The command of the establishment was vested in the hands of one individual, who had various subordinates, according to the extent of the trade carried on at the place; and if the troops who garrisoned the fort exceeded twenty or thirty, a commissioned officer usually had charge of them. The most remarkable forts were St. George del Mina, erected by the Portuguese, though it subsequently fell into the hands of the Dutch; Cape Coast Castle, the principal establishment of the English; Fort Louis, at the mouth of the Senegal, generally occupied by the French; and Goree, situated upon an island of the same name, near Cape Verd. Most of these forts mounted from fifty to sixty pieces of cannon, and contained large reservoirs for water, and were not only impregnable to the negroes, but capable of standing a regular siege by a European force.
The individuals next in importance to the director or governor were the factors, who ranked according to their standing in the company's service. The seniors generally remained at headquarters, and had the immediate management of the trade there, and the care of the supplies of European merchandise which were always kept in store. The junior factors were employed in carrying on the traffic in the interior of the country, which they did sometimes by ascending the rivers in armed vessels, and exchanging various articles for slaves, gold-dust, and ivory, with the negroes inhabiting the neighborhood; and sometimes by establishing themselves for several months in a large town 01 populous district, and, as it were, keeping a shop to which the natives might resort for traffic.
The European subordinates of the establishment consisted of clerks, bookkeepers, warehousemen, artificers, mechanics, gunners, and private soldiers, all of whom had particular quarters assigned for their abode, and lived under military discipline. The soldiers employed in the service of the different African companies were mostly invalids, and persons who had been dismissed from the army on account of bad conduct. Destitute of the means of subsistence at home, such men willingly engaged to go to the coast of Africa, where they knew they would be permitted to lead a life of ease, indolence, and licentiousness, and be exposed to no danger except that of a deadly climate, which was in reality the most certain and inevitable one that they could anywhere encounter. Few of the troops in any of the forts were fit for active duty, which was of the less consequence, because they were seldom or never required to fight except upon the ramparts of the place in which they might be quartered, and not often even there. Hence they spent their time in smoking, in drinking palm wine, and in gaming, and were generally earned off by fever or dissipation within two years after their arrival in the country. A stranger, on first visit -any of the African forts, felt that there was something both horrible and ludicrous in the appearance of its garrison; for the individuals composing it appeared ghastly, debilitated, and diseased, to a degree that is unknown in other climates; and their tattered and soiled uniforms, resembling each other only in meanness, and not in color, suggested the idea of the wearers being a band of drunken deserters, or of starved and maltreated prisoners of war.
