pose, had some years
past given me over for dead. With this view I took shipping for Lisbon,
where I arrived in April following; my man Friday accompanying me very
honestly in all these ramblings, and proving a most faithful servant
upon all occasions. When I came to Lisbon, I found out, by inquiry, and
to my particular satisfaction, my old friend the captain of the ship who
first took me up at sea off the shore of Africa. He was now grown old,
and had left off going to sea, having put his son, who was far from a
young man, into his ship, and who still used the Brazil trade. The old
man did not know me; and, indeed, I hardly knew him: but I soon brought
him to my remembrance, and as soon brought myself to his remembrance,
when I told him who I was.

After some passionate expressions of the old acquaintance between us, I
inquired, you may be sure, after my plantation and my partner. The old
man told me he had not been in the Brazils for about nine years; but
that he could assure me, that when he came away my partner was living;
but the trustees, whom I had joined with him to take cognizance of my
part, were both dead: that, however, he believed I would have a very
good account of the improvement of the plantation; for that upon the
general belief of my being cast away and drowned, my trustees had given
in the account of the produce of my part of the plantation to the
procurator-fiscal, who had appropriated it, in case I never came to
claim it, one-third to the king, and two-thirds to the monastery of St.
Augustine, to be expended for the benefit of the poor, and for the
conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith; but that if I appeared,
or any one for me, to claim the inheritance, it would be restored; only
that the improvement or annual production, being distributed to
charitable uses, could not be restored: but he assured me that the
steward of the king's revenue from lands, and the provedore, or steward
of the monastery, had taken great care all along that the incumbent,
that is to say, my partner, gave every year a faithful account of the
produce, of which they had duly received my moiety. I asked him if he
knew to what height of improvement he had brought the plantation, and
whether he thought it might be worth looking after; or whether, on my
going thither, I should meet with any obstruction to my possessing my
just right in the moiety. He told me he could not tell exactly to what
degree the plantation was imp