Consulting thus with ourselves, we resolved to take the prince, and as
many of the prisoners as we could stow in our frigate, and go about
by the bay into the river; and that eight of us, with our arms, should
march by land to meet them on the river side; for the prince, carrying
us to a rising ground, had showed us the river very plain, a great way
up the country, and in one place it was not above six miles to it.
It was my lot to march by land, and be captain of the whole caravan.
I had eight of our men with me, and seven-and-thirty of our prisoners,
without any baggage, for all our luggage was yet on board. We drove the
young bulls with us; nothing was ever so tame, so willing to work, or
carry anything. The negroes would ride upon them four at a time, and
they would go very willingly. They would eat out of our hand, lick our
feet, and were as tractable as a dog.
We drove with us six or seven cows for food; but our negroes knew
nothing of curing the flesh by salting and drying it till we showed them
the way, and then they were mighty willing to do so as long as we had
any salt to do it with, and to carry salt a great way too, after we
found we should have no more.
It was an easy march to the river side for us that went by land, and
we came thither in a piece of a day, being, as above, no more than six
English miles; whereas it was no less than five days before they came
to us by water, the wind in the bay having failed them, and the way, by
reason of a great turn or reach in the river, being about fifty miles
about.
We spent this time in a thing which the two strangers, which brought the
prince the two lances, put into the head of the prisoners, viz., to make
bottles of the goats' skins to carry fresh water in, which it seems they
knew we should come to want; and the men did it so dexterously, having
dried skins fetched them by those two men, that before our vessel came
up, they had every man a pouch like a bladder, to carry fresh water in,
hanging over their shoulders by a thong made of other skins, about three
inches broad, like the sling of a fuzee.
Our prince, to assure us of the fidelity of the men in this march,
had ordered them to be tied two and two by the wrist, as we handcuff
prisoners in England; and made them so sensible of the reasonableness of
it, that he made them do it themselves, appointing four of them to bind
the rest; but we found them so honest, and particularly so obedient
to him, that after we were gotten a little further off of their own
country, we set them at liberty, though, when he came to us, he would
have them tied again, and they continued so a good while.
All the country on the bank of the river was a high land, no marshy
swampy ground in it; the verdure good, and abundance of cattle feeding
upon it wherever we went, or which way soever we looked; there was
not much wood indeed, at least not near us; but further up we saw oak,
cedar, and pine-trees, some of which were very large.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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