Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/130

 CHAPTER IX.

THE SLAVE-TRADE.

The slave-trade has been the great obstacle to the civilization of Africa, the development of her resources, and the welfare of the Negro race. The prospect of gain, which this traffic held out to the natives, induced one tribe to make war upon another, burn the villages, murder the old, and kidnap the young. In return, the successful marauders received in payment gunpowder and rum, two of the worst enemies of an ignorant and degraded people.

Fired with ardent spirits, and armed with old muskets, these people would travel from district to district, leaving behind them smouldering ruins, heart-stricken friends, and bearing with them victims whose market value was to inflame the avaricious passions of the inhabitants of the new world.

While the enslavement of one portion of the people of Africa by another has been a custom of many centuries, to the everlasting shame and disgrace of the Portuguese, it must be said they were the first to engage in the foreign slave-trade. As early as the year 1503, a few slaves were sent from a Portuguese set