obtaining general evidence, than in any other of the same length; and the
probability was, that, as I should continue to move among the same kind of
people, my success would be in a similar proportion according to the number
visited. These were great encouragements to me to proceed. At length, I
arrived at the place of my last hope. On my first day's expedition I
boarded forty vessels, but found no one in these, who had been on the coast
of Africa in the Slave-trade. One or two had been there in King's ships;
but they had never been on shore. Things were now drawing near to a close;
and, notwithstanding my success as to general evidence in this journey, my
heart began to beat. I was restless and uneasy during the night. The next
morning, I felt agitated again between the alternate pressure of hope and
fear; and in this state I entered my boat. The fifty-seventh vessel, which
I boarded in this harbour, was the Melampus frigate. One person belonging
to it, on examining him in the captain's cabin, said he had been two
voyages to Africa; and I had not long discoursed with him, before I found,
to my inexpressible joy, that he was the man. I found too, that he
unravelled the question in dispute precisely as our inferences had
determined it. He had been two expeditions up the river Calabàr in the
canoes of the natives. In the first of these, they came within a certain
distance of a village. They then concealed themselves under the bushes,
which hung over the water from the banks. In this position they remained
during day-light. But at night they went up to it armed; and seized all the
inhabitants, who had not time to make their escape. They obtained
forty-five persons in this manner. In the second they were out eight or
nine days; when they made a similar attempt, and with nearly similar
success. They seized men, women, and children, as they could find them in
the huts. They then bound their arms, and drove them before them to the
canoes. The name of the person, thus discovered on board the Melampus, was
Isaac Parker. On inquiring into his character from the master of the
division, I found it highly respectable. I found also afterwards, that he