The voyage was a slave chase from first to last, and two hundred and thirty-five Blacks were the result. Their landing and their sale at Lagos was a day of great excitement, a long remembered 8th of August. "Very early in the morning, because of the heat (of the later day) the sailors began to land their captives, who as they were placed all together in the field by the landing-place, were indeed a wonderful sight; for among them there were some that were almost white, of beautiful form and face; others were darker; and others again as black as moles and so hideous, alike in face and body, that they looked, to any one who saw them, the very images of a Lower Hemisphere."
But what heart so stern, exclaims the chronicler, as not to be pierced with pity to see that company. For some held down their heads, crying piteously, others looked mournfully upon one another, others stood moaning very wretchedly, sometimes looking up to the height of Heaven, calling out with shrieks of agony, as if invoking the Father of Nature; others grovelled upon the ground, beating their foreheads with their hands, while others again made their moan in a sort of dirge, in their own way, for though one could not understand the words, the sense of all was plain in the agony of those who uttered it.
But most terrible was that agony when came the partition and each possessor took away his lot. Wives were divided from husbands, fathers from sons, brothers from brothers, each being forced to go where his lot might send him. Parents and children who had been ranged opposite one another, now rushed forward to embrace, if it were for the last time; mothers, holding their little children in their arms, threw themselves down, covering their babes with their own bodies.
And yet these slaves were treated with kindness, and no difference was made between them and other and freeborn servants. The younger captives were taught trades, and those who showed that they could manage property were set free and married. Widow ladies treated the girls they bought like their own daughters, and often left them dowries by will, that they might marry as entirely free. Never have I known one of these captives, says Azurara, put in irons like other slaves, or one who did not become a Christian. Often have I been present at the baptisms or marriages of these slaves, when their masters made as much and as solemn a matter of it as if it had been a child or a parent of their own.
During Henry's life the action of buccaneers on the African coast was a good deal kept in check by the spirit and example and positive commands of the Infant, who sent out his men to explore, and could not prevent some outrages in the course of exploration. Again and again he ordered his captains to act fairly to the natives, to trade with them honourably, and to persuade them by gentler means than kidnapping to come to Europe for a time. In the last years of his life he did succeed in bettering things; by establishing a regular Government trade in the bay of Arguin he brought a good deal more under control the unchained deviltry of the Portuguese freebooters; Cadamosto and Diego Gomez, his most trusted lieutenants of this later time, were real discoverers, who tried to make friends of the natives rather than slaves.
In the early days of Portuguese exploration, it may also be said, information, first-hand news of the new countries and their dangers, was absolutely needed, and if the Negroes and the Azaneguy Moors could not or would not speak some Christian tongue and guide the caravels to Guinea, they must be carried off and made fit and proper instruments for the work.
It would be out of place here to justify or condemn this excuse or to enter on the wider question of the right or wrong of the slave-trade in general. It is enough to see how brutally the work of "saving the Heathen," was carried out by the average explorer, when discovery was used as a plea for traffic.
No one then questioned the right of Christians to make slaves of Heathen Blacks; Henry certainly did not, for he used slavery as an education, he made captives of "Gentiles" for the highest ends, as he believed, to save their souls, and to help him in the way of doing great things for his country and for Christendom. He knew more of the results than of the incidental cruelty, more of the hundreds taken than of the hundreds more killed and maimed and made homeless in the taking. For centuries past Moors had brought back slaves from the south across the Sahara to sell on the coast of Tunis and Morocco; no Christian doubted the right and—more than the right—the merit of the Prince in bringing black slaves by sea from Guinea to Lisbon, where they might be fairly saved from the grasp of "Foul Mahumet."
So if it is said that Henry started the African slave-trade of European nations, that must not be understood as the full-blooded atrocity of the West Indian planters, for the use he made of his prisoners was utterly different, though his action was the cause of incessant abuse of the best end by the worst of means.
At the time the gold question was much more important than the slave-trade, and most Portuguese, most Europeans—nobles, merchants, burghers, farmers, labourers—were much more excited by the news and the sight of the first native gold dust than by anything else whatever. It was the first few handfuls of this dust, brought home by Gonsalvez in 1442, that had such a magical effect on public opinion, that spread the exploring interest from a small circle out into every class, and that brought forward volunteers on every side. For a Guinea voyage was now the favourite plan of every adventurer.