The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
other half to have recourse to for your supply.”
This was so wholesome advice, and looked so friendly, that I could not
but be convinced it was the best course I could take; so I accordingly
prepared letters to the gentlewoman with whom I had left my money, and
a procuration to the Portuguese captain, as he desired.
I wrote the English captain’s widow a full account of all my
adventures—my slavery, escape, and how I had met with the Portuguese
captain at sea, the humanity of his behaviour, and what condition I was
now in, with all other necessary directions for my supply; and when
this honest captain came to Lisbon, he found means, by some of the
English merchants there, to send over, not the order only, but a full
account of my story to a merchant in London, who represented it
effectually to her; whereupon she not only delivered the money, but out
of her own pocket sent the Portugal captain a very handsome present for
his humanity and charity to me.
The merchant in London, vesting this hundred pounds in English goods,
such as the captain had written for, sent them directly to him at
Lisbon, and he brought them all safe to me to the Brazils; among which,
without my direction (for I was too young in my business to think of
them), he had taken care to have all sorts of tools, ironwork, and
utensils necessary for my plantation, and which were of great use to
me.
When this cargo arrived I thought my fortune made, for I was surprised
with the joy of it; and my good steward, the captain, had laid out the
five pounds, which my friend had sent him for a present for himself, to
purchase and bring me over a servant, under bond for six years’
service, and would not accept of any consideration, except a little
tobacco, which I would have him accept, being of my own produce.
Neither was this all; for my goods being all English manufacture, such
as cloths, stuffs, baize, and things particularly valuable and
desirable in the country, I found means to sell them to a very great
advantage; so that I might say I had more than four times the value of
my first cargo, and was now infinitely beyond my poor neighbour—I mean
in the advancement of my plantation; for the first thing I did, I
bought me a negro slave, and an European servant also—I mean another
besides that which the captain brought me from Lisbon.
But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our
greatest adversity, so it was with me. I went on the next year with
great success in my plantation: I raised fifty great rolls of tobacco
on my own ground, more than I had disposed of for necessaries among my
neighbours; and these fifty rolls, being each of above a hundredweight,
were well cured, and laid by against the return of the fleet from
Lisbon: and now increasing in business and wealth, my head began to be
full of projects and undertakings beyond my reach; such as are, indeed,
often the ruin of the best heads in business. Had I continued in the
station I was now in, I had room for all the happy things to have yet
befallen me for which my father so earnestly recommended a quiet,
retired life, and of which he had so sensibly described the middle
station of life to be full of; but other things attended me, and I was
still to be the wilful agent of all my own miseries; and particularly,
to increase my fault, and double the reflections upon myself, which in
my future sorrows I should have leisure to make, all these miscarriages
were procured by my apparent obstinate adhering to my foolish
inclination of wandering abroad, and pursuing that inclination, in
contradiction to the clearest views of doing myself good in a fair and
plain pursuit of those prospects, and those measures of life, which
nature and Providence concurred to present me with, and to make my
duty.
As I had once done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I could
not be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had of
being a rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a
rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than the nature of the
thing admitted; and thus I cast myself down again into the deepest gulf
of human misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could be consistent
with life and a state of health in the world.
To come, then, by the just degrees to the particulars of this part of
my story. You may suppose, that having now lived almost four years in
the Brazils, and beginning to thrive and prosper very well upon my
plantation, I had not only learned the language, but had contracted
acquaintance and friendship among my fellow-planters, as well as among
the merchants at St. Salvador, which was our port; and that, in my
discourses among them, I had frequently given them an account of my two
voyages to the coast of Guinea: the manner of trading with the negroes
there, and how easy it was to purchase upon the coast for trifles—such
as beads, toys, knives, scissors, hatchets, bits of glass, and the
like—not only gold-dust, Guinea grains, elephants’ teeth, &c., but
negroes, for the service of the Brazils, in great numbers.
They listened always very attentively to my discourses on these heads,
but especially to that part which related to the buying of negroes,
which was a trade at that time, not only not far entered into, but, as
far as it was, had been carried on by assientos, or permission of the
kings of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed in the public stock: so that
few negroes were bought, and these excessively dear.
It happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of my
acquaintance, and talking of those things very earnestly, three of them
came to me next morning, and told me they had been musing very much
upon what I had discoursed with them of the last night, and they came
to make a secret proposal to me; and, after enjoining me to secrecy,
they told me that they had a mind to fit out a ship to go to Guinea;
that they had all plantations as well as I, and were straitened for
nothing so much as servants; that as it was a trade that could not be
carried on, because they could not publicly sell the negroes when they
came home, so they desired to make but one voyage, to bring the negroes
on shore privately, and divide them among their own plantations; and,
in a word, the question was whether I would go their supercargo in the
ship, to manage the trading part upon the coast of Guinea; and they
offered me that I should have my equal share of the negroes, without
providing any part of the stock.
This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to any
one that had not had a settlement and a plantation of his own to look
after, which was in a fair way of coming to be very considerable, and
with a good stock upon it; but for me, that was thus entered and
established, and had nothing to do but to go on as I had begun, for
three or four years more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds
from England; and who in that time, and with that little addition,
could scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds
sterling, and that increasing too—for me to think of such a voyage was
the most preposterous thing that ever man in such circumstances could
be guilty of.
But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the
offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs when my father’s
good counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I would go with
all my heart, if they would undertake to look after my plantation in my
absence, and would dispose of it to such as I should direct, if I
miscarried. This they all engaged to do, and entered into writings or
covenants to do so; and I made a formal will, disposing of my
plantation and effects in case of my death, making the captain of the
ship that had saved my life, as before, my universal heir, but obliging
him to dispose of my effects as I had directed in my will; one half of
the produce being to himself, and the other to be shipped to England.
In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects and to
keep up my plantation. Had I used half as much prudence to have looked
into my 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
prosperous an undertaking, leaving all the probable views of a thriving
circumstance, and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with all its
common hazards, to say nothing of the reasons I had to expect
particular misfortunes to myself.
But I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy
rather than my reason; and, accordingly, the ship being fitted out, and
the cargo furnished, and all things done, as by agreement, by my
partners in the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour, the 1st
September 1659, being the same day eight years that I went from my
father and mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their
authority, and the fool to my own interests.
Our ship was about one hundred and twenty tons burden, carried six guns
and fourteen men, besides the master, his boy, and myself. We had on
board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for our
trade with the negroes, such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and other
trifles, especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissors, hatchets,
and the like.
The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the
northward upon our own coast, with design to stretch over for the
African coast when we came about ten or twelve degrees of northern
latitude, which, it seems, was the manner of course in those days. We
had very good weather, only excessively hot, all the way upon our own
coast, till we came to the height of Cape St. Augustino; from whence,
keeping further off at sea, we lost sight of land, and steered as if we
were bound for the isle Fernando de Noronha, holding our course N.E. by
N., and leaving those isles on the east. In this course we passed the
line in about twelve days’ time, and were, by our last observation, in
seven degrees twenty-two minutes northern latitude, when a violent
tornado, or hurricane, took us quite out of our knowledge. It began
from the south-east, came about to the north-west, and then settled in
the north-east; from whence it blew in such a terrible manner, that for
twelve days together we could do nothing but drive, and, scudding away
before it, let it carry us whither fate and the fury of the winds
directed; and, during these twelve days, I need not say that I expected
every day to be swallowed up; nor, indeed, did any in the ship expect
to save their lives.
In this distress we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our
men die of the calenture, and one man and the boy washed overboard.
About the twelfth day, the weather abating a little, the master made an
observation as well as he could, and found that he was in about eleven
degrees north latitude, but that he was twenty-two degrees of longitude
difference west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he was upon
the coast of Guiana, or the north part of Brazil, beyond the river
Amazon, toward that of the river Orinoco, commonly called the Great
River; and began to consult with me what course he should take, for the
ship was leaky, and very much disabled, and he was going directly back
to the coast of Brazil.
I was positively against that; and looking over the charts of the
sea-coast of America with him, we concluded there was no inhabited
country for us to have recourse to till we came within the circle of
the Caribbee Islands, and therefore resolved to stand away for
Barbadoes; which, by keeping off at sea, to avoid the indraft of the
Bay or Gulf of Mexico, we might easily perform, as we hoped, in about
fifteen days’ sail; whereas we could not possibly make our voyage to