240 



Algiers. It is distressing to think, that even at 

 this day there exist European colonists in the 

 West Indies, who mark their slaves with a hot 

 iron, to know them again if they escape. This 

 is the treatment bestowed on those, " who save 

 other men the trouble of sowings tilling, and 

 reaping, in order to live* ." 



The greater the impression which the first 

 sale of negroes made on us, the more we con- 

 gratulated ourselves on living among a people, 

 and on a continent, where this sight is rare, and 

 where the number of slaves is in general very 

 inconsiderable. The number in 1800 did not 

 exceed six thousand in the two provinces of Cu- 

 mana and Barcelona, when at the same period 

 the whole population was estimated at one hun- 

 dred and ten thousand inhabitants. The trade 

 in African slaves, which the Spanish laws have 

 never favoured, is almost nothing on coasts, 

 where the trade in American slaves -was carried 

 on in the sixteenth century with a desolating 



* La Bruyere, Caracteres, Chap, XI. (ed. 1765, p. 303). 

 I wish to cite at length a passage, in which the love of the 

 human species is drawn with force, or rather with noble 

 severity. " We find (under the torrid zone) certain wild ani- 

 mals, male and female, scattered through the country, black, 

 livid, and all over scorched by the Sun, bent to the earth 

 which they dig and turn up with invincible perseverance. 

 They have something like an articulate voice ; and, when 

 they stand up on their feet, they exhibit a human face, and in 

 fact these creatures are men." 



