Abundance of little blacks, of both sexes, are also stolen away by their neighbours, when found abroad on the roads, or in the woods, or else in the lugaus, or corn-fields, where they are kept all day, to scare the small birds that come in swarms to feed on the millet.—(p. 256.) _Labat.—Astley’s Voyages. vol ii. p. 259._ The French have been forced sometimes to make use of violent means, when they cannot get the princes to discharge these forced loans, by pillaging some village, and making slaves of the inhabitants; after which they have balanced accounts with his majesty, and paid for as many as they had taken above their due. But these measures, says the author, don’t always succeed; and even though one was sure of getting paid this way, yet that it would be better not to make a practice of it, for fear of drawing the resentment of the country upon a man, which, sooner or later he would feel to his cost—(p. 258.) _Le Maire’s Travels, about 1690.—Astley’s Voyages, vol. ii._ Sometimes the king of Senegal makes incursions on the weakest of his neighbours, driving off their cattle, or making slaves of them, which he sells for brandy. When his stock of this grows low, he locks it up in a small chest, giving the key to one of his favorites, whom he dispatches, perhaps thirty leagues off, and thus saves his liquor by putting it out of his power to get at it. If he has no opportunity of exercising his tyranny on his neighbours, he makes no scruple of living on his own subjects, staying with his court, which consists of two hundred of those who have learnt all the worst qualities of the whites, till he has eat up the inhabitants; and, if they presume to complain, selling them for slaves.—(p. 260.) As long as the brandy bottle lasts the prince is drunk: no answer is to be expected till all the liquor is out. When he grows sober, he gives his audience of _congée_, presenting the factor with two or three slaves, which he sends to have taken up in the nearest villages. Unhappy are they who at that time fall into the hands of his guards, for they stay to make no choice.—(p. 260, 261.) _Travels (about 1730), of Francis Moore, Factor several years to the Royal African Company of England._ The king of Barsalle, so soon as he has wasted what he has gotten, either by taking an enemy’s town, _or one of his own_, he must look out for some new prize to give it to his men.—Astley, ii. 261.