268 THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES

for me; so that, in a word, I found nothing to relieve or assist me,
and that little money I had would not do much for me as to settling
in the world.

I met with one piece of gratitude, indeed, which I did not expect;
and this was, that the master of the ship whom I had so happily de-
livered, and by the same means saved the ship and cargo, having given
a very handsome account to the owners of the manner how I had saved
the lives of the men, and the ship, they invited me to meet them and
some other merchants concerned, and all together made me a very
handsome compliment upon that subject, and a present of almost two
hundred pounds sterling.

But after making several reflections upon the circumstances of my
life, and how little way this would go towards settling me in the world,
I resolved to’go to Lisbon, and see if I might not come by some infor-
mation of the state of my plantation in the Brazils, and what was be-
come of my partner, who, I had reason to suppose, had some years
now given me over for dead.

With this view I took shipping for Lisbon, where I arrived in
April following, my man Friday accompanying me very honestly in
all these ramblings, and proving a most faithful servant upon all occa-
sions.

When I came to Lisbon, I found out, by inquiry, and to my particu-
lar satisfaction, my old friend the captain of the ship who first took
me up at sea off the shore of Africa: he was now grown old, and had
left off the sea, having put his son, who was far from a young man,
into his ship, and who still used the Brazil trade. The old man did
not know me, and, indeed, I hardly knew him; but I soon brought
myself to his remembrance when I told him who I was.

After some passionate expressions of our old acquaintance, I in-
quired, you may be sure, after my plantation and my partner. The
old man told me he had not been in the Brazils for about nine years ;
but that he could assure me that, when he came away, my partner was
living, but the trustees, whom I had joined with him to take cognisance
of my part, were both dead; that, however, he believed that I would
have a very good account of the improvement of the plantation, for
that, upon the general belief of my being cast away and drowned, my
trustees had given in the account of the produce of my part of the
plantation to the procurator-fiscal, who had appropriated it, in case I
never came to claim it, one-third to the king, and two-thirds to the
monastery of St. Augustine, to be expended for the benefit of the
poor, and for the conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith; but
that if I appeared, or any one “for me, to claim the inheritance, it would