done?  Ask, why is it that thou wert not long ago destroyed?  Why wert thou not drowned in Yarmouth Roads; killed in the fight when the ship was taken by the Sallee man of war; devoured by the wild beasts on the coast of Africa; or drowned here, when all the crew perished but thyself?  Dost thou ask what thou hast done?” I was struck dumb with these reflections, as one astonished, and had not a word to say; no, not to answer to myself; and, rising up pensive and sad, walked back to my retreat, and went over my wall, as if I bad been going to bed:  but my thoughts were sadly disturbed, and I had no inclination to sleep; so I sat down in the chair, and lighted my lamp, for it began to be dark.  Now, as the apprehension of the return of my distemper terrified me very much, it occurred to my thought, that the Brazilians 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, nor whether it was good for it or not; 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 such as I had not been much used to.  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 almost for 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 thee, and thou shalt glorify me.”  These 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, as the children of Israel said when they were promised flesh to eat, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?” so I began to say, Can even God himself deliver me from this place?  And as it was not for many years