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.
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