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ship. Upon this we beckoned them with our hands to come nearer; then they sent the boys and girls to us first, which, it seems, was to bring us more cakes of bread, and some green herbs, to eat, which we received, and took the boys up and kissed them, and the little girls too; then the men came up close to us, and sat them down on the ground, making signs, that we should sit down by them, which we did. They said much to one another, but we could not understand them, nor could we find any way to make them understand us; much less whither we were going, or what we wanted, only that we easily made them understand we wanted victuals: whereupon one of the men casting his eyes about him towards a rising ground that was about half a mile off, started up as if he was frightened, flew to the place where they had laid down their bows and arrows, snatched up a bow and two arrows, and ran like a racehorse to the place: when he came there, he let fly both his arrows, and came back again to us with the same speed; we seeing he came with the bow, but without the arrows, were the more inquisitive, but the fellow saying nothing to us, beckons to one of our negroes to come to him, and we bid him go; so he led him back to the place, where lay a kind of a deer, shot with two arrows, but not quite dead; and between them they brought it down to us. This was for a gift to us, and was very welcome, I assure you, for our stock was low. These people were all stark naked.

The next day there came about a hundred men and women to us, making the same awkward signals of friendship, and dancing, and showing themselves very well pleased, and anything they had they gave us. How the man in the wood came to be so butcherly and rude as to shoot at our men, without making any breach first, we could not imagine; for the people were simple, plain, and inoffensive in all our other conversation with them.

From hence we went down the bank of the little river I mentioned, and where I found we should see whole nations of negroes; but whether friendly to us or not, that we could make no judgment of yet.

The river was of no use to us, as to the design of making canoes, a great while; and we traversed the country on the edge of it about five days more, when our carpenters, finding the stream increase, proposed to pitch our tents, and fall to

work to make canoes; but after we had begun the work, and cut down two or three trees, and spent five days in the labour, some of our men, wandering further down the river, brought us word that the stream rather decreased than increased, sinking away into the sands, or drying up by the heat of the sun; so that the river appeared not able to carry the least canoe that could be any way useful to us: so we were obliged to give over our enterprise, and move on.

In our further prospect this way we marched three days full west, the country on the north side being extraordinary mountainous, and more parched and dry than any we had seen yet; whereas, in the part which looks due west, we found a pleasant valley, running a great way between two great ridges of mountains. The hills looked frightful, being entirely bare of trees or grass, and even white with the dryness of the sand; but in the valley we had trees, grass, and some creatures that were fit for food, and some inhabitants.

We passed by some of their huts or houses, and saw people about them; but they ran up into the hills as soon as they saw us. At the end of this valley we met with a peopled country, and at first it put us to some doubt whether we should go among them or keep up towards the hills northerly; and as our aim was principally, as before, to make our way to the river Niger, we inclined to the latter, pursuing our course by the compass to the N.W. We marched thus without interruption seven days more, when we met with a surprising circumstance, much more desolate and disconsolate than our own, and which, in time to come, will scarce seem credible.

We did not much seek the conversing, or acquainting ourselves with the natives of the country, except where we found the want of them for our provision, or their direction for our way; so that, whereas we found the country here begin to be very populous, especially towards our left handthat is, to the south-we kept at the more distance northerly, still stretching towards the west.

In this tract we found something or other to kill and eat, which always supplied our necessity, though not so well as we were provided in our first setting out. Being thus, as it were, pushing to avoid the peopled country, we at last came to a very pleasant, agreeable stream of water, not big enough

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to be called a river, but running to the N.N.W., which was the very course we desired to go.

On the farthest bank of this brook, we perceived some huts of negroes, not many, and in a little low spot of ground, some maize, or Indian corn, growing, which intimated presently to us, that there were some inhabitants on that side, less barbarous than those we had met with in other places where we had been.

As we went forward, our whole caravan being in a body, our negroes, who were in the front, cried out that they saw a white man! We were not much surprised at first, it being, as we thought, a mistake of the fellows, and asked them what they meant, when one of them stept up to me, and, pointing to a hut on the other side of the hill, I was astonished to see a white man indeed, but stark naked, very busy near the door of his hut, and stooping down to the ground with something in his hand, as if he had been at some work, and, his back being towards us, he did not see us.

I gave notice to our negroes to make no noise, and waited till some more of our men were come up, to show the sight to them, that they might be sure I was not mistaken, and we were soon satisfied of the truth; for the man, having heard some noise, started up, and looked full at us, as much surprised, to be sure, as we were, but whether with fear or hope we then knew not.

As he discovered us, so did the rest of the inhabitants belonging to the huts about him, and all crowded together, looking at us at a distance: a little bottom, in which the brook ran, lying between us, the white man, and all the rest, as he told us afterwards, not knowing well whether they should stay or run away. However, it presently came into my thoughts that, if there were white men among them, it would be much easier for us to make them understand what we meant, as to peace or war, than we found it with others; so, tying a piece of white rag to the end of a stick, we sent two negroes with it to the bank of the water, carrying the pole up as high as they could. It was presently understood, and two of their men and the white man came to the shore on the other side.

However, as the white man spoke no Portuguese, they could understand nothing of one another but by signs; but our men made the white man understand that they had

white men with them too, at which they said the white man laughed. However, to be short, our men came back, and told us they were all good friends, and in about an hour four of our men, two negroes, and the black prince went to the river side, where the white man came to them.

They had not been half a quarter of an hour there, till a negro came running to me, and told me the white man was Inglese, as he called him : upon which I ran back, eagerly enough you may be sure, with him, and found, as he said, that he was an Englishman, upon which he embraced me very passionately, the tears running down his face. The first surprise of his seeing us was over before we came; but any one may conceive it by the brief account he gave us afterwards of his very unhappy circumstance, and of so unexpected a deliverance, such as perhaps never happened to any man in the world; for it was a million to one odds that ever he could have been relieved-nothing but an adventure that never was heard or read of before could have suited his case, unless heaven, by some miracle that never was to be expected, had acted for him.

He appeared to be a gentleman, not an ordinary-bred fellow, seaman, or labouring man; this showed itself in his behaviour, in the first moment of our conversing with him, and in spite of all the disadvantages of his miserable circumstances.

He was a middle-aged man, not above thirty-seven or thirty-eight, though his beard was grown exceedingly long, . and the hair of his head and face strangely covered him to the middle of his back and breast; he was white, and his skin very fine, though discoloured, and in some places blistered, and covered with a brown blackish substance, scurfy, scaly, and hard, which was the effect of the scorching heat of the sun; he was stark naked, and had been so, as he told us, upwards of two years.

He was so exceedingly transported at our meeting with him, that he could scarce enter into any discourse at all with us for that day; and, when he could get away from us for a little, we saw him walking alone, and showing all the most extravagant tokens of an ungovernable joy; and even afterwards he was never without tears in his eyes for several days, upon the least word spoken by us of his circumstances, or by him of his deliverance.

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We found his behaviour the most courteous and endearing I ever saw in any man whatever, and most evident tokens of a mannerly well-bred person appeared in all things he did or said; and our people were exceedingly taken with him. He was a scholar and a mathematician; he could not speak Portuguese indeed, but he spoke Latin to our surgeon, French to another of our men, and Italian to a third.

He had no leisure in his thoughts to ask us whence we came, whither we were going, or who we were; but would have it always as an answer to himself, that to be sure, wherever we were a-going, we came from heaven, and were sent on purpose to save him from the most wretched condition that ever man was reduced to.

CHAPTER IX.

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISHMAN -AFTER RESTING THIRTEEN DAYS, WE SET FORWARD, TAKING OUR NEW COMRADE WITH US-WE ARRIVE AT ANOTHER RIVER YIELDING GOLD

-GREAT SUCCESS OF OUR GOLD FISHING CONCLUSION OF THIS JOURNEY, AND ACCOUNT OF MY ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND.

OUR men pitching their camp on the bank of a little river opposite to him, he began to inquire what store of provisions we had, and how we proposed to be supplied; when he found that our store was but small, he said he would talk with the natives, and we should have provisions enough; for he said they were the most courteous, good-natured part of the inhabitants in all that part of the country, as we might suppose by his living so safe among them.

The first things this gentleman did for us were indeed of the greatest consequence to us; for, first, he perfectly informed us where we were, and which was the properest course for us to steer: secondly, he put us in a way how to furnish ourselves effectually with provisions; and, thirdly, he was our complete interpreter and peace-maker with all the natives, who now began to be very numerous about us; and who were a more fierce and politic people than those we had met with before; not so easily terrified with our arms as those, and not so ignorant as to give their provisions and corn for