[42] For the next half
century and more each passing year probably saw between fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand shipped. The total transportation from first to last may
well have numbered more than five million souls. Prior to the nineteenth
century far more negro than white colonists crossed the seas, though less
than one tenth of all the blacks brought to the western world appear to
have been landed on the North American continent. Indeed, a statistician
has reckoned, though not convincingly, that in the whole period before 1810
these did not exceed 385,500[43]
[Footnote 42: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_, p. 159.]
[Footnote 43: H.C. Carey, _The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign_
(Philadelphia, 1853), chap. 3.]
In selling the slave cargoes in colonial ports the traders of course wanted
minimum delay and maximum prices. But as a rule quickness and high returns
were not mutually compatible. The Royal African Company tended to lay chief
stress upon promptness of sale. Thus at the end of 1672 it announced that
if persons would contract to receive whole cargoes upon their arrival and
to accept all slaves between twelve and forty years of age who were able to
go over the ship's side unaided they would be supplied at the rate of
L15 per head in Barbados, L16 in Nevis, L17 in Jamaica, and L18 in
Virginia.
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