268 A NEW MODE OF CALCULATION.

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 cat mans too, eat all up.

Master. Where do they carry them ?

Irriday. Go to other place where they think.

Master. Do they come hither?

Irriday. Yes, yes, they come hither; come other else place.

Master. Wave you been here with them ?

Irriday. Yes, I been here (points to the north-west 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 further part
of the island on the same 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 pre-
sently 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 on a row, and pointing to me to tell them over.

Thave 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 the sea, there was a current, and
a wind, always one way in the morning, the other in the after-
noon.

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
occasioned by the great draught and reflux of the mighty river
Orinoco, in the mouth or the gulf of which river, as I found after-
wards, our island lay; and this land which I perceived to the west
and north-west 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