The Three Counties under the Dutch. 35 
In regarding slavery as it existed in the time of 
PlNCKARD not the least curious thing to us is the mental 
attitude toward the system of those white people who 
had been long accustomed to it. At the present 
day a strong prejudice against negroes, or to speak 
more accurately, against West Indian negroes, ex- 
ists even in many educated Europeans, but it would 
probably be difficult to find any men in white skins 
who have, in any degree, that utter want of per- 
ception of any moral rights pertaining to a man in a 
black skin which prevailed among many, at least, of the 
planters of Guiana at the end of the last century. Nothing 
more clearly illustrates this odd state of feeling than 
certain stories told by PlNCKARD of the habit of mind of 
the ladies of Guiana toward their slaves. For example, 
during a morning call on a lady in Stabroek, PlNCKARD 
heard the slash of whips and cries of pain. ' The lady 
of the house,' he says, ' more accustomed to scenes of 
slavery than ourselves, pointing to the spot, as if it were 
a pleasant sight for strangers, or something that might 
divert us, asked with apparent glee, if we saw them 
' flogging the negro ? ' ' Thus called to the window the 
sight he saw in the open street was the not uncommon 
one of a wretched negro fastened face downward to the 
ground, his two legs tied to one stake, his two arms 
each extended and tied to another stake, flogged by two 
strong and armed drivers; But perhaps a yet more 
marked instance of this unwomanly callousness is to be 
found in the following annecdote : — 
" A few days ago," Pinckard writes, " I was applied to by the wife of 
a colonist to request that I would make some complaint against the 
slaves of the house to her husband, very humanely giving as a reason 
E 2 
