Daniel Defoe
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 96
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... impossible to express it by words, for their excessive joy naturally driving them to unbecoming extravagances, they had no way to describe them but by telling me that they bordered upon lunacy, having no way to give vent to their passion suitable to the sense that was upon them; that in some it worked one way, and in some another; and that some of them, through a surprise of joy, would burst out into tears; others be stark mad, and others immediately faint. This discourse extremely affected me, and called to my mind Friday's ecstacy when he met his father, and the poor people's ecstacy when I took them up at sea, after their ship was on fire; the mate of the ship's joy, when he found himself delivered in the place where he expected to perish; and my own joy, when after twenty-eight years' captivity I found a good ship ready to carry me to my own country. All these things made me more sensible of the relation of those poor men, and more affected with it. Having thus given a view of the state of things as I found them, I must relate the heads of what I did for these people, and the condition in which I left them. It was their opinion, and mine too, that they would be troubled no more with the savages; or that, if they were, they would be able to cut them off, if they were twice as many as before; so they had no concern about that. Then I entered into a serious discourse with the Spaniard, whom I called governor, about their stay in the island; for as I was not come to carry any of them off, so it would not be just to carry off some and leave others, who perhaps would be unwilling to stay if their strength was diminished. On the other hand, I told them I came to establish them there, not to remove them; and then I let them know that I had...