Friday. My nation beat much for all that.

Master.  How beat? if your nation beat them, how came you to be taken?

Friday.  They more than my nation in the place where me was; they take one, two, three, and me:  my nation over-beat them in the yonder place, where me no was; there my nation take one two great thousand.

Master.  But why did not your side recover you from the hands of your enemies then?

Friday.  They run one, two, three, and me, and make go in the canoe; my nation have no canoe that time.

Master.  Well, Friday, and what does your nation do with the men they take?  Do they carry them away, and eat them as these did?

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 used to come on shore on the farther part of the island, on the said man eating occasions that he was now brought for; and some time after, when I took the courage to carry him to that side, being the same I formerly mentioned, he presently knew the place, and told me, he was there once when they ate up twenty men, two women, and one child:  he could not tell twenty in English, but he numbered them by laying so many stones in 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 asked 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 sea, there was a current, and a wind always one way in the morning, the other in the afternoon.

This I understand to be no more than the sets of the tide, as going out, or coming in; but I afterwards understood it was occasioned by the great draught and reflux of the mighty river Oroonoque; in the mouth of which river, as I thought afterwards, our island lay; and that this land, which I perceived to the W. and N.W. was the great island Trinidad, on the north point of the mouth of the river.  I asked Friday a thousand questions about the country, the inhabitants, the sea, the coast, and what nations were near:  he told me all he knew with the greatest openness imaginable.  I asked 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 Caribees, which our maps place on that part of America which reaches from