Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/52

( 22 ) prize he had got. To his surprize, he saw lying fast asleep, the two men who had come on board with him, the captain having made them drunk, and concealed them there. When they awoke they were sent upon deck, ironed, and put forward among the other slaves. On arriving at Antigua they were sold.

The Rev. Mr. Newton has known ships and boats cut off at Sherbro, usually in retaliation.

Once when he was on shore, the traders suddenly put him into his long-boat, telling him that a ship just passed had carried off two people. Had it been known in the town, he would have been detained. He has known many other such instances, but after thirty-six years, he cannot specify them. It was a general opinion, founded on repeated and indisputable facts, that depredations of this sort were frequently committed by the Europeans.

Mr. Newton has sometimes found all trade stopped, and the depredations of European traders have been assigned by the natives as the cause, and he has more than once or twice made up breaches of this kind between the ships and the natives.

He believes several captains of slave ships were honest humane men; but he has good reason to think, they were not all so. The taking off [sic] slaves by force has been thought most frequent in the last voyages of captains. He has often heard masters and officers express this opinion. Depredations and reprisals made to get them were so frequent that the Europeans and Africans were in a spirit of mutual distrust: he does not mean that there were no depredations except in their last voyages. He has known Liverpool and Bristol ships materially injured from the conduct of some ships, from the same ports, that had left the coast. It is a fact that some captains have committed depredations in their last voyages who have not been known to have done it before.

Mr. Towne was once present with part of the crew of his ship the Sally, at an expedition undertaken by the