I have been hitherto describing thePillage, as it is either publick or private. I have also considered it as practiced by the blacks upon one another. I come now to speak of it, as it is practiced upon these by the whites; and this I callRobbery.
It is too well known, at least on some parts of the coast, that the Europeans havenot failed, when opportunity presented itself, to seize the unsuspicious natives of Africa, and to carry them by force to their own colonies.
This is usually practiced by the Europeans, where they have no settlements; so that the fact generally escapes the notice of their countrymen; I mean principally up the rivers, where they have ventured to penetrate for the purpose of a more advantageous trade. At such places, they compel the negroes to deliver them hostages, whom they keep on board. The truce being concluded, the unsuspicious natives embark with confidence, and repeatedly visit the vessel without any kind of suspicion or fear. But, if the wind should be at all favourable, none of the European monsters, who are engaged in this trade, scruple to set sail, and to carry away not only the free negroes, who have come on board to trade, but the hostages also, in defiance of the law of nations and common honesty.
These transactions are not only iniquitous in themselves, and therefore derogatory from the character of a civilized nation, but are often so fatal in their consequences, that those, who perpetrate them, have a claim to the appellation of devils rather than men. For it may easily be supposed, that the relations and friends of those, who have been thus fraudulently carried off, will spare no pains to retaliate. This is generally the case. The next ship that visits the coast, is perhaps cut off. Thus, to a villainous action, is superadded the guilt of becoming instrumental to the murder perhaps of their own countrymen, and at any rate of occasioning the innocent to undergo the punishment of the guilty.
When I was at Goree, in the year 1787, accounts came down by some French merchantmen from the Gambia of the following particulars.
The captain of an English ship, which had been some time in that river, had enticed several of the natives on board, and, findinga favourable opportunity, sailed away with them. His vessel however was, by the direction of Providence, driven back to the coast from whence it had set sail, and was obliged to cast anchor on the very spot where this act of treachery had been committed. At this time two other English vessels were lying in the same river. The natives, ever since the transaction, had determined to retaliate. They happened, at this juncture, to be prepared. They accordingly boarded the three vessels, and, having made themselves masters of them, they killed most of their crews. The few who escaped to tell the tale, were obliged to take refuge in a neighbouring French factory. Thus did the innocent suffer the same punishment as the guilty; for it did not appear that the crews of the other two vessels had been at all concerned in this villainous measure.
These particulars, as I observed before, had found their way down to us at Goree, and, from the channels through which they came, I had no reason to question their truth.It is remarkable, however, that, though I wanted no confirmation of them in my own mind, yet, since my arrival in London, I have heard them fully substantiated: for I dined lately by accident with a certain underwriter, to whom undesignedly relating the time, place, and other circumstances of this transaction, I found that I had only been describing the fate of certain vessels, which, to his knowledge, had been cut off in the same part of the world, and at the same season.