A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before

by Daniel Defoe

bread, and our men began to make puddings, and lived verycomfortably. We likewise got good sugar at the ingenioes, orsugar-mills, of which there were several here, and the farther north wewent their number increased, for we were now in the latitude of 28 deg. 2'south.

  We had but one port now of any consequence that we intended to touch at,until we came to the main place we aimed at, which was Lima, and thiswas about two-thirds of the way thither; I mean Porto Rica, or Arica,which is in the latitude of 18 deg. of thereabouts. The people were very shyof us here, as having been much upon their guard for some years past,for fear of buccaneers and English privateers: but when they understoodwe were French, and our French captain sent two recommendations to themfrom a merchant at St. Jago, they were then very well satisfied, and wehad full freedom of commerce here also.

  From hence we came the height of Lima, the capital port, if not thecapital city, of Peru, lying in the latitude of 12 deg. 30'. Had we made theleast pretence of trading here, we should, at least, have had soldiersput on board our ships to have prevented it, and the people would havebeen forbidden to trade with us upon pain of death. But Captain Merlottehaving brought letters to a principal merchant of Lima, he instructedhim how to manage himself at his first coming into that port; which wasto ride without the town of Callao, out of the command of the puntals orcastles there, and not to come any nearer, upon what occasion soever,and then to leave the rest to him.

  Upon this, the merchant applied himself to the governor for leave to goon board the French ship at Callao; but the governor understood him, andwould not grant it by any means. The reason was, because there had beensuch a general complaint by the merchants from Carthagena, Porto Bello,and other places, of the great trade carried on here with French shipsfrom Europe, to the destruction of the merchants, and to the ruin ofthe trade of the galleons, that the governor, or viceroy of Peru, hadforbid the French ships landing any goods.

  Now, though this made our traffick impracticable at Lima itself, yet itdid by no means hinder the merchants trading with us under cover, &c.,but especially when they came to understand that we were not loaden fromEurope with baize, long ells, druggets, broadcloth, serges, stuffs,stockings, hats, and such like woollen manufactures of France, England,&c.; but that our cargo was the same with that of the Manilla ships atAcapulca, and that we were loaden with calicoes, muslins, fine-wroughtChina silks, damasks, Japan wares, China wares, spices, &c., there wasthen no withholding them: but they came on board us in the night withcanoes, and, staying all day, went on shore again in the night, carryingtheir goods to different places, where they knew they could convey themon shore without difficulty.

  In this manner we traded publicly enough, not much unlike the manner ofour trade at the Manillas; and here we effectually cleared ourselves ofour whole cargo, as well English goods as Indian, to an immense sum.Here our men, officers as well as seamen, sold their fine pearl,particularly one large parcel, containing one hundred and seventy-threevery fine pearls, but of different sizes, which a priest bought, as weare told, to dress up the image of the blessed Virgin Mary in one oftheir churches.

  In a word, we came to a balance here, for we sold everything that we hadthe least intention to part with; the chief things we kept in reserve,were some bales of English goods, also all the remainder of our beadsand bugles, toys, ironwork, knives, scissors, hatchets, needles, pins,glass-ware, and such things as we knew the Spaniards did not regard, andwhich might be useful in our farther designs, of which my head was yetvery full. Those, I say, we kept still.

  Here, likewise, we sold our brigantine, which, though an excellentsea-boat, as may well be supposed, considering the long voyage we hadmade in her, was yet so worm-eaten in her bottom, that, unless we wouldhave new sheathed her, and perhaps shifted most of her planks too, whichwould have taken up a great deal of time, she was by no means fit tohave gone any farther, at least not so long a run as we had now to make,viz., round the whole southern part of America, and where we shouldfind no port to put in at, (I mean, where we should have been able tohave got anything done for the repair of a ship), until we had come hometo England.

  It was proposed here to have gone to the governor or viceroy of Peru,and have obtained his license or pass to have traversed the Isthmus ofAmerica, from port St. Maria to the river of Darien. This we couldeasily have obtained under the character that we then bore, viz., ofhaving the King of France's commission; and had we been really allFrench, I believe I should have done it, but as we were so manyEnglishmen, and as such were then at open war with Spain, I did notthink it a safe adventure, I mean not a rational adventure, especiallyconsidering what a considerable treasure we had with us.

  On the other hand, as we were now a strong body of able seamen, and hadtwo stout ships under us, we had no reason to apprehend either the toilor the danger of a voyage round Cape Horn, after which we should be in avery good condition to make the rest of our voyage to England. Whereas,if we travelled over the Isthmus of America, we should be all like acompany of freebooters and buccaneers, loose and unshipped, and shouldperhaps run some one way and some another, among the logwood cutters atthe bay of Campeachy, and other places, to get passage, some to Jamaicaand some to New England; and, which was worse than all, should beexposed to a thousand dangers on account of the treasure we had with us,perhaps even to that of murdering and robbing one another. And, asCaptain Merlotte said, who was really a Frenchman, it were much moreeligible for us, as French, or, if we had been such, to have gone up toAcapulca, and there to sell our ships and get license to travel toMexico, and then to have got the viceroy's assiento to have come toEurope in the galleons; but, as we were so many Englishmen, it wasimpracticable; our seamen also being Protestants, such as seamengenerally are, and bold mad fellows, they would never have carried on adisguise, both of their nation and of their religion, for so long a timeas it would have been necessary to do for such a journey and voyage.

  But, besides all these difficulties, I had other projects in my head,which made me against all the proposals of passing by land to the NorthSea; otherwise, had I resolved it, I should not have much concernedmyself about obtaining a license from the Spaniards, for, as we were asufficient number of men to have forced our way, we should not much havestood upon their giving us leave, or not giving us leave, to go.

  But, as I have said, my views lay another way, and my head had been longworking upon the discourse my men had had with the Spaniards atBaldavia. I frequently talked with the two Chilian Indians whom I had onboard, and who spoke Spanish pretty well, and whom we had taught tospeak a little English.

  I had taken care that they should have all the good usage imaginable onboard. I had given them each a very good suit of clothes made by ourtailor, but after their own manner, with each of them a baize cloak; andhad given them hats, shoes, stockings, and everything they desired, andthey were mighty well pleased, and I talked very freely with them aboutthe passage of the mountains, for that was now my grand design.

  While I was coming up the Chilian shore, as you have heard, that is tosay, at St. Jago, at the Conception, at Arica, and even at Lima itself,we inquired on all occasions into the situation of the country, themanner of travelling, and what kind of country it was beyond themountains, and we found them all agreeing in the same story; and thatpassing the mountains of Les Cordelieras, for so they call them in Peru,though it was the same ridge of hills as we call the Andes, was nostrange thing. That there were not one or two, but a great many placesfound out, where they passed as well with horses and mules as on foot,and even some with carriages; and, in particular, they told us at Lima,that from Potosi, and the towns thereabouts, there was a long valley,which ran for one hundred and sixty leagues in length southward, andsouth-east, and that it continued until the hills parting, it openedinto the main level country on the other side; and that there wereseveral rivers which began in that great valley, and which all of themran away to the south and south-east, and afterwards went away east, andeast-north-east, and so fell into the great Rio de la Plat
a, and emptiedthemselves into the North Seas; and that merchants travelled to thoserivers, and then went down in boats as far as the town or the city ofthe Ascension, and the Buenos Ayres.

  This was very satisfying you may be sure, especially to hear them agreein it, that the Andes were to be passed; though passing them hereabouts,(where I knew the mainland from the west shore, where we now were, mustbe at least one thousand five hundred miles broad), was no part of myproject; but I laid up all these things in my mind, and resolved to goaway to the south again, and act as I should see cause.

  We were now got into a very hot climate, and, whatever was the cause, mymen began to grow very sickly, and that to such a degree that I was onceafraid we had got the plague among us; but our surgeons, who we all calldoctors at sea, assured me there was nothing of that among them, and yetwe buried seventeen men here, and had between twenty and thirty moresick, and, as I thought, dangerously too.

  In this extremity, for