Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/131

( 97 )

Natives have Industry and Spirit of Commerce sufficient for a new Trade.

R. WADSTROM observes of the natives of Africa, that they have an extraordinary genius for commerce, and that their industry is in all regards proportionate to their demands.

Consistently with this idea, we find some of them not only cultivating sufficient provisions for themselves, but an overplus [sic] for certain towns (Kiernan, Wadstrom, Wilson, and Howe); others cultivating corn and rice for the shipping that come among them, (Kiernan, Falconbridge, Dove, Bowman, Wadstrom, Hall, Newton); others bringing large bundles of rice on their heads of forty or fifty pounds weight from the inland country to the sea shore, and then travelling back loaded with European goods, (Hall, Storey, Bowman); others going in armed bodies even a month's journey inland with various articles for trade, (Storey); others wooding and watering the ships, (Falconbridge); and others hiring themselves out to the Europeans to work at a low price both in boats and on the shore, (Newton, Sir George Young, and Thompson.)

In short, says Hall, they were never indolent when they could work to advantage. They were willing to do any thing, says Morley, for which they had a prospect of N