African Immigrants After Freedom. 75 



The crush aboard was terrible. The negroes had not coffin-room. 

 They squatted each between the other's knees sometimes, to save 

 stowage. The legal slave-trade in the latter days had its Kegulating Bill. 

 The slave-smuggler knew no law. He was a law to himself. Before, the 

 mortality on the Middle Passage averaged about 8 per cent; it rose now to 

 25 per cent, or more. If winds were light or the slaver encountered bad 

 weather or disease broke out, half the slaves never reached America. 



The physical and mental condition of those landed was pitiable. 

 Most of them were mere wrecks, — shadows of men. They were skeletons. 

 It took them a year at least to pick up sufficiently for work in the field. 



As business, nevertheless, slave-smuggling was immensely profitable. 

 Nothing was more so. The value of a slave in Africa — in osnaburg, red 

 coral, salt and tobacco, muskets, rum, &c. — was about £3 or £4. He was 

 cheaper than in the old time. The trade was illegal. The demand was 

 less. Landed in Brazil, he fetched £50. One cargo of slaves was worth 

 ten of dry-goods. Many who began slave-bringing as poor people became 

 among the most wealthy men in South America. 



Now, by way of backing up Treaties with Spain, Brazil, &c, Great 

 Britain stationed a few men-o'-war off the coast of Africa, and, later, for 

 a few years, off Cuba and Brazil. They were on the watch for the slave- 

 smuggler. Readers of " Tom Cringle's Log " will recall the sinking of a 

 slaver by H.M.S. " Wave." But it was one thin=j to watch for the 

 surreptitious " black-birder," and another thing to catch him. The West 

 Coast of Africa — from any point of which almost slaves might be 

 procured — was upwards of 4,000 miles long. The coast of Brazil — at 

 any point of which almost slaves might be landed — was 2,500 miles in 

 extent. Cuba is about 2,000 miles round. There were immensely big 

 meshes in the net. It is small wonder the smuggler often got through. 

 From 1837 to 1847, 176 vessels were caught with slaves aboard. The 

 slaves liberated totalled 43,668. In 1847 only (it is estimated), upwards 

 of 50,000 slaves were safely landed in Brazil alone. 



All the Treaties — with Spain, Brazil, &c. — had one provision in 

 common, namely, that the slaves found aboard captured vessels would, 

 subject to receiving a " full and complete emancipation," be at the dis- 

 posal of the Power whose cruiser had made the capture. This was very 

 well. But the rub was, how to dispose of the captured negroes ? 



The British reply — at first — was " Send them to Sierra Leone." 

 That colony, founded in 1787 as an asylum for many of the negroes 

 whom at the close of the American War came to England and were 

 destitute, had been added to from time to time by not-wanted blacks 

 from other parts of the Empire. A large body of Maroons — expelled 

 after the Maroon War — went there in 1800 from Jamaica. Eighty-five 

 negroes implicated in " Busso's Rebellion " blew in, in 1819, from 

 Barbados. Negroes plucked from the hold of Spanish and Brazilian 

 trade ships were the latest and most troublesome accession. The digestive 

 capacity of Sierra Leone was limited. It could assimilate, reform, &c. — 

 (which was the object of their going there) — small bodies of negroes ; 



