hundred and fifty dollars, of which seventy-five dollars was advanced before the start. The merchants expected to clear one hundred and fifty to two hundred per cent. The passenger fare at the end of the eighteenth century was $1,000 for the voyage to Acapulco, which was the hardest, and $500 for the return.[1] Careri's voyage to Acapulco lasted two hundred and four days. The ordinary time for the voyage to Manila was seventy-five to ninety days.[2]
Careri's description of his voyage is a vivid picture of the hardships of early ocean travel, when cabin passengers fared infinitely worse than cattle today. It was a voyage "which is enough to destroy a man, or make him unfit for anything as long as he lives;" yet there were those who "ventured through it, four, six and some ten times."[3]
- ↑ Zúñiga, i, p. 268. Careri mentions the case of a Dominican who paid five hundred dollars for the eastern passage. Op. cit. p. 478; on page 423 he says the usual fare for cabin and diet was five hundred to six hundred dollars.
- ↑ Churchill's Voyages, iv, p. 499.
- ↑ Op. cit. p. 491. Yet Careri had no such experience as befell Cubero Sebastian in his voyage. When they were nearing the end
Careri was never out of Italy, and that his famous Giro del Mondo is an account of a fictitious voyage." Note 150, History of America. The most specific charges against Careri relate to his account of his experiences in China. See Prévost's Histoire des Voyages, v, pp. 469–70. His description of the Philippines and of the voyage to Acapulco is full of details that have every appearance of being the result of personal observation. In fact, I do not see how it is possible that this part of his book is not authentic. The only book of travels which contains a detailed account of the voyage from Manila to Acapulco written before Careri published that is described in Medina's Bibliografia Española de Filipinas is the Peregrinacion del Mundo del Doctor D. Pedro Cubero Sebastian, of which an edition was published in 1682 in Naples, Careri's own home; but Careri's account is no more like Cubero's than any two descriptions of the same voyage are bound to be; nor is it clear that Careri ever saw Cubero Sebastian's narrative.
