ghbour, a Portuguese of Lisbon, but: born of English parents,
whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I was. I call
him my neighbour, because his plantation lay next to mine, and we went
on very sociably together. My stock was but low, as well as his; and we
rather planted for food than any thing else, for about two years.
However, we began to increase, and our land began to come into order; so
that Ihe third year we planted some tobacco, and made each of us a large
piece of ground ready for planting canes in the year to come: but we
both wanted help; and now I found, more than before, I had done wrong in
parting with my boy Xury.

But, alas! for me to do wrong, that never did right, was no great
wonder. I had no remedy, but to go on: I had got into an employment
quite remote to my genius, and directly contrary to the life I delighted
in, and for which I forsook my father's house, and broke through all his
good advice: nay, I was coining into the very middle station, or upper
degree of low life, which my father advised me to before; and which, if
I resolved to go on with, I might as well have staid at home, and never
have fatigued myself in the world, as I had done: and I used often to
say to myself, I could have done this as well in England, among my
friends, as have gone five thousand miles off to do it among strangers
and savages, in a wilderness, and at such a distance as never to hear
from any part of the world that had the least knowledge of me.

In this manner, I used to look upon my condition with the utmost regret.
I had nobody to converse with, but now and then this neighbour; no work
to be done, but by the labour of my hands: and I used to say, I lived
just like a man cast away upon some desolate island, that had nobody
there but himself. But how just has it been! and how should all men
reflect, that when they compare their present conditions with others
that are worse, Heaven may oblige them to make the exchange, and be
convinced of their former felicity by their experience: I say, how just
has it been, that the truly solitary life I reflected on, in an island
of mere desolation, should be my lot, who had so often unjustly compared
it with the life which I then led, in which, had I continued, I had, in
all probability, been exceeding prosperous and rich.

I was, in some degree, settled in my measures for carrying on the
plantation, before my kind friend, the captain of the ship that took me