Probably the planter grumbled and growled and said the stench of such a ship was enough to knock you down, and that he hated the job, but he had to have hands, and in a way he enjoyed the outing and the gathering together of his own kind. No one, I think, for one moment thought of the sufferings of the slaves; they grumbled, as men do nowadays because a pig-stye smells. Occasionally a farmer, wiser than the rest, declares the swine should be kept clean, but one and all, grumblers and wise men, are sure they need bacon. And so it was with the sale of the black cattle. They were savages. Occasionally, perhaps, a highly bred and educated man from the north might be mixed up with them, but as a rule the slaves imported were the merest barbarians. It is no good thinking they were anything else. It is true enough what the advocates of slavery always maintained, that through their enslaving they did get a glimpse of better things. An Ashanti woman with her shaven head and a cloth wrapped round her middle, beating fu-fu, is certainly not as far advanced in the social scale as the milkmaid clambering down the steep hillside to Montego Bay and saving her pennies to buy herself smart clothes in which to go to church. But it is also certain that the men who imported her forbears were thinking only of their own convenience. There was a tremendous cleaning up on board on arrival; salt water was aplenty, and the slaves were doctored, their sores were attended to, and they were given palm oil and coconut oil with which to anoint themselves. They must have been thankful to come out of their cramped quarters and bask on deck in the sunshine, but they must have feared. One historian has left it on record that the planters who came down to buy had often celebrated the arrival and were so gloriously drunk that the scramble for the goods was disgraceful and the unfortunate Helots must have thought they had fallen into the hands of cannibals and were to be despatched forthwith. The planters, when they were able, visited the ships to see the new importations and decide for which they should bid at the coming sale, but in later times the slaves were taken straight to the vendue master and sold in the public slave market. There used to be a large slave market at Montego Bay, quite close to the water, so that the merchandise might be rowed ashore, and the gentlemen from Success and Contentment and Retrieve, from Iron Shore and Retirement and True Friendship--thus they name plantations in Jamaica--came crowding to fill up the gaps in their hands, to buy Madam a serving wench, or young master a boy to wait upon him.