that a temper of peace, thankfulness, love, and
affection, is much the more proper frame for prayer than that of terror
and discomposure; and that under the dread of mischief impending, a man
is no more fit for a comforting performance of the duty of praying to
God, than he is for a repentance on a sick bed; for these discomposures
affect the mind, as the others do the body; and the discomposure of the
mind must necessarily be as great a disability as that of the body, and
much greater; praying to God being properly an act of the mind, not
of the body.

But to go on: after I had thus secured one part of my little living
stock, I went about the whole island, searching for another private
place to make such another deposit; when, wandering more to the west
point of the island than I had ever done yet, and looking out to sea, I
thought I saw a boat upon the sea, at a great distance. I had found a
perspective-glass or two in one of the seamen's chests, which I saved
out of our ship, but I had it not about me; and this was so remote, that
I could not tell what to make of it, though I looked at it till my eyes
were not able to hold to look any longer: whether it was a boat or not,
I do not know, but as I descended from the hill I could see no more of
it; so I gave it over; only I resolved to go no more out without a
perspective-glass in my pocket. When I was come down the hill to the end
of the island, where, indeed, I had never been before, I was presently
convinced that the seeing the print of a man's foot was not such a
strange thing in the island as I imagined: and, but that it was a
special providence that I was cast upon the side of the island where the
savages never came, I should easily have known that nothing was more
frequent than for the canoes from the main, when they happened to be a
little too far out at sea, to shoot over to that side of the island for
harbour: likewise, as they often met and fought in their canoes, the
victors, having taken any prisoners, would bring them over to this
shore, where, according to their dreadful customs, being all cannibals,
they would kill and eat them; of which hereafter.

When I was come down the hill to the shore, as I said above, being the
S.W. point of the island, I was perfectly confounded and amazed; nor is
it possible for me to express the horror of my mind, at seeing the shore
spread with skulls, hands, feet, and other bones of human bodies; and
particularly, I observ