agents from thence being in constant communication with the Havana Slave Merchants."*

66

This new and dreadful impetus" to the Slave Trade, predicted by our Commissioners, has already came to pass. In a list of the departure of vessels for the coast of Africa, from the Havana, up to a recent date, I find that, "in the last four months," no other flags than those of Portugal and the United States have been used to cover slavers.†

The list states that vessels, fitted for the Slave Trade, sailed from Havana for the coast of Africa, bearing the American flag, as follows:

No symptom in the case is so alarming as this. It remains to be seen, whether America will endure that her flag shall be the refuge of these dealers in human blood.

I confidently hope better things for the peace of Africa and for, the honor of the United States.

This leads me to the province of

* While preparing this work for the press, I received a communication from Major M'Gregor, late Special Magistrate at the Bahamas, in which he notices the wreck of the schooner Invinci. ble, on the 28th October, 1837, on one of these islands; and he adds, "the captain's name was Potts, a native of Florida. The vessel was fitted out at Baltimore in America, and three-fourths of the crew were natives of the United States, although they pretended to be only passengers."

† Appendix to Part I., A., p. 234.

TEXAS.

I have been informed, upon high authority, that "within the last twelve months* 15,000 negroes were imported from Africa into Texas." I have the greatest reliance on the veracity of the gentleman from whom this intelligence comes; but I would fain hope that he is in error. I can conceive no calamity to Africa greater than that Texas should be added to the number of the slave-trading states. It is a gulf which will absorb millions of the human race. I have proof, quite independent of any statements in this work, that not less than four millions of negroes have, in the last half-century, been torn from Africa for the supply of Brazil. Texas, once polluted with the Slave Trade, will require a number still more appalling.

In the case of Texas, as I have not sufficient proof to adduce in support of the numbers which it is reported have been carried into that country, I shall, as I have already done in similar instances, wave my claim for increasing my general estimate.

SUMMARY.

I have then brought the case to this point. There is Slave Trading, although to an unknown and indefinite amount, into Porto Rico; into Texas; and into some of the South American republics.

There is the strongest presumptive evidence, that the Slave Trade into the five ports of Brazil which have been noticed, is "much more considerable" than my estimate makes it; and that I have also underrated the importation of negroes into Cuba. There are even grounds for suspicion that there are other places (besides Porto Rico, Texas, Cuba, Monte Video, &c., and Brazil), where slaves are introduced; but for all these presumptions I reckon nothing, I take no account of them; I limit myself to the facts which I have established, viz., that there are, at the present time, imported annually into

I confess there is something startling in the assertion, that so vast a number are annually carried from Africa to various parts of the New World.

Such a statement may well be received with some degree of doubt, and even suspicion. I have not been wholly free from these feelings myself, and I have again and again gone over the public documents, on which I have alone relied, in order to detect any inaccuracy which might lurk in them, or in the inferences deduced from them. No such mistake can I discover; but my conviction that the calculation is not excessive, has been fortified by finding that other persons, who have had access to other sources of information, and who rest their estimates on other data than those on which I have relied, make the number of human beings torn from Africa still greater than I do.

For example:- Captain M'Lean, Governor of Cape Coast Castle for many years, who estimates the extent of the Slave Trade by the vessels which he has seen passing along the coast, rates the number of slaves annually taken from the Bights of Benin and Biafra alone at 140,000.

In a letter from that gentleman, dated June 11, 1838, he says:

SIR,

In compliance with your wishes, I beg leave to state to you, in this form, what I have already mentioned to you verbally; namely, that " in the year 1834, I have every reason to believe that the number of Slaves carried off from the Bights of Benin and Biafra amounted to 140,000." I have not beside me the particular data whereon I grounded this calculation; but I can state generally, that I founded it upon the number of slave-vessels which actually passed the forts on the Gold Coast during that year, and of those others, of whose presence on the coast I had certain information from her Majesty's cruisers or otherwise. When I say that I have rather under than over-stated the number, I ought at the same time to state that, in the years 1834-5, more slavers appeared on the coast than on any previous year within my observation; and this was partially, at least, accounted for (by those engaged in the traffic) by the fact of the cholera hav. ing swept off a large number of the slaves in the Island of Cuba. The ports of Bahia, also, were opened for the introduction of slaves, after having been shut for some time previous, on account of an insurrection among the negro population in that country.

This does not include the slaves embarked from the many notorious slave-ports to the northward of Cape Coast, nor those carried from the eastern shores of Africa, nor those who are shipped at Loango, and the rest of the south-western coast. I confess that I have not any very clear grounds for calculating or estimating the numbers shipped from these three quarters. Along the south-eastern coast, we know that there are a great many ports from whence slaves are taken. With respect to the majority of these, we are left in the dark, as to the extent to which the Slave Trade is carried on; but in a few cases we have specific information. For example:-in the letters found on board the Soleil, which was captured by Commodore Owen, H. M. S. Leven, we have the following statement :-" From the port of Mozambique are exported every year upwards of 10,000 blacks."* Commodore Owen, in the account of his voyage to the eastern coast, informs us, that from eleven to fourteen slave-vessels come annually from Rio Janeiro to Quilimane and return with from 400 to 500 slaves each, on an average, which would amount to about 5500.†

Captain Cook‡ has informed me that, during the year 1837, 21 slave-vessels sailed from Mozambique, with an average cargo of 400 slaves each, making 8400. These added to 7200 exported from Quilimane in eighteen vessels, also in 1837, according to Captain Cook, give a total of 15,600 slaves conveyed

* Class B, 1828, p. 84.

+ Owen's Voyage, &c., London, 1833, vol. i. p. 293.

† Captain Cook commanded a trading vessel, employed on the

East coast of Africa, in 1836, 7, and 8.