The Great Stain Read online

  “The hammock is a large cloth made of cotton generally, but the factors have them very fine of silk or broad-cloth. It’s about nine foot long and six or seven broad, slung at both ends with several small cords or ribbons, which draw up the ends of the hammocks like a purse; at the end of which is a noose fitted to slip over the ends of a pole, about nine foot long, which cloth or hammock the traveler gets into, and either lies along or sits, as he is disposed; then he is mounted on the heads of two Negroes, which have small rolls of linen betwixt the ends of the pole and their heads, and away they will walk and run as fast as most horses can trot, cheerfully singing in parts to each other till they are quite tired when, upon notice given, they are relieved by two fresh, and they in course by two more, there always being six Negroes to attend the hammock, which are styled hammock-men … This country admits of no other kind of traveling for Europeans, by reason of the extraordinary and violent heat of the sun, in which an Englishman can scarcely walk half a mile without fainting; but the hammock traveling relieves us much, for as we sit or lie in that there is a thin cloth thrown over the pole which keeps the sun’s heat off, and lying down hollow on each side of the hammock, with the motion of the Negroes, attracts a fine cooling air. I have often taken pleasant naps in them traveling.”

  Their trading station, known as a “factory”, was located a short way inland, “near the marshes, which renders it a very unhealthy place to live in, the white men the African Company send there seldom returning to tell their tale. It is compassed round with a mud wall, about six foot high, and on the south side is the gate; within is a large yard, a mud thatched house, where the factor lives with the white men; also a store house, a trunk [holding pen] for slaves, and a place where they bury their dead white men called, very improperly, the hog-yard; there is also a good forge and some other small houses. The factory is about 200 yards in circumference and a most wretched place to live in by reason of the swamps adjacent, whence proceed noisome stinks, and vast swarms of little flies called mosquitoes, which are so intolerably troublesome that if one does not take opium, laudanum or some other soporific it is impossible to get any sleep in the night.” Phillips also complained of the heat—the air “appearing as intensely hot to an European as if he sucked in the heat at the mouth of an oven”—and the heavy rains that were “more like fountains than drops, and as hot as if warmed over a fire.”

  Soon a message came from the king summoning them to his presence, so Phillips and his officers got into their hammocks and set off, taking an armed guard of twelve men with them.

  “From the factory to the king’s town is about four miles, through very pleasant fields full of India and Guinea corn, potatoes, yams, in great plenty, of which they have two harvests yearly. On the road to the king’s town are several little villages, or parcels of houses, which the Negroes call crooms, and have each of them a captain, few of the houses being above five yards high, having no light but at the door, except the chief houses, which may have a hole bored through the walls; they are much like our sheep-houses in Wales, having for most part but one room, where they eat and sleep together, the generality on the bare ground; the cappashiers [leading men] may have a mat spread under them, and a stone or hard bundle for a pillow.

  “When we came to the palace (which was the meanest I ever saw, being low mud walls, the roof thatched, the floor the bare ground, with some pools of water and dirt in it) we were met at the entrance by several cappashiers with the usual ceremony of clapping their hands and taking and shaking us by ours, with great demonstration of affection. When we entered the palace yard they all fell on their knees near the door of the room where the king was, clapping their hands, knocking the ground with their foreheads and kissing it, which they repeated three times, being their usual ceremony when they approached his majesty, we standing and observing till they had done; then rising, they led us to the room where the king was, which we found covered with his nobility on their knees, and those that introduced us fell on theirs, and crawled to their several stations, and so they continued all the time we were with the king then, and all other times when we saw him.

  “When we entered the king peeped upon us from behind a curtain, and beckoned us to him; whereupon we approached close to his throne, which was of clay, raised about two foot from the ground, and about six foot square, surrounded with old dirty curtains, always drawn betwixt him and his cappashiers, whom he will not allow the sight of his handsome phiz. He had two or three little black children with him and was smoking tobacco in a long wooden pipe, the bole of which, I dare say, would hold an ounce, and rested upon his throne, with a bottle of brandy and a little dirty silver cup by his side. His head was tied about with a roll of coarse calico, and he had a loose gown of red damask to cover him.

  “We saluted him with our hats and he took us by the hands, snapped our fingers and told us we were very welcome, that he was glad to see us, that he longed for it, and that he loved Englishmen dearly, that we were his brothers and that he would do us all the good offices that he could; we returned him thanks by his interpreter and assured him how great affection our masters, the Royal African Company of England, bore to him for his civility and fair and just dealing with their captains; and that notwithstanding there were many other places [with] more plenty of Negro slaves that begged their custom, they had rejected all the advantageous offers made them out of their good will to him, and therefore had sent us to trade with him …

  “He answered that the African Company was a very good brave man, that he loved him, that we should be fairly dealt with and not imposed upon. He desired us to sit down upon a bench close by him, which we did; then he drank to us his brother the king of England’s health, the African Company’s, our welcome etc. in brandy and pitto, which is a pleasant liquor made of Indian corn soaked in water, some so strong that it will keep three months, and two quarts will fuddle a man; it drinks much like new ale. We had not stayed long before there came a repast on a little square table, with an old sheet for cloth, old battered pewter plates and spoons, with a large pewter basin of the same hue with his majesty’s complexion, filled with stewed fowls and broth, and a wooden bowl of boiled potatoes to serve instead of bread; we had no napkins, knives nor forks laid us, nor do they ever use any, but always tear their meat; and indeed we had no occasion for any, for our fowls were boiled to such mash that they would not bear carving. We had no great stomach to our dainties; however, in complaisance to his majesty we supped two or three spoonfuls of the broth, which was very well relished with malagetta and red pepper; we often drank to the king out of a cup made of a cocoa-nut shell, which was all the plate I saw he had, except a little silver dram cup. He would bow to us, kiss his hand, and burst out often in loud screaming laughter. When we had signified to his majesty that we had satisfied our stomachs with his dainties, he gave some of the fowls out of the broth, with his own hands, to the little children that were with him, and the rest among his nobles, who scrambled for it on their bellies like so many dogs, making spoons of their hands, which they would dip into the broth and then licked them.”

  The next day the traders returned “with samples of our goods, and made our agreement about the prices, though not without much difficulty; he and his cappashiers exacted very high. Next day we paid our customs to the king and cappashiers, as will appear hereafter; then the bell was ordered to go about to give notice to all people to bring their slaves to the trunk to sell us. This bell is a hollow piece of iron in shape of a sugar loaf, the cavity of which would contain about 50 pounds of cowries. This a man carried about and beat with a stick, which made a small dead sound.”

  Cowries, also known as boogies, were “little Indian shells, called in England ‘Blackamoors’ Teeth,’ bought at one shilling and sold here at two shillings and six pence per pound.” The reason they were so cheap to buy was that these small polished shells could be scooped up in large quantities from the beaches of the Maldive Islands by passing English ships. They had long been accepted
as currency through much of West Africa, where they were often also used for jewelry. The Hannibal also carried many other goods for trade: iron bars, brass basins, pewter jugs, knives, “coral, large, smooth and of a deep red,” broad-cloth, chintz, Indian calicoes, bangles and bracelets, and, above all, muskets, bullets, gunpowder, and brandy—for which cheap West Indian rum or English gin would later be substituted. “With the above goods a ship cannot want slaves here, and may purchase them for about three pounds fifteen shillings a head.

  “We were every morning, during our stay here, invited to breakfast with the king, where we always found the same dish of stewed fowls and potatoes; he also would send us a hog, goat, sheep or pot of pitto every day for our table, and we usually returned his civility with three or four bottles of brandy, which was his summum bonum. We had our cook ashore and ate as well as we could, provisions being plenty and cheap; but we soon lost our stomachs by sickness, most of my men having fevers, and myself such convulsions and aches in my head that I could barely stand or go to the trunk without assistance, and there often fainted with the horrid stink of the Negroes, it being an old house where all the slaves are kept together, and evacuate nature where they lie, so that no jakes [latrines] can stink worse; there being forced to sit three or four hours a day quite ruined my health, but there was no help.”

  In the meantime Phillips and Captain Clay of the East India Merchant had agreed to avoid any “disagreement in our trade.” Rather than bid against each other, “as often happens when there are here more ships than one, and the commanders can’t set their horses together,” they took turns going to the trunk to buy slaves. Even so, they found it hard to drive a bargain.

  “When we were at the trunk, the king’s slaves, if he had any, were the first offered to sale, which the cappashiers would be very urgent with us to buy, and would in a manner force us to ere they would show us any other, saying they were the Rey’s Cosa [king’s property] and we must not refuse them; though, as I observed, they were generally the worst slaves in the trunk, and we paid more for them than any others, which we could not remedy, it being one of his majesty’s prerogatives. Then the cappashiers each brought out his slaves according to his degree and quality, the greatest first &c. and our surgeon examined them well in all kinds to see that they were sound of wind and limb, making them jump, stretch out their arms swiftly, looking into their mouths to judge of their age; for the cappashiers are so cunning that they shave them all close before we see them, so that let them be never so old we can see no grey hairs in their heads or beards; and then having liquored them well and sleek with palm oil it is no easy matter to know an old one from a middle-aged one, but by the teeth’s decay; but our greatest care of all is to buy none that are poxed, lest they should infect the rest aboard; for though we separate the men and women aboard by partitions and bulkheads, to prevent quarrels and wranglings among them, yet do what we can they will come together, and that distemper which they call the yaws is very common here, and discovers itself by almost the same symptoms as Lues Venerea, or clap, does with us; therefore our surgeon is forced to examine the privities of both men and women with the nicest scrutiny, which is a great slavery, but what can’t be omitted.

  “When we had selected from the rest such as we liked, we agreed in what goods to pay for them, the prices being already stated before the king, how much of each sort of merchandise we were to give for a man, woman, and child, which gave us much ease and saved abundance of disputes and wranglings, and gave the owner a note signifying our agreement of the sorts of goods, upon delivery of which the next day he received them; then we marked the slaves we had bought in the breast or shoulder with a hot iron, having the letter of the ship’s name on it, the place being before anointed with a little palm oil, which caused but little pain, the mark being usually well in four or five days, appearing very plain and white after.

  “When we had purchased to the number of 50 or 60 we would send them aboard, there being a cappashier intitled the captain of the slaves whose care it was to secure them to the water-side and see them all off; and if in carrying to the marine any were lost he was bound to make them good to us, the captain of the trunk being obliged to do the like, if any ran away while under his care, for after we buy them we give him charge of them till the captain of the slaves comes to carry them away. These are two officers appointed by the king for this purpose, to each of which every ship pays the value of a slave in what goods they like best for their trouble when they have done trading; and indeed they discharged their duty to us very faithfully, we not having lost one slave through their neglect in 1300 we bought here.

  “There is likewise a captain of the sand who is appointed to take care of the merchandise we have come ashore to trade with, that the Negroes do not plunder them, we being often forced to leave goods a whole night on the sea shore for want of porters to bring them up; but notwithstanding his care and authority we often came by the loss, and could have no redress.

  “When our slaves were come to the seaside our canoes were ready to carry them off to the longboat, if the sea permitted, and she conveyed them aboard ship, where the men were all put in irons, two and two shackled together, to prevent their mutiny or swimming ashore. The Negroes are so willful and so loth to leave their own country that they have often leaped out of the canoes, boat and ship, into the sea, and kept under water until they were drowned, to avoid being taken up and saved by our boats, which pursued them; they having a more dreadful apprehension of Barbados than we can have of hell, though in reality they live much better there than in their own country; but home is home &c. We have likewise seen divers of them eaten by the sharks, of which a prodigious number kept about the ships in this place, and I have been told will follow her hence to Barbados for the dead Negroes that are thrown overboard in the passage.

  “We had about twelve Negroes did willfully drown themselves, and others starved themselves to death; for ‘tis their belief that when they die they return home to their own country and friends again. I have been informed that some commanders have cut off the legs or arms of the most willful to terrify the rest, for they believe if they lose a member they cannot return home again. I was advised by some of my officers to do the same, but I could not be persuaded to entertain the least thought of it, much less to put in practice such barbarity and cruelty to poor creatures who, excepting their want of Christianity and true religion (their misfortune more than fault) are as much the works of God’s hands, and no doubt as dear to him as ourselves; nor can I imagine why they should be despised for their colour, being what they cannot help, and the effect of the climate it has pleased God to appoint them.”

  Francis Moore, the “writer” for the Royal African Company stationed on the Gambia River, had a much harder time than Captain Phillips when doing business. His job was to trade for “gold, slaves, elephants’ teeth and bees-wax.” The problem was not the quality of the goods themselves, for “the gold is finer than sterling.” The ivory was also of good quality, and the supply of slaves abundant—in some years amounting to two thousand, “most of whom they say are prisoners of war and bought of the different princes by whom they are taken. The way of bringing them is by tying them by the neck with leather thongs, at about a yard distance from each other, thirty or forty in a string, having generally a bundle of corn or an elephant’ tooth upon each of their heads.”

  Unlike most slave traders, Moore was troubled in his conscience. “Besides the slaves brought down by the negro merchants, there are many bought along the river who are either taken in war like the former, or condemned for crimes, or stolen by the people; but the Company’s servants never buy any which they suspect to be of the last sort till they have sent for the alcalde [local ruler] and consulted with him. Since this slave trade has been used, all punishments are changed into slavery; and the natives reaping advantage from such condemnations, they strain hard for crimes in order to obtain the benefit of selling the criminal; hence not only murder, adultery, and theft are he
re punished by selling the malefactor, but every trifling crime is also punished in the same manner. Thus at Cantore a man seeing a tyger eating a deer, which he himself had killed and hung up near his house, fired at the tyger but unhappily shot a man; when the king had not only the cruelty to condemn him for this accident, but had the injustice and inhumanity to order also his mother, his three brothers and his three sisters, to be sold. They were brought down to me at Yamyamacunda, when it made my heart ache to see them; but on my refusing to make this cruel purchase, they were sent farther down the river and sold to some separate trader at Joar, and the vile avaricious king had the benefit of the goods for which they were sold.”

  Another villain was the king of Barsally, who, whenever he “wants goods or brandy, sends to the governor of James’s Fort to desire him to send a sloop there with a proper cargo; which is readily complied with. Meanwhile the king goes and ransacks some of his enemies’ towns, and seizing the innocent people sells them to the factors in the sloop for such commodities as he wants, as brandy, rum, guns, gunpowder, ball, pistols and cutlasses for his attendants and soldiers, with coral and silver for his wives and concubines. But in case he is not at war with any neighbouring king, then he falls upon one of his own towns, which are very numerous, and uses them in the same manner, selling those for slaves whom he is bound by every obligation to protect.