know little, nor are the facts necessary to the interest or the principles of this history, but we must not omit to record that Sir John Hawkins, the famous British navigator, made the first Anglo-Saxon venture in the trade in 1562. In his first voyage he descended on the coast of Africa, where he took, partly in trade and partly by violence, a cargo of slaves, of whom he sold three hundred in the West Indies, at a great profit.
When Queen Elizabeth heard this story on his return to England, she declared that "it would be detestable and call down the vengeance of heaven upon the undertakers" if any more negroes were taken by violence; but this opinion did not prevent Hawkins repeating the operation, nor did it keep Elizabeth from knighting him for his success.
Of the trade in the seventeenth century we know more because our ancestors the English then entered it, and some of the documents relating to it have been preserved. The cultivation of sugar-cane, which was undertaken with success in Barbadoes in 1641, gave the first impulse to the slave-trade in the British West Indies, and in 1662, when the "company of Royal Adventures Trading to Africa" was chartered by Charles II, the company bound itself to land three thousand negro slaves per year in the British West India islands.
The Queen dowager and he who was to be James II. both held stock in this company. This company built some forts on the African coast, as good points for buying slaves, but in 1672 sold out to a new company for £34,000. It had lost a large sum of money. And it is worth noting that this loss was due to the
