When the rains began to slacken, a petty caravan now and then straggled towards the coast; but, as I was only a new comer in the region, and not possessed of abundant means, I enjoyed a slender share of the trade. Still I consoled myself with the hope of better luck in the dry season.

In the mean time, however, I not only heard of Joseph’s safe arrival at Matanzas, but received a clerk whom he dispatched to dwell in Kambia while I visited the interior. Moreover, I built a boat, and sent her to Sierra Leone with a cargo of palm-oil, to be exchanged for British goods; and, finally, during my perfect leisure, I went to work with diligence to study the trade in which fortune seemed to have cast my lot.

It would be a task of many pages if I attempted to give a full account of the origin and causes of slavery in Africa. As a national institution, it seems to have existed always. Africans have been bondsmen every where: and the oldest monuments bear their images linked with menial toils and absolute servitude. Still, I have no hesitation in saying, that three fourths of the slaves sent abroad from Africa are the fruit of native wars, fomented by the avarice and temptation of our own race. I cannot exculpate any commercial nation from this sweeping censure. We stimulate the negro’s passions by the introduction of wants and fancies never dreamed of by the simple native, while slavery was an institution of domestic need and comfort alone. But what was once a luxury has now ripened into an absolute necessity; so that MAN, in truth, has become the coin of Africa, and the “legal tender” of a brutal trade.

England, to-day, with all her philanthropy, sends, under the cross of St. George, to convenient magazines of lawful commerce on the coast, her Birmingham muskets, Manchester cottons, and Liverpool lead, all of which are righteously swapped at Sierra Leone, Acra, and on the Gold coast, for Spanish or Brazilian bills on London. Yet, what British merchant does not know the traffic on which those bills are founded, and for whose support his wares are purchased? France, with her bonnet rouge and fraternity, dispatches her Rouen cottons, Marseilles brandies, flimsy taffetas, and indescribable variety of tinsel gewgaws. Philosophic Germany demands a slice for her looking-glasses and beads; while multitudes of our own worthy traders, who would hang a slaver as a pirate when caught, do not hesitate to supply him indirectly with tobacco, powder, cotton, Yankee rum, and New England notions, in order to bait the trap in which he may be caught! It is the temptation of these things, I repeat, that feeds the slave-making wars of Africa, and forms the human basis of those admirable bills of exchange.

I did not intend to write a homily on Ethiopian commerce when I begun this chapter; but, on reviewing the substantial motives of the traffic, I could not escape a statement which tells its own tale, and is as unquestionable as the facts of verified history.

Such, then, may be said to be the predominating influence that supports the African slave-trade; yet, if commerce of all kinds were forbidden with that continent, the customs and laws of the natives would still encourage slavery as a domestic affair, though, of course, in a very modified degree. The rancorous family quarrels among tribes and parts of tribes, will always promote conflicts that resemble the forays of our feudal ancestors, while the captives made therein will invariably become serfs.

Besides this, the financial genius of Africa, instead of devising bank notes or the precious metals as a circulating medium, has from time immemorial, declared that a human creature,—the true representative and embodiment of labor,—is the most valuable article on earth. A man, therefore, becomes the standard of prices. A slave is a note of hand, that may be discounted or pawned; he is a bill of exchange that carries himself to his destination and pays a debt bodily; he is a tax that walks corporeally into the chieftain’s treasury. Thus, slavery is not likely to be surrendered by the negroes themselves as a national institution. Their social interests will continue to maintain hereditary bondage; they will send the felon and the captive to foreign barracoons; and they will sentence to domestic servitude the orphans of culprits, disorderly children, gamblers, witches, vagrants, cripples, insolvents, the deaf, the mute, the barren, and the faithless. Five-sixths of the population is in chains.[3]

To facilitate the sale of these various unfortunates or malefactors, there exists among the Africans a numerous class of brokers, who are as skilful in their traffic as the jockeys of civilized lands. These adroit scoundrels rove the country in search of objects to suit different patrons. They supply the body-guard of princes; procure especial tribes for personal attendants; furnish laborers for farms; fill the harems of debauchees; pay or collect debts in flesh; and in cases of emergency take the place of bailiffs, to kidnap under the name of sequestration. If a native king lacks cloth, arms, powder, balls, tobacco, rum, or salt, and does not trade personally with the factories on the beach, he employs one of these dexterous gentry to effect the barter; and thus both British cotton and Yankee rum ascend the rivers from the second hands into which they have passed, while the slave approaches the coast to become the ebony basis of a bill of exchange!

It has sometimes struck me as odd, how the extremes of society almost meet on similar principles; and how much some African short-comings resemble the conceded civilizations of other lands!