kind of a bag four feet broad, three feet and a half high, and about a
foot and a half thick when it was full.
He caused us to fill this bag with dry sand and tread it down as close
as we could, not to burst the mats. When thus the bag was full within
a foot, he sought some other earth and filled up the rest with it, and
still trod all in as hard as he could. When he had done, he made a
hole in the upper earth about as broad as the crown of a large hat, or
something bigger about, but not so deep, and bade a negro fill it with
water, and still as it shrunk away to fill it again, and keep it full.
The bag he had placed at first across two pieces of wood, about a foot
from the ground; and under it he ordered some of our skins to be spread
that would hold water. In about an hour, and not sooner, the water
began to come dropping through the bottom of the bag, and, to our great
surprise, was perfectly fresh and sweet, and this continued for several
hours; but in the end the water began to be a little brackish. When we
told him that, "Well, then," said he, "turn the sand out, and fill it
again." Whether he did this by way of experiment from his own fancy, or
whether he had seen it done before, I do not remember.
The next day we mounted the tops of the hills, where the prospect was
indeed astonishing, for as far as the eye could look, south, or west, or
northwest, there was nothing to be seen but a vast howling wilderness,
with neither tree nor river, nor any green thing. The surface we found,
as the part we passed the day before, had a kind of thick moss upon
it, of a blackish dead colour, but nothing in it that looked like food,
either for man or beast.
Had we been stored with provisions to have entered for ten or twenty
days upon this wilderness, as we were formerly, and with fresh water, we
had hearts good enough to have ventured, though we had been obliged to
come back again, for if we went north we did not know but we might meet
with the same; but we neither had provisions, neither were we in any
place where it was possible to get them. We killed some wild ferine
creatures at the foot of these hills; but, except two things, like to
nothing that we ever saw before, we met with nothing that was fit
to eat. These were creatures that seemed to be between the kind of a
buffalo and a deer, but indeed resembled neither; for they had no horns,
and had great legs like a cow, with a fine head, and the neck like a
deer. We killed also, at several times, a tiger, two young lions, and a
wolf; but, God be thanked, we were not so reduced as to eat carrion.
Upon this terrible prospect I renewed my motion of turning northward,
and making towards the river Niger or Rio Grande, then to turn west
towards the English settlements on the Gold Coast; to which every one
most readily consented, only our gunner, who was indeed our best guide,
though he happened to be mistaken at this time. He moved that, as our
coast was now northward, so we might slant away north-west, that so, by
crossing the country, we might perhaps meet with some other river that
run into the Rio Grande northward, or down to the Gold Coast southward,
and so both direct our way and shorten the labour; as also because, if
any of the country was inhabited and fruitful, we should probably find
it upon the shore of the rivers, where alone we could be furnished with
provisions.
This was good advice, and too rational not to be taken; but our present
business was, what to do to get out of this dreadful place we were in.
Behind us was a waste, which had already cost us five days' march, and
we had not provisions for five days left to go back again the same way.
Before us was nothing but horror, as above; so we resolved, seeing the
ridge of the hills we were upon had some appearance of fruitfulness,
and that they seemed to lead away to the northward a great way, to keep
under the foot of them on the east side, to go on as far as we could,
and in the meantime to look diligently out for food.
Accordingly we moved on the next morning; for we had no time to lose,
and, to our great comfort, we came in our first morning's march to very
good springs of fresh water; and lest we should have a scarcity again,
we filled all our bladder bottles and carried it with us. I should also
have observed that our surgeon, who made the salt water fresh, took the
opportunity of those salt springs, and made us the quantity of three or
four pecks of very good salt.
In our third march we found an unexpected supply of food, the hills
being full of hares. They were of a kind something different from ours
in England, larger and not as swift of foot, but very good meat. We shot
several of them, and the little tame leopard, which I told you we took
at the negro town that we plundered, hunted them like a dog, and killed
us several every day; but she would eat nothing of them unless we gave
it her, which, indeed, in our circumstance, was very obliging. We salted
them a little and dried them in the sun whole, and carried a strange
parcel along with us. I think it was almost three hundred, for we did
not know when we might find any more, either of these or any other food.
We continued our course under these hills very comfortably for eight or
nine days, when we found, to our great satisfaction, the country beyond
us began to look with something of a better countenance. As for the west
side of the hills, we never examined it till this day, when three of our
company, the rest halting for refreshment, mounted the hills again to
satisfy their curiosity, but found it all the same, nor could they see
any end of it, no, not to the north, the way we were going; so the tenth
day, finding the hills made a turn, and led as it were into the vast
desert, we left them and continued our course north, the country being
very tolerably full of woods, some waste, but not tediously long, till
we came, by our gunner's observation, into the latitude of eight degrees
five minutes, which we were nineteen days more in performing.
All this way we found no inhabitants, but abundance of wild ravenous
creatures, with which we became so well acquainted now that really we
did not much mind them. We saw lions and tigers and leopards every night
and morning in abundance; but as they seldom came near us, we let them
go about their business: if they offered to come near us, we made false
fire with any gun that was uncharged, and they would walk off as soon as
they saw the flash.
We made pretty good shift for food all this way; for sometimes we killed
hares, sometimes some fowls, but for my life I cannot give names to
any of them, except a kind of partridge, and another that was like our
turtle. Now and then we began to meet with elephants again in great
numbers; those creatures delighted chiefly in the woody part of the
country.
This long-continued march fatigued us very much, and two of our men fell
sick, indeed, so very sick that we thought they would have died; and one
of our negroes died suddenly. Our surgeon said it was an apoplexy, but
he wondered at it, he said, for he could never complain of his high
feeding. Another of them was very ill; but our surgeon with much ado
persuading him, indeed it was almost forcing him to be let blood, he
recovered.
We halted here twelve days for the sake of our sick men, and our surgeon
persuaded me and three or four more of us to be let blood during the
time of rest, which, with other things he gave us, contributed very much
to our continued health in so tedious a march and in so hot a climate.
In this march we pitched our matted tents every night, and they were
very comfortable to us, though we had trees and woods to shelter us in
most places. We thought it very strange that in all this part of the
country we yet met with no inhabitants; but the principal reason, as we
found afterwards, was, that we, having kept a western course first,
and then a northern course, were gotten too much into the middle of the
country and among the deserts; whereas the inhabitants are principally
found among the rivers, lakes, and lowlands, as well to the south-west
as to the north.
What little rivulets we found here were so empty of water, that except
some pits, and little more than ordinary pools, there was scarcely any
water to be seen in them; and they rather showed that during the rainy
months they had a channel, than that they had really running water in
them at that time, by which it was easy for us to judge that we had a
great way to go; but this was no discouragement so long as we had but
provisions, and some seasonable shelter from the violent heat, which
indeed I thought was much greater now than when the sun was just over
our heads.
Our men being recovered, we set forward again, very well stored with
provisions, and water sufficient, and bending our course a little to
the westward of the north, travelled in hopes of some favourable stream
which might bear a canoe; but we found none till after twenty days'
travel, including eight days' rest; for our men being weak, we rested
very often, especially when we came to places which were proper for our
purpose, where we found cattle, fowl, or anything to kill for our food.
In those twenty days' march we advanced four degrees to the northward,
besides some meridian distance westward, and we met with abundance of
elephants, and with a good number of elephants' teeth scattered up and
down, here and there, in the woody grounds especially, some of which
were very large. But they were no booty to us; our business was
provisions, and a good passage out of the country; and it had been much
more to our purpose to have found a good fat deer, and to have killed
it for our food, than a hundred ton of elephants' teeth; and yet, as
you shall presently hear, when we came to begin our passage by water, we
once thought to have built a large canoe, on purpose to have loaded it
with ivory; but this was when we knew nothing of the rivers, nor knew
anything how dangerous and how difficult a passage it was we were likely
to have in them, nor had considered the weight of carriage to lug them
to the rivers where we might embark.
At the end of twenty days' travel, as above, in the latitude of three
degrees sixteen minutes, we discovered in a valley, at some distance
from us, a pretty tolerable stream, which we thought deserved the name
of a river, and which ran its course N.N.W., which was just what we
wanted. As we had fixed our thoughts upon our passage by water, we took
this for the place to make the experiment, and bent our march directly
to the valley.
There was a small thicket of trees just in our way, which we went by,
thinking no harm, when on a sudden one of our negroes was dangerously
wounded with an arrow shot into his back, slanting between his
shoulders. This put us to a full stop; and three of our men, with two
negroes, spreading the wood, for it was but a small one, found a negro
with a bow, but no arrow, who would have escaped, but our men that
discovered him shot him in revenge of the mischief he had done; so we
lost the opportunity of taking him prisoner, which, if we had done, and
sent him home with good usage, it might have brought others to us in a
friendly manner.
Going a little farther, we came to five negro huts or houses, built
after a different manner from any we had seen yet; and at the door of
one of them lay seven elephants' teeth, piled up against the wall or
side of the hut, as if they had been provided against a market. Here
were no men, but seven or eight women, and near twenty children. We
offered them no incivility of any kind, but gave them every one a bit of
silver beaten out thin, as I observed before, and cut diamond fashion,
or in the shape of a bird, at which the women were overjoyed, and
brought out to us several sorts of food, which we did not understand,
being cakes of a meal made of roots, which they bake in the sun, and
which ate very well. We went a little way farther and pitched our camp
for that night, not doubting but our civility to the women would produce
some good effect when their husbands might come home.
Accordingly, the next morning the women, with eleven men, five young
boys, and two good big girls, came to our camp. Before they came quite
to us, the women called aloud, and made an odd screaming noise to bring
us out; and accordingly we came out, when two of the women, showing us
what we had given them, and pointing to the company behind, made such
signs as we could easily understand signified friendship. When the men
advanced, having bows and arrows, they laid them down on the ground,
scraped and threw sand over their heads, and turned round three times
with their hands laid up upon the tops of their heads. This, it seems,
was a solemn vow of friendship. Upon this we beckoned them with our
hands to come nearer; then they sent the boys and girls to us first,
which, it seems, was to bring us more cakes of bread and some green
herbs to eat, which we received, and took the boys up and kissed them,
and the little girls too; then the men came up close to us, and sat them
down on the ground, making signs that we should sit down by them, which
we did. They said much to one another, but we could not understand them,
nor could we find any way to make them understand us, much less
whither we were going, or what we wanted, only that we easily made them
understand we wanted victuals; whereupon one of the men, casting his
eyes about him towards a rising ground that was about half a mile off,
started up as if he was frighted, flew to the place where they had laid
down their bows and arrows, snatched up a bow and two arrows, and ran
like a racehorse to the place. When he came there, he let fly both his
arrows, and comes back again to us with the same speed. We, seeing he
came with the bow, but without the arrows, were the more inquisitive;
but the fellow, saying nothing to us, beckons to one of our negroes to
come to him, and we bid him go; so he led him back to the place, where
lay a kind of deer, shot with two arrows, but not quite dead, and
between them they brought it down to us. This was for a gift to us, and
was very welcome, I assure you, for our stock was low. These people were
all stark naked.
The next day there came about a hundred men to us, and women making the
same awkward signals of friendship, and dancing, and showing themselves
very well pleased, and anything they had they gave us. How the man
in the wood came to be so butcherly and rude as to shoot at our men,
without making any breach first, we could not imagine; for the people
were simple, plain, and inoffensive in all our other conversation with
them.
From hence we went down the banks of the little river I mentioned, and
where, I found, we should see the whole nation of negroes, but whether
friendly to us or not, that we could make no judgment of yet.
The river was no use to us, as to the design of making canoes, a great
while; and we traversed the country on the edge of it about five days
more, when our carpenters, finding the stream increased, proposed to
pitch our tents, and fall to work to make canoes; but after we had begun
the work, and cut down two or three trees, and spent five days in the
labour, some of our men, wandering further down the river, brought us
word that the stream rather decreased than increased, sinking away
into the sands, or drying up by the heat of the sun, so that the river
appeared not able to carry the least canoe that could be any way useful
to us; so we were obliged to give over our enterprise and move on.
In our further prospect this way, we marched three days full west, the
country on the north side being extraordinary mountainous, and more
parched and dry than any we had seen yet; whereas, in the part which
looks due west, we found a pleasant valley running a great way between
two great ridges of mountains. The hills looked frightful, being
entirely bare of trees or grass, and even white with the dryness of the
sand; but in the valley we had trees, grass, and some creatures that
were fit for food, and some inhabitants.
We passed by some of their huts or houses, and saw people about them,
but they ran up into the hills as soon as they saw us. At the end of
this valley we met with a peopled country, and at first it put us to
some doubt whether we should go among them, or keep up towards the hills
northerly; and as our aim was principally as before, to make our way to
the river Niger, we inclined to the latter, pursuing our course by the
compass to the N.W. We marched thus without interruption seven days
more, when we met with a surprising circumstance much more desolate and
disconsolate than our own, and which, in time to come, will scarce seem
credible.
We did not much seek the conversing, or acquainting ourselves with the
natives of the country, except where we found the want of them for our
provision, or their direction for our way; so that, whereas we found
the country here begin to be very populous, especially towards our left
hand, that is, to the south, we kept at the more distance northerly,
still stretching towards the west.
In this tract we found something or other to kill and eat, which always
supplied our necessity, though not so well as we were provided in our
first setting out; being thus, as it were, pushing to avoid a peopled
country, we at last came to a very pleasant, agreeable stream of water,
not big enough to be called a river, but running to the N.N.W., which
was the very course we desired to go.
On the farthest bank of this brook, we perceived some huts of negroes,
not many, and in a little low spot of ground, some maize, or Indian
corn, growing, which intimated presently to us, that there were some
inhabitants on that side less barbarous than what we had met with in
other places where we had been.
As we went forward, our whole caravan being in a body, our negroes, who
were in the front, cried out, that they saw a white man! We were not
much surprised at first, it being, as we thought, a mistake of the
fellows, and asked them what they meant; when one of them stepped to me,
and pointing to a hut on the other side of the hill, I was astonished to
see a white man indeed, but stark naked, very busy near the door of his
hut, and stooping down to the ground with something in his hand, as if
he had been at some work; and his back being towards us, he did not see
us.
I gave notice to our negroes to make no noise, and waited till some more
of our men were come up, to show the sight to them, that they might be
sure I was not mistaken; and we were soon satisfied of the truth, for
the man, having heard some noise, started up, and looked full at us, as
much surprised, to be sure, as we were, but whether with fear or hope,
we then knew not.
As he discovered us, so did the rest of the inhabitants belonging to the
huts about him, and all crowded together, looking at us at a distance, a
little bottom, in which the brook ran, lying between us; the white man,
and all the rest, as he told us afterwards, not knowing well whether
they should stay or run away. However, it presently came into my
thoughts, that if there were white men among them, it would be much
easier to make them understand what we meant as to peace or war, than
we found it with others; so tying a piece of white rag to the end of a
stick, we sent two negroes with it to the bank of the water, carrying
the pole up as high as they could; it was presently understood, and two
of their men and the white man came to the shore on the other side.
However, as the white man spoke no Portuguese, they could understand
nothing of one another but by signs; but our men made the white man
understand that they had white men with them too, at which they said the
white man laughed. However, to be short, our men came back, and told us
they were all good friends, and in about an hour four of our men, two
negroes, and the black prince, went to the river-side, where the white
man came to them.
They had not been half a quarter of an hour, but a negro came running to
me, and told me the white man was Inglese, as he called him; upon which
I ran back, eagerly enough, you may be sure, with him, and found, as
he said, that he was an Englishman; upon which he embraced me very
passionately, the tears running down his face. The first surprise of his
seeing us was over before we came, but any one may conceive it by the
brief account he gave us afterwards of his very unhappy circumstances,
and of so unexpected a deliverance, such as perhaps never happened to
any man in the world, for it was a million to one odds that ever he
could have been relieved; nothing but an adventure that never was heard
or read of before could have suited his case, unless Heaven, by some
miracle that never was to be expected, had acted for him.
He appeared to be a gentleman, not an ordinary-bred fellow, seaman, or
labouring man; this showed itself in his behaviour in the first moment
of our conversing with him, and in spite of all the disadvantages of his
miserable circumstances.
He was a middle-aged man, not above thirty-seven or thirty-eight, though
his beard was grown exceedingly long, and the hair of his head and
face strangely covered him to the middle of his back and breast; he was
white, and his skin very fine, though discoloured, and in some places
blistered, and covered with a brown blackish substance, scurfy, scaly,
and hard, which was the effect of the scorching heat of the sun; he was
stark naked, and had been so, as he told us, upwards of two years.
He was so exceedingly transported at our meeting with him, that he could
scarce enter into any discourse at all with us that day; and when he
could get away from us for a little, we saw him walking alone, and
showing all the most extravagant tokens of an ungovernable joy; and even
afterwards he was never without tears in his eyes for several days,
upon the least word spoken by us of his circumstances, or by him of his
deliverance.
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.
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 the way how to furnish ourselves effectually with provisions; and
thirdly, he was our complete interpreter and peacemaker 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 Europeans 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 300 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.