166 CLOSE OF THE SECOND YEAR.

branches of such shrubs as I could find, and threw it over; and
having fed it, I tied it as I did before, to lead it away. But it was
so tame with being hungry that I had no need to have tied it,
for it followed me like a dog; and as I continually fed it, the
creature became so loving, so gentle, and so fond, that it became
from that time one of my domestics also, and would never leave
afterwards.

The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and
I kept the 30th of September in the same solemn manner as
before; being the anniversary of my landing on the island, having
now been there two years, and no more prospect of being delivered
than the first day I came there. I spent the whole day in humble
and thankful acknowledgments of the many wonderful mercies
which my solitary condition was attended with, and without which
it might have been infinitely more miserable. I gave humble and
hearty thanks that God had been pleased to discover to me even
that it was possible I might be more happy in this solitary con-
dition than T should have been in a liberty of society and in all
the pleasures of the world; that he could fully make up to me the
deficiencies of my solitary state, and the want of human society,
by his presence, and the communications of his grace to my soul—
supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon his
providence here, and hope for his eternal presence hereafter.

It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy
this life I now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than

‘the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my
days. And now I changed both my sorrows and my joys: my
very desires altered, my affections changed their gusts, and my
delights were perfectly new from what they were at my first
coming, or indeed for the two years past.

Before, as I walked about, either on my hunting or for viewing
the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break
out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me
to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in, and
how I was a prisoner locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of
the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption. In
the midst of the greatest composures of my mind, this would