He possessed several wives, of whom he was very jealous, and whom he treated as slaves. He had also several brothers, to whom he seldom spoke, or even permitted them to enter his presence; but when he did grant them admission, they were obliged to take off their caps, prostrate themselves at his feet, and throw dust on their heads. It may readily be imagined, that a disposition so cruel and arbitrary, would be stimulated almost to fury and madness by the powerful influence of ardent spirits; and the fact was, that his thirst for brandy was so insatiable, that, to procure it, he scrupled not to execute any act of oppression, cruelty, or treachery. He had even been known, in order to procure slaves, with which to purchase brandy, secretly to set fire to a village, and then send the ministers of his cruelty to seize the distracted people as they rushed from destruction, to bind and to send them to the European factories, or to the joncoes, (or black slave-merchants,) and sell them for brandy and rum; which he would continue to drink till expended, without any cessation but that forced upon him by stupefaction or sleep. It would not be consistent with the plan of our tale, to make any remarks upon the probabilities of what this man might have been, had not the slave-trade existed; or what direction his cunning and arbitrary disposition might have taken; but we may venture to say, that he could not have had so extensive opportunities of oppression, nor could his cruelties have created such incalculable misery. "For it has been proved, on the most convincing evidence, that the demand for slaves has had the most fatal effect in exciting and developing every vice and every bad passion among these people; of perverting their rude institutions, and poisoning their domestic relations. It has been proved by evidence unquestionable, that, as we have asserted, the tyrant chiefs of Africa were daily induced to condemn, indiscriminately, whole families, for trivial or imaginary crimes, with the sole object of obtaining possession of the individuals composing those families, and exchanging them for bad powder and bad muskets; to station their soldiers in ambush, on the roads, with orders to rush on the unarmed traveller, and load him with chains; to attack, at night, villages sunk in repose, dragging into slavery men, women, and children, of an age suited to their purpose, and mercilessly butchering the aged and the infant. It has been proved, upon authority equally good, that famine, devastation, and continual warfare, undertaken for the sole purpose of taking prisoners, were the inevitable consequences of the slave ships' presence on the coast; and that the Europeans not only were witnesses of this desolation, but furnished the arms, nourished the hatred, fomented the discord, and were the communicaters of the moral blast, which shed its pestilential influence over the population of a country, which,