Page:Newton's Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade.pdf/28

Rh purchase, in every possible way. And, by habit and emulation, a marvellous dexterity is acquired in these practices. And thus the Natives, in their turn, in proportion to their commerce with Europeans, and (I am sorry to add) particularly with the English, become jealous, insidious and revengeful.

They know with whom they deal, and are accordingly prepared;— though they can trust some ships and boats, which have treated them with punctuality, and may be trusted by them. A quarrel, sometimes, furnishes pretext for detaining, and carrying away, one or more of the Natives, which is retaliated, if practicable, upon the next boat that comes to the place, from the same port. For so far their vindictive temper is restrained by their ideas of justice, that they will not, often, revenge an injury received from a Liverpool ship, upon one belonging to Bristol or London.

They will, usually, wait with patience, the arrival of one, which, they suppose, by her sailing from the same place, has some connection with that which used them ill; and they are so quick at distinguishing our little local differences of language, and customs in a ship, that before they have been in a ship five nutes,