poor, miserable, dejected handful of people; that if
means had been put into their hands, they had yet so abandoned
themselves to despair, and so sunk under the weight of their
misfortunes, that they thought of nothing but starving. One of them, a
grave and very sensible man, told me he was convinced they were in the
wrong; that it was not the part of wise men to give up themselves to
their misery, but always to take hold of the helps which reason offered,
as well for present support, as for future deliverance; he told me that
grief was the most senseless insignificant passion in the world, for
that it regarded only things past, which were generally impossible to he
recalled or to be remedied, but had no view to things to come, and had
no share in any thing that looked like deliverance, but rather added to
the affliction than proposed a remedy; and upon this he repeated a
Spanish proverb, which though I cannot repeat in just the same words
that he spoke it, yet I remember I made it into an English proverb of my
own, thus;

In trouble to be troubled,
Is to have your trouble doubled.

He then ran on in remarks upon all the little improvements I had made in
my solitude; my unwearied application, as he called it, and how I had
made a condition, which in its circumstances was at first much worse
than theirs, a thousand times more happy than theirs was, even now when
they were all together. He told me it was remarkable that Englishmen had
a greater presence of mind in their distress than any people that ever
he met with; that their unhappy nation, and the Portuguese, were the
worst men in the world to struggle with misfortunes; for that their
first step in dangers, after common efforts are over, was always to
despair, lie down under it and die, without rousing their thoughts up to
proper remedies for escape.

I told him their case and mine differed exceedingly; that they were cast
upon the shore without necessaries, without supply of food, or of
present sustenance, till they could provide it; that it is true, I had
this disadvantage and discomfort, that I was alone; but then the
supplies I had providentially thrown into my hands, by the unexpected
driving of the ship on shore, was such a help as would have encouraged
any creature in the world to have applied himself as I had done.
"Seignior," says the Spaniard, "had we poor Spaniards been in your case
we should never have gotten half those things out of the ship