He got, however, several of them hauled on deck. Two or three of these died, and most of the rest, before they reached the West Indies. He was down only about fifteen minutes, and became so ill by it that he could not get up without help, and was disabled (the dysentery seizing him also) from doing duty the rest of the passage. On board the same ship he has known two or three instances of a dead and living slave found in the morning shackled together.

The crowded state of the slaves, and the pulling off the shoes by the sur geons, as described above, that they might not hurt them in traversing their rooms, are additionally mentioned by surgeons Wilson and Claxton. The slaves are said also by Hall and Wilson to complain on account of heat. Both Hall, Towne, and Morley, describe them as often in a violent perspiration, or dew sweat. Mr. Ellison has seen them faint through heat, and obliged to be brought on deck, the steam coming up through the gratings like a furnace. In Wilson's and Towne's ships, some have gone below well in an evening, and in the morning have been found dead; and Mr. Newton has often seen a dead and living man chained together, and, to use his own words, one of the pair dead.

Mr. Falconbridge

To come now to the different incidents on the passage. says that there is a place in every ship for the sick slaves, but there are no accommodations for them, for they lie on the bare planks. He has seen frequently the prominent parts of their bones about the shoulder-blade and knees bare. He says he cannot conceive any situation so dreadful and disgusting as that of slaves when ill of the flux; in the Alexander, the deck was covered with blood and mucus, and resembled a slaughter-house. The stench and foul air were intolerable.

He has known several slaves on board refuse sustenance, with a design to starve themselves. Compulsion was used in every ship he was in to make them take their food. He has known also many instances of their refusing to take medicines when sick, because they wished to die. A woman on board the Alexander was dejected from the moment she came on board, and refused both food and medicine: being asked by the interpreter what she wanted, she replied, nothing but to die—and she did die. Many other slaves expressed the same wish.

The ships, he says, are fitted up with a view to prevent slaves jumping overboard; notwithstanding which he has known instances of their doing so. In the Alexander two were lost in this way. In the same voyage, near twenty jumped overboard out of the Enterprise, Capt. Wilson, and several from a large Frenchman in Bonny River. In his first voyage he saw at Bonny, on board the Emilia, a woman chained to the deck, who, the chief mate said, was mad. On his second voyage, there was a woman on board his own ship, whom they were forced to chain at certain times. In a lucid interval she was sold at Jamaica. He ascribes this insanity to their being torn from their connections and country.

Doctor Trotter, examined on the same subject, says that the man sold with

his family for witchcraft, (of which he had been accused, out of revenge, by a Cabosheer,) refused all sustenance after he came on board. Early next morning it was found he had attempted to cut his throat. Dr. Trotter sewed up

the wound, but the following night the man had not only torn out the sutures, but had made a similar attempt on the other side. From the ragged edges of the wound, and the blood upon his finger ends, it appeared to have been done with his nails, for though strict search was made through all the rooms, no instrument was found. He declared he never would go with white men, uttered incoherent sentences, and looked wishfully at the skies. His hands were secured, but persisting to refuse all sustenance, he died of hunger in eight or ten days. He remembers also an instance of a woman who perished from refusing food: she was repeatedly flogged, and victuals forced into her mouth, but no means could make her swallow it, and she lived for the four last days in a state of torpid insensibility. A man jumped overboard, at Anamaboe, and was drowned. Another also, on the Middle Passage, but he was taken up. A woman also, after having been taken up, was chained for some time to the mizenmast, but being let loose again made a second attempt, was again taken up, and expired under the floggings given her in consequence.

Mr. Wilson, speaking also on the same subject, relates, among many cases where force was necessary to oblige the slaves to take food, that of a young man. He had not been long on board before he perceived him get thin. On inquiry, he found the man had not taken his food, and refused taking any. Mild means were then used to divert him from his resolution, as well as promises that he should have any thing he wished for: but still he refused to eat. They then whipped him with the cat, but this also was ineffectual. He always kept his teeth so fast, that it was impossible to get any thing down. They then endeavored to introduce a speculum oris between them; but the points were too obtuse to enter, and next tried a bolus knife, but with the same effect. In this state he was for four or five days, when he was brought up as dead, to be thrown overboard; but Mr. Wilson finding life still existing, repeated his endeavors, though in vain, and two days afterwards he was brought up again in the same state as before. He then seemed to wish to get up. The crew assisted him, and brought him aft to the fire-place, when, in a feeble voice, in his own tongue, he asked for water, which was given him. Upon this they began to have hopes of dissuading him from his design, but he again shut his teeth as fast as ever, and resolved to die, and on the ninth day from the first refusal he died.

Mr. Wilson says it hurt his feelings much to be obliged to use the cat so frequently to force them to take their food. In the very act of chastisement, they have looked up at him with a smile, and in their own language have said, "presently we shall be no more."

In the same ship a woman found means to convey below the night preceding some rope-yarn, which she tied to the head of the armorer's vise, then in the women's room. She fastened it round her neck, and in the morning was found dead, with her head lying on her shoulder, whence it appeared, she must have

used great exertions to accomplish her end. A young woman also hanged herself, by tying rope-yarns to a batten, near her usual sleeping-place, and then slipping off the platform. The next morning she was found warm, and he used the proper means for her recovery, but in vain.

In the same ship also, when off Annabona, a slave on the sick list jumped overboard, and was picked up by the natives, but died soon afterwards. At another time, when at sea, the captain and officers, when at dinner, heard the alarm of a slave's being overboard, and found it true, for they perceived him. making every exertion to drown himself. He put his head under water, but lifted his hands up; and thus went down, as if exulting that he had got away. Besides the above instance, a man slave who came on board apparently well, became afterwards mad, and at length died insane.

Mr. Claxton, the fourth surgeon examined on these points, declares the steerage and boys' room to have been insufficient to receive the sick; they were therefore obliged to place together those that were and those that were not diseased, and in consequence the disease and mortality spread more and more. The captain treated them with more tenderness than he has heard was usual, but the men were not humane. Some of the most diseased were obliged to keep on deck with a sail spread for them to lie on. This, in a little time, became nearly covered with blood and mucus, which involuntarily issued from them, and therefore the sailors, who had the disagreeable task of cleaning the sail, grew angry with the slaves, and used to beat them inhumanly with their hands, or with a cat. The slaves in consequence grew fearful of committing this involuntary action, and when they perceived they had done it would immediately creep to the tubs, and there sit straining with such violence, as to produce a prolapsus ani, which could not be cured.

Some of the slaves on board the same ship, says Mr. Claxton, had such an aversion to leaving their native places, that they threw themselves overboard, on an idea that they should get back to their own country. The captain, in order to obviate this idea, thought of an expedient, viz: to cut off the heads of those who died, intimating to them, that if determined to go, they must return without their heads. The slaves were accordingly brought up to witness the operation. One of them seeing, when on deck, the carpenter standing with his hatchet up ready to strike off the head of a dead slave, with a violent exertion got loose, and flying to the place where the nettings had been unloosed, in order to empty the tubs, he darted overboard. The ship brought to, and a man was placed in the main chains to catch him, which he perceiving, dived under water, and rising again at a distance from the ship, made signs, which words cannot describe, expressive of his happiness in escaping. He then went down, and was seen no more. This circumstance deterred the captain from trying the expedient any more, and therefore he resolved for the future (as he saw they were determined to throw themselves overboard) to keep a strict watch; notwithstanding which, some afterwards contrived to unloose the lashing, so that two actually threw themselves into the sea, and were lost; another was caught when about three parts overboard.

All the above incidents, described as to have happened on the Middle Passage, are amply corroborated by the other witnesses. The slaves lie on the bare boards, says surgeon Wilson. They are frequently bruised, and the prominent parts of the body excoriated, adds the same gentleman, as also Trotter and Newton. They have been seen by Morley wallowing in their blood and excrement. Claxton, Ellison, and Hall describe them as refusing sustenance, and compelled to eat by the whip. Morley has seen the pannekin dashed against their teeth, and the rice held in their mouths, to make them swallow it, till they were almost strangled, and they have even been thumb-screwed with this view in the ships of Towne and Millar. The man stolen at Galenas river, says the former, also refused to eat, and persisted till he died. A woman, says the latter, who was brought on board, refused sustenance, neither would she speak. She was then ordered the thumb-screws, suspended in the mizzen rigging, and every attempt was made with the cat to compel her to eat, but to no purpose. She died in three or four days afterwards. Mr. Millar was told that she had said, the night before she died, "She was going to her friends."

*

As a third specific instance, in another vessel, may be mentioned that related by Mr. Isaac Parker. There was a child, says he, on board, nine months old, which refused to eat, for which the captain took it up in his hand, and flogged it with a cat, saying, at the same time, "Damn you, I'll make you eat, or I'll kill you." The same child having swelled feet, the captain ordered them to be put into water, though the ship's cook told him it was too hot. This brought off the skin and nails. He then ordered sweet oil and cloths, which Isaac Parker himself applied to the feet; and as the child at mess time again refused, to eat, the captain again took it up and flogged it, and tied a log of mango-wood eighteen or twenty inches long, and of twelve or thirteen pounds weight, round its neck, as a punishment. He repeated the flogging for four days together at mess time. The last time after flogging it, he let it drop out of his hand, with the same expression as before, and accordingly in about three quarters of an hour the child died. He then called its mother to heave it overboard, and beat her for refusing. He however forced her to take it up, and go to the ship's side, where, holding her head on one side, to avoid the sight, she dropped her child overboard, after which she cried for many hours.

Besides instances of slaves refusing to eat, with the view of destroying themselves, and dying in consequence of it, those of their going mad are confirmed by Towne, and of their jumping overboard, or attempting to do it, by Towne, Millar, Ellison, and Hall.

Other incidents on the passage, mentioned by some of the witnesses in their examination, may be divided into three kinds :

The first kind consists of insurrections on the part of the slaves. Some of these frequently attempted to rise, but were prevented, (Wilson, Towne, Trot

*To show the severity of this punishment, Mr. Dove says, that while two slaves were under the torture of the thumb-screws, the sweat ran down their faces, and they trembled as under a violent ague fit; and Mr. Ellison has known instances of their dying, a mortification having taken place in their thumbs in consequence of these screws.

ter, Newton, Dalrymple, Ellison,) others rose, but were quelled, (Ellison, Newton, Falconbridge,) and others rose and succeeded, killing almost all the whites: (Falconbridge and Towne.) Mr. Towne says that, inquiring of the slaves into the cause of these insurrections, he has been asked what business he had to carry them from their country. They had wives and children, whom they wanted to be with. After an insurrection, Mr. Ellison says he has seen them flogged, and the cook's tormentors and tongs heated to burn their flesh. Mr. Newton also adds that it is usual for captains, after insurrections and plots happen, to flog the slaves. Some captains, on board whose ships he has been, added the thumb-screw, and one in particular told him repeatedly that he had put slaves to death, after an insurrection, by various modes of torture.

The second sort of incident on the passage is mentioned by Mr. Falconbridge in the instance of an English vessel blowing up off Galenas, and most of the men-slaves, entangled in their irons, perishing.

The third sort is described by Mr. Hercules Ross as follows. One instance, says he, marked with peculiar circumstances of horror, occurs :-About twenty years ago, a ship from Africa, with about four hundred slaves on board, struck upon some shoals, called the Morant Keys, distant eleven leagues, S.S.E. off the east end of Jamaica. The officers and seamen of the ship landed in their boats, carrying with them arms and provisions. The slaves were left on board in their irons and shackles. This happened in the night time. The Morant Keys consist of three small sandy islands, and he understood that the ship had. struck upon the shoals, at about half a league to windward of them. When morning came, it was discovered that the negroes had got out of their irons, and were busy making rafts, upon which they placed the women and children, whilst the men, and others capable of swimming, attended upon the rafts, while they drifted before the wind towards the island where the seamen had landed. From an apprehension that the negroes would consume the water and provisions which the seamen had landed, they came to the resolution of destroying them by means of their fire-arms and other weapons. As the poor wretches approached the shore, they actually destroyed between three and four hundred of them. Out of the whole cargo, only thirty-three or thirty-four were saved, and brought to Kingston, where Mr. Ross saw them sold at public vendue. The ship, to the best of his recollection, was consigned to a Mr. Hugh Wallace, of the parish of St. Elizabeth's. Mr. Ross says, in extenuation of this massacre, that the crew were probably drunk, or they would not have acted so, but he does not know it to have been the case.

When the ships arrive at their destined ports, the slaves are exposed to sale. They are sold either by scramble, by public auction, or by lots. The sale by scramble is thus described by Mr. Falconbridge: "In the Emilia, at Jamaica, the ship was darkened with sails, and covered around. The men-slaves were placed on the main deck, and the women on the quarter deck. The purchasers on shore were informed that a gun would be fired when they were ready to open the sale. A great number of people came on board with tallies or cards in their hands, with their own names on them, and rushed through the barricado