138 CONFESSIONS OF A SLAVE-TRADER. Chap. VI. 



Home Government of Portugal had to uphold the Settlements 

 in Eastern Africa at an annual loss of £5000, while little or 

 no trade went thence to Lisbon, and no Portuguese ever 

 made a fortune and retired to spend it at home. It is indeed 

 matter of intense regret, that statesmen, known by the laws 

 they have enacted to be enlightened men, should be the 

 means of perpetuating so much misery in this slave-making 

 country, by keeping out other nations, with a pretence to 

 dominion where they have absolutely no power for good. 

 Is it not paying too dearly for a mere swagger in Europe, to 

 have to bear the odium of united Christendom, as the 

 first to begin the modern ocean slave-trade, and the last to 

 abandon it ? 



A worn out slave-trader, sadly diseased, and nearly blind, 

 used to relate to us in a frank and open manner the 

 moving incidents of his past career. It was evident that 

 he did not see slavery in the same light as we did. His 

 countrymen all knew that the plea of humanity was the 

 best for exciting his liberality, and he was certainly most 

 generous and obliging to us. On expressing our surprise 

 that so humane a man could have been guilty of so much 

 cruelty, as the exportation of slaves entailed, he indig- 

 nantly denied that he had ever torn slaves away from 

 their homes. He had exported " brutos do mato," beasts of 

 the field, alone, that is, natives still wild, or lately caught in 

 forays. This way of viewing the matter made him gravely tell 

 us, that when his wife died, to dull the edge of his grief he 

 made a foray amongst the tribes near the mouth of the Shire, 

 and took many captives. He had commenced slave-trading 

 at Angola and made several fortunes; but somehow managed 

 to dissipate them all in riotous living in a short time at Rio 

 de Janeiro, — " The money a man makes in the slave-trade," 



