S52 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA* 
tisfactory answer, joined their forces, and almost 
wholly destroyed the country, where all the hor- 
rors and misery so appallingly attendant on Afri- 
can wars were inflicted on and borne by the 
wretched inhabitants. A dreadful instance of 
the detestation in which the actual state of sla- 
very is regarded by the free-born negro, so far 
as they are themselves concerned, occurred at 
the destruction of one of those towns. The wives 
of some chiefs who had either been killed or taken 
by the enemy determined not to survive their 
husbands' or their country's fall, and preferring 
death, even in its most terrifying shape, to sla- 
very and the embraces of their captors, — suffered 
themselves and their young children to be burnt 
to death in a hut, where they had assembled with 
that determination, and which was set on fire by 
themselves. This affair and some others of a 
similar nature which took place about that 
time in the Senegal, although rendered neces- 
sary by acts of plunder, breach of contract, or 
treachery on the part of the chiefs, who are un- 
fortunately much addicted to such conduct, were 
unavoidably attended with circumstances which, 
so far from being calculated to make those peo- 
ple regard the visits of Europeans to their coun- 
try in a favourable light, had the effect of corro- 
borating in a great measure the false and inte- 
rested reports already but too sedulously circu- 
