ally robs ye of half your year's industry; that annually
requires some hundred thousands of your class to be sloughed off into
exile, lest your whole body should gangrene and die. And all this
without even a protest. Nay, worse--you are ever ready to cry "crucify"
to him who would attempt to counteract this condition--ever ready to
glorify the man and the motion that would fix another rivet in your
fetters!

Even while I write, the man who loves you least; he who for forty
years--for all his life, in fact--has been your systematic enemy, is the
most popular of your rulers! Even while I write the Roman wheel is
revolving before your eyes, squibs and crackers sound sweetly in your
ears, and you are screaming forth your rejoicings over the acts of a
convention that had for its sole object the strengthening of your
chains! But a short twelve months ago, you were just as enthusiastic
for a war that was equally antagonistic to your interests, equally
hostile to the liberties of your kind! Miserable delusion!

I repeat what I have uttered with a feeling of solemnity. On my soul, I
hold that the slavery of the Louisiana black is less degrading than that
of the white pleb of England.

True, this black man is a _slave_, and there are three millions of his
race in the same condition. Painful thought! but less painful when
accompanied by the reflection that the same broad land is trodden by
_twenty millions of free and sovereign men_. Three millions of slaves
to twenty millions of masters! In mine own land the proportion is
exactly reversed!

The truth may be obscure. For all that, I dare say there are some who
will understand it.

Ah! how pleasant to turn from these heart-stirring but painful thoughts
to the calmer contemplation of themes furnished by science and nature.
How sweet was it to study the many novel forms that presented themselves
to my eyes on the shores of that magnificent stream! There is a
pleasaunce even in the retrospect; and as I now sit dreaming over them
far away--perhaps never more to behold them with mortal eye--I am
consoled by a fond and faithful memory, whose magic power enables me to
recall them before the eye of my mind in all their vivid colouring of
green and gold!

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE "COAST" OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

As soon as we had fairly started, I ascended to the "hurricane-deck," in
order to obtain a better view of the scenery through which we were
passing. In this place