er side of the Mississippi, which is half a-mile across. Another friend, who was riding with me here, told me, that one evening lately, spending a night at the house of a planter who was from home, the planter's wife said how glad she was to see him, as she was just going to flog one of her slaves, and he would be kind enough to save her the trouble. My friend, however, who was from the north, had not been accustomed to the office of executioner, and did not choose to take the hint, broad as it was. The lady resumed the subject before supper, and again as soon as the cloth was drawn, when my friend told her he could not think of complying with her wishes. She was extremely offended, and evinced her displeasure so openly, that had there been another house within a few miles, my friend would have withdrawn. Before bed-time, however, another traveller arrived, to whom the lady complained aloud of the ungentlemanly conduct of her first guest, who in common courtesy undertook to lacerate Cato's back, without inquiring into his offence. You will not wonder, after these details, that a White man considers it a degradation to eat with a Black one; and that if you take a White servant to a planter's or an inn, he is obliged to have separate meals; and, where it is practicable, an apartment separate from the Black servants. I remember that as the mail stopped in Virginia and Carolina, I generally saw a little White boy stuffed in one corner; and for a long time without being particularly struck with the circumstance. At last, something leading me to

inquire into the cause, I found there was a law prohibiting the mail bags being intrusted to a Black man. Now, as the coachmen were Negroes, this little lad was stuffed in, as a matter of form, as the nominal White guard of the United States mail bags!

And who are these fellow-creatures who are thus degraded below the level of their kind; and what is the crime which is visited with the atrocious cruelties I have detailed? Are they cannibals, who have invaded these peaceful regions to massacre and devour its inhabitants? monsters, whom no bonds of amity can restrain from rapine and devastation; whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand, therefore, of necessity and in self-defence, against them? No, my friend: they are the simple, docile, unoffending natives of a distant land, whose colour is their crime, and who have been torn from their kindred and their country by stratagem and force. They are the people of whom Mungo Park observes, after alluding to those traces of our general depravity which are to be found among the Negroes as much as in every other branch of the human family; "It is impossible for me to forget the disinterested charity and tender solicitude of many of these poor heathens, from the sovereign of Sego to the poor women who received me at different times into their cottages when I was perishing with hunger, sympathized with me in my sufferings, relieved my distresses, and contributed to my safety. This acknowledgment, however, is more particularly due to the female part of the

nation. In all In all my wanderings and wretchedness, I have found them uniformly kind and compassionate; and I can truly say, as my predecessor, Mr. Ledyard, has eloquently said before me, To a Negro woman I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship without receiving a decent and friendly answer. If I was hungry and thirsty, wet or sick, they did not hesitate, like the men, to perform a generous action. In so free and kind a manner did they contribute to my relief, that if I was dry, I drank the sweetest draught, and if hungry, I eat the coarsest morsel, with a double relish."

These are the people whose progressive improvement will, I hope, ere long, vindicate the prophetic strain of one of our most beautiful and devotional poets:

-But his mother's eye

That gazes on him from her warmest sky,
Sees in his flexile limbs untutored grace,
Power on his forehead, beauty in his face;
Sees in his breast where lawless passions rove,
The heart of frendship, and the home of love;
Sees in his mind, where desolation reigns,
Fierce as his clime, uncultured as his plains,
A soil where virtue's fairest flowers might shoot,
And trees of science bend with glorious fruit;
Sees in his soul, involved in thickest night,
An emanation of eternal light,

Ordained midst sinking worlds his dust to fire,
And shine for ever when the stars expire.

But I must lay down my pen for the present: though I have much more to say on the subject, and shall resume it before I leave this place.-[ am, &c.

23

LETTER XV.

Natchez, State of Mississippi.

I Now resume the afflicting subject on which I was addressing you. An extensive Slave-trade is carried on between these regions and those western parts of the States of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, in which they find it more profitable to breed slaves for the market, than to raise the appropriate produce of the soil. I have already mentioned the numerous gangs which I continually fell in with in my route from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico; and I have understood that from Maryland and Virginia alone, from 4000 to 5000 per annum are occasionally sent down to New-Orleans; a place, the very name of which seems to strike terror into the slaves and free Negroes of the Middle States. I was asked by a very intelligent free Black servant at the house where I lodged in Philadelphia, to tell him really whether the free Negroes whom the Colonization Society were professing to send to Africa, were not actually sent to New-Orleans; as it was said, that as soon as the vessel was out of sight of land, she steered her course thither; that he knew there were friends to the Negroes in the Society, who would not agree to deceive and sell them, but he thought they might be deceived themselves, and that nothing but this apprehension had prevented him from offering to go to Africa, as he much liked the plan.

Instances are not rare of Slaves destroying them

selves, by cutting their throats, or other violent measures, to avoid being sent to Georgia or NewOrleans. An instance is on record of a poor Black woman, in the winter of 1815, torn from her husband, and destined for transportation to Georgia, throwing herself at daybreak from the third story of a tavern in Washington; and slaves are marched in open day in manacles, on their melancholy journey southward, past the very walls of the Capitol, where the Senate of this free Republic conduct their deliberations. Indeed, this trade between the Middle and Southern States has given rise to the horrible practice of kidnapping free black men, and has introduced into the heart of a country pre-eminently proud of her free institutions, a sort of tegria, or man-stealing, which one had hoped was confined to the deserts of Africa. It is stated by Mr. Torrey, an American physician, in a work which he has published, called “American Slave Trade," that under the existing laws, if a "Free Coloured man travels without passports certifying his right to his liberty,he is generally apprehended, and frequently plunged (with his progeny) into slavery by the operation of the laws.” He observes; "The preceding facts clearly exemplify the safety with which the free-born (Black) inhabitants of the United States may be offered for sale, and sold, even in the metropolis of liberty, as oxen, even to those who are notified of the fact, and are perhaps convinced that they are free."

But why do I enter into these sad details? Is it to reproach America with a stain with which our own immaculate country is unsullied? I have not