horror upon the thoughts of what my
condition would have been if I had chopped upon them and been discovered
before that, when, naked and unarmed, except with one gun, and that
loaded often only with small shot, I walked every where, peeping and
peering about the island to see what I could get; what a surprise should
I have been in, if, when I discovered the print of a man's foot, I had,
instead of that, seen fifteen or twenty savages, and found them pursuing
me, and by the swiftness of their running, no possibility of my escaping
them! The thoughts of this sometimes sunk my very soul within me, and
distressed my mind so much, that I could not soon recover it, to think
what I should have done, and how I should not only have been unable to
resist them, but even should not have had presence of mind enough to do
what I might have done; much less what now, after so much consideration
and preparation, I might be able to do. Indeed, after serious thinking
of these things, I would be very melancholy, and sometimes it would last
a great while; but I resolved it all, at last, into thankfulness to that
Providence which had delivered me from so many unseen dangers, and had
kept from me those mischiefs which I could have no way been the agent in
delivering myself from, because I had not the least notion of any such
thing depending, or the least supposition of its being possible. This
renewed a contemplation which often had come to my thoughts in former
time, when first I began to see the merciful dispositions of Heaven, in
the dangers we run through in this life; how wonderfully we are
delivered when we know nothing of it; how, when we are in a quandary,
(as we call it) a doubt or hesitation, whether to go this way, or that
way, a secret hint shall direct us this way, when we intended to go that
way: nay, when sense, our own inclination, and perhaps business, has
called to go the other way, yet a strange impression upon the mind, from
we know not what springs, and by we know not what power, shall over-rule
us to go this way; and it shall afterwards appear, that had we gone that
way which we should have gone, and even to our imagination ought to have
gone, we should have been ruined and lost. Upon these, and many like
reflections, I afterwards made it a certain rule with me, that whenever
I found those secret hints or pressings of mind, to doing or not doing
any thing that presented, or going this way or that way, I never failed
to o