adventurers; and thus we agreed.
He then told us he thought it would not be an unprofitable adventure if,before we set forward, and after we had got a stock of provisions, weshould make a journey north to the edge of the desert he had told us of,from whence our negroes might bring every one a large elephant's tooth,and that he would get some more to assist; and that, after a certainlength of carriage, they might be conveyed by canoes to the coast, wherethey would yield a very great profit.
I objected against this on account of our other design we had of gettinggold-dust; and that our negroes, who we knew would be faithful to us,would get much more by searching the rivers for gold for us than bylugging a great tooth of a hundred and fifty pounds weight a hundredmiles or more, which would be an insufferable labour to them after sohard a journey, and would certainly kill them.
He acquiesced in the justice of this answer, but fain would have had usgone to see the woody part of the hill and the edge of the desert, thatwe might see how the elephants' teeth lay scattered up and down there;but when we told him the story of what we had seen before, as is saidabove, he said no more.
We stayed here twelve days, during which time the natives were veryobliging to us, and brought us fruits, pompions, and a root likecarrots, though of quite another taste, but not unpleasant neither, andsome guinea-fowls, whose names we did not know. In short, they broughtus plenty of what they had, and we lived very well, and we gave them allsuch little things as our cutler had made, for he had now a whole bagfull of them.
On the thirteenth day we set forward, taking our new gentleman with us.At parting, the negro king sent two savages with a present to him ofsome dried flesh, but I do not remember what it was, and he gave himagain three silver birds which our cutler helped him to, which I assureyou was a present for a king.
We travelled now south, a little west, and here we found the firstriver for above 2000 miles' march, whose waters run south, all the restrunning north or west. We followed this river, which was no bigger thana good large brook in England, till it began to increase its water.Every now and then we found our Englishman went down as it wereprivately to the water, which was to try the land; at length, after aday's march upon this river, he came running up to us with his handsfull of sand, and saying, "Look here." Upon looking we found that a gooddeal of gold lay spangled among the sand of the river. "Now," says he,"I think we may begin to work;" so he divided our negroes into couplesand set them to work, to search and wash the sand and ooze in the bottomof the water where it was not deep.
In the first day and a quarter our men all together had gathered a poundand two ounces of gold or thereabouts, and as we found the quantityincreased the farther we went, we followed it about three days, tillanother small rivulet joined the first, and then searching up thestream, we found gold there too; so we pitched our camp in the anglewhere the rivers joined, and we diverted ourselves, as I may call it,in washing the gold out of the sand of the river, and in gettingprovisions.
Here we stayed thirteen days more, in which time we had many pleasantadventures with the savages, too long to mention here, and some of themtoo homely to tell of, for some of our men had made something free withtheir women, which, had not our new guide made peace for us with one oftheir men at the price of seven fine bits of silver, which our artificerhad cut out into the shapes of lions, and fishes, and birds, and hadpunched holes to hang them up by (an inestimable treasure), we must havegone to war with them and all their people.
All the while we were busy washing gold-dust out of the rivers, and ournegroes the like, our ingenious cutler was hammering and cutting, andhe was grown so dexterous by use that he formed all manner of images. Hecut out elephants, tigers, civet cats, ostriches, eagles, cranes, fowls,fishes, and indeed whatever he pleased, in thin plates of hammered gold,for his silver and iron were almost all gone.
At one of the towns of these savage nations we were very friendlyreceived by their king, and as he was very much taken with our workman'stoys, he sold him an elephant cut out of a gold plate as thin as asixpence at an extravagant rate. He was so much taken with it that hewould not be quiet till he had given him almost a handful of gold-dust,as they call it; I suppose it might weigh three-quarters of a pound; thepiece of gold that the elephant was made of might be about the weight ofa pistole, rather less than more. Our artist was so honest, though thelabour and art were all his own, that he brought all the gold and putit into our common stock; but we had, indeed, no manner of reason in theleast to be covetous, for, as our new guide told us, we that were strongenough to defend ourselves, and had time enough to stay (for we werenone of us in haste), might in time get together what quantity of goldwe pleased, even to an hundred pounds weight each man if we thought fit;and therefore he told us, though he had as much reason to be sick of thecountry as any of us, yet if we thought to turn our march a little tothe south-east, and pitch upon a place proper for our headquarters,we might find provisions plenty enough, and extend ourselves over thecountry among the rivers for two or three years to the right and left,and we should soon find the advantage of it.
The proposal, however good as to the profitable part of it, suited noneof us, for we were all more desirous to get home than to be rich, beingtired of the excessive fatigue of above a year's continual wanderingamong deserts and wild beasts.
However, the tongue of our new acquaintance had a kind of charm in it,and used such arguments, and had so much the power of persuasion, thatthere was no resisting him. He told us it was preposterous not to takethe fruit of all our labours now we were come to the harvest; that wemight see the hazard the Europeans run with ships and men, and at greatexpense, to fetch a little gold, and that we, that were in the centreof it, to go away empty-handed was unaccountable; that we were strongenough to fight our way through whole nations, and might make ourjourney afterward to what part of the coast we pleased, and we shouldnever forgive ourselves when we came to our own country to see we had500 pistoles in gold, and might as easily have had 5000 or 10,000, orwhat we pleased; that he was no more covetous than we, but seeing itwas in all our powers to retrieve our misfortunes at once, and to makeourselves easy for all our lives, he could not be faithful to us, orgrateful for the good we had done him, if he did not let us see theadvantage we had in our hands; and he assured us he would make it clearto our own understanding, that we might in two years' time, by goodmanagement and by the help of our negroes, gather every man a hundredpounds weight of gold, and get together perhaps two hundred ton ofteeth; whereas, if once we pushed on to the coast and separated, weshould never be able to see that place again with our eyes, or do anymore than sinners did with heaven,--wish themselves there, but know theycan never come at it.
Our surgeon was the first man that yielded to his reasoning, and afterhim the gunner; and they too, indeed, had a great influence over us, butnone of the rest had any mind to stay, nor I neither, I must confess;for I had no notion of a great deal of money, or what to do with myself,or what to do with it if I had it. I thought I had enough already, andall the thoughts I had about disposing of it, if I came to Europe, wasonly how to spend it as fast as I could, buy me some clothes, and go tosea again to be a drudge for more.
However, he prevailed with us by his good words at last to stay but forsix months in the country, and then, if we did resolve to go, he wouldsubmit; so at length we yielded to that, and he carried us about fiftyEnglish miles south-east, where we found several rivulets of water,which seemed to come all from a great ridge of mountains, which lay tothe north-east, and which, by our calculation, must be the beginningthat way of the great waste, which we had been forced northward toavoid.
Here we found the country barren enough, but yet we had by his directionplenty of food; for the savages round us, upon giving them some of ourtoys, as I have so often mentioned, brought us in whatever they had;and here we found some maize, or Indian wheat, which the negro womenplanted, as we sow seeds in a garden, and immediately our new providerordered some of our negroes to plant it, and it grew
up presently, andby watering it often, we had a crop in less than three months' growth.
As soon as we were settled, and our camp fixed, we fell to the oldtrade of fishing for gold in the rivers mentioned above, and our Englishgentleman so well knew how to direct our search, that we scarce everlost our labour.
One time, having set us to work, he asked if we would give him leave,with four or five negroes, to go out for six or seven days to seek hisfortune, and see what he could discover in the country, assuring uswhatever he got should be for the public stock. We all gave him ourconsent, and lent him a gun; and two of our men desiring to go with him,they took then six negroes with them, and two of our buffaloes thatcame with us the whole journey; they took about eight days' provision ofbread with them, but no flesh, except about as much dried flesh as wouldserve them two days.
They travelled up to the top of the mountains I mentioned just now,where they saw (as