f the sick women as had strength to approach were
cowering, some on wooden settles (there was not such a thing as a chair
with a back in the whole establishment), most of them on the ground,
excluding those who were too ill to rise--and these poor wretches lay
prostrate on the earth, without bedstead, bed, mattress, or pillow, with
no covering but the clothes they had on and some filthy rags of blanket in
which they endeavoured to wrap themselves as they lay literally strewing
the floor, so that there was hardly room to pass between them. Here in
their hour of sickness and suffering lay those whose health and strength
had given way under unrequited labour--some of them, no later than the
previous day, had been urged with the lash to their accustomed tasks--and
their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons were even at that hour
sweating over the earth whose increase was to procure for others all the
luxuries which health can enjoy, all the comforts which can alleviate
sickness. Here lay women expecting every hour the terror and agonies of
child-birth, others who had just brought their doomed offspring into the
world, others who were groaning over the anguish and bitter disappointment
of miscarriages--here lay some burning with fever, others chilled with
cold and aching with rheumatism, upon the hard cold ground, the draughts
and damp of the atmosphere increasing their sufferings, and dirt, noise,
stench, and every aggravation of which sickness is capable combined in
their condition. There had been among them one or two cases of prolonged
and terribly hard labour; and the method adopted by the ignorant old
negress, who was the sole matron, midwife, nurse, physician, surgeon, and
servant of the infirmary, to assist them in their extremity, was to tie a
cloth tight round the throats of the agonised women, and by drawing it
till she almost suffocated them she produced violent and spasmodic
struggles, which she assured me she thought materially assisted the
progress of the labour. This was one of the Southern infirmaries with
which I was acquainted; and I beg to conclude this chapter of contrasts to
your informant's consolatory views of slavery, by assuring you once more
very emphatically that they have been one and all drawn from estates
where the slaves esteemed themselves well treated, were reputed generally
to be so, and undoubtedly, as far as my observation went, were so,
compared with those on several of the adjoining plant