revail among white peoples when contemplating the hardships of the colored
races. But Azurara was more than a moralizing annalist. He acutely observed
of the first cargo of captives brought from southward of the Sahara, less
than a decade before his writing, that after coming to Portugal "they never
more tried to fly, but rather in time forgot all about their own country,"
that "they were very loyal and obedient servants, without malice"; and that
"after they began to use clothing they were for the most part very fond of
display, so that they took great delight in robes of showy colors, and such
was their love of finery that they picked up the rags that fell from the
coats of other people of the country and sewed them on their own garments,
taking great pleasure in these, as though it were matter of some greater
perfection."[1] These few broad strokes would portray with equally happy
precision a myriad other black servants born centuries after the writer's
death and dwelling in a continent of whose existence he never dreamed.
Azurara wrote further that while some of the captives were not able to
endure the change and died happily as Christians, the others, dispersed
among Portuguese households, so ingratiated themselves that many were
set free and some were married to men and women of the land and acquired
comfortable estates. This may have been an earnest of future conditions in
Brazil and the Spanish Indies; but in the British settlements it fell out
far otherwise.

[Footnote 1: Gomez Eannes de Azurara _Chronicle of the Discovery and
Conquest of Guinea_, translated by C.R. Beazley and E.P. Prestage, in the
Hakluyt Society _Publications_, XCV, 85.]

As the fifteenth century wore on and fleets explored more of the African
coast with the double purpose of finding a passage to India and exploiting
any incidental opportunities for gain, more and more human cargoes were
brought from Guinea to Portugal and Spain. But as the novelty of the blacks
wore off they were held in smaller esteem and treated with less liberality.
Gangs of them were set to work in fields from which the Moorish occupants
had recently been expelled. The labor demand was not great, however, and
when early in the sixteenth century West Indian settlers wanted negroes
for their sugar fields, Spain willingly parted with some of hers. Thus did
Europe begin the coercion of African assistance in the conquest of the
American wilderness.

Guinea comprises an expa