Having thus settled my affairs, sold my cargo, and turned all my effects into good bills of exchange, my next difficulty was which way to go to England. I had been accustomed enough to the sea, and yet I had a strange aversion to go to England by sea at that time; and though I could give no reason for it, yet the difficulty increased upon me so much that though I had once shipped my baggage in order to go, I altered my mind, and that not once, but two or three times.
It is true I had been very unfortunate at sea, and this might be one of the reasons; but let no man slight the strong impulses of his own thoughts in cases of such moment. Two of the ships which I singled out to go in, I mean more particularly singled out than any other, that is to say, so as in one of them to put my things on board, and in the other to have agreed with the captain, I say two of these ships miscarried, viz., one was taken by the Algerines, and the other was cast away on the Start near Torbay, and all the people drowned except three; so that in either of those vessels I had been made miserable, and in which most it was hard to say.
Having been thus harassed in my thoughts, my old pilot, to whom I communicated everything, pressed me earnestly not to go to sea, but either to go by land to the Groyne, and cross over the Bay of Biscay to Rochelle, from whence it was but an easy and safe journey by land to Paris, and so to Calais and Dover; or to go up to Madrid, and so all the way by land through France.
In a word, I was so prepossessed against my going by sea at all, except from Calais to Dover, that I resolved to travel all the way by land; which, as I was not in haste, and did not value the charge, was by much the pleasanter way; and to make it more so my old captain brought an English gentleman, the son of a merchant in Lisbon, who was willing to travel with me; after which we picked up two who were English, and merchants also, and two young Portuguese gentlemen, the last going to Paris only; so that we were in all six of us and five servants, the two merchants and the two Portuguese contenting themselves with one servant between two, to save the charge; and as for me I got an English sailor to travel with me as a servant besides my man Friday, who was too much a stranger to be capable of supplying the place of a servant upon the road.
In this manner I set out for Lisbon; and our company being all very well mounted and armed, we made a little troop, whereof they did me the honour to call me captain, as well because I was the oldest man as because I had two servants, and indeed was the original of the whole journey.
As I have troubled you with none of my sea journals, so shall I trouble you with none of my land journals, but some adventures that happened to us in this tedious and difficult journey I must not omit.
When we came to Madrid, we, being all of us strangers to Spain, were willing to stay some time to see the court of Spain, and to see what was worth observing but it being the latter part of the summer we hastened away, and set out from Madrid about the middle of October; but when we came to the edge of Navarre we were alarmed at several towns on the way with an account that so much snow was fallen on the French side of the mountains, that several travellers were obliged to come back to Pampeluna after having attempted at an extreme hazard to pass on.
When we came to Pampeluna itself, we found it so indeed; and to me, that had been always used to a hot climate, and indeed to countries where we could scarce bear any clothes on, the cold was insufferable; nor indeed, was it more painful than it was surprising to come but ten days before out of the Old Castile, where the weather was not only warm, but very hot, and immediately to feel a wind from the Pyreneean mountains so very keen, so severely cold, as to be intolerable and to endanger benumbing and perishing of our fingers and toes, was very strange.