The negroes whom Hawkins procured on his first voyage to Africa were carried by him to San Domingo. This was in 1563, the date of England's first venture in the slave-trade. The English had sent vessels to the African coast as early as 1551, on private account, for gold and ivory; but as they had no West-Indian colony, and the trade in slaves was a monopoly, they had no object to increase the risks of a voyage which infringed upon the Portuguese right to Africa by carrying negroes away. Vessels were fitted out in 1552 and 1553 to trade for ivory and pepper; in the two following years the English interest in Africa increased, and a negro was occasionally carried away and brought to England.[25] This appears to have been the first circumstance which attracted the attention of Queen Elizabeth, and drew remonstrances from her before it became clear that a good deal of money could be made out of such transactions. She blamed Captain Hawkins, who had succeeded by treachery and violence in getting hold of three hundred negroes whom he carried to San Domingo, and disposed of in the ports of Isabella, Puerto-de-Plata, and Monte Christi. Her virtue was proof against this first speculation, although it was an exceedingly good one, for Hawkins filled his three vessels with hides, ginger, and a quantity of pearls, and freighted two more with hides and other articles which he sent to Spain. It was after his third voyage, in 1567, when he sold his negroes in Havana at a profit greater than he could derive from the decaying San Domingo, that the Queen forgot her scruples, and gave Hawkins a crest symbolical of his wicked success: "a demi-Moor, in his proper color, bound with a cord," made plain John a knight.[26] But the Portuguese jealously watched their privilege to export men from Africa, so that only about forty thousand negroes were brought yearly by lawful and contraband channels to the different islands. Cuba obtained most of these. The greater part of the Portuguese trade took the direction of Brazil, for the sugar-cane had been carried from Madeira to Rio Janeiro in 1531. Formidable rivalry in selfishness was thus sown in every direction by the early splendor of San Domingo. When the Genoese merchants bought the original privilege to transport four thousand, they held the price of negroes at two hundred ducats. Their monopoly ceased in 1539, when a great market for slaves was opened at Lisbon; Spain could buy them there at a price varying from ten to fifty ducats a head, but their price delivered in good condition at San Domingo, including the inevitable percentage of loss, made them almost as expensive as before.