Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/363

 was injured, in a twinkling the boats were overboard, crammed with women and children, while a stage was rigged from the bows to the strand, so that the nudes, the crew and the luggage were soon in charge of my old haciendado.

"Prompt as we were, we were not sufficiently so for the cruiser. Half our cargo was ashore when she backed her top-sails off the mouth of the little bay, lowered her boats, filled them with boarders, and steered towards our craft. The delay of half a mile's row gave us time to cling still longer to the wreck, so that, when the boats and corvette began to fire, we wished them joy of their bargain over the remnant of our least valuable negroes. The rescued blacks are now, in all likelihood, citizens of Jamaica; but, under the influence of the gale, La Estrella made a very picturesque bonfire, as we saw it that night from the azotéa of our landlord's domicil."

On a subsequent voyage, the captain fell into the hands of the Philistines. While loading his fast-sailing Baltimore clipper in the Rio Salum, the vessel was seized by the boats of a French corvette, and the captain and crew, after being tried at San Luis, were sentenced to imprisonment in France, the captain for ten years. When two years had elapsed, he obtained a pardon, and sailed immediately from Marseilles to the coast of Africa, to recruit his fortunes. He entered the service of the noted Don Pedro, the prince of African slave-merchants. This extract is given to exhibit the enormous wealth which could be accumulated in the slave traffic by a man of superior ability.

"Our concern is now with Gallinas. Nearly one hundred miles northwest of Monrovia, a short and sluggish river, bearing this well-known name, oozes lazily into the Atlantic; and, carrying down in the rainy season a rich alluvion from the interior, sinks the deposit where the tide meets the Atlantic and forms an innumerable mesh of spongy islands. To one who approaches from sea, they loom up from its surface, covered with reeds and mangroves, like an immense field of fungi, betokening the damp and dismal field which death and slavery have selected for their grand metropolis. A spot like this, possessed, of course, no peculiar advantages for agriculture or commerce; but its dangerous bar, and its extreme desolation, fitted it for the haunt of the outlaw and slaver.

"Such, in all likelihood, were the reasons that induced Don Pedro Blanco, a well educated mariner from Malaga, to select Gallinas as the field of his Operations. Don Pedro visited this place originally in command of a slaver; but failing to complete his cargo, sent his vessel back with one hundred negroes, whose value was barely sufficient to pay the mates and crew. Blanco, however, remained on the coast with a portion of the Conquistador's cargo, and, on its basis, began a trade with the natives and slaver-captains, till, four years after, he remitted his owners the product of their merchandise, and began to flourish on his own account. The honest return of an investment long given over as lost, was perhaps the most active stimulant of his success, and for many years he monopolized the traffic of the Vey country, reaping enormous profits from his enterprise.