Captain Singleton
Stolen from his nurse as a small child and sold along until the sea takes him, Bob Singleton is put ashore on Madagascar with a mutinous crew and walks the width of Africa to the Gold Coast, keeping an account of the ivory and the gold dust as he goes. A second career follows in the Indian Ocean beside a Quaker surgeon named William, who does the arithmetic on every prize and never quite handles a weapon. Defoe built the interior of the continent out of traders' reports; the map is invented and the bookkeeping is not.
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Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
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Quest object (Greimas)
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Closest analogues
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