Portuguese alone bore their grievances without retaliation, Bosman said, because their goods were too poor to find markets elsewhere.[6]But Fidah (Whydah), next door, was in Bosman’s esteem the most agreeable of all places to trade in.  The people were honest and polite, and the red-tape requirements definite and reasonable.  A ship captain after paying for a license and buying the king’s private stock of slaves at somewhat above the market price would have the news of his arrival spread afar, and at a given time the trade would be opened with prices fixed in advance and all the available slaves herded in an open field.  There the captain or factor, with the aid of a surgeon, would select the young and healthy, who if the purchaser were the Dutch company were promptly branded to prevent their being confused in the crowd before being carried on shipboard.  The Whydahs were so industrious in the trade, with such far reaching interior connections, that they could deliver a thousand slaves each month.[7]

[Footnote 5:  Bosman’s Guinea (London, 1705), reprinted in Pinkerton’s Voyages, XVI, 363.]

[Footnote 6:  Ibid., XVI, 474-476.]

[Footnote 7:  Ibid., XVI, 489-491.]

Of the operations on the Gambia an intimate view may be had from the journal of Francis Moore, a factor of the Royal African Company from 1730 to 1735.[8] Here the Jolofs on the north and the Mandingoes on the south and west were divided into tribes or kingdoms fronting from five to twenty-five leagues on the river, while tributary villages of Arabic-speaking Foulahs were scattered among them.  In addition there was a small independent population of mixed breed, with very slight European infusion but styling themselves Portuguese and using a “bastard language” known locally as Creole.  Many of these last were busy in the slave trade.  The Royal African headquarters, with a garrison of thirty men, were on an island in the river some thirty miles from its mouth, while its trading stations dotted the shores for many leagues upstream, for no native king was content without a factory near his “palace.”  The slaves bought were partly of local origin but were mostly brought from long distances inland.  These came generally in strings or coffles of thirty or forty, tied with leather thongs about their necks and laden with burdens of ivory and corn on their heads.  Mungo Park when exploring the hinterland of this coast in 1795-1797, traveling incidentally with a slave coffle on part of his journey, estimated that in the Niger Valley generally the slaves outnumbered the free by three to one.[9] But as Moore observed, the domestic slaves were rarely sold in the trade, mainly for fear it would cause their fellows to run away.  When captured by their master’s enemies however, they were likely to be sent to the coast, for they were seldom ransomed.

[Footnote 8:  Francis Moore, Travels in Africa (London, 1738).]