been here with them?

_Friday_. Yes, I have been here (points to the N.W. side of the island,
which, it seems, was their side.)

By this I understood that my man Friday had formerly been among the
savages who used to come on shore on the farther part of the island, on
the same man-eating occasions he was now brought for; and, some time
after, when I took the courage to carry him to that side, being the same
I formerly mentioned, he presently knew the place, and told me he was
there once when they eat up twenty men, two women, and one child: he
could not tell twenty in English, but he numbered them, by laying so
many stones in a row, and pointing to me to tell them over.

I have told this passage, because it introduces what follows; that after
I had this discourse with him, I asked him how far it was from our
island to the shore, and whether the canoes were not often lost. He told
me there was no danger, no canoes ever lost; but that, after a little
way out to sea, there was a current and wind, always one way in the
morning, the other in the afternoon. This I understood to be no more
than the sets of the tide, as going out or coming in; but I afterwards
understood it was occasioned by the great draft and reflux of the mighty
river Oroonoko, in the mouth or gulf of which river, as I found
afterwards, our island lay; and that this land which I perceived to the
W. and N.W. was the great island Trinidad, on the north point of the
mouth of the river. I asked Friday a thousand questions about the
country, the inhabitants, the sea, the coast, and what nations were
near: he told me all he knew, with the greatest openness imaginable. I
asked him the names of the several nations of his sort of people, but
could get no other name than Caribs: from whence I easily understood,
that these were the Caribbees, which our maps place on the part of
America which reaches from the mouth of the river Oroonoko to Guiana,
and onwards to St. Martha. He told me that up a great way beyond the
moon, that was, beyond the setting of the moon, which must be west from
their country, there dwelt white bearded men, like me, and pointed to my
great whiskers, which I mentioned before; and that they had killed much
mans, that was his word: by all which I understood, he meant the
Spaniards, whose cruelties in America had been spread over the whole
country, and were remembered by all the nations, from father to son.

I inquired if he could tell me how I m