“The people, whom you see close behind the unhappy convict, form a numerous body, and reach a considerable way.  They speak a language, which no person in this part of Africa can understand, and their features, as you perceive, are so different from those of the rest, that they almost appear a distinct race of men.  From this circumstance I recollect them.  They are the subjects of a very distant prince, who agreed with the slave merchants, for a quantity of spirituous liquors, to furnish him with a stipulated number of slaves.  He accordingly surrounded, and set fire to one of his own villages in the night, and seized these people, who were unfortunately the inhabitants, as they were escaping from the flames.  I first saw them as the merchants were driving them in, about two days ago.  They came in a large body, and were tied together at the neck with leather thongs, which permitted them to walk at the distance of about a yard from one another.  Many of them were loaden with elephants teeth, which had been purchased at the same time.  All of them had bags, made of skin, upon their shoulders; for as they were to travel, in their way from the great mountains, through barren sands and inhospitable woods for many days together, they were obliged to carry water and provisions with them.  Notwithstanding this, many of them perished, some by hunger, but the greatest number by fatigue, as the place from whence they came, is at such an amazing distance from this, and the obstacles, from the nature of the country, so great, that the journey could scarcely be completed in seven moons.”

When this relation was finished, and we had been looking stedfastly for some time on the croud that was going by, we lost sight of that peculiarity of feature, which we had before remarked.  We then discovered that the inhabitants of the depopulated village had all of them passed us, and that the part of the train, to which we were now opposite, was a numerous body of kidnapped people.  Here we indulged our imagination.  We thought we beheld in one of them a father, in another an husband, and in another a son, each of whom was forced from his various and tender connections, and without even the opportunity of bidding them adieu.  While we were engaged in these and other melancholy reflections, the whole body of slaves had entirely passed us.  We turned almost insensibly to look at them again, when we discovered an unhappy man at the end of the train, who could scarcely keep pace with the rest.  His feet seemed to have suffered much from long and constant travelling, for he was limping painfully along.