SLAVE SMUGGLING A HUNDRED YEARS AGO
Ruined and desperate, with the last dollar of my ill-gotten wealth
squandered, I looked to Africa as the place in which to mend my
fortunes. Havana had nothing to offer and I seized the first opportunity
that presented itself,—a berth as _medico_ or surgeon, in a Spanish
schooner called the _Diana_, bound for the river Bonny. At the Bight we
joined company with four other craft and were engaged in getting out our
complement, at Bonny settlement, when we were attacked by a British
man-of-war. Having plenty of pluck and powder, we boldly defended
ourselves until compelled to strike. Many of our slaves jumped
overboard, into the jaws of sharks, and I succeeded, with a number of
the crew, in seizing one of the boats and escaping to the woods behind
the town. Here we were assisted by a Calabar chief, whom I had formerly
known, till the cruiser hauled off with her prizes and a Spanish brig
arrived and took us aboard. This was the _Boa Morte_, formerly an
American trader, commanded by Capt. Pierre Leclerc, a creole of St.
Domingo. Ten days after the departure of the cruiser, the _Boa Morte_
completed her cargo and sailed for Pensacola, in the Floridas, with nine
hundred slaves aboard. I shipped in her as a supernumerary doctor.
Captain Leclerc was a peppery little fellow, an old slaver, who had an
interest in the freight. I had my berth in the round house as every inch
of space was occupied by blacks. The cabin and hold were knocked into
slave decks and packed tight at that. Leclerc reckoned up his
anticipated profits and made a good showing. He had a hundred prime
blacks—only twenty females—all branded in good Spanish, with his name,
and he estimated that his venture ought to bring him a net of $8000.—a
tolerable set-up.
For the first few days everything went well, with only three cases of
sickness,—a low fever. Quinine made them right again although the sharks
followed us as if they smelt sickness. The sixth day out, Pedro, my
assistant, reported one of our patients blind. We had half the gangs on
deck for exercise and they danced and sang, under the driver’s whip, but
were far from sprightly. Captain Leclerc said he never knew such a
sluggish lot, yet they all appeared healthy. The next day the ophthalmia
appeared to be spreading among the slaves as eight were reported blind
and the following day the number had increased to nineteen. The captain
also was ailing and took to his berth.
The captain’s illness turned out to be smallpox, that scourge of
destruction, and two of the crew soon came down with it. It was
impossible to keep the disease from the slaves and the ship turned out
to be well named. We soon began to feed corpses to the following sharks
and one day hauled sixty bodies out of the hold. The crew revolted at
this work and we had to rely on gangs of slaves to drag the dead heaps
from among the living. Captain Leclerc before long was out of danger but
remained blind from ophthalmia.
During the first week I got only about a dozen hours’ sleep and the mate
had only six able-bodied men in his crew. We were obliged to stimulate
the blacks with rum in order to get their help in removing corpses and
I, too, found it necessary to excite myself with laudanum and liquor in
order to keep at work in my horrible surroundings. The mate said if we
had only known it in time we might have saved our cargo by poisoning the
first cases; but no one could have forseen the rapid spread of the pest.
Some of the blacks went mad and screeched like wild beasts and then
those we had made drunk almost controlled the ship. The mate was obliged
to shoot one of them or the fellow might have strangled him.
On November 17th we had a violent storm and the hatches had to be closed
while the work of death went on unseen below; but Captain Leclerc
improved and could see a little. It was a frightful hurricane. Our ship
was whirled about like a top and driven before the gale all night,
without a rag of canvas. Three days later we anchored safely in
Pensacola Bay. Our surviving negroes were landed on one of the shallow
beaches near the mouth of the Escambia river and here, with the
assistance of laborers from the neighboring town, we rigged sheds for
our sick and took measures for lime-washing and fumigating the ship.
Strange as it may seem we saved five hundred and nineteen out of our
nine hundred slaves.
After the accounts had been closed I was offered a chance to accompany
one of the consignees on a land trip during which our negroes were to be
sold. The kaffle, in charge of negro drivers, was to strike up the
Escambia river and thence across the boundary line into Georgia, where
some of our wild Africans were mixed with various squads of native
blacks and driven inland till sold off, singly or by couples, on the
road. At that time the United States had enacted laws declaring the
African slave trade illegal, but the Spanish possessions were thriving
on the inland exchange of negroes and mulattoes. Florida was a nursery
for slave-breeders and many American citizens grew rich by trafficking
in Guinea negroes and regularly smuggled them, in small parties,
throughout the Southern States.
Through the influence of my associate I became a guest at many
plantations on our line of travel, which gave me an opportunity to study
the practical working of slavery in a civilized and democratic country
and compare it with Cuba and the Brazilian empire. I also was enabled to
estimate the influence of civilization on the Congo and Ashantee stock
after a generation or two of American contact and compare their
condition on American plantations with their native life in African
forests.
We spent one night at a plantation on the Ockmulgee river, in Georgia,
and our host, Mr. Olds, spoke very frankly on the subject of
slaveholding and particularly of the local treatment of “black boys,” as
they were termed by his neighbors. A case had lately occurred of a “boy”
being hung up by the wrists, to a tree, with a wooden rail tied to his
feet, and beaten by his master until he died under the torture. This was
done on suspicion of a petty theft which had been committed by the
master’s young son who afterward confessed. A slave’s testimony was not
taken against a white man.
In Carolina, slave merchants drove their kaffles over the highways in
gangs of ten and had pens in the principal villages where they held
vendues. The number of mulattoes was astonishing. I saw some really
handsome quadroons on the auction block. The slaves seemed to be well
treated and fat, though ragged and sometimes nearly naked. The men wore
linsey woolsey shirts and trowsers and the women a petticoat of coarse
ducking and all went barefoot. There was much waste of labor in all
operations. I saw a gang of blacks, with two oxen, engaged a whole
morning in drawing a log of timber from the river, to be used in the
building of a house not far distant. In Rio Basso we should have a dozen
trees cut down and shifted by such a force in the same time.
In Virginia were the oldest plantations and they were well stocked. A
respectable citizen at Fredericksburg on the Rappahannock river, told me
that slave-breeding was the most profitable business in that quarter.
Whole farms were used as nurseries to supply the market with young
mulattoes. Irish and Scotch overseers usually had charge of the gangs.
The fertility of the negroes in Virginia seemed to be about the same as
in Africa. On a farm near Alexandria I counted thirty about to become
mothers and the huts swarmed with pickaninies of different shades.
At Philadelphia we found a brig about ready to sail for the Cape de
Verdes on a trading voyage. She was the _Adelaide_, owned by an old
skipper named Blackmore, and our business being settled I took passage
in this vessel. We made a short run to Santa Cruz, Island of Teneriffe,
and a few days after spoke an English vessel in want of water which we
supplied. This vessel was bound to the African coast and as I had no
bulky baggage was able to bargain for a berth on board and thereby
secure a direct passage to the coast. This unlucky brig was the
_Charles_ and her commander was named Graham.
[Illustration:
VIEW OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
From a colored aquatint, published in 1841, after a painting by
William J. Bennett, in the Macpherson Collection
]
As we neared the African coast the weather became squally and finally
increased to a violent gale. We lost our topmasts and the old brig began
to leak so that I was obliged to take my turn at the pump. Late at
night, with a tremendous shock, we ran on a reef and the heavy seas soon
drove us into the rigging. Fortunately she didn’t break up and when
morning came we found the brig had beaten over a line of reefs and was
fast on the inner edge in a shallow lagoon. Not long after the sun rose
a number of canoes filled with Mandingoes put off from the shore and
boarded us. While they were looting the wreck a number of us on board
launched the long boat and pushed off. When we reached shore my
knowledge of negro dialects was turned to good service and we were
permitted to send a messenger to Goree, not far distant, and three days
later a sloop, with British soldiers, arrived off the reef and a boat
was sent ashore for us. On reaching Goree, I found a coasting schooner
bound for Bonny and secured passage in her.
Among the slavers sailing out of old Calabar, at that time, was the
Brazilian brig _Gloria_ and in her I now made half a dozen trips,
occupying nearly two years, with “soldiering” time between voyages. I
never knew who owned her. She was a staunch, handsome clipper craft and
deserved better masters. On the first voyage out of Calabar we had not
been out a week before I found that the captain and crew were
desperadoes of the worst kind. Once off the coast the ship became half
bedlam and half brothel. Ruiz, our captain, and his two mates set an
example of reckless wickedness. They stripped themselves and danced with
black wenches while our crazy mulatto cook played the fiddle. There was
little attempt at discipline and rum and lewdness reigned supreme. At
first I was frightened at this state of things but my appetite for
liquor, contracted since that unfortunate intimacy with Donna Emelia,
soon brought me to the level of the rest.
Meanwhile our slaves crammed in hold, cabin and peak and packed like
herrings on shelves around our vessel’s sides, were kept down by
gratings fully half the time. The shrieks and groans of the stifling
wretches below echoed our orgies above. On the eighth day out I made my
rounds of the half deck, holding a camphor bag in my teeth for the
stench was hideous. The sick and dying were chained together. I saw
pregnant women give birth to babies while chained to corpses which our
drunken overseers had not removed. The younger women fared best at first
as they were allowed to come on deck as companions for our crew. Of this
part of their devilish practices I kept clear but drank as hard as the
rest. Toward the end of the run, which lasted nearly six weeks, the
mortality thinned out the main hold and some scores of women were driven
below as company for the males. The quarrelling and bestiality that
followed was sickening. They tore and gnawed each other in fights over
the rum rations which our captain ordered and for possession of the
miserable wenches.
At last we arrived at Bahia and landed our cargo. Nearly a third of the
slaves had died during the voyage. From Bahia we ran down to Rio for a
cargo and sailed for Africa with the same officers and crew.
This trip we cast anchor in a small river not far from the American
colony of Liberia and our captain took me ashore with his first mate and
a dozen of the crew, all of us well armed and sober. We had several
breakers of rum with us, as a “dash” for the negro chief, King
Boatswain, a half-Christian black, and spent the day feasting in his
village. When night came he summoned several hundred of his warriors and
we sallied out against a tribe of blacks called Queahs. We came upon
them while all were asleep and burnt their bamboo huts and made a
general slaughter. The men and women were massacred and the boys and
girls driven to the river where they were soon transferred to the
_Gloria’s_ bowels.
The next day Captain Ruiz invited King Boatswain to a big banquet on
board the brig. The old fellow was sick but his son came with over two
hundred of his principal men. We had abundance of rum and tobacco, the
former, thanks to my medical skill, heavily drugged with laudanum.
Before night we had every darkey under hatches and were off with a
flying jib. Our entire cargo cost no more than the “dash” given to the
savage chief.
The last voyage of the _Gloria_ was a climax of horror. We sailed from
the Verdes and were making southerly, in ballast, when we overhauled a
Portuguese schooner and ran alongside. She had a full cargo of slaves
and Captain Ruiz proposed we attack her. The crew were ready and
inspired by rum soon mastered the schooner’s hands. Our captain blew out
the brains of the only passenger aboard who we discovered had with him a
large quantity of gold dust. The Portuguese were knocked in the head
with axes and the slaves and gold dust quickly transferred to the
_Gloria_. The schooner was then scuttled and we kept on our way with 190
ill-gotten slaves in our hold. The next day we ran into a storm which
almost capsized the brig and set the negroes frantic, so that they tried
to break through the gratings. Ruiz was half drunk, as usual, and
suspecting a rising, ordered the crew to fire their muskets through the
gratings until the negroes became quiet. By this foolish freak forty
were killed and wounded and had to be thrown overboard. We ran for Accoa
and landed at Papoe, a town belonging to a Dahoman chief, where we found
six hundred blacks waiting for a Spanish slaver and four hundred of
these were purchased and paid for with the gold dust taken from the
murdered Portuguese passenger.
Hardly were we out a fortnight when it was discovered that our
roystering crew had neglected to change the sea-water in the lower
casks, which had served as ballast and which ought to have been replaced
with fresh water in Africa. We were drawing from the last casks before
the discovery was made and the horror of the situation sobered Captain
Ruiz. He gave orders to hoist the precious remnant abaft the main
grating and made me calculate how long it would sustain the crew and
cargo. I found that a half-gill a day would hold out to the Spanish Main
and it was decided, in order to save our cargo, that we should allow the
slaves a half-gill and the crew a gill each day.
Then began a torture worse than death for the blacks. They suffered
continual torment. Instead of lowering buckets of water to them, as was
customary, it became necessary to pour the water in half-pint measures.
Those farthest from the grating never got a drop and soon became raving
mad for drink. Fevers and fluxs soon added to their misery and deaths
followed so fast that in a short time at least a hundred slaves were
shackled to dead partners. Our captain and crew as well as I, drank
hard, but thirst and disease kept down all licentiousness. Matters grew
worse daily and at last Captain Ruiz ordered the hatches down and swore
he would make the run on our regular rations and take the chances with
his stock. That night we caroused and satisfied our thirst while the
negroes suffocated below. Next morning came on a storm which drove us on
our course a hundred knots and two days later Ruiz and four of the crew
were taken suddenly ill. Their tongues swelled and grew black, their
flesh turned yellow and in six hours they were dead. The first mate went
next and then three more of the crew and a black driver whose body
became leprous with yellow spots. I began to notice a strange, fetid
smell pervading the vessel and a low, heavy fog on deck, almost like
steam, and then the horrid truth became apparent. Our rotting negroes
under hatches had generated the plague and it was the death-mist that I
saw rising.
By this time all of our men but three, and myself, had been attacked and
we abandoned the _Gloria_, taking in the long boat the remnant of water,
a sack of biscuit, a beaker of rum and what gold dust and other
valuables we could hastily gather together. Nine of our late comrades
lay dead on the _Gloria’s_ deck and five were dying. After running for
two days we struck a current and in three more reached Tortola, one of
the Leeward Islands. We made a landing on the reefs and were picked up
by some fishermen.
Falling sick at Tortola, I parted from my comrades of the _Gloria_. We
had divided our ill-gotten gold dust and my share amounted to £130, with
which, after my recovery, I took a vessel for Rio de Janeiro and there
obtained a berth as surgeon once more and kept sober for nearly eighteen
months during which I made about three thousand dollars by private
ventures. But ill-luck came again to dog me when I shipped in a Spanish
schooner from Porto Rico and encountered new disasters.
She was the _Ponchecta_, a fast schooner designed to make quick passages
and smuggle her cargoes ashore on the coast of Brazil and thereby escape
an import duty of $10, per head. We had Brazilian papers and our
arrangement was to run cargoes into different rivers and creeks and then
make for Bahia and report “in ballast” or “coasting.” The _Ponchecta_
was rated by imperial license as a vessel of one hundred tons but
actually measured but eighty. This was to provide for emergencies, the
law allowing only _five_ slaves to be carried for every _two_ tons. By
getting a permit on fraudulent measurement, we could cram twenty-five
per cent. more cargo without appearing to break regulations.
The _Ponchecta_ was commanded by a Porto Rico Spaniard named Antonio
Mendez, an old slave smuggler. We shaped our course for Badagry, in the
Bight of Benin, which at that time (1828-9) was doing a thriving
business in slaves as the market was generally well stocked by kaffles
arriving through the kingdom of Dahomey. From the Rio Volta, south to
the Niger and north to the Gambia, the intervening country was then
engaged in internal slave wars of the fiercest kind. Dahomans,
Ashantees, Foulahs, Mandingoes, Sherbross, Fellatahs and Bambarras were
preying on each other like wild beasts and kept the slave market
constantly supplied. We soon had seven hundred slaves on board, in our
eighty ton vessel and while packing was going on I visited one of the
baccaroons where eight hundred sick or old slaves were confined for want
of buyers. They were considered useless stock and before we sailed were
all taken out in canoes by the Badagran negroes and knocked in the head
and thrown overboard.
Our schooner was loaded beyond capacity and the deck had to be fitted
with temporary platforms or shelves, as high as the taffrail, above
which stiff netting was drawn to prevent the shackled slaves from
leaping overboard. In walking the deck we frequently trod on a hand or
foot sticking out from the lower tier.
About a week out we encountered a severe storm and the second night
after, I was awakened by a crash, as if the skies were falling, and
springing from my bunk, near the after gangway, I ran into Captain
Mendez. “Save yourself, doctor!” he yelled, “the brig’s sinking. We’ve
been run down.” The negroes were screeching on both sides and the
sailors were running to and fro like mad. How I got into the stern boat
I never knew, but I found myself there with the captain and about half
of the crew. It was raining hard and we rowed about until daylight. The
gale had lulled but the heavy rain was like a waterspout. All this time
we could hear the screeching slaves.
When morning broke we saw the _Ponchecta_ a-lee, her decks almost awash,
and we lay by until she went down, about an hour later, full of manacled
slaves. She had been struck on the beam by the _Mersey_, an armed East
Indiaman, bound for Zanzibar, which lay by after the collision and
eventually picked us up and landed us at Kahenda on the Guinea coast.
The loss of the _Ponchecta_ left me penniless again as all I possessed
went down in her. At Kahenda we found several slavers under Brazilian
colors and Captain Mendez found a passage for himself and me in a brig
bound for Angola, the Portuguese settlement, whose Governor he knew and
there he was lucky enough to receive the command of a slaving schooner
which the Governor was dispatching to the Brazils. I resumed my place
with him, as surgeon, and made the voyage out and back without incident.
[Illustration:
BRITISH PRIZE BRIGANTINE “NETUNA,” BEATING OFF THE SPANISH SLAVER
“CAROLINE,” MAR. 20, 1826, IN THE BIGHT OF BENIN
The _Netuna_ carried 1 gun and 5 men; the _Caroline_, 10 guns and 90
men. From a colored aquatint, after the painting by W. Joy, in the
Macpherson Collection
]
In March 1830 we arrived at the river Gallinas, not far from my old
station at Rio Basso, and on landing found that its thriving factories
were controlled by my old acquaintance Don Pedro Blanco, who was
particular in his regrets at the death of my uncle. He knew nothing of
Diego Ramos nor of my elopement with the Donna Emelia, my change of name
having baffled all trace of us. I was glad to accept his offer of a
situation at Gallinas and settled down as half-clerk, half doctor for
Don Pedro Blanco. When I formerly knew him on the Kambia, I had been in
possession of influence and wealth and he was an adventurer seeking a
location. Since that time I had squandered a fortune and he had
accumulated one.
Gallinas was a depot and market for slaves brought from all stations
that penetrated the Guinea coast as well as territory farther south and
my knowledge of negro dialects was of considerable value to my employer.
The river from which the town took its name was full of small islands
and on several of those near the sea, as well as on the banks, were
located factories, barracoons, dwelling-houses and store houses. The
success of Blanco had attracted a dozen other traders and agents who had
located there and the Don was something of a prince among them. In
African fashion he supported a harem and had quite a retinue of house
servants, guards, etc., besides the clerks and overseers of his
barracoons. I kept my place with him for six years and during that time
made one voyage as clerk and one as captain of a slaver.
The schooner _Napoleon_ was a ninety-ton Baltimore clipper, a model for
symmetry and speed. She came out from Cuba, in ballast, as a new craft,
and made two successful trips before, at Don Pedro’s request, I filled
the place of mate and surgeon on a voyage when she sailed with 250
full-grown men and a hundred boys and girls, for the Cuban market. The
cargo was consigned to my old friend Gomez and rated A-1. By actual
calculation the average cost per head of the 350 blacks was $16, and in
Havana the market average was $360, yielding a net profit, if safely
delivered, of $120,400. for the cargo, from which should be deducted
about $20,000. as the average cost of the clipper’s round trip,
including commissions. This would mark her earnings for the voyage, as
about $100,000. Such were the enormous profits of the slave trade in
1835. After that, with greater risks, the average of successful voyages
ran higher still.
The _Napoleon_ had trouble before her departure. The men slaves
composing her freight were some of the fiercest warriors of the Kassaos,
the Fi nation, and the Sherbroo Buttom people, who had been provoked
into a cruel war by the traders. It was only with difficulty that they
were got on board the clipper, though secured by one foot chains round
the neck as well as their ankle irons. On reaching the boats a rush was
made by several for the purpose of leaping into the sea and thumb screws
had to be clapped on them before they would be quiet. These warriors
were finely built negroes and the boys and girls were handsome and
spirited.
We had a splendid run and expected to make the Moro the next day, when
our dreaded enemy, a British cruiser, hove in sight and all sail was
crowded on the clipper. It was near sunset and we were sure that we
could slip away easily. But the cruiser proved to be a crack sailer and
overhauled us rapidly. Captain Mina was in despair as we had a stiff
breeze and a few hours more would bring us to a point of the island
where our cargo could be landed safely. Just then the wind fell off
abruptly and the moaning sea warned us of an approaching tropical
tempest. Everything was clewed up to meet the expected tornado and very
soon we had a heavy sultry squall of rain. The sky and sea turning the
color of ink; the deluge of rain stopped in about an hour but the
darkness continued. We could just see the lights of Matanzas harbor
gleaming through the mist and an idea suddenly came to me and in ten
minutes our crew were in the boats, with sweeps, towing the clipper
landward. I took my station in the leading boat and steered for the
reefs and a point of land which I well remembered enclosed my former
plantation and before the moon broke out our clipper with her topmasts
shipped was safely anchored behind some trees.
Whether the officers of the British cruiser thought the schooner had
foundered or was “the Flying Dutchman,” we never knew, but a few days
later we entered the harbor, with Porto Rico papers, and Gomez, our
consignee, placed a hundred thousand dollars credit to Blanco’s account.
Five thousand dollars of that sum I received as a _douceur_, when we
returned to Gallinas to relate the story, and the Don promised that I
should command his next vessel.
There were some half a dozen vessels then lying at anchor at Gallinas,
among them two handsome American craft, the _Fanny Butler_ and the
_Venus_ from Philadelphia, and a Brazilian bark which I liked the looks
of on account of her capacity and serviceable appearance. I proposed to
the Don that we should risk the landing of a cargo at a place called
Ponta Negra, between Bahia and Cape Frio, and he took to the project as
it promised large returns. We loaded the Brazilian bark _Aguila_ with
520 prime slaves and I hauled out of Gallinas flats, on September 6th,
1836, and set sail for the Brazils, on my first voyage as captain, in
high hopes of a fortune.
The _Aguila_ was two hundred tons burden and I had taken particular care
to have her well fumigated and amply supplied with provisions and water.
All things promised well. I had the gangs up every day, in rotation,
under their overseers, to exercise and sing. I made them dash buckets of
cold water over each other regularly and fed them well with rice and
yams. The mid-passage was safely accomplished and on sighting the
Brazilian coast I stood in for Ponta Negra to make a landing. I knew the
place well having visited it with Captain Mendez, and finding good
anchorage off the cliffs, my mate and I went ashore and leaving our boat
in a sheltered creek, we walked about half a league to the handsome
cottage and lookout of Don Felix, a noted smuggler whom I had met once
before. He received us with Brazilian hospitality, gave us a sumptuous
dinner after which we walked to his observatory to smoke our cigars. The
prospect from this elevation, of the moonlit ocean and coast, was
magnificent, but the most interesting object within sight to me was the
_Aguila_, at anchor with a cargo that was to make me a wealthy man once
more.
Don Felix puffed his cigar and sipped his wine for half an hour before
we rose for business and I was looking at my vessel, when suddenly I saw
a bright flash and the next moment an explosion rent the air while a
volume of smoke and flame shot up from the water and hung like a black
cloud before its contents descended. When this cleared away my vessel
was no longer in sight. Her magazine had blown up and every soul on
board had perished save one poor maimed sailor who managed to make the
shore.
Three months passed away before I was able to leave my bed in the
hospitable house of Don Felix. The disappointing blow left me a mere
wreck and it was a year before I felt able to undertake the shortest
voyage. It was necessary, however, for me to make a struggle for
existence and in 1838 once more I reached the African coast, acting in
the capacity of interpreter for a party of slave-traders who designed to
visit some of the interior African kings, at their capital towns. There
were three, beside myself, and we sailed from Rio and landed at Cape
Appolonia on the Gold Coast. Here we hired guides and carriers and
started across the Fantu country for Ashantee, falling in with several
black slave-traders on the way.
When we reached Coomassie, the King of Ashantee, Quacoe Dooah, was not
be seen until the third day after our arrival, but he gave orders for
our good treatment and set a guard over our goods. There must have been
over 25,000 persons collected in the great market place when we arrived.
Hundreds of well-dressed black officers were strutting about, each
wearing gold bracelets and anklets larger than slave shackles. When the
royal interpreter called on us I astonished him with my knowledge of
Ashantee.
[Illustration:
A SLAVER DRIVEN ASHORE ON THE BRAZILIAN COAST BY H.M. BRIG “FROLIC”
From a colored lithograph by H. John Vernon, published about 1840, in
the Macpherson Collection
]
Early the next morning we were awakened by the war drum announcing an
Ashantee human sacrifice and were told that five hundred men, girls and
boys were to be offered. A procession of the victims passed our huts
soon after. One poor wretch had a knife passed through both cheeks and
his two ears had been cut off and dangled from the knife blade and
handle. A long spear was thrust under his shoulder blades, through the
tendons, and he was led along by this, bleeding like a bullock. Then
followed a young woman, stark naked, with both breasts cut smoothly off
and her hips and belly stuck full of arrows. Another girl walked behind
with her two breasts skewered by a knife and a cord passed through her
nostrils by which to conduct her. There was no end to the horrible
ingenuity of torture displayed.
The next day we were present at the bloody sacrifice and saw the King of
Ashantee. He sat in a gilded wooden chair, in the midst of his chief
men. Velvet umbrellas, with immense brass-mounted handles, covered them
like a canopy. A long retinue of guards and household attendants stood
around, carrying gold swords, silver and gold dishes, tobacco pipes and
silk flags. The display of barbarian riches was dazzling and all this
wealth of the Ashantee King was derived from the enormous profits of his
slave sales. The interpreter told me that the King had sold over ten
thousand slaves since the last rainy season, a little over five months’
time, besides killing as many more in slave-hunts and sacrifices.
After an interview with the King, we followed the grand procession to
the palace. Before reaching it a great musket firing commenced, the big
drum was beaten and there was a rush of the blacks. The orgie began when
a gigantic savage dashed out the brains of a victim with his club. A
gourd was held to catch the blood, and the victim’s heart was cut out
with knives and held up to the King. I had heard that it was usual for
each chief to sink his teeth in the bloody heart, but that time this
feature of the ceremony was dispensed with. Some of the soldiers,
however, actually drank of the wretched victim’s blood, from the gourd
in which it was caught. I will not attempt to describe the rest of this
unnatural sacrifice. It was a confused massacre. Heads and limbs were
severed or sawed off by dull knives and tossed about on poles. The
bodies of men and women were disembowelled and dragged about and at last
left to the dogs to devour. Such was the sacrifice at Coomassie.
We remained there ten months bargaining for slaves and then travelled
farther inland through a beautiful country. The rainy season was spent
at the Portuguese settlement on the Rio Cacheo and in September, 1839,
we set out for Dahomey. At the capital, Abomey, the King collected his
fetish men and gave a great feast. Four thousand slaves were sold to the
traders, of which our party bought and branded seven hundred and
dispatched them in kaffles to the great slaving depot at Whydah. A
hundred of our purchase were Amazons or women soldiers of the King’s
guard who had engaged in a revolt and were punished by being sold off.
They were fine-limbed, robust females, made healthy by their exercise in
military service.
When we reached Ayudah, or Whydah, I met with a surprise. The great
slave trader who had built up the enterprise at this station was usually
spoken of as Cha-Chu, but when I met him I recognized him at once as my
old friend and Cuban enemy, De Souza, the Brazilian creole. He instantly
recalled me and after some conversation invited me to dine with him. I
accepted and the dinner turned out to be an orgie. His house was like a
palace and he had a harem filled with women from all parts of the world.
He offered to lend me a wife while I stayed at Whydah. “You shall have
French, Spanish, Greek, Caucasian, English, Dutch, Italian, African or
American,” he said, laughing; “or, if you prefer an old flame, there is
Donna Emelia.” I started and repeated the name. “Yes,” said Cha-Chu,
“She’s here, though, I confess, rather _abattu_. I’ve not seen her for a
year or two. I advise you to select a younger one.” This ended our
confab. So Emelia, the brilliant, unprincipaled woman was an inmate of
the seraglio of Cha-Chu, mingling with blacks, whites and browns. A cast
off, half-forgotten concubine. It was a wonder she had not poisoned him
long before that.
I left Whydah and returned to Brazil with the company of traders in a
large ship that carried a thousand blacks. We lost only eighty on the
voyage. After arrival I was glad to be offered a permanent position with
the trading company. My specialty was to superintend the slave nursery
or fattening farm for negroes who were not merchantable on arrival. They
were brought to the farm in feluccas to be “doctored” for the market.
The greater part, on arrival, were living skeletons and they often
dropped dead in the _corrals_ or yards. Some were ophthalmic, others
scrofulous and many were insane. The majority were reduced by dysentery
and required delicate handling in order to save them. We lost about
forty per cent. on the average of all that came to the farm. The joint
stock company that owned the fattening farm had established agencies
along the coast, at intervals, for a distance of 2600 miles and
controlled an immense smuggling traffic in negroes. Its headquarters
were at Pernambuco.
I remained in the service of this company for seven years until I became
sick of a fever and nearly died. On recovering I obtained a transfer to
another establishment on one of the Bay Islands near the coast of
Honduras in the Gulf of Mexico. Here a slave depot and farm were located
to which cargoes were brought in American clippers from slave
settlements near Cape Mesurado, Africa. The negroes were landed under
the name of colonists and the company had permits from Central American
authorities. They also had a branch farm on the Rio Grande, in Texas,
which was broken up and its stock disposed at the breaking out of the
war between the United States and Mexico.
Our island depot was admirably suited for its purpose, being near the
mainland with good anchorage on the ocean side. Our farm and nursery
were in the center of the island, on a navigable creek. Here we received
Bozal blacks and set them at work in agricultural operations and in
making goods for the African market, to exchange for their
fellow-countrymen. They were taught to gabble broken Spanish and
English, accustomed to discipline and well fed and well treated. I saw
no misery among these negroes as it was our company’s object to get them
into prime marketable condition.
This joint-stock company was connected with leading American and Spanish
mercantile houses and our island was visited almost weekly by agents
from Cuba, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia or New Orleans. During the
Mexican war we had about 1600 slaves in good condition and were
receiving and shipping constantly. The seasoned and instructed slaves
were taken to Texas, overland, and to Cuba, in sailing boats. As no
squad contained more than half a dozen, no difficulty was found in
posting them to the United States without discovery and generally
without suspicion. A single negro, sent by special agent as far as
Savannah, would pay all his costs and fifty per cent. profit in the
market. The Bay Island plantation sent ventures weekly to the Florida
Keys. Slaves were taken into the great American swamps and kept there
till wanted for the market and hundreds were also sold as runaways
captured in the Florida wilderness. We had agents in every slave State
and our coasters were built in Maine and came out loaded with lumber.
My connection with the island ended in 1853 when I came to Baltimore, on
business connected with the depot. I had with me a considerable sum of
money for a firm in New York City, on account of goods for the African
trade, and while in Baltimore went on a drunken spree that lasted a
week. When I came to myself I was in a low lodging-house, at Fell’s
Point, without a dollar in my pockets. I was helpless and soon after was
committed to the city workhouse as a vagrant. From there I begged my way
to Philadelphia and later to New York City and there I shall end my
miserable life. May God forgive me for my crimes and have mercy on me
hereafter.