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