Slaver Captain by John Newton

Author:John Newton [Newton, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Naval
ISBN: 9781848320796
Google: sna9AwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
Published: 2010-11-08T00:38:12+00:00

3. I arrive at Africa and become a slave of slaves. After many trials and much suffering I am rescued.

Letter V

Dear Sir,

In the following two years, of which I am now to give some account, I was to have still deeper experience of the dreadful state of the heart of man when left to itself; I have seen frequent cause since, to admire the mercy of the Lord in banishing me to those distant parts, and almost excluding me from human society, at a time when I was big with mischief and, like one infected with a pestilence, was capable of spreading a taint wherever I went. Yet had my affairs taken a different turn, had I succeeded in my designs, and remained in England, my sad story would probably have been worse. But the Lord wisely placed me where I could do little harm. The few I had to converse with were much like myself, and I was soon brought into such abject circumstances, that I was too low to have any influence, being shunned and despised rather than imitated, there being few, even of the negroes themselves (during the first year of my residence among them) but thought themselves too good to speak to me.

It may not, perhaps, be amiss here to digress and give you a very brief sketch of the geography of the circuit I was now confined to, especially as I may have frequent occasion to refer later to places I shall now mention, for my trade afterwards, when the Lord gave me better days, was chiefly to the same places, and with the same persons – those by whom I had been considered as upon a level with their meanest slaves.

From Cape de Verd, the most western point of Africa, to Cape Mount, the whole coast is full of rivers; the principal are Gambia, Rio Grande, Sierra Leone, and Sherbro. Of the former, as it is well known, and I was never there, I need say nothing. The Rio Grande (like the Nile) divides into many branches near the sea. On the most northerly, called Cacheo, the Portuguese have a settlement. The most southern branch, known by the name of Rio Nuna, is, or then was, the usual boundary of the white men’s trade northward. Sierra Leone is a mountainous peninsula, uninhabited, and I believe inaccessible upon account of the thick woods, excepting those parts which lie near the water. The river is large and navigable. From hence, about twelve leagues to the south-east, are three contiguous islands, called the Benanoes, about twenty miles in circuit: this was about the centre of the white men’s residence. Seven leagues farther, the same way, lay the Plantanes, three small islands, two miles distant from the continent at the point, which form one side of the Sherbro. This river is more properly a sound, running within a long island, and receiving the confluence of several large ‘rivers unknown to song’, but far more deeply engraven in my remembrance than the Po or Tyber.

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