Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/124

( 90 ) They manufacture also cloth and leather with uncommon neatness. The former they dye also blue, yellow, brown, and orange. The cloth is made best at Sallum. The latter they tan and work into sandals, and into a variety of useful and ornamental articles.

Besides the above, they are skilful in making indigo and soap. They make also pottery ware, and prepare salt for their own use from the sea water.

They make also canoes, but as wood of a sufficient close texture is seldom found on the sea shore, they make them principally in the interior parts. Here they shape, but do not hollow them. When shaped, they are dragged by a number of the natives for weeks together (each village generally undertaking to drag them to the next, and receiving in return partly European merchandize, and partly fish and salt) till they come to the sea shore. The ropes, with which they drag them, are made of a kind of aloe, growing abundantly in the country, and when well made by the natives, they are exceeding strong and good.

Mr. Wadstrom offered to produce, if necessary, specimens of several of the above manufactures, which he had brought with him from the coast.

Nearly the same accounts are given of their manufactures by Dalrymple, Kiernan, and Captain Wilson: and Hall, Newton, Surgeon Wilson, Sir George Young, Falconbridge, Captain Thompson, and Towne, (without enumerating many of their manufactures like the former) declare their capacities, either to be good, or equal to those of the Europeans.

Also in Feeling and Affection

With respect to their feeling and affection one instance may be taken from Mr. Falconbridge. Being sent to choose some slaves out of a yard at Cape Coast Castle, he objected to one that was meagre [sic], and put him aside, Mr. Falconbridge observing a tear steal down the man's cheek, which the man also endeavoured to conceal,