with mud, consisted of two earthen-floored rooms and a broad verandah. The thatched roof was rather leaky, while my furniture comprised two arm-chests covered with mats, a deal table, a bamboo settle, a tin-pan with palm-oil for a lamp, and a German looking-glass mounted in a paper frame. I augmented these comforts by the addition of a trunk, mattress, hammock and pair of blankets; yet, after all this embellishment, I confess my household was rather a sorry affair.
It is time I should make the reader acquainted with the individual who was the presiding genius of the scene, and, in some degree, a type of his peculiar class in Africa.
Mr. Ormond was the son of an opulent slave-trader from Liverpool, and owed his birth to the daughter of a native chief on the Rio Pongo. His father seems to have been rather proud of his mulatto stripling, and dispatched him to England to be educated. But Master John had made little progress in belles-lettres, when news of the trader’s death was brought to the British agent, who refused the youth further supplies of money. The poor boy soon became an outcast in a land which had not yet become fashionably addicted to philanthropy; and, after drifting about awhile in England, he shipped on board a merchantman. The press-gang soon got possession of the likely mulatto for the service of his Britannic Majesty. Sometimes he played the part of dandy waiter in the cabin; sometimes he swung a hammock with the hands in the forecastle. Thus, five years slipped by, during which the wanderer visited most of the West Indian and Mediterranean stations.
At length the prolonged cruise was terminated, and Ormond paid off. He immediately determined to employ his hoarded cash in a voyage to Africa, where he might claim his father’s property. The project was executed; his mother was still found alive; and, fortunately for the manly youth, she recognized him at once as her first-born.
The reader will recollect that these things occurred on the west coast of Africa in the early part of the present century, and that the tenure of property, and the interests of foreign traders, were controlled entirely by such customary laws as prevailed on the spot. Accordingly, a “grand palaver” was appointed, and all Mr. Ormond’s brothers, sisters, uncles, and cousins—many of whom were in possession of his father’s slaves or their descendants—were summoned to attend. The “talk” took plate at the appointed time. The African mother stood forth stanchly to assert the identity and rights of her first-born, and, in the end, all of the Liverpool trader’s property, in houses, lands, and negroes, that could be ascertained, was handed over, according to coast-law, to the returned heir.
When the mulatto youth was thus suddenly elevated into comfort, if not opulence, in his own country, he resolved to augment his wealth by pursuing his father’s business. But the whole country was then desolated by a civil war, occasioned, as most of them are, by family disputes, which it was necessary to terminate before trade could be comfortably established.
To this task Ormond steadfastly devoted his first year. His efforts were seconded by the opportune death of one of the warring chiefs. A tame opponent—a brother of Ormond’s mother—was quickly brought to terms by a trifling present; so that the sailor boy soon concentrated the family influence, and declared himself “Mongo,” or, Chief of the River.
Bangalang had long been a noted factory among the English traders. When war was over, Ormond selected this post as his permanent residence, while he sent runners to Sierra Leone and Goree with notice that he would shortly be prepared with ample cargoes. Trade, which had been so long interrupted by hostilities, poured from the interior. Vessels from Goree and Sierra Leone were seen in the offing, responding to his invitation. His stores were packed with British, French, and American fabrics; while hides, wax, palm-oil, ivory, gold, and slaves, were the native products for which Spaniards and Portuguese hurried to proffer their doubloons and bills.
It will be readily conjectured that a very few years sufficed to make Jack Ormond not only a wealthy merchant, but a popular Mongo among the great interior tribes of Foulahs and Mandingoes. The petty chiefs, whose territory bordered the sea, flattered him with the title of king; and, knowing his Mormon taste, stocked his harem with their choicest children as the most valuable tokens of friendship and fidelity.
When I was summoned to act as secretary or clerk of such a personage, I saw immediately that it would be well not only to understand my duties promptly, but to possess a clear estimate of the property I was to administer and account for. Ormond’s easy habits satisfied me that he was not a man of business originally, or had become sadly negligent under the debasing influence of wealth and voluptuousness. My earliest task, therefore, was to make out a minute inventory of his possessions, while I kept a watchful eye on his stores, never allowing any one to enter them unattended. When I presented this document, which exhibited a large deficiency, the Mongo received it with indifference, begging me not to “annoy him with accounts.” His manner indicated so much petulant fretfulness, that I augured from it the conscious decline or disorder of his affairs.
As I was returning to the warehouse from this mortifying interview, I encountered an ancient hag—a sort of superintendent Cerberus or manager of the Mongo’s harem—who, by signs, intimated that she wanted the key to the “cloth-chest,” whence she immediately helped herself to several fathoms of calico. The crone could not speak English, and, as I did not understand the Soosoo dialect, we attempted no oral argument about the propriety of her conduct; but, taking a pencil and paper, and making signs that she should go to the Mongo, who would write an order for the raiment, I led her quietly to the door. The wrath of the virago was instantly kindled, while her horrid face gleamed with that devilish ferocity, which, in some degree is lost by Africans who dwell on our continent. During the reign of my predecessors, it seems that she had been allowed to control the store keys, and to help herself unstintedly. I knew not, of course, what she said on this occasion; but the violence of her gestures, the nervous spasms of her limbs, the flashing of her eyes, the scream of her voluble tongue, gave token that she swelled with a rage which was augmented by my imperturbable quietness. At dinner, I apprised Mr. Ormond of the negro’s conduct; but he received the announcement with the same laugh of indifference that greeted the account of his deficient inventory.
That night I had just stretched myself on my hard pallet, and was revolving the difficulties of my position with some degree of pain at my forced continuance in Africa, when my servant tapped softly at the door, and announced that some one demanded admittance, but begged that I would first of all extinguish the light. I was in a country requiring caution; so I felt my pistols before I undid the latch. It was a bright, star-light night; and, as I opened the door sufficiently to obtain a glance beyond—still maintaining my control of the aperture—I perceived the figure of a female, wrapped in cotton cloth from head to foot, except the face, which I recollected as that of the beautiful quarteroon I was whirling in the waltz, when surprised by the Mongo. She put forth her hands from the folds of her garment, and laying one softly on my arm, while she touched her lips with the other, looked wistfully behind, and glided into my apartment.
This poor girl, the child of a mulatto mother and a white parent, was born in the settlement of Sierra Leone, and had acquired our language with much more fluency than is common among her race. It was said that her father had been originally a missionary from Great Britain, but abandoned his profession for the more lucrative traffic in slaves, to which he owed an abundant fortune. It is probable that the early ecclesiastical turn of her delinquent progenitor induced him, before he departed for America, to bestow on his child the biblical name of Esther.
I led my trembling visitor to the arm-chest, and, seating her gently by my side, inquired why I was favored by so stealthy a visit from the harem. My suspicions were aroused; for, though a novice in Africa, I knew enough of the discipline maintained in these slave factories, not to allow my fancy to seduce me with the idea that her visit was owing to mad-cap sentimentality.
The manner of these quarteroon girls, whose complexion hardly separates them from our own race, is most winningly graceful; and Esther, with abated breath, timidly asked my pardon for intruding,
