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

by Daniel Defoe

I was ashamed to accept such an offer as this, but he pressed it earnestly, and importuned the doctor to move me to accept it, telling him that he should not be easy if I did not; so that, in short, the doctor advised me to agree to it, and, accordingly, he hired a messenger and a mule, and sent away for his two sons to come to him; and such expedition the messenger made, that in six days he returned with the two sons and three servants, all on horseback. His two sons were very pretty, well-behaved youths, who appeared to be gentlemen in their very countenances; the eldest was about thirteen years old, and the other about eleven. I treated them on board, as I had done their father, with all possible respect; and, having entertained them two days, left orders that they should be treated in the same manner when I was gone; and to this I added aloud, that their father might hear it, that whenever they had a mind to go away, they should let them go. But their father laid a great many solemn charges upon them that they should not stir out of the ship till I came back safe, and that I gave them leave, and he made them promise they would not; and the young gentlemen kept their word so punctually, that, when our supercargo, whom I left in command, offered to let them go on shore several times, to divert them with shooting and hunting, they would not stir out of the ship, and did not till I came back again.

Having gone this length, and made everything ready for my adventure, we set out, viz., Captain Merlotte, the Spanish doctor, the old mutineer who had been my second mate, but who was now captain of the Madagascar ship, and myself, with two midshipmen, whom he took as servants, but whom I resolved to make the directors of the main enterprise. As to the number, I found my Spaniard made no scruple of that, if it had been half my ship's company.

We set out, some on horses and some on mules, as we could get them, but the Spaniard and myself rode on two very good horses, being the same that his two sons came on. We arrived at a noble country-seat, about a league short of the town, where, at first, I thought we had been only to put in for refreshment, but I soon found that it was really his dwelling-house, and where his family and servants resided.

Here we were received like princes, and with as much ceremony as if he had been a prince that entertained us. The major-domo, or steward of his house, received us, took in our baggage, and ordered our servants to be taken care of.

It is sufficient to say, that the Spaniard did all that pride and ostentation was capable of inspiring him with, to entertain us; and the truth is, he could not have lived in a country in the world more capable of gratifying his pride; for here, without anything uncommon, he was able to show more gold plate than many good families in our country have of silver; and as for silver, it quite eclipsed the appearance, or rather took away the very use of pewter, of which we did not see one vessel, no not in the meanest part of his house. It is true, I believe, the Spaniard had not a piece of plate, or of any household furniture, which we did not see, except what belonged to the apartment of his wife; and, it is to be observed, that the women never appeared, except at a distance, and in the gardens, and then, being under veils, we could not know the lady from her women, or the maids from the mistress.

We were lodged every one in separate apartments, very well furnished, but two of them very nobly indeed, though all the materials for furniture there must be at an excessive price. The way of lodging upon quilts, and in beds made pavilion-wise, after the Spanish custom, I need not describe; but it surprised me to see the rooms hung with very rich tapestries, in a part of the world where they must cost so dear.

We had Chilian wine served us up in round gold cups, and water in large silver decanters, that held, at least, five quarts apiece; these stood in our chamber. Our chocolate was brought up in the same manner, in deep cups, all of gold, and it was made in vessels all of silver.

It would be tiresome to the reader to particularise my account with the relation of all the fine things our host had in his house, and I could not be persuaded but that he had borrowed all the plate in the town to furnish out his sideboard and table. But my doctor told me it was nothing but what was very usual among them that were men of any substance, as it was apparent he was; and that the silversmiths at St. Jago supplied them generally with their plate ready wrought, in exchange (with allowance for the quality) for the gold which they found in the mountains, or in the brooks and streams which came from the mountains, into which the hasty showers of winter rain frequently washed down pretty large lumps, and others, which were smaller, they washed out of the sands by the ordinary methods of washing of ore.

I was better satisfied in this particular when, the next day, talking to our new landlord about the mountains, and the wealth of them, I asked him if he could show me any of the gold which was usually washed out of the hills by the rain, in the natural figure in which it was found? He smiled, and told me he could show me a little, and immediately conducted us into a kind of a closet, where he had a great variety of odd things gathered up about the mountains and rivers, such as fine shells, stones in the form of stars, heavy pieces of ore, and the like, and, after this, he pulled out a great leather bag, which had, I believe, near fifty pounds weight in it. Here, seignior, says he, here is some of the dirt of the earth; and turning it out upon the table, it was easy to see that it was all mixed with gold, though the pieces were of different forms, and some scarce looking like gold at all, being so mixed with the spar or with earth, that it did not appear so plain; but, in every bit there was something of the clear gold to be seen, and, the smaller the lumps, the purer the gold appeared.

I was surprised at the quantity, more than at the quality of the metal, having, as I have said, seen the gold which the Indians found in the countries I have described, which seemed to have little or no mixture. But then I was to have considered, that what those Indians gathered was farther from the hills which it came from, and that those rough, irregular pieces would not drive so far in the water, but would lodge themselves in the earth and sand of the rivers nearer home; and also, that the Indians, not knowing how to separate the gold by fire from the dross and mixture above, did not think those rough pieces worth their taking up, whereas, the Spaniards here understood much better what they were about.