Once arriving on the African coast there was little trouble in procuring a cargo of slaves, for it had long been a part of the traders’ policy to instigate the tribes against each other and in this manner keep the markets stocked. News of the trade was often published in the papers. The Meahers and Foster could have sought nothing more enlightening or to their purpose than an item published in the _Mobile Register_, November 9, 1858: “From the west coast of Africa we have advice dated September 21st. The quarreling of the tribes on Sierra Leone River rendered the aspect of things very unsatisfactory. The King of Dahomey was driving a brisk trade in slaves at from fifty to sixty dollars apiece at Whydah. Immense numbers of negroes were collected along the coast for export.” Foster, with a crew of northern men, sailed directly for Whydah. CHAPTER V THE CAPTURE OF THE TARKARS The slaves who constituted the _Clotilde’s_ cargo and who have become historic by being the last brought into the United States were captured by Dahomey’s warriors and Amazons on one of their cruel excursions. For many years the tribe of Dahomey had been a scourge to the weaker and more peaceable tribes whose domains lay near the Gold Coast or in the interior away from the coast of Guinea. Cruel, stealthy war was their occupation--a war of surprise which aroused sleeping villages to the horrors of fire, plunder, and capture. The older victims were usually killed. Sometimes they were permitted to live and to see their young and strong overpowered, bound, and led into captivity--a captivity from which there could be no hope of return, for the prisoners were conveyed to the coast, sold to the slavers, and carried across the sea to strange, alien lands. The King of Dahomey’s house was built of skulls and his drinking cups were the skulls of fallen chiefs. In the early part of the nineteenth century one of the Dahomey kings organized a battalion of women warriors--a race rare in history but not especially unique in African annals. Early cosmographies record of the King of Inhamban: “It is affirmed that he hath a strong battalion of Amazons, a warlike race of women who inhabit about the Lake of Zambre, and the outskirts of Zanzibar; compared by some for their fidelity and prowess to the Turkish Janizaries.”[19] Like the Greek Amazons those of Inhamban and Dahomey were recruited by incursions upon neighboring tribes.