53 o 
SLA VERY 
CHAP. 
the true corals, during the outward growth of the mass, become 
killed by exposure to the sun and air. These insignificant 
organic beings, especially the Serpulae, have done good service 
to the people of Pernambuco ; for without their protective aid 
the bar of sandstone would inevitably have been long ago 
worn away, and without the bar there would have been no 
harbour. 
On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. 
I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To 
this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful 
vividness my feelings, when, passing a house near Pernambuco, 
I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that 
some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as 
powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that 
these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that 
this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I 
lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the 
fingers of her female slaves. I have stayed in a house where 
a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, 
beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest 
animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, 
struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on 
his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not 
quite clean ; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from 
his master’s eye. These latter cruelties were witnessed by me 
in a Spanish colony, in which it has always been said that 
slaves are better treated than by the Portuguese, English, or 
other European nations. I have seen at Rio Janeiro a power¬ 
ful negro afraid to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at 
his face. I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the 
point of separating for ever the men, women, and little children 
of a large number of families who had long lived together. I 
will not even allude to the many heart - sickening atrocities 
which I authentically heard of;—-nor would I have mentioned 
the above revolting details, had I not met with several people, 
so blinded by the constitutional gaiety of the negro, as to 
speak of slavery as a tolerable evil. Such people have generally 
visited at the houses of the upper classes, where the domestic 
slaves are usually well treated ; and they have not, like myself, 
lived amongst the lower classes. Such inquirers will ask 
