Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/135

 not deliver up the people, which he ai length did. As soon as the natives saw their countrymen, they loaded the boat with yams, goats, fowls, honey, and palm-wine: and they would take nothing for them. They had the man and woman delivered to them, wlnnu they carried away in their arms. The Dobson did not stay above eight, ten, or twelve days. This was the last trip her boat was to make, when they carried off the two slaves.

Mr. Morley says, that when off Taboo, two men came in a canoe, alongside his vessel. One of them came up and sat on the netting, but would not come into the ship. The captain at length enticing him, intoxicated him so brandy and laudanum, that he fell in upon the deck. The captain then ordered him to be put into the men's room, with a sentry over him. The oilier man in the canoe, after calling in vain for his companion, paddled off fast towards the shore. The captain fired several musket balls after him, which did not hit him. About three or four leagues farther down, two men came on board from another canoe. While they were on board, a drum was kept beating near the man who had been seized, to prevent his hearing them, or they him. He says again, in speaking of another part of the coast, that Captain Briggs's chief mate, in Old Calabar river, lying in ambush to stop the natives coming down the creek, pursued Oruk Robin John, who, jumping on shore, shot the mate through the head. He says also, of another part of the coast, that a Mr. Walker, master of a sloop, was on board the Jolly Prince, Captain Lambert, when the king of Nazareth stabbed the captain at his own table, and took the vessel, putting all the whites to death, except the cook, a boy, and, he believes, one man. Captain Walker, being asked why the king of Nazareth took this step, said it was on account of the people whom Matthews had carried off from Gaboon and Cape Lopez the voyage before. Walker escaped by knowing the language of the country. Mr. Morley sailed afterwards with the same Captain Matthews to Gaboon river, where the chiefs' sons came on board to demand what he had done with their sons, and the boys he had carried off, (the same that Walker alluded to,) and told him that if he dared to come on shore, they would have his head.

As a farther corroboration that such practices as the above take place, it appears in evidence, that the natives of the coast and islands are found constantly hovering in their canoes, at a distance, about such vessels as are passing by, shy of coming on board, for fear of being taken off. But if they can discover that such vessels are not in the slave trade, but are men-of-war, they come on board readily, or without any hesitation, which they would not otherwise have done, and in numbers, and traverse the ships with as much confidence as if they had been on shore.

Mr. Ellison says, when he was lying at Yanamaroo, in the Gambia, slaves were brought down. The traders raised the price. The captains would not give it, but thought to compel them by firing upon the town. They fired red hot shot from the ship, and set several houses on fire. All the ships, seven or eight, fired.

Mr. Falconbridge heard Captain Vicars, of a Bristol ship, say at Bonny,