nd sometimes I would expostulate with myself why Providence
should thus completely ruin His creatures, and render them so absolutely
miserable; so without help, abandoned, so entirely depressed, that it
could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life.

But something always returned swift upon me to check these thoughts, and
to reprove me; and particularly one day, walking with my gun in my hand
by the seaside, I was very pensive upon the subject of my present
condition, when reason, as it were, expostulated with me the other way,
thus: "Well, you are in a desolate condition, it is true; but, pray
remember, where are the rest of you? Did not you come, eleven of you in
the boat? Where are the ten? Why were they not saved, and you lost?
Why were you singled out? Is it better to be here or there?" And then I
pointed to the sea. All evils are to be considered with the good that is
in them, and with what worse attends them.

Then it occurred to me again, how well I was furnished for my
subsistence, and what would have been my case if it had not happened
(which was a hundred thousand to one) that the ship floated from the
place where she first struck, and was driven so near to the shore that I
had time to get all these things out of her; what would have been my
case, if I had been forced to have lived in the condition in which I at
first came on shore, without necessaries of life, or necessaries to
supply and procure them? "Particularly," said I, aloud (though to
myself), "what should I have done without a gun, without ammunition,
without any tools to make anything, or to work with, without clothes,
bedding, a tent, or any manner of covering?" and that now I had all these
to sufficient quantity, and was in a fair way to provide myself in such a
manner as to live without my gun, when my ammunition was spent: so that I
had a tolerable view of subsisting, without any want, as long as I lived;
for I considered from the beginning how I would provide for the accidents
that might happen, and for the time that was to come, even not only after
my ammunition should be spent, but even after my health and strength
should decay.

I confess I had not entertained any notion of my ammunition being
destroyed at one blast--I mean my powder being blown up by lightning; and
this made the thoughts of it so surprising to me, when it lightened and
thundered, as I observed just now.

And now being about to enter into a melancholy re