At the time that the slave trade had commenced to occupy the mind of the Hawkins malefactors and the British nation under Queen Elizabeth, Barbarossa had already subjected the mulatto King of Morocco to the payment of a tribute of $1,000,000 in gold dust—and 40 Negro merchants without any hesitation helped the king out of the dangers that confronted his people. When the Moor Zegri was humiliated by the Spanish Commander Cisneros in 1499 and the Arab books destroyed in Granada, Marmol states that less than 1,025,000 tomes on religion, politics, jurisprudence, manuscripts illuminated and worked in silver and gold were consigned to the fires. There remained 3,000 Moorish soldiers under command of a Negro captain whose intrepid heroism and valor was shown by the charges and counter charges he was able to repel. When unable to prevent the utter annihilation of his band by superior forces under Cifuentes, the Negro captain refused to surrender and jumped headlong from a fort. (Alcatara’s History, Granada, pp. 165-6.) And this happened seven years after the discovery of America by Columbus. The conditions of the new world were such that the Spaniards who had spent most of their wealth in the unprofitable civil and Arab wars, lost no time after hearing wonderful stories of untold wealth to requisition not only the Negroes of Seville, but to embark in the lucrative enterprise of human Negroes from the West Coast of Africa, and ships which were engaged in man-hunting poured their human freight into Hispaniola. It was not long after that the Spanish Negroes belonging to Diego Columbus, revolted, and the first insurrection, taking place among the very property of the discoverer’s offspring, was suppressed by the military after killing the leaders. The prosperity of the colonies soon became apparent in the enormous number of Spanish ships with their precious cargoes arriving in the Spanish ports. The Spanish people were wild and in an ecstasy of joy to engage in the colonial enterprise, and as ships entered upon the perilous voyages of discovery the Africans were gathered to do the work for which no historian or economist has given them the credit which is their due for blazing the path of wealth into which the nations of Europe have ridden upon the lucrative backs of the Africans. The clearing of the forests from dangerous animals and poisonous insects, making with the awakening of each succeeding spring the virgin earth a paradise that has supported millions of European parasites; the working of the mines for precious metals that fed the envy of other powerful nations which questioned the right of the Spaniards to conquest under the banner of the Christian Church, and induced them to scramble and fight for their colonial honors.