as beads, toys, knives, scissars, hatchets, bits of glass, and the
like--not only gold dust, Guinea grains, elephants' teeth, &c. but
Negroes, for the service of the Brazils, in great numbers.

They listened always very attentively to my discourses on these heads,
but especially to that part which related to the buying Negroes; which
was a trade, at that time, not only not far entered into, but, as far as
it was, had been carried on by the assientos, or permission of the kings
of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed from the public; so that few
Negroes were bought, and those excessive dear.

It happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of my
acquaintance, and talking of those things very earnestly, three of them
came to me the next morning, and told me they had been musing very much
upon what I had discoursed with them of the last night, and they came to
make a secret proposal to me: and, after enjoining me to secrecy, they
told me that they had a mind to fit out a ship to go to Guinea; that
they had all plantations as well as I, and were straitened for nothing
so much as servants; that as it was a trade that could not be carried
on, because they could not publicly sell the Negroes when they came
home, so they desired to make but one voyage, to bring the Negroes on
shore privately, and divide them among their own plantations: and, in a
word, the question was, whether I would go their supercargo in the ship,
to manage the trading part upon the coast of Guinea; and they offered me
that I should have an equal share of the Negroes, without providing any
part of the stock.

This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to any
one that had not a settlement and plantation of his own to look after,
which was in a fair way of coming to be very considerable, and with a