204 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
as proofs of their honourable intentions the testimonials 
given to them by the European captains with whom 
they had business relations. 
One of these documents, signed James Dow, captain 
of the brig “ Susan ” of Liverpool, and dated from the 
most important river of the Brass country, September, 
1830, ran thus :— 
“ Captain Dow states that he never met with a set of 
greater scoundrels than the natives generally, and the 
pilots in particular.” 
It goes on in a similar strain heaping curses upon the 
natives, and charging them with having endeavoured to 
wreck Dow’s vessel at the mouth of the river with a 
view to dividing his property amongst them. King 
Jacket was designated as an arrant rogue and a cles- 
perate thief. Boy was the only one of common honesty 
or trustworthiness. 
After an endless palaver, Obie declared that according 
to the laws and customs of the country he had a right 
to look upon the Landers and their people as his pro¬ 
perty, but that, not wishing to abuse his privileges, he 
would set them free in exchange for the value of twenty 
slaves in English merchandise. This decision, which 
Richard Lander tried in vain to shake, plunged the 
brothers into the depths of despair, a state of mind soon 
succeeded by an apathy and indifference so complete 
that they could not have made the faintest effort to 
recover their liberty. Add to these mental sufferings 
the physical weakness to which they were reduced by 
want of food, and we shall have some idea of their state 
of prostration. Without resources of any kind, robbed 
of their needles, cowries, and merchandise, they were 
reduced to the sad necessity of begging their bread. 
“ But we might as well have addressed our petitions to 
the stones or trees,” says Lander; “ we might have 
spared ourselves the mortification of a refusal. We 
never experienced a more stinging sense of our own 
humbleness and imbecility than on such occasions, and 
never had we greater need of patience and lowliness of 
spirit. In most African towns and villages we have 
