- lowed the example set by the Portuguese, the English,
and the French. The trade being considered lawful by all countries, and especially in Africa, the means of obtaining slaves varied according to the wishes of the traders.
Some whites travelled through the country as far as it was practical, and bartered goods for slaves, chaining them together, who followed their masters from town to town until they reached the coast, where they were sold to the owners of ships. Others located themselves on the coast and in the interior, and bought the slaves as they were brought in for sale.
A chief of one of the tribes of the Guinea coast, who had been out on a successful marauding expedition, in which he had captured some two hundred slaves, took them to the coast, sold his chattels to the captain of a vessel, and was invited on board the ship. The chief with his three sons and attendants had scarcely reached the deck of the ship when they were seized, hand-cuffed, and placed with the other Negroes, which enabled the captain to save the purchase money, as well as adding a dozen more slaves to his list.
Had this happened in the nineteenth century, it would have been pronounced a "Yankee trick."
Some large ships appeared at the slave-trading towns on the coast, ready to convey to the colonies any slaves whose owners might see fit to engage them. Their cargoes would often be made up of the slaves of half a dozen parties, on which occasions the chattels would sometimes become mixed, and cause a dispute as to the ownership. To avoid this, the practice of branding the slaves on the coast before shipping them,
