boatswain, and a
gunner, English; a Dutch carpenter, and three foremast men. With these
we found we could do well enough, having Indian seamen, such as they
were, to make up.

When all was ready we set sail for Achin, in the island of Sumatra, and
from thence to Siam, where we exchanged some of our wares for opium and
some arrack; the first a commodity which bears a great price among the
Chinese, and which at that time was much wanted there. Then we went up
to Saskan, were eight months out, and on our return to Bengal I was very
well satisfied with my adventure. Our people in England often admire how
officers, which the company send into India, and the merchants which
generally stay there, get such very great estates as they do, and
sometimes come home worth sixty or seventy thousand pounds at a time; but
it is little matter for wonder, when we consider the innumerable ports
and places where they have a free commerce; indeed, at the ports where
the English ships come there is such great and constant demands for the
growth of all other countries, that there is a certain vent for the
returns, as well as a market abroad for the goods carried out.

I got so much money by my first adventure, and such an insight into the
method of getting more, that had I been twenty years younger, I should
have been tempted to have stayed here, and sought no farther for making
my fortune; but what was all this to a man upwards of threescore, that
was rich enough, and came abroad more in obedience to a restless desire
of seeing the world than a covetous desire of gaining by it? A restless
desire it really was, for when I was at home I was restless to go abroad;
and when I was abroad I was restless to be at home. I say, what was this
gain to me? I was rich enough already, nor had I any uneasy desires
about getting more money; therefore the profit of the voyage to me was of
no great force for the prompting me forward to further undertakings.
Hence, I thought that by this voyage I had made no progress at all,
because I was come back, as I might call it, to the place from whence I
came, as to a home: whereas, my eye, like that which Solomon speaks of,
was never satisfied with seeing. I was come into a part of the world
which I was never in before, and that part, in particular, which I heard
much of, and was resolved to see as much of it as I could: and then I
thought I might say I had seen all the world that was worth seeing.

But my fel