By an anomaly in savage life, Amoo was very much attached to his four children, while their mother was tolerably indifferent about them, and often forced me to carry her black bantling, which I did, with an exhibition of all the solicitude I could assume, and with as little disgust as possible, conceiving that if her good will and confidence could be won, they might improve my chances of escape; but I strove in vain, and might as well have caudled the cub of a she-bear.
My mistress was a negress of Guinea, and of unusually horrible aspect. Her lower lip was slit, and had a long wooden peg inserted in it so curiously, that the end thereof dangled upon her breast. Her great ears, set high upon her woolly head, had ponderous rings of metal, which dragged them downward to her shoulders. Her teeth were dyed blood red by some native herb, known to the fetishers alone, and her whole body, where revealed by her only garment--an apron of grass matting--was covered with a species of tattooing, and always smeared with a thick unctuous grease, in which the embedded gnats and flies could revel undisturbed.
To eat repasts which were cooked by her odious hands excited a loathing which hunger alone could conquer; but anxiety for the future, and the intense heat of the atmosphere, made me generally averse to animal food; hence I found the yams, which there grow like turnips (and shoot out long leaves like French beans), my most pleasant food, as I could cook them for myself, either by boiling them in a pipkin, or roasting them among cinders. The inside is white as flour, and sweet and dry.
For many days I lived on these, with such fruit as I could find when at work near our wigwam, and Amoo gave me at times a little olive oil and palm wine, but in secret, for this warrior, though fearless in other respects, was civilized enough to be afraid of his wife.
My days were spent in hoeing yams, cutting fuel, carrying water in calibashes, selecting long and straight reeds for baskets, or boughs and bark to keep the wigwam water-tight. My mistress would have had me dive into the bay in search of sea-eggs, but to this I would by no means consent, and my refusal caused an open and standing feud between us.