114 THE BRx\ZILS. 
not far distant when he may become the comfort and support 
of his aged parents. But what is the prospect of the unfor- 
tunate African ? Eternal separation from his dearest friends ; 
endless slaverj" ; severe labour ; treatment more cruel, and 
neglect more pointed, as age and infirmities shall have made 
him less valuable to his owner. 
The slave of the Brazils has many advantages over the 
slave of the AVest India islands. The climate of the former 
is infinitely superior to that of the latter, and the seasons of 
planting and of reaping are of longer duration. The owner 
of a sugar plantation in the West Indies has but a short 
period allowed him during the rains to get his canes into the 
ground. Equally short is the season of reaping them. If 
the canes are not cut down when fully ripe, the juice eva- 
porates and they turn to wood ; if they are cut down and 
not iumiediately pressed, the juice begins to ferment, and is 
tit only to be converted by distillation into rum. At these 
seasons, therefore, and particularly in the latter, every hand 
t1iat can work, however feebly, is of importance to the 
planter ; and tlie urgent demand for labour sometimes makes 
him wholly insensible to acts of inhumanity, which, perhaps, 
at other times, might appear to him in their true light, and 
as odious and atrocious iu the extreme. This is not the case 
in the Brazils. The season of planting, on account of the 
longer continuance of rain, is at least two months longer here 
than in the West Indies ; and the gradual ripening of the 
plants protracted in the same proportion. It is not therefore 
found to be necessar}'' here, as is the case in our colonies, to 
drive the slaves to work with the crack or the lash of the 
