The system adopted by the British crews in those days was very similar to that employed by the Arabs to-day in inner Africa. They landed at night, surrounded the selected village, and then set fire to the huts, and as the frightened people issued out of the burning houses, they were seized and carried to the ships; or sometimes the skipper, in his hurry for sea, sent his crew to range through the town he was trading with, and, regardless of rank, to seize upon every man, woman, and child they met. Old Town, Creek Town, and Duke Town, in Old Calabar, have often witnessed this summary and high-handed proceeding. Boswell, the biographer of Dr. Johnson, called the slave trade “an important and necessary branch of commerce;” and probably the largest section of the British public, before those antislavery champions Clarkson and Wilberforce succeeded in persuading their countrymen to reflect a little, shared Boswell’s views, as well as his surprise and indignation, when it became known that there were English people who talked of suppressing it. That the slave trade must have been a lucrative commerce there can be no doubt, when we consider that from 1777 to 1807 upwards of 3,000,000 Africans had been sold in the West Indies. All those forts which may be seen lining the west coast of Africa to-day were constructed principally by means of the revenue derived from the slave tax. In 1833 slavery was abolished throughout the British dominions, and the government agreed to pay the slave-owners of the West Indies £20,000,000 redemption-money for 1,000,000 of slaves. On the 1st of August, 1834, the famous Act of Emancipation came into operation. Throughout the West Indies the eve of the great day was kept by watch meetings, in acclamations of praise and thanksgiving. It is said that when the hour of midnight began to strike, the singing and the shouting ceased, and the congregations knelt down and listened with bated breath to the solemn strokes of the bell which announced their freedom, and ere the new day was a minute old the loud strains of “Glory Allelujah!” burst from the now enfranchised people. They flung themselves upon one another’s breasts, clapped their hands, cried and laughed, but louder than all other sounds were the cries, “Praise God! Glory! glory to God!”