DAMPIER - 319 



a walking tour, giving one dollar to a Tonquinese guide, 

 and reserving the other for travelling expenses. In 

 spite of his guide, he very nearly got into serious trouble 

 in one place, by mistaking a funeral feast for a meat-market, 

 and offering to buy a pound or two. Later he had the 

 interesting Spanish-Latin conversation over " a glass or 

 two of wine " with the French priest, which gave him 

 opportunity in his Journal to describe his own religious 

 views. " The English and the Dutch in those parts 

 of the world," he says, " are too loose livers to gain reputa- 

 tion to their religion. The Romanists are the only men 

 who compass sea and land and gain proselytes." On 

 the other hand while " the gross idolatry of the Papists " 

 gives them an advantage in their efforts to convert pagan 

 idolaters, such conversion from one idolatry to another 

 seems to him of little religious value. The first care of 

 missionaries, says the ex-pirate, " should be to bring 

 the people to be virtuous and considerate, and their next, 

 to give them a plain history and scheme of the fundamental 

 truths of Christianity, and show how agreeable they are 

 to natural light, and how worthy of God." However, 

 the Catholic converts were, he understood, falling off again 

 ;i as rice grew plentiful." 



Commercial rambles in the Eastern seas passed the English 

 time for a year and a half. Dampier can tell you all ^^ 

 about Tonquin and Cambodia and Sumatra and Malacca, trade in the 

 and many less known places. Then he spent five months East - 

 at Fort St. x George by Madras " as agreeable a land- 

 scape as I have anywhere seen " and another five months 

 as gunner in the English factory of Bencouli, on the Western 

 coast of Sumatra. Everywhere he describes all things, 

 from Christian missions to Mangostan and Pumple Nose. 

 But his main note is the call to English merchants to wake 

 up, and claim their share of the rich Oriental trade, which 

 the Dutch have monopolised. " Though men ought not 

 to run inconsiderately into new discoveries or undertakings, 

 yet, when there is a prospect of profit, I think it not amiss 

 for merchants to try for a trade. If our ancestors had 

 been as dull as we have been of late, 'tis probable we had 



