Matters continued in this way for nearly two years, during which the British kept up so vigilant a blockade at Cape Mount and Gallinas, that the slavers had rarely a chance to enter a vessel or run a cargo. In time, the barracoons became so gorged, that the slavers began to build their own schooners. When the A—— was sold, I managed to retain her long-boat in my service, but such was now the value of every egg-shell on the coast, that her owner despatched a carpenter from Gallinas, who, in a few days, decked, rigged, and equipped her for sea. She was twenty-three feet long, four feet deep, and five feet beam, so that, when afloat, her measurement could not have exceeded four tons. Yet, on a dark and stormy night, she dropped down the river, and floated out to sea through the besieging lines, with thirty-three black boys, two sailors, and a navigator. In less than forty days she transported the whole of her living freight across the Atlantic to Bahia. The negroes almost perished from thirst, but the daring example was successfully followed during the succeeding year, by skiffs of similar dimensions.
I can hardly hope that a narrative of my dull routine, while I lingered on the coast, entirely aloof from the slave-trade, would either interest or instruct the general reader. The checkered career I have already exposed, has portrayed almost every phase of African life. If I am conscious of any thing during my domicile at Cape Mount, it is of a sincere desire to prosper by lawful and honorable thrift. But, between the native wars, the turmoil of intruding slavers, and the suspicions of the English, every thing went wrong. The friendship of the colonists at Cape Palmas and Monrovia was still unabated; appeals were made by missionaries for my influence with the tribes; coasters called on me as usual for supplies; yet, with all these encouragements for exertion, I must confess that my experiment was unsuccessful.
Nor was this all. I lost my cutter, laden with stores and merchandise for my factory. A vessel, filled with rice and lumber for my ship-yard, was captured on suspicion, and, though sent across the Atlantic for adjudication, was dismissed uncondemned. The sudden death of a British captain from Sierra Leone, deprived me of three thousand dollars. Fana-Toro made numerous assaults on his foes, all of which failed; and, to cap the climax of my ills, on returning after a brief absence, I found that a colonist, whom I had rescued from misery and employed in my forge, had fled to the enemy, carrying with him a number of my most useful servants.
It was about this time that circumstances obliged me to make a rapid voyage to New York and back to Africa, where the blind goddess had another surprise in store for me. During my absence, our ancient king was compelled to make a treaty with his rival, who, under the name of George Cain, dwelt formerly among the American colonists and acquired our language. It was by treachery alone that Fana-Toro had been dragooned into an arrangement, by which my quondam blacksmith, who married a sister of Cain, was elevated to the dignity of prince George’s premier!
Both these scamps, with a troop of their followers, planted themselves on my premises near the beach, and immediately let me understand that they were my sworn enemies. Cain could not pardon the aid I gave to Fana-Toro in his earlier conflicts, nor would the renegade colonist forsake his kinsman or the African barbarism, into which he had relapsed.
By degrees, these varlets, whom I was unable, in my crippled condition, to dislodge, obtained the ears of the British commanders, and poured into them every falsehood that could kindle their ire. The Spanish factory of Fana-Toro’s agent was reported to be mine. The shipment in the A—— and the adventure of her boat, were said to be mine. Another suspected clipper was declared to be mine. These, and a hundred lies of equal baseness, were adroitly purveyed to the squadron by the outlaws, and, in less than a month, my fame was as black as the skin of my traducers. Still, even at this distant day, I may challenge my worst enemy on the coast to prove that I participated, after 1839, in the purchase of a single slave for transportation beyond the sea!
From the moment that the first dwelling was erected at New Florence, I carefully enforced the most rigid decorum between the sexes throughout my jurisdiction. It was the boast of our friends at Cape Palmas and Monrovia, that my grounds were free from the debauchery, which, elsewhere in Africa, was unhappily too common. I have had the honor to entertain at my table at Cape Mount, not only the ordinary traders of the coast, but commodores of French squadrons, commanders of British and American cruisers, governors of colonies, white and colored missionaries, as well as innumerable merchants of the first respectability, and I have yet to meet the first of them, in any part of the world, who can redden my cheek with a blush.
But such was not the case at the Cape after Cain and Curtis became the pets of the cruisers, and converted the beach into a brothel.[10]
After a brief sojourn at my quarters to repair “The Chancellor,” in which I had come with a cargo from the United States, I hastened towards Gallinas to dispose of our merchandise. We had been already boarded by an American officer, who reported us to his superior as a regular merchantman; yet, such were the malicious representations on the beach against the vessel and myself, that the Dolphin tarried a month at the anchorage to watch our proceedings. When I went to the old mart of Don Pedro, a cruiser dogged us; when I sailed to leeward of Cape Palmas for oil and ivory, another took charge of our movements,—anchoring where we anchored, getting under way when we did, and following us into every nook and corner. At Grand Buttoa, I took “The Chancellor” within a reef of rocks, and here I was left to proceed as I pleased, while the British cruiser returned to Cape Mount.