amount of the statements made by Kin-na, Fu-li and Cinque,
and the facts in the case, are as follows:--These Mendians
belong to six different tribes, although their dialects are not
so dissimilar as to prevent them from conversing together very
readily. Most of them belong to a country which they call Mendi,
but which is known to geographers and travellers as Kos-sa, and
lies south-east of Sierra Leone; as we suppose, from sixty to
one hundred and twenty miles. With one or two exceptions, these
Mendians are not related to each other; nor did they know each
other until they met at the slave factory of Pedro Blanco, the
wholesale trafficker in men, at Lomboko, on the coast of Africa.
They were stolen separately, many of them by black men, some of
whom were accompanied by Spaniards, as they were going from one
village to another, or were at a distance from their abodes. The
whole came to Havana in the same ship, a Portuguese vessel named
Tecora, except the four children, whom they saw, for the first
time, on board the Amistad. It seems that they remained at
Lomboko several weeks, until six or seven hundred were
collected, when they were put in irons and placed in the hold of
a ship, which soon put to sea. Being chased by a British
cruiser, she returned, landed the cargo of human beings, and the
vessel was seized and taken to Sierra Leone for adjudication.
After some time, the Africans were put on board the Tecora.
After suffering the horrors of the middle passage, they arrived
at Havana. Here they were put into a barracoon, one of the
oblong enclosures, without a roof, where human beings are kept,
as they keep sheep and oxen near the cattle markets, in the
vicinity of our large cities, until purchasers are found, for
ten days, when they were sold to Jose Ruiz, and shipped on board
the Amistad, together with the three girls and a little boy who
came on board with Pedro Montez. The Amistad was a coaster,
bound to Principe, in Cuba, distant some two or three hundred
miles. The Africans were kept in chains and fetters, and were
supplied with but a small quantity of food or water. A single
banana, they say, was served out as food for a day or two, and
only a small cup of water for each daily. When any of them took
a little water from the cask, they were severely flogged. The
Spania