My stay at Adena was somewhat of a holiday until the brig arrived, for, although the amount of produce to be examined was greater than I should have obtained at Quittáh in the same time, the actual purchase of it was effected by Olympio, so that I could deal with it in bulk; and then there was no store to look after and no selling of goods to the natives. Hence, I had a good deal of time on my hands, a part of which I utilised for outdoor pursuits, and the remainder I spent lounging about with a book in the shady cocoa-nut grove near the beach by day, and in my room at night. I had brought one or two books with me to Adena, but these paled in interest before the manuscript journal, over which I pored, at first secretly, and then, as I found that no one noticed what I read, constantly, until I read the antique handwriting of Captain Hogg with as much ease as Olympio's ungrammatical copperplate.
Fascinating, however, as I found the journal, I shall not inflict upon the reader any of the entries but those that have reference to this narrative. I had read through the whole of the diary for the year 1641; had examined the quaint, rough sketches and charts of the coast line with which it was embellished and amplified, and had made extensive notes of the descriptions and comments of the shrewd and observant old ship master, when on a certain afternoon some four days before the brig was due at Adena, I took the old volume out with me on to the beach, and spreading a mat on the dry sand under the cocoa-nuts lay down to read at my ease. Commencing with the date "New Year's Day, 1642," I read through the first dozen entries. They contained nothing of interest but plentiful details of the trading transactions on the Ivory Coast, off which the ship was then cruising, details that were now familiar and a little monotonous. This lack of interest in the narrative, combined with the heat and the rather somnolent surroundings, the patter of the palms overhead, the endless murmur of the sea-breeze, and the surging of the surf hard by, produced a feeling of drowsiness, and I was just letting the book fall when, recovering myself with a start, I observed on the opposite page an entry of considerable length. As this promised more entertainment than the briefer notes of trade and navigation with which I had been engaged, I plunged into it; and I had not read far before my drowsiness completely vanished and gave place to the keenest excitement.
I extract the entry at length:
"Sunday, 14th Jan.—Dropped down from Bassam during the nighte, keeping a good offing and sounding every five minutes. Passed Cape Tres Puntas in the nighte, and cast anchor soon after daybreak in Axim Bay in seven fathoms. Soon after we had anchored we perceaved a fishing canoe to be approaching from the shoare; it was paddled by three negroes, and two more were sitting near by the stern. When it hadde come alongside we could see that, besides the blacks, there was in the canoe a white man who lay at the bottom and seemed to bee sicke. The negroes climbed up the side on to the deck, but the white man was too feeble to follow them, wherefore we dropped into the canoe a rope, in the end whereof was a bowline or loop; and when the sick man had passed this round his middle we drew him up on to the quarter deck.
"The aspect of this man was most wretched and pitifull. He was quite naked excepting for a loin cloth such as the black people use to wear in these parts. His wrists and ankles—one of which bore an iron ring—were all raw and festered; his backe and shoulders were seamed with scars not yet fully healed; his ears were torn and cut with greate notches, and, most horrid of all, the balls of his eyes were gone from their socketts so that his face was as that of a dead skull. Moreover, his whole person was as meagre and cadaverous as though he had been long sicke of some wasting distemper or calenture. At first he was so feeble that he could not stand alone, but after we had fed him with fresh meate and made him drink a cuppe of Canary wine, he revived somewhat, and being sett to rest in a bed in the cabin, he fell into a deep sleep and so continueth.
"Monday, 15th Jan.—The strange man remaineth still very sick and feeble, but he hath related an account of the circumstances that broughte him to so wretched a condition. This narrative I received from his owne lippes, and so set it down, knowing not whether it bee a true relation or made up from a disordered imagination.
"The man deposeth that his name is José d'Almeida, and that he is a Portugal by birth. For many years past he hath lived at the Castle of St. George at Mina on the Gold Coast, being engaged in trade with the blacks.
"Two years since, when he was journeying from Mina to Shamah, a party of blacke warriors came forth from the bush and made captives of both himself and his followers. By these men he was carried away far into the country, and after journeying for nine days through a greate wildernesse wherein the trees were so many and of so great a bignesse as to almost shut out the light of the sun, he arrived at a great town which the blacks called Coomassy, which seemed to be the capital citie of the nation who call themselves the Asantays. Here he lay in close captivity for severall weeks in much discomfort of body, and very sad and fearfull, for he was fettered both hande and foote, and his food was both scanty and poore. Moreover, he witnessed many dreadfull spectacles which made him to fear that he shoulde shortly be made away with; for these Asantays have many fearfull rites and horrible forms of worship, and are used to offer up to their Gods sacrifices of men and women. At length there came on a certain day to the hovell wherein he was confined certain men strangely cloathed, and having their hair twisted into a number of rolls or ringletts which hung down round their heads like a fringe, and made them to have a very terrible aspecte. By these men he was carried away into the wildernesse, and so for four days they journeyed through the woods untill they came to a large river by which standeth a town called Tanosoo. In this river, as the negroes beleeve, there abideth one of their Gods, a strong and fierce devil who keepeth a pack of greate fishes to devour any who shall defile the sacred waters by bathing therein; and Almeida doth say that he saw many of these fishes with his own eyes, and that each of them was of the bigness of a man, and that the wizards or priests do call them together from the bankes, and when the said fishes have assembled (as he affirmeth they constantly do) the wizards cast to them offerings of egges of guinea-fowles boiled hard and shelled, which they instantly devour.
"When the strange men were about to carry Almeida across the river (which they presently did by way of a bridge formed from a single great tree), the chief wizard came and took from each of them his staffe and cast it on to a great pile of staves that is hard by the river, for it seemeth that the River God will not suffer any person to carry a rod or staff across the water. Then they passed over the bridge, and each of the men shook out into the streame a small bag of gold dust for a toll or due to the River God. From Tanosoo they journeyed yet two daies more in the wildernesse, keeping near to the river, whiche they crossed once each day, and on the second evening they came to a place where was a large poole or lake, at one end whereof was a great rock of red stone having two points like the horns of a bull or the teeth of an elephant. From the face of this rock a streame or fountain of muddy, red-coloured water poured into the poole, and so, Almeida thinketh, formed the headwater of the river. At this place, which is called Aboassy, that is, 'the place by the rock,' strange and terrible things befell him; for he was but just come to the shoare of the poole when there came forth from the bushes four men of the most frightfull appearance and advanced to him. Each of these men—if men they were and not devils—was cloathed in a long robe of grass, and his face hidden by a painted maske with bull's horns most horrible to look upon. When the magicians—or devils—had spoken awhile with Almeida's captors, a drum was beaten, and forthwith a great shouting arose, and there came forth from the bushes men, women, and children to the number of three or four score, all dressed fantastically in petticoates of unwoven grasse, and bearing some kind of rattles upon their wristes and ankles. These people formed a ring around Almeida and commenced to chant a stave of musick like a psalm, repeating it again and again and keeping time thereto by clapping their hands and shaking their rattles. All the time they continued slowly pacing or shuffling round like children playing in our country; and the magicians having knelt on the ground before Almeida, nodded their great maskes in time with the musick.
"On a sudden, the four wizards arose and uttered a most dismall howle, and then withoute any warning Almeida felt himself seized from behind, and instantly a leathern bag was drawn over his head so that he could neither see nor cry out, and, indeed, scarcely breathe; his armes and legges were pinioned afresh with rope, and he felt himself lifted from the ground and borne away.
"After he had been carried some distance he perceaved the air of a sudden grow cooler as if he had entered some large building, and it seemed that he was borne along some passage or corridor, for once his head struck what seemed to be a stone ceiling. Presently, his bearers halted and some of them seemed to descende a ladder, when the others handed him downe, and so descending perhaps a dozen feet they came to the level and started off again. Anon they came to another ladder and again descended a couple of fathoms or so and off again along the level. Presently the air became exceeding hot and stifling, and wondrous foul-smelling, and in the midst of this heat and stench his bearers halted and laid him on the grounde close by a wall. Then the leathern bag was plucked from his head so that he could breathe somewhat more freely, but he could see little as his bonds restrained him from turning his head; but it seemed he was in some sorte of vault or cavern and that of some size, and that there were others in the place beside himselfe, for he could hear the murmur of voices around and the sound of bellows blowing, and could perceave the glow of fire on the roof and walls. Moreover, there was a noise as of the beating of hammers, and sometimes the splash of water.
"In this place he remained lying without food or water for many houres—a full day and nighte he surmiseth—and all that time no person came nigh him save once, when two men came and examined him narrowly, talking very earnestly the while, and then wente away. And though he besought them most pitifully to give him water, he being consumed with thirst, they answered him not, affecting not to understand his speech, which was that of the Dena negroes. At length the men came to him againe after many hours, and now they brought an earthen jar, full of olde and soure palm wine, and a gourd shell to drink from, and they gave him of the wine as much as he would drinke, which was near upon two quarts. Whereupon the wine being, as I have said, old and heady, he became quite drunk and straightway fell into a deepe sleepe, from which he was violently awakened by feeling some weapons thrust into his eyes, causing him great anguish. But being still besotted with the wine he had drunk, he presently fell asleep again. When he awoke he could feel that a clout had been tied over his eyes (in which he had still much pain) and that his shackles had been lightened. And now his keepers gave him both meate and drink in plenty, although he had but little stomacke for food.
"At length, after many weary days of anguish and sickness, there came certain persons who took off the clout from his eyes and cast off the shackles from his limbs. Then, perceaving that he was blind, he put up his hand to his eyes, and behold! the socketts were empty.
"And now he was told he was to be henceforth one of the slaves of the River God, of which slaves there were in the cavern quite a goodly company, and all, like himself, as blind as so many mouldwarps; and that he should labour constantly to get gold for the River God's treasure.
"And so it befell; for in that noisome cavern he abode for nigh upon two yeares, labouring always to get treasure for his master the Demon of the River.
"Some days he would sit on the ground working a small bellows beside a furnace, and constantly driven with a whip whenever he flagged. Some days he laboured with a greate pestle, crushing the ore in a mortar, and other days he was led with divers of his fellow captives up the ladders out into the sweet air and into a canoe or raft on the pool.
"Here he would drive the craft forward with a long pole, or dredge along the bottom with a small metal buckett on a rope and empty into a large brass pan, which they carried in the canoe, the mudde that came up in the said buckett; which mudde, Almeida declareth, was nearly pure gold dust, especially that from near the fountain in the great rock.
"When the pan was filled with the mudde Almeida and the other slaves would bear it along on a pole, back to the cavern and lower it into the vault or under-cavern. Then the slaves would wash the mudd in gourd shells, while their taskmasters gathered out the gold, which Almeida believeth was afterwards melted in the furnaces and cast into shapes for the God's treasury.
"And so Almeida abode in the cavern, as he sayeth, for nigh two yeares. Then on a certaine day he was brought forth, but instead of being taken to the pool he was bound by a rope and an iron collar to some other of the slaves, and led away on a journey. And as he journeyed he learned that the King of Asantay was at war with the King of a nation called the Denkeras and that he was making many offerings to his Gods. So Almeida and the other slaves conceived that they were to be sacrificed to these Gods, whereat they rejoiced in that their miseries should be soone put an ende to. But on the third day of their journey a great tumult arose, and it presently appeared that the keepers of the slaves had been attacked and overwhelmed by a bande of these same Denkeras, who, when they had slain the Asantays, carried the blind slaves away with them to their country. Here the King of the Denkeras, having compassion upon Almeida for that he was a white man and had suffered such grievous wrongs at the handes of the Asantays, caused him to be sent to the coaste and delivered into the handes of the Commandant of the Castle of St. Anthony at Axim. And there he abode until some shipp should take him away from the accursed land of the negroes, and so he was brought to oure shipp as hath been related.
"Such is the story of José d'Almeida as he hath declared it to me, Barnabas Hogg, and by me faithfully writ down from his very wordes."
When I had finished reading this extraordinary narrative, which, strange as it was and teeming with marvellous and incredible incidents, yet seemed to me to bear the evident impress of truth, I was singularly affected.
Up to the present I had seen but the outside fringe of Africa, which, with its gin cases, its bales of cotton goods, its bags of kernels and puncheons of oil, seemed prosaic and sordid enough. But yet, even in my brief and shallow experience of the country, there had repeatedly reached me faint echoes of a more romantic and mysterious life enacting in those little known regions on whose blue and shadowy distances I had so often turned a longing eye from the verandah of Pereira's house. And now, like a personal message to me from the dim, forgotten past, came this story of the old-time Portuguese trader, stirring up all that was romantic and adventurous in my nature, and awakening in me an irresistible desire to see the wonders of Africa for myself.
When I had paced the beach for awhile I returned to the journal to see if it contained any further account of Almeida, but no reference was made to the Portuguese until I came to the 30th January, when I read:—
"The man José d'Almeida, who hath been very sickly of late, was founde dead in his bedde this morning. We buried him in the sea about nine of the clock and fired a salute with our small cannon after his corpse had been cast into the water. He seemed a godly man, although, like moste of his nation, a rank papist."
It was late that night before I turned in to rest, for the travel fever that had infected Mungo Park, Denham, Clapperton, Lander and the host of other intrepid wanderers whose exploits I recalled and whose remains rested in this ill-omened but fascinating land, had fairly taken hold of me; and when I at last tucked in my mosquito curtain and blew out my candle it was only to fall asleep and dream that I sat, a destitute wanderer, under the shade-tree of some far-away village in the heart of the continent.
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