530 United Stales of America, and British West Indies. [MAY, 



friendly emancipation which take place in these calumniated colonies, 

 will at once perceive the immense superiority of feeling which is in ope- 

 ration there over that of our American neighbours, notwithstanding the 

 boasted freedom of their institutions. 



The workhouse is not only a sort of bridewell, where offenders work 

 at the treadmill, but is also used for punishing slaves. The offending 

 slave is sent to the workhouse with a note and a piece of money, on deli- 

 vering which he receives so many' stripes, and is sent back again. The 

 retention of the power of punishment in the hand of the master is 

 defended on the plea of necessity. " I was often assured by sensible 

 men," says Captain Hall, " that any considerable modification of it, in 

 principle or in practice, would speedily bring about anarchy, insurrec- 

 tion, bloodshed, and all the horrors of a civil war,"* 



"In the court-yard of the jail, there were scattered about no fewer 

 than three hundred slaves, mostly brought from the country for sale, and 

 kept there at twenty cents or about tenpence a-day, penned up like cattle 

 till the next market-day. The scene was not unlike what I suppose the 

 encampment of a wild African horde to be. Men, women, and children, 

 of all ages, were crowded together in groups, or seated in circles, round 

 fires, -cooking their messes of Indian corn or rice. Clothes of all colours 

 were hung up to dry on the walls of the prison, coarse and ragged ; while 

 the naked children were playing about quite merrily, unconscious alike 

 of their present degradation, and their future life of bondage. On the 

 balcony along with us stood three or four slave dealers, overlooking the 

 herd of human victims below, and speculating upon the qualities of each. 

 The day was bright and beautiful ; and there was in this curious scene 

 no appearance of wretchedness, except what was imparted to it by re- 

 flection from our own m.inds." 



Leaving Charleston, Captain Hall passed through a country rather 

 interesting on account of its vegetable productions and forest scenery. 

 He halted some time at a large and well-ordered plantation, where he was 

 hospitably entertained, in the absence of the family, by the head negro, 

 who had had orders to receive him. He had here an opportunity, for 

 the first time, of seeing something of rice cultivation. " The plantation, 

 at the time of our visit, consisted of two hundred and seventy acres of 

 rice, fifty of cotton, eighty of Indian corn, and twelve of potatoes, besides 

 some minor plots of vegetables, the whole being cultivated by eighty 

 working hands. A shovel plough is used at certain seasons for weeding ; 

 but all the essential and laborious work of preparing the soil, as well as 

 that of sowing and reaping the crops, is done exclusively by hand." 



At another estate farther south, about thirty miles from the sea, he 

 had an opportunity of acquiring further information on this subject. 

 The ebb and flow* of the tide in the rivers intersecting the level parts of 

 South Carolina is of the greatest consequence to the rice growers, as it 

 enables them to irrigate their fields at the proper season, and in the pro- 

 per quantity ; an advantage which leads to the production of those mag- 

 nificent crops with which all the world is familiar. " During our stay, 

 we had an opportunity of being initiated into the mystery of the culti- 

 vation of rice, the staple of Carolina. This grain is sown in rows, in the 

 bottom of trenches made by slave labour entirely. These ridges lie about 

 seventeen inches apart, from centre to centre. The rice is put in with 

 the hand, generally by women, and is never scattered, but cast so as to 



* Hall's Travels, vol. iii. p. 108. 



