THE EUROPEAN SLAVE TRADE 339 ships the lodging-place of the slaves is divided into two parts, one for the women and one for the men, and that *'here they lie as close together as it is possible for them to be crowded." Barbot, who traded for himself, chiefly in the neighbourhood of New Calabar, says nothing about cleanliness nor separate compartments. He tells us that in that neighbourhood the slaves were "a strange sort of brutish creatures, very weak and slothful, but cruel and bloody in their temper, always quarrelling, biting, and fighting, and sometimes choking and murdering one another without any mercy." Both traders were much disturbed by a widespread belief among the natives that "we buy them only to fatten and afterwards eat them as a delicacy." Barbot tells us that ** natives infected with this belief will fall into a deep melancholy and despair, and refuse all sustenance, though never so much compelled and even beaten to oblige them to take some nourishment, notwithstanding all which they will starve to death. . . . And, though I must say I am naturally compassionate, yet have I been necessitated sometimes to cause the teeth of those wretches to be broken, because they would not open their mouths or be prevailed upon by any entreaties to feed themselves, and thus have forced some sustenance into their throats.''

Many of the slaves came from the back country, and had never even seen the sea.

Those of us who have crossed the Bay of Biscay in bad weather on a return journey from the Tropics, with all the alleviations that can be given by swift transit, comfort, and warm clothing, are in a position to imagine what some of those naked shiploads must have suffered. The death-rate amounted to two, three, and even four hundred out of every five hundred shipped in Guinea. Yet so profitable was the trade that ten ships might often be seen loading slaves in the same port.

The slaves being commonly prisoners of war, the trade had of course the indirect effect of putting a premium upon intertribal fighting. There was indeed scarcely a vice