hundred and forty.six crusadoes, being about three thousand two hundred and forty moidores.
Thirdly, there was the Prior of St. Augustine's account, who had received the profits for above fourteen years;
but not being able to account for what was disposed of by the hospital, very honestly declared he had eight
hundred and seventy.two moidores not distributed, which he acknowledged to my account: as to the king's
part, that refunded nothing.
There was a letter of my partner's, congratulating me very affectionately upon my being alive, giving me an
account how the estate was improved, and what it produced a year; with the particulars of the number of
squares, or acres that it contained, how planted, how many slaves there were upon it: and making two.
and.twenty crosses for blessings, told me he had said so many AVE MARIAS to thank the Blessed Virgin
that I was alive; inviting me very passionately to come over and take possession of my own, and in the
meantime to give him orders to whom he should deliver my effects if I did not come myself; concluding with
a hearty tender of his friendship, and that of his family; and sent me as a present seven fine leopards' skins,
which he had, it seems, received from Africa, by some other ship that he had sent thither, and which, it
seems, had made a better voyage than I. He sent me also five chests of excellent sweetmeats, and a hundred
pieces of gold uncoined, not quite so large as moidores. By the same fleet my two merchant.trustees shipped
me one thousand two hundred chests of sugar, eight hundred rolls of tobacco, and the rest of the whole
account in gold.
I might well say now, indeed, that the latter end of Job was better than the beginning. It is impossible to
express the flutterings of my very heart when I found all my wealth about me; for as the Brazil ships come all
in fleets, the same ships which brought my letters brought my goods: and the effects were safe in the river
before the letters came to my hand. In a word, I turned pale, and grew sick; and, had not the old man run and
fetched me a cordial, I believe the sudden surprise of joy had overset nature, and I had died upon the spot:
nay, after that I continued very ill, and was so some hours, till a physician being sent for, and something of
the real cause of my illness being known, he ordered me to be let blood; after which I had relief, and grew
well: but I verify believe, if I had not been eased by a vent given in that manner to the spirits, I should have
died.
I was now master, all on a sudden, of above five thousand pounds sterling in money, and had an estate, as I
might well call it, in the Brazils, of above a thousand pounds a year, as sure as an estate of lands in England:
and, in a word, I was in a condition which I scarce knew how to understand, or how to compose myself for
the enjoyment of it. The first thing I did was to recompense my original benefactor, my good old captain,
who had been first charitable to me in my distress, kind to me in my beginning, and honest to me at the end. I
showed him all that was sent to me; I told him that, next to the providence of Heaven, which disposed all
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things, it was owing to him; and that it now lay on me to reward him, which I would do a hundred.fold: so I
first returned to him the hundred moidores I had received of him; then I sent for a notary, and caused him to
draw up a general release or discharge from the four hundred and seventy moidores, which he had
acknowledged he owed me, in the fullest and firmest manner possible. After which I caused a procuration to
be drawn, empowering him to be the receiver of the annual profits of my plantation: and appointing my
partner to account with him, and make the returns, by the usual fleets, to him in my name; and by a clause in
the end, made a grant of one hundred moidores a year to him during his life, out of the effects, and fifty
moidores a year to his son after him, for his life: and thus I requited my old man.
I had now to consider which way to steer my course next, and what to do with the estate that Providence had
thus put into my hands; and, indeed, I had more care upon my head now than I had in my state of life in the
island where I wanted nothing but what I had, and had nothing but what I wanted; whereas I had now a great
charge upon me, and my business was how to secure it. I had not a cave now to hide my money in, or a place
where it might lie without lock or key, till it grew mouldy and tarnished before anybody would meddle with
it; on the contrary, I knew not where to put it, or whom to trust with it. My old patron, the captain, indeed,
was honest, and that was the only refuge I had. In the next place, my interest in the Brazils seemed to
summon me thither; but now I could not tell how to think of going thither till I had settled my affairs, and left
my effects in some safe hands behind me. At first I thought of my old friend the widow, who I knew was
honest, and would be just to me; but then she was in years, and but poor, and, for aught I knew, might be in
debt: so that, in a word, I had no way but to go back to England myself and take my effects with me.
It was some months, however, before I resolved upon this; and, therefore, as I had rewarded the old captain
fully, and to his satisfaction, who had been my former benefactor, so I began to think of the poor widow,
whose husband had been my first benefactor, and she, while it was in her power, my faithful steward and
instructor. So, the first thing I did, I got a merchant in Lisbon to write to his correspondent in London, not
only to pay a bill, but to go find her out, and carry her, in money, a hundred pounds from me, and to talk with
her, and comfort her in her poverty, by telling her she should, if I lived, have a further supply: at the same
time I sent my two sisters in the country a hundred pounds each, they being, though not in want, yet not in
very good circumstances; one having been married and left a widow; and the other having a husband not so
kind to her as he should be. But among all my relations or acquaintances I could not yet pitch upon one to
whom I durst commit the gross of my stock, that I might go away to the Brazils, and leave things safe behind
me; and this greatly perplexed me.
I had once a mind to have gone to the Brazils and have settled myself there, for I was, as it were, naturalised
to the place; but I had some little scruple in my mind about religion, which insensibly drew me back.
However, it was not religion that kept me from going there for the present; and as I had made no scruple of
being openly of the religion of the country all the while I was among them, so neither did I yet; only that,
now and then, having of late thought more of it than formerly, when I began to think of living and dying
among them, I began to regret having professed myself a Papist, and thought it might not be the best religion
to die with.
But, as I have said, this was not the main thing that kept me from going to the Brazils, but that really I did not
know with whom to leave my effects behind me; so I resolved at last to go to England, where, if I arrived, I
concluded that I should make some acquaintance, or find some relations, that would be faithful to me; and,
accordingly, I prepared to go to England with all my wealth.
In order to prepare things for my going home, I first (the Brazil fleet being just going away) resolved to give
answers suitable to the just and faithful account of things I had from thence; and, first, to the Prior of St.
Augustine I wrote a letter full of thanks for his just dealings, and the offer of the eight hundred and
seventy.two moidores which were undisposed of, which I desired might be given, five hundred to the
monastery, and three hundred and seventy.two to the poor, as the prior should direct; desiring the good
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padre's prayers for me, and the like. I wrote next a letter of thanks to my two trustees, with all the
acknowledgment that so much justice and honesty called for: as for sending them any present, they were far
above having any occasion of it. Lastly, I wrote to my partner, acknowledging his industry in the improving
the plantation, and his integrity in increasing the stock of the works; giving him instructions for his future
government of my part, according to the powers I had left with my old patron, to whom I desired him to send
whatever became due to me, till he should hear from me more particularly; assuring him that it was my
intention not only to come to him, but to settle myself there for the remainder of my life. To this I added a
very handsome present of some Italian silks for his wife and two daughters, for such the captain's son
informed me he had; with two pieces of fine English broadcloth, the best I could get in Lisbon, five pieces of
black baize, and some Flanders lace of a good value.
Having thus settled my affairs, sold my cargo, and turned all my effects into good bills of exchange, my next
difficulty was which way to go to England: I had been accustomed enough to the sea, and yet I had a strange
aversion to go to England by the sea at that time, and yet I could give no reason for it, yet the difficulty
increased upon me so much, that though I had once shipped my baggage in order to go, yet I altered my
mind, and that not once but two or three times.
It is true I had been very unfortunate by sea, and this might be one of the reasons; but let no man slight the
strong impulses of his own thoughts in cases of such moment: two of the ships which I had singled out to go
in, I mean more particularly singled out than any other, having put my things on board one of them, and in
the other having agreed with the captain; I say two of these ships miscarried. One was taken by the Algerines,
and the other was lost on the Start, near Torbay, and all the people drowned except three; so that in either of
those vessels I had been made miserable.
Having been thus harassed in my thoughts, my old pilot, to whom I communicated everything, pressed me
earnestly not to go by sea, but either to go by land to the Groyne, and cross over the Bay of Biscay to
Rochelle, from whence it was but an easy and safe journey by land to Paris, and so to Calais and Dover; or to
go up to Madrid, and so all the way by land through France. In a word, I was so prepossessed against my
going by sea at all, except from Calais to Dover, that I resolved to travel all the way by land; which, as I was
not in haste, and did not value the charge, was by much the pleasanter way: and to make it more so, my old
captain brought an English gentleman, the son of a merchant in Lisbon, who was willing to travel with me;
after which we picked up two more English merchants also, and two young Portuguese gentlemen, the last
going to Paris only; so that in all there were six of us and five servants; the two merchants and the two
Portuguese, contenting themselves with one servant between two, to save the charge; and as for me, I got an
English sailor to travel with me as a servant, besides my man Friday, who was too much a stranger to be
capable of supplying the place of a servant on the road.
In this manner I set out from Lisbon; and our company being very well mounted and armed, we made a little
troop, whereof they did me the honour to call me captain, as well because I was the oldest man, as because I
had two servants, and, indeed, was the origin of the whole journey.
As I have troubled you with none of my sea journals, so I shall trouble you now with none of my land
journals; but some adventures that happened to us in this tedious and difficult journey I must not omit.
When we came to Madrid, we, being all of us strangers to Spain, were willing to stay some time to see the
court of Spain, and what was worth observing; but it being the latter part of the summer, we hastened away,
and set out from Madrid about the middle of October; but when we came to the edge of Navarre, we were
alarmed, at several towns on the way, with an account that so much snow was falling on the French side of
the mountains, that several travellers were obliged to come back to Pampeluna, after having attempted at an
extreme hazard to pass on.
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When we came to Pampeluna itself, we found it so indeed; and to me, that had been always used to a hot
climate, and to countries where I could scarce bear any clothes on, the cold was insufferable; nor, indeed, was
it more painful than surprising to come but ten days before out of Old Castile, where the weather was not
only warm but very hot, and immediately to feel a wind from the Pyrenean Mountains so very keen, so
severely cold, as to be intolerable and to endanger benumbing and perishing of our fingers and toes.
Poor Friday was really frightened when he saw the mountains all covered with snow, and felt cold weather,
which he had never seen or felt before in his life. To mend the matter, when we came to Pampeluna it
continued snowing with so much violence and so long, that the people said winter was come before its time;
and the roads, which were difficult before, were now quite impassable; for, in a word, the snow lay in some
places too thick for us to travel, and being not hard frozen, as is the case in the northern countries, there was
no going without being in danger of being buried alive every step. We stayed no less than twenty days at
Pampeluna; when (seeing the winter coming on, and no likelihood of its being better, for it was the severest
winter all over Europe that had been known in the memory of man) I proposed that we should go away to
Fontarabia, and there take shipping for Bordeaux, which was a very little voyage. But, while I was
considering this, there came in four French gentlemen, who, having been stopped on the French side of the
passes, as we were on the Spanish, had found out a guide, who, traversing the country near the head of
Languedoc, had brought them over the mountains by such ways that they were not much incommoded with
the snow; for where they met with snow in any quantity, they said it was frozen hard enough to bear them and
their horses. We sent for this guide, who told us he would undertake to carry us the same way, with no hazard
