The slavers collected great varieties of negroes along the coasts of Loango and Benguela; some of them were tall, well-made, and vigorous, others were stunted and incapable.  They were all pagans, accustomed to Fetich- and serpent-worship, very superstitious, without manliness and dignity, stupid and unimpressible.

The Benguela women learned the panel game from the Portuguese.  This is an ugly habit of enticing men to such a point of complicity, that an indignant husband, and a close calculator, can appear suddenly and denounce the victim.  Many a slave was furnished in this way.—­But we restrain the pen from tracing the villanous and savage methods, suggested by violence or fraud or lust, to keep those decks well stocked over which the lilies of France drooped with immunity.

All these negroes differed much in their sensitiveness to the condition of slavery.  Many of them suffered silently, and soon disappeared, killed by labor and homesickness.  Others committed suicide, in the belief that their spirits would return to the native scenes.  It was not uncommon for a whole family to attempt to reinhabit their old cabin in this way.  The planters attributed these expensive deeds of manumission to a depraved taste or mania; but we do not know that they laid Greek under contribution for a term, as Dr. Cartwright did, who applied the word drapetomania to the malady of the American fugitive.  Many negroes sought relief in a marooning life; but their number was not so great as we might expect.  After two or three days’ experience, hunger and exposure drove them back, if they were not caught before.  The number of permanent maroons did not reach a thousand.

But a few tribes were so turbulent and sullen that the planter avoided buying them, unless his need of field-hands was very urgent.  He was obliged to be circumspect, however; for the traders knew how to jockey a man with a sick, disabled, or impracticable negro.  The Jews made a good business of buying refuse negroes and furbishing them up for the market.  The French traders thought it merit to deceive a Jew; but the latter feigned to be abjectly helpless, in order to enjoy this refitting branch of the business.

The Coromantine negroes were especial objects of suspicion, on account of their quarrelsome and incendiary temper.  Such powerful and capable men ought to have valued more highly the privileges of their position; but they could never quite conquer their prejudices, and were continually interpreting the excellent constitutional motto, Vera pro gratis, into, Liberty instead of sugar! An English physician of the last century, James Grainger by name, wrote a poem in four books upon the “Sugar-Cane,” published in 1764.  Perhaps it would be more correct to say that he exhibited a dose; but the production yields the following lines which show that the Coromantine of Jamaica was no better than his brother of San Domingo:—­