Friday, Yes, my Nation eat Mans too, eat all up. Master, Where do they carry them?
Friday, Go to other Place where they think. Master, Do they come hither?
Friday, Yes, yes, they come hither; come other else Place.
Master, Have you been here with them?
Friday, Yes, I 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 us’d to come on Shore on the farther Part of the Island, on the same Man eating Occasions that he was now brought for; and sometime after, when I took the Courage to carry him to that Side, being the same I formerly mention’d, 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 numbred them by laying so many Stones on a Row, and pointing to me to tell them over.
I have told this Passage, because it introduces what follows; that after I had had this Discourse with him, I ask’d 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 the 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 occasion’d by the great Draft and Reflux of the mighty River Oroo- nooko;* in the Mouth, or the Gulph of which River, as I found after- wards, our Island lay; and this Land which I perceiv’d to the W. and N. W. was the great Island Trinidad, on the North Point of the Mouth of the River: I ask’d Friday a thousand questions about the Country, the Inhabitants, the Sea, the Coast, and what Nation were near; he told me all he knew with the greatest Openness imaginable; I ask’d 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 Oroonooko 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 W. from their Country, there dwelt white