Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/108

 who were before at New Segovia, Perceiving that they had quitted the post they had first taken, and were retired to a strong place on the mountain, he pursued, overtook, and attacked thern; and though they drew up and stood on their defense, he soon routed and put them all to the sword, sparing none but their women and some female Indians they had with them, after which he returned to Segovia, and those provinces were delivered from much uneasiness."

The Spaniards did not long remain alone in the guilt of this new traffic. At first the Spaniards had all America to themselves; and as it was in America that negro labor was in demand, the Spaniards alone possessed large numbers of negroes. But other nations come to have colonies in America, and as negroes were found invaluable in the foundation of a new colony, other nations came also to patronize the slave trade. The first recognition of the trade by the English government was in 1562, in the reign of Elizabeth, when an act was passed legalizing the purchase of negroes; yet, as the earlier attempts made by the English to plant colonies in North America were unsuccessful, there did not, for some time after the passing of this act, exist any demand for negroes sufficient to induce the owners of English trading vessels visiting the coast of Africa to make negroes a part of their cargo. It was in the year 1620 that the first negroes were imported into Virginia; and even then it was not an English slave-ship which supplied them, but a Dutch one, which chanced to touch on the coast with some negroes on board bound for the Spanish colonies. These negroes the Virginian planters purchased on trial; and the bargain was found to be so good, that in a short time negroes came to be in great demand in Virginia. Nor were the planters any longer indebted to the chance visits of Dutch ships for a supply of negro-laborers; for the English merchants, vigilant and calculating then as they are now, immediately embarked in the traffic, and instructed the captains of their vessels visiting the African coast to barter for negroes as well as wax and elephants' teeth. In a similar way the French, the Dutch, and all other nations of any commercial importance, came to be involved in the traffic; those who had colonies, to supply the demand there; those who had no colonies, to make money by assisting to supply the demand of the colonies of other countries. Before the middle of the seventeenth century, the African slave-trade was in full vigor; and all Europe was implicated in the buying and selling of negroes.

So universal is the instinct for barter, that the immediate effect of the new and great demand for slaves was to create its own supply. Slavery, as we have said, existed in Negroland from time immemorial, but on a comparatively limited scale. The effect of the demand by the European ships gave an unhappy stimulus to the natural animosities of the various negro tribes skirting the west coast; and, tempted by the clasp-knives, and looking-glasses, and wonderful red cloth, which the white men always brought with them to exchange for slaves, the whole negro population for many miles inland began fighting and kidnapping each other. Not only so, but the interior of the continent itself, the district of Lake Tchad, and the mystic source of the fatal Niger, hitherto untrodden by the foot of a white invader, began to feel the tremor