HISTORY OF THE ENGLISHMAN. 111 We found his behaviour the most courteous and endearing I ever saw in any man whatever, and most evident tokens of a mannerly well-bred person appeared in all things he did or said; and our people were exceedingly taken with him. He was a scholar and a mathematician; he could not speak Portuguese indeed, but he spoke Latin to our surgeon, French to another of our men, and Italian to a third. He had no leisure in his thoughts to ask us whence we came, whither we were going, or who we were; but would have it always as an answer to himself, that to be sure, wherever we were a-going, we came from heaven, and were sent on purpose to save him from the most wretched condition that ever man was reduced to. CHAPTER IX. AFTER RESTING THIRTEEN HISTORY OF THE ENGLISHMAN ARRIVAL IN OUR men pitching their camp on the bank of a little river opposite to him, he began to inquire what store of provisions we had, and how we proposed to be supplied; when he found that our store was but small, he said he would talk with the natives, and we should have provisions enough; for he said they were the most courteous, good-natured part of the inhabitants in all that part of the country, as we might suppose by his living so safe among them. The first things this gentleman did for us were indeed of the greatest consequence to us; for, first, he perfectly informed us where we were, and which was the properest course for us to steer: secondly, he put us in a way how to furnish ourselves effectually with provisions; and, thirdly, he was our complete interpreter and peace-maker with all the natives, who now began to be very numerous about us; and who were a more fierce and politic people than those we had met with before; not so easily terrified with our arms as those, and not so ignorant as to give their provisions and corn for our little toys, such, as I said before, our artificer made; but, as they had frequently traded and conversed with the Euro. peans on the coast, or with other negro nations that had traded and been concerned with them, they were the less ignorant and the less fearful, and consequently nothing was to be had from them but by exchange for such things as they liked. This I say of the negro natives, which we soon came among; but as to these poor people that he lived among, they were not much acquainted with things, being at the distance of above three hundred miles from the coast, only that they found elephants' teeth upon the hills to the north, which they took and carried about sixty or seventy miles south, where other trading negroes usually met them, and gave them beads, glass, shells, and cowries for them, such as the English and Dutch, and other traders, furnish them with from Europe. We now began to be more familiar with our new acquaintance; and, first, though we made but a sorry figure as to clothes ourselves, having neither shoe, or stocking, or glove, or hat, among us, and but very few shirts, yet as well as we could we clothed him; and first, our surgeon having scissors and razors, shaved him, and cut his hair; a hat, as I say, we had not in all our stores, but he supplied himself by making a cap of a piece of a leopard's skin, most artificially. As for shoes or stockings, he had gone so long without them, that he cared not even for the buskins and foot-gloves we wore, which I described above. As he had been curious to hear the whole story of our travels, and was exceedingly delighted with the relation, so we were no less to know, and pleased with, the account of his circumstance, and the history of his coming to that strange place alone, and in that condition, which we found him in, as above. This account of his would indeed be, in itself, the subject of an agreeable history, and would be as long and as diverting as our own, having in it many strange and extraordinary incidents, but we cannot have room here to launch out into so long a digression: the sum of his history was this. He had been a factor for the English Guinea company at Sierra Leon, or some other of their settlements which had been taken by the French, where he had been plundered of all his own effects, as well as of what was entrusted to him by the company. Whether it was, that the company did not do him justice in restoring his circumstances, or in further employing him, he quitted their service, and was employed by those they called separate traders; and being afterwards out of employ there also, traded on his own account; when, passing unwarily into one of the company's settlements, he was either betrayed into the hands of some of the natives, or, some how or other, was surprised by them. However, as they did not kill him, he found means to escape from them at that time, and fled to another nation of the natives, who, being enemies to the other, entertained him friendly, and with them he lived some time; but not liking his quarters, or his company, he fled again, and several times changed his landlords; sometimes was carried by force, sometimes hurried by fear, as circumstances altered with him (the variety of which deserves a history by itself), till at last he had wandered beyond all possibility of return, and had taken up his abode where we found him, where he was well received by the petty king of the tribe he lived with; and he, in return, instructed him how to value the product of their labour, and on what terms to trade with those negroes who came up to them for teeth. As he was naked, and had no clothes, so he was naked of arms for his defence, having neither gun, sword, staff, nor any instrument of war about him, no not to guard himself against the attacks of a wild beast, of which the country was very full. We asked him how he came to be so entirely abandoned of all concern for his safety? He answered, That to him, that had so often wished for death, life was not worth defending; and that, as he was entirely at the mercy of the negroes, they had much the more confidence in him, seeing he had no weapons to hurt them. As for wild beasts he was not much concerned about them; for he had scarcely ever gone from his hut; but if he did, the negro king and his men went all armed with bows and arrows, and lances, with which they would kill any of the ravenous creatures, lions as well as others; but that they seldom came abroad in the day; and if the negroes wander anywhere in the night, they always build a hut for themselves, and make a fire at the door of it, which is guard enough. We inquired of him what we should next do towards getting to the seaside: he told us we were about a hundred and twenty English leagues from the coast, where almost all I the European settlements and factories were, and which is called the gold coast; but that there were so many different nations of negroes in the way, that it was ten to one if we were not either fought with continually, or starved for want of provisions: but that there were two other ways to go, which, if he had had any company to go with him, he had often contrived to make his escape by. The one was to travel full west, which though it was further to go, yet was not so full of people; and the people we should find would be so much the civiller to us, or be so much the easier to fight with; or, that the other way was, if possible, to get to the Rio Grand, and go down the stream in canoes. We told him, that was the way we had resolved on before we met with him; but then he told us there was a prodigious desert to go over, and as prodigious woods to go through, before we came to it, and that both together were at least twenty days' march for us, travel as hard as we could.. We asked him if there were no horses in the country, or asses, or even bullocks or buffaloes, to make use of in such a Journey, and we showed him ours, of which we had but three left; he said no, all the country did not afford anything of that kind. He told us that in this great wood there were immense numbers of elephants; and, upon the desert, great multitudes of lions, lynxes, tigers, leopards, &c.; and that it was to that wood, and to that desert, that the negroes went to get elephants' teeth, where they never failed to find a great number. We inquired still more, and particularly the way to the gold coast, and if there were no rivers to ease us in our carriage; and told him as to the negroes fighting with us, we were not much concerned at that; nor were we afraid of starving, for, if they had any victuals among them, we would have our share of it; and, therefore, if he would venture to show us the way, we would venture to go; and as for himself, we told him we would live and die together, there should not a man of us stir from him. He told us, with all his heart; if we resolved it, and would venture, we might be assured he would take his fate with us, and he would endeavour to guide us in such a way, as we should meet with some friendly savages who would use us well, and perhaps stand by us against some others, who were less tractable; so, in a word, we all resolved to go full south for the gold coast. The next morning he came to us again, and being all met in council, as we may call it, he began to talk very seriously with us; that, since we were now come, after a long journey, to a view of the end of our troubles, and had been so obliging to him as to offer to carry him with us, he had been all night revolving in his mind what he and we all might do to make ourselves some amends for all our sorrows; and, first, he said, he was to let me know, that we were just then in one of the richest parts of the world, though it was really, otherwise, but a desolate, disconsolate wilderness; for, says he, there is not a river but runs gold, not a desert but, without ploughing, bears a crop of ivory. What mines of gold, what immense stores of gold those mountains may contain, from whence these rivers come, or the shores which these waters run by, we know not, but may imagine that they must be inconceivably rich, seeing so much is washed down the stream by the water washing the sides of the land, that the quantity suffices all the traders which the European world send thither. We asked him how far they went for it, seeing the ships only trade upon the coast. He told us, that the negroes on the coast search the rivers up for the length of a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, and would be out a month, or two or three, at a time, and always came home sufficiently rewarded; but, says he, they never come thus far, and yet hereabouts is as much gold as there. Upon this, he told us, that he believed he might have gotten a hundred pounds' weight of gold since he came hither, if he had employed himself to look and work for it, but as he knew not what to do with it, and had long since despaired of being ever delivered from the misery he was in, he had entirely omitted it. For what advantage had it been to me, said he, or what richer had I been, if I had a ton of gold dust, and lay and wallowed in it? The richness of it, said he, would not give me one moment's felicity, nor relieve me in the present exigency. Nay, says he, as you all see, it would not buy me clothes to cover me, or a drop of drink to save me from perishing. It is of no value here, says he; there are several people among these huts that would weigh gold against a few glass beads, or a cockle-shell, and give you a handful of gold dust for a handful of cowries. |