he creature became so loving, so
gentle, and so fond, that it was from that time one of my domestics
also, and would never leave me afterwards.

The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and I kept the
30th of September in the same solemn manner as before, being the
anniversary of my landing on the island; having now been there two
years, and no more prospect of being delivered than the first day I came
there. I spent the whole day in humble and thankful acknowledgments for
the many wonderful mercies which my solitary condition was attended
with, and without which it might have been infinitely more miserable. I
gave humble and hearty thanks to God for having been pleased to discover
to me, that it was possible I might be more happy even in this solitary
condition, than I should have been in the enjoyment of society, and in
all the pleasures of the world: that he could fully make up to me the
deficiencies of my solitary state, and the wont of human society, by his
presence, and the communications of his grace to my soul; supporting,
comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon his providence here, and
to hope for his eternal presence hereafter.

It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy the life I
now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than the wicked,
cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days: and now I
changed both my sorrows and my joys: my very desires altered, my
affections changed their gusts, and my delights were perfectly new from
what they were at my first coming, or indeed for the two years past.

Before, as I walked about, either on my hunting, or for viewing the
country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me
on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me, to think of the
woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner,
locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an
uninhabited wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest
composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm, and
make me wring my hands, and weep like a child: sometimes it would take
me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh,
and look upon the ground for an hour or two together: this was still
worse to me; but if I could burst into tears, or give vent to my
feelings by words, it would go off; and my grief being exhausted,
would abate.

But now I began to exerci