The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 806 pages of information about The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808).

The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 806 pages of information about The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808).

There are so many travellers who have written the history of their voyages and travels this way, that it would be but very little diversion to any body, to give a long account of the places we went to, and the people who inhabit there:  those things I leave to others, and refer the reader to those journals and travels of Englishmen, many of which, I find, are published, and more promised every day.  It is enough for me to tell you that we made the voyage to Achin, in the island of Sumatra, first; and from thence to Siam, where we exchanged some of our wares for opium, and for some arrack; the first a commodity which bears a great price among the Chinese, and which, at that time, was very much wanted there:  in a word, we went up to Susham; made a very great voyage; were eight months out; and returned to Bengal:  and I was very well satisfied with my adventure.

I observe, that our people in England often admire how the officers, which the Company send into India, and the merchants which generally stay there, get such very good estates as they do, and sometimes come home worth sixty, seventy, and a hundred thousand pounds at a time.  But it is no wonder, or, at least, we shall see so much farther into it, when we consider the innumerable ports and places where they have a free commerce, that it will then be no wonder; and much less will it be so, when we consider, that at all those places and ports where the English ships come, there is so much, and such constant demand for the growth of all other countries, that there is a certain vent for the return, as well as a market abroad for the goods carried out.

In short, we made a very good voyage, and I got so much money by the first adventure, and such an insight into the method of getting more, that, had I been twenty years younger, I should have been tempted to have stayed here, and sought no farther for making my fortune:  but what was all this to a man on the wrong side of threescore, that was rich enough, and came abroad more in obedience to a restless desire of seeing the world, than a covetous desire of getting in it?  And indeed I think it is with great justice that I now call it a restless desire, for it was so:  when I was at home, I was restless to go abroad; and now I was abroad, I was restless to be at home.  I say, what was this gain to me?  I was rich enough already; nor had I any uneasy desires about getting more money; and therefore, the profits of the voyage to me were things of no great force to me, for the prompting me forward to farther undertakings:  hence I thought, that by this voyage I had made no progress at all; because I was come back, as I might call it, to the place from whence I came, as to a home; whereas my eye, which, like that which Solomon speaks of, was never satisfied with seeing, was still more desirous of wandering and seeing.  I was come into a part of the world which I never was in before; and that part in particular which I had heard much of; and was resolved to see as much of it as I could; and then I thought I might say I had seen all the world that was worth seeing.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.