The African law condemns the man who _draws blood_ to a severe fine in slaves, proportioned to the harm that may have been inflicted. Accordingly, the culprit Krooman, innocent as he was of premeditated evil, now lay heavily loaded with irons in Don Pedro's barracoon, awaiting the sentence which the whites in his service already declared _should be death_. "He struck a white!" they said, and the wound he inflicted was reported to have caused that white man's ruin. But, luckily, before the sentence was executed, _I_ came ashore, and, as the transaction occurred in my presence, I ventured to appeal from the verdict of public opinion to Don Pedro, with the hope that I might exculpate the Krooman. My simple and truthful story was sufficient. An order was instantly given for the black's release, and, in spite of native chiefs and grumbling whites, who were savagely greedy for the fellow's blood, Don Pedro persisted in his judgment and sent him back on board the "Reaper." The character manifested by Blanco on this occasion, and the admirable management of his factory, induced me to seize a favorable moment to offer my services to the mighty trader. They were promptly accepted, and in a short time I was employed as _principal_ in one of Don Pedro's branches. The Vey natives on this river and its neighborhood were not numerous before the establishment of Spanish factories, but since 1813, the epoch of the arrival of several Cuban vessels with rich, merchandise, the neighboring tribes flocked to the swampy flats, and as there was much similarity in the language and habits of the natives and emigrants, they soon intermarried and mingled in ownership of the soil. In proportion as these upstarts were educated in slave-trade under the influence of opulent factors, they greedily acquired the habit of hunting their own kind and abandoned all other occupations but war and kidnapping. As the country was prolific and the trade profitable, the thousands and tens of thousands annually sent abroad from Gallinas, soon began to exhaust the neighborhood; but the appetite for plunder was neither satiated nor stopped by distance, when it became necessary for the neighboring natives to extend their forays and hunts far into the interior. In a few years war raged wherever the influence of this river extended. The slave factories supplied the huntsmen with powder, weapons, and enticing merchandise, so that they fearlessly advanced against ignorant multitudes, who, too silly to comprehend the benefit of alliance, fought the aggressors singly, and, of course, became their prey.