Soon after Adams’s arrival at Wadinoon, Abdallah
offered him for sale to the Governor, or Shieck, called
Amedallah Salem, who consented to take him upon trial;
but after remaining about a week at the Governor’s house,
Adams was returned to his old master, as the parties could
not agree about the price. He was at length, however,
sold to Belcassam Abdallah* for seventy dollars in trade,
payable in blankets, gunpowder and dates.(48)
The only other white resident at Wadinoon was a
Frenchman, who informed Adams that he had been wrecked
about twelve years before, on the neighbouring coast, and
that the whole of the crew except himself, had been
redeemed. He further stated, that a vessel called (as Adams
understood him) the Agezuma-f from Liverpool, commanded
by Captain Harrison, had been wrecked about four years
before, and that the Captain and nearly the whole of the'
crew had been murdered. («) This man had turned
Mohammedan, and was named Absalom; he had a wife
and child and three slaves, and gained a good living by
the manufacture of gunpowder. Adams has often seen
him employed in making it, by pounding brimstone in a
wooden mortar, and grinding charcoal by hand between
two stones, in the manner of grinding grain. The final
* Bd-Cossim-Abdallah. D . -J* Montezuma.
process of mixing he performed in a room by himself, not
being willing to let any person see 'how it was done. He
lived in the same house as the person who had been his
master, who, upon his renouncing his religion, gave him his
liberty. (B0)
Among the Negro slaves at Wadinoon was a woman,
who said she came from a place called Kanno, a long
way across the Desert, and that she had seen in her own
country, white men, as white as “ bather,” meaning the
wall, and in a large boat with two high sticks in it, with
cloth upon them, and that they rowed this boat in a
manner different from the custom of the Negroes, who use
paddles: in stating this, she made the motion of rowing with
oars, so as to leave no doubt that she had seen a vessel
in the European fashion, manned by white people. (6ri
The work in which Adams was employed at Wadinoon,
was building walls, cutting down shrubs to make fences,
and working in the corn lands or in the plantations of
tobacco, of which great quantities axe grown in the neighbourhood.
It was in the month of August that he arrived
there, as he was told by the Frenchman before spoken of ;
the grain had been gathered; but the' tobacco was then
getting in, at which he was required to assist. His labour at
this place was extremely severe. On the Moorish sabbath,