In the height of this work my fourth year expired, from the time I was cast on this island, At this time I did not forget my anniversary; but kept it with rather greater devotion than before.  For now my hopes being frustrated, I looked upon this world as a thing had nothing to do with; and very well might I say as Father Abraham said unto Dives, Between thee and me there is a gulph fixed. And indeed I was separated from its wickedness too, having neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, nor the pride of life; I had nothing to covet, being lord, king and emperor over the whole country I had in possession, without dispute and without control:  I had loadings of corn, plenty of turtles, timber in abundance, and grapes above measure.  What was all the rest to me? the money I had lay by me as despicable dross, which I would freely have given for a gross of tobacco pipes, or a hard mill to grind my corn:  in a word the-nature and experience of these things dictated to me this just reflection:  That the good things of this world are no farther good to us, than they are for our use; and that whatever we may heap up to give to others, we can but enjoy as much as we use, and no more.

These thoughts rendered my mind more easy than usual.  Every time I sat down to meat, I did it with thankfulness, admiring the providential hand of God, who in this wilderness had spread a table to me.  And now I considered what I enjoyed, rather than what I wanted, compared my present condition with what I at first expected it should be; how I should have done, if I had got nothing out of the ship, that I must have perished before I had caught fish or turtles; or lived, had I found them, like a mere savage, by eating them raw, and pulling them in pieces with my claws, like a beast.  I next compared my station to that which I deserved:  how undutiful I had been to my parents; how destitute of the fear of God; bow void of every thing that was good; and how ungrateful for those abundant mercies I had received from Heaven, being fed as it were, by a miracle, even as great as Elijah’s being fed by ravens; and cast on a place where there is no venomous creatures to poison or devour me; in short making God’s tender mercies matter of great consolation, I relinquished all sadness, and gave way to contentment.

As long as my ink continued, which with water I made last as long as I could, I used to minute down the days of the month on which any remarkable event happened.—­And,

First, I observed, that the same day I forsook my parents and friends, and ran away to Hull, in order to go to sea, the same day afterwards in the next year, I was taken and made a slave by the Sallee rovers.

That the very day I escaped out of the wreck of the ship in Yarmouth roads, a year after on the same day, I made my escape from Sallee in my patron’ fishing boat.

And on the 30th of September, being the day of the year I was born on, on that day twenty-six years after, was I miraculously saved, and cast ashore on this island.