516 “UNSTABLE AS WATER.”

there were a great many. I found letters at London from them all
by the way of Lisbon, when I came back to Mngland; of which I
shall also take some notice immediately.

Thave now done with my island, and all manner of discourse
about it; and whoever reads the rest of my memorandums would
do well to turn his thoughts entirely from it, and expect to read
of the follies of an old man, not warned by his own harms, much
less by those of other men, to beware of the like; not cooled by
almost forty years’ misery and disappointments, not satisfied with
prosperity beyond expectation, not made cautious by affliction and
distress beyond imitation,

LT had no more business to go to the Hast Indies, than a man at
full liberty, and having committed no crime, has to go to the
turnkey at Newgate, and desire him to lock him up among the
prisoners there, and starve him. Had T taken a small vessel from
England, and went directly to the island; had I loaded her, as I
did the other vessel, with all the necessaries for the plantation and
for my people, took a patent from the governor here to have
secured my property, In subjection only to that of Kngland; had
I carried over cannon and ammunition, servants and people, ta
plant, and, taking possession of the place, fortified and strengthened
it in the name of Kngland, and increased it with people, as I
might easily have done; had I then settled myself there, and sent
the ship back loaded with good rice, as I might also have done in
six months’ time, and ordered my friends to have fitted her out
again for our supply ; had I done this, and stayed there myself, I
had, at least, acted like a man of common sense. But I was pos-
sessed with a wandering spirit, scorned all advantages. I pleased
myself with being the patron of those people I placed there, and
dving for them in a kind of haughty, majestic way, like an old
patriarchal monarch ; providing for them as if I had been father
of the whole family, as well as of the plantation. But I never so
much as pretended to plant in the name of any government or
nation, or to acknowledge any prince, or to call my people subjects
to any one nation more than another; nay, I never so much as
gave the place a name, but left it as I found it, belonging to no
man, and the people under no discipline or government but my