The seamen, whose health happen to be impaired, are discharged, on the arrival of the ships in the West-Indies, and as soon as they get ashore, they have recourse to spiritous liquors, to which they are the more prone, on account of having been denied grog, or even any liquor but water, during their being aboard; the consequence of which is, a certain and speedy destruction. Numbers likewise die in the West-India islands, of the scurvy, brought on in consequence of poverty of diet, and exposure to all weathers. I am now come to a part of the sufferings of the sailors who are employed in the slave-trade, of which, for the honour of human nature, I would willingly decline giving an account; that is, the treatment they receive from their officers, which makes no inconsiderable addition to the hardships and ailments just mentioned, and contributes not a little to rob the nation annually, of a considerable number of this valuable body of men. However, as truth demands, and the occasion requires it, I will relate some of the circumstances of this kind, which fell under my own immediate observation, during the several voyages I made in that line. In one of these, I was witness to the following instance of cruel usage. Most of the sailors were treated with brutal severity; but one in particular, a man advanced in years, experienced it in an uncommon degree. Having made some complaint relative to his allowance of water, and this being construed into an insult, one of the officers seized him, and with the blows he bestowed upon him, beat out several of his teeth. Not content with this, while the poor old man was yet bleeding, one of the iron pump-bolts was fixed in his mouth, and kept there by a piece of rope-yarn tied round his head. Being unable to spit out the blood which flowed from the wound, the man was almost choaked, and obliged to swallow it. He was then tied to the rail of the quarter-deck, having declared, upon being gagged, that he would jump overboard and drown himself. About two hours after he was taken from the quarter-deck rail, and fastened to the grating companion of the steerage, under the half deck, where he remained all night with a centinel placed over him.