This Afforded Me
Such An Opportunity Of Returning, Though By A Circuitous Route, To
My Native Country As I Thought Was Not To Be Neglected.
I therefore
immediately engaged my passage in this vessel for America; and
having taken leave of Dr. Laidley, to whose kindness I was so
largely indebted, and my other friends on the river, I embarked at
Kayee on the 17th day of June.
Our passage down the river was tedious and fatiguing; and the
weather was so hot, moist, and unhealthy, that before our arrival at
Goree four of the seamen, the surgeon, and three of the slaves had
died of fevers. At Goree we were detained, for want of provisions,
until the beginning of October.
The number of slaves received on board this vessel, both on the
Gambia and at Goree, was one hundred and thirty, of whom about
twenty-five had been, I suppose, of free condition in Africa, as
most of those, being bushreens, could write a little Arabic. Nine
of them had become captives in the religious war between Abdulkader
and Damel, mentioned in the latter part of the preceding chapter.
Two of the others had seen me as I passed through Bondou, and many
of them had heard of me in the interior countries. My conversation
with them, in their native language, gave them great comfort; and as
the surgeon was dead I consented to act in a medical capacity in his
room for the remainder of the voyage. They had in truth need of
every consolation in my power to bestow; not that I observed any
wanton acts of cruelty practised either by the master or the seamen
towards them, but the mode of confining and securing negroes in the
American slave-ships (owing chiefly to the weakness of their crews)
being abundantly more rigid and severe than in British vessels
employed in the same traffic, made these poor creatures to suffer
greatly, and a general sickness prevailed amongst them.
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