Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/340

 checkered with patches of sward and cultivation, and inclosed by massive belts of primeval wildness. Such is commonly the westward view; but north and east, as far as vision extends, noble outlines of hill and mountain may be traced against the sky, lapping each other with their mighty folds, until they fade away in the azure horizon.

"When a view like this is beheld at morning, in the neighborhood of rivers, a dense mist will be observed lying beneath the spectator in a solid stratum, refracting the light now breaking from the east. Here and there, in this lake of vapor, the tops of hills peer up like green islands in a golden sea. But ere you have time to let fancy run riot, the 'cloud compelling' orb lifts its disc over the mountains, and the fogs of the valley, like ghosts at cock-crow, flit from the dells they have haunted since night-fall. Presently the sun is out in his terrible splendor. Africa unveils to her master, and the blue sky and green forest blaze and quiver with his beams."

The account of an excursion made into the interior of the country for the purpose of procuring slaves and opening trade with the native chiefs, exhibits the horror of the people at the prospect of being sold into slavery.

"Timbo lies on a rolling plain. North of it a lofty mountain range rises at the distance of ten or fifteen miles, and sweeps eastwardly to the horizon. The landscape, which declines from these slopes to the south, is in many places bare; yet fields of plentiful cultivation, groves of cotton-wood, tamarind, and oak, thickets of shrubbery and frequent villages stud its surface and impart an air of rural comfort to the picturesque scene.

"I soon proposed a gallop with my African kindred over the neighborhood; and one fine morning, after a plentiful breakfast of stewed fowls, boiled to rags with rice, and seasoned with delicious 'palavra sauce,' we cantered off to the distant villages. As we approached the first brook, but before the fringe of screening bushes was passed, our cavalcade drew rein abruptly, while Amahde-Bellah cried out, 'Strangers are coming!' A few moments after, as we slowly crossed the stream, I noticed several women crouched in the underwood, having fled from the bath. This warning is universally given, and enforced by law to guard the modesty of the gentler sex.

"In half an hour we reached the first suburban village; but fame had preceded us with my character, and as the settlement was cultivated either by serfs or negroes liable to be made so, we found the houses bare. The poor wretches had learned, on the day of my reception, that the principal object of my journey was to obtain slaves, and, of course, they imagined that the only object of my foray in their neighborhood was to seize the gang and bear it abroad in bondage. Accordingly, we only tarried a few minutes in Findo, and dashed off to Furo; but here, too, the blacks had been panic-struck, and escaped so hurriedly that they left their pots of rice, vegetables, and meat boiling in their sheds. Furo was absolutely stripped of inhabitants; the veteran chief of the village did not even remain to do the honors of his affrighted brethren. Amah-de-Bellah laughed heartily at the terror I inspired; but I