for aught I know, suit with yours also, when you shall have
thoroughly considered it. Here we are posted, you by accident and
I by my own choice, in a part of the world very remote from our own
country; but it is in a country where, by us who understand trade
and business, a great deal of money is to be got. If you will put
one thousand pounds to my one thousand pounds, we will hire a ship
here, the first we can get to our minds. You shall be captain,
I’ll be merchant, and we’ll go a trading voyage to China; for what
should we stand still for? The whole world is in motion; why
should we be idle?”
I liked this proposal very well; and the more so because it seemed
to be expressed with so much goodwill. In my loose, unhinged
circumstances, I was the fitter to embrace a proposal for trade, or
indeed anything else. I might perhaps say with some truth, that if
trade was not my element, rambling was; and no proposal for seeing
any part of the world which I had never seen before could possibly
come amiss to me. It was, however, some time before we could get a
ship to our minds, and when we had got a vessel, it was not easy to
get English sailors – that is to say, so many as were necessary to
govern the voyage and manage the sailors which we should pick up
there. After some time we got a mate, a boatswain, and a gunner,
English; a Dutch carpenter, and three foremast men. With these we
found we could do well enough, having Indian seamen, such as they
were, to make up.
When all was ready we set sail for Achin, in the island of Sumatra,
and from thence to Siam, where we exchanged some of our wares for
opium and some arrack; the first a commodity which bears a great
price among the Chinese, and which at that time was much wanted
there. Then we went up to Saskan, were eight months out, and on
our return to Bengal I was very well satisfied with my adventure.
Our people in England often admire how officers, which the company
send into India, and the merchants which generally stay there, get
such very great estates as they do, and sometimes come home worth
sixty or seventy thousand pounds at a time; but it is little matter
for wonder, when we consider the innumerable ports and places where
they have a free commerce; indeed, at the ports where the English
ships come there is such great and constant demands for the growth
of all other countries, that there is a certain vent for the
returns, as well as a market abroad for the goods carried out.
I got so much money by my first adventure, and such an insight into
the method of getting more, that had I been twenty years younger, I
should have been tempted to have stayed here, and sought no farther
for making my fortune; but what was all this to a man upwards of
threescore, that was rich enough, and came abroad more in obedience
to a restless desire of seeing the world than a covetous desire of
gaining by it? A restless desire it really was, for when I was at
home I was restless to go abroad; and when I was abroad I was
restless to be at home. I say, what was this gain to me? I was
rich enough already, nor had I any uneasy desires about getting
more money; therefore the profit of the voyage to me was of no
great force for the prompting me forward to further undertakings.
Hence, I thought that by this voyage I had made no progress at all,
because I was come back, as I might call it, to the place from
whence I came, as to a home: whereas, my eye, like that which
Solomon speaks of, was never satisfied with seeing. I was come
into a part of the world which I was never in before, and that
part, in particular, which I heard much of, and was resolved to see