The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton

made falsefire with any gun that was uncharged, and they would walk off as soon asthey saw the flash.

  We made pretty good shift for food all this way; for sometimes we killedhares, sometimes some fowls, but for my life I cannot give names toany of them, except a kind of partridge, and another that was like ourturtle. Now and then we began to meet with elephants again in greatnumbers; those creatures delighted chiefly in the woody part of thecountry.

  This long-continued march fatigued us very much, and two of our men fellsick, indeed, so very sick that we thought they would have died; and oneof our negroes died suddenly. Our surgeon said it was an apoplexy, buthe wondered at it, he said, for he could never complain of his highfeeding. Another of them was very ill; but our surgeon with much adopersuading him, indeed it was almost forcing him to be let blood, herecovered.

  We halted here twelve days for the sake of our sick men, and our surgeonpersuaded me and three or four more of us to be let blood during thetime of rest, which, with other things he gave us, contributed very muchto our continued health in so tedious a march and in so hot a climate.

  In this march we pitched our matted tents every night, and they werevery comfortable to us, though we had trees and woods to shelter us inmost places. We thought it very strange that in all this part of thecountry we yet met with no inhabitants; but the principal reason, as wefound afterwards, was, that we, having kept a western course first,and then a northern course, were gotten too much into the middle of thecountry and among the deserts; whereas the inhabitants are principallyfound among the rivers, lakes, and lowlands, as well to the south-westas to the north.

  What little rivulets we found here were so empty of water, that exceptsome pits, and little more than ordinary pools, there was scarcely anywater to be seen in them; and they rather showed that during the rainymonths they had a channel, than that they had really running water inthem at that time, by which it was easy for us to judge that we had agreat way to go; but this was no discouragement so long as we had butprovisions, and some seasonable shelter from the violent heat, whichindeed I thought was much greater now than when the sun was just overour heads.

  Our men being recovered, we set forward again, very well stored withprovisions, and water sufficient, and bending our course a little tothe westward of the north, travelled in hopes of some favourable streamwhich might bear a canoe; but we found none till after twenty days'travel, including eight days' rest; for our men being weak, we restedvery often, especially when we came to places which were proper for ourpurpose, where we found cattle, fowl, or anything to kill for our food.In those twenty days' march we advanced four degrees to the northward,besides some meridian distance westward, and we met with abundance ofelephants, and with a good number of elephants' teeth scattered up anddown, here and there, in the woody grounds especially, some of whichwere very large. But they were no booty to us; our business wasprovisions, and a good passage out of the country; and it had been muchmore to our purpose to have found a good fat deer, and to have killedit for our food, than a hundred ton of elephants' teeth; and yet, asyou shall presently hear, when we came to begin our passage by water, weonce thought to have built a large canoe, on purpose to have loaded itwith ivory; but this was when we knew nothing of the rivers, nor knewanything how dangerous and how difficult a passage it was we were likelyto have in them, nor had considered the weight of carriage to lug themto the rivers where we might embark.

  At the end of twenty days' travel, as above, in the latitude of threedegrees sixteen minutes, we discovered in a valley, at some distancefrom us, a pretty tolerable stream, which we thought deserved the nameof a river, and which ran its course N.N.W., which was just what wewanted. As we had fixed our thoughts upon our passage by water, we tookthis for the place to make the experiment, and bent our march directlyto the valley.

  There was a small thicket of trees just in our way, which we went by,thinking no harm, when on a sudden one of our negroes was dangerouslywounded with an arrow shot into his back, slanting between hisshoulders. This put us to a full stop; and three of our men, with twonegroes, spreading the wood, for it was but a small one, found a negrowith a bow, but no arrow, who would have escaped, but our men thatdiscovered him shot him in revenge of the mischief he had done; so welost the opportunity of taking him prisoner, which, if we had done, andsent him home with good usage, it might have brought others to us in afriendly manner.

  Going a little farther, we came to five negro huts or houses, builtafter a different manner from any we had seen yet; and at the door ofone of them lay seven elephants' teeth, piled up against the wall orside of the hut, as if they had been provided against a market. Herewere no men, but seven or eight women, and near twenty children. Weoffered them no incivility of any kind, but gave them every one a bit ofsilver beaten out thin, as I observed before, and cut diamond fashion,or in the shape of a bird, at which the women were overjoyed, andbrought out to us several sorts of food, which we did not understand,being cakes of a meal made of roots, which they bake in the sun, andwhich ate very well. We went a little way farther and pitched our campfor that night, not doubting but our civility to the women would producesome good effect when their husbands might come home.

  Accordingly, the next morning the women, with eleven men, five youngboys, and two good big girls, came to our camp. Before they came quiteto us, the women called aloud, and made an odd screaming noise to bringus out; and accordingly we came out, when two of the women, showing uswhat we had given them, and pointing to the company behind, made suchsigns as we could easily understand signified friendship. When the menadvanced, having bows and arrows, they laid them down on the ground,scraped and threw sand over their heads, and turned round three timeswith their hands laid up upon the tops of their heads. This, it seems,was a solemn vow of friendship. Upon this we beckoned them with ourhands to come nearer; then they sent the boys and girls to us first,which, it seems, was to bring us more cakes of bread and some greenherbs to eat, which we received, and took the boys up and kissed them,and the little girls too; then the men came up close to us, and sat themdown on the ground, making signs that we should sit down by them, whichwe did. They said much to one another, but we could not understand them,nor could we find any way to make them understand us, much lesswhither we were going, or what we wanted, only that we easily made themunderstand we wanted victuals; whereupon one of the men, casting hiseyes about him towards a rising ground that was about half a mile off,started up as if he was frighted, flew to the place where they had laiddown their bows and arrows, snatched up a bow and two arrows, and ranlike a racehorse to the place. When he came there, he let fly both hisarrows, and comes back again to us with the same speed. We, seeing hecame with the bow, but without the arrows, were the more inquisitive;but the fellow, saying nothing to us, beckons to one of our negroes tocome to him, and we bid him go; so he led him back to the place, wherelay a kind of deer, shot with two arrows, but not quite dead, andbetween them they brought it down to us. This was for a gift to us, andwas very welcome, I assure you, for our stock was low. These people wereall stark naked.

  The next day there came about a hundred men to us, and women making thesame awkward signals of friendship, and dancing, and showing themselvesvery well pleased, and anything they had they gave us. How the manin the wood came to be so butcherly and rude as to shoot at our men,without making any breach first, we could not imagine; for the peoplewere simple, plain, and inoffensive in all our other conversation withthem.

  From hence we went down the banks of the little river I mentioned, andwhere, I found, we should see the whole nation of negroes, but whetherfriendly to us or not, that we could make no judgment of yet.

  The river was no use to us, as to the design of making canoes, a greatwhile; and we traversed the country on the edge of it about five daysmore, when our carpenters, finding the stream increased, proposed topitch our tents, and fall to work to make canoes; but after we had begunthe work, and cut down two or three trees, and spent five days in thelabour, some of our
men, wandering further down the river, brought usword that the stream rather decreased than increased, sinking awayinto the sands, or drying up by the heat of the sun, so that the riverappeared not able to carry the least canoe that could be any way usefulto us; so we were obliged to give over our enterprise and move on.

  In our further prospect this way, we marched three days full west, thecountry on the north side being extraordinary mountainous, and moreparched and dry than any we had seen yet; whereas, in the part whichlooks due west, we found a pleasant valley running a great way betweentwo great ridges of mountains. The hills looked frightful, beingentirely bare of trees or grass, and even white with the dryness of thesand; but in the valley we had trees, grass, and some creatures thatwere fit for food, and some inhabitants.

  We passed by some of their huts or houses, and saw people about them,but they ran up into the hills as soon as they saw us. At the end ofthis valley we met with a peopled