away more
conveniently: the markets exposed for sale monthly one thousand
human beings, taken from the inferior tribes of the coast. The whole
administration of justice of these superior tribes was overthrown by the
advent of the European, who taught them to punish theft, adultery, and
other crimes by putting up the criminal for sale.

The Whidah people were Fetich-worshippers; so were the inhabitants
of Benin. But the latter had the singularity of refusing to sell a
criminal, adjudged to slavery, to the foreign slave-traders, unless
it was a woman. They procured, however, a great many slaves from the
interior for the Portuguese and French. The Benin people dealt in magic
and the ordeal; they believed in apparitions, and filled up their cabins
with idols to such an extent as nearly to eject the family.

The slaves of the river Calabar and the Gaboon were drawn from very
inferior races, who lived in a state of mutual warfare for the purpose
of furnishing each other to the trader. They kidnapped men in the
interior, and their expeditions sometimes went so far that the exhausted
victims occasioned the slaver a loss of sixty per cent, upon his voyage.
The toughest of these people were the Eboes; the most degraded were the
Papels and Bissagos.

The Congo negro was more intelligent than these; he understood something
of agriculture and the keeping of cattle. He made Tombo wine and some
kinds of native cloth. The women worked in the fields with their
children slung to their backs. The Congo temperament near the coast was
mild and even, like the climate; but there dwelt in the mountains the
Auziko and N'teka, who were cannibals. The Congoes in Cuba had the
reputation of being stupid, sensual, and brutal; but these African names
have always been applied without much discrimination.

The slavers collected great varieties of negroes along the coasts of
Loango and Benguela; some of them were tall, well-made, and vigorous,
others were stunted and incapable. They were all pagans, accustomed to
Fetich- and serpent-worship, very superstitious, without manliness and
dignity, stupid and unimpressible.

The Benguela women learned the panel game from the Portuguese. This is
an ugly habit of enticing men to such a point of complicity, that an
indignant husband, and a close calculator, can appear suddenly and
denounce the victim. Many a slave was furnished in this way.--But
we restrain the pen from tracing the villanous and savage metho