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' miseries and disappointments; not satisfied with prosperity beyond expectation, nor made cautious by afflictions and distress beyond imitation.

I had no more business to go to the East Indies than a man at full liberty has to go to the turnkey at Newgate, and desire him to lock him up among the prisoners there, and starve him. Had I taken a small vessel from England, and gone 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; taken a patent from the government here to have secured my property, in subjection only to that of England; had I carried over cannon and ammunition, servants and people to plant, and taken possession of the place, fortified and strengthened it in the name of England, and increased it with people, as I might easily have done; had I then settled myself there, and sent the ship back laden 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 possessed with a wandering spirit, and scorned all advantages: I pleased myself with being the patron of the people I placed there, and doing 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 nobody, and the people under no discipline or government but my own; who, though I had influence over them as a father and benefactor, had no authority or power to act or command one way or other, farther than voluntary consent moved them to comply: yet even this, had I stayed there, would have done well enough; but as I rambled from them, and came there no more, the last letters I had from any of them were by my partner's means, who afterwards sent another sloop to the place, and who sent me word, though I had not the letter till I got to London, several years after it was written, that they went on but poorly, were malcontent with their long stay there; that Will Atkins was dead; that five of the Spaniards were come away; and though they had not been much molested by the savages, yet they had had some skirmishes with them; and that they begged of him to write to me to think of the promise I had made to fetch them away, that they might see their country again before they died.

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But I was gone a wildgoose chase, indeed! and they that will have any more of me must be content to follow me into a new variety of follies, hardships, and wild adventures, wherein the justice of Providence may be duly observed, and we may see how easily Heaven can gorge us with our own desires, make the strongest of our wishes be our affliction, and punish us most severely with those very things which we think it would be our utmost happiness to be allowed in. Whether I had business or no

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business, away I went it is no time now to enlarge upon the reason or absurdity of my own conduct, but to come to the history; I was embarked for the voyage, and the voyage I went.

I shall only add a word or two concerning my honest popish clergyman; for let their opinion of us, and all other heretics in general, as they call us, be as uncharitable as it may, I verily believe this man was very sincere, and wished the good of all men: yet I believe he was upon the reserve in many of his expressions, to prevent giving me offence; for I scarce heard him once call on the blessed Virgin, or mention St. Jago or his guardian angel, though so common with the rest of them however, I say, I had not the least doubt of his sincerity and pious intentions on his own part; and I am firmly of opinion, if the rest of the popish missionaries were like him, they would strive to visit even the poor Tartars and Laplanders, where they have nothing to give them, as well as covet to flock to India, Persia, China, etc. the most wealthy of the heathen countries; for if they expected to bring no gains to their church by it, it may well be admired how they came to admit the Chinese Confucius into the calendar of the Christian saints. But this by the by.

A ship being ready to sail for Lisbon, my pious priest asked me leave to go thither; being still, as he observed, bound never to finish any voyage he began. How happy had it been for me if I had gone with him! But it was too late now all things Heaven appoints for the best : had I gone with him, I had never had so many things to be thankful for, and the reader had never heard of the second part of the travels and adventures of Robinson Crusoe; so I must here leave exclaiming at myself, and go on with my voyage. From the Brazils we made directly over the Atlantic Sea to the Cape of Good Hope, and had a tolerable good voyage, our course generally south-east, now and then a storm, and some contrary winds but my disasters at sea were at an end; my future rubs and cross events were to befall me on shore, that it might appear the land was as well prepared to be our scourge as the sea.

Our ship was on a trading voyage, and had a supercargo on board, who was to direct all her motions after she arrived at the Cape, only being limited to a certain number of days for stay, by charter-party, at the several ports she was to go to. This was none of my business, neither did I meddle with it; my nephew, the captain, and the supercargo, adjusting all those things between them as they thought fit.

We stayed at the Cape no longer than was needful to take in fresh water, but made the best of our way for the coast of Coromandel. We were indeed informed that a French man of war of fifty guns, and two large merchant ships, were gone for the Indies; and as I knew we were at war with France, I had some apprehensions of them; but they went their own way, and we heard no more of them.

I shall not pester the reader with a tedious description of places, journals of our voyages, variations of the compass, latitudes, tradewinds, etc.; it is enough to name the ports and places which we touched at, and what occurred to us upon our passage from one to another. We touched first at the island of Madagascar, where, though the people are fierce and treacherous, and very well armed with lances and bows, which they use with inconceivable dexterity, yet we fared very well with them

a while; they treated us very civilly; and, for some trifles which we gave them, such as knives, scissars, etc. they brought us eleven good fat bullocks, of a middling size, which we took in, partly for fresh provisions for our present spending, and the rest to salt for the ship's use.

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We were obliged to stay here some time after we had furnished ourselves with provisions; and I, who was always too curious to look into every nook of the world wherever I came, was for going on shore as often as I could. It was on the east side of the island that we went on shore one evening and the people, who, by the way, are very numerous, came thronging about us, and stood gazing at us at a distance; but as we had traded freely with them, and had been kindly used, we thought ourselves in no danger; but when we saw the people, we cut three boughs out of a tree, and stuck them up at a distance from us; which, it seems, is a mark in that country, not only of a truce and friendship, but when it is accepted, the other side set up three poles or boughs, which is a signal that they accept the truce too; but then this is a known condition of the truce, that you are not to pass beyond their three poles towards them, nor they to come past your three poles, or boughs, towards you; so that you are perfectly secure within the three poles, and all the space between your poles and theirs is allowed like a market for free converse, traffic, and commerce. When you go there, you must not carry your weapons with you and if they come into that space, they stick up their javelins and lances all at the first poles, and come on unarmed; but if any violence is offered them, and the truce thereby broken, away they run to the poles, and lay hold of their weapons, and the truce is at an end.

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It happened one evening when we went on shore, that a greater number of their people came down than usual, but all very friendly and civil; and they brought several kinds of provisions, for which we satisfied them with such toys as we had; their women also brought us milk and roots, and several things very acceptable to us, and all was quiet; and we made us a little tent or hut of some boughs of trees, and lay on shore all night.

I know not what was the occasion, but I was not so well satisfied to lie on shore as the rest; and the boat riding at an anchor about a stone's cast from the land, with two men in her to take care of her, I made one of them come on shore; and getting some boughs of trees to cover us also in the boat, I spread the sail on the bottom of the boat, and lay under the cover of the branches of the trees all night in the boat.

About two o'clock in the morning we heard one of our men make a terrible noise on the shore, calling out, for God's sake to bring the boat in, and come and help them, for they were all like to be murdered; at the same time I heard the fire of five muskets, which was the number of the guns they had, and that three times over; for, it seems, the natives here were not so easily frightened with guns as the savages were in America, where I had to do with them. All this while I knew not what was the matter, but rousing immediately from sleep with the noise, I caused the boat to be thrust in, and resolved, with three fusees we had on board, to land and assist our men.

We got the boat soon to the shore, but our men were in too much haste, for being come to the shore, they plunged into the water, to get

to the boat with all the expedition they could, being pursued by between three and four hundred men. Our men were but nine in all, and only five of them had fusees with them; the rest had pistols and swords, indeed, but they were of small use to them.

We took up seven of our men, and with difficulty enough too, three of them being very ill wounded; and that which was still worse was, that while we stood in the boat to take our men in, we were in as much danger as they were in on shore; for they poured their arrows in upon us so thick that we were glad to barricade the side of the boat up with the benches, and two or three loose boards, which, to our great satisfaction, we had by mere accident in the boat. And yet, had it been daylight, they are, it seems, such exact marksmen, that if they could have seen but the least part of any of us, they would have been sure of us. We had, by the light of the moon, a little sight of them, as they stood pelting us from the shore with darts and arrows, and having got ready our firearins, we gave them a volley, that we could hear, by the cries of some of them, had wounded several; however, they stood thus in battle array on the shore till break of day, which we suppose was that they might see the better to take their aim at us.

In this condition we lay, and could not tell how to weigh our anchor or set up our sail, because we must needs stand up in the boat, and they were as sure to hit us as we were to hit a bird in a tree with small shot. We made signals of distress to the ship, which though she rode a league off, yet my nephew the captain, hearing our firing, and by glasses perceiving the posture we lay in, and that we fired towards the shore, pretty well understood us; and weighing anchor with all speed, he stood as near the shore as he durst with the ship, and then sent another boat with ten hands in her, to assist us: but we called to them not to come too near, telling them what condition we were in; however they stood in near to us, and one of the men taking the end of a towline in his hand, and keeping our boat between him and the enemy, so that they cou'd not perfectly see him, swam on board us, and made fast the line to the boat; upon which we slipped out a little cable, and leaving our anchor behind, they towed us out of reach of the arrows; we all the while lying close behind the barricado we had made.

As soon as we were got from between the ship and the shore, that we could lay her side to the shore, she ran along just by them, and poured in a broadside among them loaded with pieces of iron and lead, small bullets, and such stuff, besides the great shot, which made a terrible havoc among them.

When we were got on board and out of danger, we had time to examine into the occasion of this fray; and, indeed, our supercargo, who had been often in those parts, put me upon it; for he said he was sure the inhabitants would not have touched us after we had made a truce, if we had not done something to provoke them to it. At length it came out that an old woman, who had come to sell us some milk, had brought it within our poles, and a young woman with her, who also brought some roots or herbs; and while the old woman (whether she was mother to the young woman or no they could not tell) was selling us the milk, one of our men offered some rudeness to the wench that was with her, at which the old

woman made a great noise: however, the seaman would not quit his prize, but carried her out of the old woman's sight among the trees, it being almost dark: the old woman went away without her, and, as we may suppose, made an outcry among the people she came from; who, upon notice, raised this great army upon us in three or four hours; and it was great odds but we had all been destroyed.

One of our men was killed with a lance thrown at him just at the beginning of the attack, as he sallied out of the tent they had made: the rest came off free, all but the fellow who was the occasion of all the mischief, who paid dear enough for his black mistress, for we could not hear what became of him a great while. We lay upon the shore two days after, though the wind presented, and made signals for him, and made our boat sail up shore and down shore several leagues, but in vain, so we were obliged to give him over; and if he alone had suffered for it, the loss had been less.

I could not satisfy myself, however, without venturing on shore once more, to try if I could learn anything of him or them; it was the third night after the action that I had a great mind to learn, if I could by any means, what mischief we had done, and how the game stood on the Indians' side. I was careful to do it in the dark, lest we should be attacked again; but I ought, indeed, to have been sure that the men I went with had been under my command, before I engaged in a thing so hazardous and mischievous as I was brought into by it, without design.

We took twenty as stout fellows with us as any in the ship, besides the supercargo and myself, and we landed two hours before midnight, at the same place where the Indians stood drawn up in the evening before. I landed here, because my design, as I have said, was chiefly to see if they had quitted the field, and if they had left any marks behind them of the mischief we had done them; and I thought if we could surprise one or two of them, perhaps we might get our man again, by way of exchange. We landed without any noise, and divided our men into two bodies, whereof the boatswain commanded one, and I the other. We neither saw nor heard anybody stir when we landed : and we marched up, one body at a distance from the other, to the place; but at first could see nothing, it being very dark; till by and by our boatswain, who led the first party, stumbled and fell over a dead body. This made them halt awhile; for knowing by the circumstances that they were at the place where the Indians had stood, they waited for my coming up there. We concluded to halt till the moon began to rise, which we knew would be in less than an hour, when we could easily discern the havoc we had made among them. We told thirty-two bodies upon the ground, whereof two were not quite dead; some had an arm, and some a leg shot off, and one his head: those that were wounded, we suppose, they had carried away.

When we had made, as I thought, a full discovery of all we could come to the knowledge of, I was resolved for going on board; but the boatswain and his party sent me word that they were resolved to make a visit to the Indian town, where these dogs, as they called them, dwelt, and asked me to go along with them, and if they could find them, as they still fancied they should, they did not doubt of getting a good booty;