Chapter I.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 102, 10 April 1875, Page 3

Chapter I.

TES SLAVE TRADE. Thoroughly to understand Su&na's history, which I am about to relate to you, some preliminary explanations are needed. The first regards the slave trade. This appellation is given to that abominable traffic by which the different nations of the world have carried off at certain times, either by force or fraud, the unhappy inhabitants of Africa; who were seized, thrown like so much merchandise on board ship, and transported to different colonies in America, where they were sold as cattle or live-stock. This fearful scourge, which ravaged Africa, degraded Europe, and outraged humanity, began among so-called Christian nations towards the end of the fifteenth century. When the Spaniards discovered the New World, they wished to work the gold and other valuable mines which they discovered on this vast continent. They first tried to employ the natives to this work, but the attempt failed. Accustomed to live in the open aur an easy happy life* spent chiefly in hunting and fishing, these poor creatures died by thousands when condemned to labor in the bowels of the earth. Their new masters then took it into their heads to replace them by negroes, whom they consequently resolved to kidnap on the coast of

Africa. When the various mines were worked out, and consequently diminished in value, these same negroes were employed in agricultural work, or in the cotton-fields. In this way theaborigines of South America, who had been well-nigh exterminated by this cruel treatment and forced labor, were replaced by the stronger race of African blacks, who., torn from their own country^ had no alternative but to submit to their position as slaves, and thus became the unwilling instruments of the barbarous despotism of the Europeans. • Such is the origin of this wicked' and impure trade. A great crime gave birth to a still -greater one j and the object of this infamous, traffic was on a par with the revolting method in which it was carried into execution.' • The example of the Spaniards was contagious. Either on their Own account, or for others, the- different nations of Europe took part in the slave trade. ' For nearly three centuries thousands of ships, emphatically ' shivers,' cruised on the African coast, from Senegal to the Cape of Good Hope, and even beyond ; while to furnish ,their cargo of human flesh, every species of fraud, violence, and thirst for gain were called into play, and that in the most reckless and outrageous manner. Let us take one instance out of a thousand. ? ne ***& tne of St. Louis, being in want of slaves, fitted up certain ships apparently as traders. They^ landed at the villageof AlSbia, belonging to a friendly tribe, who received the ± reach merchants without mistrust, brought a quantity of native merchandise to exchange with the foreign goods they displayed, and supplied them with all the provisions they -required. The day passed in festivity and rejoicings; but when night came, whilst the blacks were asleep or quietly resting from their fatigue, their cabins were surrounded, and the unhappy inhabitants of the village, without the smallest pretext of offence or -quarrel, were knocked down, bound with cords, overwhelmed with blows, and thus dragged onboard ship as slaves* those who resisted having perished in defence of their liberty. Then they were transported to different parts of America, where, overworked and cruelly flogged, they dragged on a miserable existence,;; separated for ever from their families and homes, and dying far from the soil on which they were born; When the Europeans did not themselves send expeditions to Kidnap the blacks, the natives undertook it on their own account. J^rom the reports given us by travellers and residents on the coast of Africa, it is proved that since the establishment of the Blave trade, tne fratricidal wars of the Africans among themselves have o?the sL Ct thaU that ° f ca * >turin £ men *° supply tne demands Hence the sad state of civil war in which the whole- country ; and ex Perience has shown that, in proportion to the aeartn ot slaves and the demand for them, such wars were multiplied, borne tribes, in fact, like the Ashanti, knew no other way of making money than that of quarrelling with their neighbors, so tiiat they might capture and sell them. Father Labat, a AJomimcian missionary, reports that among many of the African !n! n 5 e «: c i l ? eCiallythe Bi ssagotis, they have a passion for brandy, and that to procure it they will stick at nothing. No sooner was !rJ c ii, Seen m the offin S> than a fatter would sell his children; ana ir tne > son was strong enough, he, in his turn, would seize his S exchan cr ' amd dra & them on board ship, to receive brandy another" occasion, the English governor of St. Louis, in order to procure slaves, roused the Moors against the tribe of the vneu. ue tunnelled them with arms, ammunition, and other aeceflsanes^and that to such an extent, that in two years the HhSZ^^ ,^f OneU was laid waste > while either by death or Slavery the population was simply exterminated. t,A«^S£ r |?fflishman, director of the Senegal Company, gave s£SJ tefe^Sot the Yolofs that he had just received from Sh%£ kirge supply of articles for barter, such as Manchester 222?* i? cads ' f nd other ob 3'ects which are offered by the SESk™**" 1"1 "^ 6 for blacks - The instantly set off on a oo \ &m On S tts own subjects, swept through the iSrSSLT I*°** of troo^ BB ' and seized aU tae able-bodied men thVJTwL? 0 Y e ' c T^ *° esca P c - Mtev havia S captured MS£ V n^f^ tilam this hor ritte manner, he sent word to the £v.™S ™at toe^r oods were ready. This man hurried to the king SSSaWtJr 8 traffic,- the African monarch received the K?2™2£f r s human car e°'' but he was not satisfied. tonfJ^L^JT?^ ob J ects from Europe, which had been art«wL?reado^ tb eforehim ; unhappily, he had no more eligible £fl 11 a O glV !-^ excllan « re - The Englishman then offered t? sell £wv? £f ? on credit ' for the valu e of three hundred more Sffi^k ool^ 1 *? 1 thatlie shouldb e a Uowed to go and carry them lefwed! mg to faU some tra P' tne b arbarianking Waß don * m Senegal was only repeated in a still more «SSt : gie I °?J* c hole eastera coast of A**™' reliable JSSrfVI! d tb ; at the numb er of blacks, male and female, thus i^i^n ythe slave trade from i* 6B to 1827 amounted to to 7,018/XK) Mmvm ' which ' fol> years, gives a total of rt ?iP? 6B £. statistics we do not reckon the multitude of "blacks AfricSi teibes rSWhiCllthiSdeteStable traffiC cn S endered amon S •tnd tla^t Eu s°P ea n slave trade existed for more than 300 years, B£^?M- T? ? ore active and than it became 2SS+7«.o tem i tta * 1S ? eaU y far bel<w the truth: and we have 2+Snß S%> conel l slon that since the discovery of America, the KSSL2 f E^-ope have, without any right but that of being the ?™Z* at f l ? drOit Jv3?t™ fo*V, reduced more than 35,000,000 of £T ° ry * And then they cx P ect »od to bless But to foe torn, from their homes and country is only the

beginning of the poor negroes' sorrows. Dragged, chained by the neck, from the interior to the port of embarkation,- they were shut up in a kind of hulk until the slaver had completed his cargo of human flesh. Then, the moment of departure having come, they were carried, strongly chained, on board their floating prisons. Here is a description of these ships from the testimony of an eye-witness : ' In those vessels where the most space allowed to a full-grown slave, five feet one inch in length, and one foot two inches wide, is all that is given to each man ; while the decks arc- so low that they can never stand upright, and. often cannot even sit. This is far less than the space allowed to a dead man in his coffin. But even this state of things is exceptional. In the greater portion of the shivers, the poor unhappy negroes are compelled to lie on their ~ sides, half doubled up one against the other, without ever being able to stretch themselves out to their full length. 'Lying thus on a hard board, without any clothes, and constantly bruised by the motion of the ship, their bodies are very soon covered with painful sores, and their legs and necks become raw from the iron chains which fasten them to each other. Yet in such a horrible state as this they have to make a voyage of from, 15,000 to 18,000 leagues ! la bad weather, when the sea runs so high that the port-holes are compelled to be closed, their sufferings become too horrible for description. Thrown one against the other, ' suffocated by the insupportable heat of the torrid zone, and'still more by the want of air and the fetid smells which exhales from their bodies, multitudes expire each day. And the survivors; to the number of 400 or 500, shut up in this horrible and noisome dungeon, utter the most heart-rending cries, to which the slave* driver seems generally entirely insensible.' In' the month of September, 1825, the English Commodore Bullen went on board the French ship Orpheus, which was lying at the mouth of the Calabar river, near the capital of the little African kingdom of Quoua. This slaver had 700 negroes on board, who were to be transported to Martinique. The men to the number of 550, were chained two and two j some by the arm, some by the leg, some by the neck. The horrible smell emitted from the lower deck where these unhappy creatures were ss = thua huddled together, was such that the English officer could- scarcely endure it for a moment. The same commodore speaks of another French vessel in the same port in which the captain, having completed his cargo, stuffed them all between decks, and had the barbarity to shut all the port-holes. The next morning, fifty of the negroes' were found dead from want of air. The' captain, looking upon* this horrible spectacle with complete indifferpuce, merely desired the bodies to be thrown into the sea, and returned to the coast to replace the dead with fresh victims. Another vessel, the Diana, was captured on the African coast by Captain Woolcombe, who describes the state of the ship in the following terms :' 'Of all the shivers I ever boarded, the Diana was in the most dreadful state. The stench proceeding from the dirt of the- ship, the want of ventilation, and the fetid exhalations of so many human bodies, chained two and two in such a narrow space, was something really intolerable. What added to the sufferings of these poor wretches was, that the small-pox had broken out among them, and decimated them no less rapidly than the horrible suffocation which they endured.' All these horrors (and many others which can better be imagined than described) found in the captured vessels, give us but a faint idea of those which were committed every day in a hundred other ships which escaped capture. They were such that, by careful statistics, it appeared that more than a quarter of the unhappy negroes thus embarked died during the passage. In a petition which was addressed to the two Chambers in January, 1826 to obtain the suppression of the slave trade, the French merchants declared : 'That from authentic documents, it could be proved that the captains of the slaves threw into the sea every year more than fifteen hundred living slaves, because they were so unhealthy in consequence of the sufferings they had endured, that they could not be sold with advantage.'