XV.
AN ANTI-SLAVERY DOCUMENT ON BLACK PARCHMENT.
Penn was not surprised at this discovery. He had already recognized in Pomp the hero of a story which he had heard before.
"But all this happened before I came to Tennessee, did it not? Have you lived in this cave ever since?"
"It is three years since I took to the mountains. But I have spent but a little of that time here. Sometimes, for weeks together, I am away, tramping the hills, exploring the forests, sleeping on the ground in the open air, living on fish, game, and fruits. That is in the summer time. Winters I burrow here."
"If you are so independent in your movements, why have you never escaped to the north?"
"Would I be any better off there? Does not the color of a negro's skin, even in your free states, render him an object of suspicion and hatred? What chance is there for a man like me?"
"Little—very true!" said Penn, sadly, contemplating the form of the powerful and intelligent black, and thinking with indignation and shame of the prejudice which excludes men of his race from the privileges of free men, even in the free north.
"These crags," said the African, "do not look scornfully upon me because of the color of my skin. The watercourses sing for me their gladdest songs, black as I am. And the serious trees seem to love me, even as I love them. It is a savage, lonely, but not unhappy life I lead—far better for a man like me than servitude here, or degradation at the north. I have one faithful human friend at least. Cudjo, cunning and capricious as he seems, is capable of genuine devotion."
"Have you two been together long?"