The same odd variety of accident, which put it out of my power to be personally present with you for so long a time, put it likewise out of my power to write to you. At last fortune has so ordered it, that I can send a letter to you before I can come myself, and it is written expressly to tell you the adventures I have met with, which have detained me this tedious space of time from my dear father, and because the same captain of a ship that brings you this, might as easily have brought your son to speak for himself. I shall in the next place lay before you the necessity there is for my stay a little longer among the strange natives of the country where I now inhabit, and where I am, in a manner, become naturalized. You have, no doubt of it, been informed by my companions, some of whom I hope got safe back again, if not all, that I was lost, where many a brave man has perished before me, by going over the high precipices of the mountain Brassah, in a basket, sliding down by a rope. I must suppose I have given you the anguish of a father for a son, who you thought had lost his life by such a foolhardy attempt, and I implore your pardon with all the power of filial contrition, penitence, and duty. You have always showed me such singular marks of paternal affection, that I know your receipt of this letter will fill your heart with joy, and cause you to sign me an absolution and free pardon for all the errors I have committed, and think the sufferings I have undergone for my rashness and indiscretion, a sufficient atonement for my crime of making you by my undutifulness, a partner of my sorrows. To free you the more from this uneasiness, I know I need only tell you, that every grief of mine is gone excepting one, which is, that I must still lose the pleasure of seeing you a little longer. There was never surely a more bitter night than that which must by me be for ever remembered, when I was lost in the mountain of Brassah, where I must, for aught I know, have lived for ever a wild single inhabitant, but that the storm which made the night so uneasy to me, rendered the first approach of daylight, beyond measure delightful. The first providential glimpse of the morning gave me a view of a ship driven by the tempest into a creek of the rock, that was by nature formed like a harbour; a miraculous security of deliverance, as I thought, both for the ship's crew and myself. I made all the haste I could, you may be sure, to them, and I found them to be Dutchmen that were come for fish; but in lieu of fish I instructed them to load it with eggs and fowl, which we compassed very happily in a short space of time, and I was to be a sharer with the captain in the lading, and bargained to go for Holland, to see the sale, and nature of the