just, that if any one ofus, by any play, bet, game, or wager, won any money or gold, or thevalue of any, from another, during our whole voyage, till our returnquite to Portugal, he should be obliged by us all to restore it againon the penalty of being disarmed and turned out of the company, and ofhaving no relief from us on any account whatever. This was to preventwagering and playing for money, which our men were apt to do by severalmeans and at several games, though they had neither cards nor dice.
Having made this wholesome agreement, we went cheerfully to work, andshowed our negroes how to work for us; and working up the stream on bothsides, and in the bottom of the river, we spent about three weeks' timedabbling in the water; by which time, as it lay all in our way, we hadgone about six miles, and not more; and still the higher we went, themore gold we found; till at last, having passed by the side of a hill,we perceived on a sudden that the gold stopped, and that there was nota bit taken up beyond that place. It presently occurred to my mind, thatit must then be from the side of that little hill that all the gold wefound was worked down.
Upon this, we went back to the hill, and fell to work with that. Wefound the earth loose, and of a yellowish loamy colour, and in someplaces a white hard kind of stone, which, in describing since to someof our artists, they tell me was the spar which is found by ore, andsurrounds it in the mine. However, if it had been all gold, we had noinstrument to force it out; so we passed that. But scratching into theloose earth with our fingers, we came to a surprising place, wherethe earth, for the quantity of two bushels, I believe, or thereabouts,crumbled down with little more than touching it, and apparently showedus that there was a great deal of gold in it. We took it all carefullyup, and washing it in the water, the loamy earth washed away, and leftthe gold dust free in our hands; and that which was more remarkable was,that, when this loose earth was all taken away, and we came to the rockor hard stone, there was not one grain of gold more to be found.
At night we all came together to see what we had got; and it appearedwe had found, in that day's heap of earth, about fifty pounds' weight ofgold dust, and about thirty-four pounds' weight more in all the rest ofour works in the river.
It was a happy kind of disappointment to us, that we found a full stopput to our work; for, had the quantity of gold been ever so small, yet,had any at all come, I do not know when we should have given over; for,having rummaged this place, and not finding the least grain of goldin any other place, or in any of the earth there, except in that looseparcel, we went quite back down the small river again, working it overand over again, as long as we could find anything, how small soever; andwe did get six or seven pounds more the second time. Then we went intothe first river, and tried it up the stream and down the stream, on theone side and on the other. Up the stream we found nothing, no, not agrain; down the stream we found very little, not above the quantity ofhalf an ounce in two miles' working; so back we came again to the GoldenRiver, as we justly called it, and worked it up the stream and down thestream twice more apiece, and every time we found some gold, and perhapsmight have done so if we had stayed there till this time; but thequantity was at last so small, and the work so much the harder, that weagreed by consent to give it over, lest we should fatigue ourselves andour negroes so as to be quite unfit for our journey.
When we had brought all our purchase together, we had in the whole threepounds and a half of gold to a man, share and share alike, according tosuch a weight and scale as our ingenious cutler made for us to weigh itby, which indeed he did by guess, but which, as he said, he was surewas rather more than less, and so it proved at last; for it was neartwo ounces more than weight in a pound. Besides this, there was sevenor eight pounds' weight left, which we agreed to leave in his hands, towork it into such shapes as we thought fit, to give away to such peopleas we might yet meet with, from whom we might have occasion to buyprovisions, or even to buy friendship, or the like; and particularly wegave about a pound to our black prince, which he hammered and worked byhis own indefatigable hand, and some tools our artificer lent him, intolittle round bits, as round almost as beads, though not exact in shape,and drilling holes through them, put them all upon a string, and worethem about his black neck, and they looked very well there, I assureyou; but he was many months a-doing it. And thus ended our first goldenadventure.
We now began to discover what we had not troubled our heads much aboutbefore, and that was, that, let the country be good or bad that we werein, we could not travel much further for a considerable time. We hadbeen now five months and upwards in our journey, and the seasons beganto change; and nature told us, that, being in a climate that had awinter as well as a summer, though of a different kind from what ourcountry produced, we were to expect a wet season, and such as we shouldnot be able to travel in, as well by reason of the rain itself, as ofthe floods which it would occasion wherever we should come; andthough we had been no strangers to those wet seasons in the islandof Madagascar, yet we had not thought much of them since we began ourtravels; for, setting out when the sun was about the solstice, that is,when it was at the greatest northern distance from us, we had foundthe benefit of it in our travels. But now it drew near us apace, and wefound it began to rain; upon which we called another general council, inwhich we debated our present circumstances, and, in particular, whetherwe should go forward, or seek for a proper place upon the bank of ourGolden River, which had been so lucky to us, to fix our camp for thewinter.
Upon the whole, it was resolved to abide where we were; and it was notthe least part of our happiness that we did so, as shall appear in itsplace.
Having resolved upon this, our first measures were to set our negroes towork, to make huts or houses for our habitation, and this they did verydexterously; only that we changed the ground where we at first intendedit, thinking, as indeed it happened, that the river might reach it uponany sudden rain. Our camp was like a little town, in which our huts werein the centre, having one large one in the centre of them also, intowhich all our particular lodgings opened; so that none of us went intoour apartments but through a public tent, where we all ate and dranktogether, and kept our councils and society; and our carpenters made ustables, benches, and stools in abundance, as many as we could make useof.
We had no need of chimneys, it was hot enough without fire; but yetwe found ourselves at last obliged to keep a fire every night upon aparticular occasion. For though we had in all other respects a verypleasant and agreeable situation, yet we were rather worse troubled withthe unwelcome visits of wild beasts here than in the wilderness itself;for as the deer and other gentle creatures came hither for shelterand food, so the lions and tigers and leopards haunted these placescontinually for prey.
When first we discovered this we were so uneasy at it that we thought ofremoving our situation; but after many debates about it we resolved tofortify ourselves in such a manner as not to be in any danger from it;and this our carpenters undertook, who first palisaded our camp quiteround with long stakes, for we had wood enough, which stakes were notstuck in one by another like pales, but in an irregular manner; agreat multitude of them so placed that they took up near two yards inthickness, some higher, some lower, all sharpened at the top, and abouta foot asunder: so that had any creature jumped at them, unless he hadgone clean over, which it was very hard to do, he would be hung upontwenty or thirty spikes.
The entrance into this had larger stakes than the rest, so placed beforeone another as to make three or four short turnings which no four-footedbeast bigger than a dog could possibly come in at; and that we might notbe attacked by any multitude together, and consequently be alarmed inour sleep, as we had been, or be obliged to waste our ammunition, whichwe were very chary of, we kept a great fire every night without theentrance of our palisade, having a hut for our two sentinels to standin free from the rain, just within the entrance, and right against thefire.
To maintain this fire we cut a prodigious deal of wood, and piled it upin a heap to dry, and with the green boughs made a second covering overour
huts, so high and thick that it might cast the rain from the first,and keep us effectually dry.
We had scarcely finished all these works but the rain came on so fierceand so continued that we had little time to stir abroad for food, exceptindeed that our negroes, who wore no clothes, seemed to make nothing ofthe rain; though to us Europeans, in those hot climates, nothing is moredangerous.
We continued in this posture for four months, that is to say, from themiddle of June to the middle of October; for though the rains went off,at least the greatest violence of them, about the equinox, yet, as thesun was then just over our heads, we resolved to stay awhile till itpassed a little to the southward.
During our encampment here we had several adventures with the ravenouscreatures of that country; and had not our fire been always keptburning, I question much whether all our fence, though we strengthenedit afterwards with twelve or fourteen rows of stakes or more, would havekept us secure. It