me eighty pieces of eight for it at Brazil, and when it came there, if anyone offered to give more, he would make it up; he offered me also sixty pieces of eight more for my boy Xury, which I was loath to take, not that I was not willing to let the captain have him, but I was very loath to sell the poor boy’s liberty who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring my own. However, when I let him know my reason, he owned it to be just and offered me this medium, that he would give the boy an obligation to set him free in ten years if he turned Christian; upon this, and Xury saying he was willing to go to him, I let the captain have him.
I Become a Brazilian Planter
WE HAD a very good voyage to Brazil and arrived in the Bay de Todos los Santos, or All Saints’ Bay, in about twenty-two days after. And now I was once more delivered from the most miserable of all conditions of life, and what to do next with myself I was now to consider.
The generous treatment the captain gave me I can never enough remember; he would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me twenty ducats for the leopard’s skin, and forty for the lion’s skin which I had in my boat, and caused everything I had in the ship to be punctually delivered to me; and what I was willing to sell he bought, such as the case of bottles, two of my guns, and a piece of the lump of beeswax, for I had made candles of the rest; in a word, I made about 220 pieces of eight of all my cargo, and with this stock I went on shore in Brazil.
I had not been long here, but being recommended to the house of a good honest man like himself, who had an ingenio, as they call it, that is, a plantation and a sugarhouse, I lived with him some time and acquainted myself by that means with the manner of their planting and making of sugar; and seeing how well the planters lived and how they grew rich suddenly, I resolved, if I could get licence to settle there, I would turn planter among them, resolving in the meantime to find out some way to get my money which I had left in London remitted to me. To this purpose, getting a kind of a letter of naturalization, I purchased as much land that was uncured as my money would reach, and formed a plan for my plantation and settlement, and such a one as might be suitable to the stock which I proposed to myself to receive from England.
I had a neighbour, a Portuguese of Lisbon, but born of English parents, whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I was. I call him neighbour, because his plantation lay next to mine and we went on very sociably together. My stock was but low, as well as his; and we rather planted for food than anything else for about two years. However, we began to increase, and our land began to come into order; so that the third year we planted some tobacco and made each of us a large piece of ground ready for planting canes in the year to come; but we both wanted help, and now I found, more than before, I had done wrong in parting with my boy Xury.
But alas! for me to do wrong that never did right was no great wonder: I had no remedy but to go on; I was gotten into an employment quite remote to my genius and directly contrary to the life I delighted in and for which I forsook my father’s house and broke through all his good advice; nay, I was coming into the very middle station, or upper degree of low life, which my father advised me to before, and which, if I resolved to go on with, I might as well have stayed at home and never have fatigued myself in the world as I had done; and I used often to say to myself, I could have done this as well in England among my friends as have gone five thousand miles off to do it among strangers and savages in a wilderness, and at such a distance as never to hear from any part of the world that had the least knowledge of me.
In this manner I used to look upon my condition with the utmost regret. I had nobody to converse with but now and then this neighbour; no work to be done, but
I Become a Brazilian Planter
WE HAD a very good voyage to Brazil and arrived in the Bay de Todos los Santos, or All Saints’ Bay, in about twenty-two days after. And now I was once more delivered from the most miserable of all conditions of life, and what to do next with myself I was now to consider.
The generous treatment the captain gave me I can never enough remember; he would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me twenty ducats for the leopard’s skin, and forty for the lion’s skin which I had in my boat, and caused everything I had in the ship to be punctually delivered to me; and what I was willing to sell he bought, such as the case of bottles, two of my guns, and a piece of the lump of beeswax, for I had made candles of the rest; in a word, I made about 220 pieces of eight of all my cargo, and with this stock I went on shore in Brazil.
I had not been long here, but being recommended to the house of a good honest man like himself, who had an ingenio, as they call it, that is, a plantation and a sugarhouse, I lived with him some time and acquainted myself by that means with the manner of their planting and making of sugar; and seeing how well the planters lived and how they grew rich suddenly, I resolved, if I could get licence to settle there, I would turn planter among them, resolving in the meantime to find out some way to get my money which I had left in London remitted to me. To this purpose, getting a kind of a letter of naturalization, I purchased as much land that was uncured as my money would reach, and formed a plan for my plantation and settlement, and such a one as might be suitable to the stock which I proposed to myself to receive from England.
I had a neighbour, a Portuguese of Lisbon, but born of English parents, whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I was. I call him neighbour, because his plantation lay next to mine and we went on very sociably together. My stock was but low, as well as his; and we rather planted for food than anything else for about two years. However, we began to increase, and our land began to come into order; so that the third year we planted some tobacco and made each of us a large piece of ground ready for planting canes in the year to come; but we both wanted help, and now I found, more than before, I had done wrong in parting with my boy Xury.
But alas! for me to do wrong that never did right was no great wonder: I had no remedy but to go on; I was gotten into an employment quite remote to my genius and directly contrary to the life I delighted in and for which I forsook my father’s house and broke through all his good advice; nay, I was coming into the very middle station, or upper degree of low life, which my father advised me to before, and which, if I resolved to go on with, I might as well have stayed at home and never have fatigued myself in the world as I had done; and I used often to say to myself, I could have done this as well in England among my friends as have gone five thousand miles off to do it among strangers and savages in a wilderness, and at such a distance as never to hear from any part of the world that had the least knowledge of me.
In this manner I used to look upon my condition with the utmost regret. I had nobody to converse with but now and then this neighbour; no work to be done, but
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