good for negro good for Spanish man too:  you try them two days, and see how you feel.’  The Spaniards asked for water, and it was dealt out to them in the same little cup with which they had dealt it out to the Africans.  They complained bitterly of being thirsty.  Cinque said, ’You say little water enough for nigger.  If little water do for him, a little do for you too.’  Cinque said the Spaniards cried a great deal; he felt very sorry; only meant to let them see how good it was to be treated like the poor slaves.  In two days the irons were removed; and then, said Cinque, we give them plenty water and food, and treat them very well.  Kin-na stated that as the water fell short, Cinque would not drink any, nor allow any of the rest to drink any thing but salt water, but dealt out daily a little to each of the four children, and the same quantity to each of the two Spaniards!  In a day or two Ruiz and Montez wrote a letter, and told Cinque that when they spoke a vessel, if he would give it to them, the people would take them to Sierra Leone.  Cinque took the letter and said, ’Very well;’ but afterwards told his brethren, ’We have no letter in Mendi.  I don’t know what is in that letter—­there may be death in it.  So we will take some iron and a string, bind them about the letter, and send it to the bottom of the sea.’

“When any vessel came in sight, the Spaniards were shut down in the hold, and forbidden to come on deck on pain of death.  One of the Africans, who could talk a little English, answered questions when they were hailed from other vessels.

“It is unnecessary to narrate here subsequent facts, as they have been published throughout the country.  After Cinque’s address a collection was taken, and the services were concluded by the Mendians singing Bishop Heber’s missionary hymn: 

    “‘From Greenland’s icy mountains.’

“At the conclusion of the meeting some linen and cotton table cloths and napkins, manufactured by the Africans, were exhibited, and eagerly purchased of them by persons present, at liberal prices.  They are in the habit of purchasing linen and cotton at the shops, unravelling the edges about six to ten inches, and making, with their fingers, neat fringes, in imitation, they say, of ‘Mendi fashion.’  Large numbers of the audience advanced, and took Cinque and the rest by the hand.  The transactions of this meeting have thus been stated at length, and the account will serve to show how the subsequent meetings were conducted, as the services in other places were similar.

“These Africans, while in prison, (which was the largest part of the time they have been in this country) learned but little comparatively, but since they have been liberated, they have been anxious to learn, as they said ’it would be good for us in our own country.’  Many of them write well, read, spell and sing well, and have attended to arithmetic.  The younger ones