We Continued Our Route Until
Sunset, When We Lodged At A Small Village A Little To The Westward
Of Kootacunda,
And on the day following arrived at Jindey, where,
eighteen months before, I had parted from my friend Dr. Laidley
- An
interval during which I had not beheld the face of a Christian, nor
once heard the delightful sound of my native language.
Being now arrived within a short distance of Pisania, from whence my
journey originally commenced, and learning that my friend Karfa was
not likely to meet with an immediate opportunity of selling his
slaves on the Gambia, it occurred to me to suggest to him that he
would find it for his interest to leave them at Jindey until a
market should offer. Karfa agreed with me in this opinion, and
hired from the chief man of the town huts for their accommodation,
and a piece of land on which to employ them in raising corn and
other provisions for their maintenance. With regard to himself, he
declared that he would not quit me until my departure from Africa.
We set out accordingly - Karfa, myself, and one of the Foulahs
belonging to the coffle - early on the morning of the 9th; but
although I was now approaching the end of my tedious and toilsome
journey, and expected in another day to meet with countrymen and
friends, I could not part for the last time with my unfortunate
fellow-travellers - doomed, as I knew most of them to be, to a life
of captivity and slavery in a foreign land - without great emotion.
During a wearisome peregrination of more than five hundred British
miles, exposed to the burning rays of a tropical sun, these poor
slaves, amidst their own infinitely greater sufferings, would
commiserate mine, and, frequently of their own accord, bring water
to quench my thirst, and at night collect branches and leaves to
prepare me a bed in the wilderness. We parted with reciprocal
expressions of regret and benediction. My good wishes and prayers
were all I could bestow upon them, and it afforded me some
consolation to be told that they were sensible I had no more to
give.
My anxiety to get forward admitting of no delay on the road, we
reached Tendacunda in the evening, and were hospitably received at
the house of an aged black female called Seniora Camilla, a person
who resided many years at the English factory and spoke our
language. I was known to her before I had left the Gambia at the
outset of my journey, but my dress and figure were now so different
from the usual appearance of a European that she was very excusable
in mistaking me for a Moor. When I told her my name and country she
surveyed me with great astonishment, and seemed unwilling to give
credit to the testimony of her senses. She assured me that none of
the traders on the Gambia ever expected to see me again, having been
informed long ago that the Moors of Ludamar had murdered me, as they
had murdered Major Houghton. I inquired for my two attendants,
Johnson and Demba, and learnt with great sorrow that neither of them
was returned. Karfa, who had never before heard people converse in
English, listened to us with great attention. Everything he saw
seemed wonderful. The furniture of the house, the chairs, &c., and
particularly beds with curtains, were objects of his great
admiration, and he asked me a thousand questions concerning the
utility and necessity of different articles, to some of which I
found it difficult to give satisfactory answers.
On the morning of the 10th Mr. Robert Ainsley, having learned that I
was at Tendacunda, came to meet me, and politely offered me the use
of his horse. He informed me that Dr. Laidley had removed all his
property to a place called Kayee, a little farther down the river,
and that he was then gone to Doomasansa with his vessel to purchase
rice, but would return in a day or two. He therefore invited me to
stay with him at Pisania until the doctor's return. I accepted the
invitation, and being accompanied by my friend Karfa, reached
Pisania about ten o'clock. Mr. Ainsley's schooner was lying at
anchor before the place. This was the most surprising object which
Karfa had yet seen. He could not easily comprehend the use of the
masts, sails, and rigging; nor did he conceive that it was possible,
by any sort of contrivance, to make so large a body move forwards by
the common force of the wind. The manner of fastening together the
different planks which composed the vessel, and filling up the seams
so as to exclude the water, was perfectly new to him; and I found
that the schooner, with her cable and anchor, kept Karfa in deep
meditation the greater part of the day.
About noon on the 12th Dr. Laidley returned from Doomasansa and
received me with great joy and satisfaction, as one risen from the
dead. Finding that the wearing apparel which I had left under his
care was not sold or sent to England, I lost no time in resuming the
English dress and disrobing my chin of its venerable encumbrance.
Karfa surveyed me in my British apparel with great delight, but
regretted exceedingly that I had taken off my beard, the loss of
which, he said, had converted me from a man into a boy. Dr. Laidley
readily undertook to discharge all the pecuniary engagements which I
had entered into since my departure from the Gambia, and took my
draft upon the association for the amount. My agreement with Karfa
(as I have already related) was to pay him the value of one prime
slave, for which I had given him my bill upon Dr. Laidley before we
departed from Kamalia; for in case of my death on the road I was
unwilling that my benefactor should be a loser. But this good
creature had continued to manifest towards me so much kindness that
I thought I made him but an inadequate recompense when I told him
that he was now to receive double the sum I had originally promised;
and Dr. Laidley assured him that he was ready to deliver the goods
to that amount whenever he thought proper to send for them.
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