306 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Why 

 Dampier 

 was a 

 pirate. 



His 



education. 



Voyage to 

 Java. 



was due not to his character but to his times. In character 

 he was akin, not to Morgan and Kidd, but to Sir Joseph 

 Banks and Charles Darwin. He was a born naturalist 

 of the most fervent class. The Somerset farmer's boy 

 came into the world in 1652 dowered with an everlasting 

 curiosity, an insatiable appetite for new experiences, the 

 thorough instincts of the scientific student, and an admir- 

 able capacity for describing what he called " observables " 

 in plain, accurate, vivid English. He had it in his bones 

 to be a traveller. His joy would have been to travel 

 like Banks in the Endeavour, or like Darwin in the Beagle. 

 But he was born a century too soon for " voyages of 

 curiosity." In another age his determination to travel 

 might have made him a missionary. He found as much 

 interest in missions as in other " observables," and his 

 views about " virtue " and " the fundamental truths of 

 Christianity " were as orthodox as those of a bishop. But, 

 in the late seventeenth century, missionary-voyages were 

 not in fashion. Travel somehow he must, and the best 

 people to travel with in his days were pirates. Therefore 

 Dampier became a pirate. 



He passed his boyhood on his father's farm, studying 

 the varieties of soil which it contained, and the natural 

 produce of each variety ; a fact which he mentions in 

 explanation of the scientific character of his description 

 of agriculture in Sumatra. At school he learnt Latin, 

 that stuck to him through life. Once in Tonquin he had 

 an interesting conversation with a French priest. The 

 priest told the pirate " what progress the gospel was like 

 to make in the Eastern nations" ; the pirate told the priest 

 how to make gunpowder ; and both priest and pirate 

 were highly interested in the conversation, though the 

 pirate knew no French, and the priest knew no English. 

 They talked in Spanish ; " and when," says Dampier, " I 

 was at a loss in my Spanish, I had recourse to Latin, having 

 still some smattering of what I learnt of it at school." x 



When his parents died, his guardian placed him with 

 the master of a ship, "complying with the inclination 

 1 Dampier, vol. ii. p. 21. 



