THE EUROPEAN SLAVE TRADE 337 looking poor and thin, not only the soldiers, but the officers and factors, whose countenances are shrivelled and dismal through ill diet and worse government." The conduct of all Europeans towards the black women was as discreditable as it was injurious to themselves. Rum and spirits were sold in great quantities by the English and Dutch. The Prussians and Danes were even fonder of strong liquor than the English, and their conduct generally was equally bad. The governors of the Danish stations were often men of the meanest extraction, a gunner from the fort being sometimes raised to that position. The unfaithfulness to the Danish Company of their servants was such that ** scarce any one of integrity " sent out from Denmark was allowed to live. The Dutch treated the natives with arbitrary cruelty In return the blacks were often uncivil to strangers, and this "put Europeans upon ravaging the country, destroying their canoes, and carrying off some of their people into captivity." ** If," says Barbot, **the negroes be generally crafty and treacherous, it may well be said the Europeans have not dealt with them as becomes Christians, for it is too well known that many of the European nations trading amongst these people have very unjustly and inhumanly, without any provocation stolen away from time to time abundance of the people, not only in this (the Sierra Leone) coast, but all over Guinea, and when they came on board their ships in a harmless and confiding manner, carried great numbers away to the plantations, and there sold them with the other slaves they had purchased for their goods. ..."

"Certain it is," he says in another place, "that few who can live well at home will venture to repair to the Guinea Coast to mend their circumstances, unless encouraged by large salaries. . . . This must be said, once for all, that the generality of those who look for such employments are necessitous persons who cannot live at home, and are, perhaps, most of them of a temper to improve all opportunities of mending their worldly circumstances Y