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- building, we were almost stunned. About five hundred natives were
present; each apparently having something to say and determined to say
it. His Honour—a handsome, benevolent-looking old man—sat cross-legged
on a little platform, seemingly resigned, with all Christian
submission, to the uproar. He was an hereditary chief in this quarter
of the island, and judge for life in the district of Partoowye.
There were several cases coming on; but the captain and girl were first
tried together. They were mixing freely with the crowd; and as it
afterwards turned out that everyone—no matter who—had a right to
address the court, for aught we knew they might have been arguing their
own case. At what precise moment the trial began it would be hard to
say. There was no swearing of witnesses, and no regular jury. Now and
then somebody leaped up and shouted out something which might have been
evidence; the rest, meanwhile, keeping up an incessant jabbering.
Presently the old judge himself began to get excited; and springing to
his feet, ran in among the crowd, wagging his tongue as hard as
anybody.
The tumult lasted about twenty minutes; and toward the end of it,
Captain Crash might have been seen, tranquilly regarding, from his
Honour’s platform, the judicial uproar, in which his fate was about
being decided.
The result of all this was that both he and the girl were found guilty.
The latter was adjudged to make six mats for the queen; and the former,
in consideration of his manifold offences, being deemed incorrigible,
was sentenced to eternal banishment from the island. Both these decrees
seemed to originate in the general hubbub. His Honour, however,
appeared to have considerable authority, and it was quite plain that
the decision received his approval.
The above penalties were by no means indiscriminately inflicted. The
missionaries have prepared a sort of penal tariff to facilitate
judicial proceedings. It costs so many days’ labour on the Broom Road
to indulge in the pleasures of the calabash; so many fathoms of stone
wall to steal a musket; and so on to the end of the catalogue. The
judge being provided with a book in which all these matters are
cunningly arranged, the thing is vastly convenient. For instance: a
crime is proved,—say bigamy; turn to letter B—and there you have it.
Bigamy:—forty days on the Broom Road, and twenty mats for the queen.
Read the passage aloud, and sentence is pronounced.
After taking part in the first trial, the other delinquents present
were put upon their own; in which, also, the convicted culprits seemed
to have quite as much to say as the rest. A rather strange proceeding;
but strictly in accordance with the glorious English principle, that
every man should be tried by his peers. They were all found guilty.
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