state some time before we reached shore, died the very night
we landed; and his funeral falling upon me, I thought I had the greatest
right to the manuscript, which, however, I had no design to have parted
with; but showing it to some judicious friends, I have by them been
prevailed with not to conceal from the world what may prove so very
entertaining, and perhaps useful.

R. P.

A GENUINE ACCOUNT

OF THE

LIFE OF PETER WILKINS.

CHAPTER I.

Giving an account of the author's birth and family--The fondness of
his mother--His being put to an academy at sixteen by the advice of his
friend--His thoughts of his own illiterature

I was born at Penhale, in the county of Cornwall, on the 21st day of
December 1685, about four months after my father, Peter Wilkins, who
was a zealous Protestant of the Church of England, had been executed
by Jeffreys, in Somersetshire, for joining in the design of raising the
Duke of Monmouth to the British throne. I was named, after my father and
grandfather, Peter, and was my father's only child by Alice his wife,
the daughter of John Capert, a clergyman in a nei