John Lort Stokes

“ That selfish and short-sighted policy which is almost invariably allied with despotism, has led to such constant additions by importation to the number of the slave population, that it now exceeds the white in the ratio of ten to one, while individually the slaves are both physically and in natural capacity more than equal to their sensual and degenerate masters. Bahia and its neighbourhood have a bad eminence in the annals of the Brazilian slave-trade. ”

“ Rising at a distance of some 40 leagues in dim and awful solitude from the bosom of the seemingly boundless waves that guard its base, it rests at first upon the blue outline of the horizon like a conically shaped cloud: hour after hour as you approach the island it seems to grow upon the sight, until at length its broad reflection darkens the surrounding waters. ”

“ The declining trade, the internal disorganization, and the rapidly augmenting slave population of Bahia, all tend to prove that the system of slavery which the Brazilians consider essential to the welfare of their country, operates directly against her real interests. ”

“ The wonderful resources of the Brazils will, however, never be fully developed until the Brazilians resolve to adopt the line of policy suggested in Captain Fitzroy's interesting remarks upon this subject. To encourage an industrious native population on the one hand, and on the other to declare the slave-trade piratical, are the first necessary steps in that march of improvement, by which this tottering empire may yet be preserved from premature decay. ”

“ I can imagine nothing better calculated than an appearance of this kind to satisfy a beholder of the spherical figure of the earth, and it would seem almost incredible that early navigators should have failed to find conviction in the unvarying testimonies of their own experience, which an approach to every shore afforded. ”

“ In approaching the anchorage of Santa Cruz, vessels should close with the shore, and get into soundings before—as is the general custom—arriving abreast of the town, where from the steepness of the bank, and its proximity to the shore, they are obliged to anchor suddenly, a practice never desirable, and to vessels short handed, always inconvenient: besides calms sometimes prevail in the offing, which would prevent a vessel reaching the anchorage at all. ”

“ The poor victims of cruelty and fraud and avarice, in their most repulsive forms, are packed away between decks scarcely three feet high, in small vessels of 30 or 40 tons, and thus situated have to encounter the cold and stormy passage round the Cape: the average mortality is of course most frightful, but the smallness of the vessels employed decreases the risk of the speculators in human flesh, who consider themselves amply repaid, if they save one living cargo out of every five embarked! ”

“ Let it suffice to say, that the Europeans are generally better and less exacting masters than the Brazilians. Among the latter it is a common practice to send so many slaves each day to earn a certain fixed sum by carrying burdens, pulling in boats, or other laborious employment; and those who return at night without the sum thus arbitrarily assessed as the value of their day's work, are severely flogged for their presumed idleness. ”

“ Emery, as tending to prove the existence of commercial intercourse between the various tribes in the interior, and the inhabitants of the coast at Mogadore on the north-west coast of Africa, and Mombas on the south-east. In the year 1830, certain English goods were recognized in the hands of the Moors at Mogadore which had been sold two years previously to the natives at Mombas. ”