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                                SAMBOE;
                                  OR,
                            THE AFRICAN BOY.


                            BY THE AUTHOR OF
                   "Twilight Hours Improved," &c. &c.



                And man, where Freedom's beams and fountains rise,
                Springs from the dust, and blossoms to the skies.
                Dead to the joys of light and life, the slave
                Clings to the clod; his root is in the grave.
                Bondage is winter, darkness, death, despair;
                Freedom the sun, the sea, the mountain, and the air!

                                                             Montgomery.



                                London:
                     PRINTED FOR HARVEY AND DARTON,
                          GRACECHURCH-STREET.

                                 1823.







                                   TO
                       WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, Esq.
                                 M. P.

                           THIS SMALL VOLUME,
           DIFFIDENTLY AIMING TO SERVE THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY
                                  IS,
                         BY HIS KIND PERMISSION
                  TO GIVE IT THE SANCTION OF HIS NAME,
                           HUMBLY DEDICATED;
              WITH EVERY SENTIMENT OF UNFEIGNED VENERATION
                          AND RESPECT FOR HIS
                 EXALTED PATRIOTIC AND PRIVATE VIRTUES,

                      And grateful acknowledgment
              OF HIS CONDESCENSION, IN HONOURING WITH HIS
                    ATTENTION THE HUMBLE EFFORTS OF

                              THE AUTHOR.







ADVERTISEMENT.


It has been justly remarked, "that all who read may become
enlightened;" for readers, insensibly imbibing the sentiments of
others, and having their own latent sensibilities called forth,
contract, progressively, virtuous inclinations and habits; and thereby
become fitted to unite with their fellow-beings, in the removal or
amelioration of any of the evils of life. With a full conviction
of this, I have attempted, and now offer to my young readers, the
present little work. To the rising generation, I am told, the great
question of the slave-trade is little known; the abolition of it, by
our legislature, having taken place either before many of them existed,
or at too early a period of their lives to excite any interest. Present
circumstances, however, in reference to the subject, ensure for it
an intense interest, in every heart feeling the blessing of freedom
and all the sweet charities of home; blessings which it is our care
to dispose the youthful heart duly to appreciate, and hence to feel
for those, deprived, by violence and crime, of these high privileges
of man.

It is true, England has achieved the triumph of humanity, in effacing
from her Christian character so dark a stain as a traffic in human
beings; a commerce, "the history of which is written throughout in
characters of blood." Yet there are but too strong evidences that
it is yet pursued to great and fearful extent by other nations,
notwithstanding the solemn obligations they have entered into to
suppress it; obligations "imposed on every Christian state, no less by
the religion it professes, than by a regard to its national honour;"
and notwithstanding it has been branded with infamy, at a solemn
congress of the great Christian powers, as a crime of the deepest
dye. Of this there has long been most abundant melancholy proof; yet,
under its present contraband character, it has been attended by, if
possible, unprecedented enormities and misery, as well as involving
the base and cruel agents of it in the further crime of deliberate
perjury, in order to conceal their nefarious employment.

Surely, then, no age can scarcely be too immature, in which to sow the
seeds of abhorrence in the young breast, against this blood-stained,
demoralizing commerce! Surely, no means, however trivial, should
be neglected, to arouse the spirit of youth against it! It would be
tedious, and, indeed, inconsistent with the brevity of this little
work, to name the number of the great and the good who have protested
against, and sacrificed their time and their treasure to abolish
it. Suffice it to say, that an apparently trifling incident first
aroused the virtuous energies of the ardent, persevering Clarkson, in
the great cause;--that a view of the produce of Africa, and proofs of
the ingenuity of Africans, kindled the fire of enthusiasm in the noble
and comprehensive mind of a Pitt. Nor did the flame quiver or become
dim while he was the pilot of the state, though he was not decreed to
see the success of perseverance in the cause of justice and humanity.

Let me, therefore, be acquitted of presumption, when I express a hope,
that, trifling as is the present work, yet, as the leading events
it records are not the creations of fancy, but realities that have
passed; that they have not been collected for effect, or uselessly
to awaken the feelings; but having been actually presented in the
pursuit of a disgraceful and cruel commerce, are now offered to the
view of my young readers, in order to confirm the great truths, that
cruelty and oppression encouraged, soon brutalize the nature of man;
divesting him of every distinguishing trait which unites him with
superior intelligences, and sinking him in the scale of being far
below the ravening wolf and insatiate tiger; and that the slave-trade,
more especially, never fails effectually to destroy all the sympathies
of humanity, and so far to barbarize those who are concerned in it,
as assuredly to cause civilized man to resume the ferocity of the
savage whom he presumes to despise.


                                                             The Author.







            "Offspring of love divine, Humanity!

            ---- ---- ---- ---- ----

            Come thou, and weep with me substantial ills,
            And execrate the wrongs that Afric's sons,
            Torn from their native shore, and doom'd to bear
            The yoke of servitude in foreign climes,
            Sustain. Nor vainly let our sorrows flow,
            Nor let the strong emotion rise in vain.
            But may the kind contagion widely spread,
            Till, in its flame, the unrelenting heart
            Of avarice melt in softest sympathy,
            And one bright ray of universal love,
            Of grateful incense, rises up to heaven!"


                                      Roscoe's Wrongs of Africa.


            "E'en from my pen some heartfelt truths may fall;
            For outrag'd nature claims the care of all."







SAMBOE; OR, THE AFRICAN BOY.


CHAPTER I.

                                  "Slaves of gold! whose sordid dealings
                                    Tarnish all your boasted powers,
                                  Prove that ye have human feelings,
                                    Ere ye proudly question ours."


"Encourage the chiefs to go to war, that they may obtain slaves; for
as on many accounts we require a large number, we desire you to exert
yourself, and not stand out for a price." Such was the direction,
and such the order, of the slave-merchants at Cape Coast Castle,
to one of their factors in the interior, for the collection and
purchase of slaves; who, dreadful as was his occupation, yet at all
times faithfully endeavoured to obey the orders of his employers.

This person had, by studying the character, peculiarities, prejudices,
and language of the natives, obtained a great influence over the chiefs
of a country, peculiarly blessed by Providence, with all that can
enchant the eye, or gratify the wants of man. It is a well-known, but
melancholy truth, that, by the introduction of spirituous liquors, and
other desirable articles to an uncivilized people, the Europeans have
greatly augmented and cherished the dreadful traffic in human beings:
the African kings and chiefs being induced, by these temptations,
to barter their subjects and captives, for commodities they estimate
so highly; frequently even fomenting quarrels, and making war with
each other, at the instigation of the slave-factors, for the sole
purpose of obtaining captives, in order to exchange them for European
articles, with which the factors, who visit their country for the
dreadful purpose, are well furnished; to tempt the appetites, and
provoke the wild passions, of the wretched beings they intend to make
the instruments of their inhuman thirst of gain. (Note A.)


                            "The natural bond
        Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax
        That falls asunder at the touch of fire--
                            And having pow'r
        T' enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause,
        Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey."


Mr. Irving, the factor whom we have named as having received the
peremptory and unlimited order from the merchants of Cape Coast
Castle, had won their confidence, by the remarkable success which had
attended his negociations with the king and principal grandees of
Whidah, in which delightful part of Africa he had resided for some
years. Nothing, perhaps, more strongly proves the indurating power
of the love of gain upon the heart, and the baneful influence of the
habitual view of oppression on the better feelings of the soul, than
the change which generally takes place in the characters of the young
men whose official duty places them in situations like that filled by
Mr. Irving. It has, indeed, been most justly and impressively observed,
that it is impossible for any one to be accustomed to carry away
miserable beings, by force, from their country and endearing ties,
to keep them in chains, to see their tears, to hear their mournful
lamentations, to behold the dead and the dying mingled together, to
keep up a system of severity towards them in their deep affliction,
to be constant witnesses of the misery of exile, bondage, cruelty,
and oppression, which, together, form the malignant character of this
nefarious traffic, without losing all those better feelings it should
be the study of man to cherish; or without contracting those habits
of moroseness and ferocity which brutalize the nature.

Irving, like many other youths, had been induced by an ardent
curiosity, and an enterprising spirit, to engage as a writer to
the Royal African Company [1], at a time when the traffic in slaves
was legally pursued, as one source of riches to a great commercial
nation. Yet it may with candour be presumed, that he, and many a
youth entering upon the same path, with the same laudable impulses,
had they anticipated the peril to which they exposed their humane
principles, by engaging themselves in a trade so repugnant to nature,
religion, and justice, would rather have undergone personal hazard and
difficulty in their native land, so that they might have fostered that
divine principle, which is the noble and distinguishing characteristic
of man--of free-born man.

That Irving possessed a native humanity and right feeling, would
appear from his letters to his friends in England, written on his
arrival in Africa; and as he describes the country as it first met
his admiring and youthful eye, it may be not unam