by Daniel Defoe
andleave them but little booty to boast of.
But by how much the greater weight the anxieties and perplexities ofthose things were to our thoughts while we were at sea, by so much thegreater was our satisfaction when we saw ourselves on shore; and mypartner told me he dreamed that he had a very heavy load upon his back,which he was to carry up a hill, and found that he was not able to standlong under it; but the Portuguese pilot came, and took it off his back,and the hill disappeared, the ground before him shewing all smooth andplain: and truly it was so; we were all like men who had a load takenoff their backs.
For my part, I had a weight taken off from my heart, that I was not ableany longer to bear; and, as I said above, we resolved to go no more tosea in that ship. When we came on shore, the old pilot, who was now ourfriend, got us a lodging, and a warehouse for our goods, which, by theway, was much the same: it was a little house, or hut, with a largehouse joining to it, all built with canes, and palisadoed round withlarge canes, to keep out pilfering thieves, of which it seems there werenot a few in the country. However, the magistrates allowed us all alittle guard, and we had a soldier with a kind of halbert, or half-pike,who stood sentinel at our door, to whom we allowed a pint of rice, and alittle piece of money, about the value of three-pence, per day: so thatour goods were kept very safe.
The fair or mart usually kept in this place had been over some time;however, we found that there were three or four junks in the river, andtwo Japanners, I mean ships from Japan, with goods which they had boughtin China, and were not gone away, having Japanese merchants on shore.
The first thing our old Portuguese pilot did for us was to bring usacquainted with three missionary Romish priests, who were in the town,and who had been there some time, converting the people to Christianity;but we thought they made but poor work of it, and made them but sorryChristians when they had done. However, that was not our business. Oneof these was a Frenchman, whom they called Father Simon; he was a jollywell-conditioned man, very free in his conversation, not seeming soserious and grave as the other two did, one of whom was a Portuguese,and the other a Genoese: but Father Simon was courteous, easy in hismanner, and very agreeable company; the other two were more reserved,seemed rigid and austere, and applied seriously to the work they cameabout, viz. to talk with, and insinuate themselves among the inhabitantswherever they had opportunity. We often ate and drank with those men;and though I must confess, the conversion, as they call it, of theChinese to Christianity, is so far from the true conversion required tobring heathen people to the faith of Christ, that it seems to amount tolittle more than letting them know the name of Christ, say some prayersto the Virgin Mary and her Son, in a tongue which they understand not,and to cross themselves, and the like; yet it must be confessed thatthese religious, whom we call missionaries, have a firm belief thatthese people should be saved, and that they are the instrument of it;and, on this account, they undergo not only the fatigue of the voyage,and hazards of living in such places, but oftentimes death itself, withthe most violent tortures, for the sake of this work: and it would be agreat want of charity in us, whatever opinion we have of the workitself, and the manner of their doing it, if we should not have a goodopinion of their zeal, who undertake it with so many hazards, and whohave no prospect of the least temporal advantage to themselves.
But to return to my story: This French priest, Father Simon, wasappointed, it seems, by order of the chief of the mission, to go up toPekin, the royal seat of the Chinese emperor; and waited only foranother priest, who was ordered to come to him from Macao, to go alongwith him; and we scarce ever met together but he was inviting me to gothat journey with him, telling me, how he would shew me all the gloriousthings of that mighty empire; and among the rest the greatest city inthe world; "A city," said he, "that your London and our Paris puttogether cannot be equal to." This was the city of Pekin, which, Iconfess, is very great, and infinitely full of people; but as I lookedon those things with different eyes from other men, so I shall give myopinion of them in few words when I come in the course of my travels tospeak more particularly of them.
But first I come to my friar or missionary: dining with him one day, andbeing very merry together, I showed some little inclination to go withhim; and he pressed me and my partner very hard, and with a great manypersuasions, to consent. "Why, Father Simon," says my partner, "whyshould you desire our company so much? You know we are heretics, and youdo not love us, nor can keep us company with any pleasure."--"O!" sayshe, "you may, perhaps, be good Catholics in time; my business here is toconvert heathens, and who knows but I may convert you too?"--"Very well,Father," said I, "so you will preach to us all the way."--"I won't betroublesome to you," said he; "our religion does not divest us of goodmanners; besides," said he, "we are all here like countrymen; and so weare, compared to the place we are in; and if you are Hugonots, and I aCatholic, we may be all Christians at last; at least," said he, "we areall gentlemen, and we may converse so, without being uneasy to oneanother." I liked that part of his discourse very well, and it began toput me in mind of my priest that I had left in the Brasils; but thisFather Simon did not come up to his character by a great deal; forthough Father Simon had no appearance of a criminal levity in himneither, yet he had not that fund of Christian zeal, strict piety, andsincere affection to religion, that my other good ecclesiastic had, ofwhom I have said so much.
But to leave him a little, though he never left us, nor soliciting us togo with him, but we had something else before us at that time; for wehad all this while our ship and our merchandise to dispose of; and webegan to be very doubtful what we should do, for we were now in a placeof very little business; and once I was about to venture to sail forthe river of Kilam, and the city of Nanquin: but Providence seemed nowmore visibly, as I thought, than ever, to concern itself in our affairs;and I was encouraged from this very time to think I should, one way orother, get out of this entangled circumstance, and be brought home to myown country again, though I had not the least view of the manner; andwhen I began sometimes to think of it, could not imagine by what methodit was to be done. Providence, I say, began here to clear up our way alittle; and the first thing that offered was, that our old Portuguesepilot brought a Japan merchant to us, who began to inquire what goods wehad; and, in the first place, he bought all our opium, and gave us avery good price for it, paying us in gold by weight, some in smallpieces of their own coin, and some in small wedges, of about ten oreleven ounces each. While we were dealing with him for our opium, itcame into my head that he might, perhaps, deal with us for the ship too;and I ordered the interpreter to propose it to him. He shrunk up hisshoulders at it, when it was first proposed to him; but in a few daysafter he came to me, with one of the missionary priests for hisinterpreter, and told me he had a proposal to make to me, and that wasthis: he had bought a great quantity of goods of us when he had nothoughts (or proposals made to him) of buying the ship, and that,therefore, he had not money enough to pay for the ship; but if I wouldlet the same men who were in the ship navigate her, he would hire theship to go to Japan, and would send them from thence to the Philippineislands with another loading, which he would pay the freight of beforethey went from Japan; and that, at their return, he would buy the ship.I began to listen to this proposal; and so eager did my head still runupon rambling, that I could not but begin to entertain a notion myselfof going with him, and so to sail from the Philippine islands away tothe South Seas; and accordingly I asked the Japanese merchant if hewould not hire us to the Philippine islands, and discharge us there. Hesaid, no, he could not do that, for then he could not have the return ofhis cargo; but he would discharge us in Japan, he said, at the ship'sreturn. Well, still I was for taking him at that proposal, and goingmyself; but my partner, wiser than myself, persuaded me from it,representing the dangers, as well of the seas, as of the Japanese, whoare a false, cruel, treacherous people; and then of the Spaniards at thePhilippines, more false, more cruel, more treacherous than they.
But, to bring this long turn of ou
r affairs to a conclusion, the firstthing we had to do was to consult with the captain of the ship, and withthe men, and know if they were willing to go to Japan; and, while I wasdoing this, the young man whom, as I said, my nephew had left with me asmy companion for my travels, came to me and told me that he thought thatvoyage promised very fair, and that there was a great prospect ofadvantage, and he would be very glad if I undertook it; but that if Iwould not, and would give him leave, he would go as a merchant, or how Ipleased to order him; and if ever he came to England, and I was there,and alive, he would render me a faithful account of his success, and itshould be as much mine as I pleased.
I was really loath to part with him; but considering the prospect ofadvantage, which was really considerable, and that he was a young fellowas likely to do well in it as any I knew, I inclined to