=§ 67. Escapes to the North.=--Of those who, with heroic hearts and firm courage, determined to reach even Canada, many had seldom left the plantation on which they were born, and were so completely ignorant of geography and relative distances, that the best and quickest way northward could seldom be chosen. They knew nothing of the facilities for communication possessed by their masters through newspapers and telegraph, and would often fancy themselves safe when they had travelled but a short distance from home. In reality, the white people about were often fully informed against them, and arrests were almost sure to follow.[230] The journeys of the fugitives were necessarily long, since unfrequented ways were generally chosen, and but part of the day could be used. There is a record of a man who had "taken a whole year in coming from Alabama to Cincinnati. He had travelled only in the night, hiding in the woods during the day. He had nothing to eat but what he could get from the fields, sometimes finding a chicken, green corn, or perhaps a small pig."[231] Although the methods pursued were innumerable, and varied from those of the man whose only guide was the north star, to those of the party aided onward by the most elaborate arrangements of the Underground Railroad, the fugitive was obliged to follow one of two great routes, by water or by land. From the earliest times the ship had been a favorite refuge. Once on board a craft bound to a Northern port, the fugitive was almost certain of reaching that destination, and, once arrived, could hope for protection from the Northern friends of whom vague rumors had penetrated the South. New laws, therefore, bore more and more heavily upon captains who should be found guilty of harboring a slave, and many cases were made public of cruel treatment experienced by slaves at the hands of captains who sent them directly back. Nevertheless, escapes on shipboard still occurred frequently through the years of slavery. A method commonly used by women in getting on board was to disarm suspicion by appearing to be carrying some freshly laundered clothes to the sailors. =§ 68. Use of protection papers.=--Another method called for less physical effort on the part of the fugitive, but for greater coolness. It was simply to procure from some freeman his protection papers, and to show them whenever necessary to disarm suspicion. As the descriptions could seldom be made to agree, both giver and receiver were placed in situations of the greatest risk. It was thus, however, that Frederick Douglass travelled in the most open manner from Baltimore to New York, and escaped from a bondage to which he never afterward returned.[232] [Sidenote: Fugitives disguised as Whites.]