All defects were of course discounted.

Moore, for example, in buying a slave with several teeth missing made the seller abate a bar for each tooth.

The company at one time forbade the purchase of slaves from the self-styled Portuguese because they ran the prices up; but the factors protested that these dealers would promptly carry their wares to the separate traders, and the prohibition was at once withdrawn.
[Footnote 10: The Abbe Proyart, _History of Loango_ (1776), in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 584-587.] [Footnote 11: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, p.45.] The company and the separate traders faced different problems.

The latter were less easily able to adjust their merchandise to the market.

A Rhode Island captain, for instance, wrote his owners from Anamabo in 1736, "heare is 7 sails of us rume men, that we are ready to devour one another, for our case is desprit"; while four years afterward another wrote after trading at the same port, "I have repented a hundred times ye lying in of them dry goods", which he had carried in place of the customary rum.[12] Again, a veteran Rhode Islander wrote from Anamabo in 1752, "on the whole I never had so much trouble in all my voiges", and particularized as follows: "I have Gott on bord 61 Slaves and upards of thirty ounces of Goold, and have Gott 13 or 14 hhds of Rum yet Left on bord, and God noes when I shall Gett Clear of it ye trade is so very Dull it is actuly a noof to make a man Creasey my Cheef mate after making foor or five Trips in the boat was taken Sick and Remains very bad yett then I sent Mr.Taylor, and he got not well, and three more of my men has [been] sick....