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and huddled together, and compelled to live in a 

 state of uncleanness revolting to human nature, as 

 might be expected, Cholera and other malignant 

 diseases, broke out with fearful effect. In some 

 instances ten per cent of these wretched victims 

 were carried off in as many days. In others the 

 mortality reached to forty or fifty per cent, in a 

 three weeks voyage. With some truth may it be 

 said that the horrors of the slave trade pale before 

 the horrors of the coolie trade of Assam and Cachar 

 in the years 1861-62. Yet is the worst not yet 

 told. The dead feel no pains let us follow the 

 living. Arrived at their destination, many urged 

 that they were unequal to field labor, that they had 

 been engaged as artizans, menial servants, nay even 

 as priests of temples, at treble the rates of wages they 

 were offered. But the planters had contracted for 

 coolies, had paid for them, as such they had signed 

 contracts to serve as such for three or five years they 

 were able bodied, they must work. Bat what of the 

 weak, the halt, the maimed, and the blind ? Re- 

 jected by the planters as useless, they were turned 

 adrift, to find their way, penniless, hundreds of miles 

 to their village homes, or, more probably, to starve 

 to die ! The imagination of the English reader, 

 will recoil with horror from such a picture as this- 

 possibly reject it as purely immaginary or untrue, 

 yet nothing has been stated that official documents 

 have not recorded, and in India it is a rule that in 



