Where The Twain Meet

ir hands, under their arms, or on their backs, but the women are not so progressive. I don't quite believe the yarn about the girl, who, having been sent to buy a po

g the load on their companion's head, and the woman accepting the help off

1

st Europeans, and I am sure that the features of a man's face are apt to be altered by his mode of life and his thoughts. Of course, it is his thoughts that do it, but his thoughts are produced by his environment. He is a wonderful man who is able to rise abov

were brought to Jamaica by

dies or wherever there was a market for slaves, which was seldom at her home port, and thence back empt

y held in bondage. Says Montesquieu, who was before his time, "Slavery is not good in itself. It is useful neither to the master nor the slave. Not to the slave because he can do nothing from virtuous motives. Not to the master, because he contracts among his slaves all sorts of bad habits, and accustoms himsel

ding to Spear, was in 1752 in command of the brigantine Sanderson, "a square stern'd vessel of the burthen of about 40 tons." What a cockle shell! and he, too, writes from "Anamaboe, 28th February 1753.... The traid is so dull, it is actually a noof to make a man creasey." He has been obliged to buy a cable, and he begs his owners "not to Blaim me in so doeing. I should be glad I cood come Rite home with my slaves, for my vesiel will not last to proceed farr. We can see daylight al round her bow under deck. However, I hope She will carry me safe home once more. I need not inlarge." So he, too, lay outside the surf at A

so were three of the men in the forecastle, and he feared lest the slaves in the hold, learning how short-handed he was, might rise up and make a bid for their freedom, but worse than all was the leaky condition of

that I was oblige Several Days to have Sails on bent to mend them. The vesiel likewise is all open Bound her bows under deck.... My slaves is not landed yet; they are 58 in number for owners, all in helth & fatt

ick. His slaves had rose, and they lost the best of what they had." What

& go off ye coast: ye time of ye year [it was April], don't doe to tarry much longer. Everything of provisions is very dear and scarce: it

wide steps in a half circle, steps that we so often see approaching the entrance to an old house in Jamaica. At the Hyde there were the same sort of c

an slave that we pay all Goods for here, costs twelve pounds sterg prime. I hope I shall be in Barbadoes ye latter end of June but have not concluded whither we shall go to Jamaica or Virginia; our sla

tters so that they should be neat when he had time and was not

runk" and buying those he wanted. Clarkson, when he was seeking evidence to justify the suppression of the slave tr

meter registered over 90° in the shade, so that it is hardly a pleasant place of residence for a white man. Also the old inhabitants were not very tender of each other, or very careful of human life, for as I sat there watching a most glorious sunset a woman, who had come there in the early days, and she was not then, I think, fifty, told me how she hated to walk along the shore-the Calabar River is really an arm of the sea-because of the living sacrifices, generally young girls offered to the envious gods and bound to

ommodated, joyfully accepted the invitation. The three brothers of the grandee just mentioned, the eldest of whom was Amboe Eobin John, first entered their canoe, attended by twenty-seven others, and being followed by nine canoes, directed their course to the Indian Queen. They were dispatched from thence the next morning to the Edgar, and afterwards to the Duke of York, They went on board the last ship, leaving their canoe and attendants by the side of the vessel. These, of course, were important men. A chief on the Coast now carries a silver-headed stick as a badge of rank, is clad in the richest silken robe, and is as far above the rank and file as is the Duke of Devonshire above the labourer clean

parrots call, came out of their hiding-places and joined in the ghastly fray. And the lust of killing got hold of the aggressors. The ships' boats were manned, and joined themselves to the canoes from New Tow

of his hands together and beseeched and prayed his captor not so to violate the rights of hospitality. But he spoke to deaf ears. The captain of the Duke of York only wanted a slave, and the men of New Town offered him one, n

ently I shall have occasion to tell of slave risings in Jamaica, and if the slaves were fiendishly cruel-and they were-nothing can exceed the cruelty of the white men who first brough

st Indies with the slaves themselves, and on their arrival, one if not both, were to be sold as pleasure boats. Then he gives the dimensions. In the larger one each slave "must sit down all the voyage, and contract his limbs within the narrow limits of 3 square feet, while in the smaller, each slave had 4 square feet to sit in, but since the height between decks was only 2 feet 8 inches, his head must touch the deck above. When the matter was investigated in Parliament, it was stated that if the space between decks in a slaver reached 4 feet-it never seems to have exceeded 5 feet 8 inches-they invariably put up a shelf to the width of 5 feet, so that another layer of slaves might be placed on top of the first. The men were ironed together two and two by the ankles, and sometimes their wrists were handcuffed together, and a chain usually fastened the irons to ringbolts, either on the deck above or below. The women and children were left unironed, and the men were stowed forward and the women aft. If they could get a cargo-and they generally waited on that sweltering coast, rolling in the surf, until they did-the slaves covered the entire deck." In Parliament, at the end of the eighteenth century, they took the dimensions of the slaver Brookes, picking her at haphazard from

who came to inspect them," (how could they inspect them save by tramping over them), "in the morning had occasionally to pick dead sla

a slave ship. All the calls of Nature had to be performed upon the spot

mine can convey

at they should have exercise for their health's sake, they were obliged after each meal to jump up and down, or dance in their shackles, and if they did not

d slaver of Liverpool, says Spear, by daily washings, good food, and keeping them amused by playing on musical instruments, did it, and

ment," when the rich ship owners of Liverpool and Bristol had no more shame in owning slavers th

ales of the utter brutality suffered in addition to the overcrowding, the filt

gwood, and Captain Luke Colling-wood seems to have been a dev

of it. For the death rate had been so great the voyage was likely to be unprofitable, and if he could prove that some of the cargo had been thrown overboard to save the rest, the underwriters would pay the value of it, while if these slaves died on board the ship would be at the loss. They selected accordingly 132 of the most sickly of the slaves. Fifty-four of these were there and then thrown overboard to the sharks that swarmed round the ship, and forty-two went the same way the next day, and in the course of the ne

his port. It was proved, however, in answer to this that no one had been put upon short allowance; and that rain fell and continued for three days immediately after the second lot of slaves had been thr

eld, presiding in the higher court, said that this was a shocking case, and, in spite of the law, decided in favour of the underwriters. Still, nothing apparently was done to the murderers. They went scot-free. But imagine the state of

e space between decks was less than two feet. When it was as much as two feet they were stowed, says Spear, "sitting up in rows, one crowded into the lap of another, with legs on legs like riders on a crowded toboggan. In storms the sailors had to put on the hatches, and seal tight the openings into the infern

ase of the Gloria, given by Drake in his Revelations of a Sla

rough a scoundrel surely as ever sailed the seas, filled up his men with rum, attacked the schooner, murdered her officers and crew and one passenger, stole the gold

and the horror of our situation sobered Captain Ruiz. He gave orders to hoist the precious remnant abaft the main grating, and made me calculate how long it would sustain the crew and cargo. I found that half a gill a day would hold out to the Spanish main; and it was decided that, in order to save our cargo, we should allow the slaves a half gill and the crew a gill each a day. Then began a torture worse than death to the blacks. Pent in their close dungeons, to the number of nearly five hundred, they suf

hard "as well as myself," said the frank narrator, and they did not trouble to throw the dead overboard, or presumably even to unshackle the living, for the ca

rinking in plenty, while "the negroes suffocated

ous with yellow spots. I began to notice a strange fetid smell pervading the vessel, and a low heavy fog on deck, almost like steam. Then the horrid truth became apparent. Our rotting negroes under hatches had generated the plague, and it was a malaria or death mist I saw rising. At this time all ou

this ship's surgeon appears to have been a pretty considerable villain himself. The "cargo," I suppose, must have been dead. It was ha

is hardly possible to generate disease, live over it, and escape scot-

sacrifice did not stop the disease. As it was bound to, being a filth disease, it spread to the crew, and presently there was but one man among the crew who could see. And this one man steering, and with all the work of the ship upon his shoulders, saw with thankfulness a sail, and steered towards her. But there was something strange about that sail. As he approached the ship he saw she was drifting as if derelict, though men were wandering about her

e could do to steer his own ship to port, for the disease was creeping upon him, and tradition says that he, too, went bl

forced, and no wonder the wretched cargo in their hopeless misery tried rebelling, though rebel

arms of those who fought. The crew fired down upon them, careless of whom they might hurt. In truth, there was hardly anything else they could do, for, if the slaves got the upper hand, it would have been "Good-night," as far as the white men were concerned. Next morning they were brought up one by one, and then it was found a boy had been killed. Only the two men who had first broken their bonds did not come with the others. They found their way into the hold, and armed themselves with knives from a cask that had been opened for trade. Oh, the forlorn hope! If they had been white men someone would have enthused over their pluck and valour, but they were only two negro slaves. One was persuaded to come up by a negro trader calling to him in his own tongue, and the moment he appeared on deck, one of the crew, "supposing him to be yet hostile," shot him dead. T

s. The chief mate objected to this boy being sold. He would only bring down the average. His objection was allowed. It was a natural one. Therefore, the boy was kept on board, and not exposed for sale, but no provisions were allowed him, and the mate suggested he should be thrown overboard. No one would do this, however, though they could quite easily watch him starving to death before their eyes. And starve he did, and on the ninth day died, "having never been allowed any sustenance during that time." And this in a t

to another, also a thumbscrew, and an instrument like a brutal pair of scissors with screws at the end instead of looped handles. This was pushed in a mouth obstinately ke

the trade. It had been said of him that he had held hot coals to the mouth of a recalcitrant slave to compel him to eat. He was que

the slaves might try also. When I found he was still obstinate, not knowing whether it was from sulkiness or insanity, I ordered a person to present him with a piece of fire

of the kind. Few slaves coul

have been capable men, had not only managed to get free, but were busy making rafts on which they placed the women and children, swimming themselves beside the rafts, and guiding them as they drifted towards the island whereon were the crew. They should have been hailed as heroes and helped, but the crew were afraid-whether rightly or wrongly I cannot say. Certainly you could hardly expect men who had been left heavily ironed to drown, t

and intrepidity they had succeeded in saving themselves. There were little children amongst them, and they too must have been shot down; they too must have raised despairing little hands to brutes who knew not the meaning of the word pity. But somehow even that, terrible as it is, pales before the conduct of a brutal slaver, the last I shall tell of th

ild's legs swelled. He then ordered some water to be made hot to abate the swelling. But even his tender mercies were cruel, for the cook, putting his hand in the water, said it was too hot. Upon this the captain swore at him, and ordered the feet to be put in. This was done. The nails and skin came off. Oiled cloths were then put round them." And then, as if that were not enough, the child was tied to a heavy log, and

openly upon the deck of the slaver, the officers and crew saw it, and not one of them raised a hand to help a helpless baby who was being cruelly

essity compelled to tell the whole story, for it seems to me they cannot be properly understood-their kindliness, their subserviency, their c