by Daniel Defoe
ahead, distance about threeleagues; the coast having turned away to the east and by south, veryhigh land and mountainous, and the tops of some of the hills coveredwith snow.
Our second mate and the boatswain, upon this discovery, were for comingabout, and sent to me for orders to make signals to the other ship andour brigantine, who were both ahead, to do the like; but I, who waswilling to acquaint myself as fully as I could with the coast of thecountry, which I made no question I should have occasion to come toagain, said, No, no, I will see a little farther first. So I ran on,having an easy gale at north-east and good weather, till I came withinabout a league and a half of the shore, when I found, that in the verybite or nook of the bay, there was a great inlet of water, which eithermust be a passage or strait between the land we had been on shore upon;which, in that case, must be a great island, or that it must be themouth of some extraordinary great river.
This was a discovery too great to be omitted, so I ordered thebrigantine to stand in with an easy sail, and see what account could behad of the place; accordingly they stood in, and we followed about aleague, and then lay by, waiting their signals. I had particularlyordered them to keep two boats ahead to sound the depth all the way, andthey did so; and how it happened we knew not, but on a sudden we heardthe sloop fire two guns first, and then one gun; the first was a signalto us to bring to, and come no farther: the next was a signal ofdistress. We immediately tacked to stand off, but found a strong currentsetting directly into the bite, and there not being wind enough for usto stem the current, we let go our anchors in twenty fathoms water.
Immediately we manned out all the boats we had, great and small, to goand assist our brigantine, not knowing what distress she might be in;and they found that she had driven up, as we were like to have done, toofar into the channel of a large river, the mouth of which, being verybroad, had several shoals in it: and though she had dropped her anchorjust upon notice, which the boats who were sounding gave her, yet shetailed aground upon a sand-bank, and stuck fast; our men made no doubtbut she would be lost, and began to think of saving the provisions andammunition out of her. The two long boats accordingly began to lightenher; and first they took in her guns, and let out all her casks ofwater: then they began to take in her great shot and the heavy goods.But by this time they found their mistake, for the current, which Imentioned, was nothing but a strong tide of flood, which, the indraughtof the river being considerable, ran up with a very great force, and insomething less than an hour the brigantine floated again.
However, she had stuck so long upon the sand, and the force of thecurrent or tide had been so great, that she received considerabledamage; and had a great deal of water in her hold. I immediately orderedout boats to row to the land, on both sides, to see if they could find agood place to lay her on shore in; they obeyed the order, and found avery convenient harbour in the mouth of a small river, which emptieditself into the great river about two leagues within the foreland of it,on the north side, as the river Medway runs into the Thames, within themouth of it, on the south, side, only this was not so far up.
Here they ran in the sloop immediately, and the next day we came thitheralso; our boats having sounded the whole breadth, of the main river,and found a very good channel, half a league broad, having fromseventeen to four-and-twenty fathoms water all the way, and very goodriding.
Here we found it absolutely necessary to take everything out of thebrigantine to search her bottom, for her lying on shore had strained herseams, and broke one of her floor timbers; and having hands enough, ourmen unloaded her in a very little time, and making a little dock forher, mended all the damage in about ten days' time. But seeing her in sogood a condition, and the place so convenient, I resolved to have herwhole bottom new calked and cleaned, that we made her as tight as shewas when she first came off the stocks.
This I took for a good opportunity to careen and clean our other shipstoo; for we had done little to them since we came from Madagascar. Wefound our Madagascar ship much worm-eaten in her sheathing, which wehelped as well as we could by new nailing and by taking out some piecesof her sheathing, and putting new ones in. But as to our great ship, shewas sheathed with lead, and had received no damage at all; only that shewas very foul, which we remedied by scraping and cleaning, and newgraving her quite over.
We were not all employed in this work, and therefore we had leisure tomake the best of our time for the main work of new discoveries. And nowI resolved to leave it no more to under officers, as I had done before,viz., when I gave the command of the shallop that traded with the kingand queen, as above, to a midshipman, which I was very sorry for, thoughthe fellow did his business very well too; but, I say, I resolved not totrust any one now but myself.
In the first place, I took the two shallops and went across the mouth ofthe great river to the south shore, to see what kind of a country was tobe found there. For, as to the north side, where we were, we found it tobe much the same with that part where we had been before; with thisdifference only, whereas, in the other place gold was to be had inplenty, but here was none we could find; nor did we perceive that thepeople had any.
I found the mouth of this river, or inlet, to be about four leagues overwhere I crossed it, which was about three leagues and a half within theinlet itself. But the weather being very calm, and the flood-tiderunning sharp, we let our boat drive up, in our crossing, about twoleagues more; and we found the channel grew narrow so fast, that, wherewe came to land, it was not full a league over; that about three leaguesfarther we found it a mere river, not above as broad as the Thames atBlackwall.
We found it a steep shore, and, observing a little creek very convenientfor our purpose, we ran in our boats among some flags or rushes, andlaid them as soft and as safe as if they had been in a dock; we went allon shore immediately, except two men in each boat left to guard ourprovisions.
We had for arms, every man a musket, a pistol, and a cutlass; and ineach boat we had six half pikes, to use as we might have occasion. Wehad also every man a hatchet, hung in a little frog at his belt; and ineach boat a broad axe and a saw.
We were furnished with strings of beads, bits of glass, glass rings,ear-rings, pearl necklaces, and suchlike jewellery ware innumerable;besides knives, scissors, needles, pins, looking-glasses,drinking-glasses, and toys in great plenty.
We were no sooner on shore but we found people in abundance; for therewere two or three, small towns within a little way of the shore; and Isuppose we might have the more people about us, because, as weunderstood afterwards, they had seen us before, though we had not seenthem.
We made signs to them, by putting our fingers to our mouths, and movingour chaps as if we were eating, that we wanted provisions; and we hungup a white flag for a truce. They presently understood the first signal,but knew nothing of the last; and as to provisions, just as had been thecase before, they brought us out roots and fruits, such as they atethemselves, but such as we had never seen before. Some of them, however,were very sweet and good, and when we boiled them they tasted much likean English parsnip; and we gave them strings of beads, pieces of glass,and such things as we remarked they were fond of.
We found the people, as I observed of the other, very inoffensive andsincere; not quarrelsome, nor treacherous, nor mischievous in the least.And we took care not so much as to let them know the use or manner ofour fire-arms for a great while; neither was there one piece fired allthe time we were among the other people, where we had so much gold. Ifthere had, it had been very probable that they would have fled thecountry, in spite of all the good usage we could have been able to haveshown them.
The people where we were now were not so rich in gold as those where wewere before, but we found them much better stored with provisions; forbesides deer, of which they had great plenty and variety, for they hadsome of a sort which I had never seen before, and besides an infinitenumber of those rabbits I have mentioned, which were as big as ourhares, and which do not burrow in the ground as our rabbits do, they hadalso a kind
of sheep, large, (like those of Peru, where they are used tocarry burdens), and very good. They have no wool nor horns, but arerather hairy like a goat; nor should I call them sheep, but that theirflesh eats like mutton, and I knew not what else to call them. Thenatives called them huttash; but what breed, or from what part of theworld, or whether peculiar to this division alone, I know not.
However, their flesh was very agreeable, and they were fat and good; andas the Indians were mightily pleased with the price we paid them, andthe goods we paid them in, they brought us more of these huttashes thanwe knew what to do with; and as I can calculate the rate, I suppose wemight have them for about eight-pence, or sometimes not above sixpencecost each; for they would give us one very thankfully for a string ortwo of small beads, and think themselves mighty well paid.
I found them so plentiful, and so easy to come at, that in short I sentfifty of them alive, tied neck and heels, in one of the shallops back toour ships, and ordered them to send their long-boats
