-^ The Slave Trade 



exclusive right to a Flemish courtier named Lebrassa to supply 

 four thousand Negroes annually to Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, 

 and Puerto Rico. This Fleming sold his patent to a group 

 of Genoese merchants, who then struck a bargain with the 

 Portuguese to supply the slaves. But the trade did not get 

 into full swing till after the middle of the sixteenth century, 

 when, amongst others, the English seaman John Hawkins took 

 up a concession for the supply of Negroes from Guinea to the 

 West Indies. He made in all three voyages, the first of which 

 was undertaken in 1562. He obtained his slaves first from 

 the rivers between the Gambia and the confines of Liberia, 

 visiting Sierra Leone amongst other places. On the last of 

 these journeys he was accompanied by Drake ^ (afterwards Sir 

 Francis), then a mere youth. They probably touched at the 

 Liberian coast for water on their way to Elmina, where two 

 hundred slaves were obtained by joining a native king in a 

 slave raid. 



The coasts of Liberia were not so much ravaged by the 

 slave trade as were the regions between the Gambia and 

 Sierra Leone, the Dahome or Slave Coast, the Niger Delta, 

 Old Calabar, Loango, and Congo. Perhaps in all the ravages 

 which the over-sea slave trade brought about, the Niger Delta 

 and the Lower Congo sufi^ered the worst. What damage was 

 done to the coast of Liberia seems to be chiefly attributed to 

 the English, who had already begun to visit that coast at the 

 close of the sixteenth century, and were very busy there all 

 through the seventeenth. The French traveller Villault de 

 Bellefonds mentions repeatedly in his writings the damage that 

 the English did on the Grain Coast (Liberia) in attacking the 



' Drake was a kinsman of Sir Jolin Hawkins, who practically adopted and 

 educated him. He was twenty years old when he started on this slave-trading 

 voyage to Guinea. 



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