OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. «67

 

pounds from England, and who, in that time and with that little addi-
tion, could scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand
pounds sterling, and that increasing too,—for me to think of such a
voyage, was the most preposterous thing that ever man in such cir-
cumstances could be guilty of.

But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist
the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my
father’s good counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I
would go with all my heart, if they would undertake to look after my
" plantation in my absence, and would dispose of it to such as I should
direct if I miscarried. This they all engaged to do, and entered into
writings, or covenants, to do so; and I made a formal will, disposing
of my plantation and effects, in case of my death, making the captain
of the ship, that had saved my life as before, my universal heir, but
obliging him to dispose of my effects as I had directed in my will, one
half of the produce being to himself, and the other to be shipped to
England.

In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects, and keep
up my plantation: had I used half as much prudence to have looked
into my own interest, and have made a judgment of what I ought to
have done, and not to have done, I had certainly never gone away
from so prosperous an undertaking, leaving all the probable views of
a thriving circumstance, and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with
all its common hazards; to say nothing of the reasons I had to expect
particular misfortunes to myself.

But I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy,
rather than my reason: and accordingly, the ship being fitted out, and
the cargo furnished, and all things done as by agreement by my part-
ners in the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour again, the Ist of
September, 1659, being the same day eight years that I ‘went: from
my father and mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their’ ‘autho-
rity, and the fool to my own interest.

Our ship was about one hundred and twenty tons burden, carried
six guns, and fourteen men, besides the master, his boy, and myself;
we had on board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were
fit for our trade with the Negroes, such as beads, bits of glass, shells,
and odd trifles, especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissors, hatchets,
and the like.

The same day I went on board we set sail, stax
northward upon our own coast, with design to stretch,
African coast; when they came about ten or twelve degreés.a
latitude, hich, it seems, was the manner of their course in ht