For this piece of service the captain demanded of us six thousand weight of tabacco, which he said he was accountable for to his freighter, and which we immediately bought for him, and made him a present of twenty guineas besides, with which he was abundantly satisfied.

It is not proper to enter here into the particulars of what part of the colony of Virginia we settled in, for divers reasons; it may suffice to mention that we went into the great river Potomac, the ship being bound thither; and there we intended to have settled first, though afterwards we altered our minds.

The first thing I did of moment after having gotten all our goods on shore, and placed them in a storehouse, or warehouse, which, with a lodging, we hired at the small place or village where we landed—­I say, the first thing was to inquire after my mother, and after my brother (that fatal person whom I married as a husband, as I have related at large).  A little inquiry furnished me with information that Mrs. ——­, that is, my mother, was dead; that my brother (or husband) was alive, which I confess I was not very glad to hear; but which was worse, I found he was removed from the plantation where he lived formerly, and where I lived with him, and lived with one of his sons in a plantation just by the place where we landed, and where we had hired a warehouse.

I was a little surprised at first, but as I ventured to satisfy myself that he could not know me, I was not only perfectly easy, but had a great mind to see him, if it was possible to so do without his seeing me.  In order to that I found out by inquiry the plantation where he lived, and with a woman of that place whom I got to help me, like what we call a chairwoman, I rambled about towards the place as if I had only a mind to see the country and look about me.  At last I came so near that I saw the dwellinghouse.  I asked the woman whose plantation that was; she said it belonged to such a man, and looking out a little to our right hands, ‘there,’ says she, is the gentleman that owns the plantation, and his father with him.’  ’What are their Christian names?’ said I.  ‘I know not,’ says she, ’what the old gentleman’s name is, but the son’s name is Humphrey; and I believe,’ says she, ‘the father’s is so too.’  You may guess, if you can, what a confused mixture of joy and fight possessed my thoughts upon this occasion, for I immediately knew that this was nobody else but my own son, by that father she showed me, who was my own brother.  I had no mask, but I ruffled my hood so about my face, that I depended upon it that after above twenty years’ absence, and withal not expecting anything of me in that part of the world, he would not be able to know anything of me.  But I need not have used all that caution, for the old gentleman was grown dim-sighted by some distemper which had fallen upon his eyes, and could but just see well enough to walk about, and not run against a tree or into a ditch.  The