Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/35

( 5 ) a man bound on board the Zephir, to sell, but he, Capt. Hills, would not buy him, but suffered him to escape.

The natives on the continent opposite to Goree all go armed, he imagines for fear of being taken.

When in the River Gambia, wanting servants on board his ship, he expressed a wish for some volunteers. A black pilot in the boat called two boys who were on shore, carrying baskets of shallots, and asked Capt. Hills if they would do, in which case he would take them off, and bring them to him. This he declined. From the ease with which the pilot did it, he concludes this was customary.

The black pilot said the merchantmen would not refuse such an offer. He apprehends these two boys were free people, from the pilot's mode of speaking, and from his winking, implying, it was an illicit thing.

A boy, whom he bought from the merchants in the same river, had been carried in the night from his father's house, where a skirmish had happened, in which he believes he said both his parents, but he well remembers, one were killed. The boy said many were killed, and some taken.

Mr Ellison spoke the Mundingo language, in consequence of which he has often conversed with slaves from the Gambia, to which river he made three voyages, and they universally informed him, that they had been stolen and sold.

Manner of making Slaves from the River Gambia to the End of the Windward Coast.

The natives up the river Scassus informed Mr. Bowman, that they had got two women and a girl, whom they then brought him, in a small town which they had surprized in the night; that others had got off, but they expected the rest of the party would bring them in, in two or three days. When these arrived, they brought with them two men whom Mr. Bowman knew, and had traded with formerly; upon questioning them, he discovered the women he had bought to be their wives. Both men and women informed him, that the war-men had taken them while asleep.

The war-men used to go out, Mr. Bowman says, once or twice in eight or ten days, while he was at Scassus. It was their constant way of getting slaves, he believed,