neighbouring villages were surrounded and set on fire in the night.  The inhabitants were seized when making their escape; and, being brought to the agent, were by him forwarded to his principal on the coast.  Mr. How, a botanist in the service of Government, stated, that on the arrival of an order for slaves from Cape Coast Castle, while he was there, a native chief immediately sent forth armed parties, who brought in a supply of all descriptions in the night.

But he would now mention one or two instances of another sort, and these merely on account of the conclusion, which was to be drawn from them.  When Captain Hills was in the river Gambia, he mentioned accidentally to a Black pilot, who was in the boat with him, that he wanted a cabin-boy.  It so happened that some youths were then on the shore with vegetables to sell.  The pilot beckoned to them to come on board; at the same time giving Captain Hills to understand, that he might take his choice of them; and when Captain Hills rejected the proposal with indignation, the pilot seemed perfectly at a loss to account for his warmth; and drily observed, that the slave-captains would not have been so scrupulous.  Again, when General Rooke commanded at Goree, a number of the natives, men, women, and children, came to pay him a friendly visit.  All was gaiety and merriment.  It was a scene to gladden the saddest, and to soften the hardest, heart.  But a slave-captain was not so soon thrown off his guard.  Three English barbarians of this description had the audacity jointly to request the general, to seize the whole unsuspicious multitude and sell them.  For this they alleged the precedent of a former governor.  Was not this request a proof of the frequency of such acts of rapine? for how familiar must such have been to slave-captains, when three of them dared to carry a British officer of rank such a flagitious proposal!  This would stand in the place of a thousand instances.  It would give credibility to every other act of violence stated in the evidence, however enormous it might appear.

But he would now have recourse for a moment to circumstantial evidence.  An adverse witness, who had lived on the Gold Coast, had said that the only way in which children could he enslaved, was by whole families being sold when the principals had been condemned for witchcraft.  But he said at the same time, that few were convicted of this crime, and that the younger part of a family in these cases was sometimes spared.  But if this account were true, it would follow that the children in the slave-vessels would be few indeed.  But it had been proved, that the usual proportion of these was never less than a fourth of the whole cargo on the coast, and also, that the kidnapping of children was very prevalent there.