eat 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 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,