The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe
The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe
CHAPTER I – REVISITS ISLAND
THAT homely proverb, used on so many occasions in England, viz.
“That what is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh,” was
never more verified than in the story of my Life. Any one would
think that after thirty-five years’ affliction, and a variety of
unhappy circumstances, which few men, if any, ever went through
before, and after near seven years of peace and enjoyment in the
fulness of all things; grown old, and when, if ever, it might be
allowed me to have had experience of every state of middle life,
and to know which was most adapted to make a man completely happy;
I say, after all this, any one would have thought that the native
propensity to rambling which I gave an account of in my first
setting out in the world to have been so predominant in my
thoughts, should be worn out, and I might, at sixty one years of
age, have been a little inclined to stay at home, and have done
venturing life and fortune any more.
Nay, farther, the common motive of foreign adventures was taken
away in me, for I had no fortune to make; I had nothing to seek:
if I had gained ten thousand pounds I had been no richer; for I had
already sufficient for me, and for those I had to leave it to; and
what I had was visibly increasing; for, having no great family, I
could not spend the income of what I had unless I would set up for
an expensive way of living, such as a great family, servants,
equipage, gaiety, and the like, which were things I had no notion
of, or inclination to; so that I had nothing, indeed, to do but to
sit still, and fully enjoy what I had got, and see it increase
daily upon my hands. Yet all these things had no effect upon me,
or at least not enough to resist the strong inclination I had to go
abroad again, which hung about me like a chronic distemper. In
particular, the desire of seeing my new plantation in the island,
and the colony I left there, ran in my head continually. I dreamed
of it all night, and my imagination ran upon it all day: it was
uppermost in all my thoughts, and my fancy worked so steadily and
strongly upon it that I talked of it in my sleep; in short, nothing
could remove it out of my mind: it even broke so violently into
all my discourses that it made my conversation tiresome, for I
could talk of nothing else; all my discourse ran into it, even to
impertinence; and I saw it myself.
I have often heard persons of good judgment say that all the stir
that people make in the world about ghosts and apparitions is owing
to the strength of imagination, and the powerful operation of fancy
in their minds; that there is no such thing as a spirit appearing,
or a ghost walking; that people’s poring affectionately upon the
past conversation of their deceased friends so realises it to them
that they are capable of fancying, upon some extraordinary
circumstances, that they see them, talk to them, and are answered
by them, when, in truth, there is nothing but shadow and vapour in
the thing, and they really know nothing of the matter.
For my part, I know not to this hour whether there are any such
things as real apparitions, spectres, or walking of people after
they are dead; or whether there is anything in the stories they
tell us of that kind more than the product of vapours, sick minds,
and wandering fancies: but this I know, that my imagination worked
up to such a height, and brought me into such excess of vapours, or
what else I may call it, that I actually supposed myself often upon
the spot, at my old castle, behind the trees; saw my old Spaniard,
Friday’s father, and the reprobate sailors I left upon the island;