the Spanish settlement of Florida, and with the Norse discoveries on the New England coast. If it be admitted that Eric the Red landed on the New England coast, then it is probable that he carried a woman slave ashore with him. That the Spaniards had negro slaves in their settlement in Florida is not now disputed. Peter Menendez, who held a commission of the King of Spain for a settlement in Florida, landed at St. Augustine on September 8, 1565. He undoubtedly had negro slaves in his party. If anyone wishes to make an exhaustive study of the matter of the landing of the first slaves in America, he can find nearly all the references to authorities needed in the Magazine of American History for November, 1891; but the question of interest to the present history is not when the first slaves were brought within the present limits of the United States, but when the first slave-ship came here in the prosecution of its traffic in human beings. Certainly neither the Viking nor the Spaniard came as a slave-merchant.

The first American-built slaver of which there is definite record was the ship Desire, a vessel of 120 tons, built at Marblehead, in 1636. It does not appear that she was in the trade to Africa, but Winthrop's Journal has the following under the date of February 26, 1638:

"Mr. Pierce in the Salem ship, the Desire, returned from the West Indies after seven months. He had been at Providence, and brought some cotton and tobacco and negroes, etc., from thence, and salt from Tortugas." To this is added a remark worth considering: "Dry fish and strong liquors are the only commodities for those parts."

Meantime another slave-ship had come to Virginia -the Fortune, Captain Grey, of London. While on the coast of Africa she had fallen in with an Angola ship loaded with slaves, and had captured her. The slaves were carried to Virginia and exchanged for eighty-five hogsheads and five butts of tobacco, which were sold in London. This was in 1630.

That the Dutch introduced African slaves as soon as they obtained a foothold in America need not be said to those who are familiar with the history of New York. They tried, at first, after the custom of the times, to enslave the aboriginal inhabitants, but the task was found so harassing and unprofitable that they soon sought supplies of blacks from Africa. In fact enslaving red men led to such trouble that a wall was built across the lower end of Manhattan Island, where Wall street is now found, to keep red lovers of liberty from driving the Dutch slave-catchers over the Battery beach into the bay.

The first formal mention of negro slaves in the Dutch Manhattan documents is found in the thirtieth clause of the Charter of Liberties and Exemptions of 1629. It says: "The company will use their endeavors to supply the colonists with as many blacks as they conveniently can." The New Project of Liberties and Exemptions of a later date says "the Incorporated West India Company shall allot to each Patroon twelve Black men and women out of the prizes in which Negroes shall be found." Unquestionably the first slave-ships in the trade to Manhattan Island were privateers, as the first slaver in Virginia was, or they were men-of-war.

Just when the first slaver reached New York is no

where stated, but we can prove that it was within a few years after the first blacks were landed in Virginia. In 1644 Director-General Kieft gave liberty to a number of slaves who had "served the company eighteen or nineteen years." That is to say they had been taken into the company's service in 1625 or 1626.

The

Of the introduction of negro slaves at other points along the coast nothing need be said here. It was in those earliest years a very small trade. There were no ships engaged in carrying slaves exclusively on the high seas, so far as the record shows, until about 1630, when the Fortune captured the Angola slaver. slaves were merely a part of the "general cargo" of that day. In 1647 the Dutch on Manhattan Island wrote of "the slave-trade, that hath lain so long dormant, to the great damage of the company." In 1635 the whole number of slaves imported into Virginia was but twenty-six. In 1642 only seven were imported, and in 1649 only seventeen. There is no record of the total importations, but it is certain that the traffic in all the colonies combined amounted to only a few hundred previous to 1650-certainly fewer in number than would have made a single cargo in later years.

Trivial as were these transactions from a commercial point of view, the facts are all of importance here, not only because they belonged to the beginning of the trade, but because they are helpful to an understanding of the light in which the colonists saw the trade. Did the colonists think, as they bargained for the blacks, that there was the beginning of a "fatal traffic" that was "imposed upon them from without "-did they

"lay aside scruples against" a traffic in human beings. before they exchanged their products for the "twenty Negars"?

The student who looks to see why this Virginia colony was established may see, first of all, in "The True and Sincere Declaration," published in 1609, what the colonists said was their chief object. It reads: "To preach and baptize into the Christian Religion, and, by the propagation of the Gospell, to recover out of the armes of the Devill, a number of poore and miserable soules wrapt up unto death in almost invincible ignorance; to endeavour the fulfilling and accomplishment of the number of the elect which shall be gathered out of all corners of the earth and to add our myte to the Treasury of Heaven."

They believed that was their chief object, but we have another view of their habits of thought.

In a letter written by Captain John Smith in 1614 we find the following regarding the sport of fishing in the waters of the colony:

"And is it not pretty sport to pull up twopence, sixpence, and twelvepence, as fast as you can haul and veer a line?"

One may search the entire literature of that day without finding another sentence so significant of the spirit of the age as well as of the colonists-the spirit that measured even its sport in fishing by counting the market value of each fish taken. In all sincerity they would proclaim that missionary work was the first object in making the settlement; they did truly wish to add their "myte" to the number of "the elect," but with their missionary purposes there was found a proclaimed and unrepressed determination

to make money. They had religious instructors who turned from a contemplation of the gold-paved streets of their heavenly home to talk of pay streaks in the mines of their wilderness home beyond the sea. And when they had arrived, they laid out a town site, boomer fashion, after which there was "no talk, no hope, no work but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, loade gold."

But, alas, the dirt did not pan out. They sent a cargo of glittering stuff home in the first Supply, but it was worthless, so they turned to "pitch, tar, and soap ashes"; also to sassafras, with such vigor that even the "gentlemen" of the colony went to work with axes and thereby blistered their soft hands until they swore wicked oaths "at every other stroke" of their axes. For this they were publicly punished, so that they were led to hold their tongues, commonly, whatever their thoughts might be.

But "pitch, tar, and soap ashes" also failed to make them rich, or even comfortable, and the colony was at the point of absolute extinction when John Rolfe, the squaw man, introduced the cultivation of tobacco in 1612. With tobacco came, at last, prosperity, but only at a terrible price. To grow the crop required the severest kind of toil, and, what was worse, the work had to be done under conditions that proved deadly to the colonists of every class.

With these facts held in mind let us recall the further fact that the greater part of the chopping and digging was done by "apprentices"-a real "working class" a class of men (afterward women were included) who were brought from their homes in England under contract to serve for a stated number of