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They all approved the proposal, and every one jointly swore, and gave their hands to one another, that they would not conceal the least grain of gold from the rest; and consented that, if any one or more should be found to conceal any, all that he had should be taken from him, and divided among the rest; and one thing more was added to it by our gunner, from considerations equally good and just, that, if any one of us, by any play, bet, game, or wager, won any money or gold, or the value of any, from another, during our whole voyage, till our return quite to Portugal, he should be obliged by us all to restore it again, on the penalty of being disarmed, and turned out of the company, and of having no relief from us on any account whatsoever. This was to prevent wagering and playing for money, which our men were apt to do by several games, though they had neither cards nor dice.

Having made this wholesome agreement, we went cheerfully to work, and showed our negroes how to work for us; and, working up the stream on both sides, and in the bottom of the river, we spent about three weeks' time dabbling in the water; by which time, as it lay all in our way, we had been gone about six miles, and not more; and still the higher we went, the more gold we found; till at last, having passed by the side of a hill, we perceived on a sudden, that the gold stopped, and that there was not a bit taken up beyond that place it presently occurred to my mind, that it must then be from the side of that little hill that all the gold we found was worked down.

Upon this, we went back to the hill, and fell to work with that. We found the earth loose, and of a yellowish loamy colour, and in some places a white hard kind of stone, which, in describing since to some of our artists, they tell me was the spar which is found by ore, and surrounds it in the mine. However, if it had been all gold, we had no instrument to force it out; so we passed that: but scratching into the loose earth with our fingers, we came to a surprising place, where the earth, for the quantity of two bushels, I believe, or thereabouts, crumbled down with little more than touching it, and apparently showed us that there was a great deal of gold in it. We took it all carefully up, and, washing it in the water, the loamy earth washed away, and left the gold dust free in our hands; and that which was more remarkable, was, that

when this loose earth was all taken away, and we came to the rock or hard stone, there was not one grain of gold more to be found.

At night we came all together to see what we had got; and it appeared we had found, in that day's heap of earth, about fifty pound weight of gold dust, and about thirty-four pound more in all the rest of our works in the river.

It was a happy kind of disappointment to us, that we found a full stop put to our work; for, had the quantity of gold been ever so small, yet, had any at all come, I do not know when we should have given over; for, having rummaged this place, and not finding the least grain of gold in any other place, or in any of the earth there, except in that loose parcel, we went quite back down the small river again, working it over and over again, as long as we could find anything, how small soever; and we did get six or seven pound more the second time. Then we went into the first river, and tried it up the stream and down the stream, on the one side and on the other. Up the stream we found nothing, no not a grain; down the stream we found very little, not above the quantity of half an ounce in two miles working; so back we came again to the Golden river, as we justly called it, and worked it up the stream and down the stream twice more apiece, and every time we found some gold, and perhaps might have done so if we had stayed there till this time; but the quantity was at last so small, and the work so much the harder, that we agreed by consent to give it over, lest we should fatigue ourselves and our negroes so as to be quite unfit for our journey. When we had brought all our purchase together, we had in the whole three pound and a half of gold to a man, share and share alike, according to such a weight and scale as our ingenious cutler made for us to weigh it by, which he did indeed by guess, but which, as he said, he was sure was rather more than less, and so it proved at last; for it was near two ounces more than weight in a pound. Besides this, there was seven or eight pounds' weight left, which we agreed to leave in his hands, to work it into such shapes as we thought fit, to give away to such people as we might yet meet with, from whom we might have occasion to buy provisions, or even to buy friendship, or the like; and particularly we gave a pound to our black prince, which he hammered and worked by his own indefa

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tigable hand, and some tools our artificer lent him, into little round bits, as round almost as beads, though not exact in shape, and, drilling holes through them, put them all upon a string, and wore them about his black neck, and they looked very well there I assure you; but he was many months a-doing it. And thus ended our first golden adventure.

We now began to discover what we had not troubled our heads much about before; and that was, that let the country be good or bad that we were in, we could not travel much further for a considerable time. We had been now five months and upwards in our journey, and the seasons began to change; and nature told us, that, being in a climate that had a winter as well as a summer, though of a different kind from what our country produced, we were to expect a wet season, and such as we should not be able to travel in, as well by reason of the rain itself, as of the floods which it would occasion wherever we should come; and though we had been no strangers to those wet seasons in the island of Madagascar, yet we had not thought much of them since we began our travels; for, setting out when the sun was about the solstice, that is, when it was at the greatest northern distance from us, we had found the benefit of it in our travels. But now it drew near us apace, and we found it began to rain; upon which we called another general council, in which we debated our present circumstances, and, in particular, whether we should go forward, or seek for a proper place upon the bank of our Golden river, which had been so lucky to us, to fix our camp for the winter.

Upon the whole, it was resolved to abide where we were; and it was not the least part of our happiness that we did so, as shall appear in its place.

Having resolved upon this, our first measures were to set our negroes to work, to make huts or houses for our habitation; and this they did very dexterously, only that we changed the ground where we had at first intended it, thinking, as indeed it happened, that the river might reach

it upon any sudden rain. Our camp was like a little town,

in which our huts were in the centre, having one large one in the centre of them also, into which all our particular lodgings opened; so that none of us went into our apartments but through a public tent, where we all eat and drank together, and kept our councils and society; and our car

penters made us tables, benches, and stools in abundance, as many as we could make use of.

We had no need of chimneys-it was hot enough without fire; but yet we found ourselves at last obliged to keep a fire every night upon a particular occasion; for, though we had in all other respects a very pleasant and agreeable situation, yet we were rather worse troubled with the unwelcome visits of wild beasts here than in the wilderness itself; for, as the deer and other gentle creatures came hither for shelter and food, so the lions and tigers, and leopards, haunted these places continually for prey.

When first we discovered this, we were so uneasy at it that we thought of removing our situation; but, after many debates about it, we resolved to fortify ourselves in such a manner as not to be in any danger from it, and this our carpenters undertook, who first palisadoed our camp quite round with long stakes (for we had wood enough), which stakes were not stuck in one by another, like pales, but in an irregular manner-a great multitude of them so placed that they took up near two yards in thickness, some higher, some lower, all sharpened at the top, and about a foot asunder; so that, had any creature jumped at them, unless he had gone clean over, which it was very hard to do, he would be hung upon twenty or thirty spikes.

The entrance into this had larger stakes than the rest, so placed before one another as to make three or four short turnings, which no four-footed beast bigger than a dog could possibly come in at; and that we might not be attacked by any multitude together, and consequently be alarmed in our sleep, as we had been, or be obliged to waste our ammunition, which we were very chary of, we kept a great fire every night without the entrance of our palisadoe, having a hut for our two sentinels to stand in free from the rain, just within the entrance, and right against the fire.

To maintain this fire we cut a prodigious deal of wood, and piled it up in a heap to dry, and, with the green boughs, made a second covering over our huts, so high and thick that it might cast the rain off from the first, and keep us effectually dry.

We had scarce finished all these works, but the rain came on so fierce, and so continued, that we had little time to stir abroad for food, except indeed that our negroes, who wore

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no clothes, seemed to make nothing of the rain, though to us Europeans, in those hot climates, nothing is more dangerous.

We continued in this posture for four months—that is, from the middle of June to the middle of October; for, though the rains went off at least the greatest violence of them about the equinox, yet, as the sun was then just over our heads, we resolved to stay awhile till it had passed us a little to the southward.

During our encampment here, we had several adventures with the ravenous creatures of that country; and, had not our fire been always kept burning, I question much whether all our fence, though we strengthened it afterwards with twelve or fourteen rows of stakes or more, would have kept us secure. It was always in the night that we had the disturbance of them, and sometimes they came in such multitudes, that we thought all the lions and tigers, and leopards, and wolves of Africa, were come together to attack us. One night, being clear moonshine, one of our men being upon the watch, told us, he verily believed he saw ten thousand wild creatures, of one sort or another, pass by our little camp; and as soon as ever they saw the fire, they sheered off, but were sure to howl or roar, or whatever it was, when they were past.

The music of their voices was very far from being pleasant to us, and sometimes would be so very disturbing, that we could not sleep for it; and often our sentinels would call us, that were awake, to come and look at them. It was one windy tempestuous night, after a very rainy day, that we were indeed all called up; for such innumerable numbers of devilish creatures came about us, that our watch really thought they would attack us. They would not come on the side where the fire was; and though we thought ourselves secure everywhere else, yet we all got up, and took to our arms. The moon was near the full, but the air full of flying clouds, and a strange hurricane of wind, to add to the terror of the night; when, looking on the back part of our camp, I thought I saw a creature within our fortification, and so indeed he was, except his haunches; for he had taken a running leap, I suppose, and with all his might had thrown himself clear over our palisadoes, except one strong pile, which stood higher than the rest, and which had caught