In the millet zone where there was much work to be done the slaveholdings were in many cases very large and the control relatively stringent; but in the banana districts an easy-going schedule prevailed for all.

One of the chief hardships of the slaves was the liability of being put to death at their master's funeral in order that their spirits might continue in his service.

In such case it was customary on the Gold Coast to give the victim notice of his approaching death by suddenly thrusting a knife through each cheek with the blades crossing in his mouth so that he might not curse his master before he died.

With his hands tied behind him he would then be led to the ceremonial slaughter.

The Africans were in general eager traders in slaves as well as other goods, even before the time when the transatlantic trade, by giving excessive stimulus to raiding and trading, transformed the native economy and deranged the social order.
[Footnote 3: Slavery among the Africans and other primitive peoples has been elaborately discussed by H.J.Nieboer, _Slavery as an Industrial System: Ethnological Researches_ (The Hague, 1900).] Apart from a few great towns such as Coomassee and Benin, life in Guinea was wholly on a village basis, each community dwelling in its own clearing and having very slight intercourse with its neighbors.