“When the rains are at an end, which usually happens in October, the intense heat of the sun soon dries up the waters which lie on the higher parts of the earth, and the remainder forms lakes of stagnated waters, in which are found all sorts of dead animals.  These waters every day decrease, till at last they are quite exhaled, and then the effluvia that arises is almost insupportable.  At this season, the winds blow so very hot from off the land, that I can compare them to nothing but the heat proceeding from the mouth of an oven.  This occasions the Europeans to be sorely vexed with bilious and putrid fevers.  From this account you will not be surprized, that the total loss of British subjects in this island only, amounted to above two thousand five hundred, in the space of three years that I was there, in such a putrid moist air as I have described.”

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[Footnote B:  James Barbot, agent general to the French African company, in his account of Africa, page 105, says, “The natives are seldom troubled with any distempers, being little affected with the unhealthy air.  In tempestuous times they keep much within doors; and when exposed to the weather, their skins being suppled, and pores closed by daily anointing with palm oil, the weather can make but little impression on them.”]

That part of Africa from which the Negroes are sold to be carried into slavery, commonly known by the name of Guinea, extends along the coast three or four thousand miles.  Beginning at the river Senegal, situate about the 17th degree of North latitude, being the nearest part of Guinea, as well to Europe as to North America; from thence to the river Gambia, and in a southerly course to Cape Sierra Leona, comprehends a coast of about seven hundred miles; being the same tract for which Queen Elizabeth granted charters to the first traders to that coast:  from Sierra Leona, the land of Guinea takes a turn to the eastward, extending that course about fifteen hundred miles, including those several civilians known by name of the Grain Coast, the Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast, and the Slave Coast, with the large kingdom of Benin.  From thence the land runs southward along the coast about twelve hundred miles, which contains the kingdoms of Congo and Angola; there the trade for slaves ends.  From which to the southermost Cape of Africa, called the Cape of Good Hope, the country is settled by Caffres and Hottentots, who have never been concerned in the making or selling slaves.