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
Here they found a rich pleasant country, level and fruitful, not so low
as to be exposed to the overflowing of the river, and not so high as to
be dry and barren; several little brooks and streams of water rising on
the side of the hill they came from, ran winding this way and that, as
if to find out the river, and near the river were some woods of very
large trees.
The men, not forgetting the main chance, fell to washing and searching
the sand and gravel in these brooks for gold; but the harvest of gold
seemed to be over, for here they found none.
They had also an occasion to discover, that till the land-waters were
abated, there was no stirring for them, no not so much as to cross the
first river; nor if they did, could they find in their hearts to
venture, not knowing but the waters might still rise higher, and that
the two rivers might swell into one, and so they should be swallowed up,
or if not, they might be surrounded in some island, where they should
perish for want of provisions; so they resolved to fetch their baggage
from the hill as well as they could, and encamp in those pleasant
plains, as near the river as they could, till the water should abate.
While they stayed here, they were so far from having hopes that the
waters would abate, that it rained violently for almost three days and
nights together; and one of those rainy mornings, looking out at their
tent-door (for they could not stir abroad for the rain), they were
surprised, when looking towards the river, which was just below them,
they saw a prodigious number of black creatures in the water, and
swimming towards the shore where they were.
They first imagined they were porpoises, or sea-hogs, but could not
suggest anything of that kind at such a distance from the sea, when one
of the men looking at them through the glass, cried out they were all
black cattle, and that he could perceive their horns and heads; upon
this, others looking with their glasses also, said the same; immediately
every man ran to his gun, and, notwithstanding it rained hard, away they
marched down to the river's side with all the speed they could make.
By that time they reached the river bank, their wonder increased, for
they found it was a vast multitude of black cattle, who, finding the
waters rise between the two rivers, and, by a natural sagacity,
apprehensive of being swept away with the flood, had one and all took
the waters, and were swimming over to this side for safety.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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