now her among ten thousand; that they were as certain
the plaintiff was Salome Muller, the daughter of Daniel and Dorothea
Muller, as of their own existence."

Among the witnesses who appeared in Court was the midwife who had
assisted at the birth of Salome. She testified to the existence of
certain peculiar marks upon the body of the child, which were found,
exactly as described, by the surgeons who were appointed by the Court
to make an examination for the purpose.

There was no trace of African descent in any feature of Salome Muller.
She had long, straight, black hair, hazel eyes, thin lips, and a Roman
nose. The complexion of her face and neck was as dark as that of the
darkest brunette. It appears, however, that, during the twenty-five
years of her servitude, she had been exposed to the sun's rays in the
hot climate of Louisiana, with head and neck unsheltered, as is
customary with the female slaves, while labouring in the cotton or the
sugar field. Those parts of her person which had been shielded from
the sun were comparatively white.

Belmonte, the pretended owner of the girl, had obtained possession of
her by an act of sale from John F. Miller, the planter in whose service
Salome's father died. This Miller was a man of consideration and
substance, owning large sugar estates, and bearing a high reputation
for honour and honesty, and for indulgent treatment of his slaves. It
was testified on the trial that he had said to Belmonte, a few weeks
after the sale of Salome, "that she was white, and had as much right to
her freedom as any one, and was only to be retained in slavery by care
and kind treatment." The broker who negotiated the sale from Miller to
Belmonte, in 1838, testified in Court that he then thought, and still
thought, that the girl was white!

The case was elaborately argued on both sides, but was at length
decided in favour of the girl, by the Supreme Court declaring that "she
was free and white, and therefore unlawfully held in bondage."

The Rev. George Bourne, of Virginia, in his Picture of Slavery,
published in 1834, relates the case of a white boy who, at the age of
seven, was stolen from his home in Ohio, tanned and stained in such a
way that he could not be distinguished from a person of colour, and
then sold as a slave in Virginia. At the age of twenty, he made his
escape, by running away, and happily succeeded in rejoining his parents.

I have known worthless white people to se