insanity and suicide occasional; and the isolation encouraged fraudulent
practices. It was usually impossible to tell the false from the true in the
reports of the loss of goods by fire and flood, theft and rapine, mildew
and white ants, or the loss of slaves by death or mutiny. The expense
of the salary list, ship hire, provisions and merchandise was heavy and
continuous, while the returns were precarious to a degree. Not often did
such great wars occur as the Dahomey invasion of the Whidah country in
1726[16] and the general fighting of the Gambia peoples in 1733-1734[17] to
glut the outward bound ships with slave cargoes. As a rule the company's
advantage of steady markets and friendly native relations appears to have
been more than offset by the freedom of the separate traders from fixed
charges and the necessity of dependence upon lazy and unfaithful employees.

[Footnote 14: Moore, pp. 112, 164, 182.]

[Footnote 15: _Ibid_., p. 82.]

[Footnote 16: William Snelgrave, _A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and
the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp. 8-32.]

[Footnote 17: Moore, p. 157.]

Instead of jogging along the coast, as many had been accustomed to do, and
casting anchor here and there upon sighting signal smokes raised by natives
who had slaves to sell,[18] the separate traders began before the close
of the colonial period to get their slaves from white factors at the
"castles," which were then a relic from the company régime. So advantageous
was this that in 1772 a Newport brig owned by Colonel Wanton cleared £500
on her voyage, and next year the sloop _Adventure_, also of Newport,
Christopher and George Champlin owners, made such speedy trade that after