time, and ordered my
friends to have fitted her out again for our supply; had I done this,
and staid there myself, I had, at least, acted like a man of common
sense; but I was possessed with a wandering spirit, scorned all
advantages, pleased myself with being the patron of these people I had
placed there, and doing for them in a kind of haughty majestic way, like
an old patriarchal monarch; providing for them, as if I had been father
of the whole family, as well as of the plantation: but I never so much
as pretended to plant in the name of any government or nation, or to
acknowledge any prince, or to call my people subjects to any one nation
more than another; nay, I never so much as gave the place a name; but
left it as I found it, belonging to no man; and the people under no
discipline or government but my own; who, though I had an influence over
them as father and benefactor, had no authority or power to act or
command one way or other, farther than voluntary consent moved them to
comply: yet even this, had I staid there, would have done well enough;
but as I rambled from them, and came thither no more, the last letters I
had from any of them, were by my partner's means, who afterwards sent
another sloop to the place; and who sent me word, though I had not the
letter till five years after it was written, that they went on but
poorly, were malecontent with their long stay there; that Will Atkins
was dead; that five of the Spaniards were come away; and that though
they had not been much molested by the savages, yet they had had some
skirmishes with them; that they begged of him to write to me to think
of the promise I had made to fetch them away, that they might see their
own country again before they died.

But I was gone a wild-goose chase indeed, and they who will have any
more of me, must be content to follow me through a new variety of
follies, hardships, and wild adventures; wherein the justice of
Providence may be duly observed, and we may see how easily Heaven can
gorge us with our own desires, make the strongest of our wishes to be
our affliction and punish us most severely with those very things which
we think it would be our utmost happiness to be allowed in.

Let no wise man flatter himself with the strength of his own judgment,
as if he was able to choose any particular station of life for himself.
Man is a short-sighted creature, sees but a very little way before him;
and as his passions are none of his