“How is it possible that captains should be so inattentive to their own and their employer's interests, as to sacrifice the very men who are to assist them in the main business of the voyage—or, if headlong cruelty prompts them to such a hazard, by what means is the complicated laborious business ever finished?” Again—“If by some extraneous means the traffic is completed, who are then to take care of the slaves, and how are the vessels navigated to the different Western Colonies, to which they are bound?” Of these two queries the latter I shall reserve to a future discussion, and confine myself, at present, to the former. There is on that part of Africa, called the Gold Coast, a race of the inhabitants, known by the name of Fantees; they are sturdy, animated, laborious, and full of courage. Many of this nation are reared from their childhood, in the European vessels that frequent the coast; they learn their languages, and are practised in all the habits of seamanship; and more especially all that relate to the business of _slaving_. Vessels on, or near their own coast, they of course assist for a stipulated hire: those that are destined for any of the trading places in the gulph of Benin, or farther down the coast, generally call here and engage a Fantee mate, boatswain, and crew, from fifteen to thirty or upwards, according to the size of the vessel. The captain enters into a written agreement with their king, which is counter-signed by the English governor, expressing the nature of their service, the amount of their wages, and an engagement not to carry any of them off to the West-Indies. To these men the trade is in a good measure indebted for its existence. When the poor sailors fall off, these hardy natives, who have every indulgence the captains can allow them, carry on the business with a vigour and activity, of which the British seamen, from their ill usage and scanty fare, are incapable. The manner of trading on every part of the coast differs, I dare say, in some particulars, but its general nature is pretty much the same: and as it has been so copiously handled in other publications on this subject, I shall forbear to speak on that head; reserving a liberty of animadverting on any thing that may have been but slightly handled. I am inclined to think, that the method of collecting slaves by war, and frequent battles, dreadful as that mode may be, is by no means the great support of the Slave Trade: but that they are procured by the still more infamous and horrid practice of _kidnapping_. In Benin, where I was employed, I am certain it was often the case. Our factory, in which I resided, was at Gatoe, many miles from the sea, in the heart of the country. I made continual enquiries, but never heard of any wars. I understood, however, from every thing I could collect, that they were seized by fraud or violence in the internal parts of the country, and so transmitted through different hands to the immediate traders upon the coast.