year in the case of two of the Moors, while a third took his liberty
without delivering his ransom. After the arrival in Portugal of these
exchanged negroes, ten in number, and several more small parcels of
captives, a company organized at Lagos under the direction of Prince Henry
sent forth a fleet of six caravels in 1444 which promptly returned with 225
captives, the disposal of whom has been recounted at the beginning of this
chapter.

[Footnote 8: The chief source for the early Portuguese voyages is Azurara's
_Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea_, already cited.]

In the next year the Lagos Company sent a great expedition of twenty-six
vessels which discovered the Senegal River and brought back many natives
taken in raids thereabout; and by 1448 nearly a thousand captives had been
carried to Portugal. Some of these were Moorish Berbers, some negroes,
but most were probably Jolofs from the Senegal, a warlike people of mixed
ancestry. Raiding in the Jolof country proved so hazardous that from about
1454 the Portuguese began to supplement their original methods by planting
"factories" on the coast where slaves from the interior were bought from
their native captors and owners who had brought them down in caravans
and canoes. Thus not only was missionary zeal eclipsed but the desire of
conquest likewise, and the spirit of exploration erelong partly subdued, by
commercial greed. By the time of Prince Henry's death in 1460 Portugal was
importing seven or eight hundred negro slaves each year. From this time
forward the traffic was conducted by a succession of companies and
individual grantees, to whom the government gave the exclusive right for
short terms of years in consideration of money payments and pledges of
adding specified measures of exploration. As new coasts were reached
additional facilities were established for trade in pepper, ivory and gold
as well as in slaves. When the route round Africa to India was opened at