CAPTAIN TUCKEY'S NARRATIVE. 141 



and two caps, which cost 30 shilHngs in England, making the 

 meat considerably above a shilHng a pound ; so that we were 

 obhged 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 fift}^ 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 Avere, " 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, Avhere 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 undejrstood enough of it 



