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to my Maker; at least, not with the sedate calmness and res-
ignation of soul which I was wont to do: I rather prayed to
God as under great affliction and pressure of mind, sur-
rounded
with danger, and in expectation every night of
being murdered and devoured before morning; and I must
testify, from my experience, that a temper of peace, thank-
fulness, love,
and affection, is much the more proper frame
for prayer than that of terror and discomposure: and that
under the dread of mischief impending, a man is no more
fit for a comforting performance of the duty of praying to
God than he is for a repentance on a sick-bed; for these dis-
composures affect the mind, as the others do the body; and
the discomposure of the mind must necessarily be as great
a disability as that of the body, and much greater; praying to
God being
properly an act of the mind, not of the body.
But to go on. After I had thus secured one part of my lit-
tle living stock, I went about the whole island, searching for
another private place to make such another deposit; when,
wandering more to the west point of the island than I had
ever done yet, and looking out to sea, I thought I saw a boat
upon the sea, at a great distance. I had found a perspective
glass or two in one of the seamen’s chests, which I saved out
of our ship, but I had it not about me; and this was so remote
that I could not tell what to make of it, though I looked at it
till my eyes were not able to hold to look any longer; wheth-
er it was a boat or not I do not know, but as I descended
from the hill I could see no more of it, so I gave it over; only
I resolved to go no more out without a perspective glass in
my pocket. When I was come down the hill to the end of the
Robinson Crusoe
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island, where, indeed, I had never been before, I was pres-
ently convinced that the seeing the print of a man’s foot was
not such a strange thing in the island as I imagined: and but
that it was a special providence that I was cast upon the side
of the island where the savages never came, I should easily
have known that nothing was more frequent than for the
canoes from the main, when they happened to be a little
too far out at sea, to shoot over to that side of the island for
harbour: likewise, as they often met and fought in their ca-
noes, the victors, having taken any prisoners, would bring
them over to this shore, where, according to their dreadful
customs, being all cannibals, they would kill and eat them;
of which hereafter.
When I was come down the hill to the shore, as I said
above, being the SW.
point of the island, I was perfectly
confounded and amazed; nor is it possible for me to ex-
press the horror of my mind at seeing the shore spread with
skulls, hands, feet, and other bones of human bodies; and
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