Travels in the Mogul Empire (Bernier) 3.11.2

3.11.2

Their treatment of the slaves thus obtained was most cruel ; and they had the audacity to offer for sale, in the places which they had but recently ravaged, the aged people whom they could turn to no better account. It was usual to see young persons, who had saved themselves by timely flight, endeavouring to-day to redeem the parent who had been made captive yesterday. Those who were not disabled by age the pirates either kept in their service, training them up to the love of robbery and practice of assassination, or sold to the Portuguese of Goa, Ceylon, San Thomé, and other places. Even the Portuguese of Ogouli, in Bengale, purchased without scruple these wretched captives, and the horrid traffic was transacted in the vicinity of the island of Galles, near Cape das Palmas. The pirates, by a mutual understanding, waited for the arrival of the Portuguese, who bought whole cargoes at a cheap rate; and it is lamentable to reflect that other Europeans, since the decline of the Portuguese power, have pursued the same flagitious commerce with these pirates, who boast, the infamous scoundrels, that they make more Christians in a twelvemonth than all the missionaries of the Indies do in ten years. A strange mode this of propagating our holy religion by the constant violation of its most sacred precepts, and by the open contempt and defiance of its most awful sanctions!