248 THE FLAW AT THE OUTSET.

and did not go abroad so much ; and if at any time I did stir with
any freedom, it was always to the east part of the island, where I
was pretty well satisfied the savages never came, and where I could
go without so many precautions, and such a load of arms and am-
munition, as I always carried with me if I went the other way.

I lived in this condition near two years more. But my unlucky
head, that was always to let me know it was born to make my body
miserable, was all these two years filled with projects and designs
how, if it were possible, I might get away from this island: for
sometimes I was for making another voyage to the wreck, though
my reason told me that there was nothing left there worth the
hazard of my voyage; sometimes for a ramble one way, sometimes
another ; and I believe verily, if I had had the boat that I went
from Sallee in, I should have ventured to sea, bound anywhere, I
knew not whither.

I have been, in all my circumstances, a memento to those who
are touched with the general plague of mankind, whence, for
ought I know, one-half of their miseries flow—I mean, that of not
being satisfied with the station wherein God and nature has 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 ortyinal 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 had 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 stayed, 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,