Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/107

 Ximenes, ship-load after ship-load of negroes was carried to the We Indies. We find Charles V. giving one of his Flemish favorites an exclusive right of shipping 4000 negroes to the new world — a monoply which that favorite sold to some Genoese merchants for 25,000 ducats. These merchants organized the traffic; many more than 4000 negroes were required to do the work; and though at first the negroes were exorbitantly dear, they multiplied so fast, and were imported in such quantities, that at last there was a negro for every Spaniard in the colonies; and in whatever new direction the Spun iards advanced in their career of conquest, negroes went along with them.

The following extract from the Spanish historian already quoted will show not only that the negroes were very numerous, but that sometimes also they proved refractory, and endeavored to get the upper hand of their masters: "There was so great a number of blacks in the governments of Santa Marta and Venezuela, and so little precaution was used in the management of them, or rather the liberty they had was so great, being allowed the use of arms, which they much delight in, that, prompted by their natural fierceness and arrogance, a small number of the most polished, who valued themselves for their valor and gayety, resolved to rescue themselves from servitude, and be- come their own masters, believing that they might live at their own will among the Indians. Those few summoning others, who, like a thoughtless brutish people, were not capable of making any reflection, but were always ready at the beck of those of their own color for whom they had any respect or es- teem, they readily complied. Assembling to the number of about 250, and repairing to the settlement of New Segovia, they divided themselves into com- panies, and appointed captains, and saluted one king, who had the most bold- ness and resolution to assume that title; and he, intimating that they should all be rich, and lords of the country, by destroying the Spaniards, assigned every one the Spanish woman that should fall to his lot, with other such inso- lent projects and machinations. The fame of this commotion was soon spread abroad throughout all the cities of those two governments, where preparations were speedily made for marching against the blacks, as well to prevent their being joined by the rest of their countrymen that were not yet gone to them, as to obviate the many mischiefs which those barbarians might occasion to the country. In the meantime, the inhabitants of Tucuyo sent succors to the city of Segovia, which was but newly founded; and the very night that relief ar- rived there, the blacks, who had got intelligence of it, resolved to be before- hand with the Spaniards; and in order that, greater forces thus coming in, they might not grow too strong for them, they fell upon those Spaniards, kill- ing five or six of them, and a clergyman. However, the success did not answer their expectation, for the Spaniards being on their guard, readily took the alarm, fought the blacks courageously, and killed a considerable number. The rest, perceiving that their contrivance had miscarried, retired. The next morning Captain James de Lassado arrived there with forty men from the gov- ernment of Venezuela, and, judging that no time ought to be lost in that affair, marched against the blacks with the men he had brought, and those