Esq. Consul General of the United States at Tangier),
three of the Charles's crew, named Nicholas, Nemharn,
and Nelson, -were brought to me at Mogadore by an Arab
of the tribe of Woled Aboussehah, for the purpose of bargaining
for their ransom; which, after some difficulties
described in a subsequent Note, I effected. These men
related to me the circumstances of their shipwreck, almost
precisely in the same terms in which they were afterwards
described to me by Adams, and as they are described in
the Narrative. They also informed me that Adams (or
Rose) and another of the crew had been purchased from
the Arabs, who first made them prisoners, by a party
who came from the eastward, and who had carried him
into the Desert in that direction. JD.
Note 7, p■ 15.
Soudenny has been described to me as a Negro town or
village bordering on the Desert: and I am credibly
informed by traders, that it is a practice of the neighbouring
Arabs to resort to the habitations of the Negroes on
the confines of the Desert, for the purpose of stealing and
carrying them away into slavery. This, however, is not
the common method of procuring slaves; for it is attended
with great personal risk, as Adams here relates. During
my residence in South Barbary, I have frequently inquired
of different Negro slaves the manner of their falling into
the hands of the Arabs ; and many have assured me that
they were stolen by them from their own country, and
not regularly purchased at the slave marts. D.
According to Adams's statement of his route, Soudenny
may be supposed to lie about the 6th degree of west longitude
and the 16th of north latitude. This situation will fall
very near the northern confines of Bambarra, where they
approach, (if they do not actually touch) the Desert, on the
eastern borders of Ludamar. It also approaches close to
the line of Park's route in his first journey, when endeavouring
to escape from the Moors of Benown : and we
are consequently enabled to derive from Park's descriptions,
materials for estimating in some degree, the probability
of what Adams says respecting Soudenny.
Referring therefore to Park's account of this part of
Africa, we find him drawing a melancholy picture of the
sufferings of its Negro inhabitants from the plundering
incursions of Moorish Banditti ; on which excursions he
says, (4to. Ed. p. 159), “ they will seize upon the Negroes’
“ cattle, and even on the inhabitants themselves. On
arriving at Sampaka, in Ludamar, he says, p. 119, “ the