in the meantime to find out some way to get my money, which I had
left in London, remitted to me. To this purpose, getting a kind of
letter of naturalisation, I purchased as much land that was uncured
as my money would reach, and formed a plan for my plantation and
settlement; such a one as might be suitable to the stock which I
proposed to myself to receive from England.

I had a neighbour, a Portuguese, of Lisbon, but born of English
parents, whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I
was. I call him my neighbour, because his plantation lay next to
mine, and we went on very sociably together. My stock was but low,
as well as his; and we rather planted for food than anything else,
for about two years. However, we began to increase, and our land
began to come into order; so that the third year we planted some
tobacco, and made each of us a large piece of ground ready for
planting canes in the year to come. But we both wanted help; and
now I found, more than before, I had done wrong in parting with my
boy Xury.

But, alas! for me to do wrong that never did right, was no great
wonder. I hail no remedy but to go on: I had got into an
employment quite remote to my genius, and directly contrary to the
life I delighted in, and for which I forsook my father's house, and
broke through all his good advice. Nay, I was coming into the very
middle station, or upper degree of low life, which my father
advised me to before, and which, if I resolved to go on with, I
might as well have stayed at home, and never have fatigued myself
in the world as I had done; and I used often to say to myself, I
could have done this as well in England, among my friends, as have
gone five thousand miles off to do it among strangers and savages,