On Hearing This, The
Serawoollies, Who Had Travelled With Us From The Faleme River, Separated
Themselves And Their Slaves From The Coffle.
They had not, they said, the
means of maintaining their slaves in Gambia until a vessel should arrive,
and were unwilling to sell them to disadvantage; they therefore departed
to the northward for Kajaaga.
We continued our route through the
Wilderness, and travelled all day through a rugged country, covered with
extensive thickets of bamboo. At sunset, to our great joy, we arrived at
a pool of water near a large tabba tree, whence the place is called
Tabba-gee, and here we rested a few hours. The water at this season of
the year is by no means plentiful in these woods; and as the days were
insufferably hot, Karfa proposed to travel in the night. Accordingly,
about eleven o'clock, the slaves were taken out of their irons, and the
people of the coffle received orders to keep close together, as well to
prevent the slaves from attempting to escape, as on account of the wild
beasts. We travelled with great alacrity until daybreak, when it was
discovered that a free woman had parted from the coffle in the night; her
name was called until the woods resounded, but no answer being given, we
conjectured that she had either mistaken the road, or that a lion had
seized her unperceived. At length it was agreed that four people should
go back a few miles to a small rivulet, where some of the coffle had
stopt to drink, as we passed it in the night, and that the coffle should
wait for their return. The sun was about an hour high before the people
came back with the woman, whom they found lying fast asleep by the
stream. We now resumed our journey, and about eleven o'clock reached a
walled town called Tambacunda, where we were well received. Here we
remained four days, on account of a _palaver_ which was held on the
following occasion. Modi Lemina, one of the Slatees belonging to the
coffle, had formerly married a woman of this town, who had borne him two
children; he afterwards went to Manding, and remained there eight years,
without sending any account of himself, during all that time, to his
deserted wife; who, seeing no prospect of his return, at the end of three
years had married another man, to whom she had likewise borne two
children. Lemina now claimed his wife, but the second husband refused to
deliver her up; insisting that by the laws of Africa, when a man has been
three years absent from his wife, without giving her notice of his being
alive, the woman is at liberty to marry again. After all the
circumstances had been fully investigated in an assembly of the chief
men, it was determined that the wife should make her choice, and be at
liberty either to return to the first husband, or continue with the
second, as she alone should think proper.
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