CAPTAIN TUCKEY’S NARRATIVE. 161 
for if one is badly treated, he runs off, and goes over to the 
territory of another Chenoo, where he is received by some 
proprietor of land, which inevitably produces a feud 
between the people of the two districts. The trading or 
marketable slaves are those purchased from the itinerant 
black slave merchants, and are either taken in war, kidnap- 
ped, or condemned for crimes ; the first two of these classes, 
however, evidently form the great mass of the exported 
slaves ; and it would seem that the kidnapped ones (or as the 
slave merchants who speak English call it «‘ catching in the 
bush”), are by far the most numerous. This practice how- 
ever is certainly unknown at present on the banks of this 
river as far as we have yet proceeded. 
The property which a man dies possessed of devolves 
to his brothers or uterine uncles, but prescriptively, as 
it would appear, for the use of the family of the deceased ; 
for they are bound by custom (which is here tantamount to 
our written laws) to provide in a proper manner for the 
wives and children of the deceased ; and the wives they may 
make their own, as in the Mosaic dispensation. 
Crimes are punished capitally by decapitation, by gra- 
dual amputation of the limbs, by burning and by drowning. 
The only capital crimes, however, seem to be poisoning, 
and adultery with the wives of the great men. This latter 
ey) 
