d carefully recorded
against the former to his prejudice, I took care to give him no offence.
To say nothing of his positive orders, I obeyed his every slightest wish
with a promptitude and alacrity that left him no shadow of ground to
complain of me. It was a difficult task; but it being for my interest
that no complaint of me, just or unjust, should be put on record
against me, I bore all with what I must call exemplary patience and
fortitude.

I have already said that my new master was a man of the most tyrannical
disposition--cruel, passionate, and vindictive. He was all this; and his
miserable fate--a fate which overtook him while I was in his
employment--was, in a great measure, the result of his ungovernable and
merciless temper.

Some of the wretched natives of the country--perhaps the most miserable
beings on the face of the earth, as they are certainly the lowest in the
scale of intellect of all the savage tribes that wander on its
surface--used to come occasionally about our farm, in quest of a morsel
of food. Amongst these were frequently women with infants on their
backs. If my master was out of the way when any of these poor creatures
came about the house, his wife, who was a good sort of woman, used to
relieve them; and so did we, also, when we had anything in our power.
Their treatment, however, was very different when our master happened to
be at home. The moment he saw any of these poor blacks approaching, he
used to run into the house for his rifle, and on several occasions fired
at and wounded the unoffending wretches. At other times he hounded his
dogs after them, himself pursuing and hallooing with as much excitement
as if he had been engaged in the chase of some wild beasts instead of
human beings--beings as distinctly impressed as himself with the image
of his God.

It is true that these poor creatures were mischievous sometimes, and
that they would readily steal any article to which they took a fancy.
But in beings so utterly ignorant, and so destitute of all moral
perceptions, such offences could hardly be considered as criminal; not
one, at any rate, deserving of wounds and death at the caprice of a
fellow-creature acting on his own impulses, unchecked by any legal or
judicial control. Besides, it were easy to prevent the depredations of
these poor creatures--easy to drive them off without having recourse to
violence.

The humanity and forbearance, however, which such a mode of proceeding