Part 9 (1/2)

Soon after the arrival of Adams at Wadinoon, Abdallah offered him for sale to the governor or sheik, called Amedallah Salem, who consented to take him upon trial; but after remaining a week at the governor's house, Adams was returned to his old master, as the parties could not agree upon the price. He was at length, however, sold to Belca.s.sam Abdallah for seventy dollars in trade, payable in blankets, gunpowder, and dates.

The only other white resident at Wadinoon was a Frenchman, who informed Adams that he had been wrecked about twelve years before on the neighbouring coast, and that the whole of the crew, except himself, had been redeemed. This man had turned Mahommedan, and was named Absalom; he had a wife and child and three slaves, and gained a good living by the manufacture of gunpowder. He lived in the same house as the person who had been his master, and who, upon his renouncing his religion, gave him his liberty.

Among the negro slaves at Wadinoon was a woman, who said she came from a place called Kanno, (Cano?) a long way across the desert, and that she had seen in her own country white men, as white as ”bather,”

meaning the wall, and in a large boat, with two high sticks in it, with cloth upon them, and that they rowed this boat in a manner different from the custom of the negroes, who use paddles; in stating this, she made the motion of rowing with oars, so as to leave no doubt that she had seen a vessel in the European fas.h.i.+on, manned by white people.

The work in which Adams was employed at Wadinoon, was building walls, cutting down shrubs to make fences, or working on the corn lands, or on the plantations of tobacco, of which a great quant.i.ty is grown in the neighbourhood. It was in the month of August that he arrived there, as he was told by the Frenchman before spoken of; the grain had been gathered, but the tobacco was then getting in, at which he was required to a.s.sist. His labour at this place was extremely severe. On the moorish sabbath, which was also their market-day, the Christian slaves were not required to labour, unless on extraordinary occasions, when there was any particular work to do, which could not be delayed. In these intervals of repose, they had opportunity of meeting and conversing together, and Adams had the melancholy consolation of finding that the lot of his companions had been even more severe than his own. It appeared that, on their arrival, the Frenchman before mentioned, from some unexplained motive, had advised them to refuse to work, and the consequence was, that they had been cruelly beaten and punished, and had been made to work and live hard, their only scanty food being barley flour and indian corn flour.

However, on extraordinary occasions, and as a great indulgence, they sometimes obtained a few dates.

In this wretched manner Adams and his fellow-captives lived until the June following, when a circ.u.mstance occurred, which had nearly cost the former his life. His master's son, Hameda Bel Cossim, having one sabbath-day ordered Adams to take the horse and go to plough, the latter refused to obey him, urging that it was not the custom of any slaves to work on the sabbath-day, and that he was ent.i.tled to the same indulgence as the rest. Upon which Hameda went into the house and fetched a cutla.s.s, and then demanded of Adams, whether he would go to plough or not. Upon his replying that he would not, Hameda struck him on the forehead with the cutla.s.s, and gave him a severe wound over the right eye, and immediately knocked him down with his fist. This was no sooner done, than Adams was set upon by a number of Moors, who beat him with sticks in so violent a manner, that the blood came out of his mouth, two of his double teeth were knocked out, and he was almost killed; it was his opinion that they would have entirely killed him, had it not been for the interference of Boad.i.c.k, the sheik's son, who reproached them for their cruelty, declaring that they had no right to compel Adams to work on a market-day. The next day Hameda's mother, named Moghtari, came to him, and asked him how he dared to lift his hand against a Moor? To which Adams, driven to desperation by the ill treatment he had received, replied, that he would even take his life, if it were in his power. Moghtari then said, that unless he would kiss Hameda's hands and feet, he should be put in irons, which he peremptorily refused to do. Soon after. Hameda's father came to Adams, and told him, that unless he did kiss his son's feet and hands, he must be put in irons. Adams then stated to him, that he could not submit to do so; that it was contrary to his religion to kiss the hands and feet of any person; that in his own country he had never been required to do it; and that, whatever might be the consequence, he would not do it. Finding he would not submit, the old man ordered that he should be put in irons, and accordingly they fastened his feet together with iron chains, and did the same by his hands. After he had remained in this state about ten days, Moghtari came to him again, urging him to do as required, and declaring that, if he did not, he should never see the Christian country again. Adams, however, persevered in turning a deaf ear to her entreaties and threats. Some time afterwards, finding that confinement was destructive of his health, Hameda came to him, and took the irons from his hands. The following three weeks, he remained with the irons on his legs, during which time, repeated and pressing entreaties, and the most dreadful threats were used to induce him to submit; but all to no purpose. He was also frequently advised by the mate and the other Christians, who used to be sent to him, for the purpose of persuading him to submit, as he must otherwise inevitably lose his life. At length, finding that neither threats nor entreaties would avail, and Adams having remained in irons from June to the beginning of August, and his sufferings having reduced him almost to a skeleton, his master was advised to sell him; for, if longer confined, he would certainly die, and thereby prove a total loss. Influenced by this consideration, his master at last determined to release him from his confinement; but, although very weak, the moment he was liberated, he was set to gathering in the corn.

About a week afterwards, Dolbie, the mate, fell sick. Adams had called to see him, when Dolbie's master, named Brahim, a son of the sheik, ordered him to get up and go to work, and upon Dolbie declaring that he was unable, Brahim beat him with a stick, to compel him to go; but as he still did not obey, Brahim threatened that he would kill him; and upon Dolbie's replying, that he had better do so at once than kill him by inches, Brahim stabbed him in the side with his dagger, and he died in a few minutes. As soon as he was dead, he was taken by some slaves a short distance from the town, where a hole was dug, into which he was thrown without ceremony. As the grave was not deep, and as it frequently happened that corpses after burial were dug out of the ground by the foxes, Adams and his two surviving companions went the next day and covered the grave with stones.

As the Moors were constantly urging them to become Mahommedans, and they were unceasingly treated with the greatest brutality, the fort.i.tude of Williams and Davison being exhausted, they at last unhappily consented to renounce their religion, and were circ.u.mcised; by this means they obtained their liberty, after which they were presented with a horse, a musket, and a blanket each, and permitted to marry; no Christian being allowed, at any place inhabited by Moors, to take a wife, or to cohabit with a moorish woman.

As Adams was now the only remaining Christian at Wadinoon, he became in a more especial manner an object of the derision and persecution of the Moors, who were constantly upbraiding and reviling him, and telling him that his soul would be lost, unless he became a Mahommedan, insomuch that his life was becoming intolerable.

Mr. Dupuis, speaking of the conduct which Adams received from the Moors, says, ”I can easily believe Adams' statement of the brutal treatment he experienced at Wadinoon. It is consistent with the accounts I have always heard of the people of that country, who I believe to be more bigoted and cruel than even the remoter inhabitants of the desert. In the frequent instances which have come under my observation, the general effect of the treatment of the Arabs on the minds of the Christian captives, has been most deplorable. On the first arrival of these unfortunate men at Mogadore, if they have been any considerable time in slavery, they appear lost to reason and feeling, their spirits broken, and their whole faculties sunk in a species of stupor, which I am unable adequately to describe. Habited like the meanest Arabs of the desert, they appear degraded even below the negro slave. The succession of hards.h.i.+ps, which they endure, from the caprice and tyranny of their purchasers, without any protecting law to which they can appeal for alleviation or redress, seems to destroy every spring of exertion or hope in their minds; they appear indifferent to every thing around them; abject, servile, and brutified.”

”Adams alone was, in some respects, an exception from this description. I do not recollect any ransomed Christian slave, who discovered a greater elasticity of spirit, or who sooner recovered from the indifference and stupor here described.”

It is to be remarked, that the Christian captives are invariably worse treated than the idolatrous or pagan slaves, whom the Arabs, either by theft or purchase, bring from the interior of Africa, and that religious bigotry is the chief cause of this distinction. The zealous disciples of Mahomet consider the negroes merely as ignorant, unconverted beings, upon whom, by the act of enslaving them, they are conferring a benefit, by placing them within reach of instruction in ”the true belief;” and the negroes, having no hopes of ransom, and being often enslaved when children, are in general, soon converted to the Mahommedan faith. The Christians, on the contrary, are looked upon as hardened infidels, and as deliberate despisers of the prophet's call; and as they in general steadfastly reject the Mahommedan creed, and at least never embrace it, whilst they have hopes of ransom; the Moslim, consistently with the spirit of many pa.s.sages in the Koran, views them with the bitterest hatred, and treats them with every insult and cruelty which a merciless bigotry can suggest.

It is not to be understood that the Christian slaves, though generally ill treated and inhumanly worked by their Arab owners, are persecuted by them ostensibly on account of their religion. They, on the contrary, often encourage the Christians to resist the importunities of those who wish to convert them; for, by embracing Islamism, the Christian slave obtains his freedom, and however ardent may be the zeal of the Arab to make proselytes, it seldom blinds him to the calculations of self-interest.

Three days after Williams and Davison had renounced their religion, a letter was received from Mr. Dupuis, addressed to the Christian prisoners at Wadinoon, under cover to the governor, in which the consul, after exhorting them most earnestly not to give up their religion, whatever might befal them, a.s.sured them that within a month, he should be able to procure their liberty. Davison heard the letter read, apparently without emotion, but Williams became so agitated that he let it drop out of his hands, and burst into a flood of tears.

From this time, Adams experienced no particular ill treatment, but he was required to work as usual. About a month more elapsed, when the man who brought the letter, and who was a servant of the British consul, disguised as a trader, made known to Adams that he had succeeded in procuring his release, and the next day they set out together for Mogadore.

On quitting Wadinoon, they proceeded in a northerly direction, travelling on mules at the rate of thirty miles a day, and in fifteen days arrived at Mogadore. Here Adams remained eight months with Mr.

Dupuis. America and England being then at war, it was found difficult to procure for Adams a conveyance to his native country; he therefore obtained a pa.s.sage on board a vessel bound to Cadiz, where he remained about fourteen months as servant or groom, in the service of Mr. Hall, an English merchant there. Peace having been in the mean time restored, Adams was informed by the American consul, that he had now an opportunity of returning to his native country with a cartel, or transport of American seamen, which was on the point of sailing from Gibraltar. He accordingly proceeded thither, but arrived two days after the vessel had sailed. Soon afterwards he engaged himself on board a Welsh brig, lying at Gibraltar, in which he sailed to Bilboa, whence the brig took a cargo of wool to Bristol, and after discharging it there, was proceeding in ballast to Liverpool; but having been driven into Holyhead by contrary winds, Adams there fell sick, and was put on sh.o.r.e. From this place he begged his way up to London, where he arrived completely dest.i.tute. He had slept two or three nights in the open streets, when he was accidentally met by a gentleman, who had seen him in Mr. Hall's service at Cadiz, and was acquainted with his history, by whom he was directed to the office of the African a.s.sociation, through whose means his adventures were made known to the public.

Adams may be said to have been the first Christian, who ever reached the far-famed city of Timbuctoo, and it must be admitted that many attempts were made to throw a positive degree of discredit upon his narrative, and to consider it more the work of deep contrivance than of actual experience. It is certain that many difficulties present themselves in the narrative of Adams, which cannot be reconciled with the discoveries subsequently made, but that cannot be argued as a reason for invalidating the whole of his narrative; especially when it is so amply and circ.u.mstantially confirmed by the inquiries which were set on foot by Mr. Dupuis, at the instigation of the African a.s.sociation, and the result of which was, a complete confirmation of all the circ.u.mstances, which Adams

CHAPTER XIII.

It is perhaps not the least of the many extraordinary circ.u.mstances attending the city of Timbuctoo, that no two travellers agree in their account of it; and for this reason it is most difficult to decide, to whom the greatest credibility should be awarded, or, on the other hand, whether some of them, who pretend to have resided within its walls, ever visited it at all. The contradictions of the respective travellers are in many instances so gross, that it is scarcely possible to believe that the description, which they are then giving can apply to one and the same place, and therefore we are ent.i.tled to draw the inference, that some of them are practising on our credulity, and are making us the dupes of their imagination, rather than the subjects of their experience. The expectations of moorish magnificence were raised to a very high pitch, by some of the inflated accounts of the wealth and splendour of the great city of central Africa; but these expectations were considerably abated by the description given of Timbuctoo by Adams and Sidi Hamet, a moorish merchant, who describes that city in the following terms:--

”Timbuctoo is a very large city, five times as great as Swearah (Suera or Mogadore). It is built in a level plain surrounded on all sides with hills, except on the south, where the plain continues to the bank of the same river, which is wide and deep, and runs to the east. We were obliged to go to it to water our camels, and there we saw many boats, made of great trees, some with negroes paddling in them across the river. The city is strongly walled in with stone laid in clay, like the towns and houses in Suse, only a great deal thicker.”

The latter account is at total variance with both Adams and Caillie, who describe Timbuctoo as a city having no walls, nor any thing resembling fortifications. ”The house of the king is very large and high, like the largest house in Mogadore, but built of the same materials as the walls. There are a great many more houses in the city, built of stone, _with shops on one side_, where they sell salt, the staple article, knives, blue cloth, haicks, and an abundance of other things, with many gold ornaments. The inhabitants are blacks, and the chief is a very large, grey-headed, old black man, who is called shegar, which means sultan or king. The princ.i.p.al part of the houses are made with large reeds, as thick as a man's arm, which stand upon their ends, and are covered with small reeds first, and then with the leaves of the date tree; they are round, and the tops come to a point, like a heap of stones. Neither the shegar nor his people are Moslem; but there is a town divided off from the princ.i.p.al one, in one corner by a strong part.i.tion wall, with one gate to it, which leads from the main town, like the Jews' town or _millah_ in Mogadore. All the Moors or Arabs, who have liberty to come into Timbuctoo, are obliged to sleep in that part of it every night, or to go out of the city entirely. No stranger is allowed to enter that millah, without leaving his knife with the gate-keeper; but when he comes out in the morning, it is restored to him. The people who live in that part are all Moslem. The negroes, bad Arabs, and Moors are all mixed together, and intermarry, as if they were all of one colour; they have no property of consequence, except a few a.s.ses; their gate is shut and fastened every night at dark, and very strongly guarded both by night and by day. The shegar or king is always guarded by one hundred men on mules, armed with good guns, and one hundred men on foot, with guns and long knives. He would not go into the millah, and we saw him only four or five times in the two moons we staid at Timbuctoo, waiting for the caravan; but it had perished in the desert, neither did the yearly caravan arrive from Tunis and Tripoli, for it also had been destroyed.”

”The city of Timbuctoo is very rich, as well as very large; it has four gates to it; all of them are opened in the day time, but very strongly guarded and shut at night. The negro women are very fat and handsome, and wear large round gold rings in their noses, and flat ones in their ears, and gold chains and amber beads about their necks, with images and white fish bones, bent round, and the ends fastened together, hanging down between their b.r.e.a.s.t.s; they have bracelets on their wrists and on their ankles, and go barefooted. I had bought a small snuff-box, filled with snuff, at Morocco, and showed it to the women in the princ.i.p.al street of Timbuctoo, which is very wide. There were a great number about me in a few minutes, and they insisted on buying my snuff and box; one made me an offer, and another made me another, until one, who wore richer ornaments than the rest, told me, in broken Arabic, that she would take off all she had about her, and give them to me for the box and its contents. I agreed to accept them, and she pulled off her nose-rings and ear-rings, all her neck-chains, with their ornaments, and the bracelets from her wrists and ankles, and gave them to me in exchange for it. These ornaments would weigh more than a pound, and were made of solid gold at Timbuctoo. I kept them through the whole of the journey afterwards, and carried them to my wife, who now wears a part of them.”

”Timbuctoo carries on a great trade with all the caravans that come from Morocco, and the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean sea. From Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, &c. are brought all kinds of cloth, iron, salt, muskets, powder and lead swords or scimitars, tobacco, opium, spices and perfumes, amber beads, and other trinkets, with a few more articles. They carry back, in return, elephants' teeth, gold dust and wrought gold, gum-senegal, ostrich feathers, very curiously worked turbans, and slaves; a great many of the latter, and many other articles of less importance. The slaves are brought in from the south-west, all strongly ironed, and are sold very cheap, so that a good stout man may be bought for a haick, which costs in the empire of Morocco about two dollars.”

”The caravans stop and encamp about two miles from the city, in a deep valley, and the negroes do not molest them. They bring their merchandize near the walls of the city, where the inhabitants purchase all their goods on exchange for the before-mentioned articles; not more than fifty men from any one caravan being allowed to enter the city at a time, and they must go out before others are permitted to enter. This city carries on a great trade with Wa.s.sanah, a city far to the south-east, in all the articles that are brought to it by caravans, and gets returns in slaves, elephants' teeth, gold, &c. The princ.i.p.al male inhabitants are clothed with blue cloth s.h.i.+rts, that reach from their shoulders down to their knees, and are very wide, and girt about their loins with a red and brown cotton sash or girdle. They also hang about their bodies, pieces of different coloured cloth and silk handkerchiefs. The king is dressed in a white robe of a similar fas.h.i.+on, but covered with white and yellow gold and silver plates, that glitter in the sun. He has also many other s.h.i.+ning ornaments of sh.e.l.ls and stones hanging about him, he wears a pair of breeches like the Moors and Barbary Jews, and has a kind of white turban on his head, pointing up, and strung with different kinds of ornaments. His feet are covered with red morocco shoes. He has no other weapon about him than a large white staff or sceptre, with a golden lion on the head of it, which he carries in his hand. His countenance is mild, and he seems to govern his subjects more like a father than a king. All but the king go bareheaded. The poor have only a single piece of blue or other cloth about them. The inhabitants are very numerous; I think six times as many as in Swearah, besides Arabs and other Mahommedans in their millah or separate town, which must contain nearly as many people as there are altogether in Swearah. [*] The women are clothed in a light s.h.i.+rt, or under-dress, and over it a green, red or blue covering, from the bosom to below the knees, the whole of them girt about their waists with a red girdle. They stain their cheeks and foreheads red or yellow on some occasions; and the married women wear a kind of hood on their heads, made of blue cloth or silk, and cotton handkerchiefs of different kinds and colours, and go barefooted.”