by Daniel Defoe
more than I had disposed of for necessaries among myneighbours; 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 fullof projects and undertakings beyond my reach; such as are indeed oftenthe ruin of the best heads in business.
Had I continued in the station I was now in, I had room for all thehappy things to have yet befallen me, for which my father so earnestlyrecommended a quiet retired life, and of which he had so sensiblydescribed the middle station of life to be full; but other thingsattended me, and I was still to be the wilful agent of all my ownmiseries; and particularly to increase my fault, and double thereflections upon myself, which in my future sorrows I should haveleisure to make; all these miscarriages were procured by my apparentobstinate adhering to my foolish inclination of wandering abroad, andpursuing that inclination, in contradiction to the clearest views ofdoing myself good in a fair and plain pursuit of those prospects andthose measures of life, which nature and Providence concurred to presentme with, and to make my duty.
As I had done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I could notbe content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had of being arich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a rash andimmoderate desire of rising faster than the nature of the thingadmitted; and thus I cast myself down again into the deepest gulf ofhuman misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could be consistentwith life and a state of health in the world.
To come then by just degrees to the particulars of this part of mystory; you may suppose, that having now lived almost four years in theBrasils, and beginning to thrive and prosper very well upon myplantation, I had not only learnt the language, but had contractedacquaintance and friendship among my fellow-planters, as well as amongthe merchants at St. Salvadore, which was our port; and that in mydiscourse among them, I had frequently given them an account of my twovoyages to the coast of Guinea, the manner of trading with the Negroesthere, and how easy it was to purchase upon the coast, for trifles, suchas beads, toys, knives, scissars, hatchets, bits of glass, and the like,not only gold-dust, Guinea grains, elephants teeth, &c. but Negroes forthe 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, whichwas a trade at that time not only not far entered into, but, as far asit was, had been carried on by the Assientos for permission of thekings of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed in the public, so that fewNegroes were brought, and those excessive dear.
It happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of myacquaintance, and talking of those things very earnestly, three of themcame to me the next morning, and told me they had been musing very muchupon what I had discoursed with them of, the last night, and they cameto make a secret proposal to me; and after enjoining me secrecy, theytold me, that they had a mind to fit out a ship to to Guinea; that theyhad all plantations as well as I, and were straitened for nothing somuch 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, sothey desired to make but one voyage, to bring the Negroes on shoreprivately, and divide them among their own plantations; and in a word,the question was, whether I would go their supercargo in the ship, tomanage the trading part upon the coast of Guinea? and they offered methat I should have my equal share of the Negroes, without providing anypart of the stock.
This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to anyone that had not had a settlement and plantation of his own to lookafter, which was in a fair way of coming to be very considerable, andwith a good stock upon it. But for me, that was thus entered andestablished, and had nothing to do but go on as I had begun, for threeor four years more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds fromEngland, and who in that time, and with that little addition, couldscarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand poundssterling, and that increasing too; for me to think of such a voyage, wasthe most preposterous thing that ever man in such circumstances could beguilty of.
But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist theoffer, than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my father'sgood counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I would go withall my heart, if they would undertake to look alter my plantation in myabsence, and would dispose of it to such as I should direct if Imiscarried. This they all engaged to do, and entered into writings orcovenants to do so; and I made a formal will, disposing of my plantationand effects, in case of my death, making the captain of the ship thathad saved my life as before, my universal heir, but obliging him todispose of my effects as I had directed in my will, one half of theproduce being to himself, and the other to be shipped to England.
In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects, and keepup my plantation: had I used half as much prudence to have looked intomy 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 prosperousan undertaking, leaving all the probable views of a thrivingcircumstance, and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with all itscommon hazards; to say nothing of the reasons I had to expect particularmisfortunes to myself.
But I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy ratherthan my reason: and accordingly the ship being fitted out, and the cargofurnished, and all things done as by agreement, by my partners in thevoyage, 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 atHull, in order to act the rebel to their authority, and the fool to myown 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 onboard no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for ourtrade with the Negroes, such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and oddtrifles, especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissars, hatchets,and the like.
The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the northwardupon our own coast, with design to stretch over for the African coast;when they came about 10 or 12 degrees of northern latitude, which itseems was the manner of their course in those days. We had very goodweather, only excessive hot, all the way upon our own coast, till wemade the height of Cape St. Augustino, from whence keeping farther offat sea we lost sight of land, and steered as if we were bound for theisle Fernand de Noronha, holding our course N.E. by N. and leaving thoseisles on the east. In this course we passed the line in about twelvedays time, and were by our last observation in 7 degrees 22 min.northern latitude, when a violent tornado or hurricane took us quite outof our knowledge; it began from the south-east, came about to thenorth-west, and then settled into the north-east, from whence it blew insuch a terrible manner, that for twelve days together we could donothing but drive; and scudding away before it, let it carry us whitherever fate and the fury of the winds directed; and during these twelvedays, I need not say that I expected every day to be swallowed up, norindeed did any in the ship expect to save their lives.
In this distress, we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of ourmen die of the calenture, and one man and the boy washed overboard;about the twelfth day the weather abating a little, the master made anobservation as well as he could, and found that he was in about 11degrees north latitude, but that he was 22 degrees of longitudedifference west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he was gottenupon the coast of Guinea, or the north part of Brasil, beyond the riverAmazones, toward that of the river Oronoque, commonly called the GreatRiver, and began to consult with me what course he should take, for theship was leaky and very much disabled, and he was going directly back tothe coast of Brasil.
I was positively against that, and looking over the charts of the seacoasts of America with him we concluded there was no inhabited countryfor us to have recourse to, till we came within the circle of theCaribb
ee islands, and therefore resolved to stand away for Barbadoes,which by keeping off at sea, to avoid the indraft of the bay or gulf ofMexico, we might easily perform, as we hoped, in about fifteen dayssail; whereas we could not possibly make our voyage to the coast ofAfrica without some assistance, both to our ship and to ourselves.
With this design we changed our course, and steered away N.W. by W. inorder to reach some of our English islands, where I hoped for relief;but our voyage was otherwise determined; for being in the latitude of 12deg. 18 min. a second storm came upon us, which carried us away with thesame impetuosity westward, and drove us so out of the very way of allhuman commerce, that had all our lives been saved, as to the sea, wewere rather in danger of being devoured by savages than ever returningto our own country.
In this distress, the wind still blowing very hard, one of our men earlyin the morning cried out, _Land!_ and we had no sooner run out of thecabin to look out in hopes of seeing whereabouts in the world
