Each day I found I had additional strength, and with the best care was, at the expiration of three weeks, enabled to sit up a few moments at a time.
I was obliged to keep the doctor along, for the moment he left me my pay from government was stopped.
Now for the first time since my sickness did I attempt to acquaint my friends with my situation. (I had written several times from Liverpool and other places, but received no answer.) To this I received no reply, and at the expiration of four weeks, wrote again. This also was unnoticed.
I then made up my mind that the circle which once welcomed me as the only son and brother, had resolved to disown me. This, to a repentant wanderer, occasioned many an hour of sadness.
I resolved that should I ever so far recover as to be able to find them, to cast myself upon them, begging them to receive back their son and brother, who had almost cursed the hour that separated him from them.
The doctor visited me every day, and at each visit left an additional supply of medicine. This he continued till about the first of March; at the expiration of which time I found myself in possession of drugs enough for a wholesale Apothecary establishment, the doctor, meanwhile, supposing I had pursued his directions.
I was at length left upon my own resources, for the doctor, pronouncing me free from his care, stopped my funds.
One neighbor, building a schooner offered me the job of making the sails, which busied me until the 1st of April, when I went on board a schooner bound to Quebec.
The capital of Canada and of British America, is situated on a bold promontory, at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and St. Charles, (or Little River,) about 350 miles from the sea. The basin or harbor of Quebec is sufficiently large to contain 75 or 100 sail of the line.