METHOD OF PUNISHMENT. 823 



on their heads, and in this way we may account for 

 their erect carriage. At any minute in the day 

 women and children may be seen carrying earthen 

 jars containing molasses or oil, threading the crowded 

 thoroughfares, and bringing their loads safe to their 

 destination — a feat not to be accomplished by those 

 unaccustomed to the practice. 



On the principle that sparing the rod spoils the 

 child, (for these people are viewed only as children,) 

 their owners are not at all reserved in the use of this 

 instrument of chastisement; and along with the gangs 

 at labor may the overseer be seen applying it with- 

 out remorse. As the blow generally falls on the 

 skull, I can see little reason for a preference of this 

 to the method of punishment by lashes on the back 

 in vogue in our Southern States. This, however, is 

 not their only way of punishment. I saw several 

 instances of gross personal abuse. In one case I saw 

 the slave thrown down, and dragged by the waist- 

 band over the sharp points of the macadamized 

 street, with nothing to protect his buttocks from 

 laceration except several thicknesses of calico. The 

 poor fellow, apparently aware of its uselessness, made 

 no complaint. This occurred, not in an obscure 

 place — not in the purlieus of the town, but in a 

 public street, where people were constantly passing, 

 and who, if any feeling at all were expressed by them, 

 only laughed at the ludicrousness of the scene. A 

 police-officer stood looking on apathetically, as though 

 the whole afl'air were a matter of course. 



Impelled with a desire to know what Englishmen 

 thought of the apprentice-system, I put the question 

 to every intelligent one that I could get at. In nine 



