When Commodore Owen visited Benguela in 1825, he says, "We had here an opportunity of seeing bond slaves of both sexes chained together in pairs. About 100 of these unhappy beings had just arriv ed from a great distance in the interior. Many were mere skeletons laboring under every misery that want and fatigue could produce. In some, the fetters had, by their constant action, worn through the lacerated flesh to the bare bone, the ulcerated wound having become the resort of myriads of flies, which had deposited their eggs in the gangrenous cavities."*

Oiseau, commanding the brig Le Louis, on com pleting his cargo of slaves at the Old Calebar, thrust the whole of the unfortunate beings between decks, a height of nearly three feet, and closed the hatches for the night. When morning made its appearance, fifty of the poor sufferers had paid the debt of nature. The wretch coolly ordered the bodies of his victims to be thrown into the river, and immediately proceeded on shore to complete his execrable cargo.t

Richard Lander tells us that the Brazen, in which he went to Africa in 1825, captured a Spanish brigantine which was waiting off Accra, for a cargo of slaves. A few days after this capture, the commander of the Brazen landed at Papoe, and demanded the slaves which were to have been embarked in the brigantine. They were ultimately given up, and Lander says, "The slaves at length made their appearance, and exhibited a long line of melancholy faces, and emaciated frames, wasted by disease and

* Owen, vol. ii. p. 234. † Class B. 1825, р. 123.

close confinement, and by their having suffered dreadfully from scantiness of food, and the impure air of their prison-house. They were in a complete state of nudity, and heavily manacled; several of them were lamed by the weight of their irons, and their skin sadly excoriated from the same cause.*

At the close of this journey, Lander says:-" I saw 400 slaves at Badagry in the Bight of Benin, crammed into a small schooner of eighty tons. The appearance of these unhappy human beings was squalid and miserable in the extreme; they were fastened by the neck in pairs, only one-fourth of a yard of chain being allowed for each, and driven to the beach by a parcel of hired scoundrels, whilst their associates in cruelty were in front of the party pulling them along by a narrow band, their only apparel, which encircled the waist." "Badagry being a general mart for the sale of slaves to European merchants, it not unfrequently happens that the market is either overstocked with human beings, or no buyers are to be found; in which case the maintenance of the unhappy slaves devolves solely on the government. The king then causes an examination to be made, when the sickly, as well as the old and infirm, are carefully selected and chained by themselves in one of the factories (five of which, containing upwards of one thousand slaves of both sexes, were at Badagry during my residence there ;) and next day the majority of these poor wretches are pinioned and conveyed to the banks of the river, where having arrived, a weight of some sort is appended to their necks, and being rowed in canoes to the middle of the stream, they are flung into the wa

* Lander's Records, vol. i. p. 31.

ter, ana left to perish by the pitiless Badagrians. Slaves, who for other reasons are rejected by the merchants, undergo the same punishment, or are left to endure more lively torture at the sacrifices, by which means hundreds of human beings are annually destroyed."*

Mr. Leonard informs us, "that about 1830, the king of Loango told the officers of the Primrose that he could load eight slave-vessels in one week, and give each 400 or 500; but that, having now no means of disposing of the greater part of his prisoners, he was obliged to kill them. And, shortly before the Primrose arrived, a great number of unfortunate wretches, who had been taken in a predatory incursion, after having been made use of to carry loads of the plundered ivory, &c., to the coast, on their arrival there, as there was no market for them, and as the trouble and expense of their support would be considerable, they were taken to the side of a hill, a little beyond the town, and coolly knocked on the head."t

In 1833 Mr. Oldfield found several dozen human skulls lining the bank of the river Nunn (one of the mouths of the Niger,) at a barracoon or slave-house, which he discovered were the remains of slaves who had died there.‡

An intelligent master of a merchant-vessel, who, for many years past, has been engaged in the African trade, informs me, that after the slave-dealing captains have made their selection of the slaves brought on board for sale, the unfortunate creatures who may

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be rejected are sent immediately on shore, and marched down to the barracoon, chained together, a distance of five miles. I have seen the most piteous entreaties made by the poor rejected creatures to the captain to take them, for they knew that to be returned on shore was only to encounter a worse fate by starvation." He is speaking of the River Bonny, and he goes on to say, "Ju Ju town contains about twelve barracoons: they are built to contain from 300 to 700 slaves each. I have seen from 1500 to 2000 slaves at a time, belonging to the several vessels then in the river."

"I have known disease to make dreadful havoc in these places, more especially in the year 1831, when the small-pox carried off 200 in one barracoon. Great numbers are carried off annually by diarrhea and other diseases."

Colonel Nicolls has stated to me that, during his > residence at Fernando Po, he visited the River Cameroons, where he saw a number of slaves in a barracoon; "they were confined in irons, two and two, and many of them had the irons literally grating against their bones through the raw flesh."

It is stated by a naval officer serving in the Preventive Squadron, in a letter to a relative, dated about a year ago, and communicated to me, that in 1837, having been employed in blockading a Portuguese brig, up one of the rivers in the Bight of Biafra, "On arriving at my station, I had positive information that the Portuguese had bought upwards of 400 slaves, and was about to sail. By some means or other, she got information that a British boat was blockading her, consequently she postponed her sailing for several

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weeks. Shortly afterwards, on my inquiring into her state, I found 300 of her slaves had died chiefly of starvation, and a few were shot by the Portuguese whilst attempting to escape. A few days afterwards the brig sailed without any slaves, all with the exception of about a score, having fallen victims to the system pursued."

Captain Cook has informed me that he saw many blind negroes in Quilimane (1837,) who subsisted by begging; they were the remains, he was informed, of a cargo landed from a Monte Videan vessel, which had been attacked by ophthalmia. If they lived they were left to starve.

He also says, that in September, 1837, a number of slaves were suffocated on board the brig Generous at Quilimane. "The boatswain had, it appeared, shut the hatches close down after the slaves had been put below in the evening; it was his duty to have kept the hatch uncovered, and to have placed guards over them; but this would have required his own vigilance, and he considered a sound sleep was to him worth all the slaves on board, especially as they cost him nothing." This case came to Captain Cook's knowledge in consequence of a quarrel between the captain and the boatswain. "The pecuniary loss was all that was regretted by the captain."

Captain Cook adds, that slaves who "die on board, in port, are never interred on shore, but are invariably thrown overboard, when they sometimes float backward and forward with the tide for a week, should the sharks and alligators not devour them. Should a corpse chance to be washed on shore at the top of high water, it is permitted to remain until the vultures