prince the two lances, put into the head of the prisoners, viz., to make
bottles of the goats' skins to carry fresh water in, which it seems they
knew we should come to want; and the men did it so dexterously, having
dried skins fetched them by those two men, that before our vessel came
up, they had every man a pouch like a bladder, to carry fresh water in,
hanging over their shoulders by a thong made of other skins, about three
inches broad, like the sling of a fuzee.
Our prince, to assure us of the fidelity of the men in this march,
had ordered them to be tied two and two by the wrist, as we handcuff
prisoners in England; and made them so sensible of the reasonableness of
it, that he made them do it themselves, appointing four of them to bind
the rest; but we found them so honest, and particularly so obedient
to him, that after we were gotten a little further off of their own
country, we set them at liberty, though, when he came to us, he would
have them tied again, and they continued so a good while.
All the country on the bank of the river was a high land, no marshy
swampy ground in it; the verdure good, and abundance of cattle feeding
upon it wherever we went, or which way soever we looked; there was
not much wood indeed, at least not near us; but further up we saw oak,
cedar, and pine-trees, some of which were very large.
The river was a fair open channel, about as broad as the Thames below
Gravesend, and a strong tide of flood, which we found held us about
sixty miles; the channel deep, nor did we find any want of water for a
great way. In short, we went merrily up the river with the flood and
the wind blowing still fresh at E. and E.N.E. We stemmed the ebb easily
also, especially while the river continued broad and deep; but when we
came past the swelling of the tide, and had the natural current of the
river to go against, we found it too strong for us, and began to think
of quitting our bark; but the prince would by no means agree to that,
for, finding we had on board pretty good store of roping made of mats
and flags, which I described before, he ordered all the prisoners which
were on shore to come and take hold of those ropes, and tow us along by
the shore side; and as we hoisted our sail too, to ease them, the men
ran along with us at a very great rate.
In this manner the river carried us up, by our computation, near 200
miles, and then it narrowed apace, and was not above as broad as the
Thames is at Windsor, or thereabouts; and, after another day, we came
to a great waterfall or cataract, enough to fright us, for I believe the
whole body of water fell at once perpendicularly down a precipice
above sixty foot high, which made noise enough to deprive men of their
hearing, and we heard it above ten miles before we came to it.
Here we were at a full stop, and now our prisoners went first on shore;
they had worked very hard and very cheerfully, relieving one another,
those that were weary being taken into the bark. Had we had canoes or
any boats which might have been carried by men's strength we might have
gone two hundred miles more up this river in small boats, but our great
boat could go no farther.
All this way the country looked green and pleasant, and was full of
cattle, and some people we saw, though not many; but this we observed
now, that the people did no more understand our prisoners here than
we could understand them; being, it seems, of different nations and of
different speech. We had yet seen no wild beasts, or, at least, none
that came very near us, except two days before we came to the waterfall,
when we saw three of the most beautiful leopards that ever were seen,
standing upon the bank of the river on the north side, our prisoners
being all on the other side of the water. Our gunner espied them first,
and ran to fetch his gun, putting a ball extraordinary in it; and coming
to me, "Now, Captain Bob," says he, "where is your prince?" So I called
him out. "Now," says he, "tell your men not to be afraid; tell them they
shall see that thing in his hand speak in fire to one of those beasts,
and make it kill itself."
The poor negroes looked as if they had been all going to be killed,
notwithstanding what their prince said to them, and stood staring to
expect the issue, when on a sudden the gunner fired; and as he was a
very good marksman, he shot the creature with two slugs, just in the
head. As soon as the leopard felt herself struck, she reared up on her
two hind-legs, bolt upright, and throwing her forepaws about in the air,
fell backward, growling and struggling, and immediately died; the other
two, frighted with the fire and the noise, fled, and were out of sight
in an instant.
But the two frighted leopards were not in half the consternation that
our prisoners were; four or five of them fell down as if they had been
shot; several others fell on their knees, and lifted up their hands to
us; whether to worship us, or pray us not to kill them, we did not know;
but we made signs to their prince to encourage them, which he did, but
it was with much ado that he brought them to their senses. Nay, the
prince, notwithstanding all that was said to prepare him for it, yet
when the piece went off, he gave a start as if he would have leaped into
the river.
When we saw the creature killed, I had a great mind to have the skin of
her, and made signs to the prince that he should send some of his men
over to take the skin off. As soon as he spoke but a word, four of them,
that offered themselves, were untied, and immediately they jumped into
the river, and swam over, and went to work with him. The prince having a
knife that we gave him, made four wooden knives so clever, that I never
saw anything like them in my life; and in less than an hour's time they
brought me the skin of the leopard, which was a monstrous great one, for
it was from the ears to the tale about seven foot, and near five foot
broad on the back, and most admirably spotted all over. The skin of this
leopard I brought to London many years after.
We were now all upon a level as to our travelling, being unshipped, for
our bark would swim no farther, and she was too heavy to carry on our
backs; but as we found the course of the river went a great way farther,
we consulted our carpenters whether we could not pull the bark in
pieces, and make us three or four small boats to go on with. They told
us we might do so, but it would be very long a-doing; and that, when
we had done, we had neither pitch or tar to make them sound to keep the
water out, or nails to fasten the plank. But one of them told us that as
soon as he could come at any large tree near the river, he would make
us a canoe or two in a quarter of the time, and which would serve us
as well for all the uses we could have any occasion for as a boat; and
such, that if we came to any waterfalls, we might take them up, and
carry them for a mile or two by land upon our shoulders.
Upon this we gave over the thoughts of our frigate, and hauling her into
a little cove or inlet, where a small brook came into the main river,
we laid her up for those that came next, and marched forward. We spent
indeed two days dividing our baggage, and loading our tame buffaloes
and our negroes. Our powder and shot, which was the thing we were most
careful of, we ordered thus:--First, the powder we divided into little
leather bags, that is to say, bags of dried skins, with the hair inward,
that the powder might not grow damp; and then we put those bags into
other bags, made of bullocks' skins, very thick and hard, with the hair
outward, that no wet might come in; and this succeeded so well, that in
the greatest rains we had, whereof some were very violent and very long,
we always kept our powder dry. Besides these bags, which held our chief
magazine, we divided to every one a quarter of a pound of powder, and
half a pound of shot, to carry always about us; which, as it was enough
for our present use, so we were willing to have no weight to carry more
than was absolutely necessary, because of the heat.
We kept still on the bank of the river, and for that reason had but very
little communication with the people of the country; for, having also
our bark stored with plenty of provisions, we had no occasion to look
abroad for a supply; but now, when we came to march on foot, we were
obliged often to seek out for food. The first place we came to on the
river, that gave us any stop, was a little negro town, containing about
fifty huts, and there appeared about 400 people, for they all came out
to see us, and wonder at us. When our negroes appeared the inhabitants
began to fly to arms, thinking there had been enemies coming upon them;
but our negroes, though they could not speak their language, made signs
to them that they had no weapons, and were tied two and two together as
captives, and that there were people behind who came from the sun, and
that could kill them all, and make them alive again, if they pleased;
but that they would do them no hurt, and came with peace. As soon as
they understood this they laid down their lances, and bows and arrows,
and came and stuck twelve large stakes in the ground as a token of
peace, bowing themselves to us in token of submission. But as soon as
they saw white men with beards, that is to say, with mustachios, they
ran screaming away, as in a fright.
We kept at a distance from them, not to be too familiar; and when we did
appear it was but two or three of us at a time. But our prisoners
made them understand that we required some provisions of them; so
they brought us some black cattle, for they have abundance of cows and
buffaloes all over that side of the country, as also great numbers of
deer. Our cutler, who had now a great stock of things of his handiwork,
gave them some little knick-knacks, as plates of silver and of iron,
cut diamond fashion, and cut into hearts and into rings, and they were
mightily pleased. They also brought several fruits and roots, which we
did not understand, but our negroes fed heartily on them, and after we
had seen them eat them, we did so too.
Having stocked ourselves here with flesh and root as much as we could
well carry, we divided the burthens among our negroes, appointing about
thirty to forty pounds weight to a man, which we thought indeed was load
enough in a hot country; and the negroes did not at all repine at it,
but would sometimes help one another when they began to be weary, which
did happen now and then, though not often; besides, as most of their
luggage was our provision, it lightened every day, like Aesop's basket
of bread, till we came to get a recruit.--Note, when we loaded them we
untied their hands, and tied them two and two together by one foot.
The third day of our march from this place our chief carpenter desired
us to halt, and set up some huts, for he had found out some trees that
he liked, and resolved to make us some canoes; for, as he told me, he
knew we should have marching enough on foot after we left the river, and
he was resolved to go no farther by land than needs must.
We had no sooner given orders for our little camp, and given leave to
our negroes to lay down their loads, but they fell to work to build our
huts; and though they were tied as above, yet they did it so nimbly as
surprised us. Here we set some of the negroes quite at liberty, that is
to say, without tying them, having the prince's word passed for their
fidelity; and some of these were ordered to help the carpenters, which
they did very handily, with a little direction, and others were sent
to see whether they could get any provisions near hand; but instead of
provisions, three of them came in with two bows and arrows, and five
lances. They could not easily make us understand how they came by them,
only that they had surprised some negro women, who were in some huts,
the men being from home, and they had found the lances and bows in the
huts, or houses, the women and children flying away at the sight of
them, as from robbers. We seemed very angry at them, and made the prince
ask them if they had not killed any of the women or children, making
them believe that, if they had killed anybody, we would make them kill
themselves too; but they protested their innocence, so we excused them.
Then they brought us the bows and arrows and lances; but, at a motion of
their black prince, we gave them back the bows and arrows, and gave them
leave to go out to see what they could kill for food; and here we gave
them the laws of arms, viz., that if any man appeared to assault them,
or shoot at them to offer any violence to them, they might kill them;
but that they should not offer to kill or hurt any that offered them
peace, or laid down their weapons, nor any women or children, upon any
occasion whatsoever. These were our articles of war.
These two fellows had not been gone out above three or four hours, but
one of them came running to us without his bow and arrows, hallooing and
whooping a great while before he came at us, "Okoamo, okoamo!" which,
it seems, was, "Help, help!" The rest of the negroes rose up in a hurry,
and by twos, as they could, ran forward towards their fellows, to know
what the matter was. As for me, I did not understand it, nor any of our
people; the prince looked as if something unlucky had fallen out, and
some of our men took up their arms to be ready on occasion. But the
negroes soon discovered the thing, for we saw four of them presently
after coming along with a great load of meat upon their backs. The case
was, that the two who went out with their bows and arrows, meeting with
a great herd of deer in the plain, had been so nimble as to shoot three
of them, and then one of them came running to us for help to fetch them
away. This was the first venison we had met with in all our march, and
we feasted upon it very plentifully; and this was the first time we
began to prevail with our prince to eat his meat dressed our way; after
which his men were prevailed with by his example, but before that, they
ate most of the flesh they had quite raw.
We wished now we had brought some bows and arrows out with us, which we
might have done; and we began to have so much confidence in our negroes,
and to be so familiar with them, that we oftentimes let them go, or the
greatest part of them, untied, being well assured they would not leave
us, and that they did not know what course to take without us; but one
thing we resolved not to trust them with, and that was the charging our
guns: but they always believed our guns had some heavenly power in them,
that would send forth fire and smoke, and speak with a dreadful noise,
and kill at a distance whenever we bid them.
In about eight days we finished three canoes, and in them we embarked
our white men and our baggage, with our prince, and some of the
prisoners. We also found it needful to keep some of ourselves always on
shore, not only to manage the negroes, but to defend them from enemies
and wild beasts. Abundance of little incidents happened upon this march,
which it is impossible to crowd into this account; particularly, we
saw more wild beasts now than we did before, some elephants, and two or
three lions, none of which kinds we had seen any of before; and we
found our negroes were more afraid of them a great deal than we were;
principally, because they had no bows and arrows, or lances, which were
the particular weapons they were bred up to the exercise of.
But we cured them of their fears by being always ready with our
firearms. However, as we were willing to be sparing of our powder, and
the killing of any of the creatures now was no advantage to us, seeing
their skins were too heavy for us to carry, and their flesh not good to
eat, we resolved therefore to keep some of our pieces uncharged and only
primed; and causing them to flash in the pan, the beasts, even the
lions themselves, would always start and fly back when they saw it, and
immediately march off.
We passed abundance of inhabitants upon this upper part of the river,
and with this observation, that almost every ten miles we came to a
separate nation, and every separate nation had a different speech,
or else their speech had differing dialects, so that they did not
understand one another. They all abounded in cattle, especially on the
river-side; and the eighth day of this second navigation we met with
a little negro town, where they had growing a sort of corn like rice,
which ate very sweet; and, as we got some of it of the people, we made
very good cakes of bread of it, and, making a fire, baked them on the
ground, after the fire was swept away, very well; so that hitherto we
had no want of provisions of any kind that we could desire.
Our negroes towing our canoes, we travelled at a considerable rate, and
by our own account could not go less than twenty or twenty-five English
miles a day, and the river continuing to be much of the same breadth
and very deep all the way, till on the tenth day we came to another
cataract; for a ridge of high hills crossing the whole channel of the
river, the water came tumbling down the rocks from one stage to another
in a strange manner, so that it was a continued link of cataracts from
one to another, in the manner of a cascade, only that the falls were
sometimes a quarter of a mile from one another, and the noise confused
and frightful.
We thought our voyaging was at a full stop now; but three of us, with
a couple of our negroes, mounting the hills another way, to view the
course of the river, we found a fair channel again after about half a
mile's march, and that it was like to hold us a good way further. So
we set all hands to work, unloaded our cargo, and hauled our canoes on
shore, to see if we could carry them.
Upon examination we found that they were very heavy; but our carpenters,
spending but one day's work upon them, hewed away so much of the timber
from their outsides as reduced them very much, and yet they were as fit
to swim as before. When this was done, ten men with poles took up one
of the canoes and made nothing to carry it. So we ordered twenty men to
each canoe, that one ten might relieve the other; and thus we carried
all our canoes, and launched them into the water again, and then fetched
our luggage and loaded it all again into the canoes, and all in an
afternoon; and the next morning early we moved forward again. When we
had towed about four days more, our gunner, who was our pilot, began to
observe that we did not keep our right course so exactly as we ought,
the river winding away a little towards the north, and gave us notice
of it accordingly. However, we were not willing to lose the advantage of
water-carriage, at least not till we were forced to it; so we jogged on,
and the river served us for about threescore miles further; but then
we found it grew very small and shallow, having passed the mouths of
several little brooks or rivulets which came into it; and at length it
became but a brook itself.
We towed up as far as ever our boats would swim, and we went two days
the farther--having been about twelve days in this last part of the
river--by lightening the boats and taking our luggage out, which we made
the negroes carry, being willing to ease ourselves as long as we could;
but at the end of these two days, in short, there was not water enough
to swim a London wherry.
We now set forward wholly by land, and without any expectation of more
water-carriage. All our concern for more water was to be sure to have a
supply for our drinking; and therefore upon every hill that we came near
we clambered up to the highest part to see the country before us, and
to make the best judgment we could which way to go to keep the lowest
grounds, and as near some stream of water as we could.
The country held verdant, well grown with trees, and spread with rivers
and brooks, and tolerably well with inhabitants, for about thirty days'
march after our leaving the canoes, during which time things went pretty
well with us; we did not tie ourselves down when to march and when to
halt, but ordered those things as our convenience and the health and
ease of our people, as well our servants as ourselves, required.
About the middle of this march we came into a low and plain country,
in which we perceived a greater number of inhabitants than in any other
country we had gone through; but that which was worse for us, we found
them a fierce, barbarous, treacherous people, and who at first looked
upon us as robbers, and gathered themselves in numbers to attack us.
Our men were terrified at them at first, and began to discover an
unusual fear, and even our black prince seemed in a great deal of
confusion; but I smiled at him, and showing him some of our guns, I
asked him if he thought that which killed the spotted cat (for so they
called the leopard in their language) could not make a thousand of those
naked creatures die at one blow? Then he laughed, and said, yes, he
believed it would. "Well, then," said I, "tell your men not to be afraid
of these people, for we shall soon give them a taste of what we can do
if they pretend to meddle with us." However, we considered we were in
the middle of a vast country, and we knew not what numbers of people
and nations we might be surrounded with, and, above all, we knew not how
much we might stand in need of the friendship of these that we were now
among, so that we ordered the negroes to try all the methods they could
to make them friends.
Accordingly the two men who had gotten bows and arrows, and two more
to whom we gave the prince's two fine lances, went foremost, with five
more, having long poles in their hands; and after them ten of our men
advanced toward the negro town that was next to us, and we all stood
ready to succour them if there should be occasion.
When they came pretty near their houses our negroes hallooed in their
screaming way, and called to them as loud as they could. Upon their
calling, some of the men came out and answered, and immediately after
the whole town, men, women, and children, appeared; our negroes, with
their long poles, went forward a little, and stuck them all in the
ground, and left them, which in their country was a signal of peace, but
the other did not understand the meaning of that. Then the two men with
bows laid down their bows and arrows, went forward unarmed, and made
signs of peace to them, which at last the other began to understand; so
two of their men laid down their bows and arrows, and came towards them.
Our men made all the signs of friendship to them that they could think
of, putting their hands up to their mouths as a sign that they wanted
provisions to eat; and the other pretended to be pleased and friendly,
and went back to their fellows and talked with them a while, and they
came forward again, and made signs that they would bring some provisions
to them before the sun set; and so our men came back again very well
satisfied for that time.
But an hour before sunset our men went to them again, just in the same
posture as before, and they came according to their appointment, and
brought deer's flesh, roots, and the same kind of corn, like rice, which
I mentioned above; and our negroes, being furnished with such toys as
our cutler had contrived, gave them some of them, which they seemed
infinitely pleased with, and promised to bring more provisions the next
day.
Accordingly the next day they came again, but our men perceived they
were more in number by a great many than before. However, having sent
out ten men with firearms to stand ready, and our whole army being in
view also, we were not much surprised; nor was the treachery of the
enemy so cunningly ordered as in other cases, for they might have
surrounded our negroes, which were but nine, under a show of peace; but
when they saw our men advance almost as far as the place where they were
the day before, the rogues snatched up their bows and arrows and came
running upon our men like so many furies, at which our ten men called
to the negroes to come back to them, which they did with speed enough
at the first word, and stood all behind our men. As they fled, the other
advanced, and let fly near a hundred of their arrows at them, by which
two of our negroes were wounded, and one we thought had been killed.
When they came to the five poles that our men had stuck in the ground,
they stood still awhile, and gathering about the poles, looked at them,
and handled them, as wondering what they meant. We then, who were drawn
up behind all, sent one of our number to our ten men to bid them fire
among them while they stood so thick, and to put some small shot into
their guns besides the ordinary charge, and to tell them that we would
be up with them immediately.