324 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY at Elmina was regarded as one in which a European could speedily accumulate vast wealth. It was as a rule bestowed upon some king's favourite, and by the gradual operation of this system the garrison, we are told, came to be commonly comprised of 'Mewd and debauched persons," intent on making speedy fortunes. The Portuguese Government also used the West Coast from a very early period as a place of deportation for convicts. No wonder, therefore, says Barbot, " that the histories of those times give an account of unparalleled violences and inhumanities committed there by those insatiable Portuguese." Barbot does not over-estimate the character of the blacks with whom the Portuguese had to deal. " They are," he says, "generally extremely sensual, knavish, revengeful, impudent liars, impertinent, gluttonous, extravagant in their expressions, and giving ill language, luxurious beyond expression, and so intemperate that they drink brandy as if it were water, deceitful in their dealings with Europeans and no less with their own neighbours, even to the selling of one another for slaves if they have an opportunity, and, as has been hinted before, so very lazy that rather than work for their living they will rob and commit murders on the highways and in the woods and deserts. ... It is very dangerous travelling in that country. . . . They are so very dexterous and expert at stealing that the ancient Lacedaemonians might have learnt from them the art." Nevertheless this certainly openminded judge thought that the Portuguese treated them too badly for human nature of any sort to endure.

In 1587 the blacks rose against the barbarities of the Portuguese, surprised the fort of Accra, and razed it to the ground. The French, who had as yet only a very slight footing upon the Guinea Coast, seized the occasion for intervention, made the most of their opportunities, and from that date the power of the Portuguese declined.

The French Senegal Company established itself successfully upon the Senegal, and became in the course of the