On the coast of Africa there are two descriptions of slaves, namely, the immediate descendants of slaves, and those who are reduced to slavery in the different ways I have described. The former are seldom sold, except for theft, but the most trivial transgression of this kind is often made a pretext for selling them. At Goree I was present at several publick sales of young women,[1] who were sold for acts of petty larceny, which scarcely deserved the name of crimes. The treatment these last experience is mild, when compared to that of the wretches, who are enslaved by force or fraud, and who are treated exactly like wild beasts. They are confined in prisons or dungeons, resembling dens, where they lie naked on the sand, crowded together and loaded with irons. In consequence of this cruel mode of confinement, they are frequently covered with cutaneous eruptions. Ten or twelve of them feed together out of a trough, precisely like so many hogs. There is even less care taken of them than of brutes, while they are confined in these horrid receptacles, and, till they are stowed away in the slave vessels, to be sent from the coast; nor are they worse treated on board, if we may credit some accounts. I am very sorry that humanity obliges me here to divulge a most barbarous practice, frequently used by the French traders in the Middle Passage. I have been assured by several of their merchants and captains, that when detained by calms, or contrary winds, occasioning a shortness of provisions and water; or when some fatal disease happens to break out among the slaves, they never fail to mix corrosive sublimate, or some other active poison with their visuals, and thus coolly dispatch the wretches committed to their charge. They affirm that it would be an act of imprudence to undertake such a voyage unprovided with poisonous drugs, and they boast of being less cruel than the Dutch and the English, who in similar circumstances throw the innocent victims over-board without ceremony.[2] Of the above cruel practice, my journal furnishes a melancholy instance, communicated to me by Capt. L. of Havre de Grace. About two years ago, a slave vessel belonging to Brest, having been becalmed in the Middle Passage, fell short of provisions and water. The Captain on this occasion had recourse to poison, by which so great a number was daily dispatched, that of _five hundred_ slaves, only _twenty-one_ arrived at Cape François. SECT. III. _Whether the Negroes are naturally inclined to Industry._ CHAP. I. _In FOREIGN COUNTRIES._ From several experiments made on different plantations in the West-Indies, it appears, that negroes, when working, not by the day, but by task, have given convincing proofs both of ability and industry.[3] CHAP. II. _In THEIR OWN COUNTRY._