Page:Trials of the Slave Traders Samo, Peters and Tufft (1813).pdf/39

 Here the Court immediately enjoined from the bench, the practice which it had efficaciously ordered before. His Lordship said, "To make the engagement or obligation conscientiously binding is the great object of an oath. Swear each witness according to the custom of his country and the religion he possesses; infuse into his mind, that by the solemnity he has gone through," he is to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth. We cannot by any other mode so securely affect the conscience of these poor people, they all believe in a Supreme Being, and acknowledge he is an avenger of falsehood, and a rewarder of truth, but they have no generally established form of worship."

The witnesses for the Crown were then brought forward.

Banta, a Timmany man, was sworn. He was sworn according to the custom of the Timmany nation; he swore by his mother, and wished she might die if he did not speak the truth, and he hoped that God might strike him dead as the earth (on which he rubbed his two forefingers and applied the dust to his tongue) if he did not relate the whole truth. Banta then declared that he knew the prisoner at the bar, that he knew he took slaves from the island of Tasso; he called them, ordered them away, and they were not seen afterwards at Tasso. The slaves were taken from Tasso in a canoe; he (the witness) did not know what became of the slaves, but he knows some of them were sent to Dallamoodoo, (a chief on the Boolam shore). The witness knew that Blacks, by the names of Borogo, Yanyatta, Katta, Coosin, Yusinge and Yusinge's daughter, Serese and his wife and a child of Bontoe's, were sent off by the prisoner from Tasso. The canoe in which the slaves were taken away, belonged to Bance Island. The slaves were forced off by the prisoners, whom the witness said had often beaten the slaves.

Dallamoodoo was then called up to give his evidence.