“At length my father resolved to initiate me in commerce, and, opening one of his subterranean treasuries, counted out ten thousand pieces of gold.  This, young man, said he, is the stock with which you must negotiate.  I began with less than the fifth part, and you see how diligence and parsimony have increased it.  This is your own, to waste or to improve.  If you squander it by negligence or caprice, you must wait for my death, before you will be rich:  if, in four years, you double your stock, we will thenceforward let subordination cease, and live together as friends and partners; for he shall always be equal with me, who is equally skilled in the art of growing rich.

“We laid our money upon camels, concealed in bales of cheap goods, and travelled to the shore of the Red sea.  When I cast my eye on the expanse of waters, my heart bounded like that of a prisoner escaped.  I felt an unextinguishable curiosity kindle in my mind, and resolved to snatch this opportunity of seeing the manners of other nations, and of learning sciences unknown in Abissinia.

“I remembered that my father had obliged me to the improvement of my stock, not by a promise, which I ought not to violate, but by a penalty, which I was at liberty to incur; and, therefore, determined to gratify my predominant desire, and, by drinking at the fountains of knowledge, to quench the thirst of curiosity.

“As I was supposed to trade without connexion with my father, it was easy for me to become acquainted with the master of a ship, and procure a passage to some other country.  I had no motives of choice to regulate my voyage; it was sufficient for me, that, wherever I wandered, I should see a country, which I had not seen before.  I, therefore, entered a ship bound for Surat, having left a letter for my father, declaring my intention.

CHAP.  IX.

THE HISTORY OF IMLAC CONTINUED.

“When I first entered upon the world of waters, and lost sight of land, I looked round about me with pleasing terrour, and, thinking my soul enlarged by the boundless prospect, imagined that I could gaze round for ever without satiety; but, in a short time, I grew weary of looking on barren uniformity, where I could only see again what I had already seen.  I then descended into the ship, and doubted, for awhile, whether all my future pleasures would not end like this, in disgust and disappointment.  Yet, surely, said I, the ocean and the land are very different; the only variety of water is rest and motion, but the earth has mountains and valleys, deserts and cities; it is inhabited by men of different customs and contrary opinions; and I may hope to find variety in life, though I should miss it in nature.

“With this thought I quieted my mind, and amused myself during the voyage, sometimes by learning from the sailors the art of navigation, which I have never practised, and sometimes by forming schemes for my conduct in different situations, in not one of which I have been ever placed.