love to adorn themselves as much as they can and to conduct
themselves importantly."

--Johann D. Schoepf, "_Travels in the Confederation_," 1784, p. 220.

EXTRACTS FROM ANBUREY'S TRAVELS THROUGH NORTH AMERICA

"Thus the whole management of the plantation is left to the overseer, who
as an encouragement to make the most of the crops, has a certain portion as
his wages, but not having any interest in the negroes, any further than
their labour, he drives and whips them about, and works them beyond their
strength, and sometimes till they expire; he feels no loss in their death,
he knows the plantation must be supplied, and his humanity is estimated by
his interest, which rises always above freezing point.

"It is the poor negroes who alone work hard, and I am sorry to say, fare
hard. Incredible is the fatigue which the poor wretches undergo, and that
nature should be able to support it; there certainly must be something in
their constitutions, as well as their color, different from us, that
enables them to endure it.

"They are called up at day break, and seldom allowed to swallow a mouthful
of homminy, or hoe cake, but are drawn out into the field immediately,
where they continue at hard labour, without intermission, till noon, when
they go to their dinners, and are seldom allowed an hour for that purpose;
their meals consist of hominy and salt, and if their master is a man of
humanity, touched by the finer feelings of love and sensibility, he allows
them twice a week a little skimmed milk, fat rusty bacon, or salt herring,
to relish this miserable and scanty fare. The man at this plantation, in
lieu of these, grants his negroes an acre of ground, and all Saturday
afternoon to raise grain and poultry for themselves. After they have dined,
they return to labor in the field, until dusk in the evening; here one
naturally imagines the daily labor of these poor creatures was over, not
so, they repair to the tobacco houses, where each has a task of stripping
allotted which takes them up some hours, or else they have such a quantity
of Indian corn to husk, and if they neglect it, are tied up in the morning,
and receive a number of lashes from those unfeeling monsters, the
overseers, whose masters suffer them to exercise their brutal authority
without constraint. Thus by their night task, it is late in the evening
before these poor creatures return to their second scanty meal, and the
time taken up at it encroaches upon