ath of allegiance
to the King of Great Britain; then they are led back to the ship.
Hereupon the papers announce that so and so many German people are to be
sold for their freight. Whoever is able to pay his own freight receives
his freedom. Those having wealthy friends endeavor to obtain a loan from
them to pay the freight; but these are few. The ship is the market. The
buyers pick out some and bargain with them as to the years and days of
service, whereupon they make them bind themselves before the magistrate
by a written instrument for a certain period as their property. The
young, unmarried people of both sexes sell first, their lot being a good
or a bad one, for better or worse, according to the character of the
buyer and God's providence or permission. We have frequently noted that
children who were disobedient to their parents, and left them stubbornly
and against their will, here found masters from whom they received their
reward. Old and married people, widows and the frail, nobody wants to
buy, because there is here already an abundance of poor and useless
people who become a burden to the state. But if they have healthy
children, then the freight of the old people is added to that of the
children, and the children must serve so much longer, are sold so much
dearer, and scattered far and wide from each other, among all manner of
nations, languages, and tongues, so that they rarely see their old
parents or brothers and sisters again in this life; many also forget
their mother-tongue. In this way the old people leave the ship free, but
poor, naked, and weak, looking as though they were coming from the
graves, and go begging in the city at the doors of the German
inhabitants; for, as a rule, the English, afraid of infection, close the
doors on them. Such being the conditions, one's heart might bleed seeing
and hearing how these poor human beings, who came from Christian lands
into the New World, partly moan, cry, lament, and throw up their arms
because of the misery and separation which they had never imagined would
befall them, partly call upon and adjure all elements and sacraments,
yea, all thunderbolts and the terrible inhabitants of hell to smash into
numberless fragments and torment the Newlanders and the Dutch merchants,
who deceived them! Those who are far away hear nothing of it, and the
properly so-called Newlanders only laugh about it, and give them no
other consolation beyond that given to Judas Iscario