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
Accordingly the next morning he weighed and stood off to sea; but the
weather being very fine, and the little wind that blew being
south-west-by-south, he ventured to stand in for the shore, where he
found two or three small creeks, and one large river; and sending in his
shallop to sound, and find out a good place to ride in, upon their
making the signal to him that they had found such a place, he stood in,
and came to an anchor in eleven fathom good ground, half a league from
the shore, and well defended from the northerly and easterly winds,
which were the winds we had any reason to fear.
Having thus brought his ship to an anchor, he sent his shallop along the
shore to give me an account of it, and desire me to come up to him,
which accordingly we did; and here we resolved to ride for some time, in
hopes to hear from our little army.
We went on shore, some or other of us, every day, and especially when
five of our men, going on shore on the north side of the river, had shot
three Peruvian sheep and a black wild bull; for after that they ranged
the country far and near to find more, but could never come within shot
of them, except three bulls and a cow, which they killed after a long
and tedious chase.
We lay here till the 16th of February, without any news of our
travellers, as I called them. All the hopes we had was, that five of our
men asking my leave to travel, swore to me they would go quite up to the
Andes but they would find them; nay, they would go to the Spanish
gentleman himself, if they did not hear of them; and obliged me to stay
twenty days for them, and no longer. This I readily promised, and
giving them everything they asked, and two Peruvian sheep to carry their
ammunition, with two dozen of rockets for signals, a speaking trumpet,
and a good perspective glass, away they went; and from them we had yet
heard no news, so that was our present hope.
They travelled, as they afterwards gave an account, one hundred and
twenty miles up the country, till they were at last forced to resolve to
kill one of their guinacoes, or sheep, to satisfy their hunger, which
was a great grief to them, for their luggage was heavy to carry; but, I
say, they only resolved on it, for just as they were going to do it, one
of them roused a deer with a fawn, and, by great good luck shot them
both; for, having killed the doe, the fawn stood still by her till he
had loaded his piece again, and shot that also.
This supplied them for four or five days plentifully, and the last day
one of my men being by the bank of the river (for they kept as near the
river as they could, in hopes to hear of them that way), saw something
black come driving down the stream; he could not reach it, but calling
one of his fellows, their curiosity was such, that the other, being a
good swimmer, stripped and put off to it, and, when he came to it, he
found it was a man's hat; this made them conclude their fellows were not
far off, and that they were coming by water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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