^ The Slave Trade 



than from practical experience somewhat wild ideas on the 

 subject of colonising the tropics. Accompanied by the naturalists 

 Sparmann and Arrhenius, Wadstrom in 1787 visited the coast 

 of Guinea, and finally recommended Sierra Leone and the 

 Island of Bulama (in Portuguese Guinea) as suitable sites for 

 commencing these colonies of freed slaves. 



One reason why Sierra Leone had been selected as the 

 most suitable site for the commencement of a New Africa, 

 a home of free Negroes, was its previous condition as a strong- 

 hold or central depot of European and Mulatto slave traders 

 and raiders. During the middle of the eighteenth century 

 Liverpool had established a great trade between West Africa 

 and the West Indies. Not a few mates or supercargoes of 

 vessels had settled on the coast between the Gambia and Sierra 

 Leone, had married native women, made large fortunes in the 

 slave trade, and left their mulatto sons and daughters to 

 carry on this commerce. 



The Directors of the Sierra Leone Company hoped that 

 their colony of liberated Africans might influence the native 

 chiefs to stop the slave trade. They collected through their 

 agents much information concerning this traffic, which is 

 published in the second part of Wadstrom's Essay on Colonisation. 

 A few extracts of this evidence may be of interest, because they 

 will enable the reader to realise some of the misery which the 

 slave trade inflicted. The dates of these reports or incidents 

 range between 1787 and 1792 : 



*' I have been to-day on board a slave ship in the river, 

 with two hundred and fifty slaves. The men were chained 

 in pairs ; the women were kept apart. The young slaves were 

 cheerful, but the old ones were much cast down. At meals 

 they were obliged to shout and clap their hands for exercise 

 before they began to eat. I could then see shame and indigna- 



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