The adventures of Naufragus - 1827 Author:Horne Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Oil our arrival at Columbo , the chief town of the English possessions on the island, we found a country ship f, commanded by a Captain Ross, detained in port fo... more »r want of an officer. A more fortunate opportunity could not possibly have presented itself: my proffered services were accepted with avidity, on a salary of eighty rupees, or ten,pounds a month, with the use of the captain's table ; and I left the Indiaman with the good wishes of the captain, officers, and all the crew. This allowance (as my mere personal expcnces were but trifling) soon put me in a condition to save a little: our vessel was a coasting trader of Malabar, and from constant communication with the natives of Goa, Cannanore, Man- galore, Tillichery, Cochin, Quilon, and Anjengo, I at length ventured to turn my little savings to some account, by trading, at first in a small way, buying on commission, and selling at a profit of frequently more than seventy-five or one hundred per cent. This encouragement induced me to enlarge my system of traffic ; and as we made quick trips to Bombay, and from port to port, I found myself, to my infinite joy, at the end of eighteen months, possessed of nearly five thousand six hundred rupees (seven hundred pounds). My captain was equally successful on a larger scale. The vessel was principally his own; but being too small for the increasing commerce on the coast, he resolved to sell her, build a large one at Cochin, and proceed from Ceylon to the Mauritius with a profitable cargo of buffaloes and cocoa-nut oil. As I loved my captain as a brother, I had to lament that his quitting India for the Mauritius would compel me, in justice to my own interests, to leave him ; but it gave me pleasure to be able to afford him a proof of my regard, by a ready compliance with his wish, that ...« less