been outlawed, cruisers were stationed on the African coast to stop the work of the slavers. The slave-ships then had need of such quick despatch as had never been dreamed of before. They came to the coast, usually, disguised as honest traders, and watching for a day when the coast was clear they got their slaves quickly on board and sailed away. To enable a ship to load quickly, depots were established at convenient points, where pens were built by setting treetrunks into the ground to make a high fence. In these the slaves were held by the hundred — sometimes more than a thousand were imprisoned in one pen — to await the arrival of a ship.
Captain Philip Drake, an English slaver, whose diary was printed in New York about forty years ago under the title of "Revelations of a Slave-Smuggler," describes incidentally two of the most noted of these slave stations — that of Don Pedro Blanco, on the Gallinas River, and that of Da Souza, at Whydah. "Gallinas," he says, "was a depot and market for slaves brought from all streams that penetrated the Guinea Coast, as well as territory further south. The river was full of small islands; and on several of these, near the sea, as well as on the banks, were located factories, barracoons, dwelling-houses, and storehouses. The success of Blanco had attracted a dozen other traders, and the Don was a prince among them. In African fashion he supported a harem, and quite a retinue of house servants, guards, etc., besides clerks and overseers of his barracoons."
Captain Canot describes Blanco's headquarters in greater detail. He says:
"About a mile from the river's mouth we found a
