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"At length my father refolved to initiate me in commerce, and, opening one of his fubterranean treasuries, counted out ten thousand pieces of gold. This, young man, faid he, is the stock with which you must negociate. I began with less than the fifth part, and you fee how diligence and parfimony have increased it. This is your own to waste or to improve. If you squander it by negligence or caprice, you must wait for my death before you will be rich: if, in four years, you double your ftock, we will thenceforward let fubordination ceafe, and live together as friends and partners; for he shall always be equal with me, who is equally skilled in the art of growing rich.

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"We laid our money upon camels, concealed in bales of cheap goods, and travelled to the fhore of the red fea. When I caft my eye on the expanse of waters my heart bounded like that of a prisoner escaped. I felt an unextinguishable curiofity kindle in my mind, and refolved to fnatch this opportunity of seeing the manners of other nations, and of learning fciences unknown in Abiffinia.

"I remembered that my father had obliged me to the improvement of my stock, not by a promise which I ought not to violate, but by a penalty which I was at liberty to incur; and therefore determined to gratify my predominant defire, and by drinking at the fountains of knowledge, to quench the thirft of curiosity.

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"As I was fuppofed to trade without connexion with my father, it was easy for me to become acquainted with the master of a ship, and procure a paffage to fome other country. I had no motives of choice to regulate my voyage; it was fufficient for me that, wherever I wandered, I fhould fee a country which I had not feen before. I therefore entered a fhip bound for Surat, having left a letter for my father declaring my inten

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The history of Imlac con

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tinued.

HEN I first entered upon the world of waters, 'and loft fight of land, I looked round about me with pleafing terrour, and thinking my foul enlarged by the boundlefs profpect, imagined that I could gaze round for ever without fatiety; but, in a fhort time, I grew weary of looking on barren uniformity, where I could only fee again what I had already feen. I then descended into the ship, and doubted for a while whether all my future pleasures would not end like this in difguft and disappoint

ment.

ment.

Yet, furely, faid I, the ocean and the land are very different; the only variety of water is reft and motion, but the earth has mountains and vallies, defarts and cities: it is inhabited by men of different customs and contrary opinions; and I may hope to find variety in life, though I should mifs it in nature.

"With this thought I quieted my mind; and amused myself during the voyage, fometimes by learning from the failors the art of navigation, which I have never practifed, and fometimes by forming schemes for my conduct in different fituations, in not one of which I have been ever placed.

"I was almost weary of my naval amusements when we landed fafely at Surat. I

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