It will naturally occur to the reader, that though the magistrates and other public officers of a corporation might combine together to perpetrate such acts, they could not carry their authority across the Atlantic, or compel the governors of the foreign possessions of the crown to acknowledge the brand of slavery they had set upon their captives. This naturally suggested itself to us from the beginning, as throwing a doubt over the essential movements of the transaction; but it was speedily cleared away by discoveries very creditable to the ingenuity, if to no other quality, of these astute burgesses. Every captive was indented in the presence of a magistrate,--the captor himself, of course, or some other person engaged in "the servant trade"--and that for a limited number of years. The indenture was certified and transmitted to the place of destination. This expedient brought each captive within the colonial code, which applied very rigorous rules to indented emigrants,--rules which virtually placed them in the category of slaves. These harsh regulations were justified by the circumstance that the class generally consisted of convicts--indenture being the form in which criminals obtained the alternative of transportation as a mitigation of some more dreaded punishment. When the emigrant arrived at Virginia, the ceremony by which he was sold was an assignment of his indenture. This could, of course, only convey a right to the labour of his body for a limited period; but as the convict emigrants required to be under a very potent discipline, powers were put into the hands of the planters by which they were enabled to protract the indented period; and Williamson himself describes with apparent accuracy,--"the children sent off and sold, no doubt to cruel masters, whose ill treatment obliges them often-times to elope to avoid slavery; and as there is no probability of making their escape, as they are always taken and brought back, and for every day they are away from their master they serve a week, and for every week a month, and for every month a year; besides obliged to pay all costs and charges that is advertised for apprehending them, which will probably bring him in a slave for four or five years longer at least." We shall now, in the briefest shape, give an outline of Williamson's adventures, as detailed by himself, between his removal from the country, and his return to vex his oppressors with multiform litigation.