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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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