ime of the ceremony of watering the graves,
when about sixty persons suffered. This latter custom moreover appeared to
have been a religious superstition of the country, such as at Otaheite, or
in Britain in the time of the Druids, and to have had nothing to do with
the Slave-trade[B]. With respect to prisoners of war, Mr. Devaynes allowed
that the old, the lame, and the wounded, were often put to death on the
spot; but this was to save the trouble of bringing them away. The young and
the healthy were driven off for sale; but if they were not sold when
offered, they were not killed, but reserved for another market, or became
house-slaves to the conquerors, Mr. Devaynes also maintained, contrary to
the allegations of the others, that a great number of persons were
kidnapped in order to be sold to the ships, and that the government, where
this happened, was not strong enough to prevent it. But besides these
draw-backs from the weight of the testimony which had been given, it began
to be perceived by some of the lords of the council, that the cruel
superstitions which, had been described, obtained only in one or two
countries in Africa, and these of insignificant extent; whereas at the
time, when their minds were carried away as it were by their feelings, they
had supposed them to attach to the whole of that vast continent. They
perceived also, that there were circumstances related in the evidence by
the delegates themselves, by means of which, if they were true, the
inhumanity of the trade might be established, and this to their own
disgrace. They had all confessed that such slaves as the White traders
refused to buy were put to death; and yet that these, traders, knowing that
this would be the case, had the barbarity uniformly to reject those whom it
did not suit them to purchase. Mr. Matthews had rejected one of this
description himself, whom he saw afterwards destroyed. Mr. Penny had known
the refuse thrown down Melimba rock. Mr. Norris himself, when certain
prisoners of war were offered to him for sale, declined buying them because
they appeared unhealthy; and though the king then told him that he would
put them to death, he could not be prevailed upon to take them, but left
them to their hard fate; and he had the boldness to state afterwards, that
it was his belief that many of them actually suffered.

[Footnote A: This was also the case with another witness, Mr. Weaves. He
had given me accounts, before any stir was ma