But I was gone a wild-goose chase indeed, and they who will have any more of me, must be content to follow me through a new variety of follies, hardships, and wild adventures; wherein the justice of Providence may be duly observed, and we may see how easily Heaven can gorge us with our own desires, make the strongest of our wishes to be our affliction and punish us most severely with those very things which we think it would be our utmost happiness to be allowed in.
Let no wise man flatter himself with the strength of his own judgment, as if he was able to choose any particular station of life for himself. Man is a short-sighted creature, sees but a very little way before him; and as his passions are none of his best friends, so his particular affections are generally his worst counsellors.
I say this with respect to the impetuous desire I had from a youth to wander into the world, and how evident it now was that this principle was preserved in me for my punishment. How it came on, the manner, the circumstance, and the conclusion of it, it is easy to give you historically, and with its utmost variety of particulars. But the secret ends of Divine Providence, in thus permitting us to be hurried down the stream of our own desires, are only to be understood of those who can listen to the voice of Providence, and draw religious consequences from God’s justice and their own mistakes.
Be it had I business or no business, away I went. It is no time now to enlarge any farther upon the reason or absurdity of my own conduct; but to come to the history—I was embarked for the voyage, and the voyage I went.
I shall only add here, that my honest and truly pious clergyman left me here; a ship being ready to go to Lisbon, he asked me leave to go thither; being still as he observed, bound never to finish any voyage he began. How happy had it been for me if I had gone with him!
But it was too late now; all things Heaven appoints are best. Had I gone with him, I had never had so many things to be thankful for, and you had never heard of the Second Part of the Travels and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; so I must leave here the fruitless exclaiming at myself, and go on with my voyage.
From the Brasils we made directly away over the Atlantic sea to the Cape de Bonne Esperance, or, as we call it, the Cape of Good Hope; and had a tolerable good voyage, our course generally south-east; now and then a storm, and some contrary winds. But my disasters at sea were at an end; my future rubs and cross events were to befal me on shore; that it might appear the land was as well prepared to be our scourge as the sea, when Heaven, who directs the circumstances of things, pleases to appoint it to be so.
Our ship was on a trading voyage, and had a supercargo on board, who was to direct all her motions after she arrived at the Cape; only being limited to a certain number of days for stay, by charter-party, at the several ports she was to go to. This was none of my business, neither did I meddle with it at all; my nephew the captain, and the supercargo, adjusting all those things between them as they thought fit.
We made no stay at the Cape longer than was needful to take in fresh water, but made the best of our way for the coast of Coromandel; we were indeed informed that a French man of war of fifty guns and two large merchant-ships were gone for the Indies; and as I knew we were at war with France, I had some apprehensions of them; but they went their own way, and we heard no more of them.
I shall not pester my account, or the reader, with descriptions of places, journals of our voyages, variations of the compass, latitudes, meridian distances, trade-winds, situation of ports, and the like; such as almost all the histories of long navigation are full of, and which make the reading tiresome enough, and are perfectly unprofitable to all that read, except only to those who are to go to those places themselves.