Shipment of slaves to the New World would become massive only in
the eighteenth century, but meanwhile the lure of gold was irresistible not
only to the Portuguese but to sailors and merchants of several other lands.
For them the lure was often deadly. Whereas Europeans brought diseases
to the American Indians, who had no immunities against them, the
Europeans contracted from the Africans diseases against which they them-
selves had no defense. It made no difference how well and strong the ven-
turers were when they began; they were often struck down when they
entered the infamous Bight of Benin.
Richard Hakluyt recounts one voyage that makes this somberly evi-
dent. In 1553 when “two goodly ships... being all well furnished aswell
[sic] with men of the lustiest [that is, the healthiest] sort” set out from
Portsmouth, they thought they were on the way to riches. They were.
When they reached the Gold Coast, they bartered their goods for 150
pounds of gold. That would be a fortune if they could get it back safely to
England, but, lured on by greed, their commander insisted that they sail
farther east into the Bight of Benin, to what was later called the Slave Coast,
to buy pepper and “elephants’ teeth.” Arriving at the Benin River, they
made use of their small pinnace to row up the river to a village whose ruler
spoke Portuguese. There, they made a deal to buy Malaguetta pepper,
whose seed was enormously valuable in England. Getting 80 tons to fill up
the ship took weeks. During that time, the crew began to die, “sometimes
three & sometimes 4 or 5 in a day.” Finally the captain too died. Of the
original 140 men on the ships, fewer than 40 made it back to England.
Waxing philosophical after the ordeal, Hakluyt’s informant wrote a com-
mentary that turned into a prediction: “as fortune in maner never favoureth
but flattereth, never promiseth but deceiveth, never raiseth but casteth
downe again.” That was to be the European experience in Atlantic Africa
for the next 300 years.
Long before they were pushed out of the Gold Coast by the Dutch, the
Portuguese had sailed east beyond the Slave Coast. Passing the Bight of
Bonny, where the little port of Calabar was to become one of the major
sources of slaves in the eighteenth century, the Portuguese explorer Diogo
Cão in 1485 turned south. After more weeks of sailing, he observed a huge
slick of muddy waters. Curious, he turned into the coast and so came to
86 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA