“Gentle'n:--These are to acqt of my arrival heare ye Day before yesterday in 10 weeks from Anamaboe. I met on my passage 22 days of very squally winds & continued Bains, so that it beat my sails alto pieces, soe that I was oblige Several Days to have Sails on bent to mend them. The vesiel likewise is all open Bound her bows under deck.... My slaves is not landed yet; they are 58 in number for owners, all in helth & fatt. I lost one small gall.” The health of the slaves does him credit in so small a ship. With my faith in fresh air I cannot help wondering if some of it was not due to that opening round the ship's bows under deck. After a few more remarks he says, “I left Captain Hamblet at Cape Coast sick. His slaves had rose, and they lost the best of what they had.” What happened to the slaves? The slave trade is full of such unfinished stories. There is another letter from Annamabu from one George Scott. “We have now aboard one hundred and no gold. I think to purchase about twenty & go off ye coast: ye time of ye year [it was April], don't doe to tarry much longer. Everything of provisions is very dear and scarce: it costs for water Ten shillings for one day. I think to stay in this place but fourteen days more. We shall go to Shama and water our vessel.” Shama or Chama is another slave castle about half a day's journey from Sekondi. Grim high walls surround it, and the only entrance is approached by the wide steps in a half circle, steps that we so often see approaching the entrance to an old house in Jamaica. At the Hyde there were the same sort of circular steps that I met at Chama, but at Chama they came up to a narrow entrance that two men, in those days, might hold for a week against great odds. This slaver goes on to say he thinks he will sail off the coast from Chama with about 120 slaves cargo. “We have left about two hundred pound sterg in goods which wont sell here to any profitt. Every man slave that we pay all Goods for here, costs twelve pounds sterg prime. I hope I shall be in Barbadoes ye latter end of June but have not concluded whither we shall go to Jamaica or Virginia; our slaves is mostly large. 60 men and boys, 20 women, the rest boys and girls, but three under four foot high. Pray excuse all blunders and bad writing for I have no time to coppy, the sloop being under sail.” I like the last touch, the slaver captain who copied out his letters so that they should be neat when he had time and was not ashamed to own it. I hope he was as careful of his human cargo. The getting of that cargo was not always accomplished, as Phillips did it, by the simple process of going to the “trunk” and buying those he wanted. Clarkson, when he was seeking evidence to justify the suppression of the slave trade, told a tale of wicked treachery by white men, Englishmen, I am sorry to say, who found trade bad at Old Calabar.