country, and at first it put us tosome doubt whether we should go among them, or keep up towards the hillsnortherly; and as our aim was principally as before, to make our way tothe river Niger, we inclined to the latter, pursuing our course by thecompass to the N.W. We marched thus without interruption seven daysmore, when we met with a surprising circumstance much more desolate anddisconsolate than our own, and which, in time to come, will scarce seemcredible.
We did not much seek the conversing, or acquainting ourselves with thenatives of the country, except where we found the want of them for ourprovision, or their direction for our way; so that, whereas we foundthe country here begin to be very populous, especially towards our lefthand, that is, to the south, we kept at the more distance northerly,still stretching towards the west.
In this tract we found something or other to kill and eat, which alwayssupplied our necessity, though not so well as we were provided in ourfirst setting out; being thus, as it were, pushing to avoid a peopledcountry, we at last came to a very pleasant, agreeable stream of water,not big enough to be called a river, but running to the N.N.W., whichwas the very course we desired to go.
On the farthest bank of this brook, we perceived some huts of negroes,not many, and in a little low spot of ground, some maize, or Indiancorn, growing, which intimated presently to us, that there were someinhabitants on that side less barbarous than what we had met with inother places where we had been.
As we went forward, our whole caravan being in a body, our negroes, whowere in the front, cried out, that they saw a white man! We were notmuch surprised at first, it being, as we thought, a mistake of thefellows, and asked them what they meant; when one of them stepped to me,and pointing to a hut on the other side of the hill, I was astonished tosee a white man indeed, but stark naked, very busy near the door of hishut, and stooping down to the ground with something in his hand, as ifhe had been at some work; and his back being towards us, he did not seeus.
I gave notice to our negroes to make no noise, and waited till some moreof our men were come up, to show the sight to them, that they might besure I was not mistaken; and we were soon satisfied of the truth, forthe man, having heard some noise, started up, and looked full at us, asmuch surprised, to be sure, as we were, but whether with fear or hope,we then knew not.
As he discovered us, so did the rest of the inhabitants belonging to thehuts about him, and all crowded together, looking at us at a distance, alittle bottom, in which the brook ran, lying between us; the white man,and all the rest, as he told us afterwards, not knowing well whetherthey should stay or run away. However, it presently came into mythoughts, that if there were white men among them, it would be mucheasier to make them understand what we meant as to peace or war, thanwe found it with others; so tying a piece of white rag to the end of astick, we sent two negroes with it to the bank of the water, carryingthe pole up as high as they could; it was presently understood, and twoof their men and the white man came to the shore on the other side.
However, as the white man spoke no Portuguese, they could understandnothing of one another but by signs; but our men made the white manunderstand that they had white men with them too, at which they said thewhite man laughed. However, to be short, our men came back, and told usthey were all good friends, and in about an hour four of our men, twonegroes, and the black prince, went to the river-side, where the whiteman came to them.
They had not been half a quarter of an hour, but a negro came running tome, and told me the white man was Inglese, as he called him; upon whichI ran back, eagerly enough, you may be sure, with him, and found, ashe said, that he was an Englishman; upon which he embraced me verypassionately, the tears running down his face. The first surprise of hisseeing us was over before we came, but any one may conceive it by thebrief account he gave us afterwards of his very unhappy circumstances,and of so unexpected a deliverance, such as perhaps never happened toany man in the world, for it was a million to one odds that ever hecould have been relieved; nothing but an adventure that never was heardor read of before could have suited his case, unless Heaven, by somemiracle that never was to be expected, had acted for him.
He appeared to be a gentleman, not an ordinary-bred fellow, seaman, orlabouring man; this showed itself in his behaviour in the first momentof our conversing with him, and in spite of all the disadvantages of hismiserable circumstances.
He was a middle-aged man, not above thirty-seven or thirty-eight, thoughhis beard was grown exceedingly long, and the hair of his head andface strangely covered him to the middle of his back and breast; he waswhite, and his skin very fine, though discoloured, and in some placesblistered, and covered with a brown blackish substance, scurfy, scaly,and hard, which was the effect of the scorching heat of the sun; he wasstark naked, and had been so, as he told us, upwards of two years.
He was so exceedingly transported at our meeting with him, that he couldscarce enter into any discourse at all with us that day; and when hecould get away from us for a little, we saw him walking alone, andshowing all the most extravagant tokens of an ungovernable joy; and evenafterwards he was never without tears in his eyes for several days,upon the least word spoken by us of his circumstances, or by him of hisdeliverance.
We found his behaviour the most courteous and endearing I ever sawin any man whatever, and most evident tokens of a mannerly, well-bredperson appeared in all things he did or said, and our people wereexceedingly taken with him. He was a scholar and a mathematician; hecould not speak Portuguese indeed, but he spoke Latin to our surgeon,French to another of our men, and Italian to a third.
He had no leisure in his thoughts to ask us whence we came, whither wewere going, or who we were; but would have it always as an answer tohimself, that to be sure, wherever we were a-going, we came from Heaven,and were sent on purpose to save him from the most wretched conditionthat ever man was reduced to.
Our men pitching their camp on the bank of a little river opposite tohim, he began to inquire what store of provisions we had, and how weproposed to be supplied. When he found that our store was but small,he said he would talk with the natives, and we should have provisionsenough; for he said they were the most courteous, good-natured part ofthe inhabitants in all that part of the country, as we might suppose byhis living so safe among them.
The first things this gentleman did for us were indeed of the greatestconsequence to us; for, first, he perfectly informed us where we were,and which was the properest course for us to steer; secondly, he putus in the way how to furnish ourselves effectually with provisions; andthirdly, he was our complete interpreter and peacemaker with all thenatives, who now began to be very numerous about us, and who were amore fierce and politic people than those we had met with before; not soeasily terrified with our arms as those, and not so ignorant as to givetheir provisions and corn for our little toys, such as, I said before,our artificer made; but as they had frequently traded and conversed withthe Europeans on the coast, or with other negro nations that had tradedand been concerned with them, they were the less ignorant and theless fearful, and consequently nothing was to be had from them but byexchange for such things as they liked.
This I say of the negro natives, which we soon came among; but as tothese poor people that he lived among, they were not much acquaintedwith things, being at the distance of above 300 miles from the coast;only that they found elephants' teeth upon the hills to the north, whichthey took and carried about sixty or seventy miles south, where othertrading negroes usually met them, and gave them beads, glass, shells,and cowries, for them, such as the English and Dutch and other tradersfurnish them with from Europe.
We now began to be more familiar with our new acquaintance; and first,though we made but a sorry figure as to clothes ourselves, havingneither shoe, or stocking, or glove, or hat among us, and but very fewshirts, yet as well as we could we clothed him; and first, our surgeonhaving scissors and razors, shaved him, and cut his hair; a hat, as Isay, we had not in all our stores, but he supplied himself by makinghimself a cap o
f a piece of a leopard-skin, most artificially. As forshoes or stockings, he had gone so long without them that he cared noteven for the buskins and foot-gloves we wore, which I described above.
As he had been curious to hear the whole story of our travels, and wasexceedingly delighted with the relation, so we were no less to know, andpleased with, the account of his circumstances, and the history of hiscoming to that strange place alone, and in that condition which we foundhim in, as above. This account of his would indeed be in itself thesubject of an agreeable history, and would be as long and diverting asour own, having in it many strange and extraordinary incidents; but wecannot have room here to launch out into so long a digression: the sumof his history was this:--
He had been a factor for the English Guinea Company at Sierra Leone,or some other of their settlements which had been taken by the French,where he had been plundered of all his own effects, as well as of whatwas entrusted to him by the company. Whether it was that the companydid not do