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, in a wilderness, and at such a distance as never
to hear from any part of the world that had the least knowledge of me.
In this manner I used to look upon my condition with the utmost regret. I had nobody to converse with, but
now and then this neighbour; no work to be done, but by the labour of my hands; and I used to say, I lived
just like a man cast away upon some desolate island, that had nobody there but himself. But how just has it
been . and how should all men reflect, that when they compare their present conditions with others that are
worse, Heaven may oblige them to make the exchange, and be convinced of their former felicity by their
experience . I say, how just has it been, that the truly solitary life I reflected on, in an island of mere
desolation, should be my lot, who had so often unjustly compared it with the life which I then led, in which,
had I continued, I had in all probability been exceeding prosperous and rich.
I was in some degree settled in my measures for carrying on the plantation before my kind friend, the captain
of the ship that took me up at sea, went back . for the ship remained there, in providing his lading and
preparing for his voyage, nearly three months . when telling him what little stock I had left behind me in
London, he gave me this friendly and sincere advice:. "Seignior Inglese," says he (for so he always called
me), "if you will give me letters, and a procuration in form to me, with orders to the person who has your
money in London to send your effects to Lisbon, to such persons as I shall direct, and in such goods as are
proper for this country, I will bring you the produce of them, God willing, at my return; but, since human
affairs are all subject to changes and disasters, I would have you give orders but for one hundred pounds
sterling, which, you say, is half your stock, and let the hazard be run for the first; so that, if it come safe, you
may order the rest the same way, and, if it miscarry, you may have the other half to have recourse to for your
supply."
CHAPTER III . WRECKED ON A DESERT ISLAND
Robinson Crusoe
This was so wholesome advice, and looked so friendly, that I could not but be convinced it was the best
course I could take; so I accordingly prepared letters to the gentlewoman with whom I had left my money,
and a procuration to the Portuguese captain, as he desired.
I wrote the English captain's widow a full account of all my adventures . my slavery, escape, and how I had
met with the Portuguese captain at sea, the humanity of his behaviour, and what condition I was now in, with
all other necessary directions for my supply; and when this honest captain came to Lisbon, he found means,
by some of the English merchants there, to send over, not the order only, but a full account of my story to a
merchant in London, who represented it effectually to her; whereupon she not only delivered the money, but
out of her own pocket sent the Portugal captain a very handsome present for his humanity and charity to me.
The merchant in London, vesting this hundred pounds in English goods, such as the captain had written for,
sent them directly to him at Lisbon, and he brought them all safe to me to the Brazils; among which, without
my direction (for I was too young in my business to think of them), he had taken care to have all sorts of
tools, ironwork, and utensils necessary for my plantation, and which were of great use to me.
When this cargo arrived I thought my fortune made, for I was surprised with the joy of it; and my stood
steward, the captain, had laid out the five pounds, which my friend had sent him for a present for himself, to
purchase and bring me over a servant, under bond for six years' service, and would not accept of any
consideration, except a little tobacco, which I would have him accept, being of my own produce.
Neither was this all; for my goods being all English manufacture, such as cloths, stuffs, baize, and things
particularly valuable and desirable in the country, I found means to sell them to a very great advantage; so
that I might say I had more than four times the value of my first cargo, and was now infinitely beyond my
poor neighbour . I mean in the advancement of my plantation; for the first thing I did, I bought me a negro
slave, and an European servant also . I mean another besides that which the captain brought me from Lisbon.
But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity, so it was with me. I
went on the next year with great success in my plantation: I raised fifty great rolls of tobacco on my own
ground, more than I had disposed of for necessaries among my neighbours; and these fifty rolls, being each of
above a hundredweight, were well cured, and laid by against the return of the fleet from Lisbon: and now
increasing in business and wealth, my head began to be full of projects and undertakings beyond my reach;
such as are, indeed, often the ruin of the best heads in business. Had I continued in the station I was now in, I
had room for all the happy things to have yet befallen me for which 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
CHAPTER III . WRECKED ON A DESERT ISLAND
Robinson Crusoe
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 trading with the negroes there, and how easy it was to purchase upon the coast for trifles .
such as beads, toys, knives, scissors, hatchets, bits of glass, and the like . not only gold.dust, Guinea grains,
elephants' teeth, but negroes, for the service of the Brazils, in great numbers.
They listened always very attentively to my discourses on these heads, but especially to that part which
related to the buying of negroes, which was a trade at that time, not only not far entered into, but, as far as it
was, had been carried on by assientos, or permission of the kings of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed in the
public stock: so that few negroes were bought, and these excessively dear.
It happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of my acquaintance, and talking of those
things very earnestly, three of them came to me next morning, and told me they had been musing very much
upon what I had discoursed with them of the last night, and they came to make a secret proposal to me; and,
after enjoining me to secrecy, they told me that they had a mind to fit out a ship to go to Guinea; that they had
all plantations as well as I, and were straitened for nothing so much as servants; that as it was a trade that
could not be carried on, because they could not publicly sell the negroes when they came home, so they
desired to make but one voyage, to bring the negroes on shore privately, and divide them among their own
plantations; and, in a word, the question was whether I would go their supercargo in the ship, to manage the
trading part upon the coast of Guinea; and they offered me that I should have my equal share of the negroes,
without providing any part of the stock.
This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to any one that had not had a settlement and
a plantation of his own to look after, which was in a fair way of coming to be very considerable, and with a
good stock upon it; but for me, that was thus entered and established, and had nothing to do but to go on as I
had begun, for three or four years more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds from England; and
who in that time, and with that little addition, could scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand
pounds sterling, and that increasing too . for me to think of such a voyage was the most preposterous thing
that ever man in such circumstances could be guilty of.
But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the offer than I could restrain my first
rambling designs when my father' good counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I would go with all
my heart, if they would undertake to look after my plantation in my absence, and would dispose of it to such
as I should direct, if I miscarried. This they all engaged to do, and entered into writings or covenants to do so;
and I made a formal will, disposing of my plantation and effects in case of my death, making the captain of
the ship that had saved my life, as before, my universal heir, but obliging him to dispose of my effects as I
had directed in my will; one half of the produce being to himself, and the other to be shipped to England.
In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects and to keep up my plantation. Had I used half as
much prudence to have looked into my own interest, and have made a judgment of what I ought to have done
and not to have done, I had certainly never gone away from so prosperous an undertaking, leaving all the
probable views of a thriving circumstance, and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with all its common
hazards, to say nothing of the reasons I had to expect particular misfortunes to myself.
But I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy rather than my reason; and, accordingly,
the ship being fitted out, and the cargo furnished, and all things done, as by agreement, by my partners in the
voyage, I went on board in an evil hour, the 1st September 1659, being the same day eight years that I went
from my father and mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their authority, and the fool to my own
interests.
CHAPTER III . WRECKED ON A DESERT ISLAND
Robinson Crusoe
Our ship was about one hundred and twenty tons burden, carried six guns and fourteen men, besides the
master, his boy, and myself. We had on board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for our
trade with the negroes, such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and other trifles, especially little looking.glasses,
knives, scissors, hatchets, and the like.
The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the northward upon our own coast, with design to
stretch over for the African coast when we came about ten or twelve degrees of northern latitude, which, it
seems, was the manner of course in those days. We had very good weather, only excessively hot, all the way
upon our own coast, till we came to the height of Cape St. Augustino; from whence, keeping further off at
sea, we lost sight of land, and steered as if we were bound for the isle Fernando de Noronha, holding our
course N.E. by N., and leaving those isles on the east. In this course we passed the line in about twelve days'
time, and were, by our last observation, in seven degrees twenty.two minutes northern latitude, when a
violent tornado, or hurricane, took us quite out of our knowledge. It began from the south.east, came about to
the north.west, and then settled in the north.east; from whence it blew in such a terrible manner, that for
twelve days together we could do nothing but drive, and, scudding away before it, let it carry us whither fate
and the fury of the winds directed; and, during these twelve days, I need not say that I expected every day to
be swallowed up; nor, indeed, did any in the ship expect to save their lives.
In this distress we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our men die of the calenture, and one man and
the boy washed overboard. About the twelfth day, the weather abating a little, the master made an
observation as well as he could, and found that he was in about eleven degrees north latitude, but that he was
twenty.two degrees of longitude difference west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he was upon the
