large as possible, for then the escape of one cargo out of three will amply repay the dealer. Accordingly, the negroes now are packed in the slave ships literally (and this is the comparison always used) like herring in a barrel. They have neither standing room, nor sitting room, nor lying room; and as for change of position during the voyage, the thing is impossible. They are cooped up anyhow, squeezed into crevices, or jammed up against the curved planks. The following is a brief description given by an eye-witness of the unloading of a captured slaver which had been brought into Sierra Leone: "The captives were now counted; their numbers, sex, and age, written down, for the information of the court of mixed commission. The task was repulsive. As the hold had been divided for the separation of the men and the women, those on deck were first counted; they were then driven forward, crowded as much as possible, and the women were drawn up through the small hatchway from their hot, dark confinement. A black boatswain seized them one by one, dragging them before us for a moment, when the proper officer, on a glance, decided the age, whether above or under fourteen; and they were instantly swung again by their arm into their loathsome cell, where another negro boatswain sat, with a whip or stick, and forced them to resume the bent and painful attitude necessary for the stowage of so large a number. The unfortunate women and girls, in general, submitted with quiet resignation, when absence of disease and the use of their limbs permitted. A month had made their condition familiar to them. One or two were less philosophical, or suffered more acutely than the rest. Their shrieks rose faintly from their hidden prison, as violent compulsion alone squeezed them into their nook against the curve of the ship's side. I attempted to descend in order to see the accommodation. The height between the floor and ceiling was about twenty-two inches. The agony of the position of the crouching slaves may be imagined, especially that of the men, whose heads and necks are bent down by the boarding above them. Once so fixed, relief, by motion or change of posture, is unattainable. The body frequently stiffens in a permanent curve; and in the streets of Freetown I have seen liberated slaves of every conceivable state of distortion. One I remember who trailed along his body, with his back to the ground, by means of his hands and ankles. Many can never resume the upright posture."

One item of the enormous mortality during the passage consists of negroes thrown overboard when the slaver is chased, or when a storm arises. Many thousands perish annually in this way. Very frequently it is decided, upon trial, that the capture of the vessel has been illegal; and then the slaver sails away triumphantly, the poor negroes on board having only been tantalized with the hope of freedom. A remarkable case of this kind is told by Mr. Rankin in his account of a visit to Sierra Leone, in 1834:

"On the morning after my arrival at Sierra Leone," says Mr. Rankin, “I was indulging in the first view of the waters of the estuary glittering in the hot sun, and endeavoring to distinguish from the many vessels at anchor the bark which had brought me from England. Close in-shore lay a large schooner, so remarkable from the low, sharp cut of her black hull, and the

excessive rake of her masts, that she seemed amongst the other craft as a swallow seems amongst other birds. Her deck was crowded with naked blacks, whose woolly heads studded the rail. She was a slaver with a large cargo. In the autumn of 1833 this schooner, apparently a Brazilian, and named with the liberty-stirring appellation of 'Dona Maria da Gloria,' had left Loando, on the slave coast, with a few bales of merchandise, to comply with the formalities required by the authorities from vessels engaged in legal traffic; for the slavetrade, under the Brazilian flag, is now piracy. No sooner was she out of port than the real object of her voyage declared itself. She hastily received on board four hundred and thirty negroes, who had been mustered in readiness, and sailed for Rio Janeiro. Off the mouth of that harbor she arrived in November, and was captured as a slaver by his majesty's brig Snake. The case was brought in December before the court established there; and the court decided that, as her Brazilian character had not been fully made out, it was incompetent to the final decision of the case. It was necessary to apply to the court of mixed commission at Sierra Leone for the purpose of adjudication. A second time, therefore, the unfortunate dungeon-ship put to sea with her luckless cargo, and again crossed the Atlantic amidst the horrors of a two month's voyage. The Dona Maria da Gloria having returned to Africa, cast anchor at Freetown in the middle of February, 1834, and on arrival, found the number reduced by death from four hundred and thirty to three hundred and thirty-five.

"Continuance of misery for several months in a cramped posture, in a pestilential atmosphere, had not only destroyed many, but had spread disease amongst the survivors. Dropsy, eruptions, abscesses, and dysentery were making ravages, and ophthalmia was general. Until formally adjudicated by the court, the wretched slaves could not be landed, nor even relieved from their sickening situation. With the green hills and valleys of the colony close to them, they must not leave their prison. I saw them in April; they had been in the harbor two months, and no release had been offered them. But the most painful circumstance was the final decision of the court. The slaver was proved to have been sailing under Portuguese colors, not Brazilian; and the treaty with the Portuguesé prohibits slave traffic to the north of a certain line only, whereas the Dona Maria had been captured a few degrees to the south. No alternative remained. Her capture was decided to have been illegal. She was formally delivered up to her slave-captain; and he received. from the British authorities written orders to the commanders of the British cruisers, guaranteeing a safe and free passage back to the Brazils; and I saw the evil ship weigh anchor and leave Sierra Leone, the seat of slave liberation, with her large canvas proudly swelling, and her ensign floating as if in contempt and triumph. Thus, a third time were the dying wretches carried across the Atlantic after seven months' confinement; few probably lived through the passage."

Formerly, the forfeited slave-ships at Sierra Leone used to be sold; and there were frequent instances of a forfeited slaver sold in one year plying the

same trade the next. With regard to the crews, Sir Fowell Buxton remarks, that the law by which Great Britain, Brazil, and North America have made slave-dealing piracy, and liable to capital punishment, is, practically, a dead letter, there being no instance of an execution for that crime.

Perhaps never has the inefficacy of all that has yet been done towards the suppression of the slave-trade been more strikingly made out than in the harrowing pamphlet published by the Rev. Pascoe Grenfell Hill, entitled "Fifty Days on Board a Slave-Vessel in the Mozambique Channel, in April and May, 1843." The Progresso, a Brazilian slaver, was captured on the 12th of April, on the coast of Madagascar, by the British cruiser Cleopatra, on board of which Mr. Hill was chaplain. The slaver was then taken charge of by a British

crew, who were to navigate her to the Cape of Good Hope. Mr. Hill, at his own request, accompanied her; and his pamphlet is a narrative of what took place during the fifty days which elapsed before their arrival at the Cape. We cannot here quote the details of the description of the treatment of the negroes given by Mr. Hill; but the following account of the horrors of a single night will suffice. Shortly after the Progresso parted company with the Cleopatra, a squall arose, and the negroes, who were breathing fresh air on deck, and rolling themselves about for glee, and kissing the hands and clothes of their de liverers, were all sent below. "The night," says Mr. Hill, "being intensely hot, 400 wretched beings thus crammed into a hold 12 yards in length, 7 feet in breadth, and only 3 feet in height, speedily began to make an effort to re-issue to the open air. Being thrust back, and striving the more to get out, the after-hatch was forced down on them. Over the other hatchway, in the fore part of the vessel, a wooden grating was fastened. To this, the sole inlet for the air, the suffocating heat of the hold, and perhaps panic from the strangeness of their situation, made them press; and thus a great part of the space below was rendered useless. They crowded to the grating, and clinging to it for air, completely barred its entrance. They strove to force their way through apertures in length 14 inches, and barely 6 inclies in breadth, and in some instances succeeded. The cries, the heat-I may say without exaggeration, ‘the smoke of their torment' which ascended, can be compared to nothing earthly. One of the Spaniards gave warning that the consequence would be 'many deaths."" Next day the prediction of the Spaniard "was fearfully verified. Fifty-four crushed and mangled corpses lifted up from the slave deck have been brought to the gangway and thrown overboard. Some were emaciated from disease, many bruised and bloody. Antonio tells me that some were found strangled, their hands still grasping each other's throats, and tongues protruding from their mouths. The bowels of one were crushed out. They had been trampeled to death for the most part, the weaker under the feet of the stronger, in the madness and torment of suffocation from crowd and heat. It was a horrid sight as they passed one by one-the stiff, distorted limbs smeared with blood and filth-to be cast into the sea. Some, still quivering, were laid on the deck to die; salt water thrown on them to revive them, and a little fresh water poured into their mouths. Antonio reminded me of his last night's

warning.

He actively employed himself, with his comrade Sebastian, in attendance on the wretched living beings now released from their confinement below; distributing to them their morning meal of farina, and their allowance of water, rather more than half a pint to each, which they grasped with inconceivable eagerness, some bending their knees to the deck, to avoid the risk of losing any of the liquid by unsteady footing; their throats, doubtless, parched to the utmost with crying and yelling through the night."

On the 12th of April, when the Progresso parted company with the Cleopatra, there were 397 negroes on board. Of these only 222 were landed at the Cape on the 22d of May; no fewer than 175, a little short of half, having died. Many also died after being landed. The crew escaped, there being no court empowered to try them at the Cape.

Walsh, in his notices of Brazil, in 1828 and 1829, says, in describing a slaveship, examined by the English man-of-war in which he returned from Brazil, in May, 1829: "She had taken in, on the coast of Africa, 336 males and 226 females, making in all 562, and had been out seventeen days, during which she had thrown overboard fifty-five. The slaves were all enclosed under grated hatchways, between decks. The space was so low, that they sat between each other's legs, and stowed so close together that there was no possibility of their lying down, or at all changing their position by night or day. As they belonged to, and were shipped on account of, different individuals, they were all branded, like sheep, with the owners' marks, of different forms. These were impressed under their breasts, or on their arms, and, as the mate informed me, with perfect indifference, 'queimados pelo ferro quento-burnt with the red hot iron. Over the hatchway stood a ferocious looking fellow, with a scourge. of many twisted thongs in his hand, who was the slave-driver of the ship; and whenever he heard the slightest noise below, he shook it over them, and seemed eager to exercise it. As soon as the poor creatures saw us looking down at them, their dark and melancholy visages brightened up. They perceived something of sympathy and kindness in our looks, which they had not been accustomed to, and feeling, instinctively, that we were friends, they immediately began to shout and clap their hands. One or two had picked up a few Portuguese words, and cried out, 'Viva! viva!' The women were particularly excited. They all held up their arms; and when we bent down and shook hands with them, they could not contain their delight; they endeavored to scramble upon their knees, stretching up to kiss our hands; and we understood that they knew we had come to liberate them. Some, however, hung down their heads in apparently hopeless dejection; some were greatly emaciated, and some, particularly children, seemed dying. But the circumstance which struck us most forcibly, was, how it was possible for such a number of human beings to exist, packed up and wedged together as tight as they could cram, in low cells, three feet high, the greater part of which, except that immediately under the grated hatchways, was shut out from light or air, and this when the thermometer, exposed to the open sky, was standing in the shade, on our deck, at 89°. The space between decks was divided into two compartments, three feet three

inches high; the size of one was sixteen feet by eighteen, and of the other forty by twenty-one; into the first were crammed the women and girls; into the second, the men and boys: 226 fellow creatures were thus thrust into one space 288 feet square, and 336 into another space 800 feet square-giving to the whole an average of twenty-three inches, and to each of the women not more than thirteen inches, though many of them were pregnant. We also found manacles and fetters of different kinds; but it appears they had all been taken off before we boarded. The heat of these horrid places was so great, and the odor so offensive, that it was quite impossible to enter them, even had there been room. They were measured, as above, when the slaves had left them. The officers insisted that the poor suffering creatures should be admitted on deck, to get air and water. This was opposed by the mate of the slaver, who, from a feeling that they deserved it, declared they would murder them all. The officers, however, persisted, and the poor beings were all turned up together. It is impossible to conceive the effect of this eruption-507 fellow creatures, of all ages and sexes, some children, some adults, some old men and women, all in a state of total nudity, scrambling out together to taste the luxury of a little fresh air and water. They came swarming up like bees from the aperture of a hive, till the whole deck was crowded to suffocation, from stem to stern; so that it was impossible to imagine where they could all have come from, or how they could all have been stowed away. On looking into the places where they had been crammed, there were found some children next the sides of the ship, in the places most remote from light and air; they were lying nearly in a torpid state, after the rest had turned out. The little creatures seemed indifferent as to life or death; and when they were carried on deck, many of them could not stand. After enjoying, for a short time, the unusual luxury of air, some water was brought; it was then that the extent of their sufferings was exposed in a fearful manner. They all rushed like maniacs towards it. No entreaties, or threats, or blows, could restrain them; they shrieked and struggled, and fought with one another, for a drop of this precious liquid, as if they grew rabid at the sight of it. There is nothing which slaves, in the mid-passage, suffer from so much as want of water. It is sometimes usual to take out casks filled with sea-water as ballast, and when the slaves are received on board, to start the casks and refill them with fresh. On one occasion a ship from Bahia neglected to change the contents of the casks, and on the mid-passage found, to their horror, that they were filled with nothing but salt water. All the slaves on board perished! We could judge of the extent of their sufferings from the afflicting sight we now saw. When the poor crea

tures were ordered down again, several of them came and pressed their heads against our knees, with looks of the greatest anguish, at the prospect of returning to the horrid place of suffering below."

The English ship, however, was obliged, though with great reluctance, to release the slaver, as it could not be proved, after a strict examination, that he had exceeded the privilege allowed to Brazilian ships of procuring slaves south of the line