ale it scarce left any appearance of black upon the paper: as long
as it lasted, I made use of it to minute down the days of the month on
which any remarkable thing happened to me; and first, by casting up
times past, I remember that there was a strange concurrence of days, in
the various providences which befel me, and which, if I had been
superstitiously inclined to observe days as fatal or fortunate, I might
have had reason to have looked upon with a great deal of curiosity.

First, I had observed, that the same day that I broke away from my
father and my friends, and ran away to Hull in order to go to sea, the
same day afterwards I was taken by the Sallee man of war, and made
a slave.

The same day of the year that I escaped out of the wreck of the ship in
Yarmouth Roads, that same day of the year afterwards I made my escape
from Sallee in the boat.

The same day of the year I was born on, viz. the 20th of September, the
same day I had my life so miraculously saved twenty-six years after,
when I was cast on shore in this island; so that my wicked life, and
solitary life, both began on a day.

The next thing to my ink's being wasted, was that of my bread, I mean
the biscuit which I brought out of the ship. This I had husbanded to the
last degree, allowing myself but one cake of bread a day, for above a
year: and yet I was quite without bread for a year before I got any corn
of my own: and great reason I had to be thankful that I had any at all,
the getting it being, as has been already observed, next to miraculous.

My clothes too began to decay mightily: as to linen, I had none a good
while, except some chequered shirts which I found in the chests of the
other seamen, and which I carefully preserved, because many times I
could bear no other clothes on but a shirt; and it was a very great help
to me, that I had among all the men's clothes of the ship almost three
dozen of shirts. There were also several thick watch-coats of the
seamen, which were left behind, but they were too hot to wear; and
though it is true, that the weather was so violent hot, that there was
no need of clothes, yet I could not go quite naked; no, though I had
been inclined to it, which I was not; nor could I abide the thought of
it, though I was all alone.

One reason why I could not go quite naked, was, I could not bear the
heat of the sun so well when quite naked as with some clothes on; nay,
the very heat frequently blistered my skin; w