When Europeans traveled to other countries, how did they communicate with the natives?

Strangely enough, they just found a native who spoke their language. Before the Europeans were getting heavy on the whole civilize-the-world thing, shipwrecked sailors would find themselves stranded in the new world, and either their offspring or ociates would occasionally pick up the language. It played out like an episode of star trek, in which you land, and the locals just start saying in perfect English: 'hello, your table's this way, sir'. Brilliant. Made things easier. Barring this good luck, they'd wave a bible in the natives faces--the natives didn't really catch the gist and then the explorers leveled them with their muskets.