During my stay here many proposals were made for my return to England, but none falling out to my mind, the English merchant who lodged with me, and whom I had contracted an intimate acquaintance with, came to me one morning, saying:  “Countryman, I have a project to communicate, which, as it suits with my thoughts, may, for aught I know, suit with yours also, when you shall have thoroughly considered it.  Here we are posted, you by accident and I by my own choice, in a part of the world very remote from our own country; but it is in a country where, by us who understand trade and business, a great deal of money is to be got.  If you will put one thousand pounds to my one thousand pounds, we will hire a ship here, the first we can get to our minds.  You shall be captain, I’ll be merchant, and we’ll go a trading voyage to China; for what should we stand still for?  The whole world is in motion; why should we be idle?”

I liked this proposal very well; and the more so because it seemed to be expressed with so much goodwill.  In my loose, unhinged circumstances, I was the fitter to embrace a proposal for trade, or indeed anything else.  I might perhaps say with some truth, that if trade was not my element, rambling was; and no proposal for seeing any part of the world which I had never seen before could possibly come amiss to me.  It was, however, some time before we could get a ship to our minds, and when we had got a vessel, it was not easy to get English sailors—­that is to say, so many as were necessary to govern the voyage and manage the sailors which we should pick up there.  After some time we got a mate, a boatswain, and a gunner, English; a Dutch carpenter, and three foremast men.  With these we found we could do well enough, having Indian seamen, such as they were, to make up.

When all was ready we set sail for Achin, in the island of Sumatra, and from thence to Siam, where we exchanged some of our wares for opium and some arrack; the first a commodity which bears a great price among the Chinese, and which at that time was much wanted there.  Then we went up to Saskan, were eight months out, and on our return to Bengal I was very well satisfied with my adventure.  Our people in England often admire how officers, which the company send into India, and the merchants which generally stay there, get such very great estates as they do, and sometimes come home worth sixty or seventy thousand pounds at a time; but it is little matter for wonder, when we consider the innumerable ports and places where they have a free commerce; indeed, at the ports where the English ships come there is such great and constant demands for the growth of all other countries, that there is a certain vent for the returns, as well as a market abroad for the goods carried out.