BINSON CRUSOE IS SHIPWRECKED

_By Daniel Defoe_

Our ship was about a hundred and twenty tons' burthen, carried six
guns and fourteen men, besides the master, his boy, and myself. We had
on board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for
our trade with the negroes,--such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and
odd trifles, especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissors,
hatchets, and the like.

The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the
northward upon our own coast, with design to stretch over for the
African coast, when they came about ten or twelve degrees of northern
latitude, which, it seems, was the manner of their course in those
days. We had very good weather, only excessive hot, all the way upon
our own coast, till we came the height of Cape St. Augustino, from
whence, keeping farther off at sea, we lost sight of land, and steered
as if we were bound for the Isle Fernando de Noronha, holding our
course N.E. by N., and leaving those isles on the east. In this course
we passed the line in about twelve days' time, and were, by our last
observation, in 7 deg. 22' northern latitude, when a violent tornado, or
hurricane, took us quite out of our knowledge. It began from the
southeast, came about to the northwest, and then settled into the
northeast, from whence it blew in such a terrible manner that for
twelve days together we could do nothing but drive, and, scudding away
before it, let it carry us where-ever fate and the fury of the winds
directed; and during these twelve days, I need not say that I expected
every day to be swallowed up, nor, indeed, did any in the ship expect
to save their lives.

In this distress we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our
men die of the calenture, and one man and the boy washed overboard.
About the twelfth day, the weather abating a little, the master made
an observation as well as he could, and found that he was in about
eleven degrees north latitude, but that he was twenty-two degrees of
longitude difference west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he
was gotten upon the coast of Guiana, or the north part of Brazil,
beyond the river Amazon, toward that of the river Orinoco, commonly
called the Great River, and began to consult with me what course he
should take, for the ship was leaky and very much disabled, and he was
going directly back to the coast of Brazil.

I was positively against t