Here I found several Germans, who had spent most of the winter in Madeira, four degrees further north, and give the preference to this climate. The accommodations, apartments, and society I have found better there than here.
The town is clean and well paved, with good roads, and a fair hotel. The island is evidently volcanic, as the wild and irregular masses of rock around the town testify.
Camels are here used as beasts of burden, showing conclusively they can be employed over similar roads on the overland routes in the United States, as well as on the sands of the desert.
My intention was, if I arrived in time at Santa Cruz, which I had before visited some years since, to take the West African Coast steamer for the Gambia river, and from thence down to Sierra Leone. In this I was not disappointed; after a few days’ delay I embarked. The steamer from Fernando Po, on her return touched at all the ports along the Grain, Ivory, and Gold Coasts of Guinea, and several passengers were landed and lodged at our hotel. They reported the season as being most favorable for a visit; the fevers, which had desolated the settlements, existed no longer: but their yellow and jaundiced appearance was not encouraging for the traveller. Having been so much in tropical climates, and having had much experience in fevers, I hope to pass unscathed.
On board of the good screw steamer Athenian, with favorable breezes and increasing heat, in four days we made Bathurst, near the mouth of the Gambia River, one thousand miles from Teneriffe. The approach to this English colony up the broad serpentine river is directed by a negro pilot.
The public and private buildings are well and substantially built. The beach on one side is sandy, and the tide leaves a road bed for equestrians at the ebb. The date, mango, and other tropical trees give the place a picturesque appearance. The garrison is composed of English officers, and native black soldiery. The epidemic has made sad work among the whites; out of seventy-one, twenty-one died.
The negro population is upwards of five thousand, who live in reed huts, upon streets laid out at right angles, the different tribes in their respective quarters. They present a curious sight for the European, a fair proportion requiring only the garments of our first parents, Adam and Eve. Mothers carry their young, not unlike the squaws of our Indian tribes, upon their backs, but with this difference, that the little black urchin is nestled in the folds of a cotton shawl or girdle around the waist, the child being in the hollow of the back. The little boys and girls instead of clothing are supplied with strings of beads and amulets, as ornaments, and to keep away the evil spirit.
The river is navigable beyond Macarthy island to the cataracts, which are some one hundred and eighty miles from its mouth, and trading stations are found as high up. There are some thirteen tribes under different chiefs, and several different languages and dialects are spoken. The country is unsafe to travel in without a sufficient force for protection. It was here that Mungo Park, the renowned traveller, commenced his explorations, and it is supposed that he was killed on the Niger, after losing his soldiers and marines by fever and exhaustion. One of our fellow passengers, a colonel in the service, owned a farm ten miles from the town; his house was attacked, several killed, and he had a narrow escape.
I find much hospitality on the part of the inhabitants, which is quite natural when they have a steamer from Europe at long intervals. The Governor of Gambia, Col. D’Arcy, and his interesting wife, to whom I was recommended, offered me their house. I dined with them and passed an evening; breakfasted with our consul, a Brazilian by birth; visited several other of the prominent residents; and rode some miles along the coast, passing by the English burying ground, which seemed fast filling up. The government house belongs to the crown. It is a fine mansion, pleasantly situated among tropical trees and flowering plants. Negro soldiers as sentinels at the gate reminded me in this particular of the entrance to Soulouque’s palace in the island of Hayti.
A number of French vessels are in port loading with ground nuts for making oil; many dry hides are also shipped. The trade of Senegal, the French colony, lying farther north, is of considerable importance. I find here a small vessel loading with peanuts, or ground nuts, for Boston; she hails from Salem. The down-easters are the most enterprising mariners in the world. They are met with in the most remote quarters of the globe. I have found them where I thought no trade could be furnished—up the Red Sea, the Island of Sumatra, Zanzibar, and other places, picking up coffee, spices, gums, and all sorts of products, in exchange for hard biscuits, coarse cotton cloth, lumber, wooden clocks, and an infinity of Yankee notions. The captain of this small vessel is quite a youth; he had his head cut and his nose broken by a mutinous sailor, but he came off victorious.