Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/45

( 15 ) on board, which he did; the captain's orders were, when any body brought down slaves, instantly to put them off to the ship.

When a ship arrives at Bonny, the king sends his war canoes up the rivers, where they surprise all they can lay hold of. They had a young man on board, who was thus captured, with his father, mother, and three sisters. The young man afterwards in Jamaica having learnt English, told Mr. Douglas the story, and said it was a common practice. These war canoes are always armed. The king's canoes came with slaves openly in the day; others in the evening, with one or two slaves bound, lying in the boats bottom, covered with matts [sic].

Mr. Morley states, that in Old Calabar persons are sold as slaves for adultery and theft. On pretence of adultery, he remembers a woman sold.

He has been told also by the natives at Calabar, that they took slaves in what they call war, which he found was putting the villages in confusion, and catching them as they could. A man on board the ship he was in, shewed how he was taken at night by surprise, and said his wife and children were taken with him, but they were not in the same ship. Mr. Morley had reason to think, from the man's words, that they took nearly the whole village, that is, all those that could not get away.

Captain Hall says, when a ship arrives at Old Calabar, or the River Del-Rey, the traders always go up into the country for slaves. They go in their war canoes, and take with them some goods, which they get previously from the ships.

He has seen from three to ten canoes in a fleet, each with from forty to sixty paddlers, and twenty to thirty traders and other people with muskets, suppose one to each man, with a three or four pounder lashed on the bow of the canoe. They are generally absent from ten days to three weeks, when they return with a number of slaves pinioned, or chained together.

Captain Hall has often asked the mode of procuring slaves inland, and has been told by the traders, that they