climate,
trafficking in human flesh, exciting wars, bribing and corrupting
ignorant negroes; totally without society, amusement, excitement, or
change; living, from year to year, the same dull round of seasons and
faces; without companionship, save that of men at war with law; cut
loose from all ties except those which avarice formed among European
outcasts who were willing to become satellites to such a luminary as
Don Pedro? I have always replied to the question, that this African
enigma puzzled _me_ as well as those orderly and systematic persons,
who would naturally be more shocked at the tastes and prolonged career
of a resident slave-factor in the marshes of Gallinas.

I heard many tales on the coast of Blanco's cruelty, but I doubt them
quite as much as I do the stories of his pride and arrogance. I have
heard it said that he shot a sailor for daring to ask him for
permission to light his cigar at the _puro_ of the Don. Upon another
occasion, it is said that he was travelling the beach some distance
from Gallinas, near the island of Sherbro, where he was unknown, when
he approached a native hut for rest and refreshment. The owner was
squatted at the door, and, on being requested by Don Pedro to hand him
fire to light his cigar, deliberately refused. In an instant Blanco
drew back, seized a carabine from one of his attendants, and slew the
negro on the spot. It is true that the narrator apologized for Don
Pedro, by saying, that to deny a Castilian _fire for his tobacco_ was
the gravest insult that can be offered him; yet, from my knowledge of
the person in question, I cannot believe that he carried etiquette to
so frightful a pitch, even among a class whose lives are considered of
trifling value _except in market_. On several occasions, during our
subsequent intimacy, I knew him to chastise with rods, even to the
brink of death, servants who ventured to infringe the sacred limits of
his _seraglio_. But, on the other hand, his generosity was
proverbially ostentatious, not only among the natives, whom it was his
interest to suborn, but to the whites who were in his employ, or
needed his kindly succor. I have already alluded to his mental
culture, which was decidedly _soigne_ for a Spaniard of his original
grade and time. His memory was remarkable. I remember one night, while
several of his _employes_ were striving unsuccessfully to repeat the
Lord's prayer in Latin, upon which they had made a bet, that Don Pedro
jo