Another council was called, for we were touched by the earnest manner of the negroes. Ali-Ninpha and the Fullah were of opinion that the spoil was fairly ours, and should be divided in proportion to the men in both parties. Yet, as our road passed by the objectionable town, it was impossible to carry the slaves along, either in justice to ourselves or them. In this strait, which puzzled the Africans sorely, I came to their relief, by suggesting their dispatch to my factory with orders for the payment of their value in merchandise.
The proposal was quickly assented to as the most feasible, and our fourteen captives were at once divided into two gangs, of seven each. Hoops of bamboo were soon clasped round their waists, while their hands were tied by stout ropes to the hoops. A long tether was then passed with a slip-knot through each rattan belt, so that the slaves were firmly secured to each other, while a small coil was employed to link them more securely in a band by their necks. These extreme precautions were needed, because we dared not diminish our party to guard the gang. Indeed, Ali-Ninpha was only allowed the two interpreters and four of my armed people as his escort to Kya, where, it was agreed, he should deliver the captives to Ibrahim, to be forwarded to my factory, while he hastened to rejoin us at the river Sanghu, where we designed tarrying.
For three days we journeyed through the forest, passing occasionally along the beds of dried-up streams and across lonely tracts of wood which seemed never to have been penetrated, save by the solitary path we were treading. As we were anxious to be speedily reunited with our companions, our steps were not hastened; so that, at the end of the third day, we had not advanced more than thirty miles from the scene of capture, when we reached a small Mandingo village, recently built by an upstart trader, who, with the common envy and pride of his tribe, gave our Fullah caravan a frigid reception. A single hut was assigned to the chief and myself for a dwelling, and the rage of the Mahometan may readily be estimated by an insult that would doom him to sleep beneath the same roof with a Christian!
I endeavored to avert an outburst by apprising the Mandingo that I was a bosom friend of Ali-Ninpha, his countryman and superior, and begged that he would suffer the “head-man” of our caravan to dwell in a house alone. But the impudent parvenu sneered at my advice; “he knew no such person as Ali-Ninpha, and cared not a snap of his finger for a Fullah chief, or a beggarly white man!”
My body-servant was standing by when this tart reply fell from the Mandingo’s lips, and, before I could stop the impetuous youth, he answered the trader with as gross an insult as an African can utter. To this the Mandingo replied by a blow over the boy’s shoulders with the flat of a cutlass; and, in a twinkling, there was a general shout for “rescue” from all my party who happened to witness the scene. Fullahs, Mandingoes, and Soosoos dashed to the spot, with spears, guns, and arrows. The Fullah chief seized my double-barrelled gun and followed the crowd; and when he reached the spot, seeing the trader still waving his cutlass in a menacing manner, he pulled both triggers at the inhospitable savage. Fortunately, however, it was always my custom on arriving in friendly towns, to remove the copper caps from my weapons, so that, when the hammers fell, the gun was silent. Before the Fullah could club the instrument and prostrate the insulter, I rushed between them to prevent murder. This I was happy enough to succeed in; but I could not deter the rival tribe from binding the brute, hand and foot, to a post in the centre of his town, while the majority of our caravan cleared the settlement at once of its fifty or sixty inhabitants.
Of course, we appropriated the dwellings as we pleased, and supplied ourselves with provisions. Moreover, it was thought preferable to wait in this village for Ali-Ninpha, than to proceed onwards towards the borders of the Sanghu. When he arrived, on the second day after the sad occurrence, he did not hesitate to exercise the prerogative of judgment and condemnation always claimed by superior chiefs over inferiors, whenever they consider themselves slighted or wronged. The process in this case was calmly and humanely formed. A regular trial was allowed the culprit. He was arraigned on three charges:—1. Want of hospitality; 2. Cursing and maltreating a Fullah chief and a white Mongo; 3. Disrespect to the name and authority of his countryman and superior, Ali-Ninpha. On all these articles the prisoner was found guilty; but, as there were neither slaves nor personal property by which the ruffian could be mulcted for his crimes, the tribunal adjudged him to be scourged with fifty lashes, and to have his “town-fence or stockade destroyed, never to be rebuilt.” The blows were inflicted for the abuse, but the perpetual demolition of his defensive barrier was in punishment for refused hospitality. Such is the summary process by which social virtues are inculcated and enforced among these interior tribes of Africa!
It required three days for our refreshed caravan to reach the dry and precipitous bed of the Sanghu, which I found impossible to pass with my horse, in consequence of jagged rocks and immense boulders that covered its channel. But the men were resolved that my convenient animal should not be left behind. Accordingly, all hands went to work with alacrity on the trees, and in a day, they bridged the ravine with logs bound together by ropes made from twisted bark. Across this frail and swaying fabric I urged the horse with difficulty; but hardly had he reached the opposite bank, and recovered from his nervous tremor, when I was surprised by an evident anxiety in the beast to return to his swinging pathway. The guides declared it to be an instinctive warning of danger from wild beasts with which the region is filled; and, even while we spoke, two of the scouts who were in advance selecting ground for our camp, returned with the carcasses of a deer and leopard. Though meat had not passed our lips for five days, we were in no danger of starvation; the villages teemed with fruits and vegetables. Pine-apples, bananas, and a pulpy globe resembling the peach in form and flavor, quenched our thirst and satisfied our hunger.
Besides these, our greedy natives foraged in the wilderness for nourishment unknown, or at least unused, by civilized folks. They found comfort in barks of various trees, as well as in buds, berries, and roots, some of which they devoured raw, while others were either boiled or made into palatable decoctions with water that gurgled from every hill. The broad valleys and open country supplied animal and vegetable “delicacies” which a white man would pass unnoticed. Many a time, when I was as hungry as a wolf, I found my vagabonds in a nook of the woods, luxuriating over a mess with the unctuous lips of aldermen; but when I came to analyze the stew, I generally found it to consist of a “witch’s cauldron,” copiously filled with snails, lizards, iguanas, frogs and alligators!