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Updated: June 4, 2025
I liked that part of his discourse very well, and it began to put me in mind of my priest that I had left in the Brasils; but this Father Simon did not come up to his character by a great deal; for though Father Simon had no appearance of a criminal levity in him neither, yet he had not that fund of Christian zeal, strict piety, and sincere affection to religion, that my other good ecclesiastic had, of whom I have said so much.
But, as I have said, this was not the main thing that kept me from going to the Brasils, but that really I did not know with whom to leave my effects behind me; so I resolved at last to go to England with them, where if I arrived, I concluded I should make some acquaintance, or find some relations, that would be faithful to me; and accordingly I prepared to go for England with all my wealth.
My nephew was for accepting their money at first word, and to consider what to do with them afterwards; but I overruled him in that part; for I knew what it was to be set on shore in a strange country; and if the Portugal captain that took me up at sea had served me so, and took all I had for my deliverance, I must have starved, or have been as much a slave at the Brasils as I had been at Barbary, the being sold to a Mahometan only excepted; and perhaps a Portuguese is not a much better master than a Turk, if not, in some cases, a much worse.
Any one would think, that in this state of complicated good fortune, I was past running any more hazards, and so indeed I had been, if other circumstances had concurred: but I was inured to a wandering life, had no family, nor many relations; nor, however rich, had I contracted much acquaintance; and though I had sold my estate in the Brasils, yet I could not keep that country out of my head, and had a great mind to be upon the wing again; especially I could not resist the strong inclination I had to see my island, and to know if the poor Spaniards were in being there; and how the rogues I left there had used them.
To come then by just degrees to the particulars of this part of my story; you may suppose, that having now lived almost four years in the Brasils, and beginning to thrive and prosper very well upon my plantation, I had not only learnt the language, but had contracted acquaintance and friendship among my fellow-planters, as well as among the merchants at St.
The voyage to the Brasils did not take place. Peter Grotius came to his father in summer, 1637. He seems to have been well satisfied with him, as we may judge by a letter written to his brother , Aug. 15, this year. "Peter is arrived here: he is much indebted to you, to his grandfather, and all his friends and relations, for instilling into him such good principles.
Salvadore, which was our port; and that in my discourse among them, I had frequently given them an account of my two voyages to the coast of Guinea, the manner of trading with the Negroes there, and how easy it was to purchase upon the coast, for trifles, such as beads, toys, knives, scissars, hatchets, bits of glass, and the like, not only gold-dust, Guinea grains, elephants teeth, &c. but Negroes for the service of the Brasils in great numbers.
Upon this he pulls out an old pouch, and gives me two hundred Portugal moidores in gold; and giving me the writings of his title to the ship which his son was gone to the Brasils in, of which he was a quarter part owner, and his son another, he puts them both in my hands for security of the rest.
Had the stern of the ship been fixed, and the fore part broken off, I am persuaded I might have made a good voyage; for by what I found in these two chests, I had room to suppose the ship had a great deal of wealth on board; and if I may guess by the course she steered, she must have been bound from the Buenos Ayres, or the Rio de la Plata, in the south part of America, beyond the Brasils, to the Havanna, in the Gulf of Mexico, and so perhaps to Spain: she had, no doubt, a great treasure in her, but of no use at that time to any body; and what became of the rest of her people I then knew not.
I added, that otherwise I was persuaded, if they were all here, we might, with so many hands, build a bark large enough to carry us all away either to the Brasils southward, or to the islands or Spanish coast northward: but that if in requital they should, when I had put weapons into their hands, carry me by force among their own people, I might be ill used for my kindness to them, and make my case worse than it was before.
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