It was, however, some time before we could get a ship to our minds, and when we had got a vessel, it was not easy to get English sailors--that is to say, so many as were necessary to govern the voyage and manage the sailors which we should pick up there.

After some time we got a mate, a boatswain, and a gunner, English; a Dutch carpenter, and three foremast men.

With these we found we could do well enough, having Indian seamen, such as they were, to make up.
When all was ready we set sail for Achin, in the island of Sumatra, and from thence to Siam, where we exchanged some of our wares for opium and some arrack; the first a commodity which bears a great price among the Chinese, and which at that time was much wanted there.

Then we went up to Saskan, were eight months out, and on our return to Bengal I was very well satisfied with my adventure.

Our people in England often admire how officers, which the company send into India, and the merchants which generally stay there, get such very great estates as they do, and sometimes come home worth sixty or seventy thousand pounds at a time; but it is little matter for wonder, when we consider the innumerable ports and places where they have a free commerce; indeed, at the ports where the English ships come there is such great and constant demands for the growth of all other countries, that there is a certain vent for the returns, as well as a market abroad for the goods carried out.
I got so much money by my first adventure, and such an insight into the method of getting more, that had I been twenty years younger, I should have been tempted to have stayed here, and sought no farther for making my fortune; but what was all this to a man upwards of threescore, that was rich enough, and came abroad more in obedience to a restless desire of seeing the world than a covetous desire of gaining by it?
A restless desire it really was, for when I was at home I was restless to go abroad; and when I was abroad I was restless to be at home.