discontents about what we want, appeared to me to spring from
the want of thankfulness for what we have.

Another reflection was of great use to me, and doubtless would be so to
any one that should fall into such distress as mine was; and this was,
to compare my present condition with what I at first expected it would
be; nay, with what it would certainly have been, if the good providence
of God had not wonderfully ordered the ship to be cast up near to the
shore, where I not only could come at her, but could bring what I got
out of her to the shore, for my relief and comfort; without which, I had
wanted for tools to work, weapons for defence, and gunpowder and shot
for getting my food.

I spent whole hours, I may say whole days, in representing to myself, in
the most lively colours, how I must have acted if I had got nothing out
of the ship. I could not have so much as got any food, except fish and
turtles; and that, as it was long before I found any of them, I must
have perished; that I should have lived, if I had not perished, like a
mere savage; that if I had killed a goat or a fowl, by any contrivance,
I had no way to flay or open it, or part the flesh from the skin and the
bowels, or to cut it up; but must gnaw it with my teeth, and pull it
with my claws, like a beast.

These reflections made me very sensible of the goodness of Providence to
me, and very thankful for my present condition, with all its hardships
and misfortunes: and this part also I cannot but recommend to the
reflection of those who are apt, in their misery, to say, Is any
affliction like mine? Let them consider how much worse the cases of some
people are, and their case might have been, if Providence had
thought fit.

I had another reflection, which assisted me also to comfort my mind with
hopes; and this was comparing my present condition with what I had
deserved, and had therefore reason to expect from the hand of
Providence. I had lived a dreadful life, perfectly destitute of the
knowledge and fear of God. I had been well instructed by my father and
mother; neither had they been wanting to me, in their endeavours to
infuse an early religious awe of God into my mind, a sense of my duty,
and what the nature and end of my being required of me. But, alas!
falling early into the seafaring life, which, of all lives, is the most
destitute of the fear of God, though his terrors are always before them;
I say, falling early into the seafaring life,