ciiAP. VI. VAEIETIES OF PUNISHMENT. 163 



rank and lineage placed him near the throne, to the poor and 

 friendless slave, — all had been punished for supposed or ac- 

 knowledged participation in the reading of the Christian's book 

 or the offering of the Christian's prayer. The punishments in- 

 flicted had been almost as varied as the condition or the 

 circumstances of the criminal. The tangena, or ordeal of 

 poison-water, had frequently been administered with fatal 

 effects. Fines had been imposed, from a single dollar to an 

 amount equal to the estimated value at which a delinquent or 

 his family could be ransomed. Thus, on one occasion, a 

 prince was fined 100 dollars, estimated as half his redemption 

 price. Confiscation and seizure had been made of house and 

 land, and of every kind of property belonging to the accused. 

 Multitudes were reduced to slavery, sold in the public markets, 

 and subjected to all the ordinary miseries resulting from sepa- 

 ration from their nearest relatives, frequently with two extra 

 conditions intended to enhance the bitterness of their cup, 

 viz., that they should only be sold to those who would engage 

 to make them labour severely and continuously, and that 

 their relatives or friends should not be allowed to redeem 

 them, but that they should be, as it was expressed, " like weeds 

 of the waste, bowing down their heads till they died." Amongst 

 the communications which I received, were deeply affecting 

 accounts of the circumstances of some who, nineteen years 

 before, or at a later period, had been sold into slavery, and of 

 the prices which had been paid for them by their purchasers. 

 Some of these were the widows of those who had been put to 

 death, some were single men or women, others were heads of 

 families, and their wives and children were sold with them. 

 The prices ranged from 23 to 90 dollars for a single indi- 

 vidual, and from 110 dollars for a man and his wife to 178 

 for a man and three children. 



Numbers, not sold into perpetual slavery, had been reduced 

 in rank and sentenced to the hardest kinds of labour, such as 



M 2 



