TilE SLAVE MABKET. 
175 
around the planet Venus; the purple, orange, and violet 
were distinctly perceived: but I never saw any colours 
around bmus, Canopus, or Acherner. 
While the halo was visible at Cumana, the hygrometer 
denoted great humidity ; nevertheless the vapours appeared 
so perfectly in solution, or rather so elastic and uniformly 
disseminated, that they did not alter the transparency of the 
atmosphere. The moon arose after a storm of rain, beliind 
the castle of San Antonio. As soon as she appeared on the 
horizon, we distinguished two circles : one large and whitish, 
forty-four degrees in diameter; the other a small circle of 
1° 43', displaying all the colours of the rainbow. The space 
between the two circles was of the deepest azure. At four 
degrees height, they disappeared, while the meteorolo<ncal 
instruments indicated not the slightest change in the lower 
regions of the air. This phenomenon had nothing extra- 
ordinary, except the great brilliancy of the colours, added to 
the circumstance, that, according to the measures taken 
with Eamsden’s sextant, the lunar disk was not exactly in 
the centre of the haloes. Without this actual measurement 
we might have thought that the excentricity was the effect 
of the projection of the circles on the apparent concavity of 
the sky. J 
If the situation of our house at Cumana was highly fa- 
vourable for the observation of the stars and meteorological 
phenomena, it obliged us to be sometimes the witnesses ot 
painful scenes during the day. A. part of the great square is 
surrounded with arcades, above which is one of those long 
wooden galleries, common in warm countries. This was the 
the place where slaves, brought from the coast of Africa, 
were sold. Of all the European governments Denmark was 
the first, and for a long time the only power, which abolished 
the traffic ; yet notwithstanding that fact, the first neo-roes 
we saw exposed for sale had been landed from a Danish 
slave-ship. What are the duties of humanity, national 
honour, or the laws of their country, to men stimulated by 
the speculations of sordid interest ? 
The slaves exposed to sale were young men from fifteen 
to twenty years of age. Every morning cocca-nut oil was 
distributed among then, with which they rubbed their 
