Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/122

 natives in the boat with him, that war had been there, and the natives had been taken in the manner as before described, and carried to the ships.

He has also seen such upon the Coast: while trading at Grand Bassa, he went on shore with four black traders to the town a mile off. On the way, there was a town deserted, (with only two or three houses standing), which seemed to have been a large one, as there were two fine plantations of rice ready for cutting down. A little further on they came to another village in much the same state. He was told that the first town had been taken by war, there being many ships then lying at Bassa: the people of the other had moved higher up in the country for fear of the white men. In passing along to the trader's town, he saw several villages deserted; these, the natives said, had been destroyed by war, and the people taken out and sold.

Sir George Young found slaves to be procured by war, by crimes, real or imputed, by kidnapping, which is called panjaring, and a fourth mode was the inhabitants of one village seizing those of another weaker village, and selling them to the ships. He believes, from two instances, that kidnapping was frequently practiced up Sierra Leone river. One was that of a beautiful infant boy, which the natives, after trying to sell to all the different trading ships, came alongside his, (the Phoenix) and threatened to toss overboard, if no one would buy it; saying they had panyared it with many other people, but could not sell it, though they had sold the others. He purchased it for some wine. The second was, a captain of a Liverpool ship had got, as a temporary mistress, a girl from the king of Sierra Leone, and instead of returning her on shore on leaving the coast, as is usually done, he took her away with him. Of this the king complained to Sir George Young very heavily, calling this action panyaring by the whites.

The term panyaring seemed to be a word generally used all along the coast where he was, not only among the English, but the Portuguese and Dutch.

Captain Thompson also says, that at Sierra Leone he has often heard the word panyaring; he has heard also that this word, which is used on other parts of the coast, means kidnapping, or seizing of men.

Slaves, says Mr. Town, are brought from the country very distant from the coast. The king of Barra informed Mr. Town, that on the arrival of a ship, he has gone three hundred miles up the country with his guards, and driven down captives to the sea-side. From Marraba, king of the Mandingoes, he has heard that they had marched slaves out of the country some hundred miles; that they had gone wood-ranging, to pick up every one they met with, whom they stripped naked, and, if men, bound; but if women, brought down loose; this he had from themselves, and also, that they often went to war with the Bullam nation, on purpose to get slaves. They boasted that they should soon have a fine parcel for the shallops, and the success often answered. Mr. Town has seen the prisoners (the men bound, the women and children loose) driven for sale to the water-side. He has also known the natives to go in gangs, marauding and catching all they could. In the Galenas river he knew four blacks seize a man who had been to the sea-side to sell one or more slaves. This man