entirely to
him: upon which, he told me he would give me a note of hand to pay me
eighty pieces of eight for it at Brazil; and when it came there, if any
one offered to give more, he would make it up. He offered me also sixty
pieces of eight more for my boy Xury, which I was loth to take; not that
I was not willing to let the captain have him, but I was very loth to
sell the poor boy's liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully in
procuring my own. However, when I let him know my reason, he owned it to
be just, and offered me this medium, that he would give the boy an
obligation to set him free in ten years, if he turned Christian: upon
this, and Xury saying he was willing to go to him, I let the
captain have him.
We had a very good voyage to the Brazils, and arrived in the Bay de
Todos los Santos, or All Saints' Bay, in about twenty-two days after.
And now I was once more delivered from the most miserable of all
conditions of life; and what to do next with myself, I was now
to consider.
The generous treatment the captain gave me, I can never enough remember:
he would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me twenty ducats for
the leopard's skin, and forty for the lion's skin, which I had in my
boat, and caused every thing I had in the ship to be punctually
delivered to me; and what I was willing to sell, he bought of me; such
as the case of bottles, two of my guns, and a piece of the lump of
bees-wax,--for I had made candles of the rest: in a word, I made about
two hundred and twenty pieces of eight of all my cargo; and with this
stock, I went on shore in the Brazils.
I had not been long here, before I was recommended to the house of a
good honest man, like himself, who had an ingeino as they call it, (that
is, a plantation and a sugar-house.) I lived with him some time, and
acquainted myself, by that means, with the manner of planting and making
of sugar: and seeing how well the planters lived, and how they got rich
suddenly, I resolved, if I could get a licence to settle there, I would
turn planter among them: endeavouring, in the mean time, to find out
some way to get my money, which I had left in London, remitted to me. To
this purpose, getting a kind of a letter of naturalization, I purchased
as much land that was uncured as my money would reach, and formed a plan
for my plantation and settlement; such a one as might be suitable to the
stock which I proposed to myself to receive from England.
I had a nei
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