tiny, which finally awarded the destiny of sacrifice or bondage; few or none being left behind to mourn over their slaughtered friends, or the catastrophe of their unhappy country."
The state of a district exempt from the terrors of the slave trade, and then again under their influence, is given by Mr. Randall, who was at St. Louis, on the Senegal, from 1813 to 1817: "At that time the place was in the possession of the English, and the surrounding population were led to believe that the slave trade was irrevocably abolished; they, in consequence, betook themselves to cultivating the land, and every available piece of ground was under tillage. The people passed from one village to another without arms, and without fear, and every thing wore an air of contentment."
Mr. Randall was there again when the place was in the possession of France, "and then," he says, "the slave trade had revived all its horrors. Vessels were lying in the river to receive cargoes of human flesh; the country was laid waste; not a vestige of cultivation was to be seen, and no one dared to leave the limits of his village without the most ample means of protection."
It is a significant fact, that while reading of the cruelties of the natives to shipwrecked seamen, we find the people of the same districts, described two hundred years before, as being "unwilling to do injury to any, especially to strangers," and as being "a gentle and loving people." But under the
