It was recorded that the appearance of a British cruiser stopped such a transaction midway. The Yankee crew, while en route ashore, saw the cruiser and hastened back on board to hoist the Stars and Stripes and resume the guise of honest traders. To ferret out these rascals was the task of the American naval officers. But in many cases the slavers depended on eluding the cruisers altogether. The vessels were built with leaner models than even the Yankee privateers had boasted, and they were sparred to carry a tremendous spread of canvas. In the later years of the traffic the hunt was so close that a resort was had to smaller craft--vessels that could even take down both sails and spars when the royals of a cruiser were seen, and then, by the use of oars, crawl away out of the cruiser’s course. The lateen rig of the Mediterranean usually served these little slavers. It was easily hidden, and on occasion would give good speed to a small boat. They were most picturesque boats, especially when seen under full chase running from a cruiser. But other small boats were used, and there was one case on record where a common long-boat from an old-fashioned merchant-ship was seen in mid-Atlantic with a single lug sail set and thirty slaves on board. It was in the torrid zone. The coast was full of malaria. Sleepless vigilance was required. Boat expeditions into such streams as the Congo in search of concealed slavers of the smaller kind were frequently required. In the language of Lieutenant (afterward Admiral) Andrew Hull Foote, “the matured villainy of the world” gathered on the coast of Africa, and no labor or vigilance could be spared in pursuing it. Foote was stationed on the coast two years, and his experience will serve to illustrate that of all others. He reached Porto Praya on December 21, 1849, in the brig _Perry_, and was sent by the Commodore south along the coast to examine such slave-stations as Salinas, Benguela, Loanda, Ambriz, and so on. He reached Benguela after a passage of forty-one days, and found there a brig which the British had captured with eight hundred slaves on board. The brig had come from Rio Janeiro under the American flag, and so had easily passed the British cruiser. But when she tried to get away, the cruiser found in some way that she really had slaves on board and took her.