Whilst some employed themselves in kindling a fire, others were busy in digging up and down amongst the grass. I could not conceive what they were doing at first; but I soon observed one of them pulling out of the ground a long white root, which I found was a yam, having seen many of them at Bengal; they soon furnished themselves with a sufficient quantity. I perceived they grew wild without any cultivation: some of them were a yard long at least, and about six or seven inches in circumference; they obliged me with some of them, which I roasted, and eat with a great deal of pleasure, instead of bread, with my beef: they are very agreeable to the taste, as well as wholesome food.
We arrived that evening at a small town, which we no sooner entered than the women and children flocked round about me, pinched me, struck me on the back with their fists, and showed several other tokens of their derision and contempt; at which I could not forbear weeping, as it was not in my power to express my resentment any other way; but when my guardian observed it, he came to my assistance and freed me from my persecutors. All the houses that were empty were taken up by my master, his brother, and other head-men; so that my guardian and I lay exposed to the open air. The ill treatment I met with from the women and children, put a thousand distracting thoughts into my head. Sometimes I imagined that I might be preserved alive for no other purpose, than to be carried to the king and his son, who would, in all probability, be fired with resentment at our late seizing of them, and making them prisoners; then, again, I thought that to gratify their pleasure and revenge, they would order me to be put to death before their faces by slow degrees, and the most exquisite torments. Such melancholy reflections as these so disordered me that when once through weariness I fell into a slumber I had a dream which so terrified me that I started upright, and trembled every joint of me; in short, I could not get one wink of sleep all the night long.
When it was broad daylight we marched homeward (for now I must call it so) and in three or four hours’ time we arrived at a considerable town, with three or four tamarind trees before it. One of the negroes carried a large shell, which, when he blew, sounded like a post-boy’s horn. This brought the women to a spacious house in the middle of the town, about twelve feet high, which I soon perceived was my master’s. No sooner had he seated himself at the door, than his wife came out crawling on her hands and knees till she came to him, and then licked his feet; and when she had thus testified her duty and respects, his mother paid him the like compliment, and all the women in the town saluted their husbands in the same manner: then each man went to his respective habitation, my master’s brother only excepted; who though he had a house, had no wife to receive him, and so he stayed behind.
My mistress intimated by her motions that she would have me go in and sit down. A great deal of serious discourse passed between my master and her, and though I knew nothing of what they said, yet by her looking so earnestly at me whilst he was talking, I conjectured he was relating to her our tragical tale, and I perceived that the tears frequently stood in her eyes. This conference over, she ordered some carravances to be boiled for our dinner; a kind of pulse, much like our grey pease: she gave me some, but as they had been boiled in dirty water, I could not eat them. She, perceiving I did not like them, strained them off the water and put some milk to them, and after that I made a tolerable meal of them. She gave me not only a mat to lie down upon, but a piece of calico likewise about two yards in length to cover me. She intimated that she wanted to know my name, which I told her was Robin. Having received so much civility from my mistress, I began to be much better satisfied than I was at first; and then laid me down and slept without any fear or concern about four hours, as near as I could guess by the sun. When I waked my mistress called me by my name, and gave me some milk to drink. She talked for some considerable time to me, but I could not understand one word she said. My master was all this time with his brother at the door regaling themselves with toake.
When night came on I perceived that I was to lie with them, for there was no other room. My master and mistress lay in the middle, and the whole house was not above fourteen feet in length, and twelve in breadth, so that I lay crosswise close to his feet: in this odd manner we lay three or four nights successively. At last he called me by my name several times to know, I presume, whether I was awake or not; but as I answered him whenever he called, I imagined he would have been better pleased if I had slept soundly, and had not heard him at all; for the next evening he carried me to his aunt’s house, where he told me I must lie for the future. There I remained both day and night, and did little but walk out with her and her daughter to visit the plantations which had been lately sown with Guinea corn and potatoes. In the evening I used to visit my master and mistress, and for supper I generally had milk, which was sometimes fresh and sometimes sour. They were not over fond of putting me to work, as I could do them but little service, being altogether a stranger to what was said to me, and more especially as he had above two hundred slaves always ready to answer his occasions.
My master, whose name was deaan Mevarrow, was grandson to deaan Crindo, who was absolute lord of this country, and his wife was the daughter of a northern king whom they had conquered in battle, and she was one of my master’s captives. For this reason I presume it was that she took so much compassion upon me; considering herself a slave in a strange country, and only preferred to my master’s bed by courtesy.
In a short time I began to reconcile myself to their manner of eating, since no better provision I found was to be had, only I would strip off some of the hair from the hide of the beef, whenever I could do it without being observed. I used often to reflect on my brother and sister’s more agreeable manner of living at my father’s table; being conscious that even some beggars in England fared much better than I did here. However as I found nobody lived better, I made myself as easy as I could; I was now under no apprehensions of being killed till an accident happened soon after, which put me into a violent panic for about an hour. My master, attended by several of his slaves, took me with him one evening into the woods; I observed great preparations made for killing and dressing a bullock or some such thing, but there being none to kill, and it being then dark, I perceived that they walked about with great circumspection, talked softly, and testified all the symptoms of some secret design; upon this the tears stood in my eyes, imagining that they intended to cut me up and make a meal of me, but my fright was soon over when I saw two slaves hauling along a bullock by a rope fastened to his horns, and my master sticking his lance into his throat in order to despatch him. They immediately cut up his carcass and dressed the entrails after their own manner. The booty was equally divided, and I observed that each man took care to hide his portion in some private place, from whence he might convey it away by night. As soon as our business was over we parted, some one way and some another, for fear of being taken notice of. I now plainly perceived that we were all this time plundering of our neighbours. I often wondered indeed that the aunt with whom I lived, dressed meat so often in the nighttime, but this unravelled the mystery; this was not the only time I was forced to assist in this clandestine practice.
In about four months’ time I began to have some tolerable notion of their language; I knew the names of most common things, and could express myself so as to be understood. My master and mistress took me one day into the plantations, where the slaves were hoeing the weeds from the carravances, that were just shooting up. They gave me a hoe, but I had no inclination to work; I pretended to be very ignorant and hoed up plants and weeds together, at which they laughed heartily, and took away my hoe to prevent more mischief.
This artifice, however, proved of but little service to me, for my master perceiving that I either could not or would not work in the plantations, was determined to employ me some other way, and about such business as I could not well do amiss. Accordingly the next day he showed me his cattle, and told me I must take care of them, drive them to water, and see that they did not break either his own or any other neighbour’s plantations. This business I liked much better than the other, because there were three or four lads more of this town about my age, who had cattle to attend to as well as myself. What I disliked most was, that we had a very considerable way to drive them to water, and at night to drive them back again; besides I was obliged to drag home a long tub which held about three gallons; for all the water we used in the house was fetched from this watering place. However we had no just cause of complaint, for we joined our herds together, and in the heat of the day, when the cattle would lie down in the shade, we had three or four hours’ time to ramble through the woods and gather yams. I had been thus long in the country, yet I never knew how they struck fire, till wanting to roast some of my yams, I asked my comrades where their fire was; they showed me their hands and laughing, said, here it is, but one of them soon informed me how to do it. He took one short round stick about half the length of a gun rammer, and another considerably thicker, but both of one sort of wood, and rubbed the former upon the latter till there came a dust from it first, then a smoke, and soon fire after.
We sometimes traversed the woods and stole people’s honey, and eat it just as we found it. When we could spare time, we used to look for a creature which I call a ground-hog, and which in their language is called tondruck; it is about the size of a cat, snout, eyes, and ears are like an English hog’s, it has bristles on its back but no tail, the feet of it are like a rabbit’s; its principal food is beetles and young snails, which they grub up with their snouts; they are very prolific, and have above twenty young ones at a litter, to all which they give suck. In the cold season of the year (for though there is no time which can properly be called winter, yet one part of the year is sensibly much colder than the other) these creatures hide themselves in the ground in a most surprising manner. They first dig a hole about two feet deep directly in the earth, and after that they work obliquely two or three feet one way, and as much another, making angles; though they throw the earth up with their fore feet, yet they make it as firm with their hind feet as if no passage had been ever made. When they have worked in this manner for some time, they then work aslant, upwards, till they get within half a foot of the surface: there they make a kind of lodgment, just big enough for them to turn themselves round in, where they lie for four or five months successively without any sustenance whatsoever; and what is still more strange, they are as fat at the expiration of that term as when they first went in. It is no small difficulty to catch them, for when we have discovered some marks of the place where we imagine they began to burrow, we are often disappointed in digging after them; they work so artfully, that we know not which way to find out their secret recesses; but we spare no pains to take them, for they are excellent food, and their skin when dressed is as brown and crisp as a pig’s. Their hedgehogs too are agreeable enough, but nothing near so delicious as their tondrucks; these conceal themselves all the cold winter in holes of trees, where they remain for some months without any visible support.