gun, swam on shore, and ran up directly to the mountains from whence
they came, nor could I at that distance know what it was. I found
quickly the Negroes were for eating the flesh of this creature, so I was
willing to have them take it as a favour from me, which, when I made
signs to them that they might take him, they were very thankful for.
Immediately they fell to work with him, and though they had no knife,
yet with a sharpened piece of wood they took off his skin as readily,
and much more readily, than we could have done with a knife. They
offered me some of the flesh, which I declined, making as if I would
give it them, but made signs for the skin, which they gave me very
freely, and brought me a great deal more of their provision, which,
though I did not understand, yet I accepted; then I made signs to them
for some water, and held out one of my jars to them, turning it bottom
upward, to shew that it was empty, and that I wanted to have it filled.
They called immediately to some of their friends, and there came two
women, and brought a great vessel made of earth, and burnt, as I
suppose, in the sun; this they set down for me, as before, and I sent
Xury on shore with my jars, and filled them all three. The women were as
stark naked as the men.
I was now furnished with roots and corn, such as it was, and water; and,
leaving my friendly Negroes, I made forward for about eleven days more,
without offering to go near the shore, till I saw the land run out a
great length into the sea, at about the distance of four or five leagues
before me; and, the sea being very calm, I kept a large offing to make
this point: at length, doubling the point at about two leagues from the
land, I saw plainly land on the other side to seaward; then I concluded,
as it was most certain indeed, that this was the Cape de Verd, and those
the _islands_, called from thence Cape de Verd Islands. However, they
were at a great distance, and I could not well tell what I had best to
do, for if I should be taken with a fresh of wind I might neither reach
one nor the other.
In this dilemma, as I was very pensive, I stepped into the cabin and sat
me down, Xury having the helm, when on a sudden the boy cried out,
“Master, Master, a ship with a sail!” and the foolish boy was frighted
out of his wits, thinking it must needs be some of his master’s ships
sent to pursue us, when I knew we were gotten far enough out of their
reach. I jumped out of the cabin, and immediately saw not only the ship,
but what she was, viz. that it was a Portuguese ship, and, as I thought,
was bound to the coast of Guinea for Negroes. But when I observed the
course she steered, I was soon convinced they were bound some other way,
and did not design to come any nearer to the shore; upon which I
stretched out to sea as much as I could, resolving to speak with them
if possible.
With all the sail I could muster, I found I should not be able to
come in their way, but that they would be gone by before I could
make any signal to them; but after I had crowded to the utmost,
and began to despair, they, it seems, saw me by the help of their
perspective-glasses, and that it was some European boat, which, as they
supposed, must belong to some ship that was lost; so they shortened sail
to let me come up. I was encouraged with this; and as I had my patron’s
ancient on board, I made a waft of it to them for a signal of distress,
and fired a gun, both which they saw, for they told me they saw the
smoke, though they did not hear the gun: upon these signals they very
kindly brought to, and lay by for me, and in about three hours time I
came up with them.
They asked me what I was in Portuguese, and in Spanish, and in French;
but I understood none of them; but at last a Scots sailor, who was on
board, called to me, and I answered him, and told him I was an
Englishman, that I had made my escape out of slavery from the Moors at
Sallee. Then they had me come on board, and very kindly took me in, and
all my goods.
It was an inexpressible joy to me, that any one would believe that I was
thus delivered, as I esteemed it, from such a miserable and almost
hopeless condition as I was in, and immediately offered all I had to the
captain of the ship, as a return for my deliverance; but he generously
told me, he would take nothing from me, but that all I had should be
delivered safe to me when I came to the Brasils; “For,” says he, “I have
saved your life on no other terms than I would be glad to be saved
myself; and it may one time or other be my lot to be taken up in the
same condition: Besides,” said he, “when I carry you to the Brasils, so
great a way from your own country, if I should take from you what you
have, you will be starved there, and then I only take away that life I
have given. No, no, Seignor Inglese,” says he, “Mr. Englishman, I will
carry you thither in charity, and those things will help you to buy your
subsistence there, and your passage home again.”
As he was charitable in his proposal, so he was just in the performance
to a tittle; for he ordered the seamen, that none should offer to touch
any thing I had: then he took every thing into his own possession, and
gave me back an exact inventory of them, that I might have them; even so
much as my three earthen jars.
As to my boat, it was a very good one, and that he saw, and told me he
would buy it of me for the ship’s use, and asked me what I would have
for it? I told him, he had been so generous to me in everything, that I
could not offer to make any price of the boat, but left it entirely to
him; upon which he told me he would give me a note of his hand to pay me
eighty pieces of eight for it at Brasil; and when it came there, if any
one offered to give more, he would make it up: he offered me also sixty
pieces of eight more for my boy Xury, which I was loath to take; not
that I was not willing to let the captain have him, but I was very loath
to sell the poor boy’s liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully in
procuring my own. However, when I let him know my reason, he owned it to
be just, and offered me this medium, that he would give the boy an
obligation to set him free in ten years, if he turned Christian. Upon
this, and Xury saying he was willing to go to him, I let the
captain have him.
We had a very good voyage to the Brasils, and arrived in the Bay de
Todos los Santos, or All Saints’ Bay, in about twenty-two days after.
And now I was once more delivered from the most miserable of all
conditions of life; and what to do next with myself I was now
to consider.
The generous treatment the captain gave me, I can never enough remember;
he would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me twenty ducats for
the leopard’s skin, and forty for the lion’s skin which I had in my
boat, and caused every thing I had in the ship to be punctually
delivered me; and what I was willing to sell he bought, such as the case
of bottles, two of my guns, and a piece of the lump of bees-wax, for I
had made candles of the rest; in a word, I made about two hundred and
twenty pieces of eight of all my cargo; and with this stock I went on
shore in the Brasils.
I had not been long here, but being recommended to the house of a good
honest man like himself, who had an _ingeino_ as they call it; that is,
a plantation and a sugarhouse; I lived with him some time, and
acquainted myself by that means with the manner of their planting and
making of sugar; and seeing how well the planters lived, and how they
grew rich suddenly, I resolved, if I could get license to settle there,
I would turn planter among them, resolving, in the mean time, to find
out some way to get my money, which I had left in London, remitted to
me. To this purpose, getting a kind of a letter of naturalization, I
purchased as much land that was uncured as my money would reach, and
formed a plan for my plantation and settlement, and such a one as might
be suitable to the stock which I proposed to myself to receive
from England.
I had a neighbour, a Portuguese of Lisbon, but born of English parents,
whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I was. I call
him neighbour, because his plantation lay next to mine, and we went on
very sociable together. My stock was but low, as well as his: and we
rather planted for food, than any thing else, for about two years.
However, we began to increase, and our land began to come into order; so
that the third year we planted some tobacco, and made each of us a large
piece of ground ready for planting canes in the year to come; but we
both wanted help; and now I found, more than before, I had done wrong in
parting with my boy Xury.
But, alas! for me to do wrong, that never did right, was no great
wonder: I had no remedy but to go on; I was gotten into an employment
quite remote to my genius, and directly contrary to the life I delighted
in, and for which I forsook my father’s house, and broke through all his
good advice; nay, I was coming into the very middle station, or upper
degree of low life, which my father advised me to before; and which if I
resolved to go on with, I might as well have staid at home, and never
have fatigued myself in the world as I had done; and I used often to say
to myself, I could have done this as well in England among my friends,
as have gone five thousand miles off to do it, among strangers and
savages in a wilderness, and at such distance, as never to hear from any
part of the world that had the least knowledge of me.
In this manner I used to look upon my condition with the utmost regret.
I had nobody to converse with, but now and then this neighbour; no work
to be done, but by the labour of my hands; and I used to say, I lived
just like a man cast away upon some desolate island, that had nobody
there but himself. But how just has it been, and how should all men
reflect, that, when they compare their present conditions with others
that are worse, Heaven may oblige them to make the exchange, and be
convinced of their former felicity, by their experience; I say, how just
has it been, that the truly solitary life I reflected on in, an island
of mere desolation should be my lot, who had so often unjustly compared
it with the life which I then led, in which had I continued, I had in
all probability been exceeding prosperous and rich.
I was in some degree settled in my measures for carrying on the
plantation, before my kind friend the captain of the ship, that took me
up at sea, went back; for the ship remained there, in providing his
loading, and preparing for his voyage, near three months; when, telling
him what little stock I had left behind me in London, he gave me this
friendly and sincere advice; “Seignor Inglese,” says he, for so he
always called me, “if you will give me letters, and a procuration here
in form to me, with orders to the person who has your money in London,
to send your effects to Lisbon, to such persons as I shall direct, and
in such goods as are proper for this country, I will bring you the
produce of them, God willing, at my return; but since human affairs are
all subject to changes and disasters, I would have you give orders but
for one hundred pounds sterling, which you say is half your stock, and
let the hazard be run for the first; so that if it come safe, you may
order the rest the same way; and if it miscarry, you may have the other
half to have recourse to for your supply.”
This was so wholesome advice, and looked so friendly, that I could not
but be convinced it was the best course I could take; so I accordingly
prepared letters to the gentlewoman with whom I had left my money, and a
procuration to the Portuguese captain, as he desired.
I wrote the English captain’s widow a full account of all my adventures,
my slavery, escape, and how I had met with the Portugal captain at sea,
the humanity of his behaviour, and what condition I was now in, with all
other necessary directions for my supply; and when this honest captain
came to Lisbon, he found means, by some of the English merchants there,
to send over, not the order only, but a full account of my story, to a
merchant at London, who represented it effectually to her; whereupon,
she not only delivered the money, but out of her own pocket sent the
Portugal captain a very handsome present for his humanity and charity
to me.
The merchant in London vesting this hundred pounds in English goods,
such as the captain had writ for, sent them directly to him at Lisbon,
and he brought them all safe to me to the Brasils; among which, without
my direction (for I was too young in my business to think of them) he
had taken care to have all sort of tools, iron work, and utensils
necessary for my plantation, and which were of great use to me.
When this cargo arrived, I thought my fortune made, for I was surprised
with joy of it; and my good steward the captain had laid out the five
pounds which my friend had sent him for a present for himself, to
purchase, and bring me over a servant under bond for six years service,
and would not accept of any consideration, except a little tobacco,
which I would have him accept, being of my own produce.
Neither was this all; but my goods being all English manufactures, such
as cloth, stuffs, baize, and things particularly valuable and desirable
in the country, I found means to sell them to a very great advantage; so
that I may say, I had more than four times the value of my first cargo,
and was now infinitely beyond my poor neighbour, I mean in the
advancement of my plantation; for the first thing I did, I bought me a
Negro slave, and an European servant also; I mean another besides that
which the captain brought me from Lisbon.
But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our
greatest adversity, so was it with me. I went on the next year with
great success in my plantation: I raised fifty great rolls of tobacco on
my own ground, more than I had disposed of for necessaries among my
neighbours; and these fifty rolls, being each of above a hundred weight,
were well cured and laid by against the return of the fleet from Lisbon.
And now, increasing in business and in wealth, my head began to be full
of projects and undertakings beyond my reach; such as are indeed often
the ruin of the best heads in business.
Had I continued in the station I was now in, I had room for all the
happy things to have yet befallen me, for which my father so earnestly
recommended a quiet retired life, and of which he had so sensibly
described the middle station of life to be full; but other things
attended me, and I was still to be the wilful agent of all my own
miseries; and particularly to increase my fault, and double the
reflections upon myself, which in my future sorrows I should have
leisure to make; all these miscarriages were procured by my apparent
obstinate adhering to my foolish inclination of wandering abroad, and
pursuing that inclination, in contradiction to the clearest views of
doing myself good in a fair and plain pursuit of those prospects and
those measures of life, which nature and Providence concurred to present
me with, and to make my duty.
As I had done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I could not
be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had of being a
rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a rash and
immoderate desire of rising faster than the nature of the thing
admitted; and thus I cast myself down again into the deepest gulf of
human misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could be consistent
with life and a state of health in the world.
To come then by just degrees to the particulars of this part of my
story; you may suppose, that having now lived almost four years in the
Brasils, and beginning to thrive and prosper very well upon my
plantation, I had not only learnt the language, but had contracted
acquaintance and friendship among my fellow-planters, as well as among
the merchants at St. Salvadore, which was our port; and that in my
discourse among them, I had frequently given them an account of my two
voyages to the coast of Guinea, the manner of trading with the Negroes
there, and how easy it was to purchase upon the coast, for trifles, such
as beads, toys, knives, scissars, hatchets, bits of glass, and the like,
not only gold-dust, Guinea grains, elephants teeth, &c. but Negroes for
the service of the Brasils in great numbers.
They listened always very attentively to my discourses on these heads,
but especially to that part which related to the buying Negroes, which
was a trade at that time not only not far entered into, but, as far as
it was, had been carried on by the Assientos for permission of the
kings of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed in the public, so that few
Negroes were brought, and those excessive dear.would undertake to look
It happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of my
acquaintance, and talking of those things very earnestly, three of
them came to me the next morning, and told me they had been musing
very much upon what I had discoursed with them of, the last night, and
they came to make a secret proposal to me; and after enjoining me to
secrecy, they told me, that they had a mind to fit out a ship to go to
Guinea; that they had all plantations as well as I, and were straitened
for nothing so much as servants; that as it was a trade could not be
carried on, because they could not publicly sell the Negroes when they
came home, so they desired to make but one voyage, to bring the Negroes
on shore privately, and divide them among their own plantations; and in
a word, the question was, whether I would go their supercargo in the
ship, to manage the trading part upon the coast of Guinea? and they
offered me that I should have my equal share of the Negroes, without
providing any part of the stock.
This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to any
one that had not had a settlement and plantation of his own to look
after, which was in a fair way of coming to be very considerable, and
with a good stock upon it. But for me, that was thus entered and
established, and had nothing to do but go on as I had begun, for three
or four years more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds from
England, and who in that time, and with that little addition, could
scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds
sterling, and that increasing too; for me to think of such a voyage, was
the most preposterous thing that ever man in such circumstances could be
guilty of.
But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the
offer, than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my father’s
good counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I would go with
all my heart, if they would undertake to look after my plantation in my
absence, and would dispose of it to such as I should direct if I
miscarried. This they all engaknew his dangerged to do, and entered into writings or
covenants to do so; and I made a formal will, disposing of my plantation
and effects, in case of my death, making the captain of the ship that
had saved my life as before, my universal heir, but obliging him to
dispose of my effects as I had directed in my will, one half of the
produce being to himself, and the other to be shipped to England.
In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects, and keep
up my plantation: had I used half as much prudence to have looked into
my own interest, and have made a judgment of what I ought to have done,
and not to have done, I had certainly never gone away from so prosperous
an undertaking, leaving all the probable views of a thriving
circumstance, and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with all its
common hazards; to say nothing of the reasons I had to expect particular
misfortunes to myself.
But I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy rather
than my reason: and accordingly the ship being fitted out, and the cargo
furnished, and all things done as by agreement, by my partners in the
voyage, I went on board in an evil hour, the 1st of September, 1650,
being the same day eight years that I went from my father and mother at
Hull, in order to act the rebel to their authority, and the fool to my
own interest.
Our ship was about one hundred and twenty ton burden, carrying six guns,
and fourteen men, besides the master, his boy, and myself; we had on
board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for our
trade with the Negroes, such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and odd
trifles, especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissars, hatchets,
and the like.
The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the northward
upon our own coast, with design to stretch over for the African coast;
when they came about 10 or 12 degrees of northern latitude, which it
seems was the manner of their course in those days. We had very good
weather, only excessive hot, all the way upon our own coast, till we
made the height of Cape St. Augustino, from whence keeping farther off
at sea we lost sight of land, and steered as if we were bound for the
isle Fernand de Noronha, holding our course N.E. by N. and leaving those
isles on the east. In this course we passed the line in about twelve
days time, and were by our last observation in 7 degrees 22 min.
northern latitude, when a violent tornado or hurricane took us quite out
of our knowledge; it began from the south-east, came about to the
north-west, and then settled into the north-east, from whence it blew in
such a terrible manner, that for twelve days together we could do
nothing but drive; and scudding away before it, let it carry us whither
ever fate and the fury of the winds directed; and during these twelve
days, I need not say that I expected every day to be swallowed up, nor
indeed did any in the ship expect to save their lives.
In this distress, we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our
men die of the calenture, and one man and the boy washed overboard;
about the twelfth day the weather abating a little, the master made an
observation as well as he could, and found that he was in about 11
degrees north latitude, but that he was 22 degrees of longitude
difference west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he was gotten
upon the coast of Guinea, or the north part of Brasil, beyond the river
Amazones, toward that of the river Oronoque, commonly called the Great
River, and began to consult with me what course he should take, for the
ship was leaky and very much disabled, and he was going directly back to
the coast of Brasil.
I was positively against that, and looking over the charts of the sea
coasts of America with him we concluded there was no inhabited country
for us to have recourse to, till we came within the circle of the
Caribbee islands, and therefore resolved to stand away for Barbadoes,
which by keeping off at sea, to avoid the indraft of the bay or gulf of
Mexico, we might easily perform, as we hoped, in about fifteen days
sail; whereas we could not possibly make our voyage to the coast of
Africa without some assistance, both to our ship and to ourselves.
With this design we changed our course, and steered away N.W. by W. in
order to reach some of our English islands, where I hoped for relief;
but our voyage was otherwise determined; for being in the latitude of 12
deg. 18 min. a second storm came upon us, which carried us away with the
same impetuosity westward, and drove us so out of the very way of all
human commerce, that had all our lives been saved, as to the sea, we
were rather in danger of being devoured by savages than ever returning
to our own country.
In this distress, the wind still blowing very hard, one of our men early
in the morning cried out, _Land!_ and we had no sooner run out of the
cabin to look out in hopes of seeing whereabouts in the world we were,
but the ship struck upon a sand, and in a moment, her motion being so
stopped, the sea broke over her in such a manner, that we expected we
should all have perished immediately; and we were immediately driven
into our close quarters to shelter us from the very foam and spray
of the sea.