A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before

by Daniel Defoe

The first thing I took the freedom to speak to him upon was this. Finding his habit a little offensive to our rude seamen, I took him into the cabin the very next day after we came to sea, and told him that I was obliged to mention to him what I knew he would soon perceive; namely, that we were all Protestants, except three or four of the Frenchmen, and I did not know how agreeable that might be to him. He answered, he was not at all offended with that part; that it was none of his business to inquire into any one's opinion any farther than they gave him leave; that if it was his business to cure the souls of men on shore, his business on board was to cure their bodies; and as for the rest, he would exercise no other function than that of a physician on board the ship without my leave.

I told him that was very obliging; but that for his own sake I had a proposal to make him, which was, whether it would be disagreeable to him to lay aside the habit of a religious, and put on that of a gentleman, so to accommodate himself the more easily to the men on board, who perhaps might be rude to him in his habit, seamen being not always men of the most refined manners.

He thanked me very sincerely; told me that he had been in England as well as in Ireland, and that he went dressed there as a gentleman, and was ready to do so now, if I thought fit, to avoid giving any offence; and added that he chose to do so. But then, smiling, said he was at a great loss, for he had no clothes. I bade him take no care about that, for I would furnish him; and immediately we dressed him up like an Englishman, in a suit of very good clothes, which belonged to one of our midshipmen who died. I gave him also a good wig and a sword, and he presently appeared upon the quarter-deck like a grave physician, and was called doctor.

From that minute, by whose contrivance we knew not, it went current among the seamen that the Spanish doctor was an Englishman and a protestant, and only had put on the other habit to disguise himself and make his escape to us; and this was so universally believed that it held to the last day of the whole voyage, for as soon as I knew it, I took care that nobody should ever contradict it: and as for the doctor himself, when he first heard of it, he said nothing could be more to his satisfaction, and that he would take care to confirm the opinion of it among all the men, as far as lay in his power.

However, the doctor earnestly desired we would be mindful, that as he should never offer to go on shore, whatever port we came to afterwards, none of the Spaniards might, by inquiry, hear upon any occasion of his being on board our ship; but above all, that none of our men, the officers especially, would ever come so much in reach of the Spaniards on shore as to put it in their power to seize upon them by reprisal, and so oblige us to deliver him up by way of exchange.

I went so far with him, and so did Captain Merlotte also, as to assure him, that if the Spaniards should by any stratagem, or by force, get any of our men, nay, though it were ourselves, into their hands, yet he should, upon no conditions whatever be delivered up. And indeed for this very reason we were very shy of going on shore at all; and as we had really no business any where but just for water and fresh provisions, which we had also taken in a very good store of at Lima, so we put in nowhere at all on the coast of Peru, because there we might have been more particularly liable to the impertinencies of the Spaniard's inquiry; as to force, we were furnished not to be in the least apprehensive of that.

Being thus, I say, resolved to have no more to do with the coast of Peru, we stood off to sea, and the first land we made was a little unfrequented island in the latitude of 17° 13', where our men went on shore in the boats three or four times, to catch tortoises or turtles, being the first we had met with since we came from the East Indies. And here they took so many, and had such a prodigious quantity of eggs out of them, that the whole company of both ships lived on them till within four or five days of our coming to the island of Juan Fernandez, which was our next port. Some of these tortoises were so large and so heavy that no single man could turn them, and sometimes as much as four men could carry to the boats.

We met with some bad weather after this, which blew us off to sea, the wind blowing very hard at the south-east; but it was not so great a wind as to endanger us, though we lost sight of one another more in this storm than we had done in all our voyage. However, we were none of us in any great concern for it now, because we had agreed before, that if we should lose one another, we should make the best of our way to the island of Juan Fernandez; and this we observed now so directly, that both of us shaping our course for the island, as soon as the storm abated, came in sight of one another long before we came thither, which proved very agreeable to us all.

We were, including the time of the storm, two hundred and eighteen days from Lima to the Island of Juan Fernandez, having most of the time cross contrary winds, and more bad weather than is usual in those seas; however, we were all in good condition, both ships and men.

Here we fell to the old trade of hunting of goats. And here our new doctor set some of our men to simpling, that is to say, to gather some physical herbs, which he let them see afterwards were very well worth their while. Our surgeons assisted, and saw the plants, but had never observed the same kind in England. They gave me the names of them, and it is the only discovery in all my travels which I have not reserved so carefully as to publish for the advantage of others, and which I regret the omission of very much.