because many of them are such poor creatures when they arrive, and so reduced by the miseries of the voyage, and so exhausted by the hard labour to which they are put, that they bring no profit to the master, but quickly fall ill and die like rotten sheep. Like rotten sheep, I say, they die, without a word of Christian exhortation; and like brute creatures, who have no world to come, are they buried in the ground! Again, the food served out to these poor people is not such as should be given to white people in a hot climate. There is nothing but water to drink, and that drawn from ponds, because in Barbadoes there are few springs or rivers. It is true that the old hands, who have learned how to manage, contrive to make plantain wine, and get, by hook or by crook, mobbie (which is a strong drink made from potatoes), or kill-devil, which is the new spirit distilled from sugar. Then for solid food, the servants are allowed five pounds of salt beef for each person every week, and this so hard and stringy that no boiling will make it soft enough for the teeth. Sometimes, instead of the beef, they have as much salt fish, for the most part stinking; with this a portion of ground Indian corn, which is made into a kind of porridge, and called loblollie. This is the staple of the food, and there are no rustics at home who do not live better and have more nourishing food. I do not deny that the convicts are for the most part a horrid crew, who deserve to suffer if any men ever did; but it was sad to see how the faces of the people were pinched with hunger and wasted with the daily fatigues, and how their hollow eyes were full of despair. Whatever their sins may have been, they were at least made in God's own image: no criminal, however wicked, should have been used with such barbarity as was wreaked upon the people of this estate. The overseers were chosen (being themselves also convicts) for their hardness of heart. Nay, did they show the least kindness towards the poor creatures whom they drove, they would themselves be forced to lay down the whip of office and to join the gang of those who toiled. And over them was the master, jealous to exact the last ounce of strength from the creatures whom he had bought. Did the good people of Bristol who buy the sugar and molasses and tobacco of the Indies know or understand the tears of despair and the sweat of agony which are forced with every pound of sugar, they would abhor the trade which makes them rich.