Certain it is that, whatever this accident was, it determined our hero’s father to send his son immediately abroad for seven years; and, which may seem somewhat remarkable, to his majesty’s plantations in America—­that part of the world being, as he said, freer from vices than the courts and cities of Europe, and consequently less dangerous to corrupt a young man’s morals.  And as for the advantages, the old gentleman thought they were equal there with those attained in the politer climates; for travelling, he said, was travelling in one part of the world as well as another; it consisted in being such a time from home, and in traversing so many leagues; and [he] appealed to experience whether most of our travellers in France and Italy did not prove at their return that they might have been sent as profitably to Norway and Greenland.

According to these resolutions of his father, the young gentleman went aboard a ship, and with a great deal of good company set out for the American hemisphere.  The exact time of his stay is somewhat uncertain; most probably longer than was intended.  But howsoever long his abode there was, it must be a blank in this history, as the whole story contains not one adventure worthy the reader’s notice; being indeed a continued scene of whoring, drinking, and removing from one place to another.

To confess a truth, we are so ashamed of the shortness of this chapter, that we would have done a violence to our history, and have inserted an adventure or two of some other traveller; to which purpose we borrowed the journals of several young gentlemen who have lately made the tour of Europe; but to our great sorrow, could not extract a single incident strong enough to justify the theft to our conscience.

When we consider the ridiculous figure this chapter must make, being the history of no less than eight years, our only comfort is, that the histories of some men’s lives, and perhaps of some men who have made a noise in the world, are in reality as absolute blanks as the travels of our hero.  As, therefore, we shall make sufficient amends in the sequel for this inanity, we shall hasten on to matters of true importance and immense greatness.  At present we content ourselves with setting down our hero where we took him up, after acquainting our reader that he went abroad, staid seven years, and then came home again.

CHAPTER EIGHT

An adventure where wild, in the division of the booty, exhibits an astonishing instance of greatness.

The count was one night very successful at the hazard-table, where Wild, who was just returned from his travels, was then present; as was likewise a young gentleman whose name was Bob Bagshot, an acquaintance of Mr. Wild’s, and of whom he entertained a great opinion; taking, therefore, Mr. Bagshot aside, he advised him to provide himself (if he had them not about him) with a case of pistols, and to attack the count in his way home, promising to plant himself near with the same arms, as a corps de reserve, and to come up on occasion.  This was accordingly executed, and the count obliged to surrender to savage force what he had in so genteel and civil a manner taken at play.