The purchasers were commonly too shrewd to be deceived in either way; yet they necessarily took risks in every purchase they made.

If horse trading is notoriously fertile in deception, slave trading gave opportunity for it in as much greater degree as human nature is more complex and uncertain than equine and harder to fathom from surface indications.
[Footnote 35: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation, 1783-1784_, A.J.Morrison tr.

(Philadelphia, 1911), I, 148.] [Footnote 36: The proceedings at typical slave auctions are narrated by Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), III, 143-145; and by William Chambers, _Things as they are in America_ (2d edition, London, 1857), pp.

273-284.] There was also some risk of loss from defects of title.

The negroes offered might prove to be kidnapped freemen, or stolen slaves, or to have been illegally sold by their former owners in defraud of mortgagees.