Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/74

 In a way not hard to understand, these savages connected the spirits with the evil creatures of the earth—with the poisonous serpents, the fierce robber birds, the ravenous beasts, and with those human individuals in whom cunning and stealth took the place of courage and physical prowess. Even the rocks, when of unusual form, and especially when of terrifying aspect, were regarded as the abiding places of evil spirits, and not infrequently as their visible bodies.

With all they had a crude knowledge of what, in works on political economy, is treated under the head of "exchanges." The savage, of course, had made but slight progress in the practical arts, while the white men understood the results of accumulation as well as of exchange.

In one other matter the savage and the civilized man found themselves on common ground, though that is not to say exactly on a level. They both loved rum. The white man mixed his rum with juice of limes and water and sugar. The savage always took (and takes) his "straight." The white man of those days, too, preferred madeira wine when he could afford it, which he could do after one voyage to Africa. Moreover the white man drank it for his health, or for some other reason of that kind, while the savage took it because he liked it. The relative levels of the two races are herein manifest.

Because the white men were superior in a variety of ways the black men received them with joy, and opened traffic at once.

It was a grewsome traffic that followed—the most grewsome in the history of the world—for the white