they carved out states for themselves, one or more of which, still ruled by negro princes, are in existence at the present day as dependencies of the Government of India[100]. The final impetus was given to this traffic by the European. When the Spanish, Portuguese and English discovered and settled America they found the native races too few in numbers, too fierce, or too weakly to be suited for compulsory agricultural work; and so early as 1503 African slaves were working in the mines of Hispaniola, brought thither by the Spaniards[101]. A few years later they were being imported into Mexico, Panama and Peru. In 1517 the slave trade between Africa and America was regularly established, Charles V of Spain having granted to a Flemish merchant the exclusive privilege of importing into America 4000 slaves a year. This monopoly was subsequently sold by the concessionaire to a company of Genoese merchants, who struck a bargain with the Portuguese government to supply the slaves from Guinea. English adventurers, who had first found their way out in Portuguese ships to investigate the spice trade, soon determined to take up the traffic in negro labourers for the plantations in America as being more profitable. John Hawkins, one of the famous seamen of the Elizabethan era, in 1562 took over to the West Indies the first cargo of slaves transported under the British flag. Afterwards made Sir John Hawkins (and adopting a “demi-Moor in his proper colour, bound with a cord” as his crest) he made two other voyages (1564, 1567) to the West coast of Africa, conveying some eight hundred kidnapped or purchased negroes to the West Indies. England did not engage largely in the slave trade on her own account until in the 17th century she commenced to possess Jamaica and other West Indian islands, and to develop the tobacco plantations of Virginia. Then she almost outdid rival nations. The late Dr Robert Brown, in his interesting work, “The Story of Africa,” computed that in a little more than a century, from 1680 to 1786, 2,130,000 negro slaves were imported into the British-American colonies, Jamaica in the course of 80 years absorbing 610,000. Towards the latter end of the 18th century the various European powers interested in America imported on an average over 70,000 slaves a year, the British bringing more than one half, and sometimes a still greater proportion. At first the slaves came chiefly from the Gambia and the other rivers southward to Sierra Leone, and from the Gold Coast, where they were supplied to the Dutch through the incessant wars of the Ashanti people. Later they were brought from Dahomé and Benin, and from the Portuguese possessions of Angola and the Zambezi. Then, as the demand grew, a rich field was tapped in the 18th century in that