he
Brasilians take no physic but their tobacco, for almost all distempers;
and I had a piece of a roll of tobacco in one of the chests, which was
quite cured, and some also that was green, and not quite cured.

I went, directed by Heaven, no doubt; for in this chest I found a cure
both for soul and body. I opened the chest, and found what I looked
for, viz. the tobacco; and as the few books I had saved lay there too, I
took out one of the Bibles which I mentioned before, and which, to this
time, I had not found leisure, or so much as inclination, to look into;
I say I took it out, and brought both that and the tobacco with me to
the table.

What use to make of the tobacco I knew not, as to my distemper, or
whether it was good for it or no; but I tried several experiments with
it, as if I was resolved it should hit one way or other: I first took a
piece of a leaf, and chewed it in my mouth, which indeed at first almost
stupified my brain, the tobacco being green and strong, and that I had
not been much used to it; then I took some, and steeped it an hour or
two in some rum, and resolved to take a dose of it when I lay down; and
lastly, I burnt some upon a pan of coals, and held my nose close over
the smoke of it, as long as I could bear it, as well for the heat as the
virtue of it, and I held almost to suffocation.

In the interval of this operation I took up the Bible, and began to
read; but my head was too much disturbed with the tobacco to bear
reading, at least at that time; only having opened the book casually,
the first words that occurred to me were these: "Call on me in the day
of trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify me."

The words were very apt to my case, and made some impression upon my
thoughts at the time of reading them, though not so much as they did
afterwards; for as for being delivered, the word had no sound, as I may
say, to me; the thing was so remote, so impossible in my apprehension of
things, that I began to say as the children of Israel did, when they
were promised flesh to eat, "Can God spread a table in the wilderness?"
So I began to say, Can God himself deliver me from this place? And as it
was not for many years that any hope appeared, this prevailed very often
upon my thoughts: but, however, the words made a very great impression
upon me, and I mused upon them very often. It grew now late, and the
tobacco had, as I said, dozed my head so much, that I inclined to sleep;
so