nd nature hath placed them: for, not to look back upon my
primitive condition, and the excellent advice of my father, the
opposition to which was, as I may call it, my _original sin_, my
subsequent mistakes of the same kind had been the means of my coming
into this miserable condition; for had that Providence, which so happily
seated me at the Brazils as a planter, blessed me with confined desires,
and I could have been contented to have gone on gradually, I might have
been, by this time, I mean in the time of my being in this island, one
of the most considerable planters in the Brazils; nay, I am persuaded,
that by the improvements I had made in that little time I lived there,
and the increase I should probably have made if I had remained, I might
have been worth a hundred thousand moidores: and what business had I to
leave a settled fortune, a well-stocked plantation, improving and
increasing, to turn supercargo to Guinea to fetch negroes, when patience
and time would have so increased our stock at home, that we could have
bought them at our own door from those whose business it was to fetch
them? and though it had cost us something more, yet the difference of
that price was by no means worth saving at so great a hazard. But as
this is usually the fate of young heads, so reflection upon the folly of
it is as commonly the exercise of more years, or of the dear-bought
experience of time: so it was with me now; and yet so deep had the
mistake taken root in my temper, that I could not satisfy myself in my
station, but was continually poring upon the means and possibility of my
escape from this place: and that I may, with the greater pleasure to the
reader, bring on the remaining part of my story, it may not be improper
to give some account of my first conceptions on the subject of this
foolish scheme for my escape, and how, and upon what foundation I acted.

I am now to be supposed retired into my castle, after my late voyage to
the wreck, my frigate laid up and secured under water, as usual, and my
condition restored to what it was before; I had more wealth, indeed,
than I had before, but was not at all the richer; for I had no more use
for it than the Indians of Peru had before the Spaniards came there.

It was one of the nights in the rainy season in March, the four and
twentieth year of my first setting foot in this island of solitude, I
was lying in my bed, or hammock, awake; very well in health, had no
pain, no dist