[Footnote A:  Barbot, p. 303.]

[Footnote B:  Bosman, p. 143.]

[Footnote C:  Note.  Barbot, page 270, says, the trade of slaves is in a more peculiar manner the business of Kings, rich men, and prime merchants, exclusive of the inferior sort of blacks.]

Fr. Moor also mentions man-stealing as being discountenanced by the Negroe Governments on the river Gambia, and speaks of the inslaving the peaceable inhabitants, as a violence which only happens under a corrupt administration of justice; he says,[A] “The Kings of that country generally advise with their head men, scarcely doing any thing of consequence, without consulting them first, except the King of Barsailay, who being subject to hard drinking, is very absolute.  It is to this King’s insatiable thirst for brandy, that his subjects freedoms and families are in so precarious a situation.[B] Whenever this King wants goods or brandy, he sends a messenger to the English Governor at James Fort, to desire he would send a sloop there with a cargo:  this news, being not at all unwelcome, the Governor sends accordingly; against the arrival of the sloop, the King goes and ransacks some of his enemies towns, seizing the people, and selling them for such commodities as he is in want of, which commonly are brandy, guns, powder, balls, pistols, and cutlasses, for his attendants and soldiers; and coral and silver for his wives and concubines.  In case he is not at war with any neighbouring King, he then falls upon one of his own towns, which are numerous, and uses them in the same manner.”  “He often goes with some of his troops by a town in the day time, and returning in the night, sets fire to three parts of it, and putting guards at the fourth, there seizes the people as they run out from the fire; he ties their arms behind them, and marches them either to Joar or Cohone, where he sells them to the Europeans.”

[Footnote A:  Moor, page 61.]

[Footnote B:  Idem, p. 46.]

A. Brue, the French director, gives much the same account, and says,[A] “That having received goods, he wrote to the King, that if he had a sufficient number of slaves, he was ready to trade with him.  This Prince, as well as the other Negroe monarchs, has always a sure way of supplying his deficiencies, by selling his own subjects, for which they seldom want a pretence.  The King had recourse to this method, by seizing three hundred of his own people, and sent word to the director, that he had the slaves ready to deliver for the goods.”  It seems, the King wanted double the quantity of goods which the factor would give him for these three hundred slaves; but the factor refusing to trust him, as he was already in the company’s debt, and perceiving that this refusal had put the King much out of temper, he proposed that he should give him a licence for taking so many more of his people, as the goods he still wanted were worth but this the King refused, saying “It might occasion a disturbance