However, it is not with slavery, but with the slave trade we have to do. Circumstances largely forced upon the New England colonies their unsavory preeminence in this sort of commerce. To begin with, their people were as we have already seen, distinctively the seafaring folk of North America. Again, one of their earliest methods of earning a livelihood was in the fisheries, and that curiously enough, led directly to the trade in slaves. To sell the great quantities of fish they dragged up from the Banks or nearer home, foreign markets must needs be found. England and the European countries took but little of this sort of provender, and moreover England, France, Holland, and Portugal had their own fishing fleets on the Banks. The main markets for the New Englanders then were the West India Islands, the Canaries, and Madeira. There the people were accustomed to a fish diet and, indeed, were encouraged in it by the frequent fastdays of the Roman Catholic church, of which most were devout members. A voyage to the Canaries with fish was commonly prolonged to the west coast of Africa, where slaves were bought with rum. Thence the vessel would proceed to the West Indies where the slaves would be sold, a large part of the purchase price being taken in molasses, which, in its turn, was distilled into rum at home, to be used for buying more slaves--for in this traffic little of actual worth was paid for the hapless captives. Fiery rum, usually adulterated and more than ever poisonous, was all the African chiefs received for their droves of human cattle. For it they sold wives and children, made bloody war and sold their captives, kidnapped and sold their human booty.