1836.] SLAVERY. 499 
layer, a few inches thick, of caleareous matter, wholly formed by 
the successive growth and death of the small shells of Serpule, 
together with some few barnacles and nullipore. These nulli- 
adore, which are hard, very simply-organized sea-plants, play an 
analogous and important part in protecting the upper surfaces of 
coral-reefs, behind and within the breakers, where the true corals, 
during the outward growth of the mass, become killed by ex- 
posure to the sun and air. These insignificant organic beings, 
especially the Serpule, have done good service to the people of 
Pernambuco; for without their protective aid the bar of sand- 
stone would inevitably have been long ago worn away, and 
without the bar, there would have been no harbour. 
On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I 
thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this 
day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness 
my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard 
the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some 
poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless 
as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans 
were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case 
in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an 
old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female 
slaves. JI have staid in a house where a young household mu- 
latto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted 
enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a 
little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip 
(before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed 
me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at 
a mere glance from his master’s eye. These latter cruelties 
were witnessed by me in a Spanish colony, in which it has 
always been said, that slaves are better treated than by the 
_.Portuguese, English, or other European nations. I have seen 
at Rio Janeiro a powerful negro afraid to ward off a blow di- 
rected, as he thought, at his face. I was present when a kind- 
hearted man was on the point of separating for ever the men, 
women, and little children of a large number of families who 
had long lived together. I will not even allude to the many 
heart-sickening atrocities which I authentically heard of ;—nor 
would I have mentioned the above revolting details, had I not 
