A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed BeforeDefoe, Daniel
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A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before
Defoe, Daniel
Adventure stories; Voyages around the world -- Fiction
All our company lodged in the tents here, but myself and my patron, the
Spaniard, who lodged within the Chilian's house, as I have said.
This Chilian was a great man among the natives, and all the valley I
spoke of, which lay round his dwelling, was called his own. He lived in
a perfect state of tranquility, neither enjoying or coveting anything
but what was necessary, and wanting nothing that was so. He had gold
merely for the trouble of picking it up, for it was found in all the
little gulleys and rills of water which, as I have said, came down from
the mountains on every side; yet I did not find that he troubled himself
to lay up any great quantity, more than served to go to Villa Rica and
buy what he wanted for himself and family.
He had, it seems, a wife and some daughters, but no sons; these lived in
a separate house, about a furlong from that where he lived, and were
kept there as a family by themselves, and if he had any sons they would
have lived with him.
He did not offer to go with us any part of our way, as the other had
done, but, having entertained us with great civility, took his leave. I
caused one of my midshipmen to make him a present, when we came away, of
a piece of black baize, enough to make him a cloak, as I did the other,
and a piece of blue English serge, enough to make him a jerkin and
breeches, which he accepted as a great bounty.
We set out again, though not very early in the morning, having, as I
said, sat up late, and drank freely over night, and we found, that
after we had been gone to sleep it had rained very hard, and though the
rain was over before we went out, yet the falling of the water from the
hills made such a confused noise, and was echoed so backward and forward
from all sides, that it was like a strange mixture of distant thunder,
and though we knew the causes, yet it could not but be surprising to us
for awhile.
However, we set forward, the way under foot being pretty good; and first
he went up the steps again by which we had come down, our last host
waiting on us thither, and there I gave him back his gun, for he would
not take it before.
In this valley, which was the pleasantest by day and the most dismal by
night that ever I saw, I observed abundance of goats, as well tame in
the enclosures, as wild upon the rocks; and we found afterwards, that
the last were perfectly wild, and to be had, like those at Juan
Fernandez, by any one who could catch them. My patron sent off two of
his men, just as a huntsman casts off his hounds, to go and catch goats,
and they brought us in three, which they shot in less than half an hour,
and these we carried with us for our evening supply; for we made no
dinner this day, having fed heartily in the morning about nine, and had
chocolate two hours before that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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