FARMERS' REGISTER— AMERICAN REFUGEE SLAVES. 



405 



dered the doctrine of animal, or rather vital elec- 

 tricity, as apparently ridiculous as that of elec- 

 tro-chemical agency was considered, belbre Davy, 

 by its means, changed the whole face of that sci- 

 ence which he so nobly cultivated. Nothing, per- 

 haps, has tended more to his discredit of this theo- 

 ry, than the inordinate expectations which medi- 

 cal electricity called forth some forty or lifty years 

 ago, when it was ushered into practice as a uni- 

 versal remedy, and wliich shared the fate of all 

 new remedies whose powers are overrated, abused, 

 and ultimately decried. But of late years, on the 

 continent, the influence of the electric fluid or vi- 

 tality has again forced itself on public attention ; 

 and in the south of France, we have seen whole 

 vineyards in which numerous electrical conduc- 

 tors were attached to the plants, for the purpose of 

 increasing the progress of vegetation, and of in- 

 vigorating the vines. 



REFUGEK AXD E3X AXCIP ATED SLAVES. 



[The following extracts will serve to show the pro- 

 gressive and present state pf the slaves who were car- 

 ried from Virginia and the more Sovithern States, by 

 the British fleets, during the war 1812. The narrative 

 will probably be interesiing to many of our readers, as 

 tlie circumstances relate to those who were formerly 

 our slaves, and it also presents subjects well worthy of 

 consideration for the political economist, the philan- 

 thropist, and the statesman.] 



From A Subaltern's Furlough. 



There is a settlement of negroes a few miles 

 from Halifax, at Hammond's Plains, the com- 

 mencement of the military road laid out by Sir 

 John Sherbroke, in a direct line to Annapolis, 

 through the dense forest, which lessens the niter- 

 mediale distance nearly onC'third. Any one would 

 liave imagined that the government would have 

 taken warning from the trouble and expense it in- 

 curred by granting protection to those wlio emi- 

 grated from the States during the revolution, 1200 

 of whom were removed to Sierra Leone in 1792 

 by their own request. Again, when 600 of the 

 insurgent negroes, the Maroons of Jamaica, were 

 transported to Nova Scotia in 1796, and received 

 every possible encouragement to become good 

 subjects, by being granted a settlement at Preston, 

 and being employed upon the fortifications at Hali- 

 fax, yet they too soon became discontented with the 

 climate, and, being unwilling to earn a livelihood 

 by labor, were removed in 1800 to the same colony 

 as their predecessors, after costing the island of 

 Jamaica more than 45,000/. , and a large additional 

 sum to the province. Nothwithstanding all this, 

 when the runaway slaves were received on board 

 the fleet off the Chesapeake during the late war, 

 permission was granted to them to form a settle- 

 ment at Hammond's Plains, where the same sys- 

 tem of discontent soon arose. Many of the settlers 

 professing they should prefer their former well-fed 

 life of slavery in a more congenial climate, and 

 earnestly petitioning to be removed, were sent to 

 Trinidad in 1821. Some few of those who remain- 

 ed are good servants and firrmcrs, disposing of the 

 produce of their lands at the Halifax market; but 

 the majority are idle, roving, and 'dirty vaga- 

 bonds. 



AMERICAN REFUGEE SLAVES. 



From Blackwood's Marrnzine. 



The American refugee slaves are the next class 

 who deserve notice. They have been settled in 

 Trinidad, and consisted, I believe, on their arrival 

 there about eighteen years ago, of 1100 men, 309 

 women, and 217 children ; altogether, 1626. These 

 were, I believe, principally field slaves, or agricul- 

 tural laborers when in the United Stales. Great 

 Britain paid these Stales, for these people, the sum 

 of twelve hundred and fifty thousand dollars, 

 making, with the expense of the commission at St. 

 Pelersl)urg, attending the reference to the Emperor 

 of Russia, and the additional expense of transport- 

 ing them from America to Trinidad, a suni exceed- 

 ing 300,000/. sterling. Since they went there, 

 they liave cost the British Government upwards 

 of 30,000/. sterling more, besides the value of the 

 land, sixteen acres given to each grown up person, 

 some of it in cultivation of provisions, cocoa, &c., 

 above, if land is to be taken worth any thing, 

 60,000/. more; or togelher, 400,000/. sterling on 

 this free labor speculation. I passed through a 

 part of their location in January last, and have col- 

 lected a particular and accurate account of the 

 whole. They have done nothing : they arc scat- 

 tered, and utterly demoralized. 



These people were located in the vicinily of Sa- 

 vannah-lc- Grande, the most fertile part of Trini- 

 dad. They were settled in companies in a military 

 way. The cultivation of provisions for their own 

 supply, and some product for exportation, as direct- 

 ed by Sir Ralph Woodford, was abandoned in con- 

 sequence of orders from England. Mr. Mitciiell, 

 their superintendent, with a salary of 400/. sterling 

 per annum, endeavored to keep them all at work 

 on his own estate, by persuading them that (hey 

 would not get paid if they wrought on any other. 

 He had then an estate with about thirty slaves, 

 yielding a fair return, and clear of debt. About 

 this time he sent to England some sugar, as lie 

 said, the produce oi free, labor, about which a great 

 noise was made. The fact was, that" notwith- 

 standing his unlimited authority, and the applica- 

 tion of the whip, to the extent that the flagellations 

 inflicted amongst these people exceeded those in- 

 flicted on all the sugar plantations in the districts 

 of both Naparimas, still these people would not 

 work, nor could he obtain any labor from them at 

 a profit, which compelled him to purchase a consi- 

 derable number of slaves, at a very high rate, in 

 order to carry on the cultivation of his estate. 

 From this cause it got deeply in debt at the com- 

 mencement of the late ruinously low prices of 

 sugar ; and it is now, after his death, in the hands 

 of a mortgagee, and his family left without a farth- 

 ing! Government discontinued the superinten- 

 dent at the beginning of last year, since which 

 period these people have begun to scatter them- 

 selves all over the country. Only about a thousand 

 of them can be found. They go upon estates where 

 they are supjtorted by the slaves. A few among 

 them occasionally engage in the labor of cutting 

 wood and canes, in order to procure rum and a little 

 salt fish, and such clothes as will cover their na- 

 kedness. They drink rum to excess. Those w ho 

 engage in cutting wood, never drink less than a 

 bottle a-day, and two if they can get it. These 

 people, togelher with the free Indians and Spanish 

 peons, look with contempt upon an estate that has 



