THE SENTIMENTAL SQUADRON. 369 



as to have the appearance of a slaver, she was taken 

 as a prize ; the sailors were landed at the first con- 

 venient spot ; the slaver was sold, and the money 

 thereby obtained, with a bounty on each captured 

 slave, was divided among the officers and crew. The 

 slaves were discharged at Sierra Leone, where they 

 formed themselves into various townships according to 

 their nationalities, spoke their own language, elected 

 their own chiefs, and governed themselves privately by 

 their own laws, Opinion acting as the only method of 

 coercion — a fact deserving to be noted by those who 

 study savage man. However, this was only for a time. 

 AH these imported negroes were educated by the mis- 

 sionaries, and they now support their own church ; the 

 native languages and distinctions of nationality are 

 gradually dying out; the descendants of naked slaves 

 are many of them clergymen, artisans, shopkeepers, 

 and merchants ; they call themselves Englishmen, and 

 such they feel themselves to be. However ludicrous 

 it may seem to hear a negro boasting about Lord Nel- 

 son and Waterloo, and declaring that he must go home 

 to England for his health, it shows that he possesses 

 a kind of emulation, which, with proper guidance, will 

 make him a true citizen of his adopted country, and 

 leave him nothing of the African except his skin. 



But the slave trade was not extinguished by the 

 "sentimental squadron." The slavers could make a 

 profit if they lost four cargoes in every five ; they could 

 easily afford to use decoys. While the gunboat was 

 giving chase to some old tub with fifty diseased and 

 used up slaves on board, a clipper with several hundreds 

 in her holds would dash out from her hiding-place 

 among the mangroves, and scud across the open sea 

 to Cuba and Brazil. 



2 .a 



