Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/337

 stays at home and acts the part of chieftain. This venerable personage welcomed me with great cordiality; and having made my dantica, or, in other words, declared the purpose of my visit, I desired to be shown the trader's house. The patriarch led me at once to a hut, whose miserable thatch was supported by lour posts. Here I recognized a large chest, a rum cask, and the grass hammock of my agent. I was rather exasperated to find my property thus neglected and exposed, and began venting my wrath in no seemly terms on the delinquent clerk, when my conductor laid his hand gently on my sleeve, and said there was no need to blame him. 'This,' continued he, 'is his house; here your property is sheltered from sun and rain; and, among the Bagers, whenever your goods arc protected from the elements, they are safe from every danger. Your man has gone across the plain to a neighboring town for oil; to-night he will be back; in the meantime, look at your goods.' "I opened the chest, which, to my surprise, was unlocked, and found it nearly full of the merchandise I had placed in it. I shook the cask, and its weight seemed hardly diminished. I turned the spiggot, and lo! the rum trickled on my feet. Hard-by was a temporary shed, idled to the roof with hides and casks of palm oil, all of which, the gray-beard declared, was my property.

"Whilst making this inspection, I have no doubt the expression of my face indicated a good deal of wonder, for 1 saw the old man smile complacently as he followed me with his quiet eye. 'Good!' said the chief, 'it is all there, is it not? We Bagers are neither Soosoos, Mandingoes, Foulahs, nor White-men, that the goods of a stranger are not safe in our towns! We work for a living; we want little; big ships never come to us, and we neither steal from our guests nor go to war to sell one another!'

"The conversation, I thought, was becoming a little personal; and, with a gesture of impatience, I put a stop to it. On second thoughts, however, I turned abruptly round, and shaking the noble savage's hand with a vigor that made him wince, presented him with a piece of cloth, Had Diogenes visited Africa in search of his man, it is by no means unlikely that he might have extinguished his lamp among the Bagers!

"It was about two o'clock in the afternoon when I arrived in the town, which, as I before observed, seemed quite deserted, except by a dozen or two ebony antiquities, who crawled into the sunshine when they learned the advent of a stranger. The young people were absent gathering palm nuts in a neighboring grove. A couple of hours before sundown, my trader returned; and, shortly after, the merry gang of villagers made their appearance, laughing, singing, dancing, and laden with fruit As soon as the gossips announced the arrival of a white man during their absence, the little hut that had been hospitably assigned me was surrounded by a crowd, five or six deep, of men, women, and children. The pressure was so close and sudden that I was almost stifled. Finding they would not depart until I made myself visible, I emerged from concealment and shook hands with nearly all. The women, in particular, insisted on gratifying themselves with a sumboo or smell at my face — which