Page:Morel-The Black Mans Burden.djvu/32



The Slave trade, started by the Portuguese in the middle of the 15th Century closely followed by the Spaniards, and at a longer interval (1562) by the British, then in quick succession by the Dutch (about 1620), the French (about 1640), the Swedes, Danes and Prussians, attained the full extent of its terrible activities in the 18th Century.

The earliest beginnings of the traffic were marked rather by an admixture of religious bigotry and love of adventure than by sordid motives. The passion for geographical discovery which inspired the famous Henry the Navigator of Portugal, great grandson of our Edward III., was the originating cause of a hideous and protracted tragedy. The captains of two of Prince Henry's exploring caravels brought back with them to Lisbon in 1442 a dozen Africans, whom they had captured on the West Coast in the course of a wholly unprovoked attack upon an African village. Further exploits of a similar kind followed. The ancient Portuguese chronicles recording them resemble the literature of the Crusaders. The African was a heathen, and as such fair game for the prowess of the noble Christian Knights who opposed their steel breast-plates, tempered swords and cross-bows, to his bare chest and primitive spear. Here is a typical account of one of these predatory forays:

Then might you see mothers forsaking their children and husbands their wives, each striving to escape as best he could. Some drowned themselves in the water, others thought to escape by hiding under their huts; others stowed their children among the sea-weed, where our men found them afterwards, hoping they would thus escape notice. … And at last our Lord God, who giveth a reward for every good deed, willed that for the toil they had undergone in His service they should that day obtain victory over their enemies, as well as a guerdon and a payment for ail their labour and expense; for they took captive of those Moors, what with men, women and children, 165, besides those that