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
Our men raised a shout for joy that they were in their own king's
dominions, or as they said, in their own country; and indeed, excepting
that it was not inhabited by Englishmen, and cultivated, planted, and
enclosed after the English manner, I never saw a country so much like
England.
Here we victualled our ships with a new kind of food, for we loaded
ourselves with seals, of which here are an infinite number, and which we
salted and ate, and our men liked them wonderfully for awhile, but they
soon began to grow weary of them; also the penguins are a very wholesome
diet, and very pleasant, especially when a little salted; and as for
salt, we could have loaded our ships with it, being very good and white,
made by the sun, and found in standing ponds of salt water, near the
shore.
The penguins are so easily killed, and are found in such vast multitudes
on that island (which for that reason is so called), that our men loaded
the long-boat with them twice in one day, and we reckoned there were no
less than seven thousand in the boat each time.
Here we travelled up into the country in search of our men, and made our
signals, but had no answer to them, nor heard any intelligence of them.
We saw some people here at a distance, scattering about; but they were
but few, nor would they be brought by any means to converse with us, or
come near us.
We spread ourselves over the country far and wide; and here we shot
hares and wild-fowl again in abundance, the country being much the same
as before, but something more bushy, and here and there a few trees, but
they were a great way off. There is a large river which empties itself
into this bay.
Finding no news here of our men, I ordered the Madagascar ship to weigh
and stand farther north, keeping as near the shore as he might with
safety, and causing his men to look out for the signals, which, if they
discovered, they should give us notice by firing three guns.
They sailed the height of Cape Blanco, where the land falling back,
makes a deep bay, and the sea receives into it a great river at several
mouths, some of them twenty leagues from the other, all farther north.
Here they stood into the bay until they made the land again; for at the
first opening of the bay they could not see the bottom of it, the land
lying very low.
The captain was doubtful what he should do upon the appearance of so
large a bay, and was loath to stand farther in, lest the land, pushing
out into the sea again afterwards, and a gale springing up from the
seaward, they might be shut into a bay where they had no knowledge of
the ground; and upon this caution, they resolved among themselves to
come to an anchor for that evening, and to put farther out to sea the
next morning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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