^ The Last Phase of the Slave Trade 



mutineers. He did this partly to save the life of an English 

 cabin boy, who in some extraordinary way had drifted from 

 Lancashire to this horrible service, and who had been frightfully 

 ill-used by a British mate on board some vessel at Cuba, his 

 part having been taken by Canot then, as later on in the slave 

 ship at the Pongo River/ 



At the Pongo River, Canot made the acquaintance of a 

 great local celebrity of those days, a mulatto named Ormond,^ 

 the son of a Liverpool merchant by a native wife. Ormond's 

 father had married a woman of good family and influence in 

 the vicinity of the River Pongo. He took his mulatto son to 

 England, and did his best to give him a good education. 

 After his father's death, the boy felt out of place in his English 

 surroundings, and indeed was almost penniless. He managed 

 to find his way back to Sierra Leone and eventually to the 

 River Pongo, where his mother at once recognised him, and 

 calling all her connections together managed to get him installed 

 by the native authorities in all the possessions of his late father — 

 houses, lands, slaves, boats, and barracoons. Ormond started a 

 large harem of wives, and settled down as a native chief, being 

 known by the local designation of '* Mongo." 



Mongo John or Mongo Ormond was quite a personality 

 in Senegambia between 1820 and 1830. Canot became his 

 bookkeeper, and made a journey to the Fula kingdom in the 

 interior. After quarrelling with Ormond, however, he set up 

 as an independent slaver on his own account, taking into 



' Canot, after quelling the mutiny, managed to arrange that the Areostaika 

 should convey the cabin boy back to Cuba, whence he should be sent to his home 

 in Lancashire. He states that the boy actually reached his home in safety. What 

 extraordinary experiences must this Lancashire lad have had to relate to those 

 who cared to listen ! It would be interesting to know what became of him. 



^ Compare this story with the accounts of the Ormonds given {ex Wadstrom) on 

 pp. 117 and 120. There is some discrepancy in dates and in one or two other points 

 between the story told to the Sierra Leone Company in 1792 and Canot's version. 



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