242 



WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



When tlie old man saw what had happened, he damned 

 his own handicraft in wing-making ; devovitque suas 

 artes." Prudence is a cardinal virtue : — 



" Omnia consulta mente gerenda tegens." 



Foresight is half the battle. ^'Hombre apercebido, 

 medio combatido," says Don Quixote, or Sancho, I do 

 not remember which. Had Queen Bess weighed well 

 in her own mind the probable consequences of this 

 lamentable traffic, it is likely she would not have been 

 owner of two vessels in Sir John Hawkins's squadron, 

 which committed the first robbery in negro flesh on the 

 coast of Africa. As philanthropy is the very life and 

 soul of this momentous question on slaver}^, which is 

 certainly fraught with great difficulties and danger, 

 perhaps it would be as well at present for the nation 

 to turn its thoughts to poor ill-fated Ireland, where 

 oppression, poverty, and rags make a heart-rending 

 appeal to the feelings of the benevolent. 



But to proceed. There was another thing which 

 added to the dulness of Barbadoes, and which seemed 

 to have considerable effect in keeping away strangers 

 from the island. The legislature had passed a most 

 extraordinary bill, by virtue of which every person who 

 arrives at Barbadoes is obliged to pay two dollars, and 

 two dollars more on his departure from it. It is called 

 the alien bill ; and every Barbadian who leaves or 

 returns to the island, and every Englishman too, pays 

 the tax ! 



Finding no vessel here for Trinidad, I 

 forD^merara. embarked in a schooner for Demerara, 

 landed there after being nearly stranded on 

 a sand-bank, and proceeded without loss of time to the 



