...Abraham probably escaped not from a Spanish physician in Pensacola by from the trading post of Forbes & Cmpany, the Pensacola company that succeeded Panton, Leslie & Comany as monopolists for the Indian trade in the Lower South. Forbes & Company inherited an already established commercial network that depended largely upon blacks and Indians. By 1786 Panton, Leslie & Company owned 250 slaves and nineteen separate land grants in Spanish Florida totaling 12,820 acres. Most of the company slaves worked on its various plantations and ranches, but some had specialized functions. For example, the company hired out its slave Langueste to the Spanish government as an interpreter for the Indians and collected his wages. Company slaves traveled to and from the Indian nations regularly, bring back cattle and trains of pack horses loaded with deerskins. At trading stores like the Almecen de Nuestra Senor de la Concepcion, located about six miles south of Palatka on the west bank of the St. Johns river in northern Florida, 50 to 60 slaves worked tending fields of corn and vegetables, herding cattle, and curing and tanning deerskins their compatriots brought in from the Indian settlements. In the company's St. Augustine warehouse, slaves processed the hides and prepared them for export (176). (Landers: Atlantic Creoles)