Knivet lived for a while with a native Brazilian tribe, and wrote about his adventures after his eventual return to Britain.
[2] In 1591 he joined an English privateer, Thomas Cavendish, on a voyage aimed at raiding Portuguese holdings in Brazil.
He met a native who had also fled from slavery, and together they made it to an indigenous Brazilian tribe of Tupí people, where they stayed for nine months.
While Knivet's descriptions of Brazil are generally precise and believable,[2] his writing about Africa contains several mistakes and contradictions.
[5] The published memoir suffers from Purchas' deletion of several sections; it is possible that these were motivated by his negative attitude towards Catholicism.