A voyage to the Canaries with fish was commonly prolonged to the west coast of Africa, where slaves were bought with rum.

Thence the vessel would proceed to the West Indies where the slaves would be sold, a large part of the purchase price being taken in molasses, which, in its turn, was distilled into rum at home, to be used for buying more slaves--for in this traffic little of actual worth was paid for the hapless captives.

Fiery rum, usually adulterated and more than ever poisonous, was all the African chiefs received for their droves of human cattle.

For it they sold wives and children, made bloody war and sold their captives, kidnapped and sold their human booty.
Nothing in the history of our people shows so strikingly the progress of man toward higher ideals, toward a clearer sense of the duties of humanity and the rightful relation of the strong toward the weak, than the changed sentiment concerning the slave trade.

In its most humane form the thought of that traffic to-day fills us with horror.