my father so earnestly recommended a quiet, retired life, and of
which he had so sensibly described the middle station of life to be
full of; but other things attended me, and I was still to be the
wilful agent of all my own miseries; and particularly, to increase
my fault, and double the reflections upon myself, which in my
future sorrows I should have leisure to make, all these
miscarriages were procured by my apparent obstinate adhering to my
foolish inclination of wandering abroad, and pursuing that
inclination, in contradiction to the clearest views of doing myself
good in a fair and plain pursuit of those prospects, and those
measures of life, which nature and Providence concurred to present
me with, and to make my duty.

As I had once done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I
could not be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I
had of being a rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to
pursue a rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than the
nature of the thing admitted; and thus I cast myself down again
into the deepest gulf of human misery that ever man fell into, or
perhaps could be consistent with life and a state of health in the
world.

To come, then, by the just degrees to the particulars of this part
of my story. You may suppose, that having now lived almost four
years in the Brazils, and beginning to thrive and prosper very well
upon my plantation, I had not only learned the language, but had
contracted acquaintance and friendship among my fellow-planters, as
well as among the merchants at St. Salvador, which was our port;
and that, in my discourses among them, I had frequently given them
an account of my two voyages to the coast of Guinea: the manner of