30' N. Long. 39° 30' W."' It was written by one George Scott, himself a slaver captain, and it contains a variety of matters of interest to the slave-trade in addition to the references to Captain Lindsay. It reads ag follows:
"Gentlemen:—Meeting with this opportunity I was very glad to acquaint you of our miserable voyage. We left Anamaboe ye 8th of May, with most of our people and slaves sick. We have lost 29 slaves. Our purchase was 129. My negro Bonner is ded; the slaves we have left is now all recovered. We have five that swell'd and how it will be with them I can't tell. We have one-third of dry cargo left, and two bhds. rum. If I had staid there for it and sold I believe I should have lost all our slaves. I think to proceed to Antigo and fit ye sloop and take ye other trial on the coast. Tt will not do to give up for one bad bout. If I go directly back I'll sell ye rum for gold, if I gitt but twenty pence for it before I'll by slaves. The slaves that died, I believe there was one above twenty-two years old and none under fourteen. I have sent by Captain Lindsay sixteen ounces of gold, which is all. I wrote you by Capt. Kinnecutt, who sail'd ye 10th April. I have repented a hundred times ye bying of them dry goods. Had we laid out two thousand pound in rum bread and flour, it would [have] purchased more in value than all our dry goods. I have paid a good part of the wages. My serviss to all friends, pray excuse all blunders, for I am now aboard Capt. Lindsay and in haste to gitt aboard."
Observing, by the way, that Captain Scott was determined to "fit ye sloop and take ye other trial on the coast"—that he was a man of pluck himself—the references to Lindsay mean much to a sailor.
Scott was more than a month out from the African coast and yet had covered but thirty degrees of west longitude. Then along comes a vessel, commanded by
