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
himself a cap of a piece of a leopard-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 circumstances, 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 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 Leone,
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
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, somehow 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 them 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, or 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 that, for he scarce
ever went from his hut; but if he did, the negro king and his men went
all with him, and they were 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 one hundred and twenty English leagues
from the coast, where almost all 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 farther
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 Grande,
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 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 150 or 200 miles,
and would be out a month, or two, or three at a time, and always come
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 thither, 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." N.B.--These are little shells which our children call
blackamoors' teeth.
When he had said thus he pulled out a piece of an earthen pot baked hard
in the sun. "Here," says he, "is some of the dirt of this country, and
if I would I could have got a great deal more;" and, showing it to us,
I believe there was in it between two and three pounds weight of
gold-dust, of the same kind and colour with that we had gotten already,
as before. After we had looked at it a while, he told us, smiling, we
were his deliverers, and all he had, as well as his life, was ours;
and therefore, as this would be of value to us when we came to our own
country, so he desired we would accept of it among us; and that was the
only time that he had repented that he had picked up no more of it.
I spoke for him, as his interpreter, to my comrades, and in their names
thanked him; but, speaking to them in Portuguese, I desired them to
defer the acceptance of his kindness to the next morning; and so I did,
telling him we would further talk of this part in the morning; so we
parted for that time.
When he was gone I found they were all wonderfully affected with
his discourse, and with the generosity of his temper, as well as
the magnificence of his present, which in another place had been
extraordinary. Upon the whole, not to detain you with circumstances, we
agreed that, seeing he was now one of our number, and that as we were a
relief to him in carrying him out of the dismal condition he was in, so
he was equally a relief to us, in being our guide through the rest of
the country, our interpreter with the natives, and our director how to
manage with the savages, and how to enrich ourselves with the wealth
of the country; that, therefore, we would put his gold among our common
stock, and every one should give him as much as would make his up just
as much as any single share of our own, and for the future we would take
our lot together, taking his solemn engagement to us, as we had before
one to another, that we would not conceal the least grain of gold we
found one from another.
In the next conference we acquainted him with the adventures of the
Golden River, and how we had shared what we got there, so that every man
had a larger stock than he for his share; that, therefore, instead of
taking any from him, we had resolved every one to add a little to him.
He appeared very glad that we had met with such good success, but would
not take a grain from us, till at last, pressing him very hard, he told
us, that then he would take it thus:--that, when we came to get any
more, he would have so much out of the first as should make him even,
and then we would go on as equal adventurers; and thus we agreed.
He then told us he thought it would not be an unprofitable adventure if,
before we set forward, and after we had got a stock of provisions, we
should make a journey north to the edge of the desert he had told us of,
from whence our negroes might bring every one a large elephant's tooth,
and that he would get some more to assist; and that, after a certain
length of carriage, they might be conveyed by canoes to the coast, where
they would yield a very great profit.
I objected against this on account of our other design we had of getting
gold-dust; and that our negroes, who we knew would be faithful to us,
would get much more by searching the rivers for gold for us than by
lugging a great tooth of a hundred and fifty pounds weight a hundred
miles or more, which would be an insufferable labour to them after so
hard a journey, and would certainly kill them.
He acquiesced in the justice of this answer, but fain would have had us
gone to see the woody part of the hill and the edge of the desert, that
we might see how the elephants' teeth lay scattered up and down there;
but when we told him the story of what we had seen before, as is said
above, he said no more.
We stayed here twelve days, during which time the natives were very
obliging to us, and brought us fruits, pompions, and a root like
carrots, though of quite another taste, but not unpleasant neither, and
some guinea-fowls, whose names we did not know. In short, they brought
us plenty of what they had, and we lived very well, and we gave them all
such little things as our cutler had made, for he had now a whole bag
full of them.
On the thirteenth day we set forward, taking our new gentleman with us.
At parting, the negro king sent two savages with a present to him of
some dried flesh, but I do not remember what it was, and he gave him
again three silver birds which our cutler helped him to, which I assure
you was a present for a king.
We travelled now south, a little west, and here we found the first
river for above 2000 miles' march, whose waters run south, all the rest
running north or west. We followed this river, which was no bigger than
a good large brook in England, till it began to increase its water.
Every now and then we found our Englishman went down as it were
privately to the water, which was to try the land; at length, after a
day's march upon this river, he came running up to us with his hands
full of sand, and saying, "Look here." Upon looking we found that a good
deal of gold lay spangled among the sand of the river. "Now," says he,
"I think we may begin to work;" so he divided our negroes into couples
and set them to work, to search and wash the sand and ooze in the bottom
of the water where it was not deep.
In the first day and a quarter our men all together had gathered a pound
and two ounces of gold or thereabouts, and as we found the quantity
increased the farther we went, we followed it about three days, till
another small rivulet joined the first, and then searching up the
stream, we found gold there too; so we pitched our camp in the angle
where the rivers joined, and we diverted ourselves, as I may call it,
in washing the gold out of the sand of the river, and in getting
provisions.
Here we stayed thirteen days more, in which time we had many pleasant
adventures with the savages, too long to mention here, and some of them
too homely to tell of, for some of our men had made something free with
their women, which, had not our new guide made peace for us with one of
their men at the price of seven fine bits of silver, which our artificer
had cut out into the shapes of lions, and fishes, and birds, and had
punched holes to hang them up by (an inestimable treasure), we must have
gone to war with them and all their people.
All the while we were busy washing gold-dust out of the rivers, and our
negroes the like, our ingenious cutler was hammering and cutting, and
he was grown so dexterous by use that he formed all manner of images. He
cut out elephants, tigers, civet cats, ostriches, eagles, cranes, fowls,
fishes, and indeed whatever he pleased, in thin plates of hammered gold,
for his silver and iron were almost all gone.
At one of the towns of these savage nations we were very friendly
received by their king, and as he was very much taken with our workman's
toys, he sold him an elephant cut out of a gold plate as thin as a
sixpence at an extravagant rate. He was so much taken with it that he
would not be quiet till he had given him almost a handful of gold-dust,
as they call it; I suppose it might weigh three-quarters of a pound; the
piece of gold that the elephant was made of might be about the weight of
a pistole, rather less than more. Our artist was so honest, though the
labour and art were all his own, that he brought all the gold and put
it into our common stock; but we had, indeed, no manner of reason in the
least to be covetous, for, as our new guide told us, we that were strong
enough to defend ourselves, and had time enough to stay (for we were
none of us in haste), might in time get together what quantity of gold
we pleased, even to an hundred pounds weight each man if we thought fit;
and therefore he told us, though he had as much reason to be sick of the
country as any of us, yet if we thought to turn our march a little to
the south-east, and pitch upon a place proper for our headquarters,
we might find provisions plenty enough, and extend ourselves over the
country among the rivers for two or three years to the right and left,
and we should soon find the advantage of it.
The proposal, however good as to the profitable part of it, suited none
of us, for we were all more desirous to get home than to be rich, being
tired of the excessive fatigue of above a year's continual wandering
among deserts and wild beasts.
However, the tongue of our new acquaintance had a kind of charm in it,
and used such arguments, and had so much the power of persuasion, that
there was no resisting him. He told us it was preposterous not to take
the fruit of all our labours now we were come to the harvest; that we
might see the hazard the Europeans run with ships and men, and at great
expense, to fetch a little gold, and that we, that were in the centre
of it, to go away empty-handed was unaccountable; that we were strong
enough to fight our way through whole nations, and might make our
journey afterward to what part of the coast we pleased, and we should
never forgive ourselves when we came to our own country to see we had
500 pistoles in gold, and might as easily have had 5000 or 10,000, or
what we pleased; that he was no more covetous than we, but seeing it
was in all our powers to retrieve our misfortunes at once, and to make
ourselves easy for all our lives, he could not be faithful to us, or
grateful for the good we had done him, if he did not let us see the
advantage we had in our hands; and he assured us he would make it clear
to our own understanding, that we might in two years' time, by good
management and by the help of our negroes, gather every man a hundred
pounds weight of gold, and get together perhaps two hundred ton of
teeth; whereas, if once we pushed on to the coast and separated, we
should never be able to see that place again with our eyes, or do any
more than sinners did with heaven,--wish themselves there, but know they
can never come at it.
Our surgeon was the first man that yielded to his reasoning, and after
him the gunner; and they too, indeed, had a great influence over us, but
none of the rest had any mind to stay, nor I neither, I must confess;
for I had no notion of a great deal of money, or what to do with myself,
or what to do with it if I had it. I thought I had enough already, and
all the thoughts I had about disposing of it, if I came to Europe, was
only how to spend it as fast as I could, buy me some clothes, and go to
sea again to be a drudge for more.
However, he prevailed with us by his good words at last to stay but for
six months in the country, and then, if we did resolve to go, he would
submit; so at length we yielded to that, and he carried us about fifty
English miles south-east, where we found several rivulets of water,
which seemed to come all from a great ridge of mountains, which lay to
the north-east, and which, by our calculation, must be the beginning
that way of the great waste, which we had been forced northward to
avoid.
Here we found the country barren enough, but yet we had by his direction
plenty of food; for the savages round us, upon giving them some of our
toys, as I have so often mentioned, brought us in whatever they had;
and here we found some maize, or Indian wheat, which the negro women
planted, as we sow seeds in a garden, and immediately our new provider
ordered some of our negroes to plant it, and it grew up presently, and
by watering it often, we had a crop in less than three months' growth.
As soon as we were settled, and our camp fixed, we fell to the old
trade of fishing for gold in the rivers mentioned above, and our English
gentleman so well knew how to direct our search, that we scarce ever
lost our labour.
One time, having set us to work, he asked if we would give him leave,
with four or five negroes, to go out for six or seven days to seek his
fortune, and see what he could discover in the country, assuring us
whatever he got should be for the public stock. We all gave him our
consent, and lent him a gun; and two of our men desiring to go with him,
they took then six negroes with them, and two of our buffaloes that
came with us the whole journey; they took about eight days' provision of
bread with them, but no flesh, except about as much dried flesh as would
serve them two days.
They travelled up to the top of the mountains I mentioned just now,
where they saw (as our men afterwards vouched it to be) the same desert
which we were so justly terrified at when we were on the farther side,
and which, by our calculation, could not be less than 300 miles broad
and above 600 miles in length, without knowing where it ended.
The journal of their travels is too long to enter upon here. They
stayed out two-and-fifty days, when they brought us seventeen pound and
something more (for we had no exact weight) of gold-dust, some of it in
much larger pieces than any we had found before, besides about fifteen
ton of elephants' teeth, which he had, partly by good usage and partly
by bad, obliged the savages of the country to fetch, and bring down to
him from the mountains, and which he made others bring with him quite
down to our camp. Indeed, we wondered what was coming to us when we saw
him attended with above 200 negroes; but he soon undeceived us, when he
made them all throw down their burdens on a heap at the entrance of our
camp.
Besides this, they brought two lions' skins, and five leopards' skins,
very large and very fine. He asked our pardon for his long stay, and
that he had made no greater a booty, but told us he had one excursion
more to make, which he hoped should turn to a better account.
So, having rested himself and rewarded the savages that brought the
teeth for him with some bits of silver and iron cut out diamond fashion,
and with two shaped like little dogs, he sent them away mightily
pleased.
The second journey he went, some more of our men desired to go with
him, and they made a troop of ten white men and ten savages, and the two
buffaloes to carry their provisions and ammunition. They took the same
course, only not exactly the same track, and they stayed thirty-two days
only, in which time they killed no less than fifteen leopards, three
lions, and several other creatures, and brought us home four-and-twenty
pound some ounces of gold-dust, and only six elephants' teeth, but they
were very great ones.
Our friend the Englishman showed us that now our time was well bestowed,
for in five months which we had stayed here, we had gathered so much
gold-dust that, when we came to share it, we had five pound and a
quarter to a man, besides what we had before, and besides six or seven
pound weight which we had at several times given our artificer to make
baubles with. And now we talked of going forward to the coast to put an
end to our journey; but our guide laughed at us then. "Nay, you can't go
now," says he, "for the rainy season begins next month, and there will
be no stirring then." This we found, indeed, reasonable, so we resolved
to furnish ourselves with provisions, that we might not be obliged to
go abroad too much in the rain, and we spread ourselves some one way and
some another, as far as we cared to venture, to get provisions; and our
negroes killed us some deer, which we cured as well as we could in the
sun, for we had now no salt.
By this time the rainy months were set in, and we could scarce, for
above two months, look out of our huts. But that was not all, for the
rivers were so swelled with the land-floods, that we scarce knew the
little brooks and rivulets from the great navigable rivers. This had
been a very good opportunity to have conveyed by water, upon rafts, our
elephants' teeth, of which we had a very great pile; for, as we always
gave the savages some reward for their labour, the very women would
bring us teeth upon every opportunity, and sometimes a great tooth
carried between two; so that our quantity was increased to about
two-and-twenty ton of teeth.