342 THE SLAVE TRADE. 



rich and luxurious people, such as the Carthaginians, 

 who on one occasion bought no less than five thousand 

 negroes for their galleys, these slaves must have been 

 obtained in prodigious numbers, for many die in the 

 middle passage across the desert, a journey which kills 

 even a great number of the camels that are employed. 

 The negroes have at all times been highly prized as 

 domestic and ornamental slaves, on account of their 

 docility and their singular appearance. They were 

 much used in ancient Egypt, as the monumental pic- 

 tures show : they were articles of fashion both in Greece 

 and Rome. Throughout the middle ages they were 

 exported from the East Coast to India and Persia, and 

 were formed into regiments by the Caliphs of Bagdhad. 

 The Venetians bought them in Tripoli and Tunis, and 

 sold them to the Moors of Spain. When the Moors 

 were expelled, the trade still went on ; negroes 

 might still be seen in the markets of Seville. The 

 Portuguese discovered the slave-land itself, and imported 

 ten thousand negroes a-year before the discovery of the 

 New World. The Spaniards, who had often negro 

 slaves in their possession, set some of them to dig in 

 the mines at St Domingo : it was found that a negro's 

 work was as much as four Indians', and arrangements 

 were made for importing them from Africa. When the 

 Dutch, the English, and the French obtained planta- 

 tions in America, they also required negro labour, and 

 made settlements in Guinea in order to obtain it. 

 Angola fed the Portuguese Brazil; Elmina fed the Dutch 

 Manhattan ; Cape Coast Castle fed Barbadoes, Jamaica, 

 and Virginia; the Senegal fed Louisiana and the 

 French Antilles ; even Denmark had an island or two 

 in the West Indies, and a fort or two upon the Gold 

 Coast. The Spaniards alone having no settlements 



