I had no more business to go to the East Indies, than a man at full liberty, and having committed no crime, has to go to the turnkey at Newgate, and desire him to lock him up among the prisoners there, and starve him.  Had I taken a small vessel from England, and gone directly to the island; had I loaded her, as I did the other vessel, with all the necessaries for the plantation, and for my people; took a patent from the government here, to have secured my property, in subjection only to that of England, which, to be sure, I might have obtained; had I carried over cannon and ammunition, servants, and people to plant, and, taking possession of the place, fortified and strengthened it in the name of England, and increased it with people, as I might easily have done; had I then settled myself there, and sent the ship back, loaded with good rice, as I might also have done in six months time, and ordered my friends to have fitted her out again for our supply; had I done this, and staid there myself, I had, at least, acted like a man of common sense; but I was possessed with a wandering spirit, scorned all advantages, pleased myself with being the patron of these people I had placed there, and doing for them in a kind of haughty majestic way, like an old patriarchal monarch; providing for them, as if I had been father of the whole family, as well as of the plantation:  but I never so much as pretended to plant in the name of any government or nation, or to acknowledge any prince, or to call my people subjects to any one nation more than another; nay, I never so much as gave the place a name; but left it as I found it, belonging to no man; and the people under no discipline or government but my own; who, though I had an influence over them as father and benefactor, had no authority or power to act or command one way or other, farther than voluntary consent moved them to comply:  yet even this, had I staid there, would have done well enough; but as I rambled from them, and came thither no more, the last letters I had from any of them, were by my partner’s means, who afterwards sent another sloop to the place; and who sent me word, though I had not the letter till five years after it was written, that they went on but poorly, were malecontent with their long stay there; that Will Atkins was dead; that five of the Spaniards were come away; and that though they had not been much molested by the savages, yet they had had some skirmishes with them; that they begged of him to write to me to think of the promise I had made to fetch them away, that they might see their own country again before they died.

But I was gone a wild-goose chase indeed, and they who will have any more of me, must be content to follow me through a new variety of follies, hardships, and wild adventures; wherein the justice of Providence may be duly observed, and we may see how easily Heaven can gorge us with our own desires, make the strongest of our wishes to be our affliction and punish us most severely with those very things which we think it would be our utmost happiness to be allowed in.