to clap their hands, laugh, throw limes at me; or, if they chose to throw stones, (as I think was the case once or twice,) they were not rebuked: but, in general, though all who depended on her favour must join in her treatment, yet, when she was out of sight, I was rather pitied than scorned by the meanest of her slaves. At length my master returned from his voyage. I complained of ill usage; but he could not believe me : and as I did it in her hearing, I fared no better for it. But in his second voyage he took me with him. We did pretty well for a while, till a brother-trader he met in the river persuaded him that I was unfaithful, and stole his goods in the night, or when he was on shore. This was almost the only vice I could not be justly charged with the only remains of a good education I could boast of, was what is commonly called honesty; and, as far as he had intrusted me, I had been always true; and though my great distress might, in some measure, have excused it, I never once thought of defrauding him in the smallest matter. However, the charge was believed, and I condemned without evidence. From that time he likewise used me very hardly: whenever he left the vessel, I was locked upon deck, with a pint of rice for my day's allowance; and, if he staid longer, I had no relief till his return. Indeed, I believe I should have been nearly starved, but for an opportunity of catching fish sometimes. When fowls were killed for his own use, I seldom was allowed any part but the entrails to bait my hooks with: and at what we call slack water, that is, about the changing of the tides, when the current was still, I used generally to fish, (for at other times it was not practicable,) and I very often succeeded. If I saw a fish upon my hook, my joy was little less than any other person may have found in the

accomplishment of the scheme he had most at heart. Such a fish, hastily broiled, or rather half burnt, without sauce, salt, or bread, has afforded me a delicious meal. If I caught none, I might, (if I could,) sleep away my hunger till the next return of slack water, and then try again. Nor did I suffer less from the inclemency of the weather, and the want of clothes. The rainy season was now advancing; my whole suit was a shirt, a pair of trowsers, a cotton handkerchief instead of a cap, and a cotton cloth, about two yards long, to supply the want of upper garments: and, thus accoutred, I have been exposed for twenty, thirty, perhaps near forty hours together, in incessant rains, accompanied with strong gales of wind, without the least shelter, when my master was on shore. I feel to this day some faint returns of the violent pains I then contracted. The excessive cold and wet I endured in that voyage, and so soon after I had recovered from a long sickness, quite broke my constitution, and my spirits. The latter were soon restored; but the effects of the former still remain with me, as a needful memento of the service and wages of sin.

In about two months we returned; and then the rest of the time I remained with him was chiefly spent at the Plantanes, under the same regimen as I have already mentioned. My haughty heart was now brought down; not to a wholesome repentance, not to the language of the prodigal; this was far from me; but my spirits were sunk; I lost all resolution, and almost all reflection. I had lost the fierceness which fired me when on board the Harwich, and which made me capable of the most desperate attempts; but I was no further changed than a tyger tamed by hunger;-remove the occasion, and he will be as wild as ever.

One thing, though strange, is most true. Though destitute of food and clothing, depressed to a degree beyond common wretchedness, I could sometimes collect my mind to mathematical studies. I had bought Barrow's Euclid at Plymouth; it was the only volume I brought on shore; it was always with me, and I used to take it to remote corners of the island by the scaside, and draw my diagrams with a long stick upon the sand. Thus I often beguiled my sorrows, and almost forgot my feeling;-and thus, without any other assistance, I made myself in a good measure master of the first six books of Euclid.

January 17, 1763.

I am, &c.

*

LETTER VI.

Dear Sir,

THERE is much piety and spirit in the grateful acknowledgment of Jacob, "With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands." These are words which ought to affect me with a peculiar emotion. I remember that, some of those mournful days to which my last letter refers, I was busied in planting lime or lemon trees. The plants I put in the ground were no longer than a young gooseberry-bush: my master and his mistress passing by my place, stopped a while to look at me: at last, "Who knows," says he, "who knows but by the time these trees grow up and

bear, you may go home to England, obtain the com"mand of a ship, and return to reap the fruit of your "labours? We see strange things sometimes happen." This, as he intended it, was a cutting sarcasm. I be

lieve he thought it full as probable that I should live to be king of Poland. Yet it proved a prediction, and they, (one of them at least,) lived to see me return from England, in the capacity he had mentioned, and pluck some of the first limes from those very trees. How can I proceed in my relation, till I raise a monument to the divine goodness, by comparing the circumstances in which the Lord has since placed me, with what I was at that time! Had you seen me, Sir, then go so pensive and solitary, in the dead of night, to wash my one shirt upon the rocks, and afterwards, put it on wet that it might dry upon my back while I slept; had you seen me so poor a figure, that when a ship's boat came to the island, shame often constrained me to hide myself in the woods from the sight of strangers; especially had you known that my conduct, principles, and heart, were still darker than my outward condition; how little would you have imagined that one who so fully answered to the suyo xa piceries of the apostle, was reserved to be so peculiar an instance of the providential care and exuberant goodness of God. There was at that time but one earnest desire in my heart which was not contrary and shocking both to religion and reason: that one desire, though my vile licentious life rendered me peculiarly unworthy of success, and though a thousand difficulties seemed to render it impossible, the Lord was pleased to gratify. But this favour, though great, and greatly prized, was a small thing, compared to the blessings of his grace: he spared me, to give me "the knowledge of himself in the person of Jesus "Christ." In love to my soul, he delivered me from the pit of corruption, and cast all my aggravated sins

Hateful, and hating one another.

behind his back. He brought my feet into the paths of peace. This is indeed the chief article, but it is not the whole. When he made me acceptable to himself in the Beloved, he gave me favour in the sight of others. He raised me new friends, protected and guided me through a long series of dangers, and crowned every day with repeated mercies. To him I owe it that I am still alive, and that I am not still living in hunger and in thirst, and in nakedness, and the want of all things into that state I brought myself: but it was He delivered me. He has given me an easy situation in life, some experimental knowledge of his gospel, a large acquaintance amongst his people, a friendship and correspondence with several of his most honoured servants. But it is as difficult to enumerate my present advantages, as it is fully to describe the evils and miseries of the preceding contrast.

I know not exactly how long things continued with me thus, but I believe near a twelvemonth. In this interval I wrote two or three times to my father: I gave him an account of my condition, and desired his assistance; intimating, at the same time, that I had resolved not to return to England unless he was pleased to send to me. I have likewise by me letters wrote to Mrs. N**** in that dismal period; so that at the lowest ebb, it seems I still retained a hope of seeing her again. My father applied to his friend in Liverpool, of whom I have spoken before; who gave orders accordingly to a captain of his, who was then fitting out for Gambia and Sierra Leone.

Sometime within the year, as I have said, I obtained my master's consent to live with another trader, who dwelt upon the same island. Without his consent I could not be taken; and he was unwilling to do it