ry
man he conversed with; and that he rather desired me to converse with him
as a gentleman than as a religionist; and that, if I would give him leave
at any time to discourse upon religious subjects, he would readily comply
with it, and that he did not doubt but I would allow him also to defend
his own opinions as well as he could; but that without my leave he would
not break in upon me with any such thing. He told me further, that he
would not cease to do all that became him, in his office as a priest, as
well as a private Christian, to procure the good of the ship, and the
safety of all that was in her; and though, perhaps, we would not join
with him, and he could not pray with us, he hoped he might pray for us,
which he would do upon all occasions. In this manner we conversed; and
as he was of the most obliging, gentlemanlike behaviour, so he was, if I
may be allowed to say so, a man of good sense, and, as I believe, of
great learning.

He gave me a most diverting account of his life, and of the many
extraordinary events of it; of many adventures which had befallen him in
the few years that he had been abroad in the world; and particularly, it
was very remarkable, that in the voyage he was now engaged in he had had
the misfortune to be five times shipped and unshipped, and never to go to
the place whither any of the ships he was in were at first designed. That
his first intent was to have gone to Martinico, and that he went on board
a ship bound thither at St. Malo; but being forced into Lisbon by bad
weather, the ship received some damage by running aground in the mouth of
the river Tagus, and was obliged to unload her cargo there; but finding a
Portuguese ship there bound for the Madeiras, and ready to sail, and
supposing he should meet with a ship there bound to Martinico, he went on
board, in order to sail to the Madeiras; but the master of the Portuguese
ship being but an indifferent mariner, had been out of his reckoning, and
they drove to Fayal; where, however, he happened to find a very good
market for his cargo, which was corn, and therefore resolved not to go to
the Madeiras, but to load salt at the Isle of May, and to go away to
Newfoundland. He had no remedy in this exigence but to go with the ship,
and had a pretty good voyage as far as the Banks (so they call the place
where they catch the fish), where, meeting with a French ship bound from
France to Quebec, and from thence to Martinico, to carry pr