These two fellows had not been gone out above three or four hours, but
one of them came running to us without his bow and arrows, hallooing and
whooping a great while before he came at us, "Okoamo, okoamo!" which,
it seems, was, "Help, help!" The rest of the negroes rose up in a hurry,
and by twos, as they could, ran forward towards their fellows, to know
what the matter was. As for me, I did not understand it, nor any of our
people; the prince looked as if something unlucky had fallen out, and
some of our men took up their arms to be ready on occasion. But the
negroes soon discovered the thing, for we saw four of them presently
after coming along with a great load of meat upon their backs. The case
was, that the two who went out with their bows and arrows, meeting with
a great herd of deer in the plain, had been so nimble as to shoot three
of them, and then one of them came running to us for help to fetch them
away. This was the first venison we had met with in all our march, and
we feasted upon it very plentifully; and this was the first time we
began to prevail with our prince to eat his meat dressed our way; after
which his men were prevailed with by his example, but before that, they
ate most of the flesh they had quite raw.
We wished now we had brought some bows and arrows out with us, which we
might have done; and we began to have so much confidence in our negroes,
and to be so familiar with them, that we oftentimes let them go, or the
greatest part of them, untied, being well assured they would not leave
us, and that they did not know what course to take without us; but one
thing we resolved not to trust them with, and that was the charging our
guns: but they always believed our guns had some heavenly power in them,
that would send forth fire and smoke, and speak with a dreadful noise,
and kill at a distance whenever we bid them.
In about eight days we finished three canoes, and in them we embarked
our white men and our baggage, with our prince, and some of the
prisoners. We also found it needful to keep some of ourselves always on
shore, not only to manage the negroes, but to defend them from enemies
and wild beasts. Abundance of little incidents happened upon this march,
which it is impossible to crowd into this account; particularly, we
saw more wild beasts now than we did before, some elephants, and two or
three lions, none of which kinds we had seen any of before; and we
found our negroes were more afraid of them a great deal than we were;
principally, because they had no bows and arrows, or lances, which were
the particular weapons they were bred up to the exercise of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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