Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/59

Rh whalers were pressed into the service ; sloops, brigs and brigatines. It was the money-making scheme of the day. Men would clear thousands of dollars on one trip. Slaves were landed all along the American coast by the hundred. The Providencia put 4500 into Brazil in four voyages. She was a steamer. Plenty of small crafts were in it, hardly bigger than small oyster-sloops. Some were notorious for their great speed, and in tight places they could down masts and use sweeps.

So far as the great slave-markets of the West were concerned during the entire time the slave-trade was considered legal, the chief and only source of supply was found, says a writer at hand "along the Atlantic coast of Africa, between Cape Verde, at the North, and Benguela, or Cape St. Martha, at the South. The sea here makes a great scoop into the land, as if the Brazilian part of the South American continent had been broken out of the hollow in the African Coast. Two great rivers and a host of smaller streams come down to the sea within its limits, and its contour, as a whole, is that of a mighty gulf, but there is neither bay nor inlet throughout its whole extent that forms a good harbor for shipping. And the off-shore islands, too, are few in number and small in extent. The land at the beach is almost everywhere low, even though hills and mountains may be seen, flooded with a dreamy haze, in the distance. The rivers wind about through uncounted channels in low delta lands covered with masses of mangrove and palm-trees, and haunted by poisonous and vicious reptiles. The yellowish sand of the sea and the black sand-washings of the uplands mingle to form low, tawny beaches and dunes where