d a family of seven children, but had
lost them all through 'ill luck,' as she denominated the ignorance and ill
treatment which were answerable for the loss of these, as of so many other
poor little creatures their fellows. Having dismissed her and Diana with
the sugar and rice they came to beg, I detained Louisa, whom I had never
seen but in the presence of her old grandmother, whose version of the poor
child's escape to, and hiding in the woods, I had a desire to compare with
the heroine's own story. She told it very simply, and it was most
pathetic. She had not finished her task one day, when she said she felt
ill, and unable to do so, and had been severely flogged by Driver Bran, in
whose 'gang' she then was. The next day, in spite of this encouragement to
labour, she had again been unable to complete her appointed work; and Bran
having told her that he'd tie her up and flog her if she did not get it
done, she had left the field and run into the swamp. 'Tie you up, Louisa!'
said I, 'what is that?' She then described to me that they were fastened
up by their wrists to a beam or a branch of a tree, their feet barely
touching the ground, so as to allow them no purchase for resistance or
evasion of the lash, their clothes turned over their heads, and their
backs scored with a leather thong, either by the driver himself, or if he
pleases to inflict their punishment by deputy, any of the men he may
choose to summon to the office; it might be father, brother, husband, or
lover, if the overseer so ordered it. I turned sick, and my blood curdled
listening to these details from the slender young slip of a lassie, with
her poor piteous face and murmuring pleading voice. 'Oh,' said I, 'Louisa;
but the rattlesnakes, the dreadful rattlesnakes in the swamps; were you
not afraid of those horrible creatures?' 'Oh, missis,' said the poor
child, 'me no tink of dem, me forget all 'bout dem for de fretting.' 'Why
did you come home at last?' 'Oh, missis, me starve with hunger, me most
dead with hunger before me come back.' 'And were you flogged, Louisa?'
said I, with a shudder at what the answer might be. 'No, missis, me go to
hospital; me almost dead and sick so long, 'spec Driver Bran him forgot
'bout de flogging.' I am getting perfectly savage over all these doings,
E----, and really think I should consider my own throat and those of my
children well cut, if some night the people were to take it into their
heads to clear off scores in t