From the foregoing accounts, it is undoubted, that the practice of
making slaves of the Negroes, owes its origin to the early incursions of
the Portugueze on the coast of Africa, solely from an inordinate desire
of gain. This is clearly evidenced from their own historians,
particularly _Cada Mosto_, about the year 1455, who writes,[A] "That
before the trade was settled for purchasing slaves from the Moors at
Arguin, sometimes four, and sometimes more Portugueze vessels, were used
to come to that gulph, well armed; and landing by night, would surprize
some fishermen's villages: that they even entered into the country, and
carried off Arabs of both sexes, whom they sold in Portugal." And also,
"That the Portugueze and Spaniards, settled on four of the Canary
islands, would go to the other island by night, and seize some of the
natives of both sexes, whom they sent to be sold in Spain."

[Footnote A: Collection vol. 1, page 576.]

After the settlement of America, those devastations, and the captivating
the miserable Africans, greatly increased.

Anderson, in his history of trade and commerce, at page 336, speaking of
what passed in the year 1508, writes, "That the Spaniards had by this
time found that the miserable Indian natives, whom they had made to work
in their mines and fields, were not so robust and proper for those
purposes as Negroes brought from Africa; wherefore they, about that
time, began to import Negroes for that end into Hispaniola, from the
Portugueze settlements on the Guinea coasts; and also afterwards for
their sugar works." This oppression of the Indians had, even before this
time, rouzed the zeal, as well as it did the compassion, of some of the
truly pious of that day; particularly that of Bartholomew De las Casas,
bishop of Chapia; whom a desire of being instrumental towards the