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and become their own masters, believing that they might live at their own will among the Indians. Those few summoning others, who, like a thoughtless brutish people, were not capable of making any reflection, but were always ready at the beck of those of their own colour for whom they had any respect or esteem, they readily complied; assembling to the number of about 250, and repairing to the settlement of New Segovia, they divided themselves into companies, and appointed captains, and saluted one King, who had the most boldness and resolution, to assume that title; and he, intimating that they should all be rich, and lords of the country, by destroying the Spaniards, assigned every one the Spanish woman that should fall to his lot, with other such insolent projects and machinations. The fame of this commotion was soon spread abroad throughout all the cities of those two governments, where preparations were speedily made for marching against the blacks, as well to prevent their being joined by the rest of their countrymen that were not yet gone to them, as to obviate the many mischiefs which those barbarians might occasion to the country. In the meantime, the inhabitants of Tucuyo sent succours to the city of Segovia, which was but newly founded; and the very night that relief arrived there, the blacks, who had got intelligence of it, resolved to be beforehand with the Spaniards; and in order that, greater forces thus coming in, they might not grow too strong for them, they fell upon those Spaniards, killing five or six of them, and a clergyman. However, the success did not answer their expectation, for the Spaniards being on their guard, readily took the alarm, fought the blacks courageously, and killed a considerable number. The rest, perceiving that their contrivance had miscarried, retired. The next morning Captain James de Lassado arrived there with forty men from the government of Venezuela, and, judging that no time ought to be lost in that affair, marched against the blacks with the men he had brought, and those who were before at New Segovia. Perceiving that they had quitted the post they had first taken, and were retired to a strong place on the mountain, he pursued, overtook, and attacked them; and though they drew up and stood on their defence, he soon routed and put them all to the sword, sparing none but their women and some female Indians they had with them, after which he returned to Segovia, and those provinces were delivered from much uneasiness."

The Spaniards did not long remain alone in the guilt of this new traffic. At first the Spaniards had all America to themselves; and as it was in America that negro labour was in demand, the Spaniards alone possessed large numbers of negroes. But other nations came to have colonies in America, and as negroes were found invaluable in the foundation of a new colony, other nations came also to patronise the slave trade. The first recognition of the trade by the English government was in 1562, in the reign of Elizabeth, when an act was passed legalising the

purchase of negroes; yet, as the earlier attempts made by the English to plant colonies in North America were unsuccessful, there did not, for some time after the passing of this act, exist any demand for negroes sufficient to induce the owners of English trading vessels visiting the coast of Africa to make negroes a part of their cargo. It was in the year 1616 that the first negroes were imported into Virginia; and even then it was not an English slave-ship which supplied them, but a Dutch one, which chanced to touch on the coast with some negroes on board bound for the Spanish colonies. These negroes the Virginian planters purchased on trial; and the bargain was found to be so good, that in a short time negroes came to be in great demand in Virginia. Nor were the planters any longer indebted to the chance visits of Dutch ships for a supply of negro-labourers; for the English merchants, vigilant and calculating then as they are now, immediately embarked in the traffic, and instructed the captains of their vessels visiting the African coast to barter for negroes as well as wax and elephants' teeth. In a similar way the French, the Dutch, and all other nations of any commercial importance, came to be involved in the traffic; those who had colonies, to supply the demand there; those who had no colonies, to make money by assisting to supply the demand of the colonies of other countries. Before the middle of the seventeenth century the African slave trade was in full vigour; and all Europe was implicated in the buying and selling of negroes.

SLAVE FACTORIES IN AFRICA.

So universal is the instinct for barter, that the immediate effect of the new and great demand for slaves was to create its own supply. Slavery, as we have said, existed in Negroland from time immemorial, but on a comparatively limited scale. The effect of the demand by the European ships gave an unhappy stimulus to the natural animosities of the various negro tribes skirting the west coast; and, tempted by the clasp - knives, and looking-glasses, and wonderful red cloth, which the white men always brought with them to exchange for slaves, the whole negro population for many miles inland began fighting and kidnapping each other. Not only so, but the interior of the continent itself, the district of Lake Tchad, and the mystic source of the fatal Niger, hitherto untrodden by the foot of a white invader, began to feel the tremor caused by the traffic on the coast; and ere long, the very negroes who seemed safest in their central obscurities, were drained away to meet the increasing demand; either led captive by warlike visitants from the west, or handed from tribe to tribe till they reached the sea. In this way, eventually, Central Africa, with its teeming myriads of negroes, came to be the great mother of slaves for exportation, and the negro villages on the coast the warehouses, as it were, where the slaves

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were stowed away till the ships of the white men arrived to carry them off.

European skill and foresight assisted in giving constancy and regularity to the supply of negroes from the interior. At first the slave vessels only visited the Guinea coast, and bargained with the negroes of the villages there for what quantity of wax, or gold, or negroes they had to give. But this was a clumsy way of conducting business. The ships had to sail along a large tract of coast, picking up a few negroes at one place, and a little ivory or gold at another; sometimes even the natives of a village might have no elephants' teeth and no negroes to give; and even under the most favourable circumstances, it took a considerable time to procure a decent cargo. No coast is so pestilential as that of Africa, and hence the service was very repulsive and very dangerous. As an improvement on this method of trading, the plan was adopted very early of planting small settlements of Europeans at intervals along the slave-coast, whose business it should be to negotiate with the negroes, stimulate them to activity in their slave-hunting expeditions, purchase the slaves brought in, and warehouse them until the arrival of the ships. These settlements were called slave factories. Factories of this kind were planted all along the western coast from Cape Verd to the equator, by English, French, Dutch, and Portuguese traders. Their appearance, the character of the men employed in them, their internal arrangements, and their mode of carrying on the traffic, are well described in the following extract from Mr Howison's book on 66 European Colonies."

"As soon as the parties concerned had fixed upon the site of their proposed commercial establishment, they began to erect a fort of greater or less magnitude, having previously obtained permission to that effect from the natives. The most convenient situation for a building of the kind was considered to be at the confluence of a river with the sea, or upon an island lying within a few miles of the coast. In the first case, there was the advantage of inland navigation; and in the second, that of the security and defensibleness of an insular position, besides its being more cool and healthy than any other.

The walls of the fort always enclosed a considerable space of ground, upon which were built the necessary magazines for the reception of merchandise, and also barracks for the soldiers and artificers, and a depôt for slaves; so that, in the event of external hostilities, the gates might be shut, and the persons and the property belonging to the establishment placed in security. The quarters for the officers and agents employed at the factory were in general erected upon the ramparts, or at least adjoining them; while the negroes in their service, and any others that might be attracted to the spot, placed their huts outside of the walls of the fort, but under the protection of its guns.

The command of the establishment was vested in the hands of one individual, who had various subordinates, according to the extent of the trade carried on at the place; and if the troops who garrisoned the fort exceeded twenty or thirty, a commissioned officer usually had charge of them. The most remarkable forts were St George del Mina, erected by the Portuguese, though it subsequently fell into the hands of the Dutch; Cape Coast Castle, the principal establishment of the English; Fort Louis, at the mouth of the Senegal, generally occupied by the French; and Goree, situated upon an island of the same name, near Cape Verd. Most of these forts mounted from fifty to sixty pieces of cannon, and contained large reservoirs for water, and were not only impregnable to the negroes, but capable of standing a regular siege by a European force.

The individuals next in importance to the director or governor were the factors, who ranked according to their standing in the company's service. The seniors generally remained at headquarters, and had the immediate management of the trade there, and the care of the supplies of European merchandise which were always kept in store. The junior factors were employed in carrying on the traffic in the interior of the country, which they did sometimes by ascending the rivers in armed vessels, and exchanging various articles for slaves, gold-dust, and ivory, with the negroes inhabiting the neighbourhood; and sometimes by establishing themselves for several months in a large town or populous district, and, as it were, keeping a shop to which the natives might resort for traffic.

The European subordinates of the establishment consisted of clerks, book-keepers, warehousemen, artificers, mechanics, gunners, and private soldiers, all of whom had particular quarters assigned for their abode, and lived under military discipline. The soldiers employed in the service of the different African companies were mostly invalids, and persons who had been dismissed from the army on account of bad conduct. Destitute of the means of subsistence at home, such men willingly engaged to go to the coast of Africa, where they knew that they would be permitted to lead a life of ease, indolence, and licentiousness, and be exposed to no danger except that of a deadly climate, which was in reality the most certain and inevitable one that they could anywhere encounter. Few of the troops in any of the forts were fit for active duty, which was of the less consequence, because they were seldom or never required to fight except upon the ramparts of the place in which they might be quartered, and not often even there. Hence they spent their time in smoking, in drinking palm wine, and in gaming, and were generally carried off by fever or dissipation within two years after their arrival in the country. A stranger on first visiting any of the African forts, felt that there was something both horrible and ludicrous in the appearance of its garrison; for the individuals composing it

appeared ghastly, debilitated, and diseased, to a degree that is unknown in other climates; and their tattered and soiled uniforms, resembling each other only in meanness, and not in colour, suggested the idea of the wearers being a band of drunken deserters, or of starved and maltreated prisoners of war.

Each company was in the practice of annually sending a certain number of ships to its respective establishments, freighted with European goods suitable for traffic; while its factors in Africa had in the meantime been collecting slaves, ivory, gumarabic, and other productions of the country; so that the vessels on their arrival suffered no detention, but always found a return cargo ready for them.

Though the forts were principally employed as places of safe deposit for merchandise received from Europe, or collected at outposts, they were also generally the scene of a considerable trade, being resorted to for that purpose not only by the coast negroes, but often also by dealers from the interior of the country, who would bring slaves, ivory, and gold-dust for traffic. Persons of this description were always honourably, and even ceremoniously received by the governor or by the factors, and conciliated in every possible way, lest they might carry their goods to another market. They were invited to enter the fort, and were treated with liqueurs, sweetmeats, and presents, and urged to drink freely; and no sooner did they show symptoms of confusion of ideas, than the factors proposed to trade with them, and displayed the articles which they were disposed to give in exchange for their slaves, &c. The unsuspicious negro-merchant, dazzled by the variety of tempting objects placed before him, and exhilarated by wine or brandy, was easily led to conclude a bargain little advantageous to himself; and before he had fully recovered his senses, his slaves, ivory, and gold-dust were transferred to the stores of the factory, and he was obliged to be contented with what he had in his moments of inebriety agreed to accept in exchange for them."

From this extract, it appears that not only did the managers of these factories receive all the negroes who might be brought down to the coast, but that emissaries, "junior factors," as they were called, penetrated into the interior, as if thoroughly to infect the central tribes with the spirit of commerce. The result of this was the creation of large slave-markets in the interior, where the negro slaves were collected for sale, and where slave-merchants, whether negro, Arabic, or European, met to conclude their wholesale bargains. One of these great slave-markets was at Timbuctoo; but for the most part the slaves were brought down in droves by Slatees, or negro slave-merchants, to the European factories on the coast. At the time that Park travelled in Africa, so completely had the negroes of the interior become possessed with the trading spirit, so much had the capture and abduction of negroes grown into a profession, that these native

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