The Sumter arrived on the coast in October, 1859, making her first anchorage in the lovely harbor on the west side of Prince's Island. That island, in about 1° 30' north latitude, covered with all the luxuriance of tropical growth and verdure, and broken into every conceivable shape of pinnacle, castellated rock and chasm, and frowning precipice, streaked with silvery threads of leaping streams in their dash to the sea, is indeed one of the most enchanting spots the eye ever rested on. The chief inhabitant of the lovely isle was Madame Ferrara, a woman of French extraction, who lived alone in a big, rambling house, surrounded by slaves, who cultivated her plantations and prepared the cocoa, palm oil, yams, and cocoanuts, for the trade that sought her doors.
Filling up with water, the Sumter proceeded to the island of Fernando Po, a Spanish possession close in to the mainland, in the Bight of Biafra, where she met several English and French men-of-war, and received orders for her future movements.
The first thing to do, in accordance with the custom of the squadron, was the enlisting of fifteen or twenty negroes, known as Kroomen, whose home is in the Kroo country in upper Guinea, just south of Liberia. They did all the heavy boat-work of the ship, thus lightening the work of the crew, and saving them as much as possible from exposure to the effects of the deadly climate. Great, strapping, muscular fellows, many of them, with forms that an Apollo might envy, they were trained from infancy to be as much at home in the water as upon the land, and could swim a dozen leagues at sea or pull at the oar all day long without seeming fatigue. Wonderfully expert in their handling of boats, especially in the heavy surf that rolls in upon the coast with ceaseless volume and resistless power, its perilous line almost unbroken by a good harbor, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Gibraltar, their services in communicating with the shore were simply invaluable. The head Kroomen exercised despotic power over their respective gangs, and the men were given fanciful names, and so entered on the purser's books. Bottle-o'-Beer, Jack Frying-Pan, Tom Bobstay, Upside Down, and the like, were favorite names; and our fun-loving young sailing-master hints, in his letters of the time, that the archives of the fourth auditor's office at Washington may possibly embalm the names of certain Annapolis belles that had been borne by some of these sable folk!
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The cruising ground embraced the coasts of Upper and Lower Guinea, and the coast of Biafra, with occasional visits of recruit and recreation to Cape Town and St. Helena. The work was arduous, monotonous, and exhausting, especially during the rainy season, when the decks were continually deluged with water, and dry clothing was the exception, not the rule. The weather was always hot, often damp and sultry, and the atmosphere on shore so pestilential, that no one was permitted to remain there after sundown. But that rule was no deprivation, as the dangers of the passage through the relentless breakers, alive with sharks, were so great, that few cared to visit the shore except when absolutely necessary. The vessels cruised mostly in sight of the coast to watch the movements of the merchantmen, all more or less under suspicion as slavers, watching their chances to get off with a cargo. On one hand was the rounded horizon dipping into the broad Atlantic; on the other, the angry line of rollers with their thunderous roar, backed by white beach and dense forest, with occasional glimpses of blue hills in the distant interior. This and nothing more, from day to day, save when a small village of thatched huts came into view, adding a scant feature to the landscape; or a solitary canoe outside the line of breakers; or strange sail to seaward; or school of porpoises, leaping and blowing, windward bound; or hungry shark prowling round the ship, lent momentary interest to the watery solitude. It was a privilege to fall in with another cruiser, whether of our own or of the English flag. On such occasions, down would go the boats for the exchange of visits, the comparison of notes, and sometimes the discussion of a dinner. The English officers had numerous captures and handsome sums of prize- money to tell of, while our people, as a rule, could only talk of hopes and possibilities. Our laws regulating captures were as inflexible as the Westminster Catechism, and a captain could not detain a vessel without great risk of civil damages, unless slaves were actually on board. Suspected ships might have all the fittings and infamous equipage for the slave traffic on board, but if their masters produced correct papers the vessels could not be touched; and our officers not infrequently had the mortification of learning that ships they had overhauled, and believed to be slavers, but could not seize under their instructions, got off the coast eventually with large cargoes of ebon humanity on board.
Not so with the English commanders, whose instructions enabled them to take and send to their prize-courts all vessels, except those under the American flag, under the slightest showing of nefarious character; and their hauls of prize-money were rich and frequent.
The intercourse with the English officers, notes Master Perkins, at first cordial and agreeable, became, after a few months, cold and indifferent. Her Majesty's officers no longer cared to show politeness or friendly feeling. The first premonitions of the Rebellion in the John Brown raid, the break-up of the democracy at Charleston, and the violence of the Southern press concerning the probable results of the pending presidential election, convincing them that the long- predicted and wished-for day--the breaking up of the Republic--was nigh at hand, and their real feelings as Englishmen cropped out but too plainly; but of this, more anon.
Despite the perils of the surf, the dangers of the inhospitable climate, and the unfriendly character of some of the savage tribes to be met with, the adventurous spirit and dauntless courage of Master Perkins was not to be balked. Volunteering for every duty, no matter how dangerous, hardly a boat ever left the ship that he was not in it. The life of the mess through his unfailing good humor and exuberant flow of spirits, he was the soul of every expedition, whether of service or pleasure; and before the cruise of some twenty-two months was up, he came to know almost every prominent tribe, chief, and king on the coast. Now dining with a king off the strangest of viands; now holding "palaver" with another; now spending a day with a chief and his numerous wives; now visiting a French barracoon, where, under a fiction of law, the victims were collected to be shipped as unwilling apprentices, not slaves, to be returned to their native wilds, if they lived long enough; now ascending a river dangerous for boats, where, if the boat had capsized, himself and crew would but have served a morning's meal to the hungry sharks held as fetich by the natives along the stream, who yearly sacrifice young girls reared for the purpose to their propitiation; now scouring the bush in pursuit of the gorilla or shooting hippopotami by the half-dozen, and other adventures and exploits wherein duty, excitement, and gratified curiosity were intermingled with danger and hairbreadth escape that few would care to tempt.