y the whip in hand to strike the idle. But those of the negroes
who are judged guilty of serious faults, are punished twenty,
twenty-five, forty, fifty, or one hundred lashes. The manner of this
cruel execution is as follows: four stakes are driven down, making a
long square; the culprit is extended naked between these stakes, face
downwards; his hands and his feet are bound separately, with strong
cords, to each of the stakes, so far apart that his arms and legs,
stretched in the form of St. Andrew's cross, give the poor wretch no
chance of stirring. Then the executioner, who is ordinarily a negro,
armed with the long whip of a coachman, strikes upon the reins and
thighs. The crack of his whip resounds afar, like that of an angry
cartman beating his horses. The blood flows, the long wounds cross
each other, strips of skin are raised without softening either the
hand of the executioner or the heart of the master, who cries 'sting
him harder.'

"The reader is moved; so am I: my agitated hand refuses to trace the
bloody picture, to recount how many times the piercing cry of pain has
interrupted my silent occupations; how many times I have shuddered at
the faces of those barbarous masters, where I saw inscribed the number
of victims sacrificed to their ferocity.

"The women are subjected to these punishments as rigorously as the
men--not even pregnancy exempts them; in that case, before binding
them to the stakes, a hole is made in the ground to accommodate the
enlarged form of the victim.

"It is remarkable that the white creole women are ordinarily more
inexorable than the men. Their slow and languid gait, and the trifling
services which they impose, betoken only apathetic indolence; but
should the slave not promptly obey, should he even fail to divine the
meaning of their gestures, or looks, in an instant they are armed with
a formidable whip; it is no longer the arm which cannot sustain the
weight of a shawl or a reticule--it is no longer the form which but
feebly sustains itself. They themselves order the punishment of one of
these poor creatures, and with a dry eye see their victim bound to
four stakes; they count the blows, and raise a voice of menace, if the
arm that strikes relaxes, or if the blood does not flow in sufficient
abundance. Their sensibility changed to fury must needs feed itself
for a while on the hideous spectacle; they must, as if to revive
themselves, hear the piercing shrieks, and see the flow