ts, to serve as
fortifications, over a large portion of its upper surface. As I
examined it, I saw that our chance of escape from such a place, by any
method I could imagine, was small indeed. I do not know what the
captain thought about the matter, but he was not a man to be defeated by
difficulties, or to abandon hope while a spark of life remained.

As we went along the causeway, a number of women, and children, and dogs
came out to meet us, our welcome consisting in a most horrible
screaming, and crying, and barking, which, I suspect, as far as the
prisoners were concerned, was far from complimentary. Among them were
some dreadful old crones, who came stretching out their withered, black,
parchment arms, shrieking terrifically, and abusing the white men as the
cause of all the misery and hardships it had been their lot to endure.
Their accusations were, I believe, in most respects, too just.
Certainly white men had torn them or their ancestors from their native
land--white men had brought them across the sea in the crowded
slave-ship--white men had made them slaves, treated them with severity
and cruelty, and driven them to seek for freedom from tyranny among the
wild rocks and fastnesses where they were now collected. The other
prisoners seemed to feel, by their downcast, miserable looks, that they
were in the power of enemies whom they had justly made relentless, and
that they had no hope of escape. The old crones went up to them,
pointed their long bony fingers in their eyes, and hissed and shrieked
in their ears. What was said I could not understand, but they were
evidently using every insulting epithet they could imagine to exasperate
or terrify their victims.

I have often thought of that dreadful scene since. How must the acts of
those white men have risen up before them in their true colours--the
wrong they had inflicted on young and innocent girls--the lashes
bestowed on men of free and independent natures--the abuse showered on
their heads--the total neglect of the cultivation of all their moral
attributes! Oh, you Christian gentlemen, did it ever occur to you that
those slaves of yours were men of like passions as yourselves; that they
had minds capable of cultivation in a high degree, if not as high as
your own; that they had souls like your souls to be saved--souls which
must be summoned before the judgment-seat of Heaven, to be judged with
yours; and that you and they must there stand together