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Updated: June 5, 2025
I know Whydah pretty well, having had dealings there. It is a fine place, with orange-trees growing wild and great green meadows, and rivers chock full of fish, and the whole of it full of fever as an egg is of meat. The factory there was kept by an old man, an Englishman, who pretended to be Dutch and called himself Klootz, but was known to all as Bristol Pete.
It was mostly about the Gold Coast, about a place called Whydah, where there was good trading for negroes, so the boatswain said. He had been there in a Bristol brig, under Captain Travers, collecting trade, i.e. negro slaves. "The blacks was mad after," he said, "the next ship's crew that put in there was all set on the beach. I seed their bones after. All picked clean.
All the way home he was scheming, and the very night we reached Whydah again he came out with a plan. "Have you ever read your Bible?" said he. "A little," I said, "between whiles; but latterly not much." "The more shame to you," said he, "for it is a good book. Well, I've a notion almost as good as Noah's and not so very different. We will pack her up with slaves and sail her across to Barbadoes.
"Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday." "I have other plans for her, Freeman. I have determined upon a slaving venture to Whydah." "But her cargo is ready, sir." "Then it must come out again, Freeman. My mind is made up, and the Ruffling Harry must go slaving to Whydah." All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to clear the ship once more.
I reckoned that I would wait until sunset, then hoist sail and hold on past the river and along shore towards Whydah. I counted on a breeze coming off shore towards evening, which it did, and blew all night, so stiff that at two miles' distance, which I kept by guess, I could smell the stink of swamps.
The latter was a small mud hut, with a thatched roof; and of the 'boas, which tuned out to be pythons, he counted seven, each about five feet long. The most popular deity of Whydah, however, was the Priapic Legba, a horrid mass of red clay moulded into an imitation man with the abnormalities of the Roman deity.
Two other local gods mentioned by Ellis were, according to the tradition, two men who began the trade that made Whydah the chief port of the west coast of Africa; but here also the tradition is not perfectly trustworthy.
Except to the mischievously inclined, they offer no inducement to commit violence. On landing, they flew to meet us, balancing themselves in the air in front, within easy reach of our hands. The other birds were crows, turtle-doves, fish-hawks, kingfishers, ibis nigra and ibis religiosa, flocks of whydah birds, geese, darters, paddy birds, kites, and eagles.
It was about two o'clock when the "Albatross" arrived over the plain and began to descend among the clouds which still hid her from the Dahomians. There were sixteen thousand people at least come from all parts of the kingdom, from Whydah, and Kerapay, and Ardrah, and Tombory, and the most distant villages.
It was in the old Amphitrite I was at the time she's broken- up and burnt for firewood long ago, poor old thing! and we was a-lying in the Bight of Benin, alongside of a slaver which we had captured the day before off Whydah.
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