pay for it.

In return, I signed the instrument of sale in the form which they 
sent from Lisbon, and sent it to my old man, who sent me the bills 
of exchange for thirty-two thousand eight hundred pieces of eight 
for the estate, reserving the payment of one hundred moidores a 
year to him (the old man) during his life, and fifty moidores 
afterwards to his son for his life, which I had promised them, and 
which the plantation was to make good as a rent-charge.  And thus I 
have given the first part of a life of fortune and adventure - a 
life of Providence's chequer-work, and of a variety which the world 
will seldom be able to show the like of; beginning foolishly, but 
closing much more happily than any part of it ever gave me leave so 
much as to hope for.

Any one would think that in this state of complicated good fortune 
I was past running any more hazards - and so, indeed, I had been, 
if other circumstances had concurred; but I was inured to a 
wandering life, had no family, nor many relations; nor, however 
rich, had I contracted fresh acquaintance; and though I had sold my 
estate in the Brazils, yet I could not keep that country out of my 
head, and had a great mind to be upon the wing again; especially I 
could not resist the strong inclination I had to see my island, and 
to know if the poor Spaniards were in being there.  My true friend, 
the widow, earnestly dissuaded me from it, and so far prevailed 
with me, that for almost seven years she prevented my running 
abroad, during which time I took my two nephews, the children of 
one of my brothers, into my care; the eldest, having something of 
his own, I bred up as a gentleman, and gave him a settlement of 
some addition to his estate after my decease.  The other I placed 
with the captain of a ship; and after five years, finding him a 
sensible, bold, enterprising young fellow, I put him into a good 
ship, and sent him to sea; and this young fellow afterwards drew me 
in, as old as I was, to further adventures myself.

In the meantime, I in part settled myself here; for, first of all, 
I married, and that not either to my disadvantage or 
dissatisfaction, and had three children, two sons and one daughter; 
but my wife dying, and my nephew coming home with good success from 
a voyage to Spain, my inclination to go abroad, and his 
importunity, prevailed, and engaged me to go in his ship as a 
private trader to the East Indies; this was in the year 1694.

In this voyage I visited my new colony in the island, saw my 
successors the Spaniards, had the old story of their lives and of 
the villains I left there; how at first they insulted the poor 
Spaniards, how they afterwards agreed, disagreed, united, 
separated, and how at last the Spaniards were obliged to use 
violence with them; how they were subjected to the Spaniards, how 
honestly the Spaniards used them - a history, if it were entered 
into, as full of variety and wonderful accidents as my own part - 
particularly, also, as to their battles with the Caribbeans, who 
landed several times upon the island, and as to the improvement 
they made upon the island itself, and how five of them made an 
attempt upon the mainland, and brought away eleven men and five 
women prisoners, by which, at my coming, I found about twenty young 
children on the island.

Here I stayed about twenty days, left them supplies of all 
necessary things, and particularly of arms, powder, shot, clothes, 
tools, and two workmen, which I had brought from England with me, 
viz. a carpenter and a smith.

Besides this, I shared the lands into parts with them, reserved to 
myself the property of the whole, but gave them such parts 
respectively as they agreed on; and having settled all things with 
them, and engaged them not to leave the place, I left them there.

From thence I touched at the Brazils, from whence I sent a bark, 
which I bought there, with more people to the island; and in it, 
besides other supplies, I sent seven women, being such as I found 
proper for service, or for wives to such as would take them.  As to 
the Englishmen, I promised to send them some women from England, 
with a good cargo of necessaries, if they would apply themselves to 
planting - which I afterwards could not perform.  The fellows 
proved very honest and diligent after they were mastered and had 
their properties set apart for them.  I sent them, also, from the 
Brazils, five cows, three of them being big with calf, some sheep, 
and some hogs, which when I came again were considerably increased.

But all these things, with an account how three hundred Caribbees 
came and invaded them, and ruined their plantations, and how they 
fought with that whole number twice, and were at first defeated, 
and one of them killed; but at last, a storm destroying their 
enemies' canoes, they famished or destroyed almost all the rest, 
and renewed and recovered the possession of their plantation, and 
still lived upon the island.

All these things, with some very surprising incidents in some new 
adventures of my own, for ten years more, I shall give a farther 
account of in the Second Part of my Story.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe