by Daniel Defoe
long till they found several little grains, very small and fine,not only in this brook, but in several others; so they spent their timemore cheerfully, because they made some advantage.
All this while they saw no people, nor any signals of any; except once,on the other side of the river, at a great distance, they saw aboutthirty together, but whether men or women, or how many of each, theycould not tell, nor would they come any nearer, only stood and gazed atour people at a distance.
They were now ready to quit their camp and embark, intending to lay alltheir baggage on the rafts, with three or four sick men, and so the restto march by the river side, and as many as could, to ride upon themules; when on a sudden, all their navigation was put to a stop, andtheir new vessels, such as they were, suffered a wreck.
The case was thus:--They had observed a great many black clouds to hangover the tops of the mountains, and some of them even below the tops,and they did believe it rained among the hills, but, in the plain wherethey lay, and all about them, it was fair, and the weather fine.
But, in the night, the carpenters and their assistants, who had set up alittle tent near the river side, were alarmed with a great roaringnoise, as they thought, in the river, though at a distance upwards;presently after, they found the water begin to come into their tent,when, running out, they found the river was swelling over its banks,and all the low grounds on both sides of them.
To their great satisfaction, it was just break of day, so that theycould see enough to make their way from the water, and the land veryhappily rising a little to the south of the river, they immediately fledthither. Two of them had so much presence of mind with them, as to pickup their working-tools, at least some of them, and carry off, and thewater rising gradually, the other two carpenters ventured back to savethe rest, but they were put to some difficulty to get back again withthem; in a word, the water rose to such a height that it carried awaytheir tent, and everything that was in it, and which was worse, theirrafts (for they had almost finished four large ones) were lifted offfrom the place where they were framed, which was a kind of a dry dock,and dashed all to pieces, and the timber, such as it was, all carriedaway. The smaller brooks also swelled in proportion to the large river;so that, in a word, our men lay as it were, surrounded with water, andbegan to be in a terrible consternation; for, though they lay in a harddry piece of ground, too high for the land-flood to reach them, yet, hadthe rains continued in the mountains, they might have lain there tillthey had been obliged to eat one another, and so there had been an endof our new discovery.
But the weather cleared up among the hills the next day, which heartenedthem up again; and as the flood rose so soon, so the current beingfuriously rapid, the waters ran off again as easily as they came on, andin two days the water was all gone again. But our little float wasshipwrecked, as I have said, and the carpenters finding how dangeroussuch great unwieldy rafts would be, resolved to set to it, and build onelarge float with sides to it, like a punt or ferry-boat. They worked sohard at this, ten of the men always working with them to help, that infive days they had her finished; the only thing they wanted was pitchand tar, to make her upper work keep out the water, and so they made ashift to fetch a juice out of some of the wood they had cut, by help offire, that answered the end tolerably well.
But that which made this disappointment less afflicting was, that ourmen hunting about the small streams where this water had come down sofuriously, found that there was more gold, and the more for the lateflood. This made them run straggling up the streams, and, as thecaptain said, he thought once they would run quite back to the mountainsagain.
But this was his ignorance too; for after awhile, and the nearer theycame to the rising of the hills the quantity abated; for where thestreams were so furious, the water washed it all away, and carried itdown with it, so that by the end of five days, the men found but little,and began to come back again.
But then they discovered that, though there was less in the higher partof the rivers, there was more farther down, and they found it so wellworth while, that they went looking along for gold all the way towardsthe lake, and left their fellows and the boat to come after.
At last, when nothing else would do, hunger called them off, and so oncemore all the company were got together again; and now they began to loadthe float, indeed it might be called a luggage-boat; however, itanswered very well, and was a great relief to our men; but when theycame to load it, they found it would not carry near so much as they hadto put in it. Besides that, they would be all obliged to march on footby shore, which had this particular inconvenience in it, that wheneverthey came to any small river or brook which ran into the other, as wasvery often the case, they would be forced to march up a great way to getover it, or unload the great float to make a ferry-boat of it to waftthem over.
Upon this they were resolved, that the first place they came at wheretimber was to be had for building, they would go to work again and maketwo or three more floats, not so big as the other, that so they mightembark themselves, their baggage, and their provisions too, alltogether, and take the full benefit of the river, where it would affordthem help; and not some sail on the water, and some go on foot upon theland, which would be very fatiguing.
Therefore, as soon as they found timber, as I have said, and aconvenient place, they went all hands to work to build more floats orboats, and, while this was doing, all the spare men spent their time andpains in searching about for gold in the brooks and small streams, aswell those they had been at before as others, and that after they had,as it were, plundered them at the first discovery; for, as they hadfound some gold after the hasty rain, they were loath to give it over,though they had been assured there was more to be found in the lake,where they were yet to come, than in the brooks.
All this while their making the floats went slowly on; for the menthought it a great hardship to keep chopping of blocks, as they calledit, while their fellows were picking up gold, though they knew they wereto have their share of what they found, as much as if they had been allthe while with them; but it seems there is a kind of satisfaction in thework of picking up gold, besides the mere gain.
However, at length the gold failing, they began to think of their moreimmediate work, which was, going forward; and the carpenters having madethree more floats, like flat-bottomed barges, which they brought to beable to carry their baggage and themselves too, if they thought fit,they began to embark and fall down the river; but they grew sick oftheir navigation in a very few days, for before they got to the lake,which was but three days' going, they ran several times on ground, andwere obliged to lighten their floats to get them off again, then loadagain, and lighten again, and so off and on, till they were so tired ofthem that they would much rather have carried all their baggage, andhave travelled by land; and, at last, they were forced to cast off twoof them, and put all their baggage on board the other two, which, atbest, though large, were but poor crazy things.
At length they came in sight of their beloved lake, and the next daythey entered into the open part, or sea of it, which they found was verylarge, and in some places very deep.
Their floats, or by what other name they might be called, were by nomeans fit to carry them upon this inland sea; for if the water had beenagitated by the least gust of wind, it would presently have washed overthem, and have spoiled, if not sunk, their baggage; so they had no wayto steer or guide them whenever they came into deep water, where theycould not reach the ground with their poles.
This obliged them, as soon as they came into the open lake, to keepclose under one shore, that is to say, to the right hand, where the landfalling away to the south and the south-by-east, seemed to carry themstill forward on their way; the other side widening to the north, madethe lake seem there to be really a sea, for they could not look overit, unless they went on shore and got upon some rising ground.
Here, at first, they found the shore steep too, and a great depth ofwater close to land, which made them very uneasy; for, if the least galeof
wind had disturbed the water, especially blowing from off the lake,they would have been shipwrecked close to the shore. However, after theyhad gone for two days along the side, by the help of towing and settingas well as they could, they came to a flatter shore and a fair strand,to their great joy and satisfaction.
But, if the shore proved to their satisfaction for its safety, it wasmuch more so on another account; for they had not been long here beforethey found the sands or shore infinitely rich in gold, beyond all thatthey had seen, or thought of seeing before. They had no sooner made thediscovery, than they resolved to possess themselves of a treasure thatwas to enrich them all for ever; accordingly, they went to work withsuch an avaricious spirit, that they seemed to be as if they wereplundering an enemy's camp, and that there was an army at hand to drivethem from the place; and, as it proved, they were in the right to do so;for, in this gust of their greedy appetite, they considered not wherethey were, and upon what tender and ticklish terms their
