In his work on "The American Slave-Trade," Mr. John R. Spears gives the dimensions of some of these puny vessels which were so heavily freighted with human woe. The first American slaver of which we have record was the "Desire," of Marblehead, 120 tons. Later vessels, however, were much smaller. The sloop, "Welcome," had a capacity of 5000 gallons of molasses. The "Fame" was 79 feet long on the keel--about a large yacht's length. In 1847, some of the captured slavers had dimensions like these: The "Felicidade" 67 tons; the "Maria" 30 tons; the "Rio Bango" 10 tons. When the trade was legal and regulated by law, the "Maria" would have been permitted to carry 45 slaves--or one and one-half to each ton register. In 1847, the trade being outlawed, no regulations were observed, and this wretched little craft imprisoned 237 negroes. But even this 10-ton slaver was not the limit. Mr. Spears finds that open rowboats, no more than 24 feet long by 7 wide, landed as many as 35 children in Brazil out of say 50 with which the voyage began. But the size of the vessels made little difference in the comfort of the slaves. Greed packed the great ones equally with the small. The blacks, stowed in rows between decks, the roof barely 3 feet 10 inches above the floor on which they lay side by side, sometimes in "spoon-fashion" with from 10 to 16 inches surface-room for each, endured months of imprisonment. Often they were so packed that the head of one slave would be between the thighs of another, and in this condition they would pass the long weeks which the Atlantic passage under sail consumed. This, too, when the legality of the slave trade was recognized, and nothing but the dictates of greed led to overcrowding. Time came when the trade was put under the ban of law and made akin to piracy. Then the need for fast vessels restricted hold room and the methods of the trade attained a degree of barbarity that can not be paralleled since the days of Nero. [Illustration: "A FAVORITE TRICK OF THE FLEEING SLAVER WAS TO THROW OVER SLAVES"] Shackled together "spoon-wise," as the phrase was, they suffered and sweltered through the long middle passage, dying by scores, so that often a fifth of the cargo perished during the voyage. The stories of those who took part in the effort to suppress the traffic give some idea of its frightful cruelty.