,
thinking that the natives asked too much for their slaves, held a
consultation, how they should proceed; and agreed to fire upon the town
unless their own terms were complied with. On a certain evening they
notified their determination to the traders; and told them, that, if they
continued obstinate, they would put it into execution the next morning. In
this they kept their word. They brought sixty-six guns to bear upon the
town; and fired on it for three hours. Not a shot was returned. A canoe
then went off to offer terms of accommodation. The parties however not
agreeing, the firing recommenced; more damage was done; and the natives
were forced into submission. There were no certain accounts of their loss.
Report said that fifty were killed; but some were seen lying badly wounded,
and others in the agonies of death, by those who went afterwards on shore.

He would now say a few words relative to the Middle Passage, principally to
show, that regulation could not effect a cure of the evil there. Mr. Isaac
Wilson had stated in his evidence, that the ship, in which he sailed, only
three years ago, was of three hundred and seventy tons; and that she
carried six hundred and two slaves. Of these she lost one hundred and
fifty-five. There were three or four other vessels in company with her, and
which belonged to the same owners. One of these carried four hundred and
fifty, and buried two hundred; another carried four hundred and sixty-six,
and buried seventy-three; another five hundred and forty-six, and buried
one hundred and fifty-eight; and from the four together, after the landing
of their cargoes, two hundred and twenty died. He fell in with another
vessel, which had lost three hundred and sixty-two; but the number, which
had been bought, was not specified. Now if to these actual deaths, during
and immediately after the voyage, we were to add the subsequent loss in the
seasoning, and to consider that this would be greater than ordinary in
cargoes which were landed in such a sickly state, we should find a
mortality, which, if it were only general for a few months, would entirely
depopulate the globe.

But he would advert to what Mr. Wilson said, when examined, as a surgeon,
as to the causes of these losses, and particularly on board his own ship,
where he had the means of ascertaining them. The substance of his reply was
this--That most of the slaves laboured under a fixed melancholy, which now
and then broke out into