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A Narrative
sired us not to think for a few days of any thing but recruiting ourselves , and , at the same time , furnished us with clothes , which , heobserved , our situation so much required ; though still there was a shyness in his behaviour , which we could not account for . ' I ain inclined to think , and we were all of the same opinion , that he certainly doubted our veracity , and took us for part of the crew of some French informed
ship come to kidnap the natives ( a practice , as I have been , not uncommon with that nation ) , though our ragged and squalid appearance by no means justified such an apprehension . In a little time , however , these suspicions vanished , and then he informed us of the state of the place : That there was annually but one vessel came therethat she had sailed about a month beforeand would
, , not arrive again , till June ; that as the N . E . monsoon was set in , it would be impracticable to reach Mosambique at that time , but that , if we chose , he would g ive us guides , and what was necessary to undertake a journey to Senna , a settlement of theirs inland , from whence we mig ht have an opportunity of getting to the capital ; though , at the same time , he represented the undertaking in so unfavourable a lighttogether with
, the length of time likely to intervene before any occasion might present itself for us to proceed farther , that ; on mature deliberation , we declined all thoughts of it , and turned our attention to a boat he had , about the size of an Indiaman ' s long-boat , which we made application for ; this he made some scruple of granting , on account of the
payment , which was soon set aside by our offering to grant a bill on the Honourable Company for the amount ; this he declined , and at length gave us the boat . Is was our intention to proceed to Delegoa Bay , which , with moderate winds , we mig ht have accomplished in a week . At this time of the year we knew there must be some South-Sea ships , as there generally , are to effect thisit
30 or 40 sail in a year . Had we been so fortunate as , would have been an easy matter to have engaged one , or , if necessary , _ two of them , to transport our people from Madagascar to the Cape of Good Hope , for which p lace it was my instructions to procure a vessel , had I reached Mosambique . In case we should not succeed in the first project we had determined to make for the Capeand most
pro-, , bably some ship would have picked us up before we reached it . Many people , I . am" aware , will condemn this as a mad and rash undertaking , but , when the motive , and also the alternative , is viewed , perhaps we may stand excused . Having , through the Governor , procured every thing requisite for our voyage , we sailed the 12 th of October , but ill luck still hung over
us ; we had been only three days at sea , in which time we had had constantly foul winds , and not proceeded more than 40 miles , when the boar proved so extremely leaky that , with our utmost exertions ^ we could scarcely keep her above water . I will not attempt to describe the various and frequent escapes from imminent danger we experienced till we regained Sofala , which , was not till the 20 th of October , though so little distant from it . Our reception now was widely different to that
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
A Narrative
sired us not to think for a few days of any thing but recruiting ourselves , and , at the same time , furnished us with clothes , which , heobserved , our situation so much required ; though still there was a shyness in his behaviour , which we could not account for . ' I ain inclined to think , and we were all of the same opinion , that he certainly doubted our veracity , and took us for part of the crew of some French informed
ship come to kidnap the natives ( a practice , as I have been , not uncommon with that nation ) , though our ragged and squalid appearance by no means justified such an apprehension . In a little time , however , these suspicions vanished , and then he informed us of the state of the place : That there was annually but one vessel came therethat she had sailed about a month beforeand would
, , not arrive again , till June ; that as the N . E . monsoon was set in , it would be impracticable to reach Mosambique at that time , but that , if we chose , he would g ive us guides , and what was necessary to undertake a journey to Senna , a settlement of theirs inland , from whence we mig ht have an opportunity of getting to the capital ; though , at the same time , he represented the undertaking in so unfavourable a lighttogether with
, the length of time likely to intervene before any occasion might present itself for us to proceed farther , that ; on mature deliberation , we declined all thoughts of it , and turned our attention to a boat he had , about the size of an Indiaman ' s long-boat , which we made application for ; this he made some scruple of granting , on account of the
payment , which was soon set aside by our offering to grant a bill on the Honourable Company for the amount ; this he declined , and at length gave us the boat . Is was our intention to proceed to Delegoa Bay , which , with moderate winds , we mig ht have accomplished in a week . At this time of the year we knew there must be some South-Sea ships , as there generally , are to effect thisit
30 or 40 sail in a year . Had we been so fortunate as , would have been an easy matter to have engaged one , or , if necessary , _ two of them , to transport our people from Madagascar to the Cape of Good Hope , for which p lace it was my instructions to procure a vessel , had I reached Mosambique . In case we should not succeed in the first project we had determined to make for the Capeand most
pro-, , bably some ship would have picked us up before we reached it . Many people , I . am" aware , will condemn this as a mad and rash undertaking , but , when the motive , and also the alternative , is viewed , perhaps we may stand excused . Having , through the Governor , procured every thing requisite for our voyage , we sailed the 12 th of October , but ill luck still hung over
us ; we had been only three days at sea , in which time we had had constantly foul winds , and not proceeded more than 40 miles , when the boar proved so extremely leaky that , with our utmost exertions ^ we could scarcely keep her above water . I will not attempt to describe the various and frequent escapes from imminent danger we experienced till we regained Sofala , which , was not till the 20 th of October , though so little distant from it . Our reception now was widely different to that