AN ABSORRING IDEA. 251

home for; what kind of boats they had; and why I might not
order myself and my business so that I might be as able to go
over thither as they were to come to me.

I never so much as troubled myself to consider what I should
do with myself when I came thither, what would become of me it
I fell into the hands of the savages, or how I should escape from
them if they attempted me; no, nor so much as how it was possible
for me to reach the coast and not be attempted by some or other
of them without any possibility of delivering myself ; and if I
should not fall into their hands, what I should do for provisions, or
whither I should bend my course ;—none of these thoughts, I say,
so much as came in my way, but my mind was wholly bent upon
the notion of my passing over in my boat to the mainland. 1
looked back upon my present condition as the most miserable that
could possibly be: that I was not able to throw myself into any-
thing but death that could be called worse; that if I reached the
shore of the main I might perhaps meet with relief, or I might
const along, as I did on the shore of Africa, till I came to some
inhabited country, and where I might find some relief; and, after
all, perhaps [ might fall in with some Christian ship that might
take me in; and if the worst came to the worst I could but die,
which would put an end to all these miseries at once. Pray note,
all this was the fruit of a disturbed mind, an impatient temper,
made as it were desperate by the long continuance of my troubles,
and the disappointments I had met in the wreck I had been on
board of, and where I had been so near the obtaining what I so
earnestly longed for, namely, somebody to speak to, and to learn
some knowledge from of the place where I was, and of the probable
means of my deliverance: I say, I was agitated wholly by these
thoughts; all my calm of mind in my resignation to Providence,
and waiting the issue of the dispositions of Heaven, seemed to be
suspended ; and I had, as it were, no power to turn my thoughts
to anything but to the project of a voyage to the main, which
came upon me with such force and such an impetuosity of desire
that it was not to be resisted.

When this had agitated my thoughts for two hours or more
with such violence that it set my very blood into a ferment, and