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Updated: May 16, 2025
During our halt for breakfast at the barracoon, we were visited by Petit Denis, a son of the old king. His village is marked upon the charts some four miles south-south-east of his father's; but at this season all the royalties, we are assured, affect the sea- shore. He was dressed in the usual loin-wrap, under a broadcloth coat, with the French official buttons.
We are fully aware, for instance, that you are a slave-dealer among other things and I have very little doubt that, if I chose to land a party, we should find a choice lot of negroes in that barracoon of yours in the bush, yonder you look surprised, but, you see, I know all about you; so your best plan will be to answer my questions truthfully and unreservedly.
In the rear of the house was a spacious barracoon, where the slaves were collected and kept for shipment, and where they were plentifully supplied with rice and vegetables, with salt meats, and the means of doing their own cooking. All these things the new corners noted at once, and indeed were very curious in fully understanding.
The western side is composed of thick trees, and terminates in dead wood, from which we called it 'Dead-wood Point'. After crossing the bar it branches off in a W. and N.W. direction, the latter being the principal arm, up which the boats went some 30 miles, or about 10 beyond the barracoon.
"I once knew an officer of that very name Gerald Leigh and he was killed in action up the Niger River on the West Coast, while attacking a slave barracoon, ten years ago come next March " "That was my father," I here interposed, interrupting his reminiscences. "Your father? You don't mean that!" "I do," I said, eagerly, "I was four years old when Uncle George received the news of his death."
And this one says he left his people all sick, and paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come and help them, and that these devils caught him in the bay just in sight of home, and that he has never seen anybody from home since then. And this one says," choked out Nolan, "that he has not heard a word from his home in six months, while he has been locked up in an infernal barracoon."
The next two days were entirely devoid of incident; but we were all kept busy in attending to the unfortunate captive blacks, supervising the bathing of them in batches, inducing them to take a moderate amount of exercise in the barracoon compounds, feeding them up, and nursing the sick of whom, however, there was luckily a singularly small percentage.
They were shut up safely in the "barracoon," such was the name of the large building and to-morrow, that day, or whenever the captain was ready, he would deliver them over. So promised the king. Of course the captain was not quite ready.
Now dining with a king off the strangest of viands; now holding "palaver" with another; now spending a day with a chief and his numerous wives; now visiting a French barracoon, where, under a fiction of law, the victims were collected to be shipped as unwilling apprentices, not slaves, to be returned to their native wilds, if they lived long enough; now ascending a river dangerous for boats, where, if the boat had capsized, himself and crew would but have served a morning's meal to the hungry sharks held as fetich by the natives along the stream, who yearly sacrifice young girls reared for the purpose to their propitiation; now scouring the bush in pursuit of the gorilla or shooting hippopotami by the half-dozen, and other adventures and exploits wherein duty, excitement, and gratified curiosity were intermingled with danger and hairbreadth escape that few would care to tempt.
And a very excellent bargain he contrived to make, too, so I understood, the unfortunate buyer suffering a heavy loss when the captain of the cruiser made it his first business to destroy the barracoon, which formed a portion of the property, although the aforesaid buyer of course made a point of vowing most emphatically that he had no intention whatever of using the structure for slave-dealing purposes, to which also, as a matter of course, he declared that he had a most righteous aversion.
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