When the slaver had reached its destination and had anchored off the slave coast, the following methods were employed in securing a cargo. 1st. Declarations of friendship were made and many of the unsuspecting natives were induced, out of curiosity or for trade, to go aboard the vessel, and when there were suddenly confined and permitted no more to return. 2d. Parties of the crew were sent out to surprise and carry off innocent children and youth as they went to the fields or gathered in groups to play in the groves. Think of the anguish of those African mothers and of the distress of their affrighted children! 3d. Villages were fired in the night, and as many of the defenseless inhabitants as could be captured by force of arms were carried off. 4th. The chiefs of different tribes were hired to act as the agents of the slaver in procuring slaves. Rum, of which all savages are extremely fond, was the principal incentive. Inflamed by this demon, the native chiefs made war upon each other, and sold the prisoners captured to the traders for a fresh supply of rum. The African slave trade was commenced on a small scale a few years before the discovery of America. We learn from the Encyclopedia Americana "that, in 1434, a Portuguese captain name _Alonzo Gonzales_, landed in Guinea, and carried away some colored lads, whom he sold advantageously to Moorish families settled in the South of Spain. Six years after, he committed a similar robbery, and many merchants imitated the practice, and built a fort to protect the traffic." After a discovery of the Gold Mines of America, quite a number of negroes were imported, first by the Portuguese then by the Spaniards, to labor in those mines. In 1511 Ferdinand, King of Spain, authorized the importation of a large number. About this period it is said, and generally believed that _Bartolomeo las Cas_, a Catholic Priest, influenced by a feeling of pity toward the Indians, whom the Spaniards were enslaving, proposed to Ximenes the regular importation of negroes. Whether this be true or not, Charles the V. in 1517, granted the privilege to Lebresa, of importing 4000 slaves to America annually. Lebresa sold his right to import to Genoese merchants, for about $25,000. These merchants now commenced the slave trade in earnest.