found in the infamous Middle Passage. The master of one of these
Rhode Island slavers, writing home from Guinea in 1736, portrayed
the congestion of the trade in this wise: "For never was there so
much Rum on the Coast at one time before. Not ye like of ye
French ships was never seen before, for ye whole coast is full of
them. For my part I can give no guess when I shall get away, for
I purchast but 27 slaves since I have been here, for slaves is
very scarce. We have had nineteen Sail of us at one time in ye
Road, so that ships that used to carry pryme slaves off is now
forced to take any that comes. Here is seven sail of us Rum men
that are ready to devour one another, for our case is desprit."

Two hundred years of wickedness unspeakable and human torture
beyond all computation, justified by Christian men and sanctioned
by governments, at length rending the nation asunder in civil war
and bequeathing a problem still unsolved--all this followed in
the wake of those first voyages in search of labor which could be
bought and sold as merchandise. It belonged to the dark ages with
piracy and witchcraft, better forgotten than recalled, save for
its potent influence in schooling brave seamen and building
faster ships for peace and war.

These colonial seamen, in truth, fought for survival amid dangers
so manifold as to make their hardihood astounding. It was not
merely a matter of small vessels with a few men and boys daring
distant voyages and the mischances of foundering or stranding,
but of facing an incessant plague of privateers, French and
Spanish, Dutch and English, or a swarm of freebooters under no
flag at all. Coasts were unlighted, charts few and unreliable,
and the instruments of navigation almost as crude as in the days