n their reach.
Firewood and shavings lay littered about the floors, while the half-naked
children were cowering round two or three smouldering cinders. The moss
with which the chinks and crannies of their ill-protecting dwellings might
have been stuffed, was trailing in dirt and dust about the ground, while
the back-door of the huts, opening upon a most unsightly ditch, was left
wide open for the fowls and ducks, which they are allowed to raise, to
travel in and out, increasing the filth of the cabin, by what they brought
and left in every direction. In the midst of the floor, or squatting round
the cold hearth, would be four or five little children from four to ten
years old, the latter all with babies in their arms, the care of the
infants being taken from the mothers (who are driven a-field as soon as
they recover from child labour), and devolved upon these poor little
nurses, as they are called, whose business it is to watch the infant, and
carry it to its mother whenever it may require nourishment. To these
hardly human little beings, I addressed my remonstrances about the filth,
cold, and unnecessary wretchedness of their room, bidding the elder boys
and girls kindle up the fire, sweep the floor, and expel the poultry. For
a long time my very words seemed unintelligible to them, till when I began
to sweep and make up the fire, &c., they first fell to laughing, and then
imitating me. The encrustations of dirt on their hands, feet, and faces,
were my next object of attack, and the stupid negro practice (by the bye,
but a short time since nearly universal in enlightened Europe), of keeping
the babies with their feet bare, and their heads, already well capped by
nature with their woolly hair, wrapped in half-a-dozen hot filthy
coverings. Thus I travelled down the 'street,' in every dwelling
endeavouring to awaken a new perception, that of cleanliness, sighing, as
I went, over the futility of my own exertions, for how can slaves be
improved? Nathless, thought I, let what can be done; for it may be, that,
the two being incompatible, improvement may yet expel slavery--and so it
might, and surely would, if, instead of beginning at the end, I could but
begin at the beginning of my task. If the mind and soul were awakened,
instead of mere physical good attempted, the physical good would result,
and the great curse vanish away; but my hands are tied fast, and this
corner of the work is all that I may do. Yet it cannot be but, f