264 HISTORY OF THE [book iv. 
that death would be the fate of most of the cap¬ 
tives, if purchasers were not to be met with. 
But the Mandingoes have frequent wars with 
each other, as well as with such nations as they 
consider enemies of their faith; and I am afraid, that 
some of these wars arise from motives even less 
justifiable than religious zeal. An old and faithful 
Mandingo servant, who stands at my elbow while 
I write this, relates, that being sent by his father to 
visit a distant relation in a country wherein the Por¬ 
tuguese had a settlement, a fray happened in the 
village in which he resided: that many people were 
killed, and others taken prisoners, and he himself 
was seized and carried off in the skirmish 5 not, as 
he conceives, by a foreign enemy, but by some of 
the natives of the place ; and being sent down a 
river in a canoe, was sold to the captain of the ship 
that brought him to Jamaica. Of his national 
customs and manners he remembers but little, be¬ 
ing at the time of his captivity, but a youth. He 
relates, that the natives practice circumcision, and 
that he himself has undergone that operation; and 
he has not forgot the morning and evening prayer 
which his father taught him; in proof of this asser¬ 
tion, he chaunts, in an audible and shrill tone, a 
sentence that I conceive to be part of the Alcoran, 
La ilia , ill ilia!* which he says they sing aloud at 
the first appearance of the new moon. He relates, 
moreover, that in his own country Friday was con- 
* There is no God, but God. 
