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