Liberia ^ 



natives for little or no cause, and in carrying them off as slaves. 

 In fact, a slang term, " Panyar " (from the Portuguese Apanhar, 

 to seize, catch, kidnap), had sprung up in the coast jargon to 

 illustrate the English methods. Even English travellers such 

 as William Smith (who went out as a surveyor to the Gold 

 Coast early in the eighteenth century) admit that the English 

 had become very unpopular on the Gold Coast, owing to these 

 aggressions on the natives ; and William Smith and his 

 companions endeavoured to pass as Frenchmen when they 

 visited Eastern Liberia and the Ivory Coast, '" because of the 

 bad name the English had acquired." 



The Chevalier des Marchais, the French traveller who 

 visited Cape Mesurado in 1724-5 (vide p. 94), wrote that the 

 natives of this part of the Grain Coast were much addicted to 

 human sacrifices, until they found that their captives were 

 marketable commodities which could be sold with profit to the 

 foreigner. He estimated that the region round about Cape 

 Mesurado might yield two thousand slaves annually. 



Captain Snelgrave, who traded in slaves to the West Indies, 

 had already reported in 1730 that all Europeans were through 

 the hostility of the natives banished from the " Windward 

 Coast " of Liberia ; for even if the chiefs and headmen profited 

 by the slave trade, the common folk loathed it as the cause 

 of all their wars and village troubles. Snelgrave asserted that 

 he had witnessed human sacrifices, and apparently suggested, 

 like many other writers during that century, that the slave 

 trade was really a preservative of human life, in that it offered 

 an inducement to the savage conquerors to spare the lives of 

 their prisoners, in order to sell them into a Christian captivity 

 wherein (to quote a much later apologist) they might "enjoy 

 all Church privileges." These and other writers forget that 

 even the worst excesses of barbarous kingdoms like B^nin or 



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