I confess I was for going by the Cape of Good Hope first, and so to the East Indies: then, keeping to the south of Java, go away to the Moluccas, where I made no doubt to make some purchase among the Dutch Spice Islands, and so away to the Philippines; but the whole ship's company, I mean of officers, were against me in this scheme, although I told them plainly, that the discoveries which would be made in such a voyage as that, were the principal reasons why our chief owner embarked in the adventure, and that we ought to regard the end and design of our voyage; that it would certainly in the conclusion amount to the same, as to trade, as if we went the usual way, seeing the places we were to go to were the same one way as the other, and it was only putting the question which we should go to first; that all the navigators, on such voyages as these, went by the South Seas first, which would be no honour to us at all: but, if we went by the East Indies first, we should be the first that ever went such a voyage, and that we might make many useful discoveries and experiments in trying that course; that it would be worth our while, not only to go that way, but to have all the world take notice of it, and of us for it. I used a great many arguments of the like nature, but they answered me most effectually, with laying before me the difficulties of the voyage, and the contrary methods of trade, which, in a word, made the going that way impracticable: First, the difficulty of the voyage, over the vast ocean called the Pacific Sea, or South Sea, which, if we kept a southern latitude, and took the variable winds, as we should find them, as I proposed to do, might very well be a voyage of six or eight months, without any sight of land, or supply of provisions or water, which was intolerable; that, as to trade, it was preposterous, and just setting the voyage with the bottom upward; for as we were loaden with goods, and had no money, our first business, they said, was to go to the South Seas, where our goods were wanted, and would sell for money, and then to the East Indies, where our money would be wanting, to buy other goods to carry home, and not to go to the East Indies first, where our goods would not sell, and where we could buy no other for want of money. This was seemingly so strong a way of reasoning, that they were all against me, as well French as English, and even the two agents for discoveries submitted to it; and so we resolved to stand away from the Canaries to the coast o Brazil, thence upon the eastern coast of South America to Cape Horn, and then into the South Seas; and, if we met with anything that was Spanish by the way, we resolved to make prize of it, as in a time of war.