s of Manila Bay, the plucky fight and death of Bagley
at Cardenas, the braving of death by Hobson at Santiago, and the complete
destruction of Cervera's fleet by Schley showed that Americans could fight
as well in steel ships as in wooden ones. Nor can we doubt that the
history of the next half-century will show that the new order at sea will
breed a new race of American seamen able as in the past to prove
themselves masters of the deep.

CHAPTER III

AN UGLY FEATURE OF EARLY SEAFARING--THE SLAVE TRADE AND ITS
PROMOTERS--PART PLAYED BY EMINENT NEW ENGLANDERS--HOW THE TRADE GREW
UP--THE PIOUS AUSPICES WHICH SURROUNDED THE TRAFFIC--SLAVE-STEALING AND
SABBATH-BREAKING--CONDITIONS OF THE TRADE--SIZE OF THE VESSELS--HOW THE
CAPTIVES WERE TREATED--MUTINIES, MAN-STEALING, AND MURDER--THE REVELATIONS
OF THE ABOLITION SOCIETY--EFFORTS TO BREAK UP THE TRADE--AN AWFUL
RETRIBUTION--ENGLAND LEADS THE WAY--DIFFICULTY OF ENFORCING THE
LAW--AMERICA'S SHAME--THE END OF THE EVIL--THE LAST SLAVER.

At the foot of Narragansett Bay, with the surges of the open ocean
breaking fiercely on its eastward side, and a sheltered harbor crowded
with trim pleasure craft, leading up to its rotting wharves, lies the old
colonial town of Newport. A holiday place it is to-day, a spot of splendor
and of wealth almost without parallel in the world. From the rugged cliffs
on its seaward side great granite palaces stare, many-windowed, over the
Atlantic, and velvet lawns slope down to the rocks. These are the homes of
the people who, in the last fifty years, have brought new life and new
riches to Newport. But down in the old town you will occasionally come
across a fine old colonial mansion, still retaining some signs of its
former grandeur, while scattered about the island to the north are stately
old farmhouses and homesteads that show clearly enough the existence in
that quiet spot of wealth and comfort for these one hundred and fifty
years.

Looking upon Newport to-day, and finding it all so fair, it seems hard to
believe that the foundation of all its wealth and prosperity rested upon
the most cruel, the most execrable, the most inhuman traffic that ever was
plied by degraded men--the traffic in slaves. Yet in the old days the
trade was far from being held either cruel inhuman--indeed, vessels often
set sail for the Bight of Benin to swap rum for slaves, after their owners
had invoked the blessing of God upon their enterprise. Nor were its