chap, viii.] NEGRO SLAVE HUNTERS. 199 
under the conditions of negro forced industry must 
yield to ruin, under negro freedom and idle inde¬ 
pendence. For an example of the results, look to St. 
Domingo! 
Under peculiar guidance, and subject to a certain 
restraint, the negro may be an important and most 
useful being; but if treated as an Englishman, he will 
affect the vices but none of the virtues of civilization, 
and his natural good qualities will be lost in his 
attempts to become a “ white man.” 
Revenons d nos moutons noirs. It was amusing 
to watch the change that took place in a slave that 
had been civilized (?) by the slave-traders. Among 
their parties, there were many blacks who had been 
■captured, and who enjoyed the life of slave-hunting— 
nothing appeared so easy as to become professional in 
cattle razzias and kidnapping human beings, and the 
first act of a slave was to procure a slave for 
himself! All the best slave-hunters, and the boldest 
and most energetic scoundrels, were the negroes who 
had at one time themselves been kidnapped. These 
fellows aped a great and ridiculous importance. On 
the march they would seldom condescend to carry 
their own guns; a little slave boy invariably attended 
to his master, keeping close to his heels, and trotting 
along on foot during a long march, carrying a musket 
much longer than himself ; a woman generally carried 
a basket with a cooking-pot, and a gourd of water and 
provisions, while a hired native carried the soldier’s 
■change of clothes and ox-hide upon which he slept. 
Thus the man who had been kidnapped became the 
kidnapper, and the slave became the master, the only 
■difference between him and the Arab being an absurd 
notion of his own dignity. It was in vain that I 
attempted to reason with them against the principles of 
slavery ; they thought it wrong when they were them¬ 
selves the sufferers, but were always ready to indulge 
in it when the preponderance of power lay upon 
their side. 
