the crews armed themselves simultaneously for slaughter and capture. The scenes that followed almost defy description, and I am rather glad my space here will not admit of my telling the story.
Both American and English women engaged in the fascinating slave-trade upon their own account, and some even went to the Coast. Here they lived in the stations on shore or up the rivers,— those barbaric palaces of wealth, culture, ribaldry, sensuality, and blood-money mints. The home of Don Pedro was an example of these and his sister lived with him. He left the coast in 1839 with a cool million of money. Captain Philip Drake, in his Revelations of a Slave-Smuggler, describes another of these (January 5, 1840). These are his words: — "Da Souza, or Cha-Chu, as everybody calls him, is apparently a reckless voluptuary, but the shrewdest slave-trader on the African coast. Whydah was built by his enterprise, and he lives the life of a prince. His mansion here is like a palace, and he has a harem filled with women from all parts of the world. He keeps up a continual round of dissipation, gambling, feasting, and indulging in every sensual pleasure with his women and visitors. * * * His house is the very abode of luxury. He must squander thousands. But what is money to a man who has a slave-mine in Dahomey, bringing hoards of wealth yearly by a hundred vessels. Da Souza enjoys almost a monopoly of the coast trade. Blanco has been his only rival of late years.
- * * This morning Cha-Chu met me and pro-
posed to supply me with a wife. ' You shall have French, Spanish, Greek, Circassian, English, Dutch,
