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The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, Volume 1
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York Mariner Volume 1 Author:Daniel Defoe Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Result of Discourses with the Planters. 33 those measures of life, which nature and Providence concurred to present me with, and to make my duty. As I had ... more »done thus in breaking away from my parents, so I could not be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had of being a rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than the nature of the thing admitted ; and thus I cast myself down again into the deepest gulph of human misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could be consistent with life and a state of health in the world. To come then by the just degrees to the particulars of this part of my story; you may suppose, that having now lived almost four years in the Brasils, and beginning to thrive and prosper very well upon my plantation, I had not only learned the languagCj but had contracted acquaintance and friendship among my fellow-planters, as well as among the merchants at St. Salvadore, which was our port; and that in my discourses among them, I had frequently given them an account of my two voyages to the coast of Guinea, the manner of trading with the Negroes there, and how easy it was to purchase upon the coast, for trifles, such as beads, toys, knives, scissars, hatchets, bits of glass, and the like, not only gold dust, Guinea grains, elephants' teeth, etc., but Negroes for the service of the Brasils, in great numbers. They listened always very attentively to my discourses on these heads, but especially to that part which related to the buying Negroes, which was a trade at that time not only not far entered into, but as far as it was, had been carried on by the Assientos, or permission of the kings of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed in the public, so that few Negroes were bought, an...« less