Ellesin hegemonikos, tois de Barbarois despotikos krasthar kai ton men os philon kai oikeion epimeleisthai, tois de os zoois he phytois prospheresthai. Plutarch. de Fortun. Alexand. Orat. 1.
Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci. Horace.
me tacha pikren Aigypton kai Kypron idnai. Hom. Odyss. L. 17. 448.
L. 26.
Exodus. Ch. 1.
Vide note 1st. (Here shown as footnote 025).
This strikes us the more forcibly, as it is stiled eurreiten and perikallea, "beautiful and well watered," in all other passages where it is mentioned, but this.
The following short history of the African servitude, is taken from Astley's Collection of Voyages, and from the united testimonies of Smyth, Adanson, Bosman, Moore, and others, who were agents to the different factories established there; who resided many years in the country; and published their respective histories at their return. These writers, if they are partial at all, may be considered as favourable rather to their own countrymen, than the unfortunate Africans.
We would not wish to be understood, that slavery was unknown in Africa before the piratical expeditions of the Portuguese, as it appears from the Nubian's Geography, that both the slavery and commerce had been established among the natives with one another. We mean only to assert, that the Portuguese were the first of the Europeans, who made their piratical expeditions, and shewed the way to that slavery, which now makes so disgraceful a figure in the western colonies of the Europeans. In the term "Europeans," wherever it shall occur in the remaining part of this first dissertation, we include the Portuguese, and those nations only, who followed their example.
The Portuguese erected their first fort at D'Elmina, in the year 1481, about forty years after Alonzo Gonzales had pointed the Southern Africans out to his countrymen as articles of commerce.