I do not pretend to entertain the reader with a feigned hero, whose adventures I can manage according to my fancy.  Of many of the events here set down, I was an eye-witness, and what I did not see myself, I learnt from the mouth of Oroonoko.  When I made his acquaintance I was living in that part of our South American colony called Surinam, which we lately ceded to the Dutch—­a great mistake, I think, for the land was fertile, and the natives were friendly, and many Englishmen had set up sugar plantations, which they worked by means of negroes.  Most of these slaves came from that part of Africa known as Coromantien.  The Coromantiens, being very warlike, were continually fighting other nations, and they always had many captives ready to be sold as slaves to our planters.

The king of Coromantien was a hundred years of age.  All his sons had fallen in battle, and only one of them had left behind him an heir.  Oroonoko, as the young prince was called, was a very intelligent and handsome negro, and as his grandfather engaged a Frenchman of wit and learning to teach him, he received an education better than that of many European princes.  This I can speak of from my own knowledge, as I have often conversed with him.  He had a great admiration for the ancient Romans; and in everything but the colour of his skin he reminded me of those heroes of antiquity.

His nose was finely curved, and his lips, too, were well shaped, instead of being thick as those of most Africans are.  As the king of Coromantien, by reason of his great age, was unable to bear arms, he entrusted his chief headman with the duty of training Oroonoko in the arts of war.  For two years, the young prince was away fighting with a powerful inland nation; the chief headman was killed in a fierce battle, and Oroonoko succeeded him in the command of the army.  He was then only seventeen years of age, but he quickly brought the long war to a successful conclusion, and returned home with a multitude of captives.  The greater part of these he gave to his grandfather, and the rest he took to Imoinda, the daughter and only child of the chief headman, as trophies of her father’s victories.

Imoinda was a marvellously beautiful girl; her features, like those of Oroonoko, were regular and noble, and more European than African.  It was a case of love at first sight on both sides, and the young prince presented the lovely maiden with a hundred and fifty slaves, and returned home in a fever of passion.  It was necessary for him to obtain his grandfather’s consent to his marriage, but for some days he was so perplexed by the flood of strange, new feelings surging in his young heart that he remained silent and moody.

His followers, however, were loud in their praises of Imoinda.  They extolled her ravishing charms even in the presence of the old king, so that nothing else was talked of but Imoinda.  Oroonoko’s love rapidly became too strong for him to control, and one night he went secretly to the house of his beloved, and wooed her with such fervency of soul that even she was astonished by it.  It was the savage custom of his country for a king to have a hundred wives, as his grandfather had; but Oroonoko was an enlightened and chivalrous man.