them for a mile or two by land upon our shoulders.
Upon this we gave over the thoughts of our frigate, and hauling her intoa little cove or inlet, where a small brook came into the main river,we laid her up for those that came next, and marched forward. We spentindeed two days dividing our baggage, and loading our tame buffaloesand our negroes. Our powder and shot, which was the thing we were mostcareful of, we ordered thus:--First, the powder we divided into littleleather bags, that is to say, bags of dried skins, with the hair inward,that the powder might not grow damp; and then we put those bags intoother bags, made of bullocks' skins, very thick and hard, with the hairoutward, that no wet might come in; and this succeeded so well, that inthe greatest rains we had, whereof some were very violent and very long,we always kept our powder dry. Besides these bags, which held our chiefmagazine, we divided to every one a quarter of a pound of powder, andhalf a pound of shot, to carry always about us; which, as it was enoughfor our present use, so we were willing to have no weight to carry morethan was absolutely necessary, because of the heat.
We kept still on the bank of the river, and for that reason had but verylittle communication with the people of the country; for, having alsoour bark stored with plenty of provisions, we had no occasion to lookabroad for a supply; but now, when we came to march on foot, we wereobliged often to seek out for food. The first place we came to on theriver, that gave us any stop, was a little negro town, containing aboutfifty huts, and there appeared about 400 people, for they all came outto see us, and wonder at us. When our negroes appeared the inhabitantsbegan to fly to arms, thinking there had been enemies coming upon them;but our negroes, though they could not speak their language, made signsto them that they had no weapons, and were tied two and two together ascaptives, and that there were people behind who came from the sun, andthat could kill them all, and make them alive again, if they pleased;but that they would do them no hurt, and came with peace. As soon asthey understood this they laid down their lances, and bows and arrows,and came and stuck twelve large stakes in the ground as a token ofpeace, bowing themselves to us in token of submission. But as soon asthey saw white men with beards, that is to say, with mustachios, theyran screaming away, as in a fright.
We kept at a distance from them, not to be too familiar; and when we didappear it was but two or three of us at a time. But our prisonersmade them understand that we required some provisions of them; sothey brought us some black cattle, for they have abundance of cows andbuffaloes all over that side of the country, as also great numbers ofdeer. Our cutler, who had now a great stock of things of his handiwork,gave them some little knick-knacks, as plates of silver and of iron,cut diamond fashion, and cut into hearts and into rings, and they weremightily pleased. They also brought several fruits and roots, which wedid not understand, but our negroes fed heartily on them, and after wehad seen them eat them, we did so too.
Having stocked ourselves here with flesh and root as much as we couldwell carry, we divided the burthens among our negroes, appointing aboutthirty to forty pounds weight to a man, which we thought indeed was loadenough in a hot country; and the negroes did not at all repine at it,but would sometimes help one another when they began to be weary, whichdid happen now and then, though not often; besides, as most of theirluggage was our provision, it lightened every day, like Aesop's basketof bread, till we came to get a recruit.--Note, when we loaded them weuntied their hands, and tied them two and two together by one foot.
The third day of our march from this place our chief carpenter desiredus to halt, and set up some huts, for he had found out some trees thathe liked, and resolved to make us some canoes; for, as he told me, heknew we should have marching enough on foot after we left the river, andhe was resolved to go no farther by land than needs must.
We had no sooner given orders for our little camp, and given leave toour negroes to lay down their loads, but they fell to work to build ourhuts; and though they were tied as above, yet they did it so nimbly assurprised us. Here we set some of the negroes quite at liberty, that isto say, without tying them, having the prince's word passed for theirfidelity; and some of these were ordered to help the carpenters, whichthey did very handily, with a little direction, and others were sentto see whether they could get any provisions near hand; but instead ofprovisions, three of them came in with two bows and arrows, and fivelances. They could not easily make us understand how they came by them,only that they had surprised some negro women, who were in some huts,the men being from home, and they had found the lances and bows in thehuts, or houses, the women and children flying away at the sight ofthem, as from robbers. We seemed very angry at them, and made the princeask them if they had not killed any of the women or children, makingthem believe that, if they had killed anybody, we would make them killthemselves too; but they protested their innocence, so we excused them.Then they brought us the bows and arrows and lances; but, at a motion oftheir black prince, we gave them back the bows and arrows, and gave themleave to go out to see what they could kill for food; and here we gavethem the laws of arms, viz., that if any man appeared to assault them,or shoot at them to offer any violence to them, they might kill them;but that they should not offer to kill or hurt any that offered thempeace, or laid down their weapons, nor any women or children, upon anyoccasion whatsoever. These were our articles of war.
These two fellows had not been gone out above three or four hours, butone of them came running to us without his bow and arrows, hallooing andwhooping a great while before he came at us, "Okoamo, okoamo!" which,it seems, was, "Help, help!" The rest of the negroes rose up in a hurry,and by twos, as they could, ran forward towards their fellows, to knowwhat the matter was. As for me, I did not understand it, nor any of ourpeople; the prince looked as if something unlucky had fallen out, andsome of our men took up their arms to be ready on occasion. But thenegroes soon discovered the thing, for we saw four of them presentlyafter coming along with a great load of meat upon their backs. The casewas, that the two who went out with their bows and arrows, meeting witha great herd of deer in the plain, had been so nimble as to shoot threeof them, and then one of them came running to us for help to fetch themaway. This was the first venison we had met with in all our march, andwe feasted upon it very plentifully; and this was the first time webegan to prevail with our prince to eat his meat dressed our way; afterwhich his men were prevailed with by his example, but before that, theyate most of the flesh they had quite raw.
We wished now we had brought some bows and arrows out with us, which wemight have done; and we began to have so much confidence in our negroes,and to be so familiar with them, that we oftentimes let them go, or thegreatest part of them, untied, being well assured they would not leaveus, and that they did not know what course to take without us; but onething we resolved not to trust them with, and that was the charging ourguns: but they always believed our guns had some heavenly power in them,that would send forth fire and smoke, and speak with a dreadful noise,and kill at a distance whenever we bid them.
In about eight days we finished three canoes, and in them we embarkedour white men and our baggage, with our prince, and some of theprisoners. We also found it needful to keep some of ourselves always onshore, not only to manage the negroes, but to defend them from enemiesand wild beasts. Abundance of little incidents happened upon this march,which it is impossible to crowd into this account; particularly, wesaw more wild beasts now than we did before, some elephants, and two orthree lions, none of which kinds we had seen any of before; and wefound our negroes were more afraid of them a great deal than we were;principally, because they had no bows and arrows, or lances, which werethe particular weapons they were bred up to the exercise of.
But we cured them of their fears by being always ready with ourfirearms. However, as we were willing to be sparing of our powder, andthe killing of any of the creatures now was no advantage to us, seeingtheir skins were too heavy for us to carry, and their flesh not good toeat, we resolved therefore to keep some of our pieces uncharged and onl
yprimed; and causing them to flash in the pan, the beasts, even thelions themselves, would always start and fly back when they saw it, andimmediately march off.
We passed abundance of inhabitants upon this upper part of the river,and with this observation, that almost every ten miles we came to aseparate nation, and every separate nation had a different speech,or else their speech had differing dialects, so that they did notunderstand one another. They all abounded in cattle, especially on theriver-side; and the eighth day of this second navigation we met witha little negro town, where they had growing a sort of corn like rice,which ate very sweet; and, as we got some of it of the people, we madevery good cakes of bread of it, and, making a fire, baked them on theground, after the fire was swept away, very well; so that hitherto wehad no want of provisions of any kind that we could desire.
Our negroes towing our canoes, we travelled at a considerable rate, andby our own account could