It is a high island, covered with dense wood, with water of an excellent quality, and in any quantity. Large oaks grow down to the edge of the sea; satin-wood, ebony, and other hard and valuable timber abounds. Some fine strait trees are admirably adapted for spars and masts, and some of the ships on the station have been supplied from the island. The native population is very great, amounting to 200,000; they are not black, but of a dark copper colour, or brown red; their hair, not woolly, but long and lank, and their limbs full, muscular, and well proportioned. They seem as if they were descended from the Moors, and have a steady spirit of independence that has resisted all attempts at making them slaves. On this point they are exceedingly jealous and vigilant. They do not hesitate to go on board the king's ships, with a fearless confidence, showing that they are no ways deficient in personal courage; but they evince an exceeding jealousy of strangers penetrating into their villages, or of their advancing to any distance from the coast. They had seen the consequences of European visitations, and, like the Chinese, were disinclined to admit them into their country. They are naked, with the exception of a cloth of platted grass about their loins. They paint their bodies thickly with red ochre, and the more distinguished persons are marked with blue and other colours. Notwithstanding their naked persons, and savage manners, they have made considerable advances in agriculture; part of the island is cleared and highly improved, and their bananas and yams are peculiarly fine; these they barter for pieces of iron. hoop, which they receive like regular money. It is cut into lengths of seven inches, and the natives prize it above any other articles of barter, and convert it into knives, daggers, and other implements. They have also fowls, but they are not so good, and die as soon as they are sent on shipboard.

The English settlement is on the north part of the island. It was selected with a view to salubrity, and it was afterwards found, from various remains, to have been the very place where the Spaniards had originally established themselves, when formerly masters of the island-sundry articles of broken pottery, and remnants of walls and bastions, indicate this fact.

The first governor of Ferdinando Po was Captain Owen, who brought with him twenty-five marines, and about two hundred

black soldiers of the African corps, besides carpenters and other artificers, to the number of seven hundred people, who erected a fort, governor's residence, and houses for themselves, where they were soon established, with every hope of enjoyment, on this beautiful island; but, notwithstanding the anticipations of its healthiness, it was soon found to be exceedingly insalubrious. The men were seized with low intermittent fevers, which in a short time left them in a deplorable state of mental and physical debility, from which very few recovered, and those who did so remained for a considerable time in a state approaching to idiotism.

The last station to which our cruisers were ordered to direct their attention was the river Gaboon, within thirty miles of the equator. It is notorious for its slave-trade. From hence to Mozambique, the whole coast was open to the Brazilians, who collected slaves from Molembo, Cabindo, and other places, which by treaty they were allowed to traffic with, insomuch so that in the year 1829 no less than 44,000, and in the year 1830, 52,000 slaves were openly imported into and sold in the slave-markets of Rio de Janeiro alone.* On the twenty-third of last March, however, this permission expired, and no native is now allowed to traffic for slaves on any part of the coast of Africa, on pain of being punished as pirates.

It was the general opinion that the vigour and vigilance of our cruisers had nearly suppressed this traffic; such however, unfortunately, was not the fact. The whole number captured by our cruisers, and sent to Sierra Leone, from June 1819, to July 1828, was 13,281, being, on an average, 1400 per annum; while during that period above 100,000 were annually taken from the coast, either by lawful or unlawful traders. The latter were principally from the isle of Cuba. In 1817 a treaty had been concluded with the Spanish government, that the slave-trade should be abolished in the entire dominions of Spain, and the sum of £400,000 was actually given by the British government, as a compensation to those engaged in it. Notwithstanding this, 20,000 slaves have been annually exported, from the Gallinas and the River Bonny, into Cuba alone, by armed vessels of dif

*Walsh's Brazil. Vol. ii. page 322.

Parliamentary Reports.

ferent nations, who act both as pirates and slavers. Their manner of proceeding is this: they set out from the Havannah to hover about the coast of Africa, and if they can elude our vigilance, and take in a cargo of slaves, they proceed direct with it to Cuba. If not, they turn pirates, seize the first ship they meet, preferring one laden with slaves. They murder, and, in some cases, put on shore in desert places, the crew, and proceed with the vessel and cargo to Cuba, where they readily dispose of them; the slaves are landed on the back of the island, and dispersed in various ways through the West Indies and Brazil.

These pirate slavers have been the pest and terror of the tropical regions of the Atlantic for some years; accounts of their atrocities fill the columns of our newspapers, and the law which makes a slave-dealer a pirate, is fully justified, as their characters are now combined and identified. One of the most dangerous and daring of this class has lately fallen into the hands of our cruisers. On the third of September, 1830, Captain Gordon, of His Majesty's sloop, Primrose, fell in with the Spanish ship of war Veloz Passageiro, pierced for thirty, and mounting twenty guns, commanded by José Antonio de la Bega, bound from Whyda, on the coast of Africa, to the Havannah, having on board five hundred and fifty-five slaves, and a crew of one hundred and fifty men of different nations; and after a short but desperate action, in which the pirate slaver had eighty-six men killed and wounded, with five of the unfortunate slaves, she was taken possession of.*

It appears, then, that while the English public supposed the slave-trade suppressed, it has been carried on for the last ten or

*It appears that this formidable ship had long been known to carry on the nefarious trade. The following passage occurs in Dr. Walsh's "Notices of Brazil.” "Captain Arabin had met, while on the coast, one of these atrocious vessels. She was a ship of war from the Havannah, commanded by a Spaniard, of the name of Jose Antonio de la Bega; she was called the Veloz Passageiro, mounted twentyfour long guns, and was manned by 161 desperate fellows of all nations. She was capable of containing 1200 slaves, and had a tender in company for stowing 400 more. He (Captain Arabin) had received certain information that he would sail for the Havannah on the first of May, with his own ship and his consort full of slaves, and so cross our course near the equator about this time. We had been, therefore, for some days, looking out for her, and, as it was supposed he would make a desperate resistance, preparations were made for his reception."—Vol. ii. p. 474. They afterwards pursued and captured a pirate slaver supposing it to be the one they expected, but it turned out to be another similar desperado.

twelve years, to nearly as great an extent, and under much more revolting circumstances than eyer; it remains, therefore, for England to consider what must be done for its effectual suppression. Since the twenty-third of March, 1830, the difficulty is considerably abridged, for now the whole coast of Africa, from Mozambique to Morocco, is included in the prohibition, and no nation can trade for slaves, under any pretext or evasion, either to the south or north of the line. Much, however, yet remains to be done. The present instructions to His Majesty's ships are so vague and restrictive, that known slavers are constantly met on the coast and in the rivers of Africa, and cannot be molested unless they have the slaves actually on board. This is readily done in one night, as often as the cruiser is called or driven away from her station by business or bad weather; and when she returns again the slaver has departed with her full cargo, and it is in vain to follow her, as vessels of this description are built expressly for speed, and attempts to overtake them are fruitless. By an additional article, in the treaty with the Netherlands, it is stipulated that all vessels are to be considered as slavers, and treated as such, when they have an apparatus, such as hatches with their gratings, shackles, large copper boilers, &c., evidently intended for slaves, even though none should be found on board. This article should be included in the treaties with every other nation, so that any such vessel found on the coast, belonging to any country, should be seized and confiscated.

Again, by treaties with Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Brazil, mutual right of search is allowed to cruisers of each nation, but no right of mutual search exists with France and North America, and slaves are continually transported with impunity under their flags. Efforts must be made to induce these latter nations to consent to this arrangement, and no longer to suffer the little etiquettes of national vanity to oppose this great cause. of God and man. "If then," says Dr. Walsh, "when the whole coast of Africa is protected from this commerce, and no vessel of any nation is permitted to traffic on any part of it, the right of mutual search is acknowledged and acted on by all civilized nations, and every ship found with the damning proofs on board be confiscated, and the crews treated as pirates-then, and not till then, can we hope to see this horrid traffic finally abolished."

With this we perfectly agree; but something more yet remains to be done. As long as Cuba continues in its present state, the refugium peccatorum and the receptacle of buccaneers, it is hopeless to attempt to suppress entirely the traffic in slaves. Like the piratical state of Barbary, it is the opprobrium of the civilized world, a nest of pirates, and a den of slaves. We see no reason why it should not be taken possession of like Algiers, if its own weak or wicked government is not able or willing to uphold the common and recognized rights of nations.

But, above all, we must extinguish slavery in our own colonies. As long as that foul blot is permitted to stain our national character, our influence is weakened, and we cannot, with any justice or consistency, prescribe to others that they should not make slaves, when we ourselves hold nearly a million of our fellow-creatures in a similar bondage. As long as unhappy beings perish in that state at home, the cupidity of masters will find means directly or indirectly to supply the loss from abroad. This great act, then, remains to be accomplished, and then England may expect, with the high and commanding auxiliary of her moral influence, that others should follow her example.

1444

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN MEXICO.

We have been engaged in conversation, for several hours, with a gentleman of liberal education and religious principle, a native of this State, afterwards, for five years, a slave-holder in Mississippi, and now a resident at Metamoras, in Mexico. He has resided in that republic for about ten years, and is personally acquainted in most of the Mexican States. Our conversation turned principally on the abolition of slavery in that country. The fact that slavery was abolished at the time of their declaration of independence, was announced in the newspapers; but we have never seen any such minute account of the circumstances, mode, and results, of the transaction, as rendered the information of much value. Believing that the subject would interest our readers, and even hoping that it might excite inquiry, and eventually throw some light upon the path which our own country must pursue to escape from the evils of slavery, we have obtain