urn of Kormentine cannot be
ascertained, but at any rate they were unsuccessful in obtaining it.
When the treaty was concluded at Breda, July 21, 1667, it provided
that each country should retain the territories which it held on the
tenth of the previous May[153]. Thus ended the war which had in so
large a measure been caused by the troubles between the Royal
Adventurers and the West India Company.

At the conclusion of peace between the two countries, the English
cannot be said to have been in a better position on the Guinea coast
than they were before the war. On the other hand, it would not be
difficult to rebuild new factories at the places which they had lost
during the war. Indeed at the time peace was made factories had
already been settled in several places occupied before DeRuyter's
expedition. Nicolas Villaut, a Frenchman who made a voyage down the
coast of Guinea in the years 1666 and 1667 mentioned an English
factory on one of the islands in the Sierra Leone River, another at
Madra Bomba just north of Cape Mount, and still another just below
Cape Miserado[154]. He also mentioned the strength of the English
fortress at Cape Corse, and declared that, although there was war in
Europe between England and Denmark, the English factors at Cape Corse
and those of the Danes at the neighboring fort of Fredericksburg made
an amicable agreement to commit no acts of hostility against one
another; and that this agreement was so punctually observed that the
soldiers of the two nations mingled freely at all times[155]. Villaut
failed to describe the condition of the company's fort in the Gambia
River, but on October 30, 1667, an attack on it by the natives was
reported to the general court of the company[156]. The Negroes
succeeded in obtaining possession of the island but were presently
dislodged by the company's factors after the loss of a number of white
men[157].

Inasmuch as there remain very scanty records of the company's trading
activities and the manner of government instituted at its forts and
factories on the African coast, it is impossible to describe fully
these aspects of the company's history. When the company first sent
agents to the head factory at Kormentine seven men each served a
month's turn as chief factor. As might have been expected trouble
resulted concerning the succession.[158] The company therefore
withdrew this order and directed that one of the factors be given
charge of affairs with the tit