CRUSOE’S NIGHT THOUGHTS. 249

yet the difference of that price was by no means worth saving at
so great a hazard.

But as this is ordinarily the fate of young heads, so reflection
upon the folly of it is as ordinarily the exercise of more years or
of the dear-bought experience of time. And so it was with me
now. And yet so deep had the mistake taken root in my temper
that I could not satisfy myself in my station, but was continually
poring upon the means and possibility of my escape from this
place. And that I may, with the greater pleasure to the reader,
bring on the remaining part of my story, it may not be improper
to give some account of my first conceptions on the subject of this
foolish scheme for my escape, and how and upon what foundation
I acted.

I am now to be supposed retired into my castle after my late
voyage to the wreck, my frigate laid up and secured under water
as usual, and my condition restored to what it was before. I had
more wealth, indeed, than I had before, but was not at all the
richer ; for I had no more use for it than the Indians of Peru had
before the Spaniards came there.

It was one of the nights in the rainy season in March, the four-
and-twentieth year of my first setting foot in this island of solitari-
ness. I was lying in my bed or hammock awake, very well in
health ; had no pain, no distemper, no uneasiness of body; no, nor
any uneasiness of mind, more than ordinary: but could by no
means close my eyes; that is, so as to sleep; no, not a wink all
night long: otherwise that as follows.

It is as impossible as needless to set down the innumerable
crowd of thoughts that whirled through that great thoroughfare of
the brain, the memory, in this night’s time. I ran over the whole
history of my life in miniature, or by abridgment, as I may call
it, to my coming to this island, and also of the part of my life
since I came to this island. In my reflections upon the state of
my case since I came on shore on this island, I was comparing the
happy posture of my affairs in the first years of my habitation
here, compared to the life of anxiety, fear, and care which I had
lived ever since I had seen the print of a foot in the sand. Not
that I did not believe the savages had frequented the island even