CAPTAIN TUCKEY’S NARRATIVE. 141 
and two caps, which cost 30 shillings in England, making the 
meat considerably above a shilling a pound ; so that we were 
obliged to confine ourselves to the purchase of a goat for 
four fathoms of printed cotton. Indeed, from the very little 
spare provisions the natives seem to have at this season, I do 
not think it would be possible to procure daily subsistence 
for fifty men in passing through the country. Towards 
evening two men were sent from the Chenoo as guides for 
Yellala, but one of them having evidently never been there, 
I sent him back. A Mandingo slave man was brought to 
me, bound neck and heels with small cords. His answers 
to the questions put to him were, “ that he was three moons 
coming from his country, sometimes on rivers, sometimes 
by land; that his own country was named M/intolo, on the 
banks of a river as broad as the Zaire, where we were 
at anchor, but so filled with rocks, that even canoes could 
not be used on it ; and that he had been taken when walking 
a short distance from his father’s house, by a slave catcher, 
who had shot him in the neck with a ball, the cicatrice of 
the wound still remaining ; and that he had been about two 
years from his country.” Although his reckoning of the 
lapse of time could not be depended on, he evidently had not 
been long caught, for he spoke the Congo language but very 
imperfectly ; nevertheless, as he understood enough of it 
