Note A — CHAP. XI.

First, Francis Moor, factor for the English African company, on the river Gambia,A writes, "That there are a number of Negro traders, called joncoes, or merchants, who follow the slave-trade as a business; their place of residence is so high up in the country as to be six weeks travel from James Fort, which is situate at the mouth of that river. These merchants bring down elephants teeth, and in some years two thousand slaves, most of which, they say, are prisoners taken in war. They buy them from the different Princes who take them; many of them are Bumbrongs and Petcharies; nations, who each of them have different languages, and are brought from a vast way inland. Their way of bringing them is tying them by the neck with leather thongs, at about a yard distant from each other, thirty or forty in a string, having generally a bundle of corn or elephants teeth upon each of their heads. In their way from the mountains, they travel thro' very great woods, where they cannot for some days get water; so they carry in skin bags enough to support them for a time. I cannot (adds Moor) be certain of the number of merchants who follow this trade, but there may, perhaps, be about an hundred, who go up into the inland country, with the goods which they buy from the white men, and with them purchase, in various countries, gold, slaves, and elephants teeth. Besides the slaves, which the merchants bring down, there are many bought along the river: These are either taken in war, as the former are, or men condemned for crimes; or else people stolen, which is very frequent.—Since the slave-trade has been used, all punishments are changed into slavery; there being an advantage on such condemnation, they strain for crimes very hard, in order to get the benefit of selling the criminal."