Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/33

( 3 ) answered, that was of no consequence, or ever inquired into. Captain Wilson returned the man.

Kidnapping was acknowledged by all he conversed with to be generally prevalent. It is the first principle of the natives, the principle of self-preservation, never to go unarmed, while a slave vessel is on the coast, for fear of being stolen. When he has met them thus armed, and inquired of them, through his interpreter, the reason of it, they have pointed to a French slave-vessel then lying at Portudal, and said their fears arose from that quarter. As a positive instance, he says, a courier of Captain Lacy's, his predecessor, though a Moor, a free man, and one who spoke the French language fluently, was kidnapped as he was travelling on the Continent with dispatches on his Britannick Majesty's account, and sold to a French vessel, from which he, Captain Wilson, after much trouble, actually got him back.

When he presided in a court at Goree, a Maraboo swore, with an energy which evinced the truth of his evidence, that his brother, another Maraboo, had been kidnapped in the act of drinking, a moment known to be sacred by their religion, at the instigation of a former governor, who had taken a dislike to him. This was a matter notorious at Goree.

Mr. Wadstrom knows slaves to be procured between Senegal and Gambia, either by the general pillage or by robbery by individuals, or by stratagem and deceit.

The general pillage is executed by the king's troops on horseback, armed, who seize the unprepared. Mr. Wadstrom, during the week he was at Joal, accompanying one of those embassies which the French governor sends yearly with presents to the black kings, to keep up the slave trade, saw parties sent out for this purpose, by king Barbesin, almost every day, these parties went out generally in the evening, and were armed with bows and arrows, guns, pistols, sabres, and long lances.

The king of Sallum practises the pillage also. Mr. Wadstrom saw twenty-seven slaves from Sallum, twenty-three of whom were women and children, thus taken. He A 2