more for it. There was a Dutch woman from Surinam, who
had brought with her from that plantation of the Hollanders that highly
Ingenious Mode of Torment known as the "Spanso Bocko."[C] The manner of
it was this. You took your Negro and tied him wrists and ankles, so
bending him into a neat curve. Then, if his spine did not crack the
while, you thrust a stake between his legs, and having thus comfortably
Trussed him, pullet fashion, you laid him on the ground one side
upwards, and at your leisure scarified him from one cheek to one heel
with any instrument of Torture that came handy. Then he (or she, it did
not at all matter in the Dutchwoman's esteem), being one gore of welts
and gashes, was thought to be Done enough on one side, and consequently
required Doing t'other. So one that stood by to help just took hold of
the stake and turned the Human Pullet over, and then he was so
thoroughly basted as sometimes to be Done a little too much, often dying
on the spot from that Rib wasting. Oh, it was rare sport! I wonder
whereabouts in the nethermost Hell the cunning Dutchman is now who first
devised this torment; also the Dutchwoman who practised it? I can fancy
Signor Beelzebub and his Imps taking a keen delight in _their_
application of the Spanso Bocko. The which I never knew it cure a Negro
of the sulks. They would force back their tongues into their gullets
while the torment was going on, determined not so much as to utter a
moan, and, having a peculiar Art that way, brought by them from their
own country, would often contrive to suffocate themselves and Expire.
Their own country! That is what one of the miserable beings said when,
being threatened with torment of a peculiar, outrageous nature, he flung
himself into a cauldron of boiling sugar, and was scalded to death on
the instant. Let me not omit to mention while I am on this chapter of
Brutality--wreaked by Christian men upon poor Heathen savages, for many
of them were not many weeks from Guinea and Old Calabar, where they had
been worshiping Mumbo Jumbo, and making war upon one another in their
own Pagan fashion--that I have known Planters even more refined in their
cruelty. They would make their slaves drink salt water, and then set
them out in the hot sun tied to the outside posts of the Piazza. The end
of that was, that they went Raving Mad, gnawing their Tongues and poor
blubberous Lips to pieces[D] before they died. Another genius, who was a
proficient in his H