- SEVEN YEARS OF REPOSE. 3517

upon the spot, and who I knew were very rich, so that he believed
they would be fond of buying it, he did not doubt but I should
make 4000 or 5000 pieces of eight the more of it.

Accordingly I agreed, gave him order to offer it to them, and
he did so; and in about eight months more, the ship being then
returned, he sent me an account that they had accepted the
offer, and had remitted 33,000 pieces of eight to a correspondent
of theirs at Lisbon to pay for it.

Jn return, I signed the instrument of sale in the form which
they sent from Lisbon, and sent it to my old man, who sent me
bills of exchange for 32,800 pieces of eight to me for the estate;
reserving the payment of 100 moidores a year to him, the old man,
during his life, and 50 moidores afterwards to his son for his life,
which I had promised them, which the plantation was to make
good as a rent-charge. And thus I have given the first part of a
life of fortune and adventure, a life of Providence’s checker-work,
and of a variety which the world will seldom be able to show the
like of. Beginning foolishly, but closing much more happily than
any part of it ever gave me leave so much as to hope for.

Any one would think that in this state of complicated good
fortune I was past running any more hazards; and so indeed I had
been, if other circumstances had concurred; but I was inured to a
wandering life, had no family, not many relations, nor, however
rich, had I contracted much acquaintance; and though I had sold
my estate in the Brazils, yet I could not keep the country out of
my head, and had a great mind to be upon the wing again; espe-
cially I could not resist the strong inclination I had to see my
island, and to know if the poor Spaniards were in being there, and
how the rogues I left there had used them.

My true friend the widow earnestly dissuaded me from it, and so
far prevailed with me that for almost seven years she prevented my
running abroad; during which time I took my two nephews, the
children of one of my brothers, into my care. The eldest having
something of his own, I bred up as a gentleman, and gave him a
settlement of some addition to his estate after my decease. ‘The
other I put out to a captain of a ship; and after five years, finding
hin a sensible, bold, enterprising young fellow, I put him into a